She slowly opened her eyes but the only thing she was able to see was the thick darkness that surrounded her and pressed her like a heavy brick. She looked around, trying to figure out where she was, but she only understood that she was lying on her back. She stretched out her arms but soon she had to stop because her hands collided against a cold surface, only a few inches far from her head.
She started to breathe rapidly.
Where am I?
It was hot there and she was sweating with the heat and the fear.
She was scared. She was scared because she felt trapped and weak. She was scared because she had no idea how to get out of there – whatever was that there. She was scared because the darkness, the hot, the narrow space reminded her of one moment of her life, a moment that lasted more than three months, a moment that had left her full of fears and scars.
He had been trying to phone her for the whole day, but she still hadn't answered. He was getting more and more worried, and Gibbs was too, even if he didn't show it as much as Tony did. Tony didn't expect her to phone him – she had left only a few days before and she had to be busy with her mission; but the fact that her phone was turned off while she was working, clearly breaking the rule number 3 – never be unreachable -, was really worrying him.
Where are you?
He tried to force himself to focus on his job, but he just couldn't.
It wasn't like her. It wasn't like breaking the rules. Something must had happened, but he couldn't think about anything that could have stopped her from calling. It was a simply mission. She just had to contact a man who had infiltrated a group of smugglers and report what he was going to tell her about the organization. Nothing to be worried about, but Tony had been worried since the day she left because he had that bad feeling every time she left for a mission – that bad feeling that kept him awake during the nights, thinking about all the things that could go wrong, all the things that could harm her, all the things that could stop her from coming back home. He had had that bad feeling since the last time he saw Ziva, but now he had a real reason to be worried.
Ziva, why don't you answer?
Suddenly, Vance showed up in the bullpen. Tony immediately closed his cell and looked at the director.
"Have any of you heard of Agent David?",Vance asked, shooting glances at Gibbs's team members, lingering over Tony.
"Why, hasn't she contacted you yet?" Tony asked him, even if he already knew the answer. If she had already contacted Vance, he wouldn't have been there now.
Gibbs stood up and walked towards Vance. "When did she last contact you?"
"Yesterday night," Vance answered, while both Tony and McGee were reaching their boss in the middle of the bullpen. "She had already talked with Mason and she was ready to come back home this afternoon. Nobody has seen her at the airport and the plane has left without her."
Tony looked at Gibbs. "I have been trying to phone her since this morning. Her phone has been off all day."
Gibbs breathed in deeply, looking around.
"DiNozzo, you're leaving for Seattle in an hour."
She hated the darkness when she was in Somalia. She was forced to stay in that dark and dusty room for hours and the only thing that reminded her she was awake was the noise coming from the outside. There were no windows in that room. There was no one else and nothing else but her. She was left alone for hours and in those hours she felt like she was living in a dream – living in a nightmare. She just paid attention to the noises, and every noise gave her a start. She spent hours lying on the ground, listening to her breath, touching her scars on her body with her index finger because the pain made her feel alive. Sometimes the pain was her only friend, a friend she fought against. She fought against the pain, she fought against the scars on her back and in her soul because she needed to feel alive, she needed to fight to feel life flowing in her veins and down her spine.
Other times, she begged the darkness to kill her. She just wanted to sleep, to forget the scars, and the pain, and the fights, and everything, she just wanted to fall asleep and sleep forever. She was tired of fighting, tired of feeling pain, tired of lying in the darkness. She had never been scared of the darkness before, but she started to hate the darkness, even if in the darkness she felt better, because no one was torturing her; but in the darkness she was alone with her pain and her thoughts, with her regrets and her tears and she shivered with the fear of the light. Because light was even worse than darkness, because light meant tortures, and more pain, and more scars, and more death in her soul.
Tony was looking at the sky without seeing it. He didn't notice the clouds and the wonderful light blue that was turning to a darker color. It was a beautiful scenery, but Tony had something else in his mind. The plane had been flying for more than two hours and Tony expected it to land very soon. Those two hours had been so painful for him that he just wanted to leave the loneliness of the plane and come back to the noise of the crowd. The silence was torturing him. He needed to drop his thoughts and start to look for Ziva without thinking about anything else.
He had no idea how he could find her and he felt helpless. He remembered the last time he felt like that. That never-ending summer without Ziva, those never-ending days when he was trying to figure out where Saleem was. When he had no idea of what to do, he just sat on a chair with his hands embracing his head, trying to think of a way to find him, a way to find the man who was responsible for the death of the woman he loved. He felt helpless when he was on that chair and he felt helpless now, sitting on the seat of the plane.
But he found her in Somalia.
And I'll find her now.
But now everything was quiet. There were no noises coming from the outside and she felt like she was alone again, like she was lost in the silence and the darkness again, lost in the nothingness. Because there was nothing but her there. Nothing but her and her thoughts and the thoughts were now pressing her and forcing her to feel pain again. There were no painful scars on her body anymore, but her soul was still scratched and lacerated and the fragments of her being were still lying in her heart. She tried to re-build her soul for months, and she succeeded. All the pieces of the broken vase of her soul were now at the right place. But now the darkness of her new jail was breaking her again. There were no physical tortures, but there were still the tortures of the thoughts, and the feelings, and the memories. And they hurt a lot more sometimes.
A whole night. This is the time that took him to find out where Ziva was. He met Mason, he talked to him and Mason told him to talk to the taxi driver that was supposed to drive her back to the hotel where she was staying. When he finally found him, the driver told him that he had been paid to drive her to a warehouse downtown. Tony "borrowed" his taxi and drove as fast as Ziva usually did. There was fear running like a wild horse in his veins. He could only think about what he would find there. Ziva might be dead, and in his mind he saw her body lying on the ground covered of blood, and he started to drive even faster.
There were drops on her face. Breads and tears. She was crying, hitting her hands against the walls of her small prison. She wanted to go out of there, she wanted to feel alive again, and every minute she spent there was another scar that started bleeding again.
He burst opened the door, with the gun in his hands. As soon as he realized that there was no one in there, he ran into the warehouse, looking around, calling out her name.
There were noised now. Footsteps and yells. Suddenly she felt alive again and started to fight. She hit the walls making a noise that got louder and louder, hoping that whoever was there was able to hear her.
He heard something. A rumble coming from somewhere at the bottom of the warehouse.
"Ziva?"
She was able to hear him now. She could hear his voice calling out her name. she could hear his footsteps coming nearer and nearer. She could hear him trying to understand where the trapdoor was.
Then he finally found it. He sighed with relief and opened it.
She saw the light and it didn't scare her.
She saw the light and the torture was over and not about to begin.
She saw the light and everything was fine. Again.