The room was warm. Too warm. He was constricted. Things pressed here and there, tubes pinched there and here. The muttered voices above him were indecipherable, but he recognised them as important. And heated. There was an argument going on. Somehow, even in his drugged state, that knowledge was inordinately depressing. He tried to open his eyes but they were lead heavy. They twitched in response to his neural stimuli, but simply didn't have the meat to make it the whole way up. He was cloaked in his own shade of blackness, but the voices were getting stronger. Clearer. And angrier. Everything hurt. Things, places of his anatomy he hadn't even known to exist were screaming out in protest. A muffled gargle of discomfort bubbled in his throat.

There was something in it.

And then there were hands. So many hands. All over him.

The pain became even worse. It was intolerable.

His eyes were closed but they watered as the plastic tube was slowly and tenuously removed. His first independent and instinctive breath was like a river of razors coursing down his windpipe. He spluttered with the pain, with the pressure. Cold but careful hands pressed down on his shoulders and a professionally calm voice told him to remain calm, to breathe in small but frequent bouts. He tried to listen. The second breath wasn't quite as bad, and the third lesser still on the pain chart. But it was far from picnics and roses. His eyes fluttered again, but this time they got a little higher. He caught a glimpse of the room around him. The mash-up of his past and his present only served to ramp up the hammering in his head.

He was suddenly glad for his inability to keep tuned in.

Sometimes it was better to be tuned the hell out.

"What is the matter with him?" he heard an anxious voice ring out. Stressed, wavering and urgent. Definitely a part of his present, not his past. Breslin, it was definitely Breslin. Before anyone could answer her, another female voice cut across. "What's the matter with him? Are you some kind of imbecile? He's been shot. That's what's the matter with him." That voice was definitely a part of his past. Abby, it was definitely Abby. But she sounded really off. Something more than him was wrong with her. Even half dead, drugged to the eyeballs and visually impaired, he could tell. He was alive and would most likely continue to be. But something in her voice didn't reflect that. Something deeper was wrong. He was getting really tired as he tried to follow the humdrum of voices above him.

The blackness was coming.

The doctor cleared her throat and continued her soft examination of his mangled torso. "He is heavily sedated. He's breathing on his own now which is a very encouraging sign, but we mustn't expect miracles. This is going to be a long, arduous and painful recovery. Your friend is extremely lucky to be alive. He's defied all the odds to get even this far. He won't be conscious or fully alert for several days at an estimate. He needs routine, follow up surgery when he's stable enough. Thereafter, a rigorous programme of physiotherapy and counselling. Please, do not upset yourselves. He is in the best hands and is making the best progress possible. He's not out of the woods yet, but his stats are very encouraging. You must try and be positive and be here for him when he does wake. He's going to need his friends and family around him."

Suddenly the hands were removed, a note was taken down and Dr Boyle with a nod took her leave. His past, Tim, Abby and Bishop were planted on his right hand side. His present, Breslin, Murphy and Lakes were flanking his left hand side. Not that he could see or not that he could care. His past was glaring at his present, his present were glaring back with equal distaste.

"He probably shouldn't be crowded right now. It's ok if you three need to leave."

Murphy glared at Tim with such distaste it seemed to drip from his pores.

"We're good, thanks," he drawled. "If you three need to leave and tend to that asshole old man that could be the reason Tony's career is over, we'd be glad to hold the door for you. Oh, and if you could do me a solid, I'd appreciate it. Tell that washed up, tyrannical son of a bitch that if Tony doesn't come through this with all four limbs…I'm going to rip his from his geriatric ass body. Slowly. And with great pleasure."

His lids fluttered as the tension in the room built. Gibbs…Gibbs was alive.

"We're not leaving him," rejected Abby in that same, strange voice. It was almost dazed, thin and completely unlike her own. When someone Abby cared about was hospitalised, she became frenzied. Alarmingly so. But she just seemed…lethargic, passive even. If his muscles were fully operational, Tony would have frowned in confusion. But all he could do was lie in his own shell, unable to move or communicate. "No chance," Bishop echoed softly, as Tim slipped a gentle arm around her and Abby both. "We're staying."

Lakes made an explosive noise in his throat.

"Would you like to take a picture then? So that jackass down the hall can see who saved his miserable life? Or does he even care? Will he even care that Tony's lying in ICU with holes where soft tissue and bone used to be? Do you think he'll even ask how he is?"

Tony tried to open his eyes, his mouth, his anything.

But he couldn't.

He was still trapped.

"We're not here for him," Tim's voice answered from an oddly far off distance. He was slipping, he could feel it. "We're here for Tony; as for Gibbs… he can go to hell." Utter confusion dogged the room but it was nothing compared to the nonplussed sensation that was coursing through the patient. There was bitterness in Tim's voice he hadn't heard in a long, long time. And there was a resounding absence of indignation on Abby's part. No screech of protest, no rush to protect her precious silver fox. He couldn't see the bewildered look on Bishops and his team's faces. He was encased in blackness and his own bewilderment. His heart rate quickened as a sense of helplessness engulfed him.

Murphy recovered first, his voice oozing with sceptical derision.

"Since when do any of you people speak out against your fearless leader?"

There was a billowing silence as Tony's eyes darted around under the leaden blankets of his lids. Something was going on. He could feel it. Something other than what had put him in his bed was going on. Abby was the most pressing symptom of something amiss. Tim never spoke with such heated ire in his tone and Bishop's complete silence would indicate that she was also in the dark. Maybe it was the meds or maybe it was his natural instincts being med resistant, but Tony was unconsciously bracing himself for something bad. Something worse than the bullet pocked mess that was his chest. Something he didn't know anything about. His pulse thudded along uncomfortably as the darkness pressed. He was slipping again, no matter how desperately he clung to consciousness.

"Since that fearless leader is actually a lying, dying, piece of shit."

A bomb of shocked silence exploded into the room.

Murphy, again, recovered first.

"Say what now?"

Tim's arms tightened around a gaping Bishop and a listless, pale faced Abby. "You heard me. Gibbs is dying. Terminal cancer. So we're gonna stay here with Tony, who isn't." Another gust of stunned silence swept throughout the room as his unpolished pronouncement hung in the air like wildfire. Ellie went weak at his side and he instantly regretted with intense shame the way he had blurted out the worst secret he had ever learned. He paled when he saw her face and the refusal to accept what she had heard burning in her eyes. Abby was as stiff as a rock beside him, her lips silently miming the words terminal cancer over and over again.

Tony's heart pounded and pounded, the blood was rushing in his ears. He was waiting for the reasonable explanation, the clearing up of the obvious misunderstanding. He was waiting and waiting….and waiting. But the reasonable explanation and clearing up never came. The machine attached to him, one of many, began to shriek as his heart rate climbed and climbed. Panic was setting in like gangrene. He thrashed against his muscles, begged his eyelids to open, but to no avail. He lay perfectly still, perfectly imprisoned, perfectly conscious. He heard a panicked humdrum of voices above him as calls for doctors and nurses rang out.

A sudden, intense and all consuming pain suddenly shot across his chest.

And everything went dark.

When his consciousness kicked into gear again, he knew he was somewhere different. Somewhere sterile. Somewhere where the sensation in his chest, although technically unfelt due to anaesthesia, was explained by hands in his chest. Methodical, detached hands. He still couldn't open his eyes, still couldn't communicate that he was in there. That he could hear. That he could feel. A fuzzy haze of misery clung to him as words in an all too familiar voice rammed around his skull.

Lying, dying….

Terminal cancer….

Gibbs….

The voice was drowned out by the unfamiliar timbre above him. He didn't recognise that voice. It was pleasant; he would come to remember, but clinical. "I wonder if this guy even knows," murmured the voice. "Knows what?" asked a younger medic, a female one. Tony's eyes darted around under his lids. Knows what? What do I know? What don't I know? Is it about Gibbs? Panic was gripping him again. His body was his own personal prison. One he couldn't escape from. The voice was back again, dripping with professional disappointment.

"If he knows that a portion of his liver could save his colleague's life. That other agent. Agent Gibbs."

…

TBC

…