Author's Note: As much as I like Senior, both of Tony's parents are deceased in the world of this story. However, Jenny Shepard is alive and may be making an appearance soon.

Ducky called them "the children" sometimes, and now, more than ever, that's what they seemed to be. He and Gibbs were leaning back in the deck chairs watching as the four of them roamed about the backyard trying to catch fireflies in the fading evening light. Oh, three of them would claim that they were doing it for Tony, but they were enjoying themselves. Tim held an empty mayonnaise jar in his hands, and every bug they caught was carefully deposited inside. Earlier, Tony had watched with rapt fascination as Gibbs and made holes in the lid with his knife. "So they can breathe," Tony had explained to Ziva, Abby, and Tim.

"They're good with him," Gibbs observed not for the first time.

"Did you ever think they wouldn't be?"

"Wasn't really worried about McGee and Abby. He's had practice being a big brother, and Abby's still a big kid herself. But I wasn't sure about Ziva."

"She doesn't always handle people's weaknesses, does she?" Ducky surmised.

Gibbs shook his head. "Usually takes advantage of them."

Ducky was silent for a moment. "I was a bit worried about you at first."

"Me?" Gibbs tried to sound surprised, but he wasn't really. Hell, he'd been worried about himself - worried about the whole damn situation.

"Taking on Anthony is much like taking responsibility for a child," Ducky continued. "I was concerned that… paternal feelings might make you dwell upon thoughts of… Kelly."

Gibbs sighed and took another long pull on his beer. He couldn't deny Ducky's concerns. "You're getting a little too good at that psychological profiling stuff."

Ducky reached over and placed a hand on Gibbs' arm. "Tell me if I'm overstepping."

"No… you're not. But I'm all right. We're… all right." He smiled, watching Tony cup his hands carefully around the top of the jar as Tim helped him transfer his catch. "It is a bit like being a father again in kind of a weird, six-foot sort of way."

"He depends on you."

"I know that, Duck."

"And he loves you. Very much."

"I know that, too."

At that moment, Tony came running across the lawn, holding the jar in front of him. He fell to his knees in front of Gibbs. "Look, Boss, we caught 'em all."

Gibbs took the jar from his hands and balanced it on the arm of the chair.

"Well, not all of them, Tony," Abby said, sitting down on the edge of the deck behind him.

Tony twisted around to sit beside her. "Well, a whole lot of 'em we did catch," he persisted.

Gibbs reached out and ran his fingers over the back of Tony's head, carding gently through soft, brown hair. "Goes both ways, Duck."

Ducky smiled and patted the arm that was still beneath his hand. "I know, Jethro. I know."

~vVv~

Where they were now was a long way from where they'd been. And where they'd been was only a split second away from normal.

Tony had been driving, and Tim was riding shotgun when the truck forced them off the road. Tim walked away with a broken left arm, and Tony came out of a coma two weeks later with brain damage. During the next month, he had healed physically, except for a slight limp when he was tired, but mentally and emotionally he was about seven.

There were hospitals, his doctors said. Places where he could go that would take care of him, rehabilitate him. Gibbs remembered those conversations like they were trying to sell him on the six-million-dollar man project. They would make him stronger; only no one ever promised to make him better. And they could call them hospitals or centers or whatever the hell they wanted, but Gibbs knew they all spelled "institution." And he wasn't about to let Tony go there.

And so he took him home. Tony's parents were both deceased, and there wasn't really any family left, not close family. "We're the closest thing he's got," Ducky pronounced one afternoon while Tony was still in the hospital. "And I have a very large, very empty house now that Mother is gone."

"Mine's been empty for a long time, too, Duck," Gibbs simply stated. And so it was decided, for although Donald Mallard was everyone's beloved "Ducky," Leroy Jethro Gibbs was "Boss."

That was a month ago. Tony did go to a "centre" during the day; the fancy British spelling didn't totally change what it was, but he came home with Gibbs at night. And that did change Gibbs' perspective on Tony's rehabilitation. "Going to school," as Tony called it, was his job now, and on most days he seemed to enjoy it. Ducky said that in some ways Tony was lucky; his brain damage wasn't severe enough to leave him incapacitated, but it was enough that he didn't really remember his former life - thus, there was no depression to deal with, no awareness of what he'd lost. That awareness belonged only to those who loved him. And the sad irony wasn't lost on any of them. Tony, who had always been somewhat of a kid at heart, was now a child in almost every sense of the word.

And that made "Boss" pretty much synonymous with "Dad."

~vVv~