Disclaimers: I do not own NCIS or its characters, those belong to show creators and CBS

Warnings: Slight spoilers for Season 11, Tony/OC, McGee/Delilah, might have mentions of past Tiva

A/N: I'm not going to lie, I am struggling with writing the next chapter in this series. I liked the individual chapters in the original "My Sweetest Friend" just fine, but that's just it...I liked them as individual chapters. When I read all four together I hate it. Maybe I'm just being too much of a perfectionist but since the show writers don't want to give our characters happy endings...I'm working really hard at it lol. I had written a couple of other chapters and didn't post them but it was really starting to feel jumbled. SO I've spent about two weeks rewriting and reorganizing this. I am not getting rid of the chapters I have already written, FYI because like I said I liked them as individual chapters. I apologize to my loyal readers out there for doing this to you and making you wait. I hope that you enjoy this as much as the other installments in the series.


My Sweetest Friend

September 1980

It was raining the night his mother died. Large, driving drops pelted the windows of the car as their driver brought them to the hospital in New York City. Anthony knew very little about why his mother was in the hospital. She had gone out two nights before and never returned. He had heard something about wrapping her car around a tree because she had been hitting the bottle too hard at Ms. Turners. None of that jargon made sense to eight-year-old Anthony.

Years later he would understand—he would understand that his father and mother got into some kind of argument and that his mother had escaped to her best friend's house, where apparently she had too much too drink, and then attempted to drive home. But the roads had been slick with the rain and she had hydroplane and lost control of her car, careening into a very old, very large oak tree. It was amazing she had survived the crash at all.

Anthony wasn't sure how he was supposed to be feeling at this moment. His father frowned at any sign of emotions but the young boy was scared. DiNozzo's don't get scared, Senior would lecture him, and they do not cry. So man up—no son of mine is going to be weak. His mother, though, was his entire world. Sure, she wasn't perfect but there was no doubt she loved him. Anthony often questioned if his father loved him. Senior at times certainly didn't treat him like he did. His father would take him on some nice trips—just that summer they had taken a great fishing trip—but there was a certain distance that the elder DiNozzo kept with his son.

"Junior," his father said, sternly when they arrived at the hospital. "Straighten your shoulders when you walk."

"Yes, sir," Anthony recited, automatically, and then did as he was told.

His mother's room was on what would be the sunny side of the hospital but the rain cast the room in a pale, dull light. Her once long, shiny hair wrapped underneath gauze and her eyes, a beautiful shade of green were hidden behind dark, bruised lids. She already looked dead and he only knew she wasn't because of the rise and fall of her chest and the steady beep of monitors.

In his hand he clutched tightly to a videotape. His father had told him it was pointless to bring a movie—his mother was incapable of watching it, but Anthony thought that if she heard a favorite movie of hers, then perhaps she would wake up. So, he put his movie in, sat on the hospital bed and held her hand. And it was his hand she was holding when she died, when the monitors stopped beeping and went into one, long drone. Anthony looked at the dull fingers between his—the diamond ring shining so brightly in the lights—and he thought, no one was ever going to love or understand him quite like her.