Summary: Everyone, at some time, has done something they grow to regret. Sometimes, they had a choice, other times they did not. Tim is seen as the "probie" even after Ziva has come along, provoking teasing of what is a somewhat friendly nature. Yet, there is more to the agent than meets the eye, no one sees what lies behind emerald eyes. When a case brings up events of old, can Tim protect what he cares about, and will his team protect him? After all, how can you trust someone who isn't what they seem?
Warnings: This is crime so expect blood, light swearing, and any other barrage of injuries and drama. Any major warnings will be posted on its relevant chapter.
A/N: I should specify that by "What they seem" I don't meet supernatural or anything, I mean personalities. I also want to say, any feedback is welcome. I've never really tried to write for NCIS until now, and I'm hoping to be able to learn to write these characters well. They all have interesting personalities and I thoroughly would enjoy to put them into all sorts of scenarios. Without further ado, onto the show.
He was running, sprinting away from what he had just done, it was better than to face the facts of the decision he'd made. The echoing bang of a gunshot was plenty enough a reminder on its own. He knew he wouldn't be caught, and he wasn't sure if he was afraid of being caught anyway or admitting he thought what he did was right. He was only 23, and he'd lost everything, no one would suspect him of this crime.
The man himself was a murderer, he achieved to him what he was due. That special pit in Hell had opened to swallow him whole. It was his fault his parents were gone, his fault his sister and brother were missing, and it was his fault his life had fallen apart as it has. He wasn't sure where to go from here, school can only distract him for so long. Police officer maybe? At least then he could gain the ability to legally shoot someone. He could join the Marine Corps, but he wasn't sure when that's what his father pushed him for all his life. He clenched his fist at the thought of his father and kept running as the rain started.
The gun wasn't his, it was his brothers, and he had already skipped town when this all began. None of it would have come to this if not for the people his brother was involved with, if not for the drug dealing and money stealing. He made sure every piece of evidence he couldn't clean up pointed to him, and he didn't feel sorry for it.
Rather, he realized, he didn't feel much of anything. He'd run to the old park his mother took him to as a child, to find comfort and solace on that old swing. The metal had rusted and faded away with time, the wood falling apart and splintering. He gently traced the markings on the wooden stand, where he and his sister had once carved their initials. It was far too worn to see them anymore, but he still remembered it.
He recalled every joyous day spent here, running and playing tag. The corners of his lips twitched upwards at the memories he once cherished so. The times he would convince her to play cops and robbers, or the time she wanted to wrestle him. He then frowned, growing angry as he realized those memories were all he had left of any sense of normalcy. He threw a fist forward without thinking, fracturing the splintered wood and cutting his knuckle wide open. He did this with his left fist as well, once for anger and once for grief.
He knew his mother would be disappointed in what he had done, and he wasn't sure he could blame her. In the back of his mind he recognized he was blind with grief and rage, constricted with regrets and unspoken apologies. Apologies for being a reckless child, too stuck in his own head to recognize what people needed from him. Apologies for what he'd done, and what he's become.
His mind tossed and turned as he sat on that old swing, looking for some sense of being that he'd lost with his mother's last breath. Some sense of a being that was swept away with the blood and sorrow of what he witnessed. He couldn't lock onto anything but one conversation he took away from more than he ever had. Even then, it was twisted with the darkness and pain that swam in his mind, the words coming from the last thing he had seen of her instead of what had been.
He'd only been in the 3rd grade, and he'd punched a boy for picking on a girl in the class. It was before he became the joke of classes, he'd still had somewhat of a need to protect others, and something he still had deep down. His mother was not disappointed with him, instead she'd sat him down and explained why he can't go around doing things like that. He'd understood, he'd known it was wrong from the second he chose to throw that punch. It was what she'd said afterwards that he chose not to forget, something he chose to keep as a sort of test of actions he committed.
"Sometimes, Timothy, people do all the wrong things, for all the right reasons."