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Tony had always dreamed of living in the white house ever since he was a child. He didn’t really understand what that meant back then, only that money wasn’t a worry in the white house. Despite the wealth of his mother’s side of the family, they’d always been impecunious.
He’d never really understood why they were so poor back then. It hadn’t sunk in until he was well into his twenties that Senior had wasted away any money before it even entered the house with his drinking habits. Everyone told him that he'd never become president, but he never believed them.
He’d considered becoming a senator with an eye towards eventually becoming president as a valid career path until age 21 or so when he realized that if he succeeded, Senior would try to use his fame and fortune to feed his drinking habits. Of course, he was already well on his way to a double major in physical education and political science at that point.
It was a strange combination and not as much crossover as some double majors, but he couldn’t give up the sports anymore than he could give up the political science. He could have easily gone pro football if he’d wanted, though an accident caused a broken leg before he could seriously consider it as a career. He’d been torn between going into politics and going pro football, but the injury had made it clear he should pursue his dream to be president.
He was only one semester away from graduating with his double major when he realized that his career path would force him into contact with his drunken father a lot more than he wanted. He had to scramble to figure out another career path before he graduated college. Without going into politics his career options were rather limited with the degrees he had, but he realized he could become a police officer without a ton more work.
He started working at Peoria, but he quickly found he hated it. He thought that maybe it was just the people he was working with at Peoria, who had made no attempt at hiding their hatred of him. As such, he decided to move on and took another job at a police department in Philadelphia.
Another 2 years later and he still didn’t like his job. By this point in time, he figured it was being a police officer he didn’t like, but he decided to give it one more chance. He moved to Baltimore and took a job there.
He didn’t even last 2 years at Baltimore. About 18 months in, he tackled a criminal only to find out that the guy was actually an NCIS agent named Leroy Jethro Gibbs. That case revealed that his partner was dirty and Tony was at another crossroads again.
Should he go to another police department? Should he accept Gibbs offer? Should he reconsider his career options? Maybe he should try to go into politics, after all.
He’d always been good at talking to people, so politics should be a breeze; especially with his police experience in learning how to spot a lie. He didn’t think he could even attempt politics in Baltimore, though, not knowing how corrupt the police department was. That left his only option as moving somewhere and Tony decided to move to DC.
Coincidentally, it was also where NCIS was based and thus he could work for NCIS while building up his fan base for politics if he wanted. Tony wasn’t sure if he wanted to try working for NCIS or if he wanted to go full bore on the politics. He still worried about what Senior would do if he found out Tony was putting his hat in the race so to speak, but a job he liked was better than one he hated.
Of course, Gibbs didn’t give up quite that easily. Tony wasn’t sure how, but he ended up in Gibbs’ basement as the guy worked with his tools. While Gibbs worked, he listened to Tony talk.
At the end, Gibbs simply offered, “NCIS is different.”
Those three simple words threw Tony for a loop. NCIS was different. Maybe NCIS was what Tony was looking for. Tony asked Gibbs some questions about NCIS and they had a rather long conversation before Tony went home.
Tony still wasn’t sure about NCIS, but Gibbs had promised him that he could leave whenever he wanted if it didn’t work out. He finally decided to go ahead and start working for NCIS. At first, there was no time to even consider politics as Gibbs was a harsh taskmaster and Tony frequently put in 80 to 100 hours a week.
Slowly, as Tony streamlined some of the processes so that they went faster, Tony was able to start volunteering with one of the local political groups that he identified with the most. Shortly after that, they brought on their first team member. Her name was Kate and she’d been a member of the secret service previously.
It was actually his volunteer work that led him to help Abby figure out that the dry cleaner’s place was being used to poison the ball carriers. Tony had realized that it was a political plot to try and assassinate the president. Once they figured that out, there were a limited number of options as to how they could have been doing it.
He continued to volunteer with the democratic party as he knew Senior would hate having to work with them if he wanted to run his usual cons to get other people to pay for his drunkenness. They brought on another team member. This time it was a geek, Tim McGee.
The guy was so green. Tony didn’t know if he was going to work out or not, but to his surprise McGee seemed to really want to be a field agent. As such, Tony decided to do his best to help McGee out which mostly meant pulling pranks in hopes that by the time Tony decided to leave for politics that McGee would be ready to take on more responsibility.
Tony wasn’t worried about Kate. She had a good head on her shoulders despite the blindness she occasionally showed regarding religious things. Of course, he never expected her to die so fast.
It was almost 2 years after she joined the team that she died on a rooftop to a sniper rifle gun probably shot by Ari Haswari. Her death hit Tony hard. He’d known that anyone could die in the field at anytime, but it was the first time he’d actually lost someone that he’d known so well.
He’d taken a couple of days off and wandered a forest path just thinking. He couldn’t leave, yet. With Kate gone there just wouldn’t be enough people on the team as McGee wasn’t ready to do what Tony had done when he started working with Gibbs. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could continue working at NCIS, though.
While he’d enjoyed NCIS better than the police departments, losing Kate made him rethink everything. Working in a job where you could lose someone any day and actually had, well he’d lost his idealistic belief that they were too good to be hurt and now he wanted out. He wasn’t sure politics would be any better, but in general assassinations were actually rare and thus politicians were much less likely than a field agent to die.
He had a number of conversations with McGee to prepare him for his leaving. He fully expected McGee to step into the SFA position when he left, now that Kate was dead. McGee was nowhere close to prepared, but Kate’s death had made everything more real for him too.
Tony’s plans were thrown into a bit of turmoil when Jenny forced Gibbs to bring Ziva onto their team. Working with Ari’s half sister wasn’t the easiest thing in the world and Tony was naturally suspicious of her to boot. She was definitely in contact with Ari and leaving the team with her on it was impossible.
They didn’t so much have conversations as stare downs. He knew there was more going on than she was telling anyone. When they finally took down Ari, Tony breathed a sigh of relief. Surprisingly, it was Ziva who took out Ari in the end and Tony felt a little better about leaving the team with her on it.
He still wasn’t sure that she was telling them everything, but that would be Gibbs’ and McGee’s problem. McGee would be the SFA. It would be a challenge for him to prevent Ziva from running roughshod all over him, but Tony knew he could do it.
Tony talked with Gibbs about it and they worked out a plan where Tony would stay on for another year, but taking a step back and letting McGee do his work and only helping out when McGee needed it. Tony knew Gibbs wasn’t happy with losing him, but for Tony it was the right move. Ziva was informed of the new dynamics, but it obviously confused her.
Tony watched her subtly try to undermine both his and McGee’s authority with Gibbs. He didn’t care so much about her undermining him as he was leaving, but McGee needed to stop her from doing so with him or the team was going to have so many issues. Tony brought it up in Gibbs’ basement before he left, hoping Gibbs would give McGee the support he needed to keep Ziva in line.
It was going to be hard for McGee to keep Ziva in line to begin with as she had a more dominant personality than McGee and Tony really hoped that Gibbs wouldn’t make it worse by letting her get away with some of the stuff that Kate had gotten away with when Tony was SFA. Tony had one final conversation with Ziva before he left, basically a warning.
Just because he was throwing his hat in the political ring full time, didn’t mean he couldn’t come back and kick her ass if she needed it. He planned to keep in touch with both McGee and Gibbs and would know if she stepped out of line too badly. It was a bit too early for Tony to actually become a senator this year, but next year he should be able to do so and he needed to focus on setting up his campaign.
Eventually, he would make it to the white house, but not before putting some protections in place to prevent his impecunious father from abusing his power. That would take some thinking, but he had at least 6 years as a senator to figure it out and probably closer to 24-30 if the average presidential age was anything to go by. He would have to trust that Gibbs could keep making the MCRT succeed, which wasn’t hard given he fully expected to go out on his first date with Gibbs next week.