Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tony pulled on his best undercover masks to keep his face perfectly neutral when Ziva boarded the plane. She didn't bother to show him the same courtesy, glaring hatefully in his direction every few minutes, but Gibbs and Vance seemed content to ignore that.

Tony was fairly certain that they'd ignore just about anything she said or did to him right now, so he resolved to hide his discomfort over all of his injuries — old and new — for the rest of the trip. It would be brutal on a 15 hour flight, but he didn't see an alternative. If she hadn't been there, Tony might have felt comfortable taking something to make him sleep through the worst of it, but he couldn't risk Ziva attacking him again while he was too deeply asleep to defend himself. Once upon a time, he might have trusted Gibbs to have his back, but that trust had been shaky since his return to Mexico. And since the older agent hadn't said a damn word about an injured Tony being dragged to another fucking continent to be interrogated by a foreign agency… Well, let's just say that trust was thin on the ground for Tony right now.

So he did his best not to disturb the makeshift bandage he'd made in the airport bathroom — sacrificing his handkerchief and tie to mask the shallow cut on his hip — or lose the tension in his sling. Tony wasn't going to give Ziva or Vance the satisfaction of seeing him squirm or show his pain. He knew better now.

Tony had finally given in and dozed — he'd lost count of how many different adrenaline crashes he was coming down off of now — but every time one of the others moved, the rustle of their clothing would wake him, and he'd watch through slitted eyes until they settled again.

Not long after they took off, Gibbs moved over and sat beside Ziva, tucking her under his arm, and Tony carefully crossed his name off the mental list of people he could trust to have his back right now. It hurt — almost as much as his hip — but Tony refused to get stabbed in the back again. He wasn't yet willing to entirely cross Gibbs off, but Tony knew damn well how good Ziva was at manipulating people, and how irrational Gibbs got when anyone pressed his Kelly or Shannon buttons. And Ziva was currently working the former with all that she had. Tony knew better than to think he'd come ahead in that fight. Not while Gibbs was caught up in the moment.

The fact that Gibbs hadn't even asked how Tony was since getting him back from Daddy David's clutches spoke volumes. Tony would have replied "I'm fine," like usual, because that's how their code worked, but Gibbs hadn't even asked.

Tony began mentally scrolling through his other job offers. He was under no illusions that Vance wouldn't pick Ziva over himself if asked, and right now Tony didn't have any faith in Gibbs to make a different choice. And when Tony couldn't trust two of the three people who were supposed to have his back in the field — with the third only hanging onto his spot by his fingertips — let alone the boss who chose what field to send him to… well it was time to get the hell out of dodge.

It might be nice to go with Tobias, just to rub it in Gibbs' face, but he was also the official FBI liaison to NCIS. And the last thing Tony wanted to do, other than putting his life back in his so-called team's hands in the field, was to put his life back in the teams' hands during a joint op, after "betraying" them to become a Fibbie.

It was a shame that Shepherd's stupid Frog opp had screwed up Tony's class schedule, as between that and Vance sending him afloat with no warning Tony was now two semesters behind on his Criminal Psychology PhD. Derek had told him that if he finished it, there would be a place for him in the BAU, but Tony wasn't sure they'd take him currently. Tony didn't seriously consider his offers from ATF or the Coast Guard, or the other assorted Alphabets, which left Director Morrow as the only other option. He'd offered Tony a place at homeland when he left, and had made sure to remind Tony once a year that the job was still on the table. The offer to teach at Quantico had been made several years ago, and the instructor who made it might not even be there anymore — Ian would know — but it would potentially serve as a good back up plan if Morrow wasn't actually willing to take him.

Once they landed he'd— a sharp twinge from his back halted Tony's train of thought. Once they landed, he'd drag himself to Bethesda. Then he'd send Derek a message and ask about his partial degree. And depending on what Derek said, he'd take Morrow up on his offer or call Quantico. Tony had at least two weeks of leave because of his shoulder, and he fully intended to be gone before that time was up.

Tony might think his loyalty was one of his better qualities, but everyone had a breaking point, and NCIS had well and truly broken Tony's.

Chapter Text

"I'm sorry, you want to run that by me again?" Tony said. He'd expected some kind of fallout from the Rivkin fiasco, but he honestly hadn't expected Ziva to be quite so brazen.

"She says she can't trust you to have her back anymore," Gibbs growled. "You can't work with someone you don't trust."

Tony tried his damndest not to gape at that proclamation. Unfortunately, he wasn't at his best, and several of his filters had been thinned out by the painkillers Brad had foisted off on him. He wasn't loopy, but he sure as hell wasn't guarding his words as closely as usual. "I'm sorry, her boyfriend killed a Federal Agent, tried to kill another, was guilty of espionage, including files from NCIS that he could have only gotten from Ziva, meaning she's been committing espionage too, and I'm the untrustworthy one? Un-fucking-believable."

"I'll make sure you're not sent afloat again," Gibbs said, willfully ignoring Tony's very valid points that didn't support his current obsession. "I'll make sure Vance sends you somewhere good."

"Don't do me any favors," Tony snapped. "He'll have my paperwork tomorrow." Thankfully Derek had come through for him just a few hours ago, in the form of a conference call with his boss and an assurance that Tony would have time to complete his classes for his degree while learning the ropes at the BAU.

"DiNozzo—" Gibbs began. DiNozzo. He wasn't sure when he'd stopped being Tony during their off hours, but if there was a better sign of how far their relationship had deteriorated, Tony couldn't think of it.

"Lock the door on your way out, Gibbs," he said tiredly. "Actually, fuck it. Leave the key. I'll lock up behind you." He had no doubts that Gibbs had a second copy somewhere, but Tony was going to have to move to Quantico anyway, so the key thing was more symbolic than anything.

Gibbs started, then looked Tony up and down critically. "You're hurt," he said.

"No fucking kidding, Gibbs. I went head to toe with a Kiddon officer trying to kill me a few nights ago— Don't touch me!" he added when Gibbs reached towards him.

He withdrew his hand and held it up defensively. "I read your file before we left; it didn't say anything about an injury on your thigh," Gibbs said, pointing at the bandage that was peeking out from beneath his shorts. The slice on his hip had been shallow, but long, and positioned exactly where it would tug and pull every time he sat, stood, or walked, because Ziva was a grade A bitch who knew exactly where to slice. Tony was completely unsurprised at the admission that Gibbs had read Tony's protected medical file. It wouldn't be the first time, but it was damn well going to be the last.

"Well a lot's changed since then, Gibbs."

"How? Eli didn't touch your leg in the video."

"No, he didn't," Tony agreed. "But you have no fucking clue what happened when I was out of your sight, being escorted around by his people, thanks to my own fucking team lead and director handing me over like I was a literal bargaining chip instead of a squishy human with feelings and breakable parts. And you have no fucking clue what happened to me after that meeting, while Vance and Daddy David were doing their little posturing dance while you smirked in the corner. You amused yourself by watching them trade barbs instead of having my back."

"What happened?" Gibbs growled.

"None of your damn business."

"Of course it's my business! You're my agent."

"No I'm not; you already kicked me off your team, and I just told you I'm leaving NCIS, remember? Besides, I'm only your agent when it's convenient, like when you want to read my private medical file, or insist that I tell you what happened to me. But you were conspicuously silent when I asked — damn near begged — you not to hand me over to a foreign government." Tony swallowed past the lump in his throat that that admission caused him, and resisted the urge to rub his chest. Not where his ribs hurt, but distinctly higher and far more tellingly over his heart. Taking as deep a breath as he was currently able, Tony said calmly, "You wanted to leave me alone in a room with the head of Mossad? Well you can damn well leave me alone now. So I say again, any new injuries I obtained, which you didn't give a shit about until five minutes ago, are none of your damn business. Now get out."

"I'm not going anywhere—"

"I believe the nice federal agent who no longer works for you told you to get out of his apartment," Derek said, walking out of the bedroom. His badge and gun were prominently displayed, so he'd clearly gotten them back out of the gun safe while he was in there. "Now if you don't want to spend the next few hours in a holding cell, I'd suggest you stop trespassing and leave," he concluded evenly.

"Who is this?" Gibbs actually looked shocked for once.

"Also none of your damn business," Tony sighed. He was grateful for the backup, but Derek's presence was likely to make Gibbs just dig in harder out of spite. It was one thing to get rid of Tony on his terms, because Ziva demanded it, but another thing entirely to be told that Tony wasn't going to beg for his scraps, or to see proof that someone else had taken up his job of watching Tony's back.

He saw the flash of calculation run across Gibbs' face, and the moment he decided to try a different tack and adopt a worried expression. "I just want to help."

"Any help I could have used from you I needed 48 hours ago, Gibbs," Tony said firmly, refusing to be sucked back into his pseudo-family snare. "I don't need you to help me anymore; I can handle things myself."

"With him?" Gibbs snarled, the worry gone in an instant. "The Fibbie? Who came out of your bedroom?"

Tony could have defended himself by explaining that Derek had gone in there to make a call, or by pointing out that everyone was fully clothed, or by explaining that Derek was staying on the couch because he lived a ways south by Quantico. But he no longer cared what Gibbs thought. So instead he shrugged carelessly and then tossed a lascivious smirk at Derek. "Maybe."

And Derek, who always rolled with Tony's moods, just smiled fondly. "You know you're in no condition to follow up on that look tonight, Babe." When he turned back towards Gibbs, his look turned frosty. "Now, Agent Gibbs, are you going to leave the key and get out, or am I going to have to bust out my handcuffs?"

"Ooh!" Tony perked up, but Derek pointed at him sharply. "Not the fun, fuzzy kind. The boring, work kind that lead to your former boss spending a night at the Hoover building."

Gibbs stared him down for a long moment, then huffed, spun around, and slammed the door behind him. He didn't leave the key.

Tony scoffed. "Good thing I'm changing the locks anyway," he muttered.

"C'mon babe, let's get you to bed," Derek teased, sliding one shoulder under Tony's proffered arm. "We've got an early day tomorrow."

Tony laughed and let himself be half-lead, half-dragged into his bedroom. Once they were far away from any prying ears that might still be listening on the other side of the door, he murmured, "It's a good thing my actual boyfriend's out of town. Let's not tell him or the lovely Pennelina what just happened."

Derek laughed. "Oh, I'm definitely telling my Baby Doll all about this night. You can handle Ian however you want."

Chapter Text

Gibbs slunk down in his seat and watched Tony laugh with his new team. His arm was still in a sling; the original injury should have been healed by now, so Gibbs could only assume that, like his thigh, further damage had happened when Gibbs wasn't paying attention. It seemed like a lot had happened to Tony when Gibbs wasn't paying attention.

Other than the sling and some remaining stiffness around his cracked ribs, Tony looked good— happy. Gibbs knew all his masks — or, at least, he used to — including the fake smile he used at work, and this was the genuine thing. Gibbs hadn't seen Tony look that honestly happy in… a while. Since before Mexico, possibly.

Gibbs had thought he was giving Tony time to come to his senses, but when his two weeks of mandated leave passed and he didn't return to the Naval Yard, Gibbs had gone digging. He was shocked to learn that Tony had actually submitted transfer papers the day after their confrontation, taking them directly to HR and bypassing Vance entirely. The orders were signed by the Deputy Director of the FBI, confirming Gibbs' suspicion from that night, but from there the trail was hard to follow.

The FBI had circled the wagons around his former Senior Field Agent, and Gibbs had been sent on two wild goose chases before finally being pointed at the BAU. Once he read their mandate, Gibbs realized the connection to Tony's studies — another casualty of his amnesia that hadn't been recovered until that moment — and kicked himself for missing it before.

He was kicking himself for a lot of things, including not taking Tony's side after Rivkin. It didn't even matter that he'd chosen Ziva; two days after they got back from Israel, Tom Morrow had stomped into the bullpen, dragged Gibbs up to Vance's office, and read them both the riot act for covering up Rivkin's involvement in the murder of his ICE agent, for dragging a US Federal Agent to a foreign government for interrogation, and for covering up Ziva's own espionage. His staunch defense of Tony — though not by name — had actually made Gibbs consider whether the FBI transfer was a red herring, and he spent two days trying to figure out if Tony had gone to Homeland instead. Morrow had finished off by informing them that Homeland had rectified NCIS's oversight, and Ziva was now in their custody, being interrogated about her own crimes. His tone made it clear that she had already been disappeared into some blacksite, and Gibbs was down another agent. He'd chosen Ziva, and he'd chosen wrong.

Tony's new team finished paying for their meal and headed towards the exit, and Gibbs slouched down further in his seat, waiting for them to pass. When a shadow fell over the window, he looked up and found Tony staring down at him. Any trace of his smile was gone.

"I'm not as stupid as you seem to think I am," Tony said coldly. "The you that recruited me from Baltimore would have known that I knew the moment you started staring at me, and wouldn't have tried to fool me with something from the damn NCIS motorpool in the first place. But then, that man disappeared to Mexico a while ago, and I have no idea who returned in his place."

"I'm sorry," Gibbs said, because he wasn't sure how else to respond to those very accurate barbs.

"Uh huh," Tony said, his tone clearly conveying how little that meant to him. He didn't even joke about Gibbs breaking one of his own rules like the old Tony would have.

Gibbs tried to give a peace offering. "I see you finished your degree."

If anything, Tony's expression grew colder. "Actually, your little sojourn to Mexico, one Director's unsanctioned Frog hunt, and another's hissy fit that banished me to a ship with no warning, all derailed my studies. Fortunately, the BAU is willing to train me on the job until I finish making up for lost — well, stolen — time."

So much for a peace offering. He briefly wondered if the old Gibbs — the one who wasn't still finding floating pieces of unmoored memories that hinted at larger gaps — would have already been told that. Whether that Gibbs would have done the math and known when it was time for Tony to graduate and gotten an invitation, like he had to Tony's Masters' ceremony, a few months after he transferred. He had a feeling that that Gibbs wouldn't be struggling with a gutted team right now, wouldn't be fighting against an SFA who primly informed him that he wouldn't be doing all of Gibbs' extra work that apparently Tony had been shouldering for years.

Probably.

"So, did Toby crack, or did Vance pull some strings?" Tony broke the silence.

"What?"

"You're settling a bet," Tony said, his tone slightly less frosty, but with none of his usual good humor. "I already know you didn't have McGee track down Derek to see what team he worked on, so how did you figure out that I was with the BAU? Did Toby crack under pressure, or did Vance pull some strings in the upper echelon of the FBI?"

Gibbs kept silent, not wanting to admit that Fornell had actually resisted everything he threw at him, and had even thrown back some choice words of his own.

"Ah, Vance. You'd be far more smug if you'd managed to bully Toby into giving me up. I guess I owe him a beer. So, did you get what you came for, Gibbs? Or did I ruin it when I didn't beg for you to take me back? Prove that I wasn't lost and floundering without you?"

"Where did I go wrong?" Gibbs asked, instead of admitting that Tony was right. On all counts.

"The fact that you still think there was one moment you could go back and redo to fix everything tells me you still don't understand. You want a moment, Gibbs? The other night in my apartment. The flight back from Israel. The flight to Israel. Dozens of red flags with Ziva that you ignored. Dozens of times you told the junior agents they didn't need to listen to me. Every headslap since Mexico that had nothing to do with my job performance and everything to do with your own frustration. My time afloat. Your blow up about Jeanne. The way you came back from Mexico. The way you went to Mexico. Ignoring the fact that Ziva shot me. Letting her tear the team apart. Letting Shepherd put her at Kate's desk. Trusting that she killed Haswari for you, instead of on Daddy David's orders to ingratiate herself and push your buttons about Kelly. Thinking you could lie to me about the bullet trajectories of that night and I'd be too stupid or snowed in by a damned Israeli spy to work out the math for myself. Your Ahab impersonation over Haswari. The fact that you coddled Kate so much and trusted her quote unquote profiling experience that she let Haswari get away with his kind eyes and you didn't dump her to the curb then and there."

Tony sighed. "I don't know, Gibbs, pick a time. When did our relationship start to fall apart? Was it supposed to ebb and flow the way it did, or was it already too late for us after the Atlas case? You really think fixing just one of those things would be enough? You think that one grudging "sorry" would cover years of issues? Just because this was the month I took that final step, doesn't mean that this last straw was the only thing you did to force me out. It just means that I clearly gave you several years worth of tries more than I should have. The leading theory is Stockholm Syndrome."

His absolutely flat, exhausted delivery did more to deflate Gibbs's rising anger than anything else could have. Tony wasn't raging about past injustices, or playing up his hurts for sympathy, or even joking to hide his real pain. It was the same way he had once talked about Senior, late at night in the basement, wearing two casts, explaining why Gibbs hadn't had any way to contact his next of kin while Tony was in the hospital. Tony had had the same exhausted, dead affect when he explained that legally he didn't have a next of kin, and hadn't since he was twelve. It was the same tone he'd used to offer a quiet, "he's not worth it" that did nothing to diffuse that past Gibbs's rage.

Gibbs was struck with a sudden clarity; he was now in the same category as Senior; yet another father who had thrown Tony away, who had hurt him enough that Tony finally shut them out for his own good. Gibbs meant nothing to Tony anymore, and it was his own damn fault. Tony was right; he'd taken the final step, but Gibbs had been the one to push him to that point.

Deep down, Gibbs could finally admit, he'd come here today to ask Tony to return. To ask him to fix the team that had fallen apart without him. To pick up the slack as his SFA, and to put up with McGee's disrespect — disrespect that Gibbs would never have tolerated if he'd been the one in Tony's position, yet he expected Tony to ignore — to give Gibbs his dedications and brilliance and time and misplaced anger, and to get nothing in return but pain and ridicule and backhanded insults.

Gibbs wouldn't lay any of that on Tony's shoulders ever again; it was the least he owed the man who had once been his son. A son he'd started forgetting long before Mexico, it turned out.

"Goodbye Tony," he said, starting the car. There was no point in explaining that he knew he'd screwed up, that he'd wasted good. Tony wouldn't care about his rules or his apologies. The best peace offering Gibbs could give would be to get out of his hair and stay there.

And Tony seemed to understand, as he always had. "Goodbye, Gibbs," he said with a solemn nod, backing up a step from the car.

As he pulled out, Gibbs couldn't help but glance back at the rearview mirror. He wasn't surprised to find Tony gone; he had no reason to look back.