A/N: Again, sorry for the wait, got a lot going on at Uni right now.

I'd be very interested in hearing what you think about this chapter and what Timothy explains. I have my way of seeing it but you might see it completely differently! Let me know.

Disclaimer; I do not own anything NCIS. This whole thing is just the product of an overactive imagination, boredom and too much sci-fi.

Timothy turned to face his old boss, glad that the Observation Deck was deserted as he couldn't quite keep the rabbit-in-the-headlights expression off his face.

This was the conversation he had been dreading from the moment the team appeared onboard. He knew that his friends deserved an explanation but these were not memories he cared to dredge up.

Timothy had run from the Peace Force, run from himself, at the end of the Hotton war and returned only under great duress. The NCIS team were his friends, his family, and the thought of them knowing the truth about him was terrifying. They had not been here at the time and had no way of understanding and, told the story without context, would surely not be blinded by the hero-worship of the other soldiers.

The Peace Force saw Timothy as a hero. Timothy saw himself as a monster.

The team saw him as human. It would break his heart to see the truth reflected in their eyes.

"We shouldn't talk here," Timothy said shortly. He would allow Gibbs to see his weakness but no one else.

"Kinoan is meeting with Gorcheva for the rest of the day," Gibbs answered. "We can use his office."

"You two seem to be getting along well." Timothy commented. He couldn't quite put a name to the feeling this thought caused in his stomach. There were only two people in the entire universe he felt a unwavering loyalty to - and now the both of them appeared to have joined forces, possibly against him.

"He's a good … person." Gibbs said as they set off through the winding corridors, still a little uncertain of the correct language. "He speaks of you very highly."

Timothy couldn't stop a small grin. "Person is fine. You get used to all this eventually." He ignored the second part of Gibbs' comment. His relationship with the ancient alien was hard to explain.

"How did you end up here?"

This question, at least, was harmless, so Timothy answered without much hesitation.

"I was supposed to be doing what Abby's doing, originally. I was eighteen. I'd been a member of a hacking group and we got caught. They said either I go to jail or I join Stars, so obviously I picked Stars. Spent a few months in the Radio room before transferring to the military side."

"Why?"

"Couldn't get the hang of the technology," Timothy laughed a little. "It was just too advanced, I couldn't get my head around it. Eight of us came up, only three were good enough to stay on. They put the rest of us into basic training."

"Was Leah one of them? The woman who's teaching Abby?" Gibbs asked. They had arrived at Kinoan's office now, carrying on their conversation as Timothy pushed open the high security door.

The difference between the bland white corridor and the warmth of the room they now entered was startling. Kinoan's office was, in one word, homely. A fire roared permanently in the grate, the overhead lighting bright but not glaring, the walls lined with overflowing bookshelves.

Timothy sat down in the dark green armchair to the left of the fireplace; Gibbs took the matching one opposite.

"No, Leah's fairly new. Of the eight who came up with me, I'm the only one left. Four died during the Hotton war and the three in the Radio room were killed in a recent missile strike."

Gibbs frowned. "Abby…"

"Safe." Timothy said immediately. "Our defences are better now. There was another missile strike just before you were brought onboard. It didn't penetrate the shields."

He saw no point in telling the agent how close that strike had come to sending the entire station hurtling toward the Earth. Safe, up here, was a relative concept.

"I've heard a lot about this Hotton war. The soldiers talk of you all the time. You're a hero to them." Gibbs sat forward in his chair, eyes boring into Timothy's.

Timothy shifted uncomfortably under the agent's scrutiny, knowing he would no longer be able to hide anything. He had resigned himself to this during the walk over, but that didn't make it any easier. His chest felt tight and his heart began to pound when he pictured what Gibbs' reaction would be. But he couldn't put this off any longer.

Tony and Ziva were due back from basic training in the next few days and they would, without a doubt, have heard everything. At least this way Timothy got to tell the real story, minus the ridiculous exaggeration that characterised most of the legends.

"I'm not a hero. They think I am, but I'm not. I left the Force because of what I did. Came back to Earth and hid, took a job where I had no authority, where I wasn't the boss, because of what I did." Timothy said softly, guilt already lacing his tone as it did every time he thought back.

"You've said that before but you never explain." Gibbs protested. He had been patient with Timothy up until now, respecting his rank and right to privacy. Back on Earth he had never been one to press his agents for the details of their private lives and backgrounds. They would tell him anything relevant, eventually. But the hints and rumours he'd heard so far had convinced him this was a story he needed to know, if he was ever to be the person Kinoan insisted Timothy needed him to be.

"Because I don't know how to," Timothy admitted. "If I tell you, you'll never look at me the same way again. I'm not the person you think I am, Gibbs."

"Everybody else calls you a hero. From what I've heard, you ended a terrible war and saved billions of lives."

From what Gibbs had heard, the Hotton war had been a bloody and terrible thing, characterised by the slaughter of innocents in their millions. According to legend, Timothy alone had defeated the savage armies and brought peace to the galaxy.

"I ended billions of lives." Timothy said with iron in his voice. He hated this, the unthinking glorification of a day which haunted his every moment.

"I burnt a planet, Gibbs," he spat, unable to look the man in the eyes. "In revenge, in anger, I reduced a planet to ashes and murdered the billions of people living on it. There is nothing heroic in that."

Gibbs seemed unable to think of a reply. Whatever he had been expecting, that, apparently, was not it. The silence dragged on for several long moments before Timothy finally grew too uncomfortable and began to talk rapidly.

"Hotton was using a massive fleet of automated ships to attack planets. They would pull into orbit, hundreds of them at a time, taking out the defence stations so easily. We just couldn't seem to match them. Then they would drop thousands of soldiers into the major cities to destroy their armies.

"Then, when the ground attack was over and their forces returned to the ships, the onboard weapons systems would start up again. Dropping huge bombs into heavily populated areas, killing thousands of civilians at a time. No mercy. They'd all but wipe out a planet and then move on to the next one."

Gibbs watched, expression unreadable, as Timothy sprang to his feet and began to pace the room, gesticulating wildly as he attempted to explain his actions. Explain, not justify, for as far as he was concerned there was no justification for what he had done.

"The ships were controlled from several heavily guarded facilities on Hotton. We didn't know the locations of all of them, or how many there were in total. But we knew that if even one survived, it would still be able to control the entire fleet."

Timothy's voice was shaking slightly. It didn't take Gibbs' long experience to know that these memories haunted him terribly.

"I didn't see another option, another way to destroy the fleet before they destroyed us. We were desperate. And we had a weapon. The development team called it the Inferno Device. It … set fire to a planet's atmosphere. Destroyed everything on the surface in a matter of seconds.

"We'd sworn never to use it. Locked it away with every other weapon we thought too terrible to use. But when I gave the order, they released it."

Timothy braced himself against the oak desk, staring out of the large window at Earth spinning alone in the inky void.

"I did it. It was my decision. My duty. I couldn't put that burden on anyone else. So I took the Inferno Device, loaded it into a Hopper and fired it into the atmosphere of Hotton. I watched the flames engulf the planet. There were no survivors."