11
He ran.
He paid no attention to directions, or surroundings, or anything outside his body. He just ran.
He ran until his legs felt weak, and his lungs were straining, and his vision faltered. And then he ran some more.
He left everything behind him, running until there was no Tony, and no anger, and no pain. Just the movement of the air and the sound of his feet.
And when he finally got to the point where his body couldn't run one more step he stopped, braced his hands on his knees, and heaved in lungfuls of air. There was silence, and it was bliss.
Two minutes. That was all he ever got. Two minutes, until he started thinking again. Until he started feeling again. Two minutes where he could stand tall and proud, where the future was limitless and the past didn't exist.
It passed too quickly, as it always did, and he wished he could run forever.
***
There was something inevitable about the fact that he'd run blind for God knows how long, only to wind up three blocks from St Mary Queen of Martyrs. Unsure as to what else to do, he started to walk the rest of the way.
He concentrated on the ache in his calves and the tightness in his chest in an effort to avoid thinking about what had just happened, or what came next. It was every bit as futile as he'd thought it would be.
At this rate, he'd have so many subjects he was trying to avoid that he'd never find space in there for anything useful.
He kept his head down as he walked, eyes firmly fixed on the ground. There weren't many people about at this hour, and those there were apparently had their own reasons to pay him no mind, much to his relief. He could do without people staring right now. He could do without people, full stop.
The walk to the church was familiar, but not in the slightest bit comforting for that. Familiar wasn't good. It was proof that he'd been here too long. He'd been busy, and content, and drifted past house and into home, past colleagues and into team. Things had been good, and he'd settled, instead of listening to his better instincts and cutting his losses before there was anything of import to count. He'd fooled himself into believing that he could balance everything indefinitely, when he should have been reminding himself that appearances were deceptive, and the good times wouldn't last.
He'd not felt like this when he left Peoria, or Philadelphia, or Baltimore – but they'd not been familiar. They had never been more than places, and he'd moved on each time with barely a backward glance. A grin, a wave, a good night out, and on to the next great thing. It had never hurt. There were never regrets. Nobody had come storming into his kitchen and told him that he was getting his life wrong.
So what had gone wrong in DC? What was it about this place that it wouldn't just stay a place, and meant that these people wouldn't remain just people?
He let himself in through the church gate and headed for the door on autopilot, only for reality to kick in after half a dozen steps. He stopped short, staring at his feet.
Was there really a place in a church for a man like him? If Gibbs hadn't said what he did, he would have… would have…
…done damage.
He didn't want to know what that felt like. He'd never wanted to learn that, or feel it, or know that the urge to destroy could be so thoroughly seductive. He couldn't be anybody he wanted to be and have that inside him. He would simply refuse to be around decent people, rather than allow it the chance to feed.
He'd run to the far side of the world before he'd willingly look inside that part of himself again.
Decision made, he turned away from the door, and headed across the grass, finding the old bench in the shadows by the fence, and settling down on it.
Close by, but on the outside. How apt.
He'd been one small, tiny step away from giving in to the anger. That was unforgivable. If Gibbs hadn't stopped him, it would have snapped, and the monster would have gotten out, and then there would be no hope at all, because there would never be an ok again.
Where was his control? He was better than that, surely? He had to be better than that, or else he wasn't who he thought he was, and he never had been. And where would that leave him? Who would that leave him?
No question. That would leave him a DiNozzo, in every sense of the word. Which was unacceptable.
He wanted to go inside, to sit in silence, surrounded by solid, unchanging stone and elegant beauty, but he knew now that he would never belong there, either; and he knew why. That streak of pure black had no place among the good, or even the aspiring. He was compromised. Spoiled.
He wanted to run again, and forget, but he knew that it wouldn't work, because his muscles could only take so much; and anyway, as soon as he stopped, he'd remember again, and be no better off than he was now.
He wanted to go home, but he didn't know where that was anymore.
He dropped his head into his hands, and wondered again how things had gotten this bad. It had all seemed so simple, once. He didn't fit here, so he'd move on. He'd done it before, effortlessly. So why not this time?
Because he'd let himself care, that was why not. Because he'd had enough of a taste of glorious possibility to keep him coming back, wanting more. He'd lost his toughness, somewhere along the way; that ability he'd always had, to keep the world at arms length. Instead he'd dropped his guard, and undermined his own defences. Never put him in charge of an army. He'd be a disaster.
He thought yet again about going into the church, knowing that he'd been able to find some measure of peace there before, but he still couldn't bring himself to do it. Leaving aside the fact that he didn't deserve the comfort in any case, he didn't think he could handle Father O'Reilly's gentle company right now. He was even less sure if he could allow that hand on his neck without losing another piece of himself, and he didn't have many left to bargain with.
The touch made his throat hurt, and his eyes ache, and he didn't trust himself not to throw it back off, probably with more aggression than was strictly necessary.
When had he learnt that touch was to be feared? He hadn't felt like that until recently, had he?
Had he?
Or had he felt like that all along, and just forgotten, like he'd apparently forgotten everything else that mattered?
He knew it was his own damn fault for shouting at her, but without Abby's hugs, it felt like such a long time since anybody had wanted to touch him. Anybody that wasn't Father O'Reilly, whose touch was sure, and firm, and never quite as comforting as it was meant to be. But that wasn't his problem – it was Tony's. Because there was nothing wrong with the touch; it was that the man it was laid on wasn't worthy.
And that one, brief touch from Gibbs, earlier, that he'd not seen coming, and had been needed, and hated, and way too much for him to handle.
Who would touch him now? Touch him? Nobody, that was who. And that was best for all concerned. He was tainted. And he couldn't allow that to spread to anyone else. Not for the sake of indulging his own weakness.
But he missed Abby and her hugs. It wasn't her fault. It was his, for not appreciating what he had when it was there.
You ungrateful little idiot! Now look what you did!
The fact that he only had himself to blame didn't stop him from wishing he could wake up tomorrow morning, and find the last three weeks had never happened. Then he'd still have Abby's hugs, and Kate's steadfast assurance, and McGee to tease and Ducky's chocolate bribery.
And Gibbs to learn from, and remind him what was right, and what was wrong, and which side of it he was supposed to be on.
It was a fantasy, no more, as he wasn't good enough to have any of them. He'd been born wrong, somehow, and in all these years had never managed to work out how to put himself right again.
And Gibbs knew, now. He'd seen it for himself. He knew what hid inside Tony, and there was no going back from that. On some level he'd known he wouldn't be able to hide it from him forever - that someday his boss would actually look, and then he'd see, and then it would be over.
In a way, it was a relief to have finally hit that line. It gave him something solid. He could position himself in relation to it. Measure the wrongness and the bad against people's reactions.
Reactions? Gibbs was going to kill him for losing it like that. He'd…
No. He wouldn't. Now Gibbs had seen that, there'd be no more hounding him. He'd wash his hands of him for sure. Was probably already on his way home, glad of the easy out.
He closed his eyes and buried his head in his hands, feeling closer to giving up than at any other point of the last three weeks. He didn't know how he was going to face him in the morning. Couldn't see where to find the reserves that would let him look the man in the eye and not recoil from the disgust and disappointment looking back at him.
Why hadn't he known better? Why hadn't he left before things could get to here?
Why on earth had he not had the common sense to step back and see what he was doing, realise that he liked these people, and get the hell out before he could drag them down with him?
Because he was born selfish, that's why. Just as his father had said. He'd wanted things he had no right to, and now he was paying for it, a hundred times over, in guilt, and doubt, and shame.