NCIS is the property of Don Bellisario. My works are creative fiction for my own amusement and I stand to make no monetary or other gain from this story.
Ziva was so close to her target. She had fought her way into the camp in Somalia and was a fingernail's distance from killing Saleem before she was overpowered, dragged to the ground and her hands tied behind her back. Saleem watched impassively as his would-be-assassin was pulled to her feet. One guard stood behind her and held her upper arms as another backhanded her across the face and proceeded to beat her with iron fisted hands as a prelude to any questioning.
By the time he stopped, she was bleeding profusely and the left side of her face was beginning to swell. Her arms were released and she was shoved forward and fell to the ground.
She caught the fall on her shoulder and started to roll over but the guard placed his boot squarely on her back and pushed her all the way down, her face in the dirt.
Saleem stepped forward and waved the guard away. He bent, seized a lock of Ziva's hair, and pulled her to her knees. He stood and gripped her chin, twisting her face up to look at him. "Who are you working for?"
Ziva did not answer.
"What is your name?"
Ziva did not answer.
"Who sent you? Tell me."
Ziva looked him full in the eyes and said nothing. He moved closer and his body filled her entire view. "Talk to me and maybe I will give you a quick death."
"I have nothing to say to you." Her voice was even and firm, without a single stutter or tremble.
Saleem released her chin and grabbed both of her shoulders. Ziva held eye-contact, refusing to be intimidated by his mere presence. He kneed her just under the ribcage and shoved her backward. Ziva tumbled to the ground and rolled, using her momentum to regain her footing in a low crouch.
Saleem gestured to her as he spoke to the two men by the door. "Take this away and lock it up." They hauled Ziva to her feet and put a bag of black sackcloth over her head. She stood erect and walked between them as they led her away.
She counted the steps and tried to measure the distance. She memorized each turn and the direction of the sun on her body whenever they passed a window. The guardsmen took Ziva down a small corridor that had no windows. A single, 40 watt bulb shone at the entrance to the hall that went back about thirty feet. At the end of the hall was a thick wooden door with bars in the window. The guard on Ziva's left opened it and the other untied her, pulled the bag off, and shoved her inside. Ziva stumbled forward as the door slammed and locked behind her.
It took only a few moments to fully survey the room. Ziva estimated the dimensions at around five by six feet. There was a rough, thin blanket tossed on the dirt floor in one corner and a bucket in the other. Besides that, there was nothing – only the thick walls and the door that let in minimal light. Ziva took the blanket and wrapped it around herself. She settled down on the hard-packed dirt, knowing that rest would help her face whatever they had in store for her later.
In the dimly lit hallway, hidden from natural light, Ziva had no way to determine the passage of time. Saleem allowed two days for thirst, hunger, and loneliness to work her over before he sent for her.
There was no way for Ziva to know how long she had been alone before the guards came to get her. They were not the same guards as before – Ziva made a point to remember and categorize each face, both to identify them later and to maintain a count of how many there were. One stood silhouetted in the seemingly bright light of the doorway as the other marched over to Ziva.
Ziva stood and backed up against the wall, her body language relaxed and resigned even as she tensed for a fight. The guard reached with his left hand for a coil of rope to bind her as his right stretched forward to grab her. Ziva waited until his arm was almost fully extended toward her before lashing out. She gripped his wrist with both hands, ducked under so her back was to him and lifted him clear off the ground, sending him crashing over her into the wall.
Ziva dropped onto him, spiking one knee into his chest. She pressed her forearm into his throat, watching as he struggled to breathe. With her other hand, she groped around his beltline, searching for a blade or weapon of some sort. Just as her fingers fumbled across a knife, the guard from the doorway caught up to her and hooked one beefy arm around her neck, cutting off her air supply.
He dragged her off his partner and held her firmly as she squirmed to get air. The other man stood and roughly bound her wrists behind her. "I know Saleem has plans for you, bitch. How about I just give you my own welcome gift?" He drew back and punched her full on in the stomach as the she was held in place, her arms bound.
Ziva grit her teeth and kicked upward, driving her knee toward his groin. He blocked and returned her attempted attack with a volley of punches to the gut and the sides of her ribcage.
"Enough!" Saleem appeared in the doorway and barked the order. "Bring her." A black bag was pulled over her head before Ziva was led out of the cell.
When the bag was removed, Ziva was in an open room, tied at the waist and back to a chair. She felt the warmth of the sun at her back and the hot burn of the light above her head. After several days in almost complete darkness, the brightness was overwhelming. Saleem sat casually in the chair in front of her and waved his men out of the room. A large bottle of water rested on the floor next to him.
"So, my sources tell me that you are NCIS. What can you tell me about that?"
Ziva ran a dry tongue over her cracked lips. Her voice was rusty after neither speaking nor drinking water in several days. "I don't know what you are talking about."
"Really?" Saleem stood and carried the water bottle over to stand right in front Ziva. He unscrewed the cap and poured some of the cool fluid out onto the ground. Ziva watched, her eyes followed the path of the liquid as it ran into the dust and vanished.
"Really." Ziva met his eyes and said no more.
Saleem returned to his chair and spun it around. He sat facing Ziva with his legs straddling the back and his arms resting on the top. He drank deeply from the water bottle before speaking to her again. "I apologize for my rudeness. Would you like something to drink?"
"I have nothing to say to you."
He held up the water bottle. "What is your name?"
Ziva considered and determined that there was not much to be lost by telling him that at least. Name, rank and serial number, she smiled wryly. "I am Ziva David."
Saleem tossed the bottle straight into her lap. She lifted it with both hands still tied at the wrist and drank deeply as he continued, "a member of NCIS?"
"I know nothing of NCIS."
"Then what were you doing here trying to kill me?"
Ziva smiled, "I was on vacation and decided to go hunting for dogs."
Saleem snatched the water from her hand and flung it against the wall. He jerked her head back so she was looking up at him and growled into her face, "Tell me everything you know about NCIS."
Ziva said nothing. Saleem's eye caught the gleam of a necklace and he reached down and pulled out her Star of David. He ripped it off her and stared at it for a moment before throwing it on the floor.
"It would be better for you to tell me." Saleem leaned in, placing his hands on the shoulders of her chair and bringing his face right next to hers. Ziva said nothing and he shoved, throwing the chair backwards. It crashed to the ground with Ziva still tied to it. He kicked her in the ribs.
"I have nothing to tell."
"I think you do. And you will. Believe me – whether you want to or not, you will talk to me. I urge you to do it now before things become… unpleasant." He kicked her again.
"I have nothing to tell." Saleem turned and walked out of the room. Ziva heard him barking indiscernible orders and then re-enter the room. She said nothing and she could not see the door from her position on the floor, but she saw Saleem standing over her and looking down at her. He smiled and Ziva did not consider it a smile that bode well for her. Something heavy was being dragged into the room, though Ziva could not see what it was.
A knife clicked open and Ziva was cut free from the chair and pulled to her feet. She tensed when she saw the waist-high table that had been brought into the room, with several car batteries on a lower shelf and shackles at each corner.
There was a brief scuffle and several guards received broken noses but eventually they managed to secure Ziva on the table. Saleem leaned over her as someone taped the wires down, one on her left shoulder and the other on her right hip. "Talk to me, David."
Ziva bit her lip and looked up at the ceiling, refusing to look at Saleem. "Tell me. Tell me about NCIS. Tell me who your other operatives are. Tell me why you are here. NCIS has no business out here, so tell me what other agencies you are working with. Give me names; give me numbers; give me data I can work with. And I can make all this…" his expansive wave covered the table and electrodes, "go away."
Ziva shifted her glance and looked at him; Saleem thought he saw hope in her eyes as she asked, "Just like that?"
Saleem nodded, keeping eye-contact, "Just like that."
"And what if I tell you to go to hell, then what?"
Saleem took in his hands two open wires that, when connected, would complete the circuit running through her body. "Then this," he touched the wires together and put a clamp on them before walking out of the room. "When you are ready to talk, the guards will bring you to me." He paused to tell the guard at the door, in an undertone that Ziva could not hear, "if she doesn't break, just take her back to the cell when she passes out."
Ziva woke up back in her cell. Her body was sore from head to toe but, so far as she could ascertain, there was no permanent damage as of yet. And I haven't said anything. I have not broken. They know nothing. On the floor just inside the door were a small bowl of rice and a cup of water. Ziva ate her first food in days and drank half the water. The rest she hid under her blanket in the corner. She could go for a long time without food if they chose not to feed her again for a while, but she would need to ration the water.
A week passed; then two, then three. Sometimes she was left in the half-dark of her cell for days at a time, other times she was brought out every day for some form of questioning. She still had not broken, still had not talked. Six weeks passed. Most of the time now there was something going on in the camp and she was ignored; she could dimly hear gunfire some days and tried to identify the arms by the sounds of their discharge, to gain an accurate assessment of their capabilities. She was fed enough to stay alive and taken once a week to a small shower where she was thrown into a deluge of freezing water as a guard or two stood just on the other side of the curtain.
In her long hours in the dark quiet of her cell, where there was neither day nor night, Ziva waited. She did not always know what she waited for – escape, sometimes, but mostly she waited for death. Ziva had never been overly religious, but in the long, lonely hours, she began to pray. At some point in one of her interrogations, she had been kicked to the floor and managed to secret away the Star of David necklace that had lain in the dirt since being taken from her. She kept it carefully hidden, burying it under a layer of dust whenever she heard footsteps approaching. A few times, one of the guards overheard her whispering her prayers or reciting the Shema. Always after that her food was 'accidentally' spilled or, even worse, her daily ration of water poured out on the dusty ground before her thirsty eyes.
Ziva woke from a few hours of sleep to the sounds of feet coming down the hallway toward her cell. Wearily she stood and waited. There was no point in fighting when they came to get her from her cell. If she took a guard down, they just called in another until they had her subdued and the end result was only that she was more tired and worn when it came to resisting whatever form of interrogation she was facing.
Two guards came in, bound her hands in front of her and put the bag over her head. Though she had never seen the route from her cell to the interrogation room, her feet had traveled it many times and she had every inch of it memorized by feel. When she entered the room and her blindfold was removed, she was not surprised to see Saleem standing behind the table. She was surprised to see six extra guards lining the sides of the room, all unarmed, as was standard procedure with Ziva so that she could not take their weapons from them.
"Is there anything you would like to tell me?" Saleem asked the typical opening question to any of their sessions.
Ziva said nothing – her typical response to his questions.
Saleem nodded to his men. "Strip her and put her on the table." Ziva looked around the room again, re-examining the expressions. These were not the usual sadistic faces of people who enjoyed inflicting pain, but full of lust. For the first time since her capture, Ziva panicked, and the adrenaline coursing through her system gave her a speed and a strength that no one in the room could anticipate.
She spun on her heels and through the doorway before the guards realized what she was doing. She sprinted down the hall, remembering the route she had taken to come into the compound a few weeks before. She was just in sight of daylight when someone caught up to her. The moment Ziva felt a hand reach out for her, she spun in place, kicking out and regaining her footing a split second after the strike so as not to allow them to grab her leg. With her wrists still bound in front of her, Ziva swung upwards and slammed her pursuer under the chin, knocking him over and to the floor.
The commotion in the doorway had raised the attention of several guards outside and, while Ziva's attention was focused on the man inside the building, another man grabbed her from behind. Several other guards had caught up by then. Eventually they managed to get a firm control over Ziva and carried her inside. One held her feet wrapped under his arm so she could not kick out as another two supported her body weight and pinned her arms to her side.
They brought her back to the interrogation room where Saleem still waited. Once inside, one of the men locked the door and two of them stood with their backs to it to prevent a repeat escape attempt as the men carrying Ziva deposited her on the ground. Saleem repeated his query.
"There is nothing I have to say to you, pig!" Ziva spat the words, her terror shining through in the simple fact that, for the first time, her voice was not steady and controlled, but loaded with all the hate and anger she could muster.
Saleem looked at his men and that look was all that was needed. They pushed Ziva up against a wall and forced her to her knees so they could draw her shirt off over her body. Then they dragged her to the table and threw her on her back. They secured her arms to the shackles above her and eased her pants off of her kicking legs before securing those as well.
Ziva's chest heaved in exertion as she lay spread-eagle on the table, wearing only her undergarments. Saleem ran his hand across her stomach, reveling in her fear. "So, this is what it takes to bring down the great Ziva David. You should know – everybody breaks. Just talk to me. Tell me who you were working with, who your fellow agents are, who NCIS is working with. Tell me and I will kill them and offer you an easy death. A bullet to the head is an honorable death for an agent such as you. Surely preferable to any other alternatives I could offer you.
Ziva clenched her jaw and refused to look at him. Saleem never took his eyes off her face as he ordered his men out into the hallway to wait. Ziva heard them move and then the door closed and she was trapped, alone and practically naked, with a man she had tried to kill, a man who held her captive and tortured her. "Why do you stay silent? Nobody has come for you; nobody is even looking for you. They have all left you. Nobody cares. I could kill you tonight or keep you here until you die of old age and nobody would care. Why suffer to protect them?"
His fingers traced their way up from her stomach to her ribcage. "I see you are not being kept well fed… a woman should have more meat on her bones, don't you think?"
Saleem removed a knife from a locked drawer in the table and snapped it open. The metal was ice on her skin as he cut her bra and flung the tattered fabric to the side, then repeated the procedure with her underwear. He stood at the foot of the table, looking up at Ziva's across her spread legs and bared body. He held the knife so the point just barely grazed her skin and traced it about her legs. He moved around to the Ziva's right side and continued the path with the knife up her body. He did not break skin, but left a fine red trail. Ziva bit her lip as he slowly drew the knife back down her body to the crux of her thighs.
Saleem hoisted himself onto the table and positioned himself kneeling between her legs. He spread her flesh with his fingers and held the point of the blade just against her clitoris, but did not apply pressure. "Look at me."
Ziva lifted her head and looked at him. "Please…" she murmured softly. "Please don't."
Saleem's only response was to lay down the knife on the side of the table and quickly strip his clothes off, revealing his well-toned, dark-skinned body. He leaned forward and lay on top of her, crushing her beneath his weight.
Ziva gasped as his body put pressure on her aching muscles and bruised bones, products of weeks of torture. Saleem touched her face with one hand, his fingers softly stroking her skin. Ziva tried to retreat in her mind, tried to escape, but the weight of the man on top of her, his hot breath against her neck, and his hardness against her inner thigh were entirely too real to ignore.
He reached down between them and took hold of himself, now supporting his weight on one elbow as that hand caressed her face. "You know what?" he breathed. "I'm glad you haven't talked. If you had, we wouldn't be here now. But we are. And now, you are completely… mine." With that last word, he drove himself into her in a single thrust.
Ziva uttered a soft cry in pain as he tore through her dry entrance. His movements were rapid and fierce, driving into her with a violence that belied his calm demeanor in all of their previous encounters. When he finished, he got off the table, carefully unshackled her and rolled her over. For once, Ziva was frozen and did not fight. She lay limp as he first moved her arms, wrenching her upper body painfully, and then switched her legs as well, leaving her face-down, staring at the grainy wood of the table.
She pressed her forehead against the wood, intentionally digging the ridges and valleys of the grain into her skin to give herself a pain that would distract her from the throbbing between her legs. Focus, David. This is nothing, just one more type of torture. It is nothing. It does not matter. The pain… it is not so bad. You have felt worse. The humiliation… is just designed to weaken you. You are not weak, she mentally lectured, steeling herself against his every touch.
Saleem shrugged his clothes back on and returned to the table. He admired her prone form and gave his hands free roam of her body, feeling her ass and the crease between her cheeks, uncaringly brushing his rough hands over the tender flesh he had just brutalized. His hands moved up her back, massaging her shoulders and neck with a care that seemed almost tender. Suddenly he tangled his fingers in her hair and wrenched her head to the side so she had no choice but to look at him.
"Stupid, Jewish bitch," he muttered. "Did you really think I hadn't put it all together by now? Ziva David, child of Eli David, head of Mossad. I don't know what you were doing with NCIS, but it was Mossad that sent you here, wasn't it? Wasn't it?" He threw her head down at the table and there was a sickening thud as the side of her skull collided with the wood. "Mossad knows where you are, where I am, and they haven't sent anyone, have they? I told you, nobody cares. Your own father sent you here on a mission doomed to fail and now has left you to me. No rescue is coming. No help is on the way. You are mine," he ground out the words, "until I say otherwise." With that, he turned and went to open the door. He looked at Ziva, lying helpless on the table, as he said callously to the men "Next."
It was better to be tied face-down, Ziva decided. She didn't have to look at the face of the men as they violated her, one after the other. She could press her face down into the wood and grit her teeth and bear it.
When it was done, two men stayed and watched as Ziva rolled off the table and limped to where her clothes had fallen. She redressed herself, now without undergarments, and straightened her back. She ignored the pain between her legs, refusing to show any more weakness in front of those who had debased her so. They tied her arms securely behind her back and blindfolded her for the return trip to her cell.
After that there was no pretense at getting information from her. When Saleem wanted her, he had his men take her to the interrogation room so he could rape her. Sometimes when he was done she would be sent back to her cell and sometimes the guards would have their turns. She never cried in front of them. A precious few times, she started to scream, but always managed to choke it back and let out only a groan or, at most, a sharp cry. A soldier could not show weakness. And Ziva was trained to be a good soldier. She would not cry or show such emotion before her captors. Alone in her cell, huddled under a ragged blanket for warmth, she could let out a few tears, always in silence, always alone.
Ziva hoarded what little strength she had. Though most of the time her weakness was honest, she hid what moments of passionate fury she did have. She had to lull them into thinking that her fight was gone. She had to, because if they gave her just one opportunity, just one chance, she would have to act quickly. Ziva waited, waited for a chance to kill Saleem, confident that, if she succeeded, death would be her reward. This was no longer about any mission for Mossad, any order by her father, or any war on terrorism. This was personal. Ziva David was determined to see Saleem dead, and if killing him bought her a quick death with no more shame, so much the better.
After about four weeks of rape, they stopped tying her down to the table. They said she was weak from starvation and confinement, that she had no fight left in her. Ziva heard this and would have laughed if she did not know how perilously close it was to truth.
Her ration of food had been increased since Saleem had first raped her. She knew it was not out of any concern for her well being but simply to make her more appealing to his desires. That thought alone would have been enough to make Ziva refuse food if she did not have a plan that required strength.
In the twelfth week of her captivity, Ziva realized that she had not had her period since they had begun to rape her. She still had no way to judge passage of time in her little cell so far from sunlight, especially since she was often left alone for days at a time. But she suspected that her courses might be over due. She said nothing. Most likely it was due to sudden weight-loss and general malnourishment. But there was that possibility. Most of the men did not use condoms and Ziva of course had no birth control. She was hungry all the time, though that was typical on the minimal diet she was provided, and was often sick in the mornings. She told herself that was the result of being kicked or punched in the stomach too often.
The uncertainty in her mind remained, however. Between her adamant refusal to believe that she was pregnant by one of her rapists and her logical deduction that that was the most likely case, Ziva was caught in a whirl of doubt and confusion. This one issue gave her something on which to focus her mind and all the relentless frustration of her powerless situation.
It is nothing, she thought. It has to be nothing. It is only my mind wandering, I have been here too long. Oh G*d, I am breaking! Everyone breaks eventually – I am finally breaking… The idea that Ziva was finally cracking, as she had seen prisoners crack before, was abominable. She could handle the torture; she could suffer rape; she could bear any number of things if she had too. But the thought that she might break and be torn down to a shell of a human, a derelict who would betray everything for a moment's hope of respite from captivity – this was the thought that haunted Ziva David. She had seen it, she knew it would happen to anyone given enough time, but she could not accept it happening to her.
As Ziva turned to the wall and wept silently, she resolved to act soon. She had to find a chance to kill Saleem and die herself before she broke completely.
Barely a week later, Saleem made a mistake. He ordered Ziva brought from her cell and he waited in the interrogation room as she was brought in. As of late, they saw no point in binding her hands, since all fight seemed to have left her. She was ushered into the room and Saleem waved the guards outside. They shut the door, leaving her alone and unbound with Saleem.
Ziva tensed in readiness, but maintained her calm as he pulled her over to the table and forced her down onto her back. She never forgot that he carried a knife with him, nor that he moved its location among various pockets so that she could never easily find it. She would have to wait for the right moment to present itself. She would have to wait to have the tactical advantage.
Saleem pulled her pants off, not even bothering with the shirt and dragged her down the table so that her legs hung off the edge. Somewhere, deep in the back of her mind, Ziva mourned the fact that she had become so accustomed to this horror visited upon her body that she could no longer find the strength to fight the day-to-day abuse. She mourned that she had allowed herself to fall so far as to not consider it worthwhile to resist as her clothes were stripped from her so that she could be violated.
Saleem unzipped his pants, hoisted her legs and placed them on his shoulders. As he positioned himself to enter her, Ziva took her chance. Her legs were already on either side of his head; she locked her feet behind his neck and twisted, using her legs to choke him and bring him to the ground. She rolled off the table as he fell to the ground. He turned and struggled, his hands reaching up to pull her legs away from his throat. Ziva tightened her grip, listening dispassionately as he spluttered for air.
Her hold on him was good, but it was not a solid enough lock. His air was restricted, but he could still breathe. In order to kill him, Ziva would have to shift her hold to the side so that instead of being caught between the sides of her calves he would be trapped against the shinbone of one and the powerful muscles at the back of the other. As soon as she loosened her grip to reposition, Saleem called out.
Ziva cursed and lunged forward abandoning her chokehold completely as her arms reached for his head, to twist it and wrench it from his neck. Before she could get a grip on him, though, two of the men who had been guarding outside the door rushed in and pulled her off of him.
Saleem sat up, subtly re-doing his pants as his men looked tacitly away. He rose to his feet and eyed Ziva as she stood, firmly held between two guards. He backhanded her with all the force he could muster. Ziva's head rocked back with the force of the blow, but other than that she showed no response. With a snarl, Saleem drive his fists into her, one after the other, until Ziva was doubled over, held up only by the firm grips of the guards on either side. As his final blow, Saleem grabbed her by the shoulders and brought his knee up squarely between her naked legs.
The guards let her fall as Ziva crumpled to the ground with a whimper. Saleem glared down at her. "Take her back to her cell."
Ziva put her pants back on and waited as the guards tied her hands firmly and blindfolded her. They each kept a strong grip on her arms as they marched her back. Nobody came to the cell for several days after that, not even to give food or water. On the third day, they began to give her water again, but still no food.
After a full seven days of hunger, Saleem summoned her back to the interrogation room. There he ordered her tied with her arms up to the grate over the light. Her legs were tied together and anchored to a large metal dumbbell Saleem had brought into the room for that purpose. Everyone left the room as Saleem beat her. It was hours before she was cut down and afterward Ziva had no strength to stand. Saleem would not allow her the dignity of walking even partially held up by guards as had happened before. He watched and laughed as he forced her to crawl back to her cell. If she tried to stand, he kicked her down again. If she fell to the ground, he pulled her back up onto her knees and made her continue.
"You will die, David." He told her. "You will utterly abase yourself before me and then I will be merciful and kill you. Or I will kill you piece by piece and watch you suffer through it. Either way, you will die soon. And you will die by my hand and my hand alone."
Ziva collapsed into her sleeping corner as soon as she was certain the guards had left her short hallway. Her fingers sought out the Star of David and she clutched it to her heart as she wept and prayed for the release of death. That night she bled.
When a guard came to get her the next morning, he saw the red staining her legs and went to consult Saleem. As much as he might have wanted to continue punishing her for causing him humiliation, Saleem ordered his men to stay away from her until the period of ritual uncleanliness was over. After her courses ended, they would have to wait seven days and seven nights to touch her again – otherwise they would contaminate the camp and their holy mission with her unclean discharges. She could be given food and water but other than that, there was to be no contact.
Ziva bled for two days. She knew it was not an ordinary period, she had felt the ripping in her womb as the fetus was dislodged during her beating. She wept as she dug a small hole in the floor to bury the pieces of her child. She wept for a life conceived and destroyed in the horrors of this place. Ziva allowed herself two days to weep in the solitude promised her by her "uncleanliness." For the first time in her life, Ziva thanked G*d for the traditional laws that declared a woman unclean because of her monthly courses. These laws were in the Torah and therefore applied to Jew, Christians, and Muslims alike. She would be spared their attentions until she was no longer unclean.
After the bleeding stopped, Ziva ordered herself to stop crying. She prayed and waited. Ziva had no hope that Saleem's fury had died down. He had very nearly been killed by an unarmed woman, one weakened by captivity, torture, and rape at his own hand, no less. Ziva knew he would not live with the shame of it, she knew he would kill her soon and that her death would not be an easy one. With this bitter outlook, Ziva waited, meditated, and prayed and waited.
When Ziva next heard the distinct sound of guards coming to pull her from her cell, she bowed her head in a quick prayer and tucked the Star of David into her clothing. Then she stood, straight-backed and composed, hoping that Saleem would kill her today and not drag her punishment on longer. The guards tied her hands in front of her and pulled the familiar black blindfold over her head. Halfway to the interrogation room, she heard Saleem's voice yelling for them to hurry up. At the door, the guards let go of her and Saleem's hands grabbed her, pushed her into the room and shoved her into a chair. He was talking, but Ziva barely heard his words. She was breathing, every breath a prayer that he would kill her soon and not make her suffer more. When she heard "NCIS," Ziva pulled herself out of the fog and forced herself to listen.
"…NCIS agents, concern that US forces might mobilize. One of you will tell me the identities and locations of all the operatives in the area. And the other one will die."
Ziva was confused. One of whom? The other who? Then Saleem pulled the blindfold off. Ziva wished he had just killed her already.
"I will give you a moment to decide who lives." Saleem glared down at Ziva before he turned and walked out of the room.
Tony grinned. Oh, how I`ve missed that, Ziva thought as sadness enveloped her.
"Well," His lips cracked and Ziva wondered how long he had been here without her knowing it. "How was your summer?"
Ziva did not answer him. She spoke, but her eyes told Tony that she was far away. "Out of all the people in the world who could have found me, it had to be you." It had to be you. It had to be someone I cared about, someone with whom there is so much left unsaid. If Saleem wants to break me, this is the only thing that could ever do it: my teammates, my colleagues, my friends. I could never, ever, let anything happen to them. And here they are and I am powerless to protect them.
"You're welcome. So are you glad to see me?"
"You should not have come."
"Alright then, good catching up. I`ll be going now" Tony tried to stand and his chair shuffled forward a bit against the dirt floor. "Oh yeah, I forgot." He chuckled, "taken prisoner."
Ziva stared at him; after months of torture and abuse, it was hard to remember Tony's way of joking in a crisis. It terrified her because she knew what monsters were here; she knew what could happen to him and yet he was joking. She continued staring at Tony as she spoke again. "Are you alright, McGee?" The strain in her voice as she spoke his name let slip some of her stress. The name stumbled her tongue as if she were still unable to believe they were really here.
"I`m just glad you're alive."
Ziva swallowed. "You… you thought I was dead."
"Oh, yeah." Tony nodded like a bobble-head, as though he were still processing the fact that she was not.
"Then why are you here?" Ziva's voice was tender as she questioned, still horrified that he was here, but yet touched that finally, after so long, someone cared, someone had come for her. Tony tried to make light of it but Ziva cut him off. "Tony! Why are you here?" If you thought I was dead, you should have stayed away. Then you would not be in so much danger.
"I couldn't live without you, I guess."
Ziva smiled faintly, and her lips cracked. It was as though she did not remember how to smile. It was a sweet notion, but it was foolish. The smile was only bittersweet as Ziva spoke, "So you will die with me." Her breath caught and she looked away, "You should have left me alone.
Tony started talking again, babbling about something. Ziva felt her world crumbling in. She got to see their faces one last time, but at what terrible cost? "I did not ask for anyone to put themselves in harm's way for me. I do not deserve it."
"So what are you doing out here? Some kind of monastic experience? Doing penance?"
Ziva gave a barely perceptible nod. "It is justified."
"Get over yourself."
"I have." Ziva was caught halfway to tears but swallowed them back. "Now, you tell Saleem everything he wants to hear. And you try to save yourselves. I am ready to die."
McGee spoke up from the floor, his eyes still closed. "That's not how it works."
"How what works" Do they think this is all a joke?
"The plan," Tony sounded so self-assured.
"You have an escape plan?" He nodded. "Tony, they have thirty men, heavily armed. They have anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons. What do you have?"
Tony shrugged. "Well that's where things get a little tricky." He rambled on some tangent about him and McGee driving into the camp in broad daylight.
"Wait, you got captured… on purpose?" Ziva was having a hard time putting this together.
"Yep."
"These men are killers, Tony." Ziva whispered to him, frightened more by his naiveté than anything else.
"I know. That's why we have to stay alive long enough to not get dead."
"That would involve… being rescued." A flicker of hope flared within her; after months without hope, it was almost impossible to believe.
"Yes it would."
"How long will it take?"
"I don't know, how long do you think I`ve been talking?"
"What's the plan?"
"We fail to contact Dubai, word gets to the carrier group in the Med, they scramble F-22 Raptors that burn sand into glass. How long that's going to take, I don't know. Hours? Or days?" She considered what he said when he asked, "Ziva, can you fight?"
Her instant response once would have been 'always,' but now… She was still recovering from the beating Saleem gave her before she lost her baby only a week or so ago. She could barely walk as it was without intense pain due to the miscarriage, cracked ribs and bruised internal organs.
The door behind her opened and Tony began to try to joke with Saleem. The only part that caught Ziva's attention was when Saleem said, "We're not taking prisoners." He strode over behind Ziva and pulled her head back, baring her throat and pressing a knife to it – the same knife that he has used the first day he raped her and many times since. "We're not done yet."
"No!" Ziva exclaimed, desperate to try to save her friends. She spoke to Saleem rapidly, trying to convince him to hear her words. "If they do not check in, their people will come looking for them –"
"Ziva, shut up," Tony said.
"– Kill me. You'll need the Americans for leverage."
"I don't make bargains." Saleem leaned forward, turning her head up and to the side. His eyes raked over her, like his hands had so many times before, and he moved the knife against her neck.
"Do you make pizza?" Tony's question made no sense, but distracted Saleem long enough for McGee to kick his legs out from under him. Saleem fell to the ground and the knife clattered away. He pulled a gun as soon as the knife was out of hand. He had wanted to use the knife on Ziva – it had so many memories for them and was much more personal. But a gun would do the job just as well.
Tony kept talking and his words were enough to keep Saleem from acting, though he maneuvered around the room so that he was out of reach of any of the three and had the gun trained directly against Ziva's head. "You have thirty seconds to live, Saleem."
Ziva's eyebrows drew together in confusion until Tony said, "Remember when I told you my boss was a sniper?" Seconds later, a bullet pierced the window and dug directly into Saleem's head. Ziva watched as he fell; just behind him was the table on which he had tortured and raped her. A just ending, I suppose. Even if his death was a little quicker and less painful than I would have liked.
McGee grabbed the knife and cut Tony and her free. Ziva was almost in shock at the turn of events since leaving her cell only ten or fifteen minutes before. She looked again at Saleem's body as if to reassure herself that he was truly dead.
Ziva could not stand easily, let alone keep up with McGee and Tony. They each took an arm and carried her weight across their shoulders. Outside was the sound of gunfire, but Ziva recognized M-16s mixed in with the AK's and knew that her people had brought back-up and were taking out the rest of the camp. She grimaced in pain whenever she put weight on her legs, but she managed to limp along as they carried her out to where Gibbs waited. "Let's go home."
A/N - This is just a one-shot. I'll probably do another NCIS story in the future, but this is all there is for this one.
Now that the semester is over, I am continuing work on my two other stories in progress: L&O:SVU - Revenge and Harry Potter - At Malfoy Manor. Expect the next chapters up within the next week or two.