Chapter 24: The Awakening
The memories ebbed and flowed like waves on the sea. Tim floated unconsciously through them, no sounds, no sights, just wave upon wave of memories through which he moved like a ghost. Sometimes, a piece would penetrate and he jerked at the intrusion; however, it was more of a shock than a pain. There was just so much there. He could feel it getting in and he feared its presence.
"No, no, no," Tim mumbled quietly. "Stay away."
"What, Tim?" Abby asked eagerly, as she had every time Tim had made a noise in the last couple of hours.
His eyes opened, but only stared sightlessly into her face. "I'm not ready." Then, his eyes slid shut again.
"Ready for what, Tim?"
The door to the conference room opened and Tony poked his head in. "Abby?"
"What, Tony?" Abby looked up. "You can come all the way in, you know. Tim doesn't have a contagious disease."
Tony grimaced at the ease with which Abby had pinpointed the source of his discomfort.
"How's he doing?"
"I don't know. He keeps talking in his... well, I guess it's sleep although I sure can't wake him up." She grinned suddenly. "He doesn't make any weird noises in this sleep though. No snoring or anything, just talking."
"TMI, Abby." Tony edged inside, holding a file defensively in front of him.
"What do you need?"
"Gibbs needs ballistics on a bullet. And he's hoping for some miracles on a couple of cigarette butts and a photograph."
"A bullet? Cigarettes? What happened?"
Tony swallowed. "Tanner is dead."
Abby stood quickly, dropping Tim's hand. "What?! When? How?"
"In the bullpen. Someone took a shot right through the windows. Got him in the head."
"Did you find them?"
"No. They were gone by the time Ziva and I got there."
"Gibbs needs this stuff now?"
"ASAP, Abbs. Whoever these guys are could be gunning for Sarah or Tim next."
Abby sighed. "Okay. ...I don't want to leave Tim alone, though. Will you stay with him?"
Tony shifted his weight uncomfortably. "Well, I don't know... I mean, he's... it's not like he needs any help right now."
"But Tony, I don't want him to wake up alone! Please?" Abby did her best puppy dog look and clasped her hands together.
"Okay, but if he starts to act crazy again, I'm leaving him to his fate," Tony said, although they both knew he would never do that.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you, Tony!" Abby threw her arms around him in a tight hug.
"Let go, Abbs. Go do your job," Tony muttered as he tossed the file on the table.
"On my way." She clomped out of the room. Tony noticed that Tim had not moved, not even when Abby's clodhoppers made contact with the floor. Abby had been sitting on the couch with Tim, but Tony pulled a chair over by the couch.
"McGee, I hope you know that I have no intention of holding your hand or doing anything comforting," Tony said. "All I'm doing is sitting here and making sure you don't kill yourself. Got that? Do ya got that, McGee?"
Tim twitched and moaned but made no other response.
"What's going through that thick skull of yours right now, Probie?" Tony asked. "You're the thinker of the group, but there's such a thing as living too much in your head."
Suddenly, Tim's eyes flew open again and he shouted, "Don't let me die!"
"Whoa, McGee!" Tony stood up in alarm and then looked sheepish as Tim's eyes closed and he relaxed back into his unconscious state. "Man, warn a guy, will ya?" He sat back down and watched Tim's face carefully.
Tim was drowning, trying desperately to keep his head above the waters, but it was as if the waves kept crashing over his head. He struggled, like a panicked swimmer who has forgotten how to swim, and couldn't find how to ground himself in the memories. Thom had not wanted to be forgotten, but Tim was in danger of losing himself to the flood. Events from Thom's life took root in his mind. His first day of school, his parents' deaths, the science fair, his first telescope, the first time he stole food, getting kicked out of a shelter. The memories piled up and fear built up inside until it burst out of him.
"No! I can't do it!" Tim yelled. This time, he opened his eyes and actually sat up. At first, Tony thought he had finally regained consciousness, but then, he noticed Tim's eyes were still empty. He was still asleep, but doing the crazed equivalent of sleepwalking. He pulled away from Tony's chair and curled into a ball, rocking back and forth, his fingers contracting into rigid claws and clutching either side of his head.
Tony stood watching, not sure of what to do. What he wanted to do was go and get someone else and let them deal with it, but he found that he couldn't just leave Tim like this. He pulled his chair closer to where Tim was and sat down again.
"Tim?" he said, hesitantly.
The rocking form made no response.
"McGee. I don't know what you think you can't do, but that's just silly. You're McGee. If there's something esoteric going on, you can do it. I call you a geek for a reason. All of this is in your head. That means that it's right up your alley. Don't you write stories for a living... or rather for an additional living?"
There was no easing of the tension in the body.
Tony spread his hands wide and cast a glance up at the ceiling, looking for inspiration. "What I'm trying to say, McGee, is that you can do this. Whatever it is you're trying to do. You can do it. Besides, you need to do it; so we can get on with things. We still need to catch the guys in charge, we need to get things done." He paused and thought a little more. "And then, there are still people who remember who Thom was. You don't have to be him to talk about him, do you? Can't you just remember the stuff that happened and move on?"
Still no response. Tony couldn't take just sitting there and staring at Tim; so he started to pace around the room, hoping that Abby would get done quickly and get back to sit with Tim. He really needed to be doing something more productive than talking to a statue. He looked at the file and realized, as if for the first time, what it was. He picked it up and walked back over to Tim's hunched form.
"You know, McGee, you and Thom are quite a bit alike. I don't know why there would be any problems with... having his memories... if that's what it is that happened. I didn't completely follow any of the five different explanations for what's going on in your head." He began to flip through the file of information they had compiled about Thom. "Listen to this, McGee. Thom was a complete geek in school. His teachers all loved him because he was an overachiever." He looked up at Tim. "Sounds like someone I know." He looked back down. "Thom was good at computers. Check. He had a younger sister; his parents died. Check, check." Tony looked up again. Tim hadn't moved. "...and he seems like a good guy, McGee. He didn't have the chance to be everything he could be, but I don't think they could have made up the good person you are. If you heard that, remember that you can never say anything about it because I'll only deny it ever happened. I'm just trying to help."
Still, there was no change in position that Tony could see. He sighed and started to wander again.
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Tim still fought the memories, but a voice started to intrude on his battle. It was a familiar voice, one that he wasn't sure he was glad to hear. It was faint, as if coming from a great distance, but he still heard it. He couldn't spare the effort to acknowledge it though. He was battling for supremacy.
"...you and Thom are quite a bit alike..."
They were, weren't they. He couldn't deny that he'd seen quite a few similarities in those memories. It's just that there were so many of them. He couldn't figure out how to fit them all in, how to justify their existence in his head when he already had memories for a lot of the time.
"...I don't think they could have made up the good person you are..."
Maybe not. Maybe it actually was possible to be Thom and Tim at the same time. Maybe he could file away all those events and access them when necessary. Still rigid with fear, Tim began to let down his guard, to let Thom into his head. With the lack of resistance, all that remained of who Thom had been flooded Tim's brain. Too quickly. He screamed in agony, but he didn't stop the memories. He let them come in... all of them, and resigned himself to possible oblivion or insanity. After what seemed like forever, they slowed first to a slow crawl, then to a trickle. There were still occasional inundations, but they were less frequent and less and less difficult to take in. Then, Tim watched, as if in a movie, the last memory that Thom had...
A man, Tim recognized him now as Tanner, leaned over the motionless body on the table. "Thom, you're about gone. Timothy is coming along nicely. The mental pathways are absolutely amazing. What I wouldn't give to probe your created memories verbally."
Thom watched the scene as though through three feet of cotton batting. It was muffled and fading. He felt himself dying, but he couldn't bring himself to fight the death that had been slowly coming on him for the last five years.
"I think Timothy is my best yet. In fact, I think I should be calling you Timothy McGee now. Thom is on the verge of extinction and you, Timothy, are on the ascendant." Tanner looked almost ecstatic at his apparent success. The image faded yet more and Thom knew he was almost dead. That didn't bother him too much. "Good-bye, Thom."
Good-bye, he thought and surrendered himself to his apparent death.
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"Tony?"
Tony had been pacing back and forth and had his back to Tim. The voice completely took him by surprise. It was soft and exhausted, but it was also sane-sounding. Tony realized that he was grinning like an idiot and quickly schooled his expression before he turned around to face Tim. He was still sitting on the couch, but he was no longer in a rictus of agony. His face was white as a sheet and he looked about as sturdy as jello, but he was looking around with an expression of dawning comprehension.
"Hey, Probie. How are you feeling?" he asked, and he mentally applauded himself for sounding so normal.
"Like..." Tim paused and looked around the room again. "Like I'm really me again."
"Well, who else could you be?"
Tim's eyes shadowed and he looked away. "I could have been Thom, Tony." Tony saw, to his horror, that Tim's eyes were filling with tears. "I remember being Thom. I remember him... dying. I remember losing my parents twice, once as myself and once as Thom. I remember... every injustice he suffered. Tony... I... I could have been Thom. I'd be dead now if I was. He..." Tim took a deep breath as he tried to stop the tears. "He wouldn't have lasted much longer as he was. And..." He looked around the room again. "When did I get into the conference room?"
"This was where Tanner worked his magic." Tony noticed that Tim was making no attempt to stand. He must feel as shaky as he looked.
"Tanner? What did he do to me?" Tim looked both frightened and appalled.
"If I understood it all correctly, and I doubt I did, he let you remember everything about Thom and he took away all the little pieces in your head that made you act very un-McGee-like."
"No more lost time?" Tim whispered hopefully.
"As far as I know... at least no more lost time due to bad guys. What you do under the influence of alcohol is still your own fault." In the hopes of forestalling anymore emotional outbursts, Tony added, "Do you want to go and greet your adoring public?"
To his surprise, Tim shook his head. "I need to be alone for a little while. Do you mind?"
"Absolutely not."
Tim smiled at his vehemence. "Thanks for being here at the beginning though, Tony. I do appreciate the great sacrifice of sitting next to a crazy person for hours on end."
"You're not crazy, McGee," Tony said seriously.
Tim shook his head again. "Not anymore. Maybe I never was... at least not by the conventional definition." He looked toward the window and fell silent.
"I'll tell everyone."
"Okay, but tell them I want to be alone, will you?"
"I will, but you'd better hope Abby hears that part of my message."
Tim didn't look back, but smiled again, a little wistfully.
Tony waited a moment longer, watching Tim, but then he shrugged and left Tim alone in the room.