We're done you and I. We're done.
Gibbs felt the words slide down his windpipe with all the ease of barbed wire. He closed his eyes and tried to retain his composure. Tony's voice rang with raw hurt and simmering betrayal, covered poorly with righteous anger. His next words were therefore crucial. He could see his SiC was milliseconds away from bolting. Panic threatened to take over. He pushed it down. His heat beat uncomfortably as he turned to look at his pale protégé.
"For the sake of the years gone by, can I ask for two minutes of your time before you really decide?"
Tony's jaw clenched as he stared unseeingly at the table.
"Since when have you ever asked for anything? And what makes you think I've not really decided?"
Gibbs digested those barbs, chewed on them.
"I guess I'm more hopeful that you've not decided than anything else. And, sure, you're right. I generally don't ask for anything. I expect and I demand. But I'm not about to do either of those things right now. So, if I talk to you, it'll be because you're letting me talk to you. Not because I'm talking at you. You deserve an explanation. As best a one as I can give. But if you want me to keep my mouth shut, then I can't argue with you. I can't force you to do another thing you don't want to do. I don't have it in me."
Green eyes brimmed with scorn as a dismissive hand was waved.
"I can't get a transport out of this hellhole until first light. I can't stop you talking till then. But if you're expecting a heart-to-heart, you're going to be sorely disappointed."
Gibbs nodded slowly.
"I can work with that," he said quietly, before giving up any hope of finding a palatable way to bring up the stomping elephant in the room. There was no way of shining up one of the darkest things he'd ever done. "Tony. First of all, whether you can believe me or not, I'm sorry. What I did to you is one of the most despicable things I have ever done and probably one of the most despicable things I ever will do." He looked down at his hands and drew a deep breath. Tony pretended not to be listening, but Gibbs knew him well enough to know that he was rapt with attention.
"There's no excuse for it. I'm not going to make one. I lost my temper with you. I completely lost it. I was so angry I couldn't even see you properly, hear you properly. All I could see was the danger you'd been in and how close you'd come to your photograph on that memorial wall. I hadn't been that angry in years. In years and years. I snapped. I snapped and I did something to you that I swore I would never, ever do. I abused you. I abused you and then I left you. And for that, there can be no forgiveness. I'm not stupid enough to think otherwise. I don't forgive myself. I'll never forgive myself. But if there's one thing I need you to know is that what I did is not something I'll ever let myself forget. I can promise you that."
He drew another deep breath, the longevity of his own voice a rarity to him.
His right-hand-man continued to look steadily away, continued to listen silently.
"Tony, I know what I did would have been terrible in normal circumstances. But I know that it took you back to a place you've worked very hard to get away from. I know it brought back things you've worked equally hard to deal with, to forget. That's why you've been flitting between seeing me for who I am and seeing me for who he was. I did that. I'm responsible for that. And for that, I hate myself."
He sucked in another breath, but his next bout of speech was cut short.
"You should. You should hate yourself."
Tony turned to him, an odd iciness encased by flames shining in his eyes.
"I trusted you," he spat. "I trusted you and you did…that, to me. I know I messed up. I know I can be a pain in the ass. I know all that. But I did not deserve what you did to me. If I had a team, and there was someone like me on that team, I would never do to them what you've done to me. I would take more care in my responsibilities to my people. You've spent years smacking me upside the head for acting the frat boy, but even as that frat boy, I would have more regard for the kind of trust placed in me that I placed in you."
The icy fire flickered and then splintered out.
Tony slumped in his chair.
"Why did you have to do it?" he muttered, almost to himself, "Why?"
Gibbs flinched at the tone of utter defeat and cursed himself a hundred different ways.
"Because I'm a bastard, Tony. Always have been, always will be."
The younger man quirked a brow at that but said nothing, staring back down at the table with resolute concentration. The frankness of his boss' admission surprised him. In a way, he had expected a gruff "we'll say no more about it and get yourself together" as a response to the ordeal of the conference room. This full and frank confession of fault and remorse was surprising. His father had never apologised for beating him. If ever he mentioned it, it was to tell his son that he was lucky he had such a forgiving father. The mutation of his father's face and Gibbs' face melting into one mask burned into his brain. He closed his eyes, and it hovered like a gruesome slide-show on his eyelids.
He snapped them back open and groaned lowly.
He was speaking before he knew it, before he could help it.
"I can't look at you and not see him. I can't think of him and not see you."
His fingers wrapped around his mug, desperate for a warmth to replace the ice.
"My head's fucked."
Gibbs' stomach clenched painfully. The confusion in the kid's voice was like an unspoken vitriol. He hated himself just as much as he hated Tony's father in that moment. Held as much contempt for his own treatment of DiNozzo Jr and he did DiNozzo Sr. Dread filled him at the possible and indeed probable irrevocability of his actions. What if Tony could never look at him without seeing his father? What if he wouldn't stay around long enough to try otherwise? He swallowed hard. Peeled apart his dry lips.
"I'm so sorry, Tony."
The kid smiled a grim smile of pain.
"What good does that do me, Gibbs? What can I do with your apologies?"
The elder of the two nodded and looked down at the table, suffocating in his own guilt.
"Nothing. You can do nothing with my apologies. I know that."
"Then why are you giving them to me?"
A pregnant silence prevailed.
"Because I don't have anything else to give."
Tony turned to look at the older man then, the defeat in his voice something he'd never heard before. An insufferable son-of-a-bitch though he may be, Gibbs had always been a son-of-a-bitch with a plan. To hear him so empty and without omniscience was something new. Something discomforting. He spoke before he knew it, before he could stop it.
"That doesn't sound like something the all-knowing Gibbs would say."
The all-knowing Gibbs didn't look up as he spoke quietly.
"Beating you in a fit of rage doesn't like something I'd do either, but I did. I did."
Another pressing silence ensued. It seemed to creep into every corner of the room and spread like a smog, cloying those within it. Tony closed his eyes. The upside-down and inside-out nature of his life for the last few days had his mind keening, desperate for relief. As if to stymie the pain, his subconscious threw up a hazy myriad of images of happier times. A series of first-time moments swum around his brain. His first day at NCIS, his first steak over the fire at Gibbs' house, his first pat on the back. His first DC heartbreak, the refuge he'd found in a dusty basement. The Christmases he'd spent surrounded by a family he never thought of finding. The inside of an undeserved jail cell, Gibbs on the other side with a pizza box and an unspoken promise.
He blinked, conflicted.
"I trusted you," he repeated softly, "I never thought you could do something like that."
Gibbs nodded slowly.
"Me either."
Tony looked at him and it took a lot for the older man to meet and hold his eye.
"Why were you so angry? I've done stupid things before."
Gibbs answered without hesitation.
"You've never come that close to an unnecessary death before. Not that that's any excuse for what I did. There is no excuse for what I did. All I had to do was to send you to the conference room and take the time to calm myself down. I've done it more times than I can count. I always made sure I was calm before dealing with you, with any of you. But not that time. Not that time…and look at what it's done. All because I was too stupid and cruel to calm myself down."
Something in the man's short speech triggered a dormant truth in Tony's brain.
Buried deep in pain and betrayal, but buried too deep to be forgotten.
"You're many things, Gibbs. But a cruel man isn't one of them."
The elder man's eyes opened with surprise and his countering argument was rebuffed.
"You did a cruel thing, yes," Tony admitted quietly, "But that doesn't make you a cruel man."
Gibbs' throat constricted as he assessed the sincerity in the kid's voice. To his shame, a trickle of relief that he did not deserve coated him. The fact that his protégé did not think him some sort of cruel monster was like morphine to him in that moment. He allowed it to sink into his blood stream with the greed of a burning man, closing his eyes in undeserved relief.
"I don't deserve that distinction," he said thickly, "But thank you, Tony."
The kid didn't answer, other than with a jerk of his head, and silence reigned once more.
"What happens now?" he asked after an eternity, "Do I have to transfer out?"
Gibbs swallowed the branding iron in his throat and resolved to be selfless.
It was the very least he could do.
"If that's what you want, Tony, then yes. Or I could leave. Whatever is easiest for you. You have plenty of options, you're a talented Agent."
Green eyes snapped to his.
"You could leave? Don't be stupid. The team needs you."
Gibbs grimaced.
"You think I trust myself with them after what I did to you?"
In that moment, the enormity of the situation hit Tony. The guilt the elder man felt was like a transparent sphere. He saw the lines of tiredness and misery etched onto his face. He saw the slumped shoulders. He heard more clearly the words of apology, drenched in self-flagellation. He saw the self-doubt, the self-loathing, but he didn't see the self-pity. He clenched his teeth together and forced himself to see things objectively, like an outsider looking in. He forced himself to go through a checklist, a questionnaire of sorts.
Had Gibbs ever done anything like this to him before?
No.
Had Gibbs ever apologised to him this frankly for something before?
No.
Had Gibbs ever expressed a sense of enjoyment and satisfaction from what he had done?
No.
Had Gibbs ever tried to blame him for what he had done?
No.
His eyes burned as he asked himself the most difficult question on the list.
Was Gibbs, all in all, anything like his father?
No.
In that moment and with a degree of courage he didn't even know he possessed, Tony turned to his boss and arched a quizzical brow. Things would perhaps never be the same. Things would perhaps carry a taint that couldn't be washed off. But if there was one thing he had learned over the years, it was that the most important thing in life was family. In whatever form, in whatever way one could have it. And sometimes, that meant attempting a degree of forgiveness one might think to be beyond them.
"Gibbs?"
"Tony?"
A screaming silence stormed the room for a moment, but only a moment.
"You're not my father. You're not him and I'm not who I was back then. And I think we can get through this. Things might never, ever be the same and it could take ten months or ten years, but we can get through this."
Blue eyes flooded with shock.
"But-"
"Shut your damned mouth and get us some real drinks."
"Tony-"
"For once in your life Boss, just do as you're told."
….
A/N: I apologise, I fear I've been neglecting my NCIS fics recently so here we are! Just to clarify, this fic will probably go on for another little while because the path to redemption is going to be rocky for these two, but they'll get there!
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