Chapter Text
Different, ever since he could remember Tony had always felt that way. He’d never known how to explain it. It wasn’t like he had enhanced senses or anything that while explainable would have sounded crazy. Instead, he’d always had this sense that he didn’t belong. At first he’d attributed it to the various oddities his parents had imposed on him that very clearly separated him from the rest of the kids his age.
His mother had regularly dressed him up in costumes. Anything from peter pan fairy type outfits to wizard robes and everything in between. At first he didn’t think anything of it. That changed drastically on his first day of school when all the other kids made fun of him.
He was young enough he didn’t really understand why they were laughing at him. By the time he figured out his clothes were the cause, his mother was already dead. His father immediately shipped him off to boarding school. He wasn’t even allowed to attend his mother’s funeral.
He now wore normal clothes and had figured out how to fit in with other kids, but he still felt like he didn’t belong. It didn’t matter if he was home or at boarding school, the sense of not belonging lingered. He made the mistake once of telling one of the other boys at boarding school about this vague wispy impression of not belonging he had.
He’d thought the boy was his friend, but he quickly found out differently as news of his weirdness spread throughout the boarding school like a wildfire. Needless to say it didn’t help him feel like he belonged. It did drive home that he couldn’t share this feeling with anyone no matter how much he thought he trusted them, however.
The annoying suggestion of not belonging continued to remain through his disownment at twelve. His father had quickly sent him to military school, as punishment for what Tony didn’t know. He only knew it was punishment because he overheard his father on the phone. Tony didn’t know who he was talking with.
He only remembered hearing his father say that if it weren’t for the law, he’d have just dumped his son in the middle of nowhere to fend for himself. There was some comment about how if that didn’t activate his son’s abilities nothing would. Tony didn’t understand that comment, but it stuck with him.
He wasn’t surprised that he felt out of place at military school. Discipline and him didn’t get along making him a poor fit for the military and most of the kids weren’t there because they’d been disowned. They especially didn’t listen to their father telling someone that they should consider themselves lucky to be going to boarding school instead of left for dead somewhere.
College was a completely different matter. He’d mostly given up on pleasing his father by then. He still didn’t know what abilities he was supposed to have that his father was trying to activate. All he knew was that nothing he did made a difference. His father never wanted anything to do with him.
Still boarding school had been a bit of blessing, he’d been around normal kids and realized that life didn’t have to be what he’d experienced so far. He was able to decide what he really wanted to do with his life. He’d decided college was going to be his alone. He was going to do it on his own without any help from his father.
He earned a scholarship and worked to pay for his room and board. He really felt like he was a normal college student and fit in well with the frat he joined. That feeling of not belonging, however, continued to hang around despite him appearing to fit in on the surface. The persistence of this sense drove him to try to find his own place in the world.
The impression of not belonging stuck with him through his knee injury, which killed his pro football chances. It continued to stay with him even as he was called to join the police force. He started first in Peoria, then Philadelphia, and finally Baltimore. He’d known when he met Leroy Jethro Gibbs while working at Baltimore and agreed to join him at NCIS that his life was going to change.
He could tell that there was something looming on the horizon. He still didn’t feel like he belonged at NCIS, but he knew that being there was the key to something important. He hated this mystical shit. He was generally a down to earth, fun loving guy who didn’t really believe in anything mystical, but he’d grown up with this emanation ever since he was a young child. Now the same feeling was there, but slightly changed.
He still didn’t believe in the mystical, but he’d long given up on “whatever this was” going away. It hadn’t in the 30+ years he’d been alive, so it was unlikely to do so now. He’d never shared it with anyone. How could he explain a random impression that he didn’t belong? How could he explain this sensation that had been with him since childhood without sounding crazy? It was easier to just pretend it didn’t exist.
As no one else seemed to have anything like this, not even the psychics and other generally considered crazy people, Tony had given up on ever finding out what this was. He’d resigned himself to never knowing why he felt like he didn’t belong. It had definitely contributed to his only staying a couple of years at each police force though. He’d always gotten a restless feeling that urged him to move on elsewhere. An impression that he still hadn’t found the place that he really belonged.
Tony had spent his freshman year of college going to a few psychics that were reputed to be real and some other general crazies that claimed they had special powers or whatever. He’d hoped that they could give him some insight into what this sensation was. Either they didn’t have any powers or whatever Tony was experiencing was not something they could explain or even guess at.
He hadn’t wanted to out himself and had visited them all discreetly without offering any information as to what he was experiencing. None of them had even been able to guess that he felt he didn’t belong. None of their admittedly sometimes farfetched suggestions had even come close to what he was actually going through. Nothing and no one could explain why he might feel this way, so he’d eventually given up before someone noticed the company he was keeping and actually thought he was crazy.
Truthfully, Tony wasn’t sure that he wasn’t crazy. As he had no desire to spend the rest of his life in a mental institution, though, he kept it to himself. Between his father, boarding school, military school, college, and the police academy, Tony had learned to blend in so well that he knew no one suspected anything. It had been a skill that he found translated easily to undercover work, making him easily one of the best at undercover even over people that had been in the business for more years than Tony had been alive.
Attempting to put the impression of not belonging to the back of his mind, Tony found himself becoming more and more enthralled in the NCIS life. As he formed deeper friendships with his coworkers, the sensation of being different slowly faded to a low thrum in the back of his mind. It was still there, but more like a generic background noise. A bit like traffic on a busy street that you blocked out and forgot was there unless you were actively focusing on it.
The sense of not belonging wasn’t completely gone, but he had to focus on it to really feel it. As he met all of his new coworkers, he quickly discovered that he had a lot more in common with the other NCIS agents than he had ever expected. He may not feel like he belonged, but he definitely felt like he was among similar misfits.
Except for Gibbs, he’d met Ducky first. Ducky seemed like a genial old guy and if you didn’t know him well you wouldn’t realize how much of a misfit he really was. Tony had been around long enough to realize that Ducky knew a lot more than he was supposed to. Ducky knew how to keep information to himself, however.
Over time Tony had realized that nothing ever really surprised Ducky and that it was generally because he already knew about whatever or had seen something much worse in his many years. Tony had considered opening up to Ducky about the feeling of not belonging he had, but he couldn’t bring himself to mention it after his previous terrible experience with revealing it. Although, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Ducky or Gibbs already knew somehow.
When he’d first met Abby, he’d been shocked. She was a girl who was not afraid to be different. He was actually kind of jealous of her. He wish he had the self confidence to be different and not just the pretend self confidence of his mask, Tony DiNozzo.
Tony DiNozzo was many things including self proclaimed frat boy, but it was all a mask that represented what Tony thought people wanted to see. He learned quickly working with Gibbs to tone down the mask when needed. Gibbs was not afraid to dole out head slaps when Tony was too over the top.
It was a refreshing change from having to guess what someone wanted him to do. Tony heard horror stories of people who had worked with Gibbs previously and how hard he was to work for, but Tony didn’t understand it. Sure he’d had a few mishaps as he learned how to work a scene, but he picked it up quickly and found Gibbs easy to read.
He didn’t understand how everyone struggled to understand what Gibbs was looking for. He was pretty easy to figure out. He wanted you to do your job and do it well. There wasn’t a hidden meaning with Gibbs. There wasn’t a hidden challenge that you were supposed to accomplish like he had gotten used to with people in general. It made for a refreshing change.
Over the years, they’d picked up a few additional teammates. The first one that joined them was Kate or Caitlin Todd or Agent Todd if you were a suspect. She didn’t stand out as a misfit as much as some of the others, but there were hints.
She’d been trained as a profiler, but clearly had more book training than street training. She had a tendency to miss things or discount them due to her personal beliefs, something that was quickly beaten out of anyone who had to use their training to stay alive on the streets like he had as a beat cop. Still she was much better at sketching than Tony and sometimes spotted things that Tony missed.
The next one to join their team left no doubt that he was a misfit. Timothy McGee, a geek through and through, but unlike most geeks, he wanted to be a field agent. That left him in a middle ground area where no one went. Too geeky for the more physical field agents and too athletic for the geeks.
Tony immediately felt almost a brotherly connection to the younger agent. He knew what it was to feel out of place. Heck, he still felt out of place at times. McGee’s shyness and nervousness touched a spot in Tony that made him want to protect the younger agent.
Unfortunately, Tony knew the best way to protect the younger agent was to toughen him up. If McGee really wanted to be a field agent, he needed to be able to handle the hard truths that he would run into as a field agent. He hated playing pranks on Tim. He would much rather have developed a different kind of friendship, but he couldn’t leave McGee vulnerable and it was the only way Tony knew to teach the younger agent that not everything was as it seemed.
Even with all the training Tony tried to give McGee, there were still some times where McGee squeaked so much he practically screamed newbie. Tony only hoped that McGee would learn before he ran into a murderer or worse that tried to play him. Tony hoped that it would be “try” by that point in time and that the suspect would not actually succeed in playing Tim if Tim ever found himself in a situation like that.
Tony prayed that today would not be the day that ruined McGee’s naivete. They’d been called out to National Park Seminary in Silver Spring, Maryland. At first, Tony hadn’t thought anything of it. They got called out to random locations when the crime was high profile on a regular enough basis that the location hadn’t signalled anything to Tony.
That changed as soon as Tony entered the park. Tony stopped just inside the entrance and turned around in wonder. It looked like it was straight out of a fairytale or a fable.
McGee walked right past Tony. “This way, Tony.” McGee called over his shoulder not seeing anything unusual in the park. Then again, it wasn’t his first time in the park either.
Tony blinked coming back to reality. The color dimmed and coalesced into worn buildings and ancient trees instead of the bright and playful buildings that he would swear had been there just a moment ago. Brushing it off as his mind playing tricks on him, Tony ignored it. The buildings that surrounded him were clearly the same ones he had seen just duller and worn with time. It had to have been a trick of the light that made them seem brighter and newer.
McGee’s shoulders and other muscles had tightened as soon as he entered the park. The stiffer movement was the only sign that he’d been here before. When McGee was a kid, his boy scout troop had visited this park many times. He’d also been here a few times with his parents as a kid to learn about his ancestors.
So far Tony and Tim were the only ones on the scene. Gibbs was stuck in MTAC for a bit and Kate had had to catch a ride with Ducky and Jimmy as Tony and Tim had already been out following up on a cold case when the call came in. Shaking off the odd double vision he’d experienced with the landscape, Tony followed after Tim.
Arriving at the scene, Tony noticed that McGee was already working on identifying the victim. Glancing at the victim, Tony took a second look. He would have sworn the victim had wings. Shaking his head, he looked down at the victim again. She looked normal this time. It must have been a trick of his mind.
Ducky, Jimmy, and Kate arrived just as Tim matched the fingerprint for the body. “This is Lance Corporal Erica Bodwin out of Patuxent River, Maryland.”
Ducky clucked at the dead fairy on the ground. It was always so sad when one of theirs died. Especially when they were murdered like this young lass appeared to be. People didn’t just fall over dead in the middle of a park, especially not this park, for no reason. Even though there didn’t appear to be any obvious cause of death, Ducky was sure this had to be murder simply due to where she died.
“Do cover her up, Jimmy. No one wants to be seen like this.” Ducky ordered. He wasn’t a fairy, but he was well aware of how close they were to the entrance of the enchanted kingdom where fairies amongst other species lived.
He knew that no fairy would want to stumble across the body of their friend without their wings like this. Technically the fairy had lost her wings as soon as she died, but until she was properly taken care of the ghostly wisp of her wings would remain, as was the fairy custom, so that all with the enchanted sight could tell she was a fairy. He’d heard that a few special humans could see the wings and other signs of enchanted creatures in death, though he’d not actually met any of these special humans.
Tony saw that the team had things well in hand with the body, so he left them to it and scoped out the rest of the crime scene looking for any clues that might be around. Tony hadn’t seen any obvious cause of death, but he wanted to make sure that the murder weapon was bagged and tagged if it was around. He also didn’t want to miss any trace of the murderer.
This was a park. It was almost impossible for someone to walk through it without leaving a trace. Paying close attention to each tree, twig, blade of grass, and any other part of nature, Tony searched for any evidence of human presence. He spotted a green thread and stopped to bag it before continuing his search for other evidence.
As he traveled out of earshot, Kate spoke up. “Is she really, Ducky?” Kate couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw the faint fairy wings that signified a dead fairy.
“Yes, Caitlin. She really is. I do believe that is the real reason that we were called out instead of the local police or another team.” Ducky explained sadly.
Kate knew Ducky, Tim, Jimmy, Abby, and Gibbs, if he were ever to show up, were all well aware of fairies and the other enchanted species. She had met each of them at least once in the enchanted kingdom.
Kate nodded to Ducky. That meant that she would have to make sure to check for any evidence of enchanted interference. Their abilities could not be used by someone truly evil, but there were many in the enchanted kingdom who operated in the morally grey area. However, with Tony being human, he wouldn’t even know to look for such interference, if he could even see it.
While Kate was determining if there had been any enchanted interference, Jimmy and Ducky had completed all they could at the crime scene and left with the body. There had been no obvious wounds, so cause of death would have to wait until they got the body back to autopsy. That left Kate and Tim to finish up with the crime scene.
Gibbs arrived as they wrapped up the last tasks at the crime scene. It was only when Gibbs demanded, “Where’s DiNozzo?” that Kate and Tim realized just how long Tony had been gone and that they had no idea where he was.
McGee had noticed Tony perusing the edges of the crime scene clearly looking for evidence, so he offered. “Tony was bagging and tagging evidence at the edges of the crime scene last I saw him about an hour ago.”
Gibbs growled. He couldn’t believe that DiNozzo had wandered off alone. Gibbs had trained him better than that. “Which way did you last see him, McGee?”
McGee pointed over a crest that he knew led towards the entrance to the enchanted kingdom, but like everyone else he believed Tony to be human. It was impossible for a human to enter the enchanted kingdom or so most believed today. There were a few older lores that hinted that if conditions were right a human may be able to enter the enchanted kingdom. Very few of the enchanted creatures had ever heard these lores, let alone seen the actual text though.
Gibbs narrowed his eyes. He had a bad feeling about this. Out loud, he barked, “Take the evidence you have back to Abby. I’ll find DiNozzo.”
“Yes, boss.” McGee and Todd parroted as they quickly finished packing up the car Tim had arrived with Tony in.
Gibbs watched them drive off before he headed in the direction Tim had indicated to find Tony. Tony attracted more trouble than any other human he knew. The chances of Tony being gone this long and found to be just fine were slim.
Tony knew better than to be out of contact and despite the flirting mask that he put on, Gibbs knew that the job was more important to Tony than anything else. He wouldn’t be goofing off somewhere when they had an active crime scene. Gibbs only hoped that he found Tony before he got into too much trouble.
Gibbs had searched the whole park including the area McGee said Tony had wandered off to multiple times. He was getting really worried. This wasn’t like Tony.
Tony wasn’t answering his phone and was nowhere to be found as far as Gibbs could tell. Finally, he had to admit he needed help to find Tony. He knew that some of the others had magic that could find people, so he entered the portal hoping they could use their spells to find Tony for him.
