Title: Bottles

Summary: Gibbs didn't think his senior agent could surprise him anymore until he discovers Tony's new way of dealing with loss.

Disclaimer: NCIS is not mine.

Spoilers: Nothing really specific, but there are references to the deaths and fates of several canon characters and to the episodes Aliyah and Hiatus I & II.

A/N: This story takes place not too long before the beginning of the seventh season.

This came about because Anjelik and I were talking about wanting to see Tony's apartment on the show – thanks Andy!

Anjelik was also my beta for this endeavor. Please repay her kindness by checking out her story, Life as a Habit. :o)

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For once the elevator was working which was a nice surprise. He didn't want to imagine how much more 'fun' he would have had trying to escort his concussed senior field agent up four flights of stairs. He'd had to do it before and was thankful he didn't have to repeat the experience.

It became apparent pretty quickly though that taking the elevator had its own disadvantages as he noticed Tony getting, if possible, even more pale and looking like he was going to be sick at any moment. Gibbs glanced at the panel next to the doors. It indicated they were now at the third floor. He then took another look at his agent and noted that Tony had his eyes closed and was slowly breathing in and out.

"We're almost there. Just keep breathing," Gibbs said in a low voice.

Tony didn't acknowledge him, but Gibbs let it slide as he'd rather have his agent concentrate on not throwing up than giving him a reply.

The elevator lurched to a stop and Tony's arm shot out to the elevator wall, the palm of his right hand hitting it with a loud smack. He lowered his head a bit and leaned toward his outstretched arm for support. For one brief moment, Gibbs thought Tony was going to lose control, but after a couple of deep, slow breaths, his friend opened his eyes and lowered his arm from its death grip on the elevator wall.

"You OK?" Gibbs quietly asked.

Tony took another breath and replied with a shaky, "Yeah."

As the elevator doors opened, Gibbs grabbed Tony's left elbow and they carefully walked the short distance to the apartment door. Once Gibbs opened the door with his key, he led Tony slowly down the hall towards the master bedroom.

They made it to Tony's room without incident and Gibbs only let go of his agent once Tony was seated on his bed with a firm grip on the edge of his mattress.

Confident his injured agent wasn't going to end up a boneless heap on the side of the bed, Gibbs asked in a quiet voice, "Are your clothes in the same places?"

After all their years together Gibbs knew that Tony had finally learned that he was better off being completely compliant to his boss' wishes in these situations. If he wasn't totally compliant, then he risked Gibbs' future wrath by attempting to do things the "DiNozzo way" which tended to be the opposite of what any doctor recommended and detrimental to his own health.

"Yeah," Tony eventually replied in strangled voice that was clearly tinged with pain.

Gibbs turned towards the dresser once he saw Tony start to unbutton his shirt with one hand while the other was still firmly gripping the edge of the mattress. It was then that he noticed the object sitting on top.

It was a ship in a bottle. Not so much a ship, but a little boat that looked familiar to him somehow. But, knowing he needed to tend to his agent, he didn't give it any further thought other than to note that the boat's name was Elizabeth.

Quickly and quietly grabbing the clothes he needed, he turned back towards Tony. They were long past being embarrassed helping each other change into more comfortable clothes when injured and so they were able to make quick work of it. He helped Tony get under the covers and his injured agent was essentially asleep before his head even hit the pillow.

Gibbs went to the kitchen to get the usual bucket out just in case Tony lost the battle with his nausea. He placed it beside the bed in its usual place and then went back to the kitchen. This time he started a pot of coffee before grabbing the glass of water that he knew Tony would later want.

As he placed the glass of water on Tony's beside table, he could tell that Tony was deep asleep though still in a bit of pain. He noted to himself that next time Tony was awake; he'd force him to take his pain medication.

The coffee had finished brewing by the time Gibbs made it back to the kitchen. He poured himself a mug and quickly took a drink. He drained about half the mug before refilling it and heading towards the living room.

He was just lifting the mug to his mouth to take another drink when the sight of his friend's living room stopped him short. The entertainment center, which normally barely contained Tony's collection of hundreds of DVDs, now featured one significant difference. The shelf above the television set now had eight ships in a bottle all placed neatly in a row.

As Gibbs stepped closer he noticed that all the models in the bottles were of the same design as the one on Tony's dresser. His gut was telling him to take an even closer look at the collection so he set his mug down on the coffee table and walked up to the shelves.

Looking at them all together, he finally realized why the ships, or rather boats, in the bottles were so familiar. It was his boat – over and over again – perfect miniature versions of the boat he had been building in his basement all this time.

But why? Why would Tony have nine copies of the boat that used to be in his basement? His gut was telling him that there was more to this than met the eye at first glance.

He stepped closer to the row of bottles and noticed that each boat was painted in different colors. He thought that fact might be significant to Tony, but he had no way of knowing for sure.

He got close enough to the first boat on the left and couldn't help but admire its craftsmanship before noting its name – Jane. The next was called the Catherine. And, the third in the row was the Lydia. He didn't recognize the names or their significance until he saw the name of the fourth boat. His stomach dropped to the floor when he read the name.

Kate.

To be sure of what his gut was telling him was true, he moved to check the name on the next boat. He thought he knew what the name would be, but instead was surprised to see that the fifth boat was unfinished. It had no paint and none of the details the previous boats had had. Somehow he knew that this boat was finished even though it was obviously incomplete.

At first he didn't think the boat had a name, but then he noticed a miniature broken plank next to the boat on the bottom of the bottle. On the plank was a hastily scrawled name – Gibbs. He didn't fully understand the implications of his name on a boat until he moved on to the next one in line. The sixth was called the Paula. It was the name he had expected on the previous boat.

The seventh confirmed his suspicions of what he thought this row of bottles meant to Tony. Its name was Jeanne.

A quick look at the eighth and final boat in a bottle corroborated everything. It said – Jenny.

A new thought came to mind and he took a quick look around the room hoping to see some evidence. Finding nothing, he quickly headed towards the only other place in the apartment where he knew he might find the evidence he needed to prove his theory.

At the threshold to the guest bedroom, he flipped the light switch. On the desk along the wall opposite the bed, there was another bottle. The boat inside was just beginning to take shape, but he had absolutely no doubts as to what Tony would name this particular boat.

Hanging on the wall right in front of the desk, there was a set of plans. A closer look revealed that they were copies of the plans to his boat. Somehow, Tony had managed to copy them without his knowledge. He couldn't help but be a little proud of that fact. But, what made him even more proud of his friend was not only the quality of Tony's craftsmanship and obvious attention to detail, but the apparent speed that he had picked up the required skills to construct a ship in a bottle.

He left the guest room without disturbing anything and headed back to the living room. Sitting down on the couch, he leaned forward and grabbed his mug of coffee. He sat back and took a sip, grimacing at the fact that his coffee was now tepid. But, he didn't think he had the strength to get more coffee confronted as he was by all the painful memories the names on those bottles had brought up.

His eyes kept straying to the bottle with the unfinished boat and after awhile he could look at nothing else. He thought he maybe understood, at least in part, why there was one named after him and why it was left unfinished.

Each boat seemed to represent to Tony a lost relationship, whether by death or other tragic means. If he had to guess, then he would bet the boat in Tony's bedroom, the Elizabeth, represented Tony's mother and her untimely death when he was only eight years old. It was very likely his first loss of a loved one.

The next three names he didn't recognize, but he assumed that whoever Jane, Catherine, and Lydia were, they had meant a lot to Tony and were now lost to him forever.

The Kate, Paula, and Jenny were boats representing those co-workers and friends Tony had cared for and lost to violent death. It was because of those boats that he knew the one in the guest bedroom, when finished, would be named the Ziva.

The Jeanne represented a loss of a different sort. His friend had grown to love Jeanne as Tony DiNardo, but once the undercover operation was blown, it was essentially him or rather a part of him who had died. It was also the loss of the first woman he had ever loved.

His eyes strayed yet again to the unfinished boat that bore his name. He thought 'his' boat was likely unfinished because he had come back. Tony had almost lost him when he was caught in that damned explosion, then Tony had lost him because of his memory loss, and then finally when he left for Mexico.

He hadn't intended to ever come back from his siesta, vacation, hiatus or whatever anyone wanted to call it, but it was definitely one of the best decisions of his life. The loss of Shannon and Kelly still hurt him deeply and always would, but it was his team that kept him going, especially Tony.

What Gibbs didn't understand was why Tony had built the boat in the first place. He'd come back from Mexico and his memory was intact. So, why the boat? Was it in remembrance of that time?

He lifted his mug of coffee and took a sip, frowning at the coldness of the liquid. Something that Ducky had said more than once came to mind. On more than one occasion, Ducky had told both him and Tony that they were a lot like each other. And, he couldn't help but smile a little that Tony had picked up his boat building habit – albeit in miniature form.

Gibbs knew Ducky would likely be very intrigued by all he'd learned about Tony tonight, though he had no intentions of revealing this secret to the M.E.

He sighed. He needed something to distract his thoughts from a new idea working its way into his brain. The only distraction he could currently think of was to get some more coffee.

In the kitchen, he poured his cold coffee down the drain and refilled his mug. The idea in his head was gaining ground and as he sat back down on the couch in the living room, he sincerely hoped he was wrong.

Was the reason the boat had been made because Tony thought he had lost something in his relationship with him? Did Tony really think that they weren't really and truly close friends anymore? That he was only Gibbs' subordinate and nothing else?

His gut was churning over that possibility. And, if he honestly thought about it, he could see why Tony might be thinking those thoughts.

Even though he had always been supportive of Tony, the last couple of years had seen many ups and downs in their friendship. He had been angry, not necessarily at Tony, but that he hadn't been told about the La Grenouille operation until almost too late. Then, when Jenny had died, even though he had told Tony it wasn't his fault, he'd still felt some anger towards him. And, Gibbs had to admit, that he didn't really try that hard at first to get Tony back from his assignment as agent afloat.

But, he thought they were past all of that now. He thought that in the last six months or so that they had really begun to reconnect with each other. In fact, due to his broken arm, Tony had stayed with him for a week after they got back from Israel. During that time, they had worked through quite a lot related to Rivkin, Ziva, and the whole mess that was Israel.

And, that's when he suddenly realized the other thing that had been bothering him about this whole ship in a bottle business.

The boats in the bottles had not been there the last time he'd been to Tony's apartment about three or so months ago. Given the long hours they often worked, he was amazed that Tony had found the time to not only learn how to construct a ship in a bottle, but to then go on to make almost ten of them!

How did Tony even find the time to sleep? He realized the simple answer to that question was that Tony didn't sleep much, if at all.

He couldn't help but feel concerned for his friend's well-being. He didn't want his senior field agent and friend to become this much like him. In fact, he was almost tempted to go check for a bottle of bourbon in the desk of the guest room.

He now knew that it didn't really matter that one of the boats was named for him though he was still curious about it. What really mattered was helping his friend through this most recent period of loss. The news of Ziva's death had hit both he and Tony particularly hard and he felt a bit guilty for leaving her behind in Israel. But, he also knew that Ziva had made her choice when she had forced him to choose between her and Tony. He shouldn't feel guilty about that part of the whole situation, but he did anyway.

With that in mind, he couldn't even imagine what Tony was feeling about this whole situation. Guilt was likely foremost in Tony's thoughts. There was guilt in abundance for killing Ziva's boyfriend and also for the loss of trust between him and his partner. And, Ziva's death represented yet another major loss in Tony's life.

Gibbs had thought Tony was finally getting past it all until they'd heard about Ziva only a few days before. But, he'd broken one of his own rules in assuming and not double checking how Tony was doing. It was probably why he was here tonight watching over his concussed agent.

After Tony had stayed that week at his house, he had only seen Tony at work these last few months. He had seemed to be doing fine. He couldn't believe how wrong he had been.

He should have checked. He should have done something. He should have –

ooooooo

Gibbs heard a floor board in the hall creak and turned his head just in time to see Tony come to carefully lean against the entry to living room. Gibbs immediately got up and went over to his injured friend.

Despite Tony using the wall for support, he was still very unsteady on his feet. Gibbs laid a hand on Tony's arm to help him stay upright.

"You should be in bed," Gibbs gruffly, but quietly, said.

"I know, but you were thinking so loud, it woke me up," Tony joked back.

Gibbs was about to reply when he saw Tony's eyes move to look over his right shoulder towards the shelf full of bottles. Tony's eyes widened a little in realization and then they dropped to stare at his feet. Finally, after a few moments, he lifted them again and locked eyes with Gibbs.

He shrugged lightly, then smiling shyly said, "I don't have a basement."

Gibbs smiled broadly and ordered, "Back to bed. Take your meds. We'll talk in the morning."

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The end.

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Bonus Quiz for Fun: Can anyone tell me the literary significance – book(s) and author(s) – of the non-canon names I used in this fic? Sorry, no prizes except for a virtual pat on the back and the knowledge that you could figure out the answer with only my vague clue! ;o) Bonus virtual chocolate to anyone who can tell me who is missing?

A/N 2: And, please forgive the presumption of giving Tony's mother a name. To me, it seems she was British so I went with a name that seemed logical.

Thanks for reading! And, many thanks to those who read, reviewed, alerted, and/or favorited my last story!