As always, thanks for all of the lovely reviews. I am ecstatic at the fact that my first published full length T/Z story is getting such good feedback. So thank you.


Tony was losing hope with each passing day that Ziva wanted to keep their little girl. What started as a simple fear had swiftly turned into overwhelming dread. As the days went by, she came up with more and more ways to either change the subject quickly when the baby was brought up or avoid talking about it completely. Before he knew it, two weeks had gone by since he'd talked to Abby and they still hadn't made any progress. He knew that Abby was right, and that he needed to talk to her, but any time he thought that he might be able to, he was too afraid to follow through.

On the few rare occasions that he actually did get the guts to try bringing the topic up, she seemed to realize where he was going and she would either start talking about something else, or make an excuse to leave the room. He thought it was almost unfair that she still seemed to be able to read him, but his ability to read her was lessening by the day.

Why was she avoiding talking about it? Was she so set already on a decision that it was pointless for him to keep trying? Or was she afraid that if he did talk to her, he would wind up changing her mind? Did she just not want to talk about it with him?

No matter how hard he tried to figure it out, he was clueless.

At the very beginning, she'd told him that she didn't want to go through this situation alone, and now suddenly it seemed that she was trying to. Part of him tried to believe that it was just because everything had been so stressful around them lately, and she was just trying to keep things sane by not talking about the source of most of their recent disputes. However, he knew that the possibility of that being her reasoning was slim. They hadn't been fighting that much. They had argued a few times, sure, but not bad enough for her to stay mad at him or to barely speak to him.

His nightmares were getting worse, and were now so common now that the only way he could sleep at all was to take sleeping pills or drink, and neither really helped any. He still woke up feeling either tired, lethargic, slightly hungover, or a combination of the three. It was all he could do to keep it from affecting the way he worked. They were already one agent short on the field. They definitely didn't need him to start spacing out on the job.

After a while of not hearing anything from either of them, Abby's curiosity seemed to get the best of her, and she walked into the squad room one day and asked Ziva how she was doing.

Ziva's response wasn't one that either of them would have hoped for, though. She simply shrugged and said, "I'm fine, Abby."

Abby nodded, eyes meeting Tony's for the briefest moment before speaking again. "So, uh, do... do you want me to give you a baby shower? I... I realized that I didn't actually ask you, and that I just told you I was throwing you one without asking if that was okay, so..."

Ziva's eyes snapped to Tony's, as if she knew he'd talked to her, but she quickly broke the connection to look back at Abby. "I... If you want to, Abby, you can."

"So if you get a lot of stuff, you're going... to use it?" She asked slowly, eyes wide. Tony held his breath, waiting for her to answer. Abby had, in a roundabout way, just asked Ziva the question that had been burning in his mind for weeks.

Ziva looked down at her hands in her lap, her lips pursed. "I... I do not know, Abby." She said slowly, not looking up.

Tony's heart sank, and he picked up his stapler, twisting it around in his hands. He looked over at McGee, who was watching him as opposed to the rest of the room who had their attention on Ziva. He gave him a halfhearted shrug, and McGee shrugged in return.

Abby nodded. "Okay." she replied, though it nearly sounded like a question. "Well, have you thought about... any names?"

Ziva pulled the corner of her bottom lip between her teeth. "A little." She murmured, and Tony's interest picked up the slightest bit.

"What have you thought about?" Abby's eyes lit up a little, and she looked over at him. He shrugged, listening intently to whatever was about to be said.

"I..." Ziva struggled, looking as if she wanted to be anywhere but sitting in her desk with the entire team listening to her response. "I want her to... to have a... Hebrew name somewhere, whether it is middle or first, I... I don't know, but... other than that..." she shrugged uncomfortably, and Tony noticed she was avoiding looking at him.

Abby leaned against the wall behind Ziva's desk. "Well... " she pondered. "You could do a Hebrew first name, and..." Her eyes widened. "Her middle name could... it could be Kelly."

Four sets of eyes sharply looked to Gibbs, who was looking at his computer with a small smile on his face. He shrugged simply, looking over at Ziva. "I like it."

Everyone relaxed at his words, and McGee gave an appreciative nod. "I like it, too."

For the first time since Abby had first come in, Ziva looked at Tony, and for a moment, she looked as if she felt almost guilty. But too soon, the look was gone and replaced with a much more neutral expression.

Abby clapped, a wide smile on her face. "I think that would be adorable!"

Ziva sighed, shaking her head slightly. "Abby..."

Abby seemed to recognize the tone in Ziva's voice, and she deflated quickly, looking over at Tony with a shrug and an "I tried" expression. He gave her a small shrug of his own as she stammered out a "I'm gonna go" and left.

Tony put his head in his hands, feeling even more hopeless, and knowing that he was going to have to talk to Ziva soon, whether he wanted to get into that conversation or not. It had to be done, no matter how terrified he was.

He looked back up at her, and she was biting her lip, staring at her clenched fist on her desk. He watched as she closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath. Maybe this wasn't any easier on her than it was on him, he thought. Maybe there was more of a chance than there seemed to be.

"You okay?" he asked, wishing desperately that he could take that expression off of her face. No matter how she treated him or how far away she pushed him, he cared too much for his own good.

She looked up at him, seeming almost shocked that he was speaking so gently with her. "I..." she struggled for a minute, and then spoke firmly. "I'm going to be fine."

She nodded once, formal, and any hope he'd just had was suddenly gone. He put his head back in his hands, knowing he would need painkillers for the headache he could feel coming. The phone rang loudly in the silence, and Gibbs answered it, hanging up after a moment to tell them that they had a case. Tony stood, followed by McGee, who stayed relatively silent throughout the whole baby name discussion. He gave Tony a look of sympathy as they passed by Ziva's desk, neither one of them saying a word.

When they got back to the office a few hours later, he tried to avoid meeting her gaze, which, if he'd been paying attention, wouldn't have been that difficult, because she was doing the same.

But he didn't pay attention, or at least, he tried not to, because he knew what that would do to him, and he had to stay sane somehow.


"DiNozzo, I am not going to talk to her for you. If you want to talk to her, you do it. Stop acting like you're five," Gibbs said from where he stood in his basement.

Tony sighed. "I've tried. She's... she's almost refusing to talk to me about it."

"She's been talking to you, Tony," Gibbs said, narrowing his eyes slightly.

"Something changed. I don't know what changed. I mean, yeah, we had a few fights over a few weeks, but... that wouldn't make her so indifferent to me. I mean, we said our "I'm sorry"s and worked everything out. She's just... she's avoiding the topic now," Tony explained, rubbing his hand over his forehead.

"Try harder," Gibbs replied simply, sanding down a piece of wood.

"It's not that easy!" Tony yelled, feeling tears stinging his eyes. "She's completely avoiding me, and... and that doesn't just hurt because I want to keep our baby. That hurts because this whole time, she's been treating this all like a mistake that shouldn't have happened, and it doesn't feel that way to me!"

He closed his eyes, taking a few deep breaths to calm the urge he had to hit something. When he opened his eyes again, Gibbs was looking at him with a look that was somewhere between pity and understanding. "You don't think it was a mistake."

It wasn't a question, but he answered anyway. "No. When I woke up that morning and she was gone, I... It hurt. When I tried to talk to her about it, before I knew she was pregnant, she just told me to forget about it. She said it was just a mistake. She's been treating it like that the whole time, and at first... at first I thought that the fact she was pregnant would change the way I looked at it all, but it didn't."

"That's more than I want to know," Gibbs responded, turning back to the piece of wood he was sanding.

"Thanks for listening, though. It helps a little," he offered, and Gibbs smiled slightly.

"You've got to talk to her, DiNozzo. I can't do it for you, and you can't keep coming to me to play Dr. Phil and vent everything on me. This is between you and her, and if you want her to know that you care about her and want to keep your baby, she's going to have to hear it from you."

Tony sighed. "Yeah, I know, but every time I picture how that conversation is going to go, it doesn't go well."

Gibbs didn't say anything else, so he stood, walking toward the stairs. "Thanks, again."

Gibbs grunted in response, and Tony smirked, knowing that was all he was going to get. If there was any piece of stable ground through all of this, it was Gibbs. Of course, that was how things had always been, and the fact that it wasn't changing despite the circumstances was comforting.

The drive home took longer than usual, because snow was starting to fall. The February chill had been a little worse this year, he thought vaguely, trying not to lose himself in his more dangerous thoughts. Thinking about the weather was a safer path to travel down. He knew that Gibbs and Abby were both right; if he wanted to tell Ziva anything, he would have to do it himself, and he would have to do it soon.

But knowing that he had to do it and actually getting the courage to do it were two completely different things.