Wow, it's update day again!

Exams are done (er, most of them) and the sun is finally shining! Best of luck with everyone else's exams and I hope the sun is shining where you are.

*****

You will break.

But oh,

You will also heal.

~k.a.

***

They spent the next two weeks in Paris.

Tony took Tali around to all the tourist sites, both those he had visited with Ziva and those he had not.

At some point in those two weeks, he realized that he and Tali needed to have their own memories.

There comes a point where you just gotta move on. The world keeps turning. The sun rises every morning and sets every evening. The tide still comes in and goes out.

There is a before, yes, but there is also an after.

Part of him hated to do it, and it felt a little bit like he was betraying Ziva by moving on, but it was just too hard to keep dwelling on the past. It was too draining. Exhausting. Depressing.

He needed to be there for Tali, and that meant getting his head on straight and getting his act together.

He didn't know where they would go next. He just knew it would be someplace new. Somewhere he'd never been before. Somewhere Ziva had never mentioned. Some place untainted by either of them.

***

Abby snatched up her phone as yet another picture came in.

She laughed, scrolling through the series of photos Tony sent.

He and Tali seemed to be having the time of their lives, and she supposed that was a good thing. It was about time they figured out how to start moving on.

"What's that?" McGee asked, looking up from his seated position on the floor. He was helping her sort test tubes and other easy lab stuff for the visiting school group tomorrow.

"Tony sent a few more pictures."

"Let me see."

She handed over her phone as she sank back to the floor and resumed her own task of bagging two swabs with a pair of gloves and a test tube.

She glanced up every few seconds to gauge McGee's reaction. Ziva's death and Tony's departure were rough on the entire team, but Abby knew that, having been partners with both of them, McGee was hurting perhaps a bit more than the rest of them.

His face was mostly blank, but she picked up on the occasional flicker of emotion. Not anything that she could identify, but she knew it had to be some mixture of grief and longing and happiness.

Eventually he handed her phone back.

They worked in silence for several long minutes before McGee finally said, "Do you ever think about it?"

Abby looked up, unsure how to respond.

"You know, like if Tony hadn't left. Or if Ziva hadn't been... murdered. Or if she hadn't left in the first place."

She shrugged. "I used to."

"What about now?"

"It's depressing to think about, McGee. The what if's and could've been's."

"Okay, but... But what do you think would've happened if... If she had stayed?"

"Easy. Things would've continued on the way they always had."

"You don't think they would've ever gotten together?"

"No," she said simply. "They would've kept dancing around each other. They wouldn't break Rule #12 or risk messing up the team dynamic or their friendship."

"And what if she hadn't died?"

"Would've continued on the way it was. She probably would've stayed in Israel with Tali, and none of us here would've been any the wiser about the situation."

"You really think she wouldn't have cracked and told someone?"

She sighed and set down the bag she was filling. "McGee, this is Ziva we're talking about. Not even torture would break her."

He dropped his gaze and fiddled with a couple of gloves. "Tali would've."

Okay, she had to give him that one. "Still. I don't think she would've told us unless she really needed to."

"You mean like if she died and Tali had nowhere else to go," he said bitterly. "You really think she would've kept something this huge from us. Her family."

"Well, she did it for two years, who's to say she couldn't have held up the act forever?" She hadn't been aware of her rising pitch, but now she realized she was just short of yelling.

McGee's face crumpled. "She wouldn't have-"

"But she did, McGee, okay? I talked to her every month she was gone. Not once did she mention Tali. Not once did she even drop a single hint. So yeah, I think in her ideal world, she would've taken the secret to the grave."

He stood up suddenly. "I'm sure you have secrets none of us know about. Maybe she was waiting for the right time. Maybe she didn't know how to break the news."

"I don't deal with maybe's, McGee. I'm a scientist. I deal with facts. And the fact is, she didn't tell us squat. She cut us off, and that's the end of it. She cut us off, left Tony with their secret child, and that's it."

She was taken aback when McGee met her gaze again and she saw the fire in his eyes.

"Then I guess you didn't know her like I did," he said in a low, dangerous voice.

"No, I didn't. No one knew her like you did. No one knew her like I did. No one knew her like Gibbs did. Like Tony did. Doesn't change anything. She still made her decision. She still left us without any explanation. She's still gone. There's nothing any of us can do about it. It's over. All we can do now is move on."

He glared at her a moment more and then stormed out, letting the door slam shut behind him.

Not even McGee's temper tantrum would change her mind. There were just certain things that were the way they were, and nothing anyone could ever do could ever change it. Fate, you might say.

And Abby hated Fate for taking their best friend away.

*****

Okay, I meant for this to be a happy chapter but obviously that didn't work out.

I don't know. But the chapter still shows how they're starting to heal in their own ways, so I guess it's okay.

Until Friday... live life to the fullest.