Chapter 54

Gibbs sat in the basement, sipping at a jar of bourbon. He was waiting. The wood was ready. He had a rough plan in mind, a few sketches. Now, it was just a matter of waiting.

Then, he heard his front door open, footsteps across the floor and then the door to the basement opened as well.

"Hey, Boss."

Gibbs looked up and smiled. Tim really didn't look too bad, all things considered. He could be much worse. He had been much worse in the past. Now, as he walked down the stairs, Gibbs tried to evaluate how much Tim might be hiding. Could be a lot.

"How's it going?" he asked.

Tim shrugged. "We stopped to see Ahmed. He's getting better. I think they'll probably release him soon. He'll stay with us for now."

"What about you?"

Another shrug. "We went to therapy today. All of us. The kids are still scared."

Gibbs raised an eyebrow. "What about you?"

And yet another shrug.

"Tim, what's going on?"

Tim sighed and walked over to the pile of wood Gibbs had set out.

"What is this?" he asked.

"Called flame birch," Gibbs said, allowing Tim to change the subject for the moment.

"It's pretty."

"Yeah. Thought you might like to use it."

"What for?"

"A desk."

"I've never built a desk."

"Neither have I. We can figure it out."

"Can we?"

"Yep. Got a few ideas."

Tim picked up one of the rough planks and looked at it. Silently.

"It'll take stain well," Gibbs said.

"Do we need to stain it? It's nice as it is," Tim said.

"Nope. Could just seal it. Varnish or epoxy, linseed oil. Something like that."

Tim nodded and kept staring at the wood. Gibbs sensed that he was almost ready to talk, so he waited.

Finally, Tim put down the plank. He didn't turn around, but he started talking.

"I want this to be over. For the last three years, I've tried to make it be over. Nothing worked. Everything I tried didn't do it. I'm so tired. I'm tired of having to think about it. I'm tired of this being my reality. Even if I can take it, I don't want to." Suddenly, he turned around and faced Gibbs. His expression was one of distress. "I didn't break this time, but I hate this. I hate it and I never will be able to stop hating it. It's not enough that I didn't lose my mind. That's not enough! And I can't decide..." He stopped.

"What?" Gibbs asked.

"I..." Tim sighed. "I can't decide what emotion I should feel. I can't... decide if I want to let myself be angry or if... if I'm depressed... or something else. I don't know. I just know that... that I hate it."

"A few years ago, you said that you'd accepted what happened to you," Gibbs said. "Has that changed?"

"No," Tim said. "I accept the past. I don't accept the future. The future that is going have this happening again and again until I die. One more time is too many times."

"You're giving up?" Gibbs asked, trying to stay emotionless and let Tim say what he had to say.

Then, Tim smiled and it was the most world-weary smile that Gibbs had ever seen and he hoped that he never saw that expression on Tim's face again.

"No. I'm saying that... if it weren't for my family, I would already have given up. I would be gone... only I wouldn't be working for anyone but myself. You can disagree with that all you want, Boss, but..." Tim sighed again. "...but honestly, I don't care what you think. I care what I think."

"And?"

"And I don't know what I think. Since we got back, I don't know. I can't decide. And I need to. I just don't know how."

Gibbs wasn't sure how to address this. Tim wasn't as bad off but in a way, this was worse. He was teetering on the fence and deciding which way to fall, not realizing that he could just find his balance instead. But he could also see that Tim wouldn't believe that. Not at this moment. As he said, he had to decide. He had to do it for himself, and no one could do that for him.

So what now?

Gibbs took a breath and did something he rarely ever did: He decided to let Tim off for the time being. Instead of pushing, he decided to back off.

"Then, why don't you start planing that birch and we can get started?" he said.

"What?" Tim asked, obviously surprised.

"I haven't had a chance to get it all planed. Start on that."

Gibbs held out the planer. Tim looked at it for a long moment and Gibbs thought Tim might actually refuse to do it, that his inner turmoil might keep him from pursuing the hobby that had given him stability in the past. The pause was uncomfortably long.

Then, Tim took the planer and picked up one of the boards. He walked over to the sawhorses and set the plank down. Then, slowly and carefully, he began to smooth it down. As he worked, Gibbs watched him. He had purchased rough wood because the flame birch that was already planed was a lot more expensive. And it was more time spent focusing on something other than his problems.

Every scrape of the planer revealed the beauty of the wood grain.

Maybe it would help.

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

Tim sat in his car after leaving Gibbs' house. What he had said to Gibbs had stuck in his brain.

"I have to decide," he whispered to himself.

He pulled out his phone and sent a text message to Zahara.

I'm going to be late getting home. I need to think. I promise I'm not running away. I love you.

After a few seconds, there was a reply.

I love you. I will be waiting for you.

Tim smiled a little. He knew there was no point in telling Zahara just to go to bed. She had decided to wait and she would.

He put the car in gear and started to drive.

At first, he wasn't sure where he was going to go, but then, he began to navigate to Shenandoah. He drove into the park and stopped at the first overlook he came to that was empty. He got out of the car and walked to the overlook. Unlike when he'd come here to propose to Zahara, the skies were completely clear. The stars were sparkling overhead. The sun hadn't set all that long ago with the long summer days, but it had been long enough that the stars were visible. Tim sighed and sat on the rock wall of the overlook. He whispered softly to himself.

"Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light

I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night."

He sighed again. How long had it been since he believed that poem?

"At least three years."

Ever since he had been forced to do what he had always sworn he would never do. He had always said that there was nothing anyone could to do force him...and yet, they had. Not because of danger to himself but because of a perceived danger to his family.

He didn't have the strong moral compass he'd thought he had. People said he was strong, but he wasn't. He had a major weakness. It would always be his weakness. The only way it would go away was if every person he cared about was gone. If that happened, then, Tim knew himself. He knew what he would do. He would lose his grip on that compass. It would stop pointing any particular direction and he would take out his loss on the world.

It didn't matter that he knew it would be the wrong thing to do.

"I'm not the good man they think I am," he said aloud.

Suddenly, his phone buzzed. He pulled it out and was surprised to have a text message from Tony. He wondered if he really wanted to see what Tony had to say.

Not particularly, but he was just curious enough to read it.

You busy?

Tim smiled humorlessly at his phone and typed a response.

Nope.

A pause.

Are you home?

Another smile.

Nope.

Where are you?

Shenandoah.

Why?

Thinking.

Again, there was a pause. Then, the three little dots popped up. Tony was typing something.

Mind if I join you?

Tim thought about that. Did he really want Tony around? Not really, but he also knew Tony well enough that he wouldn't back off unless Tim was ready to really lay into him and maybe not even then.

Nope.

The three dots again.

Okay. Stay there, then. Don't sneak off and have me driving out there late at night and then find you've left. Got it? I'll be really ticked offal you.

Tim actually laughed a little.

Offal? Animal entrails?

Stupid autocorrect. Off at.

I'll be here.

Tim put his phone away and sat there, staring up at the sky as it got darker and more stars came out. Since he knew his conversation with Tony was unlikely to be relaxing, he stopped trying to think and just looked at the stars, enjoying the fact that he was able to see so many as it got darker.

After about an hour, he heard a car coming up the road behind him. He closed his eyes so that his night vision wasn't ruined by the headlights. After a few minutes, the car stopped right behind him and he heard the engine go off. Still, he kept his eyes closed since he knew that many cars had a delay in when the headlights went off.

"Tim, why are your eyes closed?"

"Because I'm betting your headlights are still on."

"So?"

"So I don't want to lose my night vision. I can see quite a few stars right now."

"I can see quite a few stars."

"I can see more than you can."

"Not right now; your eyes are closed. The headlights are off, by the way."

Tim opened his eyes and looked up at the sky again.

"I can see more stars than you can."

"How do you know? You can't see what I'm seeing."

"Because of how the eye works. It takes time to adjust to darkness and you've been driving with headlights. There's no way you're seeing more stars than I am."

"Always got to bring it around to science-y stuff," Tony said and sat down on the wall beside Tim.

Tim didn't look at him. He just looked at the sky and sighed.

"Not sure I have much else besides that."

A pause.

"Why are you out here, Tim? It's not to look at the stars."

"It's not just to look at the stars."

"Why?"

"To think."

"You said that before."

"That's because it's true."

"What are you thinking about?"

"The future."

"And?"

"And whether or not I can handle it."

"You did this time."

"Yeah, I did. And it sucked," Tim said, allowing some anger into his voice. "What about the next time? And the next? And the next? Even if I can handle it, I don't want to. I'm tired of it."

Silence.

"And I'm not the person I thought I was."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I have limits."

"Everyone does."

"No. I have limits to when I do the right thing. I lied...not to other people, but to myself. Before three years ago, I said that I had a line that I wouldn't cross. I said that no one could make me cross that line because I knew that crossing it could be detrimental and there was no way that crossing that line could be the right thing to do. I was wrong. They threatened my family and I caved. I've had to deal with that fact for the last three years. Threaten my family and everything else goes out the window. I'm not strong. I'm weak, and I'm so weak that I don't even have the courage to leave them. I can't bear to get rid of the thing that keeps me from making the right choices. And so now, I'm stuck with knowing that the rules only apply to me if I let them and there's the temptation to throw all those rules away, and what's keeping me from it is not that I want to make the right choice. It's because I'm selfish and I love my family."

Tim ran out of words. He wasn't sure why he was saying them all to Tony right now, but looking at the stars helped. No eye contact.

Tony didn't say anything for a few seconds. So Tim kept looking at the sky.

"...are you finished?" Tony asked.

"Talking?" Tim asked in return.

"Yeah."

Tim thought about it. "Yeah."

"Okay. Will you listen to me?"

"Maybe."

Tony laughed a little, but it didn't last long.

"When are you going to stop seeing yourself this way?"

"What way?"

"Like you can only be good or bad. No in between. Like the idea that you'd want to save your family from suffering is somehow a bad thing. Like the fact that you don't want to give them up is somehow a bad thing. Like you have to be perfect or else you're worthless. ...like the only right way to live is if you sacrifice everything in your life for some nebulous cause."

Tim didn't know how to respond to that. So he didn't. He just kept sitting there, staring up at the sky.

"Tim, you keep treating yourself so badly and I don't know how to break through that mind set and let you live like you were before three years ago. You didn't do anything wrong back then."

"I let them make me do the one thing I said I would never do."

"Except that you didn't do it. They didn't get it and because of how much you were trying not to give them what they wanted, we were able to find you and get you and that Bill Joyce guy and the CIA guy free. Tim, what broke you wasn't doing what they wanted. It was trying so hard to save everyone, to do everything."

"No," Tim said, softly. "What broke me was Ray dying."

"Either way. Tim, you can't beat yourself up about that... if that's what you're still doing. If that's why you've been so shaky..."

"I don't know if it is. I just know I am. And I'm always waiting for the next time. It's all I can see anymore. The next time they come after me or after my family or anyone I care about. If it were just me... I could handle it so much easier. I could spit in their faces... literally, if necessary and the only thing they could do is kill me. But that's not what they do anymore. That used to be what they did, but not anymore." Tim suddenly had to look at Tony, although it was dark enough that he couldn't really see much in the way of expression. "One of those men coming after us, when it was obvious that he couldn't get me because I was already out of the room, he looked at Zahara and Salma and he cut the rope they were climbing down. He didn't need to do that. It wasn't going to get him what he wanted, but he did it anyway... because it would hurt. You tell me. How am I supposed to accept that?"

Tony didn't say anything right away. Tim turned back to the sky.

"Years ago, I woke up after falling while running away and I saw the stars. Everything sucked, but right at that moment, I escaped... from everything. It was just the stars. 'I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.' That's just not the way it is anymore. I wish it was. I just can't escape anymore."

Silence fell again. Tim looked at the sky. It was dark enough that he could see the band of the Milky Way stretching across the sky.

Then, suddenly, Tony scooted over and put his arm around Tim's shoulders. He didn't say anything. It was just that supportive arm. For a long moment, Tim wasn't sure how to react to that, but then, he sighed and let himself lean on Tony. For about ten minutes, it was utterly silent. Then, Tony broke the silence.

"You don't need to escape, Tim. You're already free. The only one keeping you imprisoned is you. You just need to open the door and let yourself out. I can see it, Tim. You're trapped in a cell, wanting to get out, not realizing that you have the key and can get out anytime you want to. No one else can let you out, even though we want to. ...but until you can see it, you can lean on me anytime. And I'll be there."

Tim sniffed a little and felt his throat tighten.

"Thanks, Tony."

They sat there, looking at the stars.