A/n: a reviewer asked me why Joy simply doesn't come out and tell her parents she can't have children. This is my answer to it. Only someone who once had to carry a burden that she feels she's unable to share anyone she might love is able to understand Joy's terrible fear of opening up to her own parents.

Summer's Solstice - Ziva

"Have you ever had a secret so deeply rooted into your soul that it became part of you?" Ziva to Buchanan

"Want some?" Joy offers a bottle of water to Ziva, as they had been sweating away on the small surveillance room set up to observe the movements of a suspected home grown terrorist cell in Virginia.

It was midsummer, and the temperatures were soaring above one hundred. They had been taking turns on the surveillance room, one turn the boys would come in, another turn the girls, then one of the boys with Gibbs, then one of the girls with the boys, and so on.

It was a long tedious job of listening people talking mindlessly about mundane things, and sometimes some hidden word that could be interpreted in so many ways.

On that hot day, Joy and Ziva are the ones watching their targets. Both girls, happy that the boys wouldn't come to relieve them for the next ten hours or so, simply stripped down to their skimpiest clothes they could find in their wardrobe.

Both girls donned tight spandex gym shorts and were wearing old ratty t-shirts, which had seen good days probably a couple of years ago before been washed until they were as thin as paper. Maybe more like a decade before.

Joy was wearing an old white Ramones t-shirt she stole from her sister Hope, when she was in a very rebel punk phase. It was autographed by Joey and Johnny Ramone, and Hope had no idea that the t-shirt was in Joy's things, otherwise a wild west standoff would happen between the sisters.

Ziva, as she didn't have Joy's shyness due to scars on her own back, was wearing a simple old yellow t-shirt, with a tight sports bra underneath. Anyone who saw them at that very moment would think they just came out of a very stimulating gym session, as both gorgeous women in gym clothes were dripping sweat.

"I wonder what Tony and McGee are doing right now," mutters Ziva, as she uses a Chinese paper fan to move some hot air to her face, in a desperate attempt to dry the sweat. Of all flats in the building, Gibbs had to choose the one which didn't have a functioning AC.

"Probably they are eating ice cream and basking in the AC of NCIS."

"Uhm…" moans Ziva, "Ice cream."

"Chocolate chips ice cream with a petit gateau just hot out of the oven, covered with melted dark chocolate, and cherries. Lots of cherries."

Ziva glances at Joy, who is staring at the surveillance cameras with glazed eyes.

"I hate you, you know."

"Yeah, I do."

Joy gets a small towel she had dipped into cold water and wipes her forehead.

"You should be used to this kind of heat. Israel is much hotter during summer."

"Yes, it is. But it feels different. It is quite humid there. We used to live just by the sea, so at night we would have some breeze coming to freshen up."

Joy nods, "So at least you won't feel like you're standing inside a pressure cooker the whole day."

Ziva snickers, "Oh, it felt like a pressure cooker. We were just used to it because we were born inside of it."

Both women laugh softly, each staring to one of the plasma screens, sitting lazily on their seats and supporting their well manicured feet on the tabletop. They were sitting back to back, their heads side by side, while their feet were on different corners of the same table.

"It must have been difficult."

Ziva takes a gulp of her bottled water, before asking for clarification, "What must have been difficult?"

"Mossad."

Ziva frowns, as she doesn't have the habit of talking of her old days in her homeland, which seemed to be a lifetime ago, and also Joy doesn't have the habit of fishing for information.

"Why do you say that?" Ziva plays with the cap of her water bottle, and waits for the explanation to come. It doesn't take long though.

"Keeping a secret. Every single day of your life. Afraid that one day, you might slip and someone might find out the secret you were trying so hard to hide, and then your life is forfeit, and your country might be in danger for your actions."

Ziva turns on her seat, and stares at Joy's face. There is a very deep frown on her forehead, and she has the same look in her eyes she usually has when she is deep into a profiling session.

"You learn to live with it. You are careful. You measure your words, even your thoughts," Joy turns to look at Ziva, and Ziva senses that, for some reason, they are not talking about Ziva's Mossad days anymore, "so your secret is never revealed."

After a while, Joy nods very slowly, and turns to stare her own plasma screen. Ziva keeps staring at the profiler's profile, and there's a faint cloud of misery around her that is very hard to ignore.

"Have you ever had a secret so deeply rooted into your soul that it became part of you?"

Ziva's question brings Joy's eyes back to the Israeli's face, and both women stare at each other for a long moment. Ziva keeps talking, seeing the play of emotions on the other woman's face.

"At first, it begins as something small. Almost irrelevant. Then it snowballs into a huge thing. And you can not get out of it. Or escape it. You are in too deep. You might even want to. You know you should come out in the open, explain things while you still can, but for some reason you are incapable of saying it. You are afraid of being hurt. You are afraid of hurting others. And in the end, when it finally comes out, it is usually as bad as you imagined it would be."

The tears simmering in Joy's eyes start to fall silently down her face, but she keeps silently staring the Israeli. Ziva stays in silence for a moment, and finally voices what's on her mind.

"We're not talking about me anymore, are we?"

Joy's face crumbles and she sniffles, running a hand over her cheek to wipe her face. Ziva puts a hand on her shoulder and squeezes.

"Whatever it is that it is eating you inside, you have to do something about it."

"A lot of people will get hurt…" Joy says in a quivering voice, "Or at least be disappointed at me." She bites her lower lip, and more tears escape her eyes, "I've been carrying this for so long, for years on my own. I simply don't know how…"

"Then it's time to share the burden," says Ziva in a comforting voice, and squeezes Joy's shoulder again. They take a moment, and Ziva asks, "Does McGee know?"

Joy nods emphatically, "He was one of the first person I've ever shared it. In a long, long time."

"What are you afraid of?"

"My dad," Joy moans, "He will be so disappointed with me," she murmurs in a broken voice after a whole minute considering how much to reveal to the Israeli.

"Ah, Joy." Both women hug, and Joy hides her face in the curve of Ziva's neck, silently crying. "Your father is an amazing man. I am absolutely sure that there is nothing you might do he would not forgive you."

They separate and smile teary at each other, and both women wipe their own faces and stare at their respective screens.

"What are you going to do now?" Ziva asks softly after some minutes in silent contemplation.

"I'm going to explore all possible venues before giving up my dream," Joy fidgets in her chair, until she gets her cell phone from her backpack under the table. She presses number one speed dial, and waits until the other side connects.

"McGee speaking."

"Hey, how are you?"

McGee looks around himself in the bullpen, which is empty right now, before dropping his voice into a lower tone, "Hey, how is the most boring assignment on the face of the earth?"

Joy laughs softly, and says in an equally low voice, "Well, it's just boring because you're not here to see the outfits me and Ziva are wearing right now. In the right angles and with good lightning, we would put the girls from Playboy to shame."

McGee gulps, as his mind conjures images of both agents semi naked in skimpy bikinis.

"Wow."

Ziva snickers and shouts loud enough to be overheard on Joy's call, "Get your mind out of the gutter, McGee, or I will use my paperclips on you."

He immediately sobers up and sits straighter on his chair; despite the fact Ziva can't see him right now.

Joy laughs delighted, "I wish I had your gift to scare them out of their wits, Ziva."

Ziva wiggles her eyebrows, "It takes practice. Lots of practice."

Both women giggle delighted, and McGee can't help his own smile as he hears both women having fun together.

Their mirth softly dims a little, and McGee waits for a while so Joy can keep talking, but she stays in silence in the other side.

"Joy?"

"Yeah."

"You called me, you know. Is there anything you need?"

She cleans her throat, and McGee leans forward on his chair, playing with a mechanic pencil on his hand, waiting for her to speak.

"We need to talk."

"We're talking right now."

Joy grimaces for once glad that he can't see her right now.

"Not, like this. I mean, talk, really talk, you know, about stuff."

He feels his eyebrows visiting his hairline.

"Is that a scientific term? Stuff?"

He smiles when he hears her moaning on the other side, "McGee, please. I'm serious."

"Ok, so you want to talk about… stuff."

"Yeah."

"Relationship stuff."

"Yeah."

He nods, and looks at his computer screen, which is showing his latest running search related to their case.

"Okay, when?"

"Let's finish this case and we will take a night out, have a nice home cooked dinner and sit down to talk. Is it okay for you?"

He nods again and runs a trembling hand over his short blond hair, wondering what possibly she could want to talk about.

"Okay, I'm fine with it."

"Good, I gotta go."

"Okay, then."

Joy softly closes her cell phone, disconnecting the phone call. She looks at Ziva, who nods encouragingly at her. Both women sit back on their chairs, and stare at their own screens, enjoying the heat of the longest day of the year. Meanwhile, McGee stares at his own cell phone, wondering what exactly their conversation might entail.