Gibbs returned to the squad room a good thirty minutes later and was surprised to find Tim still sitting at his desk like he'd been when the boss had left to go upstairs. The only difference now was that the young man wasn't working on anything. In fact, the case file he had been working on was closed and lay face down on his desk. Gibbs frowned and let his eyes roam up to his agent's computer monitor and saw that it was dark as if either turned off or enough time had lapsed for the screensaver to come on. As his eyes moved up to Tim's face, his gut clenched at the sight of his Agent sitting there staring off into space, lost deep inside whatever he was thinking about. On the off-chance that wherever he was right now, wasn't pleasant, Gibbs deliberately walked by Tim at a close enough range to grab his visual attention if he could.

As soon as Tim saw Gibbs come back, he blinked, stood up, opened his desk drawer and reached in to pull some things out before walking over to the boss' desk. Quietly, slowly and calmly, Tim put what he had in his hands down on Gibbs' desk and then and only then, did he go take the break Gibbs had encouraged him to take earlier. His demeanor had been heartbreaking but his eyes had been worrisomely guarded and Gibbs decided there and then they would need a new rulebook if they were gonna be able to figure out what was going on with this kid from now on.

With a twist in his gut, Gibbs placed the case Tim had returned to him off to the side before stowing Tim's gun and badge in his desk drawer and locking it. Picking up the young man's agency cell phone, he went in search of him hoping that he hadn't gone far. As he reached the nearest break room, Gibbs found Tim standing in front of the window watching the world outside passing him by while he stood there exuding unhappiness; The Senior Agent had the fleeting thought that the world doesn't stop turning because of something that happens, but to the victim, it's different. To the victim…to Tim, the world around them keeps going whilst theirs stops to let them get lost in their pain, grief and heartbreak.

He shook his head to clear the thought but knew that being mired in red tape from the nightmare Tim's world had become an unwilling victim to this past Saturday, was reason enough for this kid to appear as tormented as he did. Gibbs understood that. It was hard to fathom that it had only been less than a week ago, when the whole world had shifted and unsteadily rocked off its' foundation for this kid. During quiet moments like this, the parental lion within the boss couldn't help but worry what else was in store for Tim before this whole thing would settle down to become nothing but a distant, quiet memory for him…..If it ever can be.

Taking a deep breath, Gibbs readied himself to do what had to be done. Tim wasn't gonna like it, but there was nothing they could do about it except go with the way things worked. Hopefully, he'd get through it without too many problems.

"McGee."

Tim took a silent minute to take a deep breath and slowly let it out as he turned to look at his boss.

"Boss?" his tone was quiet, almost as if he'd just woken up or come back from some painful place inside himself.

The boss offered a small, almost apologetic smile as he walked up to him and told him what he'd already known was coming. "Vance's gonna try to get you that appointment today. Hopefully, this will be behind you soon and you can come back to work but in the meantime, you can stay here. I can't have you working any cases though, just riding the desk. "

Tim looked away, letting his emotions run free for a minute before forcefully reining them in and locking them away. Turning back to his boss, he gave him a small smile and gave him what he needed. He had to do what was expected of him, right?

"Okay."

Gibbs frowned. He hadn't missed Tim's physical effort to put his feelings away. It was fast becoming the norm for this kid and even though they'd known it was coming from the moment Tim had asked to talk to Ziva, Gibbs still hated to see it. Still, he'd been the one to remind everyone that they had to let Tim handle this in his own way, so he squashed his own feelings on the matter and kept going.

"This is as good a time as any to bolster Tony and Ziva's computer skills, McGee. Go set up one of the computer rooms, you can use the time before your first appointment to teach your teammates how to do the computer side of the investigations better. Give me a call when you're set up I'll send them to ya. Remember, no actual casework till you've been cleared." Gibbs told him as he handed him back his cell phone. "You keep this. Never be unreachable to me, active duty or not."

Tim nodded silently with a small smile on his face as he accepted his phone back from his boss and took a minute to soak up Gibbs' words. The boss was gonna let him teach Tony and Ziva some computer skills? Was this for real?

"McGee. Get going. I wanna hear back from you within the hour that you're ready to get started."

"Okay. Thank you, Boss." Tim answered with absolute awe in his voice. Quiet awe of the uncertain, disbelieving sort, not the supercharged, excited awe of an agent who felt like he'd just been given his dream shot at something big.

Tim quickly headed to his desk and picked up his backpack before disappearing to set up for this once in a lifetime opportunity. Gibbs grinned as he watched his agent settle into the idea of being handed his chance to shine. It had come on the heels of so much crap in his personal life and it was those issues that had brought his professional life to a dead stop, not forgetting all the red tape after that. It had to feel like a breath of fresh air for the kid and the boss was only too happy to be able to give that to him. Besides, it was common knowledge that his other two agents needed to brush up on their computer skills and that way, when Tim was cleared for field duty, he could share the donkey work more.

They also needed a reminder in McGee handling and Gibbs wanted to make sure they got that before they headed Tim's way. Waiting for them to settle in behind their desks, Gibbs watched Tony search for his little brother with eyes full of worry and uncertainty after the way Tim had bailed on him in the middle of the night.

"Boss? McGee all right?"

"Yeah, Tony, he's fine." Gibbs paused. Fine would not be an accurate description of the way Tim was right now, but he was as fine as he could be all things considered. "Need you and Ziva to get ready for a crash course in advanced computer skills."

"Boss?"

"Gibbs?" Ziva asked as she settled back into her chair once she'd returned from the ladies room.

"McGee can't work on any cases until he's cleared to come back to work and you two are overdue for training on the systems. Two birds, one stone." Gibbs explained and added a little shrug before picking up his coffee.

"Oh, Okay"

"Oh. Yes Gibbs."

The boss cocked his head and looked harder at them both when their less than enthusiastic answers struck a nerve. "There a problem?"

"No, of course not, Boss." Tony said seriously. "I was just really kinda wonderin'…"

"Tony, He's as fine as he can be. Just leave it there." Gibbs warned.

"Gotcha. Right. Okay, so where are we goin' for this training, Boss?

Gibbs' phone rang. "Yeah, Gibbs. Okay, Tim. They're on their way." Looking at Tony he answered the question. "Training Room 2."

"Where the hecks' that? I've never been to Training Room 1 let alone Training Room 2!" Tony said with surprise. "Hell, even that Sensitivity Training was held in one of the empty offices."

That's because you've never had actual extra computer training since you've been here, DiNozzo. Only training you got was that crash course all newbies get."

Tony and Ziva headed toward the back elevator.

"Wait." Gibbs told them as he walked up to them where they stopped. "Don't undermine him or give him any reason to feel belittled. Got it?"

"Boss, I…"

"Tony. Keep things as normal as possible…without any of the crap." Gibbs warned with a steely glare.

"Come on, Boss. The crap is normal!" Tony objected.

"Not today, DiNozzo. Give it a rest."

"Got it, Boss." Tony said with a sigh. He was busy wondering how he could get away with acting differently around Tim without the kid thinking something was wrong.

"DiNozzo."

"Yeah, Boss?"

"Candid Camera." Gibbs said with a smirk,

"Come again?"

"The class will be recorded for security reasons, you know, to make sure he's not doing anything wrong? You two, too!" Gibbs explained.

"Oh, right. OH! RIGHT!"

"Don't mess around." Gibbs warned as they headed out.

Two hours later found Tim needing a break from sitting in the same spot while showing his teammates new ways to trace and locate information on the system. While his 'students' ran some of those searches in a practice session, he volunteered to go out on a coffee run.

Engrossed in the case file Tim had been going through earlier that morning, Gibbs was startled by the ringing of his cell phone as it seemed to bounce off the near quiet squad room and come back at him.

"Yeah. Gibbs." He answered it gruffly.

"Agent Gibbs." Mrs. McGee's timid voice came across the line.

"Mrs. McGee. Is something wrong?" the Team Leader immediately asked. He absentmindedly got up out of his chair to move down the back stairs so he could keep this conversation out of the public set of ears on the floor.

"That's what I was calling to ask you. I know Tim probably doesn't want to hear from me. Why else would he have left here with you without even talking to me, right?" his agent's mother asked tearfully. "Is that why I haven't heard from him?"

"Mrs. McGee. Tim's doing okay. He's trying to move forward. It's taken him some time, but he's really working hard at it. Maybe he's hoping you will, too and that's' why he didn't want to talk to you before he came back here." Gibbs gently offered as he finally reached outside and kept walking out to the bench by the memorial.

"I don't understand why he won't talk to me! I'm his mother! Why is that keeping him from talking to me? I tried to protect him and I know I failed, but it wasn't because I didn't try, Agent Gibbs! He does know that, right?"

"Mrs. McGee. I'm not sure what he knows. We haven't talked about it. He could know everything; he could know nothing more than what your husband said to him on that night." Gibbs warned her. "We haven't even talked about the evidence we presented to the judge that cleared him."

"It doesn't make sense, Agent Gibbs. I read the court papers and the list of evidence you presented. Why didn't I know about the tapes? I should have known!"

"Mrs. McGee. You know your husband orchestrated things so that you wouldn't find out any more than he needed you to know. How's Sarah?" Gibbs asked her to give her a chance to calm down and refocus.

"She's quitting school, Agent Gibbs. She's withdrawing as soon as this semester's over next week. She'll lose her scholarship because her drive to do something with her life is currently in tatters. She wanted to be a writer like her big brother, but now, she's lost and I don't know how to help her. At least you got her to talk to me again. She told me about what you told her. I wanted to thank you for that."

"No need, Mrs. McGee. Your relationship with your daughter was too important to not try to do something to get it back. Maybe Sarah will change her mind about quitting school after she's had some time to recuperate from this nightmare. Tim will find his way eventually and the need to fix his relationship with you will be there again. You just need to wait until he's ready."

"But…I…" Gibbs heard her sigh on the other end of the phone. "I'm his mother. I'm sorry for what happened, I truly am, but I don't want this to come between me and my son. I knew he was protecting me, but all that stuff? I didn't know about that. Does he know that?"

"Mrs. McGee. Like I said, I don't know what Tim knows. We haven't talked about it. No one here is pushing him to talk about anything."

"I just wanted to ask him why he stayed away for so long without talking to me about what he was thinking. Won't it help him to talk about it now that that dreadful man is gone?"

"Your son wants to move on and to be honest; I don't think he'll want to talk about it any time soon. We all need to respect that, Mrs. McGee."

"My son does know I did the best I could to protect him, doesn't he, Agent Gibbs?" There was something in Mrs. McGee's pleading that broke his heart. Deep down he knew that she was a victim as well so he swallowed down anything else that he had to say to her about the way he felt, choosing instead to hopefully drive home something he thought she needed to understand about where Tim's pain would be coming from when he was strong enough to talk.

"Sometime's protecting our children means more than stopping them from gettin' physically hurt. We need to protect them from everything else as well. He's put up with too much already and needs to deal with it in his own way. I'm not gonna force him to talk to you if he doesn't want to." Gibbs knew that he sounded like a hardass at the moment, but he didn't care. He understood that this woman had been through a lot, he really did and he felt for her. What he couldn't understand was, how the hell that level abuse went on under her roof without her seeing that her kids were in trouble? How the hell could she have missed the kids' signs of trauma?

"I apologize for taking so much of your time, Agent Gibbs. I just don't know what to do. Tim's my son and I…just don't want to lose him but I don't know how to get him back."

"Tim's hurting and there's nothing anyone can say or do to take that away. You have to give him whatever space he needs to come to terms with it. He needs to choose the way works for him. What happened this weekend just meant that it came to a head and if it hadn't happened that way, then everything would have just carried on as normal for God knows how long. Your husband had a get out of jail free card because his kids were too damn scared to do anything about his threats on the rest of their family. How many years would it have gone on for, Mrs. McGee?"

"I don't know…" Tim's mom whispered brokenly down the phone before sobbing. "I just don't know."

Gibbs gave her a silent minute to pull herself together. After she took a deep breath slowly let it out, she spoke again.

"Agent Gibbs, I need to know exactly what happened that night. I can't get anyone's cooperation. I need to see what's on that tape if I don't have any chance of hearing it from Tim."

"You can't be serious. Is THAT why you wanna talk to Tim; so you can grill him about what happened that night?"

"Agent Gibbs, I have no intention of grilling my son. I know he's been through a terrible ordeal and I would not do that to him. I just wanted to talk to him about what happened. I deserve to know exactly what happened, don't you think?"

Tim felt almost normal for the first time in days and soon found himself enjoying the trip down to the front of the building and on outside. He thought back to the fun he'd had in the last two hours teaching and watching his teammates as they hunted and pecked their way through their searches, Tim couldn't help but smile as he walked. The fresh air whispered across his face as the sun shining brightly without the heat that made it uncomfortable. He held his head up and let the pleasant warmth from the sun drench his face and smiled.

As he strolled down the street toward the coffee shop, his mind basked in the joy of the moment of doing something so mundane and familiar that for the moment, this was his life; not the miserable existence that he'd lived through at home or the horrible nightmare that had crashed through his life this past weekend. He was where he belonged and the fact that he felt that with every single fiber of his being was firm proof of that.

"Not from Tim!"

Tim stopped, frozen in disbelief and horror at what he was hearing and what it could potentially mean. His feet seemed to root themselves to the spot as he tried to listen into to Gibbs' conversation without him knowing he was there.

"I don't understand why you believe he wouldn't be able to talk to me about it."

From where Tim was, he couldn't make out the voice on the other end of the line, but the fact that it was so quiet where he was and the close proximity, meant he could just make out a female voice. It was too distorted and quiet for him to identify it, but the feeling in his gut made him realize, that whoever it was, knew what was going on.

"Mrs. McGee. You forget that I know what happened in that study. I saw the tapes and the abuse Tim suffered. Even if he agreed to talk to you about this, I would do my best to talk him out of it, for his own good. You need to let this go, at least until Tim's had time to get back on his feet."

I just want to help, Agent Gibbs. How can I help if I don't know exactly what's going on with him or what happened that night?"

"If you wanna help, then let him deal with it in his own time, Mrs. McGee. Hes not ignoring you, he just doesn't know how to cope with it all. Let him come to you. Don't push him."

Tim balked slightly when he heard Gibbs mention his Mom. It was one thing knowing that he was be spoken about, but why was Gibbs talking to his mother? He decided that he'd heard enough and slipped away silently so that he could retreat back to the building. The coffee's had been forgotten in lieu of what he heard and it was almost as if he were flying on auto-pilot anyway as the short part of the conversation he heard swirled round in his mind. He wasn't surprised to find that his feet had taken him back to the training room and when he returned to Tony and Ziva, he just plunked himself down in his chair.

As his concerned teammates looked at him, all they saw was a glimpse of the man they'd seen back at the correctional center and it didn't sit well with them. Silently, they exchanged glances with each other and slipped out of the room in search of some answers as to what the hell had just happened to their Probie.

"All right, Agent Gibbs. Thank you. I appreciate you talking to me about this. I know you must think the worst of me now, but I know Tim's in good hands with you watching out for him. For that, I thank you."

"Mrs. McGee. It's not my place to judge. And don't worry, I'll look after Tim. We all will."

"Thank you. Thank you so much." Mrs. McGee said softly before she ended the call.

Gibbs took a deep breath and slowly let it out before he turned around and headed back inside. The work day still needed to be gotten through, and hopefully, Leon had managed to pull the right strings and they could get Tim the appointment he needed to be cleared to come back to work.