She rolls over in bed. She sighs, and takes a look at the clock next to her. It glares up at her, from a bedside table, between her bed, and Tony's.
He scoots down in the bed. He stares up the ceiling. He listens for a moment. He realizes that she isn't snoring.
"You aren't asleep, are you?" he questions.
"How could I be asleep? I have to figure out how to get along with you, for the rest of my life."
"We don't have to do this, if you don't want to."
"Tony if you want out, that is fine, but I am going to do this. I have to."
"I'm not going anywhere. How is this going to work? Tonight we are going to go to sleep, as Tony and Ziva, partners at NCIS. Tomorrow when we go to sleep we will be going to sleep as Tony, and Ziva, two people who have a child to raise together. We will be someone's parents. What would make him choose us, of all people?"
"He had no family."
"There had to be better candidates."
"I guess he saw something that we don't."
"I can understand why he chose you, but..."
"Tony, are you serious? You understand why he chose me?"
"You don't understand?"
"No."
"He chose you because you're a good person. You are tough, but you are nurturing. You are great with kids."
"I..."
"I am the disaster. Kids start crying the instant that my name is mentioned."
"You can't treat children like little adults, because they are not."
"Ziva... how are we going to do this? Logistically, it's a nightmare."
"You are going to have to give up your social life."
"Does that mean that you are going to do the same?"
"This is not a puppy that we are petsitting for the weekend. If we are going to do this, we need to be fully committed. We need to take it seriously. We are going to have to do things that we don't necessarily like."
"How? How are we going to do this?"
"I think that we should agree, that neither of us sees anyone for a few months, until we get settled into so sort of routine."
"Ok. Where do we start?"
"Everything is going to have to change, you realize that, right?"
"Yes, Ziva. Where will we live? Your place, or mine?"
"I have one bedroom."
"We should find a different place, one that is big enough, for all of us."
"Ok."
"But?"
"No but."
"And?"
"And we need to split the responsibility evenly."
"I don't want it to be an argument. We argue enough."
"We'll just try and go with the flow."
"This is so hard to wrap my head around."
"I know. We are being given a child."
"A little girl."
"I think that we should agree to treat her the same way we would, if she were our own."
"Meaning?"
"If in the future one, or both of us... become involved with someone else, and it becomes serious, if there is commitment involved..."
"You're rambling," she warns.
"If we can't live together, which I have a feeling, at some point will become a test of wills, we will do what is best for her. If we are apart, we split things evenly."
"Evenly?"
"In half."
"We cannot split her in half."
"We will split time evenly, expenses evenly, school functions, and holidays, evenly."
"I agree that time, and expenses should be split evenly."
"But?"
"We should both attend school functions, and we should both see her on holidays."
"I think that is fair."
"Tony?"
"Huh?"
"We should probably try to get some sleep," she suggests.
"Like that is going to happen."
"I'm sure that we have plenty of sleepless nights ahead of us."
"How are we going to go to work, if we have a kid, to take care of?"
"The same way that everyone else in the world does, hire someone to take care of her."
"Do you think that we should just go right back to work?"
"I don't think it would be wise, but you can if you want."
"You're not?"
"I have accrued a lot of comp time. I think that this would be a good time to use some of it. I mean... we are never going to be her biological parents..."
"But she's stuck with us, for the rest of her life," he finishes her sentence.
"We are the only parents she is ever going to know, the ones she's ever going to remember."
"So we should bond with her, like she's our own?"
"Yes."
"Ziva?"
"Huh?"
"Are you as terrified as I am, about this?"
"Which part?"
"There are so many, where do I start?"
"The fact that she is so small?"
"Or that she wears diapers?"
"Or that she might wake up in the middle of the night, and we won't hear her?"
"We might drop her," he adds.
"Or overfeed her."
"Or underfeed her."
"Or lose her."
"We might completely screw her up," he finalizes.
"Yes. I am," she finally answers.
"We'll get through it together."
"There is no other choice."
"Ziva?"
"Huh?"
"You know how to take care of a baby right?"
She chuckles, "I guess we'll see."