A/N: new chapter. Yay! I wish writing essays for my writing class was as easy as writing fics. Yes, college sucks, especially if you're constantly sick because of the cold weather. Yeah, I know I shouldn't bitch about NYC's weather since it's really not that bad, but this is my first real winter with snow, low temperatures and all... Well, I bet none of you is interested in my random blurbs. I feel like I'm blogging instead of writing a simple author note. I am awful. Whatevs. I blame it on the painkillers.

Anyway, I hope you'll like it and you'll leave some cute and nice reviews. Yay to reviews! OMG, I should really stop popping painkillers, shouldn't I? Geez....

Kate was having troubles falling asleep; every time she closed her eyes, all the memories that she wanted erase so badly, came back, filling her head with unpleasant images and making it hard for her to breath. She kept seeing the blood all over the furniture that she and Zach had chose together, the strong smell of rotten flash surrounding the whole house… And the note. The note written with her fiancé's blood. Shivering unconsciously, she decided it was no use to try to sleep.

Quietly walking out of Tony's bedroom, towards the big cabinet filled with DVDs, she smiled softly at the sight of Tony half asleep on the couch, shivering for the cold. She stepped closer, and she gently touched his shoulder.

He looked at her trying to reciprocate the smile, but sneezing instead. It was quite cold in the living room, she had to admit.

She laughed at him affectionately and took his hand, leading him to his bedroom.

"Come to bed, Tony. It's freezing in here."

He followed her and got into his bed in autopilot.

Kate chuckled. She was pretty sure Tony wasn't really conscious, because if he was, she knew that he would have made some kind of inappropriate remark at that point. After glancing at Tony's sleeping form for one more time, she got into bed as well and surprisingly fell asleep almost immediately.

As Kate woke up, she felt the warm breath of another person on her neck and a pair of arms around her waist. She slowly and quietly turned around, just to find Tony, still sleeping like a baby, snuggled up into her. What surprised her the most, though, was that her arms were hugging Tony's tightly, almost as she was afraid of letting him go. Rolling her eyes, but unable to stop a smile from playing her lips, she pondered what to do. She surely wasn't expecting to find herself in that situation, first thing in the morning. She definitely couldn't deny it was a pleasant feeling, to wake up into Tony's arms, but that was definitely not part of her plans. Sighing silently, she decided to wait until he woke up, and let him make the first move.

Tony's alarm went off but he didn't make any effort to turn it off; he was far too comfortable to move. As he slowly became more and more conscious, he noticed he was hugging something – or someone. It was definitely a someone, because his pillows didn't feel that good to the touch and they surely didn't smell like… KATE!

He started panicking, now completely awake, but afraid to make even the slightest move. He vaguely remembered getting from the couch to his bed at some point during the night. He cursed himself. What was he supposed to do?! He had just realized he was snuggled up to a sleeping Kate Todd which definitely meant he was going to walk funny at least for a couple of days, as she would have probably hit his sensitive parts as soon as she woke up. As he thought of ways to get out of that situation without any major damage to his manhood he noticed that Kate's arms were hugging his. He thought if maybe, that would have made the situation better. After giving it some thought, he just opted for doing… nothing. He pretended to be still asleep, waiting for her to make the first move.

Kate was still pretending to be asleep as well. She could feel Tony wasn't anymore, since his breathing pattern had considerably changed in the past four minutes, and wondered if he had decided to do the same thing she was doing and let her be the one to make the first move. After a few minutes of thinking, she decided it was useless to keep pretending; after all she didn't want to waste time to think about something that was completely meaningless – was it? – for both of them. They had to leave Washington ASAP.

She slowly turned around to face Tony, who unfortunately chose that very moment to open his eyes again. He prepared himself to be slapped or hit or hurt in someway.

Kate had to restrain herself from laughing out loud in his face. She noticed his eyes were oozing fear and that made something inside of her melt. With a smile, she disentangled herself from his embrace and stepped down the bed.

"Good morning, DiNozzo. Lets get ready. We'll grab some breakfast on the go."

He nodded blushing slightly, shocked at her unusual reaction.

"Sure…"

As she left the room and headed towards the main bathroom, Tony decided that he needed to keep his feelings –wait, did he just say 'feelings'?! – in check if he didn't want this to end badly. After all it was Kate that he was talking about. Jumping out of bed, he almost ran towards the shower in his ensuite.

In the meanwhile, Kate's thoughts were pretty much going towards the same direction as Tony's. In all honestly, she didn't even know why she was thinking about that little, meaningless accident in the first place. Shaking her head, she stepped in the shower. It wasn't definitely the moment to think about these things. She had more serious issues to deal with.

As he finished packing a few clothes and some other things that he thought could have been useful for their mission, Tony walked out of his bedroom. He found Kate in his living room, reading one of the very few books he owned.

Sensing his presence, she turned around.

"Tony, you know that you don't have to do this, right?"

He nodded stepping closer to her and placing his bag on the couch.

"I know I don't have to. I want to come. It will be like old times."

She stood up from the comfortable armchair and grabbed her bag.

"Lets go, then."

Tony followed his ex partner, taking his time to ogle her as she passed.

She was wearing one of his sweaters, that on her looked more like a dress given her petite figure, a pair of tight black pants and a pair of flats. She looked beautiful, despite her simple clothes and the lack of make-up.

While waiting for the elevator he glanced at her. He could see the determination in her eyes; he could see that those five years overseas head changed her; he could see that she was desperately looking for revenge. After giving it some thought he realized where he had seen that look before; it was the same look that he had seen so often in Gibbs' eyes, but that he would have never thought to see in Kate's. He felt the urge to kill whoever it was that had taken away the innocence and the compassion from her. He vowed to himself to give her the fate in humanity back.

Tony was driving while Kate was working on her laptop, a comfortable silence enveloping them.

Kate cleared her throat.

"I think I have a lead."

"So where are we going Katie?"

"Fort Worth, Texas."

"How long is it going to take to get there?"

"Long enough. We should stop in Nashville for the night."

He nodded, smiling. Kate smiled too. If they weren't trying to track down dangerous terrorists, she bet Tony would have been screaming 'road trip!' from the top of his lungs.

Closing her laptop she had a feeling of de ja vu. It really was like the 'good old times'. Tony driving and her on the passenger seat, checking data on her laptop or on her PDA. She wondered how her life would have been if she was still working at NCIS. That thought, triggered a series of images to take over he mind. Those people at NCIS had been her family, the only people she had ever completely trusted. She regretted her choice. She shouldn't have left, four years before. But what was done was done, and she knew that regrets only brought to self-loathing, and in that moment she already had her fair share of that and didn't need any more.

Looking at Tony completely focused on the road and lost in his own thoughts, she broke the silence once again.

"How's the rest of the team? I… I tried to check on you guys through the database, every now and then, but it's not the same as having first hand news."

Tony kept his eyes on the road and grinned. He could hear from her melancholic tone that she had missed them. A lot.

"Everybody's fine. McGee wrote a book; Abby is… well she's Abby, Ducky has always some new story to share and Gibbs is still the same. We're all fine. I mean, as fine as we can be, with a job like ours."

Kate felt weird. These people that once were the biggest part of her life, now sounded like strangers. How did that happen? She sighed.

"Good."

Tony felt for her imagining how harshly she had been taken away from everything and everybody that she had ever known without the chance to say goodbye.

"We… we missed you, Kate. It was hard to keep going, you know?"

She was surprised by his words. She knew how hard it had been for her, but she had never really thought about how hard it had been on them. They thought she had been murdered, after all.

"I missed you guys too. I really, really did."

Gibbs glanced at the clock. It was 9.00. He felt something wasn't right.

The director had informed him, two hours before, that Tony had sent in a fax asking a few days off because of medical reasons. Ziva had informed him afterwards that Tony had caught the flu, or at least that was what he had told her that previous day. Still, he couldn't shake away that gut feeling telling him that there was something wrong.

"McGee, call DiNozzo at home."

The younger agent did as told. He dialed Tony's number and waited. Nobody picked up. He hung up.

"Boss, he didn't pick up. Should I leave him a voicemail?"

"No, McGee."

Ziva looked at her boss. She caught his suspicious tone. She understood why; she had got the same feeling when she had called his partner the day before.

"Gibbs, I don't think Tony got the flu."

He nodded. He didn't think so either. As he pondered what the hell his senior field agent was really up to, an overly chirpy Abby made her appearance in the bullpen.

"Hey guys!"

Everybody proceeded to greet her, all silently wondering how she could be so full of energy at that time in the morning.

"Where's Tony?"

"He's sick."

Abby glanced at Ziva with a questioning look.

"Sick?"

Ziva nodded and wondered if the goth knew something that she didn't.

"Yes. He apparently got seasonal flu. Why?"

Abby raised her eyebrows surprised.

"Well, he called me pretty early on Saturday morning and asked me to trace the owner of an account from some coordinates that he had. I came here because I was curious and I wanted to know why he needed that…"

Gibbs looked at her, trying to find a reasonable cause for Tony to ask Abby such a thing. He doubted his request was work related and he was sure it had to do with his absence from work.

"Do you still have the account coordinates, Abs?"

She nodded, pulling a piece of paper out of her pocket and handing it to Gibbs, who studied it thoughtfully.

"Is this the name of the owner?"

She nodded again, not completely understanding her boss reaction.

"McGee, David, lets go."

The two agents looked at him questioningly.

"Where are we going, boss?"

"Tony's place."

R&R!!