"No…" Tony shook his head in confusion. She had to have hidden, or run away. "You have to find her, she needs our help."
"Are you saying someone else was there with you?" Ducky asked, afraid there was a victim they missed somehow. "Who are we looking for?"
"Leigh!"
"Petty Officer Danford?"
"Yes!" Tony's voice rose in frustration as Gibbs just gave him a perplexed look. What was wrong with them? Who did they think he meant?
"Is she here too?"
Gibbs glanced at Ducky, and they exchanged a grim look. Tony had thought she was alive and he was going to be devastated when he found out otherwise.
"What aren't you telling me?" Tony demanded.
"Tony," Gibbs began hesitantly, "Petty Officer Danford didn't make it."
Tony shook his head in denial. "No. She was hurt, but…" His voice trailed off and he tried to remember more about finding her. Had she been hiding an injury? One that had become fatal without treatment? He'd never forgive himself for not checking or questioning her more thoroughly.
"Surely you don't think you're to blame for her death, Anthony?" Ducky asked gently.
An even worse thought occurred to him. "Oh God… I left her. Something happened after I left her. I left her alone…," he repeated, full of self-loathing. This was his fault. A crushing sense of guilt and failure overwhelmed him.
Something in Gibbs' chest contracted painfully as he watched Tony withdraw into himself. He was still sitting up in the bed, rocking slightly now, whispering 'I left her' over and over. He couldn't watch Tony pull away from them any longer.
Ducky saw it too and looked to Gibbs, trusting him to know best how to handle Tony shutting down.
"Tony, look at me," Gibbs ordered. He placed his fingers under Tony's chin and turned his face toward him. Tony resisted at first, then relented. The guilt and pain in the shimmering green eyes tore at him.
"Listen, Tony; there was nothing you could have done for her." He looked to Ducky to corroborate his statement.
Ducky could see Tony wasn't convinced. "Jethro is correct. The poor young woman was killed just before you disappeared."
Tony stiffened. "What?" He felt a chill and started to tremble. He didn't understand any of this. Tony suddenly felt drained and bone-weary. The small burst of adrenaline brought on by recalling parts of his ordeal was fading and the pounding in his head rose to the fore again.
Gibbs frowned as Tony's face took on a pale and shocky appearance. "Tony, lay back down," Gibbs urged, pushing his shoulders back with gentle pressure. Tony let himself be guided back to the bed and Gibbs pulled the blankets up, hoping to alleviate his shivering.
"That's not possible, something had to have happened." He trusted Gibbs more than anyone, and knew neither man would lie to him about something like this. But everything they said conflicted with what he remembered about Leigh, and their brief but intense connection.
"She was alive when I woke up; we talked. She helped me," Tony insisted as Ducky looked on with growing concern.
Gibbs gave the slightest tap to Tony's forehead. "That's the drugs and your concussion talking, Tony. You practically memorized her service jacket. You had a head injury and were under the influence of some pretty strong drugs. With all that, it's not much of a stretch that you imagined talking to her."
He couldn't have imagined the whole thing. He couldn't have. But two men he trusted were telling him Leigh had died, when he'd thought he'd saved her. It made his failure and sense of loss all the more agonizing.
Tony nodded in acknowledgement, but his eyes were distant and troubled. "Maybe you're right…," he said numbly.
Gibbs could see he was still having difficulty accepting what he'd been told. This wasn't over yet; not for Tony.
"It's going to be okay, Tony."
That got a reaction. "Nothing about what happened to those women is okay," Tony replied sharply.
Tony was deflecting, not ready to accept comforting words from anyone. "That's not what I meant." And you know it, Gibbs thought.
Tony closed his eyes and exhaled. "I know Boss," he said in a soft, barely audible voice.
Sensing Tony needed some time, Gibbs looked at Ducky and glanced toward the door meaningfully. As Ducky turned to go, Gibbs patted a blanket covered shoulder. "It's late. Get some rest, Tony...I'll be back in the morning."
~.~
Tony laid awake for hours after Gibbs and Ducky left, and right after the nurses' mid-shift rounds, he decided to give in to his growing compulsion to leave. He dressed in a change of clothes he found in the room's cupboard, probably courtesy of Gibbs or Abby, trying not to think about the clothes he'd been wearing when admitted to the hospital. They were likely in evidence lock up, along with his cell phone. He used his room phone to call a friend for a ride, and since it was the middle of the night, he was able to leave without being seen.
Tony cleared security and took the elevator up to the bullpen. The room was dim and quiet, just as he expected it to be at 4AM. He sat at his desk and powered the computer on, logged in and navigated to the network folder where they kept their case files and scene photos. They were organized by date and it didn't take Tony long to find what he was looking for.
Feeling vaguely guilty he was unable to take Gibbs at his word, Tony scanned through the photos. There was the body of the guard he'd shot, and the pool of Miller's blood at the bottom of the basement stairs. For a second, Tony thought he could the smell death and decay again, and he carefully avoided looking too closely at the ones with the dead women from the other room. He found the photos taken of their prison, his and Leigh's. The blood stained floor where he'd lain unconscious got barely a glance.
A sharp pain swelled and crested in his chest as he came to a photo of Leigh still chained to the wall, his leather jacket covering her body. He struggled to breathe for a few seconds. It was true, she was dead. He felt conflicted and lost in more ways than one but underneath it all, there was the beginning of acceptance. Vivid as they were, his memories of her were false, created by his own concussed, heavily drugged mind. There was just one thing left to do. He made his way down the back stairs to Autopsy.
The doors slid open with a whoosh, and the motion activated lights flickered on. Tony stood in the middle of the room, looking around uncertainly. He still couldn't entirely reconcile his experience with what he'd been told yet. Not until he saw Leigh for himself. Now that he was here, he wasn't sure he wanted to see her if Ducky had already cut her open. It almost seemed like another violation, on top of what she'd already endured. He nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of a voice behind him.
"Anthony, what on earth are you doing here?"
Tony whirled. "Damn, Ducky. Do you sleep here, or what?"
Displeasure evident on the usually gentle features, Ducky replied. "Humph. One of us is where they are supposed to be, young man, and it is not you," he chided, referencing Tony's 'early release' from the hospital.
"Well…" Tony began nervously. When he wanted to be, Ducky could be far more intimidating than Gibbs ever had been. At least to him.
Ducky waved aside his discomfort. "I have a feeling I know why you're here, Anthony. Petty Officer Danford?" he asked with that sympathetic and knowing look that indicated he understood everything you didn't say.
Tony nodded, grateful he didn't have to spell out what he needed. He followed as Ducky moved toward a drawer and placed a hand on the pull.
"Wait," Tony said, laying a hand on Ducky's arm. "How did she die?"
"I haven't done the autopsy yet, we started with …," Ducky paused, unsure how Tony would react. "Well…the women who were missing longer."
Tony nodded, relieved Leigh hadn't been autopsied yet.
"It appears from a visual examination that she was strangled," Ducky continued. "And X-rays showed a fracture in her hyoid bone," he added, gesturing at his own throat.
Tony pressed his lips together grimly. "Could I have a few minutes, Ducky?"
"Of course, my boy," Ducky replied, his voice full of understanding. "Take however much time you need. I'll be in my office."
Tony waited for Ducky's office door to close, then took a steadying breath and pulled the drawer open. As the sheet covered body came into view, he began to recall snatches of their 'conversation'.
He lowered the sheet, feeling oddly grateful that Leigh's breasts and hips had been draped separately, granting her the respect and modesty taken in her last hours of life. He grimaced at the livid bruising encircling Leigh's throat, and recalled her unusual, gravelly voice. In retrospect, his confused mind had given him subtle clues at the time that she was already gone.
The dark look she'd given him at his 'nine lives' reference, and the defeated, hopeless expressions that came later. Add to that Leigh's icy, white skin and the fatalistic comments sprinkled throughout their exchanges.
Now neither one of us will leave this room alive…. it's too late for me…
He'd noticed the odd inflection in her voice, but hadn't attributed any significance to it at the time. How she'd kept encouraging him to leave her; Miller's comment, "they're dead and so are you." He assumed Miller meant it figuratively, and as a threat, but he'd meant all of the women, including Leigh.
Somehow through the head injury and drugs, his mind had known she was dead, and been unable to accept that she was beyond his help. As he reached to pull the sheet up again, the doors slid open, admitting Gibbs. A very unhappy looking Gibbs.
Uh-oh.
"Tony," Gibbs greeted, unsurprised at finding him here.
"Um…hi?" Tony returned with a sheepish expression.
Gibbs just rolled his eyes. "Figured I'd find you here," he said as he crossed the room to stand next to Tony.
"Hospital called you, huh?"
Gibbs nodded. "If you didn't have that dent in the back of your head, I'd be considering giving you the little head-slap you've earned."
"Sorry."
Gibbs sighed. "Nothing to be sorry for." He got it, but had to ask. "You didn't believe us, Tony?"
"Rule 3."
Gibbs raised an eyebrow in challenge. "Even with me?"
"Yeah." A ghost of a smile crossed Tony's pinched and pale features. "Sometimes especially with you."
Gibbs' lips twitched then lifted in his trademark half-smile. "Wouldn't have you any other way."
Warmth spread through him at the affirmation, but Gibbs had something else on his mind.
"I'm sorry this happened, Tony." Gibbs' voice was full of regret and guilt. "To her and to you."
Tony sighed. He wasn't the only one lugging around a burden of guilt that wasn't his to carry. "Look Gibbs; I get that it's become second nature, but don't marinate in guilt over things you had no control over. I don't blame you at all for what happened to me. Not this time, or the others."
"Back at you, Tony," Gibbs said firmly. "If anyone could have saved her, it would have been you. You couldn't have; it was already too late for her when you were taken."
"I know that now."
"Good," Gibbs said, clapping his shoulder. "Now come on. I'll buy us breakfast."
Tony narrowed his eyes. "You just want more coffee."
"That too."
Tony snorted in amusement. "I'll be right up. I'm almost done here."
As the doors slid closed behind Gibbs, he sobered and looked down at Leigh's waxy, gray tinged features. They were unmarked except for the circle of bruising around her neck, and she was lovely even in death.
"I'm sorry I couldn't help you," he whispered softly.
You did, Tony.
His heart thumped hard in his chest and he whipped his head around to find the source of the voice, but no one was there. The sound was soft and lyrical, how it must have been before the life had been choked from her. He shook his head in denial.
You kept your promise, they won't hurt anyone else.
It was her.
I can rest now. Thank you.
Then the voice was gone and he was left there, breathless with wonder.
He looked down at Leigh one last time and as he reached to cover her once again, he noticed one of her hands was clenched closed in a fist. Tony glanced toward Ducky's office and saw that the door was still shut. He had a hunch and even if the door were open, he'd probably have risked Ducky's wrath anyway.
Tony opened fingers stiffened in death and retrieved an item from her hand, distinctly remembering the moment he'd dropped it. Then he covered her and closed the drawer. As he left Autopsy, his mind churned and he wondered again exactly how much of what he experienced was imagined, and how much was reality.
Tony headed to the elevator to take Gibbs up on his offer of breakfast. A sense of peace spread through him as he placed the key to Leigh's shackle in his pocket.
~End~
Author's Notes:
Gibbs' Rule #3 (one of the rule 3's, anyway) Never believe what you're told. Double check.
I hope you enjoyed this one. If you did, I'd love to hear from you.