xanthefic | Two Wolves

Tanner calls Tony into the infirmary twice a day to receive a cocktail of drugs. In the morning he gets injected, and in the evening he’s forced to drink a bottle of vile-tasting water that makes him choke with every mouthful.

Tony doesn’t have a clue what’s in the drugs being forced into his body, but he is all too well aware of the effect they’re having on him. Even within a couple of days of the regime of training and drug use, he can feel that his body is starting to become leaner and more sculpted. Despite all the jibes, he wasn’t fat before, but in comparison with Gibbs and Hurrell his body was much softer. Now he can feel it start to harden up – in every respect.

His constant desire for sex wars with his need to fight, and mastering it is becoming increasingly difficult. He’s lucky that Gibbs is here to help; Gibbs not only knows how it feels to be fed the same drugs, but he’s also exactly the kind of hard taskmaster Tony needs right now. Nobody else but Gibbs could get him to focus and learn how to control the extreme sensations flooding through his body.

Gibbs takes him into the ring every day and makes him fight, hard and dirty. He doesn’t ever let Tony get away with giving less than his all; he knows Tony too well for that. He also makes sure Tony knows there are repercussions for letting his anger affect his fighting. Every single time he loses it in the ring, Gibbs outmanoeuvres him, throws him face first onto the floor, and shoves his arm up his back. Tony is held there, Gibbs growling into his ear, until he gets himself under control again.

Gibbs might be a hard taskmaster in the ring, but he takes damn good care of Tony outside of it. He pulls Tony into the restroom twice a day or more to suck him off and is just as diligent at night, giving Tony exquisitely pleasurable hand jobs that help take the edge off his overactive libido. He also sinks his hard cock into Tony’s ass at least once a night, making love to him with an attentive thoroughness that sends Tony spiralling into an ecstasy that has nothing at all to do with the drugs.

But their days are numbered. Tony is aware that every passing day brings them closer to the end. It’s like having a gun pointed perpetually at his head, and that, combined with the massive intake of drugs, makes him increasingly jittery.

He goes ballistic in the ring one afternoon, throwing himself around and raving at the top of his voice. Gibbs circles him warily, avoiding his windmill-flailing fists, and then brings him down with a swift jab of his hand and a sweep of his foot. Once again, Tony finds himself chewing the mat while Gibbs holds him there, and once again Gibbs insists he go through a litany of all the things making him angry.

“Put the anger into the fight; shove it down and bring it out when you need it,” Gibbs tells him for what feels like the hundredth time. “Find every single damn thing you’re angry about, channel that anger, focus it, and use it against your opponent.”

Tony’s heard it all too often before, and he snaps. “I’m not like you, Gibbs!” he yells. “Anger’s your thing, not mine! You’ve practically made a career out of keeping it locked up and letting it out when you need it. That’s not me though, and I don’t damn well want it to be! I don’t want to end up an angry, miserable old bastard like you!”

He can feel Gibbs relaxing his hold on him, and he knows he just went too far but he’s too angry to care. Gibbs hauls him up by the hair and propels him out of the ring and into the restroom, Gibbs’s personal guard tagging along behind as usual.

“What’s going on?” Gibbs asks the minute they’re alone inside the restroom.

“I feel like a naughty puppy, or a toddler having a tantrum,” Tony snaps mulishly. “And I’m not either. I don’t want to be pinned down and slapped around by you.”

“I’m trying to teach you how to fight!”

“What’s the point?” Tony asks in despair. “We all know I won’t win against Mac. I’ll be beaten to a pulp, raped, pissed on, and then dragged back to his lair to be his regular nightly fuck toy. Shit, Gibbs – what’s the point of any of this? You, me, us – the little world we’ve created in here to get us through this nightmare – it’s all going to end in a few days’ time.”

“No!” Gibbs slams his hand onto the wall beside Tony’s head.

“Yes! And you not talking about it and pretending it’s not going to happen doesn’t help! We need a plan! We have to find a way to escape – we need to find a cell phone – we need to get the hell out of here, not just sit around and wait for the worst to happen.”

“No,” Gibbs says again.

“Look, I understand what happened before, with Ben and Brian. I get that it’s a huge risk. I’m just saying it’s a risk worth taking because I’m looking at something worse than death here.”

“No.” Gibbs shoves him back against the wall. “You can beat McIntyre, Tony. You beat Rivkin, and I’ve seen you take down plenty of bad guys. Mac is overconfident and over-rated. I’m working you so hard because I know you can beat that lumbering, puffed-up idiot.”

“No, Gibbs.” Tony rests his head back against the wall wearily. “They’re not even sure *you* can beat, Mac, so I don’t stand a chance in hell.”

“Half the battle is mental. If you believe you can beat him then you can. You need to find that killer instinct, Tony.”

“I don’t have it.” Tony shrugs. “I can be a bad ass, Gibbs, you know that, and I can take out the bad guys when I have to. I can even kill when necessary. But killer instinct? No. Killer instinct is what you’ve got – not me.”

“You’ve got something better, Tony! You’ve got the heart and courage of a lion. You rise to every single damn challenge. I’ve seen it!”

“That’s it? That’s all we’ve got to rely on? Me rising to meet the challenge?” Tony quirks a disbelieving eyebrow. “I thought you’d been spending these past few days thinking up a plan – some plan you didn’t want to tell me about for whatever goddamn secretive Gibbs reason. But you’re telling me THIS is your plan? Training me in one week – one damn week – to defeat a man who is built like a truck and who has pummelled every single opponent he ever met into the ground? Christ, Gibbs.” He shakes his head.

“No, Tony. No.” Gibbs takes hold of his shoulders and pulls him forward this time, looking into his eyes. “You can do this. I know you can. You said you had faith in me, and I’ve got it in you. I believe in you. You just need to believe in yourself.”

Tony stares at him uncertainly. If anyone could make him believe in himself it’s Gibbs, with those intense blue eyes and that “this is the way it WILL be” attitude. Gibbs has the kind of mental strength that means he could probably go out into the pit and defeat Mike Tyson if he really put his mind to it. That’s *his* skill.

Tony has his own skills; he knows he’s a fantastic investigator, a loyal friend, and that he’s a master of the arts of distraction and misdirection. But he doesn’t have Gibbs’s quality of sheer bloody-mindedness. He admires that quality in Gibbs because what he loves most are those aspects of the man’s character that he doesn’t possess himself; that’s part of the attraction.

“I once told you not to die, and you didn’t,” Gibbs tells him in a low, fierce voice. His face is right up close to Tony’s, his strength of will radiating from every pore in his body. “You had a fifteen per cent chance, Tony, but you lived because I told you to live. You beat those odds, and you can beat these.”

“So I can beat McIntyre just because you tell me I can?” Tony asks doubtfully.

“Yes. Yes!” Gibbs grasps Tony's face between his hands, and his certainty is compelling. He leans in and kisses Tony on the mouth, and Tony can feel him transmitting his energy and faith into him. He responds to the kiss eagerly. He can do this! Gibbs is right! He DID survive the plague because Gibbs demanded it. This is no different. He can defeat Mac because Gibbs tells him he can. That’s enough.

Gibbs draws back, still gazing at him intently. “Yes, Tony? Yes?”

“Yes.” Tony nods. “Yes!”

“Good boy.” Gibbs strokes the side of his cheek with his thumb. “Now let’s get back to the gym. I want to work on your agility. You’re still too slow, and Mac is a big guy. He doesn’t move fast. Speed will be one of your greatest assets in the pit.”

“I have to piss. I’ll follow you,” Tony says, going over to the urinal.

Gibbs nods and leaves the restroom. As soon as he’s gone, Tony’s resolve starts to falter. It’s all very well believing he can defeat Mac when Gibbs is standing right in front of him, urging him on, but on Fight Night he’ll be alone out there in the pit, fighting for his life. He doesn’t have the months of experience that Gibbs has. He’s fought out in the pit once – and that was against Gibbs.

He understands. He understands that Gibbs has seen what happens to fighters who try to escape, and that he’s trying to keep him safe, but he meant what he said a few nights ago. He’d rather die than be Walid’s puppet in the ring, dancing to his tune. Gibbs might think the best way out of this is to fight and beat Mac, but Tony doesn’t agree.

He finishes pissing, washes his hands and then leaves the restroom…and stops. The guard who accompanied them has returned to the gym with Gibbs, leaving him alone. He could go to the infirmary; maybe he could overpower Tanner and use him as a hostage to make the guards surrender a gun…

He hears a noise from the big room at the end of the hallway and makes a quick decision. He creeps silently along the hallway towards the sound, and, as he gets closer, he realizes the supply truck has arrived and is being unloaded. He hides behind the door, watching as Pete finishes unpacking the crates and then goes over and accepts a cigarette from McGuire. The two of them sit there, smoking and chatting for a couple of minutes.

Then McGuire says something and jerks his head at Pete who nods, and the two of them walk off in the direction of the guards’ room, leaving the truck completely unguarded.

It’s a chance, and it might be the only chance he’ll get. One of Tony’s strengths has always been to see an opportunity and act on it, and he’s not about to pass on this one. He runs over to the truck, gets into the driver’s side, and fumbles for the box under the passenger seat. He hears voices and ducks down beneath the steering wheel, holding his breath. The voices fade, and he starts breathing again.

He takes the cell phone out of the box and jabs his fingers at it. “No service” – the message taunts him, and his gut clenches in frustration. He needs to go somewhere else…somewhere further away.

He grabs the smart card and runs over to the big doors. He slips the card in, and the doors slowly open. It’s not ideal. There’s no way to close them again behind him – that has to be done on the inside – but he doesn’t care. It’s a risk, but a calculated one. Right now, anything seems more appealing than what lies in store for him on Fight Night.

The darkness outside takes him by surprise for a moment; he always forgets they’re on a different daylight cycle, trapped away inside this big, steel structure. He takes a few seconds to get his bearings, and then he runs out into the night.

He hides for a moment, pressed against the outside of the building, looking around. Gibbs was right; it’s all wasteland. Clearly, this is some big plot of private, undeveloped land that Scott owns, right out in the middle of nowhere. Fine, then he’ll run. He’ll be much less conspicuous than the truck was when Gibbs drove that out; he’s one man on his own.

He leaves the comparative safety of the wall and speeds swiftly away from the building. His pale skin will be the biggest giveaway in the dark, and he needs to get as much of a head start as possible before they come looking for him.

He bends double and runs as fast as he can across the open ground. At least the drugs and training have given him speed, and the adrenaline helps. He finds some brush, hunkers down in the bushes, and tries the phone again. “No service”.

“Just have to keep running, DiNozzo,” he mutters. He hears a commotion in the distance, and he knows they’ve found the open doors, which means they’re probably aware of the missing cell phone too.

He remembers what Gibbs said about them being able to pack up the fighters and get them to a different location in a matter of minutes. If they do that, then it’s pointless him escaping. But if he can stay out of their reach for long enough to make the phone call, McGee will at least know where he is and come looking for him. It’s a start, if nothing else.

He runs again, even faster than before, but it’s dark, and he loses his footing. He rolls over sideways and falls down an incline. He comes to rest at the bottom of the slope and stays there, listening out for his pursuers.

Silence. He’s about to get up when he hears the sound of barking dogs, and his heart sinks. He might outrun or evade humans, but he doesn’t stand a chance against dogs. He’s never seen any dogs in the stable, but the fighters’ lives are so tightly corralled that’s not surprising. He’s never seen where the food they eat is made, either, but there must be a kitchen on the premises.

He has no intention of giving himself up, dogs be damned. He gets up and runs as fast as he can through the bushes, his chest heaving. He can hear the sounds of his pursuers behind him, much closer now, the dogs howling excitedly as they chase his scent.

A pain in his side makes him pause beneath a tree. He glances at the cell phone again, to find it still says, “No service.”

“Damn it!” He wants to slam it into the side of the tree in frustration, but that would defeat the purpose.

He heaves in several deep breaths and then sets off again. What will they do when they catch him? He remembers how they made Gibbs kill Brian. Would they do that again? Give Gibbs a choice – the other fighters or him? Who would Gibbs choose? He knows the answer without having to think about it; Gibbs would sacrifice the other fighters to save Tony’s life but the choice would break him, so either way they’d lose each other for good.

He runs as fast as he can, an image replaying in his mind over and over again of him kneeling, with a gun shoved into the back of his head. If he can just get far enough away, then surely at some point the damn cell phone will work. He glances down at it and almost falls over when he sees that there are two tiny connection bars; the service is faint, but it might work.

He crashes into some nearby bushes and shakily dials the number McGee gave him. It’s like one of those dreams where it’s so important to push the right buttons that he can’t do it. He makes a mistake the first time, his hands shaking from a combination of drugs, adrenaline and fear, but the second time he gets it right. He jams his finger onto the “Call” button on the screen and it starts dialling.

He looks up as he hears the barking of the dogs nearby and then down again – and his heart flips when he sees that the call is in progress. He only needs twenty-eight seconds. That’s all. Twenty-eight seconds for McGee to do the automatic trace.

He lifts his head and looks at the stars shining overhead in the dark night’s sky, counting softly under his breath. “Seven, eight, nine…c’mon. C’mon!”

The sound of the dogs is getting closer and closer. He doesn’t have twenty-eight seconds. Not even close. To buy time, he hides the phone on the ground under the bushes, puts his hands in the air, and walks out to meet his pursuers.

Suddenly they’re all around him, swarming all over him, surrounding him. He’s thrown face down, forced onto his stomach in the mud, and his arms are pulled behind his back and fastened there with rope. They pull it so tight that it cuts into his wrists, and he clamps down hard on the cry of pain. There’s a lot of shouting and confusion, and he struggles to breathe as someone big plants a knee in the small of his back.

“Found it!” one of the guards yells, emerging triumphantly from the bushes, cell phone held aloft.

Twenty-eight seconds…has it been that long? Tony cranes his head, looking up, and sees the display on the phone. “Call failed.”

At some point the phone lost connection. McGuire grabs the phone from the other guard, puts it on the ground and shoots it, in a pointlessly dramatic gesture, killing it completely.

The guard behind him shoves his face down into the mud, and Tony closes his eyes, his mouth full of dirt.

He’s failed.

~*~

Gibbs runs on the treadmill, one eye on the door. Tony never came back from the restroom, and he could kick himself for not waiting there for him and escorting him back. He just assumed he’d follow. Never assume! Never assume, damn it! It’s one of his rules. He went back to the restroom but Tony wasn’t there, and he didn’t like to draw attention to his absence in case it got him into trouble – but where the hell is he?

It’s been over an hour now – he can see that by the display on the gym equipment.

What’s happened? Why hasn’t Tony returned? Did Tanner catch him in the hallway and call him in for a medical? It’s a bit late in the afternoon for that; it’s nearly dinnertime.

A little while ago two of the guards were called out at a run, leaving only one remaining in the gym. They’ve never left so few guarding them before.

The anxiety is churning in the pit of his stomach. Something is wrong. His gut is setting off so many alarm bells that he can’t concentrate, and he jumps off the treadmill.

“Hey – Leroy! You have another fifteen minutes!” Frank yells at him.

“Stick it!” Gibbs stalks towards the door, but the one remaining guard steps in front of him, gun raised. He lifts the butt of the gun threateningly, aiming it towards Gibbs’s jaw, and Gibbs only just manages to jump back in time.

That’s unusual. They don’t normally dare touch him in case they injure him, and he can’t fight in the pit, but the guard looks anxious, scared…just like Gibbs is feeling right now.

“What’s going on?” Gibbs asks urgently. “What’s happening?”

“Shut up and get back to your training,” the guard replies, hefting the gun warningly.

There’s only one guard and there are several trained fighters in the room. Frank might join in and help the guard, but he never carries a gun, so he should be relatively easy to overpower. Gibbs glances around and sees Sam Hurrell walking towards him. Then Greg.

Maybe this is their chance. It’s an opportunity at least. He doesn’t want to think about Ben, or Brian, or his previous failed escape attempt. He moves forward stealthily, aware of Sam and Greg coming up behind him, and Matt over on his flank.

“Keep away, or I’ll blow your brains out,” the guard warns, edging back.

“You do that, and Scott will blow your brains out. I’m his champion remember?” Gibbs growls, moving in, feeling like he always does on Fight Night, in the pit. This is an opponent, an adversary, and not a very impressive one. Gibbs can take him out, no trouble.

He prowls closer, feeling himself going into his fight zone: Power…control…focus…strength…killer instinct…self-belief…

Even if the guard shoots him, the others will still be able to overpower him and get the gun so it won’t be wasted. It’s worth the risk. He glances over his shoulder to see the other fighters coming up behind, and he can tell that they’re all up for it. If he leads, they’ll follow.

He doesn’t hesitate. He throws himself forward…and at that moment the door flies open and a warning shot is fired into the air.

All the fighters scatter, running backwards as several guards charge into the room, all of them armed. The moment has gone, the opportunity lost, but Gibbs doesn’t have time to think about that because he sees someone being dragged into the room, covered in mud, his hands tied behind his back.

“Tony!” He runs forward but is sent flying backwards by a sharp crack to his jaw from the butt of a gun. Hurrell catches him and then wraps a solidly muscled arm around him, holding him tight to stop him running back again.

Tony’s head is down, and Gibbs can’t see if he’s alive or if they’ve dragged his corpse into the room.

“Tony!” he yells again, and this time that gets a response. Tony’s head moves, and he glances up, straight at him.

The relief at Tony being alive is soon outweighed by his fear about what they’re going to do to him. Ellis is unwinding some rope, menacingly, from a coil in his hands.

“Tony decided he didn’t like it here. He tried to run,” Ellis announces to the room. There’s a dark glow in his eyes that Gibbs is all too familiar with, and he feels a knot of anxiety form in his belly. “And I’m sure you all know how I feel about fighters who try to run.”

He looks at Gibbs and gives him a malicious smile.

“You over-played your hand, Leroy. We all had to go soft on this one because he’s your pussy boy. Well, not any more. Scott said to treat him like all the others after last Fight Night, so that’s what I’m going to do. No special treatment. He tried to escape, so he gets punished.”

He strides back over to Tony, grabs him by the hair, and pulls him up. Tony doesn’t make a sound. Ellis shoves Tony onto his knees, and Tony looks straight at Gibbs, an expression of mute appeal in his eyes. Gibbs knows what that appeal is about. He’s asking Gibbs not to lose it and go ballistic because he knows that’s the one thing Gibbs wants to do right now.

He can feel his fury rising up like a tidal wave, and he struggles to get out of Hurrell’s arms. Hurrell isn’t having any of it; he’s seen that look in Tony’s eyes too, and he knows what it’s about. He just holds on more tightly, and he’s a big guy.

Ellis unties the rope around Tony’s wrists, only to tie them again almost immediately, this time in front of his body. Then he throws the loose rope from the other coil upwards so that it catches over a hook in the ceiling. He ties that rope through the rope around Tony’s wrists, and then hauls him up so that his arms are stretched overhead, his whole body helpless and exposed.

“No,” Gibbs says quietly.

Ellis just grins at him and then slowly and deliberately removes the whip from his belt.

“I said no!” Gibbs storms forward, breaking out of Hurrell’s grip just as Ellis brings the first hard whip stroke down on Tony’s exposed back, leaving a long, red welt in its wake.

It takes three of the guards to catch Gibbs as he lunges at Ellis. They throw him down on the ground and sit on him, keeping him down.

Ellis jerks his head at the guard sitting on his back. “Make him watch. I want him to see this.”

The guard grabs the sides of Gibbs’s head and forces it up, so he’s looking straight at Tony. Tony looks back at him.

Ellis lifts his arm again and begins whipping Tony in earnest, putting all his might into each savage stroke. The sound of leather cracking onto skin is deafening, reverberating around the gym. The fighters are all standing in a subdued huddle over to one side and most of them are looking away. Some of them have their hands over their ears to block out the sickening sound.

Gibbs keeps his gaze fixed on Tony, and Tony holds that gaze. He doesn’t make a sound as the whip slams into his body, making him jerk like a fish on a line. He doesn’t move, and he doesn’t scream. He doesn’t do anything except look at Gibbs like he’s the only person in the room.

Tony needs him to be here, like he was that day, years ago, when Tony was dying of the plague in a hospital room at Bethesda. Tony can take any kind of punishment if Gibbs sees him through it. So he keeps his gaze locked on Tony. He blocks out Ellis, and the other fighters, and the guards, and Frank – who is standing by to one side, chewing anxiously on his thumb.

Gibbs doesn’t care about anything but keeping faith with Tony right now. He can’t stop this, but he can give Tony the strength to survive it. It’ll be bad – Ellis has been itching to do this for a long time – but Tony is strong. He’s always been strong enough to take Gibbs, even at his worst, so he’s sure as hell strong enough to take Ellis at his worst too.

The sound of that whip cracking down on Tony’s back is sickening. Gibbs can see flecks of blood spraying out with each stroke, and he struggles again, pointlessly, against the men holding him on the ground.

Tony’s head has started to hang down, but he’s still managing to maintain sporadic eye contact with Gibbs. He hasn’t uttered a single cry, and Gibbs feels a surge of pride, knowing that Tony won’t give Ellis that particular satisfaction. Then again, Gibbs has always known that Tony is brave; it was the first thing Gibbs noticed about him when their paths crossed in Baltimore a decade ago.

Tony is fading now. Gibbs has never known them whip a man so long before, and he has a sudden real fear that Ellis means to whip Tony to death. He wriggles and shoves and manages to dislodge the man sitting on his back, and then he tries to lunge over there to stop it, but he doesn’t get that far and is thrown back again. He gives a hoarse shout and reaches out, but Tony’s head is down now, and Gibbs can see that he’s lost consciousness.

Gibbs howls, over and over again, the anger and anxiety combining with his own helplessness to make him struggle pointlessly in the guards’ arms. And then it’s over. The sound of whip on flesh stops, and Ellis tucks the bloody whip back into his belt.

“That is what you get if you try and escape,” he tells the assembled fighters, in a tone of gloating. Nobody says anything. They just stand there, shell-shocked, gazing at him with barely concealed hatred.

Ellis takes out his knife and cuts through the rope holding Tony up, and Tony falls immediately to the floor and lies there in a heap. Gibbs can see that his back is covered in blood, the beautiful golden skin he caressed last night now ravaged by the whip. He looks like a dead bird, feathers broken, his hair lifting slightly as the breeze from a nearby fan rustles through it.

“Take him away – him too.” Ellis jerks his head, and the guards drag Gibbs out of the gym. He’s hauled along the hallway back to their stall and thrown inside. Ellis strides in after him. He’s stopped to pick up some chains somewhere along the way – the same chains they wrap them in when they take them to the fights.

He comes over to Gibbs, a vicious smile on his face, and wraps the chains around his wrists and ankles and then fastens them to the hooks in the wall. He draws back with a darkly satisfied look, and Gibbs can only stand there, chained and immobilised against the wall.

They bring Tony in, two of them hauling him between them, their hands under his armpits. They throw Tony face down onto one of the mattresses and then leave. Ellis turns back to Gibbs.

“The only reason I didn’t put a bullet through his head is because I want to watch Mac pissing all over him in the pit on Fight Night,” he says with a grin. “Aw, did you think this would get your little pussy boy out of fighting Mac? No fucking chance! Scott will throw him into the pit half dead – he won’t care. Tony’s a troublemaker, and Scott just wants to be rid of him. After Mac’s through with him, he’ll be Walid’s problem, not ours.”

Gibbs makes no reply. He just gazes back at Ellis stonily. He’s not going to give him the satisfaction of a response any more than Tony did when he was taking that whipping so silently.

“Night night, sleep tight, Leroy,” Ellis says smugly, patting Gibbs’s cheek with his hand. Then he leaves the stall, shutting the door and locking it behind him.

The bastard has chained him here so that he can’t go over to Tony to help him, to wash his back, or even just to hold him. He can only stand here, tied to the wall, helpless.

“Tony?” he calls across the stall.

Tony doesn’t stir. Gibbs can see from the rise and fall of his chest that he’s still alive, but he’s out of it.

“Tony, I’m tied up, so I can’t get to you, but I’m here,” Gibbs tells him. He isn’t sure if Tony can hear or not, but he wants him to know that he’s not alone.

Tony gives a low sob of pain, and it’s too much for Gibbs; he pulls furiously on the hooks attaching him to the wall. The chains might be unyielding, but the hooks could be less secure.

He pulls with all his might, yanking his hands backwards, tugging on the hook his wrists are attached to. It moves, so he can tell it’s loose, and he keeps on heaving and tugging away at it with all his might. His rage lends him even more strength; he remembers what it feels like to stand in the pit, with the anger flowing through his body, and he finds that anger now.

He is furious that they touched Tony; that they dared to hurt someone he loves. He connects with that rage, feeling it surge through him, and then with one massive yank he pulls his wrists free. They’re still attached to each other, and his ankles are still attached to the wall, but his arms are at least free. He leans down; there’s some slack in the chain around his ankles, but a few tugs on that hook show that it’s attached far more solidly to the wall than the other one was, and he can’t get it to budge.

He gets down on his knees and inches slowly along the floor towards Tony. The chains tethering his ankles to the wall prevent him getting all the way there, but he gets close enough to grab the hem of a blanket and pull it towards him. He shakes it out and throws it over Tony’s body to keep him warm. Then he lies flat out on his stomach and reaches out his bound hands towards Tony. The stall is small, but even so, it’s still a stretch.

Tony’s arm is slung out, a little way from his body. Gibbs reaches out as far as he can and manages to get the tips of his fingers onto the side of Tony’s hand.

Tony whimpers, and Gibbs strokes the side of his hand gently with his finger. That’s all he can reach. “You with me, Tony? I’m right here. Close as I can get.”

Tony doesn’t reply. He just lies there, completely still, his face turned away. Then slowly, painfully slowly, he manages to move his hand just a fraction closer, and then a fraction more, until it’s close enough for Gibbs to take it between his hands. His wrists are bound but he can open the palms enough to gently capture Tony’s hand between them. Tony doesn’t move again for a long time, but then he slides his thumb sideways, stroking one of Gibbs’s fingers. It’s a tiny, shaky movement, but enough for Gibbs to know that he’s okay. He clasps Tony’s hand firmly in his own and holds it there.

The floor is hard on his belly, and he’s cold, and before long he gets cramp in his arms from holding them outstretched, but he has no intention of ever letting go.

~*~

It hurts. His shoulders and back are throbbing, aching and sore. He can feel a searing pain every time he moves, so he tries not to move. He closes his eyes and dozes, longing for the sweet oblivion of sleep.

In his sleep he sees a pair of wolves fighting, one light and one dark. They’re circling each other, teeth bared, snarling, and Gibbs is there, in the middle, caught between them. Then both wolves suddenly leap up at the same time, making straight for Gibbs’s throat. They tear away at his skin, ripping into it, and blood pours from the angry wound.

Tony comes to with a gasp, twitching as he wakes from the nightmare, and the pain immediately comes flooding back in, making him sob.

“Tony?”

“Yeah.” He waits until the waves of pain subside a little and then moves his head, cautiously, to look down.

Gibbs is over to his right, stretched out on the floor, chained to the wall at the ankles. He’s holding Tony’s hand between his own bound hands.

“Sorry. Fucked up,” Tony mutters.

“What happened?” Gibbs’s blue eyes are gleaming vividly in the darkness of the stall.

“Guard was gone when I left the restroom. Heard the supply truck being unloaded. Pete and McGuire left it unguarded. Stole the cell phone. Used the card to get out. Ran like hell until I got a connection. Almost made the call…almost.” The sense of failure hits him again, made all the more intense by the pain. “Saw an opportunity. Took it. Sorry. You warned me.”

“Screw that,” Gibbs growls. Tony blinks, confused. “You did what I trained you to do.”

“And what you ordered me not to do.”

“Yeah…well…Rule 51.”

Tony blinks again. “I don’t know that one.”

“Never mind.”

They’re silent for a moment. Tony runs his thumb back and forth over Gibbs’s hand. “They’re still gonna make me fight Mac, aren’t they?”

Gibbs’s hand squeezes hard. “Yeah.”

“Definitely not gonna win now. Not that I was ever really going to win, Gibbs.”

Gibbs is silent.

“They whip you this bad when you got those scars?” Tony asks quietly.

“Not as bad.”

“So I’m gonna be scarred? Like you?” Not that it matters. He’s unlikely to survive much longer in view of what’s in store for him.

“Yeah. Worse than me.”

Gibbs sounds angry, and Tony isn’t surprised. Gibbs has always been protective of anyone he allows into his family, and Tony is a hell of a lot more than just family to him now.

Tony tries to bite back a moan as a wave of pain sweeps through him. “Shit…” He can feel Gibbs squeezing his hand again as he rides it out. “Shit…that hurts so bad.”

Tony closes his eyes, longing for sleep, but it doesn’t come. Everything hurts too much, and he can’t switch off. He needs a distraction.

“You still with me, Tony?”

“Yeah. Just hurts so much. Talk to me, Jethro.”

“About what?”

“I don’t know. Anything. Need to think about something else ‘cept how much it hurts.”

He hears Gibbs taking a deep breath. Then: “Used to take Kelly sailing; blue water, sun shining in the sky, taste of the salty air on your tongue, feeling the wind in your hair. Nothing’s better than that.”

Tony smiles, liking the word picture Gibbs just painted. He knows Gibbs is trying to take him out of himself, so he can think of himself someplace else.

“Better than sex?” he asks.

Gibbs taps his hand with his finger, and Tony laughs, knowing that’s the closest Gibbs can get to a head-slap right now. The laugh makes him hurt all over again and it tails off into a sob as the pain kicks in, rolling through him in agonising waves.

Gibbs squeezes his hand again, seeing him through it.

“Sailing’s good,” Gibbs says softly. “I’ll take you some day. You ever sail, Tony?”

“No,” Tony says through gritted teeth, trying to block out the pain. “Not really. I mean…I’ve been out on a boat a few times…been fishing…but never just been out sailing.”

“We’ll do it. One day. Take a boat out on the open water. Together. Alone.”

“Could we have sex out there?”

Gibbs gives a snort of laughter. “Anythin’ you want, Tony. I’ll take you out sailing and make love to you out in the open, under the sun.”

“Promise?”

“Promise,” Gibbs says firmly.

“What was she like?” Tony asks softly, changing the subject.

Gibbs is silent for a long time. Tony can feel him running a finger in little circular patterns over the palm of his hand. Then, finally, he speaks.

“Kelly lived in the moment. When she was happy, you knew about it. When she was sad, you knew about it. And when she was angry…boy, did you know about it!”

“Sounds like her dad.”

“Yeah. Smart though, like her mom.”

“Tell me about Shannon.”

There’s another long silence. Tony knows how much Gibbs hates this, but all the same, he saddles up and gets on with it.

“Shannon was funny. She made me laugh. When I got angry, she knew how to diffuse me. And she could talk! God, she could talk. Never shut up sometimes.”

“Hah.” Tony smiles to himself. It seems that he’s not the only one attracted to the opposite in a lover.

“Yeah. She wasn’t anywhere near as annoying as you though.”

Tony pinches Gibbs’s finger hard, eliciting a half-laugh, half-growl in response.

They’re silent again. Tony manages to shift onto his side a little, ignoring the pain that sweeps through his body at the movement. He glances down on Gibbs.

“Tell me how you got the scar on your knee,” he says quietly.

Gibbs traces his fingers over Tony’s hand again, drawing little circles. The silence is even longer
this time, and then, finally, Gibbs clears his throat.

“Got knocked down by a drunk driver when I was eight. Walking home from school with my mom.”

“Christ, Gibbs…that’s…I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

Gibbs’s fingers continue their gentle caress over his hand, and Tony knows he’s saying that it’s okay.

“Were you badly hurt?”

“In the hospital a while.”

“Must have been bad to have left that kind of scar.”

“Yeah.” Gibbs’s voice is tight. “Couldn’t speak for weeks. Jack used to visit, try and coax me out of myself. Took a long time.”

“You were in shock. Probably too shook up to speak.”

“No. I was too angry to speak.”

Slowly, very slowly, Tony comes to a realization. “You were walking home with your mom?”

“Yeah.”

Another silence.

“Bastard drunk driver killed her, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

It’s Tony’s turn to squeeze now.

“My mom died when I was eight too. Cancer,” Tony says into the darkness of the stall, not looking at Gibbs. “She just faded away. Nobody even told me she was ill. I thought everyone’s moms lost their hair and looked that pale and thin. Like it was normal. Then Dad sent me away to stay with my uncle for a few weeks. When I came back, he dressed me up in a black suit and took me to her funeral. It took me a long time to understand she wasn’t coming home. I thought she was just staying at the cemetery, like she was on vacation or something.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve always thought your dad is a total shit.”

“He is. Still love him, but he is.” Tony gives a little laugh and then wishes he hadn’t. He closes his eyes and waits for the pain to dull down to a more manageable level. He ponders for a moment about Gibbs losing his mom at the age of eight and being brought up by his dad. Maybe it isn’t just the differences in Gibbs that he finds attractive; they have a lot in common too.

“D’you think there’s any way we could have this kind of conversation except after me being beat half to death and delirious with pain, and you chained to the wall, so you can’t run away?” Tony muses.

“Nah. You’d have to tie me down to make me.” Tony can hear the grin in Gibbs’s voice.

“Don’t think I wouldn’t. There’s no way I’m going through a whipping like that again just to get you to damn well talk.”

“Well, if anyone could ever get in my face and make me do something I don’t want to, it’s you.”

Tony is pleased with that compliment. His back might hurt like hell, but at least something has come out of it.

“They ever find him?” Tony asks quietly. “The drunk driver who killed your mom?”

“No.”

“So you never got justice.” One last piece of the jigsaw puzzle that is Leroy Jethro Gibbs falls into place; Tony has never met anyone more obsessed with pursuing justice than Gibbs.

“No.”

“But you’ve had revenge,” Tony says slowly. “Out in the pit, every Fight Night: ‘Find every single damn thing you’re angry about, channel that anger, focus it, and use it against your opponent…’” He quotes Gibbs’s words back at him.

“Yes.” Gibbs’s voice is steady and firm. “I’ve beaten that bastard over and over again, and Hernandez, and Walid, and Scott, and Ellis, and everyone who ever hurt me or the people I love.”

Where does it all end, Tony wonders? When someone has as much anger inside them as Gibbs – and as much to be angry about. He lost his mom, his wife, and his daughter – no wonder there’s so much pent-up fury in the man. But where does that end?

He’s feeling sleepy again. The pain is wearing him out, and his eyelids droop and open, droop and open drowsily. He glances down at Gibbs again, lying almost out of reach. Gibbs’s shorn head is angled to one side, and Tony can see the chains wrapped around his wrists and feet, tying him to the wall. It reminds him of a book his mom used to read to him when he was a child, a book that always used to make him cry.

His eyelids droop again, and this time they stay shut.

~*~

He’s been trying to keep everyone safe, but he can’t. It isn’t in his power. He wasn’t able to keep Tony safe, or Rajul, or Steve, or any of the others that this place has destroyed.

Gibbs stretches out, still keeping his fingers wrapped around Tony’s hand. Tony has been badly hurt, and he doesn’t stand a chance of beating Mac in the pit in a few days’ time.

“That was always a stupid-assed plan anyway, Jethro,” he mutters to himself. “You were playing by their rules. It’s time they start learning yours.”

He remembers what Tony said to him earlier. “Killer instinct is what you’ve got – not me.”

That’s what gives him his edge in the pit; the fact that he’ll die rather than submit, and he’ll kill if necessary. He’s a warrior. He’s fought in war zones, and he knows what any leader knows; you have to be prepared to lose your own life and your own people on the battlefield. Any victory entails risk.

He thinks back to that moment in the gym when he advanced on the guard, fully intending to attack him. He remembers how good it felt to look over his shoulder and see that Hurrell, Greg, and the others had his six. They’re desperate to escape. They’re just looking for a leader who’ll show them how.

He needs to start thinking like Walid. You don’t outsmart your enemy by playing the game by their rules. He’s given Walid an easy ride. He hasn’t shown him exactly what Leroy Jethro Gibbs is capable of.

Tony twitches in his sleep, and Gibbs strokes his hand gently until he settles down again.

Sam Hurrell is wrong. It isn’t a fight between the light wolf and the dark wolf. The real battle is to take those wolves and make them work together. Only by taming them, controlling them, and using the force and power of them both can he win this particular fight.

The white wolf is his love for Tony, for his family, and for the people on his team. It’s his acute sense of justice, and his urge to protect those who need him. The dark wolf is his anger, his killer instinct, his lust for revenge, and his desire to fight.

He needs both those wolves. It’s time to wrestle them into submission and harness their unique individual qualities to create one Big Bad Wolf – and then he’ll go and blow Walid’s house of freaks down.

Maybe Tony was right, and he does have some magic from before the dawn of time; or at least from before he was captured. At some point along the way he forgot who he was; it took Tony to come along and awaken a sleeping wolf to remind him.

Gibbs squeezes Tony’s hand, feeling whole again. Walid wanted him to cry; he should know that when you back a wolf into a corner it doesn’t cry – it comes out fighting, more dangerous than ever.

Gibbs smiles, baring his teeth. “Watch out, Walid. I’m coming to get you.”

~*~
End of Part Twelve
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Part Thirteen

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Posted by

isha-lj.livejournal.com

Go Gibbs! Can't wait to see what he has planned.
Love the story so far. Nice and dark.

Posted by

Xanthe's Story Journal

Two Wolves - 12/19

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