Reading Time: 96 Minutes

Title: If tomorrow never comes
Author: Hedwig Edwiges
Fandom: NCIS
Genre: Angst, Action Adventure, Drama, Hurt/Comfort, Time Travel
Relationship(s): Gen
Content Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Major Character Death, Violence-Graphic. Medical inaccuracies, Law enforcement procedures inaccuracies, Original characters
Author Note: English is my second language. Any errors are my own or might be the fault of Grammarly or Word. Thanks to hubby for the action scenes ideas and suggestions.
Beta: The Nice English Lady ™
Word Count: 65,075
Summary: Tony always expected a violent death considering his line of work. What he didn’t expect was to wake up years younger, with memories of a life that didn’t go the way he expected or wanted.
Artist: NotSally
Artist Appreciation: Thank you very much NotSally for choosing my story to provide art for. Loved our email chats and amazing art you created.

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Prologue – Sometimes late at night

Anthony D. DiNozzo Junior was tired. Not only because of an 11-hour flight coming back from Europe. He was tired of the whole idea of this ill planned trip. He was tired of the way things were going at NCIS. He was tired of Gibbs and McGee and Ziva and Abby always wanting something from him, expecting more from him, but never reciprocating, never being there for him as he was there for them. Tony’s presence, Tony’s time was always a given, but if he asked for anything, if he complained, he was the selfish one, the immature one that couldn’t take one for the team.

It wasn’t even 10pm yet, but the streets were quiet for a Monday night. Tony was driving automatically, following the normal route between the airport and the Navy Yard. All he wanted was to go home, sleep in his bed for at least a week and try to forget the last days, the mad dash through Berlin, following a ghost of an idea to keep up with Ziva and her insatiable thirst for revenge.

A big truck came from the intersection, making Tony slow down and stop the car, waiting for the oversized vehicle to pass by. Ziva tapped her fingers on her thigh impatiently. She hadn’t talked much for the entire trip but had become basically mute since they boarded the plane in Berlin, after losing sight of Bodnar.

“I think we should regroup and revise the plan about this search,” Tony said quietly, distractedly watching the truck and trailer passing by, seeing a few other vehicles coming after it.

“Nobody cares what you think, Tony,” came Ziva’s rash answer, without her turning towards him.

“I know you’re hurting…” he tried again.

“You know nothing! You have an enchanted life! What might you know about my hurt?!” Ziva hurled at him, still not looking in his direction.

“I lost my mother when I was 8,” Tony whispered.

“Ha, she drank herself to death to escape you?” Ziva sneered. “I lost my mother, my sister, my brother and now my father!” She recited, finally turned to look at him. “And you killed the love of my life,” she completed in a hateful tone.

Tony sighed deeply. Another thing to be tired of. The old Rivkin discussion. The never-ending blame because he defended himself from a highly skilled agent and won since the guy was three sheets under so much booze that he probably would have set a Breathalyzer on fire.

“I’m not gonna re-hash this with you, Ziva,” Tony said quietly, half turning towards Ziva to look at the young woman. He was really trying to find some connection here.

“Because you are a coward!” Ziva interrupted, her hand grabbing something from inside her shirt.

Suddenly the tip of a knife was pressed against his chest, right under his heart. He looked down to find one of Ziva’s long thin blades nestled against his shirt.

“You are like a scab, something ugly and foul that grows out until your body throws it away. You are the little voice inside my head, repeating things like procedure and legal, when all I want is to solve a case.”

“So, you’re saying I’m like your conscience?”

“Yes! Something useless, that does not help anything! I need my training. I need to be able to do what is needed. I do not need an annoying, infuriating man-child sprouting things like fair and lawful! I just need to get it done! And you are always in the way!”

“Spouting…” Tony corrected reflexively.

“Argh!” Ziva screamed. “You are so irritating! An itch I can not scratch! You do not know when to keep your big mouth shut! You do not know when to walk away! You do not know when to leave things be! You push and pull, making it impossible to ignore you!”

Tony was not paying attention to the hateful speech anymore. A black SUV was driving from the other side of the intersection, crossing the last truck, and coming directly towards them. Even in his muddled, tired brain, DiNozzo knew that this was not right, and they had to get out of the way quickly. When he tried to turn away, he felt the increased pressure of the knife against him.

Suddenly, the SUV was upon them, impacting on the passenger door of their car, jostling Ziva forward, against Tony. Her training didn’t fail, and her hand never even quavered, keeping a steady hold on the knife, pushing it against Tony, penetrating through his shirt and into his flesh on a direct trajectory toward his heart.

The shake of the car brought Tony’s eyes up to focus on the woman’s face. He saw surprise but elation also, recognized that she might not have planned to fulfil her threat, much like when she pushed the gun against him in Israel, soon after Rivkin’s death, but she was glad that the accident forced her hand in the situation.

DiNozzo didn’t register any pain from the stabbing, his mind racing as usual, cataloguing Ziva’s expression, noting as much as possible of the black car with tinted windows that smashed against them, feeling time stretching, as if a second could last an hour.

Ziva’s eyes shone with glee, and she also seemed to ignore any pain from the impact.

“Will you go to hell already?!” She whispered, even if her tone indicated she would have liked to shout. A thin stream of blood dripped from her mouth, surprising the two in the car. Ziva’s hand finally trembled some, but she had enough presence to pull the knife out with all the hateful glee she could muster. She raised the hand holding the knife to check for the wet sensation on her face, mixing their blood. Pain started to register in her mind, and she whimpered.

Tony could feel the pressure of the knife leaving his chest and he knew that would only make everything worse, but overall, he still felt numb. Much like the impression of time stretching out, he seemed to be unable to focus on only one thing, as if everything his vision encompassed was jumbled together: the blood on Ziva’s face, the dripping knife in her hand, the tinted black windows of the other car too close to the passenger side of their vehicle, broken glass spread over Ziva’s hair, the street light throwing ominous shadows all over the accident scene.

With what seemed to be his last breath, Tony answered Ziva’s rhetorical question. “I wouldn’t want to intrude in your home.”

Then it was like a movie, everything and everyone just froze, and it was like Anthony D. DiNozzo Junior was floating away, looking at the street from high above but still able to see through the car roof, watching Ziva’s and his body flop down, lifeless, while a couple of men in black got out of the SUV that had rammed their car, walking calmly to check their handwork.

Chapter 1 – I lie awake and watch

“Clear!”

The body on the bed jumped under the shock administered by the defibrillator. The medical team was quick to approach the patient again to check their vitals.

“We have a normal rhythm,” the nurse said in a pleased, relieved voice.

“Come on, Buckeye” The doctor leaned over the man on the bed. “Don’t play these kinds of pranks with me. Not funny, man.”

Bright green eyes blinked sluggishly. “Brad…?” came the throaty, hesitant question.

“Yes! That’s it, Tony, wake up!”

Tony turned his head slowly from side to side. His brain was slowly cataloguing his surroundings. White room, 3 or 4 people around his bed, all wearing the traditional doctors’ and nurses’ uniforms, some equipment. He was in a hospital; his mind provided the information.

“What…?” His throat felt parched, his chest exploding in pain, and he didn’t think he could move even if his life depended on it. Talking was too much of an effort.

“It seems your heart was more stressed than we thought, Buckeye,” Dr Brad Pitt answered, while gesturing to the rest of the people in the room to leave. He started doing the normal checks and writing down the results. One of the nurses raised the bedhead just enough to offer a cup with a straw for Tony to sip from.

“What… mean…?” Tony tried again between sips. He felt like he could just gulp down a full water bottle, but the nurse was controlling how much he could drink.

“We just transferred you from the isolation ward and you should be resting until we can start the pulmonary physio to bring your lung functions up to as normal as we can get after the plague,” Pitt explained while going through the equipment connections to the patient.

“Plague…?” Tony asked, confused. That was so long ago. What had it to do with anything?

The doctor raised his head abruptly from the machine control he was fiddling with. “Don’t you remember? You were in an isolation chamber for a week, Tony. I was afraid you would drown with the liquid filling your lungs…” Brad responded quietly. He hadn’t dealt with his feelings on the situation yet. As a doctor he should keep his impartiality, but Tony was that special case, where their shared a student past and Brad’s unwilling involvement in destroying Tony’s athletic career created a curious bond between the two men. Pitt was also aware of the career boost that his treatment of DiNozzo illness could be for himself.

“Yeah, I remember…” Tony whispered, closing his eyes, unbelievably tired.

Brad patted the other man’s shoulder while the nurse collected the materials used on the mad dash to revive the patient.

“I understand, almost dying again can be tiring. Sleep, Tony, and we’ll keep an eye out for you. No visitors though until we’re sure you’re on the mend.”

Tony barely acknowledged the comment before dozing off.

ITNC

The expected week at the hospital to recover and learn the necessary physiotherapy for his lungs stretched to 10 days after Tony’s cardiac arrest.

Abby was forbidden to visit after the first time she came by and made such a fuss that the monitoring equipment connected to Tony started to fluctuate.

McGee and Kate also only came by once. Kate joked about Tony taking his time to come back to work, even if there was some worry not quite hidden in her eyes. McGee also tried to joke about Tony being lazy, but the comments fell flat in the presence of Doctor Pitt. Both their names were quickly added to a no-visit list. Brad had liked Kate at the beginning, thinking she acted like his sisters, showing their care by being annoying. The latest jabs though sounded more like jealousy than sisterly grouchiness. And that McGee guy, he just strutted around with his Johns Hopkins’ biomedical engineering degree, as if it made him all knowing about DiNozzo’s medical situation.

Brad shook his head, disappointed with most of Buckeye’s colleagues. So far only Gibbs and Ducky, as Doctor Mallard asked to be called, had passed muster with the Naval doctor. Ducky asked all the right questions and made notes to research the best follow up for Tony’s treatment, promising to keep an eye out for the stubborn agent. Pitt could only be grateful for any help to keep Tony in line.

Gibbs was a bit of a curiosity. He applied himself thoroughly to solve the case and find a resolution for DiNozzo’s contagion. The older man came into the isolation ward to inform his second that the case was solved, and he should not fear the risk of the disease for anyone else. He was friendly and lightly teasing, acting as a friend and not so much as a boss. But afterwards the man kept his distance, only calling to ask for updates but not visiting at all. Ducky said Gibbs was busy with the change of directors in their agency, but Brad still found the uneven behaviour disconcerting.

While Doctor Pitt kept his musings to himself, not wanting to upset his recuperating friend, Tony DiNozzo had his own troubled thoughts to deal with. He rested against the raised headboard, his eyes roaming the room, his mind loaded with firing synapses.

“Did I dream that…” Tony whispered. His left hand ran over his chest, trying to find the hole that Ziva’s knife should have left there. He banged his head against the pillow, although without too much force, maybe just trying to dislodge a memory or a thought. ‘Too real, too many details, it couldn’t be a dream!’ he thought, perplexed. ‘There was no cardiac arrest in my dream.’ Tony was running through the memories. ‘That might be connected to the stabbing?’ He shook his head, finding it hard to grasp the enormity of the situation. ‘Dream…? Or time travel…? Is any of it even possible?’ Tony couldn’t decide which way to go. He was only sure he wouldn’t be saying anything to anyone because he certainly didn’t want to end up in a secured psych ward. ‘Let’s see if something happens that can push me in any direction,’ was Tony’s last thought before falling into uneasy sleep.

ITNC

The confirmation, or sign from heaven, or whatever it could be called, came to Tony after he left the hospital and was trying to get a hold of himself in his apartment. He had spent a week in the isolation ward and another 10 days in the hospital to deal with the lingering symptoms of the pneumonic plague.

Now began the phase where Tony would have to work to build his stamina all over again. Right now, he was just sitting on his sofa, a mug with tea and honey in his hands, eyes not actually seeing what was in front of him.

The last days in the hospital hadn’t helped much to solve his conundrum. The images, or memories, were strong in his mind and Tony still couldn’t decide if it was a very vivid dream brought on by his near-death experience or a new chance given to him from powers he didn’t even believe in.

The younger version of himself looking back from any mirror he happened upon was just sending him into a head spin. The lines and careworn visage he remembered having were not there anymore. He was again in his earlier 30s, not even a speck of grey in his hair.

The knock at his door shook him out of his meandering thoughts and the tall man sighed, leaving the half drank tea on the coffee table, and pushing himself up to find out who was looking for him.

“Tony, my man!” The exclamation was full of happy wonder and true caring. Big, hairy hands took hold of Tony’s shoulders, and the large man in front of him took a good, assessing look at him. “We were scared to death when Steve found out through that colleague of yours, Kathy, that you were in the hospital! Almost 20 days, man! That was serious!”

The man in front of DiNozzo was slightly over 6.5 feet tall, broad shoulders, reddish hair cut in buzzed style and the biggest, friendliest smile ever. Tony jerked in surprise. The jumbled memories, or dreams, came to the forefront. The scene played again in his mind.

“Hey, I came to see how Tony is doing,” the deep voice sounded from the door.

“He’s resting. What do you want?” Abby’s voice sounded shrill and spoiled.

“’I’m his friend, Jacob, from Ohio University,” it was disconcerting to hear the uncertainty in such a big guy’s voice.

“I don’t know you!” Abby was in top form being a brat. “I’m taking care of Tony! When he wakes, I’ll tell him you came by,” and she was quick to slam the door in his friend’s face.

Tony had been tired, and a bit drugged up when that had happened. Or when he’d dreamed about it? Abby never told him about the visit and the whole thing slipped from his mind when he went back to work. He never called Jacob back. The friendship with his frat brothers really fractured from then onwards.

“Tony!” Jacob held the other man’s shoulders tighter. “You’re white as a sheet, man! Better sit down. You’re sure you should be out of the hospital?”

The big man directed the dazed DiNozzo inside the apartment, making him sit back on the sofa. Tony heard noises from around the apartment while Jacob went to the kitchen looking for water and to check if there were any medications lying about. He knew how much Tony despised them, but also that he would abide by the doctor’s orders to get back to his best shape.

DiNozzo dragged both hands through his hair, amazed, dazed with the situation. So his memories, his dreams, were true? Now that Abby was not here, since she was pushed away by Dr Brad Pitt for not being as helpful to Tony’s recovery as a friend should be, things might have changed? In his dream, his memories, he left the hospital just a couple of days after being out of isolation, too unnerved after being cooped up to stay at the mercy of the nurses.

Abby had been happy to bring him home and stay around for a while, taking care of him. He never really thought about it, believing she was being a good friend, but looking back, she would monopolize his time and the way things were done, not following the doctor’s orders, and rubbishing some of his medications, declaring them unnecessary. Visits had also been scarce then. Did Abby send any of his friends, people that she didn’t know, away? That was why his frat brothers started to comment on his work relationships and being less forgiving whenever he had to cancel and change their plans?

His elbows came to rest on his knees, his hands still tangled in his hair The images dancing around in his mind, the doubts if they were real or not made Tony doubt his own sanity. The clunk of a glass on the coffee table in front of the sofa made him straighten up and look at the man crouching to fit on the chair beside him. The open expression on Jacob’s face almost brought Tony to tears. He missed his frat brothers” friendship. The camaraderie and easy rapport. The support without questions. The love…

“Hey, man,” escaped Tony’s mouth.

Jacob put a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Tony…?” He didn’t know what he was asking.

“Ah… I almost died, Jacob,” Tony said quietly. “I died and Brad brought me back.”

Jacob squeezed his friend’s shoulder in solidarity but didn’t say anything. What could you say to such a declaration?

“I don’t know what to do with myself, Jacob, everything’s jumbled up in my mind,” Tony raised a hand to run through his hair again.

“I know how you’re always in a rush to go back to whatever you were doing before you got hurt or sick, Tony, but sometimes going slow gets you farther,” his friend almost whispered his answer.

“Do you believe in signs? Like the universe, or some power, is showing you the way?” Tony asked quietly. What else could these memories, these dreams be or mean?

Jacob let go of Tony’s shoulder and leaned back into the chair. He wore a thoughtful expression and was taking his time to answer. Tony appreciated that. He could practically see the reactions there’d be to such a question back at the NCIS office.

Abby would jump up and down, screaming of course but at the same time saying you should learn to read the signs correctly to navigate whatever the universe throws at you. Gibbs would scorn the very idea, saying you make your own way. McGee would stutter, unable to find a middle ground between Abby and Gibbs. Ziva would scoff and say it was a coward’s question from someone that was unable to take responsibility for his life and choices.

Another jolt ran through Tony. Ziva wasn’t on the team this time. Kate… Jacob had said “Kathy…” Kate was alive! She’d been banned from the hospital! Tony let his body slouch against the sofa’s back, mind again rushing around a mile a minute. Kate would say that it was God’s will with her faith always to the forefront if something didn’t fit with her views.

‘Could he save Kate now?’ The thought jumped forward, drowning the doubts and uncertainty. ‘Maybe he came back to save Kate!’

“I believe that we can forge our destinies, Tony,” Jacob’s soft answer pulled Tony out of his contemplation and brought his attention back to his big friend. “I also believe that we are connected, so yes, there are signs out there that something seems to push people together, or apart,” he finished.

DiNozzo nodded thoughtfully. He was running through his memories now, trying to find the point where a change could impact on Kate’s death.

“I imagine that a near death experience like yours could shake your beliefs and your expectations of life, Tony,” the soft rumble continued, even if Tony didn’t seem to be paying much attention. “But don’t go making too many life-changing decisions in the wake of this, my friend. You need time to settle back, calm down, think things through before going around tearing down your life.”

With hearing that comment, Tony’s mind came to a screeching halt, like a cartoon car stopping suddenly and almost throwing the person inside through the windscreen.

“What?!”

“I know that face, Tony,” Jacob patted his knee again before relaxing completely in his chair. “You’re making plans to change something big in your life. You had that face after your leg was broken at university. You started talking about business school and all,” the big man shook his head. “Not that you couldn’t do it, but it wouldn’t have made you happy, my friend. You were made to help people. First making them happy when you played and now really helping them at the worst time of their lives.”

Tony looked surprised and awed at his friend’s comment. All the jumbled thoughts and half-baked plans froze.

“You think you know where this is going,” Jacob continued. “You create a map in your head and jump right into it. I always admired your determination, Tony,” he smiled sadly. “But you can dig your heels worse than a mule, man. Sometimes it’s better to accept that the route you first chose isn’t the best and just change directions. You’re not being indecisive or cowardly for seeing different options after you start a certain path.”

“DiNozzos don’t dither…” Tony whispered.

“Fuck your old man, Tony!” The comment was forceful but not loud. “You should do what Henry told you to in college and change your name. You are not a faded copy of Senior, like he’s delighted to insinuate every time he dignifies us mere mortals with his august presence!”

Tony sank into the sofa while Jacob got up to pace around the living room.

“You change when Senior calls or is around, man,” Jacob rubbed his buzzed head, standing up. “You shrink, man,” he said quietly. “And sometimes, when you talk about your NCIS buddies, I worry, Tony,” Jacob paced a bit. “It’s like you’re trying to contort and bend out of shape to fit whatever they ask from you.” He stopped in front of the window, his back to the room, running a hand over his eyes. “How long can you do that for, Tony? I get it that your way to fit in is to change a bit to please people around you, but there’s a limit for it before you lose yourself. We miss our frat brother, Tony,” he turned to stare at his friend. “Since you started at NCIS you’ve become more and more busy, with less and less time for us, but this last couple of years you’ve kind of reverted to the bratty jock guy at the beginning of college. The one that Henry, BJ, and I had to bring down a peg or two before we allowed you into the fraternity,” he completed seriously.

Tony felt small and lost right now. Jacob wasn’t saying anything he hadn’t heard before from his frat brothers. Since they’d developed their close friendship by his second year in college they had been after him to deal with his father issues. He knew he came into Ohio State University with an attitude. He thought he was a hot shot with his sports scholarship, and he did finish high school at Rhode Island Military Academy at the top of his class, even if he wasn’t that good when he started there. He let out a loud sigh. He could find a theme here. He would come into a new place with the mindset from his previous experiences and butt heads, or get beat up, until he would find a way to adjust to the expectation of the new situation.

His time in different boarding schools after the death of his mother was a nightmarish blur. Tony had thought if he acted up enough, Senior would bring him back home. Nothing was farther from the truth. The more problems he got himself in, the stricter and worse the schools he was sent to were, until he ended up in a military one.

Tony tried to make the best of his time with his father but the doomed trip to Hawaii, when Senior really forgot he had his son with him and just went back home without a thought hammered home that nothing Tony did could bring him to his father’s attention in a good way.

He went to Rhode Island Military Academy with all the traumas of the previous boarding schools and all the repressed anger of his father’s neglect. He was a prime target for the military school bullies until he found a way to adapt, shine even, and blend in in such a way that he became an example of what the academy strove for.

Entering Ohio State University, Tony brought the attitude of being high and mighty, as if he could lead from the start. Henry Lewis, Benjamin Parks, and Jacob Cohen were quick to push back and show the upstart DiNozzo that things worked differently at university level. BJ and Jacob were already part of the basketball and football teams, so Tony had to swallow the attitude to be able to fit in. But that meant that the big change from previous experiences was that after he was invited to the fraternity, he made friends, real friends. Different from RIMA, Tony couldn’t make everybody like him, or at least pretend they did, but most were good company, and his friends were true friends.

Thinking back about his life after university, through the Police Academy and then the three Police Precincts he worked at, Tony could match his memories, both the dreamy ones and what he considered the actual memories of this life. They were all the same until the cardiac arrest 10 days ago. That clinched it for Tony. Dream or previous life, it didn’t matter anymore. It was a wake-up call, and he planned to heed it. Not only for Kate’s sake, but especially his own. Tony didn’t want to relive the next 7 to 8 years, going through the heartaches and the feelings of being diminished inch by inch through the days, until he couldn’t recognize himself anymore.

“Whatever brought that question about signs, destiny or whatever,” Jacob interrupted Tony’s musings. “Maybe it’s nothing but a way of your subconscious making you pay attention? You know how Charlie, Henry’s sister, goes on and on about her psychology degree,” he smirked.

Tony let out a mix of a groan and a laugh. Little Charlie started hounding him about therapy when he was laid up with his broken leg at college and she had barely started her life at university. Psychology and Psychiatry was always her aim, so she would use any chance to put her studies to use, especially with her brother’s troubled friends, as she jokingly called the group.

“Yeah, maybe,” Tony accepted the comment. He was not ready to go into details about his dreamy memories, not even with his friends. He might need to consider how to phrase it before bringing the whole thing up.

“As you said, Tony, you were dead for a moment there and brought back to life. That experience sure changes a person,” Jacob reassured his friend, noticing how he seemed uncomfortable with the subject.

“Not everybody would agree…”

“Humph, nobody has to agree! It’s your life, brother! Your experience! Only you can say how that changes you.”

Tony nodded. “Thanks for coming by, Jacob. I know I haven’t been the best friend all around…”

“Too busy at work, I know,” Jacob sat again. “But you need a life outside NCIS, Tone. It’s not good to be so embroiled with your work colleagues. We see you running anytime any of them call, but the reverse isn’t true. Nobody is here,” Jacob gestured to show the apartment.

“Ah, Brad banished Abby, McGee and Kate from the hospital,” Tony explained.

“Banished?!” The big man’s eyebrows raised as high as they would go.

“Humm… He didn’t believe they were helpful for my recovery…” Tony answered quietly, letting the response float between them.

“Not helpful…” The eyebrows still didn’t come back to their correct place on the other man’s face.

“Abby was trying to take away some of my medication…”

“WHAT!?”

“She’s a lot into natural healing…” Tony whispered.

“And that Kate wanted to pray you healthy?!” Jacob asked sarcastically. “Yeah, we need to meet your doctor Brad and say thank you for pushing those yahoos out of your hospital room.”

Tony chuckled sadly. ‘That’s the kick. He’s Dr Brad Pitt, no relation to the actor,” he completed quickly when his friend started laughing. “He studied at Michigan and played football…”

Jacob frowned, trying to place the information. He snapped his fingers. “The Wolverine that broke your leg? He was the doctor that saved you now? We’ll thank him, after thumping him a bit,” Jacob laughed out loud.

Tony laughed quietly too. “He apologized, Jacob.”

“Good for him. But we’re still gonna check him out, Tone.”

“Okay,” DiNozzo accepted it as an expression of care and friendship that it was.

“Take the time before jumping back into work, man. Don’t let them push you around.”

“Yeah, I think I need time to put my head back together,” Tony agreed. Maybe if he wrote down what he could remember from his dream memories it would help to pave the way forward.

Jacob nodded and patted his friend’s leg again. The men sat for a while in friendly silence until Tony dozed off. Jacob smiled, cleaned the room a bit and left a note letting his friend know when he planned to check on him again before walking quietly out of the apartment.

Chapter 2 – The thought crosses my mind

DiNozzo picked up a notebook when he went out for groceries and started writing down his dream memories. He quickly decided to not dwell on what they were: dreams, memories, reincarnation, or time travel. In the end, it didn’t really matter. What was important was that he had received a big heads-up, and he was going to use the information the best he could.

He had general ideas of times, but mostly no specific dates. Month and year, maybe, but no more details. Tony could work with that. He was good with the whole “connecting the dots in surprising ways” thing. So, for every big event or situation he could remember, Tony started to plan counter measures and ways to avoid the problem.

The first big huddle was Haswari and his devilish plan to use drones to attack the families waiting for the Navy vessels. And the subsequent vendetta against Gibbs. DiNozzo knew it was Ziva that killed Haswari to save Gibbs. At the beginning he bought the idea of her doing that because she found out about his double agent status. But with time and distance, and years of experience working with her, Tony thought it was all Papa David’s plan to push Ziva into NCIS. Ari had had plenty of opportunity to really take out Gibbs, but something had always changed at the last minute. They needed a space in the team for Ziva to slot into. Kate was the obvious target, to cause Gibbs pain in losing another female in a violent manner, and Ziva could then slot nicely into the position of the girl in the team, especially when asking for protection from the big, bad Papa David. And it would certainly be easier for her to manipulate the males in the team than the strait-laced Kate Todd.

The murder of the Naval officers with access to the drones happened on the same day Tony was back with the team, after his struggle with the plague, but that timeframe went to hell already with the extra days he stayed in the hospital. Nobody from his team contacted him about the big case like they were supposed to. With his cardiac arrest and the extra time in the hospital, maybe they didn’t believe he was in any shape to help. Tony tapped the pen he was using to fill out the notebook on his chin. Instead of putting something in electronic format and risking being hacked, DiNozzo went old school, writing it all down, using his code from his last long undercover op in Philadelphia. Only a few FBI agents and Police Officers would know the code and be able to translate it, and none of them were still in contact with Tony after his banishment from Philly. Not a one hundred percent safe measure, but the closest he could think of in such a short time. Maybe later he would change his code, or even better, destroy the notes as time passed by and he dealt with the issues listed there.

Tapping the pen on his chin again, DiNozzo decided that a personal call to Balboa might yield better intel than trying to talk to anyone in his team. Gibbs would say if he was asking about work, he was ready to come back. McGee and Kate would tell him to butt out and let them do their work. Abby would complain about her treatment by Brad and want him to make the doctor apologize or something. Ducky would say he was on leave and should use the time to rest before going back to the gruelling rhythm of Gibbs’ team. If he could have an idea where things were now, in comparison with his dream memories, he would be able to plan better for what was to come.

ITNC

“Hey, Tony, how’re you?” Balboa sounded relaxed, even happy on the phone.

“Hey, man, getting there, getting there. A bit tired but doing okay on the physio. Should go for the re-qual by next week. I feel I’ve been out of the game for too long already,” Tony answered, trying to sound as normal as he thought he would be for this time in his life. He was seated at his breakfast bar, notepad at hand. DiNozzo had forgotten that they didn’t have laptops yet and lost half an hour looking for it around the apartment. The flip phone was giving him hives and he had completely forgotten how to use the handheld PDA that had been the top of the line for federal law enforcement around 2003. “It is 2003!” he told himself sharply. “If I could invent all the things I dreamed about, I’d be rich… Or maybe I could do some very insightful and “lucky” investments,” he laughed a bit at the idea. His left leg was bouncing relentlessly, broadcasting DiNozzo’s anxiety. This call was supposed to be his first move to change things from his dream memory.

“Ah, take your time, Tony, you know Gibbs’ll run you ragged when you come back.”

“Yep, expecting it. How’s Probie and Kate doing?” Tony was still going for the discreet enquiry but was feeling weirdly out of practice on his suave moves.

“Learning,” Balboa scoffed. “You protect them too much, Tony. Especially Todd. She seems to have started getting the picture. Don’t go back to shielding them all the time. McGee can be good if he grows a backbone, but Todd is too arrogant. She’s gonna get seriously hurt. The rest of the office is still pissed about the Haswari thing. She doesn’t get it,” Balboa sprouted out, clearly getting upset with each comment.

“What…?” Tony was surprised. He certainly didn’t remember anyone talking about how the others perceived Kate. She seemed pretty well adapted… Actually, no, the dream memories had some acerbic interactions between Kate and the other agents. But she always portrayed those as misogynistic attitudes from the law enforcement boys’ club and Tony didn’t want to feed her animosity, so he stayed away from those conversations.

“McGee was keeping his head down and doing the job at the beginning, but then Todd and Abby started on him, saying something about he’s having the space to prove himself since you’re not hogging all the attention,” Balboa said with disdain.

“Do I hog all the attention?” DiNozzo asked quietly. Yes, he knew that he acted up and he loved to show off a bit, but Gibbs’ praise was rare, and Tony ate that up whenever the older man deigned to offer it.

“Anyone who knows you, knows it’s an act, Tony,” Balboa admonished him. “That you play around to relax the bullpen or to take Gibbs attention off the other agents, especially when he’s on a rampage. Everyone knows it except those two dimwits.”

“Well, I do like to show off…” Tony tried to own up. He needed to be honest, at least with himself, if he wanted to make the changes he believed necessary.

“Don’t we all?” Balboa laughed. “But you also deliver, Tony. It’s not like you’re talking out of your ass, man. But maybe you should tone down a bit on the jokes, so the probies pay attention. After they learn some, then they can see what you’re about,” the other agent commented pensively.

“Let’s say I had a wake-up call, and I mean to heed it,” Tony stated.

“Too close for comfort this one, huh?” Balboa responded perceptively.

“Than I’d ever have wanted it to be,” DiNozzo responded with feeling.

“Don’t let it haunt you, Tony,” the other agent advised. “I can understand how… disquieting the whole thing was, but it doesn’t have to change anything.”

“What if I want to change?” Tony asked quietly.

“Change what?”

“Change the way I do things. Change where the team seems to be going.” Tony was unsure if he should be raising this with Balboa, or anyone really, but he still felt uncertain about how to go about changing what he saw.

“Then do it because you want it, my friend,” Balboa stated. “Maybe you had a vision.” DiNozzo, startled at the comment, let out a surprised sound. “Maybe it was a sign, or the necessary wake-up call that everybody needs from time to time,” the other man continued, not noticing the reaction he caused. “Be sure to do it for you, though. Not because others would expect or want you to change.”

“I bet everybody has an idea of how I should change,” Tony answered rather bitterly.

“Everybody has faults, Tony. Everybody has annoying habits. If they won’t change when you complain, you shouldn’t change when they complain. Anything, everything should be about you first.”

“Isn’t that a bit selfish, Martin?” DiNozzo asked dryly.

“How long have you been in law enforcement, Tony?” The agent didn’t wait for an answer. “You can’t help other people if you’re not at your best, my friend. First responder rule: make sure you are safe and well enough to help others. The same in a plane: first your own mask, then help others.”

“Humm…” The younger man had no answer to that.

“Look, Tony,” Balboa sighed out loud. “I know you worry about the team and everybody else. Whatever happened when you were growing up made you carry a lot of responsibility and guilt…”

“That’s not…” Tony tried to interrupt.

“I’m not judging or prying, man,” Balboa kept going. “Just saying that you need to look at why you’re doing whatever you are doing or planning to do. Everybody is an adult here, Tony. Everybody should take responsibility for their actions and choices, not just you.”

Tony ran a hand over his hair. “This conversation went sideways. Not what I expected to talk about when I called, Martin…”

Balboa laughed down the phone. “I know, Tony! You called to find out which case your team is involved in and how you could help. I’m telling you to think of yourself first here, really get better and ready for re-qualification, and let the adults working with Gibbs take responsibility for their work and actions.”

“You’re a mean one, Martin…”

“I think I’ll call Henry and tell him you need minding. What’s his sister’s name, again?”

“Oh, no! Brad already threw me at therapy! I don’t need Charlie and her degree dogging me! I should never have introduced you to my frat brothers!”

“Take care of yourself, Tony. I’ll try to be around for your re-qual,” Balboa said as a parting shot, letting Tony hear his laugh before disconnecting the call.

“That’s not what I expected when I called…” DiNozzo repeated to the silent phone. He left everything on top of the kitchen table and moved to the sofa, throwing himself on it with a loud sigh.

He would need to be introspective now, wouldn’t he, and really think about what and why he was doing whatever he planned to do with his dream memories.

ITNC

DiNozzo was surprised by the presence of Balboa, Ducky, and Gibbs at his re-qualifications run, but he certainly shouldn’t have been.

Balboa did say he would do his best to be there. Ducky would want to see for himself that Tony was well enough to come back to work. And Gibbs always needed to confirm things directly. Original Rule 3, Rule 8, and all that.

The physical was easy, considering all the training DiNozzo had been through the last couple of weeks with the physiotherapist, and all the help from Jacob. The big guy collected him as often as he had time to spare from work and family obligations to run drills together and bring Tony back to top form. The therapist suggested swimming as good exercise and Jacob also held to the idea with gusto. He brought Henry into it and the three of them were going into Henry’s posh club at least once a week to make sure Tony’s pulmonary functions stayed top notch.

Tony was more worried about the range test. He’d only gone twice to train, but his muscle memory was good and at the end of the re-qual even Gibbs was impressed with his precision. Not that the old coot said anything really, but DiNozzo could still read his micro-expressions. The man hadn’t gone through his memory loss yet or changed his overall behaviour and connection to Tony.

Thinking about all the things he listed from his dream memories, it would be great to not let Gibbs, and the whole team actually, go through that trauma. One thing at a time though. Now it was time to go back to work after a couple of months out and find out how much things had changed from what he thought he knew.

“Vacation time’s over, DiNozzo,” Gibbs grumbled after the assessor signed off on his re-qualification.

The ink wasn’t even dry before Gibbs just pointed him towards the NCIS company car.

“Ah, Boss…” Tony wanted to go back to work, he really did, even if he was a bit nervous about it all. “I don’t have my bag with me or anything.”

“Not a full day of work yet, DiNozzo,” Gibbs kept walking. “I just need to bring you up to speed on what’s going on. Tomorrow morning, 0800 sharp, I want you in the office ready to hit the ground running.”

“Jethro, let’s not undo all the good work the doctors and physiotherapist have achieved with young Anthony,” Ducky commented, walking at a sedate pace behind the two agents.

“It’s just talk, Ducky,” Gibbs dismissed the worry.

“That needs to be finished by an acceptable hour so Anthony can have a good night of sleep before coming back tomorrow,” Ducky insisted.

DiNozzo just stayed out of the discussion, more than curious to know what was going on but also feeling he needed the time by himself to be ready to come back to what amounted to a past life in his mind.

The drive from the range to the Navy Yard went by slower than Tony’s memories of Gibbs’ driving style. Was the team leader worried about Tony? Or was this more careful style because Ducky was in the car? Tony couldn’t remember sharing a car ride with Ducky while Gibbs drove. It was mid-afternoon when they passed through Security with the guys happy to greet DiNozzo and ask details about how he was and when he was coming back. Gibbs breezed through security, his normal impatient self and Tony barely had time to say “Tomorrow” and “Way better” to all the questions.

Ducky peeled off to the left to go back down to autopsy with a final goodbye: “Do not go jumping into things head on, remember to take care of yourself, my boy.”

Tony waved at the doctor in acknowledgment, then he and Gibbs took the lift to go higher in the building. Tony was hoping this conversation wouldn’t happen in the lift and was relieved when they went all the way to the bullpen without Gibbs pushing the emergence button.

Entering the bullpen though, seeing the baby-faced, plumpish McGee and the very much alive Kate threw Tony in ways he didn’t expect or consider beforehand, even with his own younger face staring him from the mirror every morning.

McGee jumped up from his desk as Gibbs and DiNozzo arrived at the bullpen area. He was seesawing between youthful enthusiasm to welcome Tony back and trying to feign mature professionalism, as if the time the SFA was away didn’t affect him at all.

“Tony!” Tim’s voice cracked a bit. “How… humm… what about the qualifications? Everything went well?”

“I doubt Gibbs would drag him all the way up here if he hadn’t passed, McGee,” Kate commented sarcastically. She also seemed divided on how to respond to DiNozzo’s entrance.

Kate Todd would never admit out loud that she had missed the motormouth, bratty, nosy DiNozzo, but she also had a real taste of what it meant to work under Gibbs without the other man shielding them from the team leader’s over-the-top demands. Kate would welcome the SFA back into the team because she secretly recognized his contributions, but it would be also nice to have another target for her acerbic comments. The other agents in the building were not as accommodating as Tony was of her beliefs over law enforcement misogynism. And without DiNozzo there, and McGee usually doing all the computer work, Gibbs wouldn’t listen to Kate’s complaints about doing the most disgusting tasks in any crime scene.

“Probie,” Tony tried to keep his own voice from cracking. This was the young and naïve Tim, not the insufferably proud McGee that followed Ziva David like a pup and stopped listening to DiNozzo soon after the Israeli joined the team. Ziva knew how to inflate the younger man’s ego and Tony had to accept that maybe some of his hazing and pranks weren’t received in the spirit he intended. “Yep, all good on the re-quals. I even left the Boss speechless with my prowess at the range,” Tony tried to bring some of his earlier humour.

“Don’t flatter yourself, DiNozzo,” Gibbs said with his normal flat tone, while walking to his desk to stow his credentials and gun.

“Tony always had a too high opinion of himself,” Kate threw in with a smile.

DiNozzo walked uncertainly to his own empty desk. Kate hadn’t seemed as biting in his memory as her comments were sounding right now.

“Some people can back up their comments,” Gibbs barked.

All three team members jumped. McGee looked between the group, unsure about the undercurrents of the comments and was quick to go back to his desk and hide behind his computer screen.

Kate pouted, unhappy with Gibbs’ rebuke, but just leaned against her own desk, not fully backing down but also not ready for a confrontation.

Tony chose to keep close to the screen by his desk, waiting to see where Gibbs was going with that. Balboa’s comments about other agents not being happy with Kate’s attitude popped into his mind. Maybe the other team leader borrowed Gibbs’ ear while he was doing his re-qualification. DiNozzo knew Kate wouldn’t be happy doing all the grunt work at crime scenes. She always found a way to push it to Tony or McGee, but during his sick leave she wouldn’t have had any option but to do it herself. It wasn’t like Gibbs would jump into dumpsters, looking for evidence. Kate’s bad mood might make her a bit reckless right now.

“Let’s use the conference room, DiNozzo,” Gibbs stated, walking away from his desk. “Have your reports ready for him tomorrow morning,” the team leader said, encompassing the other two in the area.

Gibbs walked past the tables, heading to the conference room. DiNozzo followed quietly behind, without looking back to his team members but with a soft “On your six, Boss.”

ITNC

When Tony entered the conference room, Gibbs was already seated at the table, on the side farthest from the door.

DiNozzo shuffled towards a chair in front of the team leader, sat down, pulled one of the notepads and pens towards himself and put his best attentive face on.

“What’s going on, DiNozzo?”

“Ah, what?” The direct question got Tony unprepared.

“Don’t play coy,” Gibbs said. “You’re physically fit and all but acting really shifty there. So, what’s the deal?”

“Gibbs… Boss… I don’t…” Tony stuttered.

“Don’t bullshit me, DiNozzo,” the team leader pointed a finger towards the other man’s face. “Out with it! I need all of you here! Where’s your head at?”

‘None of my conversations are going the way I expect them to,’ Tony thought while trying to articulate an answer that Gibbs might accept.

“I almost died…” DiNozzo took a deep breath. “I died and was brought back. That messed me up some. I want to make changes… I don’t know if everybody would understand…”

Icy blue eyes bored into green ones, Gibbs stared at DiNozzo, watching him with a stony expression. The silence stretched out. Tony made an effort to sit still and not fidget much, but although he reminded himself, he’d just said he wanted to make changes he was close to giving up when Gibbs finally answered.

“Experiences like this can change you,” the older man commented quietly. He looked down, to his clenched fists that DiNozzo hadn’t noticed until then. Gibbs seemed very introspective. “You think you got a chance, maybe a way to change things that weren’t good in your life…”

The silence stretched again and suddenly Tony had an epiphany. What if whatever happened to him, also happened to others? Happened to Gibbs? The older man certainly had enough near-death experiences, with his Marine and law enforcement career. And if there was ever someone with a fixed point in time that they would give anything to change it would be Gibbs. If he ever got the opportunity, the man would turn the world upside down to change what happened to his first wife and his daughter.

Now Tony was watching the man on the other side of the table with inquisitive eyes. Had Gibbs been given the same opportunity Tony received? But all the mixed memories from this life in relation to the team leader were the same as the dream memories. So, if Shannon and Kelly weren’t alive, did that mean that it wasn’t possible to alter things after all? Hernandez…. No! Not going there. There was nothing he could, or would do, no matter how things changed.

“You change your behaviour and how you go about things,” Gibbs started talking again, pulling DiNozzo from his musings. “But you can’t control what others do or how they react to your changes.”

Tony nodded, still trying to process the idea that maybe Gibbs went through the same thing he was going through right now.

“Don’t go tilting at windmills, Tony,” the older man suggested quietly. “Do whatever you do for yourself, before anyone else.”

DiNozzo gulped, hearing a more selfish version of the same advice that Balboa had during their phone call. “Okay…” He couldn’t do things only thinking about himself, but the other team leader was right that he needed to be on his best to be able to help everybody else.

Gibbs shook his shoulders, like getting rid of some weight there. He slapped the tabletop, startling Tony. “Work! We’re here for work.”

“Ah, sure, Boss. Ready for whatever you have for me,” Tony answered, pen in hand to take notes.

“Morrow went to Homeland, Assistant Director for Special Projects,” Gibbs said curtly.

Tony remembered, from his dream memories, about the position at Homeland but this Special Projects sounded like new information. He nodded in acknowledgement but chose not to comment.

“Our new director is Jen… Jennifer Shepard,” Gibbs continued, more subdued.

Ah, Jenny… DiNozzo still had mixed feelings about Madam Director. He might sympathize with her plight at facing an undeserved death with her brain tumour, but the way she decided to torpedo his own life was hard to forgive and forget. Ducky said, in his dream memories, that the tumour inhibited her control, interfering with her morals and decision-making ability. The thing was, Tony believed that Jenny decided on her road long before the sickness took her to that stage. The tumour ended up being a convenient excuse that could work as a get her an out of jail free card. So, no, Anthony DiNozzo would not fall prey to Jennifer Shepard’s machinations again.

“Humm… The name doesn’t ring a bell,” DiNozzo dissembled. “I thought whenever Morrow left, we would get Granger. Maybe Vance, depending on the political climate.”

“Jen was working in Europe as liaison with international agencies,” Gibbs tapped his fingers on the tabletop, in a rare display of uneasiness. “I think it’s a bit of a political gamble, yes, putting a woman in control of a mostly military agency.” The older man hesitated a heartbeat. “We worked together, Jen and I, as undercover agents in Europe for a while.”

“Ah!” Tony pretended to have an epiphany. “Is she a red-head, Boss?” he waggled his eyebrows in a comic suggestive way.

Gibbs huffed but nodded brusquely. Tony couldn’t let go of his comic relief method of dealing with difficult situations but also didn’t want to needle the lead agent unnecessarily.

“That’s the reason for Rule 12? Is it going to be a problem for the team, Boss?”

“Not on my part, no!” Gibbs declared firmly, without addressing the other part of the question. Then he paused and shook his head. “But Jen does seem a bit too invested in the MCRT at the moment.”

“How invested? ‘Is the team keeping up with the high stats’ invested? Or ‘that’s how I want you to go through this case’ invested?”

“Not sure yet,” Gibbs acknowledged unhappily. ”She keeps pushing for us to work with Mossad on the Haswari case. She’s still on the double agent bandwagon,” he completed with disdain.

“Humm…” DiNozzo was trying to find a way to move things along without Gibbs interrogating him. “Who’s Mossad sending, then?”

“His handler, a Ziva David.”

“David, as Eli David, deputy director David?” Tony tried to show surprise.

“I asked Fornell,” Gibbs stared at Tony. “Haswari is David’s bastard son, from a Palestine woman. Looks like he groomed the boy to be his mole in Hamas. That’s why everybody seems to believe he’s actually a double agent,” he completed in a distrustful tone.

“And Ziva, the official daughter, is his handler?!” The question was to keep up with the pretence, but the unbelievable tone was born of something that always rattled around Tony’s mind about the situation.

“Eli David is known to be ruthless,” the older man smirked.

“You mean heartless,” Tony whispered while making notes on the paper in front of him.

Gibbs scoffed but continued without comment. “Jen brought David when we were working on a case of AWOL officers from Yorktown Naval Weapons Station who were involved in a drone testing project.”

DiNozzo raised his head on that. This was the case they caught when he came back from the plague in his dream memories. But the officers were found dead, not declared AWOL.

“The commander of the project had a beef with them, according to witnesses,” Gibbs kept going, tapping his fingers on the table, eyes unfocused, like following up the case’s steps. “So, as soon as they didn’t show up back on base from their weekend leave, he changed the access to the project. The base commander was unhappy about it, said it created a lot of extra work for their security, but I think it was because without the two guys, both the project leader and the base commander were on tap to access anything related to the drones. The shouting match was useless,” Gibbs gripped.

“And you found the guys? Been, what, 10 days?”

“Virginia State Police got involved on that one,” Gibbs paused long enough that Tony gestured for him to keep going. The older man humpfed and took a swipe of his coffee, looking at it unhappily when almost nothing came through. “A newbie cop found a car parked on the side of the road with two dead guys in it. Actually, he reported two drunks sleeping in it. He approached to check the car and the next thing that dispatch heard was an explosion. Their technicians collected what they could. Took them a couple of days to find enough to identify one of our missing officers, Lieutenant Westfall. Whoever killed them, cut off their hands and rigged the car to explode,” Gibbs concluded.

Tony swallowed before trying to say anything. “Their hands… So, something directly related to the project they worked on…”

“Thanks to the project leader’s grudge they couldn’t access it.”

“What was “it”?” Tony made quotation marks with his fingers.

“An experimental drone for remote attack,” Gibbs answered dryly.

“Humm…” Tony ran the options on his head on how to suggest the possible attack venues.

“McGee generated a list of events that could be the target for such an attack.” Gibbs latched on to the younger man’s train of thought.

“Oh, good on McProactive,” Tony said distractedly.

“There was a Navy ship arriving at Norfolk three days after the Virginia State Police newbie blew up with the lieutenants,” Gibbs informed. “Families invited to wait for the docking and offboarding.”

“That would be a tasty target,” Tony declared, pointing his index finger towards Gibbs.

“For sure. And it would have been a nightmare in casualties and in the news,” the older man agreed in a dark mood. “Thank god for hard assed commanders, huh?”

“I second that,” Tony nodded. “Where is the case now?”

“We got some footage from the two guys that tried to infiltrate the Yorktown facility. One of them matches Haswari but we don’t have enough to point fingers, it’s all circumstantial,” the lead agent was upset with the situation. “Todd thought she was being followed these last couple of days, but nothing came of it. Whoever it was got spooked because she was always with her boyfriend or with family.”

“You think Haswari….?” Tony never really understood why Haswari had kidnapped Kate. The best he could come up with was that it was to enrage Gibbs, but that didn’t take much. Had the man thought he could turn Kate to help him? Was she his actual weak point?

“I think the scumbag is sniffing around, trying to find information. That’s why this Ziva came in. If he couldn’t get anything, then maybe she could be on the inside. Jen wants her as part of the investigation,” he scoffed.

“Please, Boss!” Tony wasn’t above begging to keep Ziva David away from the MCRT.

“Not if I have anything to say about it, DiNozzo!” The older man retorted. “Fornell doesn’t want to get involved. Seems that the FBI is divided on what Haswari could bring to the table, so he doesn’t want to get burned by either side.”

“What about Morrow?” He hadn’t thought about the ex-NCIS director the first time around. But if the man was in Homeland, he might be able to help. DiNozzo doubted Morrow would fall for the Davids’ ploys.

“Morrow said he would be busy getting acquainted with his new job, but he knew that David, all of them, was a thorn all around, so he would do what he could, but no promises,” Gibbs threw the empty coffee cup into the closest trash bin.

“I’m not sure how to proceed, Boss,” Tony hated to feel wrong-footed, even with his theoretical knowledge of the situation.

“Tomorrow, 0800 sharp, DiNozzo,” Gibbs stood up. “We’ll brainstorm and see where we can go from here. I’m not sure what Jen will push us to do. She’s certainly on the Mossad bandwagon.”

“Humm…” Tony stood also, following Gibbs out of the conference room. He would have to search through his notebook to see if it would jolt any more of his dream memories. He should check his collection for some double agent movies that would give him inspiration.

Chapter 3 – Did I try to find a way

Tony was in the MCRT bullpen at 7 am, as was his norm. Gibbs’ jacket was already on his chair, and he was certainly on a coffee run, maybe surreptitiously walking around the building to collect any gossip he could overhear.

DiNozzo just fired up his computer and went to clean up all the accumulated emails, deleting as much as possible, archiving what he could, trying to minimize the amount that he actually needed to read.

His plans for the morning were interrupted when the lift pinged, grabbing Tony’s attention. Balboa and his team walk out of it.

“Tony!” Balboa exclaimed, turning to enter the MCRT bullpen, right hand reaching out.

“Hey, Martin! Aren’t you guys early?” Tony rose from his desk, grasping the other man’s hand for a firm handshake.

“Meh, a fraud case. We’re planning to surprise our suspect,” Balboa moved out of the way so the rest of his team could shake hands or hug the SFA.

“Boring, huh?” DiNozzo joked.

“It is what is,” Balboa shrugged. “Trying to catch up? Did you get the heads-up conversation with Gibbs yesterday?”

“Yes, and yes,” Tony sat at his desk, relaxed as he hadn’t felt for a while.

“Hum, let me add something in there,” Balboa said while the other man’s eyebrow raised in a mix of question and surprise. Balboa inclined his head in a sign for the rest of his team to go to their bullpen and prepare for their day. After the other three agents moved away, the team leader faced the SFA. “Maybe you should go talk with Abby sooner rather than later, Tony. She’s been stewing on whatever happened at the hospital with you, and Madam Director isn’t helping matters. Shepard is all over the labs and evidence, going on about acceptable attire, behaviour, and timeframes for processing. They are all stressed out.”

The dream memory of an Abby covered in hives because of a psychosomatic allergic reaction to the suit Jen Shepard ordered her to use popped on Tony’s mind. And let’s not even think about the whole Chip debacle.

“Thanks for the tip, Martin. I think dealing with Abby takes precedence to the emails,” Tony smiled. “I have some feathers to sooth.”

“Don’t let her walk all over you, Tony,” Balboa warned.

“Nah, I’m a changed man, Martin,” The smile had a bit of a hard edge to it now, DiNozzo’s eyes showing firm determination.

Balboa nodded. “Good for you, man. Keep that resolution because between Madam Director, Todd and Abby, you gonna need it,” he slapped Tony’s arm and moved towards his workstation.

DiNozzo let out a deep sigh. He knew the problem that was heading his way, so better deal with it sooner rather than later. ‘Work smarter, not harder’, he rolled the motto in his head, while locking his computer and walking towards the stairs to go visit Abby’s lab. He needed the exercise and the extra time to think how to approach the issue with their lab queen.

Tony could hear the faint sounds and vibrations of the music coming from the lab when he reached the stairs doors at that level. He took a deep breath and opened the stairs door, breaching the wall of sound that felt like it was piercing his ears and chest.

“Abby! Abby! ABBY!” Three shouts, and the scientist still had her back to the door, dancing in front of her machines. DiNozzo advanced towards the shelf where the cd player and the speakers were, turning the volume down to zero in a swift movement of his right hand.

The silence brought Abby’s dance to an abrupt stop, and she turned quickly towards her sound system.

“DiNozzo!” She cried, coming up to Tony with a raised fist.

“Stop right there, Abby! You don’t want an assault against a federal agent on your file!” Tony raised his hands to ward the woman off.

Abby gasped. “You wouldn’t dare! Gibbs…”

“Gibbs has a lot on his mind, Abby, he doesn’t need us fighting about nothing.”

“Nothing?! You threw me out of your room!” She stomped her booted foot.

“Dr Pitt asked you to leave and not come back because you were interfering with my treatment,” Tony said calmly.

“They were pumping you full of chemicals! It can’t be good!”

“You’re a scientist, Abby…”

“Exactly! I know how nasty those things are!” she shouted, crossing her arms.

“He’s my doctor, Abby. If I don’t trust him to do the best for me, who would I trust?”

“Me! I’m your friend!” Another stomped foot.

“But you aren’t a medical doctor…”

“I know what…”

“Enough, Abby!” DiNozzo gestured sharply to make the woman shut up. “Sorry if you were offended, but your entitled behaviour was the cause, more than anything. If you want to discuss natural remedies to help, I might listen, but don’t be a brat and try to throw away my meds! I hate them already, but I know I need them if I want to keep fit!” He stated firmly.

Abby deflated some. “I want the best for you, Tony….”

“I know, Abby, but you need to find a better way of going about it.”

She huffed and dropped on the chair in front of the computer. “Everything is wrong! Morrow is gone! You were gone for two months! Two, Tony! Shepard came from nowhere and she’s a bitch! She wants me to wear a suit, Tony! She keeps saying I need an assistant! I don’t want anyone in my lab!”

Tony breathed deeply, while pulling another chair closer to the computer desk.

“Things change, Abby,” he raised a hand to stop the scientist interrupting. “I know, you don’t like it, but it’s not under your control, so roll with it instead of trying to hold back the tide with your bare hands, okay?”

“Aaahhhh!” Abby screamed, throwing her hands in the air, getting up to pace. “Since when are you all zen and wise and calm, Tony?!”

“Ah, since I woke up after being dead, Abs,” Tony said quietly.

“Oh,” she didn’t seem to have an answer for that, so she crossed her arms, hugging herself in a self-soothing way, eyes downcast.

“I’m trying to follow a better path now, Abby”” DiNozzo continued. He wanted to steer the young woman in a different direction than she was following right now. He didn’t want to see her become that out-of-control brat he saw in his dream memories. “That was a closer call than I ever had before and it shook something in me, Abs.” Another deep breath. “I need friends and support, but not spoiled behaviour or fights. I need my friend Abby, not the brat that thinks it’s funny to gossip about things that put me in danger,” he finished in an authoritative tone.

“I never…!” Abby raised her head, eyes flashing.

“The photo you manipulated for Kate….”

“Oh,” Abby shrugged. “It was a joke, DiNozzo! You should recognize one of those! You play them enough to others.”

“Nothing I ever did put somebody else’s career, or even their lives, in jeopardy, Abby. You know how military and law enforcement personnel really are. Things are changing, which is good, but the risk is still there. So, don’t call it a joke when it could have ended badly for me.”

“It was a joke… You had that photo of Kate in the wet t-shirt,” Abby tried again.

“That was real. She did participate in the wet t-shirt contest when she was on spring break, Abby. The photo was in the bar for everyone to see. Yes, I brought it here, but I didn’t invent it. If Kate didn’t like it, she should have asked the bar to take the photo down. Trying to shame me with a fake photo is not the way to go and you know it!”

“Okay, okay…. I didn’t think anything would come of it,” she said quietly.

“You didn’t think, period. But let’s not dwell on it. It’s just an example to show how inconsiderately you acted before. The same in coming into my hospital room and trying to disconnect me from my medication, Abby. If you don’t like, or agree, with something, talk about it, don’t rush in, and throw things around.”

“Nobody is listening to me,” she whined.

“Maybe because of the way you’ve been acting…” Tony went on. “You changed some in the last year or so, Abby, and I don’t even know why or when it started.”

“I don’t know, Tony,” Abby shook her head, looking lost. “Took me a while to warm to you. Then Kate came into the team, and it was nice to have a girl close by. I liked Timmy better at the beginning but lately he’s become so full of himself that I sometimes lose my patience,” she huffed. “And Gibbs…” Abby hesitated. “I love my Silver Fox! There’s nothing wrong with Gibbs! But since Ari…” she stopped talking and hugged herself again.

“Since the attack in Autopsy, Gibbs has been laser focused on getting Ari and everything else has fallen by the wayside,” Tony said. “And you feel abandoned, left behind.” he completed the thought.

“Yes…” Abby’s agreement was barely heard.

DiNozzo stood up, pulling the young woman to him, embracing her with warm care. “I get it, Abs, I felt out of kilter too. The plague and everything else didn’t help much, but we can go through this together, right? No need to keep playing the spoiled brat! Let’s just bring Gibbs back to earth and get our little family back on the right track.”

Abby hugged Tony back forcefully, sniffing on his shoulder but not really crying. DiNozzo rocked them both in a steady, slow rhythm, humming something inane under his breath. He closed his eyes for a moment, enjoying the closeness but opened them abruptly when he felt his gut twist with a sense of fear.

For a second, that Tony even doubted was real, he saw a red dot flash on the computer screen just at the side of Abby. DiNozzo didn’t think, just reacted. He pulled Abby even closer, twisting away from the desk and throwing them to the floor. Tony didn’t stop, rolling towards the lab door, holding Abby close to his body, ignoring her surprised cry.

The window and the computer screen exploded in quick succession, spraying the room with tiny pieces of glass. Screams from people in the street, walking past the basement level windows filled the air. A second bullet flew into the room, aiming for the computer desk. Tony kept his body covering Abby’s and crawled and pushed them towards the door. Screams and running feet could be heard from outside. A third bullet impacted the floor in front of the desk and Tony jumped to push the button to open the lab doors, dragging Abby with him to the corridor. The door closed automatically behind them, and Tony rested against the wall, breathing hard. Abby was still curled against him, hiccups getting in the way of her speaking or crying.

An alarm started sounding in the building and Tony fought the instinctive response to cover his ears. Abby just pressed herself against DiNozzo’s chest, covering her head with one hand, embracing him with the other. He hugged her close, still breathing hard from the scare and his quick response.

The door from the stairs opened and banged against the wall, giving enough time for an agitated Gibbs to rush in. His tense posture relaxed some when he saw Tony and Abby slouched on the floor by the side of the glass doors of the lab.

“Anyone injured?” The team leader asked abruptly.

“Don’t think so…” Tony tried to dislodge Abby, but she just held him harder. “Abby? Anything hurt?”

“No…. Well, I’m all tensed up and all, but I don’t think I was hit by anything.” She raised her head from his chest. “You saved my life, Tony…”

He squeezed her. “Don’t think much about it, Abby. I know how much such experience can mess with your head. You don’t need to lose any IQ points,” he tried to joke.

She sniffled, hugged him back and started to disengage herself, accepting Gibbs’ hand to rise from the floor.

“Looks like his gut feeling is developing well, Gibbs,” she joked back. “I didn’t hear or see anything before he tackled me.”

Gibbs turned to his 2IC, raising an eyebrow in question.

“I saw a red dot flash on the computer screen,” Tony hesitated but the fierce look from Gibbs and the hopeful expression from Abby pushed him. “I just felt my gut twist and I moved,” he shrugged.

“You’re not at my Silver Fox level, Tony, but I have hopes for you,” Abby laughed weakly.

“Let’s get you two to the bullpen. Ducky can take a look at you while the Response Team checks the lab and outside.” Gibbs guided Abby to the lift, watching while DiNozzo pushed himself up from the floor.

“Brad and my frat brothers will go spare. Not a day back in the job and I get shot at,” Tony walked behind the couple, shoulders a little hunched, hands in his trousers pockets.

“If they want to keep being your friends, DiNozzo, they need to get used to your shit luck,” Gibbs shot back.

‘They are used to it, Gibbs, that’s why they’ll go mad.”

Abby laughed with a bit more gusto, Tony huffed, and Gibbs smirked at him, while the lift door closed behind the group.

The bullpen was in an uproar when the lift doors opened at that level. Gibbs strode out of it, still holding Abby’s hand, with Tony following sedately behind.

Ducky was the first to see the entering group. “Abigail, my poor girl! Are you hurt? Let me examine you,” he moved swiftly, indicating a chair that had been pulled over, closer to Gibbs’s desk and got busy worrying over the young woman.

Gibbs loomed over the two of them, arms crossed over his chest, a hard look on his face, lips pressed together.

DiNozzo shuffled toward his own desk, trying to pass the group in the bullpen quietly. McGee was seated behind his computer, waffling between typing something on it and observing Ducky checking on Abby. Balboa’s team had left minutes before the whole shooting started but a few other agents came by to see what was going on. They were quick to leave after a heated glare from Gibbs.

After finishing with Abby, Ducky turned to DiNozzo. “Your turn now, my boy.”

Tony balked. “Ah, no need, Ducky…”

“Ah!” The medical examiner raised his index finger to interrupt the younger man’s protest. “First day back from sick leave, Anthony, and you were caught in a very stressful situation, being shot at, at your place of work.”

DiNozzo sank into his chair, trying to avoid the doctor’s attention, even though he knew it was impossible.

“You were supposed to start slowly back into the thick of things,” Ducky shot a glance towards the team leader, like a warning but Gibbs only answer was to raise an eyebrow.

“Didn’t plan to become a sniper target, Ducky.”

“I know, Anthony, but you always seem to be in the middle of things,” the older man shook his head, while approaching with a stethoscope at the ready. He motioned towards the agent’s shirt and Tony let out a deep sigh before unbuttoning it so the doctor could check his heart.

“I feel fine,” he practically whined.

“Doesn’t mean the same thing as everyone else, DiNozzo!” Gibbs barked.

“Sssshhhh…” Ducky requested. After a couple of minutes checking DiNozzo’s heart and lungs, the medical examiner pocketed his instrument and looked at the younger man. “Yes, you seem fine, my boy.”

“Told ya,” Tony murmured, buttoning up his shirt while avoiding the team leader’s stare.

“I do suggest you take it slowly today, no more excitement.”

“Ah, Ducky… Not like I went looking for it…”

“You could have died, Tony…” Abby sprouted in between biting her nails.

“None of that, Abby!” Tony stood up and went to embrace the lab tech. “It was a scare, but we’re good.”

Ducky came around to pat the young woman’s arm, while DiNozzo swung slowly with Abby. Gibbs stood by the entrance of their bullpen, keeping guard. McGee just kept shrinking lower and lower behind his monitor.

Tony had no idea how long they stayed like that before Alex Bayley, the leader of the DC Internal Affairs team walked from the back of the floor, probably coming from the back stairs, accompanied by Rita Zamora, the Rapid Response team leader.

“Gibbs,” Alex called softly.

The MCRT lead agent turned abruptly towards the caller. “Bayley?” The enquiry covered a multitude of meanings: “What did you find? Who was responsible for this? Do you have enough leads for me to follow?”

The discreet shake of the other man’s head threw Gibbs into a seething mood.

“The angle of the bullets put the shooter on the top of the museum building, where their depository is,” Rita stated. Her posture was rigid, unhappy even. Like Gibbs, she had been a Marine before she started working at NCIS and an attack on anyone in the agency or the building was seen as personal, very much like how it felt when she was deployed.

“We have a team checking that area,” Alex Bayley said, forestalling Gibbs’ question. “We have Rita’s team and after they clear the floor, the evidence bunnies will collect what they can.”

McGee choked and Abby giggled. Tony beamed over the use of the nickname he bestowed on the evidence technicians. Gibbs threw his 2IC a dirty look and returned quickly to face the other two team leaders.

“I believe Abby was the target, Gibbs,” Rita confirmed what was on the man’s mind. “The offices above her lab are all admin and it was too early for anyone to be there. Agents are on the second and third floor and on the other side from her lab.”

“You think it was Haswari,” Bayley declared, paying close attention to the other man’s reactions.

“Who else has it in for NCIS at the moment?” Gibbs bit back.

“All the people we arrested and prosecuted, Agent Gibbs,” came the bubbly comment from the mezzanine stairs.

Tony turned to observe Madam Director Jennifer Shepard’s descent, looking more like a model on a catwalk than the director of a law enforcement agency. Her cheerful attitude didn’t seem to be well received by anyone in the bullpen.

“What’s going on?” she asked, looking around bewildered.

“Didn’t Security inform you, Director?” Rita asked brusquely.

“I was held at the entrance of the Navy Yard because of some event, Agent Zamora, but after I drove in, I came directly to my office,” Shepard smiled smarmily back.

“Someone used NCIS lab and Dr Sciuto as target practice for sniper training,” Bayley delivered in a flat, controlled voice.

“Oh, my god! Are you well, Miss Sciuto?” Shepard acted surprised but it was too rehearsed to convince the seasoned agents in the room. Gibbs focused on the Director with narrowed eyes and Rita straightened up, her left hand going for a gun that was not at her waist at that moment. Bayley took a deep breath and nodded, like accepting it as proof of something he already suspected.

DiNozzo leaned back in his chair, trying to be out of the line of sight of the woman, his mind going a hundred miles an hour. He knew Shepard had traded favours with the Davids, father and daughter, but he didn’t think she was in the loop about the attacks on NCIS personnel, Gibbs, Abby or Kate. The Director’s attitude right now put a new spin on the whole mess and pushed the need to deal with the scheming, crazy woman way ahead of any other plans Tony might have concocted.

“Abigail suffered a shock, and she might have bruised a little from the tumble with young Anthony,” Dr Mallard stated with precision, a hand on Abby’s shoulder while the young woman sat looking at the Director with wide-eyed surprise. “I believe she should take a day or two to get her bearings back.”

“Ah, well, we might need Miss Sciuto’s expertise if there’s any evidence of this attack,” Shepard started to say, losing her smile. “That’s why I would like to have an assistant for the lab,” she continued.

“We can request the late-night shift technician to come in for that,” Bayley interrupted. “Her lab is a crime scene after all,” he finished with badly hidden disdain.

“Ah, yes,” Shepard faltered at that. “Yes, of course it is.”

“Let me take you to the nuns, Abby,” DiNozzo rose from his seat, startling the Director who really didn’t seem to have noticed the man before. “You’ll feel better to have company and the nuns are great at coddling,” the SFA finished with a warm smile.

“I think that is a brilliant idea, Anthony,” Ducky smiled back at the agent and moved his hand to help Abby rise from her chair. “I will go with Abigail to see if she can pick up her purse from the lab before accompanying her to the parking garage, my boy.”

“I’ll stop at HR to arrange the leave, Ducky. See you soon.” Tony observed the medical examiner guiding the young woman out of the crowded area, shushing her when Abby tried to say something. He then turned to his team leader. “I’ll take her home and then I’ll try some contacts to see if there’s any chatter on the streets about a hit, Boss.” DiNozzo raised a hand holding his flip phone. “Rule 3,” and he moved out of the bullpen without paying attention to the disgruntled stance of the Director.

“Agent!” Shepard shouted when he was half-way to the lift.

DiNozzo turned to face the woman and produced his rehearsed seductive smile, the one that he usually reserved for recalcitrant witnesses.

“DiNozzo, Ma’am, Senior Field Agent of the Major Crime Response Team. Just back from sick leave, Ma’am. Sorry to meet and run but seems we have a case already,” he waved a weird mix of greeting and goodbye, and speed walked towards the stairs.

“What…?!” Shepard watched DiNozzo leave, looking lost.

“Told ya my SFA was one of the best agents I ever worked with,” Gibbs said before starting to walk out himself. “I’ll check my own contacts,” he continued, pulling out his phone. “Zamora, Bayley, keep me updated,” Gibbs finished, leaving without looking back at the Director.

Rita Zamora just nodded in the general direction of the others still in the bullpen and turned to leave via the back stairs.

“What…?” Shepard tried again, looking around her.

“That’s how Gibbs’ team usually works, Director,” Bayley crossed his arms and sat on the corner of the lead agent’s table. “They see a problem and they jump right into it. Well, Gibbs and DiNozzo do. Todd and McGee are learning,” he shook his head to the empty desk by the Director’s side while McGee crunched deeper behind his computer, trying to avoid being singled out.

“They are still my agents, Alex,” Shepard complained. “They should discuss the issue with me first.”

“As Director, ma’am, you don’t really have time to follow up all the minutiae of every case,” Bayley spoke calmly back. “You have bigger fish to fry. I bet SecNav is trying to contact you. He should know about the attack at the NCIS building by now.”

Jen Shepard jumped in surprise, like she hadn’t thought about it. She barely acknowledged the comment and turned to climb back to her office as quickly as her high heels would allow her.

“Find Todd, McGee,” Bayley said after the Director disappeared upstairs. “Gibbs will want to know where she is. He’ll be even more hyperalert and focused than before. That’s Abby the son-of-a-bitch targeted.”

McGee surfaced from behind his computer, eyes wide and a bit scared. “Ah, humm… Yes, sir… I mean… Yes, Agent Bayley. Right away. I… humm…. I’ll try to contact Kate and let her know what’s going on.”

“Good boy, McGee,” Bayley joked before leaving the MCRT bullpen, leaving the probie agent to his keyboard.

ITNC

Tony sat in his car outside the convent, watching as Abby disappeared through the heavy wooden doors, greeted warmly by Sister Rosita. The morning’s events played through his mind on repeat – the red dot on the computer screen, his instinctive reaction to protect Abby, and most disturbing of all, Director Shepard’s calculated performance in the aftermath.

His hands tightened on the steering wheel as he considered the implications. In his previous timeline, he had attributed Jenny’s manipulations primarily to her obsession with La Grenouille and her declining health. But her reaction today painted a different picture. The Jenny Shepard who had just taken over as Director was already deeply enmeshed in questionable alliances.

The casual dismissal of a shooting at a federal building, her immediate push to get an assistant in Abby’s lab despite the circumstances – it all spoke of someone working multiple angles. Tony’s gut churned as he realized just how early Jenny’s machinations must have started. Had she been laying groundwork even before taking the director position?

“Think it through, DiNozzo,” he muttered to himself, starting the car. In his dream memories he had always reacted to Jenny’s plays rather than anticipating them. He had been too caught up in trying to maintain his cover with La Grenouille, too focused on protecting Jeanne, to see the bigger picture until it was too late.

His phone buzzed with a text from Gibbs: “Basement. 2000.”

Tony allowed himself a small smile. Some things would never change, including Gibbs’ tendency to issue commands rather than requests in short, clipped outbursts of words, whether spoken or texted. But this time around, he wasn’t the eager-to-please senior field agent desperately seeking approval. He had lived through enough to know better.

First stop: his apartment. He needed his notebook and time to think.

ITNC

The apartment felt different now, more like a temporary way station than the comfort zone it had been in his previous life. Tony pulled out the notebook where he had been documenting his dream memories and started a new section. Time to consider what he thought he knew against what he was seeing now.

Tony always believed Madame Director wanted revenge for her father’s death and put Ziva David inside NCIS in exchange for information from Mossad. With her acting today it looked more like she was already part of Eli David’s network, and La Grenouille information was her payment.

Ziva David had blown hot and cold for the whole of their relationship. Half the time she seemed keen to leave Eli’s sphere of influence, but she always went back doing his bidding. At the end, after his death, she was an out-of-control asset, going more on instinct and experience, basing all her reactions on her training rather than thinking things through.

Now Eli David still seemed like the mad dictator, controlling and heartless, focused only on his objectives and wants without a single thought for others. It was always clear his plans were long-term and established from the beginning of his tenure at Mossad. Even his helping of Vance at the start of the previous/future director’s career seemed artificial and orchestrated now.

The biggest uncertainty was Ari Haswari. Was he an actual double agent, with all his actions against NCIS part of Eli’s plan? Maybe Ari has his own plans and was acting them out under his father’s nose? Was Gibbs a representation of his father, as Ducky had thought, or just a pawn on all these plans? Why the whole obsession with Kate?

“Aarrghhh!” Tony threw the pen on the table, standing up abruptly and pacing around his living room. Everything had seemed so clear when he’d put his dream memories to paper. He thought he knew the players and their plays. His plan hadn’t seemed so complicated then.

• Save Kate from being murdered.
• Get Ari instead of leaving it to Ziva.
• Block Ziva from entering NCIS.
• Mess up Madame Director’s plan for The Frog.
• Live happily ever after.

Tony chuckled. “Maybe I should focus on making some ‘savvy’ investments and just get out of Dodge,” he murmured.

Taking a deep breath, he sat back again, staring at the pages, mind still racing. The shooting at Abby’s lab changed everything. In his memories, Ari had focused primarily on Gibbs and Kate. The attack on Abby came afterwards. This suggested either a different strategy this time or… Tony sat up straighter as a thought struck him. What if it was Jenny’s idea to redirect Ari’s focus to create maximum chaos and make it harder for the MCRT to keep up with the changes?

His phone buzzed again; it was Jacob this time.

“Tony! Henry just called me, saying he heard about a shooting at the NCIS office! What the hell, man?”

“I’m fine, Jake,” Tony assured his friend, realizing he needed to start including his support network more in this timeline. “Actually, could you gather the guys? I think I need some outside perspective on this whole situation.”

There was a pause on the other end. “You’re actually asking for help? Voluntarily?” Jacob sounded shocked. “Now I’m really worried.”

Tony laughed, but it was tinged with weariness. “Let’s just say near-death experiences give you a new perspective on things. Can you get everyone together? Maybe tomorrow night?”

“I’ll make it happen”” Jacob promised.” But you’re explaining everything to Henry yourself.”

After hanging up, Tony returned to his notes, adding another section.

1. Direct confrontation with Jenny? (Too risky, too early)
2. Warn Morrow? (Too busy, too far away)
3. Build paper trail of Jenny’s suspicious decisions (Long-term play)
4. Contact Mossad directly? (Dangerous but rewarding if works)
5. Focus on protecting team while gathering intel (Safe but possibly too passive)

He tapped his pen against the page, considering options. The problem with having future knowledge was that it created a paralyzing fear of making things worse. But doing nothing wasn’t an option, not when he knew what was at stake.

His eyes fell on a name in his written contact list: Malachi Ben-Gidon. In his dream life, the Mossad officer had shown signs of questioning Eli David’s methods, especially regarding his children. It was a risky play, but maybe…

Tony picked up his phone, fingers hovering over the keypad. Was he really ready to start moving pieces on the board? One wrong move could make everything worse. But watching Jenny’s performance today, seeing how easily she dismissed a direct attack on a federal agency, Tony knew he couldn’t wait.

He dialled the number.

“Officer Ben-Gidon,” a crisp voice answered on the third ring.

“Malachi Ben-Gidon,” Tony replied smoothly, forcing confidence into his voice. “You don’t know me yet, but I think we might have some mutual interests to discuss.”

There was a lengthy pause. “Who is this?”

“Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, NCIS.” Tony took a deep breath. “And I’m wondering if anyone in Mossad has considered the security implications of Director David using his children as operational assets.”

Another pause, longer this time. “I’m listening.”

Tony chose his next words carefully. This wasn’t about dumping information; it was about planting seeds of doubt. “Let’s talk about how personal vendettas and family drama might compromise otherwise solid operations…”

ITNC

The drive to Gibbs’ house gave Tony time to second-guess every decision he’d made that day. Had he moved too quickly with Malachi? Should he have waited, gathered more intel first? But Jenny’s reaction to the shooting kept coming back to him. She was already several moves ahead; he couldn’t afford to be purely reactive this time.

The house was dark except for the basement light when Tony arrived. Some habits really never changed. He let himself in, heading straight for the basement steps.

Gibbs was at his workbench, sanding a piece of wood with methodical strokes. He didn’t look up as Tony descended the stairs.

“Abby settled?”

“The nuns will keep her safe and calm for the next couple of days,” Tony confirmed, settling onto his usual perch on the workbench. “She’s rattled, but she’ll bounce back. She always does.”

Gibbs grunted, continuing to sand. “You saw something before anyone else did.”

It wasn’t a question, but Tony answered anyway. “Got lucky. Caught a reflection at the right moment.”

“Lucky,” Gibbs repeated flatly, finally looking up. “Like you were lucky to survive the plague? Lucky to survive that cardiac arrest?”

Tony met his boss’s piercing stare steadily. “You trying to ask me something, Boss?”

Gibbs set down the sanding block, reaching for the bottle of bourbon. “You’re different since you came back.”

“Dying and coming back will do that to you,” Tony replied carefully, watching Gibbs for any reaction.

Gibbs poured two measures of bourbon into mason jars; his movements deliberate. “Sometimes it changes how you see things.” He handed one jar to Tony. “Sometimes it changes what you see.”

Tony accepted the jar, studying Gibbs’ expression. There was something there, something in the way he emphasized the words… “Boss, if someone could see things differently…” he started cautiously.

“Dangerous game, DiNozzo,” Gibbs cut him off, taking a long sip of bourbon. “Trying to change what you think you see coming.”

“But if you knew something bad was coming”” Tony pressed, “wouldn’t you try to stop it?”

Gibbs was quiet for a long moment, staring into his jar. “Not everything can be stopped, Tony. Sometimes trying just makes it worse.”

The weight of unspoken experience hung heavy in those words. Tony wanted to ask directly about Shannon and Kelly, about whether Gibbs had his own experience with second chances, but something held him back. No, he’d sworn to himself he’d never mention Pedro Hernandez. Instead, he pulled out his notebook.

“I’ve been thinking about Director Shepard,” he said carefully. “About her support of Mossad, and what that might mean for the agency.”

Gibbs’ expression didn’t change, but something flickered in his eyes. “Have you now?”

“Her reaction to the shooting today…” Tony flipped through his notes. “It wasn’t right, Boss. And with what we know about Haswari…”

“What do we know, DiNozzo?” Gibbs interrupted sharply.

Tony took a deep breath. “I think we need to look at the bigger picture. Jenny’s appointment as Director, Haswari’s supposed status as a double agent, I mean, what use is he as a double agent if everyone knows he was raised to be one? And the timing of it all…” He laid out his observations carefully, watching Gibbs for any reaction.

Gibbs listened silently, his face unreadable. When Tony finished, he took another sip of bourbon before speaking. “You planning something I should know about?”

“I made a call today,” Tony admitted. “To someone in Mossad who might question Eli David’s methods.”

Gibbs’ eyebrows rose slightly. “Risky move.”

“Yeah, well,” Tony gave a half-smile, “I learned from the best about taking calculated risks.”

“Just make sure you know what you’re risking,” Gibbs replied cryptically. He turned back to his workbench, picking up the sanding block again. “And DiNozzo?”

“Yeah, Boss?”

“Whatever you think you know… whatever you think you can change…” Gibbs paused, his hand stilling on the wood. “Just remember that sometimes the price of change is higher than you expect.”

Tony nodded slowly, understanding both the warning and the unspoken permission to proceed. As he watched Gibbs return to his methodical sanding, he wondered just what price his boss had paid for his own attempts at change.

The basement lights burned late into the night as two men worked in companionable silence, each carrying the weight of futures they hoped to prevent.

Chapter 4 – Getting lost in the dark

Tony arrived early at the Navy Yard the next morning, his conversation with Gibbs still weighing heavily on his mind. The bullpen was mostly empty, giving him time to think as he sorted through reports from yesterday’s shooting.

The elevator dinged, and Director Shepard emerged, her heels clicking purposefully across the floor. She paused, apparently surprised to see him.

“Agent DiNozzo. You’re here early.”

“Always am, Director,” Tony replied pleasantly, keeping his expression neutral. “Lot of paperwork after yesterday’s excitement.”

Jenny’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Yes, about that. I’d appreciate being kept in the loop about your investigation methods. I understand you’ve been making some… interesting calls.”

Tony maintained his bland smile while his mind raced. How did she know about his call to Malachi already? “Just following standard protocol, Director. Reaching out to possible contacts to dig out a potential terrorist threat.”

“Of course,” Jenny smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Still, I’d prefer such contacts go through proper channels. We wouldn’t want to create any… diplomatic incidents.”

She continued toward the stairs, leaving Tony to ponder this new development. Either Malachi had already reported the call up his chain of command, or Jenny had other ways of monitoring communications. Neither option was particularly comforting.

The sound of McGee arriving drew Tony from his thoughts. The younger agent looked tired, dark circles under his eyes suggesting a late night.

“You okay there, Probie?”

McGee dropped into his chair with a sigh. “Been running background on everyone who had access to that museum roof, Tony. No hits yet.”

“Because there wouldn’t be,” Tony muttered, too quietly for McGee to hear. He knew Ari would have been too careful to leave an obvious trail. Still, they had to go through the motions.

Kate arrived next, looking similarly exhausted but determined. “How’s Abby?” she asked immediately.

“Safe with the nuns,” Tony assured her. “But we need to talk about your security, Kate.”

She bristled visibly. “I can take care of myself, Tony.”

“Like you took care of yourself with Ari before?” The words slipped out before he could stop them, sharper than he intended.

Kate’s face flushed. “That was different! He…”

“Was playing you,” Tony interrupted, standing. “Just like he’s playing all of us. And now Abby could have died because we’re not seeing the whole board.”

“DiNozzo.” Gibbs’ voice cut through the tension. None of them had noticed him arrive.

Tony took a deep breath, forcing himself to step back. “Sorry, Boss. Kate.” He wasn’t really sorry for the warning, but he needed to handle this better. Getting emotional wouldn’t help anyone.

Gibbs studied them both for a moment before nodding toward the elevator. “With me, DiNozzo.”

As Tony followed Gibbs into the elevator, he couldn’t help wondering if he’d already changed too much. The Tony DiNozzo of this time wouldn’t have confronted Kate so directly. But watching her die once was more than enough.

The elevator started moving, and Gibbs hit the emergency switch. “You need to dial it back.”

“Boss, I…” Tony slouched against the lift wall. ‘This coming from Ahab-Gibbs?!” he thought.

“Not finished,” Gibbs cut him off. “You’re seeing things differently now. Fine. But push too hard, too fast, and you’ll lose any advantage that gives you.”

“Dial down but still pass on the risk”, he thought. “She could have died, Boss. If we don’t change things, someone else will die. And it will be just the start.”

Gibbs was quiet for a long moment. “You think I don’t know about wanting to change things?” His voice was barely above a whisper. “About seeing it coming and not being able to stop it?”

The pain in those words made Tony’s chest tight. “Sometimes we can, right? Sometimes we can change things?”

“Maybe. But not by scaring Kate into defensive mode. Play it smarter, DiNozzo.”

“I thought I was, Boss,” deep breath. “Looks like Madam Director has a longer reach or very good hearing.”

Gibbs’ raised eyebrow was an invitation to clarify.

“She said something about avoiding calls that could lead to diplomatic incidents.”

“You didn’t call from the office…” Gibbs said, leadingly.

“Home. Personal phone.”

“So, you’re being tracked.”

“Or we all are.”

Gibbs’ eyes shot to the side, clocking the camera in the back of the lift that covered the doors and the panel. Both agents were sideways to it, so they could be seen, but not clearly enough for lip reading. Gibbs turned a fraction of an inch, making it harder for the camera to see his face.

“So you think it’s more than phones?”

“The back of my head is itching, Boss,” Tony scratched the hairs closer to his neck.

The older agent remained silent for a moment. He then turned completely to the panel and pressed the emergency button to liberate the lift. “Find out!” he said, walking away with long strides towards the exit of the building.

Tony nodded and selected the button to go up back to the bullpen. As he stepped back into the office space, his phone buzzed with a text from Jacob: “Everyone’s coming tonight. 8pm at my place. Bring beer.”

At least that was going according to plan. Now he just had to figure out how to explain things to his frat brothers without sounding completely insane.

Tony returned to his desk, mind churning over Jenny’s morning ambush. How had she known about the call to Malachi so quickly? Had Malachi reported it immediately? That didn’t track with what Tony remembered of the Mossad officer’s tendency to play things close to the vest. His eyes swept the bullpen, noting the security cameras, remembering how often he’d seen maintenance workers yesterday, supposedly updating systems.

“Hey McGee,” Tony called out casually. “You done with that security program the Director wanted installed?”

“Yeah, finished last night actually. Had to stay late to…” McGee’s eyes went wide as he caught himself. “I mean, what program?”

Tony’s gut clenched. “Spill it, McLooseLips.”

McGee glanced around nervously, then rolled his chair closer to Tony’s desk. “I wasn’t supposed to say anything,” he whispered. “Director Shepard had me install monitoring software on all our work phones and computers her first day here. Said it was for security purposes, to track any potential leaks. But she was really insistent that nobody should know about it.”

Tony fought to keep his expression neutral even as alarm bells rang in his head. First day? She’d been planning this from the start.

“Does Gibbs know?” Tony kept his voice low.

“I don’t think so,” McGee shifted uncomfortably. “She said it was classified above his clearance level. I only know because she needed someone from Cyber to do the installation.”

Tony nodded slowly, pieces clicking into place. But that still didn’t explain how she knew about his call to Malachi. Maybe Madam Director was not the only one tracking her subordinates. He would have to tread carefully and find a way to alert the other agent.

“Good work, Probie”” he said absently, already planning his next move. He needed a secure way to communicate, and he needed it fast. His gaze fell on his flip phone. Time to make some changes to his personal technology too.

The rest of the morning was consumed by paperwork from the shooting. Tony made a show of conducting routine interviews and following standard procedures, all while his mind raced through implications. Jenny hadn’t just been laying groundwork, she’d built an entire surveillance infrastructure before she even officially took the position. The level of preparation suggested backing far beyond what he’d suspected in his previous timeline.

Around noon, Kate left to interview witnesses near the museum. Tony watched her go, fighting the urge to follow. He had to trust that Ari wouldn’t make another move so soon.

“Going for coffee!” Gibbs stated a moment later, collecting his gun and creds, and choosing the stairs to leave the floor.

Tony waited exactly three minutes before heading to the men’s room. He did a quick sweep for devices, then pulled out his personal phone and removed the battery. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do for now.

The rest of the afternoon crawled by. Tony found himself jumping at small noises, hyper-aware of every security camera, every maintenance worker, every seemingly casual visit from other departments. How much of the building’s infrastructure had Jenny compromised?

At 1800, Gibbs finally, abruptly called it a day. “Get some rest. Fresh eyes tomorrow.”

He had other things to think about. Something had been niggling in the back of his mind since his conversation with DiNozzo last night, and it was only now, after watching his SIC’s edginess and hyper-vigilance that it coalesced into something solid. Solid and alarming. Guarding against snipers… The shooting into Abby’s lab… Himself on a hillside, long ago… ‘Could DiNozzo know about Hernandez?’

It had never bothered Gibbs before, but now this more serious minded, focused Tony… ‘Was it possible that someday he’d no longer feel OK with keeping silent?’ Gibbs shook his head in firm denial of the thought. DiNozzo wouldn’t… but somewhere in the depths of Gibbs’ mind, although he didn’t know it, the idea took root.

Tony gathered his things, mind already on the upcoming meeting with his frat brothers. He needed their help, but how much could he safely tell them? And how could he be sure anything they discussed wouldn’t get back to Jenny?

He was so lost in thought that he almost ran into Director Shepard near the elevator.

“Leaving already, Agent DiNozzo?” Her smile was perfectly pleasant. “I hope you’ve had a more… productive day than some ill-advised international calls.”

Tony matched her smile with his own. “Always productive, Director. Amazing what you can learn when you keep your ears open, and your mouth shut.”

Something flickered in Jenny’s eyes. Surprise? Concern? Her professional mask slipped back into place. “Indeed. Have a good evening, Agent DiNozzo.”

Tony waited until she was well out of sight before heading to his car. He had two hours before meeting his frat brothers, and he needed to make some stops first. Radio Shack was still open, and he remembered enough about surveillance from his Baltimore undercover days to know what to buy.

His apartment would have to wait for a proper sweep, but for tonight, Jacob’s place would do. His friend’s renovating hobby meant plenty of power tools, a perfect cover for any anti-surveillance equipment Tony might need to use.

As he drove, Tony’s mind kept circling back to Jenny’s morning confrontation. She’d wanted him to know she was watching. But why show her hand so early? Unless…

“She’s not just watching me,” he muttered, feeling cold despite the warm evening. “She’s watching everyone. And she wanted me to know because…”

Because she knew he’d figure it out eventually? Because she wanted him off balance? Or because she was sending a message to someone else entirely? Might this be about Gibbs?

After a quick stop at Radio Shack and another at a liquor store for the promised beer, Tony pulled up to Jacob’s house. The familiar sight of his friend’s half-finished home improvement project brought a small smile to his face. Some things really didn’t change across timelines.

BJ’s car was already in the driveway, and Tony could see Henry’s fancy SUV parked around the corner. He wasn’t sure what Steve and Harrison were driving at the moment. Steve liked to change cars almost like he changed clothes. Harrison would usually drive Fords, but Tony couldn’t see any parked nearby. As he grabbed the beer and his small bag of electronics, Frank’s BMW pulled up behind him.

“Only you could get shot at on your first day back”” Frank called out, climbing from his car.

“Technically, someone was shooting at Abby,” Tony corrected, then winced at how that sounded.

“Not helping your case, Tone,” Frank fell into step beside him as they approached the house.

Before they could reach the door, it swung open to reveal Jacob’s imposing frame. “About time! Henry’s been stress-cooking, and I’m running out of counter space.”

The familiar banter helped ease some of Tony’s tension as they entered the house. The smell of Henry’s infamous five-alarm chili filled the air, and BJ and Harrison were already sprawled on the couch, beer in hand. Steve was seated at the counter, harassing Henry.

“Tony!” Henry called from the kitchen. “Tell me you brought the good beer this time!”

“When have I ever brought bad beer?” Tony protested, setting the cases down.

“1995,” the frat brothers replied in unison.

“That was one time!” Tony laughed, but it felt forced. His friends noticed.

“Alright, spill it,” Jacob said, pulling tools out of various drawers. The rhythmic hum from the basement suggested that there was equipment down there still running. “What’s got you spooked enough to actually ask for help?”

Tony pulled out his new purchases from Radio Shack. “First, we need to make sure this conversation stays private. Anyone object to a little background noise?”

His friends exchanged looks as Tony began setting up simple counter-surveillance measures. Jacob’s eyebrows rose at the small frequency jammer, while Henry abandoned his chili to watch Tony work with growing concern.

“Should we be worried?” BJ asked, sitting up straighter.

“Probably,” Tony admitted, finally satisfied with his setup. “But right now, I’m more worried about sounding crazy when I try to explain this.”

“Crazier than the time you convinced us to help you stake out your neighbour because you thought she was running an illegal ferret-breeding operation?” Henry asked, returning to his chili.

“That turned out to be true!” Tony protested.

“Which only encouraged you,” Harrison pointed out, settling into a kitchen chair.

“Should we want to know?” Steve asked, walking towards a chair closer to the sofa.

“I…” Tony took a deep breath, looking at each of his friends in turn. These men had stood by him through everything: injuries, breakups, career changes. If anyone would believe him, or at least help him without believing, it would be them.

“What if I told you I want to change how I go about things because I believe the path forward isn’t the best one? Like, bad things are going… might happen? Things I want to prevent, but I don’t know if it might make everything worse?”

The room fell silent except for the distant sound of power tools and the bubbling of Henry’s chili.

Jacob broke the silence first. “This about your cardiac arrest? Did you have one of those near-death vision things?”

“Not… exactly” Tony hedged. “Maybe more like a… dream… about how my life going forward could be. I know it sounds crazy…”

“Tony…” Henry started, lawyer mode clearly engaging.

“Are you saying you know the future, Tony?” Frank was always the more direct one in their little group.

“Nooo… Maybe…” Tony hedged.

“Tony, man, that’s crazy talk, way crazier than the ferret ring!” Steve got up and walked to the freezer to snag another beer.

“I think you got spooked by the whole plague and heart attack, Tony,” Henry stated clearly, holding the other man’s eyes. “Let’s talk about it, okay? I don’t think your NCIS friends would be the best to discuss your… discomfort after your brush with death.”

“Yep, all of them are too blase about the risks you guys take,” the sound of a bottle knocking on the counter punctuated Steve’s dry comment.

Tony deflated, letting his body fall back into the chair he was seating. How could he tell his friends about his dream memories and not sound completely insane?! He knew he needed help but in the other life he’d lost contact with them and if they asked for proof, he couldn’t tell them anything specific about their lives or loved ones. Every memory was about NCIS and the MCRT.

“Look, man,” Steve continued, “I get it you got spooked, but the best advice I can offer you at this point is to change jobs. Or you could make an appointment with Charlie for some psycho analysis!” Steve laughed.

There was a wan smile on Tony’s face and the other frat brothers made a show of snickers but there wasn’t a lot of effort in it.

“Sorry, but this is too heavy a conversation for me mid-week. If you want to discuss your mortality and what comes afterwards, I’ll need more than a couple of beers, and certainly would need at least a day to get rid of the hangover. Let’s reschedule this for a weekend, guys.” Steve said, already walking towards the door.

“Yeah, sorry that I bothered you guys,” Tony started to get up but sat back again when Henry pulled his arm.

“No, don’t be sorry, Tony. We get the need to talk, but I agree with Steve, we need more than a couple of hours mid-week for this,” Frank said.

“Yeah, I know, work and family and all that,” Tony answered quietly.

“It’s us that should say sorry that we can’t help, Tony,” Harrison commented.

“No! Never! You guys are great! I’m the one asking for too much…”

“Tony…”

“Okay! Enough mush! I’m out! Call me if you guys want to get drunk on the weekend!” Steve waved a goodbye and walked out quickly.

“I can’t be here too late,” Frank started to explain.

“No, man, don’t worry…” Tony cut in.

“We do need to catch up, but the weekend should be better,” Frank finished.

“Sure.”

“Tony, I want to help, but I’m not sure how,” it was Harrison’s turn to say.

“You always help, Harrison. I know you guys will be there for me…” Tony answered despondently.

“Don’t feel like it right now,” Harrison returned.

“Maybe it’s not to be…”

“You guys go home, and we can reschedule something for a weekend, a barbecue or something. At BJ’s or Frank’s house, where there aren’t so many hazards,” Henry said, getting up from the sofa and slapping Frank’s shoulder.

Harrison and Frank said their goodbyes and walked slowly, almost regretfully, out of the house.

Tony made to get up, but Henry just pushed him back into the seat.

“You stay put, 25, I think you need another intervention from BJ, Jake and I.”

“Guys, sorry… But it’s okay… I don’t want to bother anyone with my craziness…”

“Tony!” BJ barked. Everybody stilled. “We love you, man, and we want to help, but we need to understand first.”

“Yes, Tone, you asked something like that when I went to visit,” Jacob started. “If I believed in signs. I think the whole experience shook you enough to start looking at things differently.”

“Yeah… Something like that.”

“So let’s look at things differently,” Henry stated. “Things that you didn’t want to mess with so far but might be ready to do now?”

“Like what?” Tony asked suspiciously.

“Senior,” BJ stated darkly.

“Oh….” Tony fell backwards into the chair. He hadn’t thought about specific things to change in his own life besides trying to keep in touch with his frat brothers. All his dream memories and his plans so far were related to NCIS and MCRT.

“What have you always said to us? That first responders need to check themselves first before running into any situation?” BJ persisted.

“A rule that you never followed, I might add,” Jacob seconded.

“What do you think I should do?”

“Change your name so he can’t mess with your accounts,” Henry started.

“Maybe consider some good investments to guarantee your retirement. Law enforcement doesn’t pay enough and certainly wouldn’t give you peace of mind later in life,” BJ offered.

“Talk to us about these signs you think you got and let us help as much as we can,” Jacob completed.

Tony looked around, carefully facing each friend. “You won’t tell me I’m crazy?”

“Ah, just a little bit,” BJ joked.

“Just enough for me to call Charlie,” Henry smiled.

“But we’re still gonna help you anyway we can,” Jacob repeated.

“The others…” Tony started.

“Harrison and Frank are busy with family and jobs, you know how they can get. More focused than you. Steve… Steve is Steve and if it’s not related to a new girl, he won’t be interested at all.” Henry explained.

“So we talk to them another time, when things are more or less sorted between us.” BJ said.

“We can be magnanimous and bring your doctor, the Wolverine, into this conversation,” Jacob offered.

Tony bent forward, elbows on his knees, hands covering his face. One or two deep breaths and he straight up, looking back to his friends.

“Okay, let’s do this. Taking care of me so I can do my job,” another deep breath. “Henry, put that paperwork you’re always working on forward. I’ll use the name my mom wanted for me, Anthony Paddington DiNozzo, so no more confusion with Senior.”

“Finally!” BJ threw his hands in the air.

“I’ll process everything as quickly as possible and I’ll use all his attempts to access your bank accounts to push it through with a judge,” Henry answered. “As soon as I have everything signed, we can go around informing every one of the changes, including NCIS.”

“Yeah, that one will be a bit tricky”” Tony ran a hand over his head. “My new Director is looking more like a spy than a bureaucrat at the moment.”

“Whoa! That’s a bit out of our league, Tony,” BJ commented.

“Yep, I know, caught me by surprise too.”

“Let’s think about it when we do have the paperwork ready,” Henry retorted.

“Let’s talk about investments!” Jacob exclaimed. “I do like to make money!” He smiled widely.

“Oh, that,” Tony smirked. “I might have some ideas…”

“You got some signs related to investments?” Jacob doubted.

“Oh, you could say something like that, brother.”

“Okay, let’s work this out. And if your “insights” on investments are good, we might pass them on to the other guys,” Henry said, picking up a legal pad and a pen. “Or we might not!” He laughed.

The tension in the room broke with the laughter going around and the frat brothers set around the coffee table, talking and planning. Tony was able to relax for the first time that day.

“I’ll worry about Madam Director tomorrow, Scarlet O’Hara style,” he thought.

Chapter 5 – Maybe there’s light

Early next morning found Tony in the basement garage of NCIS headquarters, reconnecting his phone battery while leaning against his car. Thinking about old spy movies and playing on what would be expected from him, Tony decided to write an old-fashioned letter. He borrowed an idea from his Philadelphia days, when his undercover work required sending coded messages that would look innocent to anyone intercepting them.

Picking up a postcard from the Smithsonian he’d grabbed on his way in, Tony wrote in a cheerful tourist style about visiting the spy exhibit. He made sure to mention how fascinating the displays about counter-surveillance were, especially the section about the Cold War and tracking foreign operatives. He signed it with “Your American Friend” and addressed it to Ben-Gidon’s office in a slightly misspelled way that would still get there but draw attention.

The postcard would serve two purposes: warn Malachi while also letting Jenny think Tony was being deliberately obvious about reaching out to Mossad. Let her chase that connection while he worked other angles.

His phone buzzed. Gibbs, using his actual number this time: “Coffee run. Now.”

Tony smiled, pocketing his phone, and heading for the nearest postal box. Time to set some more pieces in motion.

The morning was crisp, fall making its presence known. Tony found Gibbs at their usual coffee spot, the older man already nursing what was probably his second cup of the day.

“Busy morning?” Gibbs asked as Tony settled across from him.

“Just catching up on some correspondence,” Tony replied easily, knowing the cameras in this café were focused on the counter, not the tables. “Thinking about taking some personal time soon, get my affairs in order.”

Gibbs’s eyebrow rose slightly.

“Henry’s been after me to update some paperwork,” Tony explained. “Seems like a good time, what with recent events.”

“Probably smart,” Gibbs agreed, understanding the subtext. “Speaking of recent events, Abby’s coming back today. Director wants her lab assistant to start immediately.”

Tony nearly choked on his coffee. “That’s… fast.”

“Yep.” Gibbs’s tone was neutral, but his eyes were sharp. “Seems the paperwork was already processed.”

“Efficient,” Tony commented dryly.

They finished their coffee in companionable silence, both men’s minds working through implications. As they walked back to the office, Tony spotted a familiar face across the street: Officer Amit Hadar from Mossad, poorly disguising himself as a tourist.

Perfect.

Tony made a show of dropping his empty coffee cup, bending to pick it up while palming the small note he’d prepared. As they passed Hadar, Tony stumbled slightly, bumping into the other man.

“Oh, sorry!” Tony exclaimed, steadying himself with a hand on Hadar’s arm, while smoothly slipping the note into the man’s jacket pocket. “These DC sidewalks, am I right?”

Hadar played his role perfectly, acting mildly annoyed but dismissive of the clumsy American. Tony caught the slight nod as they moved away: message received.

“Smooth,” Gibbs muttered as they entered the building.

“Learned from the best,” Tony replied quietly.

He noticed Officer Hadar walking away, phone to his ear. Good. That should get the ball rolling.

Now they just had to wait and see how the players reacted. The note, written in carefully generic terms, warned about electronic surveillance of all communications between agencies. The postcard would reinforce the message while providing a false trail for Jenny to follow, even if a bit later. Tony didn’t believe Madam Director was interfering with the American Post Office. Yet.

Upstairs, a minor circus awaited them. Abby had indeed returned, and she was standing in the middle of the bullpen, hands on her hips, glaring at a young man who appeared to be trying to disappear into McGee’s desk.

“I don’t need an assistant!” Abby declared as soon as she spotted Gibbs. “And I definitely don’t need some spy checking my work!”

Tony halted mid-step, his mind racing. The young man at McGee’s desk looked vaguely familiar. In his dream memories, hadn’t Jenny tried to place a lab assistant much later? Wasn’t he there to work on the frame-up attempt?

“No one’s spying on your work, Miss Sciuto,” Director Shepard’s voice came from the stairs. “Charles Sterling comes highly recommended.”

Tony fought to keep his expression neutral even as alarm bells rang in his head. Chip. Jenny had accelerated that play too. But why?

“My lab’s still a crime scene,” Abby pointed out triumphantly.

“Not anymore,” Jenny smiled. “The scene was cleared this morning. Mr. Sterling can help you get everything back in order.”

Tony watched the interplay while casually moving to his desk. His own phone buzzed, a text from an unfamiliar number: “Package received. Weather warning noted.”

Meanwhile, Jenny was still trying to smooth things over with Abby. “I understand your concerns, but after recent events, having backup in the lab just makes sense.”

“Recent events should make the agency more concerned about security, and not bring just anybody in,” Tony commented mildly, not looking up from his computer.

The temperature in the bullpen seemed to drop several degrees. Jenny turned slowly to face him. “Excuse me, Agent DiNozzo?”

“Just thinking that with the recent shooting, seems unwise to bring new staff in when the shooter hasn’t been found yet, ma’am,” Tony replied, finally meeting her gaze. “Almost like the whole thing was not that important.”

“Tony…” McGee started nervously.

“No, Tim, he has a point,” Kate spoke up, surprising everyone. “We’re investigating a shooting at a federal agency, but all the Director wants to talk about is bringing new people to our evidence lab?”

Jenny’s smile became brittle. “I assure you; the investigation has my full attention. As does everything that happens in this building.” Her gaze lingered meaningfully on Tony before she turned back to Abby. “Mr. Sterling starts today. That’s final.”

As Jenny strode away, Tony caught Gibbs watching him with an unreadable expression. He’d pushed harder than he planned to at this point, but Jenny’s accelerated timeline with Chip had thrown him. What else was she changing? Tony himself hadn’t done much at all about his dream memories. So why the accelerated time frame? He knew Madam Director’s basic plan: get La Grenouille and install Ziva David inside NCIS. What would make her jump the gun with the frame-up business? Maybe a change in tactics and instead of getting rid of Kate, she’d decided it would be better to throw Tony out of MCRT? Yep, not going to happen. Tony didn’t fancy spending the next 10 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. He might have to come out swinging after all.

His computer pinged with an email from Officer Ben-Gidon, routed through official channels: ‘regarding your inquiry about joint agency protocols – suggest secure meeting to discuss standard operating procedures.’

Translation: Message received, need to talk.

Before Tony could respond, McGee let out a surprised “Oh!” that drew everyone’s attention.

“Problem, McGee?” Gibbs asked.

“Um, no, just… the security program I installed? It just… uninstalled itself.” McGee’s fingers flew across his keyboard. “And it’s happening on all the systems.”

Tony hid a smile. Looks like Mossad’s cyber team got his message too. Jenny’s surveillance net was being dismantled. Pretty quickly too. No intelligence agency liked another agency playing Peeping Tom so blatantly.

The elevator dinged, and Fornell stepped out, looking more irritated than usual. “Jethro. Got a minute?”

“My office,” Gibbs replied, already moving towards the lift.

Tony watched them go, noting Jenny emerging from her office to observe the proceedings. She looked… unsettled. Good.

His phone buzzed again. Jacob this time: “Friend in electronic security free later today. Your place?”

Things were moving fast now. Tony just hoped he could keep all the pieces straight. A shadow fell across his desk, and he looked up to find Chip hovering nearby.

“Agent DiNozzo? I just wanted to introduce myself properly…”

“Okay, Chuck…” Tony smiled evilly. “Or you prefer Chip?”

ITNC

The tension filled the lift. Fornell looked like he’d swallowed a lemon whole, while Gibbs maintained his usual stoic expression.

“Three agencies just filed complaints about unauthorized surveillance of their personnel,” Fornell stated without preamble. “Coincidentally, all three had recent communications with NCIS.”

“Coincidentally,” Gibbs repeated dryly.

“Someone’s been casting a very wide net, Jethro. SecNav is not happy.”

“I’ll bet,” Gibbs smirked.

“That’s gonna blow soon, and it ain’t gonna be pretty.”

“Yep.”

“Could you help here, Gibbs?”” Fornell complained.

“How?” Gibbs asked with a raised eyebrow.

“You know who ordered the surveillance?” Fornell asked suspiciously.

“I have my guesses.”

“Ain’t gonna share?”

“Humm…”

Fornell’s countenance darkened, but whatever he would have said was interrupted by the furious hammering on the lift outside doors.

“Looks like our meeting ran over the allotted time, Fornell,” Gibbs smirked again, pressing the overriding button to open the doors.

In front of the elevator, with a thunderous expression was Director Shepard.

“What is the meaning of this, Agent Gibbs?!” She cried out. “You cannot commandeer the elevator like that!”

“The only place to have a calm conversation, Jenny,” Gibbs answered, walking past her.

Fornell scoffed, following the other agent.

“I’m talking to you, Jethro!” The cry reverberated through the bullpen, making everybody stop. Director Shepard didn’t seem to notice. “You cannot go around taking secret meetings in my agency!”

Gibbs turned slowly back to face the woman. Tobias Fornell stopped by the side of Tony’s desk, at the entrance of the MCRT bullpen. Charles Sterling, Chip the frame-up worker, was still there, clearly uncomfortable, unsure where to go or what to do.

McGee was again hiding behind his monitors, typing nervously and murmuring, increasingly upset.

Tony pushed his chair back to be able to have a better look at the scene unrolling in front of him but tried to bring any more attention to himself.

Balboa’s team, on the other side of the floor, quieted down and were silently paying attention.

“It’s not your agency, Jenny,” Gibbs retorted in a clipped, cold tone. “This is an American Federal Law Enforcement agency and everyone working here reports to SecNav first, SecDef next and then the President.”

Shepard took a step back and tried to control her haggard breathing. “You know what I mean, Agent Gibbs,” she tried to go back to the polite and distant persona she had been maintaining since she started in the position of director. “I am the director of the agency and secret meetings in here are unacceptable.”

Gibbs nodded as if recognizing her position but before she could count it as a victory, he continued. “You might be the director, for now, but my conversation with Fornell was not for anyone else’s ears.”

The not-so-subtle dig on her position put Shepard back up. “I would appreciate it if you would use the official channels if there’s anything the FBI has to say to NCIS, Agent Fornell,” she spat out, without looking at the other man.

“Well, Madam Director,” Fornell drawled out, a clear note of disdain in his tone. “I would say the official communication should be coming through to you right about now.”

“What is this about?!” She exclaimed, irritated.

“Illegal surveillance of intelligence agencies, Madam,” Fornell answered, eyes locked on the woman for her response.

A collective intake of breath filled the room. Gibbs kept his eyes on Shepard, the same as Fornell.

Kate stood up and was watching the scene wide-eyed.

Balboa and his team exchanged glances and Tony noticed Carson, Balboa’s SFA, start typing urgently on his computer. On his other side, Tony heard a whimper from McGee’s desk and noticed the step back that Chip took, taking himself farther away from the entrance of MCRT bullpen and closer to the back stairs.

Jenny’s face paled, losing the redness of her previous irritation. “That’s ridiculous. There’s always monitoring between agencies.”

“Not at the level found, Madame Director,” Fornell retorted.

“Stop calling me that!” Jenny cried, more uncertain.

“Calling you what, Jenny?” Gibbs asked calmly, his head cocking to the side. “You just point out that you are the Director of NCIS.”

“Don’t call me madam!” She returned.

“Whatever!” Fornell shrugged. “Lady, let me tell you that the higher ups are really pissed right now. Three agencies just filed complaints about unauthorized surveillance of their personnel,” Fornell continued. “Coincidentally, all three had recent communications with NCIS.”

“As I agreed, coincidentally,” Gibbs repeated dryly, still focused on Jenny Shepard’s face.

“Someone’s been casting a very wide net and SecNav is not happy. SecDef is not happy, and the Department of Justice is not happy. The unhappiness seems to keep climbing up.”

“That certainly has nothing to do with you, Agent Fornell,” Shepard tried again to assert her position. “Or any agent in this agency,” she said, casting a quick glance at her audience. “I’m certain that the secretaries and the directors of the agencies will discuss it, as needed. You should go back to your office and back to work,” she stepped to move past the two agents, finally seeming to note the audience. “All of you should go back to work!” Shepard screamed and speeded up to climb the stairs towards her office. “McGee!” she screamed from the top of the stairs. “Find out who accessed those systems!”

A series of pings coming from McGee’s computer distracted Tony from the theatrical exit left of the Director. Tony looked at his computer and saw a series of messages rolling up, too quickly for him to read as far as he was from his desk.

“Tony!” McGee’s panicked whisper cut through his thoughts. “Someone’s systematically dismantling everything I set up! The Director’s going to kill me!”

The younger agent kept typing with increased urgency and Kate turned back towards their area, eyebrows raised in surprise and suspicion.

Tony noticed Chip walking backwards until he reached the back stairs doors, leaving the area quickly. DiNozzo pulled the chair closer to the desk and typed a quick message to alert Abby that the new assistant seems to be going towards the lab.

“Probably not the best choice of words, McNervous,” Tony muttered back, while Fornell and Gibbs had a conversation with just miniscule face movements.

His phone buzzed, distracting him from the overall scene. A text from Henry: “Papers ready early. Judge owed me a favour. Want me to file today?”

Tony smiled. Perfect timing. The more chaos today brought, the harder it would be for Jenny to maintain control of her various schemes.

Tony’s phone buzzed again, this time from an encrypted number: “Meeting at 2000, Hole in the Wall Diner. Watch out. Not just NCIS. Bigger game.”

Interesting. Looks like Malachi had found something significant. Tony glanced up at Jenny’s office, trying to imagine what was going on behind the closed door.

Kate sat down at her desk, looking between Gibbs, Tony and McGee, a frown on her face. The conversation between the two older agents seemed to reach a conclusion and Fornell came toward the MCRT bullpen.

“DiNutzo,” he nodded, “Interesting times.”

“Getting more interesting by the minute,” Tony replied. “Say hi to Emily for me.”

Fornell paused, giving Tony a sharp look. “You know, she asked about you the other day. Said she had a feeling you might need some help soon.” He shrugged. “Kids, right? Get the strangest notions sometimes.”

Tony felt a chill run down his spine. Emily Fornell had always been unusually perceptive, but that was… specific.

“Who was the squirrely guy that was hovering around before?” Fornell asked, gesturing lazily towards the back stairs.

Tony raised an eyebrow, surprised the other man had noticed Chip at all. He certainly shouldn’t though. Fornell was a veteran senior agent, and an Agent in Charge at the FBI. You don’t get to that position with smiles and handshakes after all.

“The new lab assistant,” Tony answered.

“Lab assistant?” Fornell asked, surprised.

“Director Shepard decided that Abby needed help and brought the guy in, a Charles Sterling,” Kate supplied in clipped tones. “What’s going on, Gibbs?” she directly asked the lead agent.

“A lot,” Gibbs retorted, walking past the FBI agent toward his desk. Opening his top drawer, he picked up his gun, creds, and keys. “Going for lunch with Fornell here,” he smirked. “Tobias is paying.”

Fornell was still looking befuddled by the information of the new lab assistant but shook it off to start following the other man.

“Paying?! I never offer to pay for any lunch, Gibbs! This is not a date! We share and I choose the place! I don’t want to end up in the hospital because you have a lead stomach!”

Gibbs’ laugh startled most of the people in the bullpen and made Kate turn wide-eyed towards Tony. She waited for the lift doors to close and the unexpected sound to disappear before comment though.

“What was that?!”

“Gibbs and Fornell go back a long way,” Tony answered unconcerned, picking up his personal phone to text quicks “Go ahead” and “Okay” to his previous messages.

“Yeah, I know that, but I don’t remember Gibbs ever laughing like that…”

“He used to, before Haswari,” Tony commented quietly.

“Oh…” Kate seemed lost in thought for a while.

Another whimper from McGee’s desk caught his teammate’s attention. “Oh, God…! I’m so dead!”

“What now, McGee?” Kate asked impatiently.

“Everything is gone! All the softwares and access and the links to wherever the Director asked me to save the surveillance,” McGee whinging, looking like he was ready to cry.

“McGee,” Kate stood up and walked towards the younger man’s desk. “What exactly was in that program you installed?”

“I… uh…” McGee glanced nervously at the stairs, up where Jenny’s office was. “It was supposed to be just basic monitoring, but…”

“But?” Kate prompted, leaning over his desk.

“But I found some weird subroutines when I was installing it. They seemed to be connecting to external servers, logging keystrokes, activating microphones…”

“Spyware,” Tony supplied. “High-end stuff too, I bet.”

“How would you know, DiNozzo?” Kate asked, crossing her arms, and tapping her foot.

“What does it sound like, Kate?”

“Like someone is trying to set the new director up!” Kate exclaimed, throwing her arms out. “It’s just what these misogynistic politicians up the hill would do just because she’s the first woman in the command of a law enforcement agency!”

“Well, Katie,” Tony leaned back in his chair again and plastered a smug smile on his face. He had forgotten how bull-headed Kate could be with the whole guys against gals thing. “Considering that the request for the whole surveillance thing came from her directly, as McCyberSpy here can attest, I would say that’s quite a stretch.”

Kate turned back to McGee, who tried again to hide behind his monitors.

“McGee?” Kate’s tone was a warning.

“She talked to me herself, Kate,” McGee quivered. “She gave me the links and details and everything. Not by email, but she wrote everything down.”

“But, why?!” It was Kate’s turn to whinge.

“We might have to wait to see how far this whole thing goes before we can find out the why.” Balboa’s comment made Kate jump, but Tony only nodded in agreement. “Gibbs probably won’t be back,” Balboa opined.

“How would you know?” Kate asked mulishly.

Not how he would phrase it, but Tony was curious too.

“He sent me a text.” The answer raised DiNozzo’s curiosity to an unprecedented degree.

“Why you?” Kate was on top form today with the whinging.

“Team leader to team leader,” Balboa answered in a non-nonsense tone. “McGee!” The call made the younger man jump from his chair.

“Yes, sir!”

Both Balboa and Tony snickered, making McGee even more uncomfortable.

“Gibbs said to send you down to Abby’s lab to help her re-organized anything needed after the evidence bunnies finished their work,” Balboa said, still smiling.

“Abby’s lab, sure, right away…” McGee haphazardly picked up his phone and keys and left in a hurry.

Balboa shook his head, showing his dismay with the younger man’s attitude while Tony stood up to go check the other agent’s computer and lock it.

“Todd!” Balboa turned, surprising Kate.

“Yes… Agent Balboa?” She completed after his raised eyebrow.

“You are with my team for the rest of the day. Mick and Jane will tell you where we are at with our case.”

Kate made a face while carefully closing her computer and picking up her bag. She hated fraud cases. Too much paperwork and not enough action for her taste. She walked slowly out of the bullpen towards the other side of the floor. The team leader waited until she was sitting with his own team before turning to Tony.

“Gibbs said you have paperwork to sort out, out of the office. He said to go ahead and do whatever you need to do. We’ll cover for your team until tomorrow.”

Tony nodded and went back to his desk to lock his own computer.

“Phone lines will be busy today. I imagine inboxes will be exploding too,” Balboa commented in a speculative tone.

“The scuttlebutt will be going through the roof,” Tony smirked.

“Watch your six, Tony,” Balboa responded in a low tone, making sure nobody else would hear them. “She seemed a little too focused on the MCRT and you especially.”

“I have no idea why,” DiNozzo tried to dissemble.

“Nor do I, but that new lab assistant had a hard on for you, and it was not the type that would translate on a fun night out.”

The comment made Tony stand up straight, drilling a stare at the other agent’s face. “What do you mean?”

“While the whole weird conversation was going on, the guy wouldn’t take his eyes off you but not in a nice way, if you get my drift.”

Tony nodded and finished collecting his bag. “Maybe I’ll contribute to the whole congestion of the telephone lines after all.”

“Yeah, you do that. I’ll ask Carson to do his part too.”

“Thanks, Martin.”

“Of course, Tony.”

The two agents separated, one towards the stairs to leave the building and the other towards his work area.

Tony was seated in his car, still in the NCIS garage, shooting out texts to some contacts so he could try to sort out the whole Chip thing early while the world was tumbling down around Madam Director, when he saw the woman herself practically running from the building, face red, lips pressed together, phone glued to her ear. DiNozzo was too far away to be able to hear any part of her conversation, but her angry expression made it clear things were not going her way.

The whole way things were moving so quickly and the clearly villainous attitude from Jenny Shepard did put Tony a little on the backfoot but maybe her eagerness would actually help him out.

Maybe it’s time to put a bug in someone’s ear that Madam Director is not acting in a manner befitting her position. Maybe a health check is in order…

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