Disclaimer: NCIS, own not I.

Spoilers: Mild spoilers to my multi-chapter How Far We've Come, but really, nothing canon.

Setting: Takes place from the beginning of How Far We've Come to ... well, the future. It's not necessary to have read that fic first; some things are just more explainable if you have. This is a one-shot.

Dedication: To Anne. ¡Feliz cumpleaños! I'm afraid I don't have any hombres lying around; can I interest you in a fic? :P

Enjoy!

-Soph


Snapshot

"Tony, cut it out," Ziva groaned, straightening up and turning around to face him at the same time that she dropped a piece of evidence into a bag.

He grinned impishly and lowered the camera. "Cut what out?"

"You know what," she answered rudely. "Stop trying to take pictures of my butt. We should be working."

"Well, Mrs DiNozzo, I don't think Gibbs would mind if I spent a little time admiring my wife of … one day."

She snorted and checked her watch. "Four hours," she corrected. "That was when we collected our marriage license. And you have done nothing but stare at me with that stupid grin since."

"Okay. Firstly, it's not stupid," he replied even as his grin widened. "And secondly, I just got married. To you. I don't think I could stop staring if I tried."

He watched as Ziva's face softened impossibly. She moved forwards to lean up on tiptoe, careful to hold the evidence bag away from them as she pressed her warm lips to his. "Okay," she whispered against him, "but we still have to work, before Gibbs tries to find a way to divorce us from each other. We can celebrate tonight."

"Really?" His excitement shot up, only to plummet when she chuckled.

"I was talking about the celebration dinner. What were you thinking about?"

"You know what."

"Mmm." She kissed him again. "Only if you stop taking pictures of my butt."

"Oh, c'mon!" he protested.

She laughed low in her throat, shooting him a sultry look as she pulled away. And his beam threatened to split his face as he raised his camera, capturing her expression, bedroom eyes and all.

God, was she beautiful.

xoxo

"Please don't tell me you are trying to take a picture of this," she mumbled softly just as the shutter clicked, and he froze guiltily, the camera suspended high in the air above her.

"Um … no?"

She clucked her tongue. "Tony, I'm half-asleep and drooling into the pillow, as you should be. Will you please put away your camera?"

"I can't help it. You look gorgeous right now."

"Cheap flattery like that is not going to prevent me from kicking your ass in the morning."

He laughed and snuggled into her, reaching over her shoulder to leave the camera on the bedside table and then resting his hand on her stomach as he nuzzled the skin right beneath her ear. "You're not allowed to kick my ass while pregnant."

"I'm barely pregnant."

"Pregnant is pregnant, four months or not. Besides, the second trimester is not 'barely.'"

She sighed in defeat and shifted in his arms to face him. "At least tell me I looked radiant," she murmured against the skin of his neck.

The instant that he had taken the photograph, with her hair in wayward curls and her face the very picture of peaceful slumber, flashed through his mind, and he tightened his hold around her as he brushed his lips on her forehead.

Oh, she was positively glowing.

xoxo

The soft click alerted him as to the fact that Ziva currently had her hands on his camera, so he lifted his head and raised his eyebrows at her. She made a face at him.

"I'm taking a picture of the proud father," she explained hoarsely. "Unlike you, I pick the right candid moments."

"Where you've just spent twenty-one hours in labour and I've just spent twenty-one hours having the life squeezed out of me by your hands, and this little bundle has just slept through most of it?"

She rolled her eyes at his—apt, in his opinion—summary. "No, Tony. Where you meet your daughter properly for the first time."

That made tears spring into his eyes. "Ohmygod," he choked out as his baby girl wrapped her fist tightly around his index finger, and Ziva smiled. He sank down onto his wife's hospital bed, suddenly desperate to share their baby girl with her, and she reached over to tickle Baby Girl DiNozzo's cheek.

"She's ours," he breathed out in awe, and Ziva's smile turned radiant.

"Yes," she agreed.

xoxo

TaptaptapTAPTAP, went a small hand, and Ziva winced.

"Gently, nesicha," she chided, guiding her daughter's hand to stroke lightly on the swollen belly. "Ima will be painful if you hit too hard."

"Wake baby," Lila announced proudly to both her parents, and Tony grinned. "Yes, Mommy? Baby wake up?"

Ziva smiled at her daughter. "The baby is awake." She shifted Lila's hand to a spot high on her belly and held it there. "Can you feel that? That is the baby kicking."

"Kikin'," Lila repeated thoughtfully, rubbing Ziva's belly.

"Kicking, yes. He is using his feet," his wife carefully jiggled a foot, "to kick me."

Lila frowned at that. "Baby kik ha'd."

"He wants to come out."

"Mommy no hu't?" Lila protested.

His wife chuckled. "The baby isn't very strong yet, so I do not really feel it. But you are much stronger than the baby—that's why I feel it."

Lila pouted nevertheless. "Baby no kik!" she told Ziva's stomach sternly, and a slightly stunned look crossed Ziva's face before he and she had to look away from each other. Biting back his urge to laugh, Tony reached into his bedside table drawer for the camera.

Click went the shutter again, and the image of Lila attempting—'attempting' being the key word—to gently tap on her mother's stomach as Ziva watched was forever recorded.

xoxo

The moment that they chose to remember of Ben as a new-born was not his premature birth, but the day he went off the ventilator.

And the day he starting feeding on his own.

First words, first steps, first drawings, and the first days of kindergarten were recorded.

They took pictures of both Lila and Ben on their first days of elementary school, all neat with tiny schoolbags and huge smiles; Lila's first piano recital was a moment to remember, as was the day that Ben won grand prize in an art competition.

Soon, it was high school proms and graduation and college and starting work and getting married and grandchildren; Tony wore out more cameras than he could count, but he made sure never to miss a single moment in his family's life.

xoxo

"Ima!" Lila growled as she stomped into the dining room, looking very much like the grown-up version of her teenage self. "Did you tell Adelyn that she could have ice-cream for dinner?"

Confusion crossed Ziva's face for a split second, so quickly that only he could've seen it, before she grinned. "She has been a good girl today! I thought she could have ice-cream as a reward."

"Yes, but after dinner! Why'd you tell her that?"

"Because she is very good at the puppy-dog eyes." His wife laughed as Lila's expression turned into one of despair. "Relax, nesicha. I did not tell her that. She is trying to fool you into doing what she wants."

"Seriously?" Lila asked with disbelief.

"Yes. You used to do that with me and your father."

His daughter groaned. "This is karma," she muttered, and the older woman chuckled.

"This is how children act. You will have to get used to it, because she is just getting to that age…"

"I should've adopted an older kid," grumbled Lila, and Ziva narrowed her eyes at her daughter. "I'm kidding, Mom. You know I love Addie."

"I do." Ziva turned Lila towards the door and started pushing her to it. "Now go tell your daughter that she is not going to get away with it."

Lila had barely set a foot out of the dining room before his wife whirled on him. "Tell me you were not taking a picture of that," she said firmly, and he put on his best innocent expression.

"Picture of what? I'm not even holding the camera."

"Please, I have spent decades hearing that click. I know what you were doing five seconds ago. I am not that hard of hearing."

"Okay, okay. But it's cute! You were being all Mommy to the Mommy."

"Lila was upset because her daughter was lying to her!"

"All the more proof that we raised Lila right," he countered, and Ziva's wrinkle-lined face softened impossibly.

"Fine," she answered, moving forwards to give him a kiss. "You'll get away with it this time. But next time, I will kick your ass."

"You're not allowed to kick my ass because I'm old," he cracked, and her eye-roll was of epic proportions.

xoxo

Ziva stops flipping through the photo album when she reaches the picture of Adelyn holding up some cotton candy, the sticky beam having been captured at a carnival just a few months ago.

"Do you remember?" she asks softly. "That was our fortieth anniversary."

"Of course I remember," he snickers. "It's my hair that's going, not my memory."

"Your hair is already gone." The smirk turns into something gentler as she smoothens out the photograph of their Chinese adoptive granddaughter. "Did you ever think we would make it this far?"

"Not a chance." He leans over to kiss her cheek. "But I don't regret a single. Moment. Of. It."

"Since when did you turn so sappy?"

"Since I got to spend more than forty years with you," he answers, and he swears, he swears, that even after all of these years, he can still make the love of his life blush like a schoolgirl.

"Hey, Grandma, Grandpa!" a happy voice interrupts the moment, and Tony turns to look at his granddaughter with mild amusement.

"Hey, Jia."

"Watcha doing?" The nine-year-old peers over his shoulder at the album. "Oh, I don't think I've seen this one before!"

"Wanna look?" he offers, holding up the photo album, and Adelyn grabs hold of it.

"Thank you." She flips through it eagerly, coming to the very first photograph in the album—the one he'd taken at the start of his and Ziva's long marriage. "Wow, is this when you and Grandma first met? Grandma … why are you wearing that expression?"


In case you're wondering: Yes, Adelyn does have a Chinese name, written both in Chinese script and the English alphabet. Does anyone wanna know it? 'Cause I got a whole story for it :P And for her nickname, too!

Thank you for reading; please review!

-Soph