Chapter 57
Ziva looked at herself in the mirror. Ever since telling Tony about her pregnancy, it had taken over a lot of her thoughts. Right now, there was no physical sign of it. She was as thin as she usually was. She hadn't had any morning sickness as yet and wasn't looking forward to that, although she figured she couldn't really avoid it. Somehow, in all of her life, she had never imagined herself as a mother. It wasn't even that she had not wanted children. She just had never even really thought of the possibility. Tony might have wanted children at some point, but she really hadn't. Her early life had been so focused on the cause of Israel that children were not part of the equation. She hadn't had long-term relationships until coming to the United States and her own family wasn't exactly the most stable.
The last thing she wanted was to put that kind of life on a child. It was bad enough that she had gone through it. No one else should.
"You're still skinny, Ziva. That hasn't changed in the last day."
Ziva turned around and saw Tony looking at her. She was a little irritated that she was so obvious, but then, Tony was also very observant when he wanted to be.
"I know that," she said. "I'm not worried about being skinny."
Tony smiled, but his smile was very gentle. He walked over and kissed her.
"Don't worry about anything else, either," he said. "We have plenty of time to freak out."
Ziva rolled her eyes at his choice of words.
"Would you mind if I told Tim?" Tony asked.
"What? Why?"
"For the same reason that you told Zahara. I think it would help distract him. You know that he won't say anything to anyone else if we ask him not to."
"No, that is true," Ziva said. She tried to think objectively about Tony's question. In truth, telling Zahara had been for more than one reason. Yes, it had been to distract Zahara from all the family stress, but it had also been so that Ziva herself could have someone know about the secret she'd been keeping. Did Tony have that ulterior motive? Well, Ziva wasn't sure but she didn't want to ask, and really, she didn't mind Tim knowing. She wasn't ready for her pregnancy to become general knowledge just yet, but Tim knowing would probably also be easier for Zahara because then Zahara wouldn't feel like she was keeping a secret from Tim.
"Ziva?" Tony asked. "I don't have to tell him. It was just a thought."
"No. I don't mind if you tell him," Ziva said, quickly. "I just had to think it through."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. I am sure."
"All right. I don't mind if you want to keep it a secret for a while. We can get our own minds wrapped around it first and then expect everyone else to have their minds wrapped around it."
Ziva smiled. "Yes. I agree."
"It'll just have to be before it's obvious."
"Yes." She took a breath and then gladly got her mind on something else. "Do you think Tim listened to you?"
Tony shook his head. "I don't know. I hope he did, but I never know when it comes to what helps and what doesn't. Sometimes, the things I think should be the most obvious don't penetrate at all, and then something I say offhand becomes the most meaningful thing in the world. I guess we'll have to wait and see."
"Wait and hope," Ziva corrected.
"Feels like that's all we've been doing for the last three years."
"But something shook things up this time," Ziva said.
Tony laughed a little humorlessly. "That's putting it mildly."
"Perhaps they will settle in a better way."
"Maybe," Tony said. "I don't want to hound Tim too much. Give him time to settle. So what do you say we start bickering about where we're going to move to?"
"What do you mean?" Ziva asked, her brow furrowing.
"I mean that there's no way we're going to raise a kid in this little apartment. We only picked this place because we refused to compromise on where we lived. So now it's time to start compromising. We're going to have to. At the very least, we need to get a place with two bedrooms and we won't really afford a decent place in D.C. So let's start bickering and maybe we'll find common ground before the baby is born."
"I guess that we must. So we will."
"But it'll take forever so let's get started."
Ziva laughed and let Tony lead her out of the bathroom and to the living room. They sat down on the couch and started the long process of hashing out just what they wanted to have in their new place... and where it would be.
x.x.x.x.x.x.x
Tim lay in the grass in the backyard with Marra sprawled across his torso, panting contentedly. They had gone to the hospital to visit Ahmed and attended church and then Tim had done his best to give Marra some good exercise...in the backyard. While he knew that he couldn't keep it up forever, right now, staying home made things easier. So he had run her around the yard, letting her get riled up and excited in a way that she couldn't with the kids or Zahara. Apparently, it had been enough because, when Tim felt tired out, Marra seemed happy enough to lie on him. She didn't seem tired at all, just satisfied. Salma and Jonathan were taking a nap inside and Zahara had said she wanted to read.
So Tim was alone in the yard, for the moment, and everything was calm. For the moment. As he lay there, he thought about the previous night's events. All of them. His discussion with Gibbs, sitting out staring at the stars, talking with Tony, beating up the bag, talking with Bob and then his ride home. All of them. Each one mattered in a different way. He still had that same feeling that he had told Gibbs. Facing a long future of people still wanting to control him was not something he wanted. Death wasn't something that frightened him at this point. People didn't want him dead. They wanted him controlled. That was almost the worst part. He hated that it was control that people wanted because that pretty much guaranteed a long life of this. Even if he could handle it, he really didn't want to. It just wasn't fair and it sucked that he even had to think about it. However, he was starting to see that there was nothing he could do to remove that threat from his life. Three years ago, he had learned in the worst way that he wasn't safe even at home. It wasn't just people from other countries who wanted him. Even at home, he was in danger.
And yet, he couldn't forget what Tony had said and what Bob had also said. Both of them had said the same thing in different ways.
How would Tony feel knowing that I think a CIA guy said the same thing as he did?
That thought got Tim to smile a little. Tony would hate it, because it would mean he had to agree with someone from the CIA. It was amusing to consider.
However, he forced himself to get back to the topic. He didn't want to be thinking about this, but he felt that he had to. Instead of catching up on the sleep he hadn't got last night, he needed to think about his life. Everyone had given their thoughts and feelings about it (multiple times in some cases), but it had to be him. As he had said to Gibbs, he didn't know how he felt and he had to decide. No one could make this choice for him. Some would undoubtably like to, but it had to be him.
This is my life. This is who I'm choosing to be.
And this was a decision that would guide the rest of his life. Tim felt that he was at a major junction. If he made the wrong decision now, he wouldn't be able to take it back later. Of course, making the decision wouldn't fix anything, not right away, and it wouldn't necessarily make things easy. It would just be deciding where he was going to focus his efforts. How was he going to approach the issues he had?
So what was the right decision?
Tim sighed. He wasn't even sure what the options were. Maybe he should figure out what he was deciding between first.
Marra suddenly lifted her head and whuffled in Tim's face. He smiled and patted her.
"Don't worry, Marra. I don't need you to cheer me up. And while I wouldn't mind being distracted, I'd better keep thinking about this while I can."
Marra looked at him soulfully and whuffled once more and rested her head on his chest again. Tim pet her for a couple of minutes and then went back to his thoughts.
What he'd been doing for the last three years wasn't going to work long-term. He couldn't both focus his attention on all of the possible plots to control him and live a somewhat normal life with his family and friends. It hadn't worked. It had not helped him feel better and it had put a strain on those he cared about. So continuing on as he had couldn't be one of the options.
In a way, what he was choosing between was Suhayl's life and Levi's life (at least as it had been in the CIA). Not that the details were really the same, but the general outlook. Face the upheavals when they came and simply live on as if that was an accepted facet of his life or focus everything on the eventual attempts and lose everything else. Were there any other options?
Tim wanted there to be more choices.
Or rather, what he really wanted was the choice to have it all go away. He knew it wasn't a choice, but that's what he wanted. He could admit that it was childish to stubbornly insist on something that was impossible, but it didn't change the fact that he really wanted that to be one of the options. Of course, there wouldn't be a difficult decision to make if that were one of the options.
"As long as it wouldn't be one of those Monkey's Paw situations," he muttered to himself.
How had he even remembered that story? He had been forced to read it in high school and probably hadn't given it a thought since.
Regardless, that wasn't one of the options anyway and he should stop wasting his time wishing for it. It wasn't going to happen. It couldn't happen. Ignore it. Stop thinking about it.
He could also try to pretend that he'd made the decision before three years ago, but in reality, it was simply that he'd been able to mostly ignore it. After his abduction and torture in the desert, in reality, except for a couple of blips here and there, his life had been pretty normal. Sure, he'd gone with Levi to Yemen. He'd run away to Morocco and met Zahara there. And he'd made Levi's disappearance an NCIS case when he shouldn't have been able to do it. However, his life had been pretty normal and it had allowed him to ignore the elephant in the room of what had come before all that. Just why those blips had happened could be ignored because things had turned out all right. The elephant had been quiescent, even comatose. Three years ago, his ability to ignore the elephant had been stolen from him. The elephant had awakened and gone on a rampage that had made it impossible to ignore.
He was still extremely angry at the people who had taken that away from him. Dwelling on it for too long even now could lead to the same anger he'd felt at the time it had happened. Not only had they killed Ray, they had killed his ability to ignore those things. And while it made him feel extremely selfish, there were times when he couldn't decide which he hated more.
Then, Suhayl's last words came to him.
"With all else that must be done, save yourself. You do not need anyone else to do it for you."
Tim wished he believed that.
Of course, I don't believe that anyone else can save me, either.
He sighed and pulled out his phone. He hadn't yet removed the program SIM card. He needed to do that. It wasn't even that he thought someone would steal his phone with the intent of getting at it. It was that he could simply lose his phone and even if the odds were highly against that resulting in the worst-case scenario, he would not allow that to happen, even if the odds were ten billion to one against it.
Marra voiced her mild displeasure at his movements. Tim paused and petted her a few times and she was content again.
Tim looked at his phone. Quickly, he got into the program, shut it down and then powered down his phone. He carefully removed the SIM card and looked at it. So small. It looked like nothing important and yet it carried the program that had put his life on this track.
And finally, he forced himself to think about something he almost never followed through to its conclusion. He thought back all those years ago to the person he was before the CIA, before this program. His life had been unremarkable. Oh, sure. He'd written and published a book which most people didn't do. He was a better-than-average computer guy. He worked for NCIS. But he wasn't all that distinctive. He hadn't mattered to anyone beyond his circle of family, friends and coworkers. His life had been normal.
"Would I give all this up to have that back again?" Tim whispered aloud. "Would I do that, Marra?"
Marra lifted her head slightly at the sound of her name and then dropped it back to his chest.
He knew that he couldn't. He knew that it was impossible to change the past. That didn't matter for the moment. The question was would he if he could. This mattered because it defined what he wanted most: safety or his family. Would he give up Zahara, Salma, Jonathan and their third child just so that he could avoid the chaos that came along with them?
Would I?
Knowing himself as he did, Tim knew that he would never have thought of going to Morocco and even if he had, he probably wouldn't have gone in the way he did where he would end up meeting Zahara. It wouldn't have happened. If he had ended up getting married, it would have been to someone else.
He loved Zahara more than anything. He loved Salma. He loved Jonathan. Would he be willing to lose them in order to escape the horrors he'd experienced? Which was stronger? His love or his fear?
He closed his eyes and pictured his perfect life, the image that popped into his head first, the honesty of an instant thought.
...and it was Zahara and the kids he thought of.
