15

A long silence came trailing in the wake of his outburst, another one of those where the only thing he could hear was the sound of his own breathing, and the running commentary in the back of his mind which was currently suggesting that he might, possibly, be just a little unstable right now.

He'd certainly left all common sense behind somewhere. He was still right up in the other man's face, staring him out, waiting for he didn't know what. Hands balled into fists. Tension turning his shoulders to solid iron, and putting all his overwrought, nerves on full alert. Breathing a little too hard. Exertion? Maybe. Or maybe the air had run away and hidden. He wouldn't blame it. The atmosphere was charged so high he'd swear he could hear the crackling.

Gibbs response, when it came, dropped like a stone into the room.

"You want me to leave?"

"Do I…?" he tailed off into incredulity, then tried again. "I wanted you to leave hours ago, and you refused. You wanted to talk. So here I am, talking, and now you want out?"

"No!" It was a single word explosion, and he watched in fascination as Gibbs stopped hard and visibly reined himself back in before carrying on. He'd never seen that before. "I want to stay right here, and sort this out. What I asked was do you want me to leave? Because I don't think even I could be selfish enough to force my company down your throat if it's only going to make things worse than I already have."

Worse? Things could hurt worse? "You really think that's possible?" He considered the comment again, and impossibly, his temper rose higher. "You think I'm so close to the edge that you could push me over?"

If they hadn't been nose to nose, he'd have missed the flinch when he spat that you out. He was glad he didn't, smiling in satisfaction at the direct hit, and then wondering why the expression felt so foreign.

After a moment, Gibbs shook his head, and Tony was unsure whether it was a no, or an indication that the other man had no more idea what to do next than he did. He waited for the satisfaction at the possibility that he'd finally knocked him off balance, only to be blindsided by a wave of … of… emotional vertigo, for want of a better expression.

He took long enough regaining his balance that Gibbs got in first.

"I'm sorry."

That settled it. Definitely a parallel universe, and one where somewhere along the line he'd damaged his hearing, probably in that damn blast. "I beg your pardon?"

"I'm sorry."

"No, no. No. That's not right. You don't apologise. Ever. It's-"

"-A sign of weakness. Yeah. I'm thinking I can admit to one of those, this once."

"You can?"

That got him a bleak, bitter look that he had no idea what to do with.

"That comment to McGee… It was a joke, Tony. A stupid, badly thought through joke that backfired in spectacular fashion. I never thought you'd think I meant it."

"You never… oh, that is unbelievable! Why damn well say it in the first place?"

"Because I don't handle emotions very well. I got three ex-wives'll back that one up. Hell!" He watched as the other man pinched his brow, scrubbed a hand through his hair and took a long gulp of coffee. "By the time we got to you, every last one of us was about at the end of our tether. You'd been missing for hours, with God knows what happening to you, and we had nothing. Nothing."

The last word was almost an afterthought, an echo of loss and resignation muttered directly into the mug, but it resonated through the room as his boss lapsed into quiet again. Tony found himself caught between not wanting to hear another word, and needing to know every last detail. But before he could make up his mind to say stop or carry on, Gibbs picked back up again.

"When you rang in… when the line went dead…" He hesitated, stared hard at the coffee and clenched his jaw. "For a while there we all thought the only thing we'd find would be your corpse. If we were lucky."

He stopped again, just in time for that little voice to tell Tony that he should be feeling compassion, not a perverse pleasure in someone else's discomfort. He was still happily ignoring it.

"Then when we finally did find you, you were apparently handling the whole disaster better than any of the rest of us. That damn comment – I don't know if I was trying to lighten the mood, or pay you back for bouncing back like nothing had happened when we'd all been scared out of our minds. Never got that it was an act."

"Didn't work so well, whatever it was." He could hear his own voice, the clipped delivery, the icicles hanging off every syllable, and knew it well. He hated himself for having that voice in him somewhere.

"You pushed me into saying something I didn't want to say. I pushed back." He paused. "You can see where I get the divorces from."

"Yeah. I bet the whole 'pull the rug out from under 'em' went down a treat."

The conversation drifted back into nothing again. Gibbs had fixed the rapidly emptying mug with a fierce stare that would have had any suspect talking within thirty seconds, and Tony found himself with no inclination to do anything to ease the atmosphere. Eventually it was the older man who broke the standoff.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Since when did you wait for permission?"

He wasn't even surprised when Gibbs ignored the dig, instead pressing on with a characteristic determination to get what he wanted. "If I hadn't said that, would things have gotten this bad?"

Damn. That was a question that deserved a request for permission. He thought about it for a while, but it didn't help at all.

"I don't know. Maybe not."

"Would you still be leaving?"

"I… Possibly. Or not. I honestly don't know." And it wasn't a kindness. He'd thought he was thinking clearly all along, but tonight had been one eye opener after another, and he really wasn't sure of anything anymore, let alone what he might have done three weeks ago if door A hadn't slammed in his face.

He just knew that he was tired, and lost, and didn't want to run anymore. But he didn't know how to stop, or where to find safety.

Letting loose at Gibbs had felt incredibly good, but it carried its own price. Because while every word he'd said had been true, it wasn't the full story. He was still scared, and lonely, and utterly ashamed of feeling either when he should have left that kind of weakness behind years ago

The world still didn't make sense. He still couldn't tell right from wrong. He still didn't know who he was – although he was pretty certain he didn't like himself too much, whoever he turned out to be.

And he still had nothing solid to hang on to except the threads of a Tony DiNozzo that he'd all but forgotten how to be.

"I…"

Gibbs' voice interrupted his ruminations but the sentence died off. Tony watched the seconds change on the clock, idly wondering if the thread would get picked up again if he waited long enough.

"I don't know how to do this. What to say. How to…" It faded out again, and he offered no response, content to watch him flounder. "I screwed up. I let you down. I'm sorry."

Tony looked up again, and met those eyes, and this time there was nothing hidden. He found himself taken aback by the sheer depth of the pain and regret he could see there.

He knew that look. He should. It kept staring at him in mirrors, when he forgot he shouldn't catch his own eye.

And suddenly, things snapped into clarity. He was in control of this, not Gibbs. He had a choice. He could make it all better.

…Or he could make it worse. Payback. Vengeance. He could show the other man exactly how it felt, in glorious detail. The thought was incredibly tempting. Why shouldn't he get a share? Everyone had a breaking point, right? Odds were he'd never see Gibbs closer to his, and he could show him the way.

"Did I cause this?"

It was a wretched, terrible, honest question, and he knew without asking that Gibbs would wait forever for an answer. Knew he'd accept whatever Tony said at face value. Trusted him to tell the truth, regardless of its effect. Would let him say nothing, and leave him hanging, without another word.

Trust is no more than another weapon. Never let anybody get close enough to use it against you.

Something inside shifted, and twisted, and settled.

He blinked once, and shook his head, slowly. "No." And that, that was his own voice.

Gibbs let out a long, slow breath, nodded once, and wearily sank his head back into his hands.

Not gonna be that easy boss. You wanted an answer? Have the full one.

"No. You didn't cause it. You just amplified it. You… you shoved me in a room alone with it, and locked the door, and left me to it."

The top of the head bobbed, and the voice, shorn of all its irascibility and left forlorn and oddly fragile, floated out. "I'm sorry."

"I know."