Hey there! Again, sorry about how long it has taken me to update this story. My computer has been giving me some problems, so bear with me here.

So much had changed, and so abruptly. It made me feel a little bit dizzy, like I was standing on an edge, a precipice somewhere much too high.

Ziva shifted restlessly in her bed. Despite the fact that she was currently lying in a warm feather bed with a bitter night wind blowing restlessly, all she wished to do was to start her journey into town. She and Astrid had made all the necessary preparations, and Ziva had initially wanted to go tonight, but Astrid had convinced her to hold off for one more night. She had claimed that it would be better for Ziva to leave during the day, when an attack on her or Tony was less likely. It also gave them a reasonable excuse to be gone for the day. The plan was for Astrid to tell the Village Elders that she was going with Ziva to check out all the possible places that the emerald eyed snakes would dwell, hoping that Ziva and Tony's tormentor would be close by. Ziva would say that she needed Astrid as a guide for the land, and that the mission would be strictly surveillance, thereby calming all fears for Astrid's safety.

But for now, Ziva simply had to lay back in bed, relax and – What was that? Ziva tensed, and then relaxed as she realized that it was simply a tree branch cracking in the wind. She sighed. Her Mossad training could kick in at the most inconvenient times, overanalyzing every little sound she heard. In Mossad and NCIS, where every little move or sound could mean the loss of lives, it would have done her well. But out here, in the middle of nowhere, with all of nature surrounding her, it made it impossible for Ziva to get any decent sleep. The only time she had been able to sleep well was when she had been right next to Tony –

'No. No, do not think about that.' She commanded herself. Luckily, the planning with Astrid had taken up most of her day, so she was able to put her thoughts somewhere else than her ill placed moment of passion with Tony, and the argument that had come afterwards. But even for all her distractions, Ziva couldn't help but notice that Tony hadn't stopped by her cabin to talk, something he had done every day since they had arrived here. She wanted to convince herself that he was simply still talking with Abby, but knew that wasn't the real reason for his sudden disappearance from her daily routine. She had knew that he wouldn't have come to see her today, but still, she hoped.

She was still unsuccessfully trying not to think about Tony minutes later, which was why she was so startled when the men ripped open the door and pounded into the room. She threw back the covers and jumped up. Ziva could tell by these men's postures and actions that they did not mean to inform her of another incident in Haven, they meant to attack.

Right as her feet hit the floor, the first man reached her and opened his arms to grab her. Her kick in the chest hit him so hard that he flew back to hit the wall, and slumped to the floor, unmoving. This seemed to be the cue for the rest of the men, as they lunged towards her. As Ziva fought off the men, she noticed that while they had brawn and size on their side, they did not fight skillfully. Instead, they fought like amateurs. Still, they were good enough to leave her sweating and panting after she had thrown the last man to the floor. But she could not rest. If these men had wanted her out of the way, no doubt they had given a visit to her partner, too.

'Tony,' she thought, as a slight sliver of fear allowed itself to worm its way into her mind. She pulled on her running shoes, picked up her gun and grabbed a warm jacket from where it lay discarded on a chair. She began to run out of the cabin, only to trip and fall. She looked down and found her feet tangled in one of her would be attackers' cloak. Giving a quick look around the room as she ran out of it, she now saw that all of her attackers were wearing black cloaks. She had been so focused on fighting them off that she hadn't noticed what they were wearing. Now, as she sprinted toward Tony's cabin, only just a few footsteps away, did she wonder why someone who wanted to harm a federal officer would wear something so foolish as a cloak. While the cloaks' hoods made it difficult for Ziva to see who was attacking her, the cloaks were also long and tended to get tangled up in the owner's arms and legs. Maybe her assailants thought it would be an easy mission? Well, they were wrong, as their unconscious bodies clearly testified.

She reached the door of Tony's cabin, but before she could pull it open, she heard a loud crashing sound come from inside. Fear raced through her. Like herself, Tony's attackers did not have head injures or hurt arms like he did from falling into the waterfall. They also had the element of surprise, as Tony did not share Ziva's instincts. Adrenaline and terror now pumping through her veins, Ziva flung open the door.

Lying in his bed, staring up at the ceiling, Tony didn't understand where it all had gone wrong. When exactly had he given Ziva the impression that rescuing her was solely for his own benefit? Did she think it would make it him feel more manly, make him get more points with the boss? That was a lost cause. Gibbs was never going to forgive him after finding out just how badly this mission was going…

But why had she run away like that? She had kissed him, and kissed him first, after all. It wasn't like he had forced himself on her, and he had been the one who had wanted to stop. Maybe that was it, maybe Ziva thought that he didn't like her, had gotten embarrassed, and made up some excuse to leave. Great, the one time he tried to be respectful, it ended up backfiring. Just his luck. Well then, tomorrow morning he was going to have to go down to Ziva's cabin and explain everything to her. That would work… He settled back in his blankets, temporarily satisfied with this solution, and began to drift off into a peaceful sleep…

BANG. The door crashed open. Oh right, he forgot, the universe seemed to like beating the crap out of him today.

He jumped out of bed and smashed his fist into the large man that had coming running towards his bed. The man fell to the floor, grabbing Tony's leg on the way down. He dragged Tony to the floor, trying to roll him to the ground and pin him there. When Tony resisted, the man smashed his hand against the spot in his arm that had gotten hit by the rock days before. His shoulder and arm suddenly felt like they were in fire, and Tony felt his grip on the man weaken. The man tried once again to smash Tony to the floor. But Tony grabbed the man's head and slammed it against the hard wooden floor. He stood up, feeling slightly triumphant, only to see five more huge, burly men coming straight for him.

Somewhere, he was sure, the universe was laughing its ass off.

"Tony!" Ziva ran into the cabin to find Tony struggling with a man similar to her own: large, well muscled and wearing a black cloak. Four of his comrades lay on the floor, "down for the count" as Tony would have said. But one of them had Tony pinned up against the wall, his hand closing unmercilessly against Tony's throat. In the bright moonlight, she could see her partner's face was already a dark shade of purple. Fortunately, the man had turned when Ziva ran in, giving her a split second advantage. She used this to its full capacity, leaping at the man and tackling him to the floor. She slammed his head against the floor and his body relaxed, unconsciousness taking him.

"Ehh…" Ziva turned to her partner, who had slid to the floor, his back against the wall for support. He was massaging his throat and taking deep, gasping breaths of air. Ziva could now see why the men had almost been able to beat him: the cut on his head from his encounter with the river rock had been reopened. She also noticed that he was cradling his right arm close to his side. She felt a rush of anger at Tony's attackers for aiming at those easy spots. Cowards.

"Are you alright?" Tony nodded in the affirmative.

"Good, because we have to start moving." She gathered up Tony's stray gun, jacket, flashlight, tennis shoes and a water bottle that was lying out, and tossed them to him.

"Why?" He rasped. "Shouldn't we just wait for help?"

"Tony, help isn't coming." Ziva looked into his eyes grimly. "Those people were members of Haven."

"What? Are you positive?" Tony asked.

"Yes. Tony, we have been here for many days and have not seen one person that was not part of Haven anywhere, barring Abby. I can believe that one person could have missed our and Haven's constant attempts at surveillance. But a whole group of people? No. These were people of Haven." To make her point, Ziva pulled the hood of the man who had been strangling Tony, off. While she wasn't surprised to see a member of Haven, she was saddened by the fact that the man who had saved Tony's life, Langston, had now just tried to take it away. Judging by his face, so was Tony.

"I can't believe it," he croaked. But as the full implications of what was happening dawned on him, he recovered from his shock in a second, springing to life. In less than a minute his jacket was on, his gun clipped to his side, and he was creeping to the door with Ziva. Her hand had just touched the doorknob when they heard voices and footsteps on the other side of the doorway.

"Someone's coming." Ziva's whispered urgently. Tony grabbed her arm and hauled her away from the door to the darkest corner of the cabin. They hid there for a moment, ready for an attack, before realizing no one was going to burst in on them. Yet. The voices were still close and urgent.

"They must be going to my cabin first." Ziva whispered. She felt a tap on her shoulder, and Tony silently made the motion to go over to the window, their only possible escape route now. She nodded and they ran swiftly over to it, making no noise at all.

Tony knelt down and put his hands together to make a foothold for Ziva, who hesitated. "Are you sure I should be going first? You do have a hurt shoulder…" But Tony simply rolled his eyes and gestured impatiently. Finally, Ziva slid her foot into his hands and reached up to the window. Trying to ignore Tony's agonized grimace down below, she wrenched open the window, and heard it squeak loudly. Both Tony's frantic breathing and her own short spurts stopped for a minute, and then began again when they realized that no one had heard it. Breathing a sigh of relief, Ziva began to fall out the window. Then felt her breath leave her again as she looked down while she fell.

Instead of being flat ground as she and Tony had predicted, the ground below the window fell away to a sharp incline, sending Ziva falling much longer than she thought. She curled herself up into a ball as she fell to avoid breaking her neck, and landed roughly below. Uncurling herself, she found that besides a few scrapes and scratches, she was unharmed. Just as she was getting her wits back, a large thump to her right signaled that Tony had found his way down – and it hadn't been as easy or graceful as hers. She ran over to him and found him lying face down. Flipping him over, she noted with relief that he was still breathing, albeit a hard and short pattern of breaths, and that he appeared to be conscious.

"Tony. Tony!" She said, lightly slapping his face, causing his eyes to flicker open. "Are you okay?"

"I'd give my dive a 5 and yours a 9. I would have made it a 10, but I had to take off points to switching the routine halfway through." He panted, still trying to reclaim his breath.

"You-" But Ziva was cut off by voices from up above. It appeared that their mysterious assailants had entered Tony's cabin – and were not happy by what they saw. She and Tony could hear their voices clearly.

"10 of our best fighters, and they take them out like it's no problem." Ziva saw Tony's grimace of pain at the comment, noticing how his eyes strayed up to his bloody forehead.

"What do we do now?"

"Hey! The window's open?"

"They must've gone out that and into the woods!"

"Do you think we should go look for them?" Ziva felt her body tense at those words. She did not know how many people there were, and she wasn't sure how many more she could take on by herself. Tony was in no condition to fight, no matter how much he kept up his banter.

"No. Who knows how far they could have gone by now." Ziva heard Tony's soft laughter.

"Idiots." He muttered.

"We should go back and get more help. Bring out the dogs and everything." Ziva felt fear shoot through her. The voices faded away as they left the cabin to go get more people. As soon as she could hear no more, she turned back down to Tony.

"We have to run." She whispered.

"Run where?" Tony asked. "The path to the main road requires going right through the heart of Haven, and I don't exactly think we'll be welcome there."

"Then we need to go into the forest and find shelter. We'll figure out a plan from there." Ziva said. Tony nodded, and slowly began to stand up. Ziva slid an arm under his and let him lean on her as they began to make their way into the woods.

"Wait." Ziva stopped. Something had just occurred to her and she felt guilty for not thinking about it sooner. "What about Abby?"

"Don't worry. She only managed to pass me a note today, but she thinks her cover is still in place. Also, she does have a cell phone that she hid away from everybody at Haven, so if there's trouble, an ass kicking from Gibbs is only a phone call away."

"Then why don't we just go to her?" Ziva asked, trying to turn around. Tony managed to stop her.

"Right now we're only worried that she's in danger. But if we go up to her cabin for help, we really will put her in danger, and we don't know what these people are capable of yet."

"You're right." Ziva nodded. "Right now we need to go into the forest and make our shelter. We need to be so deep that even they can't find us." She glanced sideways at Tony with concern. "Can you do that?"

"Count me in." Tony gave her a quick grin which turned into a grimace as they began to walk forward. "So how did they know we were going to be here, anyway?" He wondered out loud.

"Astrid." Ziva muttered. She had known the answer from the first moment that the men had come bursting through her door. She had understood this would be the last night to attack Tony and Ziva without worrying about help coming, thanks to Ziva. Thank goodness she at least hadn't told her about Abby. "When I get my hands on that little-"

"Astrid? Well, nothing surprises me at this point." Tony said. "But why tonight?"

"You should probably focus on your hiking, and let me do the talking." Ziva said, looking for anything to take Tony's mind off the pain. "I owe you a large explanation."