Fic: Soul Deep - 9/12

[xanthefic]

Gibbs arrived home from work the following night to a warm, welcoming house. He shook off his irritation at having people in his place, getting in his way, because it was actually pretty nice to come home to find two of his pack sitting in front of his fire.

Tony and Jackson were facing off over a game of checkers, and Tony looked tired and ill – which was to be expected – but also relaxed and happy, which was more of a surprise.

Tessa immediately trotted over to where Shanti was resting on her side in front of the fire, and she nosed the lioness to check her condition. Shanti looked too tired to get up, but she nuzzled Tessa reassuringly.

"You're in good time, son. Supper's almost ready," his father told him, glancing up at him.

His father's sharp blue eyes never missed anything, and Gibbs knew he was being scrutinized and examined. It always annoyed him – he hated being watched. Every night as a kid when he'd come home from school, his father had looked at him for a sign of how his day had gone. Then they'd sat out on the porch while Jackson asked him a bunch of questions about it. Gibbs wasn't sure why it had annoyed him so much, but he'd always responded with a series of monosyllabic grunts that had served to leave his father frustrated and as much in the dark about his son's life as if he hadn’t made the effort to ask.

"Good." Gibbs went over to the gun safe and stowed his gun away. "Thanks," he managed to mutter by dint of supreme effort. "I'll just go get changed."

He ignored Tony's glance of curiosity at the strained atmosphere between them and went upstairs with Tessa loping beside him.

"You'll have to talk to him at some point, you know," she pointed out reasonably. He'd barely spoken to his father since Jackson had arrived. He'd brusquely told him about Tony but turned down all attempts his father had made to catch up on the thirteen years of his life he'd missed – including all three of his failed marriages.

Gibbs took a shower and changed into a pair of sweats. Usually he'd go and work on his boat, but tonight some kind of social interaction would be required of him, and he felt himself becoming irritable in anticipation.

"They're your pack. Just relax and enjoy being with them," Tessa told him. He wished he found it that easy.

He went downstairs and was about to push open the door when he heard Tony speaking to his father, and he paused.

"So what's the story, Jack? You and Leroy look like you're walking on eggshells around each other."

He heard his father sigh, and he knew he should stop eavesdropping and enter the room but a part of him was curious to hear the response.

"With Leroy and me it's complicated. We're like oil and water, and I know I rub him the wrong way."

"I get the impression you two haven't talked in a long time."

"I tried." Jackson's voice faltered. "See, Tony…me and Leroy's mom, there was a lot of love there but we never did find a way to live together and be happy. We separated when Leroy was a kid, and he went to live with his mom. She died a couple of years later, so he came back to live with me, but I think he always blamed me on some level for not loving his mom the way he loved her, and not mourning her the same way, either. Leroy's emotions…they're well hidden, but they can be intense."

"Yes. I know that," Tony said softly, and Gibbs was surprised by that. Tony joked around so much he forgot how perceptive he was. He rarely missed anything at a crime scene, so it was hardly surprising he didn't miss anything that was going on with the people on his team, either.

Gibbs pushed open the door and walked into the room. "How ya feeling, Tony?" he asked brusquely, fighting off an urge to run his hand through Tony's hair, the way he'd done back at the hospital. Tessa had no such inhibitions. She went over to Shanti, settled down beside her, and began grooming her.

Tony looked up at him with an easy smile, and Gibbs realized with a pang that he was completely at home here, as if it was where he belonged.

"Bit tired, Boss, but Jack's been great. Made me take a nap a couple of times, brought me good food, made conversation, and he doesn't mind being repeatedly thrashed at checkers!" Tony grinned. "He's not a sore loser, or overly competitive like some people," he added pointedly.

Gibbs grunted, but he couldn't help but notice how contented Tony looked, and it suddenly hit him just how much Tony had been neglected as a kid. Now he was lapping up all the care and attention, having clearly been starved of it his entire life. He hid it well, beneath all the joking around and the entirely too graphic descriptions of his sex life, but Gibbs suddenly saw that underneath it all, Tony really did just crave the love and attention he'd never had as a kid.

This time he didn't stop himself. He rested his hand on Tony's head and tousled his hair gently. Then he noticed his father watching him, the way he always did, and he moved his hand away guiltily. He wasn't sure why – he just felt he'd given too much away somehow.

After dinner, Tony fell asleep on the couch in front of the fire while Jackson and Gibbs remained seated at the table, finishing their coffee.

"I…uh…wanted to say thanks," Gibbs muttered. "For dropping everything to take care of Tony. Appreciate it."

"It's been my pleasure. I always did feel I had unfinished business with that kid. I can't believe you two ran into each other again after all these years!" Jackson gave a little laugh. "Tony told me all about how you met up again at some crime scene in the snow a few years ago."

"Four," Gibbs said absently. "It was four years ago. Glad to have him back. Always felt like pack. Tessa always said he was."

"Hmmm." Jackson stirred his coffee, a thoughtful look on his face. "I think it makes you happy – having him around. It always did. I never saw Tessa take to another daemon the way she took to Shanti. I used to despair when you were a kid – Tessa growling at other kids' daemons the whole time, and parents calling me to complain."

"I just take time to get to know people." Gibbs shrugged.

"Not Tony."

"No. Not Tony."

"You ever thought why?" His father's gaze was searching, and Gibbs fought down a familiar surge of annoyance.

"No."

"Maybe you should," his father said mildly.

"Tony's pack; he's just a kid…” Gibbs tried to find the words to describe the exact place Tony occupied in his life.

"He looks like a grown man to me," Jackson said, glancing over at the couch where Tony was sitting fast asleep, his head slung back, snoring gently. "He's not a cub – and I know he doesn't view you as his father. He looks up to you as a leader and a mentor, sure, but he's also clearly crazy in love with you."

Gibbs laughed out loud. "That's absurd!"

"Is it?" Jackson nodded at where Shanti and Tessa were curled up together, in front of the fire, bodies entwined, muzzles touching. "Your daemons tell a different story. Some things you can't hide, son. Question is – why would you want to?"

"It's not…look, I don't know why Shanti and Tessa like each other so much. I've never thought about it," Gibbs replied, feeling out of his depth with all this talk about love.

"Is it because of Shannon?" his father asked.

Gibbs felt like every sensitive nerve inside him was being twanged, and he didn't like it.

"Do you feel you shouldn't have something that good again, Leroy? 'Cause last time I saw Tessa behave like that around another daemon it was Pell."

"I preferred it when you just used to interrogate me about what kind of day I'd had," Gibbs growled. Tessa raised her head and looked at him questioningly.

Jackson laughed out loud. "Oh, I know you always hated those conversations I forced you into, son, but I was at my wit's end. I didn't know how to get my own boy to talk to me. Getting information out of you was like pulling teeth."

"I don't like talking about myself, Dad. I'm not you."

"I know. And I learned to see how you felt in the tilt of your head and the light in your eyes. I learned that it was what you did and not what you said that mattered. You see, you're a hard study, Leroy, and yet that young man over there…" Jackson nodded his head in Tony's direction. "He seems to understand you without putting any thought into it at all."

Gibbs looked at Tony again, and this time he noticed the surge of something deep and strong inside. He felt an urge to put his arm around Tony and hold him tight, and he found himself wondering what it would be like to silence that teasing mouth by kissing it hard. He wasn’t prepared for the sudden rush of desire that caused, and he cut off the thought, feeling angry.

“I'm not in love with DiNozzo!" he snapped.

"Is it the fact he's a guy?" Jackson asked. "I know you've always gone for women, Leroy, so is that it?"

Gibbs stared at him mutely. He didn't give a damn about sexual orientation, but falling in love with anyone else felt like a betrayal of what he’d had with Shannon.

"You're allowed to be happy, son," Jackson said quietly, leaning over the table to pat him on the arm. "Just like I was allowed to move on and date other people after your mom died. Doesn't mean you don't feel anything, or you didn't care – just means you're human."

"I moved on. Damn it, Dad, I've been married three times since Shannon!"

"I heard about your marriages on the grapevine; tried to keep up with your life even when you were doing your best to shut me out. And it always seemed to me that those women were you either trying to find what you had with Shannon, or punishing yourself for not being here when Shannon and Kelly died. What they weren't, in any respect, was you moving on.” He sat back in his chair and gazed at Gibbs keenly. “If you'd moved on, you'd have invited me to meet all those wives of yours, and you didn't. Fact is, the only person you were prepared to let me back into your life for was Tony."

"Because you knew him back then! Because…" Gibbs shook his head, feeling exasperated by his inability to navigate these complex emotional waters.

"Because you're in love with him, but too thick-skulled to realize it. And too scared."

"Damn it, Dad, I'm not scared!"

Jackson chuckled. "Oh, son, you've always been scared of anyone getting too close. Look how many people have managed it your entire life – two. Shannon and Tony. That surely tells you something."

"You're wrong." Gibbs got up and went around the other side of the table to where his father was sitting.

"Am I?" Jackson raised a sceptical eyebrow.

"Yeah. It's three." Gibbs pressed a kiss to his father's white hair. "Always was, Dad."

Jackson looked up at him with an expression of such genuine delight in his eyes that Gibbs knew he'd done the right thing. It was the closest he would ever come to saying he was sorry for shutting his father out of his life all this time. But he knew that his father knew that.

Jackson put a hand over his, where it was resting on his shoulder. "Welcome home, son," he said softly. "Welcome home."

~*~

Tony was sorry when it came time to leave Gibbs's house. The two weeks he'd spent being looked after by Jackson Gibbs were some of the happiest in his life. He hadn't been the focus of anyone's undivided attention in that way since his mom died, and he hadn't even realized he'd been craving it. He slept well at night – far better than he did at home – but his favourite part of every day were the evenings, when Tessa lay next to Shanti and they dozed together in front of the fire. He never felt more at peace than during those moments.

All too soon he was back in his lonely apartment, and back at work, and then he was standing on a rooftop with Kate's blood all over his face. One minute her daemon, Mo, had been strutting around as usual, slamming his horns into Shanti's ribs whenever he saw the opportunity, and the next he just disappeared in a flash of flame, leaving only a pile of dust behind. And Kate…Kate was lying on her back, with a deep, dark hole in her head.

Shanti leapt into the air with a roar, filling the sky with her bellow of grief, while Tessa ran around the rooftop growling and snarling, looking like she wanted to tear the entire world apart with her teeth.

The next few days were like walking through a nightmare. He was dead on his feet, his body still recovering from the plague, while Kate's killer took pot shots at them all through the Navy Yard windows. Tony had never seen Gibbs so driven, and all he could do was stay in his boss's slipstream, always on his six, looking out for him while Gibbs pursued his revenge. Sometimes Tony wasn't sure if he was feeling his own grief or Gibbs's, as their intense emotions continuously bled through to each other.

It was a relief when it was finally over, when they'd killed Kate's killer and laid Kate's body to rest in the ground.

Then, suddenly, there was nothing. Silence. All the rushing around was over, and Tony found himself staring at Kate's empty desk when they returned from the funeral, with not even thoughts of revenge to ease the working day.

He buried himself in his report, but finally he had to go home. He was exhausted, but he couldn't sleep. It hurt too much – his pain, Gibbs's pain – it didn't matter; they both felt her loss. Nowadays he could barely tell where his own emotions ended and Gibbs’s began.

Tony tossed and turned for half the night before Shanti nudged him out of bed and told him to get dressed. He did as she instructed and then followed her out of the apartment, down the stairs, and into the car.

Shanti guided him all the way to Gibbs’s house, but this time it wasn't the warm, welcoming place it had been while Jackson was here; it was cold, and the feeling of grief hanging in the air was almost palpable.

Tony knew where Gibbs would be. He went along to the basement, opened the door, and walked wearily down the stairs.

Gibbs was lying under his boat, gazing up at her. He wasn't even working; he was just looking at the boat's wooden underbelly. He took no notice when Tony came down into the basement. Tony went over to the workbench and grabbed the bottle of bourbon off the shelf. Then he got down on his hands and knees and crawled under the boat. He took the lid off the bottle, took a swig, and handed the bottle to Gibbs.

Gibbs took a long draught and handed it back to Tony, and they didn't say a word to each other all night. They just stayed there, under the boat, drinking the bourbon until it had all gone. Beside them, Tessa and Shanti watched wordlessly.

At some point Gibbs fell asleep – or passed out – Tony wasn't sure which. Then Tony put the bottle aside, rested his head on Gibbs's chest, and joined him.

When he awoke several hours later, he was aware of Gibbs's hard chest under his head – and a different kind of hardness in his own pants.

"Oh shit," he whispered, looking up to see Shanti looking back at him.

Tony put his head back down on Gibbs's chest; Gibbs was so warm and solid and safe. He could hear the man's heartbeat through his ribcage, and he wanted to stay here forever.

"I love you," Tony whispered. "I fucking love you, Jethro."

It wasn’t a revelation. Maybe it should have been, but now that he'd said it, it was so blindingly obvious. He lifted his head to look at Shanti again. "You knew, didn't you?" he said accusingly.

Shanti rolled her eyes. "Well, yeah."

"Since when?" Tony looked at Gibbs's sleeping form. Beside Gibbs, Tessa was also slumbering, her ears flicking as she dreamed.

"Since you were eight years old," Shanti replied, "when I turned into a peacock to show off for him."

"But I was just a kid!" Tony protested.

“And then when you met him again as an adult all you could think about were his blue eyes and how good his ass looked when he bent over to examine evidence at crime scenes.”

“I didn’t…oh, yeah, I did.” He sighed. “But…I thought that was just because he’s such a good looking guy. I didn’t think…I mean…love?” He buried his face in his hands. “I’ve never done love, Shanti. I have no idea how it goes.”

“I don’t think it’s something you have much choice about. And as for how it ‘goes’, you’ve been doing it pretty successfully for the past four years.”

He thought of the many conversations he’d had with her about Gibbs, and his unending fascination with the man. How had that not been a clue to him? Why had he been so dense all these years?

“I just thought that was because of the weird link thing,” he said.

“He touched your soul, and you liked it. You love him,” Shanti replied simply.

"Shit, what do I do now? I can't…he can't know." He sat up suddenly, groaning, all his muscles stiff and aching from the night spent under the boat. "Shanti." He leaned forward and grabbed her head in his hands. "You can't let him see how I feel. He mustn't know," he told her urgently. “You need to stay away from Tessa. You can’t keep cuddling up to her the way you do.”

She blinked at him, her golden eyes anxious. "No. You told me I'd never have to hide again. You promised me, Tony!"

He gazed at her helplessly, remembering how he'd once stopped her taking her true form. He couldn't do that to her again. And she was right – he *had* promised.

"But this is Jethro. He'll slap me stupid if he figures it out. He'll send me away."

"He wouldn't do that." She nuzzled his hand with her head. "You think you can't have him, don't you?"

Tony wrapped his hand in her thick, golden fur. "I think he's still mourning what he lost, and even if he wasn't, I don't think he's looking for a bed-hopping idiot like me."

"That's not what you are – it's just what you want everyone to think you are," Shanti told him. "And I don't think it ever fooled Jethro."

"Also, he's not bisexual," Tony pointed out.

"How do you know?" Shanti nuzzled against his hair.

"Because…all the marriages." Tony waved his hand in the air.

"I thought it was you who said that most people are at least a little bit bi if you talk to them in the right way." Shanti grinned at him.

"Well…it's my experience that few people turn down a really well planned seduction." Tony grinned back. Then his grin faded. "But I couldn't seduce Jethro. I mean, it’s not like that. I wouldn’t want to. He’s too important."

"I agree." She rested her head on his shoulder with a regretful sigh. "You must talk to him," she said.

"No!" Tony was horrified. "He doesn't think of me that way, Shanti. When he looks at me, he just sees that annoying kid he used to babysit. He doesn't even know we're connected because of what happened that night in the motel room. He doesn't know that I know about Shannon and Kelly, or that I know he took his revenge for what happened to them. He doesn’t know that when he hurts, I hurt. That time when that bastard Haswari shot him in the shoulder…" He shuddered. "Man that hurt!"

"It was painful," Shanti agreed.

"He doesn't even know it was me who pulled him out of that coma after he was wounded in Kuwait." Tony grimaced. "And I'm sure as hell not going to tell him."

"You keep saving each other's lives. The motel room, the coma, the plague… doesn't that tell you anything?"

"That’s just the weird link thing between us." Tony shrugged. "That's all. Nothing more. He's not in love with me, Shanti. This is a one-way street. Trust me to fall in love with the ultimate in unobtainable."

"So what do we do now?" she asked.

"Nothing." Tony shrugged helplessly.

She gave a heavy sigh. "Like we've been doing for years then?"

He glanced down at Gibbs's sleeping face. "Yes," he said firmly. "Like we've been doing for years."


~*~

2006

Gibbs emerged from the director's office with a sigh. He missed Director Morrow – meetings with his successor, Jenny Shepard, always seemed to end with her flinging their long-past liaison in his face while at the same time insisting that their relationship was purely professional. That made for some very confusing meetings. Gibbs didn’t like whatever game it was Jenny was playing with him. Hell, he didn’t understand it half the time! But at least she couldn’t fault their work on this occasion.

He suppressed a smile as looked down on the squad room. Abby's monkey daemon, Ben, was busy riding around on Shanti's back, screaming like a banshee, while Abby was riding piggy-back on Tony, the pair of them charging around the squad room like idiots. They'd been working a long case which they'd just successfully wrapped, so he cut them some slack. He knew that both Abby and Tony needed to let off steam after a case, and they could get a little exuberant.

Tim McGee was busy stuffing a nutter butter bar into his mouth, his daemon's cheeks bulging as he ate. And Ziva David…she was sitting at her desk, looking around the room as if everyone had gone crazy. Gibbs bit back a laugh; Ziva was still relatively new to their team, and she hadn't quite figured out the way things worked around here.

Tony paused by Ziva's desk and dropped Abby to the floor. Ben jumped up onto Abby's shoulder and clung on around her neck, as usual.

"So…have *you* seen him, Abby?" Tony asked, glancing at Ziva.

"Seen who?"

Tony grinned. "Ziva's daemon."

Gibbs rolled his eyes as he descended down the stairs. Tony had an ongoing obsession with finding out what Ziva's daemon looked like; so far, none of them had caught a glimpse of him.

"Maybe she doesn't have one!" Abby said excitedly. "Maybe that's the way Mossad breed them. Maybe she's a soulless killer!" She grinned at Ziva who gave a little smirk in return.

"I am a killer. I am not soulless," she said. "Of course I have a daemon!"

"Then where is he?" Tony leaned forward over the desk and peeked down the front of Ziva's blouse.

"Hey!" Gibbs slapped the back of his head, and both Tony and Shanti fell forward from the force of the blow.

"Oh, hey Boss. It’s not what it looked like!" Tony protested. "I was just looking for Ziva's daemon. He has to be *somewhere* on her person."

"Oh, I know what you were doing, DiNozzo." Gibbs glared at him; it always made him angry when Tony flirted with other people.

"I was a spy, DiNozzo!" Ziva said in an exasperated tone. "I could hardly have been a successful spy with an enormous lion following me around!" She glanced at Shanti pointedly.

"It's just freaky, that's all." Tony rubbed the back of his head ruefully. "I mean…it looks like you don't have a daemon...and that's just wrong." He gave a theatrical shiver. "Like those spooky horror movies where people's daemons turn against them and kill them."

"I am sure Shanti sometimes feels like killing you." Ziva smirked.

"Ow. That's low." Tony sloped back to his desk, one hand on Shanti's head for reassurance. She licked his hand obligingly. "At least tell us his name!" he implored as he sat down, but Ziva just grinned and shook her head. “I don’t understand how you can sit there all day and not even talk to him.”

“What I have with my daemon is private. We talk when we are alone together,” Ziva replied sharply. “Just because you and your daemon do not ever shut up does not mean we must all behave that way with our daemons.”

Tony went suddenly quiet, a wounded expression in his eyes. Gibbs thought they were probably both missing the point; Ziva had obviously never considered how much of Shanti’s chatter and playfulness was to distract people from the basic fact that she was a very big and highly intimidating lion. Tony, on the other hand, didn’t seem to understand that Ziva was just doing what he was doing, only in a more subtle way; both of them were keeping their true selves hidden to a degree.

"Okay. We're done here. The reports are fine, and the director signed off on the case. So you can all go home," Gibbs told them.

McGee glanced at him, a surprised look on his face. "Uh…already, Boss? It's only four p.m." His squirrel daemon jumped on his shoulder, her bushy tail brushing his hair endearingly out of place.

"I know, but you've worked non-stop for the past week, and you're due some downtime. So go home – start the weekend early. I don't want to see you again until Monday morning."

His team didn't need telling twice. Only Tony shot a forlorn look in his direction, but then even he grabbed his bag and made a run for the elevator.

Gibbs shouldered himself into his jacket, cast a satisfied look around the squad room, and then took the elevator down to the parking garage. He'd just bought a new consignment of lumber for the boat he was building in his basement, and he was looking forward to an entire weekend working on it.

He was about to get into his car when he paused. Somewhere in the distance he could hear Ziva and McGee chatting as they walked over to their own cars, their voices reverberating around the parking garage.

"McGee, I have a question for you," Ziva said. "I was wondering – are Tony and Gibbs a couple?"

Gibbs stood there, one hand on the car door.

"Uh, no…um…why do you ask?" came back McGee's rather shocked-sounding reply.

"It's just that Gibbs does not like being touched, and Tessa really does not like other daemons getting too close – you must have noticed how she growls. And yet Shanti often lies next to her, and they even groom each other. I have only seen this behaviour in the daemons of people who are very much in love."

Gibbs didn't hear McGee's reply as they were out of earshot by then. He got into the car beside Tessa and sat there for a moment, thinking about it.

"Why *do* you and Shanti do that?" he asked eventually.

"Because you are in love with Tony," she replied bluntly. "And he is in love with you."

Gibbs laughed and started the engine.

Tessa sat up and gazed at him crossly. "Jackson was right. You are too scared to move on. You lost Shannon, and you are too afraid of love to risk something so terrible happening again."

"Bullshit." He reversed the car out of the parking space.

"I don't think that refusing to admit you're in love with Tony changes the fact that you're in love with Tony." Tessa shrugged. "So if you lose him it would hurt just the same as it did when you lost Shannon. It hurt enough the first time, losing him when he was eight, but although you loved him then you weren’t in love with him as he was just a child. Now you are."

“Damn it, Tessa…"

"And Tony is too scared of rejection to make the first move. He thinks you'll send him away if he does, and you know how he feels about being sent away."

"What? That's just crap." Gibbs turned to glance at her.

"If you say so." She put her front paws on the dashboard and gazed out of the window, as if she didn't have the slightest interest in the conversation. "You can deny it all you like, but you can't hide how you feel and neither can he; Shanti and I are proof of that."

Gibbs was still lost in thought on the subject when he arrived home and walked into his house. He was so distracted that he didn't hear the soft footsteps behind him, and by the time he was aware there was an intruder in his house it was too late – and the sharp prick of a needle into his neck sent him falling, unconscious, to the floor.

~*~

Tony was bored. Once he'd caught up on his sleep it was just him, Shanti, and the DVD player. He felt restless.

"Most people enjoy having time off," Shanti said, from where she was pacing around the room.

"I like being busy."

"You like watching movies too." She nodded at the big TV hanging on the wall. It was a state of the art plasma, and Tony loved it, but after watching it for ten hours straight even he was bored.

"Might go clubbing later," he said.

"What's the point? You never bring anyone home anymore," Shanti pointed out. "Not since…"

"Not since I woke up plastered to Jethro and finally figured out I was in love with him. No. Nobody else has seemed that appealing since then." He sighed. "See – this is another reason why love sucks so much."

"If you'd just tell him…"

"He'd tell me to take a hike, and I don't handle rejection well, Shanti. You know that."

"So you want to be at work today just so you can be with him."

"Yup. Kinda sad, isn't it? But I just like being around him. It feels nice when you and Tessa are…" Tony paused and flushed. "Curled up together."

"We are only doing what you and Jethro want to do." She paced around the apartment irritably. "I find you very annoying, Tony."

"I know. Me too." He grinned at her.

She came over and rubbed her head against his hand. "Sorry…I didn't mean that. I just…I want to be with Tessa all the time, and because you and Jethro are so incredibly stupid, I can't."

"We could go visit him, I guess," Tony mused. "Just how weird would he think it was if I went over there and hung out?"

"I don't care – let's do it!" Shanti made a bounding leap towards the front door, with Tony close behind her.

Tony stopped to pick up a pizza and six pack of beer on the way. When he arrived at Gibbs's house, the door was unlocked as usual. Tony let himself in and walked along the hallway to the basement door. He was pretty sure that's where Gibbs would be on a Saturday night.

"The man has no social life," Tony muttered.

"Neither have you," Shanti pointed out.

"I go clubbing!" Tony protested.

"You *used* to go clubbing. Now you sit at home and watch DVDs. Or jerk off. Or both."

“Ssh!” Tony opened the basement door and peered down on the half built boat below – but there was no sign of Gibbs.

"Maybe he does have a social life after all." Tony sighed. "What do I do with the pizza?"

"Eat it?" Shanti suggested. “Good pizza should never go to waste!”

Tony returned to the living room and looked around. The place felt empty and that sense of sadness was still all-pervasive. He remembered how different it had felt when he had spent those two weeks here recuperating from the plague. Jackson had somehow transformed the house into a home – it seemed to be a knack he had.

"I wonder where the hell Jethro is. Not that he has to account to me for his movements."

Tony noticed that Gibbs's gun safe was open – and empty. He frowned. When he'd been living here, Gibbs had always gone over to the safe and put his gun in it the minute he got home. He only took it out again to go to work.

“If he’s working a case without me…” Tony took out his cell phone and called the office, but the duty agent informed him Agent Gibbs wasn't working that weekend.

"Weird," Tony murmured.

"Yes." The fur on Shanti's back was standing on end. "Something doesn't feel right," she said.

"Yeah. I know." Tony put the pizza down and glanced over at the doorway. "His car was outside, wasn't it?"

"Yes." Shanti nodded.

"Where would he go with his gun and without his car?"

Tony walked around the house, looking in every room, but he already knew Gibbs wasn't there. He could sense it.

"Can you feel Tessa through the link?" he asked Shanti. "Is she in danger?"

Shanti shook her head. "I don't feel anything." Then she paused and sat down on her haunches.

"What?" Tony asked urgently. "Has Jethro been hurt? Are they in trouble?"

"No…I feel nothing…that's the point." She looked up at Tony, her golden eyes troubled.

"I don't understand." Tony crouched down beside her. "What does that mean?"

Shanti gave a little growling sigh. "It's just…usually I can feel her. Not just when something big is happening – when Jethro has been injured for example. Nowadays I can feel her all the time…sort of like a constant background hum."

Tony rocked back on his heels, frowning. "Since when?"

"Since you had the plague. She's been closer to us since then."

"Why the hell didn't you tell me?"

"Because you don't want to hear!" Shanti snapped. "You never do. Not when it's about Jethro. You're all closed off about it. You get anxious. Also…" she paused and then continued. "I thought you might make me stay away from Tessa if I told you."

Tony stood up. "Damn it, Shanti – I *told* you I wouldn't do that again."

She blinked. "Are we arguing? We never argue."

Tony sat down beside her and pulled her close. "No. We snipe, but we don't argue. I'm sorry." He kissed her fur. "Okay…so you say you can usually feel Tessa but right now you can't. Is it…Jethro isn't dead, is he?"

"No," she said firmly. "I would definitely feel that. This is like an absence more than anything else. Something that should be here just…isn't."

"Right." Tony got up and went back down the stairs again. Shanti ran over to the front door and snuffled around on the ground. Tony followed her. "Have you found something?"

"I'm not sure. Just…here is where it feels wrong."

Tony looked around. The door looked normal, and there were no obvious signs of a struggle. Tony got down on his hands and knees and examined the floor closely. He was about to give up when he saw it. It was only small – a tiny patch of dried blood, no bigger than a quarter, and a slight smear stain around it.

"As if someone fell down and knocked his head," Shanti said.

Tony nodded. He looked up at her and read the same bleak expression in her eyes that he knew was in his own. "And then he was dragged away."

~*~

When he came to, the first thing he was aware of was a fierce, aching sensation in his body and a feeling of nausea in the pit of his stomach. He couldn't locate any one source of the aching pain – it seemed all pervasive. It was so strong that he almost passed out again immediately. It felt like anxiety, but magnified a thousand times so that it was a physical pain, combined with that tight, burning sensation in the belly that kicked in just prior to throwing up.

Gibbs opened his eyes, blinked blearily, and looked around. He was in a dark, almost empty room. He was lying on a mattress in one corner, and he could just about make out a table and two chairs in the centre, and a toilet and basin in another corner.

He reached for his daemon, groping around in the darkness, wanting to feel the reassuring softness of her fur under his fingers…but he couldn’t find her.

“Tessa?” he whispered.

He shuffled around on his hands and knees, searching for her. He scoured every inch of the small cell with his fingertips – but to no avail.

She wasn't here.

Gibbs threw back his head and howled. He waited for the answering howl somewhere nearby, waited to hear her, or to feel that she had heard him…but all he could hear was the sound of his own desperate howls echoing back at him.

"TESSA!" he screamed, but only silence answered.

She wasn't even nearby. He couldn't hear her, or feel her presence.

She was gone.

And he was all alone.

~*~

End of Part Nine
Part Ten
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