‘I didn't know'

I didn't know.

Sure, it's not like I could have known. After all, God forbid the man ever talks to me about his personal life. That dubious honour is reserved for Abby.

But still… maybe I should have known. Tony is a very private person- except when he's bragging about his ‘fantastic' love life. I still have my doubts about that.

Maybe I just didn't want to know. I've never really let myself get to know him. He makes me nervous. More nervous than guarding the President ever did. It's a secret I'll carry with me to the grave. Tony… sees too much. Hell, he knows more about me than my own mother does. This is the same man who on one hand, taunts me mercilessly about that stupid wet tee shirt contest but on the other not only volunteered to be my emergency contact but takes that role very seriously.

I should have known. It's not like he kept his past a secret. We all know he's had more than his fair share of demons to face, and I knew that he had a tendency to leave his jobs just when he's begun to settle down, but I didn't know why.

Honest.

Even Gibbs didn't know and he has the resources to find out who taught us in grade school.

No. I couldn't have known. Dammit, why is Abby the one he always turns to? I know I've never let him get to know me; I've always pushed him away the minute he starts getting into my skull, which he does so easily it scares me. Maybe that's why he keeps any conversation between us restricted to teasing. The one time I wanted to talk, really talk, he refused to take me seriously. It's my own fault, that.

I wish I had known.
If I had, then finding him in the showers in that state wouldn't have shocked me so much. I've never seen him cry. Not once, not even when we worked the Linden case. He seemed close to tears many times while we tried to solve the murder, but even then I thought that it was just because it was a child murder. No one likes to see a child die, let alone one being tortured to death by his mentally ill father. I didn't even stop to consider that it was because it was he saw himself in that child.

Abby knew.
She took Tony out that night; got him so drunk he could barely stand, then took him to her place to sleep it off. She told me that earlier. She told me a lot of things I never knew, but I know she didn't tell me everything. Tony would be horrified if he knew that I know as much as I do, that much is obvious.
I guess I wasn't looking. I didn't want to look.

Tony was disowned by his father the same day he started at NCIS and he hasn't spoken to his family since. Not only that, but Tony sees Gibbs in a more… paternal role than just his superior, Abby informed me gravely, and I'm the idiot going ‘what?'

I didn't pay any attention to that phone call this morning. I should have. God, if he had hurt himself… I think Abby got to him just in time. How she knew when I never told her, I don't know. There's always been something a little unnatural about her, though. It wouldn't surprise me if she could read minds as well as she reads evidence.

I must be NCIS' slowest agent. You'd never think I was once a member of the Secret Service.

I didn't know his father told him today that he would have been better off dead. I didn't know that he told Tony he was a shame to the DiNozzo reputation, the DiNozzo line. Abby told me that Tony just wanted to make his father proud, but he felt like he was just a failure.

I watched her trying to comfort him, feeling superfluous. I've never felt so helpless, not even when Ernie Yost danced with me.
All those times I told him he was a screw up, told him that he couldn't do anything right… no wonder he never let me in. I must have hurt him just as badly as his father did.

The same thought keeps going through my mind, over and over.

I didn't know.

So help me, I just didn't know.