I know I haven't written this for a long time (don't hate me) but I knew that the next chapter was going to be the last one and I really didn't know how to end it. So, here it is, the last chapter of Save Us. I really can't thank you enough for all of your wonderful reviews and comments. It really touched me to see how much you enjoyed this story. Hopefully you'll be pleased to know that I am working on a sequel of about the same length set further along down the line, and that this will be posted up really soon as I've already got the entire story plotted out and draft scripted, so it just needs typing up. Thank you so much to everyone who has reviews, favourited or even just read this story! I can't tell you how much fun I had writing it and I hope you enjoy the sequel.

Chapter 12

Somebody had once told him that a wedding was one of the most memorable moments he'd ever experience. He didn't doubt that, not in the slightest. There was nothing he'd forget about the last minute small-scale wedding, and he'd hate to think that there was any tiny detail that might slip his mind. He didn't care that there was less than ten people in attendance, and that included the judge who was marrying them, all he cared about was that Ziva was now, officially his wife, and that Shai officially bore the name of his father. They were officially DiNozzo's on paper now, and just looking at the paperwork brought a smile to his face. He understood how much of an incredible miracle it was that they had managed to have this paperwork in front of them, signed and finalised in a day, and he wasn't going to take it for granted, although he would find out everyone involved. These signatures had saved Ziva and Shai's life, potentially, and he wanted to find out every single person who had a hand in helping them so that he could personally thank them.

He regretted only one thing, however, and that was that he couldn't give Ziva the elaborate wedding affair that he'd always imagined he'd give her. But even though their wedding was little more than a civil gathering that took no longer than a few minutes, to the two of them, it meant the world.

The group retired back to Ducky's house, where they had been gathered less than an hour before. The only addition to the original party was the fact that Gibbs stayed, and that Nettie had opted to join them, insisting rather persistently that she would not miss a second more of her niece's life. Once there, they tucked into the Christmas feast that had been prepared and left to warm while they were gone. There was no set seating arrangement around the dining table like there would be at any other wedding, no hassle of arranging friends and family so that no disagreements would break out and ruin the day. Instead, everyone arranged themselves. Ducky sat at the head of the table, with Gibbs on his right. Abby and McGee, predictably, sat beside one another, Abby only just having the heart to abandon the photographs she was taking of the new family to eat her meal. Nettie sat opposite the pair of them, watching fondly as her niece and her new nephew-in-law seemed to eat their meal in a world that only existed to the two of them.

After their wedding dinner, after many apologies to both Nettie and Ziva by the head of the household about having no Hanukkah practices handy, the group shared Christmas crackers and awful jokes, swapping so called 'horror stories' about holidays long past, but to Ziva, who had never once celebrated Christmas, they sounded like stories of family and of belonging, two of the senses she was slowly beginning to feel again. But there was one other tradition that Abby insisted that they honour.

"We have to do speeches," she told them all. "It's their wedding day, we have to do speeches. Right, Gibbs?" she smiled sweetly at him.

He looked up from his drink to notice the somewhat demonising glint in her eye that she tried to mask with a false innocence he had been able to see through for many years. "You're looking at me like you want me to go first," he noted.

Her grin simply grew. "Well, if you're offering…"

"I'm not," he said, but at those words, he couldn't help but notice Tony's expression fall for a moment.

"But it's how it's supposed to be!" Abby chimed. "Bride's father goes first, and Ziva's father's…well, he's a bastard, if you'll pardon my French, and so you have to do the bride's father speech."

"Nothing about today has been conventional," Gibbs pointed out, eying the newlywed couple further down the table. "And nothing about it should be. I think part of what makes me sure that these are going to make it is that they aren't conventional. They have to fight against more things than any other couple would ever have to imagine, and they still come through, brushing it off like it's another day. They don't need convention on their wedding day, Abs. Convention doesn't suit them, it's part of the magic."

Abby was gazing at him, her hands tucked under her chin as though he were reading a fairy tale. "Aw, Gibbs!" she quietly squealed afterwards. "That was the nicest speech ever!"

He laughed, and sipped at his drink. "It wasn't a speech, Abs."

Her eyes widened. "If that wasn't a speech, I can't wait to hear the actual speech."

"Boss, it's okay," Tony assured him from down the table. "You don't have to do a speech."

The decision had apparently been made silently, but was completely agreed upon mutually, judging from the way that Ziva had slipped her hand into the embrace of Tony's. The two of them exchanged a gentle smile after this, and none of them looking away from the display of such passion with such little effort.

"Yes, he does!" Abby frowned. "If you're not doing anything else conventionally, then you're going to do this."

"Abby, it is fine," Ziva smiled.

"No, it's not. We're all meant to sit around and say how glad we are to see you together and wish you luck for the future and talk about how amazing you are as a couple!"

"We can do that," McGee assured her.

"Yes, I agree with Timothy," Ducky nodded. "I am sure that Tony and Ziva are quite aware that we are pleased to see them together, and also that they work well as a couple. As for wishing them all the best, that is most certainly in order, although I do not believe it is necessary for us to stand around and attempting to destroy my fine crystal glasses with your cutlery to do so."

Abby tilted her head to one side, and then nodded. "I guess so."

"In fact, seeing as you have been their biggest supporter, so to speak, perhaps you should take the first speech," Ducky winked at her.

"No," Gibbs said, suddenly standing up with his glass in his hand. "I do have something that I want to say to them, actually."

Abby grinned, and the couple just looked at each other with a mixture of happiness and curiosity as Gibbs raised his glass to them momentarily.

"First of all, I would like to apologize to the both of you. If we'd realised that Ziva had been in trouble sooner, we could have saved you sooner, and you could have been together at the moment your son was born. Having said that, Ziva, you are a tremendous mother who would do anything for her son, and I think you're incredibly brave to risk what you did to come home to your family, where we would have always waited for you. I consider you both like my children, and to be a part of this day for you both is something I feel very lucky to have been a part of."

Tony and smiled at his new wife, and couldn't resist giving her a small kiss.

"Tony," Gibbs continued, attracting the younger man's attention. "In the past two days, you've become a husband and a father. You've done a good thing by stepping up, and while I still stand by rule twelve, I also stand by love and family. You'll be a wonderful father to your son, and you'll be an excellent husband, because we all know Ziva will destroy you if you're not."

They all snickered lightly, apart from Nettie, who just nodded knowingly.

"What I guess I'm trying to say," Gibbs nodded softly and extended his drink in their direction. "Is that I have never been more proud of the two of you than I am at this moment. You've fought through Hell and back to be together," he reminded them. "Don't forget that."

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When no one other than Gibbs insisted on doing a speech, they sat at the table swapping their favourite stories about Tony and Ziva. Naturally, Abby had been bursting full of moments, McGee throwing in some of the awkward times that, had it not been their wedding day, one of the might have killed him for, followed by a few of the autopsy conversations contributed by Ducky. Gibbs said nothing, just watching the smiling faces on his team's faces.

He slipped out to the kitchen to refill his drink, and found that Ziva followed him. She stared at him for a moment, before rather uncharacteristically throwing her arms around him. He froze for a moment, but quickly recovered himself from the shock and enclosed his arms around her, placing his refilled cup on the kitchen counter.

"Thank you," she whispered to him. "Thank you for all you have done today."

"You don't have to thank me, Ziva," he told her, as she pulled back to look up at him. He hated how tiny she felt in his arms, how skinny and neglected she felt. It was no wonder DiNozzo kept loading up her plate at dinner. "We watch out for our own."

She shook her head slowly, looking rather emotional. "You do not understand…" she whispered. "Had I returned to Israel, my father would have had me killed. My son would not have been sent to his father for care then, as I would have wanted, but he would have been raised by nannies until such a time when my father could send him away to training schools. My father would have made an assassin out of him, as he did to me." She bit her lip, looking into the other room, where she could just see Tony lifting Shai out of the baby seat that Abby had bought them and into his arms, settling him on his knee. "I did not want that life for my son, and you have prevented that."

"You listen to me, Ziva," he instructed her, drawing her gaze back to his. "Your boy will not be an assassin, you hear me? You and Tony will raise him good, I know you will. I know you two haven't had the best childhoods, but that's what makes me sure that you'll be the best parents that boy could ever wish for."

She smiled, unshed tears filling her eyes. She wiped them away softly, only to notice that Gibbs was now looking into the other room as she had been.

"Although," he added with a hint of a smile. "You might be looking at a kid with a sugar addiction…"

She looked over, seeing that Tony had dipped his finger into some of the leftover chocolate dessert that Abby had made and held it out to the baby. Shai had managed to form some kind of death-grip on his father's hand as he eagerly sucked on Tony's finger to remove all traces of the chocolate sauce. "Tony is still a child at heart," she noted. "That is what will make him a wonderful father."

"Ziva," he said seriously, attracting her attention again. "Stop worrying." She looked curiously at him. "He's gone, Ziva."

Her face visibly relaxed. "He has left America?"

"Vance called me as we left City Hall. Once the marriage was confirmed he knew he couldn't make you leave. His plane leaves in about an hour."

She let out a huge sigh of relief, a true smile forming over her lips. "He is gone," she repeated over and over as Gibbs drew her back into his arms. "He is gone. He is gone!"

"It's over, Ziva," he assured her.

"It is over," she repeated. "We are free."

As she made her way back to the dinner table, Nettie pulled at her arm, drawing her close. "Mah she-baTuach?" she asked.

"Metzuyan, Dodah," Ziva smiled.

As she took her seat beside Tony once again, he frowned at her. "What's with the Hebrew?" he asked her.

"She asked how I was," she explained simply.

"And?" he questioned.

She gave him a gentle smile, placing her lips against his for a moment. "I said I was perfect."

The End.