Chapter Two
It's all going wrong!

Tim McGee can't feel the book propped on his lap. In his bedroom easy chair he tries again to focus but his eyes won't cooperate. He squints but the letters won't lose the fuzz around them. It feels, too, like a blanket is coming down over his brain and his grey matter is curling up for the night, ready to quit even if his body isn't.

Today had been busy. The search for a UA Petty Officer has provided a more than usual challenge that was developing into a juicy mystery. Maybe it's even something that, with embellishments, his alter-ego Thom E. Gemcity can use, now that his third hardcover is about to hit the shelves.

But he can't stop winding down. The book on his lap isn't good enough to keep his eyes from growing steadily heavier.

He closes his bleary eyes and sleep immediately wraps about him, tries to overwhelm him. He fights back, sleep rallies and he's about to admit defeat. He'll fight long enough to struggle from the comfortable chair to the more comfortable bed, then surren–

A barrage of knocking and bell ringing erupts from his front door. The frantic summons rips languid sleep away, adrenaline slams his brain awake and he pushes out of the comfort. Repressing words he hasn't used in years, he staggers out and into his living room, stops and forces himself to full alert.

When he approaches the noisy door he stands off-line from it, back pressed to the wall in the short tight corridor. He doesn't think an attacker would announce himself so loudly, but he's cautious. No one he works with would call attention like this. Well, maybe Abby, but... "Who's there?"

"It's me," a woman's frantic voice calls through the wood. Though the voice is familiar, the tone certainly is not. He unlocks and pulls open the door and Siobhan O'Mallory blows past him on a gale of anxiety.

x

She gets ten feet past him, turns about and starts to pace rapidly, toward and away, her long white coat and red hair resembling a blizzard topped by a conflagration. "It's all going crazy!" she slices the air sharply with her hands as though to cut through reality, whirls away to continue her fast pacing. "It's out of control. It's all going wrong!" She's so frantic she completed three circuits, in the course of three staccato exclamations.

He stares at her, not knowing what to make of the flame-haired woman's uncharacteristic outburst. She turns away to start her sixth circuit.

"What's wr–?"

She whirls on him. "Timmy, let's elope."

x

This is more stunning, but she doesn't even wait for his answer before resuming her frantic pacing.

"Errr, okay."

She halts half-away, whirls on him so sharply her gold glasses almost fly aside. She grabs for them, rights them on her face. "Are you crazy? I can't elope, I'm a priest! Priests don't elope, we get married in a Church."

"Then why–?"

She turns away, resumes her frantic pacing. "You're supposed to be talking me out of it."

"It's - err - a bad idea?"

She whirls back to him, advances on him. "Of course it's a bad idea! How could you even–?"

He catches her shoulders, no longer sleepy. For him Shav's presence has always been like a double shot of adrenaline with an epinephrine chaser, but he's never experienced it quite like this.

"Shav, can we pretend, for just a minute, that I don't know what you're talking about?"

"Our wedding."

"That much I actually got. We're getting married–"

"I don't mean our marriage, I mean our wedding."

x

It takes a moment for him to find the distinction. She tries to turn away, to resume her frantic pacing, but he won't ease his grip, not until she gives up fighting him and can answer intelligibly.

"I'm talking about our wedding itself. The actual wedding."

"I'm getting that. I thought it was all set." She'd spent the month she'd hidden away in his apartment, almost the entirety of January into February, arranging the myriad details. He'd thought she'd covered everything possible from an insider's vantage. She's handled a lot of weddings, knows exactly what to do; this is different only in intimacy.

"Do you know who's doing it?" It's not a question, it's a demand and he's surprised again by her intensity. He can't remember the last time she's demanded anything of him.

"The wedding?" She nods sharply and restores her glasses again. "I... Father Donaldson." It had been the last time he'd checked, which he admits had been never. He'd just taken it as a given that Siobhan's partner and Rector would do the ceremony as he'd led the pre-Cana conferences. "Isn't he?

"No."

"Why not?" What a time to pull out. He can't believe it; he'd better have an incredible reason.

She twists, tries to break his grip on her shoulders to start pacing again; he backs her into the room, guides her to his right and presses her down behind his desk into his writing chair. He's not sure what could drive the level woman so close to the edge, he just wants to stop her fall.

"Stay down and tell me. From the top."

x

She looks up at him and he can see in her emerald eyes that she's grateful for his force. She marshals her thoughts, opens her coat and pushes it off onto the chair back, though she doesn't pull her arms free so the coat now traps her. She wears her clerical 'uniform' of light blue shirt and inch-and-a-quarter high wrap-around white collar. That she'd come to his apartment like this is further testimony of her distress.

"No, George isn't doing the Service," she announces, her voice drowning in exasperation.

"Why not?" The wedding is next week. He can hardly imagine what could justify this near-last-minute change.

She sighs heavily, tries to get up to resume her frantic pacing, can't get past his grip or the binding coat draped over the chair back so she stops trying, settles for looking up at him, tightly clamped distress shining in her eyes. "We got a call the other day, I wasn't going to tell you - yet. From the Archdeaconry. The Archdeacon knows about the wedding, of course, everyone in the diocese knows."

So far that's no surprise. He supposes that when one of their own announces an impending wedding, word among the clergy spread faster than NCIS scuttlebutt.

"Archdeacon Norwood would like to Officiate," she continues. "He oh-so-kindly asked if George would be willing to let him. He didn't exactly suggest that George step aside, but he didn't have to come out and say it."

"A Deacon." Something's not right.

"The Archdeacon," she corrects.

Tim tries to sort it out. A deacon, he knows, is an ordained layman styled 'the Reverend Mister' but he's one rank below a priest. "I'm sorry, I don't–"

"The Archdeacon is the priest in charge of the Archdeaconry."

This takes a moment to sort out. "So he outranks you?" he ventures.

"Yes."

"Ah." At last something's clear. He won't ask 'why the confusing title?' She's still a moment away from bursting. "Why is he even interested?"

"Because I can't seem to keep my a– my butt out of the news." She sees in his eyes what picture she's conjured. "Timmy, don't you dare!"

He holds his hands up to block her more emotionally than physically this time. He leans in, hands on hers on the chair arms. "Shav, take a breath. Calm down. Tell me from the top."

x

She does take that breath and it's a long moment before she lets it out but she's not relaxed. "First I'm in the news with the capture of Charlie Morley."

"You mean your capture of–."

"Shut up! No, honey," she clutches his hands, instantly going from angry to contrite, "I'm sorry."

He didn't feel any sting, nor does he want her distracted. "And..."

"Then I'm in the papers when I got appointed Chaplain - first time a woman has ever held the post in NCIS Washington. Then my apartment got blown up, the whole top floor of my old building's gone and I'm back in the news. Then the reporters heard about John DeKalb attacking Helen at Starbase 86. I just happened to be there with Abby but of course that one reporter made the connection among all those witnesses and–"

"Of course." The 'vampire attack' on a waitress at DC's only Sci-Fi club was too good for the reporters to miss, and she hadn't 'just happened to be there'. She and Abby had been in the forefront, broke up the attack, almost captured the perp and were hospitalized as a result.

"Then I got kidnapped and the hunt extended all over the East Coast and made the National news. Then I'm part of that 'We' magazine article they did on NCIS; not just me but you know they just had to include me, blast it. And now I'm getting married."

x

What had been muddy a few minutes ago is now too clear. "You've become so famous - or infamous," she can't help a choked laugh at the irony, "that he feels some of the fame will rub off on him."

She nods.

Tim recalls so many occasions when such things happen almost everywhere in the government, and with NCIS it's usually a credit tussle with the FBI, CIA or the rest of the alphabet soup. It never goes well. "So he made his so-generous offer and, since he outranks you, you can't really say no."

"Right."

He wishes all marriage problems were as easy to solve. "Well, he doesn't outrank me, so 'thank you very much for your generous offer but we're going with Father Donaldson'."

"I'm afraid it's not that simple."

"Yes it is. It's my wedding."

"You don't understand. When BishopMatthewsheard about it, he saw through it as quickly and decided it was a really good idea."

Shav's distressed arrival, her proclaiming things out of control, now makes sense. "The Bishop has kindly and generously offered his services and hasn't had to come out and say to the Archdeacon 'please step aside'."

"You've got it."

"I've got it. Same answer." He grins. "See, there's no need to elope, though the ladder to your window does have a certain appeal."

"Don't joke," she sighs, happy this part is back under control but sure there's some new madness just over the horizon. "This has gotten completely out of control, turned into such a circus I'm surprised we're not having the Ringling Brothers host it." She shakes her head, still unable to believe something so simple has become so complicated. "I just wanted a simple wedding."

"No such thing." Her fame and his - or rather Gemcity's - together with his standing in NCIS, especially after the Millennium incident, have seen to that.

"I know, just a thousand of our closest friends packing the nave and reporters coming out of my wazoo." Despite his effort, Tim almost falls over. "It's not funny!"

"Yes it is," he tells her when he can get his breath. "That was - that was worthy of Ziva."

x

"I guess so," she admits, unable to fight a smile, grateful that enough of her tension eased so she can smile. Now that the problem is solved - in the only logical way - she can take a breath, grateful he's kept the level head she'd lost. "I've been beside myself all day. You know, Ellen told me - I didn't even realize - that during today's Noon sermon I referred to the 'Marthians and Pedes'."

"That's funny too."

"Not very." She sighs heavily. "I should've seen the solution without having to bother you. Religion is my life, this is what I do."

"You were too close to the problem."

"I guess so. Thank you."

"You've been so focused on this wedding for so long," he tells her. "So have I been."

She no longer has to force a smile. "A rún, you're a man; I know what you've been focused on. The Honeymoon."

He'd call that unfair if it weren't true - to a point.

x

She sits back against the white coat, then forward and belatedly pulls her arms from the sleeves, unable to keep up the teasing under the weight of the past three months. Has it really been just ten weeks since his surprise proposal? "But an anonymous wedding is out of the question."

"You need a pseudonym," he tells her philosophically. "Speaking of which," he leaves her, goes to his writing desk, a moment later brings back a paper. "The wedding, reception and honeymoon are all paid for, courtesy of Thom E. Gemcity."

The paper he hands her is a copy of a check from his publisher. "I deposited it yesterday. 'Cearbhall's Quest' hits the shelves in three weeks."

Siobhan leaps into his arms and throws the burden of concern away in favor of this delight. When she pulls her lips from his, eases the tight grip of her hug, she confesses: "I didn't even realize you'd finished it." She'd regret losing track of it if he ever talked of his work in progress, his first foray into the world of 'Sword and Sorcery', but: "I never got to read it."

"Read it? You lived it."

The joy vanishes as though turned off with a switch. "Don't remind me," she says flatly.

x

She can't make herself forget that months ago he'd been injured, had struck his head and for a time had believed himself to be the Elf Lord from his novel. His teammates had shared the nightmare, compelled to adopt roles from his then unfinished opus, with his sanity the prize in the quest.

Locked in delusion, he'd seen Agent Gibbs as King Tighearna, Jennifer as Queen Brigid, herself as Princess Mairenn, Jimmy and Michelle as the Elvan and Human lovers Aylfryd and Una, Ziva as his Elvan co-warrior Muirne and Agent DiNozzo as the villain Dubhshlaine.

Timmy had tried to kill Agent DiNozzo and for many horrible moments it seemed he'd died instead of his friend.

His doctor had earlier declared Timmy's fate might well be death or years - possibly a lifetime - of madness. Only God's Love, Gibbs' stubborn determination and the love of a good woman whom she must admit wasn't her, had spared him these fates and had gifted him with healing instead.

x

"Well, this is the real fantasy," he assures her, "not the fake dream but the actual fiction."

She squints at him. "Can you say that again?"

"No."

"Well, anyway," she holds him more tightly, "I feel a lot better now."

"Always glad to set you straight."

"Cute. I thought you liked curves." She emphasizes the point with an enticing wiggle. He grins but she slips nimbly out of his arms. "Not 'till we're married."

He stops. He'd been about to pursue her but despite her teasing smile - and the hint that she wants him to pursue her - he remembers his own resolution. When she had come to him in January, she'd been wounded, lost and overwhelmed.

Days of brutal captivity, unspeakable sexual tortures and the certainty of death - ending in her crucifixion - had wounded her more than she's ever admitted. She'd sought his aid, his protection, and he could only try.

He'd sworn to himself that, among other things, he wouldn't make any moves on her, not until she recovered. Rather, he'd given her the refuge of his home. She hadn't wanted to withdraw, in her reaching out to him, by driving him out of his own bed, so they'd lived together in a platonic, careful balance for a month.

It'd been an interesting month.

x

But in those long weeks he hadn't touched her but to offer comfort, even on the one occasion when she'd wanted to break through her fear by reaching out to him. She'd made an offer that was beyond her to keep, and one he couldn't allow himself to accept.

They'd managed, with professional help and close intimacy beyond the physical, to get through the month. Her wounds - the physical ones - had healed. The inner ones will take longer, but she'd eventually found the strength to return to her life.

And they'd continued their plans to get married.

But now, though each has suffered, March is here and the 17th is barely a week away. Soon so much will change.

Soon everything will change.

"So," Siobhan continues, standing out of his reach, her smile as much promise as tease, "how was your day?"

xxx

The blonde woman found McGee's car parked halfway down his street, a habitual spot, and she knows he's not alone. She'd watched his apartment from across the street and waited for his lights to go out, but when the priest/whore had come instead, this was even better. He's almost certain not to go for a drive now, so there's plenty of time to work.

Since the woman priest - how wrong that is - had arrived in her own car, she'll leave in it - or not. The blonde woman doesn't care. McGee won't come out for the rest of the night and that's all that matters.

When she'd made her choice of whose car to stow away in, she'd gone on-line and reviewed everything she'd learned earlier about this model. Obscured now in the deep shadows of the Silver Spring side street, to open and dismantle the lock takes less than twenty minutes.

She throws the pieces into the trunk. Super glue will hold the front of the lock in place, closing the small hole. Now there's no danger of being locked in.

She surveys the available space. Removing the spare tire and the other things makes up for her weight. She dumps these in a nearby driveway, returns to the car and squeezes in. Setting her flashlight on its base, she twists the wire hanger to seal the trunk closed.

The trunk is cramped and not a bit comfortable while the cylinders clamped about her body under the steel brace make finding a good position difficult, but she won't be in the confining space for long. In the morning McGee will so-obligingly drive her into NCIS Headquarters.

And there she'll send those bastards' souls to hell.

And if he doesn't, if for some reason he tries to open the trunk - well, the gun at her hip will solve that problem. McGee will just go first and she'll revise her plan for the others.

She has all the time in the world.