Disclaimer: I am neither lucky, powerful, rich, or influential enough to own NCIS. If I did I certainly wouldn't be sitting around fantasying about it. (Ha! Who am I kidding, I still would!) But regardless, everything and everyone belongs to their respective studio's, corporations, and companies. (God damnit!) And thus, I own nothing but my rabid plot bunnies and hopeless dreams, thank you very much!

Authors Note #1: This has been one of those plot bunnies that has basically eaten my brain for close to three weeks. Sitting in the back corner of my mind and absolutely nagging to be told. Something that is really quite distracting when you are right in the middle of trying to finish a few other stories I might add.

Warnings: Violence, a bit of gore and language. Spoilers: Anything up to the end of season six is fair game in my opinion, so count yourselves as warned. But really, nothing hugely specific other then for Season Five episode: "About Face." The famed 'Jimmy' episode.

Authors Note #2: Unlike in a Zoo, please feel free to feed the author! Your reviews not only give me a warm fuzzy feeling inside, but they also help me improve myself. Not to mention this is my first forray into NCIS fanfiction. So yes, please read and review.

It's a Rough Roadto Heroism

Chapter Three - "Can you lay your life down, so a stranger can live?...
Can you take what you need, but take less than you give?"

The words 'head trauma' and 'external bleeding' bounced around in his brain like a captured frog in a glass jar, with the very thought alone causing his head to throb and pound. There was something he was forgetting...he knew it. What had he missed? A good physician NEVER misses a thing in a diagnosis, and Doctor Mallard certainly wouldn't be pleased if he were to miss something! Maybe there was nothing else wrong at all and his concussion had simply addled his brain into thinking there was? Right...wrong...he couldn't tell the difference anymore.

Confusion rolled over him in cloyingly suffocating waves. Nothing was clear, everything was going fuzzy around the edges, he couldn't even hear the chirping of the crickets anymore...though he had to admit he couldn't have told anyone when they had actually started either...

He shivered violently, the concrete suddenly all too frigid against his back. 'Oh right...' He murmured in soft, unsteady triumph, suddenly remembering he had taken off his jacket sometime earlier to fashion a torso-style tourniquet, stemming the bleeding from the gunshot wound on his side, leaving him in only his thin dress shirt as the temperatures began to drop with the encroaching night.

'Well...if he were to look on the bright side of this news, at least he could say he had actually remembered that much!' He thought sardonically.

Squinting into the darkness he rallied himself to focus on his surroundings. 'Come on Jimmy, where are you? Focus! Do you think a gunshot wound and a concussion would stop Agent Gibbs? No! The guy was like the Terminator; he had been blown up for Christ sakes and had still recovered!' 'What's a little bullet and bump on the head compared to that?' He thought to himself wonderingly as he turned his head minutely to survey the area to his right.

Slowly and with great effort he pieced together the blurred images. He was near the end of a narrow, filthy alleyway, the space barely two meters across, wedged in between the hard, brick building that he was leaning against and the plain white-washed concrete of the building next to him. There was a pile of long abandoned garbage bags beside him, their bulk partially shielding him from view of the street, lest anyone actually venture into the dank alley. The rotten, sickly sour smell of mouldering food and decomposing fruits and vegetables had long since ceased to offend his senses, he just couldn't find the energy anymore.

He strained to hear over the sound of his heart thudding sluggishly in his ears the throbbing tempo of his aching head echoing in kind as it resounded through his brain like drum beats. He couldn't hear anything, not the casual strains of distant conversation, nor even the muted roar of traffic. Nothing. He was alone. Alone...

The realization slowly dawned on him. No people, no traffic...He was in an obscure part of town and it was nearly pitch black. He was seriously injured and he had no way of calling for help, his cell phone inexplicably missing while his memory still refused to fill in the alarming gaps..the missing pieces that he led him here. 'Jesus...' He breathed harshly, mind momentarily blank as he stared at the dirty smudge of wall in front of him, as if he could will the answers to appear. But the dirty white-washed wall revealed only empty space. Giving him nothing.

He vainly fought down the beginnings of a panic attack, but ended up doubled over as the schooled, even breaths he forced himself to take nearly made him choke on his own spit, the saliva made thick with blood and phlegm.

His lips were dry so he moved to wet them, only just noticing that they were swollen and cracking on one side. Running a tongue across them, unconsciously counting his teeth as he did so, making sure they were all still there. Lucky. Gradually he forced his jaw to move, experimentally forming the words before his own voice returned, it was thick, pained, and unsteady but it was his own.

"Help...Help!" He coughed, his voice barely echoing through the alley despite his efforts to raise it, ignoring as best he could the screaming pain that lanced through his side as he forced more air into his lungs.

"Help! Is anyone there?! Please!" He shouted, groaning as the echoes raced back to taunt him, There was nothing, no reply..not even a sound. All he could hear was his own uneven breathing. No one could hear him...Oh god..

No one was here..no one was coming...no one likely even knew he was missing... He had left work late, finishing up just as the night time janitors slowly started to trickle in...even Doctor Mallard had gone home before him, off to visit his mother at the rest home. In fact he had encouraged it. Knowing how much the kindly coroner had been missing her, he had convinced the man to leave him to finish up the last few details of the final autopsy so excited about the prospect of getting the opportunity to get some hands on experience with such a prominent case that he nearly propelled the man out the door. Sometimes even he enjoyed the relatively silence that descended in the mans absence.

It gave him time to think. Time to enjoy the challenge that came when one worked unaided and unwatched. Unjudged.

A testament to how late the hour was full realized when he had swung up to the main floor, idly thinking of saying goodnight to the others before he left, only to find it deserted save for a few of the new, over-achievers burning the midnight oil as they went over cold cases. Even Agent Gibbs and Tony had packed it up for the day.

In fact, out of all of them, only Abby remained, holed up down in her lab with enough DNA and ballistic samples to sink a ship, and a long night ahead of her as she clocked in a serious amount of overtime to help solve the gang case they were all working on. A case that the other NCIS agents had secretly dubbed as the 'TBBN', short for 'The Big Bastards Nightmare', in honour of Agent Gibbs who had been even more...brusque then usual.

The case had nearly consumed the entire agency and everyone was looking to Gibbs and the team to solve it. Expecting it. But as the bodies kept stacking up, with no solid leads panning out, the tension, anger, and guilt that had originally excluded from the Bull pen had simply enveloped them all, affecting everyone with its oppressive, smothering fog. Even he had not been immune, unable to suppress the frustration and helplessness he felt as he would slide yet another body into cold storage. Pretty soon they were going to run out of space.

Feeling guilty at leaving while she was so bogged under with work, he had swiftly stepped out and bought her an economy sized CAF-POW. He had still been blushing nearly a half an hour later at her over enthusiastic praise and a warm hug, slurping at it with gusto as she waved him off, turning back to her evidence with new caffeine powered enthusiasm.

As everyone in NCIS eventually learned: A happy Abby was a caffeinated Abby. And if there was no 'Happy Abby' then eventually everyone was miserable, especially Agent Gibbs. And if that happened, well, like they say in show business: "It's curtains."

Scrabbling at the wall, he tried to gain enough leverage to lift himself to his feet, mindless of the dangers of moving..or from whatever might still lurk in the darkness around him. His weakening arms shook with the effort, his legs refusing to respond, his side screaming, he bit his lip so hard trying to school the pain that he tasted iron.

He had to help himself now! It would be what Gibbs and Tony would do..what Ziva and Abby and Tim would do as well. They wouldn't just sit here and do nothing! He couldn't wait on rescue, or even discovery.

He wouldn't take this sitting down! He wouldn't! He was better then that! Stronger then that! He knew it...

He managed to raise himself a few inches before his legs gave way completely, bucking like a house of cards and sending him sprawling across the pile of mouldering garbage bags, his pained scream echoing throughout the alleyway as the scent of decay rose ripe in his nostrils.

With what felt like phenomenal effort he lifted his head from the crook of his arm, the moist imprint of his mouth clearly outlined against his shirt from where he had tried to muffle his cry of pain. But the sight he saw as he looked down the narrow alleyway was not the scene he knew had been there mere seconds ago...

Things were coming back to him in flashes, roaring through his brain like a freight train that had broken its emergency break and was now careening out of control, barely staying on the rails. That's what he felt like. Like he was barely staying on the rails, barely hanging on.

He saw the alley again in his mind, but this time the air was shot with beams of the dying sun, leftovers from the sunset that had flooded the sky a reddish pink not and an hour previous. He remembered stumbling, sliding across the pavement and skidding in the gravel, he remembered the echoed shouts, the yells, the feeling of the sudden bruising force that only came when one body collided with another, fleshy steel meeting fleshy steel, and then the meaty thunk, and whip-like breeze that signalled the motion of a body hitting the ground...

The resulting tremor seemed to vibrated up through the ground and into his feet. Climbing his bones. Even remembering it put his teeth on edge..

He didn't remember hearing the gunshot, but he remembered the impact. He remembered the way it had thrown him backwards, slamming his body into an electrical pole with the sheer force of it all. He remembered how it had taken a few long seconds for the pain to start, as if it had overloaded his nervous system to the point where even his nerves and pain receptors had frozen. It was too much..

Reeling from the mental onslaught he could only just make out the weak, unsteady masculine voice that echoed around him after his body met with the pole, he remembered a startling shock of red hair, but the man was faceless, nameless. However, unlike the other wordless, and violent noises that ran though his mind, this one came to him as different, the words lost as his body failed, but the sound that remained...he couldn't quite explain it, but it was not like the others, not threatening or harsh...the sound of an ally?

..Wait...no..he had seen this man before... But where? When? ...How? The answer was there, half hidden in the dark shadows of his failing brain. Think! And somehow he couldn't shake the feeling that this was vitally important...

But then it didn't matter..suddenly the red haired blot in his vision disappeared. And then, all he remembered was the panic, the need to get away, to escape! The chase! They were after him! They were going to kill him! Run....run....run...RUN!

And that was all, the escape...the bloody, violent, animalistic chase where all posterity and humanity was forgotten and all that was left was survival. He had never experienced the like... He didn't even know he could run so fast.. or move with such agility, even considering the hole in his side. All conscious thought left him, abandoning him to his baser instincts, fear...anger....the need to survive....the ones that knew how to keep his body functioning even when most of his highly prized human thought thinned out and disappeared like the last vestiges of the early morning fog.

He was left scrabbling in the dirt and slamming against buildings and trash cans, his limbs slipping in the mud as he stumbled and fell again and again with a weakening body shot full with adrenaline and a heavy nine millimetre hollow point slug.

'Run..Run.... Hide! Escape! Now! Go! Go! Now! Get away! Now!' It was like a chant inside his head, endless and loud until he could hardly even hear the sound of his own pained breathing, his own grunts and harsh breaths, or the grating fleshy sound of his skin meeting the brick and concrete as he ran, veering and falling everywhere.

He couldn't see! Blood flowed over his vision, blinding him as he wrenched himself up from his half crouched position, crawling almost crab-like through a gap in a chain link fence, feeling rather then hearing the back of his jacket rip where the jagged metal grabbed it.

Clutching at his side he dove for the first opening he came to, an alleyway to his right. It was all down to running now, and god did he run. Slipping through a slime encrusted puddle he ducked into a mass graveyard of rusting iron drums, flitting through the narrow spaces between them as he moved, nearly folding himself backwards as he slammed into a uniformed cluster of them, barely keeping his balance as he wrenched himself sideways, the wet slap of his bloody hands against the empty metal tolling out like the bell that foretells the slice of the executioners axe.

He wasn't even thinking anymore, he was just running...escaping. He knew that there was a hole in his side, and his head felt like it had been knocked around by something about as subtle as a rampaging cement mixer, and that the bad guys were chasing him. AGAIN...

But other then that there was no escape plan..no plan b...no nothing! His mind screamed at him to hide, to get away, to fight, to duck, to stop, to go...until he couldn't do anything but tear his way through the endless alleyways. He had to get away!

Falling he slid to his knees as he barely made it around corner. The smell of the sea assaulting his senses as a strong breeze whipped down the alley beside him, blinding him with dirt and dust as leaves and bits of trash swirled around his feet, caught in tiny whirl winds of their own as he scraped past.

Then, all he could hear was the ear shattering roar of a motor cycle, the taunting yells and harsh words weaving in together with the slamming footfalls of heavy-booted shoes as they pounded into the pavement behind him...

He remembered the running...running....running..and then this. The here...the now. Alone.

A/N #1: I wanted to take a moment and thank all my reviewers thus far. I really appreciate your feedback. It encourages me to continue writing. I try to thank each and every reviewer personally, but if you review without an account I unfortunately can't, so here is MY thank you and Caf-Pows to you all!! (With a Jimmy shaped straw of course!) (Ah... mental images...I love my brain!)

A/N #2: Chapter title is again lyrics from Brain Adams song: "Never let go".