A/N: I know, it's on the short side, but it was either one shorter chapter and one regular chapter, or one really long chapter with conflicting tones. So, I split it into two. Don't worry, I won't make you wait until Monday for the next chapter, but this is all you get for now. It's a crazy busy couple of days, and between work and school I feel like the sky has fallen in, but you guys and your reviews are AWESOME! Thanks for those of you who take the trouble to review, it means the world to me to know I'mnot just talking to myself in this void called the internet. THANKS!
The team figured they'd humiliated BPD enough in the last hour, and they didn't feel very much like starting an interagency war by running (even though they could've escaped, with Tony quoting Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid the whole way out of town). So, they let themselves get hauled to the station for assault. By the time they'd been booked it was getting on midnight, and their only choice was to play several rounds of rock-paper-scissors to figure out which one of them had to call Gibbs and tell him they were at the local precinct until morning.
McGee lost all three rounds of the game (as he always did), but chickened out mid-ring and Tony had to snatch the phone from him as Gibbs started yelling at the unresponsive phone. Tony glared at McGee for a moment (but couldn't really blame him), before saying with as much nonchalance as he could muster, "Hey, Boss. It's Tony."
"DiNozzo! Where in the hell are you?"
"We're still in Baltimore." Gibbs didn't reply, but Tony could feel the glare coming full force through the phone line. "We may have gotten in a little bar fight, Boss. And we may be in the local lockup for the night."
Tony could never quite figure out how Gibbs managed to make the snapping of his cell sound more forceful than the slamming down of a receiver, but he did. The snapping meant Gibbs was on his way to Baltimore, where McGee and Ziva would get the beating of their lives, and Tony would be duct taped to his desk for the foreseeable future.
The team was settled in to the same holding cell for the night, not separating them was a courtesy from the rookie looking after them since they were all LEOs themselves, but Tony almost wished they'd been spread out. He knew the questions that were coming, and there was no real way to avoid them now. He was just grateful for the room to pace across the length of the cell, he'd need it before Tim and Ziva were through.
Tony leaned back against the bars while McGee and Ziva settled next to one another on the bench on the far side of their cell. The three of them sat in full silence for nearly five minutes, but when McGee's nervous fidgeting got to be too much, Tony took pity on him and spoke first. "Gotta know what you're looking for if you expect me to talk."
"We would like the whole story."
"See, that's not very specific, Zee-va. I've got lots of stories. There was this one time,-"
"Tony!"
"Yes, Probie?" He was baiting them, and being as annoying as he could get away with. He knew it was useless, he'd cave and tell them eventually, but he wanted to put that off as long as possible.
"Why is Maeve so scared of Gibbs?"
"Who isn't scared of Gibbs?"
"Tony."
He cursed under his breath and ran a hand through his hair before answering. "'Cause the last time she saw Gibbs he had a gun to her father's head and said that if anyone at all tied to the Macalusos came near me again, Gio would answer for it." Blatant, bold honesty. Tony could do that. It would just be a matter of what truths he told.
"When was that?" Tony's gaze shifted from McGee to a spot on the concrete wall between his friends. He wasn't to the point of dropping his eyes altogether, but he was too close for comfort.
"About three months before Kate came in."
"… But the Macaluso op was when you were with Baltimore. Almost two years before." Damn. McGee was getting good at this. They'd trained him too well. The Macaluso op Tony could talk about with decent explanations, it was what went down two years after that he didn't want them to know.
"Yup."
"Why did Gibbs wait two years to put a gun to Macaluso's head?" Tony snorted. Leave it to Ziva to think Gibbs wasn't hasty enough in threatening homicide.
"Didn't need to before. But we had another run-in with Macaluso two years later, and Gibbs didn't take it well."
"What run-in?"
"A run-in, Probie! Let it go!"
'Screw trying to look calm,' Tony thought, and started pacing the width of the cell, keeping himself close to the bars while Ziva and McGee still sat opposite him.
Ziva made her tone gentle at Tony's outburst, and Tony wondered why in the world they put her as good cop and McGee as bad in this interrogation. "Abby texted us about Macaluso's FBI files, Tony. NCIS never dealt with him beyond that original case."
"Nope."
"Tony." Damn. McGee was all gentle earnestness too. This wasn't an interrogation. These were his friends. With soon to be lots of emphasis on the past tense. Tony stopped the pacing and braced his hands against the bars, not wanting to see their faces as he explained.
"It wasn't an NCIS thing, Tim. It was me thing. I was a stupid, weak, easy target, and Macaluso picked me off. Gibbs had to swoop in and save me."
"Gibbs...?" Tony looked up at the matted reflection of his teammates in the window across from his cell and answered the question Ziva couldn't verbalize.
"You never wondered why I rebel against every authority figure we come across, but for Gibbs I'm a loyal St. Bernard? Why I've never taken a promotion, or a job offer, or got pissed Gibbs abandoned us, or held a grudge that he came back, or decked him for being a bastard? Why I enable his coffee addiction, and his temper, and his damn recklessness with his own life? Why I've been here for seven years, making him my longest relationship and me his second longest?"
The blurry glass was enough for Tony to read the surprise in their bodies. They'd both asked the question a long time ago, but never really wondered. Tony just belonged with Gibbs. "I owe him everything. And I'll be with him, whatever he does, until he tells me to get the hell out. Even then, I'll come back when he asks.
"Macaluso, he, ... and then Gibbs," but the explanation wouldn't come out, not the way he wanted it to, so Tony pressed past those details. "The Boss saved my job, my life, and hell, my soul. I. owe. him. everything."
"Tony, what happened?" Ziva was firm this time. Still understanding, but demanding the story. Tony could feel it. They had dozens of possible scenarios flitting around their overactive imaginations, each one worse than the last. They could see Tony kidnapped and Gibbs busting down the door. Or Tony blackmailed and Gibbs making it better. Goodness, Probie probably even had a vision of Tony dying and Gibbs going down to Tartarus to haul his soul back 'cause Gibbs hadn't given him permission to die.
The truth was so much simpler and infinitely worse then they could imagine. Tony wasn't the kid who made that damn mistake anymore, he was a man, and a far better one then Tony would've thought he had any right to be. (He owed that to Gibbs too.)
And now the man was being called on to answer for the kid's crimes.
Tony kept his head down and arms braced against the bars. Tim came forward and laid a gentle hand on Tony's shoulder and Tony couldn't take it anymore. He shouted to the guard, straightening up and smoothing out the suit and his layer of fake calm. Ziva and Tim didn't stop him, probably thinking they'd pushed too far.
"Tony..." McGee was hesitant, still standing at Tony's shoulder, but Tony motioned his hand to stop any apology. He couldn't turn and look at the two of them when he spoke, knowing full well that his mistake would be almost impossible for their loyal personalities to grasp.
Tony waited until the moment he could hear the guard about to turn the corner, the instant when Tim and Ziva wouldn't have any time to respond to what he said. He answered them quietly, but with none of heart-breaking remorse he wanted to convey. Apologies wouldn't be enough for his dalliance. "I went native. And Gibbs brought me back."
The guard appeared and Tony asked to be moved to a different cell so they'd all have room to sleep. Tony stepped out of the cell and into a world where his team finally knew exactly the sort of man he used to be, and deep down, the man he feared he still was.
