This is my first foray into solely NCIS fanfic (I have a Bones/NCIS crossover).I was falling asleep one night, and this came into my head. I've read a lot of amazing Tony angst fics, so I decided to try a Gibbs one. NO CHARACTER DEATH! Because it may seem like it. And for those of you who know of my atrocious updating, I will try and do better! By the way, subtle Tiva (which may become major because I am a romantic!)

~Dolphins~

Boat. Bourbon. Basement. These three alliterative words had been his mantra for the last fifteen years. People thought that he enjoyed it, the solitude and silence, but it was an incorrect assumption, one that he could easily follow had he been in their place. Gibbs had been a very joyous, sociable child, but he had been masking his identity for so long that his innate character had actually made the transformation. But soon, his identity would be nothing more than a name in a file, and not just mentioned, like the leading officer or the suspect, but a file of his very own. The death of Leroy Jethro Gibbs.

It would require no detective work, and this was sort of ironic in his mind. The thought that he had dedicated more than half his life to putting the scummiest of the scum behind bars and that his exit from the world would involve no murderer, no forensic evidence, because there would be nothing to solve except the puzzle of why, the puzzle of his mind, the key to which he had kept locked away for years. He knew that this might cause pain among his team, among his friends, few though they were. But the more important thing was that it would alleviate his pain, erase it entirely. He couldn't just come into work every day and pretend like nothing was wrong, his stony face betraying no emotion. He knew that if there had been someone, something that had ended the monotony of work, boat/bourbon/basement, and work he wouldn't be here, about to eat his gun.

In his deepest heart he knew, though, that he was grasping at straws. Not that he would admit unless under the most severe of coercion, but he believed fully in things like true love and soul mates. People barely had the luck to meet one soul mate, if that even happened, but he had had two, and he had made the fatal mistake of losing them both. Shannon was the first (and obvious) choice- the second he had laid eyes on her, he had felt his heart leap in his chest. It was an instantaneous attraction, and a deep and fulfilling love following not far behind. The feeling after their deaths had been one of his own death, that he was empty, devoid of all emotions, just a walking skeleton. He felt as if he had one purpose on the earth- to kill the man who had done this, who had eliminated his innocent wife and daughter, discarded them like they were just targets, liabilities to his drug dealing and murder. He would never see it coming. After he had killed him, he had expected a relief of sorts, but he had felt as dead as ever. He had almost killed himself then too.

He had assumed that the ache and the guilt would wane over time, that one day he could look back upon those days as the bliss they were and not as the precursor to the agonizing pain, but it had never happened. The anguish had only been numbed for some time when he had met Jenny. She was different- she was the unattainable type, always playing hard-to-get. Usually it was him who filled that role, but her rugged determination and willingness to learn ensnared his heart, slowly but surely. They had danced around each other for months, years, until fate had finally intervened and provided that first opportunity in Paris, the amorous city. They had been happy for a time, but she had made the painful decision to forgo a relationship with him to promote her budding career. They had parted ways, he thinking the whole time that he would never see her again, and that would be best for them both.

When she had magically appeared in front of him that day at NCIS, he had practically mistaken her for an apparition. Lady Fate had a cruel sense of humor with him and women. They had flirted shamelessly, and both had wanted to take the relationship to the next level, but he was holding it back. He knew he couldn't give her what she deserved. She, in all her glory, deserved someone whole, someone not broken, bent, and crippled by the past. She deserved someone who could love her the way she needed, fully and passionately. He just didn't have it in him anymore, to put himself and his well-being on the line again.

When he had heard the news of her death, a gut-wrenching agony had ripped through him, second only to the moment Marine Gunnery Sergeant Leroy Jethro Gibbs had gotten a message to the same effect. He could barely bring himself to look at her, her flawless features marred with the crimson stain of blood. When the team had returned to DC, he had gone to her house, hoping to find something of hers, something that she had used, so he could pretend, just for a second, that she was still with him, that he hadn't made the mistake of letting her slip through his fingers a second time, and this time with an impenetrable degree of permanence.

Another one of his regrets was blaming her death on Tony, who had all too easily taken the blame. He hadn't even sensed the toll this had taken on his senior agent; he was too busy wallowing in his own pool of grief. He knew that Ziva had tried to knock some sense into Tony, telling him that there was nothing he (or she) could have done, but whatever progress she made he erased.

He couldn't protect them anymore. All of "his girls" ended up dead, one way or another. Being near him was a death sentence. He had let Kate die. He had let that bastard Ari shoot her, and he hadn't even gotten his revenge. He had been satisfied that Ziva had gotten it for him, but now that he knew that it was under orders that her father had ordered her to take out the rogue agent, it didn't fulfill his conscience anymore. Paula had died on his watch, gotten blown up. And it should have been his team killed that weekend. He never got over that. And of course the aforementioned trio- Shannon, Kelly, and Jenny. Who was next? Tony? McGee? Ziva? Abby? He couldn't lose them, but he could lose himself. He was expendable.

As he pushed the barrel of the gun further into his mouth so it was almost down his throat, a voice in the back of his mind kept talking, preventing him from pulling the trigger. Right now this disconnected part of his being (or maybe it was just his conscience) was talking about his family. Not his literal, biological one that was only there for posterity's sake, but the one he had created for himself.

First was the baby, the perennial favorite, Abby, the lovable forensic scientist Goth. She was naïve to the ways of the world, spending most of her adult life in her lab, though she spent her days filtering through evidence of murder. There was McGee, who was like his youngest son, never sure of himself. He had been more confident lately, finally standing up to Tony and even taunting the older man back. Next came Ziva, the oldest daughter not in years but in maturity. The former Mossad assassin who he loved like a daughter, because her son of a bitch father certainly couldn't fill that necessary role, who had softened during her time in DC, and it wasn't a bad thing. Lastly was Tony, the man he loved like a son. He was the one he would miss the most.

Gibbs shook his head back and forth to try and rid these thoughts. Just cold feet, he thought. Nothing can change your mind now. Suddenly, he heard the crisp pattern of a knock on the door to his basement. This unnerved him more than anything. Who the hell would knock? He slowly extracted the gun from his mouth, now distracted. He yelled cautiously, "Come in!" to his mysterious guest. The tanned and smiling face of Tony DiNozzo appeared in the doorframe, and Gibbs's brow furrowed in confusion. Tony had never been one to respect his coworkers' personal space. Why would he now?

Gibbs then took in Tony's disheveled appearance- his hair was mussed up and his shirt partially untucked, his belt looped crookedly, the buckle hanging down. He slowly began to descend down the stairs.

"Boss," Tony said with trepidation once he reached the bottom of the staircase, looking into the crystal blue eyes of his mentor and hero.

"Yeah, Tony?" Gibbs questioned in his usually brusque manner, but he had a hard time keeping the quaver out of his voice. Despite his efforts to mask it, he knew Tony heard it because the younger man's face dropped.

"Boss, what's the matter?" Tony asked his concern seeming genuine. Gibbs was too much in a fog to pick up this emotion, or maybe he had just been lying to himself for too long.

"Nothing," Gibbs retorted crisply, keeping his response terse to keep his tone from shaking. His body, on the other hand, was totally out of his control and shaking like a leaf.

"Gibbs, there's something wrong. Tell me what it is," Tony said with reassurance, grabbing the older man by his shoulders.

"What did you want, Anthony? It must be important if you came here to tell me," As always, Gibbs was the master of deflecting.

"I just wanted to ask permission for me and…it doesn't matter now. You're more important, Boss." Tony said definitively.

Tony hadn't noticed that Gibbs had been slowly backing up to the table on which his tools lay. Gibbs had deftly swung his hand behind him and grabbed the gun from where he had dropped it, and pressed it against his temple. He could see the combination of shock and fear in Tony's eyes, and Tony could see the incensed look in his. Gibbs said quietly and confidently, as always "Tony, you should leave now. I don't want you to see this." He tried to maintain his composure, but the tremors that wracked through his body made the gun shake back and forth. He tried to use his other hand to keep it still, but his efforts were for naught.

"Gibbs, don't do this. Don't do this to me," Tony challenged, the raw pain evident in his voice. He grabbed for the gun, and his palm rested against the cold metal, but he couldn't break Gibbs's iron grip on the weapon. Gibbs had already drowned the Senior Field Agent out, and pulled the trigger.

Cliffhanger! Sorry, but I want to keep people reading! Please review- I want to know what I need to work on, or just drop me a line if you like it.

~Dolphins~