A/N: Previous chapter warning about Dead Air should be considered to still be in force. Tony might be done talking about the Royal Woods incident but Bishop's just getting started.

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Serieux Part 2

Chapter 7 Analyse This

Tony felt gutted, guilty and disloyal but he also felt an overwhelming sense of relief in finally warning Bishop. He could leave, knowing that he'd warned her and she would be on her guard now. He still wasn't completely sure if he'd finally decided to reveal the truth on the dreaded comms incident because he was so pissed off with Gibbs and Tim but ultimately it didn't matter what prompted him to.

At the end of the day it was the right thing to do and now it was time to go back upstairs and face the bear. Preparing to stand and head back to the bull pen he smiled at Bishop thinking that he could put this whole distasteful business behind him now and move on.

Of course, he really should have known better. Actually he did know better – he knew Bishop a whole lot better than that. He'd just stupidly hoped to get away with just the absolute minimum of what he'd already revealed.

However, Eleanor Bishop had been an NSA intelligence analyst prior to becoming a part of NCIS' major case response team. Information was like oxygen to the probie…no a more appropriate analogy was that it was like fine dining to a gastronome – she wanted to taste it, to chew it, to savour it slowly and appreciate it for as long as she could. She was never going to let it go – what had been discussed to this point was just the appetiser before the main course.

Of course, he'd just finished building Probish up and exhorting her to 'be herself' so it was disingenuous to really expect she would just leave it alone and accept the bare bones carcass he'd offered up. Even though that was his preferred option, she was never going to let him get away with it, even though he'd give it a red hot shot because, he was a guy. And as a guy he hated talking about his feelings - he'd already shared far too much of his emotions as it was.

Glaring at him as he attempted to rise, she remained seated and her expression dared him to try to brush the topic aside or run off. Reluctantly settling his butt back in the cheap and nasty plastic moulded orange seats typically found in government buildings, Tony grimaced in anticipatory dislike of the rehashing that he was sure was about to ensue.

"So why didn't you report them?" Ellie demanded of him, her fresh-faced idealism on a par with her officious regard for rules and regulations which was so typical of a rookie agent.

He sighed in defeat and was silent as he tried to think about how to explain to her when he couldn't explain why to himself.

"It happened not long after Ziva had attacked me because I killed her boyfriend – in self-defence I hasten to add - but she'd accused me of murdering him because I was jealous. So I was very conscious of how tenuous our working relationship had become – how little if any trust she had in me." He knew it sounded totally lame but if you hadn't lived through it, it was hard to comprehend how it was back then.

He picked up the juice bottle he'd purchased at the cafeteria and began peeling back the label, feeling a compulsion to destroy something. Tony was recalling the whole Rivkin fiasco: Ziva's deceit, her accusations, Vance's alacrity to throw him to the wolves, Eli David's torture – the total farce of the deputy director of mossad and Ziva's father trying to force a false confession out of him. And Gibbs…Gibbs standing by and letting it all happen to him despite him ordering his 2IC to stay on Ziva's tail over her dealings with Rivkin and her lying. He just let him wear all the shit.

Tony also thought about learning that Ziva had been passing classified data and how after they rescued her butt from Somalia she had the balls to assume she could waltz back into NCIS as if nothing happened. Then again that was pretty much what had happened though and probably why the mess with the Royal Woods case came to pass.

He thought about how Gibbs had welcomed her back with open arms, in spite of her lies and spying. Such a very different tale from the treatment dished out to Tony by Gibbs this past year when he returned from taking care of 'The Calling', but then, there had always been one rule for everyone else on the team and another for him.

Perhaps he should have tried passing classified intel to a foreign ally and then maybe Gibbs would have welcomed him back from Shanghai with open arms too. Remembering how he'd been publicly lambasted by Gibbs in the bull pen a few weeks ago about his identity being stolen by a professional identity operation versus the four or was it five times Tim endured ID theft or loss of his creds and there'd been no Gibbs blowback, he guessed not. Gibbs definitely seemed to have one set of standards for everyone else on the team – Jethro included – and a much higher set of expectations for him.

It only took him 15 years to understand no matter what he did, Gibbs would just keep raising the bar so he never reached it. Never accuse him of being the sharpest knife in the block.

Looking at Bishop sitting with a sceptical expression on her youthful features…waiting, she looked far from convinced by his reasoning. He didn't blame her – he still didn't understand it himself after years of sleepless nights. He sighed as he tried to explain that whole Rivkin debacle to someone who wasn't there – who didn't live through the whole situation.

"Ziva ended up as a prisoner in a terrorist camp in Somalia for several months because I killed her Mossad boyfriend, so she was his replacement on the assignment. Long story short, we thought she was dead and I felt guilty, even though she lied to us and concealed several murders and other crimes her boyfriend committed while she was secretly handling him.

"Turned out she wasn't dead after all, so we saved her ass and she'd only just re-joined the team when the Military at Home case occurred. Anyway, Gibbs regarded her as a surrogate daughter. He was teaching her to play baseball."

Not entirely sure what that non-sequitur had to do with the price of fish, he remembered her fake move, falling on top of him when the bomb went off. It was a move she had used before – what was it standard seduction 101 in Mossad Officer Training? He was also convinced that she had pulled it because Gibbs was present and that its purpose wasn't just to convince her father-figure that she was the dutiful daughter.

Subtly, she was also sending a message to Gibbs and the rest of the world saying that he was a damsel in distress who needed saving - that he was useless and unprofessional, deadwood as opposed to a competent agent who, if told to drop, was trained to respond instantly. She meant it as a slur on his abilities and training and he'd taken it as such. He knew it was a snapshot, along with her switching off his comms of how she really felt about him after Rivkin – that she'd still blamed him for the whole mess.

"I guess… I didn't want to be responsible for breaking up the team a second time… so I kept quiet." Tony explained to his team mate, reluctantly.

Ellie stared at him, her eyes narrowing as she considered what little she'd been told, looking as if she was going to comment further before pursing her lips. After several moments of contemplation, she responded. "So what was Tim's excuse?"

"Eh…what?" Tony replied, caught off balance by Bishop's question.

"So, say just for the sake of argument that I accept that really crappy excuse for Ziva switching off the radio when she was supposed to be watching your back or even if she was just joking about it. What possible excuse did McGee have for doing it?

Seeing his shell shocked look, she clarified her meaning. "Did you kill his girlfriend? Did he spend time in a Somali terrorist training camp, too? Was he also Gibbs surrogate daughter?"

She noticed his deer in the headlights mien and harrumphed irritably.

"C'mon, Tony, what possible reason was there for him to earn a free pass for not doing his job? I know I'm still a probie, but even I know that there is no excuse for what he did…what they BOTH did."

Staring at Tony who was looking shattered she pressed him, since he remained mute.

"If Gibbs assigned you two agents as backup, then it must have been because his risk-analysis of the task meant that if it went bad, then you'd need both of them to help you deal with the threat. When McGee went undercover with the homeless people in DC, he only sent you to watch Tim's six, not two agents, so obviously the risk analysis was that the homeless undercover operation wasn't considered as dangerous."

Bishop noted he was ashen-faced. She could see this breach of protocol, the betrayal of trust had him all tied up in knots and even after all this time he wasn't able to be rational about it.

"But you already know all that because you've been team lead before, Tony." She stated neutrally. "So why did you give him a free pass for breaking Gibbs' Rule # 1, not to mention agency and law enforcement procedure. What would possess you to do it?"

Tony sighed deeply. "McGee thinks I picked on him - that I'm threatened by him because he's a genius and I'm just a dumb jock. Plus, he thinks I told people he was gay because I was threatened that him, and he never really got over being demoted as SFA when Gibbs came back from retirement."

He pulled a face, remembering how Gibbs return had thrown their fledgling team dynamic, as shaky as it had been, into total chaos. He should have accepted that promotion to Rota that Shepard offered him – he'd have never ended up breaking Jeanne's heart for one thing.

"He also resents me because he thinks I had everything handed to me on a silver platter. He might be my friend but he also begrudges me for all that stuff and more. Probably thinks I used my wealth to buy a degree and a career, including the SFA job."

"Okay, so did you tell people he's gay?

"Thank-you for actually bothering to ask first, Bish - everyone just assumes. Of course I didn't. First off, there's nothing wrong with being gay. Have you seen me give gay or lesbian agents like Ned a hard time because of their sexual orientation?

"More importantly, a decade ago in law enforcement, that was something you didn't tell people about your partner, especially a green probie like Tim. Even if an agent was gay, it would have been a really dangerous thing to do, possibly even handing them a death warrant. Back then, homophobia was, and still is to some extent, alive and well in PDs and federal agencies."

"So why would Tim believe you did it?" Bishop asked.

"Because another agent on our team, Cate Todd told him that I did, and he believed her."

"Why would she do that? That's a horrible thing to do!"

Tony looked genuinely mystified and shook his head. "Honestly Ellie, I'm not sure why. She was a Catholic profiler with a thing about what she'd call aberrant sexuality. Disapproved strongly of it, but seemed to be obsessed with it at the same time – ya know? Once on a case, I kissed a suspect to put her off the track after she caught me snooping in her mailbox. We were watching her after we lost an agent in a horrific killing and found a photo of her on his camera."

Tony still felt ill remembering how they'd found Chris Pacci in the lift, eviscerated. Seeing the gentle man like that was all kinds of wrong. Shaking off the gruesome image, he continued with his account.

"Turned out the woman in the photo – the one I kissed, killed our agent, who, by the by, was a friend of mine. What we didn't know, aside from her being the killer, was that she was undergoing transgender reassignment."

I'm sorry for your loss," Ellie commiserated softly.

Tony nodded. "Chris was a nice guy. So Cate wouldn't stop taunting me about kissing a guy - thought it was hilarious. Never stopped to think I felt sick to my stomach for kissing (even if it was for show) the person who murdered Chris.

"Then there was another time she and Abby photo-shopped a picture of two leather clad gays guys, with my head into the picture. If that fake picture had gotten into the wrong hands, my career would have been over."

"I don't understand. Why would Tim take her word over yours, knowing what she was like?"

Tony stared at Ellie benevolently. "Cate was our partner. Why did you believe that I was responsible for Tim's poison ivy, Ellie?"

"Touché. I'm sorry. I believed him without asking questions or getting proof and I'm supposed to be an investigator. Okay… what's with the whole lap of luxury thing…so what?"

"I think he really believes money made my life cushy, that Senior bought my way into college and I didn't earn my position – that it should have gone to him. Maybe he encountered rich entitled jerks at college who bought their way into a degree or he thought I had a charmed childhood." Tony frowned contemplatively before flashing her a wounded look.

"You guys see Senior as this delightful, urbane, older guy but the truth is I grew up with a drunk who disowned his son when he was twelve years old. A man who took his 12-year-old son to Hawaii and went home without him. The bill for room service I racked up was what tipped him off he'd forgotten me.

"I put myself through college and the police academy, plus, I earned every job on the force and NCIS on my own merits. Honestly…my mother abused alcohol too and I had a pretty shitty childhood, despite growing up in the lap of luxury."

Okay so it was Tony DiNozzo's shitty childhood he was talking about, but all true - he was even minimising a lot of crap. And Sirius Orion Black was raised by psychopaths, rich pureblood psychopaths, but psychopaths nevertheless who'd ensured he'd had a crappy childhood, too.

Allowing his vulnerability to surface momentarily, he shared a deeply private yearning. "I'd gladly have swapped with him, even with Tim having to move around to different Navy bases as a Navy brat on a regular basis, and with a father who was cold and critical. He still had a mother, a sister and a grandmother who loved and told him so and assured him he mattered – that he wasn't a mistake or an aberration."

He smiled cynically. "It sounds trite but money can't buy happiness, love or security."

And wasn't that the bitter truth for Tony DiNozzo and Sirius Black. He'd have killed to have been part of a loving family like the McGee's. Admiral McGee made Senior and his own father, Orion Black look like Father Knows Best by comparison. By his own admission, Tim admitted his father had bought him a fancy car when he turned sixteen and he'd paid to put him through two degrees at top of the line colleges. His own father wanted him to take the dark mark as he approached his majority, a car even from a domineering and cold paternal figure sounded pretty awesome by comparison. And DiNozzo had been forced to face the fact that he had no one to be there for him when he was still a kid.

Ellie obviously realised he was done talking about the subject so she decided to move on in her trawling for information.

"Oo-kay…so let's talk about picking on him because you felt threatened that he's so much smarter than you? What did that entail?"

Shrugging resignedly, he replied. "Well there's the McNicknames, snooping on his online games, pranks like supergluing his keyboard or hiding his self-help CDs, making him do the crap probie work, nicking his food a few times, teasing him about his dates, giving him orders…"

'So essentially he's angry with you for chiefly doing what everyone in law enforcement does, what he does to me or to a lesser degree what I do to him too? Not like he doesn't play pranks on you either or that Gibbs is above playing the odd practical joke if he's in the mood. Does he think that Gibbs makes jokes because he's threatened by Tim being a genius – give me a break!

Bishop frowned, folding her arms as she tried to inflict a steely eyed stare but failing miserably. "He used a trick coin on me to make sure I had to get into the septic tank to search it, instead of him. He admitted you'd pulled the same trick on him – so what, it wrong for you to do it to him but it's perfectly fine for him to pull the same prank on me?"

"Yeah but you're both smart – so it doesn't count."

Scowling at him severely, she smacked his hand, but only lightly. Clearly she hadn't been taking cues from Abby or Gibbs because neither held back.

"Don't do that. I don't need to snoop in your personnel file to know you have above average intelligence, Tony. I suspect you probably have an IQ analogous to, or close to Tim, Abby or me too." She folded her arms and pursed her lips as she regarded him contemplatively.

"As for the snooping – Tim's not exactly without sin on that score. He stuck his foot in it with Jake when he answered my phone and then opened his big mouth, telling him about my surprise anniversary trip. Plus, he stuck his nose in your business when he decided to tell Senior that you thought he was a con artist…"

"Yeah and that sucked, but to be fair though, I answered his call to his naked girlfriend." Tony replied, still much chagrined over the incident.

"Oh please! What did he expect? He's dumb enough to leave his phone lying out in plain sight when he's expecting her to call him for a booty call in the buff - while he's at work. He's only got himself to blame if someone answers it accidentally," she bristled and Tony decided that nude phone calls were a touchy subject with the newly divorced agent. "And anyway, what ever happened to no personal calls at work?"

Actually, it was a bit of a touchy subject for him too after his break up with Zoe and his two encounters with Jeanne. She might be married but even after all these years and the garbage surrounding their affair – the electricity was still there and he still loved her. Not that he'd ever tell her that – she was married now and he hoped she'd have a happy life.

Ellie interrupted his train of thought. "Besides, you didn't do any harm. Delilah reckons you did her a favour, that you made her feel sexy again because you responded to her - the woman and not the chair. And Tim was jealous, so as far as she was concerned, it was win-win."

Tony gaped at her, again with the deer in the headlight expression. He was having trouble following her logic but then women frequently left him scratching his head. He'd thought Wheels had been furious with him but apparently not. Go figure!

"Besides, Tim can be a real old gossip and a busybody – can anyone say Deep Six? And he was really shitty about you not telling him that Zoe and you were having trouble, plus remember how he whined like baby when he found out you knew about that cold case and he didn't," Bishop continued. "Not to mention he pries into my personal life if he can and teases me about my memory and food but that's different I suppose? We snooped into how you came to own your apartment which was hacking into a federal database, so isn't that a bit hypocritical to complain about your snooping on him?

Tony just raised his eyebrows.

"And what you've just described…pretty much SOP at the NSA, too. I had my fair share of hazing when I started out there. Pretty sure you encountered similar stuff at police departments too from what I've heard about cops? And you can't tell me you didn't get hazed when you joined NCIS?"

Tony tacitly acknowledged the truth of what she said.

"So why did he take a job where hazing, jokes and pranks are an entrenched part of the work culture, if he wasn't prepared to suck it up? Gallows humour and pranking is SOP in jobs that call on people to deal with depravity and evil on a daily basis." Ellie asked, puzzled and irritated.

Tony nodded; it was true. Cops, firefighters, forensic workers, emergency techs, doctors and nurses, medical examiners, even crime scene cleaners saw some horrific sights in the course of their work and also tended to possess puerile, sophomoric senses of humour and pranked each other relentlessly.

It was a common defence mechanism that helped them to not top themselves or burn out. It was also a fact of life that all of these groups also had easy access to the means to carry out a suicide attempt, so it wasn't that shocking that they had a much higher risk of dying at their own hand. Most people understood this truism but obviously not everyone. Some people didn't understand the hazing and practical jokes served a practical and very needed role as a relief valve – people like Tim who took it personally or assumed it was because he was a genius and should be excused.

"McGee joined NCIS to try to make his father proud because he suffered from seasickness and refused to join the navy. Plus, he was picked on at school and I think I came to embody all the bullies he'd encountered." Tony explained, shrugging.

"If he'd worked on a few different teams, like most normal agents do during their career, he would have realised, as you say, it's a rite of passage and everyone goes through it. He'd have learnt that hazing isn't personal and pranks help to relieve stress. But since he's only served on the one field team and was the probie for the majority of that time, with me as his immediate superior, he resents me."

"Point taken, I guess. But it still doesn't explain why he doesn't mind hazing me. Hypocritical much?" Ellie argued.

Feeling like he was already being far too disloyal to his partner, he refrained from acknowledging Bishop's line of reasoning or pointing out Tim had done his fair share of hazing Michelle Lee and also making Ziva do the crappy probie stuff when she was probationary. When he didn't comment, Ellie changed the subject again.

"But I don't understand - why take issue with you giving him orders? You were SFA back then weren't you? Of course you're going to be giving him orders as his immediate superior. He grew up on a military base as the son of an Admiral – how could he not understand about the chain of command?"

Tony stared at her for long seconds, his expressive eyes very carefully blank before finally responding in a monotone to hide his feelings. "Gibbs was a Marine gunnery sergeant, Bishop, and Ziva served her compulsory stint in the IDF before joining Mossad. They of all people understood the chain of command better than most, and yet all of them chose to ignore CoC when it came to following my orders. Obviously they deemed me unworthy of being Tim and Ziva's superior, which is probably why in retrospect, I chose not to report McGee. I think that I knew that he'd never switch off the radio on any other agent."

"Then they're idiots, if that's truly the case because you are a fine leader, Tony. And you'll make an outstanding director, even if I can't know which agency you will head up." She mock pouted at him momentarily, and then shot him a grin to let him know she was kidding, before she continued.

"Furthermore, I'm not convinced that you didn't report McGee and Ziva David because you truly believe that they'd never switch off the radio on another agent. If that was true, then you wouldn't have felt compelled to warn me before you left and more to the point there'd be no need to tie yourself up in knots, before telling me your deep dark secret."

She stared into the face of the man that she had learnt so much from in the first two years working on the team. Her immediate superior who'd brought her a BOLO cupcake, complete with lit candle to blow out after she'd issued her first be-on-the-lookout advisement. Such a sweet goof.

And then this past year, despite everything, Tony was still so kind to her. Notwithstanding how badly Gibbs had treated him and how she'd ignored him – partly because of follow-the-leader mentality and partly because Gibbs had taken her under his wing and he was a damned charismatic SOB. She remembered how DiNozzo looked out for her on Valentine's Day, which had been a really sucky day for her following her divorce and he'd made it bearable.

Both of them were silent – locked away inside their private thoughts. Finally, Ellie pulled herself out of her apathy.

"Tony, was the scuttlebutt true?" Ellie had always brushed off a particular piece of gossip, figuring like most watercooler chatter that it was ninety-nine point nine percent false, but now, after their heart-to-heart she wasn't so sure any longer…about anything. "I heard a rumour that not long before I joined the team. McGee complained about you bullying him to Gibbs during a case when he was absent and Gibbs made him the lead on the investigation."

She'd told herself when she first heard some of the other agents discussing it that it was patently ridiculous because Gibbs was a Marine and wouldn't ignore the chain-of-command. Aside from which, Tim was a seasoned agent so she didn't want to believe it was true - because he was her team mate. She looked up to him and Gibbs – along with Tony, they were her role models and she didn't want to think that they would do something so fundamentally outrageous.

Tony looked crushed and she felt a stab of pain. "Yeah," he said shortly.

"Why…what was his problem?"

"I told him to check out the Metro PD records of the three armed robberies that had occurred that month to see if we could find a connection to the armed robbery murder we were investigating and he objected to me giving him orders. Said that there was only two of us so I shouldn't be giving orders."

"So when Gibbs offered him point he turned it down because it was just the two of you, so there was no need to have someone in charge?" the former information analyst delved relentlessly. Tony just glared at her, wordlessly.

"Yeah, that's what I thought. So did he give you orders?" Ellie pursued him unremittingly, determined to parse out any shred of two-facedness with a feral enthusiasm as only someone who'd done it for a living could harness.

Tony felt like a bug under a microscope. It hit him suddenly that Ellie's unrelenting pursuit of information was reminiscent of Hermione on a tear for data. They both got off on information and he decided that it would be a nightmare if the pair were ever to buddy up to get to the truth.

"I guess so," he conceded reluctantly, feeling intensely disloyal.

"So his objection wasn't with having someone in charge; it was that he didn't want to follow orders. He had no objection though when it was him ordering you around. Pretty hypocritical of him.

She tapped her foot absentmindedly as she stared moodily at the remnants of her brownie before renewing her interrogation. "Why did Gibbs give Tim the lead?"

"Gee, why don't you ask me something simple, like what is the meaning of life, Eleanor!" He rolled his eyes in frustration. "I don't know why… maybe I did something to piss him off and he wanted to slap me down for some reason. Maybe he genuinely thought Tim's idea was a good one." Tony huffed, obviously irritated reliving the situation. "Maybe he was chronically constipated and needed an enema."

"So he thought your idea wasn't a good one?" she pressed him relentlessly.

"I really couldn't comment on that, Probish. Tim complained that I was throwing my weight around and not doing my job. The boss never bothered asking me for my side, just told us that McGee was going to take point. Irony was that McGee's assumption that the robbery was connected to previous ones and the algorithm he wanted to create to prove it, which Gibbs told him was great work, was actually a waste of time. The cases weren't connected at all – there was no armed robbery and Dawson was killed by the owner of the store who turned out to be a heroin dealer."

She looked crushed, a bit like someone had dared to kick her puppy. He knew the feeling. Again he was reminded of a young Hermione who had had her faith in magical authority figures shattered and now he'd destroyed Bishop's faith in her team too.

They were silent for several minutes and Tony hoped that they were done with this whole painful and unpleasant subject. He hoped he'd told her about the Military at Home incident for all the right reasons; because she needed to know about it to protect herself in the future, and not because of some burning desire to get revenge.

True he'd finally made up his mind this morning after learning that his best friend had blamed him for coming in contact with poison ivy back when he was the probie, but he'd been agonising about telling her and losing sleep for more than a week now. But he also knew just how insidious vengeance could be – how it could seduce and confound.

Just as he thought they'd talked the situation to death and it was time to be returning to the bull pen again, Bishop delivered a knock-out blow that left him reeling. He definitely hadn't anticipated this analysis of their little talk.

"Tony, you know what I think? I think that ultimately you decided not to report Tim and Ziva not because you didn't want to break up the team after Ziva accusations and time in captivity. I don't think you did it because you decided that McGee would never have done that to any other agent. I think that you didn't report it to Gibbs because you didn't believe he would listen to your side of the story."

"You expected him to side with Ziva and McGee and blame you, and you couldn't have coped if that had happened. It was easier to blame yourself than have him blame you, so you convinced yourself that you didn't need to report it. That was preferable to finding out you were right and Gibbs wouldn't support you – his senior field agent."

She grimaced, looking as if she was being forced to swallow poison. "Based on what you've told me today though; I think you might have been right. Despite it being against every protocol and procedure, Gibbs probably would have blamed you for what they did.

"Either because you were their direct supervisor, so you could, in theory, carry the can for their actions or you could on a normal team where the chain-of-command hadn't been hamstrung like it was here. Then again, based on how he's acted towards you this year, he'd probably have told you they never would have done it if they respected you. Ergo you weren't worthy of their respect or their protection, and so therefore the fault lay with you, not them."

Looking at his hangdog look, she added sotto voce, "Or him."

~o0o~

A little while later as he returned to the bull pen, Tony decided that women weren't from Venus – they were from somewhere much further away from Mars than that. At the very least, they hailed from Neptune or Pluto – if not from another universe entirely. He felt completely eviscerated, like he was a trout that had been gutted, filleted and grilled over an open flame. He hoped that Ellie was finally finished dissecting the situation because he felt absolutely drained.

If she'd been a guy, they'd had dealt with the situation with one tenth of the wordage that Bishop had insisted on, in wanting to know what had occurred. Probably over a beer, a few hands of poker and a slice of pizza

Hopefully, he could finally put the whole miserable business behind him now and focus on his future. He watched bemused as Fornell cross-examined Bishop on her 'protection detail.' The FBI agent demanded to know if she'd taste-tested everything which Tony had eaten or drunk in the cafeteria and it'd thrown her into a mild case of panic when she was forced to admit she hadn't.

Shaking his head at Tobias' Machiavellian streak, he never noticed Abby's stealthy approach until she slapped his cheek with a force that wouldn't shame has-been prize fighter desperate to finish his last fight on a high. The energy behind it literally left him with a loud ringing in his ears as the rest of the bull pen was initially shocked into silence.

Stomping her booted foot down hard on his own well shod foot, clad in his Salvatore Ferragamo Black Oxfords in suede and calfskin leather, she shrieked at Tony, "How could you do that to my Silver Fox after everything he's done for you, you…you ingrate, you. I can't believe you'd stab him in the back like that Mister!"