Chapter Fourteen
Death watches through ancient eyes as everything begins to unravel.
I'm so sorry. I didn't realize-
The words are useless, there's no one there to hear. There never would be. He'd be the very last thing there, before he too would vanish with a gentle pop, like existence blowing one final raspberry at his failings. The last of the last. He reaches out tendrils of consciousness heavenward, like he hasn't done for so long, and can feel nothing. His Father has deserted him. He doesn't blame him for doing so. With a leaden feeling of despair leeching through him, he reaches blindly out.
He can feel the acceptance of Tony, the fear of Abby, the defiance of Ziva, the sad resignation of Gibbs, the knowing of Ducky. Feel their souls dim, flicker.
He buckles. He can feel it all. Stars shake wildly, and atoms begin to still. Time is condensing. Souls pour in together, past, present, future, sloshing around helplessly, ignorant. Seven billion lives. Eight. Nine. Twenty. Thirty. Innumerable amounts.
The thin membrane between worlds begins to snap and tear. Heaven and Hell stretch spaghetti thin, straining toward the slowly shrinking reality, like a black hole.
He can't breathe. Did he ever? He can't remember.
He subconsciously follows threads with careful fingers (No, he doesn't have fingers anymore. He is everything. Everything is him) back to familiar feelings. They reach blindly out to him, imparting fading emotions. Friendship. Family. Love. Alarm. Fear. So alien and so familiar.
Voices in the depths.
Help. Help us. Helphelphelp.
Threads begin to unravel. He holds on tighter to them. They slide in his grasp. Eyes bug without vision.
No. No.
His fear, righteous anger and shame magnify in ways they've never been before, and he shudders, his form rippling. The emotions crackle and fizz within him.
Something's building within his chest cavity, a hurricane, a storm so large that it threatens to overwhelm him. To drown him. Drown them all. He yearns to let the flood spill forth in a scream that would rend the collapsing worlds in two. To let it all end.
He's been holding it all together for so long. Too long.
Help us. The blips of feelings weaken. The threads unravel…and begin to become shades. Shadows. Help us. McGee. Tim.
Please.
No. No, no, no. Not after everything. Unbearable pain builds with the storm and there's a fire in his chest, filling his lungs with heat and clawing agony.
"Timothy, Azrael, you know what to do."
The voice rides serenely to him on a smile. Tired and familiar in more ways than one. He clings desperately to it.
"You always have."
Timothy McGee. Azrael.
The elevator dings. (Both hear it)
"You know."
And he does. He does know what to do. He smiles, soft, sad, stringy and sallow. Bleached bones crack deeply and fuse back together. The storm inside his chest rises, howls, spilling between his ribs and sloshing against nonexistent skin.
And with the same smile, he lets it, stemming it, redirecting it, letting it flow through veins and arteries. Through bones, and marrow. Through ends and beginnings. Through him, until he thrums with the power, glowing at the epicenter of the writhing reality.
Timothy McGee.
Death.
Two sides of the same coin. The same, but not the same. Like a tree branch, splitting down the middle. The branch began whole, but few things end the same as they began.
Fingers tap a keyboard, and curl around a scythe.
The elevator dings. (Of course)
Same. Separate.
A smile. Two smiles.
Eyes open, light spilling forth, but the storm rages, contained in the supernova at the center of the collapse. With raw power, a voice pierces the wreckage.
Stop.
A pause, and then…Existence obeys.
The dying universes slow and then freeze in their undoing. Then, destruction becomes construction. Flesh and reality slowly knit together, and time begins snapping back into place.
Timothy McGee and Death stand together. Apart.
The elevator dings. (But who's on it?)
They face each other, and wonder. The supernova between the two pulses erratically and lightning claws its way across the sphere.
We never did know our own power. Death says evenly, watching the ticking bomb with interest.
"No, you didn't. And it's not 'we' anymore." Tim smiles softly.
Yes, you're correct. And you're incorrect. But mostly correct. Sort of.
Tim gives a look of weak exasperation. "That's not very helpful."
I don't have any definite answers. Not really. This has never happened before.
"Are…are you going to take care of that?" Tim nods uncertainty toward the sphere of energy, which was being swiftly infected by rather nasty-looking red veins. Death's cloak and his clothing flap viciously in the hurricane-like wind, rising and being sucked toward the sphere. "Don't want reality exploding again."
Death grins, eye sockets widening in long awaited relief, and stretches out skeletal fingers over the ball. Tim, without knowing exactly why, does the same, settling his hand beside Death's.
The two beings seem to breathe in, but it's more like a typhoon. The energy is ripped apart, and twirls, shining, twisting, around their hands in a sort of beautiful bind, shimmering, incandescent chains, before fading away.
And they stare at each other as existence delicately sews itself back together around them.
Timothy McGee.
"Azrael. Will I remember?"
Yes.
"Will Tony?"
It's better if he remains ignorant.
Tim smiles. It cracks his face in two, unforced humor oozing forth. "He'd argue with you there, Angel of Death or not. Tony's not one to be left out."
No. I suppose not. Tim can almost see a familiar smile on Death's shadowy features. It's like glimpsing himself in the reflection of the dark bathroom mirror, in the young hours of the day. But he's not designed to handle this sort of information.
Tim's brow gains valleys. "What do you mean?"
Humans have never been designed to learn the knowledge we hold. Few have had this information before, and they've stumbled only upon a fraction of it. Anthony Dinozzo will crumble under the amount we've told him. His mind will bend under the weight, and eventually, shatter. Then, he will either become clinically insane, or slip into a bottomless depression and eventually commit suicide. And I will reap him sooner than I had expected.
A pause. The elevator dings in a way that's almost impatient. Both ignore it.
"Oh God." The uttered words are a susurrus in the silence, horror and guilt dripping from each syllable. "Can you-"
I will clear away that knowledge. He will never know what you have told him.
"Thank you." A weak smile. "What about me? I'm human. I think."
You are something different.
"…Okay."
You…you are not fully human, not in the strictest sense, nor are you a divine being.
The bones of Death's hands click loudly together as they contract and then open, as if to pluck the words from space.
You are a mortal, begat from Death.
"What does that mean for me?"
I don't know. You are a different breed, I suppose. They are made from light, while you separated from darkness. It's fascinating. Though, I believe, essentially, you are similar enough to them.
Death then cranes back his neck, bones cracking wildly, and smiles, shadowy cloak curling like fog around him.
Look, Timothy McGee. Look.
Tim casts his gaze around them, and draws in a quick breath. "Oh…wow."
The brand new universe is twirling serenely around them, the milky way twisting at their feet like a shining, round carpet. The impenetrable blackness of space embracing their bodies and stretching off into infinity.
Come, Timothy McGee.
Tim rips his eyes away from the Eagle Nebula, which was slowly migrating back to its usual spot, and looks to Death.
It is time to return you.
"Goodbye, Azrael."
Goodbye, Timothy McGee. I will see you again. At the end.
Deep within the caverns of Death's eye sockets, there was a green twinkle, ominous, kind, and so very familiar.
"I look forward to that, Azrael." Tim stuck out a hand with the manners his mother had instilled in him, and a small smile crept undetected across his lips. Death slowly declined his head to look at the extended hand, and then suddenly his hand was gripping Tim's; they fit together perfectly. Death grinned cobwebs and the smell of ozone, of creation and destruction.
As do I.
The elevator dings and opens: one departs, one stays on, as it always has been.
The elevator door slides shut, and Timothy McGee drinks in the orange walls and scent of coffee.
"You are late, McGee. Is something wrong?"
"Not at all, Ziva."
She tilts her head fractionally to the side at his jovial tone, but doesn't comment. She hefts her bag higher on her shoulder and smiles at him. "We have a body. Come, McGee." She moves to stand next to him and there's a click as she presses the elevator button.
"McGoo! Thought you weren't going to make it and we'd have to go fetch you." Tony grins widely at the presumed thought of barging into Tim's apartment and dragging him blearily from bed. He tosses Tim's bag at him, which is caught clumsily. He sees Tim's look and his brow furrows. "What?" He glances at his suit. "Do I have something on me? In my teeth?" He bares his teeth and gives Ziva a distinctly constipated look. She chuckles. Tony grins, and then looks back to Tim. Concern touches his features but is sleekly glossed over. "Something wrong, McGee?"
Tim smiles, almost sadly. "Nothing's wrong, Tony. Everything's okay." Contentedness joins the sadness, transmuting it into something more akin to wisdom. "I promise.
"Oookay." Tony shrugged and clapped Tim enthusiastically on the shoulder. "Anyway, you're late, McTardy. There's a reason for that. Please tell me it involves a chick. It does, doesn't it?"
Footsteps, militarily precise, a touch harder than necessary, tap toward them. Tim smiles. Gibbs fresh from…MTAC, it sounds like. "Another time, Dinozzo."
"Yes, Boss. I'm just proud of our little Timmy McGee. Getting conquests all by himself…"
The elevator dings and the elevator arrives. The doors open. Four board. The door shuts.
And all is well.