Sorry doesn't seem broad enough to cover a nearly 4-year hiatus on this story. Adult life (and depression) is totally unfair to creative pursuits. I've always wanted to continue, but often didn't have the time and/or motivation to get back into the story. This chapter took forever, literal drafts upon drafts. But I'm happy to finally be moving forward!

Special thanks to Nicole for going above and beyond to make sure I was on the right path, and for letting me babble. She's insightful and amazing!

Hope you all enjoy. :)

Chapter 10 - Dovetail

Foggy morning. Fish-smell and pine. Lake green, blue, white, changing its mind with the lull and lap. Gibbs depressed the cold, rocky sand at shore. Vapors rolled over the water, as if a fire burned below. Ziva slid beside him like salmon downstream.

"Sitrep."

"They are unpacking—still."

A fragile mist broke as they stood together.

Shuddering, hands fisted deep in her jacket pockets, his youngest peered from beneath the windbreaker's hood. "It is too early for this."

His hum was agreement.

Their other half was with the supplies and borrowed canoes.

"I'm not getting in that thing with…with…" A sneeze punctuated McGee's refusal.

"Yuck, McGermy. Keep your nastiness over there. It was bad enough I was stuck in the backseat with you all the way up here."

"It wasn't a picnic for me, either, you know—"

"You two done bitching like a coupla school girls?" Only Gibbs caught Ziva's giggle.

Tony cut a path with his eyes. "I know who I'd gladly share my canoe with..."

"If you care for your eyeballs, I would suggest you look elsewhere, Tony." But she dangled his name like a string before a cat.

Tony laughed; the echo amplified through the trees. "Okay then, why don't we let Gibbs decide? Who's in the boat with you, Boss? McAllergy, Ziva the frozen popsicle, or me, your senior field agent extraordinaire?"

Ice collected under his jacket collar. Tide slurped the shore, shhhhheeeeerk. It really was early. Hadn't Kelly blamed him for that, too?

He looked to one, to the next. To Ziva, grabbing up the paddles. She met his gaze across her shoulder. Smile over easy.

"It is okay to let me go, Gibbs..."

Eyelids peeled back, flickering. Light dim, kindled gold and amber to match the tendrils of her hair. Gentle-gazed Jo, arching above him. Out of reach.

"Dozed off there. Bit too early for that, yet."

A tepid breeze tumbled through the screen door, the yawning windows. That afternoon he'd cut the grass under a cool sun. Jo tended the blooming Virginia bluebells while Pen chased birds. Longer days. Shorter nights.

"Were you dreaming?"

Gibbs sat forward, rubbing out the crusty ghosts of sleep. "Ah, worse. Memory."

"We've all got a few of those."

"Don't see you waking Pen up."

The Lab, stretched out on the rug, flapped her ears, like they were on fire or swatting at imaginary flies.

"Oh, she'll sleep til morning. And don't try changing the subject." Sinewy arms circled him from behind, wrapping them in a forest. "What was it? Talking helps free 'em, Jethro."

Free who, he wanted and didn't want to ask. He hadn't thought of the case in years. Couldn't recall which parts were real, the place or the people.

"Doesn't matter."

"Ziva matters." Jo pinched his neck with his mother's fingers; he was drifting off in church again. "You said her name, in your sleep."

Not surprising. Out of country, not mind. Ziva made sure of that. Sent him emails. Novels. From the airport. From a café in Tel Aviv. On and on about indigenous flowers and the familiar heat and DiNozzo's antics made worse with Schmeil playing along. But there was something off, something she wasn't writing. Gibbs read that much between the lines.

Into his silence, Jo said, "I miss that lady, too. Almost as much as you do. Get another one of her letters?"

It'd been a day, maybe more. Wasn't like Ziva to forget. He shook his head. "Sure you aren't just missing her help around the shop?"

Jo swatted his chest. Her bubbles of laughter, her life—a flood. He caught in the swell.

"Goodness, no! I got you for that, stockboy," she murmured along his ear.

Wind chimes sighed on a neighbor's porch. Evening sighed.

Gibbs shifted. Touched her skin, after her lips. "You stayin'?"

'Oh, please don't go—'

"You'll have to give me a lift in the morning." Her smile swept his cheek. "Before the shop opens..."

Gibbs filled her callused hands with his own. "It's on the way."

Another gust whistled through his home, his open door. Maybe some memories would slip out with the wind.

…

Second coffee of the morning. Director's office. Gibbs breezed in. "You summoned."

"Thanks for knocking." Vance clicked off the news, stowed away a briefing book marked CLASSIFIED. "Close the door, would you? Then take a seat."

First request obliged, second ignored. "Why am I here?"

"Always straight for the jugular." Today Gibbs's brusqueness amused the man; tomorrow it would rankle him. "I'll make this brief."

"Promise?"

Scratch tomorrow.

With a sigh, Vance reached for a toothpick and a maroon folder. DAVID, ZIVA blazed the cover. Last seen: Christmas Eve, Gibbs's living room floor, discarded. "A few months ago, I brought you this information, compiled on former Special Agent David's time away from the agency. Ring a bell?"

"It was none of my business then, Leon. Nothing's changed."

"I disagree. You'll be happy to hear she kept her nose pretty well clean the past two years. Lots of charity work attached to her name. Lots of silence, too. For a stretch of months there, we couldn't track down a receipt for a cup of coffee."

Gibbs smirked behind the lip of his brew. "She's more of a tea-drinker."

"Only anomaly came last May. Ziva made contact with known associates of Shin Bet and Mossad. The nature of the communications are undisclosed, but the dates coincide with our operation in—"

"Zakho." Of course. Of course it was.

"...and we're all aware of your relationship with coincidence." Sitting back, Vance flipped the twig to the corner of his mouth. "Is there anything you want to add, anything she's mentioned?"

Gibbs stared through the office's windows, blue and yellow bursts of sky. A horn—long and baritone—sounded in the harbor.

You knew I'd been shot—

Yes, I did!

Hell, Ziva!

It was for you!

He shook off the memory, the sound of chisel tearing her flesh. Even before, even that first night in his cabin, Ziva mentioned it by name. I also know about the incident in Zakho…

She assumed he'd catch on; he saw that now. Probe, push. And he hadn't. Not in the way he should have, or would have a decade earlier.

But that was on him.

"All I know is what you've told me," Gibbs finally replied, shoulders shrugging. "Said it yourself, seems like a coincidence."

The toothpick twitched. "Well, I'd like to find out how deep her connections still run. Especially before I offer her a position consulting for NCIS."

Scoffing, Gibbs approached the desk. Mahogany. Mass-produced, but a fine grain and shine. He tapped the surface once, twice. "She won't take it."

"That was my next question. I have a meeting with Ziva once she returns from vacation, and you know her better than anyone. Would she at least consider it?"

Depended: Old Ziva, New Ziva. The survivor, the orphan; the woodworker. The woman practically prancing down his basement stairs, all smiles. I am free. They blurred in his memory, her ghosts, echoes over echoes. Early mornings and shadows and lakes and wood and fog. It is okay to let me go, Gibbs…

"Give it some thought." Vance knotted his fingers to rope. "I have one more matter to discuss, if you've got a moment?"

Gibbs tossed his empty at the trash bin. Arc, bounce, fall.

…

There are places in this city I have only experienced as another person.

Slender hands stilled over the keyboard. The left was tingling, a plea for reprieve. No longer a pair, her hands. Right, normal; left, thin and veiny and pale. Left chasing right, chasing lost time and lost muscle.

Chasing the right words.

Ziva read the sentence over, mindlessly performing stilted finger stretches. At first, the missives flowed like conversation—the mostly one-sided kind she was accustomed to with Gibbs, each at their own workbench in the cabin, their old desks in the squadroom. Left, right.

With each day spent in Israel, the emails grew more difficult to compose.

To her homeland she had returned for closure, yet the past constantly bombarded. The group of young IDF soldiers she saw licking ice cream cones outside a cafe, dripping melted globs on their brown uniforms. The father and his two daughters at the park, playing, laughing happily. How they walked by her old apartment building in Neve Tzedek, the once dusky blue roof tiles now red…

The bathroom door clicked. Tony appeared in a cloud of steam. Sandy hair damp, tousled. Towel-wrapped waist. Smiling. He was so often smiling. He was always coming back to her. Her-Tony.

Good thing I'd follow you anywhere...

"Ah, right where I left you, Zivaleh."

"I am right where I said I'd be, and only Schmeil is allowed to call me that."

"Then sweetcheeks you'll stay, Sweetcheeks." He crossed the hotel room, folding around her at the compact desk, a blanket of dew.

Ziva relaxed in the embrace, his chest solid at her back, his aftershave tickling her nose. Eucalyptus and mint; her windowsill garden traveled with them, mingling with the salty Mediterranean air coming through the open windows.

"I'm getting a 'Netflix and chill the night away' vibe from you." Tony barely lifted his lips from the column of her neck, the ridge of collarbone. "Should I bother putting pants on?"

"Only if you plan on going to dinner half-naked."

"Tempting." He pressed a final kiss behind the shell of her ear, then straightened. "Didn't get too far on today's email, huh?"

There are places in this city—

"It is unlikely Gibbs reads them, anyway."

"I'm sure Jo can work the computer for him."

They shared a chuckle.

"It is not that." She hovered a finger over the 'delete' button. "I am unsure what to write."

"What do you normally write to your special little pen pal?" He tugged the towel free from his hips, reaching for the clothes she'd set out.

Bottom lip snagged between her teeth, Ziva admired the view. "I write about you, Tony."

He laughed, loudly. "I love you, David, but you're a terrible liar."

Another gust, sultry and jasmine-scented. Her heart flit, flit, landed. "So you have told me, a'huvi."

"Well, we've created some pretty good memories this week. You can always make Gibbs jealous of the awesome white beaches." He tipped his tanned face, evidence of their day in the sun and sand.

"Or all of our lunches with Schmeil," she added, adjusting the collar of his white dress shirt, "though I was unable to get a word sideways between you two."

"Edgewise, Sweetcheeks."

They carried on, listing everything: Walking Jerusalem. Sneezing from the purple bunches of cyclamen at the Nature Preserve in Sataf. Browsing the market stalls in ancient Jaffa. Tony towing her into alleys, the heavy press of skin on skin, his knee between her thighs. The spice of their mouths, sticky and wanting, wanting.

"Ooo, I really like that one." Green eyes darkened as he knelt before her, fitting himself within the bracket of her legs.

"I do not think Gibbs would agree with you." She smirked, pecking his waiting lips. "Thank you, though. Toda."

"Bevakasha."

"You are learning."

"When in Tel Aviv," Tony whispered, capturing her mouth anew. Running his thumb along the reddened flesh when they parted. "Mind telling me what I did, so I know for next time?"

Their laughter fused again, rising over the muted city sounds, the snippets of talk from the street below.

Ziva stroked his cheek, the freshly-shaved skin raw yet smooth. "You reminded me that...I do not need to dwell on the past. It cannot be changed, but since my last time here, I have." No resistance off her tongue. Truth. A breeze whistling through her soul.

I have changed.

You've grown, but you're still you. You always...thrive.

Had it only been a few weeks since those whispered words in her bedroom? Had it already been seven months since she returned to D.C., seeking absolution? To set herself free. Move on, start over, heal.

Perhaps this was the way: making new memories in old places, and with those she loved.

"Reminding you of all the good..." Tony brushed the wave of curls off her shoulder, smiling. Always smiling. "That is something I will very happily do, Ziva. For as long as you need it. Preferably, the rest of our lives."

Eyebrows high, she sent him a look. "You are teasing me."

"No, I'm, uh—" His breath caught, as if it got ahead of him. He cleared his throat. "I'm saying I want a future with you."

Warmth crept into her cheeks. Future. Ziva tasted the word; a tremor ran through her. Or was it Tony trembling against her legs? Her faithful partner. Her beautiful friend. Her-Tony, offering happiness, home. A future, together.

With her thumb, she soothed the pinch of anxiety across his brow. Kissed the spot, softly. Another smile—her own. "I would like that, too, a'huvi."

His eyes gleamed round and flashing. "I guess this wasn't too presumptuous, after all."

Later, she would consider the small wooden box he produced from his pocket, the detailed cherry blossoms etched into the sides. The diamond ring—simple, elegant—nestled inside drew her immediate focus.

Somehow, it slipped onto her finger. Left hand finally outshining right.

"I didn't get to ask the question yet, Ziva."

"Ask, then." She slid out of the chair, straddling his lap. Plump lips swerved. "I will say 'yes'."

Tony beamed, circling her waist with his strong arms. Releasing breath and laughter and nerves between them. "Marry me?"

Ziva mirrored his action, hooking her elbows around his neck. The earthy musk of him was a cocoon she never wanted to leave. "Yes," she purred along his bottom lip, before seizing him entire.

Their hunger escalated to an ambient rhythm, an insatiable pulse. Breath pulled taut, a familiar chord vibrating through their chests, puffing the curtains, letting in streams of orange sunset, flooding the room. Their love, brightest of all.