Title: Resurrection

Author: DOZ aka Clea

Rating: T

Summary: Agent DiNozzo is captured while investigating a murder, but he is met with a devastating revelation when he discovers the identity of one his captors.

Pairing: Tony DiNozzo/Kate Todd

Disclaimer: None of this is mine. If it were, Kate would be alive and kicking it with Tony. :D

This is my first NCIS fic, so please be gentle. Yes, you might think that this is simply another 'bringing-Kate-back-to-life' story, and maybe it is, but I assure you that it will be very different to others. It's AU and it now takes place two years after Kate's death. I purposefully have read only a handful of Tate fics, so I don't copy other people's ideas, but if I have I sincerely apologize, it wasn't my intention. Anyway, on with the story.

Chapter 1

One thing Tony DiNozzo had learned throughout his years as an NCIS agent and even as a homicide detective, was that if things seemed coincidental then there was something lurking beneath the surface. The string of murders that had occurred over the past couple of years – some victims marine, some not – all seemed eerily connected. The method in which the victims were murdered was disgustingly similar: strangulation with an unknown weapon; it appeared to be some sort of cord according to the ligature marks borne on the victims' necks. Forensics then established that before the victim lost consciousness due to asphyxiation, their throats were slashed, leaving everyone to infer that the cause of death was blood loss. The corpses were always found in secluded locations, nude.

It was after the fourth body was found that they realized they were most likely searching for a female perpetrator. This possibility equally intrigued and mortified the NCIS team, not simply because of the rarity of female killers, but the professionalism and the caution exercised by the perpetrator. It awed and scared them that there were people out there who were capable of committing such atrocious acts, and
were able to exonerate themselves of it.

Each site the team visited when a body was discovered had been meticulously cleaned. There was no trace of the killer's presence whatsoever; no strand of hair, no DNA under the victim's fingernails, no nothing. It was as if the killer was never there, leaving a dead body in their wake as evidence of their presence. It was only due to the clue left behind by the assassin after finding the fourth body that affirmed the presence of another and suggested that the person was a woman.

The perpetrator wrote with a tube of ruby-red lipstick on the mirror of the victim's bedroom, taunting the team with the imitation of blood on the glass, 'Catch me if you can.'

This was now part of the killer's MO; strangling the victim until near death before slicing their throat, and then writing in the same shade of lipstick each time those five mocking words on the nearest mirror.

The NCIS team were now on the seventh body and those words still managed to keep Tony transfixed. The script seemed so familiar yet so…alien, as if he had seen it in another life. He stared at it until Gibbs barked at him to take photographs of the body. But as he proceeded to do what he was ordered, his eyes continued to glimpse back at the blood-red characters; his instinct regarding the writing left him with a twinge in his chest that was only abated by staring at the inscription.

Gibbs, who was always uncannily aware of everything that transpired around him, had caught Tony casting glances at the teasing message on the mirror. He too had felt the pinpricks of familiarity in his mind, but had decided not to voice it until someone else noticed.

"Something on your mind, DiNozzo?" Gibbs asked cryptically as his eyes scanned over the dead body.

Tony's eyes which were temporarily fixed on the writing at the time, met with that of his superior. He remained silent while Gibbs appraised him with a cool expression. Tony then looked down at the floor and shifted his feet, while Ziva observed the two interact.

"Well, is there?" Gibbs broke the silence.

Tony then frowned as his eyes returned to the mirror, "Don't you feel that you recognize the writing from somewhere?"

Gibbs turned to the dirty mirror and tilted his head in thought, "I thought the same, but I can't seem to figure out how."

Ziva said nothing; to her it was simply another killer who enjoyed toying with their minds. It made the game that criminals and law enforcement played that much more interesting.

Suddenly, the shrill sound of Gibb's cell phone resonated within the small room. He flipped it open and greeted the caller in his usual clipped tone, "Gibbs."

He was on the phone for another 20 or so seconds before he hung up, "That was McGee. He said he might have found something."

Ziva's brows furrowed in confusion, "Like what?"

"We'll find out soon, won't we?" Gibbs turned on his heel and headed for the door. "Make sure you get a good shot of the ligature marks on the guy's neck, I want to know what the hell it is."

As it turned out, McGee had discovered a common trait shared by the dead men: they were all, at one point or another, Secret Service. They were all competent agents; one of the departed had even been chosen to protect the President, which troubled the NCIS team seeing as that the assassin was observably more proficient.

They had no leads for the likely female killer and were rapidly running out of options as their case remained stagnant. There was no specific time interval between the murders; the killings were executed unsystematically, the only piece of evidence that remotely resembled a lead was the writing on the mirror done with lipstick. The most they could do was deduce any plausible conclusions from the information at their disposal.

All men were discovered without any clothing, which suggested that a woman – most likely, given the victims' sexual orientation – lured the men into a false sense of security in the form of a sexual encounter before escalating to murder. The killer was undoubtedly ruthless, as shown by the manner in which the men were killed; an excruciatingly slow death of asphyxiation before being given a slight reprieve, only to have their throats slit. The murderer was also frustratingly arrogant; leaving them a message that both insulted the team's capacity as law enforcement and praised his or her own ability to elude capture.

But what really bothered Tony was the inscription on the mirror. His instincts told him that it reeked of familiarity, as if he had seen that style of writing before, belonging to someone he knew of in the past, but his mind refused to surrender who; he had either simply forgotten or subconsciously didn't want to remember.

It was odd because he had a feeling it was the latter.

NCIS-NCIS-NCIS-NCIS

Tony found himself asking Gibbs if he could visit the crime scene before the clean up crew erased all evidence of the crime. Gibbs merely raised a brow and gave his permission, not bothering to ask why since it was a rare feat to have Tony do more work than was necessary through his own volition.

Ziva had already left the office, so Tony was left to do the investigating on his own. He drove to the isolated cottage on the outskirts of the city and found himself standing in the centre of the room; blood still stained the bed sheets and the color of the writing on the mirror seemed to have adopted a darker shade of red.

The room was rather dark; the only source of light was what escaped through the thin curtains, but it was enough for Tony to be able to navigate his way around the room. He walked towards the mirror perched atop the bureau and stared at the words, 'Catch me if you can.' with an intensity that would have shocked Kate.

Tony frequently thought of her, especially when Gibbs had replaced Kate with Ziva. He realized after a short while that he was always comparing Ziva's actions and motives to what he thought would be Kate's.

"Kate would do this…Kate wouldn't do that...Kate would love this...Kate wouldn't like that."

He often voiced this aloud, but then the reality of the situation would dawn on him; it didn't really matter what Kate thought.

Kate was dead.

He quickly learnt to keep his thoughts of Kate within his mind, partly because Ziva didn't really care for what Kate thought; she was a practical person, she had her own way of doing her job and she wasn't going to begin allowing it to be dictated by a murdered agent, and partly because whenever Kate's name was mentioned a wave of melancholy would crash down on the team.

Her name was avoided for the majority of the time, but despite how much she meant to everyone, it was too painful to relive memories that involved her. Tony viewed the circumstances from a different perspective. Kate deserved to be remembered, she didn't deserve to be forgotten because it was too distressing, which was why she was often in Tony's thoughts; he kept her memory alive, it was the least he could do for her.

Tony was abruptly pulled out of his thoughts as he noticed a flash of movement from the corner of his eye. Before he could respond, the sound of a gun being fired echoed in his ears as he felt a sudden burst of pain in his left leg. He fell to his knees as they gave way, and barely got a glimpse at his attacker before the butt of a gun came into contact with the back of his head.

NCIS-NCIS-NCIS-NCIS

Kyra Stone sat on a worn sofa with her legs crossed as she played with the knife in her hands. She threw it in the air and caught it by the handle as it came down. The man sitting behind the desk alternated his eyes from the paperwork in front of him and the woman playing a dangerous game with her knife.

He leant back into his chair and crossed his arms over his chest, "Don't you every worry that you'll miss the handle and grab the blade?"

Kyra didn't turn to look at him, but continued throwing her knife in the air, while she responded smugly, "No."

He smirked as he rose from his chair to stand beside her and watched her as she resumed to grab the knife handle in the air with ease. The next time Kyra tossed it, he reached with one hand and gripped the handle. She looked up at him with a flippant expression as he admired the sharp blade.

"You're not starting to doubt me, are you Lucas?" she inquired playfully with a raised brow.

The man known as Lucas stopped looking at the blade and gave her an equally teasing grin, "Of course not. That's why I have you do the killing."

He handed it back to her and then squatted to meet her at eye-level, "Speaking of which, I've been told you're still leaving messages to authorities along with the body."

Kyra flashed him a self-satisfying smile, "Yes."

Lucas drew his head closer until their noses almost touched, "Do you really think it's a wise decision?"

Her eyes flickered to his lips before returning to his brown orbs, "They won't catch me."

Before another word was uttered, they heard the front doors fly open and both the man and woman separated as two other men walked in dragging another. Lucas frowned as Kyra watched the two men drop the body unceremoniously to the floor.

One of the men began to explain, "He was at the crime scene while we were there."

"He's NCIS." the other man offered.

Lucas replied with a smirk, "So the NCIS are on us now, are they?"

A blurry image wisped through Kyra's mind at the name. She shook her head and entered the conversation, "Does it matter?"

Lucas' smirk remained intact as he faced Kyra, "Now, now. What did I tell you about underestimating the enemy?"

Kyra merely rolled her eyes as Lucas turned back to the other two men, "If NCIS has discovered that the murders are linked, it will only be a matter of time before the feds will try to take the case from them."

"So what's going to happen?"

He turned back to Kyra, she reacted with a smirk of her own, "What do you want me to do?"

"Interrogate him. See how much NCIS know. Then kill him."

Kyra pursed her lips, "What are you going to do?"

"We're going to lay low for a little while," Lucas replied. "I suggest you do the same once you get rid of him. I'll contact you once I think it's safe."

A groan from the body on the floor garnered all their attention. Tony had just recently began to feel the stirrings of consciousness when he remembered that he'd been shot in the leg. He then felt himself being turned over onto his back, but couldn't discern anything from the haze that was his eyesight at the moment. The voices he heard speaking were slurred, but that was probably because he was still not yet fully cognizant.

But then he heard one of the voices, a woman's, it cut clear through his cloudy thoughts and he remembered it as if it were yesterday. With all the strength he could muster, he croaked out a single word, a name he could not and would not ever forget, "Kate…"

TBC

Reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated. Please no flames. I mean, I don't think it's that bad. :P Also, please keep in mind that everything will be explained in due time. I already have a good idea of how I want this fic to pan out.