Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs took a sip of his coffee as he studied the picture in front of him. There was no doubt that she was beautiful and he wasn’t surprised that Tony would know her, but the question that remained to be answered was how well he knew her. Gibbs realized he would have that answer in a few minutes, but until then, he would have to speculate. He was already aware of the fact that Tony was an only child, so Sydney couldn’t be his sister. Maybe she was another relative such as a cousin; or perhaps she was a girlfriend. If Sydney was a former girlfriend, the team leader knew that DiNozzo wouldn’t have shirked his responsibilities to the girl and to the baby, especially considering Tony’s own scarred childhood.
He sighed in frustration. “I’m missing something, but what is it?” he mumbled to himself.
DiNozzo had come into work this morning, his appearance slightly disheveled and a weariness hung about him like a dark cloud; his usual exuberance clearly hidden bind a mask of exhaustion and worry. Gibbs had to credit the younger man with trying to put on a good front in front of the others, but the team leader had not been fooled.
He recalled how Tony’s demeanor had completely changed when he had picked up the package off his desk. Gibbs thought the younger man was going to pass out, especially as Kate continued to press Tony for answers that he was not ready to give. Kate Todd was a good profiler, but she had no clue as to how to handle the senior field agent, especially when he became guarded to the point of lashing out at those threatening to crack the façade that he had so carefully constructed over the years.
Gibbs had taken the package mainly to keep Kate and McGee from getting their hands on it, but that action had only served to anger Tony further. When confronted about the return address, it was obvious that DiNozzo felt trapped and unsure of how to answer. He knew that Tony went to college at Ohio State, so there really wasn’t anything odd about the agent receiving mail from someone in Ohio. It had been Tony’s reaction when Gibbs had asked him about the address that had told the ex-Marine that something was wrong. He would never forget the look in Tony’s eyes; within the depths of those emotive orbs were fear, heartbreak, anger, and desperation.
Tony had headed towards the restroom in search of some privacy. Gibbs had managed to catch up to him and give him back the package; now he was waiting in the conference room for his senior field agent to join him. He picked up the picture and stared at the mystery woman. In a few short moments, he would have an answer as to who she was, but he had a feeling that discovering her identity was only the first piece of the puzzle that had he had to solve.
A soft knock at the door bought him out of musings. He placed the picture face down on the table as the door opened and Tony entered the room. “Come on in, DiNozzo. Take a seat,” he softly instructed.
He watched the unusually lethargic movements of the agent as he walked over to the table and sat down, carefully placing the unopened package in front of him. Gibbs leaned back in his chair, noticing that Tony had yet to look him in the eye. “DiNozzo?” he called out. “You all right?”
“I’m…just tired,” came the solemn response.
“Been an interesting morning,” Gibbs continued, silently studying the man across from him.
Tony shrugged. “I guess so. It’s not every day that your senior field agent loses it.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I guess you deserve an explanation.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“I’m not sure if I can give you one.”
“Why not?” the team leader pressed.
“I don’t know. Scared, maybe,” Tony admitted.
Gibbs’ brow furrowed. “Scared of what, Tony?”
“That you’ll hate me.”
“Why would you think that?”
“It’s the way it usually works. I screw up and I lose what little respect I’ve earned.”
“I’m not your father, Tony.”
DiNozzo shook his head. “No, you’re not and that’s what makes this so much harder. I finally came to accept the fact that I could never do anything to please him and after a while, I just stopped trying. But you gave me a purpose, a reason to start trying again. You push me to better myself; you’ve taught me so much and I guess that after you hear what I have to say, that I know I’ll lose what respect you may have for me.”
“DiNozzo, listen to me. Nothing that you can say is going to change the way…”
“Don’t say that until you hear the whole story,” Tony insisted. “Please, just don’t.”
Gibbs reached out and turned the picture over. “Does what you have to tell me have anything to do with this girl?”
He didn’t miss the tremor in Tony’s hand as he picked up the picture, nor did the choked back sob go unnoticed by the team leader. “Where did you get this?” DiNozzo wanted to know.
“It was taped to my door last night along with a letter,” Gibbs explained. “I brought it in to see if Abby could get me an ID and…”
“Abby knows about this?”
“She didn’t get an ID; but she did manage to lift your fingerprints off this photograph.”
“I guess she would. It’s my picture.”
“Your picture?”
Tony nodded. “Her name is Sydney and in this picture, she’s eight months pregnant.” The agent weakly smiled. “She hated that picture; she fussed for a week after I took it, but it was always one of my favorites.”
“How do you know her, Tony?”
The former Marine stared at his senior field agent, patiently waiting for an answer to his question. He could see Tony drawing on his reserves of inner strength; a strength that DiNozzo had been forced to call upon many times throughout his life. As his eyes met Tony’s defeated gaze, Gibbs knew without a doubt that the younger man was about to reveal a pain so deep that it had taken years for Tony to accept the familiar ache as part of his being.
“She was my wife,” Tony whispered, struggling to hold back the tears that threatened to fall.
Of all the things that Gibbs had expected, he would have never imagined that this girl in the photograph was his wife. He had always suspected that one day, someone would capture Tony’s heart, but he had no idea that someone did that a very long time ago.
“Your wife?” Gibbs repeated.
Tony nodded. “Yeah. We eloped the day after she graduated high school. I had already finished my freshmen year at Ohio State and…”
Gibbs squeezed Tony’s shoulder as he buried his head in his hands. “It’s all right, son. Take your time.”
“I don’t know if I can do this,” the young man mumbled, cradling his head in his hands. “I’m not sure what’s harder; telling you about Sydney or losing your respect.”
The former Marine lifted Tony’s chin until the agent was looking him in the eye. “You could never lose my respect,” he assured DiNozzo.
“Like I said, you shouldn’t say that until you hear what I have to say.”
“Tony…”
“I didn’t protect them, Gibbs,” he confessed, his voice laced with sadness and remorse. “I didn’t save them.”
Gibbs swallowed nervously as those words echoed in his mind, recalling a time that he had uttered those very words. Images of Shannon’s and Kelly’s smiling faces assaulted his senses causing him to pull away from Tony. Quickly tamping down the memories that threatened to overwhelm him, he saw DiNozzo staring at him, his pained expression clearly indicating that he thought Gibbs was disappointed in him.
“I’m sorry,” he quickly apologized to DiNozzo. “I was just…uh, thinking of someone who once said those exact same words.”
“Who?” Tony inquired.
“It doesn’t matter right now,” Gibbs replied, knowing that sometime he was going to have face his own past, but at the moment, his priority was helping Tony. DiNozzo was carrying a heavy burden and had been for a long time; Gibbs was determined to help lighten the young man’s load.
“Who couldn’t you protect Tony?” he wanted to know.
Tony stared at him, his eyes telling of the emotional agony that was consuming him. “Sydney. I couldn’t protect Sydney or Michael. He was our unborn son,” DiNozzo painstakingly recalled. “Michael Sean DiNozzo. We were going to call him Sean.”
“What happened?” Gibbs couldn’t hide the uncertainty in his voice. He couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever happened to Tony’s wife and child was horrific, forcing DiNozzo to reopen old wounds that had started to heal over the years.
DiNozzo’s gaze fell to the floor. Gibbs waited patiently for Tony to continue, knowing how difficult it was for him to face the past. The team leader’s heart began to ache for the man he considered to be a son.
Tony closed his eyes and blew out a pent up breath. “They were murdered,” he quietly began, speaking so softly that Gibbs had to strain to hear what DiNozzo was saying.
“They were murdered,” Tony repeated, his voice a little stronger, “and I wasn’t there to save them. I let them down,” he cried. “I was supposed to protect them… look out for them, and I didn’t. I heard her…scream my name…as I got out of…my car and…”
Gibbs rose from his chair and knelt down beside Tony. He reached up and began stroking the back of his hair as Tony continued to weep. He knew the younger man well enough to know that DiNozzo would be embarrassed by what he deemed to be his failure to control his emotions, prompting Gibbs to simply allow his physical presence to serve as source of comfort. He knew what it was to lose a wife and child, but he couldn’t bring himself to share his pain.
The two men sat in silence. Something about Tony had always drawn Gibbs to the younger man. He and DiNozzo were opposites, but alike in so many ways; but now they had one more thing in common. They had both experienced a loss so great that it had taken years of forcing one foot in front of the other just to survive. They had both experienced true and unconditional love that had been destroyed by the cruelty of another, and they had both been left behind to pick up the pieces. Now, they were both being forced to acknowledge a past that had been buried but not forgotten because someone was obviously determined to destroy his son.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
“What do you think is going on?” Kate wondered, her gaze fixed on Tony’s empty desk.
“I don’t know,” McGee admitted. “Gibbs didn’t look too happy.”
“Neither did Tony,” she recalled, taking a sip of her hot tea. “Did you by chance catch a glimpse of the return address on that package?”
“Not really. Gibbs said something about Ohio and I know that’s where Tony went to school. I can try and access some of Tony’s school records to see what we can come up with.”
Kate shook her head. “That would be invading his privacy.”
“Oh, and he never does that to us,” McGee reminded her.
“You have a point, but I think that this is much more serious than him wanting to know what we had for breakfast and who we’re dating.”
“We won’t know until we look though.”
“No McGee. We wait,” she insisted.
The junior agent sighed. “You’re right. I guess I just don’t like being left out of the loop.”
“I don’t either, but right now I think we better finish up our paperwork until Gibbs tells us otherwise.”
“All right, but you do know that if it were either one of us, Tony wouldn’t think twice.”
“Yeah and he wouldn’t get fussed at by Gibbs, either. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re not Tony.”
“Thank God,” Tim quipped.
“Tim!”
“I…uh…didn’t mean that…uh the way it sounded.”
“You better not have, McGee!”
Kate watched in amusement as Abby appeared from around the corner and glared at McGee. “I don’t want have to give you that lecture again,” the Goth warned.
“What lecture is that?” Kate asked.
“The lecture that involves me explaining to him that he is not to badmouth Tony ever!” she exclaimed. “You have no idea what Gibbs would be like if Tony wasn’t around to act as a go between for you two. Trust me, being Leroy Jethro Gibbs’ senior field agent isn’t an easy job.”
“You don’t have to lecture me again,” Tim assured her. “I still have a bruise from the last one.”
Kate rose from her desk and joined Abby and McGee. “So, what brings you up here?” Kate pried.
“I need to see Gibbs,” Abby eagerly replied as she looked around. “Where is he?”
“He’s in the conference room with Tony,” Kate replied.
“With Tony?”
“Yeah, it’s been an interesting morning.”
Abby chewed on her lip for a few seconds. “I’ve got to see him. Tell him the minute he comes out to come and see me.”
“Is there something we should know?”
“No, at least not right now.”
“Abby, Tony and Gibbs are acting really strange; do you know why?”
“I gotta go!”
Before Kate could utter another word, Abby was headed back down to the lab. She stared after her until she was out of sight and then turned her attention back to McGee. “Do it,” Kate snapped.
“Do what?” McGee asked, obviously confused by her sudden change of heart.
“You know. That thing we talked about earlier, but don’t get caught.”
She rolled her eyes as realization dawned upon McGee. “Oh, you mean the…thing. I’ll get right on it.”
“I’ll be on the lookout for Gibbs and Tony. Let me know when you find something.”
Kate had barely started back to her desk when McGee called out to her. “Kate, I’ve got something…”
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Tony forcibly buried the palms of his hand in his eyes in an effort to stop the flow of tears. The last thing that he had intended to do was to break down in front of Gibbs over something that happened a long time ago. Truthfully, he had planned on marching in the conference room and insisting that he was fine and that everything had been a big misunderstanding. Of course, he knew Gibbs wouldn’t believe it, but he was at least going to try.
When he entered the room, he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to hide the truth any longer, at least not from Gibbs. The team leader deserved to know what kind of man he had for his senior agent; if he couldn’t protect his family, how could Gibbs count on Tony to have his six?
“I’m sorry,” Tony mumbled as wiped away the remnants of his tears, knowing that he had to pull himself together.
“Don’t apologize,” Gibbs said.
“I know. It’s a sign of weakness,” the weary agent finished.
“That’s not what I was going to say.”
“Really?”
“Yeah DiNozzo, really. You don’t have anything to apologize for,” the team leader maintained.
“Except for failing my family.”
“DiNozzo, I…”
“Don’t say it, Gibbs!” Tony warned. “Don’t say it’s not my fault! You don’t know what happened! You…”
Tony’s control over his emotions was tenuous; one moment he was consumed with grief and the next minute he was burning with rage. He had actually raised his voice to Gibbs, something that he had only done once since he had known the former Marine. It was a miracle that Gibbs had actually hired him after that particular confrontation.
He stared at his trembling hands, silently willing them to keep still. Tony was aware that Gibbs was now sitting in the chair, facing him, waiting patiently for him to get a handle on his feelings.
“You’re right, Tony,” Gibbs quietly conceded. “I don’t know what happened and I won’t until you tell me.”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
“No, but I think I need to know. Don’t you?”
A tiny smile escaped Tony’s lips as he picked up the picture of Sydney. “God, she was beautiful.”
“Yes, she was,” the team leader agreed. “She was very beautiful.”
“We hadn’t been married three months before she got pregnant,” Tony began to recall. “It wasn’t planned. The birth control pills were supposed to be 99.1% effective; they left off the part about being .9% ineffective.”
Gibbs grinned and shook his head in amusement. “Yeah, I know. They do need to be clearer about that,” he concurred.
Tony was surprised the Gibbs actually agreed with him. Normally, he would have taken that comment and attempted to learn more about his mentor’s life, but at the moment, it was taking all his energy to deal with his own tormented past.
“Anyway,” he continued, “after we got over the initial shock, we were pretty excited. We decided that she would be able to finish her freshman year, but towards the end of her pregnancy, the doctor put her on complete bed rest, so she took an incomplete in her classes and had planned to finish them in summer school. I was a sophomore and I was going to school, playing football, and working two part time jobs, but we were managing and we were happy.
“We had a tiny house about twenty minutes away from the university; it belonged to one of the coaches and he was letting us stay there in exchange for helping him fix it up.”
“Is that the address on the package?” Gibbs asked.
“Yeah, but the house isn’t there anymore.”
“What happened to it?”
“Burnt down.”
Tony was waiting for Gibbs to say something, but he remained silent. “I’ll get to that part in a minute,” Tony muttered.
“Take your time.”
He nodded and slowly exhaled. “Like I said, she started having problems with her health and the doctor put her on bed rest. I was running myself ragged going to school, working, and trying to take care of her. Thankfully, football season was over, so that helped a little. My frat buddies would go by and check on her and take her food, so things were working out. At least I thought they were.”
“What do you mean?”
“About two weeks before she was murdered, I discovered that she was being stalked by an old boyfriend. Actually, he’d been harassing her for months and she kept it hidden from me. Told me she knew I was under a lot of stress and that he was harmless. She had dumped him before we had even started dating and assumed that he was out of her life now that she was married to me. I kind of freaked out on her; I think that was the first time I ever yelled at her. It dawned on me that I sounded just like my father and I broke down; she held me until I cried myself to sleep.”
“You’re nothing like you’re father, Tony,” Gibbs assured him. “All couples have spats. I would have probably reacted the same way. Sounds to me like you were burning the candle at both ends and everything just finally caught up with you. There’s nothing wrong with a man shedding a few tears.”
Tony shrugged. “Have you ever cried, Boss?” He wasn’t sure what possessed him to ask that question, but the words were out of his mouth before he could stop them.
Gibbs paused for minute, causing Tony to wonder if he had said something wrong. “Yeah, DiNozzo,” the former Marine said. “I’ve shed a few tears in my time.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” Tony promised. “Wouldn’t want to tarnish that tougher than nails reputation.”
The team leader grinned. “I appreciate that, DiNozzo. Now, quit changing the subject.”
“Right,” Tony sighed. “Anyway, the next morning, I apologized and all was forgiven, but I had decided that she would never be alone and even though she argued the point, I didn’t back down. My frat buddies volunteered to stay in shifts while I was at school and work and I placed a restraining order on Jason Miller.”
“Jason Miller was the ex-boyfriend; the stalker?”
“Yeah. Rich kid, had a lot of money to throw around.”
“Which you didn’t have.”
“Nope. We were barely making ends meet. Her parents refused to help us; they didn’t like me much and you know how my dad felt about me.”
“Sounds like you had some good friends.”
“Those guys were the best. Still are.”
“So, what happened? Sounds like you had your bases covered.”
“I thought so too, until…”
“Until what?”
Tony closed his eyes against the bloody images racing through his mind. He couldn’t relive this again, not even for Gibbs. Raking his fingers through his hair, he started rocking. “I can’t do this, Gibbs. Please don’t make me.”
“Tony, listen to me,” Gibbs demanded.
“I thought I could do this, but I can’t!”
Gibbs grabbed him by the shoulders, forcing him to meet the team leader’s worried gaze. “Tony, someone is obviously playing with your mind by forcing you to face your past and I guarantee that whoever this is, isn’t going to stop unless we stop him. You’ve got to confront this or they’re going to win. Is that what you want?” It was then Gibbs struck a nerve. “Is that what Sydney and Michael would want?”
Tony shook his head. He could hear Sydney telling him that it was time to let someone help him. She always accused him of being stubborn and she was right; he had proved that on more than one occasion throughout their short marriage. “No,” he rasped. “It’s not what they would have wanted.”
“Then don’t you dare dishonor their memory by letting this bastard beat you…”
Chapter End Notes:
An extra long chapter for the weekend...hope you enjoy. I'd also like to thank everyone for their kind words of sympathy in the death of my mom. I can't begin to express my appreciation for the support I've been given. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.