Warnings: Spoilers for "Deja Vu"

A/N: Follow up to the last tag. I plan on "righting" the ship in this verse soon. I'm so done with canon Gibbs lol. Oh and just so there's no confusion, Tony is not leaving in this verse, in fact I'm only writing tags to Season 13 up until "Loose Cannons", because at that point we would have reached "Slowly Fading Away" and that story seemed like the perfect backdrop to write a one-shot "righting the ship" between Tony and Gibbs.

"You're What?"

"What is that?" Leah asked, noticing that Tony was working on something on his laptop.

"My resignation letter," Tony replied, as if this was casual information; as if he wasn't making a huge, life changing decision without speaking to her.

Leah stopped what she was doing and stared at him. She wasn't even aware that her husband was thinking about leaving NCIS. What had happened while she was away in Florida? "Your resignation letter? Are you leaving NCIS?"

Tony sighed and leaned back in his chair. "Yes," he said, harshly. "I can't seem to right the ship with Gibbs and it's starting to have an effect on the rest of the team. Tim and Ellie are good agents, good people, they don't deserve that. And Tim's ready to be Gibbs' senior agent. I've taught him everything that I know, it's time that he put it to good use."

She wrestled the laptop away from him and closed it. Glaring at him, she tucked the computer underneath her arm. "Is your solution to run every time something gets hard? Life is hard, Tony! Work is hard! Relationships are hard! But running away isn't the answer."

He frowned at her. Yes, more often than not when things got tough, he ran. Tony figured he had toughed it out at NCIS for a long time, longer than most would expect him to be there. "I know running isn't the answer. But I thought you'd be happy if I resigned?"

"Only if you're happy," Leah said softly. "Would you be happy, Tony?"

"I... I don't know," Tony confessed, running his hands over his face for a second. "I'm good at what I do, Leah. I like what I do."

Leah put the computer back onto the table. "I think you know your answer then, honey."

Tony looked at the closed laptop. "If I resigned there wouldn't be such a huge risk that you'd be raising Jack alone."

"Is that what this is really all about? You're afraid of leaving me?"

"My father was absent my whole life, Leah. I don't want that to happen to Jack."

"Dying in the line of duty and just not being there are two different things, Tony."

He gently reached for her and pulled her onto his lap. Tony buried his face in her hair and sighed. If she asked him too, he would pack everything up that very second and follow her to the ends of the Earth.

She wasn't going to do that. Leah knew how much NCIS meant to him and she hated the thought her being the reason that he left. She could handle the dangers of his job if she just kept praying every night that Tony would always make it home safe.