Anthony DiNozzo
First Season
Contemplation on Spring
Post Bête Noir

Spring

It was a time most young adults thought of as Spring Break. For once the team had the weekend off as they had been ordered by the Director to Gibbs anger.
Tony had his French Window curtains open and the doors cracked to air out his apartment as he sat near them. His stocking feet up on a stool in front of them, his laptop on his lap. Open to his current reports that he had just finished and saved to disk so he could take them to work Monday morning and not have to stress himself over getting them done in time.

He looked out at the melting snow in the warming temperatures outside. Songbirds returning and making nests in the trees outside his windows.
Contemplating.

Most looked at Winter as the time of slow preparation for the upcoming warmer times. But Winter was over and nothing actually changed. They all tell themselves that it was supposed to be a time of reflection and quiet. But preparation while keeping things at the status quo is not preparation. It is avoidance, disguised as patience.

He looked at his team as it was currently standing while he thought about what he, as SFAC had written for the winter quarter’s individual assessment that was due Monday. An assessment SSA Gibbs had passed onto him long ago that he was supposed to do. Along with most of the day-to-day paperwork, the team leader’s paperwork. Ostensibly to prepare him for the time he would have his own team. A time Gibbs would currently never allow in his MINE mindset.

Winter quarter. A time to get the new probie, and that was exactly what she was, no matter what she thought or how Gibbs treated her, up to date on how things worked. But the time was spent refusing to learn, to prepare herself for the world outside Gibbs protective bubble. Her skill set did not sharpen, her discipline did not harden, except to go cry to mommy Gibbs when things didn’t go her way.
Her identity as an investigator did not shift even slightly from pampered princess. Therefore, Winter for her was only the hiding place she sought to escape what she had done at her old job at the Secret Service.

Stagnation in his philosophy was always decay, and she was mummifying before him. She lived within her self-deception. Something he rejected in himself even if he never showed his self-reflection to the outside world.

In Gibbs, there was a difference in retreating to recuperate, and retreating because he was afraid to strike at his own thoughts on his past and how it could and was being used against him.
Spring was not just the time of rebirth, but the time of exposure, and healing of the inner self so it could not be a weapon used against oneself.
The light returns. Movement resumes. Things once strong, begin to crack under visibility. So too with Gibbs after the attack in the morgue that Kate fucked up and allowed to continue due to his “kind eyes.”

This was why Spring sometimes matters more than Winter. Spring was now when Intention must become Behavior. Where internal conversations collapse and the external begins to speak for itself. As with the current tantrums going on in the pen with Gibbs over being out Alpha’d in his own territory yet allowing his make-believe daughter to get away with doing nothing about the terrorist, she had a chance to stop.

Both their excuses were losing their ground in the face of their actions. Hers was holier than thou because she was from the Secret Service and his as he knew where bodies were buried.

With his report they would have until the beginning of June to get their act together before the reports become part of their permanent records.
Enough time to prove if they were honest with themselves or merely comfortable with how things were now.

His own assessment was an assessment of self-reflection on his strengths and weaknesses during that time period. The allowance of chaos and the probie to have her head instead of reigning her in. Or trying to when she was one to run to mama Gibbs to make things better for herself.
His allowing himself to not force the issue of chain of command and everyone’s place in it. To the detriment of cases and the Agency as a whole, re: the current spat of lawsuits against them as an agency and as a team, and the current spat of IA investigations due to Gibbs allowing things to go the way they did. Plus, his not reigning anyone in as was his job.

In other words, he, and the team as a whole, had lacked discipline. One of mind, body, and skills. And one of command in its structure and presence. To focused on the leader’s need to get the bad guy, and not enough time on the skill training to do the job as he felt they should do it all on the time he never gives them.
The hours and hours of continuing education he never sees the need for or the implantation of. Or the hours needed to be done practicing skills that he didn’t see as manly or needed. Like how to do reports properly or how to obey the new rules that just came down from above.

Tactical says with the weaknesses shown in the security around the base right after the terrorist attacks in 2001, they, as a whole had become lax, AND there had to have been inside information for the terrorist to both know how to get in and do what he needed, and how to manipulate Gibbs the way he did. And is still doing from afar. So much so that the fixes needed to be done in security are not being done as Gibbs was the loud squeaky wheel to the broken security’s quiet breakdown.

Psychological Distraction where the key was creating looks away from where the enemy wants to play in. Pointing the Shiny at those who would chase after it and take everyone with them.
Everyone looked at the terrorist besting Gibbs while shooting Gerald, but no one has seen that he got away with the bioweapon he came for. A bioweapon that is now in the hands of terrorists.
The magician at work. With Gibbs’ known weakness from his past acting as the Shiny. Continuing to do so even now.
If something or someone controls your attention, it controls you.

Gibbs needing the stimulation of the scrolling of faces to catch the man who bested him. That man now controls Gibbs whether he was there or not. And cases are destroyed because of it.
The probie who passes herself off as a profiler sees nothing reportable about this. This shows her further failure in what she claims she has learned or already knows.
Yet until he did his reports everyone else in the DC Agency was even now allowing the terrorist to lead the direction of the full branches investigation as they allowed him to manipulate them through the weaknesses in Gibbs. A manipulation everyone sees but refuses to report to those higher up the chain or do anything about themselves.

Now Tony’s reports had finally shown in writing that King Gibbs was wearing no clothes and the ones who had led him to believe in the lie had long gone laughing all the way at his gullibility.

Spring, he thinks to himself as he sips his port, was either a time to learn responsibility for the time of Summer. Or allow the recklessness to continue, as the ones he noted never tried to learn anything.
If the latter, he had already put in his report that he wished to be removed from the King who never acknowledged he was naked. He liked reality, just fine, thank you very much, He also wanted to continue to live in it. Key word there, live. Something he didn’t think would happen if things didn’t change for the better on the team, he was currently with. And as stated in an earlier report, his two years were up.

Fin
6/29/2026

Edit
7/13/2026