Chapter 21

"Hey, Tim. How are you feeling, today?" Abby asked, as she had every day for the last week while Tim was laying in a hospital bed. She hoped (or pretended that she really hoped) that Tim would forget that he was refusing to speak and answer her.

He didn't. He sighed and blinked slowly, moving his eyes from the ceiling to her and then back to the ceiling.

"That good, huh? Well, I hope you're ready for another exciting day of..." she paused, held up the book, "...The Moonstone. Actually, you know, I'm almost glad you're refusing to say anything. I've never read it and it's actually pretty cool. Wilkie Collins might have had a funny-sounding name, but he knew how to write."

There was a faint smile. There were moments, reactions that Tim couldn't repress, things like that smile which told his friends that he was listening, just not choosing to talk.

"Okay, so where were we? Oh, yeah. I stopped at the narratives. We're on Miss Clack." Abby cleared her throat dramatically and began to read. "'I am indebted to my dear parents (both now in heaven) for having had habits of order and regularity instilled into me at a very early age. ...'"

Tim listened.

x.x.x.x.x.x.x

Abby saw Ducky through the window an hour or two later. She smiled and nodded in response to his gesture.

"Okay, Tim. We'll do chapter five tomorrow." She marked the place, leaned over and kissed Tim gently on his cheek.

Then, she walked out.

"Hey, Ducky. He smiled today when I made a joke."

"That's something."

"Yeah, but it's not enough!" Abby declared, feeling a combination of anger and fear that distressed her. "We're trying so hard. Why isn't Tim trying, too?"

"Maybe he is."

"He's not acting like it."

Ducky leaned over and kissed Abby on the cheek...in much the same fashion as she had kissed Tim. "Maybe it's too hard to act like he's trying."

"I want him to be okay, Ducky. I just can't tell if this is better or worse than before."

"Well, my turn. We'll see what I can do."

"Don't read any more of The Moonstone. I want to see what happens next."

Ducky smiled and raised his hands in capitulation. Abby grinned back and then walked away. After she had departed, Ducky's smile faded as he looked in on their silent comrade. Whatever Tim's reasons for maintaining his silence, if, indeed, he had any conscious reason for it, they were unclear, except that they must be related to what had happened in that house...and by extension, what he himself had done.

It was a state that could not be healthy. Where Tim had run hot before, ready to fight at the slightest inclination, he was now so cold as to be utterly frozen. An embraced state? Or one happened upon by desperation? Either way, something had to be done to break through it. ...even if it meant opening up his own recently healed wounds.

I will do my best, and perhaps it will be enough.

With that thought, Ducky entered the room.

"Good evening, Timothy," he said kindly. "Abigail has chastised me for reading ahead in The Moonstone and so I am forbidden to continue it. You will have to make due with only an old man's maunderings."

Again, that small smile, revealing a mind still engaged, if held back.

Ducky picked up Tim's chart. "You seem to be healing well enough. There is no sign of glaucoma as yet, but the doctors are still watching for it. The cracks look as though they are not going to cause more problems, although healing will take more time. Yes, your eye isn't looking very lovely at the moment, but the hemorrhage will heal in time. Most things do."

Tim's eyes blinked. His left eye, the damaged one, could only open less than halfway, and what could be seen there was not exactly lovely, but he blinked.

"It's true, although some things never go away." Ducky sighed heavily and replaced the chart. "Oh, Timothy. This is unfair, I know. This horror you have had to face...it is not something you have deserved. You could never deserve something like this. We are all trying to help you, but we also all know that we can't do it ourselves."

No response, although the eyes blinked slightly more than was needful...and the right eye took on a sheen.

"However much the rest of them care for you, Timothy, I know that they cannot truly understand how you feel. They have killed in the line of duty, to stop criminals. They have even been in the unenviable position of having to let guilty men go." Ducky paused. "...but only you and I know the pain and guilt that comes of killing an innocent man."

Almost a movement. Not quite. The merest suggestion of it.

"Yes, you know to whom I refer. We have both been the killers of someone who was not deserving of death, nor of the pain that preceded it. Both of us have killed an innocent human being. I dare say that the guilt for one is not appreciably less than the guilt for three."

The only response was a tear. It was not much...but it was something. It was more than before. He decided to continue.

"Let me speak as someone who knows and understands, lad. You feel that you can never forget what you did. ...and you're right. You can't. Not a day goes by that I don't remember, that I don't regret it. You are afraid that the rest of your life will be ruined by what you have done. To a degree, that is also correct. My life took a vastly different road than I had planned. Better? Worse? Who knows, really...but different...yes. Very different. I could never have continued on my previous course after Afghanistan."

Tim's eyes closed, jarring loose another tear. Ducky reached out and grasped his shoulder.

"Even now, I don't wish to speak of it, to speak of the details. So many years later and the memory of it still haunts me. I remember how I felt, how it was to hold another's life in my hands...and to take that life away. One never becomes truly whole after that moment, no matter the justification you use."

Tim's body began trembling beneath Ducky's comforting hand...but he said nothing.

"You are trying to deny the impulses you feel. Your experience was quite different from my own, but the end result was the same. We were both forced to take a life. We were both prevented from taking our revenge on that person. Nothing we could do would ever be enough to pay back the ruin, the pain...and the life that was taken."

The trembling became shaking. More tears. ...but no words.

"You have probably been asking yourself, 'what can I do with my life now?' now that a life has been taken at your hand. You don't know how return to a normal life when you feel anything but normal. You feel broken...because that's what you are. I sat on that plane and wished for nothing less than a crash that would put me out of my misery...because I could not quite bring myself to end my own life, no matter how miserable it was to me. I wanted it to be an accident, something where the choice was taken from me. An event that would not require me to decide."

A soft whimper escaped.

"...but nothing happened. I could not destroy the man who shared the blame. I could not destroy myself. No more could I excise that memory from my mind. I could only continue to live...and I chose to give a voice to those who could not speak for themselves. You are in a similar position, Timothy. You have to choose what to do...because you cannot continue as you have to this point."

Ducky waited for a response. He could sense the waters of despair building up on the other side of the dam Tim had built up. He had said the words which needed to be said and now he was waiting for the response that would surely come if he was patient.

Tim moved...and he spoke.

"I want to die, Ducky. I want to die," Tim finally wept, grabbing Ducky's hand and gripping it tightly.

Ducky smiled in understanding and put his free arm around Tim's shoulders, holding the man who was weeping in utter despair.

"I went there to d-d-die. I want to be dead. I don't w-w-want to... I'm not as s-s-strong as y-y-you."

"Oh, no, lad. This is not a matter of strength."

"C-c-c-can't bear it anymore."

Ducky felt his throat tighten. "Yes, you can. That's what hurts so much. You know that you can but you don't want to bear it. You don't want that fight. It's more than you want to bear." Holding Tim tightly, he went on. "You don't want to have to go back to your home and confront the first innocent who died."

Tim tensed and made a brief attempt to pull away.

"You didn't kill Jethro, but I believe you feel the loss as deeply as if you actually had done so. He died for you...and you face that every time you enter your apartment. Isn't that true? Isn't that why you tried to remove any sign of his presence?"

Tim didn't answer, but he buried his head in Ducky's shoulder.

"Oh, Timothy. I know how hard this is for you, but what you are doing now will not help."

"N-Nothing will h-h-help."

"Yes, it will. With time. Time, Timothy, will be the biggest help. It will not remove the pain, the memory, but it will dull it...and make life possible to live again."

"How?"

"Distance can often allow you to see it in context."

"Can you?"

"Yes...not well. Not always, but I can...and you all helped with that."

"Thirty years later."

Ducky smiled. "Yes. Even thirty years later I am still healing."

"I don't want to take that long."

"It may. It may not. You will never know unless you try."

Tim was silent again. He let go of Ducky's hand and wrapped his arms around his waist. He said nothing...and neither did Ducky. Words were done for now. Instead, Ducky allowed Tim to take what comfort he could from someone who truly did know what it meant to take a life. They both knew that the situations were not exactly equivalent. Tim was dealing with something that Ducky never had to face, but it was the deaths more than the impulse to fight that caused him so much pain. It was an empathy and a sympathy that allowed this closeness.

For Ducky, it was also a paternal need to comfort one so young and so in need of comfort.

"I was the same," Tim said twenty minutes later.

"As whom?"

"As the man...as Daniel Ellis. He wanted to die. He wanted to fight. He wanted to kill them."

"Yes, your feelings were probably quite similar...but you had much that he did not."

"Like what?"

"Like a life to live. Daniel Ellis was declared dead by his family when he went missing. By the time he returned, his wife had remarried, the children had been raised and sent to college by another man...using the life insurance paid out with his so-called death. If he had declared himself, that money would have been forfeit. His family had moved on from him. He had nothing. You, on the other hand, have family, friends, a job, people who care for you, who love you...people who will not let you simply end your life by stopping living."

"But that's what I want."

"I know that, but it is not what is best."

"For who?"

"For you, Timothy. You have so much of life ahead of you."

"I don't see it."

"I know you don't, but it's there. Trust me."

"You won't let me go, will you."

"Never, lad. Never."

"Then, I guess I don't have much choice." Tim's voice wasn't full of joy...or anger about it. It was just a stating of the facts.

"You do have a choice. You can choose to retreat once more to the silence. You can resist all attempts to save you until saving is no longer possible. ...or you can embrace the chance and try."

There was another long silence.

"Ducky?" Tim asked, finally.

"Yes, lad?"

Tim sat up and looked Ducky, his expression made unreadable by the damage to his face. Then, to Ducky's surprise, a small smile graced his lips.

"Don't tell Tony that I cried on your shoulder." A few errant tears escaped even as he tried to smile. "He'd never let me live it down."

Ducky laughed softly. "I will take the secret with me to the grave."

Tim swallowed and the fragile smile faded away. "I still want to die, Ducky. I still want them dead."

"The loss, the pain...they are still fresh in your mind. I would expect nothing less."

Tim nodded slowly.

"Ducky?"

"Yes?"

"C-Could I cry on your shoulder again?" He tried to smile as he said it, but the smile couldn't quite come.

"Any time, lad. Any time."

Without another word, Ducky held Tim as he cried.

No more words were spoken, and when Tim slept, Ducky let himself out of the room in silence.