Not mine…
Happy New Year.
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"The Twilight Zone?"
"Maybe she hid something in an alternate dimension?"
"You would think that, Abby, but this is Ziva. She would hide something where only she or her friends would find it."
Eli held up his hand. "Wait a minute. I remember her saying something about how underneath her bed was incredibly messy because she could never clean it up and stuff just disappeared there. Then Ari made some half-comment about it being the Twilight Zone…"
"Under the bed?"
McGee shrugged. "It's worth a try."
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Lilyann watched Charlotte talking with Ari and smiled. Her daughter seemed to have recovered from the loss of her brother, Sebastian.
She did have to worry, though, about what would happen to Ari and the baby twins. With the team's permission, she had visited the baby girl who had received her son's lungs. She wondered what would happen to the three of them. Maybe we could adopt them…
She would have to ask Roger first, though.
She hoped he would agree.
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Tony probably would have compared the box to the chest that held Davy Jones' heart. McGee, Abby, and Eli were less inclined to do so, but they still admired the chest. Abby couldn't help but wonder if Gibbs had made it for Ziva. It seemed like his work.
"Would you do the honors?"
McGee handed the key to Eli, who inserted it into the keyhole and opened the chest.
Right in the top of the chest was a painting. At least, that seemed like the best thing to call it.
The back was a single piece of paper, about six inches wide and a foot tall, painted bright gold. On it was a flower made of colored wax, with a green stem, pink petals, silver inside it and as a base for it… and three claw marks scored across it, the outer two black, the middle one blood red.
"That's… a little disturbing." McGee frowned.
Abby smiled and lifted the painting out of the chest. "It's really cool."
"Ari made it."
McGee and Abby stared at Eli. McGee broke the silence.
"That would explain the disturbing."
Underneath the painting were three tied-up bundles of letters. Each had a picture on top, with a nametag attached to the photo.
One of the pictures was unmistakably Ari and Ziva as kids. The nametag said simply, "Ari".
The second picture was of a smiling baby boy wrapped in a blanket that the three of them recognized as little Ari's baby blanket. The nametag bore the moniker "Ari (II)".
And on the final stack…
The ultrasound printout of the twins, though blurry and indistinct, was still adorable. A nametag was stuck to each side: "Chayim" and "Nasya."
Abby smiled. "Well, now we know the twins' names."
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Author's note: On the seventh day of Christmas, the seven swans-a-swimming gave Michael Phelps a swim for his money.
I know it's short, but I'm busy. Happy New Year! Shestrun, signing off from 2011!