WARNING: Mentions of sexual assault. General violence.
Most, they managed to pry from his grip alive.
A few, they couldn't.
Or wouldn't, because when he was tripping on that substance they pumped into him each and every time, nobody could get near him, let alone touch him or reason with him. On the blue juice, he wasn't even human.
He'd look up at the crowd, his adoring fans, and he'd fantasize about which one he wanted to get ahold of next, which one he wanted to kill, but he couldn't tell their faces apart. They all melted into one screaming and writhing amalgamous whole.
Soon, he started waving at it - the teeming, frenzied, singular mass - and he smiled, big and wide and vacant.
It almost incited a riot.
He loved his new fan club.
It's Ziva who grabs Gibbs by the arm, and it's also Ziva who says directly to his face: "Enough. There is nothing more we can do tonight. We need to rest."
McGee watches, on the edge of disagreeing with her, because he wants to find Tony just as much as Gibbs does. Maybe more, who knows. He can feel it somewhere in his chest, like an ache that pulses and pulses. And he goes over what few facts they have, everything they found at the house.
He can't imagine. He just cannot imagine.
Because he misses Tony's uncanny wit and his sometimes inappropriate irreverence, and he misses looking to him for advice and a different angle, and he's so fucking worried about him it's making him physically sick.
McGee voices none of this, and instead watches the altercation, still on the edge of disagreeing with Ziva, but now seeing her point. She is pragmatic. Always pragmatic. He waits for Gibbs' next move.
"Officer David," Gibbs grinds out, his arm still clamped in her grip. "You don't make the decisions."
"I am well aware of that," she says, her calmness eerie. "But we have nothing else right now, and running ourselves into the floor will do nothing for Tony. We will be exhausted, mentally and physically, and yet still have nothing."
"Ground, Ziva," McGee suddenly points out. "Running ourselves into the ground."
"What does it matter?" Ziva snaps. Then she asks him, "Don't you agree, McGee? This does not make sense."
McGee is almost afraid to answer the way he wants to, because now he knows that Ziva is right. Doing things Gibbs' way doesn't really make sense, logically. Emotionally, it might, but getting caught up in emotions won't find Tony any quicker, if at all, and Tony needs them smart and sharp right now.
"You agree," Ziva presumes. "We rest tonight. We get back to it in the morning."
All the while, Gibbs stands still and stares at Ziva's hand gripping his arm. He finally wrenches himself free. He's a proud man, but he knows when he ought to set it aside. He says, "Get some rest. We'll regroup in the morning."
They know how hard it is for him.
McGee packs his things in his backpack and dreads the world caving in on itself, and Ziva is the one to reach out and touch Gibbs on the shoulder. Nobody has to say anything to know what the other was thinking.
Abby had been nothing but snot and tears since the moment DiNozzo turned up missing, but now, weeks after the fact, she has nothing left but steely determination.
She processes every bit of evidence with the utmost care, digs into every possible angle as deep as she can go, works all night on projects McGee gives her. When she writes her reports, she detaches from herself and enters a world of clinical, sterile professionalism that lets in no feeling or opinion. It's important, she knows, to get this right.
With the black polish on her fingernails chipping away, Abby types beer bottle likely utilized to sexually assault victim and semen found at the scene indicates and evidence obtained from a five by six animal enclosure quickly and efficiently. Then she prints, e-mails, files. It's a process she's gone through daily in her job. Nothing new.
But she never forgets what's at stake. She keeps a photograph of him at her desk, and another one in her wallet. She misses him, just like everybody else does; she wants to see him rescued and saved.
The cold reality is: they are no closer than they were weeks ago.
Abby keeps it together, which is astounding considering how often she wears her emotions on her sleeve, for all to see and experience along with her. She keeps it together, until she gets to McGee's place.
They lie on the bed together, fully clothed, and when she turns her face into his side, her tears soak through his t-shirt.
"I hurt," she says. "I physically hurt."
He pulls her closer.
She goes on, "What do you think he's thinking right now? While we lie here, what do you think is happening?"
McGee doesn't know, and she knows he doesn't know.
So, finally, she admits, "Maybe I don't want to know."
And, finally, McGee says, "You probably don't."
He was in a field. It spread out for miles in every direction. Up above, there was blue sky, cheerful and clear. The sun kissed his skin, and a warm breeze ruffled his hair. There were flowers all around; he didn't know what they were, poppies or tulips or whatever they might have been.
With legs of a newborn colt, Tony staggered around a bit, almost pitching forward and backward into the grass several times.
"Where am I?" he asked no one.
No one answered, "Isn't it nice? Maybe you should stay."
He staggered even faster, hoping to catch something, but he didn't know what. A butterfly flapped around benevolently, flower to flower.
The horizon tilted alarmingly.
Tony screamed at no one, "Where the hell am I?"
And no one replied, "Isn't it nice here? I think you should stay."
Up above, the sun's rays got noticeably hotter, more hostile, and Tony, drunken on his unsteady legs, reeled around.
Kate watched him, still wearing that blue dress, flowers still in her cold hands, although now they looked on their way toward death.
That was where Tony was headed for sure.
He wanted to weep, but he didn't. Couldn't. There'd been enough of that.
She had one request: "You'll see this through to the end."
"How?" he cried out, stumbling toward her, but he could get no closer, because every step he took seemed to push her further away. He screamed again, maddened to the point of stark insanity: "Tell me how!"
She only asked, "Won't you?"
All he could think: "I want to die. I just want to die."
In those brief windows he was allowed lucid thought, Tony watched and collected and compiled. His body ached and stung, but his mind was free, for the most part, even while drugged, and he'd quickly learned that his mind was going to be the only weapon he had, and it would be the only weapon that had any chance of defeating this system.
His hands, and his body, and his drug-induced craze… that was all carefully managed. But his mind? His mind was left unchecked.
There was a method to this madness, so when they feed him, he eats.
When they drug him, he stays still.
When they put him on the treadmill, he runs.
When they beat him, he obeys.
When they rape him, he forgets.
And when they put him in that pit, he fights.
But most importantly, when they talk, he listens.
"What do ya got, McGee?" Gibbs asks.
McGee frowns, because he has exactly nothing, but he's been digging all night for a kernel of something; it's just a hunch. He wasn't going to share it yet; he prefers to get his ducks in a row before making a total fool of himself in front of Gibbs, but there's something about a detail Detective Harv had shared a week or so ago. It's something that refuses to let him go.
And there's something else… an expression on Gibbs' face, a strained frown, desolate and hopeless.
"I think they took him out-of-state," McGee says. He almost doesn't recognize his own voice, it's so confident and matter-of-fact.
Gibbs gives him a long look. "Well go on," he urges. "What else?"
McGee lets out a gusty breath. "Okay, remember when Detective Harv told us about that girl?"
Gibbs grunts.
"He's in Florida. They took him there. To Orlando. Like they did with that girl. I know this; I can feel it." McGee instantly feels stupid, but he lets it stand, having nothing better to say for himself.
"Proof?" Gibbs asks.
"Just a hunch. Uh, my gut." McGee's voice is so quiet, but it's heavy with conviction.
Nearby, Ziva watches and she smiles.
"Good enough for me," Gibbs says as he turns. "Call around down there. Put out feelers."
"Oh, I already did," McGee reveals. "And I got a lead… maybe… it's possible…"
Gibbs looks toward the ceiling in annoyance, but he's smiling. "Well, why didn't you start with that?"
The first thing he felt was the heat. Heavy and wet. Like a moist blanket swaddling him all over.
When he came back to himself, and when he could see what was real again, he saw a city streaking by the window near his face. Pavement, strip malls, people waiting for buses, palm trees, thick clouds leaden with rain, cars cars cars cars cars.
Traffic.
Where had he come from? Where was he going?
Palm trees.
"He still asleep back there?" someone said.
"Naw, he's looking out the window."
A hand gripped his arm, and Tony watched, strangely apart from this scene, as the needle and syringe were readied.
"Don't blow another vein," the someone said again. "Kid's arms are all fucked up."
"I won't. Watch the damn road."
He barely felt a prick as the sedative began to flow. His head grew heavy once more, and his cheek rested gently against the door frame.
A sign whizzed by.
Welcome to Orlando.
The City Beautiful.