I don't have any pairing preferences. It's not really what this story is about. But, feel free to let me know if you have any inclinations. I'm open to suggestion. Please R&R!

(See chapter one for introduction.)

Chapter Five: Hinky

Abby, moving to leave, halted when a small sound made her heart stop. She looked back and realized Timothy was waking up. At first, she was elated, but then panic overcame it. Looking between the bed and the door, she thought to herself, He can't be waking up- not now! Something could- go wrong, or something!

Timothy groaned. He was not just hungry, thirsty and stiff, but he also had the worst stomachache he had ever had in his life. Well, maybe not his stomach. His brow knitted as he tried to place the feeling in his hazy mind. It was above his stomach. It was his chest, his gut, his lungs, his- his everything. It felt like, like-

Like someone had shot him in the chest.

His eyes opened at that, just to slits. The effort it required was insanity. As his surroundings faded into his awareness, the dim sensation of a tube in his throat began to drive him mad as well. Even with the terror of his slowly-returning memories riding him, the only thing he could think about was the tube- Get it out, get it out, get it out! Adrenaline coursed through his veins, his breath came faster and his eyes rolled, taking in the bright, white room.

Abby ran to the doorway and yelled, "Dr. Clark! He's waking up!"

Normally, such a declaration would be cause for celebration and relief, but the tone in her voice made them all leap up in panic. An edge entered the medical professional's eye, and he rushed in, calling over a couple of nurses.

Timothy tried to understand what was going on. Abby was standing over him, tearstained and being pulled back by a scrubs-clad man.

"Timmy!" she cried out in relief. "Oh, my god, you had me so scared! Don't you ever do that again, you hear me? Ever!" She was sobbing and furious but the look in her eyes made Timothy's gut twist.

I'm sorry, he tried to say but the words did not leave his mouth formed- just indistinct sounds muffled under a plastic tube. His already troubled brow grew more wrinkled. His entire body felt steeped in numbness, weighted down with sedatives that made the edges of his body feel fuzzy and far away.

Where was his tongue? If it was in his mouth, he certainly could not feel it. It was like that time he had gone to the dentist, and they had shot his tongue with numbing solution instead of his gums by accident. So then why was his tongue-?

The flow of memories surged up, steady and disturbing. No, Timothy thought to himself as fragments flooded his mind, hard to piece together but impossible to misunderstand, and he began to shake. No! Footsteps. A gun pointed at him. Someone shoving a knife in his face, his mouth in agony. A face… a face he knew.

What did he do to me? Timothy tried to say. Panic made him struggle against his IV and the other various wires attached to his exposed skin like a twisted nightmare of a spider's web. The words still would not come out and it only made things worse. While Abby spoke from afar, a doctor moved and pumped a sedative into him. What did he do…

Abby let Gibbs pull her away and cried against him. "Oh, Gibbs, it's awful. This is awful! I hate this! I can't believe this! It's always one of you, always, and I can't do anything about it! McGee… " She twisted her NCIS cap in her hands and wiped her arm across her face. The black tracks from her make-up smeared. Gibbs steered her out of the room as Ziva followed them out. Tony, who had not even left the building yet, waited just outside the room.

The OR doctor spoke to Gibbs once Abby was together enough to let herself go. The surgeon sighed, looking flustered. "I-I've never seen someone come so quickly out of sedation. I would've given him another hour at least before he was even able to open his eyes. But, I suppose this sort of strange occurrence is to be expected, considering the nature of the attack." He looked up at Tony. "I hope you don't mind me saying, but I hope you catch the bastard. This is one of the most vicious cases I've had all year."

Gibbs stepped forward, undeterred. "And the setting? How'd it go?"

"Fine, fine. Almost a textbook procedure, really- which is a good thing. No complications."

Abby, still shaken, spoke up. "Will-will we be able to visit when he wakes up?"

The doctor made a mental assessment, mouth quirking up to the side as he thought. "Hm, we'll have to see how he's doing. If he has a reaction like that again, we may need to get a specialist from the psych ward." Seeing their discontented reactions, he went on. "Can't be too careful, for his own safety."

With that, the doctor left to attend to his duties, leaving the NCIS team quiet and stunned in the OR waiting room.

Tony looked around. "What happened?"

"He woke up." Abby looked back at the room dejectedly. "And flipped out." Silence settled like a suffocating blanket.

Gibbs patted Tony's shoulder. "Go home. Call Vance." Tony looked up, and Gibbs saw the dark circles and even darker look in his agent's eyes, knowing it could have been a reflection in a mirror. "He'll be fine."

Ziva looked away. Again, it was a private moment, and she felt it was outside her realm to appreciate it. Why, then, did she have this twist of envy? She had finally invested herself in a team, in fellow humans, with a loyalty that went beyond simple, unquestionable commitment to the mission. It was dangerous, and it went against her training. Timothy could be just another lost partner, and she could go on. Just another lost partner, just another meaningless person…

"Gibbs, may I speak to you for a moment?" Ziva stared through her fear, her uncertainty. Gibbs took one look at her and sent Tony off.

"Hey, if that detail is one minute late, it's on you," Gibbs called after Tony. "Abby, go home, too. Get some sleep. They're going to need you to help process that evidence later." Abby nodded and hugged him goodbye, then caught up to Tony.

"Call me when he wakes up!" she called over her shoulder, exhausted. That evidence was still fresh in her head, and Timothy's panicked eyes would not stop haunting her. She wouldn't be getting much sleep, but she had to try since she needed her mind to be fresh when she got to NCIS headquarters in a few hours.

Then it was just Gibbs and Ziva. "Yeah, Ziva?"

Ziva changed her stance and looked off to the side. "If, uh, if McGee does not… does not come out of this okay, he will be replaced?" That sounded callous, Ziva thought to herself. I did not mean to sound that way. Why do my words go against me?

Despite her anxiety however, Gibbs saw the question in her eyes. "Yes, Ziva, he probably would." Ziva looked away again. "But that isn't going to happen. McGee's gonna be fine. Hey, look at me." She gave him a careful, calculated look, cold, not nonchalant but not real open to comfort either. It was like reaching out to an iceberg, but Gibbs patted her shoulder anyway. "I know it's hard. It's okay."

The moment hung there for a heartbeat, and Ziva knew that in it, she could either accept Gibbs' unspoken offer of a hug or refuse it. She wanted to accept it, she really did. That comfort would be appreciated now. But she could not.

"Thank you, Gibbs," Ziva said and took a step away. She was not ready to let him, or anyone, in, but at the very least, as his hand slipped from her shoulder, she took it in her own and gave it a comforting squeeze. It was neither a complete rejection nor a complete acceptance, but an intermediate hold between the two. Gibbs could not hide the fleeting flash of disappointment in his eyes, and her gut twisted at it. He needed his people to grow, but Ziva could not. Not yet. But he knew, soon enough, that Ziva would rise to the challenge, even if in this moment she had opted to not. "I'm going to do a patrol and take a look at the layout. I should be back in twenty minutes."

"All right." He watched her go, then walked into Timothy's darkened room. The hum of machinery and the beep of a heart monitor were all too familiar to the older agent. A nurse passing by glanced over at his intrusion outside of visiting hours, then recognized him as one of the NCIS agents that were on guard for this patient. With with a resigned glare, she let him be and left the room, disappearing down the dim halls that were silent and empty in the wee morning hours. "Hey there, McGee."

Pulling up a chair, Gibbs sat beside the bed without another word. He looked at the bandages, the wires, eyes trailing up until he saw a flicker at the young agent's eyes. Timothy was waking up again. Instead of growing panicked at the unusual innate resistance to the anesthetics the doctor had just pushed again, Gibbs stood up and looked down into his eyes.

"Want me to take this out?" The doctor had said once Timothy was awake, they could remove the breathing tube, and Gibbs remembered what it was like to have one of those. Timothy gave one long blink, and the lead agent peeled the tiny strips of medical tape back and gripped it. "Ready? It's not fun, so hold on." Timothy blinked once. Gibbs gave a firm, steady pull, and it, though resistant, slid out as Timothy gagged.

"There," Gibbs sighed as Timothy coughed and swallowed. He looked at his leader with a desperate flash in his eyes. "I'll get you some water." But that seemed to bother him even more, as he managed to shake his head and reach out with his right hand. Please don't, Timothy thought. Don't leave me alone. "All right, all right, it's ok, I'll call Ziva."

He dialed the number, and she answered before the first ring finished. "Yes, Gibbs."

"I need you to get your hands on some water and bring it now. I'd get it but he doesn't want me to leave the room."

Immediately, Ziva's instincts told her something could be wrong. "He as in the attacker?"

"No, he as in McGee. How quickly can you get here?"

"Three minutes at the most."

"Good." Gibbs hung up and looked back to Timothy, who was staring at the ceiling, a haze in his eyes as his consciousness struggled to lift itself entirely from the sedative's effects. "Tim?" That broke his reverie. He gave Gibbs a slow, pained look. "I'd like to ask you a few questions, if you feel up to it. I won't ask you to talk, of course, but if you write something down for me at some point, I would appreciate it." Gibbs knew that the agent would still be muddled for a while, but even a little bit of information could help as time stretched further and further from the moment his attacker had escaped.

For a moment, a blank look of fear fell across Timothy's face, then, almost apologetically, he raised his dominant hand. The one with the broken fingers.

"Well, you'll just have to use your right. It'll still probably look better than Dinozzo's writing with his good hand." The attempt at humor did nothing to quell Timothy's worry. He just shook his head. Gibbs' gut told him something else was going on. He sat on the bed beside his wounded agent.

"McGee, you need to tell us what happened." He let his hand rest on Timothy's. "Whoever did this can't hurt you now." Timothy gave him a withering look of agony and anger that said, You have no idea. "Do you know who did this?" Timothy shook his head from side to side without hesitation. Gibbs sighed. "Do you remember what happened?" Timothy nodded, then jerked and changed his answer to no, but it was more a refusal to continue than an response to the question.

Gibbs leaned in closer, eyes burning. "You can tell me this. You're one of my people. I don't want to say it, but seeing you here does more than bother me. It makes me mad. It hurts." He went to a whisper and glanced away. "Tim, we almost lost you. Someone attacked you and tortured you and is forcing you to keep quiet, and not just because of that tongue. Someone targeted you, Tim. Please-" Timothy's eyes widened at that. "Let me help you."

For a moment, it looked as if Timothy was about to give in, but as Ziva walked in the door, he shook his head, No. Gibbs turned with misdirected anger to her and she took a step back.

Ziva recoiled from the fury in Gibbs' expression. What had she done? But just as quickly, the anger left him, and he stood up to meet her. "Here is the water," Ziva said, subdued. He reached for it, but she went on. "May I…?" She motioned to Timothy and Gibbs shrugged, letting her go by. Though he was itching for that information, he knew when to leave to people alone. He closed the door behind him.

I'd like to advertise my other story here, also about McGee. It's fantasy but with just as much McGee whump, I assure you. An intriguing and strange AU indeed with a sci-fi or fantastical twist to it. Find it, Dangerous Paths of Mice and Men, on my profile! Thanks for reading, and please review!