The wood sanded smoothly under his hand as he worked methodically. The basement around him was a jumble of half packed; half unpacked boxes. He gazed at them for a moment as he took a break from sanding and sighed. It would take an inordinate age to drag everything back out of their cardboard shells and rectify his favourite spot. Sipping on a Mason jar he wiped his brow on the cuff of his old Corps sweatshirt, before picking up the sanding paper once more. A tinkle of movement caught his ears and a trickle like shadow caught his eyes. Returning to the wood once more, he didn't look around when the visitor padded to the bottom step, or when they moved to stand at his side. He could feel the curious gaze upon him as he straightened up and cleared his throat.

"DiNozzo. You want a drink?"

Shaking his head slowly, Tony hoisted himself up on the workbench beside him and said absolutely nothing for a moment. Watching him in equal silence, Gibbs frowned slightly before turning back to his boat. Tony would talk when he was ready, he knew that and he also knew it'd take longer if he stood staring at him. The scratching sound of sanding filled the room unabated for what felt like the longest time to Gibbs, but a relatively short expanse for Tony. Eventually the younger agent cleared his throat and spoke to Gibbs' back. Eye contact was not a requirement.

"You left. You left and then you came back."

Gibbs stilled in his work and turned slowly. Eye contact was now a requirement. Tony regarded him with an odd lack of expression as he turned to face him. "You came back," he repeated quietly, "And I'm glad you came back." He swallowed for a moment and Gibbs instantly knew this was a conversation he'd been working up to having for a long time. "But you still left. You never called. You never answered my calls. You just went off the grid. You…Abby…" he trailed off, "You broke Abby's heart. You never gave a second thought to Tim or to Ducky, you just got on a plane and you left, apparently never to return."

Tony swung himself down off of the workbench and walked slowly over to the boat. Running his hand along the smoothed wood, he sighed. "And then you came back, because Ziva needed you. You didn't come back when I needed you, or when McGee needed or even when Abby cried for you. You only came when Ziva needed you." He turned to face Gibbs and the elder of the two instantly saw that the expressionless eyes had been filled with anger. "Why?" Tony demanded quietly, "Why did you only come back when Ziva needed you and why were you content to let the rest of us go to hell?"

Gibbs blanched.

In truth, he had been expecting this conversation. But he'd been back at work for two weeks now, and Tony had said nothing. He had simply slipped back into his second in command role without a word of complaint. And he…he had let him. He had accepted the return of his faithful shadow without ever questioning it. Tony's question rattled around his head as he frowned. In equal truth, he had never looked at the situation through that lens. He knew what he was doing when he had ignored Tony's calls. He had been trying, and perhaps wrongly, to force the kid to stand on his own two feet. The same with McGee. He had had every faith in Tony when he had handed him his badge, if he hadn't, he wouldn't have left.

"She was being accused of murder," he eventually heard himself saying with a shrug. "What would you have done? Just let her take the fall for something she didn't do?" He looked over at this protégé and frowned. "That's not the kind of leader I left in charge of my team and it's not something you'd ever do, so why the anger about me helping Ziva?" Staring at him with the beginnings of incredulity, Tony snorted. "It's not about your helping Ziva," he explained slowly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, "It's about your refusal to help any of the rest of us."

Gibbs shook his head as he turned back towards his boat.

"You don't need my help anymore, Tony," he contradicted, "I've taught you all I have to teach you." Picking up the sanding paper once more, he didn't see the anger that stormed across the younger agent's face. "Even if that were true," he said icily, "Do you think you've taught Abby all you have to teach her? Tim? Because…I don't care if you want to hear this or not Boss, but you broke her. You broke Abby. I held her in my arms at my apartment night after night whilst she cried for you. She called and called and you never picked up." The familiar anger suddenly morphed into a snarling dragon, writhing within Tony's gut as he remembered her habitually tear stained face. "How could you do that to her?"

Gibbs flinched at that.

"I had to go," he murmured, almost to himself, "I couldn't stay."

Tony bristled furiously.

"And that means you couldn't pick up a damned phone?" he hissed, "That means your hands were broken and you couldn't write a damned letter. Do you know how Tim was, or do you care? He had a really hard time with it, in case you were interested. You walked out without so much as a who's your father and left. And suddenly, I was his boss. Me. It's sort of like…lets say, Tobias suddenly being your boss. Would you like that? Would you be thrilled with that? Because, with all due respect Boss, that was one shitty move." He walked over to the worktable and grabbed another wad of sanding paper. Returning, he pressed it against an untreated beam and began rubbing it up and down viciously.

Somehow, Gibbs had the sense not to correct the sanding direction as he stood quietly.

"And then of course there was Ducky. We didn't see much of him after you left. Sort of kept to himself, except for visiting Abby. There were no visits to the bullpen, he even stopped speaking to his cadavers. You didn't answer his calls either, did you? He thought it was just him you were ignoring and I don't know if he was more relieved or disgusted when I told him you were pretending we were all just a figment of your imagination." He attacked the grain more viciously as he continued, and Gibbs knew in his gut that the anger his second in command felt ran deep. "So I guess my question is, was it worth it?"

He turned to face Gibbs, sandpaper hanging by his side.

"Mexico, I mean. Was building some shack and drinking yourself stupid every single day of the week with Franks, worth it? Because you know…a part of me thinks it must have been, because you did it for months. And I think we both know you'd still be doing it if you hadn't come back to save Ziva." He locked burning green eyes upon his boss. "But then another part of me thinks it couldn't have been, because you could have gone back. But you didn't, you stayed. You dumped my stuff back on my desk without a single word and took your desk back. I lead your team for months, Boss, and I damn sure led it well."

He turned back to the boat and leant against a supporting beam.

"I didn't deserve that," he muttered, almost to himself. "I didn't deserve to be kicked back down like that. I did a good job, I did the best I could. You come back and don't even explain why or for how long and next thing I know, you've done some interior decorating and I'm back as second in command." He rubbed his hand up and down on the beam. "If you were going to go, you should have stayed gone Boss. You shouldn't play with people like that. We're not your personal entourage that you can pick up and toss back down when you're bored. I get what happened was awful, I get it was tough. But you walked out and you left us behind."

He turned to face Gibbs once again.

"I thought Marine's never left a man behind?"

Before Gibbs could even answer, Tony shook his head. "Doesn't matter I guess." He glanced back at the man in front of him and steeled himself. "Jenny offered me my own team. In Rota. Total autonomy, my rules…my team. She gave me until the end of the week to decide." He clamped his mouth shut as Gibbs digested the information quietly, before swallowing deeply. "Are you taking it?" he asked quietly, the realisation of what he'd done hovering in front of him like a smog.

Tony shook his head.

"No. I told her already that I didn't need till the end of the week. I can't leave. Not now, not when everything is so up in the air. I won't do that to Abby, to McGee…or even Ziva, not that she needs me." He stared at Gibbs with an expression the man had rarely seen before. "I don't trust you right now Boss. I mean, I trust you to have my six in the field. With that, I'd put my life in your hands. But as a man…as the man I thought you were, no, I don't trust you. I'm not going to sail off into the sunset when there's a chance you'll be bolting out the door behind me."

Gibbs felt the air deflate from his lungs.

"Tony," he said quietly, "Don't do this. Take the damned gig. You deserve your own team and you're ready. Don't let me hold you back. Truth is, you've been ready for a long time. Rightly or wrongly, when I left, I knew you would step up and take over. I had no worries about the team when the team was under you." He took a deep breath and did the one thing he found most difficult in the world to do. He had known it in his gut the moment he had landed in Mexico, but he had been too much of a coward to face it. Now, looking into the eyes of the man he held such complex emotions for, he knew he couldn't be a coward any longer.

"I was wrong. I knew that the minute I got off that plane in Mexico. But I was too much a coward to come back and I was too much a coward to face any of you. I knew Abby would be distraught and I knew Tim would struggle. I turned my back on one of my oldest friends when Ducky would have done anything I would have asked of him. And…" he closed his eyes as he found it within himself to do what he should have done the moment he arrived. "I should have explained it to you, when I came back. I should never have just taken back over as if I'd never left. I know that. And I know that I never told you what a good job you did, because that would have meant admitting you can all do just fine without me."

He glanced around the basement and weariness encased him.

"That's a hard thing for a man to admit you know, not being needed." He looked at Tony with an odd expression before clearing his throat again. "But when I look at you now, I know you don't need me anymore. That mean's I've done my job and that means you're ready to take the reins yourself. I know you don't trust me right now and I won't ask you to. But I will not walk out on them again. The next time I leave, it will be because I have to, not because I want to. Do not let the fear of my abandoning my responsibilities again prevent you from accepting your own."

He felt the urge to reach out and grasp Tony's shoulder.

But the fire smouldering in the usually twinkling green eyes prevented him.

"Take the Rota job, Tony. It's your time and you've earned it. Don't let the idiot actions of an old man stop you from taking what's yours." There was a pressing silence for a moment as each man stared directly at the other. "You're wrong," Tony eventually said quietly, "About one thing…you're right about being an idiot of an old man though."

Gibbs smiled ruefully.

"Bet you've always wanted to say that huh?"

Tony returned a small smile.

"It had crossed my mind. Figured this was my only opportunity to do it without getting a concussion."

Gibbs snorted but didn't argue.

"You were wrong about my not needing you," Tony continued quietly, "I might not need you as much as I used to, or even nearly as much as I used to, but…I still need you. I'm not taking the Rota gig. I know I'm ready for my own team and I know I did a good job with yours. I know that you're not…uhh, I know that you're not used to admitting you're wrong. It's good that you know you screwed up Boss, but I'm sorry…I'm not leaving until I know you're you again and that Abby isn't going to spend every night in tears because things got too much for you."

He took a slight step closer to the elder man.

"I forgive you what you did to me. I can get over that. But it is going to take me a long time to forget the sounds of Abby's crying every single night. It's going to take me a long time to forget the look on Tim's face when he rang and rang and never got an answer. It's going to take me a long time to forget the shadow of Ducky we were left with when you took off without a single word of explanation to him. It's going to take me a long time to forget that Ziva, Ziva, cried for you and you only came back when she was looking down the barrel of criminal charges."

He took another step closer and Gibbs instantly saw the Tony he had left was not the same Tony in front of him. Nearly chest to chest with the elder agent, the junior of the two spoke in an unnaturally sombre tone.

"Don't you ever walk out on us again, Boss. Because next time, you won't be welcomed back."

With a short nod, Tony closed the chapter on a difficult period of his life and made for the stairs. It was only when he reached the top stair, the one that creaked, did he provide Gibbs any hope for rectification of their relationship. As the words wafted down the staircase, the team-lead leant against his boat with a small smile spreading across his face as the bubbling guilt in his stomach rampaged on.

"And I want a damned raise, Boss. Call it hazard pay. God knows working for you is about as hazardous as it gets.

…..

A/N: I never did like the way Tony's leadership of the team after it being thrown at him was never recognised by Gibbs. So here we are, hope you enjoyed.

_Inks.

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