3 Months Later...
McGee had assumed that he would be gone within two or three weeks, but he ended up staying for three months, and the longer he stayed at their home, the more comfortable the three were with each other. Victoria's movements were less forced, and the formal tone in her voice slowly went away, replaced by a friendly familiarity. Almost unintentionally the two became good friends, and quickly forged a relationship like that of siblings.
The former NCIS agent quickly began to pick up the Italian language, and Apollo helped him greatly, as he had grown up in a household that spoke both English and Italian. Victoria was fluent from her years in Valero Notte, and helped him build up a strong vocabulary.
Apollo procured a laptop for Tim, who tried his hardest to do research on himself. But he'd never been one for social networks, and he turned up nothing in that department. Simply googling his name was of course a failure, as 10,000 different Timothy McGees came up and he didn't recognize a single one of them.
He eventually gave up the search for his identity online, and decided that the wise thing to do would be to go to America himself and find the address on his driver's license. But he didn't have a key to any apartment or house, so he wondered how he would prove any ownership to said property. For all he knew, his landlord (because he realized that he couldn't afford a house; he had to have an apartment) had already tossed out his belongings. He would have to find his friends or family, whoever and wherever they were...
And how he would make money was a large question. After being gone without explanation for three months, would his work even take him back? Probably not.
Sometimes he was gripped with fear. After learning about Victoria's past he couldn't help but wonder if he did in fact have a family or a job. When he woke for the first time, he found out that he had been shot. What kind of life was he coming from? It might have been a terrible one.
But at the insistence of Apollo and Victoria, he tried not to think like that.
He slowly but surely gathered up plans: he decided he would get a hotel nearby his old address, and check it out. If someone was already living there, and it didn't help his memory, he would check missing persons notices around that area to find out if anyone was looking for him. (Little did he know that the rest of the world thought him to be dead.)
It was a long shot, but still worth a try.
One night he was in the midst of securing a ticket for a flight to Washington DC when Apollo stuck his head through the door.
"Tim, may we speak to you for a moment?"
Fear gripped the young man as he stood and followed him out the room. McGee had known this day was coming; it was only a matter of time before he wore out his welcome and they asked him to leave. He tried not to let it bother him, telling himself that they had taken him in out of kindness, they probably had things to do and places to go, and of course he needed to find out his own past, and...
He was already pale and resigned when Apollo stopped under the dome in the main room, where Victoria was standing. Their faces were unreadable and passive until Apollo began to speak.
"Timothy, we've really enjoyed having you here these past few months."
"You don't have to say any more," Tim replied politely.
Apollo looked surprised. "I don't?"
"I've overstayed my welcome. I understand, and I'm so sorry to inconvenience you. I was just making plans to get a flight back to America."
Victoria began to giggle, but it soon turned into full-on laughter that rang against the walls. Apollo smiled and tried not to do the same.
"We were just about to ask the complete opposite. We don't want you to leave, son, we want you to stay."
"What?"
"We're asking you to be part of this household," Victoria explained patiently.
Tim studied their expectant faces, looking for signs of a joke. "No, really."
"We do," Apollo said. "You're an incredibly intelligent person, and you're quite agreeable. We enjoy having you here. And I know you want to look for your friends and your family, which we will help with as much as we can, but perhaps you might want another family in the meantime?"
Tim said nothing, stunned, so Apollo continued.
"It's not always so quiet in this house," he promised. "We often have many interesting friends around, many of them flightlings. And we travel often, which I think you would enjoy. Of course, you're an adult and you may come and go as you please. Occasionally, Victoria or I will go on our own private excursions back to the States."
"We're not just offering to be friends, Tim. We care about you," Victoria said. "We-"
McGee silenced him by encasing them both in a hug, his wings leaping forward by reflex and wrapping themselves around the three.
"Thank you," he murmured, to which Victoria returned the hug and Apollo put his hand on Tim's shoulder.
...
Later that evening, Apollo and Tim sat in the library; Victoria had gone out to enjoy her evening with some friends from the town.
"Obviously, we wouldn't have asked you if we didn't believe you to be a loyal person," the older man said.
"Trust me, you two are literally all I have right now," McGee said. "I would never do anything to hurt you after everything you've done for me."
This seemed to satisfy the head of the Clark family, who smiled. "I have something for you."
He stood and climbed the stairs up to his loft, where he dug a small object out of his desk. Returning, he handed it to Tim.
It was a lovely little pocket watch that bore the crest of the Clark family. Its battery did not work, and in the modern world, it served as little more than a relic and an heirloom.
"Obviously you're not going to be carrying it around with you all day," Apollo said. "But it has been in my family for generations."
"Wow," McGee said, studying it reverently. "Thank you."
The large oak doors creaked, announcing Victoria's presence. "You know, this all calls for a celebration. And I think its time Tim meets your friends, Apollo."
"I agree," he said in mock seriousness. "What do you propose?"
A delighted gleam sparked in her electric eyes. "How about a party?"
Meanwhile...
This wasn't Tony and Ziva's first hunt, but it was certainly the hardest they'd had so far.
After Vance got wind of a flightling in DC from one of his contacts, he enlisted Team Gibbs to put a stop to it. The Major Case Response Team was now moonlighting as Hunters of the Supernatural. Despite the dangers the job brought, they seemed to benefit. Gibbs had two extra agents to help him hunt, minimizing the time spent fighting and perusing the beasts. Ziva was back in the shape she had been during her time with the Mossad, giving her even more energy and agility. Tony had an outlet to vent his guilt and anger at losing Tim. Though the memory of their fallen comrade weighed heavily on all of them, it could be argued that DiNozzo felt the worst, having been the closest to McGee at the time of his death.
Ziva stared down at the dead flightling, her head cocked to the side to see it better. They had caught the bastard in the act, just about to kill a young woman. Luckily the girl was unharmed save a few scrapes and a major emotional shock.
It took approximately twenty minutes of fighting to bring the monster down, and Tony and Gibbs both had good sized scratches on their arms, while Ziva had a lovely black eye. But they had succeeded.
"Is that not the most grotesque face you've ever seen?" she asked. It was clear that the man had been hunting humans for decades; god knows how many years he had extended his unnatural life by doing so. His eyes were not any vibrant or beautiful shade but a bizarre light blue that was almost white, and they glowed up until his dying breath. His teeth were in fact sharper, as well as his fingernails (which were perpetually rimmed with the blood of former victims, never properly washed off). His wings were stretched out, but they were a horrid black color instead of the lighter shade they should have been. Instead of soft, downy feathers or even sturdy structural feathers, these quills were brittle. One light squeeze and they would crack into a thousand pieces like ceramics or weak plastic.
The worst part was the man's face. It wasn't completely abnormal, yet it was twisted in such an inhuman sneer that it made it impossible to look at him for long. Even in death his face retained an air of pure evil and ill wishes.
"Yeah," DiNozzo agreed, rubbing his cuts. "Let's go, Vance already sent someone out to pick it up."
They left it behind carelessly and walked back to where Gibbs was just getting off the phone with the director. "Good work," he said to them. "Go home, get some rest."
"Gibbs," Ziva said, and he stopped to look at her. "We believe we are ready to go back to Valero Notte. To find the flightling that took McGee."
Jethro looked at them in surprise. They hadn't brought it up since that first lesson three months before. But he felt they were ready, and he knew that it would help them sleep at night, the same way Tony wanted to go after Saleem when they heard Ziva was killed.
Also, a nagging doubt had filled his mind since they had begun to describe the specific flightling to him. He had been turning over possibilities in his kind for those months. He couldn't be sure that it was the same Italian flightling he had encountered several years before.
Then again, he didn't believe in coincidences.
Either way, it was a flightling and it had to be stopped.
"Alright," he agreed. "Go home, get some rest, then pack your bags."