Archive of Our Own

It started with a nightmare, as many of these things did. Tony lay in bed, thinking about all the things he’d been through as a cop, and all the things he’d helped partners deal with. He’d helped a partner deal with the loss of a parent, he’d walked a partner down the aisle when her own father couldn’t make it, and he’d seen partners wounded, upset, grieving and in every kind of happy situation possible. He had been a cop a long time.

Partners were important. So, when they came home without his, he felt lost. It wasn’t a romantic thing; he knew he could easily fall for her, but he hadn’t. Rule 12 had a number now, but his boss wasn’t the only one who forbade interoffice relationships. He’d heard it put crudely in the past. Being able to say, “Rule 12” and move on was much more efficient and kind of tasteful in comparison. He didn’t want to start a sexual relationship with her, but as he lay there thinking about her, he realized he missed her like a sidearm, or a limb.

True, their little family of agents didn’t split up straight into “partners” the way cop shops did. The four of them took turns watching each other’s sixes. Sometimes, Tony paired up with Tim, sometimes with Gibbs, and sometimes with Ziva. He’d heard Tim and Abby talking about the makeup of a D&D team, and Tony wondered if there was some magic secret to why Gibbs picked each person for each assignment. He couldn’t see a pattern, but for all he knew, Gibbs had a secret “book of shadows” that listed how often each agent could go on which job.

His mind was wandering again. It was probably because he didn’t want to think about the nightmare. In it, they found a body, and the body lay splayed out on the ground, long, dark hair spread out around her, familiar features staring back at him, cold and lifeless. He shuddered as he remembered that experience, too – seeing a partner fall, and never seeing him rise again.

One of the reasons Tony had such a big book of connections was because partners kept in touch, even after they weren’t partners anymore. Of course, Danny was the exception that proved the rule. Normally, though, if he didn’t hear from his partners in a certain amount of time, he started to worry about them. Every day was a new set of dangers, and whether they were serving while walking a beat in a small Illinois town or across the divider in the same room, Tony wanted to make sure his people were safe.

He ran a hand through sleep-disheveled hair and got up to get a drink of water. He pushed the dream aside and went back to sleep. However, the dream kept coming back. He caught himself looking over at her desk, and then, after he’d done so a few times, he caught McGee doing the same thing. There was a limb missing. Unlike Kate, though, it was an unknown situation. They knew she was out there somewhere, and as time moved on, that she was in trouble somehow. He became more and more restless as he worked; he earned himself more headslaps, though he figured Gibbs knew what was going on.

Finally, after several months of trying to ignore the phantom pain, the twinge in his gut, and every cop instinct he had, he’d had enough. He stood up in the bullpen and shook his head vehemently, speaking only one word. That one word was plenty.

“No.”