.~.

A Thousand Miles from Nowhere

.~.

Song: A Thousand Miles from Nowhere by Dwight Yoakum.

I'm a thousand miles from nowhere
Time don't matter to me
'Cause I'm a thousand miles from nowhere
And there's no place I want to be

I got heartaches in my pocket
I got echoes in my head
And all that I keep hearing
Are the cruel, cruel things that you said

I'm a thousand miles from nowhere
Time don't matter to me
'Cause I'm a thousand miles from nowhere
And there's no place I want to be

Oh, I
Oh, I
Oh, I
Oh, I
Oh, I
Oh, I
Oh, I
Oh, I

I got bruises on my memory
I got tear stains on my hands
And in the mirror there's a vision
Of what used to be a man

I'm a thousand miles from nowhere
Time don't matter to me
'Cause I'm a thousand miles from nowhere
And there's no place I want to be

I'm a thousand miles from nowhere
Time don't matter to me
'Cause I'm a thousand miles from nowhere
And there's no place I want to be

Oh, I

I'm a thousand miles from nowhere

I'm a thousand miles from nowhere

.~.

Chapter 10 – I'm a thousand miles from nowhere. Time don't matter to me 'cause I'm a thousand miles from nowhere and there's no place I want to be

.~.

Gibbs pulled into the parking lot and drove around and around before finding an empty space. Switching off the car and removing the key, he turned to look at Tony who was still staring listlessly out the window.

"Abby said this is your favorite Italian restaurant." He said with forced cheerfulness, unbuckling his seatbelt. When Tony didn't respond he sighed and pushed the red button unbuckling Tony's belt. "Come on. I saw Abby's car, I'm sure she's got us a table already." He waited until Tony slowly pushed the belt off his chest and reluctantly opened the car door and stood. Just then a red truck drove slowly past with the window partially down and a loud burst of song caught Tony's attention.

I'm a thousand miles from nowhere
Time don't matter to me
'Cause I'm a thousand miles …

His eyes followed the truck as it went on, mouthing the words he'd heard and suddenly it was vitally important that he remember the rest of the lyrics. If it had been soundtrack in a movie, he would have known, but he had heard the song before so the words must be in his head. Somewhere. He frowned in concentration and waited.

Seeing that Tony was still standing there watching the truck pull out onto the highway, Gibbs walked around the car and gently wrapped his hand around Tony's arm and tugged. "Hey, let's go eat." When he noticed Tony humming the song, he recognized it as the same one blaring from the truck but he didn't recognize it. "What's the name of that song DiNozzo?" He asked as they went up the sidewalk and into the restaurant. "Is it in a movie?"

"Yoakum." Tony whispered taking off his jacket and turning away from Abby's bright face waving from a large round table in the corner. Happiness radiated off her like bright stabbing bolts of light trying to pierce his armor and it … hurt.

"Yoakum?" Gibbs repeated taking his own jacket off. "That's a stupid name for a movie." Grabbing Abby before she could launch herself on Tony, Gibbs used her momentum to turn them so Abby didn't see Tony flinch away from her, a frightened look skimming across his face before settling back to indifference

"Tony! Gibbs! Gibbs!" She twisted in Gibbs' grip and he had to shake her lightly to get her attention. Pouting, she nodded and shook herself free.

"Calm down Abs." Gibbs admonished and pulled one of her pigtails. She dropped the pout and grinned at Gibbs even as she wrapped her arms around Tony from behind. She held on tightly saying his name in a sing-song voice as he stood there patiently with his hands hanging laxly at his sides until she gave up with a huff and stepped back. Tossing Gibbs a rueful grin, she turned on her heel and stuck her nose in the air and walked away from them, pigtails swinging.

"Not now Abs." He said lightly shaking his head and taking Tony's arm started weaving toward the table. Gibbs was relieved to see McGee standing there waiting for them, placid smile on his face. At least someone was calm tonight.

"Hey guys." McGee nodded at them and pulled a chair out beside him for Abby. "Sit by me Abs." She looked longingly at the chair beside Tony before skirting the table and sitting down with a flounce beside McGee.

"McGee." Gibbs waited until Tony pulled out his chair and sat down before sitting down himself. "Where's Ziva?" Gibbs picked up the menu and handed it to Tony. "What's looks good?"

"Sorry I am late." Ziva breezed in with Ducky and a stranger—no—Tony frowned at him. He was familiar. He'd seen the kid before…somewhere. "There was no place to park." She settled next to Abby and let Ducky take the chair next to Tony. The nervous kid with dark hair took the last chair, sliding in between Gibbs and McGee.

When Gibbs asked Tony what he wanted, he shrugged. When Gibbs didn't close the menu he was holding open in front of Tony, he sighed and pointed at the first item without reading what it said and dropped his hand in his lap. Taking a sip of water, he tuned them out and concentrated on remembering the words to that song, keeping his eyes focused on the flickering candle in the middle of the table. A tiny smile crossed his lips when he remembered the title 'A Thousand Miles from Nowhere.' Every once in a while he hummed a little just so he wouldn't forget.

.~.

Tony looked around the room at the happy families enjoying dinner letting the discordant sounds of multiple conversations and laughter wash over him without letting it touch him—not a wave of sound, but a quiet cloud passing overhead. When it was clear in his head, he looked at each of the people crowded around his table laughing at something Abby'd said. He hadn't caught the joke, but he did see the concern in their eyes when one by one they looked at him. Giving them a small curl of his lips, he let his mind drift back to the song, A Thousand Miles from Nowhere. That's where he was, even here in the midst of friends and coworkers—a thousand miles from nowhere.

.~.

Playing the song over in his head and singing silently along with it, he smiled ruefully to himself and decided he needed a new theme song anyway. He was as far from James Bond or Magnum as it was possible to get with no way back.

"See, Tony agrees with me!" Abby's voice broke into his thoughts, effectively shutting off the song. "Don't you Tony?" Abby smiled at him hopefully. "Tony?"

"Um. What?" Looking around the table at the expectant faces staring back at him. "Oh. Sure." Pasting a smile on, he lifted his fork and took a bite of something he didn't remember ordering. It tasted like dust but he chewed and swallowed methodically. I'm a thousand miles from nowhere. Time don't matter to me, 'Cause I'm a thousand miles from nowhere, And there's no place I want to be. He let the song play in his head and hummed along, eyes on his plate until the food was gone and then he stared at the napkin in his lap.

"Time to go DiNozzo." Gibbs touched his arm and Tony looked up at Jethro Gibbs' concerned face in surprise and chanced a quick look around the table. They were all studiously ignoring him. McGee was helping Abby with her coat and Ducky was wrapping a scarf around his neck in the midst of one his stories. Ziva was rifling through her purse and the kid that looked familiar was headed toward the restrooms. Ducky and Probie and Abby and Ziva. Jethro Gibbs and that kid. No one had mentioned his name.

"Okay." Tony stood and bent over to pick-up the napkin that fluttered to the floor. "Time don't matter to me." Dropping it in his plate, Tony took his jacket from Jethro Gibbs and pulled it on over the button-down shirt he'd asked him to wear instead of his normal ratty sweatshirt. He watched impassively as the Avenger dropped a couple twenties on the table and wondered for a moment where his wallet had ended up. With a shrug he followed him out to the car; it didn't matter, nothing did.

When even Gibbs was tired of the silence he switched on the radio and gave Tony a quick look out of the corner of his eye. He was getting better at watching Tony without actually 'looking' at him. "Why don't you find something you like?"

With a sigh, Tony clicked from station to station, humming his song under his breath.

"What's that you're humming?" Gibbs asked glancing over at him. Tony looked over at Gibbs and got lost in the reflection of headlights flashing across his face. "DiNozzo? Hey, where've you gone?"

"What?" Tony looked back down at the radio and hit forward for another station. "I'm a thousand miles from nowhere." He mumbled and started humming the rest of the song.

"What's that song you're humming?" Gibbs asked with infinite patience surprising even himself.

"Just a song." Tony said softly. Once he would've went on and on about the song boring everyone with useless trivia just like he did with movies and Gibbs bit his lip wishing for those days to come back, for DiNozzo to come back. "My song."

"Do you have the cd?" Gibbs asked. "Want to stop by your apartment and check?"

"Okay." Tony shrugged and leaned back leaving the radio playing something that sounded like a Mexican polka to Gibbs who grimaced and quickly switched it off. "There's no place I wanna be." Tony sang under his breath starting fiddling with the seat belt aimlessly.

"What's that?" Gibbs glanced over at him and slung the car around a corner. Tony stared out the window still humming the song as Gibbs changed direction and headed for Tony's apartment. "Where do you wanna be?" Tony shrugged and Gibbs let it go.

When they pulled into Tony's parking spot, Gibbs prepared to get out and looked at Tony who was still staring out the side window, apparently at the car parked next to them. "You coming?" He finally asked when Tony didn't move.

"Okay." Tony unbuckled his seat belt and got out of the car without looking at Gibbs, slowly following him inside and up the stairs softly singing the chorus.

Gibbs fished through his keys for a moment before finding the one for the door while Tony stood motionless beside him. A door down the hall opened and an old lady shuffled out.

"Anthony? Anthony is that you?" She called out in a querulous voice wobbling down the hallway, leaning heavily on her walker. "Where have you been? Anthony DiNozzo, answer me this instant!" The walker thumped closer. "Tony!"

Gibbs got the door open and Tony walked inside ignoring the old woman. Gibbs glanced at her and put the keys back in his pocket. "He's been … ill." He shrugged at her. "He's not himself."

"He looks fine to me!" She stopped in front of Gibbs and hunched forward, leaning heavily on the walker. "What's wrong with him?" Twisting her head around to look up at Gibbs, she gave him a disbelieving glare.

Gibbs glanced in the door and saw Tony standing in the middle of the room, a patch of moonlight from the window shining on his hair, shoulders slumped and staring down at the carpet, hands in his jacket pocket. He hadn't even bothered to switch on the light. "He…" Gibbs mind raced as he tried to think of something, anything but the truth. "Head injury." He finally said and with a frown, he stepped in and pushed the door closed behind him, flicking the switch as he went by.

"I think she's worried about you." Gibbs said absently as he looked around at Tony's apartment. He'd been here before, but now stripped of the big screen TV and the dozens of DVDs that had always been scattered across every surface it looked … abandoned. Shaking his head, Gibbs strode toward the cabinet where Tony kept his DVD and CD collection and pulled open both doors. "We all are." At least he'd stopped humming that damn song. He already regretted stopping and hoped he didn't find the damn CD, but it had elicited more of a reaction out of Tony than anything lately so he figured he could stand to listen to it a thousand times if necessary.

"Why?" Gibbs turned around and leaned against the cabinet. This was the first time Tony'd been curious about anything and he couldn't let it go to waste. Tony was looking at him instead of the floor and that was a start.

"Because we care about you." He said waiting for some emotion to settle on Tony's face.

"But why?" Tony shook his head slightly in confusion. "Why would you care? It's still my fault. Nothing is going change that. Nothing." I got bruises on my memory. I got tear stains on my hands and in the mirror there's a vision of what used to be a man. Tony pulled his hands out of his pockets and studied them before walking over to the mirror in the tiny foyer to study his reflection.

Mindful of Ducky's admonition that Tony needed regular touches to ground him, Gibbs calmly walked over and pulled an unresisting Tony into a quick hug turning him slightly away from the mirror. "You're our friend and teammate. We love you. We want you to get better. We want you to come back to us."

He squeezed Tony's shoulders again and stood back, close enough to see the flicker in Tony's eyes.

"You?" Tony mumbled pushing his hands deeper in his pockets and dropped his chin. I got heartaches in my pocket. I got echoes in my head.

"Me what?" Gibbs asked carefully.

"You keep saying 'we'. Do you care?" Tony lifted his eyes to look at Gibbs. And all that I keep hearing, are the cruel, cruel things that you said. Wait, Tony blinked. Jethro Gibbs had never said it was his fault. Jethro Gibbs had said … something else, something different. Jethro Gibbs…

"Yes of course I care." Gibbs nodded reaching out to touch Tony's shoulder, rubbing his fingers up and down.

"Why?" Tony frowned as if he was trying hard to understand. "Why do you care?" I'm a thousand miles from nowhere and there's no place I want to be. But what if there was? What if he wanted to be … here?

"Because I do." Gibbs steeled his voice to keep any impatience from showing. "You're my senior agent, my friend. I'm responsible for your safety and –"

"But I didn't get hurt." Tony interrupted. "I didn't get—"

"Yes you did!" Gibbs growled intensely, forgetting that shouting frightened Tony. "You were hurt so badly… for so long." Take a slow, deep breath he registered the fact that Tony had stepped back, both hands coming up to his mouth, hazel eyes full of alarm and Gibbs raised both hands in surrender. "I didn't mean to shout at you, DiNozzo." He took another breath and let it out slowly. "We just want to make you better. I want to make you better."

He waited while Tony lowered his hands and the fright drained from his eyes. "But why?"

Frustrated, Gibbs rubbed a hand down his face. Why had he insisted on being the one taking care of Tony, he was no good at this. Abby would be better at the touching and the talking and the whole emotions thing. When he looked at Tony again, he was still standing there, head tilted to one side, waiting for Gibbs to answer.

"Because… because …" Gibbs stammered dropping his eyes for a moment and then looked up again with piercing eyes. "Because we're family. Because we love you, Tony. We all love you."

"Oh." He could see Tony's mind working that over. "I still don't understand. Why would you love me?" He took a step closer to Gibbs and stopped and shook his head again. "It doesn't make any sense." … a thousand miles from nowhere and …and … he called me Tony.

"Because … Tony." Gibbs pulled Tony into another hug and rocked him back and forth gently. "Because you're worth loving." He whispered hoping it was enough.

"Boss?" Tony's voice broke and the word ended in a sob. "Boss, I…"

Gibbs held him, rocking them gently in the middle of his living room until Tony relaxed against him and lifted both arms to tentatively hug him back. Gibbs blinked hard at the sting of tears and pulled Tony tighter. "You're gonna be all right Tony. You're gonna be all right."

.~.

Finis.

AN: Thanks so much for all your comments and faving this fic. It's been a joy to hear from all of you and I hope you liked it.