DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN NCIS OR ANY OF ITS CHARACTERS!
MY FATE IS DEATH BY MY BIRTH
I'm not alone. I'm never alone. The presence is always with me. It's inside me, around me, hover above me- waiting. I've been able to ward it off by keeping physically fit and having a healthy mental attitude and staying focused.
My whole adult life was being focused. Trained even in my childhood to know what was expected of me. My life was constantly surrounded by death: death of family members, friends and even enemies.
I could deny it was there, but it didn't make it true. It was only the time I laid alone seeking rest it was able to get a grip on me. It penetrated all my natural defenses while I slept unguarded.
The nightmares weren't figments of my imagination. More the premonitions of things to come. Things that were drawing closer to fruition. Things I was destined to encounter.
Was it my past and all the wrongs that I committed? Was it a curse set upon me by an enemy unseen? I had my share of enemies in my past.
Fate. It was never something I was a strong believer in. "You make your own fate," was my philosophy. Now as I faced what was surely to be the last fight of my life I doubted that belief. Alone was how I would die. It was how I spent a good portion of my life. It was only fitting to end the same way.
No one needed to bear witness to my end. No witness to my moment of weakness. My last moments of my life would also be my last moments of suffering.
Perhaps I've always been marked for a lonely death. Certainly the life I've lived had no promise of what some called the 'white picket fence' dream. Turmoil. Revenge. Hatred. Distrust. Loyalty. These were the remnants of my life. Yet I had more. Small snippets of what my life could have been. If only.
If only I had not been forced to deal with loss at such a young age. If only my mother had not been taken to soon before her time. If only my father had been there for me instead of fighting his own personal battles.
Had those things been different maybe I would not be here ready to die. I am ready now. I've fought and won a good number of victories. Came out from the depths of death's belly and survived against the odds. Now I'm tired. There's no fight, no force to fill me with the will to go on.
It's dark here. The presence is approaching ever stronger. This time in the form of my enemy. He's tortured me endlessly. Physically, mentally and emotionally he as abused me. I have no one to blame but myself. Is the saying not "I've made my bed, so now I shall die in it"?
The door opens to the cell I've been locked in for months now. No one is aware I am alive, let alone her in my personal prison. He smiles, the thrill of my death pleasing him, but he doesn't strike. He covers my head with a sack and grabs my upper arm to lead me to what can only be my end.
I am ready to die. Too weak of body and mind to resist his will. It unnerved me to realize that not so long ago, if I had been in the same situation, I would kill him with my bare hands. Now though it is over, the welcome end to all the suffering. Not the inhumanities I had endured recently but the internal suffering of a life that was filled with pain. A pain I never recognized until I had killed one of my own family. Never admitted it existed until I knew that love, real love could heal the wounds of my past and that my future could have been more than this fate I now faced.
He is talking but I had quit listening to him weeks before. Something he says breaks through my mental fog. What was it? A piece of my past. A piece I had broken off and left behind. No, I had been left behind. That loss had been my most painful. Not only to lose the family I had learned about love from, but the person I had been becoming because of that love.
Dropped in a chair I wonder what his plan is. Firing squad? One bullet to my brain? A quick slice of his knife across my throat? Or something more agonizing, more tortuous? I deserve no less in death.
"One of you will tell me. The other will die." I hear the words, but they do not make sense. Who would he bargain my life against? He pulls off the sack and I swear I must be imagining the image before me. The man across from me cannot really be there. He is the last person who should be. Ironically the one to help me meet my end. Surely, he will save himself after all we had exchanged in the end.
I beg him to save himself when he refuses to see the situation for what it is. Surrounded by too many men and too many weapons death is certain and I am ready.
He talks of a plan I can only deem futile. He asks if I can fight. Can I? For what will I be fighting? A faster death? A less painful one?
The presence returned. He seems ready to end this quickly. Perhaps my death will be quick. He grabs my head and holds the steel blade to my throat. I try again to save the man who had once been like family.
Being the man I remembered him to be he talks, but not the words to save himself. They are surely the words to doom us both, as well as our friend on the floor behind me.
He is speaking of Gibbs. A lump catches in my throat. Guilt from what I had asked of him. Heartache from his answer.
A scuffle, short lived takes place behind me. Before my former teammate is eliminated the man before me speaks again. The words begin to make sense to me. He is out there and I am not going to die today. Glass shatters and a bullet ends the existence of the deadly presence that has kept me in its grip.
It is going to be okay. Somehow they are words I can believe. As we stumble to flee the walls of our prison light blinds us around a turn. Gunfire, no rifle fire erupts a man goes down and in the light stands the man who has saved me, saved all of us and all that we mean to each other.
I am going home. And I will live, until death comes for me again.