Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at /works/27243241.

Hello yes I'm author and I'm salty. This is mostly stream-of-consiousness from Tim's perspective where I mostly ignore canon and take the bits I need.

Additional warnings for canonical torture, mild references to medicine and alcohol, mild references to vomit, self harming (punching something) and slight hallucinations

Obviously spoilers for and up to Paraguay

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Tim doesn't wake up with a gasp, or a cliche like that. He doesn't wake up screaming. In fact, he doesn't have to wake up at all. He's been staring at the ceiling, counting the cracks coming in from the edges, because counting sheep was useless and anything else hadn't worked even before this, before getting back from Paraguay. The bed is warm, though, and Delilah's there, so he stays, even if he hasn't been to sleep yet.

He hasn't slept in some time.

He understands why, of course. He remembers Kate, fitfully asleep on the floor next to her chair, Ziva, collapsed at the same desk, Tony slumping against nearby walls wherever possible. Remembers trying to keep up with Gibbs. Sleeping isn't something MCRT agents do a lot of. He hadn't, even before this, mind running three hundred miles per hour and eyes drooping as he types in another line of code. It's most of the reason he knows how little the others sleep, because he's watched them.

He does a lot of watching, of seeing the comms go dead and static in his ear, explosions he knows the location of without seeing it, of watching the man hold the fabric over his face and watching Gibbs choke and thrash around water that he can't stop, yelling and rubbing his wrists raw on cuffs, wrists that are barely healed from the last time and

Stop. Breathe. He needs coffee, but doesn't want to wake Dee. Leave a note on the sideboard, go grab coffee from that all night place with the kid who plays music far too aggressive for the time of night, who smiles without pity and drops their prices without mentioning. They push a cookie, still warm, across the counter and ask him if he's seen 'the other genius, the floppy hair one'. He denies being that clever, and they smile and mention he hasn't been around for a while. No pity. Too much knowing. He mutters something about Paraguay and they look at his wrists and welcome him back. He nods, and leaves, and walks through the streets with far too much in his head to process until he's through his front door and his computer has finished installing the update.

He doesn't have ghosts the way Gibbs does, doesn't carry the weight of killing in the name of duty. The weight of his duty is smaller, fainter ghosts he never pulled the trigger on but condemned just the same. His ghosts are all the family he's lost, seeing Tony's smirk in strangers and quoting movies to Torres's blank face. Ziva's hand on his cheek, a blended metaphor, the girl in the train station who looks so like Kate it hurts. He misses his siblings.

Delilah must wake up at some point, puts a sleep-warm arm over his back. He turns to look at her, and her eyes are full of concern.

"How long have you been awake?"

"A while."

"That's two weeks, Tim, you've barely slept. Should you tell the doctor?"

The first case she officially worked on with him, Tony hadn't slept in three days. The irony is dully noted somewhere in the back of his brain for a better time.

"I'm fine, Dee, just got work to catch up on. I had a nightmare, and figured I may as well grab a coffee and get it done now."

"Is talking about it...helping?"

"Of course."

He's lying through his teeth.

Dr Confalone looks at him with shrewd eyes.

"I declared you fit for duty."

"...yeah."

Her posture is full of intentional calm, and openness. He forces his eyes as close as to hers as he can make them go, and tries not to fidget.

"I may have been hasty, in that decision. You clearly haven't been sleeping."

"I get a few hours in."

"Two, three? Less?"

"I didn't sleep very much before."

"Before, how many hours of sleep did you get on an average day? Honestly."

"Around five or six, but only because of averaging out."

"When was the last time you got eight or more hours of continual sleep?"

The thing is, he can't remember. Maybe before college. All-nighters and nightmares and headaches, pouring kids Tylenol into coffee to push through. Hitting the ground hard after the bomb, feeling consciousness slipping and thinking finally some sleep.

"Tim, that isn't healthy."

"I know. I'm used to it though."

"Is it mostly all-nighters or nightmares?"

When he first started, all-nighters. Since Kate died, and Michelle and Mike and Jackie and Ziva and his dad, since shooting the cop and watching and the bomb and almost losing Dee and Paraguay, it's mostly nightmares.

"I'm not sure you should be in the field, Agent McGee."

That's that. He's stuck on desk duty again, watching. He waits for them to come home and every subtle hint something might be wrong sends him into a numb panic. He sleeps even worse. One time, Torres ends up in hospital, and he has to excuse himself to throw up. Delilah drops a dish and he curls himself into a corner with his head between his knees, trying to force air into uncooperative lungs because it was pitch perfect to the sound of that bat hitting the door.

His head is throbbing, and the words are gently pulsing into gibberish on the page in front of him. He used to get a few hours' sleep, but today is too much, and he's ill, like he always was as a kid when he got tired or stressed, entire back of his head pressing spines into his brain when he moves. Thinking feels like moving through a foam pit, every part of him simultaneously hot and cold and aching. He's so tired, but he can't sleep. He needs to focus on this page. It's an artist's alibi, unnecessarily detailed. He's pretty sure it wasn't her, but he's reading the whole thing anyway, in case he's wrong. Some artistic word comes up, maybe a technique or something. Kate will know.

"Kate, what does this mean?"

A stranger is looking at him strangely from his desk- wait, why is he sat at Tony's desk?

"Why am I in Tony's chair?"

Kate isn't at her desk. It's another stranger, blonde, and clearly concerned.

"Are you okay, Tim?" Says the woman.

"Where's Kate, I need her help. I don't know what this means."

The man looks at him.

"Who's Kate?"

He can hear them talking to Gibbs, when he comes back. Muttered questions about who Kate is. Gibbs doesn't reply, walks off like he does when he's seeing ghosts. What does that even mean, seeing ghosts? Gibbs doesn't have that many ghosts.

"This is one of Tony's pranks, isn't it?"

The strangers look at each other.

"I'll call Abby."

"She's gone home. Try Autopsy."

He sits there, doesn't bother trying to see through the prank. Tony'll show up soon, to revel in another success. Kate will come back from getting dinner, or wherever she is.

Palmer shows up, bizarrely confident, starts talking to the strangers like he knows them. It's weird Tony isn't back yet, because he seems to have a sixth sense, for the kid who's technically been a part of the team longer, if only officially. They're talking quietly, but he's good at listening.

"Dr Mallard is out, but I've called him. Is he..."

"He keeps asking about Tony."

"Ok, so he's maybe hallucinating..."

"And Kate."

Palmer falls silent, at that.

"That's not good."

"Who is she, Jimmy? I asked Abby when I first got here and she wouldn't tell me."

"She was the agent who sat in your desk before Ziva. Kate Todd."

"Should we call her? See if she can help?"

"She was killed in the line of duty. Shot through the head by a terrorist."

"Jesus."

"It...it messed us all up pretty good. I didn't even really know her, but Tony, and Gibbs and Tim? They were all there. Tim wasn't on the rooftop, but still."

"So if he's..."

"If he's seeing ghosts from twelve years ago? I'm not sure if we can be any help."

Kate's dead. That's where she is. He wants to cry, for the agent he's always looked up to and the woman he could almost regard his big sister, but nothing happens. He's so tired.

Dr Confalone is staring at him.

"Tim, you need to say something in these sessions, or they won't help."

"All I do in these sessions is talk."

"You talk, but you don't say anything. Your coworkers have all noted you're an intensely private person, and all your previous psych evals have gone very well despite the trauma you've experienced."

"That's a good thing, isn't it? Paraguay is just staying with me a bit."

"The level of symptoms you're displaying shouldn't have developed in any of the events since your last evaluation. The last evals, did you answer honestly?"

"Yes."

"Then what aren't you saying?"

He ends up on Gibbs's doorstep, and can't quite make himself go in. His jacket isn't thick enough for this weather, but he doesn't feel real, like his body is somewhere else and he's still fucking watching again. He smashes his fist into the nearest surface until he's suddenly in Gibbs's living room with a bandage around his knuckles. Gibbs comes back with a mason jar of whiskey, and he drinks it so fast the concern becomes clear as a shard of glass, then throws up in a trash can he doesn't remember getting to. He just sits on the sofa, until he breaks the silence.

"Tim, what the hell is going on?"

That's a good question.

"I...I don't know, boss."

He eyes him for a second.

"Have you spoken to Dr Confalone recently?"

He nods his head, probably. He knows he doesn't cry. Straighten your spine. His grandfather had spent every Fourth of July in the basement with a bottle of whiskey, and later ear defenders. His father never handled his drink well. He hasn't touched a drop in months, and before then he didn't often. He doesn't want to accept his blood, doesn't want to be like them. He never wanted to hurt anyone.

"Tim, you're going to need to go to the hospital for this. You've broken at least something."

He can't feel a thing. Gibbs sighs.

"I'll call Ducky."

Ducky arrives, and he and Gibbs exchange a few words he doesn't bother to catch. He's so tired. He can't feel the breaks, but his bones feel heavy.

"Alright, Timothy, let's take a look."

Ducky keeps saying something to him, but it's just a noise, just words. His wrist starts to hurt, and he's glad that it's finally him who's hurt, that he doesn't have to watch this time. He's got a scar from the bomb, and he should've have come back for weeks, but it didn't hurt.

"Where did you find him Jethro?"

"Outside, just hitting my wall. I've already told Delilah not to come."

"A wise move. His hand, how did it..."

"I don't know, but there was a lot of blood. What's wrong, Duck?"

"Has he said anything else about watching?"

"I'm not sure he knows he's saying his thoughts aloud."

"He's been talking to Dr Confalone?"

"He said so."

Ducky leaves, at some indeterminate point, with a pat on the shoulder. Gibbs places a plastic mug of coffee in his hands, and sits next to him, angled forward, ready to talk. He always does that. Tim has watched him enough times.

"You know it's probably PTSD, right?"

"That's what the doctor said," Silence. "Any tips?"

Gibbs laughs.

"If I had any tips, I would be using them myself."

Neither of them move.

"You ever hurt yourself before?"

"Not in a while. Didn't want hurt Dee, but it all got a bit much."

His eyelids droop before Gibbs can say anything else. He catches one question, though, meant to be rhetorical.

"How long have you been watching, kid?"

Tim sleeps on Gibbs's couch that night, not nearly enough, and in the morning, both of them pretend they're fine.

He calls Tony one night, because he hasn't seen him in however long and he needs to know he's ok. Needs to have his advice. Tony answers with his usual class-clown manner and Tim can breathe again, now his big brother is talking to him. Tony asks him what he's doing up, even though it's a reasonable hour in Paris it's too early in DC. He doesn't need to lie to Tony, tells him about the not sleeping and the nightmares and the not-breathing. About seeing ghosts. Tony's voice goes the way it goes when he drops the act, and admits it hasn't gotten any better for him even with Tali, that he had to get himself medication to be closer to alright for her.

"Do they work for this?" He says, letting his voice crack and splinter. Tony knows he takes meds already; it'd be hard not to know with all the stakeouts they've been on. Anxiety meds on the bad days he's had since he was a kid, not strong, not working at the minute. Pain meds for when his scar aches, from the bomb.

"Sometimes. Most the time. It just makes the world a little less pointy, and a little more colourful."

Tony has always had a way with words, even if he'd never admit to it.

"I..."

"Sort it tomorrow, Tim. Slow down. Get some sleep."

"I can't."

"Ok then. Play COD with me. Hell, when Wheels gets home, bring her online."

They always used to play video games together, after Tony left. He realises how much he missed it.

"I'm gonna be rusty."

"Relax, McGeek. You'll be on my level."

"Ok."

"Great. Switch over to discord, we can add Abs and the Gremlin in too."

It's the most Tim has laughed since the sheer joy the night he got back. Nobody brings it up, they just play, swearing at each other and destroying almost anyone who goes up against them. Delilah comes home with a box of pizza and joins the instant she sees the screen.

And sure, he's not better yet. He may never be truly better. But he's in the moment, and he can finally stop watching.

()

the ending is a touch sudden, sorry, I just ran out of ideas at the end and thought I'd give him a nice thing.

title is from Trapdoor by Twenty One Pilots

thanks for reading!