Chapter Forty-Four: I Want Her To Be Mine
Almost a week passed, and it was soon the weekend again. As much as Tony had promised to stay home while Penny was sick, he couldn't help that Gibbs had called him in on Friday morning. The rest of the time, however, Gibbs had been happy for him to be monitoring surveillance with Ziva; which, in Tony's head, translated as: spend time with your little girl and Ziva. So, he'd been more than happy to make up for the week that he'd spent neglecting his little family that he seemed to have built himself. Ziva was especially glad of this. It was nice to go back to how things were, to know that when things were suspiciously quiet it wasn't the source of Penny playing a one-sided game of hide and seek, but that both she and her father were sleeping, usually sprawled out in the same chair. She enjoyed hearing the little girl's giggles as Tony read all her favourite stories, putting on all the voices. She knew that Tony enjoyed it as well, which is why he couldn't deny her another reading of Tom Thumb, even though she'd asked for it twelve times already that morning alone.
On Saturday morning, he opened his eyes in surprise. For once, he seemed to have woken up before Ziva. The mornings that he had been home she had taken to going for a run, which she had not done in ages because of his overworking, and the smile he had seen on her face when she came back up the path was incredible. They'd also taken more steps in their physical relationship, especially without the restraints of his injury, which had healed nicely now. He smirked to himself - it was no wonder she was sleeping, they had definitely worn each other the night before. Still, despite their new found passion, both of them were wearing their nightclothes, Ziva a simple nightgown while Tony opted for his sweatpants, because Penny had reclaimed her habit of sneaking into bed with them in the middle of the night, one of her comforts when she was sick.
He placed a gentle kiss on Ziva's lips, and she moaned in her sleep, rolling over in the blankets. He smiled, hearing her gentle snores starting up again once she had settled. There was a time she'd have rolled over and held a gun to him for doing something like that…good thing they trusted each other more now. He decided he should get up, making breakfast for Ziva and Penny, seeing as Ziva had made breakfast perhaps every morning since they first started working undercover. Yeah, he owed her. Besides, that's what people did, right? They made breakfast for the woman they loved. That's what they did in the movies, anyhow.
As he passed Penny's bedroom, he heard movement within, and stuck his head through the door to check in on her. She was sat crossed legged on the floor, playing with two of her dolls, singing softly to them as Chase sat at her side, watching the dolls as if to ask whether or not he could take them and bury them in the garden. After watching her for a moment, he realised the song she was whispering to her dolls was a badly pronounced version of the Hebrew song he often overheard Ziva teaching her. He smiled to himself, glad that she was starting to act more like herself. In the first days of her illness, there had been lots of sleeping and whining, and he had ended up putting the oven gloves on her hands to try and stop her itching at her rash. She'd only responded by rubbing her arms against any possible surface that might ease her itchiness. Now, as the days had gone on, she'd started to want to play more, and her energy was coming back to her as well.
"Hey, princess," he whispered into the bedroom loudly.
At his voice, she looked up, jumping up when she saw who it was. "Daddy!" she said brightly, more than happy to be lifted into his arms.
"You're up early," he noticed.
"Not tired no more," she said simply.
"In that case, how about we go make some breakfast?" he asked her.
She nodded eagerly. "Yeah!"
"Shh!" he said quickly, putting his finger against his lips, an action that she copied. "Ziva's still sleeping."
"Okay," Penny whispered back.
They went downstairs, into the kitchen where Tony started to prepare a nice weekend morning breakfast for them, a break in the usual routine of cereal and toast. Penny was still holding her dolls, and began to play with them where she sat at the kitchen table for a while, continuing to sing the Hebrew song, or rather, follow the tune to it with mumbles. "Daddy, we live here forever now?" she asked him suddenly.
"Just for a while, hon," he explained. "Then we'll go back to our old apartment."
"Why?"
"Because some new people will come and live in this house."
Her face fell. "But I like this house," she told him.
"I know, babe, but you like our old house too, don't you?" he reminded her.
"This one's got more rooms in it," she pointed out.
"We've got enough room back home," he told her.
"We don't got Ziva back home."
He turned away from the saucepan, currently scrambling eggs, to look at her. She looked up at him with those persuasive eyes. "That's what this is about, huh?" he realised quietly. "You wanna carry on living with Ziva."
"Do you like Ziva?" she asked.
"Of course, I like Ziva," he smiled, going back to his eggs.
"How much?"
"Does it matter?" he asked.
Penny nodded. "Yeah."
"Okay," he surrendered. "Well, I like her a lot."
"Do you like her lots enough to make her my new mommy?" Penny asked softly.
Tony was stunned for a moment. "Why do you ask that?" he asked calmly, even though his heart had started pounding in his chest.
"Because Sarah at preschool has got two mommies. She lives with one mommy on school days and one new mommy with her daddy when its not school days," Penny explained.
Aha, he realised. The step-mother scenario. "Well, I'm sure Sarah's very lucky to have two mommies that love her," he said, trying to keep a handle on the situation as well as the saucepan.
"But I live with Ziva all the time now," she continued. "Does that mean she's my mommy?"
Tony turned down the heat on the eggs, leaving them on the stove as he went over to Penny's side. He crouched down beside her chair, making sure that he had her full attention before he spoke gently to her. "Penny, your mother will always be your mother," he told her. "Just because she isn't here with us anymore doesn't change that. Your mommy's an angel, and she'll always be watching over you."
"Why can't I have an angel-mommy and a here-mommy?" she asked.
Tony sighed, looking up at his daughter's pout. This was more than a 'daddy, I want one' conversation though. She wasn't looking into a store window begging him for a new toy. She was asking something much more of him, the one thing that he wasn't entirely sure he could give her. "You miss having a mom, don't you?" he realised, stroking her hair.
Penny nodded. "But we got Ziva now."
"Yeah, we do," he nodded.
"Why can't Ziva be my mommy?" she asked.
"Penny-"
"I like her and you like her too and she likes us!" she told him quickly. "Why can't she be my mommy?"
Tony looked at her, shaking his head softly. "It isn't that simple, baby."
"But I want her to be," she argued back.
Tony was stunned for a moment, especially at her determination. A stubborn expression settled on his daughter's face. He knew that look; she'd made up her mind. He knew what she was like when she'd made up her mind. But this wasn't deciding what t-shirt to wear to preschool or what she wanted for dinner. This was a mother. And she wanted Ziva to be that mother.
"Penny, this isn't just about what we want," he explained to her. "It's about Ziva, too."
Penny frowned. "Won't Ziva want to be my mommy?"
"Isn't it enough that we have Ziva close to us all the time?" he asked her hopefully. "We're very lucky to have somebody as nice as Ziva as our friend."
"I don't want her to be my friend," Penny decided. "I want her to be my mommy."
"This isn't something we can just decide," he told her. "This is something we'll have to have a talk about. You know when we sat down together and we had an important talk about preschool?" he reminded her.
She huffed. "No talk," she complained. After all, the last time she'd had 'a talk' she'd ended up with going to preschool. "Can't we just use magic?" she asked.
Tony held back a sigh, silently damning Disney for giving her unrealistic expectations about life. "I'll tell you what," he suggested. "Why don't I talk to Ziva about it?"
Penny just returned to the table, playing with her dolls once again, this time with less enthusiasm and certainly no singing. Tony watched her for a few seconds before accepting that he'd lost her attention and returned to the eggs on the stove. He no longer felt as settled as he did when he first awoke. All of a sudden, his very little girl was asking some very grown up questions and making some very grown up demands. It was scary, considering he'd only just set out on a relationship with Ziva, and after only two weeks of being able to call her his own, Penny was wanting in on that action as well.
Ziva came downstairs a while later, dressed in her usual khaki trousers and a plain t-shirt. It wasn't glamorous, but it was her down to a T, something that made Tony grin, despite himself. However, rather than looking as pleased as Tony, Ziva looked shocked when she entered the kitchen.
"You are cooking?" she asked strangely.
"Yeah," he grinned. "You hungry?"
Her surprise disappeared, and she fixed him instead with a playful smirk. "Starving," she replied simply.
"Sit down," he gestured. "It's almost done."
Ziva sat down at the table, choosing the chair beside Penny, playing with the girls hair for a moment. "Good morning, Penny, you are looking much better today," she noted, seeing how most of the spots on her face were already beginning to fade.
"Yeah," Penny nodded. "I made a de-sih-shun," she said slowly.
"Penny," Tony cut in quickly, his tone serious as he handed Ziva a mug of coffee. "Remember what we talked about."
Penny tilted her head onto one side. "Say the long word slowly and it gets easy?"
"Penny," he warned again.
"I'm a big girl, Daddy," she said. "I'm gonna be four soon, so I gotta make big girl de-sih-shuns," she told him, sounding out the longer word slowly.
"What decision is it you have made?" Ziva asked her.
Penny puffed out her chest. "I decided I want-"
"Penny," Tony interrupted. "I said I would talk to her, didn't I?"
She pouted at him. "But you won't do it right!" she whined.
"Penny-"
"You wait aaages to talk to her!" Penny cut him off. "Auntie Abby said you wait too long! If I don't ask her now someone else might ask her instead!" Tony was a little stunned at her insight, and instantly blamed Abby for his daughter's sudden intelligence in what Tony was like when it came to serious conversations. In his distraction, Penny turned to Ziva, and said rather professionally. "Ziva, will you be my new mommy?"
The coffee that had been halfway down Ziva's throat got caught, and she choked on the question a little. "Penny!" Tony scolded.
"What?" she asked innocently. "I don't want her to be someone else's mommy, I want her to be mine!"
Ziva recovered from her minor coffee-drowning incident and tried to hide her shock, something she wasn't doing a very good job of. "Penny, that is very sweet…"
"Will you?" Penny asked. "'Cause you do lots like a mommy and it's okay to have two mommies because Sarah and preschools got two mommies at the same time, so I think I'm allowed to have an angel-mommy and a here-mommy."
"Penny, I told you, it isn't as easy as that," Tony said, sitting down at the table on Penny's other side, so that he was opposite Ziva.
"Why not?" she complained.
"It just isn't."
"But we're a family!"
"Yes, we are, but-"
"Why can't Ziva be in our family?" Penny asked.
"She is, but-"
"If she's in our family then she's gotta be someone," Penny argued. "You gotta have a daddy and mommy and a baby. We haven't got a mommy for our family, daddy. We need a mommy."
Tony ran his hand over his hair, while Ziva reached out, placing her hand over Penny's. "Penny, just because your mother is an angel does not mean that she is not your mother," she explained, taking the same route Tony had.
"Why can't I have two mommies like Sarah at preschool?" she asked.
"Because each family is different," Ziva explained. "Not every family is lucky enough to have a mother and a father at the same time. Sometimes families are smaller than that."
"But I want Ziva to be my mommy!" Penny complained, turning to Tony again.
"Tony?" Ziva murmured, when her partner failed to give a response.
Eventually, he looked up. "Penny, why don't you take your dolls in the living room until breakfast's ready?" he told her.
"No," Penny said, folding her arms over her chest stubbornly. "We talking."
"Ziva and I will talk about this while you're playing," he said. Penny didn't move, and he nodded his head towards the living room. "Now, please," he requested calmly.
Penny got down from her chair, heading towards the living room with a huff that could have rivalled a teenager. When they safely heard the sound of the television, Tony sighed. "I'm sorry about this," he said, wanting nothing more than to reach across the table and take her hand, but with the cameras set up in the kitchen that was impossible without giving themselves away.
"It is okay," she nodded softly.
"If it's any consolation she kinda threw it at me out of the blue as well," he half-laughed.
"I thought she might have," she smirked. "You do realise that whoever is watching the live feeds may have heard this?" she pointed out.
He nodded with a sigh. "Which means if we don't sort this out now, we'll only be forced to later."
"Yes," she agreed.
They fell into a silence, and Tony ran his hands through his short hair again. "Right…I don't even know where to start with this," he said after a moment with no words.
"Penny wants a mother, Tony," she stated simply. "It is only natural."
"I guess it's only natural that she wants it to be you, as well," he realised.
Ziva gave him a smile, not the biggest smile in the world, but one that made him feel warm inside all the same. "I adore Penny, Tony," she told him. "I wish for you to know that I feel very lucky to be a part of her life. I did not have much of a family life of my own when I was younger, but with you and Penny that changes for me. It may not be a conventional family, but it feels like a family all the same."
He nodded. "And like I said the other night, I'm glad that Penny trusts you enough to consider you in that way. I wouldn't want it to be anybody else."
"This is still your decision to make," she reminded him. "You are her father and this is your choice, and I will understand-"
"-if I was to maybe swing in Penny's favour?" he finished for her.
"You understand what that would mean?" she asked hesitantly.
He nodded, keeping his eyes on her, fixing her with such an intense stare that it sent shivers down her spine. "Yeah, I do."
"It is a big decision to make, Tony."
"No bigger than the decision I made to actually stop avoiding the conversation we had last week," he pointed out. The conversation where I told you that I loved you, his mind added.
Ziva nodded. "So, that is your choice?"
"You're okay with that?" he checked.
"If Penny is okay with this, then yes, I am," she nodded again.
Tony sighed, this time one of relief that they had actually come to a decision, rather than creating a conflict. "Okay."
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When Tony called Penny back into the kitchen for her breakfast, she was silent. She crawled back into her chair, starting to eat the plate of toast and eggs that was put before her. Tony and Ziva also had a plate of breakfast before them, however, they weren't eating there's, they were just watching Penny; waiting for her to spring into a round of questions that never came. After Penny had eaten half of a piece of toast, she looked back at them curiously, finally noticing how they were watching her. Tony put his hand on the table near her. "Penny, Ziva and I talked about you wanting her to your mom," he told her.
Penny looked hopeful. "Did she say 'yes'?" she asked brightly.
Tony looked at her awkwardly. "Penny, having an angel-mommy and a here-mommy can be very hard, especially when you're very little."
"Did she say 'no'?" Penny asked, not liking her father's tone of voice. Her face fell, and she looked at Ziva with a heartbroken expression. "Don't you wanna be my mommy?"
Ziva took Penny's hand in her own, giving her a smile. "Penny, what your father means is that he does not want you to forget your mother, even though she cannot be here with you."
"But I don't forget her!" Penny assured them. "Not ever."
"And we don't want that to happen," Tony told her. "So we had another idea."
Penny looked at him hesitantly, thinking this over for a moment. "Do I still get a mommy in this idea?" she asked suspiciously.
"Kind of," Tony nodded. "You see, mommies and daddies aren't always called mommy and daddy."
"Why not?"
"Because in different places they talk in different languages , so they have different words for mommies and daddies."
"What do they call them?" Penny asked.
"Well, in Israel, where Ziva comes from, they say 'Aba' instead of daddy and 'Ima' instead of mommy."
Penny frowned in confusion, looking at Ziva. "An Ima is a mommy, too?" she asked.
Ziva nodded. "Yes."
"We thought it might be a bit confusing for you to have two mommies," Tony told her. "So, if you want, you can call Ziva your Ima and still have your angel-mommy being your mom," he explained. "How does that sound?"
"But an Ima's still a mommy?"
"Yes, tateleh," Ziva assured her once more.
Penny seemed to think about this for a long time, and then she nodded. "'kay," she said simply.
"Okay," Tony repeated, sharing a quick look with Ziva at how easy that had gone compared to the original conversation. "Right."
"Okay," Ziva also said.
They went back to their breakfast, talking about nothing in particular. Nobody really knew what to say after a conversation like that, and Penny was just please that she'd gotten her own way. After a while, Penny looked up, grinning just like her father through a mouthful of scrambled eggs. "Wait 'til I tell Tasha that I got a mommy AND an Ima," she said. "Ima's are much better than new bikes!"
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The following week, Tony was back at work as usual. Penny was going to go back to preschool as well that week, as her spots had faded, but in the morning she was due to return she was still rather lethargic so they had kept her home for one more day, just to be safe. Penny soon became restless at home, however, wanting to go and play at preschool, but since she couldn't she didn't know what to do with herself. To start with, Ziva had managed to occupy her most of the time, but a lot of the time Penny would just follow her, trying to copy her every moment, with the dog following faithfully behind her. Eventually, Ziva decided to treat Penny by taking her to see everyone at NCIS. Abby had been at a doctors appointment, however, and the others were out at the crime scene following up on a lead, so they were waiting in the bullpen for them to arrive back. Penny used her regained energy to start treating Tony's filing cabinet like a mountain.
Seeing the dangerous climbing mission, Ziva quickly lifted her away from it. "Penny, no, you will hurt yourself if you fall," she warned.
"Where's Daddy?" she asked impatiently.
"He is not back yet," she explained.
"When is he back?" she asked.
"Soon, tateleh," she assured the young girl. "Shall we do some drawing until he returns?"
Penny shook her head. "I wanna see Daddy."
Ziva sighed, trying to think of something to occupy Penny until Tony returned. "As it such a nice day, how about we go and wait down by the garage for him, yes?" she suggested.
Penny nodded eagerly. "Yeah!"
So they went outside the NCIS building. The weather was definitely working in their advantage; spring was in it's peak, so all the flowers were out in full bloom in the displays. They chose to sit on a rather small wall, about two feet high, looking at the flowers behind them. Given her new climbing obsession, Ziva made sure to keep a tight hold on Penny to ensure that she didn't fall. Eventually, a familiar car came around the corner, and Ziva pointed it out. Penny got excited to see they had returned and with Ziva's help, stood up on the wall. She waved as Tony got out of the car and when he waved back she went to jump down. Quickly, Ziva grasped her, telling her that Tony would come to her so that she didn't fall and hurt herself.
But one more time, just as Tony was within her grasp, Penny tried to break free from Ziva once more. With the sudden burst, Ziva was caught off guard, and Penny stumbled off the edge of the wall, knocking against the brickwork as she slipped. Panicking, Ziva reached for Penny, as did Tony, but they were both too late to restrict their hold and prevent her from falling. Penny slipped, hitting the ground with a painful scream.
A/N: I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!
