DISCLAIMER: I do not own NCIS, nor will I ever.
The problem is, soon DiNozzo will snap.
Ever since he was young, Tony learned that letting things slide was a lot less painful for everyone involved. Letting the constant abuse, both verbal and physical, from his mother and father slide was the only way he would survive. It wasn't like he could go to anyone for help. The doctor daddy DiNozzo employed was paid to keep silent. The help was promptly fired with explicit threats on their families' well-being if they even started to feel sorry for little bruised Anthony DiNozzo.
After his mother died, Tony didn't have to worry about being dressed up or treated like a little doll whose things were periodically mistaken for something quite different. But then his father blamed Anthony for his mother's death. The flinch that became a habit at this time took Tony years to hide. Anthony DiNozzo would slunk in the shadows to get from room to room in the huge mansion, holding his breath until he reached his destination without once hearing his father's angry voice.
The only time Anthony DiNozzo was semi-happy was when Rita was cooking for the DiNozzo's. She would smile at Anthony and let him sit in the kitchen for hours, teaching him Spanish. Anthony DiNozzo's eyes sometimes would lose some of the fear and replace it with pride at his ability to do something right. But as with most things in the DiNozzo household, daddy DiNozzo found out and fired Rita. Anthony wasn't able to see straight for a week.
When Tony was twelve things began to take a turn for the better. He was sent to the Rhode Island Military Academy, where daddy wasn't constantly drinking, swearing, yelling, and hitting. But Anthony knew his daddy was still watching him, so Anthony followed all the rules and allowed the military upbringing to let him relax little by little. On the one occasion Anthony went home for the holidays, daddy DiNozzo upped the game and made that summer he broke five bones, caused seventy-seven stitches, and forgot him at the hotel in South America for three weeks seem like a walk in the park.
The one thing that Anthony learned after that particularly nasty trip home was he was tired of letting everything slide. He snapped. Anthony was already disowned after killing his mother; he was already out of state, and beginning to excel in sports. Sports allowed Anthony to physically allow all of his pent up anger and grief out, without appearing weak.
On the last day of exams before his graduation from Rhode Island Military Academy, Anthony started to tell his father what he planned to do. Later that day Anthony went missing. The instructors and his classmates, who all liked Anthony fairly well, were slightly worried. Anthony had been planning an end of the term party, against regulations, but it was well-known that the instructors would most likely overlook the party- as long as nothing illegal was going on.
Anthony did not show up to graduation the next week, but the diploma was picked up by him a few weeks later. The sunglasses, long sleeved shirt, and bright smile did little to cover up the gashes and bruises. But the smile was real. It was real because, the dean found out; Anthony was finally free from his father. Tony, as he introduced himself to the dean, was going to Ohio State to play football and basketball. He wasn't even going to have to pay for it due to the scholarship he had won earlier that year.
College for Tony was the time where he finally let go and had fun. The nervous flinch he had physically disappeared, though the emotional one never left him. He never let anyone try to walk over him, and he let things slide off him that weren't so important, because it was innate. And until the Michigan game, Tony was going to go pro and marry his fiancé, finally life going his way. But as fate would have it, Brad Pitt broke his leg and his fiancé left him for his best friend after finding out Tony wasn't going to become rich and famous.
The next few months, Tony was in a dark place, he had snapped again. The broken leg wasn't the worst thing that happened to him; the lack of self control almost killed him. Anthony overworked his body trying to reach his old physical health. The alcohol never burned his throat anymore. He drank whiskey with his cereal and scotch with his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Vodka went with whatever dinner he scrounged and he had at least twelve beers every time he went to a bar. Slowly, he was killing his liver.
It wasn't until one morning he woke and his latest one night stand was shooting up next to him that Anthony vomited at his lifestyle. Her leg scratched his as he roll over her and ran out of his apartment. For the next few months, Anthony stayed with a buddy from college. The two finally sorted Tony out and he expressed interest in becoming a cop like his buddy. Not two days later, Tony enrolled in the police academy.
Tony soon realized his uncanny affinity towards the law enforcement. The next years, Tony was on cloud nine realizing this was finally where he belonged. Two years after he landed a job in Peoria his college buddy was shot on duty. Tony moved from Peoria to Philadelphia, and two years later he moved to Baltimore. Each time he left was a result of Tony's inability to fit with his co-workers. Never once did he leave and look back, never once did he leave and someone want him to stay.
Baltimore was where Gibbs found Tony, and soon Tony followed Gibbs to NCIS and Washington, DC. There Tony was set-up and he reached his full potential. Abby Sciuto and Doctor Mallard quickly realized that Tony was a mask that hid something, namely Anthony DiNozzo. Never before did anyone, let alone three people, realize that Tony was more than 'Tony' and still accept him into their lives. The next two years he and Gibbs worked together the wall Tony built around his heart began to allow Gibbs enter and finally become more like a father-figure to him than anyone else had.
When Tony realized he thought of Gibbs like a father, he promised to never lose Gibbs' trust, respect, or role as Senior Field Agent. Kate Todd would make fun of him for it once she became a part of the team. McGee would, on the rare occasion he would shortly grow a backbone, tease Tony about it too. Tony would let them, knowing that they were partially correct, and partially because he worked hard to make McGee stronger. The times McGee would show Tony that the incessant nicknames and jibes, which were mostly just Tony's ways of strengthening the younger agent, were helping McGee without his evening knowing was a moment of rare self-pride.
Still, he let things slide when they came close to the truth. Once, Kate came close to seeing how Tony really was on the inside, when she was griping about Tony growing up with money and having it easy. Anthony started to creep through, surprising Kate. Tony quickly clamped down and added a remark to make Kate smile. When she died Tony never felt remorse that she never knew Anthony DiNozzo, but he did wish she could have stayed long enough for him to pop up again.
Ziva's arrival to the team felt more like a slap in the face to him, she was someone who defended the man that killed Kate. Tony tried to let that slide too. It took him longer than he hoped to let it finally slide. He was starting to really like Ziva when the team was invited to dinner and he wasn't. Not her fault, he reasoned, that she didn't know how much Anthony seeked for a place to belong. But Gibbs and Abby knew, and that hurt him far worse, the mask of Tony DiNozzo briefly slipped before he put more defenses around him.
Usually, Tony could read things from Gibbs that no other could. He knew when Gibbs was contrite, angry, pissed as hell, sad, and occasionally worried. Given that the two were unused to verbal communication about emotions, it worked fairly well. Tony knew when he was being silently apologized to or that Gibbs had just been blowing off steam. Since Tony regarded the others as his sort-of family, he made himself the target of whatever emotion Gibbs needed to blow off so he could move on and solve the case. But sometimes Anthony could not read Gibbs as well as Tony could. Tony would spend weeks rebuilding defenses and building more. He let things slide.
Considering how much Tony went through with Jeanne, Tony was surprised how efficient he was at rebuilding and building and letting things slide without even considering what he was doing. So when the Agent Lee fiasco came to light, Anthony was severely hurt. He had just finished rebuilding and sliding and weaning off the alcohol when Gibbs let him down and Ziva blamed him for their predicament. Angrier then he had ever been before, Tony started yelling. First at Ziva and then Gibbs. Anthony was reminded of his father and he went home, after throwing up and the stark reminder of his father's tirades, Tony refused to let Gibbs back into his defences. Gibbs was letting him down just like his father had.
Life continued, though, for Anthony and soon he realized that his walls were starting to show and crumble. Anthony was making more appearances, and try as he might Tony was starting to falter. Much like he did before he snapped the two previous times. It's only a matter of time before Anthony DiNozzo snaps again, and this time it might not quite as easy to come back from.
Tony goes to bed worried that the next day would see him snap, see him break, see him fall so far apart no one would ever be able to help him put the walls back up and set the mask upon his face. He worries that one day daddy DiNozzo will make a reappearance, he worries that Gibbs will not speak and try to fix the still broken parts he made when he hurt Tony, he worries Ziva will find out he fell in love with her when she is in fact in love with someone else, and he worries that McGee will turn out like Tony, never knowing that Tony was in fact hiding Anthony. Because suddenly McGee was acting more like Tony and Anthony was trying so hard to keep that from scaring him.
Tony DiNozzo kept going though, hoping against time, hoping that he would be able to take some time off and let himself snap slightly. He hoped in doing so he could rebuild himself and come back strong.
He hoped against time, against life, and he lost. Anthony DiNozzo reappeared along with memories of his father and mother, Rhode Island Military Academy, broken legs, gasping under blue lights, pain from Gibbs' harsh words and actions, and lastly Kate mocking Anthony.
He finally snapped and Tony was huddled in his closet crying and staring at his gun, knowing he could never actually kill himself, because daddy DiNozzo would have been right. So he stayed curled up in the dark, knowing that his team would never think of looking there when they figured he wasn't going to come into work the next day.
A/N: Please let me know how I did! :)