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Pain.


He was aware of pain - unending, infinite, stretching from horizon to horizon - an ocean of it, an entire world, an ever-expanding universe. It was his beginning and his end, an all-consuming vortex sucking him in.


Where am I? What's happening?


His fluttering eyes caught the hints of shapes in motion over him, but the forms did not coalesce into anything recognizable or meaningful. He heard rumbling like thunder, like gunfire maybe, or the voice of God booming over the waters.


God… am I dead? Is this Hell? I don't think it's Heaven; Heaven wouldn't hurt like this.


He couldn't seem to piece together sense or memory to explain his situation. He thought he might recall a name, but whose it was or what it meant was lost to him. Was it his name? He couldn't be sure, but he didn't think so. He couldn't recall his own name to compare it with, anyway.


Who am I?


A strange hum-thud sound seemed to vibrate all around him, moving through him. He felt adrift in the buzz and thrum, unsure of where or what he was. One memory rose above the chaos and pain like a spark in the night, and he latched onto it like a lifeline.


Gibbs… Gibbs!


He thrashed weakly, limbs moving in little more than sluggish twitches before he settled again, too injured and exhausted to struggle more. He felt a pinch, like a single raindrop in the hurricane of his agony, and suddenly he seemed to slide down, down, down into a dark, nameless, mindless place where even pain could not follow.


His last fragment of sensation before his mad world collapsed around him was a hand squeezing his own.


~***N*C*I*S***~


When he was next aware, the first thing he noticed was the relative quiet.


The booming, shaking wave of sensation had stopped. He heard rhythmic clicks and beeps in the background, but they were mere footnotes on the page of his slowly re-emerging consciousness.


Quick on the heels of that revelation was the lack of pain. He felt it prying at the edges of his being, but it was muted, subdued. He felt floaty and heavy at the same time, spinning like a milkweed seed in an autumn breeze.


The thought of opening his eyes sounded like trying to move mountains, so he didn't. The pull of the dark, quiet place soon proved to be too much, and he sank down into it again without making a sound.


He didn't feel the hand holding his squeeze this time as he dropped back into darkness.


~***N*C*I*S***~


When he came to next, he didn't realize it was happening until after his eyes had already opened.


The light seemed intent on murdering his eyes, and he instinctively flinched away from the brightness. He sensed motion next to him and peered cautiously in the direction it came from.


He struggled to make out the shape next to him, eyes still signaling their intense disapproval with the current levels of luminescence. As he adjusted to the brightness, he was finally able to make out the figure looming over him.


It was a man, older, with silver hair and intense blue eyes. Some memory niggled at him; he was sure that he'd seen those eyes before. It danced just out of his reach, and he wanted to scream in frustration.


“Nice of you to finally join us, DiNozzo.”


Silver hair… blue eyes… a voice barking out “DiNozzo”…


GIBBS!


Memories like lightning bolts flashed through the man's mind, hammering into him one after another. Tackling a man in Baltimore, seeing those icy blue eyes staring up at him from the pavement, Danny’s betrayal, the first headslap, falling out of a car and a plane, white powder in the air, blue lights and a whispered command, a sniper's shot on a rooftop, losing a friend and gaining a new one, an explosion on a ship, a dead wife and daughter, leaving and returning, the Frog, Jeanne, an exploding car, Trent Kort, blue eyes in the river, dead eyes in a desert diner, being sent away, being brought back, a dead Mossad agent, Israel, losing a friend, finding her again, a storage shed, camping, the woods, a shot, a belt…


He sucked in deep breaths, suddenly panting like he'd run a marathon. He felt the nigh uncontrollable need to flee, to fight, to move, all at once. Hands held him down when he tried to rise up, and he didn't have the strength to fight them.


He looked into those blue eyes, and his world clicked into place again.


“I know you. You're Gibbs, Boss.”


The eyes bored into his, one eyebrow raising up at that pronouncement. The hands didn’t let him go, didn’t let up even an inch.


“Yeah, I am,” Gibbs said in a no duh, DiNozzo tone that seemed to hold amusement, relief, and impatience in equal measure.


“You're Gibbs, and I'm Tony. Tony DiNozzo.”


“Uh-huh,” Gibbs responded, again with that tone, eyebrow climbing even higher.


“See, I wasn't sure for a while, but now I am. Everything was thump-buzz-hum-boom-hurt-pain for a bit, then it was pinch-go-dark. Then it was different, and then I wasn't again. Now I am, and you are, and we're here… where is here, Boss?”


Gibbs’ mouth twitched before he spoke as if he had started to say one thing but switched to another before he could get the words out.


“You're in the hospital, Tony, and clearly on the good painkillers if this conversation is anything to go by. Do you remember anything that happened?”


Tony frowned, the wrinkles in his brow becoming more pronounced as he thought back. His memories felt jumbled together, and he found sorting them out to be somewhat difficult.


“I’m not sure, Boss. You found me at my storage unit, we went camping, we… talked…”


Tony stiffened suddenly as the memory of his heartbreaking conversation with Gibbs Friday night came into horrible clarity. He was vaguely aware of a beeping in the background increasing as he began to fight the hands holding him, the sudden need to get away overwhelming everything else.


He wanted to crawl into a hole and pull it in after him. God, did that really happen? Maybe it was just a nightmare.


“Tony, Tony, can you hear me? Calm down, DiNozzo! That’s an order!”


The sound of Gibbs’ barked command broke through Tony’s sudden hysteria, and his blue eyes met and held Tony’s wide, panicked hazel gaze, grounding him. The beeping alarm slowly calmed back to its more usual pace, and only then did Tony notice that they were no longer alone.


A nurse had entered the room, drawn by the alarm and Gibbs’ yelling. She was the no-nonsense, matronly type, and she quickly assessed the situation with a practiced eye as she scanned the machines and checked numbers that must have held some deep-seated meaning to the various medical professionals but were a mystery to mere mortals.


“Agent Gibbs, I've had just about enough of your heavy-handed shenanigans. If you agitate my patient again, I’ll have you remanded to the psych ward and with orders to double the haloperidol and triple-knot the straight jacket. Do I make myself clear?”


Gibbs straightened and turned to face her, his face set in one of his more intense scowls. The nurse took an aggressive step forward, entering his personal space, chin up and eyes sparking fire.


“I said, do I make myself clear, Agent Gibbs?”


Gibbs glared for a few seconds more before replying, a brusque “crystal clear, ma’am” barely interrupting the intense standoff.


Gibbs’ glare has no effect on her, Tony noted in surprise. She’s completely immune. If this gets out, the men in black are gonna snatch her away to experiment on her for sure. She’s gotta be an alien or cyborg or something.


With one sharp nod as the fight for dominance ended in feminine victory, the nurse turned away from Gibbs and looked at Tony, softening like butter on a stove as she checked him over. The transformation was frankly terrifying. Tony made a mental note not to mess with her.


“Agent DiNozzo, it’s good to see you awake. You had everyone worried there for a while. My name is Susan, and I’ll be your main nurse while you’re here. Is there anything you need before I get the doctor?”


Tony shook his head meekly, not sure if speaking would be wise. His gaze flicked between Gibbs and Susan, wondering who would win in a fight. Surprisingly, he was willing to give them fairly even odds. If Susan had a needle in her hand, Tony would even be so generous as to place his money on her.


With a gentle smile aimed at Tony and a withering glare of warning at Gibbs, Susan quietly exited the room. Tony looked at Gibbs, feeling rather subdued in the wake of the confrontation between agent and nurse. Gibbs, for his part, looked rather nonplussed.


“I think you should hire her, Boss. She’d be great for breaking stubborn suspects. Just give her a syringe and bottle of some unknown liquid, and she’d get a confession out of them before we could get the recording equipment up and running.”


Gibbs smiled at that, not with his lips but with his eyes, and opened his mouth to reply, but before he could get anything out the door reopened and a doctor walked in.


The cop in Tony snapped to attention despite his lackluster physical condition, noting the details of the medical professional in front of him. The doctor was a man about Tony's age, handsome and well-built, with plenty of laugh lines and an easygoing smile that looked as if it could turn flippant at a moment's notice. His tanned skin, sun-bleached blond hair, and warm brown eyes made him look more like a surfer than a doctor.


“Ah, Agent DiNozzo, welcome back. Nurse Susan told me you had awakened. I’m surprised Agent Gibbs here didn’t shout the whole hospital down letting us know. He’s been glued to you for three days straight now. We’ve tried to get him to leave, but he just glares and growls and mutters dark threats until we give up and go away. Fortunately, Dr. Mallard has been in and out to keep his worst tendencies under control; otherwise, we’d have sedated him and locked him in a storage closet after the first day. I’m Dr. Weisman; I’ve been overseeing your stay here.”


Tony blinked at that loquacious and somewhat irreverent introduction, his sluggish brain struggling to process everything he’d just heard. Three days? I’ve been out of it for three days? Holy crap! Sounds like Gibbs has been his usual cheerful self while I was out.


Tony glanced at Gibbs to gauge his response to the doctor’s less than flattering words at was surprised to see a bit of amusement lingering in the slight wrinkling around his Boss’s eyes and the barest twitch of his lips.


“Well, Doc, if anyone here had managed to brew something worthy of being called coffee and not that weak-kneed bilge water you try to placate me with, maybe things would have gone better for all of us.”


Dr. Weisman rolled his eyes at that before turning to look at Tony's chart, examining the numbers and muttering under his breath to himself. Tony didn’t catch much of what he said, but whatever he saw seemed to be good news because he turned to Tony with a smile on his face.


“Agent DiNozzo-”


“Please, just call me Tony, Doc.”


“Tony, then. I’m happy to let you know that your numbers are looking surprisingly good, all things considered. Now, we’ll need to do some tests, run some scans and so forth to make sure that there are no surprises waiting for us, but I am cautiously optimistic that you’ll make a full recovery. There’s no head trauma, but you did lose a lot of blood and that’s always a concern, especially when in light of your recent coma. Still, you seem to be aware of your surroundings and generally cognizant, and that’s always a good sign.”


Tony nodded at that, not exactly sure what all had happened but glad to hear that things were looking up. He wasn’t exactly excited about the inevitable onslaught of poking, prodding, and testing that was about to commence but figured it was a small price to pay for coming out of his encounter with Chip alive.


“Agent Gibbs, if you’ll excuse us, we need to prep Tony for his scans and do some other tests.” Dr. Weisman’s voice was calm, his expression even, but there was an undercurrent of steel in his posture and tone that left no room for argument. It was a dismissal. Gibbs glanced at Tony before nodding his assent at the doctor.


“I’m gonna go find some real coffee, DiNozzo. I won’t be gone long.”


With that, Gibbs executed an about-face and strode out of the room, leaving Tony to the mercy of the medical professionals around him.


Tony felt suddenly bereft, and a part of him wanted to call out to Gibbs and ask him to come back, but he squashed the impulse before it could make his tongue override his brain. His reaction surprised him, and he gave himself a mental shake to collect himself, unwilling to look too deeply into his response to Gibbs’ leaving.


With an internal sigh, Tony looked at the nurses who had joined the doctor, including the formidable Susan, and pasted on his best Tony grin.


“Alright, Doc, let’s get this party started!”

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