Disclaimer: Ponytails.

Spoilers: None.

Notes: This is very angsty :P so, forewarning. Also, there's a new DiNozzo-David baby girl here, but I don't really consider her an OC because you will only hear of her in this fic. I just needed her to get this idea out, so... my DiNozzo-David children still remain Lila and Ben; that won't change.

Enjoy!

-Soph

The Daughter

She was born the day Ziva got a bullet in the side.

Preterm at 31 weeks, she had been cut out while Ziva lay unconscious on an operating table and three doctors tried desperately to save their lives.

The latter patient had stopped breathing.

The former patient hadn't yet begun.

A week later, Ziva lay in a hospital bed, recuperating.

Three weeks after that, her and Tony's firstborn was released from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for adequate growth and the ability to breathe, eat, and stay warm on its own.

There was no doubt about it: Lilith Cariana DiNozzo was a fighter, like her mum.

xoxo

Tony went on missions twice; once when Lily was three and once when she was five.

Lily cried every night during those missions for her father and his dearly missed out-of-this-world antics. There was no one better with Lily than him—not even Ziva—and there was also no one who could cheer her up faster or cajole her into doing what she was supposed to do more effectively than him.

(Of course, there was also no one who could cajole him into doing things for her more effectively than Lily herself, but not a single soul was to mention that.)

Poor Ziva tried her best, those nights. Lilith was by no means an easy child to please, because once a thought entered her mind, she clung on to it with all the fervour of a stubborn toddler with their favourite toy. The little girl was terrified that her father would not come back or had tired of her and left, and whatever Ziva could say, she refused to hear until her father had returned.

She was changed by those missions, though. Despite the fact that her dad always came home and always seemed to want to, Lily learnt that when her parents went away for long periods of time, there was nothing she could do about it.

xoxo

She cried up a storm when she fell down a flight of stairs at the tender age of six.

It hurt, naturally; her bumped head and one bruised knee hurt and her eyes hurt from crying and her scratchy throat hurt from screaming and her parents hurt because their child had fallen down a flight of stairs and there was nothing they could have done about it.

They nursed her back to health with liberal amounts of television, ice-cream, and love, but Lily never forgot that the misshapen patch of skin on her knee meant at some point, she was going to have to learn how to take care of herself.

Her parents could not have a safety net ready and waiting everywhere for her, it seemed.

xoxo

Her first experience with playground bullying came when she was nine.

"'Lilith?'You have the same name as my grandma," the boy had sneered upon pushing her to the ground, and spitfire as she was, she'd fought back.

The boy would come to leave her alone after that, but she would come to go home and whine to her parents every day about how she didn't want to be a grandma yet.

When her parents had no answer as to why they'd given her that name, Lilith decided that parents weren't perfect.

So, she renamed herself 'Cari' and resisted everyone else's attempts to call her anything else.

xoxo

Her mother was diagnosed with cancer two weeks after Cari turned fourteen.

For months, the girl sat by her mother's bedside, holding her mother's hand as Ziva went through pointless chemotherapy and learnt that it was all futile.

The cancer had spread.

Ziva was slowly being consumed alive by mutated cells and had only one month to live.

That last month, Cari spent all her time in two places: School and the hospital. It didn't matter that she no longer hung out with her friends at a time when peer relationships mattered more than anything else to most others. It didn't matter that her school grades were dropping and that she hadn't attended dance class in about two eons. What did matter was that there was now a countdown to the passing of her mother, to the day when her mother ceased to be and simply became had been. What did matter was that after all this time, she still didn't know why her parents named her 'Lilith,' but she knew why they let her name herself 'Cari.'

No, parents weren't perfect, but they did so strive to be.

They couldn't always have a safety net ready and waiting for her, either, but no one could say they didn't try. "Do your homework," Ziva had urged while she was still able to. "Go to dance class." "Hang out with your father." "Hang out with your friends." And Cari had resented it in the beginning: "You can't even hold yourself up and you want me to go hang out with my friends? What's wrong with you? Don't you want me here?"

But in the last moments, when her mother slept more than she woke, Cari understood.

The cancer had to end sometime. (So did her mother.)

And when it did, Cari would have no more hospitals to sit in; no more hands to hold and no more sick people to be angry at. When it did, she would only have her school, her dad, her friends, her ambitions, and if she gave that all up for the cancer then she would have nothing by the time it ended.

Even when her mother could no longer weave a safety net for her, the beloved woman still tried to make sure Cari knew how to make her own.

Lilith broke down the moment she realized liberal amounts of television and ice-cream and love were only symbolic of the fact that her parents would always take care of her.

xoxo

When her parents went away for long periods of time, Lily could do nothing about it.

There was nothing she could have done when her mother stopped breathing.

There was nothing she could have done when her mother was pronounced dead and the body dealt with, and there was nothing she could have done when her father called the funeral home to make arrangements and attempted to keep her from having to hear the conversation.

There was nothing she could've done when her mother's casket was lowered into the ground.

There was nothing she could've done about the handful of soil she had to throw into the hole.

"Dad?"

"Yeah, baby?"

"I think … I think I'd like to be called Lily again. I kinda like it when you call me that."

But she would always come home, too.