A/N: I almost didn't make my self-imposed posting schedule. Whew, WIPs - never again! I can't take the pressure.

Deja Vu All Over Again
Chapter Eight

"So, yeah," Winchester said. "That's it in a nutshell."

Gibbs poured himself another and drank it quickly, relished the burn of alcohol down his throat. He wished he could say his bullshit detector was broken, but he couldn't. He believed that Dean Winchester believed every last word of the story he'd just told. God help the poor bastard. Worse, he couldn't not believe it himself, because no one was that good a liar and no one would make up something like that. It was possible the tortured young man leaning against his tool counter was fourteen different kinds of crazy, but that same non-faulty bullshit meter didn't buy that either, not completely. His trusty gut burned, but only from the liquor and from the sheer magnitude of the Winchester family saga he halfway regretted insisting on hearing.

"Drink?" Gibbs asked.

"Mister, I'm a functioning alcoholic. You don't have to twist my arm."

Gibbs frowned, but tipped a jar full of dowels empty, blew out the dust and poured Winchester a liberal drink. Hell, Lucifer, Apocalypse, Hell, no soul, angels, demons. Hell. It was a lot to take in, and truthfully sounded about as farfetched as one of those movies DiNozzo was always prattling on about. Tony. A new worry niggled at the edges of his brain now. Not only was his agent missing, but apparently he'd been taken by a monster and was stuck with a potentially unstable and therefore dangerous guy who may or may not have a clue what he was doing while beating someone's brain in. He watched Winchester with a careful eye.

"I've told you everything just like you wanted. Your demands have been met." Winchester tossed his drink back, and when he spoke again his voice was rough. "Happy?"

"Happy is not the exact word, no," Gibbs said. "Your story is … well, most wouldn't believe it."

"But you do?"

"Yeah. God help me, I do."

"God's about the only thing you shouldn't believe in," Winchester said. "If something like the god as you know it exists, it's a giant douchenozzle. All the other gods are giant douchenozzles too, by the way, so it's not just yours."

Gibbs poured both of them a second drink, thankful for a high tolerance for himself, irrationally bothered by Winchester's. He knew the look the man was wearing, and it only ended one way, and that was death. There wasn't anything he could do about it. He didn't know why he wanted to. His damned gut was more trouble than it was worth sometimes. He couldn't fix Dean Winchester. He could only hope he wasn't too broken to help him find Tony, who he might just be able to fix. His battle had been chosen.

"Good to know. God's not real," he said. He narrowed his eyes at Winchester. "You didn't have to come here, but you did. Now I know I can trust you."

Winchester glowered, demonstrating how well he knew that he had had to come here.

"I don't know what spilling my guts has to do with trust," Winchester said, "but fantastic. Maybe we can move on to more important things."

"Do you know what's got DiNozzo and your brother yet?"

Frankly, Gibbs wasn't sure he wanted to know after hearing what he'd just heard. He knew there were things that went bump in the night. Neither he nor Tony had had extensive conversations about what had taken Tony a few years ago, but he knew. He did research himself and watched his agent carefully, especially for the past year, since the first incident with Sam Winchester. He didn't have a choice about knowing more now, and he'd bear it if it meant saving Tony.

"Or, let me rephrase. Can you be sure your brother didn't…"

"No." Winchester slammed his empty dowel jar on the counter so hard it was a miracle it didn't shatter. "It's not Sam. Sam's not … he's got his issues, okay, which I think is understandable, but he's been better these past few weeks. He's handling it. He's that same guy who helped save your guy's ass last time. Hell, if anything, he's more goody two-shoes than ever."

Gibbs raised his hands to acknowledge he shouldn't have suggested that, even though he had to for his own peace of mind. He had wanted a reaction and he was as pleased with the one he got as he could be, given the circumstances. Knowing Tony's too recent history with Sam Winchester, he had to make sure before he went forward with this. He couldn't very well make this official NCIS business, so if he was going rogue, it had better be for real. Unfortunately, it was.

"Okay, it's not your brother, former vessel for Satan." Who Gibbs was still shaken to know existed just like all otherworldly creatures the Winchesters fought daily. He wished he didn't know any of it, or at the very least wished Winchester had been able to tell him there was good to counterpoint evil. Well, he'd have to put him and his team on the good side. That had to count for something, even if they were only human. "What is it we're dealing with, again?"

Winchester slowly lost the murderous look, which had still been better than the dull, blank depression that reset in its place. His brother was probably one of the only things he had in this world, so the extreme reaction was understandable. Gibbs himself felt like Tony was family, but that came nowhere near as close as a sole living relative. He thought of his own father, and held back a wince.

"It's a Nix," Winchester said. "Basically, it's a water creature that looks almost human. The only way you can tell is that the cuff of their pants or hem of a dress or whatever is always wet. Could be standing in the Mojave and still have wet pants. Here, let me show you."

Winchester fished out his phone, futzed with it for a bit and flashed Gibbs pictures of pictures.

Gibbs recognized them as the last few taken with Tony's camera at the Yee scene. They were the ones Abby was still working on, so far as he knew, and they didn't look like much. Water and a blurry figure of a dockworker they were trying to ID and track down as a witness. He reached for his reading glasses, as if they would help, but couldn't find them. He squinted instead, guessed he could call the darker patches on the uniform water. Then again, the guy was nearly in the water himself, and wasn't that odd. There wasn't time for skepticism. If Winchester said this ordinary fellow was actually a supernatural monster, then he was not a witness, but the perpetrator.

"A Nix lures people into bodies of water by simple thought control. Pretty sure that's what he's doing to your guy in this photo."

Something twisted in Gibbs' stomach at the thought. In the past year, Tony had had some weird coma, apparently compliments of Lucifer and dosed with something Abby hadn't been able to pinpoint with one hundred percent accuracy after months of trying, apparently compliments of yet another dead guy. He'd heard of being touched by an angel, but Tony seemed to run contrary to that. Touched by a devil. Over and over.

"As in 'you are getting sleepy?'" Gibbs asked.

"Not hypnosis. It gets in your head, suppresses your fight or flight instinct. Suppresses everything, really. Once it's got you, that's all she wrote."

"But you said you thought DiNozzo was still alive," Gibbs said, straightening with alarm.

"I do. He … they are. The thing about the supernatural is that they don't always adhere to what humans have transcribed over the ages. Most stories are friend of a friend, word of mouth, or are the product of people who've had the shit scared out of 'em. Not exactly prime pickings for factual information."

Made sense, sort of.

"Ducky said that our dead ensign didn't drown. His lungs were clear, which meant he died before he went under," Gibbs said. "But that he had ante mortem bruises on his chest consistent with CPR."

"Your ME's right. So we think the thing's luring victims in, but stashing them somewhere alive for fresh, uh, meat."

Gibbs ignored the meat comment, for his own sanity.

"We?"

"A friend is helping me out with the detail work. Sam's the smart one, remember?" Winchester said. "Anyway, this friend knows that DC has a fair number of underground tunnels. We were thinking, maybe you might have a faster way to search them. Since I was coming here anyway, and all."

It was a good thought. Gibbs wasn't going to pretend he understood what a Nix was based on Winchester's threadbare description and he also wasn't going to pretend any of this would see the light of day as far as his job was concerned, but Ensign Yee had been in the water for a long time, yet hadn't died there. This theory was as good as anything he had to go on. The shock was wearing off and he was starting to think maybe he wasn't in his right mind, going on a wild goose chase with an unbalanced, probably suicidal self-proclaimed demon hunter. The Winchester brothers were a pair he had never wanted to see again, but they'd proven themselves allies before. He trusted Dean to get him to Tony, if nothing beyond that.

"Give me fifteen minutes," Gibbs said, and headed upstairs for his phone.

It only took ten for McGee to find the information he needed, and that included questioning why Gibbs wasn't there with the rest of the team and dissuading him from inviting himself along. No, McGee couldn't know what he and Tony knew. None of them could. Not ever. Considering he had no idea what to expect (Yee's eyeless and fingerless corpse flashed in his head), if it was the worst-case scenario, he didn't want them to know how much worse it truly was. He could only hope his command voice was enough.

"Large drainage pipe close to where we found our ensign, close enough to get victims out of the water and resuscitate if necessary," Gibbs called down to Winchester, who was still in the basement, talking on his own phone in a conversation that looked tense. "I'll drive."

Winchester headed for his own car, and Gibbs let it go without question. If he were in the same situation, he'd want a surefire way to escape into the night. The old junker of Winchester's slowed them down, but not much. Winchester knew how to drive, and he kept Gibbs' pace and maneuvering. It still took them the better part of an hour, an hour he didn't know DiNozzo had. He knew, though, the chance here was greater than if Winchester hadn't waltzed into NCIS. Hours of captivity were bad. Days were worse.

"What happens when we find them?" Gibbs asked, and knew Winchester would know what he meant. And it was when, not if.

"Depends on a few things, but all possible scenarios end the same. Dead Nix," Winchester said, moving round to the trunk of his car, where he popped the lid and began pulling out heavy weaponry. "You got blueprints or something?"

"Yeah." Gibbs pulled out his phone, waved it in the air. "I guess they're on here somewhere."

Winchester muttered something about old people that would have been rewarded with a head slap had the words come out of anyone else's mouth. With the grim set to the guy's jaw and the hardness in his eyes, Gibbs didn't want the one time someone retaliated to come when so much was on the line. With a few deft moves, Winchester pulled up the blueprints McGee had sent him. It was a mess of tunnels they'd have to search. Gibbs was banking on the Nix not venturing much past the drainage pipe, which narrowed things some. Not enough. What he wanted was to go down and magically find DiNozzo, alive and with all of his fingers and toes. Magic had to exist, right?

"Normally, I'd say we split up, save some time," Winchester said. "But I don't want your life on my head too. Lay on, MacDuff, and damned be him who first cries."

Gibbs blinked.

"My brother's the smart one, but I ain't no illiterate."

Winchester shot him a grin that almost made it to his eyes and began walking away. The access point McGee had pointed them to wasn't a direct route to the tunnel system. They'd have to tromp through a fair bit of sewer first. His knees protested. His head told them to stuff it. They hadn't made it to the manhole cover when Gibbs heard a car approach, two doors open and shut.

"Boss," McGee said.

Great. This was not good.

"No," Winchester mumbled to him. "No Scoobies along. Too many people tromping around down there with no clue what they're doing is not going to help."

"They won't back down. DiNozzo's important to them."

Ziva and McGee trotted up to him and Winchester, McGee's steps faltering a bit as he recognized Gibbs' companion.

"Whu … what? Boss, this is the guy who…"

"I know who he is, McGee," Gibbs snapped. "I thought I told you to stay put."

"Not if you believe you have a lead on Tony, Gibbs," Ziva said, voice as firm as ever. "He is our friend, too."

"You people have no idea what a serious pain in the ass you are," Winchester said, angry and rightfully so.

"Says the dead criminal," McGee retorted. "Oh, I've had plenty of time to look you up."

"All of you, shut it." Gibbs turned over several options in his head. It was too late to protect his people from implication should this go down poorly. It wasn't too late to protect them from the darker, less real aspects of it. "He's right. You should have stayed away."

"Gibbs, we know what we are dealing with," Ziva said. "Abby and Ducky both put it together. We are looking for a serial killer. You happen to be with one right now."

Well, that was easy. Gibbs didn't even have to make that story up on the fly. Winchester was fairly vibrating with tension now, though, and they could not hash this out now. Ziva and McGee showing up put a wrench in things, but he trusted them with Tony's life more than he trusted Winchester or his half-scrambled brother.

"How do we kill it, if we have to?" Gibbs murmured for Winchester's ears only.

"When in doubt, go for the head and don't stick around to find out if it worked. Leave that to me, if and when the time comes."

"Good. Good." Gibbs turned to two-thirds of his team. "Agent Smith isn't our guy. Tell me you didn't call in backup."

"We didn't, Boss. It was pretty clear you wanted to keep this quiet, and that was before we knew he was involved."

He worked with good people, no doubt about it.

"Okay," Gibbs said to everyone. "We go in pairs. McGee, you're with me. Ziva, accompany … Agent Smith."

Ziva was about to protest, eyeing Winchester. She'd hold her own against him, where McGee would probably end up on the wrong side of a fist. Gibbs held up a hand.

"I'll explain later. I trust him." That was enough. "Keep each other safe. I doubt cell phones are gonna work where we're going, so we might be cut off from each other. An hour passes, and I want your asses back here for a status report. Got it?"

Two affirmatives and an annoyed glare, and then they were headed underground to find DiNozzo. Alive.