Loss of Self

Disclaimer: I don't own NCIS... or Ashton, Idaho. :)

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Prologue

There was a roaring in his ears and water soaking his clothing. No other part of his body felt much better. His lungs decided that water did not belong in them and he coughed painfully for a while. Then, he forced his eyes open for a few seconds, and groaned in pain as he tried to move.

I knew this was a bad idea, he thought and then wondered what he meant. As he registered his confusion at his own thoughts, he began to shuffle through his memories and shortly realized that there were none. He grasped wildly for something to tell him what was going on, but there was absolutely nothing. His mind was an absolute blank.

He decided to at least try to find out where he was. That would require sight. He opened his eyes again and squinted in the bright sunlight. Sun. He was outside then. That was something. However, at the moment, all he could see was sun. He groaned loudly as he tried to pull himself into a sitting position. His legs caught on sharp rocks, and his arms ached as if he'd been lifting weights. Maybe he had been. The scene that greeted him as he looked around was stunning. There was a wide river broken by a waterfall. He was sitting near a small cave at the bottom. A forest? Where? Had he gone over that waterfall? Okay, so location was outside somewhere in a forest, next to a river. Not much help there.

He turned his attention to himself. His clothes had obviously seen much better days. The pants were torn, and he suspected that if he hadn't been sitting in a river, they would be bloodstained. His jacket... wait, there was an insignia on the back. He winced and craned his neck to read the letters. N...C...I...S... the meaning floated out of the black hole in his mind: Naval Criminal Investigative Service. So he was an investigator. Okay. Why was someone who was part of the Navy lying in a river? That part made no sense... unless this river was near an ocean. Again, from the depths of his mind, an answer came. He was nowhere near the ocean. He was in the mountains. It was comforting to note that at least the memories were somewhere in his head; he just couldn't seem to access them at the moment.

"Do you see him down there?" The shout startled him. He wasn't alone here. Maybe they could help. He started to struggle to his feet.

"No! Not a sign. You must have killed him! The water's too shallow to have given him any protection." The words made his blood run cold. Were they talking about him? They must be. No one else was around here.

"Check out the base of the falls! Make sure there's nothing left." He began to panic. There was no one else. Just him... and people who apparently wanted him dead. He looked around. If someone was coming down here, he would have to hide somewhere. He stood and immediately wrapped an arm around his chest. He probably had broken at least one rib. He wasn't going anywhere in a hurry. Maybe he was a Marine. He looked down at himself and laughed cynically. If he was a Marine, then the Navy had lowered their standards. He looked up and saw rocks falling from directly above him.

"I'm not going down there!" the second voice shouted. "I'll probably join him. You shot him and he fell into six inches of rushing water! If he's not dead now, he will be soon! Let them find his body!" They shot me? I'm not bleeding, am I? He looked down at himself again and couldn't see any gushing blood.

"Fine!" came the response. "Get back up here and help me move this junk. We're behind schedule."

More rocks fell as the man probably scrambled back up the cliff. He sighed in relief. What in the world could he have done if that guy had come down? A more pressing question came into his all too empty mind: What would he do now? He had no idea what those men looked like and he'd only heard their voices distorted with shouting over the roaring of the falls. He stayed motionless for a long time. He couldn't hear anyone, but he didn't dare move into plain sight. However, he looked back into the cave. The water didn't fill it all up. He could at least get out of the water and maybe dry off before... he turned away from the thought of spending the night outdoors. He took a faltering step, favoring his left leg, toward the back of the cave when he noticed a backpack floating in the eddy by the falls. Maybe it was his and maybe it could give him a clue as to who he was.

A few seconds of cautious and anxious fumbling ended with the waterlogged bag in his hands. He opened it and found a digital camera, some sealed bags of what he guessed must be evidence of some sort, fingerprints, and some other things that he didn't recognize. He pulled out the digital camera and without much hope, tried to turn it on. As he had suspected, it was soaked. He threw out the batteries to prevent them from leaking acid. Something told him, however, that this was important to keep; so even though it was heavy, he decided to carry it with him.

He had to get out of here in case they did decide to come back. How would he know who was safe and who was not? This whole amnesia thing was kind of a drag. He didn't know who were friends and who were enemies. He looked at the river more closely. It was shallow. He didn't dare cross right next to the falls, but further down stream might be easy enough. He figured he should try to disguise where he was going to keep the bad guys off his trail... with that thought he paused. What if he was a bad guy? He shook his head. That didn't feel right and he refused to believe it in any case. He was part of NCIS whatever that really meant and the Navy was not the place for evil men... at least not too many.

"No. I am not a villain," he said aloud. He paused at the sound of his own voice. It was strange and yet familiar at the same time. Never mind. He could think about his allegiances later. The important thing right now was to stay alive.

He painstakingly crawled over the boulders around the cave and limped to the water's edge. It was very shallow here. It was anyone's guess how shallow it would be in the middle of the river.

"Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained." Strange how those cliches flowed naturally. Why was it that personal memories were lost and knowledge retained?

He shrugged and took a step into the water. It was cold. What was worse though was the feeling of exposure he felt as he left the security of the bank. Anyone could see him out here, and the bad thing was that, while he was unaware of the sides in whatever game this was, the people after him certainly did, which put him at a distinct disadvantage. He limped across the river, managing to twist his ankle in a hole as he did so. He also fell down a few times, each time making him groan. Luckily, he didn't slide much further down the river as he could see more white water coming up. An idea came to him though, while he was wading: Why not just walk a little way down the river in the water? That would keep them (whoever they were) off his trail. He wobbled and slid downstream for a few yards and was panting hard by the time he finally gave up and slogged his way onto the opposite bank. Was he really this out of shape or was it because of his injuries? If he had let his body get this way on purpose, when he found out who he was, he'd tell himself a thing or two. Somehow, he had the feeling that there was someone else who would do the same thing... only with physically-added punctuation.

He sat down with a sigh on the bank, blocked from view by a few bushes and began looking through his pockets. He hadn't thought to do that before. He found a cell phone. He flipped it open eagerly, but sighed again when he realized that it was broken and dark. Of course. If he'd really fallen off a cliff and gone over a waterfall, it was a miracle that he wasn't more broken. He thought of tossing it aside, but he knew that would be an indication to his would-be killers of his present state of life. There was nothing else. Why didn't he have a wallet? Where was his ID?

He shivered suddenly and looked up to see that the sun had gone behind the trees. Well, at least he knew which way was west, for all the good that did him. He didn't have a clue which way he should head. If he was in the mountains, it could get cold tonight, and he was not in a position to flag down a random passerby, even if he could find a road. What did people do when they were stuck in the outdoors? He got the feeling that he'd never been much of an outdoorsman; so the fact that he had no idea wasn't entirely annoying, just inconvenient.

"Leaves," he said aloud. His voice sounded very lonely in this empty forest. "People burrow into leaf piles or something, don't they?" Yes, and then they get leeches or ticks or something all over them, he finished silently. He pulled himself back further into the bushes, brushing away the spiders' webs he found there. "Yuck. I'm never going to leave my apartment again." Hang on. An apartment, that felt right. Was there anything else in his head? Nope.

"Who am I?" he shouted to the world at large. The world didn't answer, but there were some nerve-wracking sounds of branches snapping. Human or animal? Which one was worse? He huddled. Don't see me. Don't smell me. I'm not here, he thought. The branch-snapping stopped and then resumed. He was startled to see a largish rodent run into his clump of bushes.

"What do you want?" he asked it. The rodent said nothing, but sniffed at this strange creature who had so impolitely halted its progress.

"Push off. I'm in here tonight," he said and waved his hand at the creature. It gave him one more sniff and a look that indicated it was less than impressed and continued on its way. He curled up into a ball and hoped he'd survive the night. His last conscious thought was a sudden longing to type something.