1x20 - Missing - The one where Tony gets abducted and thrown in the sewers.

36. Stand When you Think you're Gonna Fall

Stupid, stupid, stupid, STUPID!

It wasn't that he didn't know better, 'cause he did! He was Tony Freakin' DiNozzo, he ALWAYS knew better!

He couldn't believe this was actually bothering him. He felt like he'd sunk down to his twelve-year-old self where he still took every cut to heart and wanted nothing more than to curl up with his teddy bear and cry while a good movie carried him away.

That's how the film obsession started. During the first mandatory psychiatrist visit he had in Peoria, the shrink had told Tony he was using film as a way to separate himself from the painful reality of his own existence.

Tony had beaten the urge to tell the shrink to go screw himself. Just barely, but he'd beaten it.

Instead Tony pretended that his slightly unhealthy dependence on fiction was a thought that hadn't dawned on him in the first grade when a teacher told him that Virgil Hilts from The Great Escape couldn't be his best friend because Virgil Hilts wasn't real.

DiNozzo Senior had been out of town on business, so Tony gave the letter from his teacher to his mother. She proceeded to burn it, and then watch every prison escape movie she could think of with Tony. Then they had the head butler lock them both in Senior's study, and they figured out how to break out. (It involved his Mama breaking a window, and Tony breaking a leg as he fell out of the tree they were trying to climb down.)

That hospital trip was the best one of his youth. Even better than the time he broke his arm trying to fly off his parent's balcony like Peter Pan, and definitely better then when Step-Mother #2 was so pissed at DiNozzo Senior for cheating on her that she took her wrath out on his only child. (Wife #3 may have made Senior send Tony off to boarding school, but at least she didn't shove him down stairs).

He loved to read, but Mama taught him that books took too much time and focus, so why indulge in those when you would take it easy with a film? His lovely Mama had the attention span of a gnat when she was drunk - meaning most of the time she had no idea what was going on.

He learned from his Mama that playing pretend was the only was to make it through the day. She would come home from her benders and her trysts at four a.m. and burst into Tony's room with a song. She'd crawl into his bed and wrap her arms around him, telling him how she couldn't let anyone see her. Not Papa, not Grand-Mama, and most certainly not whoever she'd spent the night with. She'd gather him into her arms, her wavy chestnut hair tumbling down her sweaty forehead and into her wide green eyes, and she'd chant to herself how only 'her darling Tonio' understood her.

He watched her at her parties, saw how she picked a different personality every night, changing herself like she changed a dress, all to match her date.

He learned the lesson well.

There was a reason Tony was the best undercover agent most of his employers had ever seen. He'd spent his whole life ducking in and out of personalities, adopting them each like they were the absolute truth, and not letting people know any different.

And then there was Gibbs.

Try as he might, and heaven knows he had tried, Tony couldn't get Gibbs to believe the lie. He'd let Tony prance around and pretend, just 'cause Tony was more comfortable that way, but Gibbs always knew the truth. And today that's what made Tony hurt like all hell. Gibbs knew the sort of man Tony really was inside, and could probably make some hauntingly accurate guesses about what exactly had gone into the making of Tony DiNozzo.

But Gibbs had done it anyway.

And now Tony had some of his more depressing rock music blaring full blast as he toured his apartment with a bottle of vodka in his fist while he tracked down his clubbing clothes.

Tony made a sport of running when he thought people were understanding him too well, just like his mother had. But then Gibbs, the bastard, had seen straight through Tony right off, and then told him he wasn't allowed to run. He'd given Tony a place, room to grow, and a person to learn from who was perfectly content to be exactly who he was and never change that personality for anyone. The bastard had given Tony stability, and strength, and someone to depend on.

Tony took a giant gulp from his bottle, the cursing in his head trying to bubble out to his voice. However, Tony felt unbalanced enough for the evening, so he tried to keep his ravings internal so neighbors didn't feel the need to call Gibbs to come check on him. (And that was a shock, to open the door half-dressed, fully drunk, and find Gibbs standing there 'cause he'd told the old lady next door to call if she ever thought Tony was in trouble.)

It was a stupid thing. An utterly pointless thing to trigger this freak out. Gibbs hadn't meant anything by it. Tony'd pushed him into using words when Gibbs was a man of action, and he should've expected to get smacked down. That's why you didn't push Gibbs.

He should've known better. Should've known to leave Gibbs alone, should've known that no one was irreplaceable, and was desperately trying to shut up the voice in his head that said, 'of course you're not irreplaceable. How could you be? You don't even know who you are!' Up until Gibbs, that hadn't bothered Tony. He liked being a chameleon, liked having seventeen different shades of personality, liked the layers of protection it gave him to keep himself locked up.

And now, now he was trying to keep himself from breaking down into tears like he was a hormonal twenty-year-old girl and Gibbs had just broken his heart.

But Gibbs had. He'd taken Tony in, made his heart start beating again, and then smashed the damn thing with a hammer. Again, and again, and again. This wasn't the first time Tony had gotten himself too drunk to walk straight because Gibbs had been brutal, and Tony was sure as hell it wouldn't be the last.

And masochist that Tony was, he'd always come back for more. 'Cause as wretched as Tony felt right now, in a few days Gibbs would haul him over for dinner, and they'd talk about baseball and why Tony thought Gibbs should watch more hockey, and Tony would hold out hope that some day, together they'd teach Gibbs not to be an emotionally abusive bastard.

And Tony could hold out for that.