A/N: Hi there, everyone; let me first thank you for your patience and all your kind reviews and comments, asking for more chapters of this series; sorry for keeping you waiting for so long.

In this one Tony is 6, almost 7, Abby is 4; and there's still no Tim or Kate in the picture for the Gibbs.

Hope you enjoy this story, too and let me know what you think.

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. May I Not Have Your Attention, Please? .

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"Oh my God, Tony?! What... on earth have you gotten into?" Shannon barely censored herself before the curse word could leave her mouth when she spotted her son trying to sneak up the stairs and into his room.

Tony cringed and hung his head; he knew his parents would be furious if they saw him like that and that was why he'd tried to be quiet and sneak into the house and into his room without them noticing him.

"Your mother asked you a question, young man!" Gibbs wasn't yelling like Shannon, but his tone showed his anger nevertheless.

"I... I'm sorry." Tony mumbled, not looking up from the spot on the floor.

"That's not an answer!" Gibbs growled. "Why in the world are you covered in mud?"

When Tony kept quiet, Shannon sighed. "Look, kid; I know you're tired of having to stay quiet and cautious because Abby's sick; but so are we; don't you think we deserve a break? Is it too much to ask to stay out of trouble for a few days?"

Silently the kid shook his head and bit his lip.

"Then how can you explain this?" She waved her hand towards Tony's muddy appearance and the trail that he'd left behind him on the floor. "Don't you think I have enough to deal with? I really can't run around and clean your mess, too!"

"He'll clean it himself." Gibbs said firmly.

"Yeah? Well, he better! I'm going to check on Abby." She snapped angrily and walked past Tony and up the stairs to check on her sick little girl.

Abby had been down with mumps for a few days and along with the little girl, the parents were both tired, as well; they still weren't sure how she'd come in contact with the virus; the chances of someone getting that infection was pretty rare, but Abby played with many questionable things and to be honest, it was a wonder she didn't get sick or infected more often. Thankfully, they all had been vaccinated against mumps; still, they'd forbidden Tony to enter Abby's room and had tried to sanitize the whole house meticulously, multiple times; which had left them even more exhausted. After one week, they were both drained and grouchy.

This was the first time they'd faced a challenge like that; they'd pretty much dived into the parenthood and still weren't ready to deal with the fear of having a sick kid. Surprisingly, both Tony and Abby were always healthy and very strong and that was why, after many months of having the kids, it was the first time that one of them had gotten so sick and seriously, it couldn't be a simple illness like the flu or something; Abby had to go and get infected with something rare like the Mumps virus and although it wasn't a serious or dangerous illness, it was still bad and the young parents had worried themselves sick. Even Shannon who was a nurse and had dealt with sick and injured people for so many years was having a hard time; dealing with ailing strangers was one thing and having her own kid sick like that was a whole new dilemma.

Tony had been worried about Abby, too and despite his young age, he was great at reading people and he could see how worried both Shannon and Gibbs were; so he'd tried to stay out of the way; had tried to cause no trouble since he knew his new parents were having a hard enough time. He really hadn't meant to get into trouble; but a bunch of older kids had cornered him at the playground and had thought him a lesson about his place. That was why he was covered in mud.

"You know where the mop is; go clean yourself and then clean the floor." Gibbs' order made him flinch, but he nodded his head and quietly turned around to walk up the stairs, but his dad's voice stopped him again.

"Wait a minute. What's that?"

Tony swallowed, he'd hoped they wouldn't notice anything but his dirty clothes and appearance; but of course, Gibbs, the ever observant investigator, had noticed it.

"What's happened to your face?"

"Nothing." Tony mumbled.

"Nothing? So your lip is swollen and you have a cut on your cheek for nothing?"

Tony wasn't sure why Gibbs was mad at him; it wasn't like he'd asked those kids to beat him.

"What did you do?"

Tony's head turned up with confusion. "I-... I..."

Gibbs narrowed his eyes. "Did you do this to get our attention? Did you get into a fight?"

Tony's eyes widened.

"That's it, isn't it? You're jealous that Abby's having all our attention these days and you wanted to make us see you?" The man was shaking his head, his tone laced with both sadness and disappointment.

"What?" Tony was shocked. Did his dad really think that Tony'd done this on purpose? How could he do that, anyway? He was so confused. "No." He shook his head vigorously, even though it hurt him badly.

Gibbs didn't believe him, though. During the months that they'd become the parents of those two kids; they'd always paid equal attention to the both of them and they knew Tony needed a lot of attention because of his past; he wouldn't put it past the boy to demand more of it when he felt they weren't seeing him. "Go to your room."

"But, dad! I didn't-" the small boy stammered, but he was once again cut off by the man who'd adopted him all those month ago.

"Go, Tony! Right now I don't have time or the patience for this." The man was shaking his head with frustration. "You can talk when you're ready to admit to your mistake."

Tony opened his mouth to say he hadn't done anything; but he was silenced with a glare and with the uncertainty that maybe he had done something wrong after all; maybe this actually was his fault.

"You have to learn that you can't be the center of everyone's attention all the time."

"But I didn't do it for your attention. I didn't do it." Tony protested; sounding close to tears.

"Your room; then bathroom; then cleaning the floor. Now, boy! Go!" Gibbs almost barked the orders and walked away; he was done.

Tony sank to the floor; sitting on a step, he cradled his arm against his chest. It really hurt, but he didn't have time to check it out; he had to get cleaned and then mop the floor; Gibbs and Shannon were already mad at him and they clearly thought he was acting out to get their attention; he couldn't let that continue; he had to stay out of their ways so that they'd forget this evening and maybe forgive him.

With some difficulty, he pulled his tired and battered body up the stairs and into the bathroom to get cleaned before going back downstairs and cleaning the mess he'd created there. He'd think of his arm, later. After all, it wasn't the first time he'd spent a long time ignoring one injury or another. He'd become an expert in that.

His arm was broken; he knew that because he'd had broken his arms and legs before and he was glad that this time he at least couldn't see the bone. There was a time that his father had hit him with a golf club and the bone in his arm had snapped and then came out of his skin; the sight of it had made him sick and he'd cried loudly; which was something he'd learned not to do when his father was teaching him a lesson; but he hadn't been able to keep it in, that time and thankfully the sight of his arm had put a stop to his punishment. His father had thrown him into the arms of one of the staff and ordered him to call the doctor. He couldn't remember much of that night; just that he'd woken up with a white cast on his arm and an order to stay in his room.

That had been the only time that he'd seen his bone; every other time that he'd broken a bone and needed a cast, the break had been hidden like this time.

He'd kept his arm against his chest the whole time he was cleaning the floor and then quietly walked up to his room; there, he'd tried to come up with a way to fix his arm; but he didn't have a cast and didn't know how to make one; he just knew it was really painful and that it was keeping him from moving the broken limb; it was only because he'd felt that pain -and even worse- before that he knew how to be quiet about it.

Not wanting to disturb Gibbs and Shannon for something as unimportant as a broken arm, especially since they thought he'd done that to have their attention, he decided to do something about it himself. Grabbing a T-shirt, he carefully wrapped it around his arm and even though tears were running down his cheeks, because it really, really hurt to touch or move his arm, he kept quiet and didn't make a sound; that was something else that he'd become good at with his father's lessons. After wrapping the T-shirt around his arm, he took the duct tape that he'd grabbed from the kitchen's drawer and started to role it around the makeshift bandage on his arm to secure it in its place and make it hard like a cast. When he was done, he knew it wasn't as good as a cast, but that was all he could do; so he rolled his shirt's sleeve down to hide the whole thing and went to bed; telling himself that his teeth would forgive him for not washing them just one night.

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TBC ...

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So, what do you think? Next chapter will be up next week.

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And I still own nothing but my mistakes and the plot of my stories!