This came to me a while after watching the fall 2013 episode, "Anonymous Was A Woman", and wouldn't quit floating around in my empty head. I'm not sure if it will make sense to anyone but me, but I'm going to put it out there. 'Cause I love Gibbs and have to keep finding excuses for the man. (Short –but maybe a little longer than drabble length.)
He knew he should have told DiNozzo, long before he made his decision about what he was going to do, but he just didn't have time to explain it all to they younger man. When Tony understood something, he was good to go, no questions, no yabba about the why and where and how. He just took care of what needed taking care of. (Occasionally, even when no explanation was needed, DiNozzo balked and just up and refused to budge, but that had happened so few times in the years he'd been at NCIS that Gibbs could count them on one hand. And they had been valid refusals in the long run.)
He knew Tony would have never refused him this request, and that was the very reason he had left his SFA out of the loop. DiNozzo would have broken ever rule in the FLETC handbook helping Gibbs on this one, and that just wasn't going to happen. When the lead agent had returned from the E.R with Ducky sporting stitches and a black eye, Tony had gone ballistic and demanded to know what in hell his boss had been thinking, or if he'd been thinking at all. Valid questions, both of them, too.
And Gibbs had tried to explain, and he thought perhaps he had gotten through to his stalwart team mate with his reasons. They had been difficult to formulate, even though he had spent months – no, years, mulling them over in his head without any concrete way to put them into words.
He thought at first that it had started with the Marines; then on further rumination, decided it might have started much earlier than that, with his father. Though seemingly easy-going now, Jackson Gibbs was not a man to be trifled with, and if he thought he was in the right, there was no changing his mind or defying him, especially if you were his kid. There weren't a lot of choices. You either did what he said or suffered drastic consequences.
Of course with the Marines, there wasn't even a thought of disobedience from Gibbs, save for a few insolent words said in the heat of the moment to a DI who promptly took his pound of flesh from the recruit. As time went by and Gibbs was involved in actual combat and missions, even that went out the window. He followed orders, did his job, and never looked back.
Then came NIS with Mike Franks. The man was a not just a force to be reckoned with, he was on a plane of existence all by himself. But he owed Franks more than he could ever give back, or at least he did in the early years. Franks involved his probie in some of the most dangerous, most questionable ops and missions Gibbs had ever been a part of in the Corps, often with vague reasons even vaguer objectives. At the time, Gibbs was numb to most of it, still struggling to come to some sort of terms with the loss of his girls. Then as time went by, he wasn't just accustomed to the wild way Franks ran things, it was an automatic response, one he didn't question, not out loud, anyways, if he wanted to live.
Following orders. Going the distance without wondering why he was doing it. It was all he ever knew.
And god damn it all, he could look back now on plenty of times when what he did for Mike Franks had been the most idiotic, asinine, beyond logical thought process that anyone on who ever lived on earth had ever done. Franks barked, Gibbs never considered asking how high. He jumped until Franks told him to come down. He never really thought why. He idolized Franks. He would do anything the man asked him to do.
And when he finally got away from Mike Franks' web of manipulations and mechanizations, he realized how well he had been played all those years, how easily his hero and mentor could read his every thought and emotion and use it to get what he wanted out of his subordinate. Not necessarily because Franks respected him, or wanted to bring out the best in him, to teach him. But because he could, use him, to the enth degree. And did. And Gibbs didn't know anymore now what had been more important to Mike Franks. Gibbs, or his willingness to move heaven and earth for his mentor.
And if Gibbs never did another decent thing again in his life, he swore he wasn't going to treat Tony the same way. The guy deserved better, even if he got pissed at Gibbs for being kept in the dark sometimes. Gibbs was determined not to put DiNozzo in the same place he had been for so many years – driven to be choose between a rock and a hard place and feeling like he had no power to say no. So he kept some secrets from Tony, some that he probably should have laid out plain as day before things got out of hand. But he didn't, and DiNozzo got over it. Mostly. Though Gibbs knew the younger man's total trust in him was shot all to hell and probably irreparable. He just didn't know the right answer. No matter what Tony thought of him and his black-magic, voodoo, supernatural powers, he wasn't perfect, and didn't have all the right answers.
He only had Tony's friendship and unbelievably, the younger man's respect and love. And Gibbs often thought that what he suspected Tony felt for him, Gibbs felt it for the man who had become a surrogate son to him a hundred times over. If he truly ever owed anyone anything, it was DiNozzo, and he would, in his own weird way, protect him and make every attempt not to be the mentor and, questionable hero to Tony that, in hindsight, Mike Franks had been to him.
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