A/N Thanks to everyone who reviewed, followed or faved. Okay I just have to say here that this story was written at least 2 months ago, long before season 13 kicked off and reoccurring cast members were announced. So if certain comments seem ironic it is totally a coincidence.

Thanks to Arress for the beta and Frakkin Toasters for feedback.

Abandon Ship: Misguided Loyalty

Part 3

Driving home, I was replaying what had happened earlier that night in my head. I went over to Gibbs' place for dinner tonight, knowing that it wasn't just a meal between colleagues hanging out together. That there was an ulterior motive for Gibbs' invitation hadn't been that hard to figure out because the last time I'd turned up at Gibbs' was just before Ziva went native. And believe me, I took no comfort from being right about her going off the rails. Not that he listened to me, mind you.

I'd honestly thought he was going to tear me a new one tonight for something I'd done to piss him off. Let's face it, the last time he gave me anything approaching positive reinforcement was way back when I was running point on the Remy Grant case and he told me he was proud of me. In private.

Of course it was in private - heaven forbid that anyone should ever learn that he didn't think that I was anything other than a freakin screw-up. But since that overwhelming endorsement was because I was fixing up my massive screw-up sending an innocent man to prison, it hardly seemed like something to take a lot of comfort from. More like it was the absolute least I could do. So, with how he'd been so distant for a while now, it hadn't seemed such a leap to assume I'd finally worn out my welcome.

I never in a million years thought that the night would end up with me making the decision to leave Gibbs' team after all the time, blood, sweat, and tears I'd invested over the years. As it all started catching up with me, the bitter taste left from Gibbs' revelations after dinner had me pulling the car over to the side of the road. Exiting the car, I found myself crouched in the gutter making street pizza of the beer and cowboy steaks I'd eaten tonight, which was a real waste. Especially since I've no doubt consumed my last cowboy steak, and believe me, the irony about ending up in the gutter hasn't escaped my notice either.

So, what had me so upset that I lost a perfectly good dinner wasn't because I was upset that Gibbs wanted to hook-up? I'm not a homophobe, not by any means. I have some good friends who are gay and worked with plenty of cops and agents over the years who are gays or lesbians - it's a non-issue. Nor was it finding out that Gibbs is bisexual or gay, not sure which since he didn't exactly confide in me tonight. But as far as I'm concerned he can sleep with whoever he likes. Can't say I was thrilled with how he'd just expected I'd jump at the chance to enter into a relationship with him, although I'm not sure if he just wanted to screw me or if he was looking for something deep and meaningful. Mind his comments about my sexual behaviour hardly suggested he was looking for anything more than a physical liaison.

No, what had really upset me was that him having feelings for me that conflicted with his precious Rule 12, and that he's been denying those feelings and fucking me around all these years because of it. It probably explained why he was so much tougher on me than on anyone else on the team, trying so damned hard not to favour me, but that isn't fair to me. I'm also pissed that not only did he not confront me with how he felt about me, but he wasn't prepared to let me move on either. Gibbs has effectively left me in limbo, leaving me believing I wasn't good enough to step up and lead my own team. If he truly cared about me as he claims, then it isn't exactly the way to treat someone you have strong feelings for.

Even if I was gay and was secretly in love or even lusting over him, I'd be pretty pissed off to find out that for so many years he didn't think that I was worth sacrificing his job for, but suddenly with his career effectively reaching an end, he had decided he has nothing left to lose in hooking up with me. Talk about making your lover feel cherished and special. Hell, Ziva, McGee, and I gave up our careers to save his ass just because of our regard and respect for him. Makes me feel like a prize chump, I've gotta admit.

I guess what really burns me, though, is how dumb I was to expect Gibbs would follow through on his declaration that he didn't waste good. All these years I've wasted, believing I wasn't good enough, that I was nothing but a screw up that Gibbs barely tolerated, when that was far from the truth. Betrayal tasted damned bitter, and it wasn't due to losing my stomach contents, either.

Climbing back into my car and heading home, I thought about Gibbs' so-called litmus test with my ex-fiancée, Wendy Miller. Just goes to show that when it comes to understanding how I feel, Gibbs has sadly missed the plot. The truth is that while Wendy captured my heart, she also broke it badly, and I was never going to fall back into her arms like nothing had ever happened. Oh, sure, I'd ended up getting hot and heavy with her, might have even ended up having sex with her if her seven-year-old boy hadn't shocked me enough to think with my head and not my little Tony. Having seen my own father drag home a bunch of step-mothers and mistresses, I wasn't going down that road with Wendy's son, and I knew damned well that Wendy, no matter what she promised, would leave me sooner or later if we ever got back together.

I'd never made a secret of the fact that I dated my high school piano teacher, but no one ever made the connection that it was Wendy. She was not only my first – first love and my first lover, but she was obviously older than me and experienced – my Mrs. Robinson if you will. Add to it a lack of healthy female role models in my childhood, my father disowning me and his emotional abuse, I fell for her hard and fast. So, when she finally grew tired of having a teenager as a lover and ended our affair, I was, hardly surprisingly, utterly crushed. As my first love, she was my first breakup, although I guess when it came to rejection I was an old hand, but still her rejection devastated me, and I wasn't able to confide in anyone since the affair had been illicit.

Meanwhile, when our paths crossed once again in Baltimore, I'd grown up, not just in terms of age or experience when it came to women, but life and hard knocks too. I'd been a cop for more than five years, was a detective, and had seen a lot of life because of it. Granted, much of it was seamy and horrific, but it had also matured me pretty damn fast.

So, I guess I'd figured that the reason she dumped me in the first place wouldn't be an issue the second time around, and after all, there is something about your first love. Even if it is less than wonderful, we fantasize about it til it becomes larger than life, and nothing ever comes close to eclipsing it - at least in our memories. So, when I ran into her a decade later, I guess I thought it was a dream come true – that we were fated to be, or some equally dumb shit, that allowed me to dismiss the reality that what she'd done as my teacher was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Funny isn't it the double standards we have about sex when it comes to gender. Guys have a lot of partners and they are players. Women with the same number of partners are promiscuous sluts or easy. A male teacher seduces a female student, they're a pedophile, pervert, or at the very least a sick creep. If the girl's under sixteen, it's statutory rape and the girl's a victim. Yet when a female teacher seduces a teenage boy, most people don't view it with the same degree of seriousness since teenage boys are seen as horny and obsessed with sex anyway. Some people will go so far as to slap the victim on the back and call him a lucky bastard.

Even as a cop and Fed it took me a long time... a damn long time to recognise that what Wendy had done as my teacher was statutory rape. I guess that's why I always tried to make light or downplay my loss of virginity by telling people it had been a showgirl. Well, it had been one of her fantasies, and it stopped people probing for details.

God knows that I was confused enough as it was - confused about interpersonal relationships thanks to the dysfunctional ones I'd witness growing up in my fucked up family and confused about my own worth since my childhood was hardly a nurturing one. So, Wendy's attention, albeit inappropriate, was always going to be highly intoxicating and addictive given my need to feel good.

People always accuse me of being a hedonist like it's such a terrible or appallingly superficial thing, and I'll cheerfully cop to the charge, but what people never stop to think about is why I ended up that way. When I ask them, they respond that it is because I grew up in a rich family and was used to nothing but the best, and they'd be right, but not in the way everyone assumes. They have this stereotypical idea of me as growing up with a quintessential silver spoon in my mouth, although the reality was that the silver spoon was accompanied by parents who abused alcohol and/or prescription pills. The fact remained that I never received much in the way of emotional nurturing. Neither of my parents was exactly demonstrative to me – too busy making love to a bottle of booze, I suppose. As a result, I learnt very early on in the piece, the art of self-soothing.

When something was wrong, instead of snuggling into my mother or father's loving embrace and being told that everything would be all right, I'd wrap myself into a cashmere pashmina or silk wrap of my mother's, serendipitously steeped with her favourite scent. It made me feel safe and loved, or I'd filch her high-count cotton comforter off her bed, snuggle under it and tell myself that everything would be all right. The luxurious fabrics against my skin were like a hug that would cocoon me lovingly as I'd drift off to sleep, which was another self-soothing technique. I'd discovered that fantastically amorphous state between waking up and falling sleeping when I was a youngster was a safe and wondrous place to be – probably analogous to a loving hug from a parent I guess. A place where no matter how negative things became at home, all things seemed possible and nothing bad could affect me.

So, to me, hedonistic pleasures evoke feelings of safety, security, and love. I guess I've always felt a kinship with the Harry Harlow orphan monkeys from his experiments into nurturing who were reared with a fabric surrogate and turned out to be 'less' dysfunctional that the orphans who were raised in a barren wire cage. So, yes, I'm a hedonist, but before you judge me, walk a mile in my shoes as a kid and see how well you would have coped, before casting aspersions upon my character. Thanks to hedonism, I didn't end up becoming a drunk, a drug addict, or a serial killer.

Anyway, hedonism aside, the point is that my youthful affair with Wendy, with the benefit of hindsight, was wrong on so many levels since she was my teacher and I wasn't sixteen, so it was in reality statutory rape, yet at that time it felt so wonderful to a love-starved, emotionally confused teenager with raging hormones and rampant DiNozzo sex drive. Wendy taught me all about sex, and what teenage boy wasn't going to fall hopelessly in love with an 'older woman' who did that, and also made him feel special and ten feet tall? So, when she turned up in my life again, it was simply too easy to fall in love with her all over again. Easy to live in a fantasy world where we could settle down together and raise a family.

When she broke off our affair the first time, ostensibly because of my age, I was shattered, but distractions got me through it, difficult as it was. I headed off to college, made the varsity basketball and football teams, joined a fraternity, and then had the life-changing trauma with Jason and Amber King to deal with. It had all helped me deal with her rejection because those things diverted my attention, although I was still hurt, of course. The second time around, while I was a damned fool to start up a relationship with her again, I guess I rationalised that it hadn't worked out with us the first time because I was a boy, but this time around I was a man.

I convinced myself that we could have a future together – the whole home and family fantasy – everything I wanted as a kid, but didn't get. When she left me the night before the wedding with nary an explanation, I didn't have anything left to rationalise away as to why she dumped me a second time, since our age difference was no longer an issue. That's when I finally concluded that the truth was that I just wasn't good enough for her.

I thought it hurt when she broke up with me the first time, but right before the wedding when everything I yearned for – a home, a loving partner, and even a family were so frustratingly close? So close I could almost reach out and grab hold of it, and when it was snatched away from me, I was completely shattered. It was then I realised that I was never going to be good enough for anyone to want to settle down with me, and looking at my parents, it was hard to argue. So, I figured that if nothing else that while I'd never be good enough for long-term, I'd at least be great for a few fun dates.

After the epic failure of being with an older woman, who was clearly much more picky and discerning, I'd decided to stick to going out with younger women who were only looking for a good time right now, not anything more permanent. I figured that way they wouldn't be so fussy, and I'd make sure even if they started to get serious, that I'd be the one to dump them. No way was I going to let anyone take my heart and trample it again when they finally figured out that I might be easy on the eye, but not good enough to spend a lifetime with. Being what Cate called a skirt chasing, male chauvinist pig simplified things all round for everyone concerned and avoided people getting their emotions trampled on. And it worked out just fine for the most part... at least it did for more than half a dozen years.

The only hiccup in all that time had been Paula Cassidy, and ultimately, it didn't really stand a chance of working out between us even if I was crazy about her, or perhaps it might be more accurate to say that she drove me crazy. Somehow, she managed to get past my defences and I ended up chasing her, when I'd promised myself I'd never do that again. I don't know if things might have worked out differently if she and Gibbs hadn't been like oil and water. Plus, he kept quoting Rule #12 at me. Of course, ultimately she went and got herself blown up by a terrorist bomb, she was a bona fide hero that made me feel guilty because she was quicker than me. Paula ended up sacrificing her life to save others, when it should have been me that died. Sometimes I hate her for dying and leaving me still alive.

No… if Gibbs really had been serious about testing me, a real litmus test would have been putting Jeanne Benoit in my path. Despite her being a mark, I'd fallen for her and fallen hard. Not being able to ditch her like I had with other women since my engagement to Wendy, things had a real chance to get serious. And with being undercover for a protracted period and having to do it as an adjunct to my normal duties first as lead agent and then as SFA, I found myself relaxing my masks for my role as opposed to coming up with a whole new persona. When I've done deep covers in the past, I usually lived my cover 24/7. That way you don't trip yourself up, you don't blow your cover and you don't end up beaten to a pulp, or worse. With the La Grenouille case, I was living a double life since I wasn't able to let my team know that I was under cover, so I was wasting a heap of energy on keeping them from catching on.

I was burning the candle at both ends badly, so I ended up using parts of my own identity for Tony DiNardo rather than creating a completely fake persona, which made me particularly vulnerable to getting too involved. And Jeanne really liked him… liked me, or to be accurate, she liked Tony DiNardo… who basically was me sans masks and hiding. When I was with her, I showed her all the parts of me that I usually kept under wraps – my intellectual, intelligent, sensitive, emotional side, and she fell in love with those qualities.

Did I only fall in love with her because she loved the bits of me that I usually kept hidden away? I'm not sure, but I do know that I was trying to grow into the role of team lead and had dropped some of my defences, and in return was getting nothing but contempt and distain from my teammates. Basically, they saw it as me trying, and failing abysmally, to step into Gibbs' shoes - I wasn't good enough!

Yet, Jeanne embraced me. Her acceptance of those parts of me that I'd always considered my Achilles' heel made me feel like I wasn't just a pale facsimile of Gibbs.

Just like Gibbs had won my fervent loyalty when he recruited me with Rule 5, the fact that Jeanne cared about me made me feel like I was so much more than I really was, someone better, someone important. Someone who WAS good enough! It was such a dramatic contrast to my colleagues' reaction, and what with me needing validation and approval like it was oxygen, I was always going to be disposed to falling in love with her. Apart from her being beautiful, smart, and caring.

So, as stupid as it was since she was mark and it was always going to end badly when she found out I was lying to her, I couldn't help falling in love with her. The truth was that she wasn't a monster – she was someone who had been born to an arms dealer and had no idea about what her old man did. She was a doctor, she cared about others, and reached out to people who were hurting, like that pathetic little junky in the morgue. Jeanne was an innocent pawn caught up in Jenny Shepard's obsessive need to avenge her father's suicide, and I still hate her for doing that to a blameless civilian.

Sure, she turned on me, accused me of killing her father, but in a real sense I did. Metaphorically anyway, since the attempt to kill us both when the CIA took out my Mustang had forced Rene to reveal his real identity to her and, of course, mine too. Both of us died for her in a sense that day.

If I hadn't managed to make her fall in love with me so that she dragged me off to meet her mother and then Rene, Jen would never have been able to get close enough to kill her father. I know that people have criticised Jeanne for falsely accusing me of murder, and I admit I was pretty pissed at the time, BUT then Shepard spent years getting into a position to be able to take revenge on the man she blamed for her father's death. She abused her power and misappropriated agency resources, and fucked up Jeanne and my lives for her personal vendetta. A false but direct accusation seems pretty measured in comparison to Jenny's machinations.

Then there was the criticism that Jeanne was manipulative – demanding that I tell her I loved her and the whole moving in together. Plus, the ultimatum when she found out about my real identity – well, it copped a lot of condemnation from the team, but I never really saw it as an ultimatum because I had no idea where she'd gone. I probably could have located her, but the fact that she didn't tell me how to find her indicated that she really didn't want us to be together, despite what she'd said. I think she was deeply conflicted, and perhaps on some level wanted to hurt me like I'd hurt her. I regret so much of what happened between us, but I really wish that the last thing that I told her hadn't been a lie. Yep, I was hurt about her accusing me of killing Rene, but I regret ever listening to Ziva and telling her that everything between us was fake so she could move on.

Seriously... what was I thinking? How was Jeanne being angry and hurt over thinking that I'd seduced her and everything between us had been fake a better scenario than thinking that I'd had feelings for her and lied to her to do my job? It wasn't. In fact, the self-loathing she felt was probably worse, at least knowing that my feelings for her had been genuine may have made her doubt herself much less. God, in hindsight, I couldn't have screwed up more if I'd been deliberately trying to.

All that aside, if I ran into Jeanne Benoit tomorrow and she wanted to give it another shot, I suspect that in spite of so many obstacles against us being able to make it together, I'd have leapt at the chance. Not that it was ever likely to happen, but my point is, Jeanne would be a litmus test – my former fiancée – NOT!

Arriving at my apartment, I was a little unsettled to find my mental ruminations had accompanied me all the way home. Guess I was lucky I didn't cause an accident, since I have no recollection of the drive. Idiot!

~o0o~

After a restless night, I woke up and went for a run to clear my head. On my return, I had my game plan fleshed out. Operation Abandon Ship was a go!

First a shower and some breakfast, then I was ready to starting putting it into motion now that I knew Gibbs had been holding me back all these years for his own selfish reasons. Sitting down on my sofa, I picked up my phone and dialed the number of an old frenemy, grinning when he answered.

"Hey, Fornell – it's Tony DiNozzo. Just thought I'd give you a heads up that I'm currently considering my future and am open to offers from other agencies." I grinned as Tobias almost swallowed his tongue in shock.

"What? Is this a joke? Where will you go, DiNotzo?"

"No, it isn't a joke at all and I haven't decided yet where I'll go. It depends on what offers I receive. I'm looking for a change and a fresh challenge..."

"Does Jethro know?"

Yes, he knows... Okay, thanks Tobias, just thought you'd want to know." Hanging up before he could make an offer, I figured that he'd be on the phone to Gibbs ASAP.

I dialed another number. "AD Morrow, please... Anthony DiNozzo." I waited until he picked up. "Hi, Sir..."

"Call me Tom, Tony. I've told you before."

"Okay, Tom. You said to let you know if I ever was serious about making a move..."

"Seriously?"

"Yes, definitely. I'm wanting a change and I'm checking out if there are any openings at the moment, so I'm putting out the word." I chuckled.

"Bet that set the cat amongst the pigeons, DiNozzo?"

"Yeah, I reckon there's going to be a few shocked people..."

"Can you come by my office at lunch to have a chat? I'll send out for takeout."

"Sure, I can come by to talk. I took a couple of days off to consider my options... Lunch sounds good. I'll see you later then."

I hung up, feeling pleased with the response from Tom Morrow, who jumped at the chance to woo me. I made several more calls to contacts at the ATF and DEA, and by the time I was finished, the CIA, Metro PD, ICE, and NSA had heard the news via the grapevine and were keen to talk to me too. Fornell kept trying to catch me but I was having too much fun keeping him dangling – I'd talk to him later.

I had a busy day meeting with people who were basically courting me to come work for them, although it wasn't money that motivated me, but it was nice to feel wanted – to know that the offers I'd gotten over the years had been genuine ones. It went some way towards shoring up my self-respect that had been so severely shaken by the revelations that my colleagues looked at me as some pathetic lovesick loser pining away over Gibbs. It confirmed that I was GOOD ENOUGH!

And tomorrow I would go to see Director Vance and give him an opportunity to offer me something to keep me with NCIS, and I'd turn up the heat by informing him of the job offers I'd fielded today. Depending on what he had to say, it would determine whether I still had a future with the agency I'd spent nearly thirteen years of my professional life working for. One thing was for sure, I wasn't accepting an offer from him that didn't mean I had my own team, and if it involved an exotic location like Pearl Harbor or Napoli, I sure wasn't about to argue.

Even then, I'd have to seriously evaluate if I wanted to work for an agency whose director thought it was acceptable to avenge his wife's death, who put himself above his core stakeholders, and didn't see that as a conflict of interest. I'm also not all that thrilled about his tendency to show favoritism to certain kinds of agents at the expense of others, and his willingness to throw an agent under the bus for the sake of 'diplomacy'.

In terms of bosses, Tom Morrow was probably my preferred option for a boss, as he was a man of principle, but OHS' raison de entre was always going to be terrorism. I'm leaning more to solving crime than chasing fanatical terrorists after my time on the MCRT, and all the crap with Mossad over the years. That made the FBI, DEA, Metro PD, and AFT the best fit for my skills. The offer from the FBI was pretty damned tempting, and wasn't that an irony? Maybe they'd be less apt to accuse me of murder again if I work for them.

I had a lot thinking to do before deciding my future, but I was determined to move forward and not look back. I can't change my past but I can change my future.

The End

End Notes:

So that's the second story in this series complete. As I said in my last Abandon Ship story, I'm a rabid equal opportunity anti-shipper when it comes to shipping Tony with any of his team mates. The next piece as you have probably figured out by now is McNozzo or should that be anti McNozzo? See you for Abandon Ship: A Second Chance