The Truth
She had once stated that she would never be taken alive –if she was ever to be compromised, she knew what she must do: Fight until she escaped, or fight until she, herself, was killed. It was simple; there were no other options.
Not only had she been captured, but she had been captured alive –which, deep down in the dungeon of her mind, infuriated her, however all feeling had been suppressed long ago.
The exact amount of time that she had been held in this forsaken room was a mystery; between the torture and the frequent, albeit welcomed, lapses of consciousness, time had merely begun to run together in an infinite tangle.
After what had to have been several weeks, the beatings and abuse had ceased and, eventually, she was able to see clearly out of her right eye, the swelling lessened and the bruises began to fade. The men no longer pressed her for information –she refused to talk anyway- nor did they kill her. In her muddled, tired mind, it began to make less and less sense.
When her captors came into her holding cell, she was prepared to die for this was her penance, her karma finally catching up to her. And she deserved everything she was dealt.
And when the taller man pulled a burlap sack roughly over her head, throwing her limp body over his shoulder, she knew that she would not be returning to this room.
And when she was dropped unceremoniously into a hard wooden chair that rocked unsteadily under her slight weight, she was prepared to die.
And when the coarse fabric was pulled over her pale face, scratching her cheeks and clawing at her chaffed lips, Ziva David was prepared to die. She was not prepared, however, to meet the familiar ocean eyes of her former American partner.
She must be dreaming, her terrified mind playing another cruel trick –surely after all she'd done, all she'd ever said –surely he would not have come for her, travel all this way from the other side of the world to search for her in the bowels of hell . . . .
There was the sound of quiet wheezing on the ground, a breathing pattern she not only recognized, but was shocked by: McGee had come too. . . .
But that was impossible . . . She had to have been here –wherever here was- for months, at least. Her own country –her own father- had given her up for dead. . . . but not the Americans, not NCIS. What was DiNozzo's rule? When your guys are in trouble, you don't sit idle? It was something like that –maybe it was Gibbs' rule. . . . It didn't matter –nothing mattered.
And then Tony maneuvered his foot against hers and it was then that she knew she wasn't hallucinating – Tony and McGee were here, on her six as always, and, she realized, they were glad to see her –they had come for her. To take her home. . . . .If they survived –if she survived. Because she was prepared to die, prepared to sacrifice herself to save the two men before her.
She was alive, she looked like hell, her hair a bedraggled tangle, her face pale and thin, but she was alive.
And when she saw him, he saw a flicker of hope in her dead, brown eyes.
