Remember

A/N: This is a sort of an AU take on the reason behind Tony's actions in Obsession. When I watched the episode, I thought for sure there was going to be some sort of ulterior motive behind his behavior, and when one wasn't revealed I decided to do my own take on it. I think my explanation is at least somewhat plausible, so I hope you enjoy it!

Dana

He first saw her on the day he turned eight years old. School had just let out, and he was standing a few feet from the curb, waiting to see which of the rotating set of DiNozzo household staff had been assigned to come pick him up for the day. It was cloudy, the whole sky covered with an angry blanket of gray, rolling and coiling and threatening rain. He remembers that distinctly because when she appeared in his line of sight, he thought the sun had just burst from behind the clouds. She was laughing with some friends on the other side of the street. She had the most beautiful laugh, all church bells and wind chimes and piano keys. He probably would have stood there forever, staring, but then his ride pulled up in front of him, and the shiny black surface of the car made her vanish as quickly as she had appeared. He only had time to hear one of her friends call out her name- "Dana!"-before they drove away. He rolled the name around on his tongue the whole ride home, the sound as musical as her laugh. But there wasn't any laughter like hers at his birthday dinner that night. He tried so hard to make his mother laugh, talking about his day at school and the funny things he had noticed. He even got up in the middle of dinner to play a stupid little song he had made up on the piano. But the closest she came to laughter was a weary smile on her face and all his attempts were put to an end when his father, his voice cold and angry, said, "Anthony, stop bothering your mother." For the rest of dinner all he wished was to have Dana appear, bright and shiny, and use her laughter to make his family happy again.

He didn't see her again for several months, months blurred together into a myriad of doctors and hospital visits and beeping machines and angry voices trying hard to hide their worry, his memories finally coalescing into a single image from the last day of the endless train of months. It's funny. He knows it was brilliantly sunny, on that last day, because the glare off the casket made his eyes water. But for some reason he remembers everything in a dark haze, as though the whole world was storming. He had run. Run from the parade of black, from the sighs and the pitying glances thrown his way, from the cold stone jutting up from the ground…but mostly run from the silent panic welling up within him that this was his fault. And so he had run and run until blind exhaustion forced him to stop and he looked up to find himself in a park. She was standing by the swings, pushing a little boy. And with each push the little boy laughed louder and louder, and the swing went higher and higher. His single sharp memory of those endless months is of Dana making that little boy fly. And standing in the park, chest still heaving and eyes still full of tears, he had wished desperately that his mom would appear to make him fly. But she hadn't, and he knew she never would.

He caught scattered glimpses of her over the next several years. Each instance was a cherished moment, to be guarded and stored away in a place no one else could reach. At the time he didn't really understand why. All he knew was that whenever he saw her, the twisted knot in his stomach unraveled just a bit, and for a little while it felt okay to be Tony. The subconscious thought process didn't matter. Then came the day when he was twelve years old, and the small, tattered rags of family that he had managed to hang onto because they were all he had left were ripped from his hands. Leaving him empty. Except…he remembers. He was sitting in the back seat of the bus that was taking him to military school. His hands were clenching his suitcase handle so tightly they turned white and with every jolt of the bus he thought he was going to throw up. But as the bus approached the outskirts of the city and he prepared to turn his back on everything he had ever known, he saw her out the window. Just standing there. He remembers that clearly. Standing as if she didn't have a care in the world. And when she saw the bus, she waved, her face lighting up with a smile. And he found his face responding in kind.

That was when he realized just why she was so important to him.

She was his vision of what-might-have-been.

If his mom hadn't died…if he wasn't such a screw up…if he still had a family…if...if…if… She was living the happy future that had been denied to him. But not only was she a vision of the future, she was also his key to unlocking the past. Because every time he saw her it unleashed an avalanche of what-had-been. Because in her smile, he saw his mom. And he remembered…His mom sitting on his bed after he had a nightmare, running her hand gently through his hair…The proud smile on his mom's face after he played in his first piano recital…Telling a joke he heard at school and hearing his mom laugh, and his dad laugh too, the whole family sitting at the table laughing…And as the bus passed beyond the city outskirts and into the wide world, there was one small part of him, tucked away where no one could see, where he didn't feel empty.

He didn't expect to ever see Dana again. But that was okay, because she had given him memories of his mother, of family, of home. And those memories sustained him, supported him through the endless boarding schools and summer camps. They kept him grounded through the lonely nights and the long days. They gave him something that was real, when it seemed his whole life was flashy smiles and pretending. Those memories gave him roots. And with those roots he grew.

He still followed Dana from afar. He read about her as she moved up in the news broadcasting business, and watched with an inordinate amount of pride as she gave her first ZNN report. And even though they were separated by a sheet of glass and hundreds of miles, seeing her smile…it was the sun bursting forth all over again. And slowly, over time, as he discovered things he was good at and made friends and started to build his own way in the world, he began to believe that Dana's future, her happily ever after, might possibly be available to him, too. That Dana hadn't just shown him what might-have-been, but also hope for what-might-be. For him. His life. And that he just might have a future worth living.

So he set out to find that future. Wasn't easy. Hit quite a few bumps on the road. He watched Dana on ZNN most nights because seeing her reminded him of his mom, reminded him of the one part of him that no one could take away. So he kept at it, kept trying, but some nights he despaired of ever finding a place where he could be who he wanted to be. And then...he found this job…and this boss. And everything changed. And one day, he woke up, and opened his eyes, and stared at the ceiling above his bed, and something was missing. And then he realized what it was. He had forgotten what it felt like to be whole. The empty feeling, the one that he had carried around for so long, was gone. He was part of a family again. A new family. And with this one he didn't have to settle for tattered rags. He didn't have to be something less than he was. He could just be Tony.

After that, he stopped watching ZNN each night. Stopped needing to watch it. Because what Dana had given him for so many years…he had found in a different source. And each day when he headed into work, the smile on his face was real. And the days rolled past and he grew used to being healed.

Then everything fell apart.

I've written one other part to this story which follows Tony's POV during "Obsession." I should have it posted in another day or so.