‘Swear to God’

Rating: PG
Ships: Tate
Genre: Romance/Humor/General… Angst?

True love is like a psychic experience.

Everyone tells ghost stories, but few have ever seen a ghost.- Anon

This was the strangest thing that had ever happened to Tony in his thirty-something years on earth.

He’d had thought long and hard about dying. It had haunted him in his nightmares. Death is the hereditary paramount fear for every human being- ultimately, it is the one thing that we strive to avoid. It is primal, ancestral instinct; to survive.

But the grim reaper always seemed to be huffing indignantly at Tony’s neck, and dogged his steps every single time he walked out onto the field, SIG held aloft and breath beating steam onto the frigid air.

He’d always had a keen eye and lightning fast reflexes, and though he’d taken bullets before, he’d never been subsequently badly injured. His only genuine brush with true death had been his encounter with the pneumonic Plague.

But this…

This was downright surreal.

Anthony DiNozzo stood on the middle of a crowded street, staring down at himself, lying bloody on the ground. He could see his own half-opened eyes, glazed and unseeing.

He could see the blood pouring out of the wound in his neck- he’d been shot at a distance of five yards in the throat after a long-winded pursuit on foot.

He could see his skin becoming pallid and his mouth opening slightly as the muscles in his face began to relax.

Ziva was crouching above him, cradling his head in her arms. Not long ago, she’d been shaking him briskly, doing her best to keep him conscious.

But now he was dead, she let the tears fall, and Tony could hear her mumbling incoherently.

“Stay, Tony, don’t go like this…”

Tony paused for a moment and kneeled speculatively next to his partner, reaching out to touch her. But to his horror, his hand slid right through hers- completely incorporeal. He could feel the wind and smell the scent of blood and he could hear the sounds of the city thrumming around him.

But why had he lost his sense of touch?

No matter how vivaciously he pawed at her hand, he couldn’t even feel her.

“Come on, Ziva! Don’t cry. I’m right here, I haven’t gone anywhere,” he told her, feeling senselessly guilty as he watched her weep, the tears gliding down her tawny cheeks.

Ziva hardly batted an eyelid and after a short while of desolate staring, Tony got to his feet, staggering away from the sight of his own dead body, feeling understandably ill.

Footsteps thundered from across the street against the buzz of traffic.

He could see McGee and Gibbs sprinting across the tarmac, stones skittering against the asphalt. They’d been in the alley on the other side of the block, waiting for Tony and Ziva to come through the alley.

But the partners had never showed- and they only now seemed aware of Tony’s plight.

Tony jogged out to meet them as they approached. His breath was throwing mist out onto the air, he could see it! Why couldn’t they?

“Hey, boss!” said Tony, slowing to a saunter as they approached him at a flat-out run. “Boss! Wait, stop, I’m right here!”

He extended a hand, as if to halt Gibbs in his tracks, but the older agent took no heed at all and ran straight through his outstretched hand without batting an eyelid.

Tony turned towards McGee, stepping directly in front of him, waving both hands in a gesture of avid desperation.

“…Probie!… Come on, listen to me, damn it!”

But alas- both agents sprinted right on past him towards where his body lay, dead, on the cold asphalt of the main road. The traffic had been hastily barricaded by Ziva’s car and there were various other NCIS investigators already on the scene, grimly putting up the ‘crime scene’ tape.

What was he still doing here? He was a god-damn ghost!

But everything felt so real. He could touch his face and still feel flesh and skin and stubble. He could talk and hear his own voice resonate over the evening air.

“Oh shit, I’m in purgatory,” he moaned to himself, clasping his hands in his face and keeling over in despair. Why was he all alone here?

“That’s rich, for a religious apathetic,” said a semi-derisive and hauntingly familiar voice from behind him. Tony’s eyes flickered open into his warm palms and his breath caught sharply in his throat.

He straightened, whirling almost comically in disbelief to meet the eyes of his former partner, who was gazing ruefully back at him.

The pause was electric.

Tony took a long moment to stare blatantly at Kate, open-mouthed.

She looked un-aged and unweathered, the same as the day she’d died. The last time he’d seen that face- she’d had a hole through her face, courtesy of a copper FMJ from their much-loathed adversary, Ari Haswari. Now, she looked healthy and whole, as if she’d never died. Tony could see her breathing fog onto the cold D.C air, too.

“Look like you’ve seen a ghost,” said Kate whimsically with a broad grin, tilting her head and drinking in his expression. It was obvious that she was pleased with his reaction of incredulity.

After a strangled breath, Tony stepped forward, drinking it all in with his eyes. He hadn’t expected to see Kate again- ever. Not even in the afterlife. He’d heard talk about it, but never adhered to the belief.

“Kate?” he exhaled quietly, closing the distance between them. He didn’t mean to be invasive, but he couldn’t help it. Tony reached out to her hand, expecting his incorporeal flesh to sink through hers- but to his surprise, he could feel her.

She was warm and breathing, and real.

Tony trailed his fingers across her palm, and then moved up to her cheeks, gently touching her face, tracing down to her collarbone.

Kate’s manicured hands promptly came up to swat his fingers away with a raised brow and pursed lips.

“Just because you’re dead, doesn’t mean you automatically get to cop a feel, Tony,” she snapped ruefully. Although, admittedly, she looked pleased to see him.

Tony grinned. He’d forgotten her sense of righteousness, and immediately reverted back to their normal back-and-forthing.

“You aren’t going to go all Patrick Swayze on me, are you? Breaking windows and possessing black ladies…”

“No, Tony, no possession. This isn’t one of your stupid movies, and if you keep on harping about them, I’ll find a way to kill you again, I swear to god...”

Tony gulped, more out of the shock of it all rather than fear for her retribution. After having dealt with Ziva for three years, Kate seemed positively tame.

“How long have you been here?” he asked her, somewhat apprehensive of the answer.

“Since I died,” she replied, her expression becoming guarded and a little morose. She ran a hand through her hair and gave a furtive glance over to the crime scene.

All three agents were now kneeling around Tony’s motionless body. Though their faces were hidden by the warped lights, Tony could see Ziva shaking and the other two agents crouching in awkward positions that betrayed their remorse.

“You should go over there, you know,” said Kate softly, inclining her head towards his former team, his family, his life. “This is the part where they say goodbye to you, so you’d better listen.”

Tony nodded numbly to her and half-staggered over towards the place where he’d died. Kate walked alongside him, and rested a hand on his shoulder.

Her presence was a boundless comfort, and they both knew Tony would already be going spare right now if she hadn’t been here.

It was Gibbs, Ziva, McGee, and now Ducky who had arrived just recently on the scene. They all had seemed to accept his fate, at varying degrees.

Ziva was still shaking violently, though the majority of her tears seemed to have ceased. She cradled Tony’s head in her lap, and she was stroking his face affectionately, as if keeping him comfortable in death.

She didn’t need words to express her grief. Ziva had been raised as a fiercely protective human being- protective of emotion, protective of her job, protective of her family. Tony was her makeshift family- and she took his death as her own personal mistake rather than the result of an occupational hazard.

Kate looked on, stony-faced, as Tony kneeled beside her, wishing with all his might that he could bring her some sort of comfort.

Gibbs’s expression was contorted into a mix of unspeakable shame, anguish, and fury. Tony knew by the look on his face that Gibbs had the full intention of hunting down Tony’s killer like a lion with its prey. But he looked almost accepting, at very least- and Tony was a little surprised to see that driving agony in his eyes.

This was his third loss within three years.

Kate, Paula, and now DiNozzo.

“Come on, boss, it’s not your fault,” voiced Tony aloud to his grey-haired supervisor who was gazing resentfully down at his younger agent’s lifeless face.

Kate chuckled sadly from the sidelines. “I said the same thing to him, repeatedly, when I died, Tony. He can’t hear you, no matter how loud you say it.”

“He’s always been his own worst critic,” said Tony bitterly, choking back his own emotion. It was surreal, to think that he could never speak to these people, ever again, or at least not until they died themselves. In a way, it was Tony who was doing the grieving.

McGee looked shaky, white, and the phrase ‘bete noire’ crept sardonically into Tony’s mind. He didn’t even know what was going through the Probie’s head. For all the teasing and the taunting and the hazing, he was a good man, and Tony knew it.

They’d been there for each other at various times during their careers, generally in their darkest hour. But McGee didn’t cry. Tony didn’t expect him to- he’d always been stronger than Tony had given him credit for.

“You’d better miss me, Probie, or I’ll haunt your ass,” said Tony with a wry smile, though it was an empty threat- he had a feeling McGee would feel his absence keenly for a while before he finally got over it.

“I hope you’re in greener pastures, Anthony,” voiced Ducky resignedly after a prolonged pause. For a man who dealt with death on a daily basis, he certainly looked shaken.

“Same colour it always was, Doc,” replied Tony from alongside him, blankly and then with an unpleasant bitterness. He was angry. Angry at himself for dying- for causing these people, the people he’d loved as his brothers and sisters, all this needless grief.

Tony shuffled to gaze acrimoniously down at his own dead face.

“How could I let myself die?” he muttered, feeling inexplicably cheated. His knuckles flexed in a surge of astringent rage and his teeth clenched. He hated himself for succumbing to weakness, hated himself for not being more wary. He was too young!

“How-could-you-let-yourself-die?!” he snarled loudly at his lifeless physique.

Stirred by rage, he raised a fist and punched his body square in the chest, which was liberally covered in his life-blood.

To his surprise, for a moment, he could feel the feeling of his own flesh against his knuckles. His carcass jerked violently from the contact before lying still again.

Tony gasped guiltily and stumbled back.

Every single person gathered around the body jumped nervously and Ducky quickly smoothed it over.

“It’s just a port-mortem spasm, quite common, don’t worry about that…”

But too late- Ziva burst into helpless waves of hysterical tears as Tony walked blindly backwards, cradling his own fist in his hand.

“Did you see that? Kate? I hit myself! I felt it! I’m going to give them all nightmares for the rest of their lives, but I moved myself!”

“I saw,” she said sombrely, watching as Ducky gently gathered Ziva to her feet and led her away from the scene in tears. Palmer was bringing out the body bag.

“She was fond of you, you know,” said Kate speculatively. “Ziva.”

Tony nodded reminiscently, watching as Ducky left her in the company of Gibbs and McGee. They watched awkwardly as she lamented and it was only when she started to keel over that Gibbs finally grabbed her and gently held her to his chest to comfort her as she wept.

“Did you like her?” asked Tony, casting Kate a curious look. Obviously she’d been following the team for some time now, so he assumed she must have gathered an opinion about her dark-haired Mossad replacement.

Kate shrugged apathetically. “She’s alright. I was angry at first, I’ll admit, but I moved on. It’s a cliché, Tony, but it’s true. You can’t dwell on these sorts of things.”

“What did you do when you died?” asked Tony, his voice shaky. He was still coming to terms with the fact that he was dead, and talking to his dead partner.

Kate took a deep breath and took Tony’s arm, giving it a brief rub to soothe him, leading him across the blockaded road onto the footpath.

“Let’s walk, Tony,” she advised gently. He was thankful- he’d had enough of death and cynicism and the pungent feeling of grief that was so strong back there. He just couldn’t bring himself to leave, that was all.

Tony dropped his head to survey the footpath and shoved his hands into his pockets. At one point, he absently attempted to kick a stone, and it was only when his foot passed right through it that he realised he couldn’t.

“When I died,” said Kate finally, answering his earlier question, “I was angry. Irrational. I felt cheated, and it took me a long time to get over it.”

Kate looked sad, but not overly emotional. Tony supposed she’d had three good years to dwell on it, so it wasn’t as if these were raw wounds for her.

“After a while, I wanted to leave, to move on. I know I could if I wanted. I know I can if I want to, because there’s always this little tug inside me that says ‘let go.’”

Kate heaved a breath and ran her fingers through her luscious dark hair.

“But to tell you the truth, Tony… I’m scared. Terrified, in fact. I don’t want to leave, even though it feels so good whenever I look into that big old light in the sky.”

“There’s a light in the sky? Literally? Like, ‘go into the light, Caitlin,’ sort of light?” asked Tony, stupefied, pausing momentarily to stare at her.

Kate shrugged. “It’s more of a feeling. I guess I’m just not ready yet, Tony,” she admonished with a sheepish smile. Tony shared the expression and gave her an awkward pat on the arm. It had been so long since he’d seen her, let alone touched her, that it was still making his mind reel.

“Makes you think, doesn’t it, though?” said Tony with a speculative scratch to the head.

“All those murdered people we’ve investigated. Wonder if they ever stood over your shoulder, and you know, screamed, and you can’t hear them. It’s insane. Very ‘Sixth Sense,’” he observed. Kate put a hand on his arm and turned him around so he was gazing back at her.

“But that is what they do, Tony,” she said slowly and cautiously.

She’d found it disturbing, herself, when she’d first attended the scene of a horrendous crime and found the victims wailing for retribution, so there was no telling how Tony would take it.

“I go to crime scenes occasionally with you guys, and see these ghosts, completely hysterical. They know who the murderer is and no matter how loud they scream it, you can’t hear them. They calm down after a while and eventually pass on, but it’s confronting, to say the least.”

Tony didn’t shy away from her gaze, but he looked a little paler, to say the least. Kate didn’t blame him- to imagine being screamed and swiped at by desperate, violent spirits isn’t something that was pleasant to picture. He had a sudden, vivid image of himself, pawing at Ziva’s hand, and shuddered.

They continued to saunter ever onwards. Tony was feeling overwhelmed, lonely, and melancholy, but he knew it was nothing compared to what Kate had been forced to live through… or die through, to be technical. She’d wandered for years with scarcely any company aside from the occasional delusional murdered spirit. Tony wondered how she’d kept such a level head on her shoulders.

But then, Kate was self-sufficient and independent. If anybody could trudge on through that sort of horrible isolation, it was her.

“So,” said Tony after a brief pause, a sudden thought occurred to him.

“Do we, uh, eat?” he looked hopeful despite the fact that he tried to smother his keen interest, and gave Kate a furtive glance.

Kate raised her eyebrows as far as they could go and let out a burst of scathing laughter. Of all the questions he could have asked… Typical DiNozzo.

“No, Tony. We don’t even get hungry.”

“Drink?”

“Nope.”

“Sleep?”

“Yes.”

“Ahhh,” said Tony blithely, closing his eyes briefly and rolling his head back in bliss. Thank god. He didn’t care how boundless his energy supplies were, his brain would turn to mush if he constantly trudged around with his mind whirring.

“Do we fall right through the beds?”

“Well, no. Do we fall right through the ground?” she countered shrewdly with a shrug.

“Well, how is it that we can feel wind and smell things and touch each other, but nothing else?” he asked, expecting Kate to know all this, expecting her to have every possible explanation to the reason for death.

“Can you see wind?” she asked gently, and rhetorically, in response. “Or scents? We’re spirits, Tony. We feel real to each other, but it’s an illusion. We aren’t here. We aren’t really walking down this road. We aren’t really speaking. We’re almost completely nonexistent, totally incorporeal, except to other things incorporeal.”

“Stop it, with the big words, Kate,” replied Tony, speaking in guttural syllables in reply.

Kate bristled indignantly.

“You can’t ask me a question and then tell me off for answering!”

“You can answer me without directly quoting the word-of-the-day, though.”

Kate growled vindictively and with great relish, took back her hand and smacked Tony hard over the back of the skull.

He couldn’t feel the pain, per se, but it was very uncomfortable and he squinted awkwardly at her, gritting his teeth.

“Oh god,” breathed Kate, closing her eyes briefly with her eyelids fluttering in bliss, an expression of ecstasy washing over her face. “Been aching to do that for three years now.”

Tony grimaced and shook his head briskly, deciding it best not to retaliate. She’d been here longer than he had, so he thought it best just to leave it alone lest she unleash the hellhounds on him or something.

“So um. Where do you sleep?”

Kate shrugged in response. “Same place I always did; my apartment.”

“So nobody else moved in?”

“Well, they did at first, but I convinced them to leave,” she replied indifferently.

Tony gaped at her, and she gazed coolly ahead, hardly even batting an eyelid.

“Is that the diplomatic way of saying you haunted their asses until they left?”

Kate shrugged and Tony’s eyes boggled.

Kate? Righteous, innocent little Kate, using her powers of the arcane to protect her flat?

“The way I see it, Tony, it’s still my apartment. You know what the manager tried to do?” she bristled indignantly as if just the thought made her want to clench her teeth.

“He told my sister to get out of my flat, even though she’s my next-of-kin, because apparently he ‘watched her break a leg off a chair in the lobby.’ And as if that wasn’t completely ridiculous, he accused her of stealing clothes from the complex next door!”

“Why would she steal someone’s clothes?” he asked in answer, hitching one eyebrow, slowing down slightly in his advancement down the road.

Kate paused and her expression became dry and shrewd.

“Because, Tony, sometimes after you break a chair, you have to steal somebody’s panties.”

Tony paused, grinned, and feigned thinking hard about it before nodding in a calculating manner. “Right, okay. I can relate. Go on.”

Kate sighed and huffed knowingly but continued nevertheless.

“So, anyway, he tried to sell off all my things as soon as my sister had left. He wanted to put everything at auction, but my family stopped him, thank god.”

Tony nodded contemplatively, the question of where his own furniture would go briefly intruding his thoughts. The thing was, in his will, Tony’s beneficiary was the Central Union Mission, a homeless shelter for young children who were frequently abused and without a place to stay.

If anybody deserved his money and furniture, it was them, he’d reasoned. He had no other legitimate next of kin, and to be damn sure, his father wasn’t getting a penny.

“Anyway, he ended up making the apartment a display home and my sister took over the lease. She doesn’t really use it, because she doesn’t want to clear out my stuff. Everything’s almost the same as how I left it, minus the food.”

Tony wrinkled his nose in distaste at the prospect of two year old food, but decided not to comment.

“Must be pretty lonely in the ghost-world,” commented Tony quietly, a peculiar feeling of trepidation dancing in his gut at the prospect of staying here for as long as Kate had.

“That, it is,” she replied, though she had the good grace not to sigh or look even the slightest bit saddened. Tony was thankful- he didn’t need another reminder, another subtle sign screaming ‘Look, Tony!! Look how miserable it is, being dead!!’

“So, anyway, have you met any good ghost-guys, Kate?” asked Tony, a grin flitting across his handsome maw as he peered provocatively at her, shaking off his previous misgivings.

“Had any dinners with the disembodied? Indulged in any spectre sex?”

“Shut up, you’ve been dead for five minutes and already I want to kill you.”

“You can’t kill me, I’m already dead,” Tony pointed out imperialistically.

“I’ll find a way,” she replied dryly in response, shooting him a saucy glare, but allowing an unwilling smile to slip across her face.

“But seriously, don’t you miss having a sex life? Sorry… personal life,” he corrected swiftly as her eyes flashed and she looked dangerously close to swatting him again. Kate paused.

“I guess I do, but I can’t really do much about it,” she replied with a shrug, running her fingers through her silky dark hair, eyes flickering back and forth across the footpath.

“Sounds like hell,” he replied, literally biting his tongue to stop himself making some dirty joke about grieving spirits and comfort sex. Now was not the time nor the place. But he did sympathise for Kate- hers was not a situation he would survive in.

Tony cleared his throat as they walked.

“How about we go out tonight, Kate? You know, in the spirit of me being dead and all. Seeing as you’ve been living vicariously through your team mates these last few years.”

“You want to celebrate your death?” she replied laconically, quirking a brow.

“No, I want to… forget about it, actually,” he retorted sourly with a slight bite to his voice before he continued with his usual inquisitiveness. “Don’t you ever go out anymore?”

Kate laughed at Tony and shook her head, dark hair cascading over her shoulders and her eyes rolled in mirth.

“Okay, okay, look, what do you want us to do? Go to a restaurant and pretend to order some invisible garlic bread and nonexistent prawns? Maybe picture ourselves drinking champagne? Pretend to play some pool? We can’t eat, we can’t drink, we can’t play, we can’t move things, we’re ghosts, Tony. Dead people don’t go clubbing.”

Tony straightened and pointed his thumb resolutely at his chest. “You haven’t met the right dead people.”

Kate laughed and Tony grinned at her, encouraged.

“Where’s your sense of adventure, Kate? You don’t need to pay for movies. You don’t need to wear fancy shoes into fancy restaurants. You don’t pay rent. Could be worse.”

“I’m dead, Tony. I’m not a living thing. I don’t even need to breathe. I might as well be a piece of rotting wood. How could it get worse?” she responded, both brows arched condescendingly, but she retained her composure.

Tony paused to consider that.

“Look, Gippetto! I’m a real live boy!” burst out Tony suddenly at the top of his voice, waving his arms above his head like a disjointed puppet, causing Kate to jump in surprise and stare at him in mortification.

“You’re right, it just got worse,” she hissed, swatting him curtly across the arm.

Tony laughed and dropped his hands, bringing his fingers up to scratch his head.

“Come on, Kate. Live a little. Uh… no pun intended. I tell you what- Instead of wandering around the city like a little lost lamb, let’s go out. I mean, really out. I’ll take you somewhere, even if it means that we need to think positive thoughts and ask the universe for some spirit-beer.”

Kate stopped on the sidewalk and crossed her arms, gazing contemplatively at him. Her dark hair was the same length as it had been on the day of her death, and wisps were blowing across her dace, a contrast against her green-brown eyes.

She huffed and the wind carried the steam off her breath up towards the night sky.

“Alright, fine.”

Kate impulsively wanted to add something on to that- some condition, rules, a compromise, but she couldn’t. In truth, she’d missed Tony these long years and finally getting the chance to speak to him face to face was an opportunity she had only touched upon in the midst of her deepest dreams.

Kate inclined her head briefly and made a gesture with her hands, signalling for him to lead the way.

Tony beamed and mock-bowed, before continuing down the street, framed by the street lights and the headlights of cars and the sinister shadows that fell from the enormous buildings lining the footpath.

The only sound besides the blaring of the traffic and the indistinct tapping of their feet was Tony’s dulcet baritone tones, resonating pleasantly on the still night air.

“'Once I was a wooden boy, a little wooden boy... '”

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