"My natural talent is in being fine — no matter what is actually going on inside me. I am fine. Nobody ever thinks otherwise."
-Andrew Smith, 100 Sideways Miles

i.

fam·i·ly

/ˈfam(ə)lē/, noun

a group consisting of parents and children living together in a household.

Tony DiNozzo didn't consider the day his mother died the worst day of his life. Losing her was just the beginning, the catalyst for everything that came next. Her death was a knife to the gut. The aftermath was like slowly bleeding out while nobody noticed. The worst day of his life was the day he realized that when his mother died, his family died, too.

He still remembered everything about the day she died: The movie that was playing on the television, the song that drifted in from the hallway, the name of the nurse that ushered him out of the room. Her name was Marissa, and she sat with him until his dad arrived. She was kind, gentle. She stroked his hair, let him cry. She smelled like lilac.

This Tony hadn't yet learned how to hide his emotions. This Tony didn't have a carefully crafted fake smile, or the knowledge of how to tuck fear and heartbreak behind a mask of humor. This Tony, this child, was just a boy who missed his mother. This Tony started to die the day his mother did.

His father came for him hours later. Senior took one look at his son's tear-stained face, and told him in his most incredulous voice, that DiNozzo men didn't cry. Something slipped past all his devastation in that moment: Shame. It buried itself in deep, started running through his veins. The first piece of the mask slipped firmly into place.

Tony was never close to his father. It was his mother who took him to the movies, who let him skip school, who knew his favorite food and shared his sense of humor. Senior traveled a lot, and when he came home he was tired or out or busy. They didn't watch football games on television. They didn't throw baseballs in the backyard. Tony never went to Senior for comfort because he didn't know that was something Senior could do.

So, Tony took that shame and mixed it with the loss and slowly destroyed the parts of him he didn't want his father to see. Holidays were passed over without acknowledgement. Birthdays, forgotten. Any trace of his mother taken out of the house. Tony put each disappointment in a box and tucked it away. He found a way to keep all his pain from making its way to the surface. If it couldn't get out, he didn't have to deal with it. He didn't have to feel it.

DiNozzo men didn't cry.

One day, Senior brought a new suitcase into Tony's room and ordered him to pack his things. He handed him a ticket when he came downstairs, told him to behave, said he would see him soon. A driver took Tony to the train station and pulled his suitcase out the trunk. Then, he drove away, leaving 11-year-old Tony with a ticket in his hand and tears pressing at the back of his eyes. He forced them back, refused to let them slip over. Somehow, he found his way to the platform. Somehow, nobody questioned the child traveling alone to the Northeast. Somehow, he made it all the way to boarding school without shedding a tear.

It wasn't until he was unpacking his suitcase that he realized he left behind the only picture of his mother he managed to save. Then he realized he didn't have any pictures of his family at all. And he thought to himself that maybe, that was for the best. He could put her in one of those boxes, put his father in one, too, and become somebody else entirely.

Tony didn't cry that night. He went to dinner with some new friends, made some jokes, played a practical joke that got him in trouble. He smiled. He laughed. He didn't show any cracks. When he crawled into bed, finally alone and with nothing to distract him, he felt a hollowness in his stomach. It wasn't pain or fear or loss. It was nothing. It was empty. It was the knowledge that the only person he had left was himself.

ii.

faith

/fāTH/, noun

complete trust or confidence in someone or something.

Tony drank all night. Drank until he couldn't see straight. Drank until there wasn't any whisky left in his liquor cabinet. He drank to forget, to go numb. He drank so he could keep moving. The night before he left for his assignment as agent afloat, all he did was drink.

He didn't answer the phone, not when Ziva called, or Gibbs. Eventually, he just turned it off. He knew they wanted to check on him, ease his guilt if he could. They just wanted to look out for him, and he wasn't interested. As far as he was concerned, he deserved any punishment Leon Vance sent his way. He deserved worse. And Tony never really learned how to stop running when he was wounded.

Tony had always liked control. He liked to know things, because when he knew things, he could combat them. He used to be confident in his ability to fix any problem, as long as the problem was something he could confront. Something he understood. He used to believe in his ability to succeed, to get out alive, to come out on top.

He believed in a lot of things before Jenny Shepard.

She destroyed him in ways that weren't fixable. Her death was the guilt he couldn't shake. It followed him everywhere, like a shadow. Jenny took something from him when he sent her undercover with Jeanne Benoit, when she used him for her personal vendetta, when she stepped into that diner. Jenny chewed him up and spat him out and he wasn't the same person.

Not anymore.

The thought of heading out to that ship made his stomach drop, his pulse quicken. He knew, even then, there would be nothing to distract him, no way to hide from himself. The defense mechanisms he had so carefully honed would be impossible to use in the middle of the ocean with nothing to do but face the person he'd become, the person Jenny had turned him into. His only company would be his mistakes.

The person who came back months later wasn't the same person that left. He didn't know if anyone noticed. Afterall, hiding things was a DiNozzo family speciality. But he was cracked in places he wasn't before, broken in ways that didn't quite heal right. The pieces no longer fit. That belief he once had in himself was shaken to its very core. He came back harder. He came back wiser. He came back much less trusting than he used to be, and that never really went away.

iii.

partner

/ˈpärtnər/, noun

a person who takes part in an undertaking with another or others, especially in a business or company with shared risks and profits.

Tony didn't know if he could really call Kate Todd his friend, but they were family. Maybe that was made of something even stronger. They spent most of their time at each other's throats: Him baiting her, her taking the bait. It was like having a sister around to tease, and Tony had to admit he enjoyed it.

The thing with Kate was, she always knew there was more to him. She yelled at him, called him juvenile, insisted that he was a child. But she always knew, deep down, that he wasn't as shallow as he wanted to seem. She was way ahead of the curve in that department. Most people just took DiNozzo as he was: Neat, no chaser. For the most part, he liked it that way. But sometimes it was nice to have somebody see the rest of him, too.

God, she was good. She was so good. A breath of fresh air for all of them, really. She was the first person since Tony started working with Gibbs that slid into their team seamlessly. Kate wasn't afraid to stand up for herself: Not to Tony, not even to Gibbs. He admired that about her, even if it drove him crazy. She was strong and brave, and he missed her. He really missed her.

He will never forget the moment she died. The warm blood on his face, her body falling at his feet. The shock of it all was too much to take in at the time, so he just went through the motions. After Ari shot her, the entire night was a blur. Even looking back now, he can't remember the details. Just the feeling of going through life in a haze.

He didn't break until he went back to his apartment for the first time, not really sure how much time had passed. It was instantaneous. The door closed, the mask came down, and he shattered. In that moment, he didn't care that DiNozzo men didn't cry. He cried because Kate was gone, and she deserved to have someone mourn her.

He found his way to the bathroom, climbed into the shower, scrubbed his skin raw. He couldn't get the feeling of her blood to leave him. He was sure it was burned into his body, that when he looked in the mirror, it would still be there: Red and wet and life-taking. He stumbled out of the shower, and threw up.

Gibbs didn't call, and Tony was grateful. He couldn't have talked about it, not that night. And he knew Gibbs was probably dealing with Kate's death in his own way: Boat, bourbon, basement. Tony had a liquor cabinet of his own that he spent a lot of time with that night.

Tony knew that even now, there was a part of him that was crafted by Kate: The part of him that wanted to be taken seriously, that wanted to be seen as something more. Because she saw that in him, he started to let other people see it, too. It was a relief, to let the smile go for a little while sometimes.

He bought the goldfish a few months after she died, named her Kate. Ziva's namesake joined a few years later. Sometimes, he stared at the bowl and thought about his two partners. Kate: Traditional, reserved, quietly strong. Ziva: Complicated, brazen, confident. They would have gotten along, he was sure of it. Probably would've made his life miserable in the process. And he would've taken it all, if it meant having both of them back in his life for good.

iv.

girl

/ɡərl/, noun

a female child.

Sometimes, when his apartment was quiet, when everything was dark and still, he could still hear her screams. They ripped him from sleep, clawed their way under his skin, made his heart thump against his ribcage in a familiar rhythm: He would never forgive himself, he would never forgive himself, he would never forgive himself.

When Gibbs first found out about the fire in Baltimore — and Tony still hadn't figured out how he did — they talked it over for a long time. They didn't exchange many words. Most of the conversation was had in hardened stars between sips of bourbon in Gibbs' basement. His boss wanted to take that burden off his shoulders. Tony didn't have the heart to tell him that was impossible. It was cemented there.

Over the years, dealing got a little easier. He gained perspective. He knew, on some level, that he couldn't have saved the girl without risking Jason King. When he told Jason that, he wasn't lying. Tony knew he made the right choice. He knew it in his bones. Sometimes, though, the rest of him didn't. Sometimes, the rest of him just ached with it.

He lost count a long time ago of the number of nights he spent trying to find a different way out. What if he took Jason out and went back in? What if he moved quickly? What if he yelled for help? What if he told the boy to go and went back for his sister? Tony lived so much of his life in what ifs. It was exhausting, but trying to stop it was pointless. It's who he was. Jeanne. Jenny and Paula. Ziva and Anton and Danny and Jason's sister and Kate. All of them, a what if. All of them, some kind of ghost he couldn't shake.

Sometimes, on particularly bad nights, he wondered who she would be if he found a way to get her out. He wondered who Jason would be. Who he would be. Sometimes, on particularly bad nights, it all just kept growing: From Jason's sister to every other person he'd lost or mistake he made or death he couldn't prevent. Those were the night when he swore he could still feel the heat of flames on his skin. Sometimes, on those nights, he thought about quitting. He thought maybe Ziva had the right idea.

By morning, though, with the light streaming in through his bedroom window, his world usually righted itself, clicked back into focus. He reminded himself that he was a cop because he lost that girl in Baltimore, that he did this to help people like her. He offered himself a small reprieve from the guilt, and remembered the life that he did save. He remembered Jason King, a little boy that was given a chance to live, and who grew into a good man.

When Tony remembered that, and he could breathe again. At least for a little while.

v.

soulmate

/ˈsoʊlmeɪt/, noun

a person ideally suited to another as a close friend or romantic partner.

Ziva David stayed with him constantly. Even when he wasn't actively thinking of her — and most of the time he was actively trying to not think of her — she was there. She was a gold necklace in his drawer, a goldfish in a bowl on his mantle, the back of a dark-haired woman in the NCIS hallway. She was the joke he didn't tell and the pain he couldn't voice and a future he wanted, but didn't get.

As the years passed, her absence became easier to deal with. He stopped waiting for her to walk out of every elevator. He didn't expect her to be on the other when his phone rang. He stopped hoping, for the most part. He didn't know if that was better or worse.

He loved her. He admitted that to himself more readily now, because what was the point of trying to deny it? After everything they'd been through, the truth ran deep. It was a mark he couldn't hide, so he just had to live with it. He loved her. She left. That was their story.

Tony didn't just miss what they could've been, or what he wanted them to be. He missed what they were: Best friends. Partners, in more way than one. He knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she had his back, that she would walk through hell for him. He would do the same, had on several occasions. What hurt the most was that they had never been closer than right before she walked out of his life. That was a particular kind of raw pain that just wouldn't heal.

He tried moving on after she left, tried hard. He dated a lot, then tried to settle down with Zoe. That didn't work. It didn't work for a lot of reasons, but mostly because Zoe wasn't Ziva. Nobody else could be. She was — as the witness they brought back from Paris all those years ago observe — his perfect complement. He let her see pieces of himself that he didn't show to anyone else, told her things he had long since decided he would never speak out loud again. And now she was just out there in the world with all of his secrets.

How was he supposed to just let her go?

They still talked on occasion, but it was hard to have conversations when they both knew what was missing. She seemed happy, and that was something. Tony wondered if she missed him. He wondered that more than he cared to admit. It was so hard to tell, with Ziva. Her entire life had shaped around shutting down her emotions. They had that in common, although they handled it in different ways.

Sometimes, though, they would be talking and he would hear it: The same softness in her voice that was there in Israel. She would crack, ever so slightly, and let him see that maybe, just maybe, she ached for him the same way he ached for her. It wasn't much, but Tony clung to it. It was comforting somehow, to know he wasn't alone.

He still kept the smallest bit of hope tucked away. He didn't let anyone else know it was there, hardly even admitted it to himself. But he allowed a part of himself to keep believing in a happy epilogue for them, to keep the idea of a reunion alive. He gave himself that one thing, so he wouldn't succumb to everything else.

(the one thing he got back)

fam·i·ly

/ˈfam(ə)lē/, noun

any of various social units differing from but regarded as equivalent to the traditional family.

He didn't know when it happened, when he stopped thinking of his NCIS team as co-workers and started thinking of them as family. So many years had gone by, so many years of sitting in the same orange room that now felt more like home than his own living room. A few faces have gone, new ones have come to replace them.

But the feeling? The feeling stayed the same.

He never expected to stay so long when he first joined NCIS. At the time, he couldn't have imagined being Gibbs partner for more than two years, and that was a generous estimate. The man hardly spoke, had too many rules, didn't seem to get Tony's sense of humor. Tony just needed a place to lick his wounds, and Gibbs offered him NCIS. He thought it would be a stop along the way to what came next.

But he settled into something with Gibbs, something that went way beyond a simple partnership. Gibbs was smart, he was a great agent, and he thought highly of Tony. At the time, that meant more than anything else: That somebody believed in him, and that he, in turn, had somebody to trust again. After Danny's betrayal, he didn't expect that to happen again for a long time, maybe ever. WIth Gibbs, it took just a few months.

Somewhere along the line, he stopped thinking of Gibbs as just his partner. He was a friend, a father figure, something solid in his life that he could count on. Tony hadn't had that in life since his mother died. Gibbs was tough on him, and he could be a bastard. But Tony knew he had his back, always and without question. That was more than anyone else had offered him for years.

Along with Gibbs came the rest of them. Abby, like a rebellious little sister. Her loyalty had to be earned, but once you had it, it was unconditional. Tim, like a geeky little brother. Tony would never tire of teasing him but, the more years they worked together, the more their relationship matured. Tony thought of him as a friend now, someone he could get drinks with, someone he could count on. Tim grew into a good agent: Capable, dedicated. Tony would never admit it, but he was proud of him.

Ducky was a kindly grandfather. Jimmy, a strange but endearing cousin. Vance was like an reliable uncle. Tony didn't see him all the time, but he knew he could call if he was ever in trouble. The newest member of their team, Ellie, changed Tony's role. She was younger, still learning. He felt the need to protect her, to teach her, to shape her so she wouldn't get hurt. It was a new feeling for them, one it took awhile for him to place: Paternal.

There were holes in their team, left by the ones they'd lost. Kate. Jenny. Ziva. Each of them had their own story, each had touched Tony's life in their own particular way. It hurt still, to think of them. He tried not to. He'd lost too much family in his life.

He told Rachel Cranston once that NCIS was part of who he was, that he surrounded himself with people he would give his own life for. All of it was true. Someday, he would move on. Someday, he would have his own team. He knew deep down, that he wouldn't be here forever. But he would take pieces of everyone with him, just like he would leave some of him behind.

Tony didn't know if he'd ever have a team quite like the one he found with Gibbs. He figured he wouldn't. Even when he left, though, it wouldn't be goodbye. Not really. If Tony had learned anything from his years at NCIS, if he took just one thing, it was this: Family, the real kind, could withstand anything.