Amelia, in a rare moment of free time in the early afternoon (thank the Lord for cousin playdates), was browsing the web. Specifically, she was catching up on the news. Well, she had been and was now fully up to date but she was now bored so she was scrolling endlessly down on the news site. Some really weird crap got reported she found. Was it really necessary to report on what colours some houses, on a street she was never going to live on, was painted? Or that someone bought Walmart's whole cheese display? Could someone even eat that much cheese?

Not knowing to be exasperated or disgusted with people, her cursor was hovering over the red 'x' in the top corner when an article caught her eye. Or, to be more precise, a word in a headline caught her eye.

'NCIS Agent caught in explosion. In hospital'

"What on earth?" She muttered to herself, clicking on the article.

Once the webpage finally loaded (damn her internet connection - they really needed to phone up about that), Amelia couldn't help but let a gasp of horror escape.

The image at the top of the article was particularly...graphic. A lot of blood, a lot of debris and scorch marks. Amelia didn't know that scorch marks could be that long. What on earth had happened? She checked the date of the article, it had been published about the time of their last scrabble game which meant the explosion happened, well, before she supposed.

Had Ziva been involved in this investigation? Her team did this sort of thing at NCIS, right? Amelia's heart jumped as her hand went to her mouth with a gasp. Did someone Ziva know die?

She shook her head. Okay, that was a bit of a dramatic reaction. And surely her questions would be answered by the article? So, she continued to read and very soon stopped again at a name. A very familiar looking name.

Still reading the article, she sent a quick text off to Ziva.

Your boss is called Gibbs, right?

She was pretty sure that it was, it was a pretty odd surname and Ziva always referred to him by that whenever she was revealing them with tales of Tony's stunts in work. But it was best to check. If it was, then Amelia could completely understand why Ziva was so out of sorts during the last game and she felt a little bit guilty over barging into her apartment. She scrolled through the article, eyes widening more and more as she got further into it. What on earth?

Her phone chose that moment to beep. She jumped and snatched it up quickly, hoping it was Ziva. Nope. Amelia sighed. Just her husband. She was about to put it back down when she realised that she should probably read and answer his text.

A quick text directing him that yes, he needed to return to the shop he just left to get the pizzas for tonight sorted that.

Of course, just as she was getting to the part about the investigation around it her phone beeped again.

"He better not be asking me where the pizzas are," she muttered, expecting another text from her husband.

Okay, she was being a bit unfair. He actually was good at grocery shopping - he did it as much as she did for God's sake - but he immediately got confused if the stores changed their layout in any way.

Amelia tapped her phone screen to open her texts. Oh, it was Ziva. She blinked and almost stopped her phone in her eagerness to open the message. It was Ziva!

Yes

One-word reply. Amelia frowned at the screen, half expecting more messages to come through. She knew that if someone was checking the name of her boss and that person didn't work with her, she would be asking a lot of questions. But the questions didn't come.

Deciding to give Ziva a chance to say more if she wanted, Amelia returned to the article. Which only gave her even more questions.

Hmmm. It looked like Ziva wasn't going to ask anything else so maybe Amelia could. Now, what was the best way to ask 'Did your boss seriously get blown up'? Followed closely by 'How the hell did he survive'?

Ziva eyed her phone suspiciously, expecting it to beep again. She suspected that Amelia had a lot of questions. Questions she didn't know if she wanted to answer or not but she was still feeling on edge about being asked. Which was ridiculous because it was up to her if she wanted to answer or not and she was sure that Amelia would not mind if she refused to answer any questions. And she was going to. Refuse to answer. Ziva could barely make her thoughts on the past week or so coherent, never mind if she tried to explain it. Her English would definitely fail her and it would come out as a jumbled mess. And that was something she wanted to avoid. She was self-conscious enough about her English as it was (though she'd never admit it). That wouldn't help.

Why wasn't Amelia replying? Why was she even asking about Gibbs? She had never met the man.

"And is never going to," Ziva grumbled and mumbled something foul about Gibbs' 'retirement'.

Her phone finally beeped and she jumped despite knowing it was coming. Which annoyed her, she shouldn't be on an edge over a text of all things. The explosion, yes. Almost losing a colleague, yes. But not a silly text that wasn't even bringing bad news. She was so stupid. America was definitely making her soft.

Scoffing at herself, Ziva grabbed her cell phone and opened the text.

I'm here if you want to talk

A smile lifted the corners of her mouth. Yes, Ziva knew it was probably just used as a nice sentiment and she definitely wouldn't be taking Amelia up on that matter but, well, it was nice of Amelia to say so.

Friends were quite nice people to have.