A/N: Huge thanks to Cha Oseye Tempest Thrain and Kate98 for betaing.

His face was wet.

Why was his face wet?

There was a noise, it was loud.

A gun shot.

There's Gibbs.

Where's Kate?

Oh, God.


Kate. She was shot.

His face was wet. It was her blood.

"Tony. Tony, can you hear me?"

Her blood.

"Tony, you have to calm down. The paramedics are on their way, but you need to stay calm till they get here. You need to take slow breaths."

He had to get it off. It was her blood, it shouldn't be on his face. He needed to get it off.

"Need to get it off."

"Tony, stop it! You're going to hurt yourself!"

Somebody was trying to stop him getting it off. They were trying to pin his hands down to his sides. He lashed out blindly, trying to get them to let him go.

"I don't know what's wrong. He's trying to scratch his face, he won't stop struggling."

"Tony, stop it."

He stopped. "Okay, Boss."

"Tony."

Somebody was tapping his face. He weakly moved a hand up, to try and swat it away.

"Tony, do you know where you are?"

The person was annoying, but maybe if he answered, they'd leave him alone. "Roof. Kate." He started coughing, his throat was irritated and his chest felt congested. He had blood on his face, why was his throat irritated? It could be a left over from the plague, but he'd only felt fatigued for the last day or so, most of the other symptoms were gone.

"No, Tony. You're not on the roof."

The person was still talking, but he'd tuned them out. He had to figure this out: if he wasn't on the roof, maybe it wasn't blood on his face. He brought his hand up tentatively to his face, and wiped his fingers along his cheek. The other person had grabbed his wrist, but let him move his fingers in front of his eyes. No blood, just clear fluid. Tears. He wasn't on the roof.

His eyes finally focussed properly on the person in front of him. McGee.

"Tony?" McGee said, with a frown. He looked scared and worried.

Tony looked past him, to see Ziva kneeling beside Gibbs. She glanced up in his direction, worry also visible on her face.

Tony remembered. "Gibbs is dead."

Ziva quickly reassured him, "No, he isn't. He's been in and out of consciousness. He hasn't spoken, but he's been awake."

He could feel himself frowning. Gibbs wasn't dead. He'd been wrong: Gibbs wasn't dead.

"I told you I might not be dead."

"Yeah, well, you've always got to be right, don't you, Gibbs?"

He looked back at McGee, who was staring at him intently. "Tony, who are you talking to?"

"Gibbs," he said matter-of-factly.

"Okay," McGee finally said, looking at him like he might start gibbering and jumping around the room doing a monkey impression at any second.

"He can't hear me, remember? I'm in your head."

"I know he can't hear you. I may be concussed and dehydrated, but I'm not stupid. Hey, you're not dead, I can get some water now!" He tried to get up, only to have McGee restrain him, this time looking at him like he was the monkey.

"Tony, the paramedics will be here soon, just stay where you are. I'll get the water."

McGee's words were fuzzy, trying to get up hadn't been such a good idea.

"See, I knew it was a bad idea to try and get the water."

"Ya think?"

Tony woke up in a hospital room. The room was bright enough to force him to squint.

"Tony."

He looked to his right, where the voice had come from, to see Kate.

"Kate?"

He sat up on his elbows and pushed himself to rest against the back of the bed.

"Who else, Tony?" She moved closer. "You didn't protect him."

"What?" He was confused. "Who didn't I protect?"

She placed herself in front of him, her hands resting on the bed as she stuck her face right in front of his.

"Who do you think?" she yelled. "Gibbs! He's dead because of you. He was trying to protect you."

"No," he protested quietly, drawing back from her and shaking his head.

"Yes. He was lying there, not moving. You saw that. They didn't do anything near as bad as that to you. Why?"

"I don't know!" He shook his head.

"He was protecting you, stopping them from thinking that you knew anything. I guess they believed it, huh? Although, that was probably not too hard, you're not exactly the brightest person around."

His eyes widened. "Hey!"

"You know it." Her voice grew quiet. "You killed him. It was your fault. Everything that you touch goes wrong-"

The room around him morphed into his childhood home, and Kate changed into his father. There was no feeling of unreality, everything that was happening was perfectly normal.

"You're never going to get anywhere with that attitude. You understand?"

Tony nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He tried to ease himself slowly away from his father. His father was a vampire. Tony didn't know why, but he knew it. Somehow, something had happened, and he'd been turned into one. He felt his heart rate climbing, his breath quickening, as he slowly backed away.

"What's wrong, Tony?" The sentence finished with Gibbs standing in front of him, his incisors now fangs.

Tony turned and ran out of the room, feeling Gibbs following behind him. He made it to the front door, and fumbled with the dead bolt, awkwardly trying to open it. He finally unlocked it and wrenched the door open. The screen door stood between him and freedom. He flipped the lock open and grabbed the handle. Just as he was about to turn it, he felt arms about his body and Gibbs' breath beside his ear.

"Going somewhere, DiNozzo?"

Time stood still as his body and brain shut down. Gibbs' face got closer to his neck, waking Tony's survival instincts. He reached into his pocket without thinking about it, grabbed his keys, turned and stabbed Gibbs in the chest.

Gibbs looked down in shock, before crumpling to the floor. His body lay flat and still, eyes closed.

"You did this." Kate's insistent voice came from behind him.

"No," he denied, not believing what had happened.

"You killed him."

"No." He whirled to confront her. He was standing in the middle of a football field. There was nobody around; the world was quiet. There was trash on the ground, being blown listlessly by the wind. He pivoted quickly, searching each direction, trying to decide what to do. Spotting a break in the surrounding fence, he walked towards it, and stepped out into a street.

There were no cars, parked or travelling. No people, no animals; just emptiness. He started walking down the middle of the street, ignoring the instinct that told him that was dangerous. There was nothing around, it couldn't be. How often did he get to walk down the middle of a street anyway?

The street led to a parking lot. There was a car, he approached it, his footsteps loud on the concrete, and looked through the window. Gibbs lay dead in the back seat, a bullet hole through his head and one through his chest.

"You did this."

"No."

"It would have been better if you had let me kill you. Kate would still be alive, so would Gibbs."

His stomach dropped at the words. Jeffrey was right. If he'd just let Jeffrey slit his throat, everyone would have been okay. It's not like they would have cared that he was dead; Gibbs would have been expecting it, considering the blood that was on the windows.

It would have been easier.

"I could kill you now, if you want." The words were right next to his ear.

"Kill me."

"Tony, no."

"Ducky?" Tony looked around, trying to spot the man.

"Tony, we need you, you can't give up. Gibbs needs you."

Tony felt his brow furrow in confusion and grief. "Gibbs is dead."

"No, he's not. Tony, you need to fight."

"I saw him, Ducky, he was dead."

"That's right, I'm dead, aren't I?" Gibbs' voice was beside his ear. "You killed me."

Tony felt his knees give out, and he fell to the ground. "I didn't want this to happen."

"It still happened, though, didn't it?"

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

TBC...