Title: [A Sort of] Lovely Chaos [1/12]
Rating: K+
Pairing: Tony/Ziva, very brief Ziva/OC
Spoilers: Very mild spoilers for the Shabbat Shalom/Shiva arc and the Aliyah arc
Summary: After Tony finds himself a father when Ziva's engagement falls through, he discovers that sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn't always as bright as he's been promised. Twelve snapshots forming a year in the life of the DiNozzo-David family.
Warnings: Mild AU (references some canon), Tiva as parents/family!fic, future chapters will include some scenes of a child in peril and some references to war and violence
May 26th, 2013
"So…you're…having a, um, a baby, huh?"
He faltered, and winced as he felt his own left hand come up to deliver the resounding slap. A tiny grin tugged at the corner of her lips.
"Yes, Tony.", she told him, with a decisive nod. There was something in her eyes that day, as she gazed at him over a steaming cup of hot tea and the papers she would need to file for maternity leave, dulled with a mysterious resignation. "I am having a girl."
"Oh. That's Good.", he said, and gulped as the syllables left his mouth.
She smiled then, and looked down, to where her hands were folded together, white-knuckled, in her lap.
"I will not be leaving forever. Only for a few months…weeks, maybe. As soon as I can hire a babysitter whom I trust, I will be back at work and we will be kicking ass and taking flames."
"Names, Ziva. Kicking ass and taking names.", he corrected, and reached across the tiny break room table, taking one of her hands in his. He watched as she swallowed, surprised and relieved when her fingers laced between his, instead of their usual pulling away.
Behind them, he could hear the buzz of the Navy Yard below, through a window someone had left open in the sweltering summer heat. Life went of as it always had, without regard to miniscule landmines that erupted in every moment of every day.
"I do not know what am I doing, Tony.", she confessed, as quietly as she could.
"Well…", Tony began, letting a deep breath he had been unaware he was holding in seep from his pursed lips. "You have Arthur, right? Let him do the legwork for a little while.", he told her, the very mention of the man's name sucking the bit of air from his lungs again.
Arthur was Ziva's fiancé, a downtown businessman who was comfortably boring, with a beach cottage and a yacht from his parents with a blue and white stripe down the bow. He was Jewish, and mild-mannered, and for all of Tony's efforts to hate him, Arthur was good to Ziva and more importantly, good for her.
The two men had reached their understanding after Arthur had torn apart Bethesda to be by her side after a stray bullet during a shootout had just grazed her calf, and Tony understood. He was no Michael Rivkin, or Ray Cruz. He was someone who cared for her deeply, he could tell, from the way that he looked at her, and held her hand, and proposed to her in a beautiful rooftop restaurant in Los Angeles, not even four months before.
Now, the two of them were expecting. Who was he to hold her back from that kind of happiness?
"Tony…I-", she sighed, and looked away, focusing on a point just beyond the branches of the low-hanging trees outside the window. "Arthur…", she began.
"Arthur is not exactly in the picture anymore."
"What?"
She shifted uncomfortably, and his breath hitched at the back of his throat.
"He…", there was a pause as Ziva glanced back at him, her dark eyes now swimming with tears. "He found out about Bodnar, and he no longer believed my story about the car crash.", she told him, plainly, as a few fat tears rolled down her cheeks.
"Arthur", she said, with a kind of bitterness that only betrayed how much she had truly loved and wanted a life with him, "did not want to be on the run from an assasain his entire life…and he told me he was not interested in…damaged goods.", she choked out. His grip around her hand tightened.
The rat bastard, he thought, watching as she blinked away at a stream of tears.
"Ziva…"
"Tony, do not try to say any different. I am not in the mood."
He chewed on the inside of his cheek, and grimaced. There were many things that their respective jobs had prepared them for, but even from his limited understanding of the Mossad, Tony could guess that suddenly finding yourself a single mother was not one of them.
"How long-"
"It has been two months. I did not want to bring in it into the office."
Tony nodded, and softy sighed, his free hand balled into a fist underneath the table. He never wanted Arthur to marry Ziva, deep down, though he had promised to be in the front row for her planned wedding on a Grecian beach.
Plans, and plane tickets, he realized with a start that were now supposed to be sitting at the bottom of his trash can.
"Does he know about, you know, uh…", he was flustered, even now. It was still so difficult to say.
"My daughter? No. He applied for a transfer to the California office and wants nothing more to do with me. I do not plan to tell him, and I thought-", Ziva ducked her head and gestured towards the papers spread between them, "I would do the paperwork now, before things are further complicated by insurance deadlines. My coverage has to be renewed within the next few weeks and, well, you know how it is, Tony."
He grinned. Even in their darkest hours, Ziva stayed practical as ever, a steely resolve settling in behind her tear-filled eyes.
Still, she had left herself open for him to take an opportunity she knew was too tempting for him to back away from.
Tony leaned across the table, and brushed her cheek. He noticed her tense and relax under him, but didn't pull away just yet.
"Ziva-", he whispered. "I didn't mean Arthur. I meant the Boss-man. Gibbs is gonna go nuts."
She giggled, and for one moment, all felt right in his world. "Tony!"
"Luckily, one very Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo will be around to take that slap for you.", he joked, his own smile growing with hers.
"I know.", she replied, and dropped his hand. She checked the clock ticking by on the wall, and gathered her papers back into the bright manila envelope under her cup of tea.
"We will deal with that when it comes, but I have a feeling we will probably have to deal with that mountain of paperwork McGee left for us downstairs first.", she told him, as she wiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand.
"I still can't believe he called in sick. With the flu!", Tony groaned, catching up to her just as she pulled the break room's heavy door open. Ziva would want to talk in her own time, but for now, it was more than enough for him to see her smile again, as she threw up her hands in mock exasperation.
"I know!", she laughed a little as they made their way down the catwalk above the bullpen. "Who gets the flu in the middle of May?"
They faded back into the easy pattern of their banter, and rolled their eyes at McGee's empty desk and the heaping piles of unfinished reports Gibbs had delegated into their desk mailboxes.
"Ziva.", Tony started, again, just as she shoved the envelope underneath a half-done case report and moved to take her seat at her desk.
"Yes, Tony", she asked, acutely aware of Gibbs presence behind them, where he was pretending to look over a folder stamped with Director Vance's signature.
"You're not alone.", he told her, simply, just as he had when she had left to bury her father all those months ago. He watched as her jaw dropped, and her eyes sparkled with a sheen of yet more unshed tears. Ziva swallowed, and gave a curt nod.
"I…", her words had caught in her throat, trapped by the realization of exactly what he had promised.
"I know you know.", Tony said, his voice barely above a whisper. "I just wanted to tell you." He gave her hand a tight squeeze under her desk, and watched from his desk as she sunk into her chair, and picked up the requisite red pen and a folder from the top of her stack.
He would look back on that day for years to come, with a reserved smile and a balled fist ready to reply to what an impulsive, utterly stupid decision he had made.
Jumping in feet first, as all fathers did, he would find, was something of a study in foolishness and perfecting a sort of lovely chaos.
Notes: This is me jumping on the baby!fic bandwagon, sort of. I'll be trying to post a chapter per day, sometimes I may post two or miss a day, but I already have most of this story written up, so I don't think I'll do that often.
For those of you who are interested in where I see the timeline of this fic fitting in, I'd say that the Ziva/Arthur relationship maybe went from just after last summer, to just about the date she references during she and Tony's conversation. This guy is really not a major player in the story, so don't worry about him!
Please review! :)