33 But if Leroy Jethro Gibbs were a sentimental man
Years ago, before he'd hired Tony DiNozzo, Gibbs had been told by Tobias Furnell that the FBI didn't hire cocky young men. They turned out disappointing. Furnell had conceded that there was the occasional wildcard, but there were too few to make them a good investment overall. Gibbs, who had once been a cocky young man himself and was somewhat offended, had been forced to agree with the statement.
He'd hired DiNozzo anyway.
Gibbs was never fooled by the act, and he'd always known there was more to Tony than the shiny, handsome exterior of the prototypical cocky young man. There were too many things that Tony never mentioned, and Tony generally didn't shy away from mentioning things. Gibbs had been intrigued by the fact that Tony would never give a straight answer about why he'd ended up in law enforcement, and he'd never doubted that this particular young man had a real desire to learn the job and do the job.
But the exterior was damned near perfect. It made Tony DiNozzo an amusing partner, watching him work his way through the female population and the suspects, flashing his quarterback's charm along with his badge, getting knocked off balance by a new and difficult job, only to right himself again. He had a wolfish vitality and an optimism that seemed indestructible. He overestimated himself routinely but kept getting better. He struggled with Rules 10 and 11, but any agent worth his salt did the same. Gibbs had thought that Tony would be the wildcard.
And then it went bad. Tony had gotten involved in Jenny Shepard's lunatic pursuit of René Benoit, getting himself entangled in hopeless love affair in the process. Then he'd had the bad luck to be a bystander at Jenny's willed death. After that he'd gone to pieces, slowly. There were flashes of what the cocky young man ought to have matured into—Somalia, particularly, where he had been both clever and brave in a production that only Cecil B. DiNozzo could have pulled off. But mostly it was decay, and Gibbs thought Tony's unrequited love for Ziva was just another sign that he was on an unstoppable slide. Gibbs had always thought highly of Ziva but he'd believed she was far too guarded to ever yield to any serious romantic impulse, particularly one for a man as directionless as Tony seemed. Gibbs had seen Ziva as yet another wall that Tony was battering himself against. Gibbs had begun to wonder when he'd be fishing Tony out of the Tidal Basin—or, worse, the Potomac.
Watching Tony crumble had been one of the hardest things in his career, second only to losing Kate Todd. Some of it had been guilt: Gibbs knew that, if he hadn't retired, Tony could never have gotten caught up with Jenny Shepard. Gibbs hadn't figured out what was going on until it was too late. And Gibbs, functional mute, had no idea how to stop the slide.
But there was more to it, though Gibbs isn't the sort to admit it to himself. Bad things weren't supposed to happen to Tony DiNozzo. He was supposed to be the wildcard, the cocky young man who would go through life without taking a serious blow. Hiring DiNozzo had been a kind of wager that an older, sadder, once-cocky young man had made, a wager that someone would get out of this life in one piece. It was a wager that Gibbs appeared to have lost. The loss and the waste angered and saddened him in ways he couldn't acknowledge, much less explain.
In the end, though, Tony had pulled himself together, and he'd done it the way Gibbs thought a man should—on his own. When Tony had announced that he was leaving in a week for Rota, Gibbs had made no effort to stop him. There had been no fond farewell. Gibbs isn't much for farewells anyway, as he's had too many of them, and he'd been afraid of saying something that would stop Tony from taking his best chance.
And Tony's turned out to be the wildcard after all. The sad man at the end of the squadroom got off his ass, snagged Ziva David, made himself the daddy of loving families at home and at work, and ended up running Leon Vance's precious Rota shuffle. Gibbs hasn't seen enough of Tony in these weeks to measure precisely how much of the old optimism remains, but a man that hangs onto a moving car that long knows he has an awful lot to live for.
Gibbs doesn't have much doubt about how Tony's future will play out. Ziva had seen Tony at his lowest and gone with him anyway. She won't give up on him now. Tony's children will grow up indulged and adored, late for school but not forgotten in hotel rooms or used as weapons. His young agents will learn to carry themselves and do a competent job, and will go out into the world remembering their first boss fondly. And as long as Vance is around, Tony won't end his career in Rota. The ever-coachable quarterback has a boss who will always play him to his strengths and won't misuse him. DiNozzo won't ever be director, and he shouldn't be, but someday he'll be pretending not to work in Naples or San Diego.
All this is deeply satisfying to Gibbs. But he's still a functional mute, and he no more wants to get all huggy with DiNozzo than he had with Stan Burley. DiNozzo doesn't just represent the cocky young man that Gibbs had once been. Tony is a particular phase in his life, his job. Gibbs had ten years under his belt when he hired Tony. He had given up his incredibly wrong-headed attempts to recreate his old domestic life and he'd accepted that his job was his life. And at that point Gibbs was confident—cocky, even—that he knew how to do the job better than just about anyone. He was confident too that he knew how to teach others to do the job as it's meant to be done. Tony belongs to a phase in his professional life that seems sharper than what came before it or what has come since. The investigations seemed more intricate and more important. The dangers seemed more pointed. The highpoints seemed higher. That phase is over.
That's not to say that he's ready for the retired list. Far from it. Gibbs knows that he, too, is still damned good at this job, and he is still damned good at teaching it, though after DiNozzo left he's hired good solid agents who learn the job and move on without making much of an impression. Still, a phase is over, and Rule 11 applies: when the job is over, go home.
And perhaps he is a little superstitious. Tony is the cocky young man who has matured into a good useful man and a happy one to boot. What's to be gained by going over old ground? Tony has succeeded mostly because of his own efforts, but there is always luck involved, and Gibbs has been visited in his life by some very bad luck. Another reason to leave Rota with all of this unsaid and to leave Tony to his new families.