Happy world Nutella day!
This is actually a cheerful one-shot continuation of Her Return for once! Sort of.
As always, make sure you have read the others first.
Chocolate Spread and Lemonade
"No, you put more on the knife than that." Tony shook his head. "Look, like this." He heaped his own knife with the gloopy chocolate substance.
"Like that?" She asked, grinning.
"Ah, much better." He laughed as his daughter stood on a chair so she could reach the work-surface properly. She spread the Nutella across her bread, imitating her father's actions.
"You are up early." Ziva said as she padded through to the kitchen.
"We were a bit nervous for our first day of school, weren't we?" Tony kissed Ziva as she walked over.
"Daddy was more nervous than me." Caitlin said, hopping down from the chair and hugging her parents.
"Was he now?" Ziva raised her eyebrows.
"Hey, you may have seen her go to her first day of school before, but not me. This is a big day for me."
"Tony, her first day of school was on the videos." Ziva shook her head.
"It's not the same." He said quietly. He still missed the moments that he never got to spend with his child, and although Shmeil's films helped, they did not stop him wishing. He was truly grateful that MTAC was so reinforced, because it was more or less the only room that was almost undamaged. There were still problems, like all the electrical equipment being shattered and it still suffered some reparable destruction, but the videos had survived, which, to him, was all that really mattered.
"I know." She leaned her head on his shoulder and stroked her daughter's hair. "What have you been doing?"
"We made lunch." Caitlin laughed, pulling her mother over to show her the chocolcatey mess they had made.
"This is not lunch." She laughed and shook her head.
"I was shocked to find that a child of mine had never eaten nutella." Tony stated, holding the jar up.
"Yes, I had worked hard to keep it that way." She frowned at the ingredients. "This is not good for you."
"She's a child, Ziva. This is what childhood is about." He smiled. "Have you ever eaten nutella?"
"Yes. It is…chocolatey."
"It's good." Caitlin grinned, licking a chocolate-coated finger. Her mother sighed.
"I guess it will be fine on the odd occasion." She relented, breaking at her daughter's grin. "But only if you eat your banana and your apple." The child huffed and looked at Tony, rolling her eyes before high fiving him.
"We have everything else ready for today. New shoes by the door, new coat on the sofa, school bag packed. Everything's ready." He whispered in his fiancées ear. The fiancée that nobody knew was his fiancée yet. "Nothing to worry about."
"Then why are you worried?"
"Because my little princess is going off into the big wide world of school." He shrugged and they both watched as Caitlin busied herself with a drawing that she had left half done the night before.
"There is one thing you have overlooked, Tony." Ziva laughed.
"No. Shoes, coat, bag, lunch. What else is there?" He counted the items off on his fingers.
"She is still in her pyjamas."
"Well, the outside looks the same." Abby said, staring at the new building. She was excited to be able to have her lab back – working in a temporary lab with all the computer techs was not conducive of good work.
"Lets just hope they've got a better wall colour this time." Tony said. They were all stood outside the new NCIS building, waiting for Vance to unlock the front doors.
"What was your problem with the orange, Tony?" Ziva asked, standing next to him. Caitlin was standing in front of them, with her new coat and her new shoes and her bag packed, ready for her first day at a new school. And in proper day-to-day clothes now.
"Orange is not my friend. I didn't like it. It made it feel like we were in a government institute."
"We were, DiNozzo." Gibbs hit the back of the agent's head.
"Well, yeah, boss, but that doesn't mean it has to feel like it." Tony shrugged.
"Daddy, that does not make any sense." Caitlin voiced the thoughts of everyone.
"If we are mentioning what we hope they have done with the place, I would like to point out that Autopsy really did need a new light box. The one we had was getting so old."
"Duck, the light box you had went out of production forty years ago." Gibbs laughed.
"Well, I hope we get new electronics." McGee grinned and Tony groaned.
"No, no, no, no, no… I had just managed to get Pac-Man to work really well on my computer!"
"Agent DiNozzo, I do hope that you do more than play Pac-Man on your government-issue computer when the government is paying your salary."
"Yes, Director Vance. I also play Pong. Oh, I meant to say ages ago, Gibbs, how fun it actually is." He grinned and received another slap to the back of the head. "Of course, we can't forget that you enjoy reading the comic-strips in the newspapers, Director, which you do when you are supposed to be working." Vance smiled slightly, walking toward the front doors and typed a passcode into the digital lock.
"You'll all have individual five number security codes. You don't share them, and they're only needed out of office hours." Vance stated, then looked towards Ziva and Caitlin. "There are locks on each floor to allow visitors in." He smiled and Ziva nodded slightly in gratitude.
"Thank you." She whispered to him as the doors opened and there was a small cheer, mainly from Abby. The group walked through the foyer, looking at new security measures. Vance directed them all to the elevator.
"I had to get that button specially built in." Vance pointed to the STOP button. "The builders were rather reluctant." A slight chuckle arose in the group, with all but Caitlin remembering conversations in the elevator. "I have tried to accommodate for all of your requests." He said as the doors slid open. The walls were a pale blue colour, to please Tony. The plasmas were updated, touchscreen too, to please McGee. The floor plan and layout was the same, to please Gibbs, and the skylight had been tinted to please everybody. The energy saving lights snapped on as they walked through.
"It's not orange!" Tony cried, picking Caitlin up and spinning her around. "Thank you so much." Everybody laughed, marvelling at the way the new area looked so familiar, yet different all at the same time.
"How about my lab?" Abby asked, bouncing up and down, a wide grin spreading from ear to ear across her face.
"Our next stop." Vance smiled and indicated toward the elevator to the rear. "Both elevators will go to your lab, miss Sciuto, but the front one requires the input of the individual passcode previously mentioned." He smiled. They all filed in and the doors slid shut again. The suspense grew as they descended until it stopped and dinged. "There was also a reluctance to add the sound to the doors." He smiled slightly as he pointed to them. They stepped out and into the hallway before 'Abby's world'. Vance indicated for Abby to open the door, which she took much delight in and made quite a ceremony in it. Her jaw dropped and she gasped.
"It's bigger! And there's new equipment!" She beamed and ran inside, looking at all the updated technology. "My art!" She grinned at the pieces covering the walls. They were the older images that she had replaced by the ones that had been destroyed in the blast.
"We wanted to keep it your lab." Gibbs smiled. He had taken the commission of Abby's lab under Vance's instruction. He had salvaged as much as he could after the explosion. He took her hand and walked her over to her desk where, framed on the wall behind it, were the drawings that Kate had done of the team along with photographs of them all, many taken at crime scenes. "It's so you've always got your family here with you, even when we're away.
"Eeeeee! Thank you thank you thank you thank you!" She squealed and threw her arms around his neck. "Thank you so much Gibbs. And you saved Bert!" She picked up her stuffed hippo.
"Might we see Autopsy now?" Ducky asked, quite excited to see his new work area. Vance nodded and led the way.
Caitlin froze as they stood at the threshold to Autopsy and shook her head. Ziva and Tony both stopped and crouched down.
"Hey, what's wrong?" Her father smiled gently.
"I do not like the dreams I have of this place." She whispered.
"The dreams are not real anymore." Ziva pushed her daughter's hair back. "Were you listening to the Director when he told us about all the things that have been done to make us safe here?"
"Yes." She nodded slightly.
"Okay, so you know that nothing bad is going to happen?"
"Yes." She sighed.
"You know, Abby used to have bad dreams about Autopsy too." Tony smiled as Ziva stood and walked in to join the others in Ducky's new lab, confident that Tony could handle the situation.
"She did?" Caitlin asked quietly, watching Abby dance around in Ducky's realm.
"Sure she did. And now look at her."
"Do you have nightmares?" She swallowed, playing with his large hand.
"I used to have nightmares about vampires." He laughed slightly.
"Are you still scared of vampires?"
"Not so much. The bad dreams'll fade with time." He smiled, deciding that telling her he fears losing the two best things in his life would not aid the situation in any way. "You want to stay out here or shall we join everyone else?"
"I…" She paused, watching everybody else. She gripped his hand harder and pulled him through the doors. He grinned. She was possibly one of the bravest little girls he knew, not that he knew many little girls.
"…and I do like the new light box, very state of the art." Ducky smiled.
"Its energy efficient." Vance nodded. "And the changing rooms are now more spacious and the showers are top of the range." Everyone admired the new and improved building, seeing new hope and life grow from the cinders.
"Daddy, we're going to be late." Caitlin said as she sat in the back of the car.
"We'll be fine, we have plenty of time."
"You drive too slowly."
"You have been spent too much time with your mother." Tony muttered.
"Hey!" Ziva looked at him and hit his arm. "My driving is fine."
"How many times have you crashed your car?"
"It is not my fault that people drive so slowly." She flung her arms in the air. "Caitlin is right, you drive too slowly."
"I'm going over the limit."
"Not fast enough."
"We are ten minutes away from the school and have half an hour until we need to be there. We're doing fine." He sighed. "And you said I was nervous for today."
"You were." Ziva shrugged, fidgeting in her seat.
"It's gonna be fine." He lay his hand on her knee and flicked his eyes across to her as they sat at the red light. "She'll be fine."
"I know. I just…"
"Don't want to see her leave." Tony finished quietly, his voice lowered so only Ziva could hear him. "There's no danger anymore."
"I know." She managed a slight smile and deep down she knew he was right. They had survived this far, and they could survive anything else that life decided to throw at them. What was the American phase McGee had used? "When life hands you lemmings…"
"Lemons, sweet-cheeks." He laughed. "When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade."
"Well what is a lemming then?"
"It's a small rodent thing. They are misconceived to jump off cliffs."
"Why am I making lemonade out of suicidal rodents then?" Her confused expression made Tony laugh more.
"They're not suicidal, it's just a misconception that they commit mass suicide. And you're not making lemonade out of lemmings, you're making it out of lemons."
"Idioms do my nuts in." She muttered.
"Nut. Singular."
"Drive, Tony, before I take over." She leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes as he complied, much to the delighted giggles of their daughter. "Faster."
"Crazy Israeli chick." Caitlin laughed again. "And her crazy Israeli daughter." He met his little girl's eyes in the rear mirror and for the first time since he had met her they looked almost carefree, young and happy.
For my reference: 17th NCIS fic.