Chapter 20

There had been no contact from Gibbs for two days and Ziva was trying not to worry about what that could mean.

"He'll call," Tony said, suddenly.

Ziva looked up.

"What?"

Tony walked over and perched on the edge of her desk.

"He'll call, Ziva. Besides, you know Gibbs. He could easily have got lost with the GPS. For all we know, he's pulled out his gun and shot it because it keeps leading him astray."

Ziva smiled reluctantly, and Tony got serious.

"Yeah, I know," he said. "If he's not calling, that means that there's something going wrong. But at least he's there."

"Maybe, he is there," Ziva said.

"Hey, I know that you're still mad at him, and I don't blame you, but he's been a lot better. If he said he'd go, he'll be there. If he said he'd call, he will... when he has something to say," Tony said.

"Gibbs rarely says anything," Ziva said.

Tony laughed. "Yeah, but he'll have something to say when he finds Tim."

"You think Oliver is right?"

"Of course. He knows his stuff. I'm not going to be the one to question the expert on it. Are you questioning?"

"No. I just..." Ziva sighed. "Tony, I am afraid of what Gibbs will find. I am afraid of the worst it could be. Tim has been gone so long...and what if that is because... he is dead?"

Tony shook his head quickly. Maybe too quickly.

"Don't think about it that way. If you'll accept some advice from a nonexpert in all this stuff, the best thing you can do is hope that it works out. If it's bad, it'll be bad whether you expect it or not. You know the possibility is there, but you don't have to focus on that."

"I know...but I should not just expect everything to be perfect."

"Of course not, but you don't anyway, do you?"

"No. That is naive."

"Okay. So you've already got that part taken care of. Just..."

Then, the phone rang. Ziva snatched it up and barely took the time to see Gibbs' name before she answered.

"Yes, Gibbs?" she asked.

"I found the house."

"And?"

"Definitely belongs to McGee."

"How is he?"

"Don't know."

"What? Why not? Could you not ask him?" Ziva asked, impatiently.

"No."

"Gibbs, you are not making sense."

"He's not here, Ziva," Gibbs said, and there was a tinge of worry in his voice. "I found the house, but he's not in it and he hasn't been for a while. I've looked all over the property. No sign of him at all."

Ziva looked at Tony, and she knew he could see the fear in her eyes.

"Put it on speaker," he said, quietly.

Ziva nodded and did so. They both leaned over the phone to listen.

"I've been trying to find some sign of him in the area, but no one knows who he is. Talked to the people in the houses closest to his. No one even knew he was here. They didn't realize anyone was living in the house. Thought it was being used as a summer vacation home."

"And you're sure it's where he was staying?" Tony asked.

"Yeah."

No hesitation. Tony looked at Ziva and raised an eyebrow.

"How? If he wasn't there, how could you know for sure?"

"The typewriter."

"Oh. Any sign of how he was doing, then?"

"Yeah. Bad."

"How bad?" Tony asked, meeting Ziva's gaze again.

"Thousands of pages he typed that just say Abby is dead over and over again."

"Thousands?" Ziva asked, feeling horrified. Gibbs wasn't prone to exaggeration. If he said thousands, he meant thousands.

"Yes."

Tony took a breath. "Yeah. That sounds bad. What are you going to do, Boss?"

"Keep looking. I'm not coming back until I find him. You can tell Jenny that if she asks."

"Will do. What comes next?"

"Local LEOs. I'll be doing that tomorrow."

"What about McGee's parents?" Ziva asked.

"Tell them or not. I don't know. He's not here right now, but he was."

"I will tell them," Ziva said. "But I will make sure they know that we have not found him yet."

"Okay. I'm going to find him."

"Good," Ziva said. That was all. She couldn't express confidence right at the moment.

Gibbs hung up without another word. Ziva did the same. Then, she sat back and thought about what this could mean. Tim wasn't in the house he had purchased, but he had been. For a long time. Typing out his trauma. He hadn't ever got better. She had hoped that, with the time away, he might have begun to recover. But that was a naive thought. She should have known better.

"Gibbs will find him," Tony said.

"Maybe."

"No," Tony said. "I'm not being naive. Gibbs said he's not coming back until he finds McGee. That means he's not going to come back until he finds McGee. You know that when he says something like that, he means it."

"Alive or dead?" Ziva asked.

"Hey, Ziva?"

"Yes?"

"Go down and hang out with your fiancé for a while."

Ziva felt her brow furrow.

"What?"

"You need cheering up, and my attempts aren't working. Oliver makes you happy. Go and hang with him for now. We're only doing cold cases up here anyway while Gibbs is gone."

There was that temptation, but at the same time, part of Ziva didn't want to give in to it. She had lived the majority of her life not needing comfort from anyone. She wasn't sure she wanted to give up that part.

Tony smiled as if he could read her mind.

"Come on. You can be the amazing ninja warrior some other time. Go down and be happy with Oliver."

Ziva couldn't help but smile back. She stood up and started for the elevator. Then, she stopped.

"Tony?"

"Yeah?"

She leaned over and hugged him.

"Thank you."

"Hey, any time...unless Oliver gets jealous. Wouldn't want that."

"No, you wouldn't."

Tony grinned and made some shooing motions. Ziva took a breath and went down to the lab. She walked in and saw Teresa at her computer and Oliver in the office, like usual.

Teresa looked up and smiled.

"Hey, Ziva." Then, her eyes widened. "Oh... have you heard anything?" she asked.

Ziva felt her smile waver, and she knew that Teresa noticed.

"What is it? What happened?" Then, before Ziva could say anything Teresa started waving frantically at the office to get Oliver's attention.

"Teresa, you do not need to..."

Then, Oliver finally noticed and looked up. He quickly came out.

"Hey, what's up?"

"Something's wrong," Teresa said.

Oliver's brow furrowed. "What?"

"Gibbs found the house," Ziva said.

"It wasn't Tim's," Oliver guessed.

"No. It was. But Tim was not there."

"Not there?"

"No, and... and he found Tim's typewriter and he said there were thousands of pages of typing, just one sentence over and over again."

"What sentence?" Oliver asked.

"Abby is dead."

"On thousands of pages," Teresa whispered. "Oh, no."

Ziva nodded. "I am afraid that... the reason Gibbs cannot find him..."

Oliver got it in a moment and he hugged her tightly. There was silence in the lab for a long moment as Ziva just let Oliver comfort her.

"I never let myself care about people before. I am... not sure I like it," she whispered. "It is easier when you do not have to worry about losing them."

Oliver laughed softly. "I promise. It's better to care about people with the potential of losing them than to never care at all. The pain is worth it. I promise."

Ziva took a breath and pulled back. She looked at both of them.

"I said I would call Tim's parents, but... I do not know if I want to be the one to say that we found where Tim was, but all we know is that things are bad."

"Gibbs is still looking?"

"Yes."

"Then, maybe you should wait another day or two," Oliver said. "I don't know if it's the right answer or not, but give Gibbs a chance to find him."

"But they should know."

"Why don't you give it until the end of the week?" Teresa suggested. "It's only a couple of days. Then, call, no matter what the situation is and let them decide what to do. But first, see if we can give them the happy ending they want."

Ziva smiled a little. "I do not know if that is possible, even if Tim is alive."

"Not right away, but it could still happen, and they'll have part of it if we find Tim."

Ziva took another deep breath and allowed herself to be persuaded.

"Very well. I will wait."

"Okay. See you after work?" Oliver asked.

Ziva nodded.

"Okay."

Oliver kissed her quickly and Ziva left the lab. She hoped she was making the right decision to wait. She hoped that Gibbs would figure out where Tim was, no matter what state he was in.

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

Tim sat listlessly by the window, looking out at the world that kept turning over without him in it. It didn't really seem to make a difference whether he was there or not. Maybe he should take that as a sign.

...but really, he knew that he shouldn't. He was the one who had tried to make sure the world didn't have him in it. What all this really meant was that he had mostly succeeded.

After three days at the hospital, being forced to talk about how he felt over and over, being forced to deal with it, he could honestly say that the doctors were probably right that he didn't need to do what he had been doing.

But it didn't change the fact that he still felt like he should be punishing himself. He still felt guilty.

And he didn't know why, but ever since he'd started talking about it, he'd started having terrible nightmares that often left him screaming or crying...or both. He hated it, and yet, he was being told that he was making good progress.

He didn't feel like he was.

He felt tired, worn out, grief-stricken and guilty.

All in all, he didn't see this as progress in any way.

"Hey, Tim. How are you feeling?"

Tim looked away from the window and saw Mark standing there. He tried to smile, but he couldn't. He just sighed and looked back to the window again.

"That good, huh."

"You don't have to come and visit me, Mark. I know you're glad to get away from me."

"Oh, come on, Tim. Just because I told you to come here doesn't mean I want to get away from you. I just want you to get better."

"I'm not."

"Not yet."

"Never," Tim said, darkly.

"I see what the doc meant. You are in a bit of a depression, but you really do seem better than you were at my place. This is helping you, Tim. It's just that it's going to take a while and you can't rush it."

"I'm not."

"I know," Mark said. "You're dragging your feet because you still don't think you should let yourself feel better. Right?"

Tim just shrugged and sighed again.

Mark walked over and sat down.

"Hey, come on. The reason this sucks so much is because you're letting yourself really be upset for the first time. It's probably how you should have been feeling last year when it happened. You can't just let it go and never work through it, right?"

"Mark, I'm not going to cheer up right now," Tim said, feeling resentful. "You don't have to keep trying."

"I'm not. I'm trying to get you to acknowledge that this doesn't have to be the end of things. You're in a bad situation right now but things can get better, even if they're not right now. Tim, you need to have hope for things to get better."

"Why?"

"Tim, people are here looking for you. Right now."

That finally got Tim to look at Mark.

"What?"

"The police stopped by my store this morning and showed me your picture. They said that there was someone up here looking for you and they were going around, asking if anyone had seen you."

"What did you say?"

"I said I wasn't sure but that I didn't think so. I only said that so that I could come here and talk to you," Mark said. "I'm not going to lie for long. So you need to tell me what I'm going to tell the police."

"Huh?"

"Am I going to tell the police where you are and tell them to contact this person, whoever it is..."

"Gibbs," Tim said, softly. "It'll be Gibbs."

"How do you know?"

"No matter why he's here, he'd never let anyone be here before him, not even my family."

"What gives him the right to do that?"

Tim smiled painfully. "Nothing. He just does it anyway. He'll have a reason why it needs to be him first, but it'll still be him first."

"So... am I going to give them permission to tell this Gibbs where you are or am I going to tell them that you're fine but you don't want to see anyone from your old life? I'll do either one, but you need to tell me which. If he's here looking for you after nearly a year, Tim, you know that means that they still care about you."

"Not necessarily. It could just be to lecture me about leaving."

"No one keeps looking this long just so that they can deliver a lecture."

"You don't know Gibbs," Tim said, grimacing.

"Well, if he tries, I'll be right there to cut him off."

Tim didn't want to see Gibbs. Of all the people he had left behind, Gibbs was one he really didn't want to see because he knew that, of all of them, Gibbs was the most likely to blame him for Abby's death, and Tim still felt he deserved that, but he couldn't tolerate what he deserved.

"No. I don't want to see him."

"Okay. Then, I'll make sure that they know that and can pass on the fact that you're alive and safe, but that you're not interested in letting your family and friends know where you are."

Tim just nodded.

Mark got up and started to leave, but then, he turned back.

"Is this really what you want, Tim? You want to reject the chance you have to be with your family and friends again? And don't give me that crap about what you deserve. I'm only asking about what you want."

Tim didn't want to answer that question.

"It's not about what I want," Tim whispered.

"Yes, it is. Whether you want to admit it or not, that's what it is."

Tim fell back on the one thing he was sure of which would allow him not to answer the question.

"I don't want to see Gibbs," he whispered. He turned back to the window.

"Okay," Mark said.

He might have been disappointed, but Tim didn't care about that. He had too many other things he was dealing with right now to see Gibbs.

Suddenly, he felt Mark's hand on his shoulder. He squeezed it gently.

"Tim, things will get better. I can tell you don't think so, but they will. Just let them."

"Yeah," Tim said, almost inaudibly.

He heard Mark leave the room and he kept staring out the window.

They'd found him here. How? Where had he gone wrong? He should have been completely hidden. What was going to happen now? Gibbs wouldn't give up, especially if he knew that Tim was in the area. ...but would he ever think of looking in a psychiatric hospital? Tim was sure he wouldn't. Gibbs would only be here to berate him for leaving. He wouldn't think that Tim actually had any problems. He didn't deserve to have problems. It was his fault all this had happened so...

"Tim?"

Tim looked away from the window.

"Dr. Lee is ready for you."

"Oh. Okay."

Reluctantly, Tim left his spot and followed the nurse off to be forced to talk about all this yet again.