A/N: To the lovely RedHandedJill44, for leaving an awesome review and having a name from Peter Pan. I know you would've preferred something to do with Kate, but I'm afraid this is the voice that wouldn't leave me alone.

2x05 – Bone Yard – The one where Fornell gets accused of being a mafia mole and Gibbs makes it better.

26. Stand When You Think You're Gonna Fall

The right thing and the just thing are never the same thing. The sooner you learn that, the better off your mental health will be.

Right would happen when the judge knew every mitigating circumstance, every intent, and every shred of remorse of the guilty party, and forgave them their sins accordingly. Justice though, Justice is a bitch. She would take every last pound of flesh the victim deserved, no matter what happened to the perp.

Eventually anyone who dealt in the law realized that Law tried to find a place between the two poles to satisfy them both. Everyone walks into the profession fighting for one team or the other, but eventually they all became the Law.

Except for the best of them. The legends at any agency were the ones who told the middle ground to screw itself and kept fighting for their side.

Tobias Fornell was a Justice man. Most feds were. But Fornell had earned himself the rank of legend. In fact, he was damn close to mythic. There would songs about him by the time he retired. Which made the plummet down to someone the Bureau thought could be bought all the more painful. He was Tobias Fornell, dammit! His Probie's liked to call him badass behind his back, when they weren't calling him a bastard. He was incorruptible, and yet here he sat in a prison cell in the basement of the Hoover building.

He could've turned. At least a dozen times in the course of his investigation he'd been given the chance to turn to the mafia and make himself a wealthy man. It would've been simple. Become a millionaire, get some fake papers, take his daughter, run away to a beach somewhere. A lesser man would've done it. But his little girl never would've forgiven him. And no matter what sort of man he could've been, that was his daughter. Myth, Justice, Right, none of it mattered compared to his girl.

That's why he asked Jethro for help. He was just as much of bastard, just as much of a myth, and most important of all, father to a little girl he would move heaven and hell to do proud. That made him incorruptible. Helped matters that Gibbs was a Justice guy himself.

So when Fornell tasted his coffee, he knew exactly what Jethro had dropped in it, and knew exactly what the plan was. Not the whole of it, but knew he was going to be faking dead, and knew it without any need for conversation.

Jethro would help Tobias clear his name, and then off the two of them would go, hunting Justice.