Other men it is said have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough. -- George Moore

Chapter Three

Two days after the funeral, Tony looked up when the elevator dinged, signaling its arrival at the squad room. "Pro—Tim?! What are you doing here??"

Ziva and Tony flocked to their teammate, dressed neatly in a suit coat and tie, his face and eyes still saturated with pain. "Where's Gibbs?" Tim asked with a gulp, grateful for their embraces. "I need to—"

"What do you need, McGee?" Gibbs said softly, coming into view. "I didn't expect you back this soon."

"I—I'm not back, boss. I need more time off. A month or so, I think. I figured I'd have to sign something extra to get that much time…"

Gibbs nodded. "And the Director needs to approve it, though I can't imagine that she wouldn't do it. Come on, let's go see her."

Minutes later they were seated in Jenny's office. "Of course you can take the time off, Tim," Jenny said. "Take all that you need. Do you have enough annual leave time to cover it?"

"Er, no, Director. I have 79 hours. I'll need to go for leave without pay for the rest, if that's okay."

"You still have 24 hours of your sick leave that you can use under the Family Friendly Leave Act," said Gibbs. "Why not use that?"

"Yeah, okay, thanks," Tim said numbly. After the last few years of squandering hours so they'd be available to deal with a sick child or something dealing with his family, suddenly…his hours were all his own again. His, and he was alone.

"What do you plan to do, Tim?" asked Jenny.

"My parents…they've asked me to come stay with them for awhile. Back home."

"That sounds good, Tim. Stay in touch, and let us know if we can do anything for you."

Back in the squad room, Tim looked at his desk to see if there was anything he wanted to take with him. He couldn't think of anything. He didn't know what to do with the wedding photo on his desk, so he only touched it, tenderly, and left it there. Will I want to see it when I come back? Will I be mad at myself if I put it in a drawer now? These last few horrible days, he'd been content to let others make his decisions for him. Now his parents had returned home, his teammates were working, and Tim felt unable to move.

"When does it stop, boss?" Tim asked Gibbs. "The hurting?"

Gibbs looked at him, knowing so well what Tim was going through. "You don't want it to stop, entirely, Tim. You don't want to lose all of the anger you're feeling now toward the SOB who did this. In time, though, the hurting will lessen…and the love will come forward. And then you'll have that, always."

Tim left then, after farewell hugs from Tony and Ziva. They searched his eyes, silently imploring him to come back to NCIS, when he was ready. It also dimly registered in his mind that they were calling him 'Tim', but he didn't comment. He couldn't find the words. All he knew was that he was broken, and somehow needed to heal. The alternative was to give up, and he couldn't…that was no way to honor Erin, Scott and Neil.

- - - - -

Arriving in Fargo the next day, he was met at the airport by his mother. After a long hug, Tim said, "Where's Dad?"

"Kale is taking Sarah shopping," said Cleo, her eyes on the luggage carousel, looking for Tim's suitcases. "She needs clothes more suitable for San Diego weather, and he wasn't about to just hand over his credit card. Not with her recent track record."

Tim sighed. "She's leaving soon? She doesn't want to see me." Cleo didn't answer, and Tim knew he'd guessed right.

His sister and father had just arrived home when Tim and his mother arrived. Tim and his father embraced. From the corner of his eye he saw a young woman with short, red, spiky hair reading a book and ignoring them. "I want to get a cold pop," Tim murmured, and headed for the fridge.

He was sitting at the kitchen table alone, drinking a Diet Coke, when to his surprise Sarah came in and sat down across from him. "Tim? I—I'm sorry."

"Sorry for what?" he snapped. "You couldn't be bothered to come to the funeral because you had tickets for a concert!"

"I know. That was so shallow of me. You must hate me, and I totally earned that. But I was sitting here alone for a couple of days while mom and dad were in D.C. with you, and I thought a lot. All because Erin wasn't Abby, I was so mad at you. And her. And the babies she had, my nephews, whom I never saw and now never will…" She broke down then, and clung to Tim when he held her.

- - - - -

His days were mostly spent in the countryside, his father's pickup pulled off the road. He would sit on the truck's hood, or in the grass at the road's edge, North Dakota was a mass of sunflower fields; that being one of the state's largest cash crops. The yellow and brown flowers bobbed in the slight July breeze.

This was the sight he'd known and loved since his family had moved to North Dakota from Oklahoma when he was around 12. Peaceful, yet full of life energy. How much effort a plant puts into growing, Tim remembered having thought long ago. Now, he was back home, hoping to borrow some of the strength he used to take from the land.

The weather was beautiful: sunny, not too hot, and the rains were holding off until after dark most days. Still Tim was unsatisfied. Under the enormous bowl of prairie sky, where the horizon stretched off almost to infinity, he tried to find an echo of what was in his heart, and couldn't. The land was saying the same things it had been when he was a boy, and probably for eons before that.

Most nights he spent in his parents' house, but some nights he had to get out of there, too. One night he stretched out on the hood, watching the sky darken at 10 p.m. A few cumulus clouds drifted slowly overhead. One enormous one with a gray bottom had lightening flash in its bowels now and then, a sight odd and wonderful, and yet still so natural.

He knew, soon after that, why he wasn't getting the answers from the land. It was because he wasn't asking the right questions. So at last he asked, in his mind, Where do I go from here? The answer reverberated in him almost immediately. You go on living and live a long, full life.

Didn't the land care? Is this all that life had to say to him? He watched a hawk soar in circles before diving for a mouse. And then it sunk in: Life, the planet, the cosmos doesn't revolve around me. I'm just a speck. There are probably millions of other tragedies happening this moment around the globe. And here I was critical of Sarah for wanting to help desperate people in Africa…

Erin, Scott and Neil, the three people who had owned the largest part of his heart, were dead. They weren't coming back. He could mourn them, and he would, but the fact that he was still alive meant that he had to accept that he, too, was part of the living world…and that his role was to go on living. He would cherish his wife and babies forever, but he would go on.

He drove to the brick ranch-style house, through neighborhoods where the scent of barbecues cooking supper came at him from all directions. Mom had promised bratwurst and corn on the cob tonight. He hugged her when he came in, as he always did. "I've been here 28 days," he said. "It's time for me to go home."

- - - - -

He walked into NCIS two days later, receiving hugs again from his teammates, and a pat on the back from Gibbs. It was just like he'd never left…although he knew that at the end of the day he'd be going back to an empty house.

His wish of their getting a new case so he could keep his mind off things wasn't granted. In the late morning, seeing Tim's mind wander yet again, Gibbs sent him down to Abby to get test results for an old case.

"Tim!! I heard you were coming back today!" Abby came at him and hugged him tightly, but let him go fairly quickly. "I'm so sorry, still. I did send you a couple of emails, didn't you get them?"

Smiling ruefully, he said, "I didn't look at any email for a couple of weeks. I—I didn't want to do much of anything that took effort."

She nodded. "And you probably didn't want to see anything that reminded you of Washington. Good news or not."

"Yeah. You guys got a hot lead on the guys that did it. I read that email just a few days ago."

"You'll have to ask your team for the details. I only did my bit."

"Thanks. I mean it. Thanks."

She dismissed that with a wave. "Are you okay, Tim? Do you need anything? Your friends here want to help, if you'll let us."

"Well, if you really want to…"

"Yes! I do! We do!"

"I've decided to sell the house and move back into an apartment. I don't need all that space anymore, and can't afford it. If you guys can help me pack…"

"Just tell us when. We'll be there." She held his hands and gazed into his grass-green eyes, feeling so glad that this person she had once considered her best friend was back. She had been afraid that he'd stay on in North Dakota, way out there in upper Midwest, an area as strange and unfathomable to her as Mars. But here he was. Maybe they could be best friends again.

- - - - -

Tim was forbidden from having any connection to the case involving the car bombing, though the rest of his team put every spare minute in it. "We're going to get that bastard, Tim," Tony assured him. "I've never wanted to nail a piece of crap as much as I want him."

And they did, within a month. It turned out to be the brother of the landlord whom Erin had seen, five years ago, strangling a sailor. The brother had also been a small-time criminal who in the heat of the moment killed the young female Marine, and then in a botched robbery, killed the old petty officer. It wasn't until Tim started poking at the cold cases that the brother had felt the law closing in on him. He'd killed another person or two along the way, and when Tim had shrugged off the threatening notes, he'd upped the threats with a car bomb. He hadn't realized that this would only make an agent angrier.

All of NCIS sighed with relief when the perp decided to plead guilty. He might get a life sentence. There was always the risk that something would fall apart with a trial, and Tim's friends silently thought reliving everything at a trial might crush him.

- - - - -

The packing session at Tim's house was an all-day affair, despite the fact that Tim and Erin had been orderly people. Tim was looking for a small apartment, probably not much larger than his old one in the Silver Spring brownhouse had been. He threw away or gave away most of their possessions, including Erin's and the boys' clothes, trinkets and toys. Jimmy quietly took a lot from the 'throw away' pile, and in a month presented Tim with a substantial check; the proceeds from the eBay sales.

Pictures, Tim saved. He was at the point of being able to look at them again—not for long, but for a little while. When he put the framed pictures in packing boxes, he already looked forward to unpacking them at his new place. And there were hundreds on his computer, as well. He could glimpse his little family any time he wanted to, and his heart would warm again.

- - - - -

He found himself crossing paths with Abby more and more often, by some benevolent design of nature. She was the good sounding board she had once been when they were close, years ago. They started having lunch together frequently. Four months after the car bombing, they took in a movie together, then some dinners, shows, and concerts.

At first Tim was reluctant to say anything about these dates—as he now admitted to himself they were—to his team, but he should have known that they would notice. "You deserve happiness, Tim," said Ziva. "The past is past. Look to the future." Tony smiled and nodded. Tim felt more at ease. He would always love Erin, but he couldn't tie himself to her forever.

On his third night at Abby's, Tim pulled back from her kisses, and squeezed his eyes shut against the tears. "I'm getting a vasectomy," he told her. "I can't—I can't bear the thought of bringing another baby into the world, only to have him or her die because of me."

"Tim!" Abby sat up. "You listen to me! You didn't cause their deaths. That brother of the manager did!"

"I know, but—"

"People have been dying too young for a long time. You know when I was a kid and heard in class that in such-and-such an old era that people only lived to be 40 or so, I thought how weird that was—to never get to be a grandparent, maybe. And years after than I learned that some people lived to a ripe old age just like they do now. It's just that the mortality rate for children was so much higher that it skewed the statistics.

"You can't say you're not going to have children just because they might face danger. All of us face danger, every day. As an agent, you're much more likely to be in danger than your kids would be. Life is precious; life is a gift. Don't throw away that chance to love again, Tim. Think about what I say…that's all I ask."

Tears still burned in his eyes, but he had to admit, she made a lot of sense. She usually did. And right now, he was the beacon in his life, one of the helping things that were keeping him going every day. Am I grasping for her on the rebound? he asked himself. I don't think so…

- - - - -

"No, Tim; I don't see anything wrong with it," his father said with definite enthusiasm a week later on the phone. "You've thought this over, I can tell."

"Have you set a date?" his mother, on the extension, asked eagerly.

"Mom, I haven't even proposed yet," Tim laughed, then sobered. "I don't want people thinking I'm dishonoring Erin. You're sure people won't think it strange? Isn't there like a customary one-year waiting period before remarriage?"

"In some circles," said Kale. "But that's not so much true anymore. Besides, they say that a man who remarries in under a year does so because he'd had so happy a marriage that he can't stand being single any longer than he has to be."

"We know how you loved Erin, Tim," said Cleo. "We loved her, too. But she's gone, and you have a chance to love again. Take it."

- - - - -

It was down in Abby's lab a week later that Tim handed her Bert the hippo. "I think Bert has something for you. In his mouth," Tim said shyly.

Abby took the paper from Bert and read it out loud. "Look in the top right drawer closest to master mass spectrometer. Why, that's amazing! I never knew Bert could write in English. Or at all. No opposable thumbs, you know."

"Bert's quite a guy," Tim grinned, and watched her go to the drawer.

She pulled out the small velvet box and gasped at the beautiful ring inside; a diamond flanked by black pearls. "Oh, Timmy…" Throwing her arms around him, she said, "Well? Aren't you going to ask me?"

"How do you feel about having children?" he said, slyly.

"Yes!" she responded, not quite logically. "Timothy McGee, will you marry me?"

"Pick a Saturday, and make sure Tony reminds me to show up," he said, and leaned in for the kissing.