2013

The room was immersed in a type of absolute silence that could only be found at 4 a.m. in a Monday. The only sound he could hear was her calm, slow breathing beside him. Tony had developed the habit of waking up around that time to use the bathroom. He was about to get up when he realized something was off.

"Can't sleep?" he whispered in her ear, his hand gently touching her shoulder.

"I wassleeping." She tried to sound tired and annoyed.

"You can't fool me, David. I'm a Senior Field Agent. And I knowyou weren't sleeping."

Ziva laughed and opened her eyes, defeated. "How did you know?"

"Magician never reveals his tricks."

"Stop being such a dwarf."

It was his turn to laugh. "Dork."

"Yes, dork. Stop being such a dork. How did you know, Mr. Senior Field Agent?"

He shrugged. "You weren't snoring."

She threw a pillow at him, pretending to be offended. "I do not snore."

"Of course you don't. And Gibbs is a talk show host. Oh, wait…did I just say the complete opposite of the truth?"

"Can we not discuss Gibbs while we are in bed, please?"

"Stop changing the subject, you dwarf." He sat up, giving her a worried look. "What's keeping you up?"

"Nothing. Go back to sleep, Tony."

"Nothing… that's the international code word for 'something is bothering me'. C'mon. What is it?"

"I do not want to talk about it." She buried her face on the pillow, running away from his gaze.

"Well, I do. What is it?" She turned her head so she could see him again, her face so pale and her eyes so filled with fear that she reminded him of the Ziva he met in Somalia a few years before.

"Tony…"

He ran his fingers through his hair. "What? Am I going bald or something?"

The joke came out nervous and uncertain, but she laughed anyway. "No, you are not going bald, Tony…" She trailed off again, looking for words she seemed unable to find.

All that hesitating was making him feel uneasy. "Just tell me, Ziva."

"I am…We are…" She didn't have to courage to actually say it, and she didn't need to. It was written all over her face.

He glanced at her abdomen, then back at her face. "Oh my god… you're pregnant."

"Yes." She sighed, relieved it was finally out there. "I took the test three times, Tony. I am definitely pregnant."

He pretended not to notice the way her body shook as the she spoke the word. They both sat there, paralyzed, for what felt like an eternity. Uncomfortable, Tony broke the silence. "We're really doing this, aren't we?"

"We are." She nodded, clearly terrified. Ziva had never truly considered kids. Children simply weren't in Eli David's supersoldier plan.

"We are going to have a baby!" He kissed her and jumped out of bed, pulling her up with him. His smile was so bright and genuine it calmed her down.

"C'mon, we've got things to do."

"Such as…?"

"Finding a new place." He gestured to his small, messy apartment. "We can't raise a baby in here."

2016

"Morning, Ms. Durand." Said Miguel Valdez, one of the motel employees. She smiled at the strange sound a Mexican man trying to speak English gave to her French last name.

"Morning, Miguel." One of the hardest parts of her new identity was remembering to fake her accent every single time she spoke. It was safer that way, though. If she'd stayed Israeli, tracking her down would be ridiculously easy. In a small town like that one, being a foreigner drew unnecessary attention. She hoped that, by changing nationalities, her identity would be protected. After all, they were looking for an Israeli brunette, not a French blonde. "Could you tell Carlos I'm leaving, please?"

"Will you be coming back, Miss?"

She hesitated for a second. "No."

"Ok then. Goodbye, Ms. Durand. Hope you've enjoyed your stay." He replied half-heartedly, clearly repeating a sentence he'd been taught to say to every single guest the cheap little motel managed to get.

"Goodbye, Miguel." She walked past him, clenching her fingers around the cold metal handle of her small leather suitcase, wondering where Camille Durand would be going next. She had been staying in that motel for almost three months, it was obviously time to leave. However, she still didn't know her next destination. They day before, Monique had called to tell her to pack up her things, go to the airport and wait for a text with further instructions. Ziva didn't like to be kept in the dark. She hated the running, hated the blonde hair, hated the blue contact lenses and hated having so little control over her own life. But Ziva is dead,she told herself once again. And Camille Durand will take what she can get.

She hailed a cab two blocks away from the Motel entrance. The car had the typical strong scent of cigarettes and alcohol that reminded her of the suite she had been living in for the past three months. The leather that protected the seats looked like an abstract painting. She was able to identify burn marks, ashes, dried vomit and a pink colored stain that she was almost completely sure was blood. She had been to torture chambers that looked more inviting than that.

"The airport, please." She said to the driver, a man in his fifties wearing a white shirt damp with sweat and a Yankees baseball cap. He was Middle Eastern, she could tell. She wondered if he could tell too, if he could see through her disguise, if he could see Ziva hidden behind Camille Durand's blue eyes.

"Ok." He barely glanced at her, keeping his eyes on the wheel. She sighed, realizing how irrational was her fear of having her cover blown by a cabbie just because they came from the same continent. Part of her wanted someone to recognize her, even though she knew that her life depended on her identity being kept a secret. It had been way too long since the last time anybody looked at her and saw NCIS Special Agent Ziva David.

. . .

Lying awake in his king sized bed, Tony stared at the ceiling. Once again, he couldn't sleep. He had tried everything: happy thoughts, glass of warm milk, counting sheep… Nothing worked.

The bed had been the very last piece of furniture they'd bought, just a couple of weeks before her disappearance. Most of the nights he'd slept though on that bed were spent alone but, still, every time he looked at it, all he could think about was how empty it felt without that damn Israeli ninja assassin who had stolen his heart and disappeared with it. Every single night of those two years he struggled to fall asleep, sometimes because of his son's cries, but mostly because the silence bothered him. Alone in the dark, he smiled to himself, realizing he couldn't sleep without the sound of her unbelievably loud snores.

He was still awake when his alarm clock told him it was time for work. Tony got up quickly, relieved to have something else on his mind other than Ziva.

"Wake up, big guy." He whispered gently to his son after taking a quick shower and putting on his favorite Armani suit.

"No." The little boy replied decisively, his eyes still tightly shut.

"Yes!" Tony lifted Dave up in a sudden move. The boy didn't appreciate it much, but he had already gotten used to his father's ways to wake him up. "Now, which shirt do you want to wear today: Iron Man or Batman?"

"Iron Man!"

While still holding the child with one hand, Tony opened up his small, white closet and got a red Iron Man shirt, white shorts and red Velcro Converse All Stars. He dressed the boy while telling him a story about Iron Man and his friends, The Avengers. Putting clothes on made Dave really impatient, but Tony had learned that a story about a movie would almost always calm him down. That was one of the many things he and his son had in common. The love for movies, the hair color, the DiNozzo charm… But not the eyes. He had his mother's dark, mysterious eyes. In the first few months after Ziva's disappearance, it was truly hard for Tony to look at his son. He loved his child more than he ever thought he'd be able to love anything, but he kept seeing her in his little eyes, and seeing her hurt way too much.

Eventually, though, he got used to it. He started doing the exact opposite of trying not to see her: he put pictures of her everywhere he could. In the walls, in the fridge, in his phone, in his computer, in his wallet. He wanted his son to get used to her face, he wanted David to know that that face belong to his mom so, once she got back, he'd recognize her. There wasn't a single moment in those two years in which he really considered the possibility of her not coming back. Tony pictured his 80 year old self holding onto the photo of a girl that had been lost for half his life. That thought saddened him. He didn't want to be one of those stubborn grandpas who can't let go of the past, but he couldn't imagine himself ever letting go of her.

. . .

She looked at her watch impatiently. Her flight would be leaving in an hour. She was lucky to get there soon enough to catch it. In that small airport, there was only one flight a day that could take her to her destination. "São Paulo, Brazil."was all Monique's text actually said, but the usual "You'll know more when you get there" was implied. Ziva understood why they had to keep contact to a minimum, but she wished they didn't have to. She wished…god, she wished so many things.

She had been to São Paulo before, in a particularly unpleasant Mossad assignment. There was nothing wrong with the city itself, but things got out of hand and she ended up making some very powerful enemies. Looking back in her Mossad days, she realized making enemies was one of the things she did the most. Her young, reckless self knew that one day those enemies could come back to haunt her, but she didn't care. Mossad operatives usually didn't live to see their 30th birthday, she figured she'd be long gone before any of her ghosts had a chance to catch up with her. She never thought she'd find something worth living for, something worth protecting. She beenhad wrong, and now it was up to Camille Durand to clean up young Ziva David's mess.