A/N: This is a small AU Tiva offering that I posted on Tumblr awhile ago and forgot to share over here. It was inspired by the photo in the cover image. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: NCIS and its characters are not mine.
Gate 13A at Dulles International Airport filled up. Mothers. Siblings. Friends. Children. Husbands. Wives. Their shared anticipation was an almost tangible sweetness rising above the aroma of stale coffee and floor cleaner. Bright signs and brighter smiles shone from every direction. And in the middle of it all, from the confines of her stroller, Nora DiNozzo expressed her displeasure at the commotion with wails that proved her young lungs clear and healthy.
Normally, she was not a fussy baby. It wasn't uncommon during their mid-morning walks around base for her mother to receive compliments on the child's mild nature and the beauty of her wide, green-flecked eyes.
Does she look like her father? they always asked.
More and more each day, Ziva would reply, for it was true. When she missed her husband, a rule more than an exception, she did not close her eyes to beckon memories, but gazed at her daughter and found his likeness in the smiling face, the personification of their love. And Nora would gaze back, her world so small, her every need met before it could be voiced. There was nothing for her to fuss over, normally.
But it was not a normal day, and Nora seemed to sense as much. Fat tears streamed behind her ears and slicked her dark-blonde wisps darker still and flat against the sides of her head. Tiny fists balled in the yellow chenille blanket beneath her; restless feet kicked the guardrail on the stroller.
"Why you have chosen this moment for such things, motek, I do not understand…" Ziva admonished blithely, cooing and clucking like bubbas twice her age as she lifted the fitful baby into her arms. Her knees, prematurely creaky from training she no longer used, bounced dutifully, setting a soothing rhythm.
It was to no avail. Nora cried on and on, earning sympathetic pouts from other mothers in the terminal, and Ziva began to wonder if her daughter was reacting to more than just the noise and lights.
As her mother had often told it, Ziva was not seen by her father until she was three weeks old. Business kept Eli David away, but family legend went that when his coal eyes did alight on his firstborn daughter, he wept.
For Nora and her father, the separation was six months and counting. His most recent deployment spanned Ziva's pregnancy and the fragile moments of his daughter's developing life that followed. Now, an announcement piped through the intercom and drew Ziva's eyes to the window at her side for confirmation: indeed, the plane was taxiing up to the air bridge. The wait was nearly over.
She bounced and swayed, dipping her mouth to her child's perfectly rounded ear. "Worry not," she whispered. "I promise he will love you. He already does."
Choked cries of loved ones at the front of the gate went up before she glimpsed the first passengers arriving out of the tunnel. As families reunited with their soldiers, the emotions came in waves, shouts and tears and relief flowing back into the crowd, crashing and enveloping.
From her hip, Ziva raised Nora into the air, offering an open-mouthed smile despite the girl's continued sobs. "Let us go find your Daddy, yes?"
But Army Lieutenant Anthony DiNozzo, Jr. found them, appearing out of the maze of bodies in his sandy-camouflage fatigues, a duffel tossed over one of his broad shoulders. "Ziva," he called over the commotion—and then his easy grin faltered when eyes flecked with green landed on the bundle in his wife's arms.
The duffel hit the floor, and yet his feet stammered as much as his words. "She's…I…"
"She has been waiting for you, and rather impatiently at that," Ziva finished for him, making up the distance he struggled to close to deliver their child into his embrace for the first time. And miraculously, that was all it took for Nora's cries to soften and ebb, as if she had been calling to him all along and was now satisfied.
Like Eli, and perhaps many other fathers before, since, and to come, Tony gazed on his daughter with tears welled at the corners of his eyes. Face-to-face, their resemblance was no exaggeration. More and more each day…
"Hey there, Nora," the soldier sing-songed, and she sputtered a giggle at the sound. "Nice to finally meet you, my sweet baby girl."
Out of the all the times her mother had told the story, Ziva never thought to ask what her own reaction had been to witnessing her husband and daughter meet, but she imagined her mother had wrapped her arms around them both, as that was what came naturally for Ziva to do now with the loves of her life.
Tony shifted Nora into the crook of one arm and snaked the other across Ziva's back, pulling her flush to his side and kissing her fiercely. His was a familiar flavor on her tongue—and she looked forward to gorging her taste buds on it again and again later that night.
But for now, his little girl won back his attention with a grab of spindly fingers at his clean-shaven chin. "Do you think she knows who I am?" he gasped, watching every move she made with wonder.
"Yes," Ziva told him, burrowing her face into his shoulder. "And she loves you already."