This is not your usual Post-Twilight fic, and this certainly not the type of NCIS fic you will usually find coming from me. I am, as a rule, denying that the last two minutes of Twilight happened, but this story embraces Kate's fate and shows what is a decidedly dramatic outcome.

I won't let on how, but this is a TATE story, though it won't look like it at first. Just remember that when I go for a ship I go all the way and I'm definitely a TATE shipper.

"Tony's right, Kate," Gibbs said as he helped Kate to her feet. Tony grinned. He'd worked for the man for almost four years and there had been only a handful of times that his boss had said that he was right.

Kate smiled. "Tony's right? I thought I'd have to be dead to hear tha—" Kate said, her quip cut off by a single shot that went straight through her head.

Warm blood sprayed Tony in the face as he moved to catch his fallen partner.

Tony woke up, drenched in sweat, his heart racing, his breaths coming in slow, laboured gasps.

"Fuck. Not again," Tony growled before throwing the damp and twisted covers off his naked body. He pulled on a pair of sweatpants and stumbled through the small house he lad lived in for just over two years. He moved clumsily around boxes that had yet to be unpacked despite the length of time he had lived there. Every time he tripped over the boxes he was reminded of how she would have reacted if she saw how he was living. So he didn't do anything with the boxes, hoping that he would be able to make Kate knock on the door and start teasing him about his house if he did the things that he knew would annoy her the most.

Splashing cold water on his face from the kitchen tap, Tony tried to shape the talon-like fingers of his nightmare from his soul.

The nightmare was something he had lived with for almost three years. For almost a week after Kate was killed he, Gibbs, McGee, Abby, and Ducky had worked non-stop, tracking Ari because they all knew that it was him and that killing Kate was the terrorist's act of war. Ari threw down the gauntlet when he pulled the trigger and the chase, that had been very real but necessarily slow-going due to prioritizing, was on in earnest.

Gibbs was a man obsessed. Ari was unfinished business to the Gunny and everyone knew that Gibbs felt guilty because the only intel they had to go on pointed to Ari being after him and using Kate to throw Gibbs off his game. A major miscalculation, that.

Abby had confessed her precognitive dream to the NCIS shrink who had encouraged her to share that with her friends. None of them had really known how to respond to that piece of information and it had quickly been swept under the proverbial rug.

Ducky had taken a leave of absence immediately after Kate's death, partially to grieve, but mostly because he knew that if he stayed he would have to perform her autopsy and, even though he had done them on other people he knew, Kate was special. She was the daughter he never had and losing her cut Ducky to the core. He had come back to work after a month and had joined the rest of the team in their search for revenge.

McGee had been crushed by Kate's murder. She had been the only person on the team that he could usually understand and, other than the one time when he was first made a Probie, she had never hit him, even though he was pretty sure she had wanted to a few times. He also felt incredibly guilty because he felt that, since he wasn't on the roof, he should have been able to see Ari on the other rooftop and that he should have done something to stop the trigger from being pulled.

But Tony took it hardest of them all.

Kate had been there for him, not just during the day-in-day-out stuff, but during the big stuff as well. She had risked being infected with the plague just so that he wouldn't be alone in the isolation chamber. He didn't even think he was worth the risk, especially the way he treated her a lot of the time, yet she had stayed by his side, bantering with him when he had the strength, just sitting with him and holding his hand when he grew too weak to do anything but cough and rest and groan between doses of painkillers.

Tony had never been a big believer in soul mates, but one day, about two months after Kate's funeral, he realized that he and Kate had been soul mates. Even when they were fighting like cats and dogs or when they were racing to beat each other to impress Gibbs, they were still a team. Partners to the end. Best friends who loved each other even if they had never found the opportunity to say the words. They were there for each other, even if it wasn't in the most palpable of ways, through thick and thin… in sickness and in health… 'til death did them part.

Soul mates.

The day Tony realized that was the day he tendered his resignation and left DC for good.

He hadn't had contact with anyone from NCIS since he left. He knew they were trying to track him down, which was why he hadn't so much as thought about calling or writing. He knew how good they were. They would find him and try to bring him 'home'. He just hoped that they realized that he had left for a reason and, if he were to ever go back, it would be because he was ready.

Since he couldn't visit her grave and place flowers—from Martha's Garden, her favourite florist—by her headstone regularly, Tony had found a nursery and bought a near-full-sized Weeping Willow and had planted it in his back yard that was almost as big as the house itself. The trees had always reminded him of Kate—strong and steady, yet soft and so fragile at the same time. His neighbour, a single mother named Donna, had two kids, Emily and Amy, ages ten and eight respectively, and he had found them trying to climb the tree several times, always running away when he caught them though he honestly didn't care. Kate loved kids, he knew, and would have been an amazing mother if she had been given the chance. She probably would have been overprotective, especially given the horrors they had seen in their line of work, but she would love her children with everything she had. Tony was sure of that.

"When I'm a mother I'm never letting my kids out of my sight," Kate said as they scanned the perimeter of the train station. Neither one of them thought the kidnapper was still there, and they were all pretty sure it was just the one guy doing this to the Watson family, but if they were wrong and there were more people in on it and they went straight to little Sandy they would give their link to the Captain away and then Sandy's mother would be killed.

"Yeah? How do you plan on doing that?" Tony asked.

Kate had an answer all prepared for his question. She had obviously thought a lot about this. "GPS locator strapped to their ankles; audio and video surveillance built into their clothes."

"No, I mean the part about becoming a mother," Tony replied.

"Ha, ha. Funny," Kate said, rolling her eyes.

Then, later at the office as they watched the Watson's hugging and kissing each other, she's brought the subject of procreation up again.

"Makes you think, doesn't it?" she asked.

"What?"

"Having kids," Kate said, a longing in her eyes that Tony found adorable.

"Yeah," Tony admitted. He frowned. "I don't think I could handle it," he added. He wasn't cut out to be a daddy. Sure, his nieces and nephews were fun to hang out with and he wasn't completely opposed to babysitting should his sister's call upon him, and they certainly made family get-together's more bearable because, honestly, he was a kid at heart, but Tony knew he wouldn't be able to be a full-time parent. He liked not having responsibilities beyond his job to tie him down.

Kate, however, would be the kind of person who worked full time, raised a baseball team of children, and still had time to do inane things like join the PTA and make costumes for school plays. Tony was sure of that.

One night, about a month after planting the tree Tony watched the girls climbing his Kate-tree and having the time of their lives. He smiled for the first time since before Kate was killed. He had gone out to talk to the girls and they had profusely apologized to him, calling him Mr. DiNozzo, saying that they hadn't meant to make him angry and could he please not tell their mother about this? Tony had laughed it off, though. "I don't mind, girls," he'd said. "Just be careful."

The girls were beautiful, both with light blonde hair that obviously came from their father as Donna was a natural red-head and, if the people who arrived in droves at Christmas were any indication, so was most of her family. Their innocence was refreshing, and he was amazed with their willingness to befriend him—their mother's willingness to let it happen without thoroughly interrogating him first—without any questions asked. They didn't know his past, didn't know the number of people he had killed and seen die, didn't know that he knew more ways than he could count to murder someone without leaving obvious traces. His job, his career… his past life had taught him so many things that he just didn't want to know anymore.

His new life, however, was easier, and safer. He had friends—not close friends like he had had at NCIS, but still good friends, good people—and he had his house—undecorated as it was—and he had his job as a detective at the local precinct. He ran in the early evenings, always pushing himself a little harder than he really should have been. He had dated, some, but never anything that went beyond a first or second date. Sometimes he was sure that he had stayed in his pseudo relationships with women back in DC only because it gave him good material to bug Kate and McGee. He didn't joke with the people he worked with and hadn't fired his gun since leaving DC except for on the shooting range when he needed to requalify. He called his family more than he had in the ten years prior to joining NCIS and had managed to convince his older sister, Isabella, to let her kids, Joseph and Maria, nine and eight, come visit him for a few weeks during their summer break. He was pretty sure his mother had something to do with it—Isabella had never really trusted him to be around her kids without 'adult supervision'—but he didn't really care. He missed his niece and his nephew and hadn't been able to bring himself to visit them because they lived in Virginia Beach, relatively quick drive East on the I-264 from Norfolk.

Tony often found himself thinking about his past life during the early hours of the morning after his seemingly unstoppable nightmares dragged him from his bed. He didn't regret leaving. He knew it was the right thing; that it was what he had to do for himself. But he missed his friends and the support that the team had always given him.

After drying his face off with a dish towel Tony decided he should start figuring out what to do with the boxes of his possessions. Other than his clothes, books, CD's, and movies everything was still packed and taking up space that he would need when his niece and nephew arrived in two weeks time.

He found an Exact-o-Knife in one of the drawers in the kitchen and then went into the living room where the majority of the boxes had found themselves. First, he decided, he would deal with the framed pictures. They were out of date and he was pretty sure the glass had been broken in a few of the frames during his impromptu packing-and-skipping-town act, but that was easy enough to deal with.

Pictures of his sisters and their children; of his parents and grandparents; a group picture of his fraternity and an updated one from their spring break reunion in Panama City; of him and his partners from when he was a cop, and even some older pictures of beloved childhood pets, including a Shih Tzu that had died when he was seven or eight. He stopped and sat down when he found the box that was full of pictures of the team with all its different members. Gibbs was in them all, as were Ducky and Abby. Viv Blackadder was in some. Kate in others. McGee started showing up later on, always in a suit even though Gibbs had told him more than once that it wasn't necessary, that the dress code was lax and that he was a field agent now, not a computer tech, and casual clothing was much more logical a choice in the field.

He found his favourite picture easily, though. Just him and Kate in Paraguay. Their guide had snapped the picture. They were in the room they had gone to when they first arrived and were both sweating profusely, standing in front of the open fridge to cool down a little. Tony remembered debating with Kate whether or not it would be wise to take a Corona from the fridge and split it. It had been so hot and there was nothing in the fridge but Corona's and limes. The picture had been taken just as he grabbed some flaky ice from the freezer and dropped it down the front of Kate's tee shirt, making her jump and giggle and elbow him in the gut all at the same time.

"That was a good trip," Tony said softly. He didn't much care for the outcome, their mark getting taken out by someone who was supposed to be on their side, but they had saved the girl and solved the case and had gotten out of Virginia for a little while without Gibbs lurking over their shoulders.

Tony was just about to go put the picture on the mantle place when a car pulled up and parked at the curb. One man got out and approached Tony's house quickly. He reached the door and hit the doorbell before knocking firmly and loudly.

Not wanting to piss anyone off—his unexpected guest or his neighbours—Tony grabbed one of his guns from the end table and made sure it was loaded and that the safety was off, and then he went to the door and looked through the peep hole.

The man standing on the other side was distorted and there wasn't much light, but Tony would know him anywhere.

Sighing heavily, Tony stepped back and unlocked the door, turning the handle and pulling the heavy wooden plank back a few feet until he was looking his past in the face.

"Kinda late for a social call, don'cha think?" Tony asked coolly, making no move to hide the fact that he was armed, though the gun was currently pointed at the ground beside his right foot.

"Would'a been here sooner but you're a hard man to track down," the visitor replied as he stepped past Tony and walked into the living room as if he were an invited guest. Tony sighed again and closed the door, resigned to the fact that he couldn't hide any longer. He wasn't ready for this, but he couldn't help but thinking that maybe it was better that the choice was taken away from him. In his most honest heart of hearts he knew that he would never have the courage to go back to Virginia unless his hand was forced.

And he was pretty sure he was about to be dragged back, kicking and screaming if that was what it took.

I was going to put more in but I wanted to leave it here. Plus I really wanted to get this out before the 'net got filled with Mind Games spoiler fics, which, BTW, this is not going to be.

Please let me know what you think.

Mel