July, 28, 2006

The older Tony DiNozzo got, the more obvious it became the everybody had their secrets. His co-workers and teammates at NCIS were no exception. McGee never mentioned his father and Ziva never spoke of Israel. Nobody knew much about Jenny and thus nobody knew what secrets she was hiding. It was simply clear that she had them because everybody did. Abby and Ducky were mostly open books but even they had their secrets. Jimmy didn't open up much of course he was never really given the opportunity. Gibbs was for sure the most secretive about his life but recently his deepest and darkest secret, had been made known.

Gibbs was down in Mexico recovering from his head injury and trying to cope with the pain or having to relive his family's murder. Nobody knew if he would ever move back to DC or anywhere else in the United States. All they knew was that he was never coming back to NCIS. Tony had been appointed Agent In Command of the Major Case Response Team and he was having a rough time with it. Being in charge was a lot harder than it looked. It wasn't fun and games. It was constant meetings with the director and pressure. His teammates who he thought were his friends. Had turned on him. He was now the enemy. He was the boss now and nobody really liked their boss but they had never even dreamed of treating Gibbs this way. Abby hated him, she acted as if he was the reason Gibbs had left. As much as he wanted to be agent in charge. He would never force Gibbs to leave. Gibbs was his hero and surrogate father. Well he had been. Even Ducky was cold to him. The only friend he had in this was Jimmy Palmer. Maybe because he didn't know Gibbs as well as everybody else. Maybe he was just that nice of a guy. Either way Tony was eternally grateful to have at least one friend. Especially at this time of the year...

Tony came home after a long day of work. He tossed his jacket carelessly on the floor and shoved his badge in the side table drawer. He didn't want to think about NCIS. He had been chewed out by Jenny twice that day. He had to practically tie McGee up to get him to do his paperwork but whose fault was it that the case reports were late? Ziva and Michelle had asked to go on a coffee run about ten that morning and come back a noon. It turns out they had gone to the nearby Starbucks and had such a good time. They took an early lunch. Yet again Jenny had gone off on him. OK maybe that one was his fault but Ziva and Michelle weren't innocent either. He made the mistake of dropping Abby's, Caf-Pow and you would think he had dropped her newborn baby. He fed Kate the goldfish and then threw himself down on the couch. As he went down he caught sight of the 365 Days of Classic Movie Quotes calendar. The one that Ducky had given him for Christmas. Today's quote was "The most dangerous game is man." He had laughed at that as a kid but after nearly a decade of being a cop, he found it to be painfully true. However it was not the quote that really stood out to him. At least no more than any of the other hundreds of quotes he had read over the course of the year. Today what jumped out to him was the date. July 28 was printed in big black numbers at the top of the page. How could he have forgotten? If he had made a note of the date that morning. He would have called in sick for sure. It did explain why he was in such a depressed fog all day. The first thing he did was call Jenny and pretend to be retching from a sudden stomach virus. He hated lying to his boss or anyone for that matter but he needed at least one personal day. After hanging up he pulled himself off the couch, went to the kitchen, and grabbed a six pack of beer. He set the cans on the coffee table. Not even bothering with coasters, walked over to the closet and withdrew the worn cardboard box. He used to take the box out every night and drink himself to sleep. Until he realized that if he handled the fragile items too much, they would wear our and then they would be gone forever. He also realized that he was developing a drinking problem. He quietly transferred to Baltimore, started attending AA meetings first twice a day, then daily, then weekly. He still attended the weekly meetings and would certainly need to attend at least one meeting in the coming week. Just not tomorrow. After the transfer. He only touched the box twice a year. One her birthday and on the anniversary. He moved the beer to the floor and laid the contents out on the table.

"Oh Mollie" Tony whispered sadly.

Jimmy made his way down the now familiar hallway, Tony and him had gotten extremely close over the past few months. Tony was struggling with the challenges of running the team and he just needed a friend. He had just graduated college and was starting med school in a few weeks. He was the only one of his group of friends going to Georgetown and he needed to start again. Tony was a good guy and they had fun together but Tony was also really depressed lately. Especially today, Jimmy wasn't sure what was wrong. If he was just having a bad day or if there was more going on. In either case, he wanted to check on his friend. When Tony didn't pick up his phone, he grabbed his keys and rushed to his friend's apartment. He came to Tony's unit and knocked on the door. He didn't get an answer but he heard crying coming from inside. The door was unlocked and after a lot of consideration, Jimmy turned the knob and walked inside. He found Tony sitting on the couch, holding a tiny pink blanket up to his face and crying his eyes out. There was a medium sized cardboard box lying on the floor and several old photographs and paper documents lying across the coffee table.

"Tony?" Jimmy asked.

"P...Palmer?" Tony stammered.

"Yeah it's me. I was worried OK. What's wrong?" Jimmy replied nervously.

"Get out! Just get out! NOW!" Tony snapped, drawing the blanket close to his chest. In that moment Jimmy saw that it was a baby's blanket...

A/N: What do you think? What is Tony hiding? Starting in chapter two, the story will take place in present day. This is just explaining why Jimmy learned the secret. New chapter will be up soon. Please review and thanks for reading.