XIV. Family is not an important thing. It is everything.
"McGee, Abs, shopping list." He handed them a block of wood with a list written on it. "Get it in quickly."
"What are these for, oh esteemed master?" Abby grinned, waving the block in the air.
"Tony and Ziva're low on supplies." Gibbs said.
"But, er, boss, how are we going to get it to them?" McGee frowned and stuttered.
"We're gonna go for a hike. Wear good boots, McGee." Gibbs left them and walked up to the director's office, ignoring Cynthia's protests as he pushed the door open.
"Ah, Agent Gibbs, how can I help you?" Jenny smiled, placing her pen down carefully.
"DiNozzo and David are out of supplies in the safe house."
"How are you planning on getting supplies to them?" She asked. "What do I need to sign off on?"
"Nothing. I was thinking since you seem to miss being in the field so much you would like to help. You still got your warm coat, Jen?"
"You want me to hike up to the safe house?"
"Need to take more supplies than me and McGee can carry." He shrugged. "We'll be leaving at 0800." He walked out. Jenny shook her head and rolled her eyes, unlocking the cupboard that she kept her walking gear in and sighing.
"Abs, what are you doing?" Gibbs asked as she walked into the squad room. She was bundled up in thick coats and what looked like four hats.
"I'm coming with you to see Tony and Ziva." She grinned.
"No, you're not, Abby." He shook his head.
"Why, Gibbs?" Her face fell. "I want to help!"
"You'll help by staying warm and safe here." Jenny smiled. "You're not a trained field agent."
"But you'll need all the help you can get! There are four backpacks and only three of you!" She argued her case.
"She has a point." McGee said. Gibbs sighed.
"Fine, but she's your responsibility." He pointed to McGee. "You won't need all those layers, Abs, one'll do fine." She grinned and bounced up and down, inhibited slightly by her hiking boots. "Oh, and Abby."
"Yes Gibbs?"
"No snowball fights. We're going out for a reason."
"Are you expecting something, Tony?" Ziva asked as he looked out of the window for the tenth time since she had woken up. It was the first thing she had said to him all day.
"Always expect things, then you won't be caught off guard when it happens. I'd have though that your Mossad ninja training would have taught you that."
"Yes, but I am less obvious about it." She said, looking up from where she was sat on the floor with Mina in her lap and Elsie next to her, building a tower out of wooden blocks.
"You spoken to your father?" Tony asked, walking over.
"No. Why are you so interested?" She asked, frowning.
"I want to meet him." Tony shrugged.
"You do not want to meet my father." She replied.
"Why not?"
"He would not approve of you." She shrugged and he looked at her, trying not to feel insulted.
"That 'cos I'm not Jewish?" He smiled, remembering their last conversation about her father.
"That, and I doubt he will like the fact that you got his only living daughter pregnant." She shrugged again, not noticing Elsie look up at her and then to Tony.
"Yeah, well, how do you know that's not what I wanted to talk to him about?"
"Um, the fact that I do not want him to know and will kill you if you try to talk to him at all."
"You realise that he will notice when you turn up to visit and all of a sudden you have a baby." Tony walked over to where they sat.
"Maybe I will not visit."
"What about if he visits you?"
"I will work out what to say when I need to say it." She ignored him as he sat next to her.
"Why do you refuse to talk to me about this? We're having a baby, Ziva. You can't just ignore that."
"I have not ignored that. I just think that there are better times to talk about this." She smiled at Mina as the child held up a blue brick from the top of the tower.
"When? In a month? In six months? A year? A decade?" He glared at her.
"Do not be ridiculous, Tony." She sighed. "We will talk about this after the scan." She sat quietly, playing with the two children. Tony frowned but let it slide, joining in with the tower building.
"Abby, save your energy. It's a long walk to the cabin." Tim groaned as she jumped around when they got out of the car. Gibbs had parked it in a layby just down the road from where the turning onto the track that led to the safe house.
"I have a Caf-Pow in this." She held up the drinking tube to a platypus that she had slipped into the large rucksack that Gibbs had strapped to her shoulders. "There's enough caffeine in here to sustain me for a month." The three others raised their eyebrows. "Well maybe not a month, or even a week, but there is a lot in there."
"We need to get going." Gibbs nodded, zipping Abby's coat up tighter for her and pulling her hat over her ears. They started walking, making quick progress.
"Did you do this in the Marines, Gibbs?" Abby asked after five minutes.
"Did things like this." He smiled, remembering his time in the core.
"Was it always so dull?" She asked and he chuckled.
"Never dull, Abby."
"Can we sing a song? Just to keep us going?" She asked, walking behind Gibbs and stepping in his footprints to make it easier.
"No, Abs." He said, shaking his head and laughing when she broke into a rendition of frosty the snowman. Why did he even bother?
"Shh." Ziva silenced Elsie, nodding to Tony to move the two girls into the bedroom. She un-holstered her gun and pressed her back against the wall, slowly unlocking the front door and easing it open, listening to the crunch of the snow as multiple feet trod the path up to the cabin. "Put your hands where I can see them!" She yelled as she caught sight of the first person as they rounded the corner.
"Ziva!" Abby squealed, running up to her and hugging her. "I feel like I haven't seen you in months!"
"Abby, I am struggling to breathe." She said, removing Abby's arms from around her neck. "What are you doing here?" She asked as Gibbs, Tim and the director walked over as well.
"Tony phoned last night and said you were low on supplies." Gibbs smiled.
"So this is what you were waiting for?" Ziva asked the man stood behind her with Mina in one arm and Elsie holding on to his free hand.
"Yeah, thought I asked for a helo?"
"Agent DiNozzo, where were you planning on having this helo land?" Jenny asked, looking around the clearing barely big enough for one car.
"Well, I hadn't exactly ironed out the plan." He shrugged. "Anyway, come in." he moved into the lounge.
"Wow, I think this is the longest a safe house has ever gone without it becoming covered in pizza boxes and takeaway cartons." McGee chuckled as he walked in.
"That's what comes from being stuck in a house with three girls." Tony laughed, stopping when he saw Ziva's face. "So, what did you bring us?"
"We got everything on the list." Abby grinned. "We got some pretty odd looks in the supermarket."
"Why?" Ziva frowned.
"Well, the boss wrote the shopping list on a piece of wood." Tim explained.
"Was all I had to hand, McGee." He looked at him.
"No, there's nothing wrong with that, boss, it's just, uh…" McGee stammered as everybody else hid smiles.
"Let me take that for you. It's heavy." Tony said to Ziva, removing one of the backpacks from her hands. She twisted his arm behind his back and pinned him to the table, ignoring the stares of everybody else.
"I can manage, Tony." She hissed into his ear. "I do not need you to help me. With anything!" She picked the bag up as she let go of his arm and walked into the kitchen area. Tony sighed and stood back up, walking over to where the two children were, Mina laying on the floor and Elsie sat playing with a toy car. He scooped Mina up and sat her on his lap, smiling at the gurgling sounds she was making.
"She's adorable." Abby sat next to him on the sofa, grinning at the infant. "What was that with Ziva?" She asked quietly, so the director couldn't hear her.
"We had a slight argument. And by slight I mean…I don't know what I mean… She suddenly said that she was worried it wasn't going to work between us and I tried to make it better but I made it worse…" He trailed off and shook his head.
"Tony, I'm sorry." Abby sighed.
"It's not your fault, Abs." He smiled slightly.
"Oh, we brought lunch with us." Abby grinned and jumped up. "We have ham and cucumber sandwiches that the director made." She pulled out a lunch box from one of the bags and placed it on the dinning-room table.
"And Cynthia baked a banana and chocolate cake that she said we could have." Jenny smiled from where she stood helping Ziva unpack the food.
"So when is lunch?" Tony asked.
"When the rest of the food has been put away." Gibbs said, mixing a bottle of baby formula up. There was very little space in the kitchenette with just one person in there, but with three it was beginning to become very crowded.
"We're done." The redhead breathed after a few very tense moments of silence, squeezing past Ziva and Gibbs and placing the box with the cake on the table. The bungalow was feeling rather cramped with the four agents, the director and Abby, along with the two children. They gathered around the table, Elsie sat on Gibbs' lap due to the lack of seating.
"Well, this is nice." Abby smiled, trying to break the tension.
"Yes, it is good to see other people after being stuck in here." Ziva said, increasing the tension again. There was an uncomfortable silence as everyone ate his or her sandwiches.
"So I can go home now?" Tony asked looking to Gibbs and the director as he finished his first sandwich and reached for another.
"Nope." Gibbs said.
"But boss?" His face fell.
"It's a long walk in deep snow. You don't have warm clothing." He said.
"Gibbs, I will be fine. I have walked further distances in colder weather." Ziva pleaded.
"No!" Gibbs, Tony, McGee and Abby cut her off.
"Why not?" She scowled at them all.
"You know why not, officer David." Gibbs warned.
"But I don't." The director said, looking around the table for answers.
"Do you not want Ziva to leave because she's going to have a baby?" Elsie asked Tony innocently, everyone turning to her. "Was that like the secret about you loving Ziva?"
"Yeah, sort of." Tony nodded.
"Well, this is very interesting." Jenny smiled, folding her hands on the table.
"Did you talk to her about this?" Ziva asked him, wrapping her hand around his wrist.
"Er, well, I did tell her that I love you but I never told her that you are pregnant, although I did think about it when you were carrying her around earlier." He said. "You're kinda hurting my wrist." She looked down at her hand and released it.
"Sorry." She said quietly.
"Why is it that I don't know anything about this?" Jenny asked, looking from Ziva to Tony to land on Gibbs.
"Because I wanted to stay in the field for as long as possible. I knew that you would take me out of the field when you found out, you might even have sent me back to Mossad." Ziva said guiltily.
"You could have just talked to me about it. If you didn't want to be taken out of the field, I could have made arrangements." Jenny looked at her. "And Ziva, I would never have sent you back to Mossad without a good reason."
"I should have told you director. I am sorry." She sighed.
"Hey, wait! Hold up a minute!" Tony frowned and pointed at McGee. "How did you know that Ziva's pregnant?"
"Er, uh, well… I sort of…um...Abby, little help here please?" He turned to her.
"I was wrong, McGee, maybe Ziva isn't the one you have to worry about." Gibbs smiled.
"I told him accidentally." Abby smiled. "I'm sorry. You're not angry, are you?" She asked and grinned.
"Could anyone ever be angry at you, Abby?" Ziva laughed. "It is not like you are Tony."
"Okay, it's been, like two years, can we drop that already?!" Tony flung his arms in the air.
"I don't think so." McGee grinned.
"Anyone for cake?" Abby laughed at Tony's glare.
"Not for me, thank you Abby." Ziva smiled.
"I'll take some." Tony grinned, passing his plate over to her.
"Ziva, why are you angry with Tony?" McGee asked as they washed the plates from lunch.
"Because I do not think it will work." She said.
"What won't work?"
"Me and him." She turned to him. "We are not going to be able to raise a child together. We can barely keep a relationship alive."
"Ziva, did you argue at all before you found out that you were pregnant?" He asked.
"No more than we did before Venice. Probably even less."
"Exactly. What you are going through puts strain on even the most secure of relationships."
"McGee, what do you know of this?" She asked, shaking her head. He paused and turned to her.
"Ziva, do you know why I wrote in my book that Officer Lisa and Agent Tommy were in love?"
"Revenge? Payback?"
"Well, that was partly it, but I could have just placed agent Tommy and Officer Lisa in multiple uncomfortable situations, but no, the reason I did that was because you two fit together. I've seen the way you look at one another when you don't think anyone's looking."
"McGee…"
"I see you two every day. I saw how…jealous you were when he was with Jeanne."
"I do not get jealous, McGee."
"Then what do you call it? Because it was most definitely jealousy." He shook his head. "Ziva, I have seen Tony get just the same when you have left with men who weren't him. You're going to have a baby, and that baby's going to need a mum and a dad. We all know that you and Tony will be amazing, loving parents, it's just you two who need to figure that out." He sighed.
"What if I am not ready?"
"Then, you have, what? Eight months to get ready?" He shrugged and pointed to Tony, Gibbs, the director and Abby who were playing with the two children. "Mina and Elsie are still alive, aren't they? You and Tony have done a wonderful job of looking after them so far, they are the proof that you are ready." He smiled as Tony picked the young child up and made her laugh. "Does that look like a bad father?"
"No, McGee." She smiled gently.
"So what's the problem? As far as I see you're just making excuses. Are you scared?"
"No. Why would I be scared?" She looked away.
"Because a baby changes your whole life. Every single little bit."
"Are you trying to make me feel worse, McGee?" She stared at him.
"What I'm trying to say is that yeah, it's daunting, but what you're getting out of it is so amazing that it'll all be worth it. Every parent gets scared, it's natural." He shrugged. "You have absolutely nothing to worry about."
"Thank you." She placed her hand on his shoulder. "Truly."
"I just want my friends to be happy." He nodded. "I'll finish up here, go on." He nodded, smiling. She pecked him on the cheek and walked over to Tony, sitting next to him and leaning her head on his shoulder. Tim smiled at the scene. They were his family. Not his biological family, of course he still had Sarah and the rest of his actually family, but the people he worked with day in and day out were closer than friends, they were his family too. He dried the last plate and placed it in the cupboard, walking over and joining them.
