They drive to the hospital with all haste, Tony itching the whole way to pull his handheld cop siren from under the back seat. Ziva's stubborn and somewhat irrational desire to take a shower has set them back at least a half hour. She sits in the passenger seat, panting heavily with her face screwed up in pain.
"Fuck," she wheezes, her hands balling into fists against his upholstered seats. His foot presses harder against the accelerator.
"Almost there," he promises, speeding through a yellow light.
The contraction subsides then, leaving her breathing heavily as beads of sweat trickle down her forehead and reflect beams from the streetlights.
"Hangin' in there?"
"Shut up and drive," she seethes through clenched teeth.
Tali clung to Ziva for what felt like hours, her hot tears soaking through the warm fabric of her sister's faded shirt. At some point Ziva had guided her to sit on the bed and pulled in tighter, drinking in every aspect of her sister. She had grown and changed so much. The last few years had been hard on her, undoubtedly. Losing her mother in sister in such rapid succession would devastate even the strongest of adults. Tali had been just a little girl, only nine years old. She had been small and sweet and above all, somewhat fragile.
And now, what was Tali now? The past few years had damaged her, most likely, but how irreparable the damage would prove to be was still to be determined.
As Ziva tossed the question around in her head, somewhere along the line she realized she should be asking the same thing of herself. The wounds on her back throbbed.
Tali's eyes eventually ran dry, but by that point afternoon was beginning to bleed into evening. Ziva felt a sudden shard of panic stab her when she remembered her father.
"Tali, when does Eli usually come home?"
Tali sniffled and pulled her face away, leaving behind a dark spot where it had been buried in Ziva's shirt. "He left yesterday for a conference. He won't be back for a few weeks," she responded, wiping at her splotchy red eyes. The words instantly released some of the built up tension in Ziva's shoulders and she silently thanked God for this tiny stroke of good luck.
"Where is Ari?"
"Edinburgh."
"We need to call him," Ziva stated, petting Tali's hair gently. "Do you have his number?" Tali nodded into her sister's shoulder. "Okay. I'm going to go take a shower now, but when I come back out we'll call him. You'll be okay?"
"Yeah." Tali's voice came out soft and stilted. Ziva pressed a kiss to her cheek before extricating herself from the tangle of arms and heading to their bathroom.
The water, though warm and familiar and relaxing, did not provide her with the feeling of renewal and refreshment that she had hoped it would. It cleansed her body but her soul still felt stained, and Ziva wondered how long it would take for it to be washed away. The open wounds on her back stung sharply in protest when the hot, pressured water pounded against them, but she felt a strange disconnect from the pain. It was there, throbbing and burning, and she did not care. She had fantasized enough times about coming home that the whole day seemed to be just that—a fantasy. It had not quite sunken in yet, and until it did she seemed to be somewhat on the outside looking in.
The shampoo was, strangely enough, what made it all seem real. Scent is the most powerful memory trigger, and as she kneaded the same jasmine-infused gel that she and Tali had always used through her hair suddenly every sense became heightened. The scent brought back vivid memories of the days before her mother died and everything began to snowball. It reminded her of being in high school and braiding her sister's hair and taking piano lessons from the strict old Polish lady next door. It reminded her of Shabbat dinners and running through olive groves and picking flowers for her Aunt Nettie to set on the table at her house in Hiafa.
It reminded her of home and suddenly everything was real again. But it was nothing like it had been before—she was nothing like she had been before. Everything seemed older, grayer, more tired than she remembered. But then again perhaps she was simply projecting her own damaged soul onto her surroundings.
The world now sat before her in high definition and surround sound, shocking her to her bones. She could suddenly feel every individual drop of water, now searing hot against her pale skin. Her back throbbed angrily in protest and she shut off the water, shivering as the cool air hit her. The shivers continued and soon she realized she was unable to stop shaking, and it was no longer due to the draft. She leaned back against the tile wall, running her hands down her wet face and taking a deep, calming breath. She could not fall apart now. There would be plenty of time later for her to break under the weight of the past few years, but now Tali and Ari and her potential child needed her to be her usual calm and collected self.
She took a few more deep breaths and emerged, wrapping the white towel around herself and pushing open the bathroom door. Tali was still sitting on the bed, her head shooting up the second she heard the door open. Her breath caught, as if she had once again realized her sister was truly alive, risen from the dead.
Ziva just offered her a gentle smile and headed to her dresser, surprised to find that it still held her clothes.
"I made sure Abba didn't throw your stuff out. I told him that I would be able to use it, once I grew up," Tali explained. "Really I just could not… It felt like throwing you away."
Ziva pulled out her favorite pair of cargo pants, a loose-fitting t-shirt, and some undergarments. She pulled the underwear on, dropped the towel, and slipped into the pants, knotting them tightly to keep them from sliding down her bony hips. When she went to put on her shirt, she heard a small gasp from the other side of the room.
"Ziva…" Tali whispered brokenly, sounding on the verge of tears.
"It is nothing, Tali. You do not need to worry," Ziva denied with a backward glance.
"The towel is all bloody. It needs to be wrapped." When had Tali become capable of such calm rationale? She'd always known her sister to become incredibly emotional and sometimes illogical in serious situations. "I'll go get you something."
Ziva watched her sister dash out of the room, wondering just how much she had missed.
The sound of ringing had never made Ziva more anxious than it did as she and Tali curled up on the couch with the landline tucked under the younger's ear. This would by no means be an easy phone call. There was no telling how her brother would react, and there was no truly delicate way to break the news to him this way.
"Hello?"
"Ari? It's Tali."
"Tali! Everything okay?" Ziva heard faintly through the receiver.
Tali hesitated. "There's something you need to know. But… you have to promise to try to stay calm, okay?"
"I don't like the sound of that," Ari responded. "What's wrong?"
"I… um…" she glanced quickly at Ziva, who was gesturing for her to hand over the phone. "There's someone you have to talk to. Try to be calm, okay? I love you." Ziva accepted the outstretched phone with shaking hands.
"Ari? It's Ziva." Her voice was so tiny, so tentative, that when he did not respond she thought he might not have heard her. She was about to open her mouth to say something else when she heard a crashing noise and a furious yell.
"That absolute fucker!" he screamed, and Ziva heard another crash and a thump. It sounded like he was kicking something, probably furniture. She winced and held the receiver a few inches away from her ear.
"Ari, please, calm down," she pleaded, and miraculously he stopped. His heavy, rapid breaths formed little bursts of static in the receiver.
"I'm on the first flight back to Tel Aviv," he seethed, and Ziva winced. Her brother was out for blood. "Where is he?! I'll kill the goddamn bastard myself!"
"You need to be rational, Ari!" she cried. "You are angry. I understand, I'm angry too. But—"
"Ziva," he growled savagely. "I'm more than just angry. He lied! The son of a bitch lied to me and to Tali and to the world! He… God, where have you been, Ziva?! Please don't say Be'er Sheva. Please."
Her silence told him everything.
"He's not going to live to see another day," Ari snarled.
"Just come home, Ari. We need to leave Israel, all of us. We should not talk say anything more here, just… Come home."
"I'll be on the first flight back. Then we'll figure out the plan," he assured her, his voice softening just a bit. "Be safe, both of you."
Then he hung up.
Ziva pulled the black scarf off her head as she slipped back into the apartment the next day. Tali was at school for another few hours, so Ziva had enough time to get this done and get rid of the evidence. Until she knew for sure, she was not ready to tell anybody.
She had run out to the store down the street, taking the precaution of covering her head to try to keep from being recognized. All she returned with was a small box. It was that box that she took upstairs with her to the bathroom.
She only had a few minutes to wait, and with strangely calm hands she flipped over the small white stick and let out a small breath.
A little pink plus sign confirmed her suspicions, and she didn't know how to feel.
She put the scarf back on, walked to the dumpster behind the building, and threw it in.
Ari arrived the day after that, duffel bag slung over his shoulder and his hair longer than Ziva remembered. The first thing she noticed as he pushed open the apartment door was his set jaw, tense shoulders, and eyes that seemed to burn with anger.
The second he saw her, however, he seemed to momentarily forget his anger with Eli, only capable of focusing his attention on his ghost of a sister. His shoulders slumped and the bag dropped to the floor.
"Ziva." His voice held a mixture of disbelief and sadness, but there were small hints of happiness in the way the corner of his mouth twitched upward.
"Welcome home," she greeted, and somehow they crossed the distance and she was in his arms.
Hours later finds Ziva situated in a room in the maternity ward, mentally cursing every person who dares to even breathe too heavily. The contractions come and go at ever-shortening intervals and with increasing severity, and the pain far surpasses anything she has endured before this. Even the worst of nights in Be'er Sheva is incomparable.
Tali has been sleeping on the chair by the window for almost a half hour, her light snores grating on Ziva's already tightly-wound nerves. Usually she finds the soft noises endearing, but tonight even the most minor of things is a cause for annoyance.
Tony and Ari come and go, making unnecessary trips back and forth from her room to the cafeteria. Ziva knows it is because they find the situation uncomfortable, and she can hardly blame them. She wonders briefly why Tony has stayed for what is nearing almost four hours, but dusts the thought off with the realization that she does not care why, she just cares that he has. It would feel strange for him not to be here, she decides, however irrational that is.
She reads the same issue of People magazine twice, pausing at intervals to pant and grunt her way through excruciating contractions, before Dr. Kendiss informs her that she is fully dilated. She refuses the epidural, because despite the excruciating pain she still values her pride above all else.
Through the pain she manages to pant out for Ari to take Tali out into the hall, but her younger sister insists on staying. She seems entirely fascinated with the whole process, and Ziva does not want to deny her the experience of witnessing the miracle of birth.
At the moment, though, it just feels like a whole hell of a lot of pain.
At Tali's refusal, she turns her head to Tony, who looks like he is ready to make beeline for the door. Somehow, however, his hand has found its way into hers, and she is holding it with a bone-crushing grip that makes leaving out of the question. Strangely enough, she cannot even find it in herself to feel uncomfortable that he will witness this incredibly personal moment. It somehow seems so natural for him to be here when her son is born. She will have to thank him later.
A somewhat murky voice is commanding her to push, and she complies.
"You talked to Bashan?"
"Yes," Ari replied, sitting down on the couch next to Ziva and flipping the prepaid cell phone shut. "He's on it."
"How long?"
"A few weeks he said. It's a rush job, it's the best he can do."
"He will be thorough, yes? I do not want to risk…" she trailed off, unwilling to think of the consequences should their father manage to track them.
"He's got some of the best guys he knows doing this. We should be fine, just make sure we take extra precautions." There was a moment of hesitation before he continued. "He was so surprised and happy to hear that you are alive."
She shuddered. "I still… I am still shocked that Eli would do such a thing. It does not harm be, but Tali! She had just lost her mother! The nerve…"
"Me, too."
She frowned, looking up at him. "What?"
"It hurt me too, Ziva. You are my sister. It was… a very difficult loss. This is nothing short of a miracle."
She smiled sadly and patted his hand. "But why would he do this?"
"It's my fault. I went to him the day before you were to be sent on the mission. I let my anger get away from me, and it must… It must have led him to believe that I would interfere if he sent you on the mission. So he told us that the plane carrying you crashed in the desert, was incinerated on impact."
"You were not suspicious?"
"Oh, I was very suspicious. But he is not a fool, and he fabricated a lot of evidence, and eventually I could not deny it any longer. I left for Ediburgh on his orders maybe a month later. I felt like a monster for leaving Tali so soon, but as you surely understand, orders are orders."
"Yes," she responded, her voice haunted. She could feel his eyes studying her.
"Ziva," he sighed, and she looked up, "How bad was it?"
She gulped, averting her gaze to the faded family picture on the coffee table. "Bad." It was only one word, but her voice cracked.
He hesitated. "How… how often did they…?"
She looked up at him sharply. "You should not ask those kinds of questions."
"Zi—"
"You do not want to know," she interrupted with a sad but piercing glare. "Trust me."
He did not challenge that.
That night Ziva sat at the kitchen table with a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a towel, and her necklace. The past few years had left it tarnished and dirty, but as she rubbed away the filth it began to sparkle once again. It filled her with a strange sense of calm. The gentle, therapeutic motion soothed her tumultuous soul, and in some ways she felt that with each stroke she was also cleansing herself.
She wiped away the dirt of the past and prepared herself to start anew.
They left a little less than two weeks later, on the morning of the day Eli was scheduled to return. They had obtained the fake IDs and passports, picked them up at a scheduled drop point having been placed there by one of Bashan's most trusted men. They packed lightly, taking only clothes with them.
Tali cried heavily that day, at one point arguing that they did not need to leave. But they boarded the plane all the same and Ziva allowed herself one small, discreet tear for the life she was leaving behind.
They took off into the sky.
Two weeks after arriving in Washington, D.C., she opened her eyes in the hospital with a stabbing headache and a panicked heart. The anxiety subsided when a nurse in pink assured her there was nothing to worry about. Her siblings were fine, her baby was fine, and it was just a concussion. Relief flooded through her.
Then a man with sea green eyes appeared in the doorway and smiled.
Pain consumes her for what feels like hours, and colorful expletives and sharp cries pierce the air relentlessly.
It goes as quickly as it came, and suddenly there is crying and nothing from that day really seems to matter. None of the things that set her on edge, made her want to strangle various nurses and family members and Tony, are important, and her nerves melt away with every breath her newborn son takes.
She only gets to see a glimpse of pink, goo-covered skin before he is whisked away by nurses to be tested and cleaned and swaddled in a soft blue blanket. She cranes her neck to see past the women in scrubs to her baby, and the softest twitch of Tony's hand reminds her that she still has his fingers clenched in her fist. A glance back at his face reveals to her a small, happy smile. His mossy eyes gleam and reflect that happiness she feels right back at her.
"Congratulations," Dr. Kendiss says, interrupting their brief moment. Tony's hand tightens slightly in hers and before pulling away, freeing her arm to reach out to the small blue bundle in the doctor's arms. The small child is placed gently in Ziva's arms, the warm weight more welcome than she ever could have imagined. "You have a healthy baby boy. He's a bit on the lighter side due to how early he is—five pounds, twelve ounces. Twenty and a half inches long. And as cute as a button."
The statistics are lost on Ziva's ears—all she can focus on is her son's face. His nose and mouth are smaller than Ziva could ever have imagined, and small tufts of dark hair grew on his smooth head. However, it is eyes that really captivate her; brown and wide, they hold within them a world of innocence and perfection.
Protectiveness and love unlike anything she has ever felt before floods through her as she stares into the face of a tiny, helpless little child who will rely on her for anything and everything. And he is hers, she realizes with a start, completely and utterly hers.
It does not scare her as much as it probably should, because suddenly it does not matter how she will provide for him. She will find a way, no matter what obstacles stand in her path. She would go to the ends of the earth if necessary, and she knows that now.
"He's so tiny," Tali whispers, sitting on the side of the bed and staring with wide eyes.
"Yeah," Tony and Ari both reply in unison, seeming just as mesmerized as the two sisters.
"Does he have a name?" one of the nurses asks.
"He does, but Zivi hasn't told anyone yet," Tali answers.
Ziva smiles gently, her long fingers smoothing her baby's thin hair. "His name is Ethan. It means enduring," she reveals. She picked out the name months ago, after noticing it in the baby book Tony had purchased for her. It jumped out from the page and since then any other name seemed wrong.
"Ooo," Tali coos, playing with her nephew's small, pudgy fingers. "I like that. Little baby Ethan."
The nurse with the birth certificate presses on. "Will he have a middle name?"
At this Ziva hesitates, glancing first to Tony and then to her brother. "I did have one in mind, yes," she responds softly.
"Jebediah?" Tony jokes, a mild attempt at lightening the situation. Ziva offers him a crooked smile.
"No. But, I was thinking, uh…" She swallows and shrugs. "Anthony?"
For a moment, Tony does not respond, but then it hits him and his eyes widen, heat flooding his cheeks. "Ziva, I was kidding, I don't expect you to actually—"
"I know," she interrupts curtly. "But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it fits."
"Ziva." He leans forward and grasps her hand, staring straight into her eyes with his brow furrowed. "This is your son we're talking about."
"I have thought this through, Tony. I am not impulsive. I want him to be named after someone he can look up to. You have been here every step of the way for eight months. If my son turns out even halfway like you I will be a proud mother."
Tony swallows audibly, unable to think of an adequate response. "But Ari—"
"Does not want a kid named after him," her brother interrupts with a wry smile. "She clearly isn't going to be changing her mind, DiNozzo, so stop arguing."
When Ziva looks back at Tony his eyes are gleaming. "I… I am so honored, Ziva. It… It means a lot." He hesitates for a short moment before leaning forward and planting a quick but meaningful kiss to her temple. When he pulls away, she feels a loss.
"He's beautiful," Tony mutters. "Ethan Anthony Regev."
"Yes," Ziva responds dazedly. "He really is."
She stares absently at the paper in her lap, pen poised stagnant in the air.
"You okay?" Tony asks.
She insisted that Ari take Tali home for her to sleep at some point around 0900. She tried to make the same demands with Tony, but he made up all sorts of excuses. Somehow, he saw right through her and knew that she did not truly want to be alone. Now he is standing at her bedside, cradling her son while she fills out paperwork.
She has never deserved him.
"I am fine," she responds, blinking a few times at the line on the paper. Filling out a birth certificate, such a simple thing, has turned into an introspective reflection. And it is not just the fake name, for both her and her son, that bothers her, although that is certainly part of it.
Full Maiden Name of Mother: Ziva Regev
Full Name of Father: ...
It does not usually trouble her, Ethan's parentage. She has always thought of him as hers and hers only, although logically she knew that half of his genes belonged to a man whose face she could not—did not want to—remember.
The blank mocks her, attempts to take an otherwise perfect day and tarnish it by throwing her back into the clutches of her darkest days. Knowing she has no choice, she hastily scribbles the word unknown and hands it back to the nurse, trying to keep Tony from seeing it. She chastises herself for it, but she does not want him to think less of her.
Ethan begins to cry then, and Ziva's eyes focus on his small body cradled in his arms. Rather than immediately hand him over, Tony begins to bounce on his toes, rocking the baby gently back and forth and humming softly. Ethan's cries soften and fall away.
Warmth spreads through her chest and suddenly it does not hurt so much anymore.
…
A/N: I feel like this chapter has been such a long time coming. I've been writing this story for over a year, I can't believe that. It's taken so long to get here but I'm glad that it has. And a lot of people have asked me recently if the story is going to end here. No, of course not. There is so much that hasn't been resolved yet. We've got a ways to go, don't you fear. There's no way this doesn't last into fall (with my updating schedule maybe even later!).
On that note, I am so sorry this took so long. I really didn't think it had been that long of a time since I'd updated but when I got two reviews in one day by people thinking I'd forgotten I realized it had been actually quite a while. So I'm sorry.
I also want to apologize to anyone who was confused a few weeks back. I accidentally updated Part II of All the King's Horses as chapter 38 of this. I took it down immediately once I realized my mistake but unfortunately everyone who has this story on alert thought I had actually updated the story.
I hope the chapter lived up to expectations! I know there are a lot of high expectations for this one. I also hope you like the name. I think it fits.
Thank you so much to NCIS Ziva DiNozzo, Bex19, clestaffordt, amaia, shortcake99, prince-bishop, nevergiveuphope2, skydancer81, Miss Suave, bunnykoko, J09tiva, 123sannancis, Tapes and Records, slurmina, simsee, a guest reviewer, EowynGoldberry, dvd123, Aquasm, Licaro, Mari83, greeny13, Libby, mysticgirl101, nanoushka, tintcalad, DHDiNozzoDavid, bonycastle237, and another guest reviewer for the fantastic feedback on the last chapter! The response absolutely blew me away. Apologies again to those who reviewed asking about the mistake with 38. And a billion thanks to Abby for both reviewing and helping me with this chapter (it was a struggle).