A/N: This is the story I wrote for the NFA Secret Santa fic exchange this year. It's Tim-centered as usual, but the team is prominent as well.
Disclaimer: I do not own NCIS or the characters, and I'm not making any money off this story, alas.
Winter Branches and Old Bones
by Enthusiastic Fish
Some leaves hang late, some fall
before the first frost-so goes
the tale of winter branches and old bones.
~William Carlos Williams
Chapter 1
It was the wind that woke him. It was rattling the branches overhead, and he heard it and woke up. He supposed that he should be happy about that, but considering how he felt upon waking, he had more than a few seconds where he thought that dying in the cold might be better. He'd heard that it was peaceful. You get tired. You fall asleep.
You die.
Simple.
But no. Now that he was awake, he knew that he couldn't give in so easily.
Groaning, he rolled onto his back and stared up at the trees. It was very dim. Not dark yet. Just dim. Dim and cold.
And windy.
The bare branches moved back and forth, heralding the approach of a change in the weather...and not a good one most likely.
With another groan, he sat up and instantly grabbed hold of his head to keep it from falling off...although, it hurt enough that, just maybe, it might be better to let it.
What had happened? Where was he? What was going on?
With all the questions he had, one thing was very clear to him.
It was wintertime and he was not prepared for it. A shiver ran through him and he huddled in on himself.
As he looked around, he wondered about how he could be so certain that he wasn't. After all, why would he be out here if he couldn't deal with the weather?
...and then one more question pressed in on him.
"Who am I?" he said into the cold air. His voice sounded lonely.
As he started to get up, he felt a sharp pain on the back of his head. His whole body ached, but the worst was his head. He put his hand up and felt it...and there was a crust of something...probably blood.
"I hit my head on something."
That made sense. He felt a lot of pain, some dizziness, and a general sense of malaise...and there was this blank spot where his identity should be. It was really disturbing.
He sat back and tried to think about what was going on, what had happened and where he was. He wasn't very successful.
It was getting colder. Another shiver. He figured that he probably shouldn't be sitting around.
Gritting his teeth, he turned his aching body around so that he could hold onto a tree and get to his feet. It was only then that he noticed the steep angle at which the ground fell away from his feet. He looked out on a rather expansive landscape. It was quite lovely...and snow-covered.
"Where am I?" he asked.
His voice still sounded lonely, although it had some accompaniment from the wind now. He shivered for a third time and then winced at the movement.
Snow. There was snow in the air. That was bad.
"Isn't it? It is bad."
Some important information was just on the tip of his brain...tongue...whatever. It was just out of reach. He wondered if he would be likely to remember if he stayed where he was or if he moved...and if he moved, should he go down or up? That depended upon where he was.
"But if I fell here, then, it would probably be right to go up. Right?"
He thought about it some more.
"But maybe I was trying to go down and I fell. Then, I should go down. That would be right...wouldn't it?"
His brain was throbbing and he was pretty bugged by the fact that he couldn't seem to remember what was going on...with anything. He could almost remember. Just not quite.
So...up or down?
One thing in favor of up was that it looked like it wouldn't be as far...and it looked safer. That was enough. In his current state, he wasn't able to do any deep analysis. He started trying to walk up to the...top of whatever.
He took a couple of steps up the hill...mountain...
...but only a couple because he slipped in the snow and fell painfully to the ground. When he hit the ground he groaned loudly and then rolled over onto his back again and breathed heavily, waiting for the pain to ebb.
His ankle was now throbbing in tandem with his brain.
"Ow."
He was kind of thinking that maybe his initial thought about letting himself die in the cold was the best one he'd come up with...but still, he couldn't. Something wouldn't let him.
Then, suddenly, without any fanfare, he thought about who he was and he remembered. There was still a lot of fog in his brain, but he was remembering his identity at least. That was a relief.
"Tim McGee," he said aloud, amidst the darkening trees. "That's who I am. ...but where am I?"
That answer didn't appear to be forthcoming. He didn't know if it was because he really didn't know or if the same fogginess in his brain that had briefly hidden his own identity from him was now keeping him from knowing his location.
"Do I remember everything?" Tim asked himself.
Well, obviously not everything since he didn't know where he was or why he was wherever he was, but what about his past?
He thought about it, and he could remember things about himself.
"I work for NCIS," he said aloud. "Did someone hurt me because of that and leave me out here to die?"
He didn't know. Whatever had led him here to wherever he was seemed to be completely absent from his brain. He started shivering again. It was so cold.
Well...what about climbing up again?
Tim thought about that and didn't like the idea. His ankle really hurt. His head really hurt. ...and the rest of his body was only marginally better. Moving seemed like a bad idea, but then again, not moving might be a problem as well, given that he was really cold and it was snowing.
Instead of getting to his feet, Tim started to crawl up the hill, hoping that it would make him more successful.
He was...marginally. He couldn't fall and sprain another ankle, but his pants were sopping wet and he had no change of clothes. ...he didn't think so, anyway.
He struggled to make some progress, and he tried to tell himself that it was a good thing that he was on a hill. It kept him from losing his way when his brain seemed to be semi-disconnected from reality. Occasionally, he'd forget what he was doing, where he was going, and why. Well, he didn't really know where he was going beyond up.
His ankle really hurt as he crawled up. It seemed to take forever. Forever and a day. So longer than forever. He was still shivering...because it was still cold.
Agony. That was the word he wanted for how he felt. At one point, his body just outright refused to move any further. He stopped struggling and let his body sag into the snow. He lay there for a while, snowflakes caking to his eyelashes.
"No. No. Must keep moving."
His body said no.
Tim tried to bully his legs into moving again. Finally, he did. It was a slow pace, but it was forward movement. That was important. It was almost dark now.
At some point, he finally reached the top...or a top. The ground leveled off, but it went on up a bit on the other side of the...
"A road?" he whispered.
A road. That meant...some kind of civilization somewhere along it. Somewhere. He carefully got to his feet, putting very little pressure on his sprained ankle. He looked both directions. One way went up and the other went down. It was an easy choice of which way to go, even with his head throbbing and the wind feeling very very cold.
Down. That would be easier than trying to keep going up. Which meant that all his effort to get up here would probably be wasted. Too late to complain about that, really. He tried to take a step in that direction, but he forgot about the fact that his ankle wasn't going to be happy about holding him up.
He collapsed...and rolled onto his back again, staring up at the white snow falling against the ever-darkening sky.
"What am I doing here?" he whispered...and didn't stop shivering.