Disclaimer in the first chapter, but for the record, all I own is my car. Well, actually, not even the car. Just the insurance. And the gas prices. Trade?

I had a revelation, which involves prolonging a few things in order to throw in a few things I like to deepen the story. The results of the poll are duly noted, but I am going to employ that where it will do the maximum damage. Yes, I know. Pure evil. )

Her Mission, His Mistake

The door clicked softly behind her, and her training detected the underhand hiss of a lock. Ziva smiled internally, more from wry humor than actual amusement. This seemed like a scene from a Mossad training handbook; get past the guy, pick a lock without any tools (without alerting the terrorists outside), get past said terrorists (still without any weapons), and somehow maintain cover. Ziva cracked her neck and her knuckles. This was going to take her the better part of the night…it was a good thing she was well rested.

Ziva warily observed the room around her as Jamal began to light the lanterns that hung from the ceiling. For a beautiful building, it lacked certain modern amenities and electricity was one of them. Unfortunately, proper cell phone reception was another.

Jamal's room was overly showy, to a point where Ziva would classify it as tacky. The walls were hung with deep purple Egyptian silk, the massive four poster bed the focal point of the room and surrounded by candles and a small wicker chest. The site of the chest alone was enough to make her subconscious shudder. Ziva knew what was inside there, she knew it all too well.

"I am glad to see some things never change." Ziva remarked with a slow grin as she watched Jamal strike another match.

"What things are those, my dear?"

"You always did love Egyptian cotton."

Jamal laughed, a deep throaty sound, and Ziva matched it with a seductive smirk of her own. He was in front of her now, his ring finger swirling and looping over her forearm. Not hurting, but using his nails with enough pressure to let her know he could if he wanted to. Ziva looked up at him, searching. Jamal thought Madeline was a prostitute; he wouldn't waste his time seducing her into bed, he'd act like any man would when he was paying by the hour. So why was he taking his time now?

The glint in his eyes answered Ziva's question. He was hiding something. That much was obvious, of course. He was a terrorist, so Ziva knew he was hiding millions of things she didn't want to pretend to imagine. But what was he hiding now, specifically relating to her, that would make him wait before fulfilling his desires? Jamal Koram wasn't a man prone to waiting around.

"Have you changed, Madeline?"

Ziva leaned forward and kissed him softly on the lips, the innermost sanctum of her mind searching for something else to focus on. When she was on missions like this, she had to pretend her mission was someone else entirely. Someone she wanted to kiss. It made the task easier, made it seem almost as if it wasn't happening at all. Ziva didn't like that she was used to this part of her job, but she had chosen this profession for its results, not its smooth travel.

Normally, the face she pictured in her mind was of her late boyfriend, Mattie, the first man she had loved and lost. But today, the face in her mind was Tony. Today, the lips that gave beneath hers tasted of sugary coffee and pepperoni pizza, not brandy and biltong. Today, the fabric scraping her skin was smooth Italian leather, not a silk tunic.

"Do I taste different to you, Jamal?" Ziva whispered in his ear, pulling back. He looked exactly as she expected him to look. Hungry. Desperate. Men are almost too easy to control, Ziva thought dryly, watching as Jamal's pupils dilated and his stance tightened. If an unwilling kiss here and there meant hundreds of people wouldn't be subjected to the terror of a suicide bomber, or whatever the hell Jamal had in store for Kaman's goods, than Ziva would do her part. Silently. Without regrets.

"I've missed you, Madeline." He took a step forward, his hand on her hip. Not in a caressing, or protective, as Tony's had been earlier. His was more forceful. Demanding. She ached to push it off. "After Cairo, I thought the American Feds had arrested to you."

"That is why I left in such a rush." Ziva remembered her cover, rehearsed and memorized with Jenny just for this moment. He had trusted her before, and he would trust her again. Tony's cover depended on it. "What I do is not legal in the states, Jamal, and my clientele seems to be all too familiar with the American Feds. I am not the sort that would do well in prison. So I ran. I survived. It is what I do."

"You do seem to pick up your fair share of explosive sellers."

Ziva smiled again, rolling her shoulders in a way that sent the sheer material of her top shimmering across her torso. She watched as Jamal's eyes followed the direction almost instinctively, as expected. Good. A few more flirtatious moments and Jamal would be so focused on her he would personally cement the reputation of the undercover agent here to put him out of business. Tony's cover would be solid.

"They pay better, and I travel more. And besides, I do not like boring men."

"And what of the French men you are with, hmm? Jean Bonswa?" Jamal kissed the side of Ziva's face and she scrambled to put her shield back together again, her mind whirling between protecting Tony's cover and blocking out the infestation of his touch.

"He is the best, Jamal. I would take whatever he is offering."

"I think I will do just that."

The way he looked at her just then, Ziva knew he wasn't referring to a kiss. Or a bunch of C4.

Ziva closed her mind off instinctively, her Mossad training taking over, as she felt his hands on her skin. Even from her reserved state, she could feel him stop. Jamal looked at her for a moment, puzzled, and Ziva realized she was shaking. Ziva panicked as she realized something: she wasn't sure she could do this. Not now, not after spending two years with NCIS, two years with Tony… She was shaking and she wasn't reciprocating, and if she didn't act fast she could cost both her and Tony their lives.

She dove deep into herself to find the Mossad agent she used to be, the fiery and angry woman who had been willing to burn everyone in her path, even herself, to get results. She needed to be that passionate, furious, painfully determined woman now or she wouldn't make it out of this room alive. Ziva ripped through every internal barrier she had ever put up between herself and her emotions, every protective covering she had left. She had to flood herself with raw emotion, enough to motivate the Ziva of old to do what she had to do. For the mission.

Ari, dead, her bullet in his forehead.

She felt the pain fill her veins as images flashed before her mind's eye, its familiar ache a comfort to her, and she pushed Jamal backwards onto the bed. She needed to go deeper still.

Mattie, his dismembered body thrown amongst anti-Israeli pamphlets.

Ziva felt the familiar comfort of her shield envelope her, the steely embrace of a mind trained to pretend it didn't know what the body was doing. She used strong muscles to flip him onto his back, his laughter echoing faintly in her ears. Could she hear that? Where was she?

Tali's face, before the bomb, smiling and laughing.

Trained hands massaged his back, and Jamal groaned beneath her ironclad hold. Ziva was lucky Jamal didn't turn around. The look on her face was one of cold blooded hatred, the calculated and twisted manifestation of a lifetime of pain thrust upon a brain insistent on denial. The Ziva David she was on a normal day was captive to the internal Ziva David, an agent with a much greater hold than anyone among the living.

Tony's car exploding on the MTAC screen. His gun. His phones. His badge. Cast among the rubble.

Ziva shifted her hold, stretching her legs farther apart to give her hands greater access to a wider range of his neck. Her mind did not register the moans her ears heard. There would be no sex here tonight. Not because she couldn't handle it, but because the logical and methodical Mossad Ziva who rose from the shield hardly thought using the strongest weapon in their arsenal on the first night was strategic.

Tali after the bomb, broken and bruised, her black hair dyed red from the blood.

Ziva's skillful fingers employed a massage move never taught in salons and Jamal, who only moments ago had been moaning beneath her, was silent. Sleeping. She rose from the bed, only half aware of what she was doing. Ziva could see herself opening the door, but she couldn't feel the knob on her hand or the air on her body.

Ziva was faintly aware of the world rotating around her, and the unconscious parts of her brain registered it as walking. Ziva herself wasn't sure what was real and what wasn't. The images she had conjured to form her shield had yet to dissipate and were instead reforming themselves, sometimes in new poses, sometimes with new faces. There was fog in her mind, stifling her, choking her, spun from an overdose of pain once needed to preserve a cover and now slowly killing her from inside.

Tony sat up in alarm as Ziva entered the room. There had been no noise outside the door, not that there ever was with Ziva, but none of the men had led her to his room. How had she gotten past Jamal?

He looked up to ask her this, and his mouth opened in an automatic registration of shock. The woman that stood before him was not Ziva, not the Ziva he knew. She was wearing only the skirt from before and a lacy black bra, but she showed no signs of covering herself up. The look on her face was foreign…he had never seen it there before. The coldness, the sheer volume of anger, instinctively and primaly frightened him.

"Ziva? Ziva, what's wrong?" He rose from the bed and approached her, his expression worried rather than fearful. She wouldn't hurt him. She was still Ziva, and although she could threaten him with an imagination and a skill level worth of an Oscar, she'd never actually do anything. Right?

She laughed, the sound so strange, so hollow and unfamiliar to his ears. The Ziva before him looked as if she wanted to hurt him, as if she was there to kill him. Something was wrong. Something had gone terribly, horribly wrong with Jamal and Ziva was in trouble.

Tony could see Ziva reach a hand out towards him, and he didn't doubt she was intending to do harm. Instinct told him to reach for the knife safely hidden within his clothes, but Tony knew he couldn't hurt Ziva. She wasn't actually going to hurt him; no matter what hidden world she was reliving inside her mind, what horrible things she was covering up with rage and disassociating from, she was still Ziva.

He did the only thing he could think of. Tony reached forward and wrapped his arms around her tightly, one hand stroking her hair while the other tried to keep her left hand from wrapping around his neck.

"I was watching this movie the other night. The Black Narcissus, 1947. Deborah Kerr and Jean Simmons. Some of the best directing by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburg. So there are these nuns…"

Ziva felt the arms around her, was vaguely aware of her arms trying to get free of them, but something told her not to fight. The part of her brain that told her to lift the door key from under the rug, the part of her brain that had led her down the corridors and into this room. For the first time since she started Jamal's massage, Ziva's face changed expressions. She adopted an utterly confused expression wasted on Tony, who was still prattling on about the nuns in the Himalayas.

There was a voice coming to her from outside the fog, one getting stronger and stronger. A voice she recognized. Ziva could feel the pain subsiding, the grief fading into the background where she always kept it, the shield finally loosening its hold on her. Ziva felt a salty tear splash against her lip, and another on her cheek. She couldn't remember the last time she had cried, but it felt good.

"Tony, I thought we agreed. No movie references."

The voice was muffled, seeing how Ziva's face was cocooned in his shoulder, but the voice was distinctly hers. Tony stopped talking immediately and stepped back, suddenly feeling awkward. Ziva wasn't a fan of displays of affection, especially hugging, and he didn't want to offend her. He opened his mouth to speak, but all he saw was a blur of color as Ziva rushed past him and into the bathroom. Tony battled the urge to hold her hair back, but he figured Ziva was too private a woman to appreciate such a gesture while she was retching and doubled over.

When Ziva came back, the look in her eyes was gone and she looked normal again. Tired, and half naked, but fine. Tony gulped for an entirely different reason, his body responding to Ziva's near nakedness in ways he certainly wasn't going to address right now. She seemed completely oblivious to it.

"Here." Tony pulled one of his undercover shirts from his bag and wrapped it around her shoulders, coming to sit beside her on the bed.

"Thanks."

"You want to talk about it?"

She shook her head and clutched the edges of the shirt closer around her. This Ziva didn't remind him of his Ziva, and Tony realized just how little he knew about her. He knew how she smelled, how she tasted, how strong she was, but he had yet to see the vulnerable side. If he said he liked this side more would he sound like a cad? It wasn't the typical DiNozzo thought process, she's-vulnerable-so-swoop-in-for-your-share, but more of a dawning realization that Ziva was simply better at hiding her pain than everyone else. That didn't make her unrelatable or unfeeling or anything else. She just played a better game of hide and seek, hold the seek.

"Nothing happened."

"Something happened, Ziva. You came back in here looking like the Night of the Living Dead. If I didn't know you better I'd have sworn you were going to kill me. If we were back in DC, I wouldn't press it. But we are here undercover and unless we work together, this isn't going to work. What. Happened."

"We didn't sleep together, if that's what you mean." Her voice was soft, calm, eerily so. Not the cold and calculated calmness of before, but the trained voice of a woman used to reporting painful details on a regular basis. Tony felt a small smile of pity tug at his lips. How had he missed this side of Ziva before? Sure, her widely powerful and independent side was more obvious, but how had he missed this?

"I froze, Tony. I could have gone through with it, but it would not have been the same. I would have felt it. Remembered. That has never happened to me before. I have always been able to hide it, mask it, get the job done without thinking about how. If I can not do this I can not be a Mossad agent." Ziva's hands fiddled aimlessly with the worn blanket, desperate for an outlet for the unaccustomed display of emotion. She felt Tony's strong hand clasp over hers, his thumb gently stroking the side of her palm, and she stopped fiddling.

"That doesn't tell me how you ended up in here, lost inside your own head."

"It is a Mossad trick." Ziva shrugged. "It is easier to kill and to act undercover if you are only thinking about who you are acting for. The pain, the grief, the anger of the past protects the present from any emotions that may inhibit the mission." Ziva struggled to find the words in English for a moment, her mind running through a dozen possibilities. "The angrier we are, the more upset, the easier it is to finish the mission without regrets."

"Why didn't it work for you this time?"

"This is the only time I have ever not finished a mission with so much inside my head. I did not kill him, Tony. Even in that state I knew what to do. Almost better than I do now. And I did not sleep with him. It was too soon, would be giving away too much power." Ziva sighed. She did not like voicing her failures out loud. She had acted correctly with Jamal, but had failed to control the most simple of all Mossad tricks. Why had her trainers not taught her how to end the shield without completing the mission to the fullest possibility?

"The pain, the anger, had no way to leave." Tony stated, understanding now. He had been right, that hadn't been Ziva at all.

"Exactly." Ziva paused for a moment, her hands still enclosed inside his, their shoulders brushing on the small bed. She was terrified of herself, terrified of the emotions she had felt and her lack of control. How was Tony sitting here right now as if nothing had ever happened? "Tony? Can I ask you something?"

"Yeah?"

"How did you know I would not kill you? You got so close to me…there were so many different ways for me to have done something, and in that state, I doubt I would have noticed until it was too late. How did you know you could stop me?"

"I didn't."