NCIS

Season 03: Episode 12: Boxed In
Song Fic: The Underground Wall
By Simon and Garfunkel

Anthony DiNozzo, Character Bashing, Competent Tony,

Underground

The last train is nearly due
The Underground is closing soon
And in the dark, deserted station
Restless in anticipation
A man waits in the shadows

Tony had made the excuse of a bathroom break and was now standing in the shadows by the stairs. Memories of the day filled his mind.

“Who’s gonna drive you home?”
“I am. I’m making him dinner tonight.”

“So, what are you making him?”
“Italian.”
“You cook Italian?”
“Her cooking rocks, Tony.”

“Wait, back up a second. You were with McGeek?”
“No, he was with me. I was making him dinner.”
“Why would you make McGeek dinner?”
“I like to cook.”
“You cook?”
“Jimmy seemed to like it.”
“Palmer? I’ve never even been to your place and you’re cooking dinner for McGee and the autopsy gremlin? At what point did the Earth come off its axis?”

“You’re not claustrophobic, are you?”
“No.”
“Because I’m telling you, that would be another nail in the shoe of my day.”
“What if we blow a hole at the bottom of this door, near where the bolt is? It might enable us to jam something under it and force it open.”
“Not liking it. Firing a bullet in the air and it’s bound to ricochet. As I was saying, there’s a good chance the bullet might ricochet – and kill one of us.”

“It’s a two-inch scratch.”
“I was grazed by a bullet. Another six inches to the left and bam! No more DiNozzo.”
“Okay, you did not get shot. I talked to Ziva. You cut it on a wooden box.”

His restless eyes leap and scratch
At all that they can touch or catch
Hidden deep within his pocket
Safe within his silent socket
He holds a colored crayon

He watched as the, no longer his, team laughed and joked easily with the one who did the dossiers on the team for her assassin brother. The same brother who took out their teammate, Kate. And all based on this foreign agent’s dossiers making her just as culpable for their teammate’s death.
His anger simmering in the background of his mind as he balled the sling the ER had said he needed to keep his through and through stitched arm in. Twenty-four stitches inside and out for a “wooden box scratch.” A scratch that “cut” through a heavy woolen jacket and shirt to go “through” his “arm” for twenty-four stitches worth.

He had already gotten a confirmation e-mail on the times off for his shooting review (and he is waiting on the blow up on “Officer” Dav’id’s part over that) and the time off the ER doctors had him down for on his wound. Plus, the desk duty till he re-qualified on the range.
Of which he was going to go all in on his requals and retake lessons to qualify on as much as possible since he now had an excuse for it. Including sniper training. As they should have more than one trained agent (not named Officer Dav’id) on the team for the job.

He had already made arrangements with legal to come down and do his statement and fill out the reams of paperwork for his part of the shooting.

Now, from the tunnel’s stony womb
The carriage rides to meet the groom
And opens wide in welcome doors
But he hesitates, then withdraws
Deeper in the shadows

The elevator doors opened to admit Madam Jenny who quickly joined the group as he slid through the stairway door and headed over to legal.
It wouldn’t be his problem if neither Madam Jenny nor Gibbs mentioned to Officer Dav’id about the rules and laws involved in a shooting incident. As it was, Tony had already turned over his used gun to the investigator for the review. If her two nominal bosses hadn’t done the same for her, it would not be his circus, not his monkeys. Even if he was familiar with the clowns.

And the train is gone suddenly
On wheels clicking silently
Like a gently tapping litany
And he holds his crayon rosary
Tighter in his hand

The only sounds he now heard in the stairwell, and away from the hyenas, was the from the electricity running through the fluorescent lights overhead. Their quiet hum made a soothing sound on his nerves as he went down a floor, then down the hallway to his destination.
It was time to get lost in the oh, so familiar paperwork.

Now, from his pocket quickly flashes
The crayon on the wall he slashes
Deep upon the advertising
A single-worded poem comprised of
Four letters

His eloquently worded “fuck you officer Dav’id, I’m throwing you under the bus” done throughout his official legal debrief and signed paperwork.

And his heart is laughin’, screamin’, poundin’
The poem across the tracks reboundin’
Shadowed by the exit light
His legs take their ascending flight
To seek the breast of darkness and be suckled by the night

By the time he was done with legal, everyone from the team had gone home. Including Ziva. And he’d had his police officer neighbor do a check on his apartment for any tampering and then call-in reinforcements to arrest the B&E interlopers while he went to stay at a five-star hotel.
Ziva could either call her Embassy and try to explain herself or call Gibbs. But he’d already told the officers that he was going to prosecute to the fullest extent he could for the B&E and be in in the morning to fill out the paperwork.
Till then, unless they get hassled by her Embassy, hold her for the mandatory seventy-two hours 51-50 on her before bringing her before the judge for bail. As, according to his judgement, she wasn’t all there and may be suffering PTSD from being raised in a war zone like she had been and had been showing signs of mental instability.

Let whichever God she really worships, Him, or her Father sort it out later. He was done.