A/N Thank you to everyone who has taken the time and effort to leave reviews or faved and alerted. NCIS Fan - Dissociative Identity Disorder is an interesting theory and not so surprising that Tony would think that movies and one fishing trip can make up for all the other abuse that his parents have heaped on him. Sadly, it is a pretty common denominator in neglected and abused children (and domestic violence survivors too). He also continues to use the same faulty logic as an adult in accepting the abusive treatment he receives from the team, including being able to rationalise head slaps as a sign of affection. That in its self speaks volumes about the damage that was done to him but while he has an excuse, I'm not sure what excuse the rest of the team has in fawning all over Senior.

Hope that you enjoy this chapter.

Internal Affairs

Chapter 5

Appointment four:

Tony sat down on the soft as a baby's butt leather sofa in Dr George Wilder's office. He had spent last night at the retreat/spa and hadn't had any major melt downs for which he was incredibly thankful. Panic attacks really truly sucked so he was prepared to put up with the whale songs and tinkling waterfall music/ambient noise CDs playing in the background, lentil burgers and chickpea casseroles. It seemed such a small price to pay for peace and dreamless sleep. Hell he'd even eat that tofu crap Cate used to consume if it helped keep the attacks at bay.

They'd been also persuading him that rather than drinking Gibbs' strength coffee to try to stay awake so he didn't have nightmares, he should drink green or chamomile tea instead to help him relax and sleep peacefully. They'd even given him a massage before he went to bed last night. So, all in all, for the first time in days he was starting to feel better rather than worse. It felt real good!

He smiled at George who was fussing with his file. "Before we get started Tony, I just need to clear up something on your intake form. You listed your year of birth as 1973, you crossed it out and put 1968 and then scrubbed that out too. So I don't have a date of birth for you for my records. What year were you born?"

The look on anguish on his client's face told him this wasn't a simple clerical error. The psychiatrist had just stumbled blindly into another major psychological issue that hadn't come up yet. Just when the psychiatrist thought he might have reached the limit of what was distressing him, a routine question had wiped the tentative smile off Tony's face. And it was the first one he'd seen that wasn't a mask or deflection but one indicative of his emotional state.

Needless to say he wasn't feeling so happy any more. Now Wilder wasn't an advocate of avoiding issues – that was never a prudent course of action since it merely delayed the inevitable. What people never seemed to appreciate, was that the ensuing crisis when it finally occurred, was almost always much worse than facing the issue head on. Mind, he also wasn't advocating chucking in a lit stick of dynamite either and then trying to clean up the mess but that was exactly what he'd done. Completely inadvertently, damn it!

"Okay, I'm sorry. I didn't realise that there was a problem here. Do you want to tell me what's going on, Tony? Why don't you know what year you were born in?" George asked gently.

"I did…well I thought I did. I mean who doesn't know how old they are…right. Well me it seems. I guess I must have lost five or even six years somewhere along the way – which just goes to prove that I am crazy as a loon."

Seeing that Tony was beginning to hyperventilate George had him slow down his breathing and to take deep breaths and hold it. Tony had mentioned in passing that he had problems with his lungs so the therapist was mindful of this complication, wanting to avoid any more problems for his client. When his breathing had normalised he continued to probe gently.

"So let's start with why you thought that you were the age that you did. That sound okay, Tony?"

Tony shrugged. Not knowing your age was a pretty big red flag – George could say what he liked. Maybe there was a block of years that he'd been undercover on a counter intelligence op or a sect had kidnapped him and wiped his memory or he'd suffered a head injury and had amnesia. Or if it walked like a duck and talked like a duck it must be a duck and he was a sandwich short of a picnic, just like he'd tried to tell his shrink. Unfortunately, the esteemed doctor didn't seem willing to accept the cold harsh truth.

"Thought I was younger than I am, Doc." If that doesn't tell you I'm a candidate for a seat on the bus to the mad house then not sure what will."

"What happened to make you doubt your age? Something obviously did," Wilder observed.

"Once my father started turning up again these last couple of years and we started talking. He told me about the family bottle of wine 1968 Chateau Le Claire, that he purchased the year I was born and he saved, even when he liquidated other family assets – no pun intended. He was so adamant about it and I mean it's not like a parent wouldn't be in the best position to know the year that their only child was born, surely." Tony demanded of the psychiatrist, passionately.

George refused to be drawn without having the full facts in black and white in front of him, especially since Tony had already conceded that his dad was an alcoholic, even if he might be on the wagon now. After all long term alcoholism caused blackouts, memory loss and excessive consumption of booze fried brain cells. Ignoring that for a moment he returned to the second date that Tony had thought was his DOB.

"So before speaking to your father in recent years there must have been reasons why you thought you were younger?"

Tony scrubbed at his face with the palms of his hands. "Apart from the fact that I just always thought so, you mean? Well okay… I graduated from OSU when I was almost 21 and went straight to the Police Academy and completed the 6 month training program. Then after I graduated, I worked at Peoria PD for two years and then went on to Philadelphia PD for 18 months before I spent another two years at Baltimore. Unless I have a huge block of at least five years plus, that I've somehow forgotten or I been abducted by aliens, by my reckoning I was almost 27 when I went to work with Gibbs. I've worked at NCIS for the last 13 years – at least I think I have, since I don't know what to believe anymore. So that means that I'll be 40 soon but according to Senior I was born in 1968 and suddenly, ever since then, everyone is telling me I'm 45 this year. Any wonder I feel like I've lost my marbles – this is just nuts!"

George was flabbergasted. He really did not know what to say after that. He'd been trying to clear up something that he thought was a simple administrative mistake. and was totally unprepared for the storm he'd unleashed so innocently. Honestly, it was highly probably just greeting Tony was fraught with danger – like taking a stroll through a minefield, stoned and blindfolded. Not a sensible activity at all and yet now that Pandora was released out of her box, there was no coaxing her back into the neat little receptacle again. That left no choice – it was onward and upward. Looking at Tony, it was clear that there was more information waiting there that needed to be lured out.

"I can certainly see why you feel that way, Tony. I sense your frustration but I also feel that there are things that you have held back? Do you want to talk about it?"

Sighing, Tony decided to share some of what he 'd held back. "Just that when I go under cover, I've always used 1973 as the year of my date of birth on my identity papers. I've always followed the rule that when working undercover, you keep as much of your backstory as you are able as close to the truth as possible. That way, it's harder to be tripped up when you're under pressure or worse, under constraint."

George shuddered at the casual mention of constraint. Constrained was a much more genteel way to describe beating, bashing and torture and it was a pertinent reminder that the man sitting in his office was no stranger to constraint.

"I've always kept the year and the day the same as mine or what I thought as mine and changed the month – either the month before or after mine. Just like I usually go by some derivative of Anthony – especially when I'm deep under cover for months at a time. It makes it easier to stay in character and that is often the difference between success and failure."

And living and dying, George reminded himself.

Meanwhile, Tony was silent as a theory began to emerge. "George, is it possible that all my undercover work might be what's causing me to crack up?"

The doctor pursed his lips. He couldn't see off the top of his head why that would have any effect. What was startling was that Tony seemed to read his confusion with ease and began to explain. For a so called self-confessed crazy guy, that showed great insight.

Tony tried to explain. "When I go under cover, especially deep under cover, I don't just adopt the new identity when other people are around. I live that new persona 24/7 – not unlike a method actor. Depending on how long I stay under cover, when the case is closed, it can take anywhere from a day to several to start to shed the undercover persona and pick up my own personality again. Even then, it isn't that unusual for me to be off balance, irritable, not acting in character. Sometimes it might take a couple of weeks to settle back in again, totally."

Wilder considered this information carefully. He could see why Tony was grasping at this as a possible explanation. Truthfully, he didn't know what to think. He'd discussed this case with the other psychiatrists in his practice and they'd been scratching their heads somewhat – reaching for increasingly more outlandish possible diagnoses as the more mundane ones were ruled out. After hearing the latest revelations about missing time and method acting, he could only imagine the differential diagnosis they were going to come up with. It gave him a headache even thinking about their next practice meeting.

"Okay, I have to admit that this is out of my league, Tony but I'll do some research about all this and get back to you. So let's do a recap of what we've discussed so far." Wilder said as he began to succinctly summarise what they had covered in their time together.

As Tony listened, he realised George was feeling out of his depth. That being the case he was glad he hadn't mentioned that apart from his confusion about his age, he wasn't the only one. Imagine how crazy he would sound if he'd talked about Gibbs being at least half a dozen years younger than when Tony first started at NCIS. When he'd arrived in DC, he was pretty sure Gibbs was just barely old enough to be his father. Now that Gibbs was suddenly a lot younger, combined with the fact that Tony was five years older than he'd thought, that put Gibbs into the big brother category rather than a paternal one. It definitely made them part of the same age cohort.

Tony had turned down the Rota promotion because he'd wanted to wait and take over the MCRT when Gibbs retired - hopefully permanently this time. Especially since for four months it had been his team and he wanted it back again after all the blood sweat and tears he'd poured into it. At this rate though, his boss was never going to retire and by the time Tony eared the gig as SSA, he was going to be using a Zimmer frame to chase down the bags of excrement. Or he and Gibbs would end up being the same age and retire together. Holy Caped Crusader, Gibbs is Benjamin Button!

Maybe this was just some elaborate dream that he was having – or nightmare and none of it was real – like Dallas and Bobby Ewing. Maybe he was delusional and he was already incarcerated in a psych ward and this was just a psychotic break. Or what if he'd been abducted by aliens and his brain was being probed and they'd planted this outlandishly extravagant fantasy. Maybe he was just a disembodied brain in some hinky alien's laboratory somewhere in the universe and this was some sort of cosmic joke. Wait, it might be a supernatural phenomenon - what if he'd accidentally been transported to an alternate reality and that was why everything was the same but different. It might even be something really simple like someone was slipping him magic mushrooms or weed or hallucinogenic …

"You don't agree, Tony?" Wilder probed, insistently.

"Whoa… um what?"

Wilder sighed, long sufferingly. "I was saying that when I sat down to analyse all the data we'd collected so far, I discovered a disturbing trend. The statistics show that you're at an unacceptably high risk of death and injury whenever you are paired up with Agent David and I strongly recommend that you don't go out into the field with her anymore. I think that she may have a death wish."

Tony remembering the shipping crate incident and the Domino fiasco plus the bomb defusing episode that he'd never shared with the doc and was hard pressed to argue with his conclusions. But he hastened to reassure him. "Look, Ziva resigned from the Agency and returned to Israel… she's finding herself. We have a brand spanking new shiny probie, who's an Intelligence analyst. I won't be going on any cases with Ziva anymore," He assured his psychiatrist.

"I'm serious, Tony. Stay away from her – she is not good for your health. I hear what you're saying - that she's gone but from what you tell me, you didn't report her assault on you in Israel because you thought she had left the team. And she came back again – so I'm saying that should she ever decide to return to the agency, you need to run screaming in the other direction. I've read the medical file you brought me yesterday and I am appalled at your injuries. Sometime soon your luck is going to run out."

"Okay, point taken. But seriously Doc, how likely is it that I'm ever going to be fit to go back to the field myself? I'm a cot case. What if I have a panic attack in the middle of a fire fight or when I'm trying to take down an assailant? I'm a danger to me and anyone that happens to be with me." Tony demanded.

The psychiatrist paused as he considered the issue of Tony returning to work as a field agent. He agreed at the moment that was looking like an issue that they didn't need to focus on too heavily, since they had a lot of work to do before that bridge needed to be crossed. He was still floundering around like a fish out of water and no real idea what he was dealing with, either. If anything, after today he was even more out of his depth and he was going to give some serious consideration into finding Tony someone who might be better equipped to figure out what was going on. Honestly, how could he come up with an efficacious treatment plan if he couldn't even arrive at diagnosis? Tony wasn't the only one that was having a crisis of confidence.

Resorting to platitudes that they would both go home with homework, for him a ton of research and Tony- to indulge in more pampering at the hands of the staff at the wonderful Solace, he hoped to have an epiphany sometime soon. If not, he was beginning to think that the suggestion of one of his colleagues that he should be sending him for brain scans wasn't so OTT after all. He'd almost be relieved to find a brain tumour at this point. And while some of his contemporaries might feel expressing his concern about Tony working with Agent David being a health hazard was far too premature, he couldn't agree. If anything were to happen and Tony left before they satisfactorily resolved his situation and who could blame him, at least he had fulfilled his duty of care and warned him that he felt she posed a clear and present danger to him. If Tony did change therapists, Wilder would be able to live with himself at the very least. Sighing, he realised it was time to conclude this session before they stumbled into any more minefields.

"Okay Tony, why don't you show me how you have been going with that self-hypnosis technique we practised and then I'll try to do a summary. Then we'll conclude with a visualisation exercise. Let's schedule your next appointment for two days from now. That will give me a bit more time to research this issue about undercover work and you can see how your coping skills are holding up too. Of course if you need to talk to me any time before then, you can call me anytime of the day or night."