Chapter 19

Ten weeks later...

Tim watched as his various "students" filed out of the classroom. He didn't feel like he should call them students. They were nearly all federal agents...or would be as soon as they graduated. Some of them were older than he was...by a significant margin. It was weird to be their teacher. One of the younger ones peeled off the main group and walked back to him. It was plain that he wanted to ask a question but hadn't wanted to do it during class. That had happened often enough over the past couple of months. Tim himself had been guilty of it when he was in college. The memory elicited a rare smile of nostalgia.

"Agent McGee?"

"What, Lewis?"

"I wanted to ask you something."

"Go ahead. Is it about the partitioning we were doing today? Because you seemed to have no trouble with it. It's fairly basic stuff."

"No, nothing like that."

"What then?"

Lewis (full name: Clark Meriwether Lewis; his parents had been going through a history phase at the time of his birth) hesitated. He was one of Tim's pleasant surprises: a young FBI agent who had scoffed at computer forensics and then become enamored of the whole subject, doing extra projects just to learn more. He had a real knack and Tim had enjoyed encouraging him.

"You were at NCIS Headquarters before you came down here, weren't you?"

For Tim, it felt as though a sudden shadow had passed over the sun. He didn't think about NCIS during classes if he could help it as he knew that it still had the power to disconcert him to the point that he lost all track of what he'd been doing, saying...even where he'd been going. It wasn't so bad all the time, but when it came out of the blue...like this.

"Agent McGee? Are you all right?" Lewis' voice sounded like it was coming from very far away for a moment before reality snapped back into place.

"Yes. I'm fine. Yes, I was there. Why?" Tim knew his voice was cold, emotionless in a way he didn't usually speak.

Lewis was abashed but undeterred. "I just wanted to know why you came down here of all places."

"They needed a temporary instructor here. The regular teacher will be back in a couple of weeks."

"But why you? I mean, I'm sure they could have had someone from anywhere...right?"

"Are you implying that I'm not any good at this job?" Tim asked, smiling. He knew he wasn't a stellar teacher but that he wasn't too bad either. It helped that he knew what he was talking about...and years of trying to explain things to someone like Gibbs had helped him learn what worked and what didn't...even if he wasn't always any good at it.

"Get to your real question, Lewis. What is it?"

"What was it like?" The question came out in a rush.

"What was what like?"

"Being there...seeing it happen."

Tim took a deep breath. "Lewis...why do you want to know?"

"Partly, it's just curiosity."

"What's the other part?"

"I've never been involved in anything like that. I've never been in a firefight. I've never lost anyone on my team. I don't know...maybe I won't ever, but that's not likely. I just want to know what it's like...so I know...so I can be ready."

Tim set his bag down on the desk at the front of the room and looked at Lewis. He was serious, Tim could tell. He wasn't going to go running out of the room and spread it around like a gossipy teenager, but trying to tell him wouldn't come close to actually telling him what had happened.

"You can't know...not unless you've been there. You can't be ready for it. It's the most awful thing in the world. I can still see it happening if I close my eyes. I have nightmares about it. I remember every funeral I went to...all of them. Most were closed casket, but I can also remember seeing the bodies, some laid out under bloody sheets because they ran out of body bags. The worst thing is that I can see the building disappearing...cutting me off from everyone inside, cutting me off forever...because I lived and so many that I knew died. Some of my closest friends died. I found one of them in the rubble. She was a very good friend. I spent the first few hours so out of it that I didn't recognize voices, didn't notice anything but what was left of the building. I spent the first entire day just standing in what was left of the park, staring." Tim walked to his computer and turned it off. He didn't need to, but it gave him something to do. "While the people around me started to pull themselves back together...I continued to fall apart. I tried to get back some of my life, but I couldn't. Do you know why?"

Lewis shook his head silently.

"Because I felt guilty for living. I still do to some degree. I lived that day because I got stuck in a traffic jam and was late. If those bombs hadn't gone off, I would have been in big trouble...but they did go off...and I lived. For the longest time, I only wanted to be dead and join them because I felt that I should have been dead and it was unfair that I wasn't. Unfair to whom, I didn't know at first. Now, though, I know that I felt guilty and I resented being alive. Living meant that I had to rebuild. I had to work at living. I had to face the fact that everything had changed, that it would never be the same again. ...and I've never been very good at letting things go."

"And now?"

"Now?" Tim laughed. "Now, I take it one day at a time and some of the days end up being good ones, some of them...not so good. Soon, I'll have to go back. That will be the test to see if I've really gotten any better or if I'm just running away from the wreck of my life."

"What if you're running away?"

Tim knew his expression was bleak. "Then, that means that I can't make it," he said bluntly. "...but the difference between me not making it this time and how close I came to not making it before is that this time I actually believe that it might be possible." He paused and found that he was able to smile. "That's why you can't know, why you can't be ready. We all react in our own ways. My way...not the best idea. Ducky, our medical examiner, reacted probably the best of any of us...but no one heals right away. Some of us will never heal completely...maybe none of us will. It's still too soon to know."

They stared at each other for a moment.

"I'm sorry, Agent McGee."

Tim shook his head. "Don't be." He paused and smiled. "I was going to say that it's a sign of weakness, but really, you don't need to apologize because it's not necessary. I wouldn't have told you if I didn't think I could." He cleared his throat and found the strength to pull himself erect into his teacher stance. "Just be sure to finish the work on partitions. It's not hard, but some people do find it time-consuming."

Lewis recognized the none-too-subtle dismissal and nodded.

"Thanks, Agent McGee," he said and then left the room.

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

Night came to Glynco, Georgia...not that it got nearly as cold as it did further north, even in winter. In fact, Tim had been wearing jackets the entire time he'd been at FLETC. It was, however, cool enough to keep away some of the tourists and Tim liked that. He liked that it wasn't so crowded as it generally was in DC.

Thinking of DC seemed to have the power almost to transport him back there, and as Tim wandered aimlessly around the grounds of FLETC, he found that he was still filled with the same ambivalence that had dogged his memories ever since he'd left. What was the best thing to do when Aimee came back to her job in two weeks? Scratch that. He knew what he needed to do...he just wished that he knew what would happen when he got there.

Tim knew that he had come a long way over the last couple of months. The first week or so of his work had seen him teetering on the edge of a meltdown with all the work required prepping for classes and the necessity of focusing and being the center of attention for so long. The students had been able to see something of that in him, even if he hadn't addressed it directly. He chalked up the fact that he had survived those first weeks to the kindness of the students. Now, he felt more confident, although he wondered if he'd ever really feel comfortable being in front of the crowd and being the teacher. He was a loner and much more comfortable by himself than he was with large groups.

The loner part wasn't completely true anymore, however. It hadn't been for years, ever since he'd been on Gibbs' team. He'd been a part of a group, a part of something better, something bigger than himself...and he had liked that...no, he had loved it, had made it into what defined him...and that was the problem. He had done all that...and didn't have the ability to face the change in definition when what defined him had disappeared and altered almost beyond recognition.

That wasn't all, he realized now, as he allowed himself to ruminate on what had happened and his reaction. He had been angry, too. Divorced as he was from his friends, he could more easily address the feelings he'd had. He still talked to them nearly every day. He had laughed when Abby had described in devastating detail how Tony had insisted that he wasn't going to need crutches and then had taken a step...only to fall into Ducky's waiting arms. He had cheered when Michelle had built up the strength and dexterity to pick up a phone and call him. He had endured Tony's good-natured ribbing about being a teacher (Tony had even sent an apple down to him...a plastic one). He had spoken often with Gibbs and Ducky, at first, mostly about his near-attempt at suicide, then, about what he was doing, what they were doing.

Tim had talked with them all...but he had cut himself off...a defense which he now recognized and even as he felt a tinge of guilt, he knew it had been necessary...and he knew now that he had been as angry as he had felt guilty. Angry at the chance moment that had saved his life, angry at the lives that had been taken...and angry at Gibbs. Whether deserved or not, Tim knew now that a large part of what he had felt before had been anger that Gibbs had left him alone, alone to think that he was the only one who had survived. He just hadn't realized it because the pain and despair had been so great that they had masked his fury. He wasn't angry anymore...which was why he could think about it without any problem at all.

No, what he had noticed in the past couple of weeks was how much he missed everyone at NCIS...missed in the usual can't-wait-to-see-them-again manner, rather than the grief-stricken I'll-never-see-them-again manner. He had actually caught himself counting down the days until he could go back to DC, a feeling he hadn't thought it was possible for him to feel without that despairing addiction to seeing the remains of what had defined his life. That addiction (and that's really what it had been) had been a result of his anger at being spared. That was another thing he now recognized. The slow self-destruction, the steady slide toward suicide had been a reaction, delayed, yes, but nevertheless a reaction to his feeling that it had been unfair that he had lived.

Now, although the feelings were still there, they had been lessened...by time and by distance. One would only continue to grow, but the other...

He was afraid to go back, afraid that, as he had told Lewis, he would find that he hadn't actually healed, that he had only delayed the inevitable, that death really was the only way to get away from the grief and despair.

But no matter what the future held, at this moment, Tim wanted to go back, and he hoped that it was a good sign...if any good signs had survived the destruction of NCIS.