Chapter Text
No More Almost
PROLOGUE – Mira
The pen felt wrong in his hand.
Too light, too cheap, too ordinary for what it was about to do.
Tony turned it once between his fingers, feeling the faint ridge where the cap clicked on. Across the table, Ziva watched him with the kind of stillness that only ever meant one thing with her, if she moved, something might break.
To his right, Tali swung one leg under her chair, foot tapping an anxious rhythm against the floor she pretended not to notice. On his left, Mira hunched over a coloring sheet some clerk had given her, tongue peeking out in concentration as she filled in the roof of a cartoon house.
Four stick figures stood in front of the house. The smallest one had curls.
“Sign here, Monsieur DiNozzo,” the clerk said in accented English, tapping the dotted line.
He didn’t look at the paper.
He looked at Ziva.
She was looking at Mira.
For a second, the courtroom dissolved, the beige walls, the buzzing fluorescent lights, the bored bailiff, all of it slipping away under the weight of another memory, in another room, with another small plastic thing between them.
The pregnancy test sat between them on his coffee table like a tiny, accusatory alien.
Tony stared at it. Stared at her. Stared at it again.
“So,” he said finally, because silence had never been his thing, “either that’s a very tiny thermometer, or…”
“It is not a thermometer,” Ziva said, dry but a little breathless. She was sitting upright, feet planted, as if bracing for impact. “I wanted to be sure before I told you.”
“And now you’re sure.”
“Yes.”
He exhaled, a shaky laugh bubbling out despite the way his heart was slamming against his ribs. “Okay. Okay. Wow. Okay.”
“You are… upset?” she asked, watching him too closely, like she was waiting for a mistake.
“What? No.” He shook his head hard enough to make himself a little dizzy. “Surprised. Very surprised. Maybe a little terrified. Definitely Terrified. But not upset.”
Her expression didn’t soften.
“Ziva,” he said, his voice dropping, “we’re… this is… you and me and Tali and now… maybe another tiny person who likes to ignore bedtime and steal my shirts.”
She swallowed. “The doctor will say it is risky. My body… it has been through much. Tali was already…”
“A miracle,” he finished for her. He knew the word stayed lodged in her throat. Somalia, the metal, the scar tissue, the quiet warnings. You may never…
And then Tali.
He reached across the counter and covered her hand with his.
“Then maybe this is another one,” he said. “Or maybe it’s not. But whatever it is, we do it together. No disappearing, no secrets, no ‘I leave to protect you.’ Deal?”
She hesitated. For a second he could see the old reflex—the part of her that ran alone into danger, into grief, into whatever came next.
Then she nodded, eyes impossibly dark. “Deal.”
He squeezed her hand. “Good. Because I’m very good at late-night cravings runs and mediocre at Lamaze videos, and it would be a shame to waste those talents.”
Her laughter was quiet, but it was real.
He held onto that sound for weeks.
The pen scraped faintly against paper when he finally put it down.
Tony didn’t realize he’d signed until the clerk was sliding the document toward Ziva with the same bland efficiency she probably used for parking tickets and name changes.
“Madame David?” the woman prompted.
Ziva blinked, coming back from somewhere far away, and took the pen.
From the corner of his eye, Tony saw Tali straighten up in her chair. She was trying so hard to look unimpressed, like this was just another appointment, but her knuckles were white around the edge of the plastic seat.
Mira kept coloring, rainbows everywhere. That was how Tony knew she understood exactly how big this was. Kids who had lived through real fear always pretended it was nothing when it mattered most.
Ziva’s handwriting was neat and deliberate. No shaking. No hesitation. She wrote Ziva David like it was both a full stop and a starting line.
“Très bien,” the clerk said, stamping something with a heavy, official thing. “It is complete. Congratulations. She is now, in the eyes of the Republic, your daughter.”
Mira’s pencil froze.
Tali’s foot stopped tapping.
“Like… officially?” Tali asked, English slipping out before French, as it always did when she was excited.
“Officially,” Tony confirmed, feeling something in his chest loosen that he hadn’t realized was clenched.
Mira glanced up, eyes flickering between the adults, then to Tali. “So I… do not have to leave?” she asked, voice small.
“Oh, love,” Ziva said softly, the endearment slipping out before she could stop it. “No. You do not have to leave.”
“And I really get to be her sister?” Tali blurted, then flushed. “I mean. If she wants that.”
Mira hesitated like someone stepping over an invisible line, then nodded once. “I want that,” she said, the words careful but clear.
Tony cleared his throat. “Well, that seems unanimous,” he said lightly. “Should we celebrate? I hear from a very reliable source” he jerked his head toward Tali “that there is a bakery down the street with macarons so good they are basically illegal.”
Tali rolled her eyes. “I told you that in confidence.”
“Nothing is confidential in this family,” he said. “You’ll learn that soon enough, Mira.” He reached out and brushed a knuckle lightly against the tip of her nose, the same way he did with Tali when she was small, a soft little boop that said you’re one of us without any big speeches. Mira’s mouth twitched.
They filed out of the courtroom together, the four of them. The hallway was bright and echoing, the air different somehow on this side of the door.
Outside, the afternoon was crisp, Paris noisy and ordinary around them. Cars, scooters, someone swearing at a parking meter. Life, just… happening.
Ziva expected Tali to immediately latch onto Tony’s arm and start debating flavors. That was their ritual: loudly arguing about chocolate versus raspberry while Ziva pretended not to have a favorite.
Instead, Tali lingered by the steps, looking at Mira.
Mira hovered awkwardly, the strap of her too-big backpack clutched in both hands.
“You can walk with me, if you want,” Tali said, suddenly shy. “It’s less scary in the middle.”
Mira blinked, considering this, then nodded. She stepped forward so they were side by side.
Without looking, her fingers slipped into Tali’s.
Tali squeezed once, firm.
On Mira’s other side, as they started down the street, she reached out in a small, hesitant movement, hooking two fingers into the fabric of Ziva’s coat—just enough contact to say I’m here, don’t go too fast, not enough to demand anything she wasn’t sure she was allowed to want.
Ziva felt the tug and looked down.
For a second, the image doubled, Mira’s hand, Tali’s grin, the city ahead of them, and overlaid itself with a different future that had never quite arrived. A tiny plastic test on a coffee table. A word caught behind her teeth.
Miracle.
She swallowed.
Then she shifted her arm so that Mira’s small hand slid naturally into hers instead of just her coat, fingers curling around knuckles that were too thin for her liking.
Mira didn’t pull away.
On Tali’s other side, Tony fell into step, reaching out to ruffle his older daughter’s hair. She swatted at him automatically, but her smile was wide and irrepressible.
“Macarons?” he offered.
“Raspberry,” Tali said.
“Raspberry,” Mira added, so quietly he almost missed it.
“Excellent life choices,” Tony declared. “Come on, then. First official act as a family: a sugar rush.”
They walked toward the bakery, four shadows stretching in front of them on the pavement.
Somewhere in the jumble of the past few years, Washington DC, Be’er Sheva, Somalia, Cairo, Paris, running and stopping and starting again, the fault lines in their lives had finally stopped splitting them apart.
They were still cracked. They always would be.
But for the first time in a long time, those cracks felt like something new was growing through them—room for more laughter, more small hands, more chances they hadn’t dared imagine before.
For now, it was simple: two parents, two daughters, a paper that said official and a bakery door that chimed when they pushed it open.