Beta: This story has benefited greatly by the awesome beta-skills and input of Arress and I want to extend a humungous thanks to her for all her assistance. And you all know the drill... any boo-boos are my bad :)

A/N Thanks to everyone who reviewed alerted or favourited this story. I appreciate your support and hope you'll enjoy this chapter although I must warn you it is quite lengthy. Just to clarify, in this story Jimmy takes on the role of narrator and is written in 1st person while everyone else is written in 3rd person pov.

An Eye for an Eye Leaves Everybody Blind

Jimmy Palmer:

They say that hindsight is 20/20 you know, and looking back now I can see plenty that should have made us sit up and take notice, or at the very least expect the unexpected, although I doubt that my brain could ever in a million years conjure up a scenario such as this one. Obviously if I had, I would have done something, said something, maybe dragged Tony home to spend the night at my place, well, before things had gone to Hell in a hand basket. Yet he was really hurting when we patched him up since he refused to go to the hospital. He was in pain, deep unrelenting pain, his anguish both physical and emotion. Plus he was deeply embarrassed to have let his stoic mask slip so badly, so all he wanted to do was hole up in his personal bunker in splendid isolation and try to repair his mask. If only I had insisted that he needed to be watched by someone and dragged him home with me. If only…

If only Dr. Mallard or I had put things together, but to be honest, we were too shocked at the revelations that we'd literally dragged out of Very Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo under the influence of narcotics. What we learnt stunned us so much I guess we didn't make the connections, didn't put the pieces together and failed to anticipate that it could come down to this. Which is something both of us will be forced to live with for the rest of our lives, just not sure how you do that? It wasn't our fault, we aren't to blame…I know that rationally, but still the guilt remains because emotions aren't rational, they're… well, they're emotional. And therein lies the naked truth about revenge, that it makes the innocent feel complicit, often through no fault of their own for not preventing the carnage unleashed as they watch on, helpless to stop it once it begins. But there's that little voice that persists, it whispers seductively, "I should have known, I should have stopped it." Oh, yeah, there are many victims when someone selfishly demands revenge.

And in my guilt, I acknowledge what none of us have been prepared to before today and ask the unanswerable question – if we'd addressed it, could we have prevented this travesty? Even as I ask this question of myself, I know that there is no way to know the answer and that it will remain an exquisite form of self-torture as I'm left to wonder why none of us ever tried to address the honkin' big elephant in the room, despite it leaving a mammoth sized pile of manure that even a blind man would have noticed. If anyone had gotten their heads out of La-la Land just once, could one of us have stopped this from happening? While things hadn't been good on the team for a long time, we've all pretended otherwise, all keen to maintain the façade that we were one great big happy family and had each other's backs, but with the benefit of hindsight…. who knows.

I've wracked my brain in the days since getting called to Tony's apartment that night, trying to pinpoint exactly where our perfect little Ossie and Harriet 'family' began to fail him. Maybe it all began after Ari entered the picture, or perhaps it was Gibbs losing his memory when the rot really set in. It really impacted negatively on everyone when our fearless leader took off for sunnier climes and then when he got bored, decided to resume his role on the team that he'd earlier entrusted to his SFA with a cavalierly off-hand "you'll do" to Tony, taking it off him in an even more bastard-like fashion than usual (if that was even possible.)

Looking back, now I recognise that what preceded that event had marred my friend fundamentally and irrevocably; it made him even more uncertain about his worth, professionally and personally. It sure as heck made him vulnerable to the machinations of Director Shepard, who courtesy of his Psych. Evals, background checks along with his personnel file, gave her plenty of ammunition with which to use and abuse Tony. To manipulate him so she could pursue her personal vengeance using the assets of the agency and its best undercover agent. But apart from all the Intel on Tony that Jenny had at her disposal as the director, she had a secret weapon to really ensure that Tony would perform his undercover role for her.

Working as Gibbs' protégé, she knew well all his mind games and techniques to manipulate and knew how much Tony was struggling with his abandonment, plus the contempt of his team mates, which isolated him further. Hell, for all I know, she was egging on the terrible twosome to be openly insubordinate, although I think she was a bit more Machiavellian than that. Looking back, all she had to do to sabotage Very Special Anthony DiNozzo was appoint McGee as the Senior Field Agent, when he was woefully ill prepared and under-qualified for the job. I mean, how can someone with less than two full years of field experience, one as a probationary field agent in his first job be suitably qualified to be second in command to the premier MCRT in the agency?

After all, Tony had six years as a cop, both as a street cop and also as one of the youngest detectives in the country, before Gibbs snaffled him up to join the agency as his second in command. And then he had another five years working under the hardest taskmaster in the agency, possibly in any agency, as his 2IC before he assumed the lead of the team. Tim, in contrast, was obviously inexperienced, green and to anyone with half a brain, clearly not nearly ready for the promotion.

The proof of that pudding can easily be seen in the way he failed to fulfil the major brief of the job and have the team leader's back. He was insubordinate and snotty, constantly trying to sabotage and belittle Tony's efforts to assume command and put his own stamp of leadership on the team by telling him he was a poor imitation of the leader who had walked out and left them all behind. It showed in the fact that instead of putting Ziva and Abby in their place when they questioned Tony's authority and backing him to the hilt, as was in his job description, he sided with them and acted like what he was - an raw junior agent who was too inexperienced, too damned immature to have the requisite insights that his ability and skills weren't anywhere approaching those of the new team lead.

It made no sense to appoint him to the position of SFA when what Tony really needed as a new team leader was an experienced SFA, or at least one that had the skills and the psychological maturity to assume the role. Instead, Jenny gave him McGee, who proceeded to behave like a bratty child who had delusions of grandeur and thought he had more right to lead the team than Tony did. He needed someone that had his six, and if that wasn't enough to cope with… which it was incidentally…more than enough, he definitely didn't need the added stress of trying to train a rank rookie like Probationary Special Agent Michelle Lee, who was green as grass, to boot. But Director Shepard needed a team that didn't have Tony's six; one that was too busy trying to overthrow him, to notice that he was ducking off to work undercover while continuing to run the MCRT.

She would have to have known after working with Ziva for several years and being privy to the dossiers that she'd prepared on the team, that she didn't have any professional respect for Tony, and that she didn't work well as part of a team, too used to running her own show. It wouldn't take an Einstein to figure out that Ziva would think that she was much better qualified to lead the team, and would defy his orders at every turn. Would Jenny have even bothered to explain to Ziva that as a liaison she wasn't eligible to hold a supervisory position on the team and should pull her head in? Somehow I doubt it. Should she have done so as the Director of the Agency when she saw Ziva making it so difficult for Tony try to put the team back together in the wake of Gibbs departure? Oh yeah… absolutely!

Jenny would also have known about McGee's passive-aggressive personality coupled with his blind ambition from his Psych Profile, and that Lee was too nervous and inexperienced to stand up to the other agents and give Tony the support he needed. McGee was never going to be strong enough, confident enough to stand up to such an assertive person as the Mossad officer. I know that she made me almost wet my pants on occasions and Tim especially back then was almost as much of a wimp as me. All of which added up to a disastrous team dynamic that should have been balanced out by a strong experienced agent to fill the vacant senior field agent slot. Instead, she gave him McGee, and that spoke volumes about her intentions. So darned easy to be wise after the event, though…

Yeah, it was all too clear in hindsight! She knew that Tony could carry the team when it came to investigation because of his professional experience as a homicide detective and working for five years with Gibbs. Yet she ensured the one thing that he craved, the acceptance and respect of his team, would not be forthcoming, and it would leave him feeling isolated and alienated. Then by making sure the team was toxic, she got to play the good guy; praising his efforts with positive reinforcement, which was like oxygen to the man who had had an emotionally impoverished childhood. She became his support system, letting him know she appreciated him and had his back when no one else did, earning his undying loyalty and gratitude.

In essence, she became his friend and fulfilled the role that Gibbs had filled as his mentor, and made him feel needed, appreciated and trusted. So much so that he was willing to walk through fire for her to justify the faith she'd shown in him. For his friends, Tony was always prepared to step in front of a bullet to help or protect them. It was one of his most endearing qualities and one of his greatest vulnerabilities. And then he'd spent his nights with a beautiful, smart, caring woman who actually saw his intelligence and appreciated him.

One who he couldn't stop getting close to him emotionally, one he couldn't chase away by dumping her when he started developing deep feelings for her, which was his modus operandi ever since his fiancé broke his heart. Little wonder then that Tony fell in love with Dr. Jeanne Benoit. Indeed, if he hadn't fallen head over heels for her, it would have been little short of a miracle, given how much crap he was enduring.

For the Director to act all shocked and claim that she didn't realise that he'd gotten too close to Jeanne was crap, and the fact that he was so reluctant to enter into a sexual relationship with her would have been proof enough to Shepard that he had gotten way too emotionally invested in his undercover role. But it suited Jenny Shepard's purposes completely to claim ignorance because making sure he developed feelings for the doctor guaranteed he wouldn't skip out on the mission, even if Gibbs came back again.

Oh, yeah, in hindsight it was blatantly clear that Director Shepard set Tony up as soon as Gibbs lit out for the wide blue yonder, safe in the knowledge that Tony no longer had anyone watching his back. Well, admittedly, I did try to step up and be his friend, but there was only so much an autopsy gremlin could realistically do to counter what was going on in the team, and she played him completely. Although I really don't see how it could have played out any differently, not with her holding all the cards and being prepared to use them to achieve her goal.

The only other explanation for her appointing a completely inexperienced and unsuitable agent to fill the role of SFA and appoint an equally inexperienced rookie Lee to the elite MCRT was that she was flat out incompetent. But anyone who was Gibbs' former protégé wouldn't be incompetent or manage to fill the big chair, so I have to conclude that her actions were carefully contrived to achieve her own ends. She was determined to avenge her father's death and screw the cost to anyone that got in the way, even if it happened to be the very agent that allowed her to realise her ambition.

Tony had confided to me one night when he'd had too much to drink that he was sure that Jenny had had her revenge and that she'd killed 'The Frog', although he couldn't prove it. I can't say I shed any tears when she died, except perhaps for the fact that my friend blamed himself for following her orders when she ordered him and Ziva off protection duties. Suspecting that she had nefarious pursuits to um…er pursue, he'd wanted to be as far away from them as possible after being screwed over by her so badly with the Benoits.

He paid a terrible cost for her blind thirst for retribution, and now revenge had cost him once again. We should have known, should have said something, and should have done something. Shoulda, coulda, woulda…if only…

~ An Eye for an Eye Leaves Everyone Blind ~

Flashback

Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo lay in his bed, his body aching all over. He was exhausted, yet unable to go to sleep. His fractured arm was elevated on several pillows as he tried not to jostle it. He knew that Ducky would be furious with him if he knew that he'd ditched his splint and sling but it was so swollen that keeping the splint on simply wasn't an option and when he'd removed it the throbbing had decreased somewhat. Tony knew that Ducky would chastise him severely for not calling him or going to the hospital when his arm continued swelling, making it too uncomfortable to wear the splint that kept the fracture immobilised but it was late and he didn't want to bother the medical examiner. Nor did he feel up to dragging his aching body out to a hospital tonight. He was battling jet-lag from the lightening quick trip to Tel Aviv and he was beyond exhausted.

He was still really hurting from the beating he'd taken few days ago when he tried to arrest a Kidon assassin and the guy had decided to resist, violently. Then there was the long and arduous flight to Tel Aviv and back again in a C130 military transport, not even flying coach on a commercial airliner in a proper seat. Considering he was bruised literally from head to foot, had a fractured radius, bruised ribs and collarbone from the fight for his life with a highly trained killer, the flight had been one more torture that he really didn't need. Having to constantly brace himself to prevent his body from getting flung around had left him feeling bone weary with bruises upon his older bruises. Even on the trip to Tel Aviv, it had left his muscles tense and contracted, and that had been further exacerbated on the return trip.

Of course, some of his pain wasn't just due to his beating at the hands of Officer Michael Rivkin, but because of a more recent attack upon his person. When he'd tried to talk to Ziva after her father's shocking confession, she had been in a murderous rage and taken him out with such force he'd displaced his fractured arm as he hit the ground, well that was according to Ducky when he examined him back in DC. That hadn't been the most shocking part of the assault though for Tony. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the memory of his partner, someone he'd trusted with his life on far too many occasions, taking her loaded gun and holding it at point blank range as she aimed it first at his heart threatening to pull the trigger before aiming it at his thigh, too, stopping herself only at the last minute from pulling the trigger.

Tony could see a primordial anger in her eyes that had utterly chilled his soul. It spoke of rage, grief and betrayal. It was no exaggeration to say that he had felt the cold chill of the Angel of Death's wings, waiting to escort his soul to the afterlife before Ziva hauled herself back from the abyss of hate where she had hovered. But it had been a close thing!

And he wasn't even going to think about the emotional pain he was going through, either. It had been hard enough to deal with the aftermath of discovering that his cop partner had been corrupt and he'd felt completely betrayed by Detective Danny Price, but even Danny had never accused him of murder or threatened his life. Ziva had taken his trust and smashed it into tiny little pieces, and he wondered just how many more times his heart could go on putting itself back together again. Each time, the process was more difficult and the results were more flawed.

Wishing he could surrender to his exhaustion, Tony tried to ignore his pain, but waiting hours before Ducky could reset his arm hadn't been the most ideal situation. He was surely paying that cost now as his arm throbbed with a fierce intensity. Yet he hadn't felt as if he had any choice since he hadn't felt safe enough around Rivkin's co-workers to seek medical treatment at a hospital or clinic while they were in Israel. He strongly suspected if he did, he would simply disappear, and frankly he didn't feel like he could trust Director Vance or even Gibbs to protect him while they were in Tel Aviv. He felt like a pawn in a much larger game that was being played out where if it was expedient, he would be sacrificed without a second thought. So he knew that the most prudent action was to suck it up, say nothing and go and see Ducky when he was safely back in DC.

He still felt vulnerable here in DC in light of his superiors' alacrity in throwing him on a plane to Tel Aviv while wounded and without adequate support, and they had stood by while he was interrogated using questionable force. Still, home was a Hell of a lot safer for him than seeking medical help in Israel. That didn't meant to say that TPTB wouldn't turn a blind eye if an officer of Mossad decided to redress any perceived guilt by killing him though; it had been made quite plain that he was expendable.

So once Ducky examined him and clucked disapprovingly when the kindly ME saw the state of his injured arm, Tony didn't even try to appear contrite at the delay, or even explain it. Looking at it as he sat on an autopsy table, he grimaced, noting how much additional swelling and fresh bruising there was, and that was apart from the pain. According to the medical examiner, it had been further exacerbated by the rough trip back in the C130, and as it had been ignored instead of reset, it had become increasingly swollen as inflammatory cells rushed to the site of injury. With no help forthcoming, his already stressed body did its best to defend against the assault by making it more and more difficult to ignore.

The swelling, apart from contributing to the pain, made it difficult to set his arm again, and Ducky had demanded to know how he had reinjured it and gained so many fresh bruises although he'd refused to discuss the attack or the Mossad Director's interrogation, Ducky had been sneaky. While giving him a muscle relaxant to help him reduce the fracture and cause no further damage to muscles and ligaments when they were forced back into alignment after hours of trauma, the M.E. had slipped in an analgesic, too. Sneaky, because he knew that Tony would refuse the painkiller if he asked, so he hadn't. Rule #18 applied here quite nicely!

Of course, if Tony's tongue became loose and he was incapable of self-censorship of his thoughts or emotions and developed verbal diarrhoea, then Ducky was not at all apologetic or above asking some pertinent questions, either. So it meant that the medical examiner and his trusty assistant, Jimmy Palmer, now knew how he'd displaced his fracture and aggravated his previous injuries, which was bad enough, Tony concluded as he lay in bed tortured and wishing he could toss and turn without pain, so he could at least relieve some of the anxiety that he was experiencing. But Tony, to his great embarrassment, had also gone ahead and spewed forth about his emotional hurt and feelings of betrayal, revealing how his superiors had thrown him to the wolves for their own selfish reasons.

He'd ranted about how Vance clearly felt that it was acceptable for a Mossad officer to enter the US illegally and hunt and kill alleged terrorists without informing any relevant agencies, not to mention the fact he'd contributed to the death of a federal agent. Yet when Rivkin resisted arrest and tried to kill Tony, and subsequently been killed by him in self-defence, Director Vance had seen fit to drag his ass to Israel to answer to Eli David. The fact that he had already been cleared by the forensic evidence seemed immaterial; he'd had to defend himself against a charge that his own country and agency had deemed as self-defence. Moreover, he'd been expected to do so without any legal representation, consular assistance or even support from his own agency. He hadn't even had time to consult a representative from the Union, either.

And once they arrived in Tel Aviv, Vance had ordered him to go off on his own with Officer Hadar in a separate vehicle and he could have so easily been disappeared. Nor had Gibbs spoken up in his defence when Mossad had separated him off from the rest of their entourage at the airfield, where his safety could not be guaranteed. In fact, Tony had felt extremely intimidated by the tactic of divide and conquer, and he knew damned well that it had been intentional mind games. So much for the boss always having his six!

Then later Ziva's father insisted on interrogating him using the highly unimaginative yet oh so predicable technique of physical persuasion, no Anthony DiNozzo was no weakling and he'd be damned if he'd give Eli David any more power over him by calling it torture, even if it had been or that it had also been thankfully short-lived. Still, when Eli used his injuries to try to intimidate and break him, Vance and Gibbs hadn't even protested and that hurt, maybe worse than what Ziva's father had inflicted upon him. The pain he'd felt when Director David had pressed down on his shoulders and dug his fingers in like talons into his bruised clavicle, had been excruciating, replacing the dull steady ache in his left collar bone with a sharp knife-like hurt that stole his breath away. Although the ER doc had said he's sustained a soft tissue injury, pain receptors amped up the pain level and radiated down to his fractured arm and bruised ribs, making it even more difficult to breathe and not reveal how much pain he was experiencing. He'd learnt early on that bullies would only zero in it and turn up the heat if you showed any weakness.

Desperate to get away from the agony, he'd dialled up the obnoxious DiNozzo factor to the max, knowing it was quickest way to rattle the bastard. Still, when the sadist grabbed him by the throat which 24 hours previously had been crushed in a viscous choke hold by the Kidon assassin, leaving his esophogus so badly bruised he could barely eat or drink and he'd wondered how David had managed to zero in on two injuries that hadn't been obvious. He didn't believe in co-incidence which left him with the disquieting conclusion that someone had leaked his confidential medical report to the Mossad director. The fact that he'd successfully managed to turn the tables and tricked Eli into revealing the truth about Rivkin had convinced him that the only person he could depend on from hereon in was Anthony DiNozzo, and that left him feeling very exposed and alone. While Vance had professed to be impressed by his turning of the tables and trapping Eli into confessing, Tony hadn't felt much comfort in his director's sudden approval.

Much to Tony's chagrin, he had also spewed out to Ducky and Gremlin his hurt and betrayal over Gibbs' failure to defend him to anyone. Even though he had been following Gibbs' orders in investigating Ziva's involvement with Rivkin and her refusal to be straight with them, he was embarrassed that the man that he idolised had in effect left him without backup. He knew that Gibbs viewed Ziva as a surrogate daughter, but if the boss had confronted her on her duplicity and his own suspicions, then she might not have persisted in the ludicrous notion that he'd killed Rivkin because he was jealous of him and apparently 'wanted' her.

Yet Gibbs had stayed silent and made it seem as if he was a loose cannon and he'd gone off on his own to pursue Rivkin after the case was marked as 'closed'. When the truth was, his suspicions had been justified that Rivkin had been involved in Agent Sherman's death. Yet, as far as he knew or could tell, even Vance didn't know that he had been following Gibbs' instructions. Instead of observing his precious Rule #1, Gibbs had let him twist in the breeze when all he needed to do was state that Tony had simply been following orders. The mistake he made was trusting Ziva and wanting to protect her from the shit he'd assumed she would face in being involved with Rivkin and lying about it. Yet, it seemed that his lapse in procedure was viewed as a much bigger transgression than the fact that Ziva had lied to them or had been passing classified Intel to Mossad without authorisation, at least according to what Abbs and McGee had uncovered. Go figure!

Still, Tony hadn't wanted anyone to know how upset he was, how betrayed he felt by Gibbs' silence. Hell yes, he was hurt, but that didn't mean he wanted Ducky or Jimmy to know that the man he admired more than anyone else in his life had left him without backup when he needed it the most. That was just rubbing salt into the wounds, and he cursed his idiosyncratic reactions to medications that had left him open to flapping his gums.

As he shifted marginally in his bed and groaned pathetically since every inch of his body hurt, he couldn't help but think that insanity must run in the David DNA. Seriously, that Ziva could actually accuse him of being a murderer because he was supposed to be jealous that Ziva and Michael Rivkin were lovers? He really had to think that she was projecting her own feelings onto him, which in itself was very worrying.

Since not long after she had come back from her sojourn back at Mossad earlier this year when she'd appeared to have hooked up with Michael, whom she knew from childhood, Ziva had suddenly been throwing herself at him. Recalling the scene in Gibbs' conference room at the end of that FUBAR war game crap, she'd caught him off guard, suddenly proclaiming her unwillingness to conceal her feelings for him any longer. He'd assumed at the time, perhaps wrongly, that it had been prompted by being in such close proximity when adrenaline levels had been raging as they attempted to evade detection. So even though he hadn't responded in kind when she'd practically thrown herself at him, he was supposed to be the jealous one?

Still, she'd apparently had no compunction in turning right back around and picking up on her affair with Michael. Apart from the completely illogical accusation of him being jealous, it also hurt Tony badly that she had such little regard for him, her partner for the last three plus years. Did she really have such a poor opinion of him that she could really think he would kill another person because he was jealous? Obviously, she did, and that cut him to the quick.

Honestly, Tony couldn't understand how Ziva would ever believe that they could be a couple. Sure when she first joined the team, he had flirted with her unmercifully, and he'd have to be a eunuch or gay to not have experienced some level of lust when she'd flirted right back at him, but he'd assumed that she knew it was only harmless flirting. Tony flirted with everyone - Hells bells, he'd even told Gibbs once that he loved him when he pinched the night shift's pizza to give him when he was on a stakeout in the pouring rain, but it didn't mean that he was interested in Gibbs, either. After all, even if he was remotely interested in Ziva David, which he wasn't, there was always Rule #12 as an impediment, although personally he'd thought it was a damned good one. Although where Gibbs' Rule #12 was never date a co-worker, Tony's was a slightly modified one and it was never date a team mate.

Dating Paula Cassidy, who was a colleague but not a team mate, hadn't resulted in them being unable to work together when they broke up, but he would never sleep with a team member where they worked together on a team on a daily basis. That was plain stupid and asking for trouble if one of them turned psycho. He'd had female partners as a cop as well as a federal agent, and he would never blur the lines between a partner and a lover. He needed someone watching his six that wouldn't be sulking because he'd forgotten and left the toilet seat up again or didn't pick up a wet towel.

That didn't mean that he didn't care about or sometimes even love his partners over the years, but it did mean that their relationship would always remain platonic or even familial. So while he might flirt shamelessly with them, he would never cross the line and fall into bed with them. In fact, he'd always thought up until Ziva's emotional outburst after the Domino fiasco, that Ziva flirted with him because she knew that there would never, could never be anything between them, a fact that made it safe and relieved the tension they faced. It seemed he'd very wrongly thought of it as a harmless diversion based on her own admissions that she was hardly a blushing ingénue given her Mossad training.

And Tony told himself that while they were friends and partners, there was simply no way that she could ever love him or want to have a genuine meaningful and adult relationship with him. Ziva had made it clear in every possible way that she didn't respect him as an agent, as demonstrated by her entrenched insubordination and her refusal to follow his orders. She had seemed to be completely oblivious to the irony when she lectured him about following the chain-of-command after Domino, and yet had just ignored his own order for her to stand down. Then there was the blatant demonstration that he had failed to win her respect when she showed exactly how much she didn't trust him or his skills as her supervisor, when she was on the run from the FBI. She'd chosen not to follow SOP and come to him for help when she was in trouble, preferring to seek out a booze-riddled amnesiac who wasn't even in the country. Then there was the matter of the intelligence dossier she'd prepared where she had labelled him as Agent Meatball.

And if it came down to it, why was it okay for her to use a racially derogatory slur to describe him in a report to her Mossad colleagues when she would have accused him of racial bigotry if he had dared to use any terms that might be even remotely construed as referring to her Semitic heritage? Yet in another equally offensive and stunning example of hypocrisy, Ziva could perpetuate a stupid racial stereotype that Italian males were excessively hirsute when she started calling him her hairy little butt as a supposed term of from it being a fallacy generally, and more specifically in his case, Tony was second generation American on his Italian side and first generation on his English side, and he found it offensive to pigeon-hole him based on his racial antecedents, not to say just down right out and out wrong.

Truthfully, Tony hadn't put much stock in Ziva's adrenaline fuelled declarations of undying love for obvious reasons. If he'd thought for a moment that it wasn't a remnant of being caught up in a situation where they both were concerned for each other after having the crap beaten out of them by the Marines guarding Domino, he would have laughed until he wet himself. After all, unlike his Mossad trained team mate who was schooled in seduction techniques, he was, despite his reputation, someone who becomes emotionally attached to people far too easily. That was why after Wendy had taken his heart and comprehensively ripped it apart, he sworn never again, and commenced serial dating and acting like an obnoxious jerk. That way, no one was ever tempted to stay with him long enough to get to know and love the real Anthony DiNozzo and he didn't fall in love.

It was his protection like a porcupine has spines to drive off predators or an armadillo has armour, his was acting juvenile and shallow. But Jeanne had seemed to see the real him almost immediately, and the longer he was with her the more that she broke through his emotional walls. Ziva, in spite of the countless hours they had spent together over the years, never did see beyond his guises. She simply wasn't able to understand that the mission with Jeanne had broken his heart, absolutely and irrevocably. She just didn't get that even more than a year after it all went FUBAR, he still hadn't been able to recover, to reconstruct the playboy slash frat brother persona that he had used in the past as his armour.

Truthfully, he just couldn't be, correction he wouldn't be in a relationship with anyone who was so damn clueless about how much he was hurting. So much so that she thought that she could snap him out of a funk by following him into the men's head and berate him for being foolish enough to fall in love with his mark. So much for sensitivity but didn't appreciate it when he'd had the temerity to point out that she didn't have room to lecture him on that score since she had fallen in love with a witness in a case, and that was even knowing that he was dying. Not that she'd learnt from that since less than a year after lecturing him she'd slept with a suspect while she was undercover looking for a serial killer. Still, she'd the hubris to act as if he'd behaved like a boorish pig for pointing it out it she didn't have a right to judge him, demanding an apology for upsetting her. No, he needed someone with more empathy, someone who wouldn't go around accusing him of shooting her current lover because he was jealous that he hadn't been in her bed, for pity's sake!

He honestly hoped that Ziva would find happiness, and with her crappy childhood, she deserved it, but that didn't mean that he wanted them to be anything more that partners. Seriously, after her accusations and the assault, he didn't know if it was going to be possible for them to even work together, since he didn't know how he was supposed to trust her again. If it came down to it, he really wasn't sure he could trust anyone from the agency to have his back any longer.

Truthfully, he felt let down by NCIS, and was convinced that if it had suited his superiors' purposes, he would be sacrificed on the altar to the so called greater good. For Vance, that meant keeping Papa David in his happy place, and for Gibbs it meant keeping his surrogate daughter Ziva from being pissed with him for having any involvement in Rivkin's death. Tony felt that the only reason why his worthless ass had been permitted to get on the C130 back to DC was because his smart mouth. He'd managed to goad Eli David into admitting that Rivkin had been under orders to sleep with Ziva, kill the terrorists and crash the intelligence summit of a trusted ally, resulting in an ICE agent's death. Essentially, he'd embarrassed the crap out of the Mossad Director and it bought him a temporary reprieve. Yet he was under no illusions that he had made a formidable enemy out of Ziva's father, and he knew he was going to have to watch his back in future, and not rely on anyone else to do it, either. That sort of misplaced trust could see him dead!

Still, the one thing Tony had managed not to spill his guts to Ducky about, and he was eternally grateful for that, was the deep betrayal he also felt over Ziva's behaviour, starting when Gibbs and McGee had been working with OSP in LA. Sure, he understood how she was in a conflicting situation as a liaison officer, serving two masters, but it wasn't like she didn't know that when she accepted the position in the first place. And it wasn't as if the team hadn't been good to her or anything, having her back and treating her as family, especially since she had a fair degree of culpability in the death of Caitlyn Todd, along with her half-brother. So he was feeling angry at her for betraying them, and she had the gall to act like she was the wronged party when she had lied to all of them all along, and then accused him of being a liar and a murderer.

Remembering the anger and outrage that she had directed at him after Rivkin died and the hatred she focused at him on the flight over, he shivered at the depth of her anger. He could sort of understand that she was in shock and wanted to blame someone else for Michael's death. It was so much less complicated to blame him rather than Michael for resisting arrest, or admit that her own actions, not to mention Rivkin's and Mossad's agenda, had resulted in her lover's death.

But her overwhelming fury directed at him after he'd managed to trick Eli David into admitting, in the presence of his daughter, that Rivkin was acting on his orders had deeply disturbed him. Clearly her 'daddy' issues prevented her from expressing her justified anger at her father, and it seemed that along with her feelings of betrayal at her friend with benefits/sometimes lover, it had coalesced and centred upon him instead. Not that that in any way excused what she'd done.

Having such volatile emotions combined with her lethal training, she was a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. After being attacked by her, Tony was very concerned about her mental state. How could he not be? He could deal with the physical attack…barely, because it had been impulsive, he decided, and while it was completely unacceptable behaviour and a betrayal of everything he held dear for a partner to turn on him, what was utterly shit-scary was her pointing a loaded gun at him.

Tony was under no allusions about how close he came to returning to DC in a pine box today. The madness and desire for retribution was clear to him when he'd stared into her eyes, and he wondered why Gibbs and his all-knowing gut didn't seem capable of seeing it. He also couldn't help wondering if the next time she snapped, if she would be able to step back from the abyss before she went too far. It scared him, because he didn't think she was capable of having his six anymore.

And watching her fervent hatred as she settled down beside Gibbs in the C130 on their return trip when she glared at Tony, he wondered how it would ever be possible for them to work through it all. Deplaning upon their arrival, he shivered as if someone had passed over his grave, and he realised that Ziva's cold dead eyes were following him as he walked to the sedan that would take them back to the office. Grateful that Vance's driver was waiting to drive him separately to NCIS, Tony decided to stretch out on the backseat, knowing that he was returning with yet more bruises and soft tissue injuries, and his arm ached with an intensity that told him something was very wrong. He really hoped he wasn't going to need surgery to correct it.

Groaning as he looked at his digital bedside clock, still unable to sleep, he tried to decide if he should swallow his pride and take some heavy duty pain meds. Lying in his bed for the past few hours stewing about it all hadn't done any good. As he was weighing up the pros and cons of drugging his brains out, the power went out and Tony cursed the fact that he had never gotten around to replacing the back-up battery in the clock for power outages. Yet as sensory adaptation kicked in over the next minute or two, the black inky nothingness faded to reveal some light and shade in subtle gradations of black and indigo. Tony had always had keen senses, with superior eyesight, acute hearing and well-honed sense of smell; even so, he wasn't sure if his current state of paranoia was to blame. Alternatively, plunging his apartment into complete darkness, since his window blind had been closed at the time, had caused his hearing and smell to become hypersensitive. Whatever had caused it, it wasn't really relevant at that point since all that mattered was that someone had entered his apartment, and it wasn't someone who was invited or welcome.

Given that the person was trying too hard to remain silent, along with the fact that it was 0330 and not the time for normal people to make a social call, he was immediately on alert. There were only two people that realistically might want to visit him and have a means of gaining lawful entry to his apartment, and he was certain that his intruder was neither. Abby would be bouncing off the ceiling with all the Caff-Pows she had consumed and wouldn't be trying so hard to be silent, and her gunpowder perfume was way too distinctive for it to be her. Equally, Gibbs as the only other person he'd entrusted with a key to his apartment years ago, positively reeked of sawdust, Old Spice aftershave and coffee. Plus, he and Gibbs had this weird simpatico vibe where he was always aware of the Marine's presence whenever he was in close proximity, just as Gibbs seemed to be aware of him, too, without the need for speech.

Apart from which, while Abby might come to check up on him, he seriously doubted that Gibbs would bother, since he hadn't shown any particular desire to have his back since the Rivkin debacle went down. Oh yeah, sure he'd won Gibbs' approval over his checkmating Eli David in the interrogation room, but that was because Gibbs was such an uber-alpha personality. He no doubt felt that Tony's little victory had reflected well on him for handpicking his senior field agent and training him up. But the bottom line was that Abby and Gibbs were too damned smart to try and sneak up on an armed federal agent, since it was just asking for them to cop a bullet in the chest. So whoever it was that had entered his apartment was most definitely ill-intentioned.

Sensing rather than truly hearing the dirtbag sneaking toward his bedroom, Tony groaned silently, thinking of the gun he had secreted under his mattress, and knew that he needed to get to it quickly. That conviction was strengthened when he heard a slight rattle as his door was opened slowly. Knowing that it was going to hurt like hell, he took a deep breath and moved. Not bothering to take precious time getting out of his bed, Tony just rolled over to the edge and tried not to tense up as he fell off the bed. Of course tried being the operative word here, even as he twisted in mid-air so he was face planting the floor so that his right arm, his good arm, his shooting hand was closest to the bed, ready to reach under and grabbed his gun and released the safety catch in one smooth movement.

Although that was his plan, he was so focused on retrieving his gun he instinctively reached out to brace himself with his other hand as he landed. His left arm and shoulder bore all his body weight momentarily, before his arm collapsed in an excruciating pain and tearing of skin. He felt his collarbone snap before the imminent threat to his life took precedence. Tony's fight or flight response kicked in, allowing him to ignore the agony that his manoeuvre had caused him, even as he gave thanks for the painkilling properties of adrenaline. The federal agent rolled over onto his back so he was lying facing the doorway with his Glock aimed steadily, waiting as the door opened completely.

Although every last cell in his body was screaming out loud and clear that the intruder framed in the doorway of his bedroom had harmful intentions, Tony waited to see what would happen next. Just a few days ago he'd been forced to take a life and he knew it was justified, but he really didn't want to discharge his firearm in his own apartment and kill some hopped up junky looking for something to pawn for his next fix. Tony wasn't a killer, though he'd been forced to kill to save a life, his own or an innocent bystander, but even when it was justified, it was always a crappy thing to have to live with. So he waited and hoped that he was wrong and it was just some innocent mistake. In his heart though, he feared that Mossad had come to avenge one of their own.

Hearing the subtlest of squeaks from the shift in weight of the intruder and a familiar shift in air pressure, reminded Tony of the night that Ari tried to kill Abby when he'd felt more than saw, the bullet heading for her. Once again, Tony knew instinctively that something was propelling itself toward his bed. He didn't think it was a bullet from a silenced weapon; more likely it was a projectile such as a crossbow or a knife, and when it hit his bed with a force that bespoke its intent to kill, he steeled himself to fire. As he started squeezing the trigger, a penlight snapped on and the assailant, swathed in black and wearing a ski mask, was poised with a gun which rapidly took aim at his position, and Tony fired. Time froze as the gunman also squeezed off several shots intended to end his life.