Title: Dead Reckonings

Story: NCIS crossover

Chapter 2 of ?

Rating: PG (language and a bit of gore)

Characters- 2nd chapter: Ziva, McGee, mentions of Gibbs, DiNozzo, and OMCs

Pairings: none

Beta: StrangeVisitor

Summary: Two NCIS team members travel to an isolated cabin to pursue a lead and their lives are changed forever.

Disclaimer: Don't own, just playing, yadda, yadda

Chapter 2 – Rude Awakening

McGee drew in a deep breath and immediately sat up, blinking at the sudden brightness and grimacing at the strange coppery taste in his mouth. The burning pain in his chest forced a groan from his throat, and he barely had enough time to wonder why he had been flat on his back just moments before when he heard a scream.

His attention snapped to the source of the sound and he saw Ziva standing a few yards away with her gun drawn and pointed directly at him.

"Ziva?" he asked, startled by the terrified expression on her face. He quickly scanned the area, trying to find what could have possibly frightened the unflappable Mossad officer, but they were alone. When he returned his attention to Ziva he saw that her fearful expression had been replaced by one of wary confusion.

"Ziva?" he asked again. "What happened?" Following her gaze he looked down at his chest and froze; momentarily unable to comprehend what he was seeing.

"Is this…is this blood?" He then noticed three dark rimmed holes in his shirt, and felt a surge of anxiety when he realized what they had to be. He tried to remain calm, to rationalize, but his efforts were in vain as a full blown panic attack overwhelmed him and the edges of his vision started to darken.

It's not that bad…it's not that bad… it can't be that bad, the pain is gone and I'm still-

Suddenly he felt a strong hand grip his shoulder, bringing his mind back into focus. Ziva was crouched by his side, her intense gaze focused on him. She reached out with her other hand and placed two fingers against his neck, checking his pulse. Without hesitation she pulled open his shirt and at the sight of his chest she sat back on her heels with a startled gasp, her eyes widening in shock.

"This is impossible," she whispered.

"W-what?"

McGee looked back down at his chest and instead of the expected bullet wounds he saw that the skin was unmarred. He struggled to find an explanation, but nothing made sense.

Unless…no, she wouldn't…would she?

"Is this some sort of a …joke? OW!" He cried in protest when Ziva reached up and smacked the back of his head.

"Do you really think I would attempt such a thing, McGee?" she asked as she pointed to his chest. "You were shot! There were three bullet holes, and…" She drew in a deep breath. "You were dead."

"Dead? Are…are you sure?"

"I have seen death before, McGee. I know what it looks like."

McGee fought back the hysteria-induced urge to ask if Death really rode a big white horse named Binky. He bit his lip and shook his head, trying to maintain his tenuous grip on reality. Before his mind could form a coherent question, he noticed Ziva reach into her pocket and remove her camera. She clicked through several frames before handing the camera to him.

"Look."

McGee peered at the image on the small screen. It clearly showed, in close up, three very obvious bullet wounds surrounded by blood-soaked fabric. He advanced to the next image, a wider view of the wounds, where the buttons and collar of the shirt were visible. The next image caused him to gasp: it was an even wider view, now showing the face and wide, dead eyes of the body, features he recognized as his own.

"Now do you believe me?" Ziva asked in a shaky voice.

He continued to stare at the image, denial still screaming in his head. He struggled to respond.

"I…this…this doesn't make sense. How could this happen?"

"I really have no idea. What do you remember?"

"Uh…not much. We split up to search outside the cabin…after that everything is a blank. Until I woke up. What happened before that?"

Ziva briefly closed her eyes and sighed. "I was searching the north side of the cabin when I heard the shots. When I returned to the front of the cabin I saw a man with a gun. He put the gun away and pulled out a long knife…no not a knife, a sword."

"A sword? What in the hell-?"

"I do not know. I yelled at him and he ran off. I fired several shots, and I am quite sure I hit him, but that did not deter him from making an escape. He had a vehicle hidden close by. After I realized he was gone, I made my way back to the cabin and…found you. Like that." She indicated the picture. "And then I had to do my job." McGee nodded. He now understood why she had taken the pictures.

"How long was I…out?"

"Nearly two hours. I had done all I could here and was getting ready to leave, to go find cell reception. And then you…came back."

McGee still couldn't accept that he had been dead. The idea flew in the face of everything he knew, everything he understood. He tried to find some logical explanation for what had happened and finally hit upon an idea.

"Maybe this was all a trick." He noticed a flash of anger in Ziva's eyes and raised his hand in a placating gesture. "No, not by you. The man you saw. Maybe he did this as…as a distraction. He…I don't know, maybe he dosed me with some sort of drug that just made me appear to be dead. Then he set up the rest of this to keep you occupied so he could get as far away as possible."

"That does not make sense-."

"It makes more sense than 'I died and came back to life'!"

"Yes, but it does not explain the disappearing bullet holes."

McGee slumped in defeat. She had a point. They sat in uncomfortable silence for several minutes; neither of them was really sure how to proceed. Finally, Ziva spoke.

"We should head back. It is getting late and…it has been a very long day." She stood and offered him her hand. With Ziva's help, he struggled to his feet, swaying a little as he adjusted to the change in position. She looked up at him with concern in her dark eyes.

"Are you sure you are all right? Maybe we should get you to a hospital-."

"I'm fine. Just give me a minute." He took a few deep breaths. "I'm good. Let's go." He turned to head for the car and Ziva gasped in surprise. He paused, almost afraid to ask.

"What's wrong?"

"Your back. There's a…large hole in your shirt. And blood." McGee felt a light touch at the middle of his back just to the left of his spine. "But there is no wound."

McGee sighed. Impossible seemed redundant at this point.

"Can this day get any w-weirder?"

"It has been my experience that it is unwise to ever ask such a question."

McGee let out a mirthless chuckle. "Yeah, I know what you mean. So what now?"

"Now, we do the job we were sent here to do: we find Doran Keane. Let's go."

McGee followed Ziva, fighting a wave of dizziness as he started the trek down the hill towards the spot where the sedan was parked. By the time he reached the car, Ziva had retrieved her backpack from the rear seat. She pulled out a bandana and a bottle of water just as McGee was reaching for the passenger door handle.

"Wait." She reached into the car and pulled out McGee's jacket. "You might want to…"

"Oh. Right." He pulled off his battered and stained shirt before reaching for his jacket with a distinct feeling of embarrassment. Ziva placed the jacket on the hood of the car and joined him on the passenger side. She handed him the bottle of water and he took a swig of the contents, gagging at the strong taste that filled his mouth. He spat out the liquid, now tinged dark red, and recoiled in disgust. He glanced at Ziva, wondering how she would react, but she merely took the water bottle from him and pointed to the hood of the sedan.

"Sit."

McGee gingerly lowered himself to a half-sitting, half leaning position against the side of the car as Ziva poured water on the bandana and then started to wipe his face. To his questioning expression, she responded, "You cannot go anywhere like that. You're looking very…Night of the Living Dead." McGee groaned.

"You've been spending too much time around Tony," he muttered.

"Possibly." She paused and took a step back. "Maybe…" McGee immediately understood her train of thought and huffed in annoyance.

"I'm not a zombie, Ziva."

"Are you sure?" she asked, resuming her work. "No overwhelming desire to eat me?"

Startled, McGee searched her expression for a hint of acknowledgement of the double entendre and caught her subtle smirk.

"Very funny…"

She did not reply and continued the clean his face and neck with the bandana, but McGee saw some of the tension between them drain away and he felt a twinge of remorse.

"I'm sorry…"

"Never apologize. It's a sign of—."

"Weakness." He managed a smile which soon faded. "What are we going to tell-?"

"Gibbs? Nothing."

"You're seriously suggesting we try to keep this a secret?"

Ziva sighed. "Right now we do no even know what really happened. All we have are questions. Gibbs wants answers. Until we have something to tell him, something that makes sense, we should keep this to ourselves. At best, we have been fooled by and lost a potential witness. At worst, Gibbs will think-."

"We've lost out minds."

"Yes. Neither scenario will make Gibbs happy, that is for certain. So, until we do have some answers…"

"Rule number four?"

"Yes."

McGee nodded. Keeping this to themselves was the best course of action. Besides, there was no way Gibbs would understand or believe the current version of the events of this particular trip.

The woods surrounding the cabin were silent. McGee scanned the area as he made his way through the clearing, but there was no sign of movement, no evidence that their quarry had made his escape in this direction. Maybe they had missed something back in the cabin? He was fairly sure there was no way the man had made it out of the cabin and eluded them, not in the time he had to do so. Maybe he should go back and check the cabin again? The idea of a trap door, a hidden compartment sounded like something out of an Agatha Christie novel, but it was the only explanation McGee could find.

With a sigh, he turned to head back and was met with the sight of man pointing a gun at him. Before he had a chance to completely draw his weapon from its holster the man fired. The sound of the shots registered before the pain hit, a sudden burning surge of agony in his chest and back. He felt the strength dissolve from his body and he fell to the ground, unable to stop his descent. The jarring crash as his back hit the ground sent a spasm through his chest and he coughed, sending a fresh wave of pain through his body as spatters of warm liquid exited his mouth and landed on his face. He struggled to draw in a breath but his shattered chest would not cooperate, and the sensation of drowning overtook him completely. As he struggled to hang on to life, to fight off the enveloping blackness, he heard the man speak for the first time in a cold, taunting voice…

"You have no idea what you are, do you?"

McGee awoke with a jolt, gasping in welcoming breaths as a cry of protest died in his throat. His flailing arm caught the door handle, bringing him back to reality, and he warily took in his surroundings. The sedan was pulled over onto the side of a highway and Ziva was staring at him from the driver's seat. The car shook slightly as a large tractor trailer flew past and the motion caused McGee's stomach to clench. Without a word, he pushed open the passenger door and stumbled out, traversing a few feet of highway shoulder before collapsing to his knees and emptying the contents of his stomach on the brittle grass. The sensation immediately brought back the memory of the taste of his own blood and he gagged again, continuing until nothing was left but a dry cottony layer in his mouth. He remained on his knees with his head hanging down, motionless until he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Are you-?"

"No. Not really."

"Nightmare?"

"Yes…no. Memory. I remembered what happened back at the cabin." He looked up at Ziva. "I remember getting shot. I remember…dying. But that doesn't-."

"We will figure it out, McGee." She helped him to his feet. "We are almost home now. We can start working on it tomorrow. Come on." She led him back to the car and helped him into the passenger's seat before returning to the driver's seat and refastening her seat belt. She pulled the sedan back onto the highway and drove on in silence. After several minutes she spoke.

"Do you remember anything else?"

"Uh, no, not really."

"McGee, you are lying to me. Why?"

"It's crazy."

"And the rest of this day has not been 'crazy'? Just tell me."

"I, uh, well…the man who shot me. He said something before I blacked out. But it doesn't make any sense."

"What did he say?"

"He said: 'you have no idea what you are, do you?'"

"'What you are'? So…he targeted you specifically. Why?"

"I don't know! Like I said, it doesn't make any sense. I mean, any 'what' I might be, I already know: NCIS agent, computer specialist, writer…it's just...nonsense."

"Maybe it is something else; the what. The reason why you are not dead now."

"So, I'm some sort of…thing?"

"Perhaps. I…" She paused and a strange expression crossed her face. "I have heard of something like this before."

"Seriously? When?"

"From my grandmother. A story told to her by her grandmother, passed down through generations. It was about a man in the village who was killed by…what is the word? Bandits. He was stabbed through the heart. His family was preparing him for burial when he revived. At first, everyone thought it was, well, a miracle I guess."

"But you don't believe in miracles."

"No. As I said: at first. But then, his family, his friends, the rest of the people in the village aged and grew old as you would expect, but he did not. His wife bore him no children, and it seemed he suffered no sickness or injury. The people soon decided that he was cursed and banished him. He left the village and was never heard from again, although through the years people claimed to see him pass through once a generation."

"Cheerful story," muttered McGee.

"Yes. I always thought it was just a folk tale, a story to remind us, how do you put it? Not to judge first appearances."

"Which it probably was, Ziva. I mean, come on? Curses? There's no such thing."

"So you say, just as it is impossible for a dead man to come back to life. And I know you will say that there is a logical explanation, too, but so far we have not found one."

"We will." We have to.

Ziva lapsed into silence for the remainder of the drive, not speaking again until they were outside McGee's apartment building.

"I need to take the car back to NCIS, but then I will come back to check on you."

"You don't need to do that Ziva. Really, I'm…well, as good as can be expected."

"Fine. I will pick you up tomorrow at 0600 so we can start working on the case." She handed him his shirt in a plastic bag. "Make sure you find a safe way of disposing of that." She then handed him the SD card from her camera. "And these pictures as well."

"Got it. Ziva…thank you. I'm…thanks."

"Until tomorrow."

She drove off with a slight screech of tires and he watched the sedan until it disappeared into the distance before making his way up to his apartment. Once inside, he tossed the bag into the hall closet, not wanting to even think about it, and carried the SD card to his computer and sat down. He had decided not to destroy the pictures, believing that they would somehow shed some light onto this whole mystery. He pulled all the images off the card onto his desktop and "scrubbed" the card, completely deleting the incriminating photos. He then saved his copies onto a CD, adding several layers of encryption as he went, before completely deleting the files from his hard drive.

"Better safe than sorry…"

After a hot shower to wash away the remnants of dirt and blood that Ziva had missed, he dressed for bed and took one last look in the mirror, searching for something, some clue that might tell him why he was still breathing. Finding nothing obvious, he went to his room, lay down on the bed and closed his eyes. He tried to shut down and relax, but the strange words of the shooter continued to echo through his mind. It was several hours before he slipped into shallow, restless slumber.

A/N: I decided that McGee is a fan of Discworld (where Death rides a horse named Binky). I couldn't help myself.

Rule number four (paraphrased): If you have a secret, keep it to yourself. If you can't, tell one other person. There is no third option.

Consider this story to be set sometime in early season 5.

And yes, you've guessed it, it's a Highlander crossover. Just so you know, no one else who works for NCIS is immortal. Still, it's hard to get anything past Gibbs ;)