A/N: Just my obligatory glimpse into what 'might' happen on Tuesday's upcoming episode. God please let it be so.

It had seemed to Tony that he had drifted forever in endless space, hearing voices, seeing visions, feeling entwined with past, present and future all at the same time. Visited by Kate and Jenny, and that terror of a man Mike Franks; even Paula Cassidy had put in her obligatory ghostly, ghoulish visit to haunt and taunt him. Several times Gibbs stopped by to yell at him, and the man wasn't even dead. By the time Victoria Mallard appeared, beating him over the head with her umbrella, he knew it was time to wake up. And now he didn't mind, feeling refreshed and somehow cleansed and new.

"Bout time ya joined us, DiNozzo. My ass was starting to mold to this stinking hospital chair."

Well, one of them at least was refreshed and new.

"How long – I' been here, Boss?"

"Well, let's see, Tim and Abby got married and had twins, named one Anthony Jethro, the other Caitlin Jennifer, Vance finally found a nanny for his kids, though they've graduated high school so it's a little late, and Dornaget has your job and a boyfriend who works in Human Resources."

"Boss?" Tony croaked out in a strangled, hoarse voice, and his boss burst into an unfamiliar chuckle.

"Just kiddin', DiNozzo, you've only been here a few days, they've kept you doped up so you don't keep blabbing to the whole world that you think TIVA is like a cold sore that will never go away, like ya did to that Buzzfeed journalist the other day. Gee-zus, DiNozzo, haven't you got any sense of decency, spewing all that disbelief and making the TIVA fans go ballistic? Why don't you just not clap during 'Peter Pan' and make Tinker Bell disappear for them, too?"

"Don't like 'er, Boss, she's nasty to me. Hits me, calls me names, pulls her gun on me after knocking me down.."

"Phhttt, quit bein' a pansy ass and get with the program, DiNozzo. Nobody ever said the path to love was strewn with unicorns and rainbows. So she pushes you around a little, Jen did it to me all the time and...well, maybe that's not such a hot example, but this is the twenty-first century, and prime time television. Folks wanna see the girls be tough and not let anything stand in the way of what they want."

"Don't think they wanna see them abuse their boyfriends, Boss. But I could be wrong, it's happened before. By the way, how is she, is she...gone?"

"Yes, Tony, she's gone, I'm so sorry...but only 'cause she's gone to the mall with Abby and with my credit card. Always wanted her to be my surrogate daughter like Abby, just never thought about how much it would actually cost me. Girls are expensive as hell, young or old."

"Yeah, but they're worth it...hey, if she's at the mall, she must not have gotten hurt very badly, how is that, she was on the impact side of that speeding SUV. She couldn't have just walked away from it while I got the snot kicked out of me!"

"Well, she's Ziva, ya know. Super ex-Mossad ninja chick. Well, she was, anyways."

"What aren't you telling me, Boss, what's going on with our Ziver?"

"Well, when the EMTs got to you two, she was lying over the top of you, protecting you from the impact of the crash, cause she knows you're a candy-ass now, ever since she the Mexico 'misunderstanding', cause you took all that crap from us and stayed around anyways, but the important

thing is, while she was protecting your nancy boy butt, her head hit the steering wheel, hard, and well, she was knocked unconscious and fell into a coma on the way to the hospital."

"Wow, Boss, a coma? I just woke up from one, you had what, two of them..and now Ziva! Our coma rate is nearly as high as our NCIS agent vigilante justice score! So, if she was in a coma, how come she's at the mall now?"

"Well, you know our Ziver, super powers, super fast healing. She willed herself to come out of it in a few hours, unlike my 'poor baby Tony I've got a boo boo coma, Boss, I need you to sit beside me in that ass-killing hospital bedside chair and not leave me until I wake up' Senior Field Agent. But when she woke up she couldn't remember anything, not even the accident. Not even all her years in Mossad, and her idiot father that we've been trying to avenge, or her surrogate father, me. Not even you, Tony."

"Not even me? She doesn't remember me? Her fuzzy butt on-again, off-again, love-hate, sibling – hot unrequited lovers Very Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo?"

"I'm sorry, Tony. Not even you."

"Alright!" Tony shouted with glee, pumping his fist in the air. "Something good did come out of this! Call me whatever you want, Boss, but call me relieved beyond reason. I can't tell you how sick and tired I was of having to keep up that line of drek in the name of ratings!"

"Yeah, well, according to the ratings, you aren't the only one who was sick and tired of it, we were down a good share for the first time in years. Maybe those fanfic writers are on to something. Like actually writing about the entire team, and solving difficult cases and really watching out for each other like the family they're always insisting we are, instead of only making sure we keep you around and stupid so you can play Ziva's punching bag slash sloppy seconds go - to guy when her last lover gets pulverized."

"Wow, Boss, that's a lot of words for you! I think I only caught half of them, but I get the picture. So, you're saying this means Ziva can be a real honest to God character with depth and subtlty and layers of potential goodness and humanity and, gasp, actual flaws. Boss, do you realize what this means? We can mold her and shape her, it would be like taking Frankenstein's monster and turning it into a human being, only without the neck bolts! She could finally learn to treat me with respect and maybe a little admiration for my skills and uber thought processes! And...and if it it works for her..."

Suddenly Tony was seized with a bolt of pain that made him go rigid and lose his ability to speak. He was calmed and soothed by his solicitous boss, though he was a boss with an ulterior motive.

"Easy, there, DiNozzo, don't go going all code blue on me, you signed your contract to the end of the new 2013 season. Don't wanna have to replace you with Dornaget, he's a decent kid, but he can't even remember to bring his weapon with him, much less his brains."

"I'm – I'm okay, Boss, just – the implications of this whole scenario are...I mean, we could make-overs on all of us, well, except for Ducky and Palmer, they get so ignored by the writers that they haven't gotten a chance to be crucified by them yet, but, maybe we could find a nice love interest for Ducky, one that doesn't turn out to be the obligatory murderess. You know, I thought that plot line died out with Bonanza or The Streets of San Francisco or something. Obviously not, unfortunately.

"But that's not the point, the point is, most of us could have healthy, lasting romantic relationships outside of work, and get over our Daddy complexes and you could not be such a bastard most of the time and actually show and tell us that we do good work and we have a meaningful place in your life instead of believing that we can all read your mind all of the time and therefore know by mental telepathy we're you're second family."

"And I suppose you'd wanna have cook outs in my back yard and you Tim pitch a tent and camp out and revert back to your childhoods. And have me get married to some obligatory redhead who you all call Momma Smurf. Not gonna happen, DiNozzo. People wanna see blood, guts, patriotism, us bringing down terrorists – well, Ziva bringing down terrorists while we watch, but you know what I mean. We need to retrain her, at least to be able to protect you out in the field. Can't lose my best Senior Field Agent, then there'd be no Tiva!"

"Boss, you're not getting it, I don't want Tiva, I never did want Tiva, I hate Tiva with every fiber of my body, but I have a job to do and I do it, but maybe now I can do and actually enjoy it! Maybe now we can actually teach her to be a real MCRT agent instead of an 'I want to be a US citizen and NCIS agent but I insist on doing things exactly the way I did things back in Israel's Mossad and if I can't, I will stab a giant paper clip through your eyeball' kind of agent! And.." he gasped out of breath but hopeful.

"And maybe we can teach her to value her superiors and follow the chain of command, and understand that I'm actually not an idiot or dead weight and then I can become a real man, a real honest to goodness competent, 'got his shit together' Senior Field Agent who is emotionally stable and still attractive enough to be able to get a date without any problem and have a healthy relationship with a woman outside of what has now become my entire life; hell, according to the fanfic and the show writers, I don't even go home more than once a week anymore and that's just to feed my goldfish!"

"Well, DiNozzo, it's a tall order, and to tell you the truth, I'm not even sure when Ziva will be able to come back to work, she didn't even remember her name up until a couple of days ago."

"Yeah, that's what I'm saying! We give her a whole new identity! She can be your adopted daughter from one of Jen's illicit affairs! Or, or Ducky's long lost grand daughter from some wild night in Beruit on a black ops mission! Or -"

"Tony, enough. Right now she thinks she's Abby's real younger sister, one of the ones orphaned at the same time Abby and her brother were. Abby came up with that one; cool, hunh?"

"Does that mean she'll quit following me around and cornering me in the men's room and trying to make out like I'm insanely jealous of any man who talks to her much less goes out with her? Cause ya know that's getting' kind of old for me, and for about eighteen million weekly viewers. She needs to gain a grip on reality, Boss."

"Ha ha, you're funny, DiNozzo! What the hell does this show have to do with reality? That went out the window somewhere around the time Kate got bumped off and I came back from Mexico. Quality plot lines went south and stayed there after that. Probably still will. Might as well get used to it or quit."

"Hmmm. Well, there's always Two and A Half Men, I hear they may be looking for a new face."