Chapter 8

Tim would have screamed had he been able. This was what had felt wrong. Now, now, he realized that the wrong feeling had been there since back in the woods...when he had dug up the boundary stone. He'd just been so out of it at the time that he hadn't really noticed.

The low menacing laugh that Tony had heard hours ago now emerged from Tony's lips.

"She couldn't protect him completely," he whispered in a strange and twisted voice. Tony's hands reached out and grasped Tim's neck, closing tighter and tighter.

Tim's mind froze for just a moment and he was terrified that there was nothing he could do, nothing he could say...but he felt a memory surge through him which freed his mind from the paralyzing fear...even as the darkness closed in.

"He's mine. He doesn't know how to fight it. All mine. I can begin again."

"I don't think so," Tim choked out. Abandoning the useless effort of trying to stop those unnaturally strong hands, Tim reached out and pressed his hand against Tony's chest. The grip on his hands loosened and Tony's voice screamed in pain.

"I am sorry, Tony," Tim said, for the second time that day...only this time, it wasn't his voice. It was a different voice and as he said the words, a beam of energy burst from him...so bright it momentarily blinded him, not that it mattered, Tim felt as though his whole life was ending in that moment. Too much energy. The energy...the life which had been preserved and passed down from generation to generation for 400 years.

Tony's hands fell from Tim's neck and Tim collapsed to the ground, seeing only vague shapes of light and dark swirling around Tony...but he heard Tony screaming and he tried to get up, but he couldn't make his limbs work.

Then, he heard a last echoing voice. "Your time is over."

There was another shriek, but this was not from Tony. It was from... Tim tried to clear his vision. The white light surrounded and seemed to destroy the darkness, wrapping it into a smaller and smaller space, pulling it, confining it...until there was nothing left.

Tim lay there and watched as Tony, who had been seemingly frozen in place, wilted and dropped to his knees on the pier. The white light resolved into the shape of a man and he bent over Tony, touching him gently on the eyelids. Tony slumped down onto the pier, unconscious. Then, the...man turned to Tim who still felt as though he couldn't move at all, and touched his palm.

"I thank you."

Tim stared at him and then he knew. "Sorin?"

The man of light nodded. "I swore that I would free Rhian. She is free and Ciar is gone."

"He can't die."

"No, he cannot...but even spirits' existence can end. That is the thing I learned. His existence has ended. He is gone. I have paid the price for my mistake...and Ciar will not be able to compound it."

"Ciar?"

"He is the darkness...made...real. Not alive but existing on our plane. For too long."

"Will...will...Tony be all right?"

"Yes. Tony was not the one he wanted. That is the reason he has survived. Ciar hid deep inside only coming out when he thought he could succeed. You were his target." Sorin touched Tim's heart and his forehead, and Tim felt energy surge into him, renewing his sapped strength. "He needed a knower to be able to set up Mongothsberd again. Tony would have been a secondary addition."

Tim looked over at Tony who still lay unconscious on the pier. Weakly, he pulled himself over and shook him gently.

"You will also recover your strength. I required some of it in order to release my own. A spark to light the blaze."

Tim managed a smile.

"I hope no one happened to look over here. It would be kind of hard to explain."

"No one saw. Time has been slowed to a stop. It will resume when you leave the pier. No one will know."

"Except us?"

"Yes."

"How do you do that?"

Sorin had no discernable features...and like Rhian he was fading away, but Tim got the sense that he would have been smiling.

"You may discover it for yourself...or you may not. It is your potential to know, but be wary of searching for things you do not need. That is where I allowed myself to fall...and my fall nearly destroyed that which I held most dear."

"Will you see her again? Rhian?"

"I can only hope. Perhaps I have adequately atoned for my error. If so, I may find her once my life ends."

"You never died either?"

"No. I put myself into a stasis, like Mongothsberd, until I could be released to fight the battle I swore I would fight."

"Rhian said I couldn't do it alone, that I would need one to help...but only one."

"One to help free the captives. One to help destroy the captor. Together...three, working toward one cause."

"Three into one."

"Yes."

Tim watched him fade and something made him cry out just before the light faded completely.

"Rhian forgave you!"

For a moment, so brief it could almost have been imagined, Tim thought he saw a man standing on the pier, his gray eyes brightening with hope at Tim's words...and then, he was gone.

"McGee?" Tony's voice was cracked.

Tim turned back.

"Tony. How you doing?"

"I see what you meant now. Why you thought dying was the only way."

"I'm sorry you know."

"Me, too. What happened?"

"Sorin annihilated him."

"That sounds pretty final."

"It is."

"Where did Sorin come from? I thought he'd died."

"He didn't. He waited...inside me."

"So...you were possessed, too?"

"In a way, I suppose."

Tony groaned and sat up. "It's over then?"

"So Sorin said."

"You said spirits can't be killed."

"They can't, but apparently they can be destroyed."

"Well, I'm glad that thing was."

"Yeah...me, too."

"How you doing?"

"I'll be okay. I'm just sorry I didn't notice sooner. Something was wrong but I didn't know what. Some knower I am." Tim ran a hand through his hair. It was dripping with sweat...and he felt very very tired.

"Hey, McGee, you did some pretty amazing things today."

"So did you."

"Me? All I did was stand around."

"No," Tim disagreed. "You were...you were strong enough to stick around when everything went absolutely crazy. I couldn't have done it without you. I'd probably be dead...or worse. You were the right choice."

Tony fidgeted with embarrassment. "Well...well, thanks, McGee." Carefully, he got to his feet and then helped Tim up as well. "You know what I'm not going to do now?"

"What?"

"I'm not going to go home and watch a horror movie."

"That sounds like a good plan."

"You want to not watch a horror movie, too?" Tony asked.

"What?"

"I have lots of other movies. We could get pizza and watch some other movies."

Tim had planned on going home and sleeping away the rest of his life, but suddenly, this sounded a whole lot better.

"That...is the best idea I've heard in a long time."

"Great! We'll have a buddy-movie night!"

"A what?"

"Buddy movies!"

Tim gave Tony a blank look as they walked off the pier, hardly noticing that the world was moving along with them now.

"Lethal Weapon? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? 48 Hours?" Tony looked like he was regretting the suggestion. "Road to Rio?"

Tim smiled. "Oh, the Bing Crosby, Bob Hope movie! I've seen the Road Pictures. They're hilarious!"

Tony sighed with relief. "I was about to lose all faith in you, McGee. Okay, Crosby and Hope it is!"

"Which one is your favorite?"

"Road to Zanzibar."

"I always loved Road to Morocco."

Tony grinned. "'A fine thing. First, you sell me for two hundred bucks. Then I'm gonna marry the Princess; then you cut in on me. Then we're carried off by a desert sheik. Now, we're gonna have our heads chopped off.'"

Tim smiled back. "'I know all that.'"

"'Yeah but the people who came in the middle of the picture don't.'"

"'You mean they missed my song?'"

Tony laughed. "Okay, Road to Morocco it is."

"I don't think I should be driving," Tim said suddenly when they reached his car.

"I'm not sure I should be either. I feel like I'm walking on a waterbed."

"Maybe...maybe I'll call a taxi."

"Man, McGee...you're some sort of special race of human being and you're going to call a taxi?"

Tim rolled his eyes. "I also used to take the bus, remember?"

"Good point. Taxi it is."

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

"I can't go on! No food, no water. It's all my fault. We're done for! It's got me. I can't stand it! No food, nothing! No food, no water! No food!"

"What's the matter with you, anyway? There's New York. We'll be picked up in a few minutes."

"You had to open your big mouth and ruin the only good scene I got in the picture. I might have won the Academy Award!"

The closing credits rolled...but the two men on the couch didn't see them. In fact, they hadn't even seen half the movie. Instead, their snores competed with the music of Road to Morocco. ...but when the DVD flipped back to the menu, Tony woke up and looked over at Tim, his head back on the couch, mouth open wide, and laughed softly. Then, he got up and went into the bathroom. Carefully, he lifted up his shirt. There, in the center of his chest was a burn in the shape of the three-headed dragon Tim had on his hand. Tony looked at it for a long moment, wondering briefly if anyone else would be able to see it, and then walked back out. He turned off the DVD and the television. He shifted Tim so that he was sleeping in a bit more comfortable position and then got up to go to bed himself. Before he did, he paused.

"Thanks, McGee."

There was a long silence and then, out of the darkness, there was a soft response.

"Thank you, Tony."

What else was there to say?

FINIS!