AN: Once again, thanks to all the people who reviewed and weren't signed in. Thanks too, to all the people who've sent lovely PMs.

Drake's Drum

Chapter 4

His palms were already against the glass, and he leaned his forehead against it as well. 'You couldn't even remember my name…' He'd come from behind his desk, stridden past his Boss and to the long window overlooking the Anacostia. The lights that had made the water black and gold in the night were winking out, a few at a time, and leaving grey. Grey like Rota… yesterday he'd been by grey water grieving for his mother, his heart crashing like Drake's Drum; here he was again, the sound of the same drum loud in his ears, an iron band round his chest, and maybe…grieving for the father he'd thought he'd had.

He didn't want to do this. He didn't want to say the things he needed to say, because no matter what he still loved Gibbs like he imagined a son would; and he sure didn't want to hear the answers; but the alternative was to run, and once he started he'd go and go, with no idea where he'd end up. It wouldn't be back here.

Gibbs said from behind him, "You could have talked to me."

He didn't dare turn round, at least until he had his breathing under control. "No, I couldn't. I've already explained why."

"A team shouldn't have secrets, DiNozzo."

Tony turned so fast that Gibbs took a step back. "Bullshit, Gibbs! Are you hearing yourself here? What you mean is, I shouldn't have secrets from you! You can have as many as you like, your whole way of dealing's one big secret – but I'm not allowed the same privilege! I didn't tell you for your own sake… what's your excuse?"

"What d'you mean… as many as I like?" Gibbs asked belligerently.

Tony glanced up at the security camera; it didn't record sound, but he wouldn't put it past Abby to lip-read… Gibbs caught the look and trailed uncertainly after him as he stalked around the staircase to the secluded corner that everyone knew the camera couldn't reach.

"Where shall I start? How about Maddie? If I'd taken the Spanish posting, you'd be dead right now, and so would she. McGee's getting better every day… but he trusts you –"

"And you don't?"

"To have my six, for as long as you want to, yes. I'm in a big black hole as far as the rest of it's concerned. Back on track here… Tim. Would he have figured out what you were up to in time? Since you weren't telling anyone? Keeping that little secret was nearly the death of you – and Maddie, even with me around! Could he have done what I did? Hell, I don't even know how I did it… maybe I didn't, since nobody ever said a word about it… "

A cold finger poked Gibbs in the gut. He'd always assumed someone had said 'good job', but it was true, he hadn't. "Tony… I –"

"Never mind. You didn't want to talk about who Maddie was. I understand. I got over that. Or I thought I did, like I thought I was over Rota. So childish to hold on to resentment for so long, isn't it? Pointless. Bad for the soul." God, how he wished the drumbeat in his chest would stop. It hurt. "OK, next. Mike Franks. You protect your team, right? I didn't see you raising a murmur when he brained me –"

Gibbs didn't deny what Tony had always known. "I came to see you were OK –"

"And let me go on about Russian terrorist teams… when you knew damn well who'd done it. You must have thought that was funny… I trusted him because he was your friend. Turned my back – off my guard. Very stupid. Would have been nice if you'd blacked his eye for me or something… But hey, that's not important." His voice sank to almost a whisper. "What is important is that you let him commit murder, and get away with it."

"How the hell d'you know about that?"

Tony's expression was wild. "Because I'm not stupid. Because I can tell the difference between the sound of a Sig, a Colt, and some Russian thing, and I remember the sequence of the shots. Because I saw Franks walking away, and he may have had his back to me, but oh, that cocky swagger spoke volumes. And because you never explained to me what happened. You never tried to blag me about self defence, because, all credit where it's due, you didn't want to lie."

"I didn't want you to know, Tony! I couldn't let you know I'd let him do that!"

"Ah, but I did know, and I've carried the knowledge ever since. It'd be a career ender, for both of us, Boss…"

"That's why I said nothing! I'd never take you down with me…"

"I understand that at least... and I know it's well buried – just would have been nice to be trusted."

"Dammit, Tony – it had nothing to do with trust… it had to do with me looking out for you… you could have told me you knew!"

"Yeah… guess I could. 'Boss, you let your former boss, who you respect, murder someone. OK, the guy was a cockroach, but he still gunned him down.' The person to do the telling was you."

"And if I told you, would you have told the rest of the team?"

"No… I'd have told you to. A team shouldn't have secrets, huh, Boss?" Tony's face twisted. "We can never protect each other if we don't know what we're protecting from! And if you say Jeanne, I'll say Domino."

He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, chewing his bottom lip. This still hadn't got him where he needed to go. He felt as if his anger was running down, but in its wake came a wave of the most gut-wrenching fear. A mighty roll from that damn' drum. This had to be done; things had to be out in the open for the team's sake; for Gibbs' sake if he did but know it, for his own sake – but the most likely outcome he could see was the one he'd thought Gibbs was trying to provoke – and the Boss still hadn't answered that question. Did he want him gone? Because if he couldn't make this right, for everyone, there'd be no other way. He'd be off the team. He'd lose Gibbs, his 'family', his anchor and stability; everything that mattered to him. Everything.

Gibbs watched him for a moment, and said quietly, gently even, "So… you've let it all out. Yes, I've been far too hard on you. If I say no more secrets, and I get off your case about Rota, will that do it for you? Can we get back?"

His SFA looked at him for what seemed like an eternity; and Gibbs thought he could read what was swimming about in the anguished eyes. Tony wanted to say yes. To take the easy way. The lie. He hovered on the brink of it, desperate to take the plunge, and Gibbs might have willed him to. 'Leave the rest… It's best left alone,' he wanted to touch his arm, to say it aloud, but knew he couldn't. When it came to the crunch, he couldn't wish for Tony to be anything less than the man he was.

The green eyes blinked slowly, and the words were dragged out of the unwilling mouth. "What about before Rota, Boss?"

NCISNCISNCIS

"We should go back up there," Abby said for the tenth time, as they left the garage and headed back to the lab. "They could be killing each other…"

"No, they're not, and no we shouldn't," Tim told her yet again. "You have to let them figure this out, Abby."

"But figure out what? Why's Tony so mad at Gibbs?"

Ziva said steadily, "Abby, if you have just witnessed the same scene that we have, you must surely have seen it was the other way round? It was Gibbs who was mad at Tony. Tony was… restrained."

"Well, why? What's Tony done? What sorrows is he supposed to be drowning?" They had reached the lab by now, and Abby headed straight for one of her computers and began to rattle the keys.

"No, Abby," Tim said firmly, reading her intent without difficulty, and taking both her hands off the keyboard. She looked at him in astonishment, but he didn't back down. "You're not going to watch them, you're not going to lip-read. Somehow, I don't think you'll get the chance anyway. They know the camera's there, and all the spots it doesn't cover."

Abby pulled a face, and opened her mouth to protest, but Tim swivelled her chair away from the desk. "You need to know something," he said quietly. "You too, Ziva."

Ziva didn't object, but hitched a chair over to them, and sat waiting.

"I found out why Gibbs was on Tony's case in Rota," Tim began, "Or at least why Tony thinks it was."

"It began before then, McGee," Ziva said thoughtfully. "But I will agree that the last few days have been worse. What does Tony think?"

"He's certain Gibbs has found out he kept a secret from him." Abby hitched a breath in, and Tim wondered for a moment about the strong reaction, but there wasn't time to think about it; he filed it away for future attention, as Ziva said sadly, "Gibbs would not have liked that. Did he tell you what the secret was?"

"Oh, yeah… He reckons Gibbs knows that he turned down the team leadership in Rota when he was offered it."

"He did not tell us either," Ziva said. "He must have let something slip to Gibbs when he saw what a mess Moreton had made."

Tim shook his head. "I assumed at first that it must have been then; that Moreton took it when Tony turned it down. But it wasn't… it was when Gibbs came back from his 'retirement'. Tony was offered his own team – Rota – after he'd run MCRT for four months. He could have gone then –"

"But if he'd done that, what would Gibbs have done without him? When he'd been hurt and his memory wasn't so good – how could Tony –"

"Abby!" McGee's voice rose sharply enough to make her twitch. "Haven't you noticed? He's still here. He took a demotion, and all the sniping to his face and talking behind his back that went with it, rather than leave."

Alarm and a glimmer of understanding crossed the lab queen's face as she thought about it, and she didn't say anything else.

Ziva sighed. "It did not occur to me until a long time later, that Gibbs would not have had a team to return to but for Tony. I think sometimes we… rubbed his face in it."

"Nose, Ziva. His nose. I remembered things I'd said, tried to apologise; he told me not to worry – he was over it and I'd been demoted too…"

"And what?" Ziva asked, picking up on the hesitation.

Tim thought first of wriggling out of it, but then reminded himself 'no secrets', and confessed. "I told him I'd been so glad to have Gibbs back." He smacked himself round the side of the head. "I didn't mean it like that… Really… I'd work for Tony again any time."

Ziva didn't laugh. She said, "Have you ever told him that? Ah… no, but you went with him to – to deal with Saleem."

"We talked about that, Ziva. We'd do it again… He talked about why he teases, and I realised that I've been in on the game for years. So yeah, I guess he knows how I feel. No secrets…" he trailed off thoughtfully.

Ziva said, in that same regretful tone she'd used earlier, "You are right. Keeping things from each other has never led to anything but trouble; we have all learned that the hard way, so many times."

Abby bit her lip and said nothing.

NCISNCISNCIS

Tony saw immediately that Gibbs knew just what he was talking about. It was one of those 'I knew that he knew that I knew' moments that would have been comical on another day, at another time…

The Boss sighed, searching for words. I don't want to tell him. I don't want him to know. Abby looked at me differently… she really believed she ought to tell Rivera the truth, at least before she understood who he actually was... If it had been anyone but me she would have done. It took her weeks to come round. I put her through that… He didn't want to do this; but it had been a long time coming, and he only had himself to blame.

Tony waited.

"I know," Gibbs said finally. "You're gonna say it started way before Rota." He hitched his elbow through the balustrade of the staircase and leaned to take the weight off his knee. He looked at the floor. "You're gonna say I was taking things out on you way before I had anything to get mad about."

"Well, yeah," Tony acknowledged. He'd noticed the easing of the bad knee, and glanced at it to let Gibbs know he was aware, but left it to Gibbs to decide what to do about it. "D'you want to tell me when it started, or shall I tell you?"

Gibbs raised his head, and his blue eyes locked with Tony's, and the younger man wasn't sure whether he was allowing him to see the fear in them, or simply couldn't conceal it. "Reckon I'll follow your lead, Tony," he said steadily.

"'Kay…" the younger man began. "Abby goes to Mexico. Meets an instantly dislikeable guy from the Justice Department. And a female drug dealer. Comes back. You go to Mexico. I get sent there twice. Ducky gets a body to autopsy. Jackson gets his store shot up. Lives with you for months. And all the time this is going on, you and Abby are in your own little world. Soulful looks and clandestine conversations."

He shook his head. "We get the female drug dealer, who seems to be after you. Just as well, cuz throughout all this, I'm trying to figure out how to have your six; and every time I tried to get more information, out of you, or out of Vance, I get slammed down. 'Go to Mexico, DiNozzo. Rescue Gibbs. Who – wait a minute – doesn't need rescuing. Go to Mexico, DiNozzo, follow Rivera. Oh, but we won't warn you that Franks is there as well. Be a good little agent and do as you're told. I'm thinking Domino all over again, and you settle into this routine of 'don't talk to DiNozzo, just bark at him', and when it's all done I'm thinking, 'it's been a strain, trying to keep his Dad safe all this time, he'll sort things out', so I suck it up…"

He rubbed his chin, and flashed one of those blazing, empty, desperate smiles that Gibbs realised with a jolt he'd first seen in Baltimore ten years ago. "Quite honestly, Boss, my jaw aches all the time from the permanent state of sucking up, and I'd like to stop."

He paused. "You're not a guy who fears much… you don't do fear very well… I reckon it comes out as anger. You don't fear bombs or guys with guns or crooked lawyers… but you're afraid of something, you won't tell me, and you're blaming me for that! You see why you couldn't say 'no more secrets' to me, Boss?"

Still Gibbs hadn't said a word, and Tony wondered whether to go on, or whether he was simply coming over as petulant and the Boss was just waiting for the chance to ream him out. No point in holding back now, then… "If you've got a secret that you share with Abby and not with me, that's... good… I guess. You've known her a long time, and she'll never betray you. But neither will I… and I can't have your six if I don't know what I'm defending you against… unless you don't want me to any more… have your six, I mean… kinda hurts, Boss. I want… no more secrets. I wish you'd tell me what you're afraid of…" He realised his thoughts were becoming too tangled to make sense of, and he choked up too much to go on. "Ah, hell, there – I'm done."

He leaned against the wall again, exhausted. Dum – dum – dum – dah-da… that bloody drum was off again, but he thought his heart actually lurched to a dead stop when Gibbs said, in a tone of infinite regret, "What am I afraid of? I'm… afraid of you, Tony."

He thought his legs would buckle under him, as he stuttered, "Me? Boss?"

Gibbs took a step nearer. "I'm afraid of what you'll think of me…"

"What?"

"We uphold the law. We act within it. You weren't happy about Franks gunning a man down in cold blood –"

"Not so much… but I wasn't happy about you not telling me – oh… freakin' hell… this – this is all about you gunning down Hernandez! You thought I'd think you're a murderer?"

"You knew?"

AN: I'm not kidding, this was difficult to write! Thanks to Snoop Mary Mar for her feedback… I've not forgotten your idea, and I WILL use it. Now I'm going to lie down in a darkened room with a brandy to recover!