Chapter 5

"Where is Tim?" Ziva asked when Gibbs and Ducky came back to NCIS.

"He's seeing a doctor," Ducky said.

"What kind of doctor?" she asked.

She'd obviously heard about what had happened.

"A psychiatrist," Gibbs said. "He won't be here for a few days."

Ziva nodded. "Is Tony with him?"

"No. He should be here. He didn't go with us," Ducky said.

"We left him in Autopsy."

"He was not there," Ziva said. "I went down there and he was definitely not there...but his car is here."

"Perhaps he went after us," Ducky suggested, although he sounded uncertain.

"But without his own car?"

"Jethro?" Ducky asked.

"If he ran off after McGee, he didn't tell me."

That was all Gibbs said. He sat down at his desk and started to work. Ziva looked at Ducky and raised her eyebrows questioningly.

"Do you think we should look for him, Gibbs?" Ziva asked.

"Tony?"

"Yes."

"No. He'll show up. He'd better."

That was the end of it. An unsatisfactory end, but the end.

For now.

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

Tony didn't like watching this. He had seen Tim collapse under the weight of a number of nightmares. Every time, he saw the same thing. Tim would start to change in the face of the assault, and every time, he had suppressed it. It was getting frustrating, and he hated seeing Tim suffering.

"Can't you just tell him? Why do you keep doing this?"

"He needs to know, not just be told."

Tony sighed.

"How long have I been here?"

Greta only smiled.

"Right. It doesn't matter."

He had got used to the trembling every time he spoke.

Greta opened the basket yet again and pulled out a wisp. She didn't blow it away. Instead, she began to waft it back and forth between her white hands.

"Do you recognize this nightmare?"

"All of them look the same to me."

"This is your nightmare. I have been saving it."

"Mine?" Tony looked at the wisp. It didn't look any different than the others and he felt no connection to it.

"Yes, yours. It is your dream. It is your nightmare. The deepest fear your mind dwells on in sleep."

Tony remembered that he hadn't had any nightmares the night before. It had been a rarity that he had appreciated...but now...

"Don't send that!" he said. "Don't make Tim see what I dream."

"Would you like the chance to teach him?"

"What do you mean?"

"You have been in his dreams before. This is your dream. Your mind can travel on it."

"Only my mind?"

Greta laughed. Her voice was as pleasant as it had been when he had thought she was a living, breathing human being. It only made her more chilling.

"If you succeed in getting him to do what is needed, you do not want to be stuck in his head physically."

"Oh."

"You have helped him in dreams before. Are you willing to do that again?"

"Yes."

It didn't take any time to think about it. Tim needed help. Tony now understood, more or less, what Tim needed to do. That meant he would go.

"Very well, human. Look."

Tony stared at the wisp that was his nightmare. Greta began to swirl it around between her hands. It was almost as if she was hypnotizing him. Tony wanted to resist but he forced himself to relax enough to be drawn into that swirl.

"Step into my sigh
Look inside the light
You will know that I have found you"

Tony felt himself being sucked into the swirl. Then, he was gone.

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

Greta watched as Tony's corporeal form fell to the ground, the mind gone. This would be the chance for the knower to learn what he should know already. She had been confident that the human would not want that nightmare to be seen by the knower. It would be something he would want to hold off.

A black swirl took the form of Death.

"He has gone?"

"Yes."

"Will it work?"

"Yes."

"You are confident."

"I know what humans are underneath the veneer of flesh. I see it every night. They do not hide themselves when they are asleep. I know them. I know them better than any can know them. This will work because the human will not let the knower see what he has dreamt."

There was another whirl of black and Death was gone. Greta looked back at the dreamcatcher. There was no limit to the number of nightmares she could gather, but she would wait for now. She would see if the human would do what was necessary.

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

Tony landed on his feet. The floor was simple wood. It was like he was in a cabin or something. He didn't know exactly where he was or how he would get to where he could confront Tim and keep him from seeing that dream.

"Tim?" he called.

There was no trembling. So he was out of that strange world. He saw a door. There was light streaming in around the edges of it.

There was nothing for it but to walk through the door. He opened it.

...and he was sucked through as if in a reverse wind tunnel. Instead of it blowing him back, it was pulling him forward.

"Tim!" he shouted.

Suddenly, he was flung forward into black. Tim was there, his back to Tony. Tony looked around.

"Tim?" he asked.

"What are you doing in here, Tony?" Tim asked, without turning around.

"Where is here?"

"My head. I'm asleep, but I don't dream when I'm asleep anymore."

"Not at all?"

"Not dreams. Just realities. That's bad enough. I don't need dreams, too."

"Tim, what are you doing?"

"Waiting for the next attack."

"Why aren't you fighting back?" Tony asked.

"I don't know how."

"Yes, you do. I've been watching."

"Watching? How?"

"Greta. How do you think I got in here?"

"I guess."

"Tim, what are you doing?"

"Waiting. Like I told you."

"Why here?"

Tim laughed a little bit.

"It's my subconscious, Tony. I don't really choose the setting. Actually, I haven't ever really been here. I guess that Greta must have set this up. So another nightmare is coming?"

"Yeah, and you need to fight it, Tim!" Tony said.

"I can't."

"Yeah, you can! I've seen it!"

"I don't want that, Tony."

"You don't have a choice! Greta told me. This is going to keep happening until you let it happen."

"Let what happen?"

"Let that fight happen. I don't know what it means, but you change. You start to change and then you stop it. You've got to let it happen."

Tim was quiet for a long period of time...whatever time meant in this place.

"You don't know what you're saying, Tony. You don't know. I took the dreamer inside me, but..."

"It scares you, doesn't it."

Tim nodded. He got to his feet and he turned around. Tony fell back a step. Tim's eyes were gone.

Like the dreamer.

"Exactly, Tony," Tim said. "You're telling me to let the fight happen, but this is what starts happening. This. And I don't know what will happen if I let it...happen."

Tony swallowed, but then, he forced himself to walk to Tim, to walk through this blackness and grab him by the arms.

"You're still Tim. You've had the dreamer inside you for months already."

"Inside. Controlled."

"Wasn't the point of all that to make him a part of you?"

Tim nodded.

"Then...let it go. If this has to be like this, Tim...then, let it!"

"I don't want to, Tony."

"I don't want to see you committed for seeing nightmares while you're awake. It won't stop. You know what Greta's like. She's not going to let you get away with not doing it."

"Tony." Tim looked around. "You're not supposed to be in here. Why would she use you?"

"Because she knew that I could convince you," Tony said with a forced jaunty smile.

Tim smiled in reply, although the whole no-eyes thing didn't really help matters.

"Tim, another nightmare is coming. I don't want you to see it."

"At least, I'm asleep."

"You'll wake up."

Tim looked at him in some surprise.

"How do you know? Tony, do you know what the nightmare is going to be?"

Tony didn't see how he could lie about that.

"Yeah. I do...and you don't want to see it."

"No, I don't, but I didn't want to see any of them. What makes this one so bad?"

"It's mine, Tim. It's my nightmare and I don't want you seeing what I dream about. I want you to stop fighting the dreamer stuff inside you and using it like you know you're going to have to."

"Your dream? That bad?"

"Yeah, it is," Tony said. "And I don't want you seeing it."

The door behind them began to shake. The dream was coming.

"Please, Tim. Please, fight it off! You're so much stronger than this!"

"I'm so tired of it, Tony!"

"Well, buck up and deal with it! You're the knower! Now, you're the dreamer, too! You have to save the world! So get going!"

"You don't know what you're asking."

"Then, show me. Banish my nightmare and stop this crap that Greta's pulling. Let her see that you're not a wuss and then, you can go home."

"Until the next time?"

"Yeah."

The door shook more violently.

"Fight it, Tim!" Tony shouted.

Tim looked at the door and then looked at Tony with those missing eyes.

"You really don't want me to see it?"

"I really don't want you to see it."

Tim swallowed and then nodded.

The door blew open and the nightmare streamed inside the black. Tim raised his arms, stretching his hands as if they were claws. Instead of the familiar dragons that Tony expected, the black holes that were Tim's eyes began to expand, to grow larger until they seemed to take up his whole face. The nightmare was stopped abruptly at his hands. The nightmare began to swirl around his hands, reminding Tony of how Greta had pulled him into the nightmare in the first place. Then, suddenly, Tim jerked back. The light of the nightmare was sucked into those holes where his eyes should have been.

There was a moment of silence.

"Tim...what–?"

That was all Tony had time to say. Tim drew his hands back and then flung them forward. As he did so, the light of the dream was expelled. To his surprise, Tony felt himself thrown violently along with the nightmare.

Out of Tim's subconscious mind. Out of that black room. Out of all that he could understand and as he was thrown, he suddenly felt something.

Not only was the dream being rejected, he could see that it was getting swallowed up in something.

In black.

In Tim's eyes. In the dreamer eyes that were empty, bottomless, hungry to be filled.

And he understood Tim's fear. The dreamer was hungry for the dreams to fill it. The dreamer would devour them, wrench them out of existence.

...and Tony was afraid that he was going to be devoured as well.

Could his mind survive what would destroy a dream?

Suddenly, he felt it. He felt the nightmare being devoured and he was tied to that nightmare.

"Help!"

He had seen the black depths of dreamer eyes before and almost been lost in them. Now, he was going to be lost in them forever because there was no Tim to hear him. There was no Gibbs to stop the process. All there was...just Tony and his nightmare in some void that was about to become a whole lot emptier.

He was sucked toward the blackness.

He tried to resist.

He couldn't.

He called for help as the blackness surrounded him.

As the destructive power of the dreamer began to obliterate his mind.