Disclaimer: No, I don't own NCIS.

Warning: Implied rape, also this fic is slash but easy enough to read as gen. :)

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He didn't know how long he'd been here.

Wherever 'here' was. He didn't know.

He shivered, pulling his blanket around himself a little tighter. It was the only thing he had, his blanket. All that they had given him. It didn't cover him completely - his legs were exposed from the knees downwards – but it gave him something nicer to lie on, and it wrapped around him, bunched around his neck a little, covered all it needed to. It gave him warmth, felt nice against his skin, and gave him that little bit of protection.

Until they took it away from him again. No, not thinking about that.

He pulled his legs up to curl into the foetal position, adjusting his blanket to cover them before shuffling around a little on the thin mattress he lay on, covered in stains from things that he didn't want to think about. Not now, not ever.

He lay there for a few minutes, then began to think about Gibbs. Silver hair glinting in the light... icy blue eyes you could lose yourself in so easily... the rarest of his smiles, so brilliant, so bright, so strong it could send a storm running for cover...

He sighed happily before dozing off.

.

They came for him, sometime late in the night. They took his blanket away from him before doing things that he didn't want to think about.

When they were done (it took a while, there were five of them), they threw the wadded up blanket at him.

He was so cold, but he hurt too much to try and manoeuvre himself under it. Instead, he pulled it to his chest and clung to it like a child would their favourite toy, before attempting to sleep once more.

.

The next time he awoke, it was to loud bangs, gunshots and yelling. Lots of yelling. He recognised the voices but didn't want to try shouting an answer to them; he didn't want to ruin the moment in case it was a dream.

Then the door to his prison flew open, a cloud of dust in its wake. The door bounced off the wall with a clatter, and there he was.

Tony's knight in shining armour.

NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs.

Tony glanced over his rescuer/lover/boss, and decided that knight in shining armour wouldn't really fit, considering the 'armour' wasn't exactly shiny. More flat, dull black with a heavy coating of thick grey dust that clung to everything, including, Tony noted slightly hysterically, a large pile of it on the top of Jethro's head.

He tried to sit up but his muscles wouldn't let him, so he yelped and flopped back down then Gibbs was there, at his side, carefully, ohsocarefully picking him up off of the filthy stained mattress and pulling Tony to him, wrapping him in his arms gently, like he was one of those porcelain dolls that had always creeped him out because they were supposed to look real but they didn't, not really. They just looked creepy and unreal and Tony also guessed they were supposed to look alive but they didn't. Not to him.

As Gibbs started to move them away from the mattress, Tony reached an arm out, snagging his blanket, needing the extra security as much as the coverage. The blanket was arranged on him, then he was lifted up properly again, like one of those dolls. Tony thought about it as he was carried through the door, down a short hallway then up the stairs into the light.

He was more like one of those dolls than he'd first thought. Fragile, at least for the moment, unreal, the way everyone was staring at him like it was some sort of miracle him being there, and then the last thing. The not-looking-alive thing. Tony understood that.

He might look alive, but inside, deep down... he was as dead as one of those dolls, and fractured too, like he had been dropped but not from a great height, something smaller, something that didn't cause as much damage. Something that could be fixed, in time, with the right tools, with the right knowledge, with patience.

He just hoped he could be put back together again.

-Finis-