A lullaby for a troubled man
Gibbs was a troubled man, who only let his troubles grow. Based around 'Bury Your dead' and Tony's death. Father/son relationship.
The moment he saw Shannon and Kelly's graves, he knew what heartache felt like. He was meant to be serving his country, and the anger built up in him because his country couldn't even protect his wife and daughter.
Staring at those head stones, Leroy Jethro Gibbs hated his government, because they had their hand in the death of his family.
He heard Shannon's voice and Kelly's laughter, wherever he went, and he promised he would never replace them with any one else's.
He grew lonely, and he thought that marrying again and again would make the crippling pain leave for a little while, because Shannon would have wanted him to be with someone.
But each night, he grew to hate himself a little more, because he was trying to do the one thing he promised he would never do.
He tried to fill the hole Shannon left.
He stopped trying in the end, and it didn't hurt too much because he never tried to replace both Shannon and Kelly.
He grew to accept his new role in life, and he worked hard to keep people away. It worked, because after a few years, people just stopped trying.
That was until he turned up in Gibbs life. He had been some smart mouth cop who seemed to rub his teammates all the wrong way.
But Gibbs watched him and knew that Anthony DiNozzo was hiding something, and trying hard to keep people away, just like Gibbs was doing.
It didn't take much to get the younger man on his team, and though everyone questioned Gibbs when he was hard on the younger man, Tony didn't, and that was enough for Gibbs to know he was going to get on well with Tony.
Before he knew it, it had been five years, and Tony was apart of his world and Gibbs had learnt he was filling a hole in Tony's world.
A role that Tony's father hadn't really tried to fill, himself.
Gibbs had almost pushed Tony away when Ducky pointed out that Gibbs will always be a father because he was guiding Tony in ways that no normal boss would really do. But looking at pictures of Kelly, Gibbs knew he wasn't replacing her with Tony, and he accepted that.
He could live with that.
There were times Gibbs even felt a little heartbreak knowing that Kelly would have loved Tony, because he would have treated her like a little sister.
When Kate died, Gibbs felt like a failure once more, and he couldn't hate anyone else but himself, because he should have protected her.
It wasn't until Tony arrived at his home one night a week after Kate's death that Gibbs noticed that Tony blamed himself as well, and Gibbs wanted to take that guilt away from him.
Kelly had opened his heart to being a father and Gibbs accepted that he couldn't switch that off.
He wasn't replacing Kelly.
Then it all changed.
Gibbs understood that he might not be replacing Kelly, but he was replacing something he wanted.
He and Shannon always spoke of having more kid,s and it wasn't for a lack of trying. Gibbs wanted a son, and though there were chances to have another child, he knew, deep down, he'd only wanted Shannon to be the mother.
Watching that screen show the blast, and having to make that trip to see the burnt out car of Tony's had made it, hit Gibbs hard.
Tony was replacing the son Gibbs never got and he hated the younger man for that.
Not because Gibbs felt tricked but because he felt that heart ache all over again. Seeing the body was just as hard as when Gibbs saw his wife and daughter's grave stones.
Knowing that he would never see him again, made Gibbs want to hurt someone; made him want to run away.
He had escaped for an hour; he had driven for ten minutes before he found himself in a park where families laughed and believed nothing bad would ever happen to them.
Gibbs hoped that was true, but at that moment, he didn't really believe.
Gibbs had felt his hate in that hour. His hate for Jenny, because he had loved her once upon a time; his hate for whoever killed Tony, because they were stealing something from Gibbs he hadn't know he'd had, and he hated Tony for lying to him and breaking his heart.
He was a troubled man; he knew that, and nothing would ever change that for him. But something had longed for that to happen.
When Tony walked out of the elevator, Gibbs wanted to say a lot of things to him; some nice, and a lot that would hurt. But something in the younger man's face made him stop, something that made the father in him rear up.
He watched it all as Tony told Jenny and himself what had happened and Gibbs saw that Tony was hurting, because for all the lies he had told, he had forgotten to remember one that would have stopped him from hurting.
He forgot that he didn't really mean it when he said 'I love you'.
Gibbs knew Tony understood how much he had hurt his boss, and how much he had to do to make up for the lies. But Gibbs also saw that Tony, deep down, knew what their relationship was about.
Walking away when Tony wanted to talk to him, was the most shameful act he had ever committed, and as he worked hard on the boat sitting in his basement, he heard Shannon demand an answer to why he couldn't forgive Tony, and he heard Kelly pleading with him to stop hating Tony.
He was being a fool, and he knew it. But he had let Tony in, and for nearly half a day he had thought it was all for nothing. He thought he had lost the son he was never going to have and he understood he was replacing something he never knew he really wanted.
He was a troubled man and the silence of an empty house was his lullaby.
He would forgive Tony soon; deep down he knew that, and he would go back to the man who was the silent father. But for now, he would be the troubled man.
Because it was easier then suffering through loosing his family again.
The end.
This has been edited by Xenascully. Thank you for the help.