Chapter Text
March 2027
The bedroom was shrouded in darkness. A sliver of light reflected from the moon through the gap in the curtains that acted as a thin veil between the Parisian apartment and the outside world.
Tony stirred, still half asleep and wishing more than anything that he was still unconscious, unaware of the darkness or the moon or any part of what he already knew, without looking at his phone on the bedside table, was closer to the middle of the night than the morning, or any part of the morning he wanted to know.
The wee hours of the day and Tony had become close friends in the last few months. Meeting daily, comparing notes, learning far too much about each other. He’d thought those days were long gone when 3:00am seemed like a good idea, though, back in his hay day, that was the time he was going to sleep and not waking up. It hadn’t even been that long ago in the grand scheme of his life. Tony recalled many times when he was still behaving like a twenty something college idiot long into his thirties and long after a certain ex-Mossad agent had waltzed into the bullpen to turn his world on its axis. Some of those late nights and early mornings even revolved around her.
They still did.
Revolved around all of his girls, now.
Tony sat up, slowly, methodically, not nearly as spry as those days he was nostalgically recalling. His back cracked in more than one place. His bad knee clicked in a way it probably shouldn’t have as he swung it over the side of the bed, feet landing on the original hardwoods, a selling feature in the home for him when he’d purchased it, and they were cool under his feet. Tony reminded himself to turn the heat up on the dial outside of the bedroom when he finally made it there, knowing Ziva would make an immediate fuss over the temperature as she threw on one of her many cardigans over the shorts she slept in all year, even in the winter chill she inevitably always complained about. Even her clothing choices showed the dichotomy of who she was as a person. Tony chuckled to himself, eased into the early morning by the idea that he knew her all too well.
Behind him, he felt the bed shift.
Tony held his breath, hoping that it was nothing more than Ziva shifting.
When stillness encapsulated the room again, confirming that Ziva was in fact not awake and instead enjoying the rest he was not getting, Tony stood up. He stretched his hands above his head and let out a quiet sigh, accepting his fate and hoping for a moment to nap later, their oversized couch already had his name written on it.
The crackling sound that had woken him up in the first place, echoed through the room. Not nearly as loud as it could be, but it was certainly not quiet, had it been Tony wouldn’t have been woken from his slumber and rubbing the sleep from his eyes in a futile effort.
As mentally noted, he knocked up the temperature a few degrees on his way down the hallway. The hardwoods still cool under his feet everywhere the muted floral pattern runner didn’t cover.
Out of habit, he stopped at the first door on his left. Not his destination, but a stop along the way. He door creaked ever so slightly and like he did every time, Tony took a mental note of doing something about it, so that one day it didn’t wake up the occupant of the room and give away his practice of laying eyes on Tali when she didn’t know that he stood in the doorway confirming both her existence and admiring how when her eyes were shut tight and her face squished against the pillow, she looked much younger than her thirteen year old self would have ever wanted to hear.
She was looking so old these days. So much more grown up than the little girl who had been dropped in his custody eleven years earlier, brown curls and brown eyes so resembling her mother sometimes even the thought of it, even with such a passage of time, made the smallest of tears form in the corner of his eyes; she was her mother made over. But every early wake up for the last six months, before the sun barreled down the hallway and the sound of the coffee maker buzzed from the kitchen, he stuck his head in to ease his heart with a look at the someone who as closely resembled the daughter he wished never had to grow up as she ever would. Though, the pink axolotl sitting at the end of the bed, collected from the cabin in Germany, was a staunch contrast to the same child who begged to get her second ear piercings and purple highlights, just a few because they were cool. Funnily enough, also the same trying desperately to grow up teenager who personally requested You’ll Be in My Heart from Tarzan, a movie she watched on repeat with her father in the early days when it was just them, after getting in the car post Taekwondo practice — except request actually meant just stealing Tony’s phone to turn it on herself instead of watching him stumble through Spotify.
When Tony was satisfied with his brief once over, maybe it was like a twice over, he shut the door as quietly as he’d attempted to open it.
The heat kicked on with a soft thud, a sound that came with a building as old as theirs. The charm, the size, the location made the few leftovers from the last century very worth it. Besides, everything worked when it needed to.
The second door on the left was already cracked open, left that way by a mother who’s paranoia was being worked on every day, but left its mark in a few places still, like the inability to leave the door completely closed. While Tony himself didn’t fight the same demons, he found a certain comfort in the idea that he shared his home with a woman who could only change so much, could only work through so many things in therapy; he wanted her stronger, not different.
It used to be a dark navy, the room. A deep blue color that Tony had deemed manly and appropriate for his home office. Not that he worked from home all that often, less and less as Tali got older and as things shifted for him in a way that made his job important but not the be all, end all. He was the boss after all; Tony could delegate, he could assign more responsibilities to other people and feel less obligated to handle more than he could pile on his metaphorical plate. So when they needed another room, the navy dissipated, no longer marking the room as belonging to Tony himself and it blurred into a gender-neutral soft yellow that somehow felt like the color it should have been all along. A color of course chosen by Ziva and seconded by Tali, so Tony’s only option was to agree. It’s purpose now was much more important than being filled with books that looked good to company, but Tony hadn’t ever read, or the novels Ziva slowly added to the collection simply for the need of storage or housing the overpriced leather chair sitting behind an overpriced antique desk or being the place someone would find Tony’s most expensive bourbon, a gift from a client.
Across from the doorway, sat a small table lamp. Tony inched across the floor, not missing that he had been greeted with silence. Fingers hovering over the switch, he hesitated wondering if he’d perhaps manage to garner some more sleep if he left the room dark and changed his mind.
Little leaving it dark did at all.
Tony was met at that early morning hour, too early for any sane person to enjoy, by a toothless, sloppy, so much like his own signature expression grin that lay face up in their crib, hands gripping their tiny footed pajama clad feet in some sort of odd self soothing effort until an adult showed up. Tony was that very adult and his six month old, youngest child, had just played him like a bad sax in some eighties song Tali screeched for him to turn off in the car when he maxed out the volume.
“Squirt,” Tony chided in a whisper, not wanting the sound of his voice to stream through the baby monitor and wake Ziva up.
The grin only widened.
Tony never stood a damn chance.
Tali had that same expression. It had taken a few days to drag it out of her, the shock of being turned over to a man she’d never met, but could label in a picture suddenly becoming her full time legal guardian had to wear off first, but then he saw himself. Which was good because for a moment Tony didn’t see a single molecule of himself in the toddler who’d been sworn to him was his. She’d been Ziva through and through, the most painful reminder of a woman he had loved and subsequently lost more than once, on the tarmac in Tel Aviv and in the bombing he watched play out on national TV. And then it had cracked wide open at some stupid thing he did to try and amuse a child of an age he knew little to do with and it was like watching a reflection of himself. Tony knew for certain that Tali was his daughter then and never questioned it again.
Even given that the second time around there was no question of the genetic donors, Tony felt his heart expand every time he could see himself in the baby whose eyes gleamed up at him even in the dark. The same deep, brown eyes she shared with her mother and sister and promptly served as a reminder that he did in fact love more the parts of his children that reminded him of their mother, than of himself.
Tony reached his hands into the crib, small, grabby hands returned the favor and he easily lifted the baby into his arms, where she instantly laid her head against his chest, just like every morning when it was inevitably the two of them in a quiet apartment because Tony had made every effort to let Tali and Ziva sleep.
“Just you and me again this morning,” Tony planted a gentle kiss on the top of his baby’s head, smelling the shampoo from her bath last night. Visions of Ziva leaned over the edge of their bathtub the previous evening, gently scrubbing the growing, both in length and unruliness, curls, played in Tony’s head.
The hallway creaked under Tony’s feet, but everything else remained still, as he’s hoped.
He traipsed into the kitchen. The night lights of Paris twinkled beyond Tony’s focus in the distance. They danced across the floor, twinkling and bouncing around, much more lively than the home they illuminated.
“One bottle coming right up, madam,” Tony announced, the slightest French accent creeping in as a joke only he would understand, as he began the first of a few one handed tasks.
One bottle was made. One cup of coffee steaming, black, in an old NCIS mug that survived its Transatlantic move to Europe, was brewed. The side table lamp flipped on next to the corner of the couch Tony had long since claimed as his own. Baby girl adjusted in the crook of his arm, those familiar and well loved brown eyes once again staring into his own.
In no world, not even in his wildest imagination did Tony ever expect his life to irrevocably mold its way into something that even remotely resembled what he had now. Especially in those desolate nights after leaving Ziva to occupy a farmhouse he would never see again, nor did he really want to even if it held memories of uttered words and meeting bodies that had been so entirely honest, Tony didn’t need to go back there because at the end of the day, she stayed, he didn’t and he wasn’t allowed to. He’d found himself in a constant half-drunk stupor after every day at work, sometimes wine, sometimes the good stuff from the cabinet over the fridge in the kitchen, sometimes cheap shit that left him paying for it even more in the morning. Dirty stubble growing on his face because it was all he could do to get out of bed and get dressed. The absolute lowest point of his entire life that eventually morphed into such deep, suppressed grief when his mornings became tea parties with stuffed animals and a little girl who had no idea how sad he was under the silly facade he displayed for her benefit. In reflection, it was hard for Tony to decide if the lonely night when he could be as mournful as he wanted were harder or if the times when he had to hide it and pray, so unlike him, that having a piece of Ziva that he would never lose was enough to eventually pull him out of the hole he’d too comfortably lived in for years.
And then there was after Cairo.
When Tony knew that Ziva was still alive and that there was even a sliver of hope that he would see her again on the other side of the terror she was experiencing, some hope flitted back into his very dulled senses. Though, Ziva being alive was the least of their concerns when it really came down to the foundation of their relationship. The idea that she was still breathing did start to soften the edges of Tony’s depression, but never made him contemplate an existence where his family was under one roof, one member larger than ever envisioned. Ever.
For four years mornings were a marathon, helped by Sophie, who acted as the middle man between parents whose broken relationship had fallen apart in a heap at an altar that should have solidified the love they had. Tali was at one house for this night and that night and get her to school on time, or drop her off on time so the other parent couldn’t make snide remarks about how they needed to be a little more responsible with their time. She needed this thing she left at Dad’s or she needed her hair braided, only mom could do that even if Tony tried for years to master the skill. Chaos in co-parenting that meant the thought of a slow morning didn't exist because when one of them had their daughter, they were not in the business of wasting time with her. Coffee in to go cups. Breakfast at their favorite cafes. Walking to the park or the book store or Taekwondo practice or dance for the short time that lasted. Business had coated their lives, sometimes as a way to forget that it wasn’t how Tony or Ziva had wanted it to go, but time to reminisce only hurt feelings and brought anger rising to the surface. Busy was better.
For a while, in the blissful reuniting of Tony and Ziva, making their family seem whole again, mornings quieted. Less racing between apartments and avoiding and stretching thin every second they had with their child because time diminished so quickly. They worked together on school mornings to get everyone everywhere and they simply enjoyed weekend mornings, cappuccinos, pancakes with whipped cream faces that Tali rolled her eyes at, Ziva reading through all those books that had found a home in Tony’s previous office. Sometimes Tali occupied herself and Tony and Ziva occupied themselves in ways that required constant shushing and even turning the master suite shower on just for the disguising noise it offered. In every imaginable way it was exactly what Tony had pictured and wanted and wondered if they’d ever get to share.
Then, like life always did for them, the next thing came crashing down, exploding into bits and pieces the normalcy they’d assumed they’d finally earned, in the very shape of the infant that sucked hungrily at the bottle he still held for her.
Like a sixth sense alerting her to the very idea that she was alone in the king bed, Ziva rustled awake against the all too expensive cotton sheets that Tony insisted on owning and rolled from her side to her back only to find a cooled, empty spot next to her where she should have found her partner.
The very first sliver of the day’s light seeped through the window treatments, not the full fledged spring sunlight that would encapsulate the afternoon later, but the beginning of it and enough to tell Ziva that she’d slept much later than was normal for their little family recently. Sleep was once the least of her and Tony’s worries when they were sneaking out of apartments in the earliest hours of the day, only to meet each other a few hours later in the bullpen nursing coffees for whatever feelings-hangover they both had after clandestine hours together.
Times changed drastically.
Those fools ignoring love at every turn would have laughed in the faces of themselves now.
Ziva’s feet easily found her slippers, left there the night before for that exact reason, when she finally found the wherewithal to pull herself from the all together cozy bed and extra minutes of sleep she could be getting because the rest of the house was seemingly still quiet, not inviting her to be in any kind of rush.
Instinctively, the first place she went was to Tony’s dresser, opening the exact drawer she needed and drawing from it an old, oversized sweatshirt. It was one he never wore, but somehow it managed to never get placed in the donation bag when they were cleaning things out, like Tony knew Ziva would always reach for it if it was there. So she pulled it over her head, sniffing the way his cologne always lingered on it and reminded her who it actually belonged to. It was comfortable in more ways than one every time the over-washed cotton lining made contact with her skin.
Ziva had an assumption about where she would find Tony, but her feet carried her the opposite direction, instead to Tali’s door. It creaked ever so slightly as the mom gently opened it. The teen was sprawled out on the bed, very different from the way her father had found her earlier, covers tossed around, pillows wonky at the head of the bed, stuffed animals amiss at the end of the bed. Ziva saw so much of her sister Tali in her daughter; namesake aside, they would have gotten along so well it sometimes hurt Ziva to know their paths would never get to cross. Tali would never get to have an aunt, one who would have adored her, Ziva knew that much to be true.
Tali shifted in bed.
They were on borrowed time before she was up. Ziva took a final look, reminding herself how lucky she was to still be getting the chance to check in on a child that she sent across an ocean and once wondered if she’d spend all of her growing up years not really understanding what had happened to her mother. The running around and the classes and the practices and the never ending scheduling when Tony and Ziva were separated, every moment of it was worth it for Ziva to find herself in the doorway of her thirteen year old’s bedroom in an apartment she shared with Tony. With their family.
With a swift door shutting, Ziva knew she'd be listening to Tali complain about something, in the way only a teenager could, in no time.
Thank goodness.
The other door in the hallway was wide open which signaled to Ziva there was no need to check in there because she would not find the occupant in there anyway. A frequent occurrence.
Ziva had been hardened by time, by training, by constant disappointment, by loss. She’d protected her heart in ways that only broke it more, leaving deeper scars covering herself, but also etched into the people she loved most. It had seemed in too many moments, that there would be no coming back from the damage she’d experienced and caused. And in the end, Ziva would have understood why she deserved a bleak ending.
Not the ending where she gently rounded the corner into their living room and found in front of the twinkling lights of the Eiffel Tower, glittering through the window, that would soon dim when the sun lifted the rest of the way into the sky and signaled the people of Paris that the day was starting, Tony’s arms full of a baby who couldn’t take her sweet little eyes off the illuminated wonder of France. Two of her three favorite people in a place that every time she found them in, which was frequent after the discovery that nothing soothed an over tired, but fed and needing a first nap of the day baby like the view from the window, Ziva exploded with disbelief that this was her life.
Albeit not perfect, not easy, not a fairytale of epic proportions, life had been kinder to them in the last eighteen months than it maybe had in years. Though, that was a somewhat low threshold.
Still, there was an agreement that everyone was grateful for even the smallest of storybook moments. A fairytale wasn’t required to write their book.
Ziva idled in her spot, attempting to stay as quiet as possible for as long as possible to just admire.
But Tony sensed her and his eyes lifted to find hers, the smallest of smiles tugging on the corners of his mouth, filled with something of similar origin to Ziva’s own disbelief. It has been six months and the newness of their family addition and what she meant for them, hadn’t worn off.
“How long have you been up?” Ziva found herself sidling up to Tony, her head fitting easily on his shoulder to give her a perfect view of a very awake baby girl who seemed far too enthralled with the lights to consider sleeping.
“This time or the first time?” Tony offered, not mentioning that they’d fallen asleep on the couch for a while together before that was no longer good enough for his youngest child.
Ziva chuckled lightly, understanding too well. “You could have woken me up. I did not need to sleep so late.”
“Oh yes because getting up before 7:00am is so late,” Tony chided.
“You got up with her yesterday though too. I’m starting to wonder if maybe you just enjoy…”
“The middle of the night?”
“Yes,” She smirked.
“I enjoy the company, not the time of day.”
“Pretty cute company.”
Identical gazes dropped to Tony’s arms and neither of them needed to look at one another to know they also share identical grins, smitten in nature.
“You two look so dumb when you stare at her like that.”
Tali’s voice cut through the otherwise sweet moment, the common morning occurrence, in a way that only a too smart for her own good thirteen year old’s could. Sometimes — sometimes — Tali’s parents were slightly grateful to have a baby that was incapable of any attitude to counterbalance their daughter they adored and gave them a solid run for their money every chance she got.
“I don’t remember asking you,” Tony shot back, taking in his somewhat disheveled teenage daughter, wearing her mother’s old sweatshirt that had somehow managed to sneak its way into her room and the two braids that she’d requested from her Ima the night before were fuzzy with frizzy bed head.
“Don’t have to,” Tali shrugged.
The Dad’s attention turned back to the baby. “Your sister thinks she’s pretty funny, Maya.”
Ziva just shook her head at Tony and Tali. A normal morning in the David-DiNozzo household. She didn’t need to add to their banter, as they had plenty to share without a word from her. “Let me get coffee and I’ll take her,” She spoke to Tony, a tiny part of her also just wanted the warmth of their six month old in her arms.
“Great, I need a shower.”
“Mom, where's my Switch?”
Ziva plodded to the coffee pot, half filled from where Tony had filled his own cup and snuck a mug from the cabinet. The brown liquid steamed as it hit the glassware.
“I’m sure it is where you left it, Tali.”
“But where is that?”
“Tali, it’s not your mom’s responsibility to keep track of your things,” Tony let Ziva take a seat on the couch, set her mug down and then handed over the baby, who without question settled in to be fed and maybe fall asleep for her. The knowing way a baby could always identify its mother; Ziva loved it, even in the most inconvenient moments.
And it all became what it kept becoming.
Tali found her Switch and without a word, placed herself on the couch next to her mom. Tony took his shower, before plopping into the oversized chair in the living room and flipped on the TV.
The sun kept filtering into the living room as the morning’s light seeped between the few clouds in the sky.
The quiet ease with which the family let the minutes pass them by to simply just be for a while was their new normal. Ziva sipped her coffee as her thumb stroked the back of the baby’s head, who had like magic had been fed, readjusted to lay on Ziva’s chest and nearly instantly fell asleep. Sometimes they were working on a schedule with the infant and sometimes that was bombarded by one of her parents’ need to spoil both her and themselves with a decision they’d pay for later. Tony had turned on TCM in the way only he could and was vaguely enthralled with whatever black and white film played, as he answered a few work emails. Tali aggressively moved the controls of her gaming console, entirely invested in the game she played, pausing only when the hours of morning were dwindling and Tony spoke up.
“Pancakes or waffles ladies?”
“Absolutely pancakes,” Tali wasted not even a second answering him.
“Ziva?”
“I’m happy with whatever you make, as long as you are hand delivering it, seeing as-” She gestured toward the daughter of theirs that was sleeping. “I cannot move.”
“Oh yes your highness. Of course. Anything for you,” Tony gave a little bow as he stood up from the chair, playing up his own ridiculousness. It got a laugh from Tali.
“Perhaps I should remind you once again that I delivered both of your children and you are still paying for it.”
“Yeah yeah yeah,” Tony waved her off, though he knew he really probably owed her a lot more than breakfast on the couch for the family they’d created.