Title: Maybe Baby
Fandom: NCIS
Author: Alidiabin
Words: 963
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Warnings/ Spoilers: general S7
Parings: none.
Summary: Salim Ulman took one more thing from Ziva.
Maybe Baby
The major case response team did not like cases involving children. Gibbs for obvious reasons, he had buried one. The other members of the team did not like those cases either though for less concrete reasons. McGee just did not like the thought of the venerable child. For Tony the cases reminded him of the less fun aspects of his childhood with senior. Ziva disliked child cases because she was taunted with what she would never have.
They arrived at a crime scene in a small town, a marine on maternity leave. The small town and rather chauvinistic sheriff and has had very little experience with a baby. So the bawling crying mess of six week old baby boy is thrust into Ziva's unwilling yet welcoming olive skinned arms.
"Just because I am a woman" Ziva uttered beginning a familiar rant to her colleagues.
"Doesn't mean you have to look after the kid" Palmer added. Ziva shot him an angry look.
Ziva paced the small hallway. Holding the wailing infant. She rested his head on her shoulder.
"Ssh" she whispered trying to sooth the infant. She rubbed his back and tried to coax the infant into sleep. She felt sorry for the poor thing, his mother was dead and he would never remember her.
The social worker let a smile cross her aged face as she saw Ziva holding the sleeping baby.
"How many do you have?" the social worker asked as she slowly teased the baby from Ziva's embrace.
"None" Ziva uttered, as the child was settled into a carrier.
"None yet" the social worker said with a smile on her face. "You'll be a natural" Ziva watched as the child was taken away. She touched the shoulder where he had just rested.
"None ever" she whispered as she turned back to the crime scene.
Salim Ulman had unknowingly taken her ability to reproduce from her, either him or one of the men he allowed to use her body in the most disgusting way possible, had given an STI. That STI combined with the nutrient deficiency from living on dirty water and very little food for nine weeks had destroyed her fertility.
She remembered the day the doctor told her.
"Ziva" Doctor Sadie Roan stood in front of Ziva, with an open manila folder. Ziva looked up at the brown haired woman. "I don't really know how to tell you this"
"Spit it down" Ziva said mixing up her idioms, due to the fear suddenly pulsing through her body.
"The nutrient deficiency and STI have led to you seriously hindered your fertility" Sadie said softly. Her hand touched Ziva's in comfort.
"It is that it" she lied trying to hide the sadness that suddenly crept through her body.
She had not really thought about it since she had spent the afternoon crying. She had never been one hundred per cent children she wanted children, but the option had been taken away. She no longer had a choice.
Gibbs told Tony and Ziva to ride back to NCIS together. Ziva found that the Gods were taunting her; all she saw were images of children. The billboard they were sitting in front of in the unmoving traffic of DC had a diaper advert on it. The car in front contained two children, boys Ziva assumed as she was only able to see the top half of the back of two heads. The car behind also contained a child, Ziva could see the baby carrier through the mirror.
"Ziva" Tony said interrupting her musings. "You ok?" he asked. "Well obviously not you've been weird since you held that baby. Are you getting clucky?" Tony babbled.
"No" Ziva said in a quiet voice. "I just do not like being confronted with what I will never have"
"What?" Tony asked confused. Ziva expected nothing less; though Tony was a former playboy he had little knowledge of women's health issues.
"I cannot have children" Ziva uttered looking out the window at the wire fence on the highway. "I got an infection, it is cleared up but I cannot have children" Ziva uttered not willing to explain how she ended up with an STI.
"You could adopt" Tony replied, thinking of celebrities and one of his frat brothers who had adopted a kid a few years back.
"Yes" she uttered sarcastically, trying to hide the fact she had indeed looked into adoption the weekend after doctor Roan's revelation "because some adoption agency would really give me a baby" she spoke with a bitter tone remembering that afternoon in her apartment where she realised she would not be able to adopt either. "I am a single woman, who only recently became an American citizen. I have a dangerous job, an emotionally traumatic past and no extended family" Tony looked at her. She understood the flicker of pain in his eyes. "No legal extended family. I love all of you as my family but according to the law you are just my friends" Ziva paused and took a deep breath that seemed to calm her. "Perhaps it is just not meant to be after all I did spend nearly a decade of my life killing people, maybe it means I do not get to create life or even help mould a life already created"
While she spoke a fresh wave of self-pity washed over her, as Tony navigated the highway traffic with ease.
"I should probably count out marriage to" Ziva uttered as traffic finally begun to move. She could hear Tony's unspoken why "No one would want to spend forever with someone who cannot give them kids" she said.
"There you are wrong" Tony whispered as the traffic begun to flow. He had never really wanted kids anyway he thought.
A/N: this is what watching an episode of 'Private Practice' does to my muse. I'd like to go all 'Boston Legal' and sue 'Private Practice' for getting me involved in some baby storyline (I cried for gods' sake) despite my strong dislike of children and desire to live a life of childfree freedom until the day I die.
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