Sorry I am so late in posting this. I had a long day a work and just got home ... this the first thing on my to-do list!

Oh, FYI - I have officially given up any hope that the show will do anything Tim-worthy. I will still watch it, so that I can get good ideas for fanfic ... but the show last night just ruined the whole series for me. What the hell was Gibbs' problem with Tim? Oh, could it be he upset precious Tony & Gibbs decided to punish McGee for it? Sure seemed that way! I pissed me off so much, that I couldn't enjoy, what would have been a perfect episode ... I absolutely loved the interaction between Ducky & Jimmy. I think last night's episode just proves that Tim means little to nothing to Gibbs ... I bet he could disappear and Gibbs wouldn't care less!

Ok, deep breath ... letting out slowly ... I feel better now. I will stick to fanfiction good stories about Tim. You may see a trend of Pappa Gibbs stories from me ... since they won't write it for the show, I'll write it for myself!

Alright, enough of me ranting. Hope the chapter was worth the wait ... I look forward to finding out what you guys think!

They where standing in what looked like a typical college dorm room. Tim still looked like he was five-years-old, typing away at his computer, thoroughly involved in whatever he was doing that he didn't notice the first knock at the door ... or the second.

It wasn't until the knock changed to pounding and a familiar voice shouted out, "Federal Agents, open up." that had Tim jumping out of his skin, then quickly going to the door.

A young Mike Franks and his partner were let into the room.

"S-sorry sir. I w-w-was in t-the middle of a p-project."

Franks looked the boy up and down and seemed to be unimpressed. Holding out his badge for the boy to see, he introduced himself. "I'm Mike Franks, this is Rick Hernandez, we're from NIS. Do you know an Allison Soltesz?"

Tim looked from the badge to Franks and back as he answered. "Y-yes sir. S-s-she's my g-girlfriend."

Mike snapped his fingers at his partner. "Hernandez, photo."

The young man quickly scrambled to get what his boss wanted and handed the photos over. One was of a pretty blonde, smoldering brown eyes, smiling happily for her college id. "Is this her?"

"Y-yes sir. T-that's her. I something w-w-wrong?"

"Yeah, she's dead."

The team all knew this tactic, giving horrible new hard to see how a possible suspect would react. However, it didn't make it any easier for them to see it being used on their teammate.

Tim paled and sat down hard on his computer chair. "Dead?"

Franks and Hernandez exchanged a look, either Tim was being honest in his reaction, or he was one hell of an actor. Franks nodded and his tone softened. "Afraid so, son."

"How? When?"

"When was last night around midnight. Did you see her around then?"

Tim shook his head. "W-we were supposed to go out, b-but I canceled."

"Why?"

Now, Tim flushed red and he looked away from Franks, ashamed.

"Oh, did you have another girl on the side?"

Tim's head snapped up. "N-no! It's not like that!"

"Then what?"

The child version of Tim looked down at his hand and shook his head.

Feeling the information could be important, Franks pressed, gently. "Son, listen, I know you might not want to speak bad about her, but the truth is the truth ... and it could lead us to who killed her."

Tim sighed, ran his hands through his hair, leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands together. "Alli and I met during my first week here at school."

"We ran into each other, literally. I had my nose in a book and wasn't watching where I was going." Tim smiled a little. "Most girls would have cussed me out and went on their way, but Alli didn't. She apologized too, said she wasn't paying attention either. We kind of hit it off from there."

"She always lived in the shadow of her father. He was a high ranking Marine and she never felt she measured up, so she ... uh, fell in with the wrong crowd. I knew how she felt, so we kinda bonded."

"I kept trying to get away from the drunks and druggies she had been hanging with. After she showed up here one too many times smashed out of her mind, I decided I needed to do more, if I was gonna help her ... so I started going with her when she went to hang out with these so called friends." Tim snorted angrily. "With friends like those who needed enemies."

"I hear ya there, kid."

Tim shrugged. "The thing was, that I'm ... well, I'm a geek ... couldn't really do much to stop her. Her friends knew I wasn't any real threat, so they didn't listen to anything I said and Alli, well if she wanted to be drunk or high, there was nothing I was going to be able to do about it." A long sigh left his lips.

"I tried to show her other ways to cope. She would always say, how could I know her way didn't work if I hadn't tried it myself ... and logically, I guess she was right. So one day, I let her talk me into smoking some marijuana ... and I didn't like it."

"You didn't like it? You must have done it wrong."

Tim laughed a little. "Yeah, that's what Alli said, but it's not true." He finally looked up to met Franks' eyes. "Look at me, I don't really have much going for me, except my brain and that stuff made my brain all fuzzy. So something that could impair or ruin the only good thing about me ..."

Franks nodded. "I can get that. So let me guess, you guys started fighting a lot."

Tim dropped his eyes. "Yeah. She kept trying to get me high again, and I was trying to get her clean. Although, she finally seemed to swing my way, ended up getting enlisting and started boot camp just a little over a week ago. Thought she was going to try to follow in her father's footsteps."

"Yeah, that matches our records." Hernandez chimed in.

"Found out afterwards, she only enlisted because she heard that the military has the best drugs." Tim shook his head. "So, we fell back into the same pattern, her trying to get me high, me trying to get her straight, until ..."

"Until what?"

Tim held his breath for a moment, then blew it out quickly. "Until last night. She wanted me to go to some powder keg party, so that we could get 'so total blown', she thought the pun was funny."

Tim stopped, Franks had a pretty good idea of what happened next, so to keep Tim going, he made a guess. "You told her you'd had enough and she wasn't welcome back until she was clean."

"Yeah, something like that." He let his head drop way down and his shoulders started to shake. "That's why she's dead, isn't it? Because I wasn't there to watch over her, she went out of control and od'd on something. This is my fault."

In a very rare display of kindness, Franks placed his hand on Tim's shoulder. "I'm only gonna say this once, so you better listen closely. This is not your fault. She was heading full steam down a bad road and,for what ever reason, she didn't want anyone to stop her. If you would have gone with her last night, the only thing that would have happened is that you both would have wound up dead."

Tim looked up to Franks and searched his eyes for any sign of deception. "But ..."

"Nope, no butts. There are only two kinds of people in this world: those that will build you up and those that will tear you down. As hard as it might be to hear, Allison was someone that would tear you down."

"I guess you're right."

"Of course I am." Franks patted Tim's shoulder and stood, pulling out a business card. "Now, if you think of anything else, or if anyone odd comes asking about her, give me a call, okay."

"Yes sir."

They could tell by the tone of his voice, that Tim was only responding out of habit, his mind was already elsewhere.

Franks gave the kid on more look, then he and Hernandez left.

Tim stared at the card for a long while. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then turned back to his computer. He started to put his hands back to the keyboard, but stopped midway and balled them into fists instead. With a sudden yell, he jumped out of his chair and started knocking books off their shelves. When that didn't satisfy him, Tim picked one up and threw it at his computer, knocking the monitor off the desk.

He raised his eyes to the ceiling and started talking. "Maybe you were right Alli. Maybe this world is full of nothing but shit." He went to a dress drawer and pulled out a small bag of marijuana and cigarette papers. He sat down on the floor and roll one. "Maybe the best thing to do is to escape and forget about it." He then lit the end and almost put it to his lips ... but he stopped.

He let his hand drop and he just stared straight ahead. Tim shook his head and tried again, but once again, he wouldn't let the drug touch his lips.

"Damn it! This just feels ... wrong!" He put out the joint, pulled his knees to his chest and curled in on himself. "I guess I am a coward, Alli." He put his head on his knees and started crying.

XXXX

This time when the memory faded, Tim was no longer in the middle of them. He was now only one step away from going through the barrier.

"I ... let ... her ... die. I ... put ... my ... needs ... first. I'm ... no ... better ...

Before any of the team could move a horrible roar tore its way through the sky. It was both high and low pitched. While a cold feeling of dread froze the team, the phantom shapes couldn't scurry away fast enough. They were moving so fast that it looked like fog being burned away by the sun.

Tony looked around in amazement and concern, not knowing if they really wanted to met the thing making the soul numbing roar.

In the distance a large dark form was taking shape. It appeared massive and the ground shook with each step it took. However, as it got closer, it seemed to shrink instead of getting bigger and the earthquakes became lighter.

As the phantom souls receded, the team held their breath waiting for whatever this new apparition may be. Instead, Ari materialized, walking quickly towards them, swiveling his head and glowering at the phantoms.

None of them noticed that Tim had made it outside of the barrier, however by that time all of the phantoms had retreated. Ari knelt down to the boy and quickly stuffed the cotton in his ears, then scooped him up, held him close and started quietly singing - it was so soft that Ari's voice didn't reach the team at all.

Ziva, Tony, and Gibbs stood dumbfounded, trying to wrap their minds around everything that happened.

The phantoms were still retreating when a light voice reached Tony.

'My little entertainer! So good to see you again, I've missed you.'

Tony turned slowly, trying to get a fix on the voice. While the phantom voices had been devoid of any gender, this one was clearly female ... and Tony knew who it was immediately. He kept turning, making a complete circle before Gibbs caught his eyes.

"Everything alright, DiNozzo?"

"Yeah, sure boss." He responded in his most sarcastic tone.

Gibbs narrowed his eyes at his senior agent. "You know what I mean."

"I think, if we ever get out of this place, I'm going to need therapy for the rest of my life ... assuming I could find a shrink that wouldn't throw me in a padded cell."

"It does take a strong mind to come to this place." Ari had walked up to the edge of the barrier, still holding Tim tightly to him. "From what I understand, there have been others that have tried to make the journey and left here not quite ... whole."

"How is he?" Ziva asked, she had not taken her eyes off of Tim since Ari had picked him up.

"Resting." He shifted Tim so that he could hold him with one arm and reached into his pocket, pulling out some stones. He tossed them to Ziva. "Here, you need to rebuild your barrier, these will make it stronger."

The stones easily went through the barrier and Ziva caught them just as easily. She turned the stones over in her hands. They were not very large and they had no distinct color, one turn they looked purple, another black, another green. "What are these?"

"Trust me, you don't want to know. Just put these next to your stones when you redo the barrier. You'll notice the difference."

Ziva nodded and went about tearing down and rebuilding the barrier.

As soon as it was down, Tony heard the voice again. 'Tony, my son, I want to talk to you, come to me.'

This time Tony didn't make any outward appearance that he heard the voice. However, he tracked it in his mind and started planning a way to separate from the group.

When the barrier was reestablish, the difference was clearly noticeable. Where as before, none of them could really see the it there was now a dark shimmering dome.

Once the new barrier was built, the voice died away. Tony started to panic slightly, but outwardly he kept his calm. While Ziva and Gibbs went to the edge of the barrier, Tony lagged behind, still trying to catch any whisper of the voice. When none came, he decided to try something. In his mind, he brought up an image of the woman then called out to her, Mom?

'I am here ... waiting.'

A thrill of hope ran through Tony. He smiled to himself, then joined Ziva and Gibbs at the barrier's edge.