"Why have they not yet come back for me?"

Why would that upset you? Tony countered. When had she started pretending he was actually there?

"It bothers me to not know what is coming. Would that not bother you?"

Maybe they're trying to scare you.

Ziva snorted. "Yes. Being alone in here is so frightening."

It's clearly driven you crazy, Tony pointed out. Well, crazier. You weren't exactly the poster girl for sanity before, what with the knives and guns and-

"Thank you," she muttered.

"You are welcome," a voice said. Very close, male, only slightly familiar. Ziva stiffened. How could she have let her guard down so much as to not have heard her captors returning? "Although why you thank me is a baffling question indeed."

--

"What have we heard?" Miri asked. Always practical, always… well, usually professional, Hadar thought. This would be difficult.

"Not much, Miri. We have heard that she is in Africa, but as you have no doubt learned, that is a rather large place."

"Well, we have to begin somewhere, yes?" Miri ignored the slight helplessness she felt. Pretend that it is someone else, she told herself for the hundredth? thousandth? time. It is… Noach, she decided. Noach, not Ziva.

Hadar sighed. "Yes. Somewhere. Somewhere in Africa."

--

"I want to know where she is," Gibbs growled. Vance looked up, unimpressed.

"You let her go, Gibbs. She's not a part of your team any more." Vance paused. "Let it go. She's no longer your responsibility."

Gibbs simply stared at him, saying nothing. Vance did his best to stare back, but the older man's patience in anger was uncanny. After a few moments, Vance sighed.

"She's not your responsibility. But," he added, "I will get in touch with Director David. He should be able to give us a thumbs-up, at least."

Gibbs walked from the office without a word. As he descended the stairs into the bullpen, Tony looked up from his desk. His arm was out of the sling; though he was not yet back in the field, Tony was recovering nicely from the wounds received in his fight with Rivkin.

"Boss?" Gibbs wondered when his senior field agent's voice had gone so flat. It hadn't been this bad when Kate had- but then, Tony hadn't felt responsible for that. Not really. Gibbs shook his head and Tony slumped slightly in his seat.

"Get going on that paperwork, DiNozzo," he said gruffly. "Vance said he's gonna ask Mossad about her."

Tony picked listlessly through the stack of papers on his desk. He pulled a few pages from near the bottom, scanning through and pulling up a document on his computer. He was set to begin his hunt-and-peck typing when a voice sounded from just in front of his desk.

"Tony?" He looked up and blinked.

"Abby? Do you have something?" Tony reached for the paper in her hands, but Abby held it just out of his reach and shook her head.

"I need you to do something for me," Abby stated. She waited, looking at him – just looking, not speaking or expecting or smiling or anything, just looking. He sighed after a moment.

"What is it, Abs?" He pulled his desk drawer open, assuming that she was about to ask for some of his secret chocolates or a stick of gum.

"Smile?"

Tony blinked, hand stuck halfway back into his desk, and looked up at her. "What?"

"Smile, Tony. It's not hard, really. It goes like this-" Abby pointed to her own face, a flat line for her mouth. When she was certain that he was watching, she put her index fingers to the corners of her lips and slowly pulled them towards the top of her head. "See? That's a smile. I can share mine if you can't do it yourself." She put her fingers in the corners of her smile and pulled it back into a flat line, then put her fingers onto Tony's face and tugged the corners of his mouth upwards.

"There we go," she said, satisfied. "It's not the dazzling DiNozzo smile we all know and miss, but it's better than what we've had." With that, Abby turned and walked towards the elevator.

Tony couldn't help but grin – actually grin – at her antics. "Abby?" he called after her. She turned, almost to the elevator. "If I smile for you, will you give me that piece of paper?"

Abby's eyes widened. "Oh!" She flew back towards him, lab coat fluttering around her, and placed the paper on his desk. "It's nothing really exciting, Tony, just the DNA results to be filed for the Matheson case."

Tony smiled anyway as he accepted the paper. "Thanks, Abby," trying to give her the most – what had she called it? – dazzling DiNozzo smile that he could muster.

--

"Tell me," the man said again, "what. You. Know." Each pause was punctuated with a sharp crack as he propelled a thin reed towards her back. The hits stung, but didn't really hurt her, and Ziva knew that this wasn't really an interrogation; it was more of a test. Would she break? How long would she hold up? If the truly terrible was mixed in with the simply unbearable, would it make her talk more quickly?

Ziva straightened as well as she could, stared her captor in the eye, and said nothing.

"How about this?" the man said, suddenly throwing the reed into a corner. "I will share some information with you, and you will return the favor by telling me what I want to know. Just something small. Trade for trade."

No reaction. Another tactic, another attempt to get her to talk. Ziva knew that she could not trust anything that passed from the man's lips, yet when he spoke, she could not help but gasp at the information.

"And now?" the man said, smiling smugly. "Tell me this. Your team leader, the one they call Gibbs. What does he know of your mission here?"

Still she said nothing, and the man's smile only grew. "Perhaps I will leave you with your new information for a little while," he said patronizingly. "It seems that the news of betrayal has cut you deeply. We will continue this later." The man called something over his shoulder, something in Arabic, and Ziva wasn't listening, wasn't translating, was only thinking of what the man had said. Two other men entered the room and hauled her down the hall, back into the smaller room. They threw her to the floor inside and slammed the door and lock shut.

Betrayal? Disbelief ran through her, replaced later by anger like ice water through her veins.

Betrayal.