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She's the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all. Since she's my rose.
Tali is five when she first asks Tony:
"Daddy? How did you know Mommy?"
He frowns, eyeing her. They're cuddled up on the couch, watching a Barbie Princess movie.
Barbie has just met the Prince, usually Tali's favorite part.
"What d'you mean, chouchou?"
"Was she a Princess when you met her?" she asks, so earnestly.
He grins, tracking the question now and tickling her sides.
"No, she wasn't a Princess," he murmurs softly, and Tali pouts in curiosity.
"How?"
He smiles just a little, wondering how to explain it. Ziva wasn't a Princess he rescued... apart from maybe one time.
No, she was more than that. In fact, she's the one who saved him. When they met, he was a wreck. Oh, he put up a good front, but in reality all he had was his job. He wasn't speaking to his father. He'd bounced from precinct to precinct, stumbling across Gibbs and deciding to stick it out. He was desperate for a family, and desperately trying to pretend he wasn't. He slept around, for, really, the first time in his life, since he met and got engaged to Wendy young. He lost himself in women rather than thinking about anything that mattered. Rather than actually connecting with someone, he could keep them at arm's length. And to top it off, Kate died, right in front of him. A woman he was just starting to understand. To feel something for.
And then Ziva.
It wasn't until Ziva that it really all fit. She was the meaning, suddenly.
He wonders if he ever told her, that. She must know. That she brought the change in him. She's the reason he grew up. The reason why he could be Tali's Dad-- not just the obvious way, but if it had happened years before, he wouldn't have been ready. She changed him. Calmed him.
A quote comes to him, suddenly. Out of nowhere.
You become responsible forever for what you have tamed. You're responsible for your rose.
She tamed him.
It's funny. He should be the Prince, and her the rose...
But he doesn't think it quite works like that.
He eyes Tali. Barbie sings on. His little girl looks up at him, wide eyed. Everyone says her eyes are like his, but he just sees her mother's.
"I have a story for you. About Ima. Do you want to finish the movie?"
She shakes her head, urgent.
"Story!" Chuckling, he shifts, clearly not fast enough for her. "Now!"
Sending her a flat look, he's sure she knows what he's about to say.
"Come on."
"Story please, now," she says, and he can't help but melt. So it's not quite the nice please and thank yous they're always practicing. But she's just too cute, she's his weakness.
"Alright, alright." He kisses her cheek, pausing the movie. "Let me get the book."
Heading to her bedroom, he plucks the story he's yet to read to her off the shelf. She's waiting patiently when he comes back.
"Read it!" she demands excitedly, and he chuckles, flopping down by her side and pulling her into his lap, facing out, their usual story pose. She's a bookworm, this one. She's already received one reading award from school and he's sure it's just the first of many. He pulls his arms around her and drops the book in her lap.
"This book is called The Little Prince. Le Petit Prince. We haven't read it yet-- there's a lot of pages." He kisses her head. The story's a little much for her now. Not just the length, but the snake, the weird surreal way the story is told. The ending. "But there's a Prince in it." She traces the little boy on the cover, before he opens the book, turns to a page. "And the Prince meets a rose. You know a rose, the flower?"
"Mmhm. They have them at le marché."
He grins at how she knows it-- she loves to stop at the farmers' market in their neighborhood, charm the vendors out of a flower or two. The name is basically the same in French and English. She's a perceptive thing, their girl.
"That's right, they do. Well, the Prince loved the rose. And the rose was needy. It always wanted things. He protected her, he put her in a case, he made sure the bugs couldn't eat her."
He points at the illustration of the rose in the jar, then chomps Tali's ear and she giggles. But he sobers as he turns the pages more.
"But then the Prince realized the rose only thought about herself." He swallows. "So he left. And he missed the rose a lot. He saw other flowers, but nobody was like his rose. And in the end he went home to find her."
"Did he find her?"
Smiling at Tali, his little dreamer, he rubs her cheek.
"The story never says." She frowns, the unresolved ending too much for her to bear, but he closes the book, turns her to face him. "Chouchou, your Ima and I, we're a little like the Prince and the rose."
"How?"
"Your Mom is like the Prince. When we met I was a little like the rose. I needed her to protect me. She helped me so much. And she loves us so much. And she had to go. But in the end she'll come back to us, just like the Prince."
"But the story--"
He smiles.
"That's the best part, my girl. The story-- it's finished." He closes the cover with a thunk, holds it up. "The book is done. But ours isn't, is it?" He tickles her tummy, and she giggles.
"You're a rose."
She traces the cover again, the Prince. Ziva.
He kisses her head.
"Yeah, baby."
Tali is eight when she eyes her parents at bedtime one night and says, "Can we do the Prince and the rose?"
Ziva frowns, looking up and across their daughter to her fiancé.
"The what?" she asks, the story unfamiliar to her.
But Tony grins, ruffling Tali's hair.
"Chouchou. I didn't know if you'd remember."
She grins.
"You're the rose."
Ziva eyes him still, and he stands, grabbing the book from the shelf. She realizes what it is when he sits back down, and she tilts her head.
"The Little Prince?" she asks.
Tony nods, but says nothing, including not explaining how he is somehow the rose in the story.
"I think the book's still a little long for you, Tali," he murmurs, and Ziva frowns further. If they haven't read it, why was Tali asking for it?
"I don't want the book, I want your story," she says, eager.
Flipping open the book to a few pages in, Tony smiles, and Ziva watches him, even more confused.
"What are you up to?"
He grins at her, knowing, eyes all warm.
"Trust me. You'll get it." He turns to Tali. "So, once there was this Prince." He taps the page. "And one day this Prince came to an asteroid, like a planet. And there, there was this rose."
Tali points at the flower, grinning.
"You!"
"Yeah. And this rose... it had been through it a little. It was spiky. It was a little sad. Too many headslaps from the boss." Tali giggles, and Ziva sits back, realizing. "But the Prince... well, the Prince didn't like the rose all that much at first. But when they got to know each other, the Prince fell in love with the rose. And the rose didn't realize, at first, how much the Prince was helping it change."
Her heart races a little as Tony flips to another page, another image.
"The Prince protected the rose, and put it in a jar. And one time, the Prince went missing, and the rose thought they were gone forever. But then the rose saved them both. They taught each other."
And they did. He keeps looking down, turns the page again, and she can only watch him. He shows Tali the little airplane, swallowing.
"But then the Prince had to go. And the rose... the rose was very sad, alone. The rose missed the Prince so much. And while the Prince was gone, they realized how much the rose had changed them."
Finally, he looks up at her.
"You become responsible forever for what you have tamed," she quotes, and Tony smiles softly.
It takes her back over a decade in a moment. The break room. An old camera. Just like then, there's so much love in his eyes she can barely breathe.
"But the Prince came back," Tali adds.
"Yeah." Breaking their gaze, Tony clears his throat, looks back down to their daughter. "The Prince did. And now the Prince and the rose are happy, on their planet together. With their Tali."
Ziva smiles as Tali applauds the story.
It's not how the book ends, of course.
But Tony isn't reading the book. He's reading their story.
"And then the Prince and the rose got married. And Tali was their flower girl," she boasts, still thrilled about her role. She got her dress the other day and it seems to have made the whole event so much more real in her little world.
Chuckling, Ziva taps Tali's cheek.
"That bit hasn't quite been written, yet."
The little girl smiles.
"It will," she insists, and Ziva nods.
"It will be."
Later, when Tali is sleeping, Ziva finds Tony in the kitchen, pouring them another glass of wine each. She avoided the questions as they tucked Tali in, did the dishes, but now she has to ask:
"When did you tell her that story?"
"Years ago," he muses with a smile. "I don't know why I thought of it. It just hit me one day. I'd bought her the book when she was still two-- it was right after we moved here, it was the only French book I knew at the time. But I knew she wouldn't read it for years."
"So you told her our story instead."
He shrugs.
"It's a weird book, for a kid," he tells her, and she has to agree. "And the ending, I could never figure it out. Maybe the Prince dies, maybe he makes it back to his rose."
Optimistically Ziva had always hoped, like the narrator did. But it's not clear. The Prince leaves and the narrator doesn't know; you don't see the happy ending yourself.
"You were still on the run... I couldn't even think about it."
With a nod, she slips her arms around him. She's not sure she could, either. Even letting Tali have that brief hint of doubt would have hurt so much.
"Did you tell her the story a lot?"
"Just a couple times," he admits. "And not for years, I'm surprised she remembered it."
She smiles. Maybe Tali just remembered it because it's their story. Them.
"So I am the Prince?"
He smirks.
"You're the ninja. You're the strong one."
"And I left," she says, sober and so aware of it.
At first it was for herself. To atone. Find out who she was.
But then those years on the run... She wasn't visiting planets and meeting interesting people to tell to a narrator one day, not like the Prince. And she hadn't stayed away because Tony was selfish, taking advantage of her kindness... God, it was anything but. She was fighting for her life. Their lives, here. She so desperately wanted to go back to him every waking moment.
"And I was the idiot you loved, and I didn't even know," he mutters, nuzzling her cheek. "For far too long."
They both did that for a while. Loving each other without realizing. Seeing other people.
Sometimes she wishes they got their timing right so much earlier. But the other part thinks they needed to be here, today, with their Tali. Besides, they're making it right, now. And she has a ring on her finger and a future as Mrs DiNozzo round the corner.
She smiles lightly, not letting the thoughts bring her down.
"I didn't tame you," she points out, running a hand through his hair.
"No. But you saved me." She frowns a little, not sure what he means, and he shrugs. "I never would've coped with Tali, without you. With a kid. Without you, I don't even know how long I would've stuck around NCIS, after Kate. You changed me."
He changed himself, she thinks. But she witnessed it. She felt it, saw it. He went from a womanizer, a frat boy... to her whole world, just like that.
She sighs.
"I missed you so much," she murmurs. Just like the Prince. He nods, a little teary. "But I was always going to come back." She never planned to be away forever, to keep Tali from him. She just had to be ready. She eyes him, firm. "No matter how long it took."
She kisses him, and he holds her.
She was always going to return to her rose.
When Tali is twelve, she tells Ziva that she and Tony only almost got married for her sake, and that she didn't think they even liked each other.
It's a quick, throwaway sentence, that Tony isn't even really supposed to hear. It's said while they're running for their lives, right after Tali picks up that things might be happening between her parents again.
But it sticks in Tony's mind far longer than it takes to clear their names. To the point where he knows they have to talk to her about it.
That point comes when they're sitting on the couch one evening, a little after everything goes down. Tali is reading on the armchair, a new development and unexpected side effect of their time on the run, both her passion for books reviving itself and her willingness to actually spend the evening in the company of her parents. Tony slings his arm around Ziva's shoulder, pulling her in, and Tali rolls her eyes without even looking up.
"Something wrong, chouchou?" he goads, and Tali snorts, still reading.
"Nope."
He deliberately cuddles in closer to Ziva, who chuckles against him, clearly knowing what he's doing.
"Y'sure?" he teases.
"Yes." Tali waits a beat, then rolls her eyes once more as she looks at them. "You're so annoying now you like each other again."
He pauses, those words again.
"We always liked each other."
"No, you didn't," she remarks, her tone so close to sassy he's surprised she's not sticking her tongue out at him.
But Ziva shifts a bit, sitting up.
"Tali, we did. That's not why things didn't work before."
Tali, maybe at her mother pushing back, looks up.
"What do you mean?"
But Ziva hums, laces her fingers through Tony's.
"Do you remember The Little Prince?" she asks.
Tali frowns, brow knitting.
"Yeah?"
"We used to tell you about the Prince and the rose," Ziva says, and their daughter nods. Ziva looks at him, eyebrow raised in a silent question. He knows what she's asking, so he nods. "I think we should tell you our story."
Tali sets down her book.
"Your story?"
"Yeah," he fills. "I don't know if you realized, but I'm not exactly the flower type."
This won't be their story through the fiction. This will be the truth. She's ready for it-- most of it, anyway. What they've been through recently... she's no longer their baby (though she always will be). But she's growing up. She deserves to know their history. Especially if she thinks they didn't even like each other, which is so far from the truth.
Tali grins.
"I always liked that you were the rose," she says, warm, and he chuckles.
"It fit. But that story-- it doesn't cover everything. About us."
Ziva looks up at him.
"You can start."
He takes a deep breath. This isn't how he thought they'd pass their Friday night. But he wants to tell her. It's time.
So he thinks back.
"Do you know how long we've known each other?" Tali squints, like she's probably heard it once. "Over 20 years." Her eyes widen. "And we were friends for most of that, not a couple."
"But you worked together?" she asks, and he nods. He used to tell her about catching bad guys, Ziva by his side.
"You remember I told you about my partner, Kate? She died?" Tali nods. "She's why we met. When I met your mom, Kate had just been killed. I was pretty sad. I didn't know what the job would be like, if I'd want to keep doing it. And your mom worked with the guy we thought did it."
Tali gapes a little, not expecting that, and Ziva takes the lead-- because Tony doesn't know how much she wants to reveal.
"I came to NCIS to defend him." One day, he thinks they will tell her it was Ari. That Ziva killed him. But not today. Tali knows about her uncle, that he passed away, but they can't shatter her world quite yet by saying he was the one to kill Kate. "So your Dad, and Gibbs, everyone-- didn't really like me. And then you had orders to follow me in case I did something," she tells him, and he chuckles. "And you were terrible at it! I saw you the whole time."
"You gave me espresso," he says warmly, and she smiles. He looks back at Tali. "That night she told me about your aunt Tali."
He remembers being so surprised by it. How open she was. He'd almost thought it was a lie, a play. But he'd seen the look in her eyes and he knew she was telling the truth. To him. A stranger.
"A few months later I was assigned to the team permanently. I still worked for Mossad, for my father, he was in charge. But I ended up finding a home with the team."
Tali eyes them.
"And you... fell in love?"
He chuckles.
"No. Well, yes." He corrects. Ziva did, first. Then he did, harder. "But we didn't do anything about it."
"What do you mean?"
"Your Dad had a girlfriend, for a while," Ziva says, glossing over the particulars. "And then I started seeing someone."
"Why?" Tali asks, like it's so simple. "When you were right there?"
Tony shrugs as he explains.
"Well-- Gibbs had a rule against coworkers dating. But we weren't ready, then." They weren't. It was like an unsaid vow: they wouldn't cross the line. "Just like we weren't ready at the wedding." Tali frowns, and Tony moves on. "Point is, we became friends. We've always liked each other."
She hums.
"Then what?"
Ziva squeezes his hand, still in hers, and he braces himself for the next part.
"I... I made the wrong choice. We fought, your Dad and I, and I went home. I stayed home." She smiles just a little, which surprises him until she speaks. "Maybe I am a little like a Princess."
He smiles, too. She loosens her grip and lets go, leaning forward, looking at Tali, who's now rapt.
"I went on a mission, and things went wrong. I was kidnapped. For a long time." Their daughter's expression hardens, her own capture still too fresh for any of their liking. "I went alone. Nobody knew where I was. I'd given up hope of anyone finding me. And one day they took me into this room... and there he was."
Tali's jaw drops, looking at Tony.
"You told me this," she rushes. "When I was little. You really saved her?"
He smiles just a little. He'd tell her fairy stories of their team. Gibbs as the gruff King. Tony, the brave Knight. McGee was always the horse. He couldn't help himself.
But it's not a fairy tale. It's real. And there's a difference between the story and reality.
"That's the best part, chouchou," he tells her, just as he did once when she was five. "I didn't even think she was alive."
"He was... avenging my death." Ziva explains, eyeing him. "It was foolish."
"And it saved you."
"And then you got together?" Tali guesses.
"No." Ziva says, and Tali huffs.
"Why not?!"
It's so simple to her. So obvious. But the reality was anything but.
"It wasn't the right time," Ziva says gently. "We had to trust each other again. And we started to. I became an agent, a US citizen. I met your Saba for the first time. And we came to Paris together, for an assignment."
Tony grins.
"That was fun."
And they'll never tell Tali certain parts of that story.
"But then we dated other people, again."
Tali rolls her eyes.
"You're so stupid."
Ziva laughs.
"I was scared," she explains. "By that point I knew I loved him. But what if it didn't work, and we were better as friends?"
"But you had me," Tali says, clearly trying to connect the dots.
"Eventually, yes." Ziva sits back, and maybe seeing Tali is so engaged she pats the empty space of the sofa, and their girl clambers over. Ziva pats her knee. "There was this attack, at NCIS. A bomb. And we got trapped in the elevator."
"Yeah, Tals, never get in an elevator in an emergency."
"Duh."
"Our twelve-year-old has better lifesaving instincts than we do," he murmurs, and Ziva chuckles.
"Anyway-- when it fell we both lost consciousness for a moment, and I remember waking up first, and thinking, what if we don't get another chance?"
"So then you got together?"
She smiles again at Tali's simple way of looking at things.
"No. But it changed us. We got a lot closer. It was after that, actually, that your Dad told me about the last movie he ever watched with his mom, your Savta."
"The Little Prince," he says quietly, and Tali gasps, learning more significance of that story to them. He swallows. "Your Mom went through a rough time, after that. I was just about to ask her out, caution to the wind, and then someone was after us again. And like the Prince... she left."
"I thought I had to protect everyone," she says, quiet. Just like the Prince protected the rose. "But your Dad... He found me. Again."
"I always do." She looks at him, smiles, teary eyed.
"And then we were together." For a few days. It felt like a little lifetime. They made up for so much lost time. But they also held each other. One of the nights he insisted on cooking, setting up a table, a real date. He was trying to convince her to come home with him. It didn't work. But he treasured it. Tali needn't know it was just day-- after everything they'd gone through, all that time, it was a leap. It was a relationship. "But I still..."
He reaches for Ziva again, squeezing her hand.
"It wasn't the right time." Tali looks at him, curious, but he can't explain it. He can't tell her that he left. That Ziva needed him to go.
"I stayed in Israel, and your Dad was back home before I knew I was pregnant with you." She swallows, and he suddenly realizes what she's about to say. "Love, you know that when you were born, you were just with me. And then when I had to leave, you were just with your Dad." Tali nods, brow knit again, not following. "Well, I had you in Israel. And I didn't tell your father."
Tali frowns.
"What do you mean?"
They've never told her in so many words. She vaguely knows that she came to Tony, and obviously remembers being raised by him alone. She's lost the memories of her and Ziva, but there are photos he's missing from, and Ziva has told her about adventures they used to have, just the two of them. She never asked.
"I was in D.C.," he answers. "And we didn't talk, for years. So I didn't know about you."
"When our home was attacked, I gave you to a friend and sent you to America, to be with your Abba."
"And that's the first time I met you, first time I found out about you."
Tali still looks confused, and hurt, and he shifts closer so he can reach out to her.
"You didn't know?" she asks, and he shakes his head. "Why? Mom, why?"
"She was scared," Tony answers.
"But I--"
"It's a decision I can't undo," Ziva murmurs, quiet. "And I've wished I could so many times."
"We were together for four years," he reminds Tali. "Just you and me. While your mom was trying to get back to us." She eyes him again, seeking, and he nods, encouraging. He's made peace with it, and she can, too. "It's in the past."
He's moved on. Yes, he still has hurt around it. Yes, he wishes he could get those years back all the time.
But Ziva's alive. She's here, with Tali. They made it. They all made it.
And he'd felt that before, but being on the run again, together this time, has shown him once more that holding grudges against the past, keeping that bitterness... it's not worth it. Not when it comes to Ziva, and Tali. And their thousandth chance together. This life is so, so fragile. And he gets to live it, in Paris, with their daughter, and with Ziva back in his arms. It's nothing but a blessing.
Tali looks at Ziva.
"And then you came back."
She nods.
"I did."
It's one of the best days of his life, despite the panic. Tali standing watching Ziva walk down those stairs, clutching her flowers, desperate to see her.
"The Prince doesn't, right?" Tali remembers, looking up at him. "You said that once, didn't you, Dad? You don't know if he comes back."
He eyes her, nodding. Maybe now she sees, the story could have been theirs. Ziva could've been lost forever.
But she's not.
"I think you'll like the story," he tells her, taking a deep breath. They've reached the end point, the present. "You see, chouchou, we've spent twenty years liking each other. And just about that being in love. Even when we weren't together, that never stopped. Four years ago... it was because we loved each other so much, we knew it was best to not be together. We needed time to heal, from everything."
He once thought walking away on the tarmac with Ziva in his arms was the hardest thing he'd ever have to do. Then, sitting on his bed and trying to reconcile her death with his utter belief she was okay. But sitting there at that pool in Barbados absolutely devastated to realize they were everything to each other, and so they had to break up to have any chance of raising Tali right, of healing... It crushed him. And he hid that for a long, long time. Until a therapist's apartment, actually, where it really hit him.
"So it wasn't just me? You didn't-- it wasn't my fault?" she asks quietly, and Ziva gasps.
"No. No, honey, it was never your fault." She leans forward again, squeezing Tali's leg. "There were so many times we wanted it to work. And it just wasn't the right time."
Yes, when they were engaged they probably both had the thought of being together and with their daughter, a proper, functioning family like they never had growing up. But it was forced. They didn't communicate. In fact, they could have tried to stick it out just for Tali. But they didn't.
Tali swallows, shifts.
"But I got lost. Looking for flowers. And I thought that I was why you wanted to get married..."
"No, chouchou. It wasn't your fault, at all," he reassures her.
Has she wondered this the whole time? She goes to Archie regularly, now, and if she's raised it there Tony knows the guy would have quieted her worries too.
"I would've married your Dad fifteen years ago, if only he'd asked me," Ziva says, her thumb stroking Tali's knee. "But it wouldn't have worked, then. Just like it didn't work last time. And that was our fault. I'm sorry if we ever made you feel like it was yours."
Tali nods, and Ziva smiles, tucking a stray hair behind her ear.
"I could've asked you fifteen years ago?" Tony deadpans, and Ziva shakes her head with a snort.
"You missed your chance."
"Took too damn long to take it." He slings his arm around her again. "We're maybe a little more complicated than the Prince and the rose," he admits.
"That which is essential is invisible to the eye." Ziva quotes, and he smiles at the memory from so long ago. Not getting the reference, Tali frowns.
"It's a quote, from the book," Tony supplies. "The writer means love."
She nods.
"The book's on my shelf, right?" When he nods she stands, scurrying to her room.
He leans closer to Ziva.
"You alright?"
"Yes. We'll tell her more, one day. But she needed to know."
Humming, he kisses her neck.
"I would've married you in Paris that time," he murmurs, because that trip here, the first time, was fifteen years ago.
"You would've done anything in Paris that time," she murmurs, deadly low and meaning the exact time he's talking about. "Provided it kept me in bed."
He kisses her neck again.
"I was selfish, sue me."
She chuckles.
"I might just marry you some day, instead, after all."
He hides his grin in her hair.
There's an engagement ring in his nightstand. Size five, new, bought very intentionally. Their and Tali's initials are engraved on the inside. They're not ready yet. Dr Lang, and Tony's new therapist (a recommendation from Archie; someone he refers his patients to when they grow out of his care) have said the same. Hell, Tali would say the same. They'll take their time. But goddamnit he is marrying this woman some day.
Tali returns, flopping back onto her armchair and opening her new book.
Tony never would've thought, that day at the theater with his mom, or that day in the break room, telling the story of that film to Ziva, quoting books and movies-- he never would've thought that one day their daughter would be reading it. In their apartment in Paris.
Their story, sort of.
The Prince, and the rose.
He likes their ending better.