Pellucid

Tony had become a cop because he wanted to help people. The emolument hadn’t even been an original factor in his career decision, but after everything that’s happened Tony was beginning to become burnt out.

When he’d first started, he’d enjoyed learning under Gibbs’ thumb or head slaps as the case may be. Now though Gibbs had left him with only a “You’ll do,” as he headed off to recover from memory loss in Mexico.

Director Shepard had then taken advantage of that to shove Tony into an undercover role that Gibbs would never have approved of if he’d been here. Tony worked more hours than there were in a day; every day that Gibbs was gone. Then when Gibbs finally returned, instead of the relief Tony had hoped for, Gibbs had dumped his stuff back on his desk without so much as a by your leave.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Jenny was soon replaced with Vance who quickly shipped him out to agent afloat. He absolutely hated being agent afloat. There was nothing he wanted more than to be back in DC and working with the team.

As he heard about one after the other of his teammates returning to Gibbs’ team while he was still out at sea, he couldn’t help feeling a bit sick to his stomach. Was he not needed anymore? He placed feelers out to the CIA and FBI and immediately got back job offers for considerably more than he was currently making at NCIS.

He knew then that regardless of what NCIS thought, he was worth more. Finally, Gibbs was able to get him back. The first thing Tony did was to go to Vance and demand a raise.

For the first time when it came to DiNozzo, Vance finally saw through Tony’s less than pellucid mask to easily understand the man underneath it. He immediately agreed to the raise, shocking DiNozzo. The truth was that he knew the FBI and CIA had offered DiNozzo more money and also that Gibbs would become unbearable if he let Tony go to one of them. Most of all, however, the reports he’d gotten back from the ship made him realize there was more to DiNozzo than met the eyes.

Tony didn’t wait for Vance to change his mind and left the office. While the increase in pay did not eliminate his burn out, it made him feel like his work was at least appreciated. This actually went a long way towards getting him back to a relatively even keel. It didn’t eradicate the stress, but it by far made it easier to deal with. He went back to work the next day with a smile on his face ready for whatever the day may bring.