Hello my dear readers! I hope that your day has gone well so far. Today=new glasses day for me. Anyway, this will be the end of Red Dawn. Please enjoy it!

Epilog:

Five men lay dead in Casa Verde. Camilla Ramirez sat cross-legged on the dirt floor beside the two dead Marshals. They were men with lives and families, men that she had vowed to protect. And she had let them die like animals, let their lives slip easily away while her own was saved. Cam had read the psychology books, taken the courses in Georgia that prepared you for this kind of thing. Nothing, of course, could ready you for sitting beside your dead friends. She knew that she was experiencing survivor's guilt. She would be sent to consoling, for sure, pour her feelings out to a total stranger in hopes of quenching the dark thoughts that came now. Cam heard the Coroner's van swinging up the dirt road through town, and knew that the time had come.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so, so sorry."

…

When Gibbs was nervous, he paced. He paced now, in the family waiting room of Copper Queen Community Hospital. Ziva just sat there, folded into a plastic chair, looking impossibly small. Her hands and her clothes were stained dark with blood that she had not washed off. Ziva's eyes stared straight ahead, burning holes through the cottage-cheese stucco walls and out into the dark sky beyond. Tony sat beside her, one arm across her shoulders. He was rubbing her back as one does a small child.

They all felt guilt, inconceivable remorse at what had happened. Tony was cursing himself for allowing Sam to be the decoy. He should have kept the kid safe, not let him run into danger like that. Tony remembered Sam mentioning a girl back home in DC, and although he was not particularly religious, he prayed that Sam would live to see her.

Ziva knew that she should not feel guilty, after all it was not her fault that Don Gomez had picked her to torture for information. It was not her fault that Tony and Sam had hatched such an impossible plan to rescue her. But Ziva had held the dying agent in her arms, felt his life draining away into the thick desert dust. She had lost too many friends in her life. She vowed that she would not loose Sam Renker too.

A small eternity passed, as small eternities often do, in that hospital waiting room. The smell of antiseptic was strong and choking, but no one noticed it. It was well into the pre-dawn hours of the next morning when a white-coated doctor appeared like an angel sent from God himself or Satan, which had yet to be determined.

"You're the party for Sam Renker, right?" The doctor asked. Gibbs nodded. The fear in the room was palpable now.

"He's going to make it."

The words broke over the small group like a blessed downpour following a drought. Ziva hugged Tony, Tony hugged Ziva and Gibbs hugged them both. Well, it was considered a hug for Gibbs, who rarely took anyone in his arms who wasn't a red-haired woman.

"Can we see him?" Ziva wanted to know. The doctor shook his head.

"Sorry, family members only. Everyone else has to come back tomorrow."

Gibbs stepped forwards as the doctor turned to go.

"I'm his father, doctor."

Tony said, "And, uh, I'm his brother."

"I am Sam's sister," Ziva lied effortlessly.

The doctor glanced from the tall, silver-haired Marine to the sandy-haired federal agent to the dark-looking Israeli woman. There was no way in Hell they were all related, he thought, unless the older guy was really into adoption. But he let them in anyway.

…

Sam was knocked out on pain medication, probably off in some dream world where ambitious federal agents went when they went through six-hour surgery. Gibbs refrained from his usual light head slap and instead patted Sam's hair very gently. Tony rested a hand on his shoulder and declared that Sam Renker had saved a lot more lives than he thought. Ziva, who had washed her bloody hands more thoroughly than Lady Macbeth, settled for holding Sam's limp hand in her own.

אלוהים יכול להיות איתך, thought Ziva. May God be with you.

…

After a half-hour, the doctor kicked them out so that Sam could recover in peace. So three federal agents, three people whose lives had been altered for the better and for the worse, stood outside in the cool desert pre-dawn.

"Well, we all made it." Tony shoved his hands deep into his pockets and tried not to think about the Marshals who hadn't.

Gibbs just stared into the distance.

"Heroes get remembered," he said. "Legends live forever."

He added, "May God rest their souls."

Both were un-Gibbs-like things to say, but during times of strife such things were excusable. So they stood there, hands in their pockets, shoulders touching, in the light of a red dawn.

Oh, God. Okay, so I am officially the biggest wimp of the year, because I could not kill Sam Renker. I actually invented him so I could kill him off and create some strife within the NCIS team. And then he started growing on me and I just couldn't let him die. But I hope you like it anyway. Also-I would like to thank every lovely person who reviewed this story. You guys are wonderful.

-Maggie