A/N: Yes bridgetlynn the story does deal with, among other things, Tony's apparent lobotomy. lol Thanks to everyone that reviewed, faved, followed etc. Although I can't access your reviews via the site atm they are still coming through, albeit it slowly into my email account so I can read them. And I know I've probably intrigued you with my classification combination, which sounds odd even to me. All will be revealed by the end of the story, I swear. Meanwhile, I really don't want to spoil the surprise.

Although I issued a warning at the beginning of the story, I am now giving a very specific one for this chapter. While the content of this chapter is all based on canon, TIVA fans will without doubt be grossly offended. I strongly recommend you save yourself the angst and go read TIVA stories.

This chapter is not beta'ed so please excuse any major boo boos.

Internal Conflicts

Previously:

Tony stood up and began to pace agitatedly. "I feel like I'm not me anymore. I feel like someone is influencing my thoughts and feelings. I feel like everything that I knew was true is suddenly all wrong and no one but me seems to notice. I FEEL LIKE I AM LOSING MY MIND!" He revealed in a rush before dropping on the sofa and wrapping his arms around himself in an attempt to self-soothe.

Appointment One: continued

"Okay Tony, Let's approach this by examining your statements, one by one." Dr Wilder coached him calmly. "Can you tell me why you think that someone is influencing you thoughts and feelings?"

"Because I'm acting totally out of character. I'm not acting like me at all."

George stared at the agitated man. "Can you give me an example?"

Tony pursed his lips in thought. "After being pressured to resign from my job this past year, I was reinstated after an extremely violent attempt on my life. I then went running off to the Middle East searching for a colleague."

"That must have been a very stressful time. How was your behaviour out of character?"

"Well for a start, my colleague didn't want to be found but I chased her for months and left the rest of the team short staffed. Trust me Doc, that's really uncharacteristic for me. I even rushed back to work after contracting the plague in a bio-hazard attack a week early because I didn't want to take time off work and leave my team short."

George wrote furiously, making notes to seek clarification about that statement later. Body language open to encourage Tony to continue, he nodded empathetically.

Grimacing he carried on. "Finally, I came home and resumed my job and then it all came crashing down. Couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, couldn't think…started falling apart."

"Sounds like you miss the team member? Were you working together long?"

"Yeah I worked with her for eight years."

"That's a long time, you obviously have feelings for her."

"Yeah it is a long time in law enforcement and she's family, like a sister or cousin."

"Perhaps you are repressing your true feelings for her." The psychiatrist observed. "Spending months tracking her down seems rather obsessive…seems to suggest a little more than familial feelings for her."

"I know… that's what's so crazy. I can't believe I did it. It was almost as if someone else was forcing me to do it against my will or better judgement."

"Love and infatuation can make us do things that can feel crazy, Tony. Perhaps you care for her much more than you are prepared to admit to yourself."

"I knew you wouldn't take me seriously, Doc." He snarled. "I've been in love a few times in my life and I know that what I feel for Ziva isn't it. But I'm doing crazy things against my will and I don't know why, almost as if I can't control myself."

Tony started rubbing his forehead in an agitated fashion. "I am a master of self-control, normally."

"Love often makes us feel out of control, Tony. It can be scary but it is normal."

Tony leapt up and paced around the room as if pursued by the hounds of Hell. "I knew that this was a mistake," He muttered sotte voce, scowling at George. "Look I don't have romantic feelings for Ziva, I never have. I might have temporarily, at various times entertained lustful thoughts about her since she is hot but Doc, the woman is crazy with a Capitol C. She is a Kidon trained assassin and in case you don't know what Kidon is, it's the fabled arm of Israel's Mossad - it trains its elite assassins."

He took a breath before starting again. "She killed a suspect that annoyed her by talking too much…FYI Anthony DiNozzo talks non-stop…verbal diarrhoea. She has told me that no woman would want me, that she feels the need to shower after I talk to her because afterwards she feels dirty. Said that I was dead weight and she didn't want me to accompany her on a mission to South America. She, along with my other partner, turned off the microphone she was supposed to be monitoring in case I needed backup when I was undercover trying to locate a home grown terrorist cell. Terrorists who'd already murdered three people I might add, in case you think that there was minimal risk. Then they joked about it to my face when I came back to the car."

He paused for a moment and steeled himself before continuing, his face a mask of pain. "She accused me a killing her Kidon trained assassin boyfriend because I was jealous of him and was in love with her. She refused to acknowledge that I killed him in self-defense because he was trying to kill me. At that point she sicced her father on me after they dragged me off to Israel where he tortured me, trying his damndest to force me to confess that I killed her boyfriend because he was convinced by his daughter that I had romantic feelings for her."

Daring George to seize upon that statement with a glare worthy of Leroy Jethro Gibbs, he resumed his recitation. "That was even though it was her father who ordered him to sleep with his own ;daughter, since he doubted her loyalty. He set the whole mess in motion by setting her up with a raging alcoholic who killed a Federal agent. When I tricked her 'Daddy Dearest' into confessing that he'd set up his own daughter, she attacked me physically, knocking me to the ground, despite the fact I was already injured."

The federal agent studied his shoes assiduously before confessing, "And she held a loaded gun to my chest and my thigh and threatened to pull the trigger. She admitted that she wished I'd been killed instead of her boyfriend, even though he'd already killed a US federal agent and…" His voice wavered as he tried not to break down while confessing to the damning assortment of insults and assaults against his person… "She tried to have me thrown off my team that I had been on for nine years – the team that is like my own family."

Tony flopped down on the sofa, lying sprawled out, drained, his six foot two form seemingly out of steam. The psychiatrist was momentarily, caught off guard, wondering how he could have put his foot in his mouth so badly. Staring at Tony, he could just tell that there was more, though. So he waited. Sometimes it was better to say nothing, just listen rather that make assumptions and say or do the wrong thing. Especially since he had already! Watching Tony's heaving gasps subside to less laboured breathing, he was rewarded as his new client resumed his account, shakily.

"Then to cap it all off, her scumbag father who was director of Mossad no less… who… FYI, left her to die in a Somalia terrorist camp after a mission gone bad, well he just strolls in and turns our lives upside down again. He killed a journalist who had the misfortune to recognise him because he had come here in secret. As you do…right? And then with more hide than a rhinoceros, he waltzes in and invites himself to dinner with our director and his lovely wife and mother of his two little children and his enemies assassinated him. No great loss I say except our director's wife was killed too… collateral damage according to the analysts. Tell that to her kids!"

Something about that statement required clarification and Wilder made a note to pursue it at some later point.

Still very frenetic, Tony rushed on. "Then Ziva and our director leapt on board the crazy-train to Vendettasville and dragged us all along with them for the ride and I don't know why the Hell I took that train."

Tony stared into space, suddenly lost in memories - remembering how people at work were running around - ignoring procedures and protocols. It felt like he was in crappy remake of Charles Bronson's Death Wish ( which was already pretty damned crappy) rather than working for a federal law enforcement agency full of professionals supposed to be upholding the law. Sighing, he continued.

"They all ran around hunting the person that had been framed to take the fall for the death of her father… and she murdered him instead of arresting him which was her job as a federal agent. Ziva took an oath to perform her duties to the best of her abilities when she joined the agency. She renounced her Israeli citizenship and swore allegiance to the USA. She was supposed to uphold the laws of the United States, not ignore them." He drew breath, his eyes focused on the far wall as he recalled what had transpired in Baltimore.

"She should have arrested him so he could stand trial and answer for the crimes she believed he'd committed, not dispatch him. Just as she should have arrested her father for killing the journalist. He was someone's son, someone's family too and his life was worth no less than her father's. This is the United States, not Mossad – the man accused of murdering her father was entitled to a fair trial like everyone and you want to know what was crazy? I'm was a cop long before I became a Fed. I believe in the law and the concept of innocent until proven guilty, and George, what she did was wrong – it was the antithesis of all I hold true. Then when this guy from DOD came along and tried to hold her accountable for her actions, I defended her and said she hadn't done anything wrong."

Tony sat up ramrod straight and glared at the doctor as if he had just insulted him instead of remaining mute. "Hadn't done anything wrong? Maybe on Mars or Eli's Mossad but we have a rigid division in law enforcement for a damn good reason, Doc. We are not meant to be judge and jury. Cops aren't supposed to play executioner. Never ever! Yeah we kill people but only to save members of the public or ourselves or our colleagues when our lives are being threatened and it is always supposed to be a last resort. We are not supposed to kill for revenge, I truly believe that if we do, then we are no better than the criminals and terrorists. Yet for some reason I don't understand, I defended colleagues who broke the law and committed crimes. And after all that, you want me to buy into the idea that I am really in denial that I have romantic feelings for Ziva?"

He leapt up suddenly and raced to a large potted palm and proceeded to throw up his entire stomach contents and continued dry heaving long after food, bile and even hydrochloric acid had long ceased making an appearance. He gratefully accepted a bottle of chilled water and a damp paper towel that the psychiatrist offered him when he finally sat back on his haunches in relief.

"Thanks Doc," he gasped, spent.

George Wilder was shocked by the volume of information his client had spewed forth figuratively, before… um spewing forth literally. Not to mention the content of said spew which was outrageous and the depth of emotions engendered was intense. This was certainly not going to be a straightforward case as he'd first thought. Glancing at the time, he decided that he needed to wrap things up and also give Tony a sense of resolution about what he'd shared. He had a feeling the federal agent didn't open up very often and he'd only done so because he was in crisis mode. Time to validate and reassure the man. Frankly with everything he'd shared, he was surprised the man was capable of coherent speech. Personally he'd be tucked up somewhere in a nice safe padded room. Drooling!

"Let's sit down again Tony. So we can talk. And you're right, I don't think that this is a simple case of unrequited or unacknowledged love either. Before you ask, I'm not sure what is going on yet but we are almost out of time, so I'm wondering if you could come back again tomorrow. That way we can work on this some more together and get to the bottom of what's going on?"

He noticed that Tony looked emotionally drained but seemed pleased that the doctor was taking his concerns seriously. "Yeah, okay Doc," He croaked, his throat hoarse from puking.

"Thank you Tony, we'll talk more then, but for the last few minutes, I want to ask you about your family background. Have there been any significant disturbances in the family like schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, liver disease, seizures, night terrors. The more details the better." He asked carefully.

Tony saw straight through the ruse. "You're wondering if crazy runs in the family, Doc. Well here goes. My father is an alcoholic, my mother was an alcoholic although in her case it was, I suspect, a clumsy attempt at self-medicating. She was also clinically depressed and battled addictions to prescription meds too and before you ask… she died when I was eight and I'm not totally convinced that it was cancer like I've always been told. She was a confused and unhappy person, I know that much. One of her brothers was, according to the family, supposed to be a bit batty although he seemed okay to me. But then again, I'm obviously crazy too so what do I know?" He concluded, utterly defeated and very obviously exhausted.

Dr Wilder laid a comforting hand on his arm. "Tony, like I said, I'm not sure what we are dealing with, but you aren't crazy. You might be stressed but it seems to me like you have one Hell of a reason. Go home, try to get some rest, do some exercise, do whatever makes you feel relaxed and make sure you eat something nutritious. We will pick this up tomorrow and please… call me if you need to. Any time, day or night."