Chapter Text
Tony wasn’t asleep for long, jolting awake in the early hours of the morning with the crippling fear of the future and what it would hold for his daughter. Sure, these men would be caught—dead or alive was pretty irrelevant to Tony at this point—but what then? He had no doubts these men would be jailed either here or at Mossad, depending on which director won the pissing contest, which meant, technically, they'd be safe again. But for how long? He hadn't exactly had a low-profile law enforcement career either. Was it just a matter of time before someone else from his or Ziva's past tried to come after Tali again?
In the early days, having been intimately familiar with how Mossad treated threats to their own, Tony had seriously considered living in Tel Aviv, both so Tali could be close to the people who had raised her for the first two years of her life and so they—Tali mostly—could live under their protection. Just like Paris though, it hadn’t worked out. New to the dad job, he’d all but washed out in the City of Lights, if not for an elderly neighbor who shown him the trick to changing a diaper with speed and accuracy, and who had taught him how to read his kid for signs before the tantrums started.
Tel Aviv was better, Tali clearly more at home than Tony would ever be, but as good as Israel was for Tali, Tony felt like he was losing more of himself by the week. Ziva’s family supported him by means of Tali, but his support system—a concept previously foreign to him before Team Gibbs—was in the States. So, after six months of good effort, he’d informed them he was moving back but that they were welcome to visit at any time... as long as they got a place of their own.
They hadn’t murdered him on the way out and stolen Tali so he considered that a win. Yay blended families.
On days like today though, Tony wondered if leaving had been a huge mistake: if Tali wouldn't be better off staying with them, or a separate, safer, white-picket fence-2.4-kids-and-a-giant-golden-retriever type of family with no law enforcement or career criminal ties instead. The thought alone felt like a knife to the heart, but if it came down to that or Tali's safety, Tony wasn't sure he really had a choice.
This whole situation was only exacerbated by his coaching. It was only for six more weeks, but Tony already knew those extra hours away from Tali were going to feel like a lifetime. Back at NCIS, Abby had once joked about sticking a tracker on him, and after what had just happened, Tony was having semi-serious thoughts of doing the same for Tali... until the rational part of his brain won out.
Tali hadn’t picked her parents. She deserved to grow up as normal as possible. Or as normal as Tony could make her already unnaturally complicated life.
Maybe he needed to quit his league and just focus on her for a bit: school, soccer, ballet. Less time outside of the house, less running around for the both of them. But he needed that weekly hour of ball like he needed air in his body. Sometimes it was the only thing that allowed him to be a sane person after fifty thousand requests to stay up later, complaints about the toothpaste flavor, the way the fan was blowing, the vegetables he had managed to both over and undercook.
Don’t even get him started on Scouts. Tony had been told by the parents of Tali’s friends that he was going to have to start thinking about signing Tali up for the summer. McGee naturally expounded on the wonders and virtues of the scout program, but Tony was 100% sure he wasn’t yet ready to be a den dad or whatever they were called. And he did not want all those boxes of cookies around his house… But was this something he needed to find time for? Was he screwing Tali's future up by not having her sell those boxes of cookies and make friendships with the future CEO of XYZ who might one day have an opening in just the field Tali had studied and went out of her way to offer it first to her long-time friend instead of just posting it online? Assuming “online” even existed by the time Tali was old enough to need a job.
In all of his years in law enforcement, Tony had never been more stressed than he was most nights, wondering if he was the right person for this job.
He’d voiced that once to Abby, who had put a stop to his crisis with a few simple sentences—ones Tony always repeated to himself when he was feeling this way: Tali was happy and healthy. She'd developed her own, unique personality. She ate most of her food, and interacted well with others, even going so far as to have a best friend named Amy who Tony was supposed to meet the parents of so the two could get together for a play date.
Most nights that was enough; tonight it was barely a drop in the bucket of his crippling fear that this was the first in a line of incidents, ones which might not play out so well for them.
“Dad?”
Tony rolled over to see his daughter looking down at him, semi-sleepy face wrinkled in confusion and ringed by a wide halo of curls.
“Why’re you on the floor?”
“Because you take up a lot of room for one so small.” Pushing his internal crisis away for the moment, Tony dropped his voice, thinned his lips, and jutted out his jaw. “And that bed ain’t big enough for the both of us.”
Tali bit her lip, visibly trying to keep from grinning.
“Oh c’mon,” Tony groaned dramatically. “That was pretty good.”
With great effort, Tali shook her head somberly before throwing herself on Tony, knocking the breath out of him as her knee collided with his bruised stomach. Only years of practice kept him from crying out and he masked his stuttering breath by wrapping his arms around Tali and pretend body-slamming her into the ground next to him. It didn't earn him the giggles it usually did, but Tali wasn't sobbing like she had been a few hours ago, so it was win enough for now.
“Do I have to go to school today?” she asked.
“Gibbs thinks it would be best,” Tony replied, once he was able to without gasping.
“What if I don’t wanna?”
“I think it depends on why you don’t wanna.”
“I’m scared.”
“McGee is going to stay with you all day, in the hallway right outside your room. You know he won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Can’t you?”
Tony shook his head. “I have to go do my job. Much as it pains me to say.”
“Why can’t McGee can’t do your job and you stay in the hallway?”
Tony sat back on his haunches, shooting Tali a look. “You really want to be seen with your old man all day? The mean old PE teacher who makes you do laps when you don’t listen?”
Tali nodded, then burst into tears.
“They said she was alive,” she sobbed, swiping furiously at her eyes. “But she can’t be alive because if she was, she would be here because she’s my Ima, right? And Imas aren’t supposed to leave you. But mine did and—”
Tony leaned forward so he could get his arms under Tali and pull her into his lap.
“Tali, baby… Ima is gone,” he said, watching Tali’s face fracture, her bottom lip wobble. “She’s been gone for four years, since you came to live with me. I...” Tony paused to clear his throat “...I don’t know what they were talking about. But I know she’s gone. I promise you I have checked.” He tilted up her chin, forcing her to look at him. “I’m so sorry, sweetie.”
Tali nodded, very diplomatically, then crashed bonelessly into Tony, wrapping her arms around his middle as her sobs picked up speed.
They sat like that for a long while, Tony singing softly while rubbing her back, knowing nothing else he could say or do was going to make her hurt any less.
“Ima used to sing that to me,” Tali said softly, a while later.
Tony blinked a few times, not realizing until just then that he’d switched from Ol Blue Eyes to “Chad Gadya”. He swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the lump in his throat.
Thankfully, Tali spoke up again before he had to come up with a response.
“I miss her.”
“I miss her too, baby,” Tony said, shaking his head to keep his own tears from falling. Every goddamn day he looked at Tali and saw Ziva’s face, her hair. The ache only got worse as Tali grew, tearing the hole in his heart wider and wider. He wasn’t sure how to quantify what he and Ziva had had, what they hadn’t, what they could have if she hadn't… But it didn’t matter now. She was gone. His priority was, and would always be, Tali.
“Tell you what,” Tony said, as his heart continued to fracture. “What if you came to the gym with me for the morning, then we'll see about you going to school in the afternoon?”
Feeling Tali nod against his chest, Tony patted around him until he found his phone, at which point he shot off a message about the change in plans to Gibbs. Then he rocked her back and forth until she was breathing evenly again.
Feeling more wrung out than he had a couple hours ago, Tony heard a noise and looked up, hand again going down to his waist for the SIG that was no longer there. But it was just Gibbs, watching them through the doorway, signing something with his hands. Something Tali saw. Something too fast for Tony to read.
But his posture, the hurt in his eyes, that Tony could read loud and clear.
“I love you, Dad,” Tali said into his chest, before taking a long inhale and pulling away. She wiped the snot and tears from her eyes with the back of her hand and gross, she was going to need a long shower before school today. Which wasn’t going to make putting tights on any easier at. all.
“Ti amo,” Tony replied, pushing that problem off to join the thousands of others he was going to have to deal with later.
“Te amo más.”
“Ich liebe dich—er,” Tony added when he realized he didn’t know how to add the ‘more’ in German. “To infinity and beyond.”
Tali scowled. “You said that was cheating.”
“I said no such thing.” Pushing a lock of hair out of Tali's eyes, Tony tilted his head up at Gibbs, who remained in the doorway, a beacon of silent support. “Do you think Gibbs could use a nice, warm hug, considering he stayed up all night with us?”
Tali was on the move in an instant, throwing herself at Gibbs, limbs splayed like a starfish. There was a second of brief concern on Tony’s part before Gibbs caught her effortlessly, whispering something in her ear that was lost to Tony as she wrapped herself around the closest thing she was ever going to get to a grandparent.
“I got her. You get ready,” Gibbs said to Tony as he and Tali walked into the kitchen, conversing in… no, that couldn’t be Russian, could it?
“Gibbs, we said no more languages until we’re done with phonics,” Tony, still on the floor, called, but his words were promptly ignored.
“I’m sending her to your house for her next homework assignment then!” he shouted as the broken conversation continued.
“Fine!” Gibbs shouted back, garnering a peal of laughter from Tali. Sorely missed laughter.
A warmth spread through Tony's chest, centering on his heart, and after all that had happened, he did check to make sure he hadn't been shot, before it sunk in that this was a different kind of warmth: one he didn't feel anywhere else but here.
Maybe this had been the right decision after all.
“We’ll see how funny you think it is when you have to unscramble all her word puzzles,” Tony mumbled as he hauled himself to his feet but the words were without heat. He knew Gibbs would do it in a heartbeat, if only his schedule would allow it.
That being said, Tony had asked Gibbs last night for laughter and smiles. His former boss had delivered on both in record time.
Maybe this had been the right decision after all.
Heart feeling lighter than it had in the past ten hours, Tony headed into the shower, only to be stopped dead by a change of clothes for both him and Tali sitting on the counter surrounded by an assortment of toiletries. The clothes were in their favorite colors and styles, and Tali's fish-shaped "no tears" shampoo and conditioner bottles were sitting next to his own preferred hair products and scents; Abby and McGee had to have had a hand in it because no way Gibbs had picked that all out on his own.
And in that instant, Tony knew he was making the right choice raising Tali here. Nowhere else, not even in Tel Aviv, would Tali get this level of care, this amount of love. The rest was essentially a detail—a very large world-sized detail—but a detail nonetheless.
He'd figure it out like he always did. He wasn't the first current or former law enforcement official to be raising a child, wasn't the first single one to be raising one either. The Reiners had had a retirement plan and they were far from conventional, and Woody Harrelson had survived to middle age, so it was possible. Silly as it was to admit, both those examples gave him hope.
Tony didn't know where exactly they went from here, once the men were caught, but what he did know is that he'd stop at nothing to keep his daughter safe and happy. He was probably going to need help, a concept previously (and honestly still) foreign to him, but for his daughter, he'd figure out how to ask so she would get the childhood he'd never had, one filled with love and support and people who actually gave a shit.
She deserved nothing less.