Chapter 25

The world watched as the government on Lugniapo began to topple under the onslaught of massive protests and rioting. A raid on Sirja Prison as well as a number of smaller prisons scattered around the island resulted in the release of hundreds of prisoners, many of whom ran roughshod through the streets of Aolano, destroying all that came in their path and stealing whatever they found of value. Guards were killed. Some of those who had come to the aid of the prisoners were injured, by whom was unknown. There were too many possibilities.

The embattled government released a few statements and some footage showing the violence on the part of the protestors. There were numerous instances of the military being beaten by mobs. In response, cell phones, cameras and other less-than-official means were used to beam footage of women and children being driven away from their homes. Bodies were shown lying in the street, the military refusing to allow burials. Every step taken to restore order led to a ramping up of the violence.

Aolano, Cascheya, and five other cities on the island began to burn. Aolano itself looked more and more like a ghost town as former residents fled to the forests for safety.

...and the world watched it happen.

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

Tim was glued to the TV, watching the same videos over and over, trying to catch a glimpse of someone he knew, anyone. He would point them out as he saw them, but none were Esosa or her family.

"That's Pidaro. He was in prison with me. I don't know why. He liked beating me up."

"That's one of the guards. I hit him once. I felt bad about it."

Then, there was a shot of the bodies at the prison.

"That's the warden. There's one of the other guards who was nice to me...the body on the left."

He had seen the same newscasts so many times that he could (and did) recite along with them.

"That's one of the leaders...one of the people who came to the prison and spoke to me."

Naomi was worried about Tim's sudden obsession with the news. It had finally pulled him out of his fear that he had never been rescued, but it had created in him a desire to see nothing else. He didn't care about seeing outdoors. All he cared about was watching the television and seeing if there was someone he knew, seeing if a new video had been received.

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

Tim wasn't the only one glued to the television...although in this case it wasn't her own television since she didn't own one.

Marjani went to any location where a television was showing something about Lugniapo. She had seen, as Tim had, the brief shot of Esosa, but nothing else and she was desperate to know more. She didn't know if the attempted rescue of Tim had been successful because she hadn't dared return to NCIS, but she hoped that he had been saved...and that he would some day be able to tell her about her family.

Until that time, she watched the news and tried not to let her tears at the destruction of her homeland be obvious to those around her.

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

There was a knock at the door. Tim didn't move away from the television, his attention didn't even flicker. Naomi watched him for a moment and then sighed and shook her head. She walked to the door and opened it and then stopped in surprise.

"Tony...I didn't expect to see anyone from NCIS here. It's the middle of your work day, isn't it?"

Tony smiled a bit uncomfortably. "I'm...sort of here officially."

"Sort of?"

"Okay, I'm not here officially at all...but I'm here with full knowledge of...some of my superiors."

Naomi laughed. "You don't have to justify yourself to me. I just don't want you getting into trouble. Tim is...the same as he's been for the last week. If you have things to do, he'll still be the same when you have time. Unfortunately. I just can't get him to stop thinking about it. Nothing is as important." She looked back over her shoulder. "As worried as I was before...I'm more worried about this. Tony, there's nothing he can do. He can't go back to Lugniapo...even if it were physically possible. He still couldn't go. He knows that. He must. ...but whether he does or not, he doesn't care."

"Actually...Naomi, that's kind of why I'm here."

Naomi looked back.

"What do you mean?"

I'm here to see if I can help break McGee out of this..." He floundered.

Naomi smiled sympathetically. "It's an obsession, Tony. Call it what it is."

"Okay. This obsession, then. Do you have the letters for Marjani handy?"

"Yes. I leave them out where he can see them. I've tried to talk to him about them, but he won't. If you're going to try, then know that he's not going to do it."

Now, Tony looked really uncomfortable.

"What?"

"What if I didn't give him the option?"

"In what respect?" Naomi asked, feeling herself stiffen slightly. She could tell that Tony noticed.

"What if Marjani was...downstairs in my car...right now...waiting to come up here."

"What if?"

Tony smiled but it wasn't a happy smile. "We were thinking..."

"Who is we?" Naomi asked, now unsure as to whether she should be relieved, happy or angry at what had been arbitrarily decided by people who were not Tim's family nor his doctors.

"Us...at NCIS..." Tony said, trying to explain.

"And what gives you...at NCIS, the right to...to do all this...without even telling me?" Naomi asked, feeling angry although not for any discernible reason. "Without asking? Without...warning me that you were about to...to try and force my son to do something he doesn't want to do? Who are you to take that on you?"

She could see Tony trying to decide how to respond and then he bristled slightly at the implication of callousness.

"We're the people who helped McGee get away," Tony said, almost plaintively. "The people who saw him so afraid of dying that he almost did...the people who..." He stopped and looked away. "...who had to listen to him telling them that he deserved to be in prison, the people who had to feel like his jailers because he was too sick to be let out into the open. That's who we are."

Chagrined, Naomi squeezed Tony's arm. "I'm sorry...Tony. I'm sorry."

Tony shook his head quickly and smiled as he looked back. "No, I'm sorry. I guess I...maybe we all forgot for a minute that...that the Probie actually has a family. Most of us don't...at least not like he does. It seems like an MCRT requirement to be dysfunctional. ...and I'm not fulfilling my role as the happy-go-lucky guy."

Instinctively, Naomi hugged Tony. "Is that who you're supposed to be? ...because you're not very good at it."

Tony laughed and pulled back, obviously feeling awkward. "I guess not. Well...anyway...we were thinking that McGee's not going to let this go on his own. He just can't do it. Probably partly because he thinks he deserves it...for whatever reason. ...and Marjani...she needs to have those letters, and McGee wants her to have them, but he needs to be the one to give them to her. So...we tracked her down and told her about Tim, what happened and what he's doing...and that he has the letters for her but is afraid to give them to her."

"Did you tell her about her sister?"

Tony nodded, grimacing. "We didn't think it was right to make her wait to find that out, not when we knew. She cried. A lot. Ducky was there. Thank goodness."

Naomi smiled. "You say that she's here now?"

"Yeah. We actually told her a couple of days ago and then asked her if she would be willing to talk to McGee or if she'd rather just have one of us give her the letters."

"Why?"

"Well...Ducky said that she deserved the option because, even though none of us think it was McGee's fault that Alayla died, Marjani might not appreciate being asked to help the one who was there when it happened. We're all focused on McGee, but she's lost a lot herself. She asked for some time to think about it and yesterday, she came and told us that she would like to talk to McGee. I don't know what she's going to say, but I think that if anyone can get McGee away from the TV, it will be her."

"You'll have to get his attention, first," Naomi said.

"I know. I'm good at that."

"Do you want to invite Marjani up? She's welcome."

"No. I want to get McGee out of here and down to her."

"Go ahead. I hope you can." Naomi gestured toward the bedroom.

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

Tony heard Tim's voice, speaking along with the news anchor as he headed back to the bedroom.

"Hey, McGee."

"There's Pidaro. It's a new video as of this morning. They've shown it five times now. He's still alive."

"Yeah, great. Could you listen to me for a second, please?"

"I wonder if he was really guilty of anything...I don't think he was rehabilitated by being in prison, though. Some of his fellow prisoners are running around. I'll bet they're looting."

"McGee!"

Tony could tell that Tim heard him. He couldn't quite suppress the instinct to react when people spoke to him, but he was pretending that he wasn't hearing anything but the television. Well, there was an easy way to fix that. They hadn't tried it before since it was so nice to have Tim thinking about something other than his imprisonment, other than the possibility of his health degrading again. ...but now, this was all he was thinking about and it was no better. So...Tony took a breath, walked over to the television...and turned it off.

What surprised him was how quickly Tim reacted to the event. Up to this point, all they'd seen from Tim was a sluggish plod from place to place, a tentative motion forward, backward...up and down. ...and a soft voice, too soft to be natural. But not this time.

"Turn it back on!" Tim shouted, springing to his feet. "I might miss something!"

"No, McGee. We need to talk."

Tim ran at the TV, Tony easily held him back, but it was almost shocking to have Tim suddenly shift from near-sedentary to manic in two seconds.

"No! I might miss it! I have to see!"

"See what?" Tony asked. "What do you expect to see, McGee? More people running around shouting? More people getting killed? More buildings being burned and looted? What is it, you're expecting to see?"

"I have to...to see what happens," Tim said.

"McGee, it'll take weeks for you to know what is going to happen. This isn't going to stop anytime soon. It just isn't. You can't sit here all day staring at it."

"I have to!"

Tony had a firm grip on Tim's arms, and he shook him just a little.

"Why?"

"I have to..."

"Why, Tim?" Tony asked. "Please, tell me why."

"I..." Tim looked into Tony's eyes, and Tony saw Tim's pain. It had probably always been there, but he just hadn't noticed.

"Why?" he asked again, more gently.

"I can't have...a life...when...when theirs is...is in shambles. I can't live if they can't."

"Why not?"

"They gave up everything for me. ...everything...and..."

"You don't have to do the same. In fact, they don't want you to do the same."

"How do you know?"

"Because if all they wanted was for you to sit in here like a bump on a log, they wouldn't have bothered trying to save you in the first place. They saved you so that you could live, Tim! ...and if you refuse to do that, you're making it so that it means nothing! Do you think Esosa would want you to be sitting there on your bed watching her island burn?"

Tears began to form in Tim's eyes.

"Wh-What should I be doing then?"

"Getting your life back, McGee. That's what you need to do. Get your life back."

"I don't know how."

"Well, I don't either...but it's not going to be by you sitting on your butt, staring at the TV."

Tim smiled but then began to cry...and he finally stopped trying to get to the television.

"I don't want them to die."

"No one does."

"I don't want... Lugniapo is a beautiful place...and they're destroying it."

"Yes."

"Tony..." Tim tried to stop crying but couldn't and he tried to blink the tears away but more kept coming. "...they're destroying...everything. Not just the bad. The good is... Why does everything have to be...be destroyed? Why? Why do good people have to die?"

Tony felt his own throat tighten. "I don't know, Probie. If I did, I could stop it. Lots of good people die. Times like this...you can't control what happens. It just happens...and there's nothing anyone can do until it runs its course. Maybe something good will come out of it. Maybe not. ...but, McGee, you can't stop it by stopping your own life."

Tim stared at his feet and took a number of shaky breaths and then looked at Tony again.

"There's...there's something you want me to do, isn't there."

Tony smiled. "You know me too well, Probie," he said, nearly giddy with excitement inside. That was more like the Tim they all knew. The one rightfully-suspicious of Tony's motives.

"What is it?" he asked, sniffing back more tears.

"Marjani is downstairs."

Tim's eyes widened and he shook his head.

"Oh, no...Tony. Please, no. I can't tell her that..."

"She knows already. We told her...but she needs to get those letters from you. She needs to hear about everything you know of her family. She needs that from you, Probie, not from us."

"She should have them."

"Yes. From you."

"Not from me."

Tony shook Tim once more. "It can only be from you, McGee."

"Are you sure? They're not that heavy." He tried to laugh.

"You need to, McGee. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows who needs to put those letters into Marjani's hands."

More tears, shaking hands wiping them away.

"Come on, McGee. Come outside."

Tim looked out the window...for the first time in days.

"There's a lot waiting for you, McGee. ...and Marjani's first."

Tim stared at the bright sunny day.

"...and she's probably really getting bored outside, Probie," Tony said, smiling mischievously. He was relieved when Tim managed another tearful laugh.

Tim looked away from the window, at the television and then at Tony.

"Where are the letters?"