Why he stayed at the NCIS
They all heard him tell the story of why Gibbs hired him, "it was the smile".
They had heard or guessed why he said yes: "Gibbs was just that good, he'd be a fool to pass up the chance to work with him", "He was ready for new challenges, and it was time to move on.", "The pay is better" and "He couldn't continue working with Danny, not when he knew Danny was on the take." The reasons were all true, as many and varied as the people who asked him.
But they didn't ask why he stayed on: with the lack of respect and trust, from both his collages and, sometimes, Gibbs as well -The less that was said about the Mexico fiasco the better-, despite the insane work hours and the lack of a private life.
They all assumed it was to loyalty to Gibbs and an absence of prospects elsewhere, McGees "you're not good enough to deserve your own team", still hurt.
Granted, he was loyal to Gibbs. Tony admired and respected the man, no matter all his faults and shortcomings and Gibbs had plenty of those. Gibbs was one hell of an investigator, he was driven, sometimes obsessed, and almost always got his man.
Tony liked the variety of cases at NCIS, they stretched all over the spectrum: from murder, theft, assault to espionage and terrorism. He liked taking part in the forensic part of the investigation, something he had rarely done as a detective.
When they met in Baltimore, Tony had been curious about the man and the agency, that could demand and give, such single-minded devoted focus and time to each case.
The truth was in any other agency or department a man like Gibbs would have crashed and burned out, within two years.
In the NCIS the most open cases they had worked simultaneously was five, and that was as a team, which made it one and a half case per Agent. At he time that he was running around in Baltimore with Gibbs, Danny and him had eleven open cases on their desk and that was not counting cold cases.
He had seen what happened to the homicide detectives who had stayed to long in the field, they became embittered and disillusioned. No matter how hard they fought it, their empathy and their humanity slowly became eroded down, as a result of the cesspool of pain and blood that was their everyday life. Sometimes, in a desperate attempt to distance themselves, apathy crept in and the victims became nothing more than numbers in the morgue.
Tony didn't want that to happened to him, he didn't want to lose his empathy, to stop caring, to lose what had made him want to be a cop in the first place and for the job to turn into nothing more than a way to earn a pay check.
No matter how long Gibbs kept them as their desks, despite how he occasionally slept on or under the desk in the difficult cases, it's still a luxury to be able to give such focus to one case.
There was such satisfaction in knowing that Tony really had given his all to deliver justice for each victim, that he hadn't had to phase himself because there was several other victims, also demanding his time and attention.
To know that the perp. wouldn't go free because the evidence hadn't been processed in time, or correctly. That clues wasn't missed because the M.E had rushed through the autopsy because there were untold other body's who were still waiting their turn.
He looked at McGee, Kate and Ziva when she joined, even Gibbs sometimes, and wonders if they knew what a privilege it was, he didn't think they did.