Tim

Tim slept but his dreams were not peaceful. His dreams were full of pain and cold. Not as much as reality, however, so he slept on. His dreams often had a voice at the beginning. It was telling him to get up. That is was dangerous to sleep. He was sleeping in a wet, cold spot. Not safe. It was getting late, making it colder. And he had lost a lot of blood and weight… impossible to stay warm. His dream-voice was telling him to get up to not freeze to death or bleed to death.

But he didn't listen to the dream-voice. So then it always changed into memories of the past week. But sometimes morphed. He sometimes saw himself telling the bastards what they wanted. Then he would see that information used to get Tony, Ziva, Gibbs or Abby killed. Those were the worst dreams. Even if they didn't care about him he still cared about them. At least Abby was nice to him but didn't care about him. Ziva was decent but treated him like any co-worker. Tony loved to make Tim's life miserable. He took pleasure in making Tim feel like dirt. And Gibbs saw him nothing more than a replaceable computer geek. That was all.

He had always had low confidence in the first place, so his captors had used that against him. They told him that his team… his friends… didn't really care about him. They thought nothing of him so he didn't have a reason to not tell them what they wanted. He, in time, believed them… but didn't tell them anything. That pissed them off and the torture had gotten worse. At first they used a skill they were very good at. Causing maximum pain without killing or causing permanent damage. But after a while they were fed up with him and didn't care what damage they caused.

One of his dreams ended with his death and it woke him with a start. Immediately he started shivering, his clothes were little more than rags now, all stained with blood and dirt. And he was soaked to the skin with blood and water. His muscles ached from shivering and staying in one place for so long but it didn't matter. It was quickly over come with pain. Something told him to get away from here. He hadn't heard the gunfire from the cabin, he was too far away, but still something told him.

He saw little point to it. He crawled out of his hiding spot, ignoring the pool of blood on the ground and blood stains where he had been leaning. His smaller injuries weren't bleeding as much but they still were a bit. A detached part of his mind idly wondered how he had managed to not bleed to death.

He took a few moments to gather up his strength before pushing himself up off of the muddy ground. He managed to make it to his feet. Although unstable he seemed to be able to stand and walk again. Running was out of the question though.

Leaning on a tree next to him he took a few moments to get his mind around the situation.

It was dark. Night. Which mean he'd be less likely to see anyone or anything. True that same thing could be said of those who were hunting him but he doubted he'd be able to be as quiet as them.

It was damp. The woods were damp from rain sometime during the past week. It made things slippery and harder for his already weak body to stay on its feet.

It was cold. It made the situation that much worse for him.

He took a few deep, ragged breaths. It hurt to breath by now. It felt like he had been forced to gargle acid or something. Breathing was not supposed to hurt but right now, for him, it felt like every breath was someone taking a rusty ragged cheese grater and swiping it over his throat and lungs. But he had to breathe. There was no choice.

He had to leave. He had to get away from here. The feeling that he had woken up with which had told him to leave this area had only grew in the time it took to get his footing. So finally he decided to do it. He managed to make it away from his hiding area about ten feet before his slow progress was halted. In the darkness and the mugginess in his mind he hadn't seen the above-ground root from a tree in his path. His foot had caught it and he fell forward painfully. His head was slammed into a rock. The pain from his ankle, and head, mixed with pain of all of his countless other injuries caused him to yell. Not as loud as a scream, though. He didn't have enough in him to scream by now. Over the past week he had screamed far more than any person should.

The yell was loud enough, however, to catch the attention of whoever he was trying to get away from. A dark figure approached him and spoke in an all too familiar voice. A voice he had heard plenty times this past week, "Ah, there you are Agent McGee."

Tim's eyes widened, the green hues dull and filled with pain and fear. He scrambled, trying to get his footing but he couldn't. His legs wouldn't cooperate. Although he hadn't actually twisted his ankle when he tripped he had hurt enough that it didn't want to support weight. So rather than being able to get to his feet he dragged himself backwards, trying to get away from the gun aimed at him.

Finally he heard a gunshot but didn't have the time to brace for the impact. Rather the world seemed to slip out from under him, distracting him from the bullet which pierced his leg.

With a yelp of pain and surprised he fell. He had crawled to a steep hill and finally, accidentally, pushed himself over. The decline had a lot of rocks and pebbles and sticks and twigs and who knew what else. It hurt, causing his injures from the past week to reopen and even causing a few extra ones.

Finally he hit the bottom on his back. He whimpered, holding back sobs. The pain in his body had flared up again, causing his entire being to feel like a mass of agony. The fresh bullet hole in his leg only another tally on the list of pain. But he could see, at the top of the hill, the dark figure of a man disappear. He was obviously looking for a safer way down the decline so he could finish Tim off. Tim had to get away. Had to move. Had to go further into the woods and escape. He pushed himself to his knees and then to his feet, gasping in pain.

He walked, or more like stumbled, about five feet before he had to stop. He leaned against the side of a large tree. Slowly he sank down, unaware of the blood trail left on the bark. Before he even realized it he was sitting on the ground. And from there his body sank down the rest of the way to his side.

His body couldn't take much more. His body had been broken and, finally, his spirit was to. He didn't want to die but it seemed to only option. There was no chance of rescue... no chance of getting away. Might as well accept it.

His hunter would find him here and they could kill him. He wouldn't try to get away. They'd shoot him and the pain which he'd been in for a week would stop, finally. The fight would be over. Sure he would have lost but it didn't matter. He hadn't told them anything so although he'd loose so would they.

Now the only choices he seemed to have was either continue to try to escape and stay alive... but eventually die in these woods by gun or his injuries and suffer in agony the whole time. Or to let them kill him. Let the pain stop. He didn't want to die... but it seemed to be a better choice to allow it to happen sooner rather than later. He had plenty of fight in him by nature. He was a stubborn person. But he had fought hard over the past week. And what was left of that fight had been used up trying to escape. He had nothing left.

Now, lying on the ground, he closed his eyes, he let unconsciousness once again over take him. But this time not really expecting to open them again.