Yeah, I know I haven't updated in a while. I'm a horrible person and yadda yadda. I had a hard time getting this to flow well. I still don't think it works, but it sorta makes sense, so I'm giving it to you anyway. You're all smart people...I'm sure you can figure it out.

This story so far is really seemingly dark to me compared to all the other stuff I've done. (And if you've read it, then you know I'm into that sweet romantic happiness fluff.)

Yes...I admit it. Underneath this sarcastic and redheaded figure lives the heart of a hopeless romantic.

But that doesn't mean I'm not completely cruel and manipulative towards my characters first. muwahahahahaha...


CHAPTER 7

ZIVA

It was dark; the last candle had long since blown out. Nikki and I sat in the far corner, behind the over-turned table, and just out of sight of the door. I had tried for several hours to crack the giant combination lock, but I could not do it. After a while I had begun to hit the door with anything I could reach, shouting obscenities in every language I knew.

"That's not going to help, Ziva," Nikki had said, trying to sound complacent. She was sitting with Tony's head in her lap, trying to carefully unwrap the bandage from around his shoulder.

"Here, Let me," I said softly, coming over to her and flipping open my phone and sharing what little light I could give. She took the phone from my hand; I pulled out my pocketknife and began to methodically cut away the dirty cloth. The blood from Tony's wound had soaked through and clotted around it, making it extremely difficult to pull off.

"Is there any water around?" I asked Nikki.

She shook her head. "I looked around while you were cursing the door. There's nothing here."

I sighed. "I'm going to have to rip it then," I said.

"Do you have something to bandage it back up again with?" she asked. "If we rip this one off it's going to open the wound back up again. Plus...it's going to hurt like hell."

"It is a good thing he is asleep then, yes?"

I looked around for something that would work as a replacement bandage, but saw nothing that was clean enough. That is, until I saw my own shirt.

Nikki saw it too. "You could use the sleeves," she said. "And then the bottom hem to wrap around it."

Without any hesitation, I pulled my t-shirt over my head. Nikki, with a jerk of her arm, ripped the dirty cloth off. Tony groaned as it pulled at his wound and opened it up again. His eyes snapped open and met mine instantly. I held them solidly and without fear, like Gibbs would have done, and willed him with all the strength that I had for him to make it through this. I could definitely see that he would not last very long if we did not find a way out of here soon. The fact that I was standing over him without a shirt on did not even cross my mind.

"Ziva!" Nikki said, and I remembered what I was supposed to be doing. I cut off the sleeves of my shirt, which I used as padding, and a good six inch wide strip off the hem, which I wrapped around his shoulder and tied off as tightly as I could.

Within minutes, Tony had drifted off again. Nikki and I sat there in silence. I pulled my shirt back over my head, and shut my phone, putting it in my pocket. I sat in the darkness, listening to Tony's ragged breathing until I drifted off to sleep.

...

After what felt like only a couple of minutes, however, I was awake again. My eyes opened to total darkness, and I was at first disoriented. But as I lifted my head off of Nikki's shoulder, I remembered where I was.

In a room full of dead people.

There was a crackling noise that broke the silence like a whip. I could hear voices echoing around the pitch black room, and I sat bolt upright, almost knocking Tony's head out of my lap. That must have been what had woken me up.

"Nikki!" I hissed, grabbing her shoulder and shaking her. "Wake up!"

"What?" she asked. "What's happening?"

"Shh…Listen," I said, holding my hand up as a gesture for silence.

The crackling and voices came again.

"It sounds like a walkie-talkie," Nikki said.

I got up quickly and went over to the dead Iraqis. After quickly setting Tony on the floor, Nikki joined me.

"Help me figure out which one it is," I said. "Because I think it is just one."

The crackling noise sounded of again, and I began rifling through the clothes of the man in the middle until my hand closed around a small black box. I pulled it out of the man's vest and stared at it.

It was old and felt really cheap; like the ones used by kids. It was made of black plastic and the brand name had been scraped off…all that was left were a couple of lonely letters in chipped white paint.

"Those don't look like military-issue talkies," Nikki said.

"I do not think we are dealing with any type of military anymore," I said as the realization hit me. "I think it is someone else. An independent."

"It must be an independent with a lot of money."

"Or he could just be a powerful speaker," I pointed out. "It does not take much to get radicals fired up and suicidal…just a few choice phrases about pride and honor and faith in your country."

The walkie-talkie crackled again, and this time the voice came through quite clearly in Arabic.

"Sayid. Come in Sayid. The boss wants to speak with you."

Shit. Not good.

"What do we do?" Nikki asked.

"Well, they are going to know something is up inevitably," I said. "When they do not get an answer from this man they will come down here looking for him after a while. And if one of us answers, they will be tipped off immediately and come rushing down here in who knows how many numbers. They will probably kill us."

Nikki thought for a moment. "So our options are dying now…or dying later." She paused. "I choose later."

"Wrong," I said.

"What?"

"We can either die on their terms…or ours," I continued. "If we do not answer the call, they will come down who knows when. Maybe when we are sleeping…I do not know. But if we do answer them, then they will come rushing down here. We will know they are coming and will be ready for them."

Nikki thought about it for a moment. I could see that she understood my logic on this.

"But what about Tony?" she asked. "What are we going to do about him? If we get caught in a firefight…he's not able to defend himself. What if he gets shot again?"

"We will hide him," I decided. I stood up and pointed to the overturned table. "We can use that."

The talkie crackled again.

"You should answer that," Nikki said softly.

With trembling fingers, I brought the walkie-talkie up to my lips and pressed the red button on the side. What would I say? What should I say?

"I'm afraid Sayid is otherwise occupied," I started to say, filling my voice with the daring and bravado that I knew I did not have. "Can I take a message?"

I let go of the button and waited tensely for the response.

"Who is this? Where is Sayid?" The voice demanded almost immediately, sounding shrill and angry through the crackling speakers..

"He is dead," I replied smoothly, keeping all emotion out of my voice now. "And so are the others."

There was silence at the other end when I released the button; I guessed they must be discussing things with each other. I turned to Nikki.

"Judging from the bad quality of these," I said, holding up the plastic talkie in my hand, "They should not be too far away. These things do not have a great range."

She nodded, and began situating the furniture around Tony's body and grabbing all the weapons from the dead men.

The talkie came on again, and this time I could hear angry shouting in the background. "I am assuming that this is the American Israeli from NCIS that I am speaking to, yes?"

"Yes," I replied, not able to think of anything else to say. Then I threw the talkie across the room and smashed it.

"Don't you think that was a little unnecessary?" Nikki asked, pointing to the bits of wire and circuitry on the floor.

"I did not want to have to spend the next several minutes listening to them rant and shout death threats at me," I replied coolly.

Several minutes later, we had constructed a barrier out of the furniture in the room. It was set up in the farthest possible corner from the door, and we had every weapon we could find back behind it with us.

Tony groaned, and the small noise cut through the silence like a knife. I knelt down next to him, my hands gently caressing his face.

"Tony, can you hear me?" I asked him softly.

"Yes," he whispered. His left hand came up and brushed lightly across my cheek. I leaned into it unconsciously, as if it were the most natural thing for me to do. I closed my eyes and a tiny trickle of water ran down my cheek.

"You're crying," he murmured as he brushed it from my face. "Why?"

"I'm worried about you," I said brokenly.

"I'll be okay."

There was a huge commotion on the other side of the door.

"They're here," Nikki announced, grabbing one of the AK-47's off the floor and positioning herself behind the barricade like a sniper.

The lock clicked on the giant metal door, and it swung open. Ten men burst through, shouting and waving their guns.

"Now," I hissed to Nikki, and we both opened fire on them.

Bullets slammed into our wooden barricade and flew past within frightening proximity of my head and buried themselves in the wall behind me. I could tell Tony was trying to get up, but I shoved him back down onto the floor with my free hand.

"Now is not the time, Tony," I said. "Stay down."

"They're closing the door!" Nikki shouted to me over the noise of the shootout.

I looked up and heard the door slam.

"Shit," I said. With two bullets I took out two of the remaining three men, and with a burst of sheer stupidity, I ran around the barricade and rushed him. There was a shot, but I was not aware of myself enough to register if the bullet had hit me or not. I tackled him to the floor and pulled the gun from him. Nikki came up behind me, and my heart sank.

She was bleeding; the bullet had hit her arm.

"I'm fine," she mouthed to me, and I turned back to the man on the floor.

"Who are you?" I demanded, grabbing his shoulders and slamming him into the floor for emphasis.

He did not answer.

"Who are you working for?" I tried, hoping that would bring out an answer. He was still silent. I grabbed the handgun he was carrying and pressed it to the side of his head. "Answer me!" I shouted at him, my rage and frustration boiling out of me. I was sick of being trapped down here, I was worried about Tony and Nikki, and now, with recent events taken into account, escape seemed almost feasible.

I was on my last nerve, I guess you would say.

Calm was an unattainable goal, and the only thing that kept me from shooting the man was the fact that we needed him to open the door.

"Are there any more of you?" I asked.

"Yes," he replied after a moment. "And they will kill you."

"I look forward to it," I snarled. Then I hit the man hard over the head with the barrel of his gun and knocked him unconscious.

"Don't we need him to open the door?" Nikki asked, blood seeping through her hands as she tried to put pressure on her wound.

"We are using him now," I said, ripping a chunk of fabric off the guy's shirt and wrapping it around her arm.

"How?"

"When these men do not come back, someone will come looking for them. He said there are others. So when they come and open the door, this time we will be ready for them." I finished tying the makeshift bandage around her arm and walked over to our shattered barricade. "This is not going to help us anymore," I said, and promptly ripped one of the metal legs off the table.

Tony looked up. "What happened?" he asked.

"Nothing," I said calmly. "Go back to sleep, Tony."

"What's that for?" Nikki asked me.

I did not have a chance to answer. Voices called to the fallen men from the other side of the door. I knelt down and pulled our hostage up, holding his arms behind him.

Nikki and I pressed ourselves up against the wall right by the door. I held the man in front of us so that he would be the first thing seen. The door clicked several times as they dialed the combination to open it.

"Eight digits…" I murmured. "No wonder I could not crack it."

"I've never heard of an eight digit combination lock like that," Nikki whispered.

Just then, the door creaked open, and before anything else could happen, I shoved the metal table leg through the crack.

"Get Tony!" I said to Nikki. "And get ready to run!"

I turned to the men behind the door and pressed a gun to the head of my hostage. "Let us out or I shoot him!" I shouted in Arabic.

"So?" I was challenged. "He is already prepared to die for the cause."

Damn.

I dropped the man I was holding up and held up the gun, pointing it at the closest man through the two inch opening. "Let us out."

"No."

"I have a plan," Nikki whispered in my ear as she came up to me, supporting Tony with her good arm. "You take Tony. We'll shove the door open and I'll shoot them. As soon as it's clear, you get Tony out of here."

I could see the definite holes in the plan…and also the resolve firmly positioned behind her eyes. "No…Nikki…" I said. "I cannot let you do that! You will die! You are going to make it out of here with us…you-" I broke off. Someone was trying to pull the table leg out of the gap. I dropped the gun in order to gain a better hold, and instantly four guns were pointing at me from the other side.

"Drop the stick," the first one said. "And we won't shoot you."

There were two shots, sounding loud in my ears. I waited for the impact, but nothing hit me. I looked to my left, and I saw Nikki holding the gun I had dropped in front of her, sticking it out through the gap. The two soldiers in front fell to the ground.

In the moment of shock that passed, and it cannot have been more than a couple of seconds, several things happened. Nikki shoved me out of the way while simultaneously pushing Tony into my arms. With the hand not holding the gun, she grabbed the table leg from me and pried the door open with a force fueled by anger and desperation. Without breaking the motion, she brought the gun up in her other hand and shot two more soldiers. I was pushed behind the thick metal door, and I listened as shots began to fire.

It was over as quickly as it had begun.

Then there was silence.

In slow motion, I came around the edge of the door, holding Tony. I saw Nikki standing in the middle of the dead soldiers, and then I saw her begin to fall.

"Nikki!"

I did not catch her in time to stop her from hitting the floor.

"Nikki!"

She was covered in blood. There were four bullets that were lodged in her upper chest area, and one that looked like it had grazed the side of her head.

"You have to go now, Ziva," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "You have to get Tony out of here…before he dies too."

"I am not just going to leave you here," I said firmly. "I am going to get you out too. You will make it."

"You can't carry both me and Tony, and you know it," Nikki said. Then she started coughing. Blood came to her lips and ran in a little trickle from the corner of her mouth down the side of her face. "It was a pleasure working with you, Ziva," she whispered.

I took her hands in mine. "Same here," I replied. "You are one of the bravest people I have ever met," I said sincerely. "And I mean it. Not even people in Mossad would have done what you have for me and Tony." She smiled.

Her body shuddered violently, and then she sighed.

Then her eyes closed as her hands went limp as I held them in the still silence.


Yep. I did it. I killed off one of the characters.

I was planning on doing this from the beginning anyway...hopefully it came as somewhat of a surprise.

Hang in there for the next chapter, dudes. I'm not done with this yet... :)