Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“You’re just lucky,” Tony scoffs at her, trailing her through the cubicles, passed their desks, halfway to the elevator, still not willing to admit defeat.

“Oh?” She does not bother to expand on her words as Tony is more interested is being an impoverish loser than to actually listen to her when she tries to explain why he was not chosen for this case.

“Yeah, maybe if you’d listened to me when I—” she stops abruptly at the elevator, turning to face him in one brisk movement, making him stop less than half a foot from her, and for a moment, their proximity appears enough to distract him from the one-sided argument he was so involved in—a one-sided argument that she already explained to him did not matter because Vance had already chosen who was to take the lead “—are you trying to test my reflexes?”

“No, Tony, if I wanted to do that, I would do this.”

Without warning she tosses the case file at him, the one filled with instructions, the address to her safe house, the main locations she needs to familiarize herself with, a list dictating what she needs to wear, her alias, her background—everything he would eventually learn from working on the case from the office anyways. It does not matter if he learns it a few days early.

To her amusement, Tony catches the file, unfortunately the maneuver is more of a clap than a catch and he ends up dropping his coffee on the ground. But his mouth grows into a large grin as his morning caffeine absorbs into the freshly steamed carpets.

“Ah ha!” He points at her, both of his hands snapping open the file and his eyes scanning. “You’re Rose Eid.”

“The carpet has eaten your coffee.”

“Rose—Isn’t that old? Like an old woman’s name?” He briefly darts his eyes back to her, though they’re not exactly looking at her, as he squints in recollection. “Wasn’t she one of the Golden Girls?”

“I don’t know or care what that is.” She reaches for the file that he meticulously snatches away at the perfect time, enacting another game of predator and rodent.

“Ah, ah, ah,” he tuts, the file open and pinned behind his back. She does need the information back, particularly who to contact in the costume unit, but right now, she is purposefully setting him up for a bigger fall as payback for constantly haranguing her whenever she is chosen for an assignment that he wants to do instead.

This time his excuse was that he wasn’t in Vance’s good graces since he sideswiped an evidence van against a yellow-painted concrete pole which left a noticeable yellow stripe down the side. Then he lied—badly—that he didn’t know what it was from.

“You know McMopey isn’t the Boss’s favorite, it’s the only reason why—"

She makes a tactical decision to stop listening to him as he rambles, counting something on his fingers while circling her. Whatever the story is does not matter as the point is that she was never capable of earning these assignments on her own. Without another word, she leans back, depressing the button to take her down.

The point is—” Tony frantically flips through the papers in the dossier, crumpling corners and ripping edges that she cannot be sure is not intentional “—how are you supposed to be a hot ninja assassin with a name that belongs to a grandma?”

“Have you gotten to the second last paragraph of the first page Tony?” Sighing, she glances to the elevator light indicating she would need the file back shortly.

“What? No. Why?”

“Read it.” She gestures her hand with urgency as the elevator solemnly dings. “Quickly.”

“In order to draw out the suspect, Agent David will have to wear a prosthetic stomach to better match the characteristics of the known victims who were all in the third trimester of pregnancy when murdered…”

His voice trails off, leaving her in a stunning silence that she would welcome if it were not so unnatural. She does not know what Tony is thinking. Surely, he cannot be worried for her as she has proven herself capable and more lethal than him hundreds of times over the last seven years.

It must be his, hopefully waning, jealousy.

Standing in the mouth of the elevator she holds her hand to receive the file back, however, Tony keeps it close to him for another moment, his brows furrow as he looks at her. “You’re going to have to wear a fake baby belly?”

“Quicker than getting a real one.”

Gibbs rounds the corner towards their desks, easily side-stepping Tony’s spilled coffee a few feet back without even a glance at the ground.

The elevator starts to buzz, and the doors try to close on her, when she pushes them back. “Tony, I have to go.”

“You’re going after the Pregnancy Pact Killer?” His voice becomes softer, farther away, almost like a whisper in the middle of the night which clarifies his concern is now fueling him and not his envy.

Ordinarily, she would respond with irritation, at him wasting her time, at him belittling her ability to do the same job he does when she has more experience undercover than he does. Perhaps she could placate him, they have seen each other through hardships, and it is true that if he were going undercover for an extended period of time, she would be tentative to see him leave on his own.

Instead, she simply holds out her hand to receive the file. “I wanted to let you know why you were not chosen.”

“Yeah.” Almost in shock, he hands the file back to her, the tips of his fingers grazing hers, holding still momentarily. “The old genitals on the outside thing.”

Cannot think of a single sentence to not only accompany his, but to change the subject as no one can halt a conversation as completely as he can. Instead, she offers a weak smile, retreating back into the elevator, standing center so subliminally he can understand he is not along for the ride.

“Hey, maybe I can come down and judge how well they—”

The tone of his words, perhaps the urgency in which he speaks spreads a blush over her until she is certain her skin resembles that of a pomegranate. The forked relationship they have cobbled together over the years, with a malnourished spine and broken back from all their encounters, their arguments, disagreements from inconsequential to North Afrika. How did he so poetically state their relationship to her once?

Like two ships in the night, violently crashing into each other, dragging each other to shore.

She explained they were only unmoored, and he did not understand the joke.

Uncertain of their exchange as almost every conversation, stake out, interrogation, movie marathon, Paris hotel dialogue with room service is miscommunicated, mistranslated while speaking the same language. So much, too much, has happened that each are waiting for agreement from the other, while still fearing both reciprocation and the lack of it.

They live in a constant stalemate, a terra nullius, no man’s land, which historically has never resulted in overwhelming positive favor.  

“It’s undercover, Tony,” she speaks gently, reaching forward and pressing the B1 button. “You’re not supposed to see what I look like.”

“True, yeah.” His words mix, launch out of his mouth faster than he can think as emotion conquers, suppressing logic. He’s trying to regain his composure, his hands on his hips while he does a half turn, shined shoes stepping right in his carpet coffee.

When he completes his rotation, he’s more grounded. “You’re really going to be gone for three months?”

Wants to reply only if it is not successful. If there is no movement at all, if she is unable to uncover any type if lead, she could be recovered earlier, but the killer has famously dealt with women over thirty-two weeks of pregnancy, and even if she is starting at six months, it is still many days.  Discovering his abandoned turmoil, she frantically scrolls her mind for a method of communication they could use that could not be traced.

“Not if she doesn’t get downstairs, DiNozzo.”

The dull slap across Tony’s head rings through the empty floor, cubicles left gray with only a soft orange hue coming from their area. Gibbs says nothing to her, again expertly sidestepping the spilled coffee.

“Yes, Boss, of course.” Tony agrees to no one and nothing as his eyes grasp onto hers the way his hands cannot as the elevator doors start to close.

“And clean up that coffee.”

Chapter Text

She does not like the small apartment, that she immediately airs out, as whoever used this safehouse last left everything beyond filthy.

Her first day consists of her scrubbing the one bedroom, one bathroom hovel from top to bottom, tossing out rotten groceries with the maggots and cockroaches they have accumulated. All the windows are open to get the stench of rot out even though she is sure it has seeped into the floorboards at this point—like when they find bodies in advanced states of decomposition that contaminate everything around them with bodily fluids that ooze into the carpet, the delineation of kitchen tiles, the pipes, and the air vents.

By the end of the first week, she has made an appearance at all the locations including the Women’s Center near the base for prenatal yoga classes, parenting classes, labor and delivery classes and pregnancy classes—something she did not believe existed until Gibbs insisted, she attend all four.

“There is nothing to learn, you follow the instinct from your body, and you push the baby out.” Gibbs handed her the pamphlets for the offered classes showing a traditional couple on the cover holding a hand to their mouths, and another hand to the woman’s pregnant body in fear. “It could not be simpler.”

Gibbs wore a half grin, amused by her explanation as she huffed crossing her arms against her chest, against her still flat stomach. “I’m glad that you have high confidence in yourself,” he leaned forward, his hands on his desk sitting behind it but across from her. They had stayed late the last night before she officially became Rose, and he was running her through protocol again. “But a lot of these women have husbands away overseas, and they don’t have a good support system.”

She glanced to him, closing her lips together and leaning back in her chair which she had pulled over to his desk after they ordered Chinese food. “Did I ever give an indication that I was not doing my hypothetical labor alone?”

That garnered a true grin from him, and even a dry laugh as he reached across the table and patted her hand gently. “I have faith in you, that you could deliver a baby alone.”

“Well, I would not be alone, the baby would be there.”

“And now you’re starting to sound like an idiot, like DiNozzo.”

“No—” she paused, using chopsticks to collect the wad of noodles at the bottom of the white takeout carton. “Tony would lose his mind if someone in the same room has having a baby. I cannot imagine him going to a prenatal yoga class, or a parenting class and being comfortable with the number of pregnant women present.”

“Tony was a cop for years, he knows how to deliver a baby.” Gibbs chased a mouthful of noodles with a swing of stale coffee, and at her confusion, clarified, “I only know because he wouldn’t shut up about it.”

“He would probably want deliver one just to see if the parent would name it after him.”

Names.

Namesakes.

Onomastics and etymology.

How does one properly name a child. It has become a reoccurring discussion in her life, from her own name from her father’s mouth. A father who is the last living of her relatives, and who has made no attempt to contact her since he left DC almost two years ago.

Tony has stated more than once that he wants to name a son after himself, which McGee stated that he is more likely to name his child after people who have made a difference in his life. Gibbs has never talked about who or why he named Kelly.

When she asked her father why he named her as he did, he could never give a straight answer, and she never asked her mother.

Naming a person after another person is a large dedication, not only dictating how they act, but who they are. Perhaps knowing the meaning behind a name is not worth finding out, but it is easy to let her mind wander.

Anything to keep her mind off her first day in the prosthetic.

Being fitted for it was not enjoyable, but it was not a burden. She did not have any life-changing revelations while Marg, the old woman who is as gray as the pack if cigarettes she smokes every day, fitted her, and retook her measurements with each version of prosthetic.

“Ya, look so damn cute.” Her voice sounded like gravel dragging under a metal gate, but her contentment was contagious. “Thin as a stick and then you turn and your all baby.”

Marg also happened to be the best costumer for undercover agents going long term, meaning more than one month. She has been with NCIS longer than Gibbs and perhaps longer than Vance, starting back when it was NIS as well.

“Hold the tummy up a bit.”

Standing sideways, the profile of her body was the biggest she had ever seen it.

“You know back in my day we just had foam, no silicone, no molds, it was up to mama to make it look natural.” To emphasize her point, she turned away coughing harshly, before shaking her head. “Gimme a sec, Kiddo, I need some water.”

Marg disappeared throughout the rows of costumes in the room big enough to be a warehouse. Left alone for a rare moment, she untucked her purple shirt from her pants and let the loose material billow over the prosthetic, until it was hidden enough to appear viable.

Suddenly, she was a little over six months pregnant.

All to find one killer.

Definitely male, either twenty-five to thirty-five or over fifty-five based on Ducky’s profile. Married once but either widowed or divorced. Likely childless, likely once had a prospective child, and her hand grasped the material tightly to the prosthetic, trying to imagine what it would be like, to have a baby, to be enamored by their movements, annoyed by their cravings, to set up a nursery which she would never use as she would keep them close in a bassinet beside the bed.

“You look so stinkin’ cute,” Marg leaned against one of the rolling dressers that were used for more intimate undercover cases. Her eyes were wistful, and her dyed orange hair suited her round face. “This your first time being pregnant?”

The question hit like an irate parent, as if she were disobedient in taking the moment to reflect upon herself, the emptiness in her chest leaving her ashamed and yearning. “No,” she swallowed, tugging her shirt back up as Marg showed her the proper way to disengage the prosthetic. “I—uh—used pregnancy as way to hide weapons with the Mossad.”

It was not a lie, but it was not the whole truth. It was the beginning portion of the truth that she did not speak to the psychiatrist, the doctor who saw to her upon her return, or anyone that accompanied her back to America.

“Well, you would be gorgeous,” Marg set the prosthetic down and took one that was approximately six and a half months alone. “And your kid would be a little cutie.”

She nodded, not hearing many of Marg’s words, her mind more distracted by the distorted version of herself beckoning her from the mirror, but she appreciated the kindness beneath prosthetic after prosthetic measured in place to be able to withstand yoga and Lamaze.

Upon entering her first classroom, which is a corporate boardroom with the table and chairs pushed to line the wall, she knows this may be the hardest case she has ever been assigned to.

She counts nine pregnant women not including herself for obvious reasons. Carrying her gym bag slung over her shoulder, she is intimidated. Cannot count the time she has flawlessly had to slip into a new personality on the spot and how many times her creativity has saved her life, but she has nothing in common with these women.

She is not pregnant.

She does not know the first thing about being a mother other than what proceeds the moment of conception. Does not know what activities are forbidden or dangerous when pregnant and she is starting to think that she should have read the “What to Expect When You Are Expecting” book they sent with her—Perhaps Tony did not sneak it into her bag without her knowing, maybe it was given by Ducky to read up on.

The women begin to take their places, lining up the yoga mats so a place in the center is empty for the instructor, who is also male, he is spectacularly muscled and lean, wearing a blue and orange tank top and a pair of white yoga pants tightly around his thin hips.

“Good morning, ladies,” he greets with a hint of an accent worn out by years submerged in America and its culture. “As usual, I’d like to get us started out with a quick meet and greet, names, a little about yourself that doesn’t have to do with your pregnancy, and then something special to you about your pregnancy.” In an instant she remembers the background given to her. Parents died in a car accident. She keeps to herself, likes to read, is hesitant but excited to be a mother, her husband is aboard an aircraft carrier. “Marie, if you’d like to go first.”

A soft-spoken woman, her voice delicate and almost trembling, starts to speak about how this is her sixth child with her second husband, her first killed during action. How she works tirelessly to make her children feel as full siblings and that nothing is more important than family. She does not make eye contact when speaking, instead glancing down at her hands.

One by one, the women speak, one is on her third child, and another is having twins, one is a nurse who supersedes all the questions she was asked in order to explain how she is eating only organic foods and making sure that she is perfectly at the weight she should maintain in order to deliver a healthy child.

For the first time, pregnancy seems eerily terrifying. Not the idea of apprehending a murderer, or possibly being in danger from an attack, but the growing of another within her body, a little thing syphoning off her nutrients, sharing her blood, her organs, her life until the trauma of birth which opens a door for so many other occurrences to go wrong.

“What did you think of me, when you first saw me?” She and Ari were out to dinner, it was his treat as she was not yet in the Mossad and not making enough for frivolous wants like meals out.

He laughed into his drink, a very strong-smelling whiskey that he drank before every dinner, a tradition he inherited from their father. The laughter reached his eyes, lighter than her own and copied from his beautiful and kind mother. “What kind of question is that?”

His mirth was always infectious, if she did not laugh with him, he would continue until she had no choice. With a chuckle of her own, she sipped her own drink, just water tonight for training tomorrow. “I think the question is pretty self-explanatory.”

“Baby Sister,” he cooed to her in Hebrew, picking his whisky tumbler up by the rim, his fingers as claws over the glass. “I do not remember meeting you.”

“You have to.”

“You are only three years younger than I.” A grin flashed over his lips as he diverted the question. “Do you remember meeting Tali?”

“Of course I do, the world remembers meeting Tali.”

They shared the laughter.

Their baby sister was a force, was not to be grounded, was not to be told she could not, was not to be told that her father was Deputy Director of the Mossad as she simply did not care. Music, art, acting, athletics, poetry, these were gifts Tali was bestowed, and like everything she did, she did them flawlessly and roaring in her confidence.

“I am sorry, but I believe the earliest memory I have of you is in the orchard.”

Leaning in on her hand, she grinned at him, remembering the years they spent playing in through the rows of trees. “Tell me?”

“Tali was not here yet. You were little and you were wearing little overalls that were patched up because Abba could not afford new ones. They were constantly arguing back then.”

“Is it bad that I miss the arguing?”

“We miss even the wrongdoings of people after they are gone.” He raised his hand to the server, indicating that he would like another drink. “Are you sure you would not like a drink, Baby Sister?”

“You know—” setting down her water on the table, the ice cubes long dissolved in the evening heat. “You are the only one in the world who I will allow to call me that.”

“Of course, I know.” He held out his new drink, cheering to her. “This is why I must call you it.”

True to his word, she missed being called anyone’s little sister.

Any one’s big sister.

Any one’s sister at all.

“And your name?”

When she glances up, the instructor is staring at her intently, waiting for her to give him some sort of answer. To her left one of the women mutters something about her probably not speaking English.

“I’m sorry,” she apologizes shaking her head. “My name is Rosie. I am just finishing my second trimester. My husband is in the navy aboard an aircraft carrier. He will not be finished his contract before our daughter is due.”

“That’s great, thanks—”

Does not know what empowers her to state that the baby is a girl. Refuses to accept that it is because she would not be able to name a son after Ari. There is no way to honor the man that he was before he became the man he did.

The same woman, sitting in the circle third to her left, one who only spoke to assume she did not speak English—leans forward for her turn, her blond hair done in the color of a golden sunrise over a field of wheat perfectly pulled into a ponytail that is not too tight or loose. She is in full makeup, and her fingers are fully manicured.

“Where are you from?” Her voice carries the kind of brass that Southern American’s speak with, although she holds no accent.

“My husband and I live in DC.” Does her best to keep her voice gentle as she does not want to take the attention away from the other women she is supposed to be monitoring, not only that, but the less she divulges, the less she must remember, and the less they have to track her on.

“Where are you really from?”

Before she can even think of an answer, the instructor quickly skips to the next person, not bothering to go into detail about what was said. He does not speak again until all introductions are done, after about twenty minutes, to begin the actual yoga class that is much harder to do than she thought with a near twenty-pound weight on her stomach.

It has been over six weeks, and she still has not gotten used to the prosthetic stomach she is forced to wear ninety percent of her day, only being able to take it off whenever she is inside her apartment—the safehouse.

The basic amenities were lacking on the first day and have only gotten worse since.

There is a small kitchenette with a portable stove top that allows for her to cook her own food, but nothing near the space or optimization she would need for a decent meal. Since she is supposed to be the wife of a marine who is out at sea, she cannot exactly treat herself to takeout every night. Not only that, but she may end up coming home with as big of a stomach since exercise is all but forbidden outside of the apartment, her daily routine whittled down to yoga and calisthenics.

So, she buys her own food from the grocery store the local navy wives shop and grins at them in the aisles and speaks with them when they approach her and just touch her stomach without warning or permission and then ask about her husband.

She tells them he is deployed, and he will be gone when the baby is born. Listens to their lamentations and their comparable stories of how disappointed they were when their husbands could not attend the birth of their children.

Every few weeks she meets up with McGee at her apartment to exchange intel and receive her next prosthetic. Already having changed the size of her stomach twice.

“Ziva, whoa, it’s—uh—”

If Tony or Gibbs were here, they would give him a hard time, pointing out the exact way that his words could be misconstrued, which is why he is hesitant to voice his perspectives sometimes. She only grins at him, a hand on her very realistic stomach. “I know, I cannot get used to it myself.”

“Yeah—” he hands her a bag with the next prosthetic wrapped up to look like a baby gift in case anyone gets the wrong opinion about his visits “—it’s a little weird,” he pauses glancing up from the next bag like an animal being hunted, “not that pregnancy is weird or you being pregnant is—”

“McGee, it is okay,” she chuckles, smiling when his speech immediately settles. “Do you have more for me?”

“Well,” he hefts the second bag forward, it is twice the size of the first and barely has any tissue paper exploding from the top. “According to Marg in costumes, you need a higher pants and shirt size now because the old prosthetic won’t really fit in.”

She barely hears him as the excitement of having a change from the main five shirts and two pants she was initially given takes precedence as he leans over to retrieve his phone to scan her apartment for bugs.

Pulling out the first shirt, it is black and white stripped sweater, the second is a pair of dark jeans that match the ones she currently wears but a size or two larger. Next is a plain black tank top, followed by a jean jacket, followed by a pair of cargo pants.

Then she lifts out the next shirt.

“What is this?” She holds the yellow shirt before her, trying to make sense of the writing on it.

From her two-shelf bookcase, Mcgee checks over his shoulder to her, and then shakes his head. “That was Tony’s contribution.”

Rolling her eyes, as it makes perfect sense, she shakes out the shirt and stares at it again. Imaging Tony scavenging through the rows of shirts while chatting to Marg, laughing with her, ignoring the smell of forty-years of chain smoking roiling off her with every movement, convincing her to send this particular shirt. “Bun in the oven? Is it a sexual euphemism?”

“No,” McGee laughs, standing from the corner and approaching her, while she flashes the shirt again. “It’s an idiom, meaning pregnant.”

“Well, of course I’m pregnant—or pretending to be.” Shaking her head, she tosses the shirt into the pile with the others.

“I know, it’s just a thing a lot of women do to kinda advertise they’re expecting.”

“Isn’t the large, cumbersome stomach advertisement enough?” Before McGee tries to apologize again, she reaches into the bag, pulling out a dark purple t-shirt with ruching, it is longer in size and will definitely be more useful. “Make sure to give Tony my thanks.”

“I will,” McGee agrees, his eyes glancing up at her quickly, and then back down to his phone. “He misses you, you know.”

“Oh, I’m sure he does.” The next shirt is a bold magenta blouse with wide sleeves, not exactly ideal for cooking or for pulling her weapon from her ankle holster quickly.

“He does, or at least he talks about you a lot.”

Next is a white lace camisole that is quiet appealing but should not be used during close encounters as the fabric has decorative holes that could belie her belly. “Probably complaining that I have it easy while you two need to continue with work as usual. I am sorry if he has been extra irritating to you since I am not there.”

“Actually, no—” she sets down the shirt as McGee does a slow rotation in the room, coming back to her. He shakes his head, both at the answer to her question and to the indication of bugs “—he’s been spending a lot of extra time in Abby’s lab.”

“Really? That’s—” Unusual? Interesting? “—weird.”

“Yeah, I thought the same thing, but when I mentioned it to Gibbs yesterday when we were in the elevator, he snapped at me.”

The bag settles on the table with a rustle of a final garment jolting around within. “For what reason?”

“I don’t know, both him and Tony have been different since you left.”

Reaching in, her hands touch what feels like lace again, though this time it is much thinner and much more intricate, and she is careful as she lifts it up. “I didn’t leave, I—”

Holding up the last of her clothing for two or three weeks both her and McGee fall into silence as a black lace sundress hangs before her, and all she can think is how relieved she is that Tony did not send her lingerie.

“Yeah,” McGee stops beside her, staring at the intricate lace cascading to the bottom in three layers and the black ribbon weaving at the sides like a corset. “This was Abby’s contribution.”

Chapter Text

“Afternoon, Rosie.”

“Good afternoon, Gus,” she greets the retired marine with a flair for baking that he picked up while stationed in Paris with recipes just as authentic.

She visits Gus, from the boulangerie at the end of the block at every in-person check in with McGee. Not only does it help to better ingrain her in the neighborhood and giving her visibility in the community, but also, she has started to feel guilty with McGee constantly bringing her coffee and offering him nothing in return.

“Your brother in town again?”

 “Yes—” she leans a bit against the front of the curved glass displaying the multitude of pastries baked fresh that morning, genuinely excited to see McGee—it is nice to speak with someone who truly knows she is not almost eight months pregnant “—he is coming to visit me today again.”

“The usual then?” Gus gruffs, standing and flipping a cardboard box together to carry her bounty.

“Yes, please.” She rests her chin on her arms, grinning as it will be nice to have a normal conversation if even for the fraction of the afternoon. Something that does not revolve around birth weights or placentas.

“It’s nice of him to come and visit you so often,” he collects two eclairs and six macarons—two more than usual—but she is more distracted by his subtext than the baker’s gift.

“He is making sure to come and see me more often since it is just me and, well,” she points down to her stomach, but her striped t-shirt is covered in the scars of dry erase markers categorizing each pastry from the glass. “Gus, I’m so sorry—”

But the old man just laughs, reaching over the counter and handing her the box, and waving her off with the other hand. “No need to apologize.”

He wipes his hands on his apron before opening the gate to her side of the counter and limping towards her. “My wife was the same way, she’d always forget just how big she was.”

“Well, your wife is lucky to have such an amazing baker and understanding man as a husband.” She pulls the cash out from her quickly disappearing jean pockets, only for him to hold up his hand again.

“Consider it my donation to the baby shower.”

“Oh, Gus, no—I must—”

“I know how hard it is to be expecting and how hard it is to have to do it alone.” He turns away from her, pulling a marker out of his apron and already rewriting which she inadvertently erased, speaking over the squeaks of freshly inking the letters. “Hopefully your husband comes back to see you soon.”

“Thank you, Gus.”

“You got a name picked out yet?” Limping back to the register, Gus lets the separator fall going back to his newspaper.

“No—” she shakes her head.

What it would be like to be truly expecting? Who would they look like? Would she be able to protect them? Would she be able to get over the memory of firing bullets, and pushing knives through skin and muscles? Would she be able to change a diaper with the same hands doused in someone’s blood.

Would she ever be able to her child what she has done?

She knows she could never have children, she could never safely settle “—My husband and I had not decided before he left.”

“You might want to consider Claire. It was my wife’s name.”

“It is a beautiful name.” It brings up the memory of her mother, of Tali, and she knows she would immediately name her after her baby sister forever stuck at sixteen. It in no way makes up for the guilt she feels, of not being there, of not warning Tali enough about the dangers, she wanted her little sister to live fear free which was not possible.

“You should get going, better to eat the macarons while they’re fresh.”

Nodding, the silver bell ringing above the door announces her leave. It is gray for midday and a little cooler than it should be for the beginning of September. Washington always makes her cold, the rain here is always freezing and incapsulating.

The walk is short to her apartment, the one-bedroom unit accessible from the back of a building above an old appliance store that went out of business years ago. The same rusty metal stairs and rails acting as her fire escape which are currently slick with raindrops from the sky that refuses to relent.

Tucking the box under her arm, she pulls out her key, pausing when she hears movement from inside the door. It could be McGee, she is running a bit late, but standing idly, the sound of a hushed conversation, more muffled and debating, and the sound of something crashing, triggers her defense.

Instinctively, she reaches down and unholsters the gun from her ankle, leaving the pastries out on the metal deck to become waterlogged, before she kicks open the door, aiming her gun for the middle of the back wall where the couch sits.

Movement stops in the room as McGee freezes from pulling coffees out of the snug tray, and Tony stops fiddling with the tissue paper on the top of her present, that she is just going to give them back at the end of the visit.

“Pregnancy hormones kicking your paranoia into overdrive, Ziva?” He settles the gift on the counter, but does not stop staring at her, like she has offended him, his eyes wide and accusing.

A moment passes, McGee questioning her with lowered eyebrows and a squint, so she lowers her gun, the rain still spitting outside, the sky and the ground and the metal balcony all the same suffocating gray, it seeps into her nostrils before the scent of coffee drowns it out, and then the familiar scent of an appropriate amount of familiar cologne.

“I heard someone inside.” Reaching down, she finds it is much harder to holster her weapon than to unholster it and with a grunt, she loses her footing for a moment. McGee gives her a nod of understanding, moving around her to close the door and grab the pastries he knows are waiting outside.

“Yeah, so kick down the door and barge in belly first.” Tony picks up one of the coffees, sips it, grimaces and closes the lid back into place before settling on another.

“You broke into my apartment,” She grunts, the prosthetic pushing into her actual stomach, increasing the difficulty of drawing in a breath, as she tries again to holster her weapon.

“This is a safe house,” he argues with her, stoic face, brows set as he watches her struggle. “You’re not actually pregnant are you, because the amount of time it’s taking you to put that away, you could actually pop a kid out.”

“The prosthetic almost weighs 20lbs, Tony.” McGee returns, shutting the door gently behind her, the pastries now tucked under his arm, as she straightens, her face red from the exertion and embarrassment.

“And yet she still hasn’t figured out how to store a gun inside of it.”

“She is still in the room,” she snaps, pre-emptively ending any arguments between the two of them. Tony quirks an eyebrow at her as she passes by him towards the couch, the gun still in hand.

“That would explain the waddling then.”

On her heel, she spins, collecting herself into his space, her brows drawn and her voice a ripping whisper. “I am not waddling.”

“Sure.” His answer comes too easy making her eyes narrow in suspect. “Whatever you say.”

She does not acknowledge his outburst, or hers, merely walking to the couch and spinning to her side to lay down.

“Well, now that all the—” Tony notices her again, and again he becomes confused, his words being spoken slowly while watching her “—fun. Is. Over—Ziva, what the hell are—”

Raising her leg in the air, she stretches her foot towards her face and slips the gun into the holster, ignoring both him and McGee as if her actions need no explanation.

“A little focus please?” McGee steps forward, unfortunately taking the coffee Tony previously drank from, cracking back the lid to have a quick gulp.

“I had a cat that moved like that,” Tony offers, gesturing with his coffee towards her.

“I have to be in Abby’s lab in less than two hours” Mcgee again raises his voice, ignoring Tony’s weak jokes, grabbing the last coffee and handing it to her. “It’d be nice to narrow down the potential suspects.”

“Well,” McGee sits on the opposite end of the couch from her, she presumes the apartment has already been swept for bugs. Usually, he does the bedroom while she cleans up from their meeting, folding the yellow tissue paper back into the bag, and folding the paper bag back down into a flat surface so he can bring it back in another two or three weeks with more clothing and another prosthetic. “We did some digging deeper on the latest victim because she didn’t match the MO of the first two.”

“Right, her husband was not out of the country on contract work during her death.”

It was a gruesome scene. All Ducky could offer was that at least the fetuses were not exorcised, signaling that they may not be the focus of the murders.

“Then why focus on pregnant women?” Palmer asked as she stood to the side, taking a break, her camera dangling at her side from the strap as Tony stopped beside her, solemnly not speaking a single word, let alone a joke, before he nudged her to start taking pictures again.

Ducky stopped moving over the body, took off his glasses, and glared at his assistant. “Because of the women, Mr. Palmer.”

“Well after we dug a little deeper, the first two women weren’t left alone with husbands on leave either.”

“What do you mean?”

“The first victim’s husband was on a last trip to Vegas that he got clearance for instead of coming home, and victim two was already separated from her husband, he was being reassigned at the time so not on active duty.”

Inhaling deeply, the dark roast in her hand overtakes the rain woven into her t-shirt and hair. “Then we have been looking for the wrong motivation this entire time.”

“Yeah,” McGee sighs, leaning over and resting his elbows on his knees, his hands hanging as if he did not tell her the worst part of the situation.

“If these women all had partners who were readily available, just absent—” the pieces quickly fit together, the new information labeling most of her interactions so far as obsolete. “—then we will need to get a husband who does not care.”

Tony flops down between them, his body hitting the couch hard, spilling his coffee down the front of his shirt, a whole macaron stuffed into his mouth, and gripping another tightly in his hand. “That’s where I come in, Roomie.”

Chapter Text

“Out of everybody, Tony, really?”

McGee left for Abby’s lab a little over two hours ago. He would be standing in there, chatting with her now while what Tony called ‘tape abuse’ played in the background.

“Oh, please.” His answer braids into the alternating pressure of the shower switching from strong to weak, from hot to cold. “Don’t act like I wasn’t your first choice.”

He was her first choice, supported by the fact that she wondered what it would be like if he was here, but there was no way she would ever let him know they finally agreed on something. Instead, she did not offer an answer towards the ajar door wafting massive amounts of steam into the room, making an already unbearable hot apartment hotter. She tries to focus on putting away the new pile of clothing while blissfully unburdened with the prosthetic, her reflection catches her in a mirror and she stands with perfect posture, much more comfortable.

The tap squeaks off abruptly, the water halting, but the steam, the heat that came with it creeping into the room like a fog. She hears the hard stomps of his feet slipping against the cracked enamel before quickly regaining composure, while the shower door slams open, then closed, then open more forcefully.

“I’m okay.”

Even though he cannot see her, she arches an eyebrow towards the bathroom—he knows what he is doing just as well as she does.

A few seconds later, he walks out into the bedroom, a towel wrapped around his waist, his wet feet tracking puddles across the floor and immediately she knows ground rules need to be laid made.

“Look, Magoo was already pinned as your brother and the Boss isn’t really husband material—he’s ex-husband material—but you sort of screwed the—Jesus!”

Faltering at the bed, he points with one finger, mouth agape, eyes wide as if he is witnessing a catastrophic event. “Is that the torso?”

Without answering him, she picks the prosthetic up from the bed, and when noticing his discomfort, begins to walk towards him. “It is quite realistic, isn’t it.”

Essentially it is just a silicone corset with the realism of an expecting stomach carved into it, colored a little paler than her skin that she steps into after her undergarments and before her clothing.

“What is the matter Tony? Cat got your Tom?”

“It’s tongue. Cat got your tongue,” he snaps, his eyes never leaving the prosthetic, “and that thing is ungodly.”

“You should have tried wearing it during the August heat.” Despite enjoying the heat, the sun, the desert, and growing up in a dome of constant summer with sizzling sidewalks, she sweat more during the month she was burdened with that stomach, almost doubling her water intake to stay ahead of dehydration, it worked to help her keep her cover as well, as she was constantly fatigued.

“Yeah, well, sorry I had to miss that,” his voice drips with sarcasm, but another tone underneath catches her attention. One that denies his response, lets her know that this is an act, a hint she may have missed if she did not know him so well.  

“So—” he drops his go bag on the other side of the bed, which leaves much to be desired. This is not like the Raniers’ stay in a luxury hotel, or even two agents splitting the difference between a queen-sized bed in a Paris suite. This was the equivalent of a double, if even that. “What side of the bed do you want?”

“Tony—”

“Oh, come on,” he drops his boxers, his socks, a t-shirt and jeans, leaving his bag almost empty. Hopefully he has more clothes tucked away somewhere else. Or at least more underwear.

His grin is wide, cheeky, knowing that he is calmer about playing house than she is.

Part of her wants to match him, to play turkey like old times and see how far she is willing to take the charade before one of them crack. “You’re telling me you’d rather take the stained couch?”

But this isn’t like old times, this isn’t the Raniers putting on a great show while he does push-ups shirtless above her and she keeps her bandeau securely on, getting a little annoyed every time his nose crushes into hers and using his current exercise count to calm her ire.

This is different.

This is after Somalia, after she was held captive, strip-searched far more often then necessary, having her body be removed from herself one piece at a time over the course of days, of weeks, of months.

After Paris where after a little too much Merlot—she let herself forget those memories she willed away, did not want them to dictate her present actions and therefore her future, but that first night always hung like the star of David around her neck, influential even in her direct disobedience of them.

How the passion between them became palpable and frenetic in drunken fumblings. The friction provoking reactions, how his mouth against the side of her neck caused goosebumps to flash over her skin in a shiver, how she climbed into his lap and did not feel him until a second later.

How in the morning, he brought her a coffee and ran a hand through her hair and grinned down at her with a face full of so much emotion, such genuine happiness that she felt disgusted in having to let him know that while they shared similar feelings, she could not jeopardize her job and become exiled from yet another family.

How with somber eyes, wet and dull like he was attending a funeral, he nodded in agreement, not willing to jeopardize not having her around either, and more pieces were taken away and stored with someone else, in someone else, burned for fuel or buried from rotting.

How he kissed her one more time because he needed one for the road.

The moment was never spoke of again. Not in passing, not in a secret code they generate together, not in innuendos, and not in threats.

After that night was over, so was what happened in Paris.

Until it happened in Paris again four years later.

Currently, she is not in the right place of mind to accept a relationship that evolves into anything more than friendship, a point she has made clear despite how much it hurt her whenever he had a date or mentioned another woman.

“Tony—” when she glances back at him from her reverie both six years and three years in the past, he is fully clothed and running the same towel he used to wrap around his hips through his hair.

“It’s fine, Ziva.” Again, a tone hitchhikes with his words displaying his true emotions, the disappointment, the short-fused rebuttal in the form of a vocal strike, but just as the phantom presence becomes more corporeal, it wisps away like the diffusing steam from the washroom and he grins at her. “I was only joking.”

Giving the towel a twist, he turns back to the washroom and hangs it over the door for it to dry, an idiosyncrasy she is familiar with from repeatedly working undercover with him. “You want to put on the torso and take me for a quick walk around the neighborhood before it gets dark?”

“Tony, are you sure—”

“Yeah, Probie gave me all the details of your daily itinerary. I figure since we have to be at yoga early, now would be the best time to do it.”

“Sure.”

It is still drizzling when they leave the apartment, the sky growing darker with the setting sun and the looming evening as the wind blows the rain back into their faces.

“Well, this sucks.” Tony huddles under a large umbrella, his hands red, his knuckles white. He sacrificed his heaver jacket for her since all she has are workout sweatshirts not meant for inclement weather. Initially, she denied the leather jacket, but he argued that he would not fit the part of ‘doting husband and father-to-be’.”

“We are almost around the block,” she shifts close to him, her hand blanketing his, finding them a little damp. When he stiffens at her touch, she retreats so the rain patters off his jacket, and he closes the space between them, more likely concerned with the leather.

“During my walks, or taking the bus, I have not been trailed, or at least not very far.”

The muscles in his arm tense again, and he double steps to regain the gait they had. “McCafé didn’t mention anything like that.”

“I did not mention anything as both times it could have been explained away as a chance.”

“You know what the Boss would say,” he squeezes close to her sharing the sidewalk as they pass an older woman who grins brightly at them.

“That there are no coincidences.”

“Exactly—” he nods as an older man follows before shifting away. Is he aware of how he appears? Not to people viewing them on the street, but to her, his constant accordioning, shifting in and out, his eyes darting to windows a little more suspicious than she would like. “So, either someone was following you or someone was just walking.”

“Tony,” she grits his name out from the side of her mouth.

“What?”

Her hand pries one of his off the hand of the umbrella and holds it within her own, “relax.”

“In case you haven’t noticed—”

She considers squeezing his hand, but knowing him, he will only ask what it was for. Instead, she trails her thumb over his knuckles, hoping it does not cross too many lines.

His arguments fall silent, and he nods at her. She gives a little nod, and they stop outside of Gus’s boulangerie underneath a little blue and white striped awning, the rain picking up for a few moments, his eyes reflected in the puddles.

They still hold hands as cars drive by creating waves in the gutter water. “I know it is overwhelming.”  

He swings their clasped hands with a laugh, “Oh Honey, it’s not the hardest thing we’ve ever had to do—”

“And yet it is more overwhelming.” The thoughts that swirl around in her head, the roads not taken, the pain and sorrow explained away with brick walls of neglect, of dedication, of duty.

The rain runs off the awning like a waterfall.

“Well, Sweetie—” his hands reach over and adjust the collar of his jacket properly, and then his hand falls to her stomach tenting the jacket, stretching the leather tightly “—let’s go meet this Gus you’re so fond of.”

She grins to match his and for a moment there is a question of reality. Not the undercover work, but whatever was or is or never was between them, has she always been who she was or was she made this way by men and traumatic situations, has her life up to this point been a lie or a construction written in an undercover portfolio.

There is a piece of her, miniscule, but no matter how small, still there, tainting the sound thoughts she has, the right actions she takes, but reminding her that she would much rather be back in Paris right now.

Tony gives her a querying expression, but one that is entertained as he yanks on the shop door, only for it not to move.

“Closed?”

“Well, maybe that’s what tomorrow morning is for, prenatal yoga and delicious macaroons afterwards.”

“He usually stays open late tonight.”

“You said he’s an old marine, right?”

“Yes—” does not start her argument before she finds out what he is thinking. Something she needs to put work into, being more proactive and listening to his side before immediately defending her perspective as if it is the one singular view.

They are both so shockingly unique, two colors that clash, but in their overlapping areas they cover so much more, create so much more than both individually.

“He got a war injury or anything?”

“A limp from thigh shrapnel.”

“Well, there you go—” leaning closer to the darkened window, he cups his hands around his eyes to see in “—rain probably made his trick thigh act up.”

It is logical deduction—at least more realistic than Gus being a serial murderer—but something about the outline of dirt near the area where the boulangerie’s hours are listed, a sign that is now missing, tells her to think about it more.  

“I thought you liked Gus.”

“I did—I do—but in the last two months he has not closed the store early for any reason.” Even in the middle of the summer with that industrial oven running all the time and the only solace being a small countertop fan, slowly rotating to cover the small area.

“Okay, but it’s also only been eight weeks—”

With speed he most likely forgot she do to her being bogged down with the weighted prosthetic, she flips towards him on the bed, resting her cheek on her palm and her elbow digging into her pillow. “Perhaps to you it was only eight weeks.”

Unsurprisingly, he mimics her pose, his teeth flashing in the darkness of the bedroom, the shared comforter pulled up to the middle of his bare chest. “And maybe I just wanted you to flip back to face me.”

“Tony.”

“Ziva.”

“We cannot keep—”

“We don’t keep doing anything—” his hand tucks a strand of hair out of her face, resting with such gentleness on her cheek. After nightfall the temperature dropped, and in the darkness, she seeks warmth.

She seeks comfort.

His thumb runs over her lower lip, slowly, enticingly. “It was just Paris. Twice”

With the name of their magical city, an understanding is arranged, and his mouth closes over hers.

“And Rome,” she murmurs into his upper lip, pushing herself up to match him.

“Zurich,” he tells her chin, directing her backwards, consuming the space between them, grabbing his pillow to support her shoulders.

“Belgrade.” Her staccato exhale makes him grin against her skin.

“Jerusalem.” His lips pluck at the skin on her neck, she raises a shoulder, throwing an arm around his back as his knee slides between her thighs.

“Dusseldorf.” She presses her cheek into his neck, her fingers scratching through his soft hair.

“Cali—” Suddenly, he stops, holding his weight up with one hand and the other slipped under her shirt. His brows drawn in confusion, his hand warm on her flat navel. “It wasn’t me in Dusseldorf.”

“What?” She mocks him by copying his expression. Sitting up, straightening the strap on her pajama camisole.

“I’ve—” Tony pauses as the blood rushes upwards to his other head momentarily. “You and me—” he gestures between them “—have never been to Dusseldorf.”

“I know, Tony,” she laughs for the first time in eight weeks because he really is so predictable, only stopping sex to follow-up on a lead that she may have been with someone else. That she might be confusing him with a different man. “I am only joking.”

There is something so pure about the moment, about the contact, the joke, the response, reducing Tony down to who he really is.

Someone who desires.

Someone wanting to be desirable.

Someone who wants her full attention.

Expects that he may be a little a hurt, but he simply shares her chuckle. “What are we going to call this one?”

“Maryland?” She lifts her arms as he tugs her camisole over her head.

“Home turf?”

The words mean more than the should, they have never had sex this close to home—at least since coming to their undercover covenant. It is one of the rules crafted between them that they agreed not to break. No apartments, no houses, no hotels, no cars, and no departments. She suggested the area code must be different than work or home, but he explained the Metropolitan area is so large that they could walk a few blocks and be free.

Sometimes she wishes he never said that.

Sometimes she wishes he had never held her that night in Paris while she cried for Tali on the anniversary of her death, and coming back from the opera, another year passed and her memory fading still.

It does not make missing her any easier.

It does not make the loneliness consuming her life any easier.

The betrayal she was forced to enact, her murder if Ari, her exile from Mossad and her father.

Bit by bit her family breaking off from her as she hurdles like a rocket towards the ground.

He readies himself, hand wide and wet on her stomach, but falters before kissing her. “You’re—still on—”

“Yes,” she nods, knowing how ironic it is to be portraying a person in late stage pregnancy and be actively using the pill.

Chapter Text

“You’re just so good at it.”  McGee said at their last meeting without Tony included. Complimented her on the she conducted herself, the aura around her, apparently, she is very good at acting pregnant. Perhaps because she convinced herself to feel the part so thoroughly, to be upset at a husband who should not be present to welcome their daughter into the world together, although that has changed.

She decided it was a girl. A little girl with short brown curly hair that she could tie pink ribbons in for pig tails, one who would grow up stubborn but intelligent and carefree, who didn’t have to worry about family, or pain, or war, or navigating the dynamics between siblings and stepsiblings and playing in politics like she is playing with fire.

She would be completely free to be who she wanted.

They both would be.

She must have grinned, because the prenatal yoga instructor, a man, roughly around the same age as her, and not all together unattractive, grinned back at her, nodding in approval. “Enjoying yourself?”

Then, the baby, the idea, the family, the life she could only have for herself while being undercover disappeared, leaving the reality of tight yoga pants and a prosthetic she needed to figure out how to hide a firearm inside of.

The instructor watched her closely, almost as if he evaluated her, so she grinned again this time for show. “I’m sorry?”

“Oh, you got mommy brain.”

For a second she wanted to argue with him, kick him up the side of the head in less time then it would take him to register the pain, argue women are not forgetful because of hormones, and even if that did play some minor aspect in her memory, it would be from the sheer overwhelmed feeling of housing and cultivating another person.

Wanted to scream that to him, that men are only present for the ‘fun’ part of pregnancy, and quickly take their leave afterwards, but she had reason to be here besides masquerading around like a fake pregnant doll almost everyone at the office wanted to dress up.

So, she would make McGee proud, giggled vapidly and swayed her ponytail behind her head as she returned to a seated pose. “Yes, that must be it.”

He laughed with her, mouth wide, teeth big and white, shoulder-length shaggy blond hair carried natural waves and highlights. His skin sun kissed, the kind earned from repeated weekly visits to a tanning bed.

McGee would call him ‘new-aged’.

Gibbs would call him a damn hippie.

“I didn’t mean to harsh your flow, but you just seemed so Zen there.”

“Oh,” she laughed again—a tactic to relax him—her hand played over the black-ribbed tank top smoothed out the wrinkles over her stomach. “She was just kicking.”

“Yeah?” His eyes lit up, his smile widened as—without permission—he placed a hand beside hers. “Little Princess still going?”

“No.” Clearing her throat, she straightened her back, tried not to portray her discomfort at such an abrupt show of intimacy questioning why this random instructor should be different than all the older women who have invaded her personal space in the last few weeks.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” His hand retracted, upon seeing her rigidity. “It’s you’re first time here, usually I’m so busy helping and adjusting everyone that I never ask permission. I’m really sorry.”

“It’s okay.” She shrugged, as she attempted to save face, noting all the expecting mothers have brought spouses or significant people along. “My husband is deployed right now, so a little attention is nice.”

He raised his eyebrows at her, nodded in response and crossed his arms as if taking the hint for conversation, however instead he reminded, “You were supposed to bring a support person today.”

With a gentle head shake, she refuted, “I—I do not have anyone else.”

“Well, soon you’ll have a baby girl, and you gotta enjoy the time you have left pregnant. It’s such a mystic and special time, you know?” He nodded to himself, as if convinced of something and motioned to sit beside her. “I’ll be your partner then for today.”

“Oh.” She choked on the sip of water she wanted to take to end the conversation, wiping her chin as it dribbled down. “Oh, no, I couldn’t ask for that.”

“Come on, it’ll be fun.”

“But—” her brain scrambled, desperately tried to find a reason for this man not to keep touching her, not only due to discomfort, but from fear of the silicone being discovered “—you need to be available to help others correct their poses.”

“Yes, but I also have to show the class how it’s done, and since I’m not pregnant…”

Now, she has to explain to Tony, some of the dumber decisions she made in judgement lapses.

“Are you sure you do not want to bring anything other than a coffee?” With her hair tied back, she pulls on the black tank top from last week, tugging out the wrinkles and shifting the center of the prosthetic.

“It’s prenatal yoga, how active can it get?” Despite her not really wanting him to come, he has been ready for much longer, sitting on the end of the bed since nothing interesting is on television.  

“It is preparation for giving birth, Tony,” she marches to the bathroom, taking off her earrings and glancing at herself in the mirror to ensure she appears as mediocre as possible.

“Yes, because for me, the birth of our unborn child is going to be very labor intensive.” Immediately after his sentence he laughs loudly, raucously, proud of himself. “Get it? Labor?”

But she does not focus on that, instead the word combination of “our unborn child” echoing through her ears ad if the apartment is only a sound chamber. The words are a joke no doubt, the words are mocking—are they mocking?—they are intimidating, they are scary, they are a joke at her expense, they are dreaming, they are status quo, they are hopeful—hopeful?

Too many words, too many branches of feelings rooted in her body, turning and twisting and confusing because they are so busy playing other people or versions of themselves that other people want to see, that again, she does not know who she is.

It buries her in conflict.

Despite what he may think, she will always be the better actor between them. Her time with the Mossad burned the idea that to give up the act would be the exact same as giving up her weapon. Though her time here accumulates, she grows the same tree roots to tell her not to let any emotion show in dangerous situations.

This is a dangerous situation.  

So small talk ensues until they get on the bus together, Tony carrying the backpack she would be carrying herself with all the accoutrement creating the perfect mask as an expecting mother complete with a fake ultrasound picture, a crumpled grocery list, her water bottle and some antinauseants.

Sitting beside each other, dressed down in sweats and t-shirts, they talk about a myriad of subjects, some sports team, the news this morning, agreeing to pay more attention with the shower as she ran out of hot water. Useless small talk anyone around them can hear and not give a second thought to.

“I should have warned you about the instructor.”

“Why?” He helps her off the back of the bus, holding out a hand for her to clasp, and she will never admit it, even under the threat of torture, but having him present to help her with the extra, genuine, physical burden is a great relief.

There is no use in dwelling how they can have sex where he climaxes inside her, but she cannot tell him she appreciates his help. She knows there are not therapists qualified enough to tell her the reason.

Why they can be so intimate in a bed or a shower or a washroom at a nightclub, but it embarrasses her to take his hand in public, to tell him thank you, to fall asleep beside him and know she is safe, and knowing where he is reassures her of his wellbeing, something she should not care about as deeply as she does.

“It didn’t say much about him when I read McGoo’s notes.”

They are only a block from The Women’s Center, and she cannot confirm why, but she does not have a good feeling. Though she controls her bodily responses, no squeezing or straining her muscles, or not keeping his eye contact, her lack of reply is enough of an indication.

Tony slows their speed, using their clasped hands to tug her back to meet him. With that idiotic grin he wears when he tries to appear nonchalant, he tucks a strand of her hair back behind her ear. “Do you think it’s him, my little incubator?”

She does not have the time to argue about the choice in nicknames as it is one that will stay between them—at least she hopes—instead grabbing his hand in hers and tugging him along. “I do not know what I think he is, but I wish he was not a lot of things, mainly the instructor.”

“Okay, so he’s inappropriate.” Tony at least starts to walk but slows his pace to more of an amble. “How is he inappropriate?”

“Oh, I would not want to taint your impression of him before you’ve even met—”

“You already have.”

“Well, then I would not want to taint it more. Come on, we are late.”

“We’re like—” He checks his watch, his eyebrows raising at the time as if he had not known all along. “So, we’re late.”

“He does not like it when people are late.”

“Okay. I—” he pauses, purposefully holding onto the sentence, the words, the moment “—don’t care?”

“Then wait out here.” It is a final effort to get him to join her. Reverse psychology which usually only works on children younger than eight.

“No way, I want to meet this goober now.”

And Tony.

Amazingly, they do not get kicked from the class, despite showing up almost fifteen minutes late, and still during a squibble, but forgot how exaggerated Tony is when he needs to prove a point.

Unfortunately, this time it happens to be over her.

“There’s my gorgeous wife and my little biscotti,” he croons over her as she returns from the washroom, playing up the act, as they have been all class to get a rise out of the instructor. Her reasons are strictly case related to give them any form of evidence in reprimands or aggression.

She does not have the heart to inform Tony that the singular is biscotto. He simply follows her lead, jogging a bit to catch up to her, holding her hand and giving her a kiss on her temple before shouting, “later, Teach.”

Only later, when they are back at the apartment, laying on the opposite sides of the bed, staring up at the same water stains on the ceiling, will they feel comfortable enough to share notes.

“He touches you a lot.” Tony offers first, his hands clasped together over his chest, his eyes still resting on the swirls of rainwater and probable mold.

“Yes—" not sure of what else to say as her mind is still reeling from the class. How the instructor attempted to separate them, to show the proper areas to help her as she stretched. There was even more touching that last week. “I do not like it.”

“I don’t like it either.” His voice is softer than she expects, not the harsh snap of him overreacting or frustrated. “I don’t think he’s our killer though.”

“No?”

“No, I just think he has a very obvious kink that the navy should’ve vetted out before they gave him this job.”

She grins, knowing exactly the right words to say. “He’s a volunteer.”

“Oh, God.” His disgust manifests physically in a twinge of revolt that elicits a laugh from her. “Next time I’m not conceal carrying.”

Turning her head only slightly, her back still pressed solidly to the mattress she holds her smile. “To be fair, Tony, you were getting quite handsy yourself.”   

“Hey.” He almost flips towards her losing the competition that they never agreed to have for bragging rights they will never use or acknowledge, but he stops short, only turning his head as far as he can and pointing at her. “I am a proud Papa Bear, I’m allowed to handle my pregnant wife if she wants to be, and especially at a class preparing me for how to help her in labor.”

“Please, you would not help me in labor.”

“How can you even say that?” His shock sounds genuine she believes him for a moment before he adds, “why are we even having a fake baby together if you don’t trust me?”

Reaching across the mattress, she takes his hand, and as always, it dwarfs hers. “I trust you for most things.”

“Most things?”

“I think unless the goal was to irritate me to the point where I just pushed the child out to be rid of your antics, you would do fantastically.”

“And—” he reaches their coupled hands over to her stomach, bouncing them on the silicone “—little baby DiNozzo comes into the world like all DiNozzos do, with her parents wanting to murder each other.”

“Hmm, then her last name should be David.”

“Umm, no my little Peach Cocktail, we’re married.” He drops her hand and shows off the plain faux gold band on his ring finger. “Kid’s got the DiNozzo tag.”

She stretches her arms above her head, cracking her wrist and her ankles, causally drawing his attention elsewhere, another way she tends to win. “She will have to be David-DiNozzo then.”

“Why do you get to be first?”

“Because I am the one giving fake birth.”

“No one listens to the second name when someone has two last names. DiNozzo goes first.”

“The mother’s surname always goes first—”

“That’s an old, stupid rule.” He leans up now on his elbow, ignoring her coy attitude. “You have to give me something better than that.”

“It works alphabetically?”

Sitting up fully, mind trying to grasp at arguments to be made, until his mouth closes and his lips purse. “I guess that works.”

“Good, I am glad it is settled.”

Before laying back down he points at her, almost with an accusation. “No hyphen though.”

“It is a hyphen that makes it a full word—if you’re worried about people dropping your name out of it—”

“The only kids who have hyphenated last names are trust fund assholes or pretentious erotic novelists, and as much as I would love my son to—”

“It is a girl.”

He stops at her interruption, tightening his jaw and speaking very firmly. “No, it’s a boy.”

“Girl.”

“Senior.” He points to the floor, indicating hell, before he points to himself. “Junior.” Finally, he points to the prosthetic. “The Third.”

Leaning up in her elbows she scoffs at him, “and you will just call him ‘Third’?”

“No. ‘The Third’. It’s cool. He has a title.”

“All names are titles, Tony.” He squints at her suggestion, possibly trying to discern if her fact is truthful or not as she has slipped a few lies by him using the power of semantics. “It does not matter anyway; I have already told most people the baby is a girl.”

“Come on!” His frustration appears real this time, his nostrils twitching before he flops to lay flat on his back again. “You couldn’t let me have this one thing? Carry on the noble lineage of my—”

“Your father named you after himself.”

“Yeah, but I could have made it cool.”

Chapter Text

The day passes without much issue. They take the bus to the nearest grocery store and collect a pitiful amount of food. When they disembark at the corner, Gus’s store is closed, but he usually takes every other weekend off, so aside from Tony complaining about the lack of macarons, there is nothing overtly unusual.

In the afternoon, he flips between the three television channels that come in clearly enough to watch, while she reads a few more chapters into “What to Expect When You’re Expecting”, stopping only as she feels her eyes growing tired from lack of stimulation, so she brings out her kit to clean her gun.

“Wanna do mine too?” He asks, his hands behind his head on the couch and the tv faltering in and out with volume. She nods and he sets his firearm on the table. “Why does it feel like we had an argument.”

“I don’t know, but that feeling is there, isn’t it?”

Again, she nods setting up the supplies to start cleaning, expecting him to go back to his movie, a black and white film from the forties, which would explain the different levels in volume, which he does, but after a few moments, he offers, “I’m sorry, for what it’s worth.”

Ducking her head, so he cannot see her amusement, she starts to dismantle his gun first. “I am sorry as well.”

It is hot.

Too hot.

An intense heat drying up everything around her into crumbs, dots of sand small enough to rest on a pinhead buried beneath her nails, stuck to the bottoms of her palms, wedged into the corner of her mouth and planted inside of her nostrils.

She accommodates the dry air, that is not the problem.

The heat, it brings pain, but the darkness—that is where her fears rest.

The inability to navigate, rough ground cover, sharp objects, animals, people, men. Even if given a moment of respite, there would be no way her coordination would allow her to flee.

The food they gave her is tasteless, and she stopped fully eating two days ago as she understood she was to die here. The water they gave her is dirty, scum roiling on the bottom of a tin cup. She tried to stop drinking, but they forced it into her mouth.

Her arms and legs became laden with a weight that was not her own but eventually she stopped fighting too because the only thing she could smell was no longer her own presence, but everyone else’s.

“Hey, hey.” A warm hand jostles her shoulder, releasing the weights from her arms, allowing her to float upwards and out of the desert, opening her eyes to a darkened room that lights up as a car travels down the street away from her.

“Focus on me.” The hand moves from her shoulder to cup the side of her face, muss the hair out of her eyes and direct her attention. “There you are.”

The darkness creates shadows in his eyes, but she can read them just as well. Even if she was not an agent, even if she was never Mossad. His actions, his indications are as bold as black writing on a white wall.

“What happened?”

“You were having a little bit of a bad dream there,” he speaks to her evenly, calmly, his hand still on her cheek like an anchor. “It was really cute when you started, you sort of moved your arms and legs a little, your nose twitched, and you even made some little puppy sounds.”

“I could not move my arms or my legs—they would not let—” Her hoarse voice cracks while he reaches back to his bedside table, grabbing his water bottle and handing it to her. “I was being held down,” She rasps out, her brows knit as another set of car headlights drag their way over the wall. The inside of her mouth is still dry and if she tries hard enough, she can still taste the sand mixed with blood “—the pain was—”

“Okay, not puppy dog cute anymore.” His voice is distant, further away than it should be given his proximity, just as it was when they unmasked her and she saw his face, his hair shocked up in oily tufts, his lips chapped and dry, and his skin sun burnt so red.

How he was able to still give himself the satisfaction of humor during a deadly situation, how she knew these men, had known them long enough to know that they would cut his throat without a second thought because the only thing that mattered less than his life was hers.

“Ziva.”

She knows that room so well, she could draw it from memory, tell what time of day it was from the light and how it spilled across the ground, the exact number of bricks in the wall, the direction of the wind and if given a world map could pin it to within five degrees.

“Okay, you’re shaking a little too much for—”

The stench of blood coating her clothing, the grit on her skin taking more than two hours to wash out, others taking longer.

She had given up. Accepted death. It was a universal commonality. Language, culture, religion all difference, but everyone must die, and it was simply her turn. Tali would be waiting for her, her mother, and a version of Ari without hate.

It would be vindicating; it would be poetic; Eli David husband to no one and father to none. A man who dedicated himself to the Mossad and now had nothing and no one to show.

But he and McGee dragged her out when she did not want to move her legs, when her legs could not move from the abuse. She was so lightheaded from lack of food that she could not see straight.

They saved her when she believed there was nothing to save.

“Focus on me,” his voice rings out on the plane back to America. Her body starting to revolt under the lack of nutrients, of sustenance, of safety. As soon as they were off and departing overseas, a medic assessed them, does not remember, but presumes they all bowed back until she was cared for.

At that point, she could not keep down water, later finding out that permanent damage occurred to her kidneys, though thankfully, minimal. She thought the pain was just from being beaten.

He talked to her through it, held her hand when she would not listen to him, when she would not allow fluids to be administered, when she refused pain medication, when she refused to go straight to the hospital or stay in the car as they went back up to the office. How she hadn’t thought of Abby seeing her in that state and the effect it may have on her, and instead she received the closest hug from a sister in too many years.

“Ziva, come on!”

Despite informing whoever would listen that he did not go to visit her, he did. Everyday he sat beside her hospital bed and waited for her to make conversation. “Talk about anything. Nothing. Everything, I don’t care, just don’t shut down on me.”

Then he started carrying on conversations leaving spaces for her to jump in if she wanted. Topics ranged from movies he was currently obsessed with, to a new Caff-Pow flavor Abby was not sure she liked or hated, to how their case for the day was a marine who fell for an online killer who pretended to be a women and then shot men at point blank range. “I know you’re not back in the bullpen yet—” also about how she would return to the team as it was kismet “—I mean it’s only a matter of time, but we’re missing you hard, Ziva.”

He reached over and held her hand, the first physical contact she had since Abby, and she turned her attention to him, expecting him to jump at her suddenly swift movement but he only squeezed her hand, unapologetic, unashamed, and gave her that same cheeky grin. “I’m missing you hard.”

There was no longer an IV in her hand since she had been weened off the need for fluids a few days prior, and the action of him touching her, not held down by rope or cuffs or another man, was many things, some fearsome, but most familiar. “And McGee just doesn’t have the legs to pull off that green dress.”

A part of her returned to her body. Not individuality or independence or even her memory, but a piece of her soul, allowed her eyes to view specific truths that she forgot, as bright and as beautiful as headlights on a peeling painted wall, as motes of dust shining in the desert sun, and languidly she directed her vision towards him, and worked her mouth into a crook of a grin.

Their relationship is difficult to navigate with too many emotions to fit between them and neither willing to part with any—he is too stubborn and her too spurned—but they will always categorize their misgivings as something else and that is the reason they stay sexual partners without advancing to being romantic.

But in that moment, he laughed, tears pricking the corners of his tired eyes. He touched the side of her face so soft that she could not discern if she imagined it or not.

“Okay, we have to do the thing, right? Where you name shit?” He sits on the bed beside her, completely uncovered, one of his long legs bent and the other stretched out towards her. One of her hands in his in his lap which he bounces as he thinks aloud. “Shit—what is it. I’m never good at remembering it in the moment. Something like five things you can taste, three you can smell—”

“I cannot taste five things right now, Tony,” she chuckles as the only taste is sleep and the faint mint of her toothpaste from hours ago.

“Oh, Thank Christ,” he laughs, his mouth wide as he leans forward and kisses her on her lips, and then pulls away just as quickly remembering when she has these dreams it is best not to touch her too soon afterwards, but the honesty helps to ground her, like the first time he hugged her in that hospital bed, shouting he knew he should have led with a cross-dressing McGee. “I’m sorry—I just—”

Now she has enough of her personality back to consider what it was like for him to travel across the world and help her—save her—even when her own father deemed her unworthy. What it must have been like to see her for the first time, and to hear the defeat in her voice.

It has not been easy for him either.

“I am sorry—”

“No—” he holds up a hand stopping her, then places it on her shoulder, guiding her to him, embracing her, and she can hear the quiver in his voice, but she knows he gets defensive when she brings up emotions “—we agreed no apologies over this.”

“Perhaps you can do me a favor, then?”

“Anything.”

“Will you stay close to me?” Does not say hold me as it is the exact kind of word that he would use against her later when they are done feeling vulnerable. She does not add the context that it will just be for tonight since they both know how to straddle their respective edges of the bed.

She wants an open invitation.

They end up falling asleep in the middle of the bed, his arms holding her to him, his body warm and relaxing, and his nose buried in her hair. Before he falls asleep, whether he is aware of it or not, he releases a contented sigh.

Chapter Text

“Tony,” her voice low and dry from sleep, not wanting to instill panic into him, but neither of them set their phone alarms so they both slept in. If they do not hurry, they will miss prenatal yoga.

“Uhh,” he mutters, releasing her and turning back to his side of the bed.

“Tony,” she attempts again, trying to be as gentle as possible, poking a finger into the corded muscle on his shoulder.

“I just got to sleep,” he bemoans against the pillow, muzzling his full voice in a lie.

“No, you did not.”

“You snored so loud—”

“—you were the one that snored—”

“—let me just sleep for a little—” suddenly he flips back to her with an alarming speed “—unless you want a little morning fun.”

“Unfortunately, we do not have time for anything fun this morning.” It is a lament, but a very light one. Despite the truce between them, she remembers last night’s dreams with a clarity rivaling only her original ordeal resulting in not feeling very sexy. Combined with having to wear the prosthetic, she does not feel attractive to anyone.

Well, anyone aside from the instructor.

Immediately, she knows how to make him accompany her.

“I will just go to prenatal yoga by myself.”

“You enjoy it, you deserve it.” He flops back to the pillows, no longer listening when sex is not an option.

Sitting up on the side of the bed, her bare feet touch the floor which remains cold from the night despite the slashes of light cutting through the curtains. “I will have to count on the instructor to be my partner for today then.”

She can almost count the seconds before he fully comprehends. “Wait, is it done by the same—”

“Yes.”

“Give me five minutes.”

By some temporal miracle the buses are running early. When they board, there is only one seat available, and Tony stands, holding onto the metal bar, rambling about some movie on their three channels television that morning for the three extra minutes it took her to get dressed in the prosthetic. She nods along with his cadence more than his words as she cannot really hear him over the din of the packed bus.

He reaches forward, she presumes to keep stability in the cruising bus, but he touches the pad of his index finger to her cheek, and before she can protest, he pulls it away. “Eyelash.”

True enough, on the end of his long finger is a single sliver of hair.

“So?” Does not know the meaning of this, the custom, the superstition, there are different ones in every country and unless she really reads up on them, it is impossible for her to remember them all.

“So, you have to blow on it.”

“What!”

“The eye lash, Sweetcheeks,” he shakes his head at her, “to make a wish.”

Her eyes meet his for judging as this may be one of the cruel jokes he labels as practical, and she does not want to end up his next casualty.

“Trust me.”

Normally, those would be words she needs to mull over, but given the last twenty-four hours, the memories of last night, she thinks of a wish blowing a short burst of air and sending the eyelash flying off.

“What’d you wish for?”

“Oh, no.” Shaking her finger at him, she laughs, a hand resting over the prosthetic hidden away under a sweatshirt as the morning offers the first coolness of the changing seasons. “You always threatened that if you tell a wish, it will not come true; or is that some other high tales you have been spinning.”

“Tall, Zi—Rosie, my little Bunsen burner.”

The instructor’s aloofness has multiplied since their last meeting, no longer being handy with her, but every time she chances a glance to gauge where he is in the room, he is watching them.

Obviously, she cannot tell what he scrutinizes about them, so as she works through the poses with Tony’s passive help, she creates a mental list of what she would be considering.

Where Tony places his hands and where she adjusts them to, how when Marg picked out these yoga pants she adjusted for the perfect size, how she becomes too hot after holding downward dog for three and a half minutes, and her posture wavers, Tony’s hands are there for support, how he doesn’t know that it also gives her the concentration she needs by staring at his watch.

When the instructor calls for a thirty second break, she rests on her knees, her ankles pressing into her backend, and pulls off her sweatshirt to reveal the bright yellow ‘bun in the oven’ t-shirt underneath.

Tony snorts at it, which it turns into a cough, and she knows that her smug grin is not missed by him.

“Please, try not to interrupt the peace of the room as mommies and babies settle.” Donovan and his blond, choppy hair bounces as he turns to glare directly at them—she would almost feel embarrassed if the baby were real, but she knows in a few weeks, he will just be another perpetrator in jail.

Tony, never to be embarrassed, does not miss his chance to lean his head down to the prosthetic and coo, “There’s Dada’s little Cannoli.”

She does not correct him that it should be Cannolo unless she is carrying twins she does not know about.

There are a few more stretches, basic ones that she can keep her form on well, another way not being pregnant helps her excel in this class, but that does not prepare her for the mandatory ten-to-fifteen-minute relaxation period that ends all the classes.

“So, Dads, since Mom is doing all the heavy lifting, I want to give you the chance to do it.” Donovan appears to have grown from being interested in them to the one expectant parent who did not bring a partner. “Make sure you sit really close behind Mom—”

“He does realize that those aren’t our legal names, right?”

She chuckles as he follows what the instructor does, sitting behind her, facing her back, with a leg on either side of her and a hand poised at each of her hips. She jumps slightly to see if the instructor reacts, but Tony leans forward. “No surprises, it’s just me.”

The prosthetic acts as a shield, keeping his body heat from penetrating to her skin, but he gives her hips a quick squeeze for reassurance and laughs, all too aware she is trying to fight off the urge to slap him away.

It is always more difficult in public.

It is always more difficult around friends.

Privately, they can admit issues they allow themselves to forget later to keep present circumstances functional—it is why overthrowing the ordinary on rare occasions when they travel halfway around the world together is so alluring. They must ration their caring until a big gesture needs to be made and then ignore the guilt and the uneven power structure.

“At least it is you this time,” she speaks before she truly thinks the sentence through, the meaning if it. Does she want Tony to be jealous? What would that gain her? Him? Them? This operation? It only works to hinder them in many ways, but before the thought finishes she adds, “and not him.”

“Him? Captain Kink?” Tony’s chin sits heavy on her shoulder, digging onto her muscle when he speaks. “Wait, you let Captain Kink get a—”

“Yes, Walter, because if I remember correctly, we’re here for a reason,” she hisses from her barely moving lips. When Donovan glances over at them, she quickly kisses Tony’s cheek and pets the other, smiling and laughing, elbowing him inconspicuously until he laughs as well.

The instructor feigns a grin, only briefly, before turning his attention to another couple in the room.

“Okay, ow!” The complaint is immediate when they part, as Tony reaches back to where his side and her elbow met. “I thought we were over the slapstick comedy era of our—”

“Will you just—” the calmness from over the last few weeks fades in an instant, morphing into brief but intense anger, before she swallows the emotions back down “—hold the baby please, My Love.”

“Yeah—of course,” which seems to work better than any other threat she has ever uttered, his chest becomes flat against her back, his hands hooping around her from behind as she tucks his hands underneath the prosthetic.

“Okay. Am I doing it right?”

“If you have to ask then you are not.”

“Well, then help me out here, My Little Pizza Oven.”

“I don’t know how much more—”

“Am I supposed to be feeling something?”

Would like nothing more than to explain to him that perhaps if it was his real child she nurtures and not twenty pounds of silicone, that he would probably feel an open realm of emotions, but she has a better answer. “Does this conversation remind you of anything?”

The question silences him for a moment before he connects the phrases to years ago in a Paris hotel room, drunk out of their minds, they had sex for the first time—fumbling, clumsy, dirty, lazy—waking up sweating with a hang over.

It was there she made him swear it would never happen again, that she could not jeopardize her position on the team. Try to convince him the sex was suitable enough, and not a mistake as they got the tension between them under control.

He disagreed, unashamed and unable to be bargained with, but the more she tried to barter with him, the more fearful she became. It was the first time he had any leverage over her, and she knew the type of man Tony was—at least she thought she did—his arrogance started to become frightening.

Any other time a man thought he could extort her, she would just shoot him. She could not do that to Tony, aside from Gibbs and McGee possibly being upset, they would also notice his absence.

“Fine, you want to negotiate, I’m willing to settle—”

“Fine, what are your terms?”

“I’m playing hardball—”

“The terms, Tony!”

“A mulligan.”

The term sat with her a few seconds before expiring, the heat in the room palpable and humid, the back of her neck sweating, her hair crunchy and wet, her temples booming from the previous night’s alcohol, she reached her breaking point.

“Just tell me!”

“A mulligan, a do-over, a gimmie—”

“For Christ’s sake, Tony, I do not know every slang term in every body of language.”

“Yeah, but you know my body—”

“I am done,” when she stood, snatching the closest article of clothing, his dress shirt from the evening before, and tugging it on, intent for the showers. “Tell whomever—”

“It means a redo,” his head stretched over the back the chair he barely sat in, his chest bare with his undone bowtie hung around his neck, areas of his skin darkened where she paid more attention the previous night. “I want to redo last night.”

“We will not be in Paris for another—”

His hand dropped over his face more dramatically than he intended for by his brief jump afterwards, but it did not stop him from letting out a loud, annoyed moan. “I mean the sex, Ziva.”

“Tony, I know you want to have sex whenever you want but I am not going to—”

“Once—” he interrupts her holding up one finger, his face growing a bit red, she could tell the instant the hangover hit him “—One time, that is it.”

“So, to reiterate so I understand—” she padded from her area of the room, staring at the mess they had made. Flyers, papers, ripped up and tossed to the ground, furniture overturned, wall art broken, dropped to the floor with a crash of their bodies, clothes, hers, his, towels, sheets, blankets, some stained some not, cushions from the couch on the ground, a tray of raspberries half eaten hanging off the arm of the couch “—You will decide one time for us to have sex.”

“Yeah, I call the sh—”

“Fine.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes.”

“Just like that?”

“If we can pretend that this never happened, we can certainly do it again at a time of your choosing.” She shut the door on him before he had a chance to disagree with her, turning on the shower in order not to hear him speak.

“Like this.” Placing her hands under his, she lifts the bulbous prosthetic taking the weight off her body and placing it into his hands.

“Whoa, that’s heavy.”

“That’s our baby, Mon Petit Pois.” She murmurs as Donovan strides by them, barely holding eye contact.

“You know what your French does to me.”

“I do, you are holding it.”

When he releases the weight back down the tension returns to the overworked muscles in her back and her shoulders. Without wanting to, she grunts, not knowing how woman do this every day for all hours for nine months. Perhaps it becomes easier when the weight is not removed in the privacy of their apartment.

The class ends with the bonding technique, and after sliding out from behind her, Tony reaches a hand down to help her up, bracing himself at the added weight. She does not pop up as spryly as her pre-prosthetic body would have allowed her to, something he must be noticing, must be relishing in as her abilities are at a deficit.

However, he says no words, no harsh jokes, no dumb movie quotes, just reaches over and tucks the wisps of her hair back, before smoothing out the wrinkles on her shirt. “I think I picked a good one, huh?”

She scoffs, but it is more to give her a reason to turn away from him. From his piercing eyes. From his gaze. His questions. The one that she knows he has had in his head for months now, instead leaning down to pick up their shared gym bag. “I had to ask McGee if it was a sexual innuendo.”

With a gentleness, he picks up the bag off the ground for her, tucking it back around his shoulder to carry it for them. “Why do you think I would send a sexual innuendo for you to wear.”

“Because you are you.”

“Not everything I think about you is sex related.”

She stops moving towards the exit, her hands on her hips, and a raised eyebrow in challenge.

“I mean, most of the time—”

“Walter, Rosie,” Donovan greets them as the other couples start to file out of the room. He has his hands behind his back and greets Tony with a neutral voice. “How did you enjoy the class?”

“Well, hey there, Buddy.” Tony takes a step forward shortening the distance between himself and the instructor to the point where she has fallen a little behind him in position.

“Honey—” taking his large hand in hers, she attempts to guide him away, but Tony holds strong.

“Rosie, Baby, the man’s just asking how I liked the class—” she recognizes the unevenness in his voice, and she knows that he is channeling one actor or another to appear more unhinged. “Well—” he pauses, giving the instructor a once over, “Guy—”

“My name’s Donovan—”

“Of course it is.”

Again she tries to direct him to the door, to the street where there is fresh air, and a bus waiting to take them down to the boulangerie where she can use the excuse of pregnancy to eat decadent eclairs that she might have to run extra hard to work off if she was not lugging around so much extra weight every day.

“I had a wonderful day with my two girls, thank you,” Tony’s tone dictates that he is finished but from what she reads in his body language she knows he has one more punch and she hopes for the sake of the case, it is verbal.

But that does not appear to be Tony’s decision as he takes a threatening step closer to Donovan, rolling up the sleeves of his sweatshirt. “Dada’s home now, and if you so much as look at—”

“And we are leaving.” She pulls again, this time on the gym bag which skitters off his shoulder and onto hers as she starts to walk.

Tony does what she expects and only a few seconds later, he trails her out of the building.

“That would have worked better if you let me finish my threat.” He must step twice as fast to keep up with her, now tugging to get the gym bag back.

“Your threat was clear, but unfortunately it only hinders our case.” She stops, twisting back to him. “You could have alienated us further from our only lead.” 

“I know, okay,” he tugs at the bag again and she slaps down his hand, which he recoils and rubs. “Look, I saw how handsy he was with that woman, and the thought of him doing that to you makes me want to get handsy with him.”

Her expression must be roughly between utter confusion and revulsion, as he clarifies, “Punch him, Ziva, I wanted to punch his stupid freegan face.”

“Isn’t it ‘freaking’.”

“What?”

“Isn’t ‘freaking’ the word you use when you cannot use fucking?”

“I said freegan. It’s a lifestyle choice people make when they have rich parents they want to piss off—look, just let me carry the bag, okay?”

“Why?” They packed the bag together, throwing in water bottles, cell phones, their bus passes, so unless he—“did you steal something?”

“No—what would I even steal?”

“I do not know, but your obsession with this bag is—”

Gently, he holds her arm still, the one that is not holding the strap of the bag and sidesteps with her into the shade under a tree while they wait for the bus. “We’re supposed to be acting like this is real, right?”

The words mix in her head due to the doubt of what he is referring to. Her initial thought is their relationship that has been amorphous for years. Friends. Benefits. Partners. Lovers. But whenever they are able to fully define what they are to each other, an innate hurdle constructs itself as neither wish to be the first to admit emotions, afraid the other will balk at the vulnerability. So afraid to change what they have already stumbled upon, that the other would deny them the full benefits of a romantic relationship instead of something sordid and hidden on the side. Is that what either of them truly wants? Having a relationship based almost completely on sex that has turned on and off? Perhaps nothing better will fit into their complicated lives.

“Pretend what is real?” Questions for clarification even though she does not want to know. There is no way to romp around the question and get an accurate answer, at least not one she can think of in half a minute.

Staring at her, his mouth a half grin and his eyebrows flat, he answers, in a tone meant to mock her intelligence. “The baby?”

“Yes.” She nods attempting to secure the idea they were speaking about the same subject the entire conversation. “We are.”

“Then—” he tugs the bag strap again, which she allows to drop a little, though still catching on her arm “—Let me carry the bag, because I wouldn’t—“”

“You would not let me carry a gym bag if I was truly pregnant?”

“I wouldn’t want you to if I was there, no.” She stares at him, trying to decipher the context, the meaning, the definition of why—does it truly matter? “I think even if it wasn’t my kid, I’d still try to stop you from doing certain things.”

The bus crawls to a stop at the curb and she steps forward, letting the bag drop from her arm to his as they stand in line to board. “How chauvinist of you—”

“Hey, no—” he shuffles around, reaching into the front part of the bag and pulling out government paid passes for them that he readies to tap for their fee. “There’s certain things you do now that give me the heebie jeebies that I don’t say a damn thing about.”

She steps up the stairs first, making her way to the back of the bus. Hearing the second beep of this pass going off and the quick thumps of his heavy footsteps following her over the metal flooring. When he plops next to her in the aisle seat, she asks, “The hippie jiffies?”

“Heebie jeebies, it’s an onomatopoeia for shivers.”

“It is not an onomatopoeia as shivers do not make a sound, but I am surprised you know that word.”

“Sometimes I catch the second half of Jeopardy.”

As always, his self-deprecation makes her laugh as it is both so in and out of character for him.

He points at her grin. “I made you smile, you can’t be angry at me anymore.”

“I am not—” she forces down his finger, which causes him to bring up his other hand in place “—I am not upset with you, but being pregnant—” which she uses as an euphemism for their undercover case “—there are many rules to factor in, and I did not think to factor in your ideals as well.”

The words appear to mean more to him than she initially intends, and he thoughtfully reaches over to hold her hand. “They’re not ideals, they’re more like aspirations,” his voice is very even, a sincere whisper as his hand grazes her cheek eliciting her to grin again. “They’re just things I would want to do if you were—Watch Out!”

Without a thought from her, his arms wrap around her, pulling her towards him just as an SUV hits their side of the bus, pushing the back end into the opposite lane to be hit by oncoming traffic fishtailing the bus back to the original lane.

“Brace,” is the only word he speaks before the bus smashes into a thick concrete electrical pole and the hydraulics hiss to drop the bus back to the ground.

Chapter Text

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

In a well discussed decision, they agreed to walk the fifteen blocks home in lieu of waiting for another bus as until they can speak with McGee again, it is not known if the accident was deliberate or not.

“Tony, I bumped my head.” His left shoulder took the brunt of the crash as he turned towards her and did his best to hold her steady. “You took more damage than I did.”

“Yeah, but you’re getting a nasty bruise there.” He taps her cheek gently, staying away from the crest of her orbital bone which went directly into the back of the chair in front of them. She turned just on time to save the impact of the crash from her neck and spine. “It’s swelling up the bottom of your eye a bit.”

“When we return to the apartment, I will put a bag of peas on it, Mon Petit Pois,” she gleams at him, causing him to huff a out a chuckle. “How is your shoulder?”

Rolling it, she can almost hear the crackles and snaps. “Oh, you know, nothing that a week at a spa in the Alps won’t cure.”

Reflexively, she tucks her hand away from him, resting it on the prosthetic so they will not make contact. There is no indication that he has a new romantic interest, but if he is intent on going to European spas, the indication is already there. “So that is what you have been saving your vacation time for.”

“Actually, I’ve been waiting for some Navy business to happen in Switzerland all year so I didn’t have to take the time myself.”

“Switzerland is landlocked, Tony.”

“Yeah, I kind of realized that too late.” He hisses, moving the gym bag off his injured shoulder and to the one closest to her.

“We should have stayed and let EMS look at you.”

The sidewalk was chaos, people hurt from the bus, people hurt from the cars, pedestrians who barely escaped being sandwiched sprawled on the concrete. The pole’s live electrical wire threatened to snap at any moment, and everyone had to disembark from the emergency door at the back making sure to jump clear of the vehicle.

A traffic jam ensued, horns started honking, some of the passengers from the cars and bus had open wounds bleeding, some held injured limbs close to their body, some were furious and screaming about suing the driver, others the city, other both.

“You okay?” He asked her once they fell into the crowd well enough not to be picked off by someone in a sniper’s nest.

“Yes, hand me one of the sweaters.” He did what she asked, handing her the plain black one she wore to yoga earlier. Quickly, she tugged it on despite the temperature picking up.

“Do you need to sit down?”

“I am not in shock,” she answered his unasked question, taking his hand and pulling him a little further into the crowd. “But if that was deliberate, a yellow shirt on a heavily pregnant woman sticks out.”

“Shit, you’re right.”

“Call McGee.” She nodded to the front of the gym bag where their phones were kept. “See if—”

“Ma’am,” an EMT approached them at a parting as the crowd started to filter to the right places for triaging. “Were you on the bus?”

“I’m fine,” she nodded to the young man, only a little older than twenty with short cropped blonde hair, pale eyelashes and blue eyes. “My husband,” she tugged on Tony’s arm, the one that was holding the cell to his face, he spun around drowning whatever angry retort he concocted to poor McGee, “he protected me.”

“Forgive me ma’am, but your husband isn’t incredibly pregnant.”

“Well, I’d hope not, or we’d really be in some trouble,” Tony joked, casually handing the cell with McGee shouting to her.

“Tim?” she questioned as Tony tried to shoo the paramedic. “It’s Rosie.”

After a long pause, McGee finally greeted her back, “Oh, hey Rose. Sorry, I thought it was Walter who called me.”

“He did. We did.” With one finger pressed into her ear, she turned back to see Tony describing the accident to the EMT, before rewinding more and asking if he knew about the creep of an instructor teaching the prenatal classes at the Women’s Center.

“Okay, is there a reason, Rose?” Another paused ensued followed by “Can you talk or is there someone there with you?”

“Just an EMT, we just wanted to call you before you saw it on the news. We were just in a bus crash coming home from our prenatal yoga class.”

The aloof aura left McGee’s voice as she heard frantic typing. “Are you two okay?”

“Yes, Walter took most of the impact with his shoulder, I am a bit bruised up, but okay.”

“I’m bringing up the traffic cams right now, I’ll scan and check license plate numbers.”

“The baby is fine, Tim.” She sighed with her best fake incredulousness.

“Uh—What?”

“Everyone here keeps asking the same thing. She is still moving around like crazy, and I have nothing more than a slight headache.”

“Okay—” he held onto the word either expecting her to automatically explain more than she already did or thinking of the next logical conclusion. Unfortunately, neither happened. “I’ll—”

“Ma’am,” the EMT engaged her again, stepping by Tony, who wore an expression of pure exacerbation “I’d like to get you on a rig and take you to a hospital for a proper examination.”

“I’m fine,” she reassured as she hung up bluntly on McGee, handing the phone back to Tony. “I am not cramping, my due date is not for another seven weeks.”

“And in the sense of keeping it that way, I strongly suggest that you let emergency services at least give you a once over here.” He jutted a gloved thumb over to a small clearing where picnic tables and food trucks had been taken over as a temporary triage area.

“I’m fine, really.” When she tried to draw on her happy, bubbly voice, the one she always pictured Abby for, she sounded too tired and too worn down to successfully convince even herself. “As I just told my husband’s brother—”

“Brother?”

“Tim?” She stressed his name the same way McGee has with his final word.

“Oh, my step-brother,” Tony nodded once and turned to the EMT. “We’re not that close.”

“You’re close enough that I wanted to tell him about the accident before he heard all about it on the news. You know how excited he us to be an uncle.”

“Good old Uncle Tim.”

“We are fine—” She dropped a hand to her stomach for emphasis while holding Tony’s hand, staring into the EMT’s pale blue eyes. “Thank you though, for your concern.”

For a moment, the EMT seemed to not accept this fact, but glanced from her to Tony, who nodded to him to accept the choice. “If you have any concerning or unusual symptoms later: vomiting, headache, loss of consciousness, extreme fatigue, or spotting—”

“You mean all the stuff she has anyway?”

She closed her eyes, giving a silent Hebrew prayer that Tony had not just fucked the whole situation up for them for a joke.

“—Go to the closest emergency room immediately.”

As the EMT marched away, searching for his next patient, Tony took her hand off the prosthetic and held it tightly as they wove through the crowd. “That was a close one.”

“If I went to get evaluated at the hospital, they would have done an ultrasound, Tony,” she reminds, as they are only a few minutes from the apartment.

“I had one of those when I had a kidney stone in college, they’re not that bad—”

She stops walking, overwhelmed by the events of the day already. Being watched like a hawk by the instructor, and Tony threatening him, the accident, the walk, and from here she can see the closed sign on Gus’s boulangerie already, sending a pang of worry through her.

“What?”

“If I had gone to get an ultrasound, they would have found a fake silicone stomach with a gun taped to the inside of it, and if they got to the point of doing the ultrasound, they would have found no fetus.”

“You finally found a way to get a gun in there?”

“It is not the most comfortable, but it stays in place for the most part.”

“When this is over,” he waits for her to catch up, and then slows his pace a little to match her tired steps “I think we should go on vacation?”

“What? To the Alps?” she laughs in doubt, but when he reaches over and retrieves her hands again, her laughter runs dry.

“Unless you want to keep waiting for some poor marine to bite it on Swiss soil.”

“You know that there are seven other countries that the Alps run through.”

His grin turns a little bitter, but he remains holding her hand, and his voice keep a congenial tone. “You know that wasn’t the important part of that sentence.”

She shrugs as they round the building to the back fire escape which he gestures for her to ascend first, though slightly chivalrous, she knows that he does not trust her to keep her balance on the stairs. “I was just offering suggestions in case you wanted to wait and save your money.”

“Oh, so I’m paying for the whole thing?”

Standing at the top of the escape, he stops a step or two below her to be even height and she tugs on the collar of his shirt. “You are the one who invited me, Tony.”

He leans in, his hand on the back of her neck as he kisses her. They both have chapped lips from depleting their water during the class and their reserves on the walk home, but she feels him grin against her mouth, and he draws a smile from her, his hand moving up to tangle in her hair.

“Come on,” she leaves a soft peck on his lips and nods towards their apartment, “let me take a look at your shoulder, and we will see if we can continue this.” He tosses her the keys from the front part of the gym bag. “I will even pretend to be a masseuse named Elsa, if that is what you want.”

She does not realize how close he is until his words touch the back of her neck, causing a field of goosebumps to roll out over her skin. “You know it’s not.”

The words suddenly mean more than they should, take on a new definition with his tone, and she has to force herself not to turn back to him, to verify his words are true, to clasp his cheeks between her hands and kiss him until they both run out of breath.

It is a precaution birthed by her inability to take what she presumes to be a very serious declaration seriously. Another hurdle of her own construction to block any progression of their relationship, leaving the definition stalemate as partners with benefits.

Though the decision is stupid, stubborn, and selfish—knowing it will hurt him to say those words with truth only to have them bounce off her indifferent exterior—it does save their jobs and perhaps his life as when she opens the door, intent on locking herself into the bathroom for the next several minutes in order to recuperate, the man who has been waiting on the couch in a dark safehouse rises from the cushions, coffee cup in hand.

If his action did not explain how upset he was, then his next words certainly do.  

“I wonder when you two would finally make it back here.”

Chapter Text

Gibbs keep all meetings, especially meetings in safehouses, monosyllabically quick.

However, today he does not appear to be giving them any shortcuts.

Tony tries his best to recap what he knows, but this exchange of information is not going as smoothly as they do with McGee. McGee is noncombative and easy to converse with. He sits, drinks his coffee while she updates him on potential suspects, then he scans for bugs while updating her about the office and leaves within the hour.  

“The instructor, Donovan—” Tony snaps his fingers in quick succession once, then twice, his face pinches as he struggles to think of their instructor’s last name.  

“Casey, DiNozzo? You even trying to catch the man going around killing marine’s wives and babies?” The judgement in Gibbs’s voice brings back the brutality of the case—something she does not like to remind herself of often.

“Yeah, there’s something off about that guy.”

“Off how?”

“He’s really—”

“He’s very handsy on, Gibbs, that is all,” she interrupts, not willing to sit passively by and allow him to take the brunt of this crash as well. “He has inquired about Tony and my status and suggested that Tony may be abusive—”

“What?” Tony turns towards her on the couch, his eyes narrowing. “You never told me that.”

“It would have only made you more upset, and I did not want you—”

But in true Tony prowess, he pivots to argue with her, his words loud in offense. “Like I would ever hit you!”

“Because you would die.”

“I don’t mean I couldn’t beat you, I mean—”

“Both of you quiet!”

It reminds her of being at the farmhouse, the pomegranate orchard out back where she and Ari played hide and seek until Tali would toddle over and cry from exclusion. How her father would blame her for not controlling Ari in his elder years, how her mother would scold her for not including Tali.

She was no parent’s favorite and as she grew older those lines became clearer, but her siblings loved her. Cherished her, Tali would bring her drawings from school, and Ari would bring her jewelry back when he went to visit his mother. They would count the rice on her plate, and until they both died, they ensured she had an equal amount.

“Ziva!”

“What!” She snaps, glancing to the man she shot Ari for as she could see her older brother, her safety and laughter, begin to change, to morph like a caterpillar to a moth attracted to the light of rebellion.

How he started to exclude her from gatherings, from trips, from runs or bicycle rides, or collecting the pomegranates in the orchard like they did when they were kids, no longer having to climb the branches of what used to be tall trees, instead just reaching up and snapping off the fruit.

All three would never again see who could eat the first fruit the fastest, or who could eat the most before returning to the house.

Her big brother had a hole in his head, and her little sister fell in pieces.

Tony’s eyes grow wide, shocked and maybe afraid of her outburst, but she will simply not sit here all evening and listen to Gibbs tell her about everything she has done wrong for the last two months.

She left that man behind once, and she can surely do it again.

But before she can explain this threat, translate it from Hebrew to English in her head, she glances down at her hands, looking at them shaking on top of the prosthetic.

Gibbs’s worn face softens as he reaches out, touching the back of one of her hands softly, and the quivering stops. “You have had a rough day.” He clasps his hand around hers briefly before standing. “If you don’t have anything new, then you don’t have anything. McGee will be back two Saturdays from now with the second last one.” He gestures to her stomach in case his point was not clear.

Tony shoots up beside her on the couch, following him to the door, promising to be more diligent with what they learn, to alert them by phone if anything suspicious rouses their attention, to just all around do better, until Gibbs grumbles some threat at the door and slams it behind him.

During the chorus of locks Tony sets into place she starts to undress, pulling the sweatshirt and t-shirt off in one tug and letting it drop to the floor, then dropping her yoga pants and panties, calling out, “I’m having a shower—” she stops in the middle of the bedroom, slowly detaching the prosthetic before stepping out of it and leaving it on the floor.

The shower has mold in the ceramics and mildew glistens in the corner. The enamel from the bottom is all but chipped away and dull. The tub spigot no longer works, leaving only the shower functional.

She does not want him to come in.

Her hair flattens under the spray of water, her eyes growing dry under the stream, her one eye painful, dizzying when the stream pounds against it. She pushes through it, thinks about what her father said about the ocean beating against rock, wearing it down over time because the rock allows it to, a simple black eye will not give her a headache she will cede to, will not give her nausea mixing with the sound of waves she hears if she concentrates enough, while resting on the sides of her feet unevenly.

If he does not come in, she will be upset.

The thundering of her heart, with the heat building up due to lack of ventilation, and the wear in her tired body that has been broken and mangled back together only to break again is overwhelming, drowning her in the undertow of the waves. She leans her head against the disgusting tiles that she will clean once she is out and her eyes grow wet, the tears threading in with the water covering her actions, not implicating her in emotions.

The wall replaces itself with a structure much sturdier, a little less dingy, but more loving as his hand starts to stroke through her hair. She wants to fight with him, tell him she did not invite him in—though she specially did not tell him to leave her alone, and to divulge that the shower is the only place she learned she could cry in peace without the ramifications of others identifying her weakness.

But her body is tired, and her face does hurt. She does not want to admit to it as she has survived much worse at the hands of her own teams, but the headache, the accident worn stiffness, the dehydration from a hot afternoon, the turmoil of the collection of people from the accident site, and she cries into his shirt while the shower water beats down over the glass door and against him to puddle on the floor.

When she regains her equilibrium, the ability to stand on her own two feet without wavering, he lets her go. Allows her independence to shower while moping up the small bathroom floor with extra towels he found in the closet. There is a fresh towel on the floor as she steps out of the shower, and two hanging on the wall. He leans over the sink, his back to her, while wringing out his shirt.

Wrapping a towel around her hair, and other around her body, she chuckles at the sheer amount of water releasing from his t-shirt. “I’m sorry, Tony.”

Expects him to tell her not to apologize as it is a sign of weakness, but he uses his shirt and wipes away the fog on the mirror so he can talk to her that way. “Sorry for what? As far as I’m concerned that shower is possessed.”

They have changed around each other, from arguing to debating, from stubborn to accepting. Little switches being flipped in another direction from the influence of someone must mean more than a simple friendship.

The shower heated up the small apartment, and he opens one of the windows in the bedroom and another in the living room. The sound and smell of other people waft into their lives, and it feels like they’re no longer alone. That someone is watching them instead of the other way around. Arguments, car doors closing, people shouting on the phone, a thick cigarette smoke infiltrating through the mesh screens, and the apartment does not even appear theirs anymore.

“Your gun still in the torso?” He questions, grabbing her clothing from the floor and stuffing it in a plastic drawstring bag they will take to the laundromat soon as they have used all the towels.

“Yes,” she answers while drying off her hair, twisting her fingers through it like Tali did when she was young, when she wanted to know how to braid like their mother.

“Okay, I put it in the closet because you know how that thing freaks me out.”

She slides under the blankets wearing panties and a t-shirt he let her borrow, since all her own clothing felt too confining, the weight of the prosthetic all day mixed with constricting clothing not helping her settle, and before he even gets into bed, she falls into an exhaustive sleep.