A/N: Hi everyone! This is my first fic so please read and review! Constructive criticism welcome!

WARNING: Contains spoilers for end of Season 6 and beginning of Season 7.

This is unbeta'd to so all mistakes are my own. Enjoy!

CHAPTER 1:

Ziva's POV:

Ziva looked up from the paperwork that was starting to make her head spin.

It had been a quiet week at NCIS headquarters, with no cases or Gibbs barking out 'Grab you gear!' leaving the team to fill out the paperwork which somehow always piled up. Ziva missed having a case to work on, it kept her focused and her mind busy. It meant that there was no opportunity to remember all the memories which she was trying to forget. The torture, the taunts, the violation. The three long months of waiting in Somalia with Saleem and his men…

In the first month, she had patiently waited for the Gibbs and the team, or her father to rescue her, smiling to herself as she didn't give Saleem the satisfaction of hearing her scream. The thought of the team rescuing her had kept her going and kept her from breaking.

In the second month, she was still waiting, she convinced herself that they were just on their way, but she could not get rid of the niggling voice in the back of her mind that said "They're never coming. They don't want to find you. They don't care about you, nobody does. Why do you think they left you out here to die? You are nothing to them."

By then, the ability to resist her body's reaction to the pain was weakening as her hopes started to fade. It was then she realised how much Tony meant to her, how much she missed him. The pain of never seeing him again overwhelmed the pain that Saleem inflicted on her.

By the third month, Ziva had given up all hope, she somehow endured all the pain Saleem kept putting her through. This frustrated him and so he became more and more creative with his methods of torture , repeatedly violating her body in an attempt to get her to scream or talk. However, he did it in vain, Ziva just wanted to die. She was now convinced that nobody was coming for her, that she was forgotten and worthless. She wondered why she had thought that somebody would be looking for her or be worried about her. At this time, her mind retreated leaving an empty shell of her former self, she stopped feeling the pain and was left with feeling nothing at all.

A phone rang, jerking her out of her reverie.

Ziva realised that she was shaky and slightly nauseous from having relived the memories. Thankfully, no one in the squadroom had noticed. They had been oblivious to her mental turmoil.

As she calmed down, she watched as McGee typed tirelessly on his computer and thought of how much he had grown into a capable NCIS agent. She remembered how he had come to her rescue with Gibbs and Tony. Tony.

Just the sound of his name made her smile on the inside. She turned to look at him and for once he was working, head down, pen scribbling. These days, his carefree attitude of a 'frat boy who had never grown up' had toned down slightly. Sure, he still spouted movie quotes and endlessly teased McGee, but something had changed. Somehow, he had become a bit more responsible, perhaps it was in the three months that she was in Somalia.

He must've felt her staring at him because he looked up and gave her a heart-warming smile. A smile that said everything. A smile that said a thousand words. A smile that said 'I love you'.

After Ziva's return, she and Tony had become much closer; in those three terrible months, they both had realised how much they needed each other and how they felt about each other.

He would come to her apartment every night to check that she was okay. Night after night, he watched her breakdown due to the physical and emotional trauma that she had suffered in Somalia. Tony mostly listened and comforted her, and she found his presence somewhat calming.

At first, Ziva had resisted him coming, she didn't want him to see her being an emotional wreck. She couldn't understand why he would want to spend time with somebody so broken and unstable. Despite her attempts to push him away, he had learnt from losing her the first time and did not give up.

Once Ziva had let go of all the emotions she had bottled up in Somalia, she started to enjoy Tony's company and looked forward to their evenings. He usually ended up staying for hours or even staying the night. Most of the time, Ziva would cook dinner for the two of them and Tony would bring dessert and a movie, as he saw it as an opportunity to educate her in films. She felt the need to broaden his palette from pepperoni pizza and Chinese take away.

After the movie, they would usually stay up chatting until late and this is when she unconsciously let him see a side of her that she wouldn't normally reveal.

A side in which she had hidden her emotions since her father started training her as an Mossad assassin when she was a child.

He learnt about her childhood, her family and her life before NCIS. At first it had been difficult for her to let down her guard, to talk about her past but little by little she had let him in. There were still times when her Mossad training kicked in, she would hear her father's voice saying "Emotions are weaknesses" and she would rebuild the wall that Tony had endeavoured to bring down brick by brick.

Neither Tony nor Ziva mentioned the strange relationship that had developed between them, and their emotions about each other always went unsaid. Nevertheless, their three month separation and the feelings which they had endured since they had first met, soon came together; and as she began to trust him with her emotions, she subconsciously started to trust him with her heart.

I hope you enjoyed it! Please bear in mind it is my first ever fic, so do not completely diss it.

Please review! Tell me what you think! :)