Prologue

She was in 5th grade when they met. Her middle school and his high school were doing a Protect the Planet project. One partner was a freshman and the other was a fifth grader. Tony met Teresa on the introduction day, when they were partnered up.

Tony groaned. He was stuck with a fifth grade girl who would probably only want to talk about her clothes and her hair. Wonderful.

Teresa on the other hand was psyched. Her partner wasn't some high school girl who would give her advice about her clothes, or boys. She was paired with Tony DiNozzo, the first freshman in ten years to make varsity football. Awesome.

When they started the project they learned a bit about each other. Tony asked what she wanted to be when she was older, just to start a conversation. "I want to be... uhh. I don't know." she said, "But it has to be something with either football or basketball."

Eventually they became friends, sort of. They got along because of sports. Not to mention, Mrs. Lisbon would ask Tony to babysit when she and went out. Reese would help him tale care of her younger brothers. They became fairly good friends.

In April of Reese's seventh grade her when her mother was killed, it was no surprise that she went to Tony for comfort. He just started senior year when he noticed Reese getting bruises, she was now in junior high, which shared the same building as the high school. They saw each other everyday, and she was starting to withdraw from their normal talks in the hallway.

When he finally found out what was going on at her house, he let her and her brothers stay at his. Tony's dad was almost always away on business so Tony opted for helping Reese out instead of holding parties with all of the other seniors. Together the two of them raised her brothers for a year.

When Tony went off to college in the fall, Reese spent her high school raising her brothers and battling with her father. Tony had given her a spare key and she would take her brothers to his house if it got really bad.

Reese was one month shy of turning eighteen when her father killed himself. It was the summer after she graduated high school, the summer that Tony came back to Chicago after he finished college. Tony took legal custody of all four of the Lisbon kids, and a month later Teresa got shared custody of her three brothers, James, Tommy, and Micheal. Tony worked in the city and Reese went to college some four hours away. The Lisbon boys saw their sister periodically, but Tony was like a older brother/father figure to them.

Eventually, they all graduated high school and moved out. James stayed in Chicago and went to Northwestern on a full scholarship to become a doctor. After college, he stayed and worked at Chicago Central Hospital. Tommy and his girlfriend left Chicago and never looked back. Eventually, they ended up in California. Micheal went straight into the Marines. He moved to a base in Brunswick Maine.

Tony eventually came to work for NCIS in Washington D.C. on a team led by Special Agent Gibbs.

Teresa became the leader of her own team at the C.B.I. in California.

Reese and Tony kept in touch; they stilled called each other at random times. Sometimes they wouldn't talk for months, but when they did, they would talk for hours on end.

A/N this is juts background to set up for the rest of the story. Sorry if it seems rushed or choppy in some places.