Gutter
There were definitely days when he came in from his run having done about two miles further than he should have, tasting salt in his mouth, feeling a crushing burning down his throat and a weight on his chest that reminded him vividly of blue lights and drowning on dry land.
He forced himself to swallow between pants as he passed his threshold, knowing it wasn't so, but unable to shake the thought that the salt taste in his mouth was blood. He knew exactly what that tasted like, he'd become almost accustomed to its presence on his tongue in sense memory every time the first warm mist of a shower hit his face. That particular crack in his psyche was probably getting too wide to mend.
He kicked off his shoes and threw down his water bottle, gasping like a fish out of water. On days like this, when he pushed himself too far and came back to find everything as he had left it, he was overcome by an undeniable sensation of total futility. Like a failed suicide.
He didn't have a death wish. Not really. He had complacency and that was probably worse. Maybe he should take a survey. Maybe while he was interviewing victims and murderers (get a nice variety), "By the way, ma'am, who's less pathetic: someone stupid enough to decide they want to die or someone who can't dredge up enough basic humanity to care whether they live?"
At least suicides had conviction, wasteful and amazingly selfish conviction, but conviction nevertheless. And he'd never worried much about being selfish, had he?
He put his head between his knees and tried to catch his breath. It had been a little harder since the plague, but not that much. The scarring was spectacular on his x-rays and would always provide a moment of entertainment when he was checked into hospital, but it was really fairly innocuous physically. It was just that he could never quite forget, never quite convince himself he was still the same, unmarked by the experience. And if he remembered that, if he remembered the pain, he could not help remembering the hope. Could not help remembering that he had not been alone, that she had not let him think for one second that he would die alone.
And if he remembered that, he unfailingly remembered what had happened next. She hadn't died alone either, his nightmares could attest, though he wondered if it counted when she had not even had time for recognition, when she would never know that they'd been with her at what became her last moment. He wasn't sure it did.
He drenched his head in the sink, freezing water splattering all over his tiny kitchen and dribbling down his spine. It reminded him that he was alive and time was relentlessly marching forward whether he took action or not- entropy slowly scattering the remnants of a life worth living- that drifting off into self-pity and the past did not make the present go away. It didn't pay the bills, it didn't catch the bad guys, it didn't protect a geek and an assassin from the increasingly unpredictable moods of an ex-marine with one too many chips on his shoulder.
He sank bonelessly onto his couch, giving considerably less than one tenth of a shit that he was ruining the material as well as the floor, and that his hot muscles were going to go taut as piano wire if he didn't stretch them out. He'd regret it tomorrow, but fuck tomorrow tonight.
Tonight he would do only one more thing and that was pour a cocktail. A rum and rum cocktail, the cheapest gut-rot he could find. He would not get drunk (DiNozzos do not pass out, but Anthony has; DiNozzos drink alone, Anthony does not). Getting drunk alone proved very little other than that a new low had been reached on the totem pole of sad old loser-hood. Look at Gibbs. He'd sunk so low he'd managed to come out on top. Not everyone who hit rock bottom started digging, it was almost admirable in a deeply unhealthy kind of way.
He wondered if reaching a point in your life where you could admit to yourself that you didn't really care if you lived or died could be construed as hitting bottom. He'd always known that it was more important that other people survive than that he did, that if it came to an exchange he would not hesitate to pay for another life with his. He figured that was probably pretty damn noble in theory, but the truth was it wasn't about nobility. It wasn't about courage. His life just wasn't worth very much. He'd never had a starring role, never been irreplaceable, never been everything to anyone, never been the best of them. He was expendable, transient, and this time he'd gone long past his expiration date.
Anthony's father had always said he'd end up in the gutter and here he was.
His single significant romance was a big damn lie, a stupid one at that, and the sacrifice of his integrity, the crossing of the one line he had sworn he would never cross, had been for one woman's Goddamn personal vendetta. Fuck if that didn't stick in his throat so much worse than lie itself.
The other biggest lie he told, the one where he had a family even if he didn't have blood, that one was probably the worst. Maybe because it was the only lie he told himself.
Because they'd let him hang when he stuck his neck out. First he had been abandoned (no surprise there, it was something of a constant, the only one he had) and that he could cope with. He'd never stop being disappointed that the one person he'd ever thought maybe he could rely on had proven him wrong, but he could cope. It was his area of expertise. No, it was the way he'd given them everything he had, from the shirt on his back to the blood in his veins, wrung himself out to nothing to keep them together. To keep them safe. To help them heal and grow and become a team again. To be their spine.
And he hadn't expected thanks, but when Gibbs came back (in the most insensitive, bastard way he could think of, of course) and they pushed his face in it like it was his fault the old man left, like he'd been trying to keep him away, like he just wanted to be boss; that was something he shouldn't have to cope with. Even he was worth more than that.
But he had, because Gibbs wasn't right yet and semper fucking fi.
Loyalty was important to him, it just wasn't more important than the right thing. Something Gibbs could stand to learn.
And he had lost another dance partner in the absurd vaudeville that was his insignificant little life. He hadn't needed to have Paula's blood in his mouth to taste her death- smoke and seared flesh and oh God- in the air, to keep tasting it forever. To know that yet again he'd waited too long to decide to hold on to someone, that he should have let her in as soon as he realised she really did care. Another soldier, another sister in arms, another damn good agent, but mostly the only fucking person in his whole life he could call a real friend without qualification. The only person who asked him if he was okay after his partner's head caved in two feet from his face, human being to human being, and cared about the answer. And another woman he'd loved whose grey matter was scattered all over the concrete.
And he'd seized the wrong day in answer, just like he always did. It wasn't Jeanne's fault that he wasn't the person she thought he was, that he wasn't even the person he thought he was. It was his fault. He was too damaged to play pretend love and pretend family, too needy, someone should have seen that. He should have.
He'd been dead. His car was in little bitty pieces and he almost wished he were in it.
Then Jenny had to be a fucking martyr because she couldn't stand the idea of slipping away with grace and dignity, just like she couldn't stand anyone else keeping their dignity if she could help it. He should have known, that was the thing. He should have known and he should have stopped her from trying so hard to bring NCIS down with her. She nearly got him (not for the first time, the big lie really should have cost them both their jobs), she nearly got Gibbs and Ziva, too. That would always be on him, even if her death wasn't.
When Gibbs decided that trust was overrated and used his entire team as a puppet show for his own personal entertainment, the breaking point was reached. There was leaving them out of the loop (shitty), putting them at risk (shittier), and there was trading in years and feelings for mind games with the fucking toothpick (probably unforgivable). He felt the fingers of a white hot rage curl around him, anger like he'd never let show in all the years the almighty Gibbs had been watching him, anger that he could not control. He didn't allow himself a temper, it was a privilege he was certain he would abuse. Anthony was not big, was not angry, was not out of control. Because Father was all those things and Anthony would never become his father.
Gibbs had broken something sacred, added the last push that brought down the walls he'd built around himself. And the agent he'd trained, his agent was a mole, a murdering traitor. He was in tatters. The pillars of his life, his principles and his integrity, his pride and his faith, the people he protected and the person who protected him; they had toppled one by one.
But that was nothing, because his partner had put a gun to his chest. Forget how he put his career on the line to trust her, to give her a chance to explain what looked so bad, forget how that had ended with him half dead and shipped off to be interrogated anyway. Forget how the bad-looking wasn't just looking, but three hundred and ten percent fact. Forget how she'd told him he was such a fucking worthless sack of shit in her eyes she believed he was more than capable of murder, of pettiness on a cosmic scale. Forget all that. She put a gun to his chest.
She was an assassin. No one could know better that you didn't point a fucking gun at anything you didn't want dead. Ever. After who knew how many years in Mossad, there was a certain willingness there, a certain consciousness of intent no matter how upset she was. And he wouldn't forget that.
But he was letting it slide because that was apparently all he thought of himself.
Don't worry, you keep right on walking over me, because I will take it. I'll take anything you give me. I am that desperate. I'll take love on orders, I'll take nine years of shit from a man who isn't even my father, I'll take You wouldn't be here if you did, and You'll do, I'll even take Maybe I would. Profilers and psychic guts, genii and assassins, none of them saw past the mask; a mask he'd barely maintained in years.
What was that phrase?
All of us are in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Hope springs motherfucking eternal.