Disclaimer: Oh, I only wish.

Summary: Almost as soon as she leaves NCIS, Ziva is captured. What ensues involves pain, betrayal, heartbreak, and searching. Lots of searching.

Spoilers: Everything up to and including Aliyah is fair game. Season 6 is especially spoiled in here.

She would not cry out.

It did not matter what they did, what they tried, how they hurt her, how she wanted to scream. She would not cry out.

She had nothing to say to them anyway; really, they wanted information that she was unable but also unwilling to share. Even if she had known those things – access codes, movements, names, numbers – she would say nothing to the men who tortured her day in and day out.

They were good at what they did; she would give them that. They used many of the same techniques that she had learned during her own training. Along with those techniques, she had learned how to resist, so those were the tools she employed now.

Now, as she heard the door creak open. Now, as she felt the long, slow steps on the floor. Now, as she felt the hand grasp the chain around her neck and pull so hard that it cut into her neck before it snapped. Now, as he lifted her head violently and she gasped in pain – damn it – now, she would use everything she had ever learned to tell him nothing.

Her surprise was not evident; nothing could be discerned from her swollen face. This was a different man than the ones who had been screaming at her since her… arrival. They had yelled, whispered, threatened, conversed in front of her, all in Arabic that she pretended not to understand. This man, however, smiled as if recalling a joke that only he knew, a joke that involved a woman strapped to a chair and bloodied and beaten and giving a small gasp of pain – before he bent to speak in her face. English.

"Tell me everything you know about NCIS."

Author's note: I can't even tell you how much I love to read comments. It's a lot. It's Abby-and-her-Caf-Pow lots. Please feel free to comment on any and all things that you loved, hated, or were indifferent about. Comment early, comment often.