The squad room fell silent, morphing from office to memory graveyard in the break of a heart.

Tony blinked, shocked at his father's words—shocked beyond awareness of his team's watching the exchange with equal parts curiosity and peeping-tom guilt. "You think I don't know that? She was dead long before she ever got around to dying. You made sure of that."

Tony was ashamed that his father's cold tone could still send a raging river's worth of icy shivers down his spine after all these empty years. "You'd better watch your mouth, son."

"Or what? You'll shut it for me?" Tony laughed, startling himself as much as his unwilling audience with the harsh, mirthless sound. "Come on. You can do better than that. We're DiNozzos. We talk. It's what we do. We may be annoying and pompous and very often inappropriate, but we're never trite. At least be original if you're going to threaten me."

Tony's too-quiet explosion seemed to have sucked the oxygen from the room, and no one spoke. And for once, Tony felt no need to fill the silence that gaped like an open wound. He turned sharply on his heel and left them all standing there, their mouths little Os, baby birds awaiting their next meal.

And it was a tough one to swallow—because it was then that they all realized that Tony was not who they thought he was. That they had harbored a stranger in their midst and, for all their investigative skills, had never known it. Had never noticed that he had folded himself into their little puzzle instead of just fitting, that he wasn't simply in the wrong place but from a completely different picture. He had fooled them all—and done it with a heartbreaking ease and grace that no person should be able to master.

That he was someone who had been broken and rebuilt so many times that even he didn't know where the pieces went.

The silence he fled was suffocating and he was glad for the banging of the stairwell door as he slammed through it. That small violence wasn't enough to quell the rage with which he practically vibrated, and he punched the wall with a force that would have sent teeth flying had it been a human target. The pain was welcome because it was real and different and his, belonging only to him and completely under his control.

"Bet that hurt," came a cool voice from behind him.

"Not nearly enough," he returned evenly—but he was cursing his luck that it was Gibbs who chose to follow him away from the bloody wreckage he had left up in the squad room. The last person he needed to deal with was Gibbs, with his icy blue eyes that couldn't see a file a foot in front of him but could easily read the fine print all the way at the bottom of his soul.

Tony's cheeks burned as he realized what he'd said. He had been so busy thinking of a way to deflect that he'd forgotten to deflect. He'd been thinking about the forest and smacked face-first into a tree. "What? Why are you here?"

"Thought you might be upset," Gibbs said, his tone carefully blank.

Tony scoffed. "Good guess, Boss, but I'm not really impressed. I've seen you do way better with much less."

Gibbs would have smiled if not for DiNozzo's bleeding knuckles—and hemorrhaging soul. He watched his agent lean back against the stair railing and cross his arms over his chest, effectively hiding his damaged hand in his sleeve—and no doubt ruining his suit jacket. Gibbs found it odd that that fact was what bothered him most right then.

"You need to know how messed up I am over this," Tony said, his voice completely devoid of emotion. "If I can still be objective."

Gibbs nodded, wondering if DiNozzo really thought that was the only reason he'd followed him.

"Well, no, Gibbs. I can't. Not even close," Tony said, not reacting to Gibbs' subtly surprised reaction. "I barely have any clue what's gone on in this case since he got here. So no, I'm not going to be even remotely objective when it comes to him. I don't think I ever have been. He's taken enough from me, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let him distract me and get McGee's head blown off. Or Ziva's. Or yours. He already means death to me. Every time I look at him, I see her. I can't take any more of that."

"Done?" Gibbs asked, not unkindly—but not kindly, either. It was a very Gibbs tone, so much so that it really should be an adverb all its own: "Go fuck yourself … gently," he said gibbsly.

"Very," DiNozzo said, suddenly feeling exhausted.

Gibbs simply nodded. "Go home, DiNozzo. We've got it from here."

There was so much else he wanted to add. DO get some sleep. DON'T go marinate your pain in a bottle; it won't make it any easier to swallow, I promise. DO go do something that makes you happy; watch a thousand movies if it'll take away an ounce of the metric fuck-ton of pain you're in right now. DON'T blame yourself for his shortcomings; you have a set all your own and yours are far less devastating. DO know that we're here for you, if you decide one day to let us in. We don't need a tour of the keep right away, but letting us across the moat would be a start. DON'T go punching any more walls; you're hurting enough.

He settled for: "And get Ducky to look at your hand. I need you to be able to shoot straight when this is all over."