Staring through bloodshot eyes, and through equally beleaguered lids caked with dried blood, Tony's jaw clenched as his oppressor grinned eerily at him. A remote control was clasped firmly in his tormentor's grasp as he waved a commanding hand for his cronies to wheel in a jaded looking television, on a rickety stand. Grinning with his all too familiar leer, the man shuffled over to the stand, and raised a brow in his captive's direction.

"About three hours ago," he breathed in a wheezing whisper, "your little friends stormed into the location where my…colleagues, were holding your junior counterpart. They, as it transpires, are not quite as hopeless as we believed. They at least managed to find one of our many, many residences." He laughed mirthlessly, "and one of you. I suppose we know now which one of you is more important, do we not?"

He paused then, to drink in the look of tentative, atrophied hope that was tinged with horror that was spreading across the battered face. His eyes crinkled at the corners as he consumed the emotion, feeding his maniacal desires. Whilst perhaps not as bloodthirsty as Vlada, he was certainly afflicted with the perversions of torture based enjoyment. He did not care for his fallen comrades, because, quite like them…he felt nothing.

Still, he found such childish emotions in others quite amusing, in an intellectual sense if nothing else. And the warring battle that was tied to the chair in front of him was nothing short of delicious. Licking his lips in appreciation, Pyotr appraised his most difficult of difficult captives. He was a present, this…Italian fellow. A gift. He was not supposed to be here. He was not the target. But…he, oh, as all Americans tend to do, just had to play the hero. He just had to race after his little protégée.

And now, now he was paying the price.

Heavily.

"Forgive me, my friend," Pyotr murmured in his heavily accented, but crisply perfect English, "I was lost to my thoughts for a moment…what was I saying?" His lips spread further, and a perfect set of gleaming white teeth were exposed. "Oh yes, your little federal playmates…they arrived at our retreat, quite rudely, without notice or invitation." His eyes lit up as he caressed the remote. "I am not entirely acquainted with your culture, nor I am I fully convinced you have any but…we Russians, we do not take kindly to such poor manners, you see?"

Scraping a chair along the ground, he moved closer to a steadily staring Tony, and threw himself down in front him. Folding a leg, in a meticulously pressed pair of military chords, he raised a brow. "I am afraid, that when confronted with such…rudeness, my colleagues had no choice but to try and teach your, ahh…how do you say it?" His lips twitched. "Oh yes…your buddies, they had no choice but to teach your buddies some respect."

Stomach churning, clenching and contracting…Tony continued to stare stiffly ahead. He had screwed up a moment ago, he had showed emotion. He had let his mask of indifference slip. He knew better than that. He was reclaiming that mask now, gripping to it like a child to a blanket. It was his only line of defence. His mind…so often taken for granted, was like a battering ram of offence based defence these days. It was the only place he was safe. The only place they couldn't storm and plant their flag.

Of course…of course they had been successful in penetrating it somewhat. Over the long, cold, lonely months of sadistic torture and unanswered demands for information, his barriers had crumbled. There wasn't a portcullis in the world that could withstand that kind of assault, without obtaining a dent and a nick. He had dark moments. Moments where he prayed for the end to come, with a swiftness that would snuff the light out of him before he knew it was happening.

But then…then Tim's face would creep into his mind, and he would push those thoughts away. He somehow, had convinced himself…perhaps in the depths of his despair, that as long as he stayed alive. As long as he clung to this earth…so would McGee. It mightn't look like it to the idle observer, but he and the probie had a unique bond, fused as tightly as a welders touch. As long as he was alive, he could feel that Tim was too. And so, he clung, clasped and gripped to this life.

No matter how much he didn't want to. No matter how much he just wanted to lie down, and never get up again. No matter how much he wanted to just go and be with his mother…and sleep. He couldn't. Not as long as he felt that the probie was still alive, and he did feel that he was still alive. Out there somewhere, possibly suffering the same fate as he was. In his most solitary of moments his throat had constricted dangerously, and his green eyes had shone with unshed tears at the thoughts of Tim enduring the treatment he had become so… accustomed to.

The wispy voice, so ill fitting to its owner was burning into his brain now, and he needed to stay focussed. Blinking, he stared resolutely over Pyotr's head. But he couldn't avert his ears the way he could his eyes, and the murmuring tone dripped and seeped into his mind like an oil spill into the ocean. He couldn't outsmart, outrun or outgun it. He had to listen to it, and right now, the more he listened the more his consciousness threatened to depart from him. To leave him in a state of bound unconsciousness.

Literally and figuratively.

"I am afraid that there were causalities my friend," Pyotr crooned, eyes gleaming with the thrill of the con, as he finally aimed the remote at the stationary television. "I am afraid…your team is no longer whole. It is such a pity…such a pity…first Timmy and then your good self. But at least there were two…action menremaining….yes? But now…" He shook his head in sardonically feigned sadness, as his well fed fingers stubbed the "on" button, flickering the blank screen into action.

"But now…there is only one."

Feeling his mask threaten to dissolve, Tony desperately grappled for it as he met Pyotr's eyes, dancing with a twisted glee, with a purposely expressionless set of his own. Inside though, inside…his heart was hammering against his rib cage with a desperation so strong it was as if it yearned to escape. His throat burned with the sudden dryness that encased it, and a clammy, cold sweat was spreading throughout him like wildfire.

Following the glare of the screen as it settled into the playing of a recording, he took in a deep, but subtle breath and prayed for the best whilst feeling faint with the thoughts of the worst. A dark, dank and decidedly gloomy room inched into view. Never even having set foot in the visualised room, Tony could almost feel the despair he was sure was coating the stone flanked walls. This was clearly an old time, run down prison. Unlike his shiny, purpose built, clinical surroundings.

His heart clenched with an almost arresting pain, as the footage suddenly trained in upon a lone, prone figure in the centre of the room. Bound snugly to a large chair, with lacerations and scarring so like his own, sat a shadow of what once was Timothy McGee. Before his mind could even begin to process the sight, and the rampantly complex emotions that went along with it, the image shifted.

Watching with enlarged eyes, Tony suddenly felt his pulse still. Before his heart sang with a joy that was oh, so very quickly and cruelly snuffed out with a dash of incomprehensible misery. There, creeping slowly into the mouth of a tunnel that clearly led to the room he was seeing, was Ziva and Gibbs. Eyes straining, he couldn't see any accompanying figure. He watched from his binds as his boss and his…well, Ziva, inched down the torch lit tunnel, with firearms raised.

Deep green eyes screamed with agony as a gunshot, unheard in his confines, rang out on the footage. The same eye's almost bled with an acute misery as the figures that had caused such fleeting exultation, crumpled. Fell like dominoes, one directly after the other. One figure, tall but stout, draped over their slimmer counterpart in a last ditch attempt at salvation. A fruitless attempt. Both bodies lay still, lifeless…with a stream of ruby red expelling from their wounds with a river flow force. He was compelled to sit and watch as their life literally spilled from their bodies, his eyes once so carefully expressionless, shining with an intolerably intolerable anguish.

Before he could blink, before his eyes could shut and grant him a millisecond of physical respite from the scene in front of him, it switched again. They were back in the room. The room that shrieked desolation and despair from its very foundations. The room where Tim McGee sat bound, but this time, with company. Tony watched with a fear he didn't know he could still feel, as crisply clear audio suddenly filled the room, and a dangerously low voice flittered around his own confines.

Pyotr grinned with an appalling glee as Vlada's, then alive, voice pierced their haunt. He chuckled internally as the ashen quality , of his most perplexing, resilient and downright unbreakable prisoner increased with every syllable. He watched as the lips of the still strong jaw, twitched in an irrepressible despair. Turning to enjoy the show himself, and once again praising himself for capturing that little…technology man, he tapped the remote thoughtfully against his chin. It was so well done, this…tinkering with reality, that if he wasn't the instigating party of it, he too, would have believed it.

His ears pricked up as the death notice negotiations were being played out between Vlada and this Timothy McGee, and once again marvelled at the man's obstinacy. Perhaps it was a requirement, he mused, in order to work for the NCIS…one must be honourable to the point of utter, suicidal, stupidity. His hands trembled with a morbid humour as the tape wheeled to an end, with the younger NCIS agent essentially agreeing to end his own life, without even an attempt at an attempt, to save it.

It was delicious.

Pausing the tape, he turned back to a now very queasy looking captive and smiled his eerie smile.

"Now…we have tried all sorts of different methods to loosen your tongue, friend…and they have all proved to be in vein." He leaned back, and crossed his legs. "I am not a man accustomed to failure, I will not tolerate it. So, let us see shall we? Let us see if you, even though prepared to cast aside your own life, are as willing to do so with his?" Pointing to the screen where Tim's frozen face was displayed in all its mutilated, pixilated glory. "Because…" he chuckled in self interruption. "Excuse me my dear man for I am being patronising, I am sure you know what I am trying to tell you, hmm? A clever man like you, surely it is…very clear?"

He craned his neck to fully appreciate the edible sense of agony staring back at him, and licked his lips with an almost phantom, cannibalistic appetite.

"Perhaps not…perhaps you are so tired that you are incapable of reading between the lines? Should I just help…how do you say it? Oh yes, help a brother out?"

Not expecting an answer, he ran a hand through perfectly styled hair, and displayed those unnervingly white teeth in an almost demonic, glinting smile. His silky voice rattled around the room, and shook the very foundations of the man in front of him.

"You have five minutes to tell me what I want to know, Anthony DiNozzo…or Timothy McGee is quite literally, a dead man."

….

TBC

….

A/N: Audience Preference Q: (Because I really don't mind either way )

I could finish this story up in one more, lengthier chapter, I think. Or I could fence it out into a longer, multi chapter type situation dealing with the aftermath and recovery etc etc. Like I say, I don't mind. This is enjoyable to write, but I don't mind bringing it to a close either. Lemme know what you guys' think!

-Inks