This is the last chapter with any action, I promise. Actually, we've only got the epilogue after this, then we're ALL DONE.
I've changed my mind. I'm screwing around with timeskips in this chapter because I am just THAT SLACK.
Anyway, thanks for staying faithful and reviewing. Thanks to everyone for everything- I owe you so much.
Granted that I just basically made all this up, and only began to think through identities and blame and such AFTER writing chapter 6, I think I am doing pretty well, too. *pats self on back*
Love you all. This is dedicated to Chibitalia (glomps)
-Slayer xXx
Ziva slipped quietly through the forest, following the tire tracks that rent a broken hole through the dark trees.
Holding her gun to the side, she cocked an ear, trying to hear some sign of the motor. The oppressive silence of the woods was all she got.
She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to concentrate, but her worry over Tony was fast obscuring all conscious thought. What if she didn't find him in time? What if he blamed her? What if she never saw him again?
A huge curve was cut into the silence of the woods by the racing car, and she could only wonder at the reckless abandon of the driver. But she couldn't hear the sound of the engine.
She couldn't hear anything at all.
McGee sat in the front drive in the foetal position, hands clutching his head as a myriad black shapes attacked his eyes. He couldn't help, couldn't follow, he had no idea what to do.
Everything was so complicated. He looked up to Tony like a big brother, Gibbs almost as a father, Ziva like a sister… and now it was all gone. Because even if they hadn't been crying, they were crying on the inside. The kind of tears that burn icy tracks in the skin, that find their way like mercury to your heart and blaze like white diamond, the kind of fire that never really goes out, the kind of burns that are more like frostbite, the kind of wounds that never really heal.
He wanted… He wanted everything to be alright again. He wanted to hold Abby in his arms and tell her it would be alright without having to lie.
He wanted to see Ziva again and be able to look her in the face, knowing that she was alright.
He wanted to look Gibbs in the eye, knowing that their family was all right.
But he couldn't have that. Abby was back at the lab, waiting for them to bring Tony home, Tony was God knows where, Ziva chasing after him, Gibbs chasing them both.
And he, as always, had been left behind-wounded, inadequate. All he could do was stare at the woods that bordered the yard and hope.
Tony opened his eyes. The car had stopped.
Donald pushed him on the shoulder. "Get out of the car," He snarled, a grimace disfiguring his face.
Tony felt his eyebrows push together, concern colour his voice. "What's wrong?"
"Just get out of the car, jerk," Donald said.
Tony stared back at him, uncomprehending. "What?"
Donald hissed, then got out of the car, slamming the door. He quickly changed to Tony's side and shoved the door open, unbuckling the seatbelt and hauling him out of the car. Tony tried not to cry out, the pincer-like grip disturbing several bruises. "What the hell is going on, Donald?"
"You know."
"No, I don't. Don't tell me what I do and don't know."
"You FUCKNG SHOULD!" Donald yelled.
Tony didn't know what to think. How had he not seen this side of him? He could barely see at all, but how had Donald fooled him? And what was going on?
"What are you doing? Donald?"
"Fucking SHUT UP!" He yelled, pulling a pistol and stopping. He shoved him to the ground and Tony winced, broken bones creaking under him and he tried so hard not to scream. So hard, but then Donald lashed a kick right into his upper arm, where the muscles connected, where the bone was already broken and the bruises were already there, and he howled- it just hurt so much he- clawed at it blindly, he couldn't see-
He felt the cold, impartial barrel of the gun connect with his temple.
"Don't. Move."
Tony felt his entire body still; breathing, heart, mind- stopped like pedestrians before a red man.
"You don't understand, so I'll tell you."
His voice was so close, right beside his ear, but behind the gun.
"You see, it all comes down to love. Have you ever felt it?"
And Ton felt his heart stop again because there was Ziva, right there against the blurred field of his vision, right there in the dark, oppressive trees he couldn't even see. There she was.
"Yes," he whispered brokenly.
"Don't. Speak." Donald said, whipping the barrel of the pistol against his nose.
"I loved him. Mikey."
He loved him.
Of course.
"The others wanted to kill you. I wanted to kill you myself, but they had a plan, and manpower. I had to see you die, so I fell in with them, helped them, they assumed they were going to take the killing shot but I knew all along that your team would be there, so I was there before they were. I fooled you. I got you to come with me. They'll still be tied up with all the men at the house, and you are going to be murdered and raped here in the woods, all alone, nobody to find your corpse."
He felt cold fingers caress his neck and bile rise up in his throat.
"The bonds of love can only be beaten by those of hate," Donald whispered softly, his hand moving downwards to Tony's chest, pushing him down so he was curled on the ground like a dog.
"You killed the man I loved," he said. "I'll make you hurt."
There was no way. Ziva wasn't there, Gibbs wasn't there, he didn't have the strength to run- and even if he had, his kidnapper had a gun. He wouldn't make it far. While it was true that Donald probably wouldn't sodomise his corpse, he could always just shoot him in the leg and have done.
He had no way out.
Donald brought down the heel of his foot into the soft flesh just below Tony's solar plexus. His breath came out in a loud Whoosh and he felt his limbs curl into an even tighter ball, trying to protect himself. Donald aimed another kick right into his lower back and he bared his teeth in a silent scream, sides heaving, eyes tearing up-
And he heard the sound of jeans being unzipped.
He tried desperately to get up, but was only on his knees when he was kicked to the ground, spread-eagled with his face smashed into the dirt, small puffs of dirt escaping onto his face. Donald was standing over him, and he could hear their panting filling the silence of the woods, and then a shot, so loud, in his leg, like a dark comet rending his calf in half, burning like the sun and he could see the after-image burning against his closed lids, and he was trying so hard not to scream-
Then the dry rustle of cloth moving against skin, boxers ripped down and he was exposed to the cold, dry air, and-
And that was when the rain came.
Donald was right behind him, the gun was against his head, he could feel his body heat against his skin and he just couldn't move and-
Fire, so much fire, all over his body, he was being ripped in two, and this time he couldn't stop himself from screaming because the fire in his leg and the ice in his arm and the molten lava ripping his back in two-
Warm wetness, a tongue, just below his ear, screams subsiding, the air rent and his eyes bulging out of his head, the words-
"You have no idea how painful losing the love of your life is. If you did, you'd never have done it. But at least you will have some idea, before you die."
He was covered in water and mud and the rain had run into his eyes, his blood was painting the black dirt with red so that it looked like sunset on yesterday's battlefield, still strewn with corpses.
His mind was a bleak moor in Yorkshire, blank and full of despair.
He couldn't feel anything.
He was drifting away on clouds of silk…
Ziva. The rain had wet her and she felt her hair stand up, goose-pimples rippling in suddenly pale flesh. Her hair was slicked back and her clothes drenched.
Shewas only moments past the car when she heard the screaming.
It was heartbroken and desperate and wrong, but she recognised it, she knew it, it was his.
And now she came to the clearing- and she could see…
At first, she was not sure what she saw.
There was a man, a man she had never seen before, and he was on top of Tony-
And Tony was lying face down, leg bleeding, pants ripped-
The man was raping her Tony.
As she watched, he leant down and murmured in his ear. His words carried cleanly in the almost-silence, and Ziva felt her pulse stop, blood still, hands firm around her gun. She bit her lower lip, hard, feeling the lazy trickle of sanguine water flood her wet chin as she tried to hold herself back from jumping immediately in.
She wanted to tear him off Tony, scream at him, hurt him, but that would be foolish. He might not be alone. There might be other men in the trees. This could be a trap.
"You have no idea how painful losing the love of your life is." His head was so close to Tony's. "If you did, you'd never have done it. But at least you will have some idea, before you die."
He lifted the gun, and Ziva felt her mouth stretch into a snarl, eyes flash, hands on her gun rise, the muscles in her legs moving her forwards into the clearing. She didn't care if it was a trap anymore, only that this man was hurting her Tony, was killing her Tony, and she would stop him, before it was too late.
Unbidden, words rose to her lips: "You must be a monster indeed, to know what that pain is like and yet be ready to inflict it on another."
His head jerked back, sodden blonde hair flicking water, snarl fixed firmly in place.
She felt herself grow numb.
"Donald?!"
She had seen his face only once. In a file, beneath that of his father- his adoptive father…
Matthew Temple. Nicholas Temple's twin.
Donald Temple was Mikey's cousin. Kind of, anyway.
How the hell had she missed that?
The rain was frozen in the air, her ears closed. She could see him screaming, could see his finger about to close on the trigger-
She moved, diving towards them and firing the pistol, firing until there were no rounds left.
The rain pattered into his sightless eyes as he lay there in the mud on his back, arms splayed at awkward angles and the gun lost somewhere in the mud. She stood over his, cold rain pounding into her back as she stood over him, pointing the empty gun at his dead body.
Every one of her shots had hit; two in the back, another few in the chest, and one, placed firmly in the middle of his pale forehead, leaking red tears like a third eye. They didn't drain away and she realised she was shielding his corpse from the rain with her own body.
She picked up his wrist, still warm, and felt for a pulse. There was none.
"You came," Tony murmured from behind her. In a heartbeat, she was kneeling beside him, his head cradled in her lap. She wasn't sure if she was crying or it was just the sky's tears staining her cheeks.
"You came for me."
"Of course I came for you," she whispered, and the broken note in her voice and the burning under her lids informed her that yes, she was crying- But it was okay, because Tony was here and he was safe.
"You're here," she crooned, stroking his blood-matted hair away from his face. "You're safe."
His eyes lids fluttered weakly closed. "Can we go home?"
He sounded like a little boy, so lost and so, so desperately alone. She smiled a bittersweet smile and pressed a soft kiss to his forehead.
"Of course you can go home."
A/N: This is the longest chapter I have ever written. R&R!