Through the Ages

Chapter 1: Season 1

Gibbs only saw Tony fall out of the corner of his eye.

It was understandable really, because there was chaos in the plane, and Tony was, for all intents and purposes, an adult, so Gibbs really shouldn't have to be keeping an eye on him every second of every day, and whose idea was this plan again?

Oh, right. His.

Well it ended well. The suspect had been apprehended, the idiot soldier had been restrained, and DiNozzo had gotten his wish of being a weekend warrior and gone skydiving. All's well that ends well, and Gibbs was most definitely not going to acknowledge the near-paralyzing fear that had plagued him when it was still possible that his agent had fallen to his death. He absolutely refused to get attached to a man who would most likely leave in a few months anyways.

Gibbs smiled to himself. Tony had looked pretty sore when leaving the office. Hopefully that would teach him not to goof off at work.

Frankly, it wasn't that hard to figure out why DiNozzo was so excited about Puerto Rico.

It was a sun-town, and therefore would have many, many women in bikinis, which was about all the reason that DiNozzo needed to go there. Luckily, Gibbs was Gibbs, and he managed to restrain his eye roll when his agent continued to try and connive and wheedle out a reason to go there.

Inwardly, Gibbs shrugged. Someone needed to go there and see if it was possible to get a sword. DiNozzo was the best at persuasion, so long as he didn't want his suspect to be a witless pile of tears (that was his job), and Kate was still very new at this. Besides, DiNozzo worked well when he was on his own. There was no audience for him to try and impress.

Outwardly, he shut his agent up by allowing him to go. The conniving little bastard tried to negotiate. Gibbs turned away, as he couldn't contain the rolling of his eyes this time.

"It's not up for negotiation, DiNozzo."

"Yes, Boss," came the immediate answer. Gibbs smiled. A little.

"I know what this is, Boss."

Gibbs looked at his agent with a semi questioning look on his face. It was kind of obvious, wasn't it? "Ah, external fuel tank."

"A three hundred and seventy gallon external fuel tank," Tony corrected, "Off an F14 TomCat." Okay, Gibbs could admit it. He was a little surprised that it was DiNozzo who was offering this information, and without getting it from another source. "A few were converted into cam runs or cargo pods." He gestured to the fuel tank, "This one's a cargo pod." He finished and looked up expectantly.

Kate snapped a picture "I'm impressed."

Me too, Gibbs thought inwardly, but then again, not really. He wouldn't have hired DiNozzo if he thought he was an idiot. He didn't suffer fools. DiNozzo just did his very best to hide his intelligence, and succeeded well enough that it was strange to see it shine through. Kate rarely saw it, because the man spent most of his time acting like an idiot in front of her.

"Didn't become an NCIS agent yesterday Kate. As a matter of fact, tomorrow-"

"-it will have been two years." Gibbs finished, remembering as well. History would say that DiNozzo was going to be picking up and leaving soon, but he sounded so proud right now…maybe he wanted to stay. He certainly hadn't indicated otherwise.

"That's kind of touching, Gibbs. Remembering the day you hired me." And enter the village idiot.

Payback time. Besides, he couldn't let DiNozzo get away thinking Gibbs liked him. It wouldn't be natural. "Yeah, well, seemed like a good idea at the time."

Tony gave him an affronted look which was promptly ignored. There was a body here, whether or not anyone else remembered.

"Duck, is it okay if I touch?"

"Nothing else of interest in her apartment except…"

Gibbs was getting annoyed now. "What?"

DiNozzo sat down slowly and gave him a very, very fleeting glance before gesturing to the computer screen. "She had a bottle of Escada on her dresser."

Gibbs looked away from his agent, surprise building. Normally, DiNozzo would have blurted that information out to get the up on Kate, in whatever little sibling rivalry competition they had going. Now, something was getting in the way of his ability to do his job.

That something was Agent Cassidy.

And that was not alright.

"And Saied did have a key to her apartment but she did not have a key to his."

"Most women prefer their own beds." That was a bit cruel, but a wake up call was necessary. Kate gave Tony a victorious glance, and Gibbs assumed he had walked into a previous conversation of theirs. "She and Saied were doing a horizontal salsa." Okay, so now he was just blatantly provoking him.

"Not according to the bartender." Tony reminded him. He was doing a very good job of keeping his feelings in check, but he was still defending Cassidy.

Worse, his own gut was telling him that Tony was right.

Well, the others didn't need to know that.

"What, lovers register with him at Gitmo first?"

"Bartenders know this kind of stuff Boss. He said she went there most nights, danced with a lot of guys, but, always went home alone." He said, as if that should be conclusive evidence.

He hadn't taken DiNozzo for the type to fall hard. Maybe it just took the right girl.

However, so long as DiNozzo was on his team, the 'right girl' would not be an agent.

He let Kate describe Saied's place without really hearing it. He had to figure out what to say to DiNozzo. This couldn't continue. Not now, not ever.

He did hear it, when Tony stepped in again. "I think Saied copied Cassidy's key without her knowing." DiNozzo's last ditch attempt to defend Cassidy, and even though Gibb's thought he was probably right, he pretended otherwise.

Gibbs didn't like doing this. He didn't like tearing at his agent's feelings, especially an agent who rarely felt so deeply for others.

But nothing good could possibly come from this relationship. It was better to cut your losses.

"And which brain is thinking that, DiNozzo?" The words were cruel, but they needed to be said.

A brief flash of hurt entered his eyes, before anger rolled in like a thunderstorm. Gibbs wasn't surprised. Tony had a nasty temper, but he controlled it well.

Even so, Gibbs was a little surprised at the depth of this anger before he realized that he had insulted DiNozzo's ability to do the job, which was one of the few things his insecurities didn't cover.

Well damn. That wasn't good.

Tony stood, and said, "I'm hitting the rack." Before slamming the chair down, the only physical sign of his anger, and walking out of the room.

Gibbs watched him for a few steps, and then handed Kate the laptop. "Get this up to Abby, Kate."

"You know Gibbs," She started, "Sometimes you can be a real-"

"Bastard?" He supplied. His anger not abated yet.

She nodded, "Yes."

He let half a sigh out, "Yeah, well my gut's telling me that Cassidy is telling the truth."

Kate looked confused and a little angry. "So then what's the problem?"

Gibbs stopped rifling through papers and looked up at her. It was an important lesson that needed to be taught. "Romance between agents, Kate, it never works."

Kate wasn't ready to give it up. "You speaking from experience?"

He might like Kate, but he wasn't going to share his past with her. He simply leveled a glare in her general direction.

She seemed to get the message.

He watched her walk away, a little seedling of regret pinching his stomach.

It's for the best.

They stood a way off, watching the medic tend to Kate. The blankness in her face was visible, even from this distance, and that was disturbing.

"We gotta do something Boss." Tony said, a little desperation coloring his voice.

Gibbs didn't look at him, and tried to figure out how to phrase this right. "Have you ever made a mistake, Tony?"

"According to you or me?" Was the immediate response.

Gibbs smiled a little. Trust Tony to need clarity on a question like this. "You."

"…Yeah."

The investigator in him wanted to know what gave his voice the hesitancy Gibbs heard there. Tony was usually explicitly forthcoming (to the point that Gibbs had far too much detail as far as the man's sex life) so whatever it was must have been terrible. He had a few good guesses.

"Could anyone make you feel better?"

He could see that Tony understood.

"…No."

They shared a look of understanding and Tony walked away into the snowy evening, before Gibbs remembered that the man had nowhere to sleep.

"My door's unlocked." Well he couldn't have him sleeping in the office for the next week. It was probably against regulation anyway.

Tony didn't even turn around. "I know."

Well that solved one problem. He looked towards Kate, and the absolute helplessness that she portrayed.

And there lay another.

Gibb's attention was pulled over to his agents when he heard his name.

"Shouldn't we ask Gibbs?" Kate asked.

"He's busy," Tony replied.

He could almost see the confusion on Kate's face, "Doing what?"

"What he does every night," Tony said easily.

He heard Kate hesitate, then follow Tony out of the office. Meanwhile, Gibbs's brow furrowed. When had DiNozzo gotten to know him so well? Then again, his behavior was pretty predictable concerning this matter. If Kate would rely on instinct rather than her profiling skills to read people she probably would have figured it out as well.

He stared as the faces of terrorists sped by on the screen. None of them were his man.

Kate seemed…alright. Definitely not off, by any means. Almost…unaffected, which was strange, considering the fact that she was a hostage.

Ducky was mad. Plain and simple, and he had a right to be. Not only had he been a hostage, but his assistant had been shot, and the use of his arm would be a long road indeed. Thephrase, I want him on my table, Jethro, was not for show. Ducky was as bloodthirsty as Ducky got.

And then there was DiNozzo. Out of all of them, he seemed the least affected, which made sense. He wanted to catch the bad guy, but for him it wasn't personal. Not like it was for Gibbs.

However, he was also the most understanding. Tony knew what it was to have your sights set on a scumbag so hard that the rest of the world fades. His years as a cop had undoubtedly taught him that, and Gibbs was glad that he had convinced Kate not to ask him to come to dinner with them. She meant well, but the road to hell was paved with good intentions, and he had no plans to drag his agents with him.

He watched the faces tick by and reran the program when it came up empty.

Gibbs stepped off the elevator, Tony and Kate two steps behind him.

Instead of taking his usual path to his desk, though, he stopped at agent Pacci's uncannily neat one.

Tony set down his bag behind him. "God, Chris was so anal." He said quietly, a note of wistfulness in his voice. "Borrowed his stapler once, put it back in the wrong place. Heard about it for days." He finished with a laugh.

Gibbs knew that Tony had been good friends with Pacci and felt for the younger man. It was hard to lose another agent, and Pacci would by no means be the last.

He turned on the light, and looked over the desk. "Give me his keys," he demanded. Tony produced them and handed them over.

Gibbs quickly unsealed the bag and opened the drawers, when he found the six hour.

Why would Pacci leave his weapon here?

Kate spoke first. "Regs are you have to carry your weapon from portal to portal. Why did he leave his here?"

Tony turned toward the window and looked too distracted to give the answer. Gibbs took it upon himself.

"He was tailing somebody. Going from place to place, he didn't want to stop to identify himself or risk setting off an alarm."

Tony nodded behind him. "We've all done it, especially with the heavy security these days."

Gibbs nodded, that should be a satisfactory explanation, "I'll go over his case files. You two check out his house."

"Tonight?" Kate asked, incredulity in all over her face and dripping from her voice.

What did she think this was? An agent was murdered. What could possibly be more important?

"Yes, tonight." He ordered gruffly.

Kate backed off immediately, "I just gotta make a call." She said, before scurrying off suitably chastised.

But not before giving Tony a strange look of incredulity.

"Is there anyone you need to call, DiNozzo?" He asked, his anger building. Why couldn't they understand that this was more important?

"No Boss." He answered as he took the house keys. "No calls."

So maybe one of them did understand. Tony walked away calmly, with a strange understanding light in his eyes.

Immediately, Gibbs remembered what the second b stood for.

DiNozzo, at least, knew how to avenge one o his own. He had too much understanding of the subject for mere sympathy. That look only came from experience.

It was a few moments before Gibbs went back to work.

Gibbs looked up from Kate's sketch to the unwelcome sight of Tony flirting with the bar waitress.

"DiNozzo…" He growled, "He's about a step from vanishing himself," he told Kate, who smiled. "Hey!" He yelled to his idiot coworker.

Tony looked over and waved goodbye to the waitress, a stupid grin on his face as he walked over.

"I got her name, Boss." The man said proudly.

This was not the time, nor the place. "Do I look like I care, DiNozzo?" He sighed. There was no changing this man. "Lets go."

But as he was walking away, DiNozzo opened his mouth. "The woman with Atlas, her name was Carol Powers."

Gibbs stopped walking and turned back to his previously idiotic agent, surprise probably written all over his face.

"I got the waitress to remember that she paid using a credit card." Tony then proceeded to hand the receipt over to his boss and waited for Gibbs to acknowledge. When Gibbs still said nothing, he continued on to his next bit of info. "She's a reporter for the post. Can have her at our office in an hour if you're interested."

Well. It may be a bit…unorthodox as far as investigative methods go, but clearly it worked for DiNozzo.

It hit him again that his agent was actually very intelligent when he chose to be, and not for the first time Gibbs wondered what made Tony wear a mask of idiocy so often. It was times like these that made him remember why he had hired Tony.

"Good job." He said in answer, and walked away.

When he heard the phone ring, he answered it immediately. He might not admit it, but he had a bad feeling about this whole undercover operation. DiNozzo was not getting hurt because he had let the phone ring twice. That was just unacceptable.

"Hey," He said.

"Gibbs." Tony replied, a small amount of worry in his voice.

"What's up?"

"Sacco just left the bar," there was a pause, and Tony's voice was slurred when he spoke again, "Ah…Ah…I'm not feelin so well."

For a second, Gibbs wondered if Tony were drunk. Then he realized that Tony never would have done that on the job, especially when tailing a marine.

And the 'bad feeling' in his gut intensified to 'insane worry'.

"Tony?" He asked, "You okay?"

Kate looked up.

"I think…I think I screwed up Boss." Tony said quietly, before he heard a crash that was presumably the phone dropping to the ground.

"Hey, DiNozzo can you hear me?"

No answer.

"Hey! Tony!" Worry mixed with his intuition to form a strange nausea.

He waited a full five seconds before calling again.

"Tony! Tony can you hear me?"

Kate now stood in front of his desk, worry written into the very lines of her face, but he was already halfway around it, shrugging into his jacket and attempting to get the idea of move across using obscure arm movements.

"We're coming for you!" He yelled into the phone, before dragging Kate to the elevator by the arm.

Tony was not going to be the next to leave NCIS's ranks unwillingly.

As Gibbs walked back to his desk, Tony barreled around the corner, and nearly hit him with his backpack, so intent was he in his haste to get out of the office.

The man hadn't even seen him.

Well that was odd. Tony noticed everything, from the subtle differences in a person's attire to the way people spoke. It was part of what made him a good agent, and more than that, it was what made him Tony.

So what had given him tunnel vision?

Gibbs watched him go, and watched as he punched the elevator button impatiently, before letting his gaze slide to the most likely instigator of such behavior.

Kate was smiling in her chair.

Gibbs frowned. Tony had seemed…honestly upset. What had they been talking about?

"What's wrong with DiNozzo?" He asked.

Kate looked up, radiating smugness, "He's conflicted."

Gibbs didn't buy that, but let it go. Kate relied on her profiling skills to read people, and was just barely starting to use her own intuition. She still thought that Tony had the emotional capacity of a five year old. In some ways that was true, but it bothered Gibbs a little that she hadn't thought to look deeper.

Oh well. Tony was a big boy. He would be fine by morning, and as Kate worked with him more, she would hopefully one day come to see him a little more clearly.

As it stood now…he had a terrorist to find.

He wasn't pleased.

There was a terrorist to find, there had been no progress since the day he had started his search and he had two agents missing.

He hated failure.

Quickly confirming that Kate hadn't spoken to Agent Cassidy, he began to worry. The dream from the night before came back invading his mind.

Cassidy's call to Tony made him bristle.

That was another thing that went under the not pleased category. He realized that some things had to be learned from experience, and when it came down to it, DiNozzo wouldn't let anything get in the way of his job, but that didn't make him any less angry.

When he turned around and saw DiNozzo standing there, stupid grin on his face, it really didn't help matters.

"Hey Boss." Tony said cheerfully, as if he wasn't wading through proverbial dog shit. "Ah…McGee said you wanted to see me." He cleared his throat uncomfortably. He felt a small rush of satisfaction at this, but it wasn't nearly enough. "Actually he said I was under house arrest, but I figured that was just your way of making a point."

Making a point? What, did he think this was a joke? Did he think that Gerald thought it was a joke? The man was still in rehab!

He stood up and walked past his agent, "Do I have to tell you the name of the creek you're up without a paddle? Or how deep it is?"

The response was instant, "About up to my knees?"

Gibbs's anger rose again. Why did he sound so unconcerned? Obviously he had been far too soft with Tony recently.

"Ah, so you're familiar with this creek?"

"Boss, I'm sorry I took a long lunch but I'm not working a hot case-"

Hot case? Hot case? "What's a 'hot case' to you, DiNozzo? Shadowing a tight ass?" His voice was rising. He didn't really care. Truthfully, he hadn't really found an intimidation tactic that worked on DiNozzo. Usually holding his job over his head was good enough, but he got the feeling that DiNozzo had had a lot of people try and intimidate him throughout his life, and Gibbs seriously doubted anything had worked.

"Boss that's not really fair-"

Not fair? "War is not fair. And we are at war." For some reason, DiNozzo wasn't really looking ashamed right now, more…sympathetic. Which, of course, did nothing to subdue his anger. "Until I relieve you, which may be any moment now," DiNozzo looked away, which was a good idea, because otherwise Gibbs would have fired him just to prove he could. "You will fight that war 24/7. that includes sleeping, eating and taking a crap, you got it?"

DiNozzo's responses were always instant, "I got it, may I say something?"

He really didn't sound apologetic. "Only if it has to do with me catching that bastard I'm chasing." As far as intimidation tactics went, the in-your-face method was always a good fall back.

"It does."

Really? Well why hadn't he said so before? "Then speak."

DiNozzo took a deep breath, looked his superior in the eye and calmly said, "Boss, you really need to see Moby Dick." And walked away.

Well, so much for intimidation.

It was too bad the agent had walked away. He was seriously considering firing him.

Moby Dick, huh? That was funny. He was being compared to Captain Ahab, the man so intent on his target that he drowned his ship.

There were worse things.

He watched DiNozzo walk back to his desk and shook his head in disbelief.

There were very few people who could stand up to an angry Gibbs and hold their own.

a/n-Well if you made it this far, I should congratulate you. As you've probably figured out, these are scenes taken from actual episodes. It's all between Gibbs and Tony, with the other characters thrown in for effect. These are by no means the only scenes that potray these characters well, but they're the ones that I thought would be a good model for the S1 Gibbs and Tony. If you have any suggestions, feel free to message me.

Oh, and if Gibbs seems a bit OOC here, that's probably because he is. For some reason I seem to channel a more 'Tony' personality when writing Gibbs. Oh well. Ducky did say they were rather a lot alike, in our favorite ex-marine (there's no such thing) sniper's younger days.

The episodes go like this from top to bottom:

Hung out to Dry

The Immortals

The Curse

Minimum Security

Left for Dead

The Truth is Out There

Dead Man Talking

Missing

Missing (yes, twice. It was just too good to pass up)

Split Decision

Reveillie