A/N - This is a re-write of my old story of the same name. It's been about ten years since I last updated that one and though I never forgot it, and always wanted to come back to it, life does as it does and the timing never worked out. Well, I can't say life's any less hectic, but I'm biting the bullet at last. I have no idea how many - if any - of my old readers are still around and interested but whatever else may be, giving this story another shot is something I want to do for myself as well.

One of the reasons I gave up on the old version is that I started to hate my own writing. We've all been there, I'm sure, just part of the process. Now it's been ten years and I've learned a lot since then, I feel like I can do this story the kind of justice I always wanted to. To that end, I'm re-writing it again from the beginning.
There've been some changes but the core of the story is the same. Some characters might take a little longer to pop up than before, and some of the details have been updated, but the heart of it hasn't changed. I'm still putting my favourite characters into situations in space and seeing what they do.

I hope that whoever may stumble on this fic and give it a chance enjoys the journey too.

Timothy glanced at his wristwatch as he reached for the handle of his front door: gone midnight. That made the third time this week he'd be making it into bed less than six hours before he had to get back up again, and it was only Wednesday. It was days, weeks, like this that made him wonder at his own life choices - he could be sitting pretty in the private sector, making two or three times what he made with NCIS and working reasonable hours besides, hours that would perhaps leave him with the time to pursue that rare and mysterious thing known as a social life.

He had the option, if he wanted it, had been tempted once or twice by some flashy offer but never seriously. Despite days like this, NCIS was where he belonged; there were very few reasons now that he would walk away.

Timothy heaved an exhausted sigh, stepping through the doorway and reaching, on automatic, for the light switch. It took him a beat or two to realise the light was already on. He blinked. It'd been bright out when he left that morning, barely but enough that he was sure he hadn't needed the overhead on. But he had been only marginally less dead on his feet then than he was now, so it was possible. He hoped the nosy old parker across the hall hadn't noticed the light under the door or he'd be getting another lecture about young - young - people and waste next time their paths accidentally crossed. He rubbed his stinging eyes, gave a mental shrug, and started toward his bed.

Then the bathroom door opened, and Timothy came abruptly face-to-face with one of those reasons.

Harriet Mason was very rarely a welcome sight, for anyone. She was something of a loner on a good day - seeing her, then, generally meant the day was anything but. Fresh off an eighteen hour shift, bone-tired and aching, with a head full of dead sailors and Gibbs' frustration, Timothy experienced a moment of terrible clarity. He had a lot of sins. Of course it would be her, in the moment when they all came back to bite him.

"I thought I had more time." The words surprised him; he hadn't meant to speak them, had barely been aware of thinking them. They bubbled up from a place he'd spent so long ignoring, he'd almost successfully forgotten it was there.

Harriet closed the bathroom door behind her and leant back against it, looking him over with that old familiar gaze. It sent a shiver up his spine. How long had it been? Ten years, for him, and only the stars knew how long for her. She hadn't changed, not even a little - same dark hair shorn brutally short, that ragged old scar slashed across her left cheek, even the glint of red behind her eyes, cybernetic implants and madness. Here, in the middle of his mundane little apartment, his mundane little life, she seemed an impossibility.

"Things have changed," Harriet Mason said, her voice calm and even as it always was in his nightmares. "We can't spare you any longer."

"What's going on?" He didn't want to know. He didn't want to know. If he did not know then he could stay, could tell Mason that he was not the man he had been a decade ago, that he was old and soft and happy and they could all very well manage without him. He could tell himself that. It was always the knowing that had done for him.

Mason stood forward, drew herself to her full, utterly unimposing height, and held out the other end of a Jumper. Timothy didn't take it. For a moment they were both still, the world balanced on a knife's edge and Timothy afraid to breathe for fear of tipping it either way.

"What do you think, McGee?" Mason said with a touch of impatience, never one to let a moment be. "We don't know what, exactly, but it'll be war."

"It's always war," Timothy argued, though it felt redundant to point that out to the woman they called Harbinger. He had been promised more time. "That's the one bloody constant of the universe."

"Do you really think we'd call you back for some backyard scrap?"

"You would." Timothy folded his arms, fixing her with a stare heavy with familiarity. Harriet Mason was - difficult. She had called him friend, once, and in the next breath a coward for leaving. He'd spent the first couple years of his early retirement looking over his shoulder, always expecting to see her grim and scarred face come to drag him back. Somewhere along the way, though, he'd stopped. Forgotten, as if Mason and everything she carried with her were some long-ago nightmare he'd finally stopped reliving. As if Timothy McGee was all he had ever been.

"The order came from Kinoan himself." Mason said. "He bellyached for months over it but he signed." She held out the Jumper again, a battered old thing that'd probably lived through more wars than even she had. It made Timothy queasy just to look at it. "Take it up with him."

"Do I not even get a day or two to sort things out?" he asked. Inevitability settled like a shroud even as he struggled. In the end, he would always say yes. "I have a life here."

"So I see." Harriet's eyes found the desk where his typewriter stood, and the framed photographs next to it. His family, his friends, his team. None of them would understand this. None of them would ever know – he would just be gone. Again.

"You knew you'd be leaving again," Harriet said, the faintest of crinkles appearing on her brow. She'd called him friend, once. As far as Timothy knew, he was the only one she had. He doubted there was another who would even notice that crinkle, let alone know what it meant. "Why bother with all of this?"

"It's called a life, Mason," he snapped. Something hot and heavy was bubbling up in his chest, a terribly familiar burn he'd already run away from once. He marveled at how quick it had returned. "It's what humans do."

Mason looked back at him, unperturbed. If his words had hit their mark Timothy could see no sign but, then, it had been ten years. Perhaps he'd just lost the knack. Mason shrugged one shoulder, turning her back to the photographs, blocking his view too.

"You're a General. If you want to make a couple calls home, I doubt anyone'll argue."

It wasn't a particularly comforting notion. What could he even say? Even if his name still counted for something out there, it wouldn't stretch to the truth and he wouldn't tell it if it did. He couldn't see that anyone's life would be the better for knowing.

He looked at Mason, at her impassive face and spotless (for once) uniform, and the Jumper she once more held out. The truth was a terrible thing. Knowing it was the reason he hadn't thrown her straight out, hadn't told the lot of them they'd already taken more than he was willing to give. Knowing it was why he would give more yet, and more again, until the stars took him home and beyond their use.

There's nothing left to burn, McGee. So what are you going to do?

General Timothy McGee sighed out his exhaustion and his fear, and breathed in the weight of the stars on his shoulders.

"I'm packing a bag this time," he said, in a voice that did not belong to Timothy but which made Mason's spine straighten to attention. "You can wait."