I mean it when I say this is a silly, just-for-fun story. It's not particularly well-written or edited, but the thought made me laugh, so here it is.
Ever since she was born, Tony had completely denied the possibility that his daughter—his sweet, brilliant, occasionally fussy but basically perfect baby—would ever go through something as ridiculously overdramatized and overpublicized as the terrible twos.
"They make that sort of thing up to fill parenting magazines," he'd told McGee airily.
So when Ziva's usual recitation of Adi's daily accomplishments and adorabilities suddenly began to include a good many anecdotes of Adi saying "no," Adi throwing herself on the floor in the supermarket, Adi refusing to eat the pears she'd always loved so much, Adi bellowing every time Ziva snapped her into her carseat, Tony laughed and chalked it up to a bad day here and there.
Ziva did not find the daily power struggles quite as amusing. She particularly did not find amusing the way her child managed to behave angelically when Daddy came home, despite putting Mama through frequent periods of hell just because she could.
So on this particular Tuesday night, when Adi took .02 seconds to morph from a happy child to a shrieking flail machine for no apparent reason, Ziva continued eating her chicken alfredo as if nothing was wrong, and almost seemed to enjoy Tony's horrified expression.
"Hey, babycakes, what's wrong?"
Adi slammed a small fist onto the table.
Tony turned to Ziva. "What's wrong with her?"
"Nothing," Ziva said. "She's probably a little tired."
"Maybe she has a fever."
Ziva chewed and shook her head.
"She looks red. God, Ziva, she's going to hurt herself!"
"The booster seat has straps," she pointed out. She turned to Adi, who had begun banging a small bowl of steamed veggies against her sippy cup, and pointed sternly. "If you throw those, we will not read the duck story tonight."
Adi's flushed cheeks got redder, and she held her mother's gaze as she deliberately upended the bowl.
"Fine," Ziva said. "No duck."
It wasn't that Tony didn't know his wife could be a hardass—he'd watched her interrogate before—but he couldn't help but sympathize with his daughter, who let out yet another ear-piercing shriek at the injustice of a duckless evening.
"Mm. Can you take one more big bite of your pasta for me?" was Ziva's response.
And Adi's response to that was to fling out her arms, sweeping the overturned veggies bowl to the floor, sending the sippy cup rolling into Tony's plate, and spinning the small bowl of alfredo sauce-drenched pasta in Ziva's direction at a frightening speed.
Later, Tony explained to McGee that the physics of the thing made no sense—one second the bowl had been barreling the short distance along the table toward Ziva, and the next second it had somehow made it into the air and crashed into Ziva's collarbone, slinging white sauce everywhere.
Ziva dropped her fork, and the clatter rang loudly in the suddenly silent kitchen.
She no longer looked amused at his horror and confusion. She looked pissed.
"Damn—I mean, darn," he caught himself. He stared wide-eyed at his wife, trying to communicate to his toddler via quick warning glances that this would be a very good time to pull a puppy dog face. Adi ignored him completely, dropping her chin to her chest and observing the vegetables that she'd scattered all over her section of the table. She picked up a chunk of carrot and popped it into her mouth.
Ziva, lips compressed, pulled a fistful of noodles off her chest with one hand, righted Adi's dish with the other, and dropped the messy bunch into it.
Adi ate another piece of carrot.
"Ziva?"
She raised a finger and swiped some alfredo sauce off her cheek.
"…honey?"
"I am going to move to Russia," she informed him calmly.
"That, uh…that seems a little extreme, don't you think?"
"I will live in a quiet, clean cottage," she continued, ignoring him and her daughter, who had rediscovered her spoon, "and return when she has grown out of this. Because if I feel one more slimy thingon my body," she said more loudly, so he could hear her over the enthusiastic banging of toddler-sized cutlery on the table, "I am going to throw a tantrum."
"You're shouting."
"Ha!" Ziva stood up and braced her hands on the table, and Tony watched as a lingering noodle slithered past her neckline into her cleavage.
"Am I?" she asked, and that's when Tony realized he had said something very, very wrong and would probably not be able to extricate himself from this one. "Well, maybe you'd be shouting too if your child spent the entire day hatching devious schemes and testing them on you!"
Tony scoffed. "Schemes? She's two!"
"I don't know why you're surprised! She has all the right genes to be a criminal mastermind!"
He couldn't believe they were having this conversation. Or rather, not a conversation. An unexpected and dramatic explosion of bonafide craziness straight from their household's designated Voice of Rationality. Is this how it was all day when he was at work?
That was a problem.
"Oh my god, Ziva."
"You do not—"
"Criminal mastermind? Where did you even—"
She threw both hands up. "Mastermind, I am telling you!"
"Mama," the object of their conversation suddenly called.
Ziva closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.
"What?"
And then Tony watched Ziva's mouth fall open as she opened her eyes to Adi smearing a handful of carrots into her wispy curls. For being so vocal a moment before, Ziva seemed to have completely lost her voice. Her arms slowly descended.
Tony shoved his chair back from the table to get a better view of the two staring each other down.
Ziva tried to say something and failed, nothing but a noise of disbelief rising in her throat.
Adi observed her own orange hand with great interest, unbothered by the vegetable mash coating her head. "Wanted 'em," she blithely informed her mother.
"You wanted them," Ziva repeated.
It occurred to Tony that, based on his reading of her facial expression, there was a very real possibility that Ziva might cry. Over a food fight with a toddler. He watched the muscles around her mouth twitch and wondered if this was where he was supposed to try stepping in. But before he could attempt anything—a mollifying phrase, a time-out, volunteer duty for KP—Ziva let out all the air in her lungs with a huff, and then, to Tony's great surprise, began to laugh, and laugh hard. She bent and picked Adi up out of the booster seat, settling the child against her front as Adi looked up at her and grinned.
That's my girl, Tony thought.
"You are incorrigible, did you know that?" Ziva gasped, tears at the corners of her eyes. "You are just like your father."
"Hey, I just want to point out that I'm the only one not participating in the food fashion show here."
Adi petted Ziva's sauce-splattered hair, leaving an orange streak. "I'm like Mama," she said.
"Yes," Ziva agreed, "yes, you most certainly are. We are a mess, aren't we?"
From an objective observer's point of view, Tony agreed with that. From a father's point of view, well…they were still a mess, but he thought they were kind of a beautiful one.
He was also pretty sure they were both insane.
"I'm gonna go fill the tub."
"Thank you. By the way," she called after him, "I told you so. Mastermind."
He thought there was a strong possibility she was right about that.
Thanks for reading!