The turbulence of the plane was nothing compared to the turbulence on McGee's face as he stared unseeingly in Gibbs' direction. Tony…taken? That made categorically, no sense whatsoever. Feeling an acidic level of hatred that had frankly never been housed inside his body before, he threw a venomous stare across at his boss, who didn't flinch, but seemed almost…sad.

"You think that's funny?" McGee raged, ignoring the startled look on Ziva's face, "is that your idea of a joke?" His breathing was coming in rapid bursts, his much beleaguered lungs wheezing in protest, but he kept slamming air into them regardless. He needed air to vent his pulsating rage, and they would therefore just have to deal.

Gibbs leant forward and with a mammoth effort, resisted the urge to lay a comforting hand on the kid. It didn't take a genius to realise it would not be appreciated. He struggled to find the words, not an unusual occurrence for him, but in that moment he wished for nothing more than have to been blessed with the art of fluid speech.

"Tim," he began quietly, "there's no joke. Tony…" his voice cracked a bit, "he's missing. Has been since the same night you were taken. "We have no idea where he is, or…well, we have no idea how he's doing."

McGee stared, with curled up lips, a feral snarl on his face that was perhaps the first to ever cross the handsome features. He, generally, was not the snarling type. The look he threw at Gibbs in that moment however, was nothing short of sinister. Made more so by the deep cuts and gaunt expression of his previously boyish face.

"I saw Tony in the bull pen, just a few days ago," his eyes swivelled round to Ziva and who, he now realised, was the man who in the video was seated at his desk, "he's fine."

He sucked in a ragged breath and jerked his head towards the silently watching unknown agent. Cutting Gibbs short as he began to speak in the process.

"I see you had no trouble replacing me though," he grinned maniacally, jerking his head in the man's direction, "who's this then, Agent McTwo?"

Gibbs rubbed his temples slowly and shook his head.

"This," he replied quietly, "is a special ops recovery Agent Connors on loan to us from the feds, he specialised in bringing back captured men."

The plane jerked, at that moment, causing the four occupants to be tussled slightly. Ziva and Gibbs' hands instantly shot out to steady Tim, who just as instantly slapped them away, with a raw anger still evident on his face.

"A recovery agent?" he mocked loudly, "a recovery agent? Was that day, chilling at my desk, his idea of recovering then? Just you know, having a bit of a rest? Because, if it is, I have to say the feds are about as useless as you guys proved to be."

He paused in his diatribe for a moment, eying the still silent man fiendishly. "Agent Connors, is it?"

Not waiting for the man to affirm or deny, he continued. "Well take my advice man, run while you still can. Because this team, they're just gonna drag you down until you have nothing left."

His jaw tightened, as he looked down in abject anguish, unable to comprehend how they could lie to him the way they were so easily doing, before looking back up.

"Take my word for it."

Agent Connors didn't respond, and it struck McGee in that moment, that this was just another day at the office for him. He averted his gaze, and found Ziva staring at him with an odd expression. Averting his gaze again as his throat constricted, he found Gibbs staring at him with a similar expression.

He settled for staring at the ground.

Before another burning inquiry took a hold of him.

"Where are we going?" he found himself spitting a moment later, the question seemingly so obvious, but only occurring to him now.

Gibbs, still wearing that expression, murmured softly "home, and then straight to a hospital."

McGee blinked.

"And where were we?"

This time it was Ziva who answered, and Tim's eyes reluctantly flickered towards her. He took in her appearance, and found himself drinking in every aspect of her. Everything about her that he had missed so desperately during his incarceration. Now though…now those things, those very same things, made his stomach curl up inside.

"Russian midlands," she answered softly, seeing the disgust in Tim's eyes and feeling her own stomach somersault at the intensity of it.

Nodding, because he couldn't think of anything else to do, McGee suddenly winced as a familiar bout of internal pain surged through him. Gibbs instantly reached out a hand once more, as if he could even do anything.

"Don't touch me," Tim hissed angrily, moving out the way of the well intentioned touch, wincing even more in response as his body protested violently against the sudden movements. Gibbs withdrew his touch, a palpable sadness radiating from him as he viewed his junior agent.

The physical difference from the last time he'd saw the kid, and now, were heart wrenchingly obvious. But the mental divergence…that was the most devastating difference. Conscious of the horrors Tim must have endured, Gibbs took a deep breath and tried with all his might to be gentle.

But he needed to know. He desperately needed to know.

"Tim…the…the people, who held you…did they ever mention anything to you about Tony?" His voice rang with an urgency that instantly set McGee's teeth on edge and his blood pressure surging dangerously upwards.

This, apparently, was quite the wrong thing to say.

"Are you still peddling that story?" he gritted out, "have you become a bit forgetful in your old age or something? I just told you. I saw the damn tape. There's nothing wrong with your precious Tony, he's alive and kicking, but obviously just too busy to be here."

He shook his head slowly.

"I was a fool for thinking he would be. That any of you would be."

Gibbs blinked.

"Tim, I-"

A loaded interjection broke him swiftly off.

"You what?" Tim vented with a biting venom, "you were just busy building your boat, and you forgot about me for nearly a year, but…you're here now, so I should just fall into your arms and cry with happiness. Is that it?"

Gibbs shook his head fervently, and tried to answer, but he was once again beaten to it.

"So when you do show up after twelve months of me being tortured on a daily basis, you feed me some cock and bull story about Tony being kidnapped? Are you a special kind of sadistic bastard? Do you get off on causing people the most disgusting degree of misery possible?"

His chest was heaving with the effort of his outburst, and a faint trail of blood trickled down his cheek as his rapid mouth movements irritated the much abused skin.

Ziva gaped from her chair, as Gibbs slowly unbuckled his seatbelt and crouched down on the ground before Tim, his own chest heaving with his own anguish as he took in the destroyed young man in front of him.

"It's not a cock and bull story Tim," he croaked out, "I swear to you, it's not. Tony's-"

Recoiling from the man in front of him, McGee shook his head with an anger that was astounding in such a battered body. He resisted with a degree of will power he didn't know he possessed, from round housing Gibbs straight into his lying mouth. In that moment, in that crushing moment, he hated the man.

He hated the team. He hated…hell, he hated the air that was keeping him tethered to his earthly existence. He found himself wishing, in that dark moment, that Vlada had just killed him where he sat. If he hadn't wasted time with notices and signatures, he could be blissfully settling into whatever awaited him after a long, long bout of purgatory.

But no…oh no, even Team Gibbs were too meddlesome to permit him an effective, painless death.

"I SAW THE TAPE," he shrieked in a miserable Jethro's face, "are you listening to me? I. Saw. The. Tape. There is nothing wrong with DiNozzo, not that if there was, you would have taken a year to find him right? Oh no, he would have been back in time for dinner…"

He petered off, an inhumane pain shooting through him as his lungs worked overtime to support to the oxygen flow necessary flow for such rage.

Suddenly, the plane hit an air pocket, and jolted to the side violently.

Instinctively, and maddeningly, Tim's hands shot out to catch Gibbs as he stumbled with the force of the jerky movements. With the plane returning to its normal gate, he instantly let go of the man's collar as if the soft fabric was capable of scalding him.

Straightening himself up, Gibbs looked squarely at his junior agent, and spoke rapidly. In the full knowledge that he could, and probably would, be cut off at any given moment.

"The tape was a fabrication Tim" he murmured quickly. We had a computer forensics expert come in and analyse all footage from the bull pen with Tony in it, and we saw that Connors was in it too."

He took a deep breath, no interruptions yet, pressing his luck, he pushed on.

"Tony has never even met Connors, Tim. We knew that our feed was being hacked, that's why we brought in the analyst, but we were too late, and we couldn't shut it down. We needed it. It was the first clue as to where you were. We knew that there was a strong likelihood that you would be shown that doctored feed, to make it look…."

His voice cracked again.

"To make it look like we'd basically disavowed you and moved on. I…" he gulped slightly, "I gave the order that the feed be allowed to continue being doctored. I felt…I felt if they knew we were aware of their hacking, your life would be in danger."

He swallowed.

"More danger, I mean…" looking up at a silently staring Tim, his eyes shone with sincerity, "I'm so sorry Tim, I know how it must have looked, but I was trying to keep you alive, without…without knowing if you were alive or not."

Tim's mind was keeling under the weight of the information being delivered to it. He knew, from his MIT experience, that it was indeed possible to doctor footage to such a degree that it was all but unnoticeable. He also knew that NCIS had that kind of pull. Looking down into Gibbs' eyes, he saw nothing but the truth shining back at him.

Still having so many questions, so many burning, shrieking questions, he asked the most pressing. In a now shaking tone, devoid of the anger it had rung with not five minutes ago.

"Tony's really missing?" he whispered, a deadening feeling spreading throughout him at the thoughts of the grinning, teasing DiNozzo languishing in a place like he'd just escaped.

Gibbs' jaw clenched as he nodded slowly.

"He really is," he answered quietly, feeling sick at the warring battle of relief and anguish that was raging inside him. The relief of having his junior agent back, and the anguish of still being without his senior one.

"How?" Tim croaked in horror that matched his darkest days in prison, "how?"

There was no missing the warning look that Ziva sent to Gibbs as he spoke, and the rather alarming intensity behind it. The team lead didn't have to be facing her to feel it burning into the back of his skull, as he looked up at McGee tentatively.

That was the first major clue for Tim.

Tentative and Leroy Jethro Gibbs didn't generally share the same stratosphere as each other, never mind the same damned plane.

"HOW?" Tim all but roared, causing Connors to jump slightly in his seat.

Flinching slightly, Gibbs reached out and placed a hand on McGee's knee, which, mercifully was not slapped away or shrugged off.

Taking a shuddering breath and wishing that he was more lax about lying, but knowing that Tim needed the truth, Gibbs forced his vocal chords to cooperate with his brain, with eyes shining with remorse.

His whispered voice rang with a pain that very few occasions had ever brought about, and it seemed to bellow around the small confines of their accommodations.

"He…Tony, saw them take you, Tim…"

Gibbs swallowed forcibly, and felt himself swoon slightly as he forced himself to continue.

"He went after you."

….

TBC

….

A/N: In response to Guest reviewer: Nope, I don't really plan fic's, I just go along with whatever pop's into my head. If I have a particular storyline that I really want to do, I'll sort of plan that, but generally, it's a chapter by chapter basis

Thanks for reading guys. Will update soon.

-Inks.