He made his way slowly through the cemetery, looking down at each of the headstones, each bearing a familiar name.

Each with a familiar corpse resting lightly on the freshly turned soil.

He could smell the dirt. Its earthy scent invaded his nostrils, overriding everything else—even the sickly sweet smell of death. The dirt's odor was so overwhelming that he couldn't even smell the faint tang of the blood that poured from his wounded wrists, but he didn't need the smell to know it was there. He could feel it pulsing from the deep cuts, could feel it sliding slickly, thickly down his hands, could feel it dripping from his pale fingertips.

He passed Kate's grave and saw her lifeless body lying atop the reeking dirt, her Presidential Medal of Freedom resting on a chest unstirred by breath. Apparently, that didn't matter, though. Her eyes opened and her voice spoke to him: "It should have been you, you know," she said sweetly, in that matter-of-fact tone that he was ashamed to realize had so infuriated him at times.

He passed John, the DC detective, the hole in his chest still gushing blood as if he were lying on a hose with a hookup straight into hell's vast stores. He gasped his last breaths again and again, his lips endlessly forming the word "Liar"—but all Tony heard was: "It should have been you."

He passed Jenny, who was curled on her side on damp dirt blackened by blood, her body shredded by bullets. She did not move. Did not speak to him. But scrawled in blood on her headstone as if a child with a brand-new set of gory fingerpaints, her corpse had printed the dripping words: "It should have been you."

He passed Jeanne, lying perfectly still on her grassy green grave. She took a sudden breath, as if remembering how to live, and got up and walked away. He followed her movements and watched her join a green-eyed man in the distance. She linked arms with the stranger, turned back, and called to him: "It should have been you."

He passed a stranger in a familiar car: his beloved, burned-out Mustang. His team moved around the ruined car, processing the devastating scene with little show of devastation. As he passed, the corpse uncurled its charred body, turning its grisly head and whispering, "It should have been you."

He passed the pieces of Paula littering her gravesite. The only parts among the carnage recognizable as her were her pretty eyes—and they were full of recrimination. He didn't need her to gather up her ruined throat to speak to know what she would have said: "It should have been you."

He finally reached his destination, standing shaking beside the familiar headstone bearing his own last name. The grave was open and he stared down at the shiny top of the coffin that held the only person who had ever loved him. The only person who had never hurt him. Except that wasn't true. She had hurt him—broken him, irreparably—the day she had decided to open her veins and leave him.

He watched as the lid opened, watched tiny flecks of dirt sliding down off the shiny surface and disappearing into the soil below. He felt his heart surge at the thought of seeing her again, of hearing her voice, musical as the piano she had so loved in life. He longed for the chance to sit on that bench with her one last time, his small body perched beside hers as her long, slim fingers wrung beauty from the fine instrument. The sickening smell of the dirt was replaced by the soft scent of roses, and he felt the first tears slip down his cheeks.

He did not smell roses once she rose from her silk-lined coffin. Her flesh was mottled green and yellowish where it wasn't dripping thickly from her bones. Her face was half-obliterated, one side glowing with the ethereal loveliness he remembered, one side a mangled mess of decay. He cried out in shock and terror as she reached forward and took his bloody hands in hers. On his left wrist he felt the softness of her smooth skin, this time unruptured by her blades. On his right, nothing but hard, cold bone as the skeletal fingers circled his warm, damaged flesh.

He forced himself to look away, his eyes coming up, up, away from her lovely destruction—and settling on the furious face of his father. His eyes burned with rage and hate and a suffering that he knew was mirrored in his own but that they would never share.

"It should have been you."

Tony came awake with a shriek, tears streaming unchecked down his face as he struggled to remember where he was. The room was unfamiliar, but the face staring with shocked concern into his own was blissfully recognizable.

"Gibbs," he gasped, his throat raw and sore, and he realized he'd been screaming again.

He wasn't surprised, considering the nightmare's lingering grip of terror.

He was surprised that the shame didn't burn the leftover tears from his very face.

"It's all right, Tony," Gibbs whispered, his voice as shaky as Tony's hands. He stood beside the bed, unsure if he should touch his trembling friend. Tony was sitting up, looking around wildly, panic and pain and shame waging war across his damp face. Gibbs took a step back and watched him flinch as he hurt himself swiping at the tears on his cheeks.

Tony's eyes finally settled on Gibbs' face and he blinked several times before closing his wide eyes and whispering, "Well, shit."

Gibbs would have smiled if he hadn't been still hearing Tony's terrified screams echoing in his head. "You okay?" he asked, feeling like an idiot even before Tony answered.

"Just woke up screaming in a hotel room with my boss," he said shakily, his eyes on his bandaged left wrist. "Not so much."

Gibbs followed his gaze and said, "And you're bleeding."

Tony didn't speak. He didn't move, either, and Gibbs just stood there awkwardly, having no idea what to do or say. He somehow knew platitudes and trite, meaningless phrases would do no good so he simply said, "I saw you clawing at it in your sleep. But I didn't want to grab you. Maybe I should have," he finished, sounding more uncertain than Tony had ever heard him.

Tony shook his head. "Nah, I might have punched you. Then this would be even more awkward than it already is."

"It's not that bad," Gibbs argued, but it sounded weak even to his own ears.

Tony just raised an eyebrow at him from where he sat, still shaking slightly.

They were silent for a moment long enough to make Gibbs shift his weight uncomfortably.

"At least we still have our clothes on," Tony finally said, the corner of his mouth turning up slightly.

Gibbs laughed out loud. "I should headslap you for even thinking that."

"Nah," Tony said again. "It's no fun when you warn me."

They stared at each other again, the awkwardness blooming like a time-lapsed rose. Gibbs finally shook his head. "Let me take a look at your wrist. Need to make sure we don't need to find a hospital."

Tony looked uncomfortable for a moment, but then gave in with a nod—because he was more tired than self-conscious at the moment. Gibbs went and washed his hands, returning with the first-aid kit containing antibiotic salves and bandages that Ducky had sent with them. He sat on the edge of the bed, his cheeks flaming bright red when his hip bumped Tony's bent knee through the blanket.

"Chill, Boss," Tony said as Gibbs took his hand in his own. "We both know I'm not your type. Not a redhead."

Gibbs laughed again, the volume making Tony realize just how thoroughly unsettled his boss was—and how hard he was trying to hide it. Just what the hell was I screaming? And for how long?

Gibbs slowly unwound the thick gauze from his agent's wounded wrist, his concern at the crimson deepening with each layer overriding the similar hue burning his cheeks from Tony's joke. He schooled his features as he removed the last of the dressing, knowing Tony was intently watching his face for his reaction to the gruesome injury. Gibbs didn't flinch as he lifted Tony's hand closer to his face and inspected the damage.

He expected a joke about his worsening eyesight so he was shocked when Tony said, "We wouldn't need to find a hospital. I know where the closest one is. I'll never forget that one. It's the one she died in."

Gibbs listened to the choppy sentences and was struck with shock when he realized who Tony was talking about—and what he was doing. You're so unsettled by my gentle ministrations that you're pulling that memory out? And sharing it with me? Does my kindness scare you that much more than the memories?

Gibbs looked up at him in surprise. "She wasn't dead when you found her," he said before he could stop himself. Once an investigator…

Tony shook his head slowly, and Gibbs blinked at the gratitude in his green eyes. "I'm glad it's you here with me, Boss," he blurted. He flushed and looked down at his bleeding wrist. A rivulet of red had found its way from the popped stitches into Gibbs' cupped palm, and Tony winced. He continued anyway. "Anyone else would be falling all over themselves trying to make me feel better."

"Tony, I—" Gibbs began, feeling guilty that he hadn't even tried to console him, to comfort him when he was obviously hurting.

"No, Gibbs," Tony said softly. "Thank you. For letting me just be."

Gibbs stayed quiet, his eyes on Tony's bleeding wound as he tried to figure if it would stop on its own. He pressed a gauze pad to the broken stitches, hoping the pressure wasn't too painful, and gently forced Tony's arm up against the agent's chest. He held the pressure and returned his eyes to Tony's.

"She might as well have been," Tony said once Gibbs was looking at him again. He gave the man credit for not looking away when he felt his eyes well up again. "Dead, that is. She couldn't move, couldn't talk. But she was still there. I saw it when I looked into her eyes. Hers stayed open until the end, and I couldn't even force mine open when I … Whatever. But that's what I remember most about all of it. Not the blood, the wounds, the way her bright red fingernails perfectly matched the pools beside her. I remember wondering what she would say to me if she had been able to speak."

It took everything in Gibbs' formidable power not to flinch, to keep his eyes on Tony's as he spoke with such raw anguish. He was pretty sure his heart was ripped from his chest as Tony calmly compared his experience with his mother's, and Gibbs fought not to remind him that he had lived.

"It wasn't just a hotel in Maui that he left me in," Tony said, trying to replace Gibbs' hand with his over the wound. But Gibbs held firm, and so he just continued. "It was that damned hospital, too. As soon as the doctor came back and said she was gone, he bolted. So did I, though, when I realized he wasn't coming back. I hid for hours. The doctor must have forgotten about me, too, because when I came out, they all just kept asking me what my name was, who I was there with. I wanted to tell them I wasn't there with anyone. Not anyone living, anyway. But I didn't say a word."

Tony's lips curved in a heartbreaking parody of a smile. "I didn't speak for a month after. He sent someone to pick me up the next morning, and the guy asked me if I was okay, but I just couldn't talk. Not to anyone. Hard to believe, I know. Me, silent for that long."

Gibbs was stunned speechless, but not by Tony's lengthy silence. He was horrified that a man could be so selfish as to abandon a child who had just lost his mother—and in such a brutal way. He found that he, himself, could not put that rage into words so he just waited, his eyes still locked on Tony's glittering green ones. He willed his friend to give in and release the agony he had to be feeling, but he knew Tony wouldn't cry in front of him, not consciously anyway. That realization made him ache for reasons he didn't fully understand.

"But I just couldn't speak. It didn't seem fair to talk when I knew she never would again."

Gibbs listened with matching anguish to the soft words, wanting to hug him, to pull him into his arms and apologize for mistakes that were not his but he would do anything to fix. But he knew it would only frighten and embarrass him. He couldn't find words so he just reached out and laid a shaky hand on Tony's shoulder, hoping the gentle touch wouldn't send him fleeing.

He finally let his hand drop, noting that Tony finally looked away as Gibbs examined his wrist again. He saw that the bleeding had stopped and it appeared only two of the stitches had come apart during Tony's fierce struggling. Gibbs applied the salve wordlessly and rewrapped the wrist, giving it a soft pat before he got up and went silently back to bed.

He lay in the darkness for a long while before whispering, "Tony?"

He wasn't surprised in the least when Tony answered back immediately and with not even a hint of a tremor in his tone. "Yeah?"

Gibbs gulped and prayed he was saying the right thing.

"I'm glad you found your voice. I'd have had a hell of a lot less laughter in my life if you hadn't."

Gibbs awoke the following morning with a start of his own as sunlight began streaming through the window. He turned and found Tony watching him.

Gibbs smiled. "I know how they knew about your mother."