Gibbs sat drinking bad coffee and wondering if he had time to wander away from the hospital cafeteria to find something that didn't taste like ground, roasted plastic. He stayed put, though, working on his second cup, because he didn't like the thought of Tony coming to find him and not being able to.
The last thing DiNozzo needed was to be abandoned. Again.
"This seat taken?"
Gibbs looked up in surprise at Marianne's red-rimmed eyes. He shook his head slowly, wondering what had happened.
She sat heavily, rubbing a hand over her face. "I messed that up," she confessed.
"Bad?" Gibbs asked, wanting to get up and go find Tony, make sure he was okay. He doubted he was, considering the pain on Marianne's face.
She nodded, staring down at her hands. "Really bad."
Gibbs just waited, unwilling to offer comfort to this stranger even though he had glimpsed hints of her strength upstairs. He figured his reserves needed to be conserved for Tony—he was certainly going to need them.
"Ever since he called to say he was coming, I told myself to watch what I said. I knew the last thing I should do is defend the man," she said, sighing. "I think he knew he was dying. He confessed an awful lot of misdeeds to me, shared all kinds of horrible memories. His guilt was like a living, breathing thing between us, and I would have left if I didn't know how important it was for him to get it out. But I just loved him too much to leave him."
"I'm glad at least one of them got it out," Gibbs couldn't help saying, feeling his anger rising again.
She flinched. "I know," she said simply. "And that's why I told myself not to defend him. And that I should just keep my mouth shut on the whole subject. I knew anything I said would be meaningless and empty coming from me. But now that he can't say it, I felt like someone should. I just want Anthony to know that his father did love him."
Gibbs didn't speak—not out of cruelty, because the woman obviously had wanted to do the right thing and that counted a lot for Gibbs, but because he wasn't sure what to say. He had no idea what Tony's thoughts were on that painful subject.
"How do I fix it?" she asked.
Gibbs raised an eyebrow. "You think I have an answer for that?"
She sighed. "I just… You're obviously close, and I…"
Gibbs watched her flail and knew she really did mean well. He frowned. "Listen, I've hurt him too," he said, the words "You'll do" echoing loudly in his head. "I know the best way for me to apologize. But I can't tell you what you should do."
She took a deep breath and stood. "Well, then," she said, shaking her head slightly. "I guess I'd better go figure it out."
She turned and left before she could even read the admiration on Gibbs' face.
Marianne ran into Tony just outside the cafeteria. She saw him regarding her with blank eyes and was startled by the lack of any emotion in them. She couldn't imagine he wasn't feeling something.
"Marianne," he said, his voice giving away nothing.
She almost flinched at the deadness in him. "Anthony, there you are," she said. She took a breath. "Listen. I'm truly sorry about everything I said to you. I know you're probably in hell right now, and the last thing you need is me making you feel worse."
His flat eyes met hers. "You don't have to apologize to me. You obviously love him."
She nodded, wishing he would be angry with her—or something. Anything but this blank emptiness. "I have for a long time now," she said. "But it still doesn't excuse my behavior."
"How long have you been together?" he asked, genuinely curious.
She looked guilty again. "Almost five years."
She watched him take that like a sucker punch before shoving his face behind a mask of casualness. No one should be able hide emotions that strong that well, that quickly. Oh, my dear Anthony, what did you do to this boy? As if I don't already know, she thought with a shudder.
Tony nodded. "Then I'm the one who should apologize. You know him better than I ever did. I shouldn't have come here. I wouldn't be welcome if he were awake anyway."
"Anthony, no," she said, watching him flick glances toward the hospital's exit. "He loved you."
"Really?" Tony scoffed, unable to hide the anger as efficiently as the pain. "Never mind. Now isn't the time to debate that. I'm glad he found you. And I'm glad you made him happy. No one ever stayed with him that long—not after my mother. I'm sorry, Marianne, for your loss."
He turned to leave, figuring he could just wait outside for Gibbs to find him. But her soft words stopped him.
"Please don't leave angry. I don't want to have to tell him I failed you too."
Tony was glad his back was to her so she wouldn't see the agony on his face. He wanted to turn around and lay into her. To scream into her face that he didn't owe her shit. That he didn't owe either of them a goddamned thing.
And he would have. If he didn't know exactly what she was doing. He had seen her perception upstairs in that horrible room.
She spoke again to his tensed back. "Please come back and let me try this again? Let me do this right? You don't have to come back tonight, but please. Just don't leave?"
Tony didn't speak. He couldn't.
He simply walked away.
Gibbs found him slumped on a bench outside, staring blankly at the big fountain in front of the building. He approached slowly, having no idea where Tony's head was at that moment. He sat beside his agent, not speaking for several long minutes while Tony's eyes seemed to be drowning in the spraying water.
"We used to come out here before it got bad," Tony said after a deep, shaky breath. "She hated hospitals with a passion. Made my dislike for them seem like nothing."
Gibbs suddenly realized just why DiNozzo hated hospitals so much, and he kicked himself for not realizing it sooner.
"And she could yell, too," Tony was saying, his voice soft and faraway. "She definitely made her displeasure known. So we would sneak out here every chance we got while she was still able, and then we'd get caught, she'd scream at the nurses and finally let me drag her back inside. Never him. Just me. It was December when I found her out here one night, shaking and crying so hard I thought she might break. I mean, I was shaking too because it's fucking cold here in December."
He stopped, wincing at the curse word. "Sorry, Boss," he said, but Gibbs just shrugged. Tony looked lost for a minute before continuing, his voice a low, pained lullaby. "I couldn't figure out why she was crying—or why she was out here when it was so… cold. She was getting really weak by then, and we hadn't been out here in a long time. I don't even know how she made it by herself. And that's when I realized that she knew. She knew she was never leaving this place."
Tony breathed deeply, trying to ease the aching knot in his chest. He didn't look away from the fountain. "He found us just in time to hear me tell her she should go home. I didn't say 'to die,' but we all knew that's what I meant. She smiled at me then and said she would like that. To see her piano one last time. To hear me play for her," Tony said, his voice breaking.
He felt Gibbs' hand settle on the back of his wrist, and the simple, gentle contact sent tears streaming down his face. He took a shuddering breath, ignored the tears, and continued. "He wouldn't let her, though. He actually said she belonged here. I couldn't understand it. I still don't. But he made her go inside, and he took me home with him that night. I should have known something was very, very wrong with that because I was practically living here by that point. The only times he ever made me come home were when he got jealous of the time we were spending together while he was at work. He didn't have to work then. He chose to, but that was somehow my fault."
Gibbs listened, wanting to tell him none of this was his fault. But he didn't. He just listened.
"That was the first time he ever hit me," Tony said, and Gibbs felt his free hand clench into a fist in reflexive anger. He forced himself to relax so he didn't break the spell. Tony obviously needed to get this out, and Gibbs damned sure wasn't going to scare him off from doing just that. "He punched me, a closed fist to the face, and then made me stay in my room for a week. I didn't really care that he'd hit me, but I was furious because he wouldn't let me leave the house until the bruises faded. I spent that whole week hating him so much it made me sick. I guess he wasn't really lying when he told her I was too sick to be with her. I just hated him so much for taking away a week that I could have had with her.
"She wrote me a letter every day that week, called me every night."
Gibbs took in Tony's soft smile at that warm memory and was hugely relieved that Tony had at least had the unconditional love of one parent, that he had known that kind of love once. Gibbs' relief faded when he realized that had probably just made it harder when she died and Tony was left with a selfish, uncaring bastard for a father. He realized Tony was just silently staring at the fountain, the tears having dried on his cheeks.
"I'm so sorry, Tony," was all Gibbs could come up with—and he kicked himself, not for breaking his stupid rule but for not having anything better to offer.
Tony finally turned and looked at him. Gibbs read shame and embarrassment and pain in his eyes before all emotion blinked out of them for good. "You kicking yourself for that offer yet?" he asked, looking away to viciously scrub at his tear-streaked face.
Gibbs almost sighed. "Seriously, DiNozzo?" he asked, exasperated. "You obviously need to get this out, and I'm glad you trust me enough to finally let me in. Is it easy hearing you spill your heart out like this? No, it's not. But nothing worth doing is ever easy. Get it out, Tony. Get it out and let it go. It's the only way. Trust me, I know."
Tony blinked in shock at his oblique reference to his lost family. There were so many things he could say to that, but he just said, "Thanks, Gibbs. For everything."
Gibbs just nodded, then asked, "So what's the plan? I saw Marianne and she said things didn't go so well between you two."
Tony flinched, feeling his guilt start to chew on him again. "I was my usual charming self," he said with a grimace. "I made her cry."
"The way she was beating herself up, I'd say she thought she deserved it," Gibbs said, glancing at Tony briefly.
"No one deserves that," Tony said softly. "Not at a time like this. Not when she obviously loves him. She's been with him for five years. Can you believe that?"
"No," Gibbs said truthfully, wondering how Tony felt about that. Gibbs found himself imaging happy holiday gatherings that could have been if the man dying up in that room hadn't been such a selfish son of a bitch. Gibbs knew that Tony never requested holidays off. In fact, he often volunteered to work them so his coworkers could be with their families.
"Can we go?" Tony asked suddenly, standing and looking around as if lost.
"Back to the District?" Gibbs asked as he stood.
Tony debated, thinking of Marianne's soft plea. He really didn't owe her anything. "You okay with staying one more day? I'm not sure I could live with myself leaving her like that."
Gibbs didn't miss that he said "her" and not "him." You're a good man, Anthony. "Sure," he said as they started back to the hotel. "I'll even buy you dinner. Wherever you want."