The first thing he was aware of was an excruciating pain.

It bit into his side and worked its way up and around his ribs, lashing into his torso waspishly. But he could tell it had been medicated down. The fuzzy quality of his brain a tell-tale sign of pain meds hard at work. His eyes flickered open slowly, feebly. The familiar scent of sharp antiseptic shot up his nose and he grimaced in disgust. A blurry figure moved about in front of him, a solid block of white. Quiet murmurs came from the block as a fleshy pin-prick that he supposed to be a hand, shot over and across a chart relentlessly.

He tried to inhale a deep breath but stopped rapidly when it made him feel dizzily naseuas.

The small splutter he must have made was enough to draw the attention of the white block upon him like white on rice. A warm hand suddenly seized his shoulder whilst an offensively bright light was shoved into his eyes, one at a time. Hands grabbed, prodded and poked him without compunction. The hand scribbled even more furiously across the chart as a hand was raised, with two fingers shooting out like cannons. He blinked fuzzily up at them, and took a rather gormless moment to realise their point. His voice was crackly, throaty but it was audible and relatively clear.

"Two."

It even came out in his trademark grunt. The one that said I have better things to be doing right now.

Dr Mensen beamed.

"Agent Gibbs," he said loudly, slowly, almost as if speaking to a small and rather confused child. "You came through the surgery like a trooper. Your vitals are strong and climbing and our initial tests appear to show a clean incision of the tumour, nothing left behind. You're on a strong dose of chemotherapy as a precautionary measure to target any cells that may be too immaturely mutated to show up on our scans and you'll stay on that course of treatment until your bloods come back and tell us what we're dealing with. Your body has begun to accept the partial liver transplant during the time you've been out and our hope is that it will begin to regenerate in two to three weeks. If it regenerates at a significant enough pace, you won't need an additional transplant. We won't know for sure until then what your prognosis is, but as of now, I'm hopeful."

Gibbs blinked slowly, not understanding a single word of what the man had just said.

Because he was too busy thinking of someone else, beginning to panic about someone else.

"Tony," he blurted, "Tony…where is he…. how is he?"

A slight frown punctured Dr Mensen's face and Gibbs' insides glazed over.

"No," he practically whimpered, a first for him. "No, no, no…he can't be. You said it was…you gave me your word…" With that, he fought against the hotchpotch of wires that encased him, thrashing to rouse himself. The Doctor stared with wide eyes for a moment before understanding hit and he reached out to forcibly calm his patient. This was met by a ferocious snarling and snapping and the medic had to put in some serious elbow grease to restrain the irate man.

"Be still," he barked, surprising Gibbs by his break from his mild-mannered norm. "You'll rip your stitches. Agent DiNozzo is absolutely fine and has been alert and relatively mobile for two days now. You may see him when I give the all-clear to do so and I tell you now, I won't be giving any such clearance if a single tube or wire becomes dislodged from your person that I haven't personally ok-d. You are in a post-operative state, not a battlefield. You will follow my instructions or there will be no visitors in this room. Are we understanding each other?"

Gibbs gaped for a moment, before his investigative instincts kicked back in.

"You frowned when I said his name," he argued quietly, "Why?"

Dr Mensen supressed a sigh.

"Agent DiNozzo has been proving a rather difficult patient. He is anxious to return to work and I think even you would agree, he is in no fit state to do so. It has taken the more persuasive staff here at the hospital to stop him checking out AMA. Them, and the rather terrifying dark-haired woman who comes every day. She seems to have put paid to any escape attempts for the time being, thankfully. The other man, McGee I think his name is, has been very helpful as well."

Gibbs' gut spasmed as he remembered the last conversation he'd had with Abby and Tim.

The concern must have splashed across his face because Dr Mensen filled in the gaps.

"They've been in to visit," he said quietly, "Agent DiNozzo, too. You've been out for nine days now, to be expected given your age compared to his. They've all been in at least once, every day. Forgive me if it's not my place, but they seem quite concerned for your wellbeing despite a rather…uhm, charged atmosphere." He smiled and made one last notation on the chart he held before murmuring that he would back to check in soon and sweeping from the room, leaving Gibbs to stare blankly at his retreating back. A blackness was beginning to form at the corner of each eye and despite fighting it, he was pulled back to a deep, dreamless sleep.

Hours later, he awoke the sound of hushed voices around his bed.

Opening his eyes was difficult, adjusting to the harsh overhead lighting even more so. Blinking in adjustment, his awakening went unnoticed by the three other occupants of the room for quite a considerable moment.

"I'm just saying, how can you trust him?" snapped Tim, "You've allowed yourself to be sliced open and your organs treated like a communal fund for a man who couldn't even tell you that he was dying in the first damned place. For a man that drove you out of your job and everything you knew. I don't understand it, Tony, I wish I did but I just don't."

"McGee, stop it. You can't-"

"No, Abby, no. Alright? You don't get to defend him. You don't get to say aw guys, that just the way Gibbs is or he had his reasons. You don't get to say any of that. You weren't there on an hourly basis when he was treating Tony like crap for absolutely no reason. You didn't see it. So, don't tell me what I can and can't say. He's not going to-"

"Stop it."

Tim and Abby's necks swivelled to an ashen Tony, who despite his pallor, spoke with a resounding firmness.

"Stop it," he repeated. "This isn't the time or the place for this conversation. I made my choice and it was mine to make. Not yours, Abby, or yours McGee. It was mine and I stand by it. I told you two before, this is between me and Gibbs. Ok?"

A grudging silence filled the room as they both nodded, their opinions threatening to suffocate them.

A sickening feeling coating his stomach, Gibbs supposed he ought to make an appearance.

"Hey guys."

Three sets of eyes snapped to him and he hid his wince as he sat up straight in his hospital bed, knowing that he looked like hell. He should have expected it, but the sudden suffocating force that hammered his chest knocked the wind out of his sails. Abby's breath was hot on his neck as he flung herself at him, holding on for dear life. Wrapping his arms around her automatically, he couldn't help but hiss in pain as his stitches bulged at the sides.

"Abby," Tony's voice broke in, "C'mon, he needs to breathe. Loosen it up just a little."

Squawking as she realised this, she instantly broke away and roused herself. Her eyes were brimming with happy tears. Swallowing a lungful of air Gibbs looked around the trio and couldn't hide the wince as he spied Tim's uncharacteristic look of bitter anger. Tony looked merely tired and drawn and another spurt of guilt kicked in with vigour.

"How are you feeling?" Abby demanded, "The Doctors…they're really happy, Gibbs."

He nodded quietly and tried to find the words.

"I'm feeling great," he lied smoothly looking up at them, "But do you think Tony and I could have a second alone?"

Tim tensed as Abby nodded without compunction. Seeing the reluctance, Tony nodded imperceptibly. "Go on guys, I'll be back in my own room in a bit. Nurse Ratchet will be on the warpath soon enough and I don't want to get on her bad side again." He smiled a ghost of his once-upon-a-time ready smile and shrugged. "Tell her I've absconded if she grills you. You have no idea where I am. That'll keep her busy until the next medication run." Chuckling tearfully, Abby nodded and looked back at Gibbs as if she couldn't quite believe he was there. Seemingly satisfied that he was in fact there and breathing with normalcy, she dragged a none-too-happy Tim from the room. Pausing at the door despite the vice-like grip on his arm, the newly minted SFA cleared his throat pointedly.

"Rule number forty-two, Tony."

The swoosh of the electronic doors swallowed the two up leaving former SFA and SSA alone.

Gibbs broke the sticky silence first.

"He's got a point."

Tony nodded slowly.

"The Doctors…they're hopeful. For you, I mean. They're hopeful for you."

"They are," Gibbs agreed quietly. "And that's because of you, Tony. I'd be dead by now if it wasn't for you. Why you did what you did, I'll never know. But…" his voice constricted, "Thank you. I can't ever thank you or repay you, but thank you."

The younger man stared down at him with an odd blankness in his eyes.

"Does that mean you're actually going to try and live this time?"

Blanching, Gibbs nodded.

"I'll get through this if it kills me," he joked feebly, shutting up swiftly at the withering look he got in return. Another pressing silence blanketed the room as each man became lost to his own thoughts, uncomfortable in the other's presence, despite all the years between them. Machines beeped lazily in the background, no notes of urgency sounding.

"You tried to kill yourself. I didn't know that until I woke up from the operation."

Gibbs' entire body tensed as shame and regret lashed him without remorse.

"I was a coward, I can't deny it."

Tony breathed out deeply.

"Jesus Christ," he muttered, "I never thought out of the two of us, I'd have to be the strong one."

Gibbs sank back on his pillows, a medicated weakness overcoming him, and smiled sadly.

"You were always the strong one, Tony."

The Vice Agent snorted in a bout of dry derision.

"Must've been, to stay as long as I did under your hammer of a hand."

He looked down at the gaunt face of the man he had nothing but confused emotion for and felt a headache coming on. A part of him loathed him, a part of him loved him. A part of him wanted to never lay eyes on him again, a part of him wanted to see what could be salvaged from the wreckage. He closed his eyes wearily. He was in his late forties, but he might as well have been in his late eighties such was his fatigue. He scrubbed a hand through his hair and thought quietly. He was going to be discharged in a day or two, Gibbs wasn't. He could leave and never see the man again. He'd done his part. A part no one, except maybe Abby, would have blamed him for turning down. He'd saved Gibbs' life. Quite literally, he'd saved it. There was nothing to keep him there, where he stood in a hospital gown that reeked of sharp disinfectant. He could leave and not feel a moments guilt about never looking back.

But he didn't.

Things would never be the same between he and his mentor again.

He knew that. He wasn't naïve.

Things had changed. Irrevocably so.

But some things were still the same. He was finding out, as he stood there, that thirteen years of ups and downs, of friendship and family couldn't be thrown away no matter what the provocation. No matter the justification. He saw Gibbs for what he was. One screwed up, misguided, son-of-a-bitch. His own worst enemy. He saw the pain of his past etched into the lines of his face and knew, then and there, that he was a product of his life experiences. He swallowed. He didn't know if he was doing the right thing or the wrong thing. All he knew was that he was doing a thing. And where that thing led him, them, was anybody's guess.

"I guess you'll be needing someone to pick you up some stuff from home?"

Gibbs' head snapped up, shock splintered across his face.

"What?"

Tony rolled his eyes and gestured to the room at large.

"You don't look all that good in a gown, let's just put it that way."

Gibbs' eyes bulged.

"You're coming back?"

The younger man shook his head rapidly, suddenly terrified there'd been a terrible misunderstanding.

"No," he all but blurted, "I am never coming back to NCIS. Never. You need to understand that."

Gibbs shook his head with understanding spreading from eye to eye.

"No, I know that. I know we're never going to work together again," he said quietly, sadly, "I meant…you're coming back here, to the hospital? After you've been discharged?" His face was suddenly burning with a blush that stemmed from a concoction of emotions that no shrink would touch with a barge pole. "To see…me?"

Tony shrugged, doing his best to achieve the maximum degree of nonchalance.

He failed. Miserably.

"Who the hell else do you have?"

…..

A/N: One more chapter and this one is done, guys! *Rule#42: Never accept an apology from someone who just suckerpunched you.*

Inks x

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