Warning: Fans of Ziva will probably take offence at content in this chapter so I recommend taking that into account before you decide to read this.
A/N Seems I wasn't the only one that the comment in question angered and blarney's review summed it all up nicely and so I quote…
"I did not understand the remark Gibbs made about Tony needing an attitude adjustment. It came out of left field to me and there didn't seem to be any closure to the remark…"blarney
Honestly I think that was what was so disturbing – there was absolutely no rhyme or reason that I could see for such a gratuitously ugly remark. No way it could be explained away this time as a joke (Missing), teasing or Tony having stepped too far over the line. It was whoa, were the heck did that come from? Also wasn't amused at the way the team treated him when Detective Kemp appeared and it was revealed he married an ex of Tony's. When combined with what Gibbs said to Abby, it all just added up to a whole lot of nasty.
Thanks to everyone who alerted, reviews and faved. I appreciate your support. and it was pointed out to me that apart from my two WIP I also have the two Guardian Angel series pending too. My bad, although I haven't forgotten them but think of them more as ongoing series of separate stories that are linked rather than WIP in the same vein as a multi-chapter story if that makes sense to anyone other than myself ;). Fear not, I am planning on updating them both when I finish the two multi chapter WIPs which are close to being completed. I also plan to start working on sequels to Halloween Remembrance and Running from the Demons too. Arress beta'ed this chapter and has my eternal gratitude and any boo boos from my tweaking are on me.
Be Careful What You Wish For
Chapter 1
After the Christmas break, everyone noticed that Tony seemed different. Christmas had always been a particularly painful time of the year for him and this year had additional challenges as well. He'd run into Justin Kemp, the metro detective who ended up marrying an old girlfriend of Tony's that he'd actually been fairly serious about. The contact had led to thoughts of his ill-fated love affair with Jeanne Benoit. Ziva, while they'd been staking out the Washington Memorial on Christmas Eve had gone straight for his soft underbelly, wanting to know if he'd ever regretted not getting married or having kids.
Was she freakin kidding or what? It was only last year he'd had his heart broken after he'd come so close to living with the beautiful Doctor Benoit. And for him, it didn't get much more serious than that. Since Wendy left him practically at the altar, he'd been seriously commitment phobic, and any wonder? Both times he'd be foolish enough to open up his heart and ended up broken hearted. Ha broken – more like crushed, shattered, his heart turned to dust, ripped out of his chest, irrevocably petrified...
He sometimes wondered if Ziva David had been the sort of kid who went around ripping the wings off butterflies for fun. What was he thinking…of course she was. What else would a mini-in-training Mossad Assassin do for fun, unless perhaps she was amputating the legs off still live frogs and cooking them for lunch? She was so damned merciless in her pursuit of him, with an implacable predator's instinct to draw blood so he ended up rushing out into the snow just to get away from her, even if being out in the frigid air was the last thing his lungs needed right now. And then to cap it all off, there was the perilous state of his relationship with his mentor and the team which had been off for a while now. Put it all together and it all added up to one heck of a sucky Christmas!
Returning to the office after the Christmas break, people noticed the change. He was quiet, reserved, and haughtily polite, and his 1000 watt grin and jokes were conspicuously absent. His colleagues noticed that the endless comparison to situations in movies had ceased while many of his contemporaries commented upon the freaky stillness of the man who was infamous for his inability to stay still for longer than a few minutes. He was frequently observed sitting unmoving at his desk for hours at a time, focused on his computer and seemingly unaware of what was happening around him. He failed to join in the banter that Team Gibbs was renowned for, too.
Ziva and McGee, although initially concerned, found that after Tony assured them that he was fine, enjoyed the absence of teasing, the constant references to movie, the insatiable need for attention, and the unquenchable curiosity into their private lives. It was like he was a carbon copy of Tony physically, but that was where the similarity ended. Gibbs was suitably suspicious that Tony was up to some highly elaborate prank or that he was perhaps ill or something. DiNozzo seemed fine though, and to be honest, he too liked the peace and quiet in the bullpen. They got a lot of paperwork done and it was high time DiNozzo grew up.
Over the course of the week, though, they found that the change in the bull pen wasn't quite as desirable as they'd imagined it would be. Just after Christmas they picked up a case that was bound to press all of Gibbs' buttons when the wife of a serving Marine master sergeant was sexually assaulted and died from head injuries sustained as she fought off her attacker. To make matters worse, the assault had taken place on base housing with the couple's five-year-old son sleeping in the next room who woke up the next morning to find his mother lying in a pool of blood. All that meant, of course, that Gibbs turned into someone completely feral, pushing the team past even his usual unreasonable expectations, not letting them go home, eat or sleep. He was beyond desperate to find the killer.
Initially, Ziva and McGee relished the fact that Tony didn't seem interested in playing the one upmanship game that Gibbs used to try to wring out every last drop of effort from his team. So, rather than having to compete with Tony, they just had to compete against each other, and McGee in particular felt that it was now his turn to shine. He always felt his contributions were seriously underrated by everyone on the team, especially Tony. Now was his big chance to bask in the glow, but the trouble was that no matter what information he came up with, it wasn't enough for their driven boss in his current mood. Gibbs was always a hard taskmaster and pushed them all way past their limits, but this case had sent him into a new stratosphere of bastardness. They all kept looking over at Tony, silently begging him to crack a joke and lighten the mood in the bull pen, but he kept his head down, focused on finding leads.
As the case progressed, Ziva and McGee, not to mention the rest of the bull pen, expected the senior field agent to step in and put his body on the line to deflect the fallout from Gibbs' frustration and anger away from the junior members of the team, and everyone else in the office, too. It was what he routinely did, but Tony seemed oblivious to the tension in the bull pen, though. He kept his head down and his mouth shut only speaking to deliver leads or information directly pertaining to the case. As Gibbs became progressively more disturbed by their lack of progress and stepped up the yelling, head slaps and abuse, Ziva and McGee kept prodding Tony, trying to get him to respond in his usual moronic fashion. Unfortunately, he seemed heedless to everyone's distress.
Be Careful What You Wish For
Tim McGee realised that with the increasing tension in the office, he was beginning to stutter around Gibbs again. He'd done that early on when he'd joined the team, but thought he was over that nervous affliction long ago. Obviously not! And as Gibbs fumed, stalked, yelled, demanded and made it abundantly clear that the team wasn't giving him the leads he needed to find the killer, he realised just how much Tony's juvenile behaviour had shielded him from Gibbs' anger and obsessive personality.
And how when the SFA's jokes and pranks weren't there to deflect their fearless leader from taking his frustrations out on the team for not producing the results he demanded, McGee realised finally what they'd taken for granted. Until now!
It was now blatantly clear that when all else failed Tony had fearlessly thrown himself in the path of the Gibbs-bomb, triggering it to release the unbearable tension in the bull pen where it was impossible to breathe let alone think. With all the benefits of hindsight, McGee comprehended that Tony used a cavalierly suicidal remark or a ribald joke, or even a seemingly tactless comment about Gibbs' disposition, to set him off. He'd always marvelled at how dumb Tony was to be caught repeatedly making remarks behind Gibbs' back, but perhaps it hadn't been as unintentional as he'd always assumed. It happened far too frequently for it to be coincidence now that he thought about it. Particularly as it wasn't happening all of a sudden, which sort of suggested it had been premeditated.
He castigated himself for breaking rule #8, never assume. Just because Tony looked and acted like a dumbass didn't necessarily make it so. But something had changed and it was like a clone had replaced the real DiNozzo with someone completely different. He worked almost silently, typing at the keyboard like a professional PA, not the one-fingered variety of poking the keyboard that he was used to seeing from the childish agent.
Now that Tony wasn't deflecting their leader's ire any longer and the tension was ratcheted up to unbearable proportions, Tim felt his body including his neural synapses, his secret weapon, had either gone on strike or run away screaming like a little girl. After more than four years working for Gibbs, he couldn't concentrate or anticipate his requests, and he knew that his boss was getting increasingly pissed off with him. He had gotten unbelievably pissed off with the whole team, really.
As he found himself turning into an emotional wreck, it also didn't escape his notice that Tony, while not displaying any of his erratic brilliance punctuated by moments of sheer idiocy and childishness, was working with a feverish intensity. The sheer volume of intelligence he produced was staggering and McGee realised he in comparison was finding it increasingly impossible to function, and damn it, DiNozzo was making him and Ziva look bad!
Trying to get things back to normal, Tim attempted some icebreakers about movies that the case could be compared to, and Ziva joined in gratefully, sharing her observations in her typically atrocious mangling of idiomatic phrases. Several times after her struggling with a idiom, both junior agents looked over, silently begging Tony to correct her attempts at colloquialisms and pop culture references, but Tony's expression remained impassive and he kept concentrating on the intelligence gathering he was focused on. He didn't even react in his usual fashion when Gibbs crept up behind him and let him have it with a pretty vicious head slap, loudly demanding that he quit wasting time and give him a lead.
Frowning, Tim realised that following the head slap Tony didn't leap a mile in his seat, didn't scream like a wounded child, didn't pout, didn't scowl at his teammates when they smirked at his discomfort, didn't thank Gibbs for hitting him, didn't apologise profusely, explain or show any expression. He remained utterly impassive like a zombie or a pencil-pushing Fibbie and gave the scantest of verbal response – a soft "Yes, Gibbs."
Since when did Tony refer to the boss by his last name? Ah, darn it; would this case, this day, this hour never end? Even though the MCRT worked killer hours, much more than any other team at NCIS, the time usually seem to fly by, and Tim hadn't realised how much of that was down to the banter and camaraderie that apparently their senior field agent had been exuding, up until now. He hoped whatever the Hell was wrong with him that he would get it together before Gibbs killed them all.
Leaping half out of his chair as Gibbs snuck up behind him, leaning in with a frightening intensity to murmur menacingly, "I want something when I get back, Elf lord, or you'll be back in the cyber basement so fast your computer bits will bob…are we clear, McGee?" He emphasised his threat with a Gibbs slap to the back of his head that had him seeing stars and stuttering once more. Shooting a look across at Tony, expecting him to be laughing at his misfortune, once again he was shocked to see the SFA seemingly oblivious to what was going on.
Who the hell was this doppelganger and what had he done with Tony?