Chapter 6

"No, McGee!" Tony shouted and ran at the dais. The lights were disappearing. Tim was disappearing beneath the onslaught of the darkness. He ran...but then, stopped and watched in a kind of morbid fascination as Tim...split into three separate beings, all of them now surrounding the darkness which had been surrounding them. Each one, simultaneously, put out their right hand and the tattoo which had writhed all over Tim before surged off each Tim's palm and began swirling over and around the darkness that was the Proprietor.

There was an inhuman shriek that burst out of the swirling mass in an explosion of sound. ...but it wasn't sound...not exactly. Tony heard it, but he didn't really hear it. He felt it...but what happened next, he never saw clearly. There was a sheen of green light which came between him and the dais. All he could see was something happening to Tim...to the Tims. That three-headed dragon or whatever it was seemed to have grown to the size of the room...or maybe not considering space didn't seem to have any meaning in this place anyway.

In slow motion, the Tims wavered, rippling in the continuing explosion...and then, the rippling pulled them closer and closer together before suddenly being one again.

The dais disappeared. The dragon thing disappeared. The blackness shriveled and faded, ground to nothing itself. ...and Tim was falling, falling.

The green light disappeared and Tony ran forward against some sort of howling wind. Somehow he managed to get to Tim before he hit the ground. He wasn't even sure why Tim was falling from such a great height or when he had reached such a position. Regardless, he caught him and eased him to the...dirt.

Dirt?

Tony's mind got distracted from that stimulus because suddenly Tim gave a great spasm and was still, his eyes closing, his body limp and seeming somehow empty.

"McGee?" he said.

Painful silence.

"He has done it."

Tony looked from Tim to the woman. She seemed more alive than their surroundings.

"He looks dead."

"He is not." She reached out and took Tim's limp right hand, turned it palm up and exhaled gently on the livid tattoo. It was not black but red. Then, she raised her other hand high above her head and said simply, "Come."

Before Tony could ask what she was doing, a swirl of white light came and gathered in her hand. Slowly, she brought that light down and put it over the tattoo. It seemed to be absorbed into Tim's hand and Tim took a breath.

"What did you just do?" Tony asked...somehow more weirded out by this one moment than he had been by all that had come before.

"His spirit was weakened. I gave him strength, strength which the souls he freed gave to him. Their lives were at an end and they gave the last of themselves to him...because his life is not over." She breathed on the tattoo again and it turned black once more. Then, she gently laid the hand on his chest.

"Wait...they died for him?"

"They should have died long ago," she said. "This was prevented and the darkness fed off their pain and their longing. They could neither live nor die. Timothy gave them what was needed. They have now died and passed on."

"Where are we?"

Tony looked down and saw Tim's eyes open, staring up at...

...the open sky?

For the first time, Tony looked around and there was no building, no strange rooms, no...no Mongothsberd. They were in the middle of a small clearing in the trees, the NCIS sedan sitting just at the end of what had probably been a logging road back in the day.

"Looks like Virginia," Tony said. "You all right?"

Tim appeared to think about that for a long moment.

"Maybe."

"You will be fine. It will take some time for you to recover fully."

Tim's eyes shifted onto the woman. "You."

"Yes. Thank you, Timothy McGee. You have set us free."

"Who are you?"

"I was the first resident of Mongothsberd. It was created for me."

Tim sat up quickly...too quickly. He had to put an equally quick hand to the ground to steady himself.

"What?"

She reached out a hand to help him. They both noticed that she was translucent. They could almost see through her, but not quite.

"Four hundred years ago, I should have died, but my husband...he loved me so dearly. He was a knower like yourself, Timothy. He did not want to lose me and so he called on all the power he possessed to create a world in which I could live and he could join me." Her hand dropped to the earth. "Alas, he did not fully understand the powers on which he called...or if he did, he convinced himself that he could control them. He was wrong. I should have died but I was trapped here, forever feeling the need to go on...but never able, never able to go back. Just stuck here. ...and it was here that I was found by that evil spirit."

Tony couldn't help himself, even after all he'd seen. He made a slightly skeptical sound. In response, she pointed at the black ball which had suddenly appeared on the ground.

"There are spirits in this world, Anthony," she said, waving her hand over the ball, and bringing out frightening images. "They exist on a different plane, but they are here. The evil spirits and the good ones as well. The evil spirits do not usually have power to overtake us. Life has power over the sort of existence they possess...but I...I was the source of power which allowed Mongothsberd to grow. That evil spirit, that darkness found me. In my weakened state, trapped between life and death, I could not fight him and he bound me, feeding off my pain, holding me from moving on. It gave him power. Power enough to find others in the same position. He began to add those at the point of death to the population in Mongothsberd. He heard their cries, and using the power he took from me, he trapped their souls."

"What about your husband?"

"He had thought, for many years, that he had simply lost me and he focused on raising our children. We were members of a traveling group. We have been called gypsies. We gave performances but our true purpose was understanding the power that was possible to exert over the world of spirits. It was a dangerous learning and many were uncertain it should be done at all. My husband and I were not among the skeptics. ...but after I disappeared, he feared for what he may have done and swore he would no longer meddle in those things. Instead, he strove to understand his own gift of knowing."

She was fading ever more as she spoke but although she noticed her own transparency, it did not seem to frighten her. Rather she smiled when she saw Tim and Tony staring through her.

"It took many years, but I was able to use my own meager strength...and that lent to me by the others trapped in Mongothsberd to contact my husband. Briefly, the town appeared. As soon as it appeared, it had always been there. My husband heard the name and he came. He entered the gates and saw me there. As quickly as I could, I told him what he had done, to what purposes I had been used. It nearly killed him to know what his rash act had wrought. He swore to me that he would free me...somehow. If he could not, he swore to me...and to the others trapped here that one of our descendants would. He would pass on what he knew to those who came after."

Her bright green eyes met Tim's own.

"Me?"

She smiled. "It has been four hundred years since he made that vow. There are many many people who would be counted our descendants. However, you are the part of this generation who received his knowing. Because of the oath, we have been drawn to wherever that person may be. By the same token, the Proprietor was also drawn...although he would not have liked knowing he was still at the mercy of the living." Her smile became one of satisfaction. "That symbol has always been the symbol of the knowers, back many centuries before my husband's birth. Perhaps with the destruction of Mongothsberd, the knowers will cease to appear, perhaps not."

"I always did feel like I could trust you, like I knew you," Tim said in wonder.

"That is because we are of the same blood. It is that, along with your own sense of duty, that led you to be willing to make the sacrifice you did."

"But you told me that I had a destiny I couldn't avoid."

"Yes. I knew your destiny because I could see in you what I saw in my husband. He felt that he had to free me, to destroy Mongothsberd because he felt responsible for its creation, because he pitied those trapped there and he felt great sorrow and remorse for what he had done to me, his wife, whom he dearly loved. You received that from him."

The woman stood, brushing the dirt from her clothes. Tim also stood hurriedly but had to be supported by Tony who had followed Tim's example.

"Who are you?"

"I am Rhian," she said simply and turned to Tony, her eyes piercing him. "You have a choice to make, Anthony DiNozzo."

"What's that?"

"You may choose to remember or forget what has happened here. Timothy may not because he is a knower and will always remember. He must remember; so that he may pass on the wisdom he has gained, the understanding which my husband gained, to the next knower upon his death; so that no one else will make the same mistake."

"Why do I need to decide to remember or forget?"

"Because no one else will remember what you did here. As it will transpire, when you return to NCIS, you will find that you were sent on a fruitless search for witnesses, a search which led to nowhere. They will not remember Mongothsberd because now...it never existed. It exists for Timothy...and it can exist for you as well...but you must make the choice. Because you saw it all happen, you may be exempt from the disappearance of this place from memory."

"If I choose to forget?"

"As soon as you drive away from this clearing, you will remember only that you were sent out here for no reason at all. Whatever you thought before coming here, you will think it again. It will be as if this time never happened...because for you, it will not have happened."

"If I choose to remember?"

"You will leave and you will know, accepting the consequences of that knowing, while the rest of the world continues on in its ignorance." There was no condemnation of that ignorance, Tony noticed, just a simple statement of fact. The only part of her that was still fully present were her bright green eyes. The rest was fading into transparency.

Tony looked at Tim and remembered watching Tim shoot himself, watching Tim die, seeing him split into three. Those were things he would dearly love to forget and never have to remember again...as he knew he would...especially at three o'clock in the morning.

...but if he did forget everything...he looked at Tim again and saw his weak smile. Tim seemed to know (and probably did, truth be told) what he was thinking. If Tony forgot, it would be back to the sniping, the teasing (which would come again anyway), the fighting. The understanding, the trust that had been built between them because of this experience would be gone, and Tim would know the difference, but Tony wouldn't. Tim would remember all they'd both been through, but Tony would go on in ignorance. Could he really do that? Could he intentionally choose to forget something so huge and massively difficult? Could he knowingly choose to strip their friendship back to the increasingly abrasive interactions they'd been having over the past year?

As he met Tim's gaze, he saw nothing but acceptance of whatever Tony chose...and perhaps a wistful desire that he could make the same choice, that he could forget his experience. Tim had been keeping this secret for a long time; he could continue keeping that secret even after having revealed it once...and yet...

"I don't use up enough of my brain as it is," Tony said finally, turning away from Tim and fixing his gaze back on those piercing green eyes. "Let me keep the memories."

Her face, so serene...so like glass...her eyes still green and bright. She smiled in acceptance of his choice.

"You will remember. Now, I must go...and finally die. Perhaps I will be able to find Sorin...after so many years apart. It would be good to see him again."

She turned to Tim one last time, little more than a faint shape surrounding her eyes which were still so bright.

"Three into one," she said, her voice echoing like a breeze.

Tim held up his right hand and the faint outline of her hand touched his.

"Do not forget."

"I won't."

With a final swirl of green light, she faded away, leaving the two men standing alone in the clearing.