"I'll be out of town for a day," Delfina told Caspian. "It's time."
Caspian didn't need to be informed out what it was time for, as there was only one thing Del could mean and that was it was time to go up to inform his godparents that she had met her mate.
The two of them were in her office instead of his for a change, and it was a lot smaller, but then, Delfina didn't need much space, as she only did the books here and didn't really spend a lot of time in this tiny room that had been turned into an office for her. There was enough room for a desk and a chair, some filing cabinets, and that was about it.
"I'll see you when you get back," Caspian said. "Say hello to your parents for me."
"I will," Delfina promised.
"I'm surprised it's taken you this long to take a trip up to South Carolina where they are," Caspian said.
"I didn't have a legitimate excuse to get away," Delfina said, shaking her head. "Tony would've needed a solid reason for me to suddenly want to go up and visit mom and dad for what seemed for no reason other than I miss them, which is true I do, but it's not a good enough reason to just get up and go, not for Tony at least. If I was going to stay for a few days it would be one thing, but Tony would see it as why waste the money to go up there for only a few hours. He's not close to his father and his mother is dead. He would never waste money just to go visit his dad for no reason. I didn't need him getting suspicious as the reason I went to visit them, but right now he's involved in a big case so he won't even know I'm gone before I'm already back."
"I see," Caspian said, absorbing what Delfina had said. "I understand if there's one thing you don't want to do is make your mate suspicious of why you suddenly needed to take a trip."
"Exactly and this is a good time to do it, since Tony is very busy with that case right now and has already told me that he won't have time to spend with me for a few days. Since I won't be gone but a few hours, this is a good time to get it out of the way without raising his suspicions," Delfina said. "It's a good time to go up to South Carolina and inform mom and dad that I've met my mate. We'll talk for a bit and then I'll head back here, so Tony never has to know until he's in on our secret. Also, I have no clients today so that's another good reason to just get up and go."
"I'll see you when you get back," Caspian said simply. "My godparents will be very happy for you having met your mate. Now, if only I can meet my own mate sometime in the next few decades, I'd be forever grateful."
"You will," Delfina told Caspian. "It's been happening so often in our family that it's simply a matter of time. It might not happen for 100 years, but it will happen. The next one to find their mate should be one of your siblings, which might very well be you for all you know, since it seems to go from a Rossi to a Hotchner and back again."
"That's true," Caspian said brightening at that thought. "I could very well be next for all we know."
"It's possible," Delfina told him not wanting to dampen Cas's hopes. She somehow doubted, however, that Caspian would be next because the likelihood of him meeting his mate right after she had met hers were astronomical considering they worked together. Besides, they were of the same generation, which made it even more unlikely since so far those that had met their mates had been different generations.
"You don't think it's likely though," Caspian said when he looked at Delfina's expression, heard the doubt in her tone of voice, despite the fact that she tried to hide it.
"It's just that we work together. I mean, think about it logically for just a minute. We are the same generation and so far every Rossi and Hotchner that has met their mate have not been so closely linked and they're also different generations," Delfina explained what she'd been thinking
"Way to dash my hopes Del," Caspian told her looking downcast.
"Look I'm sorry, Cas, I really am. I should've just kept my thoughts to myself, but I never have been able to control my expression or tone when I'm not thinking about it and you caught me in a weak moment," Delfina said.
"It's OK. When you're right, you're right, as you just pointed out some thing's I hadn't thought about," Caspian said. "I hope you have a good time visiting your parents and let me know what they say when you return."
"I will," Delfina promised. "I had better go though, as I have a shuttle to catch. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Tomorrow," Caspian agreed as he washed Delfina, leave her office and head for the street, so she could head to the shuttleport.
~~~Tony and Delfina~~~
"It's good to see you Del," Aaron greeted his daughter after she had entered her parents home, which was not the same one that she had grown up in.
"Because you called ahead, I got some snacks from your aunt's bakery," Shonda added, as she to came to greet her daughter
"I'm sure I'll love whatever you got from Aunt Jazz's bakery," Delfina said. "I'm certainly a regular patron at the one in Baltimore."
"Of course you are. I would be more surprised if you told Aaron and I, that you hadn't been at all to the bakery there," Shonda told her daughter, smiling.
"How's Caspian?" Aaron asked his daughter.
"And the business the two of you started just a few years ago," Shonda added. "Any difficulties?"
"No, the business is fine and so is Cas," Delfina promised, before she took one of the little cakes off the plate that her mother had set on the table so that anybody could get what they wanted from it. "That's not why I came to see you."
"I believe both of us have figured that out already," Aaron said, as he too, took one of the little cakes from the plate.
"It's not like Aaron and I aren't used to one of our children visiting every few years," Shonda told Delfina with a smile. "When you contacted us and told us you were coming we both had a pretty good idea as to the reason why."
"True, we did," Aaron agreed unsurprisingly, with his wife, "so the only question is are you going to confirm our suspicions?"
"If you're suspicions that I've met my mate then you're correct," Delfina told them.
"We were right," Shonda told Aaron who nodded.
"It's not like that's unusual considering how many of our children have met their mates. Delfina is just the next one for it to happen to that's all. So what's his name?" Aaron asked his daughter once his and Shonda's suspicions had been confirmed.
"Anthony DiNozzo Junior," Delfina applied smiling. "He goes by Tony though."
"So you met him where?" Shonda wanted to know.
"At the gym, where else?" Delfina said. "He apparently signed up a few weeks ago, and I don't really know if he switched gyms for some reason or if he just decided he needed to keep in shape suddenly."
"So you actually met him at the gym that you and Caspian own," Aaron said. "That's rather unusual as usually one of our children just run into their mate accidentally not meet them at their place of business, though I suppose there has been one exception to the usual rule.
"Yeah, with Aleah and Ducky," Shonda agreed. "In that case, Ducky approached Aleah at her practice, because he needed help with the daughter of a friend of his. That's the only time it's happened though. Come to think of it, though, it did happen to Dave and Jazz where Dave met her at her place of business, but that was centuries ago. The rest of the time one of our children just runs into their mate totally on accident whenever they're out in public."
"I did and technically, I did just run into him just at my place of business, though certainly not literally," Delfina said. "Caspian didn't catch on when I accepted a date from him when he asked me out immediately and wondered what was going on. We were working close to each other, but he was distracted with a client and was only paying minimal attention to the conversation."
"I don't think you can really blame him, though. It's bound to be noisy on that gym floor with everybody using the equipment, people talking, the music in the background, the noises from the machines," Shonda pointed out.
"That doesn't mean I didn't tease him about not knowing what happened," Delfina admitted, smiling. "In any case, Tony is a private investigator and at one point, he was a cop."
"So he was a cop and now he's a private detective," Aaron said. "He probably works with cops on a regular basis."
"From what I learned, he became a private investigator because he was placed in illegals in Baltimore and he says the whole department is crooked. He didn't want to be pushed into a corner where he had to throw his ethics out the window. He said he never would've been able to keep his mouth shut until he could transfer so it was just better to quit before he ended up in the hospital or worse."
"Worse is dead I take it," Shonda said with sympathy in her tone and expression.
"That's what he said. He thinks that at minimum he could've ended up with his expensive medical bills to pay, and he still has his scholarship for college to finish paying off so that would've been even more of a financial burden."
"It's just as well he quit then, though in a lot of ways being a private investigator is very similar, but with less rules," Aaron said.
"I think so too," Delfina agreed with real feeling. "Considering his background, he has a lot of ethics and morals. He said he would've liked to have the authority to investigate the illegals department of the precinct where he worked, but he was still a rookie and wouldn't have that power for some years."
"He could've gone to someone higher up, tell them that his entire department was crooked," Shonda suggested.
"You know what would've happened mom, even if he could get someone to listen to him and not put him on the report thinking he was just trying to cause trouble, at least one of the detectives in the illegals department would've heard about it and he would've likely ended up in the hospital after being beat to within an inch of his life. You can be aware of the danger, but you also can't be on guard 24 hours a day, as you would have no time to sleep. Now some lieutenant in homicide or his commander may very well have listened to him and launched an investigation or they may very well also be on the take. I don't blame Tony for not wanting to take the risk of at a minimum not being believed. Tony had no idea how far the corruption extended, as it could just be that one department or could have extended to the chief of police of Baltimore."
"Del has a point honey," Aaron told Shonda. "It would've been risky for Tony, as he could've ended up dead, as our daughter has already pointed out. It was probably smart for him to get out while the getting was good and while I know Tony would've liked to do something about the corruption he wasn't high enough up in the ranks to succeed, and he might've been pulled in and either forced to compromise his ethics or blackmailed to keep his mouth shut."
"Blackmail is this distinct possibility because it turns out his father is something of a conman. He is always trying to bilk people out of their money. To say that Tony and his father are estranged, is putting it mildly, but the father keeps popping up in his son's life on a regular basis," Delfina revealed.
"Ouch! That must've been hard on Tony and his mother," Shonda winced her sympathy apparent in her expression.
"Tony's said more than once and he and his mom spent a lot of time struggling because of the father, who is Anthony DiNozzo Senior by the way. Tony was named after him.
"I can see why he goes by Tony then," Shonda said and Aaron nodded in complete agreement. "You were right about everything you said just a minute or two ago. He wasn't a cop long enough to know who was honest and who was corrupt, and if he had talked to the wrong person..."
"Exactly," Delfina agreed. "Also, think about this, if the Senior DiNozzo had shown up and somebody from illegals, had done some research on him and found out he was basically a conman they could've tried to blackmail Tony into at a minimum, to keep his mouth shut about the drugs they were stealing or at worst try to make him complicit in their dirty deeds. Tony might claim that he doesn't care what happens to his father but deep down I know he loves him, even if he doesn't like his actions. Tony would feel guilty for the rest of his life if his father ended up in the hospital or dead because of something he did. The two of them might be estranged, but that's not going stop the guilt that Tony feels if anything happened to his dad other then natural causes. And if that didn't work, I can actually see his coworkers trying to frame him for their crimes if Tony had reported them, and that had led to an investigation."
"And the mother?" Aaron asked.
"The mother was Keira and she's been dead, ever since Tony was eight, so basically Tony's an orphan, even though his father's still alive, but it's not like he ever played a fatherly role in his son's life as he spent basically all of his time in boarding schools and summer camps."
"Poor guy," Shonda winced again at what she was hearing. "Seems like you're mate didn't have much of a childhood much like Spencer actually, but it's not like it's an uncommon theme among mortals."
"True," Aaron agreed.
"No, he definitely did not have much of a childhood," Delfina agreed. "Compared to mine, his was practically nonexistent."
"Some people just should never have children," Aaron said, shaking his head. It was clear he deeply sympathized with his daughter's mate Tony DiNozzo.
"I agree with that in principle, but here would be a lot less children in the world if people did that and then Del's mate never would've been born," Shonda said.
"That would've been tragic," Delfina shuddered at that possibility. "That Tony turned into such a good man, is practically a miracle considering his father's lack of parenting, since he who stuck him in boarding school during the school year and camp during the summer. That tells me everything I need to know about how much the father actually cared for his son. I'm actually glad that Tony doesn't have any siblings considering that they would've been treated the same, I'm sure, after the mother passed.
"Really, his father didn't have any influence or at least not much, considering he hardly spent any time with his son," Shonda said. "Still, I know what you mean. Tony could've turned out totally differently because of that lack of caring after his mother's death."
"That's a very good point mom," Delfina said. "Still, it was more than possible he could've turned out like his father an uncaring, arrogant man who didn't give a damn about anyone but himself. I'm not entirely sure if Tony's father is a narcissist or if he just doesn't have any emotions like serial killers."
"He could've had a psychic break for all we know," Aaron said.
"Maybe," Delfina allowed, "but it doesn't really matter. This family will smother him with love something he probably hasn't felt since his mother died."
"We can't be to obvious about it, because I doubt Tony would take it well. Considering his childhood, I would say he's likely very independent and might retreat if we smothered him too much," Shonda said. "I doubt he's had anybody to really love him since his mother died. I'm sure he has friends from all the time he at summer camps and from boarding schools, but whether he's still in contact with those friends is the question. We're just going to have to include him in everything we do as a family and since you said he's so intelligent I'm sure he'll get the point eventually."
"It'll take him time to realize that his new family isn't going to abandon him like his father basically has," Aaron said agreeing with Shonda, which wasn't really a surprise.
"I hope you can introduce him to the family soon," Shonda added looking at her daughter.
"Not for awhile, as we've only been dating a few weeks," Delfina said, shaking her head. "About two months more or less. It'll be months yet before we can risk telling him about what we are and what we can do."
"I hope you've been feeding him some of your cousin's sweets since there is a bakery in Baltimore," Shonda said.
"I have and he loves whatever I get from my cousin's bakery," Delfina winked grinning. "He claims he has to take the time to exercise more now because he's been eating so many of the goody's from the bakery owned by the Rossi family. I've never met anybody yet that doesn't like something sweet occasionally, even if that's just one of those individually wrapped, hard candies."
"We need to be careful about telling Tony, our secret because just like Derek he was once a cop, even if he quit that profession because of the corruption he discovered in the department he had been assigned to," Aaron said. "Just because he quit, doesn't mean he doesn't have at least one contact that he trusts if he takes the information he's given to do us harm. I'm not saying that's what's going to happen just that it's a possibility."
"I'll be careful, dad," Delfina promised understanding her father's concern, because he was right Tony could do them great damage if he was so inclined or felt betrayed by her, just like Derek Morgan could have so long ago now.
"It'll probably never happen, but that doesn't mean we don't need to be cautious," Shonda agreed with her husband. "Considering your mate's childhood, he'll probably be expecting betrayal from those he gets close to. Of course, I know I could very well be wrong too."
"Hopefully, things will go well when we do tell him about us, at least I hope so," Delfina said.
"I think both Shonda and I can agree with you on that," Aaron said, looking at his wife who nodded.
"You just let us know when you're ready to introduce him to us and your godparents," Shonda said.
"I will," Delfina promised, even as she ate the last little cake that was on the plate. "I should be going, as I need to get back, even though Caspian knew I was coming here to see you. I have clients tomorrow, so this was a good day to come to tell you about Tony, because I was free with no clients to worry about. Also, Tony is involved in a big case right now and he wouldn't have understood my need to come and see you, just because unless I was going to stay for a few days for some reason. I didn't want him getting suspicious of the reason I was coming to visit you unless I lie and tell him one of you is ill or something of that nature, which I don't want to do."
"Both Aaron and I can definitely understand that," Shonda said and Aaron nodded in complete agreement. "It's too easy to be caught in such a lie so it's better to be as honest and truthful you as you can be, as that prevents misunderstandings and arguments about the reason you lied."
"We're looking forward to meeting your mate," Aaron said, "but then, we always look forward to meeting the mate to any of our children."
"That's true we do," Shonda agreed. "It's one of life's little joys, and there aren't enough of those considering what we are. Our family just keeps getting bigger and I don't think we or your godparents are going to complain about that."
"Definitely not," Aaron said. "Family is basically all an immortal has. We'll have friends, we'll have associates, we'll have coworkers, but no one except family will know what we really are. Anyone outside the family will never know the real person underneath the façade that we put on."
Delfina took her leave of her parents a few minutes later and headed back to Baltimore and her mate Tony DiNozzo.
~~~Tony and Delfina~~~