A/N: haha, back by popular demand...a second chapter to a one-shot that never was. Brought to you by the thoughtful actions of a poor deer that slammed into the driver's side of my car on the way home from work last night. Right now I'm waiting for the collision shop to come tow it away, so I seem to have some extra time on my hands. Sweet.
PS: a bit AU, as I seriously doubt Tony and Gibbs would ever lock horns like this in the series. Not beta'd, all boo boos are mine.
If Gibbs could have pried apart the elevator doors, he would have throttled his ex-Senior Field agent. God knew he was angry enough to do some damage to the guy, and it had been a long time coming. Who the hell did DiNozzo think he was, mouthing off to him like that in front of everyone?
Instead, he stood staring at the metal box, fists clenching and unclenching in unanswered rage.
What the hell does the kid know about justice, about retribution? He's a spineless jellyfish who won't even tell his old man to fuck off, or make his own subordinates respect him. He's never lost what we have, the way we have! Lives in a fucking fantasy movie world! Never would have cut it as a Marine. Weak bastard.
He stormed back to his desk, ignoring McGee and Ziva's still wide-eyed looks, slamming drawers as he emptied them of his few personal belongings.
"What the hell're you sitting there for, clean out your crap and get out of here, it's over, your work is done here."
"No one told us where to go, Boss...er, Gibbs." McGee stuttered, falling back into old habits under the sudden changes and harsh tension.
"Well no, McGee, you quit, no one's going to tell you jack shit except to get your ass out of the building."
"Uh, yeah, right. Sorry. Uh..."
"Jesus, McGee, you lose your backbone too, hangin' around DiNozzo?"
"N-no, sir. Er..Gibbs." McGee closed his eyes and sighed in resignation to his sudden backsliding into probiehood. He had seen Tony stand up to his boss before, but never in such a visceral way, and never with such heat and anger in his eyes, and it had shaken him, even after all these years. He wondered what it had done to Gibbs, but didn't dare really take a good look at the man for fear of being turned into a pillar of salt, or worse, disintegrated like an alien from Kirk's phaser beam.
"Then go do something constructive, go work for Morrow at Homeland Security, they're always looking for good agents."
"And I should go there also, Gibbs?" Ziva asked sadly.
"You go wherever you need to go, Ziver. You can probably find something with the CIA, or NSA."
"And Tony? He is to be tossed to the wolves for doing something totally distasteful to him under your orders?"
"DiNozzo can take care of himself, always has, always will."
"Perhaps. But he was helping me, Gibbs. And he was doing it for Jackie."
"Don't kid yourself, Ziva. He was doing it cause I told him to do it and he was my second. He was following orders. Just a job to him, you're giving him way too much credit for being that deep."
"But Gibbs, he -"
"Ziver, stop." the former agent demanded harshly as he slammed the last drawer. "You heard what he said. He was done here seven years ago and just didn't know enough to leave. I didn't know enough to boot him out on his sorry ass. Could've had Langer all this time, maybe he wouldn't have gotten killed."
There was no more conversation from either McGee or Ziva, shocked into dumb silence by Gibbs' blunt confession. They knew things had been different the last few years between Tony and their boss, but this was unknown territory. Both resisted the urge to question the man, to see if it was just anger and exhaustion talking, or his real feelings, and hurried to gather up their personal belongings and remove themselves from the oppressive atmosphere. McGee took one long, emotional look around the bullpen that he had called his second home, doubtful he would ever see it again, and headed for the stairs, avoiding taking the elevator with Ziva. It would be too much, the suddenness and sadness of leaving on top of Gibbs' and Tonys' near violent altercation. How had things gone so wrong so fast? It was all supposed to be okay, Vance had sanctioned it, Gibbs had spearheaded it, what the hell had happened?
He cursed himself for being so gullible as to believe that just because he had been on his boss's and the Director's side, he would naturally be on the winning side. Gibbs had skirted boundaries many times in the years McGee had worked for him, and always come out fairly unscathed. Now the team was no longer, and Gibbs was on his way to God knew where to pay the price for all of their actions. Once he got home and somewhat settled, McGee sat at his computer, staring at the on-line application for tech support at Homeland. Tony had warned him that he may not be happy with the consequences of getting involved with Ziva and Gibbs' manhunt, but he had flippantly snapped back to the man that being part of a team meant doing things for another team member that might not be easy or safe. DiNozzo had given him a strange look before grating out, "Well thanks for that novel bit of information, McGee, I'll be sure to add that to my little book of important things I learned from Timmy."
McGee had shrugged it off, albeit a bit huffily, being certain to get the last word in by snapping back and telling Tony that maybe he ought to think of someone other than Anthony DiNozzo for a change."
The look Tony gave him after that had chilled him. Something had hardened in his partner's eyes, and the flinty coldness of the green belied the heat behind them. McGee had nearly backed up, the way he used to when Gibbs threatened him, but the sudden change in DiNozzo's face passed as quickly as it came, and was replaced with an even more disconcerting blankness. As if the man had pushed a button and reset his brain. Now McGee knew otherwise. DiNozzo had reset his brain alright, but not back to the easy-going man Tim was normally used to. His sometimes friend and often rival had closed himself off and become just another person in the office, efficiently and effectively doing what was asked of him. If McGee had been able to read DiNozzo, really read him after all of those years of working so closely together, he would have seen the wheels and cogs moving in Tony's head that were the beginnings of the senior field agent's Plan A.
While McGee was staring dumbly at his computer screen, his ex-boss was at home, slamming cupboard doors and swearing out loud as he cleaned out anything that might spoil while he was away on his supposed 'suicide mission'. He was marginally calmed down from his bullpen melt down, but not enough to let things go, and certainly not enough to stop thinking of the way Tony had looked at him, and the words he had said. He had known all along that the whole vengeance scenario would go against his second's ingrained sense of justice, and it simultaneously made him proud and pissed him off, but mostly pissed. As many years and work days that he had spent with the younger man, and he still couldn't get the blinders off the kid. And what the hell did they actually have in common, anyways? At least McGee understood the military, had the Navy in his blood because of his old man Admiral.
He took what Gibbs told him at face value, and though sometimes he over-thought things, he accepted orders and instructions, knowing his place in the chain of command and always striving for a higher post. DiNozzo? Always getting in his shit about how to do his job. If the guy was so smart, he would have taken that Rota position Jenny offered him. Hell, if it weren't for DiNozzo, Jenny would still be..
'Enough of this shit.' Gibbs growled to himself. How long was he going to blame Tony for Jen's version of suicide by cop? And how long was he going to be ignorant to his own short-comings? Hell, the shit he had done in the name of justice could hardly be called short-comings, more like – going off half-cocked in a blind rage without thinking of the consequences. At the time it had seemed the right thing to do, the only thing to do.
And yet when they were done, Tony had always looked at him and treated him differently, with barely concealed disappointment and a hint of disgust. Each incidence of vigilante justice committed by Gibbs, or condoned and overlooked by him, had cost him more ground in his already shaky kinship with a man he once considered as close as blood, and now the worst of all sins had been committed. Gibbs had ordered DiNozzo to be part of the ill-fated revenge mission, telling himself that if he ordered Tony to participate, the younger agent could use following the chain of command in defense. Truth was, he knew that DiNozzo would die protecting Ziva no matter how wrong-headed he thought the mission was. Ziva would go with or without him, and probably talk a career-driven McGee into going with her, as she had obviously convinced him to help her with the cyber side of tracking down Bodnar.
"Shit." Gibbs swore out loud, loudly enough for it to echo through the old house. Since when had Tony become expendable? Since Jen Shepard's Frog hunting days? She had used him and then used him up, Vance had had no problem taking up where she had left off, and now he himself had sent a clearly unwilling agent on a wild-goose chase to keep safe a girl who had come to mean as much as a daughter to him, like Abby. His girls. And now...McGee was his only boy. Tony would run screaming from the city now that he had been given the blessing to do so, never being able to admit defeat again and quit on his own as he had from the police departments of his youth. He had admitted to Gibbs one night that he was too old to burn any more bridges, that one job was the same as the other anymore anyways.. "Different city, same shit." the kid had told him after his boss had found his way back from Mexico and made himself to home again in the bullpen. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for staying with Gibbs as long as he had.
Gibbs knew that once Tony had left the bullpen under such angry and hurtful circumstances, he was likely to never see the younger man again, and more likely to never know who, if anyone, was watching his six. Worse, he would leave with every reason to think he had yet again made the fatal mistake of allowing someone like Gibbs into his life, only to be told he wasn't good enough, wasn't deserving of that sort of relationship. Gibbs highly doubted DiNozzo would join up with Fornell, the man was too reminiscent of the former Marine, not to mention still attached at the hip as best friends due to the fact that no one else could stand them. And with what had happened with his old partner Danny Price, and now with Gibbs sanctioning and aiding Ziva's revenge mission only to find out from Tom Morrow that they had been hunting and killed the wrong man after all this time...it would be a wonder if Tony was willing ever again to join any sort of law enforcement agency.
Nothing Gibbs could say to his former second would make things any less FUBAR than they were. He had known that as soon he had met with Morrow the last time, realized how wrong he had been and how morally bankrupt he was becoming when it came to setting an example for his 'family'. Tony had tried to tell him, and he had conveniently ignored him, accusing him in his head of being too shallow to make hard choices.
Trouble was, Gibbs concluded, it wasn't that he and DiNozzo had too little in common to hold together a strong bond: it was just the opposite. They were too much alike, and Tony reminded Gibbs of the way he used to be before he let his current version of justice mess with his head. The combination of Marine training, Shannon and Kelly's deaths, too many sordid black op missions, and the guilt of wrecking three ex-wives, mixed up with a lot of bourbon and empty nights, had warped him, made him see in black and white areas that used to be gray. Only two sides to a coin, no matter how you flipped it. But Tony could still see a bigger picture, one with differing outcomes and consequences, and more importantly, he was still attuned to the quirks and weaknesses of human nature and how those consequences could hurt more people than just the target.
His SFA had been forced to suppress that trait the past few years, but it was never entirely buried, and Gibbs had learned to hate it when it got brought out. Tony was supposed to be Pinocchio, not Jimminy Crickett. Gibbs' oldest son, the one who did what he was told. Not the one who picked at his father's conscience until Gibbs punished the boy for having the temerity to call things as he saw them. That's why he and McGee got on so well. McGee had never once dared challenge the Admiral's authority, and Gibbs intrinsically knew it and used it against him, just as he used DiNozzo's innate need for recognition and one-upmanship against him to get what he wanted.
It had cost him his team, his job, his family. He had willingly taken the blame for the entire Bodnar mess, but he knew in truth that he was also to blame for the way he had come to think and do things over the years. Grabbing up his go bag, he locked the door behind him, not knowing if he would ever see the place again, and feeling a bit as if he didn't deserve to. Life had taught him to be hard, pragmatic. To get the job done at all costs and not think too deeply about it, no matter the collateral damage. He would have a lot of time now to consider exactly what those costs and damages were, and wonder if, by some chance he did come home, would there be anything or anyone left to come home to.