Tony released the small body, and with the boy no longer alive to cling to him, Kevin fell to the patio at about the same time as his "Daddy."
Which was about the same time Gibbs threw open the French doors hard enough to shatter the glass. The sound was deafening in this cold dead of night, but Gibbs noticed Tony didn't even flinch as he slumped against the bench. He ran to his agent, shuddering hard and forcing aside his own devastation as he stepped over the child's dead body because he knew Kevin was beyond help. Like so many children lost to senseless violence every day.
But Gibbs could still help the living.
In fact, he and his team spent their lives doing just that.
Gibbs ran warm hands over his agent's chilled body, starting with his bloody face and neck. He found a small gash at the left side of his throat, but he didn't know if it was from the bullet or a bone fragment. The bleeding was light so Gibbs moved on, reaching with what he realized were shaking hands under Tony's jacket, sliding his hand between the vest and his agent's skin to search for wounds, and then running those hands down each of Tony's arms.
He couldn't find any other physical injury so he took Tony's bloody face in his hands.
"Tony," he said, loudly and firmly. "Look at me."
But the green eyes staring back at him were glazed.
"Talk to me, DiNozzo," Gibbs ordered, growing more concerned by the second.
"I'll get the medics," he heard Haywood say from somewhere off to his right.
"Tony," Gibbs said again, practically shouting in his face and getting nothing in return. "Come on, kid," he said, as close to pleading as he had ever come with DiNozzo. He pulled a hand back from Tony's cheek and slapped him lightly, searching vacant green eyes for some sign of his friend.
"Harder," one of the EMTs said as he crunched over broken glass.
Gibbs gave the man a look.
The EMT shook his head. "I know, it's not SOP," he said, "but I've seen it work enough times that it's worth a try. Is he breathing?"
"Barely," Gibbs answered, wanting to look away as he drew back and slapped Tony hard across the face.
It worked.
Tony blinked twice and drew a deep, shuddery breath, the panic flooding his eyes making Gibbs brace to get hit back. But Tony just sat there, gasping with hitched breaths that Gibbs couldn't tell were pain or shock.
"Let's get him inside," the medic said, sharing a look with Gibbs that read loud and clear: And away from all this. But they both knew: Escaping or ignoring it wouldn't make it all go away.
Gibbs slid under Tony's right side and waited for the EMT to move to his left. They nodded and hoisted the agent up, letting him hang like a broken marionette between them as they moved him inside to the warmth of the house that would never again be a home. At least not to the people left outside.
They stepped into the kitchen and the warm air was like a slap in the face after the biting cold outside.
It worked better than Gibbs' slap.
Tony's eyes blinked rapidly and he shrugged out of the men's grips on him in one sharp movement. Gibbs watched him reach up with a shaking hand to swipe at the blood on his face, and it made him feel sick, memories of Kate's blood on that same pale cheek assaulting his mind. He was suddenly glad he had called out only half the team—and he wished he had been able to spare them all. Gibbs moved closer, hesitating only slightly upon recognizing the look in Tony's previously shell-shocked eyes.
It was rage.
DiNozzo lowered the hand and looked at Gibbs and the medic as if just noticing them.
"What the fuck?" he spat, those furious eyes going to the door and making Gibbs wonder if Tony's overwhelmed brain even remembered that Harris had killed himself already. "How the fuck could he do that?"
None of the several spectators had an answer for him, and Gibbs knew their presence wasn't going to help Tony. Honestly, he wasn't sure he could help his agent, but he also knew he had to try. So he reached out as DiNozzo brushed past him—maybe to go try to interrogate a corpse—and grabbed Tony by the arm, half-expecting again to get hit.
"It's over, DiNozzo," Gibbs said, looking straight into those glowing green eyes. His voice was quiet but firm, his grip loose but ultimately inescapable.
Tony wasn't going anywhere—wasn't leaving Gibbs' sight until he was sure his agent was as okay as anyone could be after a night like this.
The fury hadn't lessened, and Gibbs suddenly found himself the target of DiNozzo's rage.
He mentally shrugged. So be it.
"Hit me, Tony," Gibbs said softly, hoping he wouldn't. Gibbs hadn't been lying when he said DiNozzo was a hell of a brawler. "If that's what you need to do," he continued steadily, eyes locked with his agent's, "then hit me. I won't hit you back."
DiNozzo debated while Gibbs braced.
But Tony just pulled out of his boss's grasp and stalked out of the house, leaving behind a scene that would never leave him.
Gibbs followed Tony outside, expecting a fight and surprised to end up watching helplessly as his agent slumped down onto the wide brick front steps. The multicolored Christmas lights wrapped around the banisters twinkled obscenely in the frosty night air, and Gibbs stood as frozen as the puddles in the driveway because he had no idea what to do, what to say. A raging DiNozzo he could deal with; he wasn't sure what to do with a broken one. He had no idea if Tony would accept whatever comfort he could manage to offer. He thought briefly about slipping back into work mode and barking orders. He thought longer about dragging Tony to a hospital for a chest x-ray.
But when he reached the bottom of the stairs and looked into blank green eyes that he had expected to be seething, all words left him. He simply stared back, waiting for something, anything.
After a long while of watching DiNozzo shake in his thin NCIS windbreaker, Gibbs started to shrug out of his heavy wool coat, asking an unnecessary, "Cold?"
But Tony shook his head and clamped his mouth shut, effectively muting the chattering of his teeth.
Gibbs rolled his eyes and finished removing his coat, holding it out and finally moving to drape it around DiNozzo's trembling body.
"I'm fine," Tony said, standing before Gibbs could complete the movement. "Don't," he rasped, his hoarseness a reminder that he had invested three hours' worth of words in resolving this peacefully.
Gibbs watched him retreat to lean against the opposite railing. "Did everything you could," Gibbs said softly, sympathy in his eyes.
Those blank eyes flashed with anger. "Really?" Tony snapped out, his tone as biting as the frigid air swirling around them. "Go tell Kevin that."
Gibbs just stood there, suppressing his instant retort and trying to remember the last time he'd had to watch his words around Tony.
"Oh, right," Tony said, the twisted expression on his face far too pained to be called a smile—no matter how hard he was trying to fake it. "He's dead."
"Yeah, DiNozzo," Gibbs agreed softly. "He is. Because Harris shot him, Tony, not because of anything you did. It was not your fault."
Tony's eyes closed and his breathing picked up, making Gibbs glance toward the house where he had last seen that medic. He found the man standing just inside the entryway, watching them through narrow vertical panes of glass flanking the door. The concern on the medic's face made Gibbs wonder if he should have been more thorough in his examination of his injured agent—but really, he had been looking for bullet holes, not broken bones.
He stepped forward, holding out the coat again. "Take it. It's freezing out here."
"I'm not cold," Tony said stubbornly.
Gibbs swallowed a sigh. "That's called shock," he said, eyeing Tony critically and noting his increased shaking. "Let me take you to a hospital?"
Tony was already shaking his head. "I'm fine."
Gibbs' patience was running thin and he just barely kept himself from shouting. "You got shot, DiNozzo," he said. He took a breath, counted to five and continued more calmly, "Need to make sure you didn't break anything."
"Vest caught it," Tony said, shrugging dismissively. "Nothing's broken."
Gibbs gave up on that fight, knowing the only way he was getting DiNozzo into an ER would be cuffing and dragging him. It wasn't worth upsetting Tony over a potentially busted rib when he was this close to breaking anyway.
Tony glanced toward the house and then back at his car, parked crookedly at the curb in his earlier haste—when there was still hope that this night wouldn't end in one of the many tragedies that plague this broken world. "You want my report tonight or can I get it to you tomorrow?" he asked stiffly, his eyes still longingly on the car.
Gibbs folded his jacket over his arm, knowing both Hell and the blood in both their veins would freeze over before Tony would accept it. He nodded at his own car, farther down the block. "Come on," he said, releasing a sigh as Tony shied away from the hand Gibbs slid under his elbow. "I'll take you home."
But DiNozzo just rolled his eyes. "I'm fine, Gibbs," he protested.
And Gibbs lost it. He got in his agent's face and yelled, "You got shot—close range in the damned chest, DiNozzo. Those vests aren't fail-proof, and you know it. Or if he'd aimed a foot higher, you'd be dead right now."
"But I'm not," Tony said, not backing down from his boss's fury. "I'm—"
Gibbs lowered his voice, but the anger—and the concern—were still there. "A little boy died in your arms," he said, not surprised when that made Tony look away. "A little boy that you did everything you could to save. And now his blood is on your cheek. And maybe you're still too stunned to be thinking of Kate's blood there, too, but I know it'll come. Put all that on top of taking a bullet that could easily have killed you, and I'm sorry, Tony, but I'm not sure if I want you to be fine."
Anguished green eyes met blazing blue ones for a long moment. And then Tony nodded and started walking toward Gibbs' car, settling into the passenger seat without a word. Gibbs followed, handing Tony a handkerchief before starting the engine and putting the car in gear. He had no idea why Tony had given in so suddenly, but he wasn't about to question it.
"Wait," Tony said, his eyes on the house.
Gibbs waited.
"Kev—" he choked on the name, took a breath and tried again. "Kevin's brothers. They're at a sleepover at a friend's house. Someone needs to tell them…"
Gibbs shook his head, knowing there was no way he was going to let Tony put himself through the agony of telling those boys their entire family was dead—by their father's own hand. "Metro will take care of it," he said, pulling his phone and making the calls before Tony could protest.
Toning down his breakneck driving out of consideration for his injured passenger, Gibbs waited until they were on the interstate to ask one more time, "Sure about the hospital?"
DiNozzo nodded, still looking out the window.
"You're gonna be hurting once you warm up." Gibbs cranked up the heat and turned the vents toward his chilled passenger.
"I don't care," Tony said. And then he winced—more likely from having let that slip than from the pain of his injury.
Gibbs turned stern eyes on him and said firmly, "You do not need to punish yourself for what happened tonight."
He paused and slid a sidelong glance at his stone-faced passenger. But Tony stayed stubbornly silent, and for a while, Gibbs just drove.
Then, not really expecting an answer, he asked anyway, "How bad's the pain?"
And he wasn't surprised when Tony stayed silent, green eyes glued to the window as a light snow began to fall over the District's deserted streets. Tony's quiet stillness was grating on Gibbs in a way he wouldn't have thought possible, so he threw out a question that demanded a response.
"Your place or mine?"
That there was no waggling of eyebrows or joke about sexual harassment in the workplace made Gibbs' concern flare all over again. In the past, no matter how upset Gibbs knew Tony was, his agent always tried for some attempt at humor. But Gibbs was glad he didn't try tonight: Gallows humor could get a cop through a lot, but Gibbs knew Tony would just hate himself for it later. For now, it was best to just let Tony be. So instead of repeating himself or demanding an answer, Gibbs just waited for Tony's soft words to come.
"I want to go home," he finally said.
The simple plea, spoken with such honesty and fragile hope, about broke Gibbs' heart—as if it weren't already beating brokenly, shattered in his chest but still managing to beat on. Gibbs didn't waste the time to wonder how life could go on after such loss. It just always did.
Gibbs swallowed hard. "Sure, Tony."