Or I'll Begin to Roam

by firechild

Rated T

Disclaimer: I own only the non-canon characters.

Warning: One later 'removable' chapter, which will be marked, contains the non-sexual spanking of an adult--if you can't handle this with equanimity, skip that chapter—you won't miss much in terms of the main plot--or turn back now.

A/N: This story is not connected to my Semper Fi series. This is an au, a supposition about the origins of the Gibbs/DiNozzo dynamic. I like playing with possibilities, and this is one that occured to me. I had to do some guesswork and I took some creative license with names and with dates--I sadly lack an eidetic memory and only have net access at my parents' house, where I invariably spend all of my time reading the fic you guys write, so while I did research this, most of what I turned up is patchy. And yes, I switched Baltimore with Philly--he was supposedly a homocide detective, but if you'd ever noticed, he worked transit in Baltimore , which would have made him not homocide and probably not a detective yet (Tony in uniform...) so I reworked. This is NOT slash.

Dedication: To supergirl02, may2002, superem, and my personal mad scientist and reactionary gauge, misslindalee. Hugs!

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8-17-00

Whoever did these 'you are here' maps had to be on something.

Possibly several somethings.

It wasn't that he was lost--if his research was accurate, he was about a mile from his destination for the moment. The issue was time. He had no illusions that his little adventure wasn't coming to an end very soon; he'd lay money, if he'd had any, that before the day way out, he'd be caught, killed, or both. Time was running short for him, and he had no intention of being taken before completing his job. He had no intention of being taken alive, for that matter. Hence, his agreeing to such an obscure location. Hence, his trek to Texas . Hence, his discovery that highway signs in Texas were more valuable as scrap metal (which might've been his next job if he'd thought he'd still be breathing tomorrow.) Hence, his creative navigating.

Hence, his haunting of the area maps at this... fragrant... excuse for a rest stop.

He'd been to a number of these, and for the most part, TXDOT did a decent job of maintaining them, but this particular one was along a less-traveled stretch of highway, which was presumably why his mark had chosen it, and the smell, helped along by the perversely humid early-morning heat, was starting to make him a little lightheaded.

Of course, that could also be the lack of sustenance talking.

Nah. He'd gone more than three days at a time without eating before. Had to be the stink.

He shrugged to himself, trying not to take a deep breath, and scanned the area, trying to decide how to get over to the meet point--which was nothing more than a mile marker--without keeping himself out in the open like a giant target. Unfortunately, the terrain wasn't cooperative, and nothing came to him.

Oh, well. He reached into his bag, hand bypassing the semi-automatic and selecting a fresh shirt.

He was going to die today, anyway. Might as well go out in style.

-----

He was gonna kill him.

That's all there was to it. He was just flat-out gonna kill him.

He still couldn't quite swallow it. How could the kid do this, how could he just betray everything he'd stood for?

How could Tony betray Gibbs?

It just didn't make any sense.

Gibbs had been flitting all over the country for the last two days, always a step behind Tony, maybe half a step ahead of the FBI, determined to catch the boy himself, to be the one to cuff him, to hold a gun on him, to look him in the eye and ask him why.

Oh, he knew that it shouldn't matter. Tony was on the wrong side now, in league with a murderer, and it shouldn't matter why. They barely knew each other, so it shouldn't matter why. Gibbs was Gibbs, it never mattered, it shouldn't matter.

It shouldn't matter, but it did.

It mattered to him. He wanted to know. He had to know.

To do that, he was gonna have to step up the pace, he was gonna have to be the one to stop Tony, because while he sort of wanted to kill him, while he knew there was a distinct possibility that he might have to literally do so, he also knew that if the FBI got there first, Tony would almost certainly leave in a body bag, and Gibbs couldn't shake the conviction that he'd never forgive himself if that happened.

So, yeah, he was gonna kill him, but he fully intended to do so figuratively.

Anger radiating from him, he all but stood on the gas pedal of the rented Mustang, barely noticing the blessed lack of traffic on this road as he passed the mile marker, swore, and jerked the car into a violent U-turn, briefly riding on just two wheels. Snapping on latex gloves, he left it, idling, pointed the wrong direction on the shoulder as he stormed over to the green marker, knowing that he was too late, again, and bent on closing the gap. He found the lump duct-taped to the back of the marker and impatiently yanked it off, turning it over in his hand and opening the battered envelope to unfold a photograph of a marina dock with one boat circled in red, the slip number barely visible, part of the name of the boat fuzzy but still legible.

So.

Back to where this had all started.

Gibbs set his jaw as he strode back to the car, yanking open the glove compartment to retrieve an evidence bag and inserting the whole package into it, photo open and facing up, before tossing it onto the front seat with the others. He didn't know why Tony hadn't taken any of these friendly little messages with him as he'd gone on his merry chase to meet his new partner, but Gibbs wasn't about to leave them for the fibbies to find; they'd been tracking him just fine on their own, they could just keep doing it. As for Gibbs, he was tired. He was done. He wasn't going to be anyone's Wile E Coyote, least of all Anthony DiNozzo's. He was going to be the one a step ahead this time. He didn't know why Tony was doing this, he didn't know if things could have been different, he didn't know how much responsibility he himself carried in all of this, he didn't even know how many people had already died over this. If this little odyssey was going back to its own genesis, well, that was just fine with him; one thing he was sure of--no matter who'd started it or why or where, one way or another, he was going to finish it.

They owed each other that much.