Note: Too bad Gibbs had taken the duct tape with him when he stepped out of the room... I'm sure Mac would have wanted to borrow that...

Tony arrived at the hospital as the sun was setting. Normal visiting hours were over, but he flashed his badge at the security station to get into the patient wings, and from there up to the floor where MacGyver's room was. The nurses watching the floor told him that MacGyver was sleeping at the moment, but if he was quiet, he was welcomed to wait until he woke up. Tony thanked them and quietly sat in the chair that had already been pulled up near MacGyver's bedside.

Mac was sleeping, and the growing shadows drifting in through the shaded windows settled into the crags and valleys in his face. The artificial moonlight of the parking lot lamps cast a blue glow that made the strands of silver in Mac's hair stand out. For the first time since Tony had met him, MacGyver was looking close to his age.

That made Tony feel inexplicably sad. There weren't enough people like that in the world. Seeing Mac for the first time in the back of the squad car, he never would have guessed the older guy was a globe-trotting daredevil agent, a real James Bond/Indiana Jones hybrid. Working with him since had revealed a down-to-earth guy with the mind of an inventor, the hands of a surgeon, and a staunch refusal to believe in no-win scenarios.

Tony heaved a sigh, feeling a little foolish sitting there and watching MacGyver sleep. He'd put off his arrival at the hospital, not entirely sure how to accomplish what he'd hoped to get out of the visit. He should have figured Mac would be down for the night. He could try telling himself that if he were in Mac's shoes, he wouldn't want to be in a hospital all alone, and that having a friendly face in the next chair would be reassuring. A part of him wondered how long it had been since Abby or Gibbs had been visiting; it didn't seem like either of them to leave him alone for too long. However, Tony realized he was just fooling himself. With the true mission details so heavily classified and the synopsis so redacted, there was probably good reason why MacGyver couldn't say anything. "I guess I'll never know if it was Ziva," he whispered aloud.

"NO!" MacGyver shouted as his sharp twitch set all kinds of alarms blaring. The screen showing his vitals was going crazy; his blood pressure and heart rate were in the danger zone within seconds. "G'DOWN!" he cried again, wrenching his whole body sideways. Beads of moisture gathered on his forehead as his expressive face showed shock and pain. His long fingers grasped the bandage on his abdomen, plucking at it almost as if he were trying to perform surgery himself. "...not you… Not you!"

A nurse darted into the room, reading the monitors. Catching her patient's hands and failing to calm him, she tugged a syringe from one of the med drawers and plugged it into the port on his IV pole. As soon as the plunger emptied the liquid into the line, Mac sagged back into the mattress. "What happened?" the nurse demanded, quickly assessing her patient.

"I dunno!" Tony said quickly, horrified by the idea that just saying the name that haunted him so badly could elicit this kind of response in MacGyver.

"He's probably coming out of a bad dream, and he's hurting. He's refused most of the pain medication we offered him today, and I'll bet that's caught up with him." The nurse moved to the IV pole to work quickly with the bags. "There. That should give him some relief," she said, watching the monitors as Mac's vitals steadied out. "I don't believe this guy!" she exclaimed as she replaced the morphine button next to Mac's hand. "He keeps dropping this over the bed rail!" When every indicator was back in the safety zones and the alarms stopped beeping, she gently wiped Mac's forehead, murmuring calming words until his heart rate had once again returned to normal. The nurse turned to Tony as she stepped away from the bed. "I've given him something to reduce the pain, but he might still dream. If he has another nightmare like this and he doesn't wake up to push the button, call us right away."

"Will do!" Tony insisted. "This looks like a pretty wicked case of Post Traumatic Stress to me."

The nurse glanced at the badge on Tony's belt. "My job is to get him healthy, and that's all I'm going to worry about." With a final glance to reassure herself that MacGyver was resting quietly, she slipped out of the room and bumped the door closed.

At the sound of the latch, Mac's head shifted on the pillow. "…crumbs…" he mumbled, sounding worried. "G'down!… Always one…"

"Easy, Mac," Tony encouraged. "You're dreaming."

MacGyver's face twisted. "…Well, that's no good!… No, gotta get you home to… She's not gonna lose you! Wiring… headphones? Oh, God, that hurts!" His voice faded out, growing raspy and even more broken. "… No, you gotta… I'm… Zee, please!"

Tony jumped as if he'd been hit with one of those monster slugs. "Ziva?" he demanded, unable to help himself. He leaned in, finding the button and sliding it into Mac's hands. "Mac, if you're hurting, push this!"

Mac's fingers clenched around the button, crushing Tony's hand with enough strength to make the younger man yelp. When the medication hit his system, Mac went limp and released his grip. He lay still for a long moment, his breaths coming in short jerky gasps. When his eyes finally opened, they found Tony but were unable to fix on him.

"You okay?" Tony asked, shaking the circulation back into his fingers. "You scared me there!"

"Thought I was a goner," MacGyver whispered. "Thing hit me like a freight train." His too-bright eyes tracked blearily over Tony's face. "You saved my life…"

Tony shook his head. "You saved her! You pushed her out of the line of fire! You took that slug...so she wouldn't!"

"Not you!" Mac twisted, still caught in the remnants of the nightmare. Shallow gasps barely filled his lungs. "Gotta stay conscious… Talk to me? Tell… tell me more 'bout Tali. Tell me… more 'bout Gibbs'n Tony…"

"Ziva talked about me?" Tony couldn't keep the hopefulness out of his voice.

Mac's next breaths were a little deeper but still very ragged. He seemed to be gathering himself as his gaze slid unsteadily around the room and awareness glimmered in its depths. "Who…?"

Tony glanced around to make sure he wasn't too close to any open electrical sockets or standing under a storm cloud; with the whopper he was going to tell next, he wouldn't have been surprised if lightning generated out of thin air to strike him. "We broke the encryption on your laptop, MacGyver. We've read the entire file. We know what happened." He waited for Mac to process that information, and Tony wasn't pleased to see the stubborn set of his jaw. Tony raised his eyebrows and attempted a conspiratorial whisper. "I saw the size of that slug! How did you survive getting hit with that?"

It was obvious the pain medication was having an additional affect when Mac blurted out, "Barrel wasn't made for that ammo… didn't fit, so not as much 'oomph'…"

"That makes sense," Tony agreed, putting puzzle pieces together from Mac's synopsis. "And you made sure they won't hurt anyone else. I gotta say, from the looks of that monster, you saved a lot of lives there!"

Mac's gaze tightened, reminding Tony of Gibbs' 'Interrogation Look'. However, the forcefulness of the expression was lost a little as Mac waded through the mind-addling drugs being pumped into his system. "How?" Mac demanded.

"You rigged an explosion using chemicals in the building you were held in," Tony said. "By destroying those bullets, you…"

Mac shook his head, wincing as it made his stomach swim. "No… How did you break the encryption?"

Tony shrugged. "I didn't. It was McGee. You know how good he is on the computer. You knew that before you'd met him. She told you all about us."

"Careful," Mac warned. "You're playing with…"

"Fire?" Tony filled in as Mac ran out of energy before he could finish his thought.

Hauling in a deep breath, Mac shook his head once. "...C4..."

"Plastique explosive? Yeah, she was like that. If you didn't know what you were dealing with, she could really surprise you."

"Once," Mac admitted before he realized he'd spoken.

Tony rejoiced silently at the crack he'd managed to open. "Once was usually all it took. Not a whole lot got a second chance to underestimate her."

Mac twisted again, pain showing on his face that no drug could mask. "Not fair… not fair to you…" he mumbled, catching one of Tony's sleeves. "Told her so, too! Kate did it to me… with Sam. Not fair…" Mac's hand dropped back to the sheet as his strength gave out. "She seemed so soft…"

Tony couldn't put the rambling thoughts together, wondering if Mac was getting lost in the conversation they'd started in the bullpen the night before. "Kate died years ago," he reminded him gently.

"And left him alone! All all those years… I told her that! But she wouldn't listen. I met him so much later. Wasn't fair to either of us. I told her she couldn't do that to…" Mac broke off with a groan as his back arched at the memory.

Completely lost now, Tony found himself getting worried. "Mac, what are you talking about? Kate was killed by a terrorist ten years ago; she didn't leave anyone behind. We're talking about Zi…"

Mac's sharp inhale caught in his throat, and he coughed painfully. As soon as he caught his breath, he accepted the straw Tony guided to his lips and took a few swallows from the beige plastic cup. "Thanks… You know, when she showed up with… all that intel, and quite a story… I wouldn't let her come. She had too much to lose. That made her mad…"

Tony pictured Ziva's 'stubborn face' and grinned. "When she feels strongly about something, there's no stopping her."

"Said she had to do it for…" He bit his lip hard, closing his eyes as he rested for a long moment. A sudden memory made him smile. "She gave my secretary conniptions." When Tony prompted him, he continued. "Showed up in my office… Still can't figure how she got through our security."

"That sounds like her," Tony said, the pang of missing her a physical force. "What got you talking about the team?"

MacGyver's eyelids had drifted closed, and the effort it took to pry them open brought his chin up. "Classified document, sealed in an envelope… I used the Swiss Army Knife in my pocket, and she said,..."

"Rule Number Nine; Always Carry a Knife!" Tony finished with him.

The sound of MacGyver's choppy breaths mingled with the soft blips from the monitors. Gathering himself to speak, Mac continued with a faint, yet reminiscent smile. "I pulled Gibbs' sorry carcass out of the jungle…"

"When you first met him, thirty-something years ago," Tony nodded, catching on to MacGyver's thought process.

"Yeah… Took two weeks to get to safety…" It was obvious he was fading, but he kept going. "I learned a lot about his rules. She filled in the ones I'd forgotten… there're, what, forty of 'em?"

Tony snorted. "I think we've climbed beyond the sixties!"

"No kidding... I have some catching up to do…" MacGyver's voice trailed off to almost nothing, and he seemed to melt into the mattress. A slow smile parted his lips, and Tony had to lean in close to hear his next words. "Funny… she'n I felt the same 'bout knives… but our philosophies on paperclips were radically different…"

Knowing he had a brief window before MacGyver gave out completely, Tony bolstered his courage. "Where is she now?"

Mac was quiet for so long that Tony feared he had gone back to sleep. "I'm sorry, Tony..." he finally whispered.

For one horrible moment, Tony thought that meant she hadn't made it back from the mission, but he remembered that after she'd saved MacGyver's life, he'd offered her a job. He tried to keep the pleading out of his eyes as he leaned in and nudged the semi-conscious man's elbow. "Mac, I gotta know. I haven't heard one word from her since I left her in Israel three years ago."

"I get it, DiNozzo… I really do. I'm sorry."

Tony was about to press him further, but it was obvious that MacGyver's last reserve had run out, and he was once again asleep. Tony stared at him for a long moment, then his frustration welled up and he pressed his clenched fists into his knees and gritted his teeth. "I can't believe this!"

"I can't believe you're in my chair," a wry whisper came from the doorway, startling DiNozzo badly. Gibbs materialized out of the shadows, tapping a finger against his lips as Tony started to fumble for an excuse. "I heard. When did McGee break the encryption?"

Tony heaved a sigh. "That was a 'Rule Seven' situation, Boss," he admitted, looking down in embarrassment.

Gibbs quirked one eyebrow. "Convincing," he admitted, and if Tony would have listened harder, he would have heard brief approval behind the words. However, the frown Gibbs fixed his agent with next held a mix of disappointment and anger. "How long did you know about this?"

Tony lowered his head. "The first day, when you caught us with his file." Sensing Gibbs' growing frustration, Tony bristled. "Why didn't I say anything? Because I couldn't be sure. I couldn't get a straight answer out of him."

Gibbs took a deep breath. He'd known right away that Mac knew too much about his team, and it wasn't much of a stretch to figure out how. He'd read the synopsis when Tony wasn't looking, and he'd done his own form of digging. Ultimately, he'd known that he had to back off; Mac's reticence had made that clear. "Why do you think Mac won't talk about her?"

"If I hear, 'It's Classified' one more time…" Tony grumbled.

Gibbs stepped to the window and gazed out over the parking lot. Catching movement in the reflection, Gibbs watched Tony cross his arms like a petulant five-year-old. "I don't think we have the whole story."

"Ya think, Boss?"

Gibbs fired a look at him that was wasted as Tony glared at the floor. "I know Mac's not telling us everything; but if it's not coming from him...?"

"He's protecting her?" Tony snorted.

"Yeah… How?"

It was obvious that Tony didn't want to look at the big picture, so Gibbs decided to spell it out for him. "She leaves us… we don't really have the full story on that. She turns up at the Phoenix Foundation. Their Field Ops division does what needs to be done, sometimes what the government…or its agencies… can't." He had Tony's attention now, so he paused to let that thought sink in. "There's a new ammunition out there somewhere, with bullets big enough to take out aircraft. She has this intel." He gave it another moment to let the younger man chew that over.

"If the Phoenix Foundation does what we can't, and she went to them with it, it's gotta be something really ugly; some kind of diplomatic talk that can't get messed up… A hostage negotiation!" Tony remembered suddenly. "There were two other hostages that they got to safety. Mac doesn't even hint about their identity."

"So, something has to be done off the radar, and she goes to Mac. We don't know the whole story."

"So we don't know why he can't talk about it… or her… but we can figure he's got a really good reason."

Gibbs nodded. "So does she."

Tony drew his breath in between his teeth. "Ooookay, I didn't think of that. Mac slipped and hinted she was protecting someone…"

"Maybe us?"

Tony looked up at him. "Us?"

"How many times did we go off-book for her?"

Tony had to smile at that. "Yeah, a lot. I get what you mean. We broke every rule in the book for her; when she was framed her for that assassination, when we took out Salim's terrorist camp… I see what you mean."

"If we're willing to do what it takes, at our own expense, she'd know that. If she could have brought this to us, she would have. This one might have taken us down."

"Now that it's over, will she…?"

"Is it over?" Gibbs interrupted.

Tony's mouth hung open for a second. "I… I dunno. Not really knowing what she's involved with, I guess…" He snapped his jaw closed and pointed a knowing finger at Gibbs. "Oh, I gotcha. Yeah, you make a lot of sense."

"Cut MacGyver some slack," Gibbs advised. "He hates this as much as we do." When Tony gave him a questioning look, Gibbs shrugged. "He told me."

Tony was nodding with resignation. "I hated working undercover ops without telling you or the rest of the team. It was for the greater good, and the orders came from the Director or above, but I still hated not being able to talk to you about it. I can't imagine not being able to tell you if I knew Ziva's whereabouts!"

MacGyver drew in a sharp gasp at the sound of her name, and Gibbs hurried to catch his arm as he almost threw himself over the bed rails. Mac flailed, grabbing any part of Gibbs he could. "…G'Down!… Always one left… Not gonna last…"

"Mac, you're having a nightmare!" Gibbs winced as the alarms went off on the monitors next to his ears. He darted a quick glance at the screens and his jaw clenched; he'd been in enough hospitals to know those readings were quickly approaching dangerous. "HEY!" he barked, startling MacGyver out of his fevered dream. "You're safe, Mac! I've gotcha!"

"Where's…?" His fingers full of the fabric of Gibbs' polo shirt, Mac refused to let go. His panicked gaze found Gibbs' face, and relief filled his expression before it crumpled. "Oh, I hate this, Gibbs! So sick of this…" The breathless admission sounded dangerously close to a sob.

The nurse was once again in the room, and she made the mistake of trying to elbow Gibbs out of the way. Both MacGyver's death-grip on his shirt and the arctic defiance in the Special Agent's eyes backed her up for only a second. "Look, he's in no shape to handle this kind of stress. This is his second attack since you both showed up. I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

Gibbs swiveled his head to give Tony a sharp look. "Go home."

"Both of you!" the nurse insisted.

Gibbs ignored her, returning his full attention to calming his agitated friend. "Don't worry, Mac; I'm not going anywhere," he said in a low voice. "C'mon now, it's almost over."

"Look," the nurse started again, but she swallowed hard as Gibbs' gaze once again found hers.

"Tony, go home," Gibbs said again, his order no less forceful in the soft tone that was slowly bringing MacGyver's nightmare to an end. "He'll settle down. I'm not leaving."

Tony slunk towards the door, wishing he could have gotten more, and sorry that he'd made MacGyver so uncomfortable. As he hit the hallway, he could hear Gibbs' low voice and the smoothing of the erratic beeps.

Note: ...poor guys...!