All roads lead to Paris

Part 29

As she came down the stairs, Tony was already waiting for her leaning on her desk. "Didn't know you had a date with the director, Bish. You don't tell me anything these days."

She rushed to her desk and tried to get him to let her alone: "Well, I didn't know I have to tell you everything."

Tony turned around and looked at her. She was already tipping on her keyboard searching for something.

He took the chance and grabbed the file and turned around to read it. She tried to stop him, but he didn't give her a chance to: "Hey! TONY. You aren't classified to read that!"

He didn't hear her and read out loud what he saw on the case file: "Mission A-A-M-T... Interesting."

She teared the file out of his hands and said angrily: "You have no right to snoop around in this case. Director gave it to ME, not to YOU."

Tony was surprised by her being angry at him and decided to not drag her anymore: "Okay. Calm down Bambina. You don't have to be mad at me."

The other agents stared at them, as always. Tony said: "Don't you have to work??"

They all turned back to their computers and Tony did the same. He tipped a few minutes on his keyboard not really searching for something and then leaned back and looked across the room at Ellie who was focused on her computer.

Even though Ellie told him not to, he wanted to know what this was about. He searched AATM. A photo of a too familiar guy popped up. He scrolled down and saw an even more confusing thing. The agent who led the mission. He immediately shut down his computer, grabbed his bag and turned on his heels. He said while walking: "I have to go. See you tomorrow."

"Ima?"

Tali looked at her mother with sad eyes. Ziva looked up from her laptop and said: "Yeah. What's wrong?"

"I don't know. I'm just sad."

She saw the sadness in Tali's face and her worried eyes and immediately put all things aside to help her. She opened her arms and said: "Come here."

Tali crawled up her lap and leaned her head against Ziva's chest. She stroked through her daughter's hair and said: "It's okay."

Tali pressed herself against her mother's body which made her feel better.

Ziva calmly asked: "Do you want to talk about it?" Tali didn't answer right away, and Ziva said: "You don't have to, just when you're willing to talk about it."

She looked at her and Tali said: "I don't know what I should say. I don't even know what's wrong."

Ziva thought about what it could be. Tali had been untypically quiet these past days, even though Ziva wasn't as much home as normal she did notice it. And she didn't come home from school as happy as usual. Something did happen.

And Ziva already had an idea what it could be: she asked: "Is it about Charlene?"

The silence following told her she was right, and that Tali was too sad to answer that question.

Ziva sighed. She straightened up and looked at her. "I know you feel bad for her, Tali. This is not a bad thing. To impress your compassion is something that most people have trouble with. I'm glad you feel the way you do. But you should not let it make you too sad. It's something Charlene must deal with. Not you. You can help her. But you shouldn't feel sad too. And you know what?"

"What?"

She looked at her with curious eyes. Ziva smiled and said: "I think you're the one that can make Charlene happy again."