Title: Weakness
Fandom: NCIS
Author: Alidiabin
Words: 633
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Warnings/Spoilers/Rating: Nightmares || 3x08 || Teen
Parings: Tony/Ziva, previous Jenny/Ziva if you want it to be.
Summary: The nightmares happened long before Somalia.

Weakness

All was quiet in the very expensive hotel room of Jean-Paul and Sophie Ranier. Jenny sat in MTAC with her sixth or seventh coffee of the evening. Gibbs had come in to give her a refill and told her to go to sleep but she had refused. Gibbs slipped in to MTAC and stood behind her.

Tony and Ziva were both asleep and snoring. Gibbs and Jenny had been watching the tranquil scene for ten minutes when Ziva began moving around in the bed. She cried out in a foreign language and flapped her arms with her hand remaining tightly gripped on her gun.

"Is she ok?" Gibbs asked. Jenny turned around to find Gibbs had not left when she refused to go home and sleep.

"Ziva is a messy sleeper," Jenny answered. She remembered that dingy safehouse in Cairo where they had shared the only bed. Jenny had been hit by Ziva when she was in the throes of a vicious nightmare.

Suddenly, the mood in the hotel room changed. Tony murmured as his sleep was disturbed. Jenny knew was the calm before the storm.

Ziva reached for her gun and suddenly the butt of her gun hit the gap between her and Tony in the bed.

"What," Tony said waking up. "What the hell?"

"Lo," Ziva cried. The loud and harsh-sounding Hebrew continued. DiNozzo gulped and slowly backed away from her trying to escape the bed.

"Tony," Jenny said, "She's having a nightmare,"

"Figured that out," Tony replied bitterly. He had been intermediated by the Israeli when she first joined the team, but now he was truly scared. He was also saddened that his new partner could not get any solace in slumber.

"Rub her back," Jenny uttered, hoping her friends nightmares would subside quickly. "Up and down, it soothed her when this happened in Cairo."

Jenny waited for the younger man to make an inference about Jenny and Ziva's time in Cairo, but he uttered no such words.

Tony rubbed Ziva's back up and down in rhythmic circles as per Jenny's instructions. Her body became less tense and she stopped shouting. Jenny breathed a sigh of relief.

Tony took a deep breath as Ziva slowly woke up. Her eyes fluttered open and squinted as she looked up to see Tony. She continued to mutter in Hebrew.

"English, please?" Tony asked. Ziva sat up in the bed as the weight of what had happened hit her.

"Go to sleep," Ziva said now fully alert and aware that Tony had seen her at her weakest.

"I was sleeping," Tony replied with slight anger trying to hide his concern over it. "Then your Nightmare on Elm Street woke me. The Director said that I should rub your back."

"Oh," Ziva replied ashamed that Tony, Jenny and probably Gibbs had seen her so vulnerable so weak, "Thank you,"

"Do you want to watch a movie or something?" he asked as she adjusted her lacy pyjamas.

"It is," Ziva paused and looked at the hotel clock, "0342 which is not a time to watch movies."

He looked up at her, not bothering to hide the concern in his eyes. She noticed it. She touched his bare arm.

"I will be fine," she reassured him with a slight smile.

He caught her gaze and nodded. She realised how long she had been holding onto his arm, and quickly relinquished her grip like he was a roaring fire and she had put her hand in the flame.

She rushed to the bathroom and splashed water on her face. She was ashamed herself, ashamed that she had been seen at her weakest by all of them. She was also touched by Tony's gesture to stay up with her. Her head spun.

She wasn't going back to sleep tonight.