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 totally still would!) But regardless, everything and everyone belongs to their respective studio's, corporations, and companies. 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 fics 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. But 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 foray into NCIS fan fiction. So yes, please read and review.

It's a Rough Roadto Heroism

Chapter Five -

"Don't tell me if I'm dying, cause I don't wanna know. If I can't see the sun, then maybe I should go... Don't wake me cause I'm dreaming, of angels on the moon...
Where everyone you know, never leaves too soon.."

He floated through the confusing swell of his own thoughts, trying to ignore the growing numbness in his limbs as he weakly tried to force them to move, encouraging his battered circulatory system to continue flowing as his fingers seemed to buzz and pulse, existing in a perpetual state of pins and needles.

Random snatches of memory were brushing along the shadowed edges of his mind, shedding light, for the briefest of moments, on a confused jumble of images and chaotic bursts of sound before it retreated into the darkness again..

It was like watching fractured bits of a grainy, shakily film movie.. One that seemed to lag behind, as though there was a pause between the actions and the sounds, with the noises and words themselves nearly muted, echoing metallically in his confused ears. He had seen B-Movies with Tony that were light years better then this..

Understanding was sliding through him like water streaming from a sieve, he couldn't understand it, and he couldn't retain it. He couldn't hold on to the images that he knew he had lost. His head was too jumbled, too lanced through with pain and the growing feeling of that bone-deep chill that iced into his flesh. His mind too stupid with what he knew had to be a pretty significant amount of blood loss by this point to respond to his half-hearted attempts to remember.

Instead, he let the random swathes of memory and conversation slide through him, remembering things that he hadn't thought of for weeks or even longer, things that seemed to simply swim through his muddled brain, surfacing from the heady stream in a garbled current of sound, smell, picture, and impression.

....

The day after his run in with Milo Suskavcevic, he had gotten up and dragged himself to the campus gym, conscientiously ignoring the fact that it was a Saturday and he was actually at school, as he signed up for kick-boxing and a few of the other self-defence classes that the gym offered. Vowing never again to feel as helpless as he had felt when he had stared down the barrel of that gun. Twice.

He had always thought that if he could even be half as good, half as talented, and as brave as the others then, well then that would be worth something. Maybe then, instead of running after the insane man with the big gun, with no thought on his mind other then stopping him, that now he might actually know what to do with the person if he DID catch them.

Either way, he figured that at least he hadn't frozen.. That was something. At least he had tried.. Even if running after an armed criminal hadn't exactly been the genius move of the year.

So he had entered into each new class with some trepidation, but strong enthusiasm, and by the end of his first month, he realized that despite his initial misgivings, (likely fostered by the embarrassingly easy way Ziva had repeatedly incapacitated him during the case in question), he found that he had come to enjoy himself, delighting in the way that he steadily improved as each new lesson passed.

He had always remained in good shape, but now he found new confidence in the way that he actually had an idea about what to do with his own personal strength and stamina. He felt accomplished at his budding skills and growing self confidence, feeling a strange bolt of satisfaction as the horrifying images that had skulked in the backdrop of his dreams for many weeks, that of the empty-eyed, hooded-man firing at him as he made to climb over the railing, gradually faded, eventually slipping away from his nightly terrors to take residence in that small, unconscious corner of his brain that still housed his childhood nightmares and primitive fears. Becoming nothing more then a bad memory..

And after a month had gone by he had almost completely stopped thinking about it. It wasn't in his nature to dwell much on the past; he figured that the present was more then enough for him to worry about, thank you very much!

He had also come to find that he enjoyed the physical activity of the classes themselves. And while he often came home with just as many bruises and aches as he gave his sparring partners, he always secretly revelled in the feeling of progress. Even if it did hurt like a son of a bitch.

Though that one time with the black eye had been a hard one to explain....

For some reason he hadn't told anybody about the lessons, feeling the strange desire to keep his new fascination with self defence personal. He still wasn't exactly sure why. Maybe it was because he was doing it solely for himself and no one else and didn't want to make it seem like a big deal? Or maybe he just wanted to do something like this on his own, something so very different from anything he had ever done before?

But regardless of his lack of a believable explanation for his admittedly impressive shiner, he suspected that out of all of them, at least Ziva knew anyway. Having quickly fixed him with her usual impenetrable dark-eyed stare, the moment he had sauntered off the elevator, a slightly sheepish look spreading across his face as the nearest man had whistled in relative sympathy.

Leave it to an NCIS agent to truly understand the impact of an injury, even if it was just a black eye... A black eye that felt like it had been the result of getting hit by a Mac truck...but that was neither here nor there..

He had been surprised, and somewhat touched to see concern flickering momentarily across her features as she openly observed him from under the half-veiled fan of her dark eyes lashes, her concern only melting away when she had finished taking him in. Her eyes flickering over the darkening ring of angry purple skin, gradually skipping down to take in his scrub-covered torso, watching the careful way in which he held himself, until her lips had curved upwards in a small smile, inclining her head toward him in what he could only surmise was an expression of approval.

If he hadn't known any better he would have thought the Israeli woman was almost...proud... It was hard to tell with Ziva sometimes.

She had said nothing when she and Tony had arrived in autopsy just in time to witness him haltingly telling Dr. Mallard that he had run into a door. She graciously didn't call him on it, letting him keep his secrets.

Predictably the older coroner had been less then impressed, insisting on giving him a through eye exam as he had admonished him about paying more attention to his surroundings, digging through his aged medical bag with one hand at the same time his other was delicately probing the vicious looking bruise, searching for orbital bone damage.

There might have also been a rambling story about him and some of his colleagues falling into a Vietnamese pit-trap while they were in the Medical corps together. But he couldn't be entirely sure, having been too busy trying to keep from laughing aloud as Tony and Ziva took the opportunity of Doctor Mallard's distraction to engage in a strange, all out version of a nudge war behind the exam tables.

The entire fiasco had predictably ended in the usual heart-stopping fashion, with Gibbs walking in just as Ziva finally lost her cool and nearly body-checked Tony across half the span of the room, the movement spawning an effective, if not petulant retaliation from Tony as he grabbed her by the scruff of her shirt collar and nearly dragged her down with him, the pair of them thudding audibly into one of the stainless steel sinks before either of them had even noticed that the silver haired man was standing behind them.

He had gotten all the expected comments as he had arrived for work that the day. The well meant teasing and humorous jabs he had joked right back at... Hell, it HAD been kinda funny! And besides, it had been nice to have Abby and the office girls spoil him rotten all day along. They had all seemed dead set on believing that he had barely escaped from some sort of mythical fight of good versus evil, or something ridiculous like that, rather then believing his door frame story. And by the time they had finished with him they had him nearly believing it too!

Though he supposed that they were all just extra jumpy due to the case. He had been something close to home, something physical that they could all latch onto and try to make better, something that they could feel that they were making a difference in... Where as in the case, all they had was a growing collection of victims and no leads. They had nothing and it was running everyone ragged, especially Gibbs' team.

However he had been more thrown off by Agent Gibbs' reaction then any of the others scolding and friendly teasing.

'Is there anything you need to tell me Palmer?" He asked gruffly, catching him alone and off guard in the main elevator as he made his way up from autopsy a few days after it had happened, somewhat self-pityingly thinking of all the homework that awaited him back at his flat.

His black eye had faded by then into more of a smudged grey shadow, making him look more like he had been the subject of a practical joke rather then the victim of his instructors misjudged, if not equally as impressive backhand.

But the man hadn't been looking at his face, instead he had been looking down, taking in the reddened scrapes, and slightly bruised skin of his knuckles, the abrasions only just peeking out from underneath his long jacket cuffs, neatly hidden from view. Or so he had thought anyway.

It wasn't as if he was really hiding them...more like choosing not to call them to attention. He had thought at the time. Even to him his tone had sounded a bit too defensive. He wasn't sure why, but now, as he was caught under the older mans stare, the whole situation seemed absolutely mortifying.

But regardless of that he had swallowed audibly. The man seemed impossibly huge in the small space, fixing him with his commanding stare, one that immediately made him feel guilty. Despite the fact that he had done nothing wrong. It was the kind of look that demanded the truth, and warned against bullshit all wrapped into one single patented stare.

And for a few crazy moments, under that intense and piercing stare, he had felt quite a lot like a very guilty child.

Inwardly cursing the previous night's self-defence lesson, the first day they had begun practising without their protective gloves and gear, he steeled himself and met the man's eyes. He could only imagine how it must look, what the senior agent might be thinking..

"No sir." He had finally replied, deliberately keeping his reply as simple as the man's question had been, absurdly pleased and more then a little grateful to note that his voice didn't stutter or falter as he spoke.

If it was even possible, the older man's stare intensified, sweeping up his face to meet his eyes, and staring at him until he apparently had seen something that had confirmed his answer.

God only knew what it was.

Because after a moment he simply turned away, giving him the slightest of nods as he uttered a barely discernable growl of: "good," before raising his coffee back to his lips and taking a long, measured sip.

But the silent offer had echoed strongly in his ears, the actual words had remained unsaid, but the offer and the meaning behind it was just as clearly expressed as if the man had spoken the words to him aloud.

And as the man had stalked out from the elevator without so much as a backward glance when they reached the next floor, he hadn't been able to completely to repress the secretly pleased smile that had spread across his face, watching with a small grin as the senior field agent cut across the room out of sight, leaving a few of the newer, and more skittish agents holding their breath as he blew past.

.....

He came back to the present abruptly, not fully understanding what had roused him, eventually realizing that he was still blearily looking down at his freshly split and bloodied hands.

His eyes were just barely in focus when he felt it again, rain...

Falling like the slow, pulsating beat of his heart, the rain splattered across his face in tiny tremors of muted feeling, running down his upturned face as he watched the black, cloud-ridden sky broil and churn above him. It looked like it was going to storm.

The rain made him think of his mother...

Whenever it rained like this his mum would always stare out the kitchen window and watch, sometimes for even a half an hour or more He had never really wondered why until he was in his early teens, and had asked her then, his voice tinged with a teenagers usual haughty bravo and questioning sarcasm, just why she always did so.

And he had never forgotten her response. She had turned from the window with a slow smile, a large mug of steaming tea cradled in her hands, seemingly unperturbed by his adolescent cynicism.

"My mother used to always tell me that when it rains like this, somewhere an angel is crying. And she said that no one should ever have to cry alone." She had responded simply, her voice uncharacteristically thick as she had brushed arms with him companionably before turning back to watching the rain-streaked glass, the water streaming down the pane like tears.

After that he had never really given the whole incident much thought, putting it down as a one of those unique 'mother' things that only really made sense to the whole mysterious female gender.

That is, until years later, during the first big rainfall of fall and the beginning of his first serious year of medical school. Because soon after he had moved into his first apartment, and the rain had begun streaming down the window, he had found himself standing in front of the sliding glass patio door, a cup of strong coffee in his hand, doing the exact same thing.

...His mother... She would be worried; he had forgotten to email her yesterday. With all the busyness of the case and his upcoming exam everything else had taken the back burner in his thoughts, and the email or call back to her had been temporarily forgotten...

For some reason the thought alone filled him with guilt. She had just sent him a care package filled with home cooked baking and few covertly placed twenty dollar bills, each peeking out happily from amongst the sea of zip-locked bags and canned soups. And he hadn't even had a chance to thank her for them yet. He had put it off when all she had really wanted would have been a quick phone call..

Stupid...

And now all he could do was sit there, consumed in his own thoughts, hopes, and regrets, shadowed by a series of memories that his mind refused to unveil, masking the events in between the beginning of that alleyway and the angry, violent shouts, all the way to the bloody, painful reality of now.

'Please...' He whispered feverently, the words slowly trailing to a stop as he suddenly realized that he was uncertain of how, or even of whom he was supposed to be imploring. He had never really been a very religious person, his mother had believed, but had never fostered, or forced her own religion upon him, content and open minded enough to let him choose his own way.

However he had always been uncertain, never being able to fully understand what had created her strong faith. And how she could so strongly and believe in something that could not be seen or even touched.

'How could one rely on such a thing? Believe in something that wasn't physical or solid, something that remained elusive and largely unknown?' He had always wondered, feeling somehow as though he were missing something, as though he was trying to put a jig-saw puzzle together with only half of the pieces.

And now, at this very moment, in these few and precious seconds, minutes...stuffed amidst the reeking city waste, and pressed up against the dank and sludge-covered pavement, his torso a fiery maw of screaming pain, he had to wonder who one could turn to if they didn't really believe?

Was there really such a person?...Or even such a thing?...

But then he suddenly remembered, nearly trembling with the realization as he sucked in an unsteady breath, giving himself a moment to simply let it wash over him, feeling for all the world as though he had just been doused in a soothing burst of summer warmth in the dead cold of winter.

Them, he could rely on them. The team, his friends. He was not alone. It was them that he could see, hear, touch, and trust. It was them that had saved him once before. It was them who time and time again proved not only that they could be counted on, but that they cared. He could rely on them; rely on that small, faint little flutter of hope that had just alighted in his breast.

He could count on them...

A/N: Chapter title from Thriving Ivory's song: "Angels on the Moon".

A/N: Special thanks to Eclipse whose last review came at the best of times, as I fretted over the last chapter.