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femgenficathonTitle: your boldness stands alone among the wreck
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tosca1390
Fandom: NCIS
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Elements of torture, violence
Prompt: 43) More piercing, more unbearable than blame / Is to be understood. --Frances Cornford (1886-1960), English poet.
Summary: Her veins felt like iron, her bones unbreakable, for she was Ziva David, and she did not bow to any man. What happened that summer in Somalia.
Author's Notes: I'm so excited to post this, I've been sitting on it for days! Many thanks toladychi for the beta. Title comes from a Mumford and Sons's song.
*
The scent of blood stuck in her nose, unrelenting, unerring.
The courier was dead, the sandy floor soaking up the deep dark red. She only had three bullets left, and no other ammunition. Sweat dried sharp and salty along her hairline, the curve of her neck; she walked past the courier and pressed onward through shadowed and dark corners and halls, listening for noise, ears attuned to the abrupt and weird silence.
It was too quiet for terrorists.
Even the shadows were hot in Somalia. At footsteps down the hall, she pressed her back to the wall, searching for just a moment of coolness. If it had been her choice, she would not want to die in dirty clothes and sweat-drenched skin, with sand encrusted in her abrasions and her eyes and ears. But today, with nothing behind her and oblivion stretching out dark and silent in front of her, she only carried the hard promise of death in her heart, piercingly clear.
Floorboards creaked ahead of her, a door opened and closed; her ear caught the murmurs of Arabic, the staccato rhythm of orders. Gun secure in her steady hand, she slipped along the crease of floor and wall, unencumbered, her bag left far behind deep in the sand, along with I.D.s and passports and anything to give the slightest hint than she even breathed this air, all abandoned. It was the final test in a lifetime of training and discipline and hard knocks in the hot Israeli deserts, and she would pass, no matter what.
Breathing in silently, she heard two quiet voices, male, on the other side of a doorway. The others were close; the courier would be discovered soon, the flies swarming, the stink in the hot summer temperatures, and then the game would be up.
She kicked in the door, aimed at the closest body, shot him down cleanly. The calls went up, harsh dissonant shouts of Arabic and yelling, pressing in on her. She locked eyes with him, with Saleem across a homey, sandy room; he watched her with nothing but a smile, slow and bright in the dim shadowy room. There was an odd stillness, as her gun settled along her sightline, ready to fire, a vacuum of sound, just the hard beat of her heart and she thought of Tony, of Gibbs, of Michael, of Tim, of her father, of Ari, of all those men, of this last man—
Then, a sharp blow to the head, her cheek pressed to the gritty floorboards. And soft blanketing darkness, and quiet.
She shut her eyes and prayed to stay in it.
*
“What is your name?”
She opened her eyes and found dust in the air, in her eyes, in her mouth, a dull, constant throbbing at the base of her neck. Her arms and ankles restrained, she was stuck sitting in a hard wooden chair that creaked with each shift of her weight.
Saleem sat in front of her, at a distance, lazy and relaxed in a chair similar to hers. The sun beat down on her back and nape of her neck, creeping along the long line of his legs. His face, speckled with light, lay shadowy and unfocused. She blinked, ribs pressing in on her lungs.
“Your name?” he repeated, slow and even, cultured, like Ari.
Mouth dry, she swallowed hard on nothing, staring dead ahead.
“You tried to kill me. I think I deserve a name.”
Death settled heavy in her stomach, her fingers curling with it, nails scratching the wood of her armrests.
“I have tortured women before. They are always the first to break, even the strongest,” he said, suddenly sharp and at attention.
She choked out a laugh at that, rattling in the thick warm air. “How exciting for you,” she said at last, voice hoarse. It was off-script to speak at all (she knew the drill, of course), but when men said such things (and they did, very often, in situations like this), she found it nearly impossible to remain quiet.
He raised an eyebrow, delicate in his thin face. “You speak. And with such spark.”
Breathing out silently, she kept her eyes to just past his shoulder, finding specks of dust to focus in the filmy light. Her mind was deliciously empty as her body was heavy.
“All I want is your name.”
Now, all that was left was the wait.
*
Saleem and another man, stocky and tall and heavily-bearded, took turns mauling her face, taking the most direct route at first: pain.
Blood dripped into her nose, along the curve of her mouth. Her brain shuttled from side to side with each hit, skittering around her skull and ringing in her ears like a too-close bell. She bit her tongue on moans and screams; she had never caved before, and would not start now.
“Your name,” Saleem repeated into her ear after every hit. His voice was soft and even and familiar, reminding her of a rainy night in Washington DC, of grainy cell phone calls, of a damp, wood-shavings-littered basement, family blood on her hands. “Your name.”
Ziva David, she thought to herself, over and over, a spark of life even as the blood trickled over her face. Ziva David, NCIS.
“Your accent is Israeli. Perhaps I shall just start down the list of known Mossad agents?” he murmured.
Not Mossad, she thought again, breaths hiccupping in her throat, against hot teary moans. She coughed, the bones of her face throbbing and charged with pain. But her veins felt like iron, her bones unbreakable, for she was Ziva David, and she did not bow to any man.
Even if his hands latched onto the fingers of her right hand and began to bend them back, slowly, harshly, with every inch of skin hot as if aflame.
*
After being knocked out with one good swipe to her head, she woke up to blinding sunlight, blistering heat, sand-drenched wind slipping between the crevices of her skin, the indents of her teeth, the lines of her face. Raw and scorched, she shut her eyes and sealed her mouth, breathing infinitesimal amounts through her aching nose. Her feet, bare and bruised, seared on the sand; she curled her toes against the heat, gritting her teeth.
“I thought you might like some fresh air,” Saleem called to her from a distance, easy to hear in the desert silence. There was no breeze, only too-hot, too-close sunshine and her dry cracked self. All of it was nearly unbearable.
She sucked her split bottom lip into her mouth, sagging into the unforgiving chair under the heat. Gripping the armrests with torn and twisted fingers, she opened her eyes to slits, finding the ramshackle house, and a small, lean figure, safe in the shadows of the eaves and roofs. She wasn’t far—but far enough.
“All I need is a name,” he said over the sun and sand, soft and thick with concern. It was soothing, in the bright-white heat, to sink into the coffee-dark of his voice. She felt such a pang then, deep and aching, like the ocean; it made her want to cry, but it had all dried up by now. “And then this will end.”
He didn’t understand, she thought fuzzily, seeing spots as she shut her eyes again, smelling the rankness of her own dried blood, her own open wounds, the sand gritting into the edges of her split skin. This was nothing new; nothing, not even the sun, could pierce her now. Her Star of David, hidden under her clothes, warmed under the heat, and left marks she could feel along the line of her neck.
After a while, he went inside. Only then did she let herself pass out.
*
It was the water that shocked her, the soothing lukewarm water against her bare skin.
She was nearly naked except for a thin, bloodied shirt and underwear, bruised and shuddering, after taking punch after punch to the ribs. Her whole body seemed black-and-blue, in ways it had never been before. They stripped her, bound her wrists and ankles together, tossed her in a tub, and left her shivering in her bare-bones dusty room, Somali moonlight curving around her through the cracks in the boards. The desert was cold now, and she was chilled, aching.
Saleem came in with water—she thought immediately of waterboarding, of Chinese water torture, of being boiled alive (she had seen too many American movies)—but he did not speak. He knelt beside her, a bucket of water at his side, pulled out clean cloths and began to wash the blood from her face.
“My men complain of your stench,” he said quietly as he stroked the washcloth over her cheek, the line of her jaw. “I do not mind so much. But you might.”
She did not flinch, or blink, just stared straight ahead, into the cool blue darkness, trying not to tremble so hard. Trembling was for girls, and children, and soft men in offices, pretending to change the world.
“You think I do not understand how you think, or what you are,” he continued, his touch gentle as his voice sharpened. “You think I will kill you, because of your silence.”
Her breathing stuttered, all the muscles in her body tensed, as the washcloth finished its perusal of her face, coming away rust-red and dirt-brown.
“But I know you. And I know you are special. I know someone is looking. And I will keep you alive until they do. It is the worst thing I can do, really. You will sit here, for days and weeks and months and wait for death, but I will not give it to you,” he said finally, dropping the washcloth to the ground and standing, towering over her.
She glanced up at him, unable to breathe, to look away. He smiled, but there was nothing soft about it now.
“As I said before, this will be fun for me, no matter what,” he said, words sharp with finality, and then strode easily out, leaving her damp and bound and shaking.
Pressing her face into her knees, she breathed in and out harshly, the room pressing in on her like a vice. At sea and shaking, she curled into herself and began to whisper Gibbs’s rules, under her breath, until exhaustion swept over her.
*
Time passed, or it did not.
She could not track the days and hours; sometimes, it felt as if she spent days upon days in strict sunlight. They beat her, sometimes, left permanent scars, but most of the time, she was alone, in her quiet room, thankful that she had nothing to identify herself with, thankful to have burned bridges both in Israel and in America, because she was cocooned in ambiguity, and no one could break that.
Until, of course, they did.
“Ziva.”
For a moment, it sounded like Ari. She lifted her head, hair falling limply into her eyes, waiting for the brother she murdered to appear, to take his revenge, in the hot sun-streaked room she now considered a living grave.
Saleem smiled, holding up a sandy, sun-bleached backpack. “We may be educated in the best schools across the world, but we also remember how to dig,” he said flatly. “Retracing your steps was difficult, but not impossible.”
She settled her gaze directly on the sandy floor, curling her fingers along the lines of the now-familiar armrests. Her joints creaked, swollen and broken with the effort; they splinted them at first, but now, did not seem to care.
“Ziva David, formally of Mossad—and I called that one correctly, you see, and not just because of your necklace,” he said, dropping her bag and circling her. “But you are now with NCIS. With the Americans. What do they want with us, I wonder.”
A lump, abrupt and choking, landed squarely in her throat, making it hard to breathe, harder than with her bruised ribs.
“So perhaps you should fill me in, Ziva,” he whispered, suddenly right next to her, his breath hot on her cheek, fanning her stringy hair. “Would you?”
Without hesitation, she spat in his face. It was weak, as she was dehydrated and starving, just a thin film along the line of his lip and nose, but it gave her something, a moment of victory.
Still for a moment, he wiped his face slowly, and then struck her across the mouth, splitting her lip once more, leaving her gasping.
“I will ask again later.”
*
Every day, every hour, every whatever her life was counted in, she felt pain.
In those moments, when all she could taste was blood and sand, and all she could hear was the sound of interrogation, of NCIS over and over and over, she thought of the Damocles, of the men she’d killed. Of Cryer, who died not at her hand but because of her; Gibbs would never forgive her for Cryer, if he ever found out. After all, she did not forgive herself. She thought their ghosts were with her now, in her tiny room, outlined in sand and cheering Saleem and his men on as they broke her down to build her back up, tiny flakes of her soul disappearing each time.
They injected her with what she was sure was a sort of truth serum, but she had practically been weaned on it by Eli David and they never quite asked the right questions. All the questions were of NCIS and she could hardly remember cases, let alone intelligence. She answered in mumbles and spurts, but she did not break. She thought of Abby, and Ducky, those she’d left behind, and she refused to break. They asked for plans, for passwords, all of which she knew had been changed since her absence, but she said nothing. She cried out and screamed nonsense and moaned with pain, but she did not speak words, for she had none left in her body.
This was what it was all for, she thought distantly, sitting out in a pool of scalding sunlight, sand stuck in every crevice of her skin, the creases of her eyelids, listening to thirty men recite the midday prayer call to Mecca as they all spat on her after. Tali and Ari and her father and Gibbs and Tony, all that misdirection and heartbreak for this.
She didn’t know what it meant anymore, didn’t understand. Now, she didn’t care to anyway.
In time, she forgot who they were, the names Saleem slipped into her ear, the people he tried to extract from under her thick skin. There were fuzzy collages of faces, a shock of dark hair, a sheepish smile, stark black pigtails, a polka-dot bowtie, a war-weary lined face—all scrapbook memories from a life not her own any longer, and therefore untouched.
It was better this way, to be iron-clad, safe, and immoveable.
“Someday you will tire,” Saleem said, the first concession he had ever made of his own frustration with her, after how long, she did not know.
“No, I will not,” she replied simply, her voice raw and cracked with misuse and screams.
They broke a rib then, but her armor remained unchallenged.
*
It was a cooler day, she thought. The room was not so unbearably warm. They had not touched her in some time (perhaps hours, perhaps days; she had no sense of time), and the solitude dulled her, let her sink into the chair she called home. Something akin to anxiety rippled through the camp; she could tell even in her captivity. The men were hustling, creaking and stomping around the camp with gusto.
Perhaps they were compromised; perhaps she would finally die, as planned, as promised.
Saleem walked in eventually with his regular companion (a name she had never learned); they slipped a hood over her head, unbound her ankles, and shoved her forward. Under the hood, she sucked in a hot stinking breath, pliable and compliant under their hard grips. Her feet skittered across the floor, her body aching with the physical effort, but all she could think of was yes, it was time, they would finally give in—
A door creaked open; she could hear hitched and strained breathing, smell others in the air, even through the thick hood. She coughed as they shoved her into another chair, slapping the harsh plastic restraints on her ankles.
“One of you will tell me the names and locations of all the operatives in the area, and the other one will die,” Saleem said sharply, and she couldn’t breathe for a horrible moment because one of who, and then the sack was ripped off of her head and Tony sat directly in front of her, staring like he was seeing a ghost.
She couldn’t help the small sound, the audible final breaking of her heart.
Saleem’s voice was white-noise now, before he stomped out, and she couldn’t tear her eyes away from Tony, from the dirt and the blood flecked over his face.
Tony, finally, cracked something of his usual smile. “So. How was your summer?”
Now, there was a further purpose to her continued existence, a chance to get McGee and Tony out alive, however reluctantly they went. Boldly she pressed and pushed and stupidly Tony pushed right back, and when Saleem grasped her hair and put the knife to her throat she nearly leaned into it, just to ruin the whole scheme, because she refused to be used as emotional manipulation—
It all happened too fast, in the end. Suddenly Saleem was dead, and Tony had his arm around her and she nearly buckled from the sudden rush of adrenaline and exhaustion and pain. Memories she had locked off into a separate compartment broke through, whether from the physical manifestations of the men in her life, or just through sheer will. Gibbs was there, and Tony, and McGee, and all the ghosts of the men from the Damocles, trailing at her sides, catching her in the space between life and death.
*
“You were scary, back there.”
She looked askance at Tony, next to her on the cargo plane, jittery and anxious in the knees and fingers, like he couldn’t control his impulses. And then, she remembered the serum, and wanted so desperately to ask if this was real, if she wasn’t having a heat-generated hallucination.
This certainly could not be the afterlife, which was supposed to be deep dark peace and sleep. She imagined she would be on Ari’s side of it; after all, sometimes she felt she was just a mirror of his own experiences. Tali had died too young and too pure and too loved to be tainted by them and their father and the sick twisted cycle they’d all spiraled down into.
“Scary?” she said finally, knees pulled up to her chest, her fingers locked together, shielding her body from expected blows. Her voice echoed raggedly, soft and not her own. Nothing felt like it was hers anymore.
“You wanted to die,” he said hoarsely, eyes shining bright with serum or something else she did not want to identify.
Her back curved to the shape of the plane; she preferred the floor, the coolness of metal against her skin, to the benches. “Want was not a part of it. It has been—I do not even know how long. It was a certainty that I refused to fear,” she said after a long moment, fixing her eyes to the bolts littering the plane’s skeleton.
Moving from the bench to the floor, he settled next to her gingerly. “Martyrdom doesn’t suit you, or Mel Gibson.”
Hot tears pressed against her eyes, the sudden wet shock of them burning harshly. She ducked her head, her whole body aching and pressing in on her soft self. “It was not that,” she said finally, voice breaking, and she hated herself for it. “I could not—I can not be completely as I used to. My bridges are burned, I had nothing to return to, there was nothing else to do,” she finished, desperate for something, anyone, to understand.
Tony remained silent, a comforting warmth at her side. She pressed her face to the tops of her knees, trying to stifle the overwhelming loneliness, the onset of an old way of life she had pushed nearly completely from her mind. At her other side, she thought she felt the cold brush of Ari’s ghost on her skin, a siren of death beckoning, and oh, it would be so easy to just let go—
A broad, warm hand touched the crown of her head, callused fingertips tracing the line of her hair, the remaining wounds and scars. Her dry blood flaked away, just as easily as she felt she could disappear. “This bridge isn’t burned,” Tony said, low and painfully gentle. He leaned down, eye to black-eye. “I get it.”
“Do you?” she asked, a choking sort of piercing pain shattering through her.
He nodded. “I’ve always gotten you, Ziva. Okay, maybe more like ninety-nine percent of the time, but still—”
Trailing off, he forced a smile, just for her. “I still get you. Scars and bruises and your gun in my chest don’t change that for me.”
Exhaustion flooded her and all she could do was lean her weight back and shut her eyes. His hand touched her cheek, lingered for a moment on the scarring right below her eye, and then withdrew. His breathing evened next to hers. She relaxed into the plane, but her grip never loosened from her knees, still waiting for blows that would never come.
Some things were still unbearable.
*
Author:
tosca1390Fandom: NCIS
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Elements of torture, violence
Prompt: 43) More piercing, more unbearable than blame / Is to be understood. --Frances Cornford (1886-1960), English poet.
Summary: Her veins felt like iron, her bones unbreakable, for she was Ziva David, and she did not bow to any man. What happened that summer in Somalia.
Author's Notes: I'm so excited to post this, I've been sitting on it for days! Many thanks to
ladychi for the beta. Title comes from a Mumford and Sons's song.*
The scent of blood stuck in her nose, unrelenting, unerring.
The courier was dead, the sandy floor soaking up the deep dark red. She only had three bullets left, and no other ammunition. Sweat dried sharp and salty along her hairline, the curve of her neck; she walked past the courier and pressed onward through shadowed and dark corners and halls, listening for noise, ears attuned to the abrupt and weird silence.
It was too quiet for terrorists.
Even the shadows were hot in Somalia. At footsteps down the hall, she pressed her back to the wall, searching for just a moment of coolness. If it had been her choice, she would not want to die in dirty clothes and sweat-drenched skin, with sand encrusted in her abrasions and her eyes and ears. But today, with nothing behind her and oblivion stretching out dark and silent in front of her, she only carried the hard promise of death in her heart, piercingly clear.
Floorboards creaked ahead of her, a door opened and closed; her ear caught the murmurs of Arabic, the staccato rhythm of orders. Gun secure in her steady hand, she slipped along the crease of floor and wall, unencumbered, her bag left far behind deep in the sand, along with I.D.s and passports and anything to give the slightest hint than she even breathed this air, all abandoned. It was the final test in a lifetime of training and discipline and hard knocks in the hot Israeli deserts, and she would pass, no matter what.
Breathing in silently, she heard two quiet voices, male, on the other side of a doorway. The others were close; the courier would be discovered soon, the flies swarming, the stink in the hot summer temperatures, and then the game would be up.
She kicked in the door, aimed at the closest body, shot him down cleanly. The calls went up, harsh dissonant shouts of Arabic and yelling, pressing in on her. She locked eyes with him, with Saleem across a homey, sandy room; he watched her with nothing but a smile, slow and bright in the dim shadowy room. There was an odd stillness, as her gun settled along her sightline, ready to fire, a vacuum of sound, just the hard beat of her heart and she thought of Tony, of Gibbs, of Michael, of Tim, of her father, of Ari, of all those men, of this last man—
Then, a sharp blow to the head, her cheek pressed to the gritty floorboards. And soft blanketing darkness, and quiet.
She shut her eyes and prayed to stay in it.
*
“What is your name?”
She opened her eyes and found dust in the air, in her eyes, in her mouth, a dull, constant throbbing at the base of her neck. Her arms and ankles restrained, she was stuck sitting in a hard wooden chair that creaked with each shift of her weight.
Saleem sat in front of her, at a distance, lazy and relaxed in a chair similar to hers. The sun beat down on her back and nape of her neck, creeping along the long line of his legs. His face, speckled with light, lay shadowy and unfocused. She blinked, ribs pressing in on her lungs.
“Your name?” he repeated, slow and even, cultured, like Ari.
Mouth dry, she swallowed hard on nothing, staring dead ahead.
“You tried to kill me. I think I deserve a name.”
Death settled heavy in her stomach, her fingers curling with it, nails scratching the wood of her armrests.
“I have tortured women before. They are always the first to break, even the strongest,” he said, suddenly sharp and at attention.
She choked out a laugh at that, rattling in the thick warm air. “How exciting for you,” she said at last, voice hoarse. It was off-script to speak at all (she knew the drill, of course), but when men said such things (and they did, very often, in situations like this), she found it nearly impossible to remain quiet.
He raised an eyebrow, delicate in his thin face. “You speak. And with such spark.”
Breathing out silently, she kept her eyes to just past his shoulder, finding specks of dust to focus in the filmy light. Her mind was deliciously empty as her body was heavy.
“All I want is your name.”
Now, all that was left was the wait.
*
Saleem and another man, stocky and tall and heavily-bearded, took turns mauling her face, taking the most direct route at first: pain.
Blood dripped into her nose, along the curve of her mouth. Her brain shuttled from side to side with each hit, skittering around her skull and ringing in her ears like a too-close bell. She bit her tongue on moans and screams; she had never caved before, and would not start now.
“Your name,” Saleem repeated into her ear after every hit. His voice was soft and even and familiar, reminding her of a rainy night in Washington DC, of grainy cell phone calls, of a damp, wood-shavings-littered basement, family blood on her hands. “Your name.”
Ziva David, she thought to herself, over and over, a spark of life even as the blood trickled over her face. Ziva David, NCIS.
“Your accent is Israeli. Perhaps I shall just start down the list of known Mossad agents?” he murmured.
Not Mossad, she thought again, breaths hiccupping in her throat, against hot teary moans. She coughed, the bones of her face throbbing and charged with pain. But her veins felt like iron, her bones unbreakable, for she was Ziva David, and she did not bow to any man.
Even if his hands latched onto the fingers of her right hand and began to bend them back, slowly, harshly, with every inch of skin hot as if aflame.
*
After being knocked out with one good swipe to her head, she woke up to blinding sunlight, blistering heat, sand-drenched wind slipping between the crevices of her skin, the indents of her teeth, the lines of her face. Raw and scorched, she shut her eyes and sealed her mouth, breathing infinitesimal amounts through her aching nose. Her feet, bare and bruised, seared on the sand; she curled her toes against the heat, gritting her teeth.
“I thought you might like some fresh air,” Saleem called to her from a distance, easy to hear in the desert silence. There was no breeze, only too-hot, too-close sunshine and her dry cracked self. All of it was nearly unbearable.
She sucked her split bottom lip into her mouth, sagging into the unforgiving chair under the heat. Gripping the armrests with torn and twisted fingers, she opened her eyes to slits, finding the ramshackle house, and a small, lean figure, safe in the shadows of the eaves and roofs. She wasn’t far—but far enough.
“All I need is a name,” he said over the sun and sand, soft and thick with concern. It was soothing, in the bright-white heat, to sink into the coffee-dark of his voice. She felt such a pang then, deep and aching, like the ocean; it made her want to cry, but it had all dried up by now. “And then this will end.”
He didn’t understand, she thought fuzzily, seeing spots as she shut her eyes again, smelling the rankness of her own dried blood, her own open wounds, the sand gritting into the edges of her split skin. This was nothing new; nothing, not even the sun, could pierce her now. Her Star of David, hidden under her clothes, warmed under the heat, and left marks she could feel along the line of her neck.
After a while, he went inside. Only then did she let herself pass out.
*
It was the water that shocked her, the soothing lukewarm water against her bare skin.
She was nearly naked except for a thin, bloodied shirt and underwear, bruised and shuddering, after taking punch after punch to the ribs. Her whole body seemed black-and-blue, in ways it had never been before. They stripped her, bound her wrists and ankles together, tossed her in a tub, and left her shivering in her bare-bones dusty room, Somali moonlight curving around her through the cracks in the boards. The desert was cold now, and she was chilled, aching.
Saleem came in with water—she thought immediately of waterboarding, of Chinese water torture, of being boiled alive (she had seen too many American movies)—but he did not speak. He knelt beside her, a bucket of water at his side, pulled out clean cloths and began to wash the blood from her face.
“My men complain of your stench,” he said quietly as he stroked the washcloth over her cheek, the line of her jaw. “I do not mind so much. But you might.”
She did not flinch, or blink, just stared straight ahead, into the cool blue darkness, trying not to tremble so hard. Trembling was for girls, and children, and soft men in offices, pretending to change the world.
“You think I do not understand how you think, or what you are,” he continued, his touch gentle as his voice sharpened. “You think I will kill you, because of your silence.”
Her breathing stuttered, all the muscles in her body tensed, as the washcloth finished its perusal of her face, coming away rust-red and dirt-brown.
“But I know you. And I know you are special. I know someone is looking. And I will keep you alive until they do. It is the worst thing I can do, really. You will sit here, for days and weeks and months and wait for death, but I will not give it to you,” he said finally, dropping the washcloth to the ground and standing, towering over her.
She glanced up at him, unable to breathe, to look away. He smiled, but there was nothing soft about it now.
“As I said before, this will be fun for me, no matter what,” he said, words sharp with finality, and then strode easily out, leaving her damp and bound and shaking.
Pressing her face into her knees, she breathed in and out harshly, the room pressing in on her like a vice. At sea and shaking, she curled into herself and began to whisper Gibbs’s rules, under her breath, until exhaustion swept over her.
*
Time passed, or it did not.
She could not track the days and hours; sometimes, it felt as if she spent days upon days in strict sunlight. They beat her, sometimes, left permanent scars, but most of the time, she was alone, in her quiet room, thankful that she had nothing to identify herself with, thankful to have burned bridges both in Israel and in America, because she was cocooned in ambiguity, and no one could break that.
Until, of course, they did.
“Ziva.”
For a moment, it sounded like Ari. She lifted her head, hair falling limply into her eyes, waiting for the brother she murdered to appear, to take his revenge, in the hot sun-streaked room she now considered a living grave.
Saleem smiled, holding up a sandy, sun-bleached backpack. “We may be educated in the best schools across the world, but we also remember how to dig,” he said flatly. “Retracing your steps was difficult, but not impossible.”
She settled her gaze directly on the sandy floor, curling her fingers along the lines of the now-familiar armrests. Her joints creaked, swollen and broken with the effort; they splinted them at first, but now, did not seem to care.
“Ziva David, formally of Mossad—and I called that one correctly, you see, and not just because of your necklace,” he said, dropping her bag and circling her. “But you are now with NCIS. With the Americans. What do they want with us, I wonder.”
A lump, abrupt and choking, landed squarely in her throat, making it hard to breathe, harder than with her bruised ribs.
“So perhaps you should fill me in, Ziva,” he whispered, suddenly right next to her, his breath hot on her cheek, fanning her stringy hair. “Would you?”
Without hesitation, she spat in his face. It was weak, as she was dehydrated and starving, just a thin film along the line of his lip and nose, but it gave her something, a moment of victory.
Still for a moment, he wiped his face slowly, and then struck her across the mouth, splitting her lip once more, leaving her gasping.
“I will ask again later.”
*
Every day, every hour, every whatever her life was counted in, she felt pain.
In those moments, when all she could taste was blood and sand, and all she could hear was the sound of interrogation, of NCIS over and over and over, she thought of the Damocles, of the men she’d killed. Of Cryer, who died not at her hand but because of her; Gibbs would never forgive her for Cryer, if he ever found out. After all, she did not forgive herself. She thought their ghosts were with her now, in her tiny room, outlined in sand and cheering Saleem and his men on as they broke her down to build her back up, tiny flakes of her soul disappearing each time.
They injected her with what she was sure was a sort of truth serum, but she had practically been weaned on it by Eli David and they never quite asked the right questions. All the questions were of NCIS and she could hardly remember cases, let alone intelligence. She answered in mumbles and spurts, but she did not break. She thought of Abby, and Ducky, those she’d left behind, and she refused to break. They asked for plans, for passwords, all of which she knew had been changed since her absence, but she said nothing. She cried out and screamed nonsense and moaned with pain, but she did not speak words, for she had none left in her body.
This was what it was all for, she thought distantly, sitting out in a pool of scalding sunlight, sand stuck in every crevice of her skin, the creases of her eyelids, listening to thirty men recite the midday prayer call to Mecca as they all spat on her after. Tali and Ari and her father and Gibbs and Tony, all that misdirection and heartbreak for this.
She didn’t know what it meant anymore, didn’t understand. Now, she didn’t care to anyway.
In time, she forgot who they were, the names Saleem slipped into her ear, the people he tried to extract from under her thick skin. There were fuzzy collages of faces, a shock of dark hair, a sheepish smile, stark black pigtails, a polka-dot bowtie, a war-weary lined face—all scrapbook memories from a life not her own any longer, and therefore untouched.
It was better this way, to be iron-clad, safe, and immoveable.
“Someday you will tire,” Saleem said, the first concession he had ever made of his own frustration with her, after how long, she did not know.
“No, I will not,” she replied simply, her voice raw and cracked with misuse and screams.
They broke a rib then, but her armor remained unchallenged.
*
It was a cooler day, she thought. The room was not so unbearably warm. They had not touched her in some time (perhaps hours, perhaps days; she had no sense of time), and the solitude dulled her, let her sink into the chair she called home. Something akin to anxiety rippled through the camp; she could tell even in her captivity. The men were hustling, creaking and stomping around the camp with gusto.
Perhaps they were compromised; perhaps she would finally die, as planned, as promised.
Saleem walked in eventually with his regular companion (a name she had never learned); they slipped a hood over her head, unbound her ankles, and shoved her forward. Under the hood, she sucked in a hot stinking breath, pliable and compliant under their hard grips. Her feet skittered across the floor, her body aching with the physical effort, but all she could think of was yes, it was time, they would finally give in—
A door creaked open; she could hear hitched and strained breathing, smell others in the air, even through the thick hood. She coughed as they shoved her into another chair, slapping the harsh plastic restraints on her ankles.
“One of you will tell me the names and locations of all the operatives in the area, and the other one will die,” Saleem said sharply, and she couldn’t breathe for a horrible moment because one of who, and then the sack was ripped off of her head and Tony sat directly in front of her, staring like he was seeing a ghost.
She couldn’t help the small sound, the audible final breaking of her heart.
Saleem’s voice was white-noise now, before he stomped out, and she couldn’t tear her eyes away from Tony, from the dirt and the blood flecked over his face.
Tony, finally, cracked something of his usual smile. “So. How was your summer?”
Now, there was a further purpose to her continued existence, a chance to get McGee and Tony out alive, however reluctantly they went. Boldly she pressed and pushed and stupidly Tony pushed right back, and when Saleem grasped her hair and put the knife to her throat she nearly leaned into it, just to ruin the whole scheme, because she refused to be used as emotional manipulation—
It all happened too fast, in the end. Suddenly Saleem was dead, and Tony had his arm around her and she nearly buckled from the sudden rush of adrenaline and exhaustion and pain. Memories she had locked off into a separate compartment broke through, whether from the physical manifestations of the men in her life, or just through sheer will. Gibbs was there, and Tony, and McGee, and all the ghosts of the men from the Damocles, trailing at her sides, catching her in the space between life and death.
*
“You were scary, back there.”
She looked askance at Tony, next to her on the cargo plane, jittery and anxious in the knees and fingers, like he couldn’t control his impulses. And then, she remembered the serum, and wanted so desperately to ask if this was real, if she wasn’t having a heat-generated hallucination.
This certainly could not be the afterlife, which was supposed to be deep dark peace and sleep. She imagined she would be on Ari’s side of it; after all, sometimes she felt she was just a mirror of his own experiences. Tali had died too young and too pure and too loved to be tainted by them and their father and the sick twisted cycle they’d all spiraled down into.
“Scary?” she said finally, knees pulled up to her chest, her fingers locked together, shielding her body from expected blows. Her voice echoed raggedly, soft and not her own. Nothing felt like it was hers anymore.
“You wanted to die,” he said hoarsely, eyes shining bright with serum or something else she did not want to identify.
Her back curved to the shape of the plane; she preferred the floor, the coolness of metal against her skin, to the benches. “Want was not a part of it. It has been—I do not even know how long. It was a certainty that I refused to fear,” she said after a long moment, fixing her eyes to the bolts littering the plane’s skeleton.
Moving from the bench to the floor, he settled next to her gingerly. “Martyrdom doesn’t suit you, or Mel Gibson.”
Hot tears pressed against her eyes, the sudden wet shock of them burning harshly. She ducked her head, her whole body aching and pressing in on her soft self. “It was not that,” she said finally, voice breaking, and she hated herself for it. “I could not—I can not be completely as I used to. My bridges are burned, I had nothing to return to, there was nothing else to do,” she finished, desperate for something, anyone, to understand.
Tony remained silent, a comforting warmth at her side. She pressed her face to the tops of her knees, trying to stifle the overwhelming loneliness, the onset of an old way of life she had pushed nearly completely from her mind. At her other side, she thought she felt the cold brush of Ari’s ghost on her skin, a siren of death beckoning, and oh, it would be so easy to just let go—
A broad, warm hand touched the crown of her head, callused fingertips tracing the line of her hair, the remaining wounds and scars. Her dry blood flaked away, just as easily as she felt she could disappear. “This bridge isn’t burned,” Tony said, low and painfully gentle. He leaned down, eye to black-eye. “I get it.”
“Do you?” she asked, a choking sort of piercing pain shattering through her.
He nodded. “I’ve always gotten you, Ziva. Okay, maybe more like ninety-nine percent of the time, but still—”
Trailing off, he forced a smile, just for her. “I still get you. Scars and bruises and your gun in my chest don’t change that for me.”
Exhaustion flooded her and all she could do was lean her weight back and shut her eyes. His hand touched her cheek, lingered for a moment on the scarring right below her eye, and then withdrew. His breathing evened next to hers. She relaxed into the plane, but her grip never loosened from her knees, still waiting for blows that would never come.
Some things were still unbearable.
*
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-07-15 05:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-18 03:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-15 01:08 pm (UTC)But if she had broken, if she had been willing to be used, she would have lost even more.
Thank you for this. It's hard to get Ziva right, and you've done that. This feels like a scene that was--unaccountably--left on the cutting room floor.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-18 03:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-18 03:55 am (UTC)Amazing job!
no subject
Date: 2010-07-18 03:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-28 04:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-30 04:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-17 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-29 01:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-23 02:43 am (UTC)