Author's note: It took me a while to get there, but it is revelation-time! Jej! Have fun!

Chapter 8:

"I'm going for coffee! "Was all Gibbs said when leaving his team behind to snoop around in the personal life of his Senior Field Agent. Usually his conscience would stop him from prying too much into his Agent's personal life but this time, his conscience wasn't stopping him, it actually, was encouraging him. He needed to know what was forcing his agent to sleep in his own car.

He decided to start at Tony's apartment. When he got there a strange feeling of solitude was creeping up on him, one that only abandoned places could emanate. In fact, there was not one person in the whole house. The main doors were locked.

On closer inspection he found signs of ongoing construction work.

It took him a while to find the address of the land settlement society that owned the building. He had to intimidate three clerks to get some information. His conscience not stopping him there either.

Finally, he tracked down the concierge of Tony's building. He had met him before on a few occasions. He was an elderly man, probably due for retirement a decade ago, called Buddy. Buddy was a man, who obviously liked the joys of life, and carried those on his hips. He loved to share a story, but wasn't by far as entertaining as Ducky.

Gibbs decided to go with bribery and brought doughnuts.

"You're Tony's boss, aren't you? With the FBI right?" Buddy said while dropping the filling of the jelly doughnut on his overall.

"We're with NCIS. Naval Criminal Investigative Service."

"Ahh… sure, sure! So that's the same, is it?"

"No it isn't." Gibbs was sure that DiNozzo had had that special conversation a couple of times before. Well, they got that one often, the agency wasn't as well known as their good work deserved. He would make sure to annoy Fornell on the next occasion a little more than necessary to make up for this.

"So, how is Tony? Better, I hope?"

Gibbs grew suspicious at this new information. "Better, yeah! Can you tell me what really happened? You know he holds back on details."

Buddy's eyes lit up happily, finally having found someone who would listen to him voluntarily.

"Yeah, it was quite a tragedy. In 45 years never once have I seen something like that happen. The Mansons, they lived here since 20 years I think, nice people. Laverne, she was a real beauty in her time, had an adventurous strike, I think she was a nurse in Korea, best blueberry muffins I've ever had. Jimmy, was some sort of scientist, I think, he was a bit of a fruitcake, only thing he talked about were his books…" Buddy went on for a while about the elderly couple.

Awesome, now he is telling you the life story of everyone he's ever met! Gibbs willed down his temper and impatience.

"… 3 children, a couple of grandchildren. Really a tragedy! Tony tried to help, but it was too late. Gave us quite a scare himself, didn't he?"

Now, they were getting somewhere. Gibbs focused his attention again, but just nodded in agreement to encourage the other to elaborate.

"He got quite a load of the gas, as he was trying to get the Mansons out of there. Looked bad. Gave the paramedics some work, didn't breath right for a while. Is he out of the hospital yet? Sure thing, they took all the inhabitants to hospital. Everyone exposed to the gas, was quite a leak. The Miller's kids are still in. Could have ended worse. "

Now, Gibbs had a hard time not to scream out of frustration. Anger was boiling up inside of him. In all the blubbering of the old, fat man he had gotten the information he had searched for. This was serious. Even more serious than he had expected. That stupid, stubborn kid!

Buddy went on with his jabbering, while Gibbs tried to calm down again and reflected. There had been a gas leak. The Masons, Tony's next door neighbors, had died from the intoxication. Tony had liked the older couple, Gibbs knew that he had occasionally helped them, drove them to doctor's appointments and went shopping, when Mrs. Mason had broken her leg after falling over the cat of another neighbor. Tony had tried to save them and had probably inhaled a lot of the gas himself in doing so.

"Why, was the gas that deadly?" he interrupted Buddy with an absent minded question.

"Errr… some kind of chemical reaction with the pipes. House was built in the twenties; they used some kind of strange metal. There is a lot of foolery going on in construction, you know,…"

So, he had inhaled some toxic gas, had not been able to breath and had been taken to hospital.

Tony hated hospitals and he tended to avoid them at all costs. Even, at the cost of his own health. Gibbs had made that experience with a sprained ankle, a cracked rib and a gunshot wound. Panicking and running away from hospitals and doctors in general was a very unfortunate habit for someone who attracted trouble like Tony did. He had probably signed himself out AMA as soon as possible and came to work the next morning without telling anybody. Stupid!

"When will the work be done?" Gibbs asked.

"Will be a while, they will change all the pipes, but we should be able to get back in there tomorrow. It's been long enough, four days now. They put something in to neutralize the gas… "

Tony had not been able to get into his apartment, since the sleeping over at a women's house, the office and finally his car.

Stupid!

"I've got to go now!" without another word Gibbs headed back to his car.

"Thanks for the doughnuts!" Buddy shouted cheerily after him.

A/N: So this might be a little anit-climactic, but I added a little heroism for good measure. This story will now focus on how hard it is for Tony to accept help and what happens when he stays over at Gibbs' house for the first time.

Please review, constructive critisism and praise ;-) is greatly appreciated.