Chapter Forty-Three: No Play, Mommy
After Leanne Holloway's body was discovered, Tony ended up working most of the day, and half of the nights. He had gone back to working case hours he hadn't done since before Penny had come into his life. The only reason it was at all possible for him to be at work that much was because Ziva was at their cover house to take care of Penny. He felt guilty, of course, because he wanted nothing more than to get this mission over with and spend some quality time with his daughter, not to mention Ziva. They'd been officially together for a week and a half and he'd barely spent a waking hour with her since. Some nights he was returning home long after even Ziva had gone to bed, meaning Penny was well and truly asleep, and then his phone would ring in the early hours and he'd be back at work before Ziva woke Penny for preschool. He had no idea what Penny was doing at preschool because he was never there in time for her to run up to him and tell him what she'd done, or show him the picture she'd drawn. He'd seen a few of the pictures in the kitchen, kept to one side by Ziva just in case he returned home that night. He was noticing that day by day, the patterns in her drawings were beginning to look more like the people they were meant to. He could see that the harsh line across Jimmy's eyes was meant to represent his glasses, and that the funny coloured squiggle at the bottom of Ducky's neck was his bow-tie. The attention to detail she was attempting to show was amazing, but the attention to detail he, himself, had shown to his daughter was a level he was ashamed of.
It wasn't only his daughter he was neglecting, but his new girlfriend, if he could even dare to call Ziva that with the amount of time they had spent together recently. Attempting to set the foundations of the lasting relationship they were both looking for were futile, because he was never there. Instead, they seemed to be carrying on like they had been before they had even had the all-important conversation. Sometimes, when he crept into the room in the middle of the night she would turn into him, laying herself out on his chest. Other times, she'd be too far in sleep to even notice he was there, even with her ninja-senses, and he'd be the one to throw his arm over her waist, burying his face in her soft hair to try and forget, just for a while, about work and missions. It never went any further than an innocent cuddle in the night because he was just too exhausted, not to mention still being within the healing limit for the knife wound in his side. He'd even stopped leaving notes promising to be home for dinner that night, because he knew that he'd end up breaking that promise every time.
A week passed, and he was still leaving at the crack of dawn. When Ziva awoke with the alarm, she wasn't surprised to find the bed beside her empty and abandoned, but the fact that the sheets were still messed assured her that Tony had, at least, come home for some rest the night before. She missed him, that much she couldn't deny. They'd finally got to a point where they weren't hiding anything from each other anymore, and then they were being forced to spend so much time apart because of the mission. Whatever she did know about the mission she learned from her daily briefing with Gibbs in the surveillance centre they had set up in one of the empty bedrooms, because Tony was never there to keep her updated. She had learned that Leanne's body had been killed using the same M.O as the other victims, and she knew that this was bad, because it meant that their killer was no longer waiting, but ready to choose their next victim. Of course, given the fact that a strange figure had been seen peering into Penny's bedroom at night, this didn't fill them with hope. In fact, it made Ziva even more alert in Tony's absence, because without him, she was the only one there to protect Penny in the middle of the night.
She went about her usual morning routine, heading into Penny's room to open her curtains. As soon as she set foot in the room the dog was awake, following her around the room. She left the curtains open, before leaving the room; Penny had proved herself much like her father more recently by showing them that giving her time to wake up gradually would promise them a much better mood for the rest of the day from her. After letting sunlight into the bedroom, which usually started to rouse the little girl, Ziva went downstairs, taking the dog with her into the back garden so that he could do his business. It was clouding over, no doubt going to rain that day, and she sighed. If there was one thing she'd discovered the next day, it was that she spent more time cleaning after returning from walking the dog in the rain that she did after catering for a dinner party. Then, she went back upstairs, Chase following as ever, and back into Penny's room.
"Penny, wake up, is it morning!" she said brightly, waiting for the onslaught of 'where's daddy?' that always occurred in the mornings now. However, the bundle underneath the blankets didn't move and complain like usual. "Penny?" Ziva asked, and at Penny's little moan she sat down at the side, peeling back the blankets. "Penny, tateleh, it is time for breakfast," she coaxed.
"Ziva?" Penny asked.
"Yes, Penny, it is me. Are you still sleepy?"
Penny nodded, rubbing her eyes.
"What would you like for breakfast?" she asked.
"Nuffin," Penny grumbled, turning on her side to try and get back to sleep again.
"You shall be very hungry when you are playing later if you do not have breakfast," Ziva pointed out, her voice gentle.
But still, Penny shook her head. "No breakfast," she decided.
"No breakfast?" Ziva replied, a little shocked that Tony's daughter, of all the girls in the world, was turning down her favourite meal of the day.
"No play," she continued.
Ziva frowned, that wasn't like Penny at all. "Tateleh, do you feel sick this morning?" she asked gentle, worry seeping into her tone.
Penny nodded, turning and cuddling up to Ziva. "No play, mommy."
Ziva froze for just a moment, but quickly relaxed. After the first 'mommy' incident, it had started to happen more and more. If she hadn't spoken to Tony about it in the first place she definitely would have had to by now. It was only when Penny was very tired, usually when she put her to bed, that it happened, especially now that Tony was scarcely seen. She couldn't help but feel something was very wrong, an put her hand on Penny's forehead, startled at how warm it felt. This worried her even more, as she had not had a temperature the night before. Gathering Penny into her arms, with the little girl's legs wrapped around her stomach, she lifted her from the bedclothes. "Come with me, neshomeleh, let us check your temperature."
They went downstairs, and Ziva curled Penny onto the couch as she retrieved her cell phone from the small table at the bottom of the stairs, where she had left it that morning. She then collected some clean, cooler pyjamas for Penny from the laundry pile so that she could change her into something that might not smother her so much as her thick pyjamas. She was clearly not going to preschool with a fever like this; she was no doctor, but Penny was definitely sick. First of all, she phoned and left a message at the preschool to say that Penny would not be attending that day, before she went back into the living room with the thermometer, sitting down at Penny's side. The small girl responded by crawling into Ziva's lap, settling against her in a tight ball.
"Open wide, tateleh," Ziva coaxed, allowing her to insert the thermometer. When she pulled it out, she saw that the number read 102. A fever of 102 degrees. Too high. Too high for a girl so small, she knew. She opened up her phone, dialling a familiar number, but she held back a curse when she heard a recorded message instead of a human voice.
"The number you have called is unavailable, please hang up, and try again…"
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Tony slammed his cell phone onto his desk, cursing as some of the outer casing cracked with the force, small parts of the battery and definitely some of the numbers flying across the room, landing around his desk. McGee looked up from his desk, watching cautiously as Tony grumbled, taking on of the pieces that had landed on his desk and trying to fit it back onto the handset, even though it was clearly a lost cause. "Something wrong?" he asked hesitantly.
"It's broken," Tony complained.
"I'm not surprised," McGee said, noticing that the number 7 button had landed closer to his own desk than Tony's.
"It was broken before this," Tony corrected him.
McGee frowned. "It was broken so you decided to break it even more?" he tried to understand.
Tony just looked up at him. "Got a problem with that?"
"No," he said quickly, looking back at his computer screen. "Not at all."
"Gear up," Gibbs announced, as he came into the room, leaving again just as swiftly. Tony's office phone rang as he pulled on his jacket, he went to answer it, but Gibbs' scolding tone reached him first. "Now, DiNozzo."
"Coming, boss," he said, following Gibbs to the elevator as the phone rang without answer.
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Having tried and failed several times to contact Tony, Ziva had resorted to ringing Ducky. While Tony had the number of Penny's paediatrician in his cell phone, Ziva didn't even know the doctors name, so she had called the one doctor she did know. "So it may just be a virus?" she checked, as she walked back into the living room with a cool cloth in her hands.
"Being around so many children at the preschool is certain to have exposed her to the common cold, at least," Ducky confirmed.
"She was not herself last night, either," Ziva remembered. "She seemed lethargic and that her head was hurting her, but she had been sitting close to the television even though I told her not to, and I believed she was just tired. She slept fine, and did not get up at all during the night as she usually does, so I thought she would be fine this morning."
"She may just need some rest," Ducky said, as Ziva sat down on the couch again and drew Penny into her arms, rocking her gently. "But keep checking that fever every twenty minutes in case it rises. If it gets any higher and continues to rise, take her to the emergency room, just to be safe."
"Thank you, Ducky," Ziva said. "I do not suppose you would know where Tony is?"
"No, I've not seem this morning. Abigail did mention they were out in the field again this morning. Does he know that Penny wasn't herself last night?" he asked.
She shook her head, sighing, even though Ducky couldn't see the motion. "Penny and I were both sleeping when he came home last night, and he was gone before we woke this morning."
Ducky could hear the sadness in her voice at that, but chose not to comment on it. It wasn't his place to pry into the complicated partnership between Tony and Ziva, especially since what Tony had told him the other night. He hadn't heard any rumours flying around the building like he sometimes did, he could only assume that if they had made a decision about their feelings they had chosen to keep it to themselves for the moment, something which he could respect. Instead, he offered a reassuring tone. "When I hear that Anthony has returning I'll make sure that he calls you straight away," he told her.
"Thank you," she repeated.
"No trouble, my dear."
As Ziva placed her cell phone on the coffee table, she turned her attention fully to Penny, who showed little co-operation with wanting to straighten her out a little so that she could cool her with the cloth. She managed after some gentle persuasion, however, and Ziva began wiping around her face and neck with the cloth to cool her down.
"No, cold!" Penny hissed, trying to push the cloth out of Ziva's hands.
"Please, Penny…"
"No, mommy!" Penny repeated. "No!"
"I know it is cold, Penny, but it will make you feel cooler," Ziva told her softly, her heart pounding once again at the use of the word 'mommy'. She did, however, notice Penny trying to rub at her stomach through her pyjama top, and she frowned, lifting her shirt a little. Her eyes widened, and the cell phone was straight back in her hands, dialling the last called number once again. "Ducky, it is me….Penny has a rash on her stomach…"
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Sitting in the emergency room, alone, she had never felt more helpless in her entire life. Ducky had urged her to get Penny to the hospital immediately, and she had wasted no time in pulling Penny's coat over her pyjamas, despite her complaints that it was too hot. She didn't even bother with putting shoes over her socks, she just put her into the car seat and drove to the hospital with as much control as she could muster, which she strangely found to be a lot. She had to keep reaching over and pulling Penny's hands from under her pyjama top, where they kept on trying to itch at the rash, but the second she had released her hands she would be attempting it again, telling Ziva that it was sore. Once they had arrived and she had explained the fever, the tiredness and the rash, Penny had been taken from her, leaving her to fill out the forms. She was able to fill out the home address, her father's details, but her medical history, her allergies…she didn't know anything about that? As far as she was aware, Penny wasn't allergic to anything, and she hadn't been admitted to hospital for anything before. She'd put in the family history that her mother had suffered from leukaemia, but having written that, she'd panicked. Was it hereditary? Surely the symptoms Penny was suffering weren't for an illness as serious as the one she had lost her mother to less than a year ago? There had been a haste in Ducky's tone when he directed her to take Penny to the emergency room, but surely if he had suspected something of that nature he wouldn't have left her blind to it? Not for the first time that week, and certainly not for the first time that day, she found herself needing Tony.
She sat in the waiting room, her phone constantly using speed-dial to reach Tony. Every time she got the same message, that his phone was unavailable, and that he couldn't be reached. It hadn't even gone straight to his voicemail, meaning he was either out of signal range or that he'd managed to break his cell phone again. If it was the latter, she might just use the broken pieces of his phone to cause him as much panic as she had that morning, if it were possible. Eventually, after an hour of sitting there, panicking, wondering, and above all fearing that Tony's daughter was dangerously ill, a doctor came out.
"Family of Penelope Ryan?"
She stood up, rushing to the doctor. "Yes, is she okay?"
"Are you her mother?" the doctor asked her.
"No, I am…" she thought for a moment…what was she? Family friend? Step mother? Just her father's partner. She settled on that one. "I am her father's partner," she explained.
"Miss…?"
"David," she answered. "Ziva David."
The doctor gave her a sympathetic smile. "I'm sorry, Miss David, we really need to speak to Penelope's parents."
Taking a controlling breath, she tried to calm herself at those words. "Her father is unreachable in the field at work, and her mother passed away last year," she informed the doctor.
"What about her legal guardians? Emergency contacts?"
Ziva stopped for a moment. Did Penny even have legal guardians? Had Tony made arrangements like that for her? If he had, he certainly hadn't shared that information with her. "I was the one that brought Penny in this morning," she explained calmly. "Can you at least tell me that she is all right?"
The doctor sighed. "Well, she hasn't made it easy for us, but we've run some tests and we're managing to bring her fever down to a more comfortable level," he explained.
"She does not like doctors or hospitals," Ziva explained. "She is scared of them. Perhaps if I could sit with her she would-"
"I'm afraid that unless you are a parent or guardian, I cannot allow that," the doctor denied.
She gaped at him. "This is ridiculous, I live with her!" Ziva cried. "I am the closest thing she has to a mother now. Tell her that I am here," she instructed. "If you tell her that Ziva is here she will understand, she knows who I am-"
"But who you are is not her parent or guardian," the doctor pointed out. "I'm sorry, Miss David, but it's hospital policy, especially with children involved. I suggest that you contact her father or another family member or legal guardian so that we can speak to them."
Filled with a new rage, Ziva returned to her seat, slumping forward with her head in her hands for a moment whilst she tried to sort her mind out. Penny was in the hospital, they were refusing to tell her anything because she wasn't a legal guardian or her mother. She needed somebody they would speak to. She needed Tony. Tony. It all came back to Tony. If he'd been reachable in the first, she wouldn't have been sat here helpless. Penny wouldn't be scared and alone, because Tony was her father and he'd have been allowed to stay with her while the tests were being done and while they were waiting for the results. She took her cell phone out of her pocket again, starting to go back to her monotonous attempts to call anyone…Tony….McGee…Gibbs…and that one worked. She was shocked when she heard more than just an 'out of service message'.
"Yeah, Gibbs."
"Gibbs!" she breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness, is Tony with you?"
"Just gone into interrogation," he explained. "Something wrong?"
"I need him at the hospital," she explained. "I am at the emergency room."
"What happened?" Gibbs asked.
Ziva rested her forehead on one hand. "Penny had a high fever this morning. She did not go to preschool and I was trying to get in touch with Tony but I could not get through to his cell. I spoke to Ducky and he said to keep an eye on the fever and-"
Gibbs interrupted her rambling, his voice as calm and controlled as she wished hers was. "Ziva. What happened?"
"Penny came out in a rash," she explained. "It was spreading even as we made our way to the hospital and the fever continued to get higher. When we arrived at the hospital it had reached one hundred and five degrees," she revealed.
"Is she okay?" Gibbs asked, with less of a business tone and a lot more worry in his voice.
"I do not know," she admitted,
"You don't know?!"
"I am not her parent," Ziva choked her out. "And I am not her legal guardian either. The doctors will not tell me anything about her condition. They will only speak to a parent or guardian, so I really, really need Tony to come to the hospital," she repeated, hating the desperation her voice, but she felt it was justified.
"Which hospital are you at?" Gibbs asked her.
"Bethesda," she said instantly. "It was closest and once I had shown my badge the doctors would not turn her away, especially not a child."
"Okay," Gibbs said, "Stay there, we're on our way."
Gibbs hung up, and at a loss of anything else to do, she did exactly what he told her to do. She stayed right where she was, looking at the doors she hadn't been allowed through.
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"Ziva!"
She looked up at the sound of his voice, finding her partner rushing towards her, their boss following a little slower behind him. She stood up to meet him, knowing that if it were anyone else other than Penny she'd have shouted at him right in the middle of the lobby. "Tony, where have you been?" she asked, as he put his hands on her arms.
"Where's Penny?" he asked her, his voice filled with urgency. "Is she okay?"
She shook her head slowly. "They will not tell me, Tony," she said softly.
His frown grew. "What? What do you mean they won't tell you?"
"I am not her mother, Tony!" she pointed out. "They would only speak to a parent or legal guardian, of which I am neither."
He stopped, his entire body coming to a halt as everything hit him in one go. His daughter was in the hospital, possibly very sick. His partner, the closest thing Penny had to a mother, had done the right thing getting her medical attention, but the doctors weren't authorised to tell her anything. How could he have been so stupid as to not list emergency contacts for Penny? What if something was wrong and even Ziva hadn't been there to try and reach him? "Where's her doctor?" he asked quietly.
"Over there," Ziva asked, pointing to the doctor filling out forms at the nurses station.
"Come on," he said, keeping hold of one of her arms as he went over to the doctor. "Let's sort this out. When they were standing in front of the doctor, Ziva was amused to see that the doctor seemed a little unnerved by the anger in Tony's eyes as the added presence of Ziva once again before him. "Hi, I'm here for Penny Ryan, I'm her father," Tony explained.
"Mr Ryan?" the doctor assumed.
"DiNozzo," he corrected. "Special agent. How is she?"
The doctor looked down at his notes and offered Tony a reassuring smile. "Agent DiNozzo, I can assure you that your daughter is in no danger, health-wise."
Both Tony and Ziva sighed. "What is it then?" Tony asked. "She's okay, right?"
Again, he consulted his notes. "When she was admitted she had a high fever and a rash, so naturally we ran tests to exclude some of the more serious illnesses such as meningitis, but thankfully all the tests came back negative."
"So what gave her the fever and the rash?" Ziva asked.
"That would be the primary infection caused by the Varicella Zoster Virus," the doctor explained. Two very confused and very concerned faces stared back at him, but the doctor smiled. "Agent DiNozzo, your daughter simply has the chicken pox."
"Chicken pox?" he repeated absurdly.
The doctor nodded. "Yes, it's a very common illness, especially in children. It's transmitted through the air particles and also highly contagious."
Still, Tony looked confused, with more and more relief sinking into a growing smile. "Penny has chicken pox?"
"Yes," the doctor repeated. "From her medical history we could see that she has not had the virus before, so it could simply mean that coming into contact with another child who has had the virus made her extremely susceptible to it. The virus would have entered the lungs, and it's then carried through the blood to the skin where it causes the rash. Other symptoms include a headache, the fever she was admitted with, swollen glands…any flu-like symptoms which combined with the rash seem suspicious enough not to be the flu."
"So, she's okay?" Tony checked.
"She is tired, and very keen to go home, but there is no reason why the virus shouldn't run it's course, and she should be back to full health within ten to twenty days," he assured them.
"We can take her home?"
"Of course," the doctor nodded. "I'll go and get her discharge papers now. She's in the room on your right if you'd like to get her ready."
"Of course, thank you."
As Tony went into the room, Ziva followed, but stood back as Tony went over to Penny's side. She was curled on her side in a hospital bed, thankfully with none of the scary wires attached to her arms, but they could see a plaster on the inside of her arm where they had taken blood. "Hey, princess," Tony whispered softly, smoothing back her hair from her face.
She opened her eyes, looking up at him. "Daddy?"
"Yeah, hon, daddy's here," he told her. "We're gonna take you home now, okay?"
"Daddy staying home?" she checked.
"Yeah, Penny, I'm gonna stay home with you for a while until you get better."
Ziva smiled at this. Tony had missed a lot of time with his daughter in the past week, time that they would never get back, but thankfully it was only a week. He had missed three years and managed to keep a perfectly good relationship with his daughter, they could survive a week. Tony stood up, bringing Penny onto his hip as he came over to her. He offered her a small smile. "I'm sorry," he told her.
"No," she shook her head. "I am sorry. All this worry for nothing…"
She trailed off as the doctor came back into the room with some papers. "Okay, Agent DiNozzo, if you could just sign here, we'll get Penelope some antibiotics to take for the next seven days and you can be on your way," he announced brightly.
Tony signed the papers, and then looked at the folder underneath the form. "That Penny's file?" he asked.
"Yes, sir."
"It's got her contact details in? Next of kin and that stuff?" Tony continued.
"Yes, sir. Have any of your details changed that we need to be aware of?" he asked.
"Yeah, actually," Tony said, indicating to Ziva, who stood by his side, playing with the tiny hand that Penny reached out to her with. "This is Officer Ziva David. She was the one that brought my daughter in this morning."
"Yes, we met earlier," the doctor nodded to her.
"I want her added into the file," Tony demanded.
"As a next of kin?"
The sudden burning in Tony's eyes as he made his demands was strange to watch. Obviously, Ziva had seen him at all heights of fury and anger with their line of work, especially in the past year, but there was almost a possessiveness, a fierce sense of defending one's territory in his voice. "As whatever she needs to be so that the next time my daughter's in the emergency room and I can't be reached, at least Ziva will be allowed and sit with her so she won't be scared. Because when you trust somebody enough to take care of your child, you'd like to think that the doctors can do the same," he half-growled.
"Of course, sir," the doctor nodded. "If you'd like to leave the details at the front desk we'll have the details added to your daughter's file immediately."
As Tony put an arm around her to indicate their leaving, she found that after his display a moment before, she couldn't even be mad at him for being unreachable anymore.
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Ziva drove home, and Tony didn't once complain, even when she forgot herself for a moment and took a corner too sharp. When they got home, Penny was asleep, so he took her upstairs and tucked her into her bed. The dog followed obediently, obviously glad that his favourite person was home after everyone had left the house very quickly. Ziva went upstairs a while later to find Tony sitting at the end of the bed, his feet crossed beneath him as he watched Penny sleeping. Chase was curled up in his lap, and he was absent-mindedly stroking the puppy's head. She came up beside him, bringing him a glass of water.
He took it from her, drinking some as Ziva settled another cup of water beside Penny's bed for the young girl when she woke. "I am sorry to have worried you today," Ziva whispered afterwards.
"It's okay," Tony nodded, still watching Penny.
"I just…" she sighed. "Taking care of Penny is wonderful," she told him. "She is an amazing child, a joy to be around, but when she had a fever so high and then the rash? And to not be able to reach you?" she shook her head. "I was afraid that she was very sick, Tony."
He reached out to where she was standing, taking hold of her hand in his. It was shameful to think that this was basically the most physical contact they'd had in a week, especially when he'd been willing to tear his stitches for her before. "I'm glad you worried me," he told her, looking up to meet his eyes.
"You are?" she frowned.
He nodded. "What if we'd passed this off as a cold, let her sleep it off and then it turned out to be something really serious?" he asked hypothetically.
"It was not," she assured him.
"But it could have been," he realised. It wasn't a nice thought to think about, but parents had to cope with their children become seriously ill all the time, and it was something he found himself more aware of now; the bravery of not just the children, but the parents. "I'd rather drop everything and go out of my mind over nothing than underestimate something terrible," he decided.
She moved so that she was standing behind him, putting her hands on his shoulders so that she, too, was watching over Penny. Chase sat up in Tony's lap, licking happily at her fingers. She smiled, stroking the puppy's head before he returned himself to Tony's lap. "I did not think I would see the day when you would finally enjoy Chase's company," she admitted lightly.
"Yeah, well…" he trailed off, unable to deny his smile. "Now that he's not making beds out of my shirts, he's not that bad." He heard her gentle laugh behind him, and reached up a hand, placing it over hers. "I'm sorry, Ziva," he said softly.
"Do not apologize, Tony," she scolded him.
"Forget the 'sign of weakness' crap for a second, will you?" he asked. "I broke a lot of rules this week."
"Gibbs' rules?"
"Yeah," he nodded.
"There cannot have been that many," she realised.
"Never be unreachable," he said immediately. "Broke that one today. Never screw over your partner. Broke that one this entire week. I've been here less than ten hours in seven days-"
"You were working, Tony," she cut him off. "It could not have been helped."
"I'm a father, Ziva," he pointed out. "I missed a whole week of her life."
She began to gently knead the knots of tension on his shoulders, relaxing him with a sigh. "Would you like to know what it so you have missed?" she offered.
He nodded. "Please."
She moved from behind him, taking his hand again. "Come with me."
He looked at his sleeping daughter. "Ziva…"
"She has some water beside her, she is sleeping peacefully, and if she does wake for any reason we shall hear her when she calls for us," she reminded him with reassurance. "Come with me."
This time he followed her, and they went downstairs to the kitchen. He sat down at the table as she busied herself with the kettle. Minutes later, she pushed a mug in front of him, and he admired it strangely when he found it to be hot chocolate rather than his usual. "We run out of coffee?" he asked her.
"No," she said simply. "But something tells me you have been drinking enough coffee this week."
"You're probably right," he admitted, accepting the hot chocolate.
She sat down before him, holding her own mug with both hands. "What is it you would like for me to tell you?" she asked him.
"Anything," he shook his head. "Just…anything."
"Okay," she said, looking around her for a place to start, her eyes landing on the refrigerator where a scrawled coloured drawing had been pinned with several magnets. "That is a picture she drew on Tuesday. She says it is of Chase, but it looks more like a human being in my eyes…" Tony nodded, agreeing with her. "She has moved on from Cinderella and keeps wanting to watch Sleeping Beauty all the time now. Oh, and the preschool sent home a pamphlet with each other children about dance sessions in town on the weekends. I kept it because Penny seemed very excited about it and several of her friends are going along to it as well…"
As Tony sat there, listening to how much his daughter's life seemed to have changed in the past week, he couldn't help feel that if anyone had been there for it, he was glad that it was Ziva.
A/N: Come on, you didn't seriously think I'd let anything happen to Penny, did you? :P
