One more chapter after this one. think…?? Thank you again for your reviews and support. One of the many reasons I took so long getting back to posting ff was that I found myself apologizing for way too many things - style, plot, AU, canon, writing words in italics, whatever anyone criticized in a review, which leads to resentment and self-doubt. . No apologies or pity parties here on my part for what I offer in my stories. (Although I did notice some boo boos in past chapters that I'm going to try to fix.) Writing FF is a labor of love, and is free for the taking, or the leaving, if it doesn't suit. I write for my own enjoyment now, and if it resonates with some readers, that's a wonderful bonus! Not beta'd.

So, on with the show.

It had taken more intestinal fortitude than he'd needed in a while for Gibbs to step quietly into his Senior Field Agent's private room. He'd stood outside the door a good five minutes or more trying to formulate some explanation or apology. Or both. Finally he'd just bitten the bullet and made himself go in. The cubicle was in low-light, and there was a quiet drone of voices coming from the small television mounted high in a corner space. He couldn't tell if Tony was sleeping, so he crept in in his usual stealth style.

"Hey, Boss." a hoarse voice greeted him across the few feet of space.

"Hey, Tony. Is it okay if I come in and talk a bit?"

"Sure, have a seat. The nurse told me you'd be stopping by."

Gibbs swallowed hard, not sure where to start.

"I miss Cate, too, Gibbs." Tony spoke up quietly, as if reading Gibbs' mind. Again. "But driving me away won't bring her back. I can't change what happened. I'd take her place if I could."

"I know you would, kid. But I wouldn't want you to. Losing either of you was unacceptable."

"Then why do I get the feeling you wish it had been me?"

"Christ, Tony, do you really think that? That I'd have chosen her over you? This is exactly what I was trying to explain to Ducky. Why I've been such a shithead for the last month!"

"Explain it to me. In small, quiet words, please. Because I'd sure as hell like to know - need to know, how I became the target of your wrath after taking on a thankless task for a thankless boss."

"I lost Cate. We lost Cate. We didn't talk about it after Ari was taken out. Maybe we should have, I dunno. We didn't stay late at work. I didn't know where you disappeared to every night after we wrapped things up."

"You could've asked me. Asked how I was doing. If I needed to talk."

"You never said anything."

"You were too damned angry for me to say anything to you about it! Like you never wanted to hear her name again! And like you couldn't stand to even look at me! It nearly broke me, Boss. We might've scrapped like a cat and dog, but that's what siblings do, or so Ducky says. She pretended to not "get" me, but she got me anyway. Hell, she stayed in that stupid isolation chamber with me when she absolutely shouldn't have, because she knew I was secretly terrified and would've given my eyeballs not to be left alone in there! We were both hurting after she left, and you turned away. Just like my father did when my mom died. You didn't see me grieving because you chose not to. You only thought of yourselves, and how you were hurting! Do you know how many times I woke up those first couple of weeks and swore I could still feel her blood on me? I couldn't wash my face enough to try to get rid of that feeling."

"You never came by. I figured you didn't want company."

"I did come by, Boss. Your door was locked. If that wasn't a neon sign to go the hell away and stay away, I don't know what was. Tried a few times, and gave up. Anyway, I don't understand what the hell one has to do with the other, you grieving Cate and then coming back from Mexico and terrorizing me. I worked hard, Boss, I did a great job. I didn't deserve your new level of bastardry.

"I was the same guy you dragged back from Baltimore, you knew what you were getting then, just like I knew what I was getting with you. Or thought I knew. Worse, you undermined my authority with McGee and Ziva, and that's unacceptable. There's a chain of command for a reason, and I've earned my link on that chain. You all might not like my personality, and I get that, I do. But here's a news bulletin, Boss. None of you are exactly sunshine and unicorns to work with. You all have your quirks, and that's a nice way of putting it. Tim thinks his big MIT brain is much, much bigger than the rest if ours put together, and doesn't mind reminding me every five minutes, even though he still barely manages to think outside of that damned tech box. Ziva thinks she should be able to run things like she did in Mossad, the American legal system be damned. They both think they would be much better at my job than I am. And you, well, I'm not going to even bother with my list."

"I lost a lot of ground after the explosion. Felt like I was so far behind everybody that I'd never catch up. I know that's a lame excuse. I've never played fair when I'm behind in points in the fourth quarter. There's usually blood spilled and all kinds of personal fouls."

"I'm not the opposing team, Gibbs! Jesus, when did you decide this was a damned competition? And do you remember what I went through, still go through, to stay qualified to work here after my little bout with y-freaking-pestis? I didn't have an "in" with the director, Morrow liked me just fine, but he was no fool. No one agent was more important than the whole of the agency. He was sympathetic to my situation, but he made it very clear to me that he wouldn't tolerate anything less than perfect scores on all my evals to come back to the team. He almost canned me after that car exploded and I ended up kissing the pavement."

"He never said anything to me, neither did you! What the hell, DiNozzo?"

Tony gave a grim, weary smile to the irate man standing beside him. Gibbs was still predictable in his wounded pride.

"As if you were in the frame of mind even back then to take up that battle! You had one freaking person on your mind - no, two freaking people on your mind. Ari, and yourself. If my Ishmael had fallen overboard, I doubt your Captain Ahab would have even noticed. And I'd have been damned if I'd drowned alone while the rest of you went on sailing. Still will be. You don't get to keelhaul me to save your wounded pride, Gibbs, and especially not for doing my job, I won't have it. I'll transfer to another team, or take Tobias up on his backhanded offers to join Team Fornell."

"You'd really quit, Tony?"

Gibbs sounded a little strangled, as if the idea of DiNozzo leaving his MCRT had never occurred to him.

"Don't act so shocked, Boss. Would you have taken this kind of abuse from Mike Franks after giving him a hundred and ten percent for as long as I have to you? You'd have knocked out his teeth and told whoever your director was to find you a new team, and don't you dare tell me you wouldn't have!"

Tony's blood pressure monitor was alerting the nurses station again to his agitation. He fully expected Nurse Fulton at his bedside in about one minute. He wasn't disappointed when she came bustling in in just over that time, giving a challenging glare to Gibbs, and adjusting Tony's i. v.

"Well, Anthony, for the people who are claiming to be your family, they're certainly acting as if they can just come in here and agitate you regardless of our warnings to them!"

She stared pointedly at Gibbs, and to Tony's amazement, the man had the sense to back down.

"Sorry." he muttered, but rather ungraciously. "I'll only be a few more minutes, then I'll let him be. Just wanted to get a few things worked out before the morning."

"Then please 'work them out' without upsetting him. I think he's had enough upset in recent days, according to what Doctor Pitt has told me."

Tony watched his boss's posture stiffen at the veiled accusation. Good! he told himself. Nice to know I've got someone watching my six, even if it is the guy who once incapacitated me on the field.

"Yeah, I got it." the lead agent ground out, none too politely. "

They had a small battle of wills with their eyeballs before she relented and left the tiny room, and Gibbs turned back to his SFA, attempting to hide his annoyance at being chastised yet again.

"I'm sorry, Tony. I didn't come in here to argue with you. You know me, I open my mouth before I engage my brain sometimes. I just…I wanted to say that…it was nothing you did, or didn't do that made me act like an ass towards you, it was all me, and that's something that I hope you can let me fix when your surgery is over and you're on the mend. Just…please give it some thought. If I've burned one too many bridges and you wanna move on after this, I won't hassle you. I'll be pissed as hell at myself, but I won't make a big fuss. I know I can be my own worst enemy sometimes."

"As we all can be, Boss. Go on, go get some dinner. I can't stay awake anymore, nurse must've upped my sleepy juice when she was in. You gonna be here for the surgery? It's okay if you're not, if you've got a new case."

"McGee and Ziva are tying up some loose ends on the one she just closed. The Director took us off rotation for a few days. Both Ducky and will be here for you before and after you go in. I'll stop by after dinner and check on you before I leave."

"Okay. See ya later, Boss.."

Tony's eyes drifted shut, and Gibbs waited for the soft, even snoring that came from the bed. He hoped that his visit had helped to at least initiate a detente between them, and wondered why he had such a difficult time in his relationships with anyone he spent more than a day with. It was why he didn't talk much - what came out of his mouth was more often than not the wrong thing. He knew DiNozzo didn't have the market cornered on saying the wrong things at the wrong time, his three divorces were a testament to that.

And he knew he was no good at expressing feelings about how he cared about someone; even Shannon had to read between the invisible lines sometimes, but he never doubted that she knew how much he loved her. She had brought out that side of him, making him want to express himself better. After he'd lost her and Kelly, that side of him just seemed to shrivel up and die along with them. It had started to blossom again after DiNozzo had joined his team, the kid's off the wall humor and childish antics forcing Gibbs to pay attention, and this time around, he had.

Then Caitlin Todd came along, and took a lot of things that Gibbs thought he believed and stood them in his head. He'd gotten attached and protective of her, too. Then she was gone in a literal blink of an eye. Of the two of them, Gibbs had had to admit that he would have been more devastated if it had been DiNozzo, that a lot of his sadness and anger was guilt at not being able to stop Ari Haswari's game of cat and mouse before it ended in tragedy for his team. It made him uncomfortable and wrong footed that he had been more attached to one of them than the other, and he realized it had made him resent Tony for making him feel that way.

Regardless of what had happened in the past, this was now, and DiNozzo was in a world of hurt, both physically and emotionally. He needed to get his act together for the younger man, and stop using the explosion on that ship and his subsequent bout with amnesia as excuses for not being able to deal with his emotions towards his friends, and people he now considered family. Tony hadn't used his near-death experience with pneumonic plague to excuse himself from coming back to work, earlier than expected, to protect his team from Ari Haswari and keep Gibbs from ruining his career over some obsessive manhunt. It was time he followed DiNozzo's example for a change and started doing his job.