The gunshot wound would have been mild, if such a thing exists. But the thing about flightlings being a secret was that it made getting emergency medical attention tricky. As long as McGee was sure to keep his wings in check, he could see any doctor he needed. In a situation like this? When he wasn't thinking straight because he'd been shot, and seemed to be experiencing a flashback? It couldn't be guaranteed that he could keep his wings, or any of his powers, in check while on morphine or under anesthesia. It wouldn't be helpful it, during surgery, an unconscious Tim's wings popped open, knocking he surgeon and his assistants down and giving several nearby nurses mouths full of feathers.

These were the thoughts that were running through DiNozzo's mind as he stood, trying to remain calm, trying to calm his friend, but almost entirely unsure of what to do. There wasn't training at FLETC for what should be done when your flightling partner and best friend gets shot in the shoulder and experiences a flashback when you have no backup.

…Well, there was training for when your human partner gets shot, so Tony went from there.

"McGee….Tim, listen to me. You're in a warehouse. We're in D.C. We aren't in Italy. Breathe, Tim. Come on."

The junior agent appeared to slowly gain his sense of reality back, but was still very much inside of his head. Meanwhile, his shoulder continued to bleed. DiNozzo knew that it was a bad idea to put pressure on his friend's wound while McGee was still out of it, but he didn't feel as though he had much of a choice.

"McGee, we're gonna sit down, okay? Come on," the senior agent repeated his words of encouragement, putting one hand on his friend's forearm and another grabbing his shaking hand. Tim, a bit more pliable now, did as he was told and slowly sunk down to his knees, and then sat back where Tony leaned him up against an old car. McGee's wings still stayed up and out, so he couldn't sit directly up against the abandoned vehicle, but they were on the ground, which was a major improvement. At this point, the younger man's shirt was hanging off the injured shoulder but sticking to his skin thanks to the blood that was all over.

"Alright McGee, you with me?" Tony asked, not waiting to figure out the answer to his own question. "We gotta put pressure on this, okay?"

DiNozzo quickly tore a piece of the already-ripped shirt from his friend's the opposite side; the one not already spattered red. He rolled the cloth up and pressed it to Tim's shoulder.

Which did not go all that well.

Although McGee had been slowly coming out of his shocked state, this new burst of pain to his arm held him from breaking back into the real world. He saw the warehouse, he saw his wings in good shape (save the bit of spatter that had gotten on them), but his mind insisted that he was being attacked all over again.

Most of us automatically respond to a painful stimulus by getting away from it. Or, if this is impossible, by grabbing it and removing it so that the thing can't hurt us anymore. Tim's brain, addled as it was by fear, adrenaline, and pain, opted for the second.

When his injured friend grabbed his arm, Tony tried, and failed, to stifle an involuntary grunt of pain. From what he'd seen flightlings do with their strength, he knew he wasn't getting a full experience of McGee's strength. However, the vicelike grip on his wrist was far from comfortable, and in the back of his mind, DiNozzo knew that if he didn't get Tim to let go, he could very well panic further and injure both of them very badly.

"McGee," he panted, trying not to struggle and make things worse. "It's me. You gotta let go of my hand, man. I need you to help me help you. I know you're in there, Probie."

After a few moments of this, Tim's shoulders slumped and he breathed out a rush of air that had been struggling to escape his lungs. He let go of DiNozzo's arm and wrist, physically spent, and blinked at the lights high over their heads.

"That's it. Welcome back, McGee," Tony quipped between deep breaths of his own. "You with me?"

Tim nodded faintly, barely there at all. "What happened?" he croaked.

"You got yourself shot again," DiNozzo said, trying to keep his tone light. "You're gonna be fine, it just clipped your shoulder. You freaked out for a bit there. Think you can fold your wings away?"

McGee nodded again, looking so exhausted that it seemed he might pass out right then and there. But with the older man's help, he leaned forward, wincing through the pain this caused him, and folded his wings out of sight.

"Alright. Here, you keep putting pressure on that. Keep this arm down. Like that- good," Tony directed. With things finally calmed down a bit, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his cellphone. He couldn't unlock it with his fingerprint, as his hands were currently covered in Tim's blood and the poor phone didn't understand, so he had to manually type out his password, intermittently trying to wipe his hands off on his shirt and pants.

As it didn't appear to be a life-threatening injury, they now had the ability to call Gibbs and figure out what to do.

The team leader picked up on the first ring, and before he'd even finished saying Tony's name, DiNozzo was quickly explaining their situation.

"Boss, McGee's been shot. I think he's gonna be fine but he needs to go to the hospital-"

"Where are you?" Gibbs asked, and the senior agent could hear his boss grabbing his keys out of his desk in the bullpen.

"In a warehouse down the street from Coleman's apartment. I'd take him to the hospital but, uh…we had a bit of an incident with his wings and he panicked for a minute there…I'm not sure what kind of attention we can get him without it being a problem."

Jethro was quiet on the line for a moment, and then DiNozzo heard the elevator ding on the other end of the line.

"Hold on for a minute- Duck!" Gibbs was calling, clearly in the morgue by now. There was some muttering as the team leader explained to Ducky what had happened, and then suddenly it was Dr. Mallard himself on the line.

"Anthony, are you there?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, you're putting pressure on the wound?"

"Yeah, he was hit in the shoulder."

"Is he conscious?"

Tony looked up at his friend's face; Tim was indeed blinking some more, but was still very much out of it.

"Kind of. He's awake but not with me all that much."

"I'd expect so. Can you get him to the nearest hospital?"

"Won't that be a problem? Especially with his wings…"

"If his wings are away and he is unconscious by the time he gets to surgery, it shouldn't be a problem. Anesthetics are paralytics, so his muscles wouldn't work to cause any accidental revelation of what he is," the elderly doctor assured him. "The real issue will be getting him over to the hospital in an ambulance without anything happening. That could be stressful enough to keep him awake and cause him to panic, so we'd have to find a way to either sedate him beforehand or guarantee he's not going to show his powers to anyone."

After a second's thought, DiNozzo shook his head into the phone. "His wings are already put away. I'll drive him."

"If you're sure, and it isn't risking his life any further, then I have no problem with it. Do you know the way to the nearest hospital?"

"We passed it on the way. I'll send you our location so that Gibbs can find us."

"Alright. Good luck, we'll meet up with you as soon as we can."

Tony disconnected the call and slipped his phone back into his pocket, then quickly gathered himself up and put his shoulders under Tim's uninjured arm.

"Let's go, Probie," he grunted, his stress causing him to revert back to his older nickname for his friend.

"I….I can walk, Tony…" McGee volunteered between breaths.

"Alright, if you say so," the older man agreed, letting him go and walking close next to him in case he should need the physical support. Before leaving, he grabbed both his and Tim's firearms and led the way back to the main room of the warehouse space. When they made it there, DiNozzo noticed immediately that the large dark van was gone, driven out the garage-style exit in the back wall. He hadn't heard the suspect leave after he'd dropped his pursuit in favor of helping Tim, but now Tony couldn't help but bite mutter a curse under his breath that he hadn't watched the van better in their moment of chaos.

The two agents exited the abandoned warehouse and were hit with the open air, which despite its oppressive heat, felt almost cool compared to the stale, uncirculated air inside. At this point, the senior agent's phone buzzed, and he checked it briefly to see that it was Gibbs calling back.

"Boss?"

"DiNozzo, change of plans. Ziva's gonna send you an address for a place a little further away."

"Why not go to the nearest hospital?" Tony asked, confused.

"Victoria apparently knows a doctor at this one who sees flightlings."

Thank god. That eliminated a large portion of his concerns. After hanging up, the senior agent saw that he had indeed gotten a texted location from Ziva. At this point, he and Tim had slowly reached their parked car, and Tony helped ease his injured friend into the passenger seat, jumped into the driver's spot, and gunned both the engine and air conditioning before tearing off towards their destination.

…

Honestly, DiNozzo wasn't one hundred percent positive he was even at the right hospital. Yes, he'd put in the address that Ziva had sent him, which had apparently been approved by Victoria, but he hadn't stopped to confirm with any of his teammates that the doctor they were coming to this specific institution for even knew that they needed his services. When Tony had pulled up to the emergency room doors and helped McGee out, the younger man was immediately whisked away the staff members who had come out to receive their newest patient. The senior agent had been so preoccupied with getting where they needed to go that he'd had no plan for what to do when they actually arrived. Next thing he knew, McGee, half-conscious as he was, was being put in a wheelchair to be rolled quickly towards the medical attention he needed. Next thing he knew, he was being directed to pull out of the ambulance zone and park, and by the time he got into the actual E.R. reception area, Tim was gone. So the nurses led him to a waiting room, then a particularly nervous intern came over and assessed him for a concussion or any other possible injuries, despite his insistence that he was fine. Then they gave him a spare scrub-top to change into, as his own shirt had quite a bit of blood on it. However, he wanted to be in the waiting room to wait for the rest of his team; the last thing they needed was for someone to come out with an update on McGee's wellbeing and find an empty waiting room because he was in the bathroom changing into someone else's scrubs.

He didn't have to wait too long, luckily, because Gibbs and Ducky appeared a short while later.

"He's in surgery," Tony said as he stood up, before they even had the chance to ask. "Shouldn't be too bad. It caught him in the shoulder."

"Well if it severed an artery, he'd already be dead, so I suppose you may be right," Ducky said. "Although if he was hit in the humerus and broke it there could be all manor of problems."

"I don't think it did," DiNozzo responded. Gibbs looked his senior agent up and down to asses his mental and physical state.

"That for you?" he asked, eyeing the shirt on the chair next to where Tony had been sitting.

"Oh, yeah…"

"Go change. Hey," Jethro called his agent's attention back to him as the younger man walked by. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Just…" he trailed off, but his boss seemed to understand his implied feeling of exhaustion and that jarring stillness that comes after escaping a high-pressure, stressful situation. Gibbs nodded and let him go.

He supposed if he really tried, he could possibly try to bleach his white button-up shirt back into its intended shade, although he didn't really care to try, and instead rolled up his tie and shoved it in his pocket. The bloody shirt went in a biohazard can he passed on the way back. But it took him some time - and a lot of paper towels - to get Tim's blood off of his hands and forearms. It was at this moment, when reaching for the sink, that DiNozzo realized just how much it hurt to move his left hand. He looked down and saw the ugly bruises that were beginning to form around his forearm and wrist. When Tim had grabbed him in the warehouse, he'd been focused on too much else to realize that his friend might have done some actual damage. But now there were purple splotches on his skin that suggested otherwise. It hurt to flex his wrist, but he could move it and there was no agony, so Tony was fairly certain he'd survive.

When he was done, he slipped on the borrowed shirt, which was a bit too big for him, and made his way back to the waiting room.

He sat in the chairs across from Ducky and Gibbs, and before he could decide whether wanted to wait for Ziva and Victoria to join them before telling the full story, the two women in question arrived.

Neither of them looked particularly frantic; not that he would expect hysterics from Ziva, but….well, no, come to think of it, Victoria was closely-acquainted with this kind of danger and either way, had never been particularly flappable. But Gibbs had told Ziva over the phone that it didn't appear to be a critical hit and that McGee should be fine, so neither woman had any just cause to panic, anyway. Tony watched as they each silently took in the faces before them, and while he knew his own sunken, tired expression most likely was less than comforting, he also knew that the general atmosphere of the waiting room wasn't exceptionally heavy or depressing, leaving the newcomers to discern that no bad news had been shared as of yet. When they sat, DiNozzo cleared his throat and went about telling the full tale of how they'd come to be in this situation, answering questions about the van, and the mystery shooter, and how McGee had reacted when he went into his flashback. When he was done, Gibbs asked Dr. Mallard how long they should expect this surgery to be.

"We'll be waiting awhile," Ducky told them. "Even though from what Tony told us, it should be a minor wound at worst, it will take some time to operate, make sure everything is as it should be, and do all necessary post-op work."

They all nodded and the room fell back into relative silence, the only sounds around them being the distant white noise of medical happenings down every hallway and through every door.

"I think I'll head to the cafeteria to get some tea," Ducky then said, putting his hands on his knees to stand up.

"I'll join you," Victoria offered, rising to leave with the ME. When they'd gone out together, the three agents turned to each other.

"He will be fine, Tony," Ziva said, catching DiNozzo's weary, quiet sigh. "And this was not your fault."

"You know what?" DiNozzo said, almost letting out a few breathless laughs. He wasn't angry, but that self-hating, falsely-joking tone he'd been known to throw around when he was upset was seeping from his voice. "You're totally right. It wasn't my fault. But I didn't exactly make things better, either."

Gibbs leaned over and gave a medium-strength slap upside his agent's head to snap him out of his spiral.

"Thank you, Boss."

"You got him to the hospital. That is literally all you could have done. Especially since he had an episode while holding a loaded gun, and considering he is so much stronger than us. He could have hurt you or himself but you made sure he didn't," Ziva insisted.

This suddenly reminded the senior agent of the bruises that were forming on his hurt wrist, and he crossed his arms even tighter without thinking about it.

After a moment, Tony sighed and nodded. It did make him feel better to have Ziva remind him of the obvious, if only because he was too good at forgetting it in these situations.

Ducky and Victoria returned in due time, each carrying drinks for everyone. The doctor gave out coffees to Gibbs and Ziva, took his own tea, and threw away the cardboard carrying container he'd used to bring them. Victoria came to stand in front of Tony, who was staring into space, his head tilted down towards his shoes, and held a coffee in his line of sight. DiNozzo blinked at it before realizing that the cup was for him, and he straightened up to take it, grateful at the gesture.

"What happened to your wrist?" she immediately noticed his bruised arm and sat next to him to examine it, all the while being conscious of giving him personal space. She never noticed that she did this, but after so long of avoiding touch from people, and assuming that humans who knew what she was didn't want her to touch them, it was an unconscious habit.

Damn it. There went his intention of keeping it a secret.

"Oh, uh, he grabbed my wrist while I was trying to put pressure on the wound. He was still out of it at that time.

"Does it hurt?" she asked quietly, not being able to completely hide the concern in her voice.

"Nah, just a bit sore," he said, trying to ease her worries, but Ducky leaned over, one hand stretched out. At this silent request, Tony hesitantly put his hand in the medical examiner's, and tried not to wince at the prodding his arm was suddenly enduring.

"Nothing feels broken," came the diagnosis. "But I'd like to wrap that once we get back to the office, in case it's sprained."

DiNozzo really didn't want to agree, but knew it would save him a lot of stress in trying to talk his way out of it, and so nodded and sipped his coffee.

It seemed like they'd been sitting around forever, and yet also for barely any time at all, when a tall, rather handsome doctor made an appearance in the waiting room. Everyone stood upon his entrance, eager to get any updates they could.

"I'm Dr. Steven Nacht. I'm assuming you're with Agent McGee?" he asked, then noticed the one person there who wasn't an NCIS employee and his question was automatically answered. "Ah, Victoria."

The young woman went up to him and gave a hug as her greeting.

"Steve, thank you so much for taking care of Tim. I knew you'd come through for us. How is he?"

Dr. Nacht looked up at the rest of the questioning looks and nodded. "He's going to be fine. The bullet did clip through his shoulder, but it was a very lucky shot for him. It only went and damaged soft tissue- or, the muscles, ligaments, etc. Bullet fragments and debris can get left behind, especially when a person as physically strong as he is gets hit. He should make a full recovery within a couple of weeks, and can be back to desk work by the end of the week, since he's going to heal just a tiny bit faster than the average patient."

Even though they'd all been fairly certain there was no cause for worry, this news made all five sets of shoulders relax.

"Can we see him?" Gibbs asked.

"I figured you would want to right away, so I waited until he was stable to come get you all. He's unconscious right now, although he should be waking up soon."

…..

About an hour later, McGee opened his eyes and the first thing he registered was how numb and heavy he felt, especially his shoulder.

The second thing he noticed was the circle of loved ones that had congregated around his bed.

"Hey there, McGee," Tony said, his voice low but his spirits a much higher than they had been.

"Hey…." Tim replied, his own voice thick. Everyone else was fine, but he was in the hospital for some reason? "What happened?"

"You got shot. Again," DiNozzo informed his friend for the second time that day.

"It's funny, this is more or less how I met you last year," Victoria said softly, referencing how she had helped stitch McGee up when he'd been shot in Italy, which had led to the whole revelation of his flightling nature in the first place.

His eyelids were heavy so he allowed himself to close them again, but he remained awake and grinned a little.

"Do I get any more new powers this time?"

Everyone laughed quietly. "Probably not," Ziva replied. "But you do have your memory this time."

"That's true. I don't remember too much about getting shot, though," he said, and when no one replied right away, McGee opened his eyes again to see several hesitant looks.

"What?"

The team, with Tony in the lead, explained what had happened and Tim listened in dismay.

"I don't remember that," the junior agent said. "The last thing I remember is looking at the van in the warehouse."

"That's most likely because of the anesthesia than anything else," Ducky assured him in an attempt to make sure he knew it wasn't a fragile mental state that caused this lack of memory.

McGee nodded at this information when a new thought suddenly dawned on him. "I took a picture of the van's license plate. It's on my phone. We can trace that."

Everyone's expressions lit up at this.

"Good work, McGee," his boss nodded with a small smile.

Tim felt a bit comforted that, at the least, a possible lead came out of this mayhem. It was then that he noticed what Tony was wearing.

"Why do you have scrubs on? And what happened to your wrist?" he murmured, his eyes narrowed as he focused in on DiNozzo, his eyesight taking a moment to cooperate. He was feeling more and more tired with every second.

"Somebody bled all over my work shirt," the older man quipped.

"Sorry 'bout that," McGee murmured, laying his head back on his pillow.

"Don't apologize, Tim. Just promise you're gonna stop getting almost-killed. It's getting old."

The junior agent's eyes drifted shut again, although a small smile came to his lips. "I thought I'd left that bad habit behind me in Italy," he joked.

This was the last thing he managed to express before he drifted back into sleep, not realizing that Tony hadn't answered his question about his bruised arm. Nor did he realize that the mystery shooter was not only still out there, but had almost certainly seen his wings. In his exhaustion it didn't even occur to him that there were fairly serious implications his flashback had brought forth that he would have to consider later. None of this mattered at that moment, because his team was safe, he was okay, and he was really, really tired. With all of this fading into the haze of his mind, McGee gave over to the sleep that, thanks to the medication, was the first full, uninterrupted sleep he'd had in a while.