Disclaimer: Not mine! I don't own NCIS or any of the characters... but boy it would be nice if I did.
A/N: The first few chapters are short. That is intentional. Regular lengths return along the way.
Human Contact
By Enthusiastic Fish
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Chapter 1
He pounded on the ceiling. It was so low that he couldn't stand up straight. He pounded and shouted, pleading for release. The walls remained spitefully solid. He'd already tried breaking them down and gotten a bruised shoulder for his trouble. Had it been hours or days? Minutes or years? He had no idea. Time had no meaning in this room, this cage. He didn't even know how he had arrived here. One minute he'd been standing outside, the next in here, in the dark. He had opened his eyes and closed them again. It didn't make any difference, but at first he could pretend it wasn't pitch black if his eyes were closed. It was so quiet when he stopped pounding...
...It was starting to feel stuffy. That was a bad sign. He was using up too much oxygen, and it obviously wasn't being replaced. But what was the point in conserving it? So he could stay alive that much longer and die later? No, don't think about that. He pounded and pounded. He hit the ceiling so many times that he started leaving bloody prints as he broke the skin, and eventually the bones, of his clenched fists, not that he could see them. It was pitch black. Besides, the pain helped him remember that he was still alive. It was getting harder to believe that. There was no sound except for the noise he was making, no light, nothing. He couldn't stay still, and so he pounded on the ceiling. His voice began to crack but he kept shouting, the exclamations fading to wordless cries. He couldn't let the absolute silence, emptiness, descend. Sometimes he was frantic, sometimes determined. It didn't matter, so long as he didn't have time to remember that he was alone, that no one was there, that no one knew where he was. He couldn't think about the fact that he was going to die, slipping seamlessly from living to dead, leaving just his shell behind. There seemed to be nothing else in the entire world. Just him. Just the unending pounding...
...Over time, the pounding became weaker and weaker; the shouts dying away as his voice finally gave out completely. There was only an occasional muffled thump indicating the presence of life within the box. No one was around to hear it, but it was there. In the small embers of his dying consciousness, he knew it was essential that someone know he was in there, that they find him so he could relay what he knew. He slid to the ground and contented himself with hitting the wall with one bloody fist. Over and over. He would hit the wall and let his hand slide down to his lap. He would rest and then hit again, repeating the process. It was hopeless, but he persisted. No matter how bad things get, a part of us always clings to life. He was clinging, but his grip was getting weaker...