Part four of Those Who Wander ~ SamayouTamashi

"You all know him better as Alex Rider, the youngest and only teenage spy in the business today."

Tony snorted. "Yeah, and I'm Lady Gaga."

"It would certainly explain the wide range of scars he has," Gibbs nodded, once more finding no trouble ignoring Dinozzo.

"And MI6 would have no problems finding someone to put up that firewall I ran into," McGee agreed. "The names Daniels and Rider were under such heavy protection that I can't be entirely surprised."

Ben was glad that at least half of them seemed to have no problems accepting what he was saying as fact. "The only reason I'm telling you all this classified information is because the threat of SCORPIA is growing with every day. Alex is our expert on all things related to SCORPIA and their tactics, and I need him with all of his memories back in place.

"However, you still have technical custody over him until this case is closed, so until his amnesia clears up, it may be safer with him here rather than in the field."

"And why would that be?" Tony asked. "Aren't you spy-types supposed to be super ninjas, or whatever?"

"Most of us are just run-of-the-mill ex-soldier types actually, but Alex is a different sort. You've hit the ninja thing on the head, but," he frowned, "Alex is…was too close to this whole case. SCORPIA isn't the regular 'world domination/destruction' kind with him. Both his parents, uncle, and housekeeper were killed by them, not to mention that they have a similar vengeance against him."

"Don't tell me. He stole one of their nukes or something," Tony joked, still unable to take the spy seriously. After all, teenagers aren't spies. It just doesn't seem possible to most people, and it shouldn't be.

Ben slammed both his hands on the table and looked the NCIS agent in the eye. "No, he killed half their board of directors, their liaisons to multiple terrorist groups, and stole a dozen nuclear missiles they had stashed in North Korea out from under their noses." Tony's eyes widened and he gulped as he leaned back away from the irritated spy.

Forgetting Tony for the moment, he turned to Gibbs. "As far as I know, there have been two assassination attempts backed by SCORPIA on him. He never brought up the topic of any others. Even as cocky as they have been, they shouldn't know of his amnesia this early on and it needs to stay that way. Any agents here who know anything about Alex, even if they just caught a glimpse of him, need to be monitored carefully. If it sneaks out that he's here, you will be looking at a full out battle in your building. It has happened before."

Gibbs nodded in agreement. "You say he needs those memories, but wouldn't it be better for him to forget everything and start over again."

The same thought had crossed Ben's mind countless times before. "It wouldn't matter if he left the business, Gibbs. You don't understand. He has too many enemies now and many of them are more powerful than you can imagine. Alex is the best we have between Britain and the States, and he has more contacts in the Underground and black market than any other agents in our business. And he knows…knew that."

It was frustrating for Gibbs to get everything straight in his head. "So he's a weapon."

"And a friend," he stressed. "I hate this just as much as you, but if he wants to stay alive in the world he's been living, he needs those memories back."

"What do you think we should do?" Ziva broke in to the conversation. As a former Mossad agent herself, she understood better than most the sacrifices you have to make for your country, despite any age barriers.

"Ms. David, I assume you know how to fight?" His eyes sparkled brightly.

Alex had woken to find the place nearly empty at ten that morning. He yawned and rubbed at his eyes, sensing that he had woken more out of reflex than anything else, seeing as how he still felt just as tired as before.

"Aww, you're so cute when you do that," Abby giggled from his left. He turned to see her sitting behind Ziva's computer. The rest of the NCIS agents were evidently somewhere else for the moment.

"How long have I been asleep?"

"Only three hours. I can set out a blanket in my lab if you want to sleep longer. No one should disturb you there."

"No, I think I'm going to be awake for awhile now." Truthfully, more sleep would have been heavenly, but something instinctual kept him up.

"If you ever change your mind… They're returning!" she spun around in Ziva's chair, being the only one who could even think of crossing into the agent's space without worry of being 'accidentally' killed for trespassing. "How'd it go, Gibbs?"

"Do you have anything else for us, Abbs?" he diverted as the rest of the team filed down the stairs, Ben still his usual bouncy self, but the rest of them somewhat toned down. Alex noticed Tony taking 'stealthy' glances at him and wondered what Fox had told them to make the agent wary of him.

"Not so much." Her results came up on the screen, "His clothes have all been thoroughly cleaned, and they were bought recently while he was here in D.C. Ducky couldn't find any evidence of a phone, credit cards, or anything else to tell us where he was staying. All the fibers on his clothes relate to the park you found him in. Before that, he could have been in Antarctica for all I know."

"But if he had a credit card," McGee said slowly as he sat down to type on his keyboard, "it would be connected to his bank account, which could point us to where he's been."

"Get on it, then. Ziva and Daniels, go take a break. Alex, you're with them." Gibbs turned to Tony. "Dinozzo, grab us all some coffee. It's going to be a long day."

"Yes, boss."

Alex and Ben followed Ziva's lead to the elevator and then to the gym that took up the level right above autopsy and Abby's lab. "You know anything about sparring, Rider?" Ziva challenged.

He thought about it before an early memory with his uncle surfaced. "I think I do."

"Daniels here thinks that if you only work with the muscles, the mind has a chance to recover muscle memory. Some other memories should come back along with them."

"If you think it will work... I really want to remember. I get the feeling there was something important that I forgot with everything else, and bad things are going to happen if I don't tell anyone."

"Just let it come naturally," Ben said. "Rushing things won't help."

"But you knew me, right? Can't you just tell me about myself to make things go faster?"

"I don't want everything to come back at once, Alex. Let it come on its own time," he soothed.

"And you think this will help?" Alex asked, gesturing at Ziva leaning by the open and padded space.

"Absolutely. Your strongest memories are the ones engrained permanently in your muscles and reflexes. Just do what seems natural while you're sparring."

Alex sighed. Something told him that he had been a decent fighter before the amnesia. Hold back, his subconscious was telling him, or someone might get hurt.

Ziva showed him where the borders to their sparring ring were and said she'd start slow for him.

At first, it was just slow kicks and punches in his direction. He didn't try to compensate for them or retaliate, instead stepping aside before they hit. Then Ziva sped up, adding in feints to throw him off. Yet he knew where every hit was going to land before she finished throwing them, reading her movements and eyes to see when she was faking and going for a hit. It became an easy game, taking small steps to make the hits barely miss and using his small stature to throw off her aim.

She began to actually try for a point when Ziva realized that he wasn't going to go for a hit. Moving faster than before, he swerved his whole body to the side when she aimed kicks at his side and rolled when the hits were aimed higher than his torso.

Ben was speaking to him from the sidelines. "Strike back!" he was calling out.

At some point, he began offering his own punches, pulling them at first but then realizing he didn't have to against Ziva. It wasn't until one of his blows landed to take the agent off her feet that he realized the points he had been hitting had been purposely landing around nerve points.

But the fight was just starting to get interesting. Ziva spun back to her feet, kicking upwards at his chest and sending him down to the floor. Instead of standing, he shot a foot out to tap behind her thigh. Her leg collapsed, but not before she pulled one of his arms behind his back. On her knees, she pinned him to the floor. Or so she thought. Using his feet, he pushed her over his head and rolled backwards to stand again.

As he stood this time, his right foot moved in front and his left to the side with both hands ready to either block or hit in front of him: a standard fighting pose he clearly recalled from so many years of practicing karate, muay-thai, and tae-quon-do.

Ziva took a similar stance, and the real fight began.

Tony took the elevator down to deliver the much-appreciated coffee to Ben and Ziva. When he stepped out and into the practice room, he blinked.

Alex and Ziva were no longer sparring, but in an all-out match to the death. On closer inspection, their eyes had lost any gleam of emotion as they looked at each other only as targets and no longer as fellow humans.

"How long have they been at it?" he asked Ben.

From his perch leaning against the wall opposite the fighters, he shrugged. "They were going fairly slowly until a couple minutes ago, and suddenly you'd think they were settling a blood feud or something." He stood up and stretched his sore shoulders above his head. "It's a good thing Ziva is so good or I'm worried Alex might have killed her by now. He loses his mind while he fights and that's exactly what I want to happen."

"Worry not. No one beats Ninja David unless they want to look forward to hell the next day."

His point was proven when Ziva finally made a direct blow to his temple, dazing Alex and sending him to the floor with his hand over the bruise that would be forming.

Ben crossed the floor to ruffle his former-partner's hair. "You looked like you were having fun."

But Ziva looked pissed off to say the least, as she spun on the British spy. "What were you thinking, having me fight him?"

He stumbled back a step, holding his hands in front of him. "What? You didn't injure him too badly and it might have helped."

"No," she hissed, "quite the opposite. If I hadn't dazed him, he would have killed me. You should have told me that SCORPIA had trained him, Daniels."

"SCORPIA? No, he works for MI6..." he trailed off in a confused manner. "He may have killed, but he was never an assassin."

A quiet voice spoke up from the floor, "I think she's right."

Ben, Tony and Ziva looked over at the blond standing up slowly, still recovering from the dizziness of the unexpected hit. "I remembered something while we were fighting. SCORPIA were the ones who taught me how to shoot. I did some kind of training for them, and I think that sometimes I had to suppress how they showed me to fight. Ziva's right. I shouldn't be fighting anyone until I remember everything."

"I didn't know," Ben whispered, shaking his head. "You never told me."

"Your name is Ben, right?"

Ben Daniels smiled. "Yeah."

"I think I remember something about Bangkok, and I met you there through MI6?"

"Maybe this is helping you more than I thought."

Ziva shook her head. "I refuse to fight him again. The next time he loses himself, I might not be so lucky to get such a shot again."

Tony laughed. "I never thought I'd live to see the day where you'd admit defeat, Ziva."

"You'd like to try your look then?" she raised an eyebrow.

"Oh no, you'd pound me into the ground before I even raised a hand."

Alex sat back on the edge of the mats, pulling his legs in against his chest. "I was a spy, wasn't I? I didn't want to do it, but then something happened and I couldn't push myself hard enough."

Ben shifted his weight from foot to foot. "Yeah, your housekeeper."

"Jack. She...something happened to her."

"SCORPIA had her shot after MI6 made an agreement with them about your protection. You couldn't be killed directly, so they shot her in front of you to make their point clear. After you recovered, you couldn't be out in the field too much. I think the real reason we were paired together was for me to pull you back down from the clouds to see clearly again."

"And then Russia and Afghanistan a couple months apart before we were sent after SCORPIA in the States."

"Right. You insisted on going by yourself, but Blunt was worried that you were out for revenge and the mission would be ignored."

"He was probably right," Alex admitted.

"We came in and then I can't remember anything after I stepped off the plane."

"Neither do I. You insisted that we get off separately and get to the hotel by different routes. I left first and never saw you until NCIS knocked on my door."

"How did you know that the lieutenant was working for SCORPIA?" Ziva asked.

"The tattoo," they replied simultaneously.

"It was on his trigger finger," Alex explained, briefly recalling his meeting with the lieutenant in the park. "All of SCORPIA's people have the silver symbol on whichever finger they use to shoot as a means of recognizing each other. It's small enough that it goes unnoticed by anyone not looking for it."

Their conversation was interrupted by Abby running into the room. "McGee was able to find something!" she said excitedly. "There's no phone down here, so Gibbs sent me to get you."

A/N: Soooo many reviews! I love all you guys so much that you all get imaginary cookies whether you reviewed or not. Remember, reviews are food for my imagination. The more reviews, the better I know what you guys like and/or dislike.

This chapter might have been a little fast, but I needed Alex to start remembering stuff to make the next part more interesting. His personality should start changing noticeably from now until the end, so don't complain that he seems to have multiple personalities. As the memories come back, the innocence he seemed to have up till now should fade over and the harder, colder Agent Rider will start to come out more.

Side note: One of my wonderful anonymous reviewers brought up that Alex seemed a little OOC with him being deputy director, but remember that this is supposed to be a good 6 months at least ahead of Snakehead. I can't imagine that at this point, any agent would be better for the job than him with the sheer amount of experience he has. On a more emotional side, Jones was the softer one between her and Blunt, and Alex is the one filling in her seat. He knows what the field looks like, and the reality of the situation out there, making him incredibly understanding towards the worries, fears, and pain of his subordinates. I try to imagine him as a mix between a seasoned spy and teenage boy. While both will be visible in my fics, try to imagine that psychologically speaking, he is an adult. His childhood is already over, guys, and he's accepted this from my point of view.