DISCLAIMER: I always find, when it comes to Tony, that the greatest depths to his character may actually just be plot holes. Like the sudden life-long devotion to film that cropped up mid-season two when he didn't know who Elijah Cook was in season one. And the way the Baltimore department he worked for before NCIS changes every time he mentions it. He even worked with Metro at one point! And how he's been there so long, but doesn't seem to really know most of the agents around…
Ten Partners and Seven Years
First, there was Parsons. Damon Parsons.
Before he'd come to NCIS, Parsons had been a ranking member of Miami's Crime Scene Investigation Unit. He was an expert sketcher, and had the uncanny ability to walk onto any scene and immediately figure out exactly how it went down. Unfortunately, he also had the habit of wanting to enact these scenes, rather than trying to explain them, and would often pretend to kill Tony for Gibbs' visual benefit.
Tony had no idea how he'd wound up on the team, because Parsons had been there a full six months before him. However it happened, he and Gibbs never really seemed to be able to leave it behind, because Parsons was always worried about the scene and Gibbs was always yelling at him to focus on the crime.
What he did know was that Parsons hated the fact Tony knew his way around a crime scene. He hated that Tony could sketch, fast and cold, guestimating measurements in his head as he went. So he would always wait until Tony was in the room before announcing how he thought the crime had occurred. He would always make sure Tony knew when he, Damon Parsons the crime scene specialist, had discovered something about the scene that Tony had missed.
But he was a specialist for a reason, and Tony knew it, so he let Damon have his fun. He played up the slacker in himself – he was always late for work, later still to arrive at a crime scene. He was quiet and shy – the lowly cop awed by the experienced federal agent.
Unfortunately, that pissed Gibbs off more than Tony's skill annoyed Parsons, and told them both so at every opportunity. Parsons eventually put up an ultimatum: either Gibbs acknowledged his skill and experience over Tony's, or Damon Parsons the crime scene specialist would transfer to a unit where he would be appreciated.
He was transferred before the week was out.
Second was Sienna. Sienna Descartes. Damn, she was beautiful.
Sienna had always been around the office, since before Tony joined. She was a lot like Gibbs' secretary, at first, until she went from taking calls to going over evidence with Abby to suddenly collecting it alongside Tony. She was smart and witty and modest and so absolutely perfect that witnesses didn't realise they'd fallen in love until she'd gotten all the information they knew.
The problem was that Sienna was so sure of her ability to play people that she never knew when she was being played in return. She was positive she had Tony wrapped around her little finger, but even Abby, who didn't like to be in the same room as 'the brick-headed jock', knew Tony was the one in control.
She thought she could fool anyone, even sociopaths that had become serial killers by fooling others. Eventually, it got her kidnapped and held hostage, a knife pressed against her throat while Gibbs shouted negotiations. She got away unharmed, but refused to go back into the field. She transferred into Human Resources and never spoke to any of the team again.
Before that, she had loved the idea of Tony as an inexperienced cop looking for guidance in the ways of a federal agency. For her, he was quiet but flirty, always looking to her for reassurance and offering up cute, nervous smiles. He'd almost gotten her into bed when she left.
Damn, she had been beautiful…
Third was Jeremy Andrews, and he came with the fourth – Leonard Lichtenstein.
Andrews and Leo were discharged marines that Gibbs was presented with after Sienna left. Andrews had been dishonourably discharged for making his sexuality known to his Sergeant via the sergeant's son. Leo finished his service and decided to try life as a cop. Andrews was an angry son of a bitch who claimed his life was terrible because no one accepted gay men; Leo a smart arse kid with a dark past Tony recognised but didn't ask about.
They balanced each other out, oddly enough. Despite his personality, Andrews was a good talker – he could ease the most skittish witness and scare the shit out of a wife-beater. Leo was no use when his mouth was open, but he was good with evidence and crime scenes. Neither was really much of a cop, though, so Tony took on the role of caring mentor, balancing out Gibbs' hard discipline. It bothered him that this kind of made him the mother, until he realised Gibbs was encouraging it. That meant Gibbs respected him enough to teach 'their' kids, and Tony couldn't have been prouder.
It didn't even last two months. They screwed up: a girl they were trying to protect was killed before they could get to her. Leo took it hard… combined with that dark past of his and some bad memories of Afghanistan… Tony wished he could have been surprised that Leo swallowed his Sig.
Andrews would have gone longer, and Tony blamed Leo because he refused to blame himself for what happened. They were finishing up some stuff in the evidence locker when the power suddenly cut out. It had been a crappy day—the case wasn't going well, the heat was through the roof, and Andrews hadn't slept in days—so Tony wasn't altogether shocked when the power turned out to be the last straw. Andrews got all angry and upset, punching and crying, and, when Tony tried to calm him down, aggressively affectionate.
To this day, Tony doesn't actually remember what happened. All he knows is that somewhere between Andrews trying to pin Tony against the fence and a technician coming down to let them out of the locker, Tony's Armani shirt got ripped open and Andrews' jaw was broken at the joint.
Tony felt it was an even trade.
Next up was Samuel Jameson. Like the whiskey, only smoother.
Jameson was FBI material that never made it, mainly because he liked justice, not the law. Tony really respected that about him, and hated it at the same time. Worse, Gibbs was the same way, and so Tony often found himself ignoring the way their cases were resolved, or following leads and suspects long after they should have been given up.
Jameson was a playboy, and brought it out in Tony, who joined him on Friday nights to hunt girls. They shared a love of jazz, too, and Tony became a songster, bursting out with lyrics and tunes whenever a moment reminded him of one. They split when it came to languages, though – Jameson spoke Welsh, which Tony thought sounded dirty. Jameson thought both Italian and Spanish were cliché.
Despite agreeing with his sense of righteousness, Gibbs didn't like Jameson that much. He was too quick on the draw, easily distracted by a new face, be it related to the case or attached to a hot body. Gibbs never missed an opportunity to call him on it, but while Tony would always let it go with a grin, Jameson took every criticism to heart.
He quit six months in, and Tony hated him a little for it.
Then came Viv. Vivian Blackadder. Pocahontas. Straight line FBI on a revenge kick.
She only joined NCIS because her brother had been a marine. He'd died in a terrorist hit, and NCIS was always tracking down terrorists. She seemed to think they could pick and choose their assignments, too, and so was always trying to muscle her way onto a team that could get her revenge.
Tony liked Viv, he really did. She was honest and stubborn; reliable in a way Tony had never seen before. And she would always listen when he told stories, true or not. Her favourites were the ones from his days as a cop: 'Baltimore Homicide stories', despite his never actually having been assigned to Baltimore Homicide. She would complain and tease him every time he started a story, but she'd always listen. He knew she loved it.
She could have stuck it out. She could stare Gibbs in the eye when he lectured her. She stuck to her guns when she knew she was right. She was learning about being a cop so fast. She could have made it, could have been his partner.
But she was so damn set on revenge that she screwed it up for herself and nearly the whole team. Then she tried so hard to make it right that she screwed up again. And again. And again, until Tony's pep talks, bad jokes and crappy stories just didn't cut it anymore.
No one was sure whether she quit or Gibbs fired her. But Viv went back to the FBI.
The seventh was ol' Blue Eyes. Fredrick Carter.
Blue Eyes was a psychologist that sidelined as an investigator. They met him on a case, when his patients started dying in variously horrific ways. Luckily (depending on your point of view), it turned out that he was the target, not the killer. He joined their team because no one would hire him anymore, and he was damn good at what he did.
That was probably the problem. He scared the crap out of Tony, who had to play up his college persona and almost stop talking to Gibbs, just to get Blue Eyes to stop guessing all the traumas of his childhood. Blue Eyes then turned on Gibbs, who responded by making his life miserable in the name of teaching him how to be a criminal investigator.
It took less than a month for him to move on. Tony stopped having nightmares after the third.
Kate was next.
Goddamn Caitlyn Todd.
Kate was… Catholic. Secret Service. Wholesome. Righteous. Smart. Gorgeous. Brave. Traditional. Playful. Everything.
Kate was everything they didn't deserve.
They picked up Kate after Gibbs got her fired from the Secret Service. She was an expert profiler, and learned fast. She could meet Gibbs smart comment for glare, match Tony's wit with her own, and torture any man that looked at her sideways. For all her talents and smarts, she didn't know the difference between acting and a lie, and could never tell when someone was playing a role. She was a college feminist, so Tony played the sexist frat boy, and although that set them at odds, they were an excellent tag team when they wanted to be.
She gleefully pointed out Tony's hero complex. She could call Gibbs a bastard to his face and grin about it. She was the sister-lover-friend Tony had never had, and everything Gibbs thought his daughter would have grown up to be.
One bastard terrorist killed her to get to Gibbs.
Goddamn Caitlyn Todd.
During Kate's reign, Probie joined up. Tim. Timothy McGee, the computer forensics specialist with a heart of gold.
He was Tony's first Probie. The only real probationary agent, green as newly mowed grass, that Tony had ever had. Tim was small and shy and flabby and cute and had absolutely no self confidence. Or, at least, he hadn't to start with. Tony eventually fixed that, though it came back to bite him in the arse. Tim was their link to the technological age, and was more comfortable with computers than people, for good reason.
Probie was a writer, not a fighter. He could and did hack everything from Tony's computer to the hardcore firewalls of the NSA. He stiffened up around guns, was scared of death, read the manual like a bible, and was always learning more.
He learned, and he changed. He outgrew the nasty older brother persona Tony had created to wear around him, but was never willing to completely accept any other version of Tony that was provided. He liked to believe he was better than Tony; above him. Gibbs, Kate and everyone else encouraged it, because Heaven knew Tim needed the confidence.
Tim will probably break Tony's record with Gibbs.
After Kate, Ziva was given to Gibbs, for various reasons that Tony thinks he knows but won't ask. Her relationship with Gibbs reminded him of Jameson, and he never liked it.
Officer Ziva David of Mossad. Crazy ninja chick. Assassin. She had Gibbs' ruthless skills and Tony's flirty cynicism and Tim's knowledge and Kate's everything else. The only thing she didn't have was investigative experience, and she picked that up too quickly for Tony's taste.
She never bought the frat boy persona, or the sexist pig, or the outrageous storyteller. She decided that Tony was a pathetic chameleon with a father complex; a mildly racist, cynical child playing at being a man because children don't have to live with the consequences of their actions. Tony let her believe it, until he almost started to believe it himself. Ziva had a tendency to do that to people – mould them until her vision of things was right.
Ziva called herself Tony's partner.
She was close enough.
Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo was the first agent Gibbs had ever had last more than five years.
No one is entirely sure how Tony came to work for Gibbs. Each person gets a different story, just the same as each person knows a different version of the same man. Chris Pacci used to talk about a sports-mad lady-killer; an Italian Stallion in every sense of the word. The girlfriends who dumped him say he was a sweet, gentle romantic who didn't really live in the real world. The girlfriends who got dumped call him a sleazy jerk who talks a good game and plays wonderfully in the bedroom, but can't follow through. Abby likes to remember the smart, handsome man who waltzed out of a portal to the 1940s, still singing along with Sinatra, but more often sees the big kid who can't quite sit still.
Gibbs used to think he knew Tony. He knew a brilliant, angry, dedicated cop who followed orders until he didn't think they made sense. He knew the best undercover cop he'd ever seen, an empathetic chameleon that wanted to believe in everyone but never could. He knew a loner that would spend every moment at work if he didn't crave human companionship.
But now Tony is only angry at himself. He's broken, and follows orders even when he thinks they're moronic. He doesn't trust his instincts, doesn't trust his intelligence, doesn't even trust his heart. Now he does spend all his time alone. Now he only goes home to sleep a few hours a night and change, so no one knows he spent the night at his desk. And Gibbs doesn't know that for sure, because Tony won't talk to him. Tony will look him in the eye and speak words that sound sincere, but Tony doesn't talk to him.
Tony quotes classic movies, when four years ago he only watched Summer Blockbusters. Tony doesn't sing, or wear casual shirts, or show up in Gibbs' basement to rant about college football. Tony doesn't flirt with Abby or wear glasses he doesn't need.
When Vance gives Tony orders to Agent Afloat, Gibbs just blinks and swallows lightly.
Even if he fixes things, and gets his team back, he's not sure Tony will be a part of it. Tony's had ten partners and been with Gibbs for seven years.
He's overstayed his welcome anyway.
I am… feeling a little bitter about Season Six. But I feel that may be more a reflection of me and what I liked about NCIS than its current quality. But still. I feel I need to confess that. I am feeling bitter about Season Six.