Proofed but Not beta'd. Sorry for any boo boos. Something I was inspired to write after a disappointment in my own universe.
NCIS*
There it was again. The insinuation – no, the out and out declaration – that he was a self-centered, egotistical creep. This time spoken by his boss, his supposed friend, of all people. Tony had only heard the tail end of the conversation between Gibbs and the M.E., and not even in hushed tones as to keep anyone entering Autopsy from hearing.
Narcissistic, he was, according to the Almighty Gibbs.
And Ducky hadn't countered him, so the older man must believe it, too. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, in Gibbs' case, anyways. The man was the biggest walking, sometimes talking, piece of 'the world revolves around me' Tony had ever encountered, and he'd worked for and with some incredibly self-involved people through the years. Hell, he'd grown up with one that could hold a pretty bright candle to his boss.
Tony slid back out of the room and into the elevator as quietly as he had come in – the two men gathered over the slab had not even lifted their heads in acknowledgement of him. Once behind the shelter of its doors, he slouched his six foot two inch frame in the corner of the metal box. He needed to get it together before he got back up to the bullpen – to hell with what he'd come down there to show Gibbs in the first place.
It was an age-old story with him, one that no one, not even Abby, had ever taken the time to read past the first couple of pages for the guts of the tale. He had a book as big as War and Peace full of those stories, and some of them just as gruesome. He'd heard the party line enough through the years, from his boarding school masters, to his FLETC trainers – DiNozzo has talent and aptitude, but his 'I' s keep getting in the way. Funny thing, nobody seemed to mind, though, when they heard Tony volunteering himself with an 'I'll do it.' when nobody else wanted some particularly unpleasant task.
If he was truly as egotistical and self-centered as those around him believed, he wouldn't have had any problem coming right out and attempting to set them straight on the matter. Truth was, what folks construed, assumed, psychoanalyzed in him as being narcissistic and 'me' driven, was really just a finely honed sense of survival, both on an emotional level and a subconscious level. He didn't actually have the balls to try to change anyone's minds about him, and a large part of him had ceased to care about doing it anyways.
When you learned at a very early age that you weren't the center of your parent's world, either of your parents, for any length of time, your self-preservation instincts tended to kick in. Quite often left in his crib to cry, very often left to the devices of frazzled household staff while your parents were busy entertaining at home or Monte Carlo, Tony learned to entertain himself, and get used to his own company. He had to enjoy his own company, as no one else seemed to. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the voices were telling him that it wasn't right – that parents are supposed to at least take an interest in their child, that he had to be important enough to them to want to spend more time than an occasional day here and there with him.
Then his mother had died, and that was the ultimate in abandonment to him. She had not even loved him enough not to die and leave him, and the non-response from his now completely absent father hadn't dispelled the notion from his eight year old mind. He hadn't known back then how long it had been that his father had stayed away, traipsing through Europe and garnering sympathy and memorials for his recent widower status. It could have been weeks, could have been months. It was all the same to a little boy lost in the throes of misery.
Just when he thought he couldn't get any more sad or miserable or lonely, he found himself on the doorstep of a frighteningly stiff-lipped boarding school, and fought tooth and nail not to cry himself to sleep at night. Bullied for being smaller than other boys his age, prettier than some girls, and a pansy-ass for not being able to defend himself, he turned to spending all his extra hours in the school library, reading anything he could get his hands on. Which only served to alienate him all the more. He didn't care. Aside for the times when the bullies got to smack him around during phys ed class, he was still living, breathing and completing his assignments; he figured he didn't owe the world or anyone else any more than that.
It didn't matter if he did, anyways. He had nothing left to give them.
A few short years later, he'd gotten big enough and bold enough to stand up for himself, and once again Tony found himself on the outside looking in – a fight with one of the school's nasties bullies gotten him kicked out of the place and sent back to his father. The Senior DiNozzo had taken him back reluctantly, grudgingly, and let him know by both word and action that he wasn't happy about the situation. Senior had become accustomed to having his own life entirely to himself, his way, and living it where and with whom he wanted. He was entitled to it, after all, hard-working widower that he was, and trying to raise a high-maintenance, unruly child besides.
During a trip to Maui, dragging his sullen pre-adolescent son along with him, he'd fallen under the spell of yet another wealthy dame, who made it her first priority to dispose of little Anthony by any means possible. She loathed children; their high-energy and noise level gave her migraines, she claimed.
Rhode Island Military Academy had been the next ultimate abandonment in young Tony's life – yanked away from his father after finally getting to spend some time with him and thrown to wolves that made the boarding school bullies look like toothless puppies. It had been sink or swim, sometimes literal life or death for Tony. So he had immersed himself in the curriculum, working hard and turning himself into someone even he didn't recognize anymore. He learned untold things about himself there – endurance, perseverance, and to thine own self be true. It was all he had left to offer, and he gave it to himself.
Graduation day, and a finely honed, well-rounded Anthony DiNozzo Junior searched the crowd for his Senior. The man had assured him he would be there. He had even called him from the airport after arriving. So where the hell was he to see his only son graduate with honors from one of the finest military academies around?
Tony found out later that the man had hooked up with the woman sat next to him on the flight and gone straight to his hotel room with her. DiNozzo Senior had been doing the horizontal mambo with a woman he'd known for a little over a few hours while DiNozzo Junior had been collecting his medals and diploma. The agreement he'd had with Senior was null and void in Tony's head, as he had all but expected it to end up being. During a weak moment midway through his sophomore year, after abcense from his father had made him a little fonder of the man, he had agreed to join Senior as an intern at one of the man's cronie's financial firms. Senior had found out that Tony had a surprisingly good head for numbers, and was determined to use that talent to his full advantage.
Tony hadn't cared then. Money seemed good to him after years of having nothing to call his own, and a big salary was even more alluring.
All of that went out the window, along with any money promised for college classes, when an apologetic Senior descended on a beyond angry Tony, and the ugly scene had almost turned into an all-out brawl, stymied only by one of Tony's D.I.'s holding him back.
Once again, it was on Tony to survive, and survive he had. He'd secretly applied for scholarships to a variety of schools, and had been awarded a full ride to Ohio State University after a scout had seen him play during an impromptu match between RIMA and a rival school.
He'd gone on to do great things at OSU, helping win game after game for his team, and never once spotting his father in the stands cheering him on. When his graduation day approached, he hadn't even bothered extending an invitation to his father – hadn't wanted him there to remind him of just how invisible the man had always been in his life. The man most likely would have tried to take all the credit for Tony's hard work and natural talent, and turned a thrilling moment into a homicidal one.
It was ditto for Tony when he graduated from the Peoria Police Academy. Super shiny new cop, full of determination and delusions of making the world a better place, not one family member looked on as he was rewarded for his accomplishments. A small part of Tony grieved, but he had long since given up the notion of doing anything to impress his father, or anyone else at that point. He did what he did to because it was what he wanted to do, and no one was there to tell him otherwise. He'd excelled at the academy, despite reports by some disgruntled instructors that Tony wasn't a team player.
Other than his years at Ohio State, and only two of them spent as first string quarterback, Tony had never played on any team. He'd strategized, plotted, trained with, ate and slept with many a group of soldiers and athletes. He'd given credit where and when credit was due to fellow team members, and celebrated victories and mourned hard losses with them.
But in reality, he hadn't done it for the team. He'd done it for himself, to learn, to grow, to make himself a better person, to not become his father. He'd had to learn to be content with being proud of himself, with accomplishing things not everyone was able to accomplish– he couldn't rely on anyone, anywhere outside his own cheering section to appreciate his hard-earned rewards.
And he'd become so skilled at self-preservation through inner accolades, that without intending to or realizing it, he had come to present a rather smug, self-serving front. Yes, Anthony DiNozzo Junior had the audacity to learn to think about himself, to protect himself, to keep at arms length anyone who couldn't be bothered to take the time to get to know him. For most of his life, he was all he had, and he'd had to learn to love himself inside and out, because he couldn't wait anymore for someone else to do it. Even Danny Price, his beloved partner in Baltimore hadn't loved him enough not to become a dirty cop and force Tony to go against everything he believed and turn a blind eye to his sins. There were times when he didn't like himself a lot, but the self-love could never be budged. It would be the end of him, and he'd sworn he wold never turn into his mother, either.
So Gibbs considered him a narcissist. There were worst things to be considered, by better people. Not that he didn't think Gibbs wasn't good people; it was just that the man had so many glaring faults himself, that Tony considered his boss's criticism fairly innocuous.
It was Ducky's agreement with the team lead's assessment, or at least, non-protest that got to Tony.
The M.E. had been taking courses in profiling. He of all people would know Tony's psychological profile.
Tony slumped further into the box's corner. Damn. Where along the road of life had his self-preservation skills turned him into a laughing stock?
Okay, DiNozzo. Time to take stock. He needed to get his head back together. Back in RIMA, even during the game at OSU, this block of self-doubt would have cost him a kick in the gut, or a brutal sack. He needed to keep his head in the game, the game being his job. When and if Gibbs ever told him
he was a screw-up as an NCIS agent, then he'd start taking the criticism personally. Until then, he could live with what people thought of him, even Gibbs.
Because he knew better. All of the time he'd spent by himself through the years had enabled him to dig deep, search far, and solve some of the puzzles that were Tony DiNozzo. He knew all too well there were parts of him that were broken and would never go back together. The edges were just too rough and jagged. He knew he had made mistakes and caused people pain, but he knew more than most people that he was just human, with no special powers and no instruction book. Some things he could forgive himself for, some would always be a wound that never properly healed. And he knew how to forgive others, because he'd learned to do it for himself.
Most of all, he knew the meaning of empathy. His issues were the same ones of the people he'd become a cop for, and it made it easier for him to see several sides of one story, not just the victim's version. Simply put, he had developed his own set of intrinsic rules while navigating the land mines of early childhood all the way to where he stood today. He didn't share them with anyone, in fact he couldn't even name them. They were really more like his moral compass, anyways. If he had to write any of them down, he supposed the first one would be that there was a lot more than two sides to any story. It was a continuous, never-ending lesson for him.
Which led him to understand that there were many sides to people, and not all of the bright and sunny. He could live with being called a narcissist. It wasn't what he was really about, and it wasn't all about him. He was in law enforcement to make a difference in people's lives, a good difference, and most mornings he could look himself in the mirror and know that he'd accomplished that.
As far as Ducky's professional opinion was concerned, well, he'd had a beloved partner named Caitlyn Todd who had been a professional profiler, yet had rarely been able to see beyond the smoke and mirrors of Tony's every day jive. He'd liked it that way, it had kept her from poking at more of his sore spots than she already did, and it had been fun to wind her up and watch her agitate.
Life went on, hurts and all. Words injured, and could devastate if he let them. He had let them, at one time, when his father more than happily listed all the good things Tony wasn't and all the bad things he was. If Tony hadn't found a way to cope with that sort of abuse, he wouldn't had survived. So he learned to encourage himself, praise himself, pat himself on the back. If that constituted narcissism in some people's eyes, so be it. Nowhere in the law enforcement job descriptions he had come across had said anything about being a shrinking violet, the two were incompatible. He was good at his job, damned good, and he had no intention of letting someone's misinformed opinion of him run him off. Chew at him for a while, maybe, and force him to re-evaluate, but only for as long as it took him to get back to the bullpen. Then it was game on. His narcissism against Gibbs' version of supposed tough love. Whatever it took to survive.