Chapter one

He must be going mad.

But he blinked, and stepped back, nearly falling down the flight of stairs but catching himself in time – and yet he was still there, standing in front of him.

DiNozzo.

Tony.

There was something off – the way the light reflected off Tony, the way Gibbs could see through him here and there—he must be going mad.

“You’re not here,” he said, rubbing at his eyes.

“You fantasize about me a lot then?” Tony asked.

Gibbs looked at him, wondering just how much around the bend he had to be going to have a hallucination appear and talk to him.

Then again, for a hallucination, it was a nice one. Tony looked the way he did when Gibbs last saw him – eyes twinkling with mischief, dressed in a grey sweater and dark pants. The hallucination regarded him silently, perhaps waiting to see if it passed inspection.

Then Gibbs shook his head – as nice as the hallucination was, he really didn’t have time for it. He had to find the real Tony, before time ran out. Before hallucinations were the only images of Tony he’d see.

He turned and stalked up the rest of the stairs, and when he looked back, the hallucination was gone. Gibbs tried to pretend that it didn’t stab at his heart.

“Anything?” he snarled as soon as he was in the bullpen. He knew he hadn’t even been gone ten minutes, but he still asked.

“N-no, boss,” McGee stammered.

“What about Commander Mahoney? Lieutenant Johnson? Lieutenant Miller? Petty Officer Davis?”

The four bodies currently down in autopsy were all male, all handsome men – and although Ducky had been able to determine the causes of death, there had been little else of use for them to go on.

“There’s nothing, Gibbs,” Ziva said, annoyance obvious. “There is not a single piece of evidence we haven’t tracked down. There is nothing for us to do – we are simply waiting for the next—”

She snapped her mouth shut.

“Waiting for what, Officer David?” Gibbs asked, moving to stand too close to her. She did not fidget under his hard gaze.

“His next victim,” she said, and somewhere below the fear and frustration, Gibbs felt a sliver of pride that she could and would stand up to him. But it took a backseat now, because they all feared that the next victim they were waiting for was Tony.

They stared at each other, Ziva’s dark eyes blank and hard. Even after years of working together, Gibbs couldn’t always tell what she was thinking.

By the time the clock reached eight, and the office had emptied out, Gibbs sighed.

“Go home,” he snapped finally, the order for both Ziva and McGee. “If you’re not here at six thirty tomorrow, you can look for a new job.”

Ziva gave a short nod. They were usually there by seven in the morning, and even earlier than that when they had a hot case – but then they also had the best crime-solving statistics at NCIS.

Within five minutes, both McGee and Ziva had left. Gibbs returned to his desk, sitting down heavily. He wished for something to do, someone to interrogate and break, to get the information he so badly needed. But breaks did not come easy in this case – they still had no idea of the murderer’s identity. The victims had nothing in common except their ages, gender and good looks, and that they all worked for the Navy, one way or the other. The latest victim, Lieutenant Johnson, had worked at Bethesda Naval Hospital, while the others had been home from tours. They had few visible injuries – some had marks around their wrists and ankles, likely from handcuffs, but none of them had fatal wounds. Ducky had determined the cause of death to be Propofol overdoses, although the murderer hadn’t so much as attempted to conceal the fact. Post-mortem, they had been meticulously cleaned, leaving no traces of the killer behind.

“You should go home, boss.”

Gibbs looked up, to find Tony—no, to find the hallucination standing on the other side of the desk. Gibbs rubbed his eyes – when a hallucination told him to rest, it was probably time.

“You should listen to me.”

“Yeah, I should listen to a mind-reading ghost,” Gibbs muttered, and then snapped his mouth shut, because he was not about to engage a hallucination in conversation, no matter how much it resembled his missing agent.

“Don’t need to read your mind to know what you’re thinking, boss,” it said. “Gotten pretty good at reading you.”

The bullpen was thankfully empty, so that no one was around to see Gibbs look up into the empty air, staring at something only he could see. He stubbornly refused to answer the hallucination.

“Oh, come on, boss,” it said, sounding exasperated. “What did I do?”

Gibbs tried to focus his attention on his computer, but the words jumbled together into a mess that he couldn’t decipher. The hallucination still loomed on the other side of the desk, as the real Tony sometimes did, awaiting instructions. Gibbs frowned up at it, wondering how his mind could supply him with such an extremely accurate image – everything, from the exact color of his hair to the shape of his hands fit. Did he really have such a keen eye for detail, that he was able to recreate it in his mind? Obviously, he thought.

“You know, you aren’t usually talkative, but this is quiet even for you,” it said.

“You’re not real,” Gibbs snapped.

“Am too,” it said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You’ve been missing for a week,” Gibbs said.

“Missing?” it asked, confusion written over the all-too-familiar face. “But I’m right here.”

It reached out to lean on the desk, closer to Gibbs – only to sink straight through it.

“What the—”

Gibbs looked at the hallucination, which was displaying genuine shock over not being corporeal. Gibbs wondered how a hallucination could be shocked over something that Gibbs already knew: that it wasn’t real. It was supposed to be produced by Gibbs’ mind, and as such know the same things as Gibbs did.

“Gibbs—why can’t I—what’s going on?” it said, eyes wide. It looked so much like Tony that it was all Gibbs could do not to believe that it was, in fact, him. There was innocence in those eyes – Tony’s innocence – that he hadn’t thought his own mind capable of producing, even in a hallucination. He simply wasn’t innocent that way.

The hallucination backed away and Gibbs ran a hand over his face. He felt drained in a way he hadn’t in a long time.

“Boss?”

Gibbs looked away, shaking his head. “You’re not real.”

When he looked up again, the image of Tony was gone.

He poured a glass of bourbon as soon as he got in the door. He had refrained from drinking so far, since DiNozzo had been kidnapped, because he needed to be at his sharpest to find him – but the events of the day had him going for the bottle. Tony’s disappearance had passed the one-week mark – and Gibbs had obviously become desperate enough to conjure up an image of him to talk to.

He headed downstairs, changing into a grey t-shirt on the way, and started working on his boat. It was nearing completion, this small boat that had no name yet, but he would keep polishing it until it was perfect.

Feeling the wood beneath his fingers calmed him, and he worked until he was sweaty, taking swigs of bourbon instead of water when he got thirsty. It probably wasn’t a good idea, but he didn’t care. He needed to get away from his own mind, away from the sharp stabs of pain that threatened to overwhelm him every time he thought of Tony. Where was he? What were they doing to him? Who were they? Was he still alive at all? His body hadn’t been found yet, but that didn’t mean—

He sanded the boat, focusing on the grains of the tree, trying to distract himself from his thoughts.

He didn’t jump when he heard the voice, but that was only because he was a Marine who wasn’t surprised easily.

“Boss, I think I need your help.”

Gibbs looked up, finding the hallucination on the steps – or rather, a few inches above the steps, floating. He wondered why a hallucination would float.

“You figured out you’re not real?” he said, mostly because the bourbon had taken the edge off and talking to a hallucination didn’t seem like such a bad idea anymore.

“I’m real, boss – I’m just not—” it trailed off, floating down the stairs and slumping down into a sitting position.

“You’re not real,” Gibbs said. “You’re missing.”

“You said that before,” it said. “But I’m right here.”

It held its hands out, but all that served to do was to show just how much it wasn’t there – it’s right hand went straight through the wall and disappeared. It gasped upon seeing this, and pulled back, tucking its arms around himself.

“You’re a figment of my imagination,” Gibbs said roughly and began working on the boat again.

“I’m not a fantasy!” it exclaimed, and then added, “But it’s nice to know that you think of me sometimes.”

There was silence, stretching but not uncomfortable. The hallucination’s brow was drawn together in a frown, as Tony’s was sometimes.

“What do you mean ‘missing’?” it asked. “Where did I go?”

Gibbs ignored him, continuing to work on smoothing the wood beneath his fingers.

“Oh, come on, boss,” it said. “Give me something to work with. If I’m not real, then see it as—I don’t know, thinking out loud?”

“You’re not real,” Gibbs snapped.

“Just tell me what happened,” it said.

“He took you,” Gibbs said.

“Who?”

Gibbs refused to look at it, staring intently at the wood instead. He wasn’t crazy, he was simply thinking out loud.

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be here.”

Gibbs saw it’s shoulders slump slightly. “Where, then?”

“Bethesda Hospital,” Gibbs said. “Parking lot.”

“Oh.”

Gibbs looked at it. There was a tug at his heart, just like what he always felt when Tony – the real, live Tony – was in the room; a need to take care of and protect, to love, albeit from afar.

“What can I do to prove to you that I’m not a fantasy?” it asked.

Gibbs snorted. “Nothing. Anything I know, you know.”

“Fine,” it said, “then I have to give you something that doesn’t have to do with you.”

It looked thoughtful, and Gibbs shook his head. The hallucination was going to prove to him that it wasn’t a trick of his mind. Gibbs had to hand it to himself – his mind was certainly more inventive than he’d first thought. He probably ought to seek psychological help – or sign himself into a psychiatric care facility – but still, he had to be impressed.

“Ziva left someone behind in Israel,” the hallucination said. “A man. She has a picture of him in her desk.”

Gibbs rolled his eyes. “She left her father and some unresolved issues with him behind, and she put the photo of the man in her desk so that Tony would find it, since she knew he would be going through her desk.”

The hallucination stared at him. “She didn’t! She didn’t know I would—Okay, fine, maybe she did. Um, something else—”

Gibbs looked at it, and wished that it was real, that Tony was sitting with him on the stairs while he worked on the boat. He wished Tony was safe and sound. It felt as though someone reached inside of him and twisted his heart around hard, because he knew Tony wasn’t safe, and probably not sound either.

“Abby has dolls that represent each of us,” the hallucination said. “She uses some good kind of voodoo on them to keep us safe.”

“How is that supposed to convince me?” Gibbs asked, not stopping his woodwork.

“Call her,” it said. “Call her and ask.”

For a second, Gibbs considered it. He could call and tell her that the voodoo protection was obviously doing a crappy job, because Tony was still gone.

But when he looked up again, to take in the sight of the hallucination, because no matter what it was, it was still a comfort amidst all the pain, it was gone.

He swallowed hard. It didn’t matter if the hallucination was there or not – he wouldn’t stop thinking about Tony either way.

He worked until three in the morning, the hallucination not coming back despite him downing several more glasses of alcohol. He didn’t make it up to his bed to sleep, but slept on the hard surface beneath the boat in restless sleep filled with images of Tony being tortured.

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