A/N: Hey everyone, so here we are several weeks and episodes removed from the episode Saviors. *If you have not seen the particular episode yet please do not read this section of the author's note. I personally thought the episode was very good despite the fact that it was much less melodramatic than my own version. I loved the way McGee explained the whole issue to Bishop. I kind of wished that the whole Tony/Jeanne thing would be explored more (perhaps Jeanne will return for another episode and grant my wish) but her being married puts a damper on that and all. Anyway, that's my take on it.*

In the time since Saviors I have continued working on this story, although a hectic and stressful situation at work has made writing a bit difficult. However, now I'm on two weeks break so I'm going to try and get some quality writing time in (so long as I don't get distracted by other works of fanfictions and rewatching NCIS). As it is this chapter is sort of a monster for me, I think it's one of the longest that I've written. I've edited the heck out of it and this is what stuck. Hopefully you lovely readers will continue enjoying this story even though it goes way beyond what was covered on the show and is completely AU. And yes, the chapter title is cliché but I couldn't help myself.

Also, for the purposes of this story Tony and Zoe broke up some time ago, Ellie is not currently having issues with Jake (I can't handle that much drama all at once and could honestly deal with one less messed up person on the show) and Gibbs is still dealing with his medical issues but perhaps not as much as on the show. Does that make any sense?

Disclaimer: Oh, I don't think anybody wants me to own any part of NCIS. I couldn't take the pressure.

To my lovely reviewers: DS2010, I am going for a mature Tony who still has a sense of humor. Sydcasy, Tony's behavior has a reason, I can't promise that it will be explained directly, but there is a reason and it should become clearer as we go along. Yellowcallalilly: I'm so glad you like it and it's giving you hope. Hopefully I don't let you down. Ellie is not my favorite character but she has a certain innocence and lack of prejudice, particularly where Tony is concerned, that I find refreshing and surprisingly fun to work with. N: thanks for the support, I don't get the hate either!

Once again, thanks for all your lovely reviews, follow and favorites and thanks for reading!

Is There a Doctor in the House?

Jeanne hurried across the nearly deserted street and headed towards the vintage car idling in front of a diner named Millie's, or as the flickering neon lights proclaimed, Mie's. She reached for the passenger door, only hesitating for a moment before she jerked on the handle. A blast of warm air greeted her along with Tony's shadowed face. He stared at her impassively from the driver's seat, his eyes glinting eerily in the mostly darkened car.

"And how are you doing on this beautiful night?" He asked once Jeanne was securely belted and he had pulled back into traffic. Jeanne wasn't certain if the question was sincere since his voice remained annoyingly neutral.

"Well, I almost didn't come. Which is stupid, believe me I know, since I'm the one who asked you to come here." Tony said nothing. "My god, you are stubborn." She muttered, annoyed again despite her determination to not be affected by him.

"Ah, and now you've hit upon what half a dozen step-mothers, countless headmasters, and a number of superiors discovered over the past thirty-odd years and failed to overcome despite their best efforts." Tony responded in a cheerful tone that held just enough acidity to let Jeanne know he wasn't yielding an inch.

"Tony, can we just have a simple conversation that doesn't end with us bickering?" She waited a beat and then added as an afterthought, "Or sarcasm, or deflection, or jokes intended to distract me?" There was a moment of silence and she wondered if Tony had simply decided not to talk at all. Jeanne glanced towards his profile, expecting to see some sign of anger but instead saw that his cheek was twitching. After a moment she realized he was fighting back a smile.

"Well, Jeanne you just severely limited my options for communication." Tony turned to face her then, a streetlamp glinting off his teeth.

"Tony!" Jeanne gasped as the dim light briefly highlighted his features. In an instant all her frustration vanished to be replaced with concern. "What happened to you?" Tony jerked at her exclamation, momentarily confused as to why she was freaking out. Jeanne reached out automatically to touch his cheek and understanding washed over his face.

"It's nothing." He responded quietly, pulling back from her gentle touch. Jeanne persisted though and carefully brushed her fingertips along his marred cheekbone.

"Pull over." She ordered softly and oddly enough Tony complied.

"I told you, it's nothing." He insisted once he had squeezed into a parking space along the side of the street and put the car into park. With a roll of her eyes which said exactly what she thought of this assessment she turned on the ceiling light. She winced again as the full extent of Tony's injuries were revealed.

"Tony, what happened?" She repeated as she gently grasped his chin, turning his face towards the light glowing through the window. His left cheek was a mass of darkening purple that extended from just below his eye down to the edge of his jaw. Jeanne ran the fingers of her other hand up, following the map of bruises, her skin just barely making contact with his. She paused when he winced just as she reached his hairline. Tony was unresisting as she carefully tilted his head and moved aside the short strands of hair to see two thin gashes along his temple. A bit more probing revealed a raised bump and elicited a strained hiss.

"Mmm, the most serious bruising and contusions appear to be in the temporal area." Jeanne mused, easily falling into doctor mode. "Have you been to the hospital for this?" Jeanne asked not bothering to cover her concern. Tony sighed as though she had just asked an enormous favor of him.

"Yes, our M.E. made sure nothing was broken." Jeanne hands, which had been systematically probing the edges of his temple, came to a halt.

"Your medical examiner is also your doctor?" Tony shrugged unconcernedly at Jeanne's incredulity.

"Not officially, but whenever somebody needs a little patching up then, yeah." He chose this moment to glance at Jeanne and obviously saw her blatant disbelief and a healthy dose of concern. "Honestly if we went to the hospital every time one of the team got hurt during a case the department would be bankrupt." Rather than look reassured, Jeanne appeared slightly ill.

"How often do you get injured?" Jeanne asked hesitantly. Absentmindedly she scraped at a patch of dried blood that remained persistently glued just behind his ear. Well, at least this ME had done a fairly good job of cleaning him up. Blood was notoriously difficult to get rid of once it dried. Tony shrugged again in response to her latest question.

"What can I say, when given the choice between going to jail and fighting the guys with guns criminals usually choose a fight." Jeanne shook her head as she continued to run her fingers over the skin at his temples. Unconsciously Tony leant into the soft caresses while his eyes gradually slid shut. They were quiet for a moment, the moment oddly peaceful despite the current topic.

"So," Jeanne began, her voice sounding jarringly loud amidst the quiet hum of Tony's car. "I'm guessing that night in the hospital wasn't that unusual for you?" Tony tensed a little and for a moment Jeanne thought she had ruined any chances of a productive conversation. For all she knew Tony could pretend he didn't know what she was talking about. Apparently he was too tired to resist as he simply leant a little more into her hand and made a sound caught somewhere between enjoyment and pain.

"Mm, I seem to have a penchant for concussions." He winced suddenly as Jeanne encountered a second, though less severe, bump at the back of his skull. She probed it gingerly, making Tony shy away with a disgruntled expression. "I'm fine though, Ducky says it's only a mild one and I'm not experiencing any of the normal symptoms." Choosing to ignore the fact that Tony had apparently had enough concussive episodes to memorize the symptoms, Jeanne gently asked.

"Ducky?" It wasn't the first time that Tony had mentioned someone he worked with but all the other times he'd said the names as though they were closely guarded secrets which she didn't have the proper clearance to know. Tony smiled slightly with his eyes still closed.

"Our M.E., Dr. Donald Mallard, but he prefers Ducky." Jeanne smiled in return even though Tony couldn't currently see it. It seemed highly appropriate given the bizarre life Tony seemed to live. Only he would know an ME named after a bird and happily submit to his medical expertise. Tony rested his against the back of his seat, sighing as he craned his neck towards the ceiling of the car.

"If I remember correctly when that drug addict nocked you out the only reason I was able to check you out was because that drug addict gun trained on you." Jeanne observed, making the most of Tony's placid demeanor. "So how is it that you're ok with a man who works on cadavers on a regular giving you stitches?" Tony snorted.

"Please Jeanne, they're his patients. He talks to them and everything." For some reason that failed to surprise Jeanne. At this point she would expect nothing less from one of Tony's coworkers. "Ducky barely ever makes me go to the hospital if I can make it down to autopsy. So, the lack of revealing hospital attire and invasive nurses makes up for the ice cold tables." Jeanne found herself laughing at Tony's completely serious expression.

"It's good to know you have your priorities straightened out." She mocked which earned her a bereaved glance that fell just short of Tony sticking his tongue out at her. Jeanne pursed her lips to hold back the smile threatening to burst out again. Silence rained for a few minutes again while Jeanne continued to flake away the bits of dried blood along Tony's hairline

"So what came between your head and the bad guys this time?" Jeanne asked, striving for a casual tone. There was a slightly pained glint in Tony's eyes that made her think that whatever story he might tell was not quite as cut and dry as he wanted her to believe. She'd seen the same haunted look in police officers accompanying their injured partners or helpless victims to the E.R.

"Oh you know, just me being my usual extraordinary Special Agent self." He didn't even give Jeanne time to object before he was speaking again. "Honestly, it all starts with two petty officers and one gunny sergeant. Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke I know, but turns out the punchline isn't all that funny." Jeanne didn't comment, but went back to running her hands through the hair at Tony's temples which seemed to calm him. At the very least it didn't appear to be causing any harm and Jeanne found that the feel of his skin against hers grounding. "Anyway Petty Officer, let's call her Johnson and Petty Officer…Baker meet while serving aboard the USS John F. Kennedy. Now it turns out that Baker isn't the most by the book when it comes to fraternization policies and asks Johnson out." Tony paused to use quotations marks and gave Jeanne a significant look just in case she couldn't manage to determine the meaning of 'asking out' in this particular instance. Jeanne rolled her eyes, lifting a hand in a gesture that told him to get on with it.

"Unfortunately for Baker, Johnson is engaged to a gunny sergeant. Very happily engaged and very faithful to her fiancé. Baker doesn't take this news too well and decides the best course of action is to bury his sorrows in a highly illegal bottle of bourbon. Fast forward a couple weeks and Johnson is on leave with the gunny and just around the same time Baker goes AWOL. It seems he tracked her down by calling in a few favors to a tech friend who hacked the GPS on her phone. Baker waits til she goes back to the gunny's apartment alone, breaks in and proceeds to slam her head into a curio cabinet. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, the gunny comes in about five minutes later to find Baker on top of his fiancé with her shirt in one hand and pounding the hell out of her with the other." Jeanne made a strangled noise and Tony paused in his story. "Sorry." He muttered with a contrite look.

"No, no that's ok." She assured him. "Just tell me that he stopped him in time, did Johnson make it?" Tony chuckled darkly, his fists clenching tightly in his lap.

"Oh sure, she's great. She's got a broken nose, two cracked ribs, more bruises than an over-handled peach and enough emotional trauma to make her sucker punch the next guy who gets too close, but other than that she's great." Tony's voice trembled as he finished though Jeanne couldn't tell if it was a reflection of anger or some other emotion.

"So how did this lead to you getting a moderate concussion–?" Jeanne asked, feeling the need to change the topic before she started crying or in Tony's case, hitting things.

"Mild." Tony inserted with an affronted tone." Jeanne rolled her eyes.

"Tony, you clearly have a headache and you've been squinting every few seconds, particularly when the lights are brighter. As a consummate concussion recipient you should know that symptoms lasting longer than thirty minutes are classified as moderate." Tony scowled at her and she quickly added. "You should also know to never argue with a doctor, we have access to enemas and aren't afraid to use them." Tony raised an eyebrow as his face stretched into a wide and more sincere smile.

"Wow, I've received some dark threats in the past but that's downright evil." Jeanne fought back her own smile, happy to see the dark cloud hanging over Tony lift slightly.

"So, what happened?" She asked after a few moments, knowing that Tony probably needed to get this case off his chest before they could talk about anything else. Jeanne also wasn't entirely certain she could sleep in peace without knowing what happened to the Petty Officer. Tony heaved a sigh.

"So the fiancé comes in and once he figures out what's happening, naturally he freaks out. He goes to defend her and pulls Baker off her. Unfortunately for the gunny, the guy's got more muscles than Schwarzenegger and brought along a gun for good measure.

"My god, he shot him." Jeanne guessed, wondering if every case NCIS handled was this horrible. She saw the same terrible violence every shift she worked in the E.R. but there was something entirely different about hearing a blow by blow account.

"Oh no." Tony assured her, sarcasm making a reappearance. "No, he pistol-whipped the guy until he resembled something from a Tarantino movie. Johnson came to and broke a lamp over his head and Baker just kept going. Ten minutes later the police get there and find her trying to keep her lover's head together with her bare hands." Tony sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair, a gesture that seemed to increase in frequency depending on his level of stress.

"He's still in a coma. Which brings us back to Baker. He runs off, steals a Rolls Royce, cause if you're gonna break the law, why not go all out and add grand theft auto into the mix. Two hours later, local LEO's find it crashed in a ditch and still no petty officer." Tony paused for a moment to rub at his forehead and groaned almost inaudibly.

"Do you really want to hear this?" He asked, his words muffled by his hands, the palms of which were currently pressed tightly against his eyes. "It doesn't get any better." Jeanne silently pulled his hands away and began gently kneading his temples.

"Yes." She answered simply. Tony shook his head slightly, the movement hampered by Jeanne's palms, and groaned.

"Oh, remind me not to do that again." He sucked in a deep breath and blew it back out slowly. "Fast forward two more days when the case finally made its way to us–apparently the officers on site were too shaken up to remember to call NCIS until then. By the time we were notified, the dirt bag had beaten three more people while trying to rob a liquor store and attempted another carjacking. We tracked him down as he was escaping a woman who didn't take kindly to his charms. Pretty sure he's never going to look at a boing knife the same way again." Jeanne raised an eyebrow which earned another shrug. "It's a rough part of town." Tony explained.

"Anyway, we took after him and since I happened to be closer I had the privilege of tackling him."

"Please tell me he didn't hit you with his gun." Jeanne whispered already calculating if his symptoms warranted a trip to the hospital regardless of whatever protests he might make." Tony shook his head, apparently having forgotten his vow to not move it anymore.

"Nope, nope. Apparently it is a requirement for all alleyways to come equipped with old pipes."

"He hit you with a pipe?" Jeanne exclaimed, her voice coming out much louder than she had intended.

"Well, not as much as he might have liked to. It helped that I hadn't enjoyed breakfast courtesy of Skky Vodka. Alcohol really dulls the senses, you know and I happen to be a pretty good fighter, not to brag. He got in a few blows with the pipe but I br–got it away from him before he could do too much damage." The change in word choice didn't go unnoticed by Jeanne.

"How did you stop him?" She asked, figuring that there was something he thought would not appeal to her lady-like senses.

"Oh, just a commonly known disarming mechanism." He hedged.

"Tony, really? You think that whatever you did to protect yourself is going to bother me?" Tony glared at her for a moment before relenting.

"Fine, I broke his–" Jeanne's stomach sunk with his pause and she thought that perhaps Tony had been right and she wasn't prepared for this.

"What exactly did you break, Tony?" She whispered.

"His wrist." He breathed.

"Oh." She sounded oddly disappointed and Tony turned sharply towards her with an amazed expression. "I thought you were going to say his neck." She explained.

"I'm fairly certain that's not an NCIS approved method of defense." Tony said in a bemused tone. Jeanne made an annoyed sound.

"Just tell me what happened, Tony."

"Well, there's a reason why this guy was in the Marines. Yeah he dropped the pipe when I broke his wrist but he barely paused, just started pounding me into a brick wall." Jeanne felt her heart clench even though Tony was sitting right there in front of her, a little worse for wear but clearly still alive. Unconsciously her fingers move to the back of his head, feeling the risen area, proof of the moment he just described.

"He got his arm around my neck and he just wouldn't let go no matter what I did. I got a few punches in but then everything started turning gray. Then just before I black out I hear something and see McGee standing there with his gun pointed at us." Jeanne's breath hitched in her throat. Tony shot her an impish grin.

"Don't worry, McGee's a good shot. He should be, I taught him after all."

"Did he kill him?" Tony nodded excessively.

"Oh yeah, Gibbs would have smacked him if he didn't. Yup, went right through his forehead and straight out the other side. Ducky says it was almost dead center." Jeanne almost didn't notice the shift in Tony's demeanor from angry and sarcastic to nearly morose.

"When you're that close to a person when they get shot, you can feel the moment the bullet enters them. You feel their body shudder." He paused reflectively as Jeanne stared at him in quiet horror. She could feel his body trembling faintly, the blood rushing more quickly through the veins in his temples. Jeanne could only imagine what was going through his head right now. Death was nothing new to either of them, she'd seen the way he handled his gun and she worked more ER shifts than she cared to remember, but she doubted it was the same as feeling the life leave a person's body.

"Tony–"

"And the blood, that's something else too. You probably know a lot about blood too. It's very messy, very hard to get out of suits, particularly Zenga, I don't know what it is. My dry cleaner really hates me too. Once made a woman cry when I brought one in–"

"Tony, stop." He sucked in a sharp breath and for a horrible moment Jeanne thought he might cry. Carefully she slid her hand down the sides of his face and neck until they rested on his shoulders. Without thinking to deeply about what she was about to do, she leaned in while gently pulling him against her so his head rested against her chest. His entire body shuddered.

"It's been a while since I've been that close to someone when they died." He whispered, his voice ragged at the edges. He laughed, a bitter, harsh sound that startled Jeanne with its suddenness. "And I didn't even like this guy." Tony choked out around another broken chuckle. That admission more than anything saddened her.

"I think it means that you're still a good person." Jeanne whispered against his hair. Tony laughed again, this time more genuinely.

"God, of all people to tell me I'm a good person." He muttered. "This is one of the most bizarre–nah, I take that back, doesn't even come close." Jeanne sniffed a little, mortified to find herself close to tears. They held onto each other until Jeanne no longer felt the prick of tears behind her eyes and Tony's pulse had slowed to a steady rhythm.

"Ok, move over." Jeanne said as she straightened in her own seat. Tony gave her a confused which turned wary when she reached for the keys still resting in the ignition.

"Why?" He asked cautiously.

"Because you're not driving." Jeanne explained firmly. His noise of protest was lost in the wind as she opened her door and headed for the other side of the car. Tony's arms were stubbornly folded against his chest when she jerked his door open, his features drawn into a mulish expression.

"Not gonna happen, Jeanne." She shoved ineffectually at his shoulders, only managing to jostle his broad frame slightly.

"Tony, there is no way that I'm about to let you drive anywhere with a grade two concussion."

"Grade one!" Tony snapped earning himself another glare.

"Tony, please. I would never forgive myself if something happened to you that I could have prevented." Jeanne pled, not feeling even the slightest bit guilty for manipulating him. If it kept him from getting into an accident it was well worth it.

"Fine." Tony said after a moment, his tone acerbic. Once he had moved to the passenger seat he added. "By the way, I haven't been shopping for two weeks so don't have high expectations in the food department."

"I ate dinner hours ago." Jeanne said, slightly confused by the shift in topic and exactly why Tony thought she would be sticking around long enough to check out the contents of his fridge.

"Exactly. And by the time we get to my apartment it will be time for a midnight snack." Tony explained as though it made perfect sense.

"You're ridiculous." Jeanne muttered as she started the car. Tony didn't bother to dispute her statement, simply asking.

"How's Chinese sound?"

A/N: So I realize this is a bit of departure from the previous chapters but I couldn't have Jeanne and Tony meeting for coffee indefinitely. I also wanted to highlight the connection between these two characters and Jeanne's obvious compassion. I also couldn't help but have Tony in a wee bit of pain. Although it may not be stated, I'm going with the assumption that Ducky gave Tony some sort of mild pain killers which explains his relative openness. I am also not an expert on concussions but I've read enough and with a bit of research I believe I've correctly portrayed a moderate concussion.

Don't worry, there's more angst and drama to come in the next chapter. Also, I'll be turning 23 in less than a week so reviews for my birthday? :D