*****
Prologue
*****
The Pulse... So that's what they were calling it now. Logical really. Its effects were so devastating that survival was the only thing on most people's minds these days.
Inevitably the world wondered who did it, and more importantly, why? The conspiracy theorists were having a field day and who could blame them? Only one fact was known for sure. On October 21st 2008, at precisely 3.17p.m., there was a blast of light in the sky that changed everything...
Tony shivered at the memory and reached out towards Gibbs; his touch reassuring the younger man like nothing else could. It still surprised Tony how good they were together, even months after that awful day. They had only survived because of their trust in each other. Trust that had become something else entirely....
But Tony needed more from Gibbs tonight than just touching. He needed to go to that place where there was no separation between them in mind or body. He needed to *join* with Gibbs in the closest way possible. To mindlink with the man who had become his lover.
It was a level of intimacy Gibbs allowed no-one else.
Tony was the only one he trusted enough to join minds with, and in turn, Gibbs was the only one who understood him. They had started out fighting for their sanity and ended up in a relationship. And now Tony knew that when the dark precog visions threatened to swallow him, Gibbs would be there to lend him his strength. His love.
How else could they have survived the end of the world as they knew it.
*****
1. The coming of the pulse
*****
There was absolutely no warning beforehand. None at all. Tony DiNozzo was riding in the passenger seat of Gibbs' car, driving down the road on the way to Bethesda from a crime scene, when the world changed. Somewhere, high above in the atmosphere, where the air was so thin and rarefied it was indistinguishable from space to all but scientists, the psi-device exploded.
Where it came from would later be the source of endless debate. Some authorities claimed it was alien. Others said it was invented by a geek from MIT who had discovered a way to tunnel into another dimension. The conspiracy theorists - and there were many of these - suggested that it was something the Russian Mob had sold to terrorists, which they'd found in a bunker after the fall of the Soviet Union. Part of a UFO which had crashed in Tunguska in 1906.
Who knew? Not that it mattered. The world had been changed forever.
Ten miles above the Eastern seaboard of the United States, there was a soundless, brilliant flash of omicron radiation, brighter than the sun. All electronics within six hundred miles of the epicentre were instantly fried, including several crucial power stations. As a result, most of the power supplies of the Eastern United States and Canada failed. The effects on millions of unshielded humans exposed to the radiation were just as devastating.
The epicentre of the blast was somewhere high over West Virginia, close to where the two agents were driving. The radiation levels there were particularly intense. Tony barely had time to yell in alarm and fling his hands in front of his face as his eyes were dazzled by the intense light. Then the blast wave of omicron radiation hit and a wall of pain slammed into his head.
*****
Abstract - Journal of Physics, May 2009
We theorise that the explosion which occurred on October 21st 2008 produced a rare form of electromagnetic radiation which we are calling Omicron Radiation. The nature of the radiation was such that we believe it had a dimensional element; that is to say, it reached into another dimension, ripping it open. The effects of both the explosion itself and the space-time instability it caused had devastating effects on the Washington area.
All electrical devices within approximately 600 miles of the epicentre failed. More seriously however, within the blast zone a measurable, potentially lethal disruption occurred to the electrical activity within the brains of all unshielded individuals within minutes of exposure to the omicron radiation.
Other biological effects may be significant in the longer term, particularly on a genetic level.
*****
His head hurt. No, that was inaccurate. Where his head used to be, there was a white hot, raw wound that was at the bottom of an abyss of pain. Tony could hear someone making a pathetic whimpering noise, and he dimly knew that he was making that sound. He knew too, that he was badly injured; healthy people didn't feel this way. Healthy people didn't sound like that.
He needed to open his eyes.
It felt like something had sliced into his skull and pulled out part of his brain. Maybe it had. There was a terrible emptiness where part of his mind had been, raw and bleeding round the edges. A place where mental and physical pain seemed to centre itself.
With a moan, Tony opened his eyes.
Whiteness disoriented him, made his head spin. He closed his eyes until the dizziness eased. He felt a hand pressed against his forehead, and he moaned softly, leaning gratefully into the soothing touch.
"Don't try to move." Tony forced his eyes open again. The whiteness resolved itself into Gibbs' shirt. Tony realised that he was lying on his back on the ground, with what felt like Gibbs' jacket rolled up under his head. Gibbs was kneeling beside him.
"Boss?" He could hear his voice slurring strangely. He forced himself to focus. "...Head hurts..."
"We crashed. Do you remember, Tony?"
He tried to shake his head, almost instantly realising his mistake as pain stabbed through him, radiating from a place centring on his forehead. He whimpered.
"Don't try to move. I think you hit your head."
No. He hadn't. He tried to explain to Gibbs but the words wouldn't seem to form in his mouth. It was the light that had hurt him, not the crash...
"The car died and the steering locked, then we ran off the road," Gibbs said with a scowl. "Some kind of airburst weapon I think, maybe even a nuke?" He frowned. Only long familiarity with his boss clued Tony in to the fact that Gibbs was seriously worried by something he wasn't telling Tony.
"What else, boss?" he managed finally to mumble a question. The small twitch of Gibbs lips told Tony that the boss recognised how sharp Tony's perception was, even now, and approved of it.
"The car electrics and our cell-phones are fried," Gibbs acknowledged. "And we're stuck in the middle of nowhere." Gibbs had been driving fast along a back country dirt road, on one of his alleged shortcuts, when the light had exploded in the sky.
"And...?" Tony prompted.
"You need a hospital Tony." Gibbs spoke the words gently. That alone clued Tony in to the seriousness of their situation. The younger man shivered. He must look really bad for Gibbs to sound like that. Considerate...
The pain in his head was unlike anything he had ever felt before - like his head was trapped in a vice.
Something hot and wet began to flow from his nose.
Dully, he reached up to rub at his face; he could feel something wet and sticky running down his chin. His fingers came away red. There was a coppery taste in his mouth. Blackness crowded at the edge of his vision, threatening to sweep him away.
"You're bleeding!" Then, "Oh shit..." Gibbs sounded surprised. Tony tried to focus on his boss. Something was very wrong here; Gibbs never lost his cool. Even as Tony watched, he saw a trickle of red thread its way from Gibbs' right nostril. His boss raised a hand and swiped at his nose, then stared uncomprehendingly at the sight of his own fresh blood.
No. That was just impossible. Gibbs never got ill.
"Not a nuke," Tony whispered. "Something worse..." The blackness that had been pushing at the fringes of his thoughts rose up and swallowed him. And because it meant an absence of pain, he let it.
******
Leroy Jethro Gibbs was in trouble, and he knew it. He stared at at the pathetically crumpled form of DiNozzo, his face deathly pale and a thin trickle of blood from his nose... They had been exposed to an unknown weapon and he realised that it was starting to affect them. The effects on Tony had been immediate and devastating, and Gibbs had initially hoped that he had escaped the worst of its effects.
He wasn't fooled though. The fact that he too had started bleeding from his nostrils told him that he was in deep shit. He could already feel his head starting to ache and he felt dizzy. They were miles from any settlement and their car was dead. Gibbs knew that he needed to find a safe place to hole up. Preferably somewhere warm and sheltered. To stay here and get sick was to die.
Memory kicked in. A few years ago, he had worked a case in the hills near here, and he remembered a group of cabins strung out along the ridgeline, not too far away. No more than half a mile or so. If he could get DiNozzo there...
The younger man was deeply unconscious and even if he came round again soon, he wasn't capable of walking. Six weeks ago, the young agent had been within hours of death, his body infected by plague; this new bio-weapon, whatever it was, had hit him particularly hard. And abandoning the young agent was never an option, no matter what happened next. With a grimace, Gibbs forced himself to ignore his aching head, hefted Tony's limp body in a fireman's lift and headed uphill.
*****
Later...
The next time Tony woke to consciousness, he immediately wished for oblivion again. The pain in his head was a thousand times worse than it had been before - a white hot agony that made him sob aloud helplessly. He felt as if someone was hammering a spike into the centre of his forehead. He was also desperately thirsty. Part of him just wanted to stay where he was, but a tiny, stubborn part of him wouldn't let him give up so easily.
The last time he had opened his eyes, there had been light; now there was semi-darkness. It was much later in the day, much cooler and probably close to dusk. His eyes gradually made out the wooden beams of a ceiling above him. He was lying on his back, indoors, probably on the floor, judging from the smooth, hard surface he could feel beneath him.
He processed that information for a long while. To be honest, it surprised him that he could even string two thoughts together, but needs must.
Gibbs had brought him somewhere, God knows how. The man was a powerhouse of strength and reliability. Of course he had helped Tony. Especially after losing Kate so recently...
But where was his boss? That was what was wrong. Gibbs wouldn't just leave him; it was as certain as the fact that the sun would rise in the east not the West. Tony's trust in Gibbs was absolute.
Tony whimpered softly. He knew how much it was going to hurt, but he had to turn his head and look around him. More specifically, to his left, where he could hear something odd.
It did hurt - more than he had thought possible - but Tony made himself look towards the noise anyway. What he saw made him moan, and he forced his body to clumsily turn towards the sound, his movements hopelessly uncoordinated. His limbs seemed to have turned to lead.
The world greyed out for a while then came back into focus.
Gibbs lay crumpled on his side, a couple of feet away from Tony on the cabin floor, unconscious, his body wracked uncontrollably with great shivers. Blood was flowing freely from his nose, just as it had from Tony's, earlier.
Gibbs must have known they were going to get sick and found them a bolthole. He had done well; this cabin was far from a dusty old hovel. In fact, it looked as though this place was some rich man's private hideaway. Polished oak wood floors, covered with expensive rugs; original artwork on the walls. Tony knew expensive when he saw it. Not that they were any less fucked.
Lying on the floor beside his boss was a big bottle of Gatorade, lying on its side. Tony fumblingly grabbed it and fumbled at the top for an age, then drank gratefully, trying to ignore the way his hands violently shook and the white hot stabbing pains in his head. It took all of his strength just to do that small task. Gibbs must have found it here, which probably meant the place was well stocked. Apparently he had been searching the place for provisions when he had finally collapsed.
Maybe they had a chance. But the way Gibbs kept on shivering like that was more worrying...
With the last of his strength, Tony edged closer to Gibbs, until he was lying close to his boss, and he put his arms round the older man, holding onto him. It just seemed the right thing to do, to try and keep them both warm. Gibbs moaned, but didn't wake. After a few minutes though, his shivers seemed to ease a little, as the heat of Tony's body warmed him. Tony tightened his grip, trying to convey to the other man that he wasn't alone. And at least he could feel that Gibbs was still alive. If he had been dead... After what had happened to Kate, and his own near death experience with the plague... Just knowing Gibbs was there helped Tony. They were in this together. But the effort took the last of his strength and sent him spinning back down into the darkness.
His last coherent thought was that this was the closest he had ever been to his boss; they were both going to be really embarrassed about this later. If there was a later.
****
There was a warmth against his right side, which was a good thing, because Gibbs couldn't seem to stop shaking; he felt so cold, though the day was in fact fairly warm. Indian Summer...
He couldn't seem to think straight.
The pain in his head was a constant, red-hot misery that never seemed to end. That was the worst of it. No rest from the unrelenting pain. And the way he kept fading in and out of consciousness; it had been daylight, and now it must be way past midnight, the moon full and illuminating the interior of the cabin with a ghostly light...
He sensed movement close to him and focussed on its source. Tony's green eyes were a few inches away from his, filled with torment.
"It hurts so much," Tony whispered, his expression not entirely sane. Gibbs realised that Tony was holding on to him tightly. It was hard to focus - his vision kept shifting impossibly so that objects advanced and receded impossibly. Sometimes, he caught glimpses of otherness - dizzying alien colours and perspectives, as if he were looking through a door into another world. There was only one constant. Tony DiNozzo's warmth against his side as the young man clung to him, a physical anchor in a world of chaos.
Most of the time, the young agent seemed to be a short distance away from him, but sometimes he was far away, like he was at the bottom of a well. Yet always, he seemed more real than the objects in the room around them. More solid and alive...
The younger man whimpered. "I feel like I'm falling." Gibbs could feel fine tremors shaking Tony's body. Not feverish, like Gibbs. More like small shivers were racking the young agent's body every few minutes. Whatever the explosion of light was, it had affected each man differently.
Gibbs pulled Tony closer, holding on to him tightly, trying to ignore the swirling dizziness. Contact with DiNozzo seemed to steady things slightly - the world was spinning around him sickeningly. Perhaps the younger man needed Gibbs too. He clutched at the older man and pressed closer with a tiny whimper.
For the first time, Gibbs realised that they might die of this, and the thought hurt more than he had ever thought possible. He had lost his wife and daughter. He had watched Tony fight for his life as plague turned his lungs to crap. He had stood by while an assassin had shot Kate, her brains blown out in front of him, only weeks before. Blood-spray splattering across the rooftop... Then Paula Cassidy had been kidnapped by a serial killer and had nearly died...
Everything in his life turned to ashes. Now Tony's life was once again in the balance...
*..can't hold on..*
DiNozzo's fingers released their tight grip on his arm. The younger man's face had lost all of its colour; he looked like death...
Not while Gibbs had the strength to fight for him! He wouldn't let it happen. Not while he had breath left in his body. Gibbs reached out and put his hands gently, either side of Tony's face.
"Look at me, Tony." Green eyes focussed unsteadily on his face. "You aren't going to die. Do you hear me? That's an order!"
"Help me..." Tony whispered. "Boss... Please..."
He could almost see the light dying in those green eyes. Then the younger man's eyes slid shut. Terror blossomed in Gibb's feverish mind, irrational and overwhelming.
"No!" he yelled. "Fight it! You hear me!" Then in desperation, "Don't leave me, Tony!"
Even as he screamed at Tony, pain stabbed through his head, white hot and intense, like a needle lancing into his forehead, and he howled, helpless to stop the convulsion that wracked his body. Something in his mind seemed to crack wide open. He was dimly aware of pitching forward, his forehead colliding with Tony's shoulder, but that wasn't what caught his attention. It was as if there was another part of him, long dormant and unguessed at, which was suddenly free to stretch out and expand. This new part of him reached desperately towards Tony, instinctively protective, oddly detached from the pain. He felt life stir and moved closer still.
*Contact*
A rush of emotion and a confusion of images pouring into his mind, suffused with a distinct *flavour* of DiNozzo. That was the only way Gibbs knew to describe the experience as it overwhelmed him. All that Tony was, pouring into him and through him and over him, filling him up, not just in that pain filled place, but through the whole of his being.
He hadn't known that there was such an emptiness inside him until Tony was suddenly there, filling his mind and soul.
Not dead! The relief that filled him was overwhelming. Tony was alive. Distant though, and so weak.
He called out his young subordinate's name, though he would never afterwards know whether he used his mind alone or spoke aloud.
*Boss?*
He felt something wake in DiNozzo, just as it had in his own mind. That same new perception. Then the younger man's astonishment washed over him, followed by a desperate hope.
*Hold onto me*
He felt Tony reach out towards him with that strange new awareness that he too seemed to possess. Their minds tangled together, and he *felt* his strength flood through the young agent.
It was like a key fitting into a lock, or maybe two fabulously complicated jigsaw pieces snapping together. An experience that couldn't be described accurately except perhaps by metaphor. And in that moment of joining, he saw all that Tony was; a curious mix of joys and insecurities. A desperate need for approval, and a surprisingly deep well of loneliness, comparable to his own. He knew that the younger man saw him just as clearly. There was no way to hide from each other; there were no barriers left between them in this place.
He had never let anyone else see so much of himself. He felt raw and open and exposed. Tony could see everything he was. Even that defining moment of his life - the terrible trauma of his family's loss. And the scarred, cold-blooded bastard he had become in the years since then. Justice without mercy.
*No* Tony's voice inside his head, filled with compassion, becoming stronger by the moment as he drew on Gibbs' strength. *Don't judge yourself so harshly, Boss* A feeling of warmth and acceptance came flooding from the young agent. Feedback. His strength boosting and reinforcing Gibbs in return. What the touch of Tony's mind did to him, he couldn't tell, except that *two* were stronger than one alone. They supported each other, so that neither of them fell further into darkness.
Part of him wanted to close off the link. To pull away from the too-welcoming, too intimate presence of the younger man's mind. If he hadn't trusted Tony absolutely, then the intimacy would have been intolerable. As it was, Tony's presence seemed to fill up that emptiness in his mind that he hadn't known existed. Lighting up the shadowy corners of his mind. He could feel the younger man's mind-touch more clearly from one moment to the next, as if familiarity with each other made it easier to link to Tony.
He could no longer tell where the boundary between them was. He didn't care though. Tony no longer looked or felt as if he was dying, and that was all that mattered.
*Hey boss! My head doesn't hurt any more!*
Curiously, Gibbs realised, his pain was gone too, though he still felt as weak as a kitten, and dizzy with fever. The world seemed to have stopped its crazy rollercoaster motion. It felt unexpectedly good, just to lie there without pain. Not that he had the energy to move an inch at the moment. He had given everything he had to Tony - every bit of strength he possessed - and he could still feel that strange part of his mind wrapped around the younger man, supporting and sustaining him.
There was no separation between them. He knew instinctively that if Tony were to die, they would go together, because he didn't know how to break the link between them. Which was unthinkable, because being joined to Tony made him feel complete. Like he had found the other half of himself.
The absurd thought occurred to him that the reason his head had stopped hurting was that the hole torn in his mind by the explosion of light had been filled in some way by Tony. But that was just crazy, wasn't it? Crazier still was the idea that there was no way they could ever separate again without tearing their minds apart.
For a long time afterwards, he watched over Tony, instinctively safeguarding him. Needing to know Tony was safe. Feeling Tony's awe at the older man's protectiveness. The depth of his care. He could feel Tony's wonder in their link as if it was his own. The strangeness of it all. He tried not to think about how good it felt not to be *alone* any more.
Eventually, they slept, exhausted, minds still tangled together.
*****
When he woke, Gibbs lay still, revelling once more in the relative absence of pain. The faint light filtering into the cabin told him that it was near dawn. Though his head still ached, it wasn't the agonising pain he had felt earlier, though he knew he was still sick. He felt feverish, which lent an air of unreality to recent events. He had slept for hours, and if he had dreamed, he couldn't remember it. Tony was curled up next to him, a warm presence snuggled in against his side, which on one level, was just a little disturbing. Not that he could have got much more intimate with DiNozzo, considering they could hear each others' innermost thoughts. But still.
The younger man sighed and Gibbs felt his companion's mind stirring slowly into wakefulness. The link was still there. He should have been more disturbed by it, but there was a rightness to it that he couldn't explain.
*Mmmm. Boss* Tony's voice was a lazy drawl inside his head. Then as the younger man woke fully, Gibbs felt Tony's awareness of him return.
*Oh!*
"Yeah. I know." Somehow, speaking out loud lessened the intimacy a little. Made it easier to cope with. Mostly.
"Telepathy..." Tony said slowly. "I guess this one isn't down to Al Qaeda then." A crooked grin. "You believe in aliens, boss?"
Gibbs shivered. A door had been opened in his mind, but frankly, he couldn't imagine how or why it had happened, let alone who had done it.
"If you'd asked me that two days ago, I would have smacked your head," he said. "But now... I don't know any more."
He tried to ignore the nameless apprehension that had filled him at the thought of unknown forces ranged against them. His protective instincts had flared at the idea, and he heard Tony gasp as Gibbs' mind flowed around him; a watchful guardian presence. The strength of his own reaction embarrassed him, and Gibbs sought refuge in distraction.
"You think if we help each other, we can make it to somewhere more comfortable than the floor?" he asked. "Starting with the damn bathroom."
"Easier said than done, Boss." Tony gave a wry half-grin. "I think I can just about crawl, but standing is definitely not going to happen."
*****
Waking up had been weird this morning. The realisation that their minds were still entwined had stunned Tony. Last night seemed a horrible dream in which he had hovered on the brink of death, until Gibbs rescued him. And somehow, they had slid into each other's minds!
Gibbs' mind was still tangled up in his. He now knew more about his boss than ever before, and Gibbs knew him on a similarly intimate level.
The mind of Leroy Jethro Gibbs wasn't what he had expected. For instance, Tony could never have dreamed that Gibbs would feel so strongly protective of him. He liked it. All his life, he had been looking for the kind of acceptance Gibbs offered him now, tinged with respect and just a trace of need. The older man tried not to show it, but there was a desolate loneliness in him that Tony had never suspected, that welcomed his connection to the younger man. In the end, that, above all, was what Tony responded to.
They were both trying to ignore the things that they were discovering about each other. The intimacy was just too much to cope with, unless they tried to distance themselves from it. Tony knew that he could have lost himself in the mind of Jethro Gibbs, if he had wanted to. Exactly that. Losing himself in sensory overload. He could feel his identity fraying at the edges, when he could feel everything that Gibbs felt, from the slight tickle in his nostrils that threatened to develop into a sneeze, to the dull ache in Gibbs' knee, sign of his earlier exertions in getting to the cabin. It was hard to separate what was input from Gibbs from what was happening to his own body. Tony was in control right now. Just.
He had more immediate problems though. Though he felt much stronger, the same couldn't be said of Gibbs. Where their bodies were pressed together, he could feel that Gibbs was too hot, and the older man's shivering had returned. The effort the two of them had made to get to the bathroom, then one of the bedrooms had exhausted the older man. His strength had given out, just short of the bed. Hardly surprising, since he had dragged or carried Tony to the cabin from the car even as his own body had started to react to the blast of light.
Tony managed to roll Gibbs onto the mattress, and then he had lain next to the older man, shuddering in the aftermath of great physical effort. He knew that he too was sick, and not just from the confused images that the older man was sending into his mind as his fever increased. He leaned against Gibbs, just glad that he could rest for a moment. Contact with the other man steadied him somehow. Grounded him.
*Got your back, boss*
*I never doubted it, Tony. I never have*
Tony felt a warm flush of pleasure and joy. Praise from Gibbs had always meant a lot. He saw the older man smile; they were completely open to each other's feelings and Tony knew that even if he had wanted to, he couldn't have hidden his reaction. He was like an open book to Gibbs. Which was unfortunate, because he was beginning to worry about the older man's fever. He rested for a while, gathering his strength. It concerned him that despite their link, the normally sharp Gibbs didn't ask him what he was planning. In fact, his mind-touch felt duller, more sluggish than it had before.
Gibbs soon slipped into an uneasy doze.
With a sigh, Tony slid off the bed and onto the floor, beginning the long, long crawl (of about twenty feet) to the bathroom cabinet, where he guessed the household medical supplies were stored. It took him over twenty minutes and several time-out moments, to force his weakened body towards his goal. When he finally reached it, he stared in despair at the cabinet door, an impossible five feet above him.
He had tried to stand earlier, and hadn't made it past his knees. Even then, the swirling dizziness and nausea that had assailed him had discouraged further experimentation. Well actually, he had puked his guts out. His head was beginning to ache again and he felt close to exhaustion. He glared at the door. Maybe if he threw something at it...
With a click, the door swung open by itself.
Tony stared for a long time, before his brain finally caught up with his eyes. He had already done at least two impossible things today - telepathy and the very much more daunting achievement of cuddling Gibbs. Why should psychokinesis be any more extraordinary than the rest of his achievements? He wouldn't have tried it if he had been completely sane at that point. Or possibly the edge of fever colouring his thoughts, echoing from Gibbs, affected his judgement. For whatever reason, he decided to try something crazy, mad and stupid.
He could see exactly what he wanted inside the cabinet; bottles and packets of assorted drugs. Hesitantly, he stared at a bottle of Tylenol. How had Carrie done it in that film?
*move*
It wobbled. Tony grinned through his shock, and tried again.
*MOVE!*
With a crash, the whole cabinet jerked off the wall and went flying across the room, smashing into the wall opposite. Pieces of wood and bottles rained down on Tony as he covered his head protectively. Okay, so that had been overkill. But this new ability definitely had big potential.
Pain unexpectedly stabbed through his head and he felt the familiar hot trickle of blood from his left nostril.
Well, maybe the movie he should be thinking of was Firestarter. Wasn't that the one where the guy gave himself nosebleeds when he used his psychic powers?
Tony stuffed as many bottles of pills as he could carry into his pockets and inside his shirt, and began the long, tiring crawl back to Gibbs. His headache was excruciating by the time he finally reached the older man's side. He swallowed a couple of Tylenol down himself, in the faint hope that they would ease his head, then gently shook Gibbs awake.
The older man stared dully at him.
*Your head hurts*
Tony sorted through his prizes until he found something that promised that it had fever reduction properties.
"It's not important boss. You need to take this. It'll help your fever."
Gibbs' lips curved briefly.
"Playing nursemaid, Tony?" He swallowed the pills with a grimace.
"Just call me Nurse Carrie." Tony grinned at Gibbs' puzzled expression. "Sorry boss. Guess you haven't seen that movie."
*Don't watch porn...* The older man murmured confusedly.
He felt Gibbs' mind slip back into uneasy sleep. Shivering with apprehension, Tony laid his aching head next to Gibbs' and tried to rest. He tried not to think about the kind of enemies who could blast open the secret places of their minds and cause them so much pain. And why?
******
End of part 1
Story Notes:
Set in a post-apocalyptic world where telepathy becomes possible. Contains cabinfic and occasional hurt/comfort.
I used *quote stars* to represent telepathic communications.
Author's Chapter Notes:
The story is set just after Kate's death, but before Ziva joined the team. Gibbs and Tony are still hurting because of her death.
Chapter End Notes:
Set in a post-apocalyptic world where telepathy becomes possible. Contains cabinfic and occasional hurt/comfort.
I used *quote stars* to represent telepathic communications.
I used *quote stars* to represent telepathic communications.