The temperature in the room had dropped down several degrees. Before Gibbs realized the cause of it, the hand he was holding was pulled away; more like snatched. Gibbs furrowed his brows as Tony suddenly stood up. He could feel the anger radiating from the young man and it confused him.
"Don't. Don't call me that."
"Call you what?" Gibbs' eyes widened slightly when it came to him. "Don't call you son?"
"Don't say it!" Tony reached out his hand toward the almost empty box of pizza and for a moment Gibbs thought he was reaching for what was left of the pizza, but instead the whole thing was wiped off the table in a fit of rage. "Don't you ever call me that..." Just as suddenly as they appeared, all the energy and anger disappeared and Tony sounded tired again.
"I didn't mean anything by it." Gibbs frowned, trying to fix this, whatever this was, but obviously he had said the wrong thing. Again.
The anger flashed in the green eyes again. "You really don't get it, Gibbs? What am I even saying, of course you don't get it."
"Well, if you'd finally explain things to me, DiNozzo, then perhaps I would!"
With his palms flat against the kitchen table, Tony leaned closer and spoke with a low voice so unlike his, even he didn't recognize it, "Do you want to know what it is you did to me, Gibbs, in what to you is nothing but some crazy dream?"
The look on Gibbs' face was saying, 'you think? '
"You weren't that different from the you now. Dare I say, many of the differences are there because I'm making the difference. I refuse to let you just walk all over me and get away with it anymore. I know where it leads when you're allowed to do as you please. And I swear, Gibbs... I can't do it for the second time. Dream or reality, none of it matters when those memories are there in my head and the memory of how depressed and lost I became... Before I met you, I never knew that you could both hurt so much and feel numb at the same time. I swear, Gibbs, I can't do it again. It'll kill me this time. I know it will."
Gibbs flinched at the deep hurt he saw; so deeply rooted that he couldn't help but wonder if those feelings where there to stay, with no hope, no way to heal it away.
Tony started pacing around the kitchen. "I'll admit that you and I had a much better start in the dream. We became closer much faster and while usually there's nothing wrong with that, this being us, maybe that was part of the problem; you got what you wanted too easily. You brought me from Baltimore like some lost puppy and for the first time I started to trust someone. Really trust. And it was great, but I became a fool and I let my guard down. Repeatedly. I was happy, you know. Happy with you, Abby and Ducky in my life. I finally felt like I had a family, a home I could go back to. And then..." The look on Tony's face became pained; saying that word almost physically hurt him. "You started treating me like your son. We never talked about it, you know. It was just always there in the little things and moments. You didn't often call me son, but when you did I was so happy. And then that two-year mark came and we were closer than ever. For the first time, I didn't get the usual need to move on. I was finally right where I belonged; at home."
Tony took the chair he had been sitting on before and sat down. He didn't look at Gibbs, knowing that the moment he would look in those sharp blue eyes, calculating his every move, he would be done.
"Then Kate came along, which was fine. Really. Even when you started distancing yourself from me and started to question my authority as the SFA for the first time. First with Kate, and it was fine for a while; I was still young and hopeful fool. First trusting, then hoping that it would pass and you would remember why you chose me. It never happened... I would lie in my deathbed and while you did show in your own way that you cared, it was all forgotten as soon as I seemed alright. And Kate had an attitude problem then too, but she still had potential to become a fine Agent, if she was willing. But your lack of respect really didn't help there... Then probie joined us and he was so green and I'm still not sure if he was fit to be working in the field with us... If he would survive in the real world, where he had to remember that in the real world he was no Elf Lord."
Elf Lord? Gibbs opened his mouth to ask, but then closed it when Tony kept talking.
"By the time he came, it was like once you got the taste of it, you just couldn't stop it. I was the perfect whipping boy; both strong and weak enough to take it for as long as I did. There were some hurtful moments between all of us and maybe I was just a little bit jealous too that I had to share your attention with the new kids." Tony smirked bitterly at the memory. "Besides, we weren't exactly given the best choice in agents. Could've had something to do with the fact that very few people were willing to work with you as their boss. But back then I didn't really mind. As much as we could be mean and horrible to one another, in our weird twisted way, we were like a family or so I thought, but I don't exactly have much experience of a real family. And then... Then it all went down to hell." Tony looked up to see the blue unreadable gaze. "Kate was killed. After that... I really should have just left the NCIS."
"Killed?" Gibbs finally spoke and with that he thought he finally understood at least something; Tony's reluctance to accept Kate in their team. "And then?" Gibbs spoke again when the silence between them became heavy, with Tony perhaps lost in some memories again. The glazed look in his eyes told as much.
- DREAM REALITY FLASHBACK -
Her blood was all over him and no matter what he did, he couldn't get it off.
Four years. It had been four years now since she was killed on that rooftop. Whenever he thought he was finally getting over it, something happened, which triggered memories he was still trying to forget. Memories that made him dream of that day again like some broken record that kept going through that same moment over and over again, until he woke up, gasping for his breath and covered in sweat.
Whenever it happened, all he saw was her blood all over him again. So here he was once again, in his shower in the middle of the night. Trying to wash it off. Trying to scrub it off, until his skin was almost bleeding red, raw and too tender to touch.
He'd seen plenty of deaths in his life and horrible ways to die, some even before he became a cop. Starting from his own mother, when he was just a small boy. So why this, why now, why her death?
"Tony?" Gibbs started to get worried, seeing the glazed look in the young man's eyes.
"I'm fine," Tony finally said, blinking slowly as his mind was slowly coming back from the box of memories inside his head. "You know what, it doesn't even matter. Why should I have to explain anything to you? After all it seems you have all the answers, just like you always do. You sure act like it anyway. Here you are, in my home, wanting me to explain something to you, when it's you who screwed up."
"DiNozzo..." Gibbs growled in warning.
"Let me finish, Gibbs. It's my home, my rules. Not yours." Tony held up his hand when Gibbs opened his mouth again before the man settled for annoyed glare, unable to really say anything against that. "The reason why I lost it when you called me son is because it hurt so much more when you forgot what we had. It hurt so much more when you started treating me like I was worth nothing, not even my Senior Field Agent status. And not in your bastard Gibbs is only joking kind of way, but in a really hurtful ways. To make it even worse, you made sure everyone knew just what you think of me. Call it petty or childish, and maybe it was partly my fault too for letting things go that far in the first place, but I don't care anymore. You let me believe in something. You let me feel safe and wanted. Happy. Then you took it away just like that." Tony snapped his fingers. "Like it had never been there in the first place. By the end of it, I myself could've just as well not been there. That's how much I was worth."
"Tony, I'd never..."
"I'm not going to share my deepest secrets with you, Gibbs, and do you know why? Because as much as we may have gotten closer since we met, maybe even friends, but moments like these prove to me that I still can't trust you."
"I'm sorry..."
Tony smiled sadly, almost pointing out Gibbs' own rule about apologizing. "No, you're not. Don't say you're sorry if you don't mean it. Maybe I'll start using that as one of my own rules..." Gibbs frowned, looking confused, and Tony stood up again. "How can you be sorry when you don't even know what to feel sorry for? Gibbs, I don't need that. I just need... I just want... For me this is a new start, a chance to do things differently. I won't let you or anyone else ruin it for me. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I'd like to go by that rule from now on."
"Is there really nothing I can do?" Gibbs asked quietly. "I don't like this. I can see how this whole thing is eating you up, your head filled with all this. Let me do something. Anything."
"It's my fight, Gibbs, whether you and I like it or not. My dream, my head, my problem. Obviously there has to be some reason why I'm the one who ended up with it. We're not good, yet, and it's up to you if we ever will be." Clearly finished with his speech, Tony walked to the kitchen door, where he stopped again. "There is one more thing I want to share with you though." Gibbs nodded encouragingly when he hesitated. "I need you to never forget two names; Ari Haswari and Ziva David. If you do ever hear anything about them, run as fast as you can and don't go all Captain Ahab, Gibbs. You don't know them the way I do, and if it's up to me you never will... All I can say is that they destroyed what we still had, like slowly working poison."
"Tony..." Gibbs hesitated when Tony looked at him. "Thank you. And I'm sorry." This time he knew what he was saying sorry for and he meant it. He knew from the small smile on the young man's face that he saw it too.
"Apology accepted," Tony said finally, but Gibbs could hear the unsaid words loud and clear, 'But we're still not good.' He listened as Tony took his keys and left the apartment again. He wondered just how badly he had screwed things up.
Leaving the apartment after a while, Gibbs went back home, thinking about the 'battle plan' he was going to have to make. He would never forgive himself if he'd let this ship sink before they even got to the sea. He almost laughed at his sudden realization. He was pissed off. At himself, at this dream version of himself who obviously was between everything he was trying to make right with DiNozzo and himself.
"I'll make it up to you, Tony. Somehow. I promise you..."
"Bad case?" Isaac asked when his favorite customer entered his bar. It didn't matter that there were other bars much closer to his home, this was where Tony would always come to. It was his special place, which he wasn't going to share with anyone else. Not before they passed a certain level of trust. He liked that he didn't even have to share it with his coma-self, although who knows, perhaps it would've done him good to have that. There was no way to know.
Tony sighed as he sat down. "You could say that... Give me something with plenty of mind numbing alcohol in it. I feel like getting so drunk I won't even remember my own name for a while."
Isaac frowned. He better keep an eye on the kid today... "Alright then, I'll let you taste my new creation then. Someone said it tastes like crap, but they buy it anyway so it must be good."
"Alcohol in it?"
"Plenty."
"I'll have that then," Tony muttered and held his head in his hands. He sighed again when Isaac gave him one of those worried looks of his. "Don't look at me like that... I grew up with alcoholics; not gonna end up like them. Just need to not think anything for a little while..."
"Alright then." Isaac relaxed slightly. He made the drink to Tony who, after tasting it, nearly spat it out.
"What did you put in this?" Tony coughed, while Isaac laughed. It was never boring to watch people taste it for the first time.
"I call it Dark Soul. People who wish to forget for a while, they love it. I mean, first they curse the taste and the man who made it, but soon they're dead to the world and only remember just how bad the taste was."
"Fitting..." Tony muttered and dared to drink more, albeit with the utmost care and shuddering at the offending taste. Strangely it was pretty mind numbing after only a few sips. Surprised, he looked up.
"Told you. It's becoming quite popular."
"In that case, be ready to make more of it."
"Oh, you won't be needing more. But if I were you, I'd pay up before you're too out of it." Isaac held out his hand and wiggled his fingers. Rolling his eyes, Tony threw the money on the table. Looking around to see if anyone else needed him, Isaac sat down. His usually happy face was now frowning with worry. "That bad, huh?"
"That bad..."
"Want to talk about it? You know I'm always ready to listen."
Tony shook his head. "I appreciate it, but I really don't feel like talking about it... I already opened my big mouth a little too much today. That's all."
"It's about that dream of yours, isn't it?"
Tony cursed Isaac's way of getting him to talk with some special tongue loosening drinks of his. There was nothing else like it, he was pretty sure, and he'd faced Saleem and his truth serum among other things. That was nothing next to Isaac. "You know... You really should've been hired by the government to make their truth serums and other magic potions for them. They could seriously learn a thing or two from you. Then again, maybe we're all better off this way. Take it from me; if you can help it, never work for the government. They're a nasty bunch that crowd."
Isaac chuckled. "What, and leave you here on your own, with no one to make sure you at least eat once in a while? You're finally starting to get some meat over your skinny little bones. Can't let all my hard work go to waste."
They both became serious again, while Tony kept taking small sips of his drink, never without a grimace and a small shudder. "I was going to tell my boss about my sniper lessons since I figured he might want to know, maybe even give a few lessons of his own. I don't know what I was really thinking... Then he throws the bomb; he's known all along.""He knew about the lessons?"
"No, although at this point I wouldn't be surprised... I meant my dream. Turns out he heard when I told Ducky, two years ago. Then he has the nerve to... The nerve to call me son." Tony found talking suddenly so hard and he had to think really hard before trying to form the words with his mouth. His tongue felt like it didn't belong in his mouth at all.
"You never seem to mind when I call you that."
Tony shrugged somewhat bashfully, but it took a while before the answer came, the words forming so badly that Isaac had a hard time understanding them all. "You're 'saac..." Tony mumbled and drank some more. He now understood why the drink was so popular; it was hard to think about anything. How dangerous, he thought. If Isaac had been his enemy and there he was, completely under his mercy...
He had to speak fast if he didn't want his words to go to waste, Isaac knew, so he went right into it. "You really care about your boss, don't you? You're afraid he's going to break your heart again."
"Ma'ing me'soun' li'e... girl."
"You don't have to be some love-struck girl to love and care about people. He's like a father to you, isn't he?"
Tony mumbled something and shrugged joylessly, blinking his eyes heavily, trying to focus.
Isaac smiled ferally. "Well, if this sniper boss of yours hurts you again, I'll mess with his coffee so that he can never drink any coffee again. Once I'm done with him and his tastebuds, he'll never even look at coffee."
Tony laughed softly. "'at's... worst 'ing ever."
Isaac's fingers brushed through the young man's hair as Tony's head hit the table with a 'thud ', having just missed catching the head before it fell. He was feeling a little jealous, he had to admit. The kid reminded him of his son, his bright sweet boy who had died too soon. "That boss of yours is a lucky bastard indeed..." he muttered as he stood up. For a man of his age, it was with surprising ease that Isaac managed to carry the young man in the small room behind the bar. "Get some rest. I'll drive you home later."
Tony's only answer was to sigh and curl up on the old and worn couch. He wouldn't be having any dreams this time, and he could never be grateful enough for that short moment of calm.