Chapter Sixteen
Epilogue

In summer night falls reluctantly, then with the suddenness of a black shroud thrown over the world. It is long after everyone else has gone home, when the stars dot the skylight, that Gibbs finally leaves his desk.

Twenty minutes later he walks into a bar immediately outside the base, a place he occasionally goes to unwind after a particularly bad day. This time, however, he's quite surprised to see Jimmy Palmer sitting at the bar. Curious, not knowing the young man as a drinker, he sits down beside him and waits for Jimmy to notice him. "How many have you had?"

"Five." Palmer thinks it over. "Six?" The bartender holds up eight fingers. "I never could count."

"I didn't know you drink."

Jimmy looks at his reflection in the mirror across the bar. He doesn't like what he sees. "First time for everything."

"I'd ask how you're holding up, but...." He leaves it.

"I'm trying to forget."

Gibbs taps the glass with a fingernail. "Won't help. In the morning, you'll just have one more problem. One more regret." He signs to the bartender, who puts his usual drink in front of him.

"One more regret?"

Gibbs takes a hard gulp. "Don't try to match me on regrets, kid. I'll bury you."

x

They sit in silence for a long time before Gibbs breaks it. "I understand you insisted on assisting Ducky today."

"It's my job." The words are empty, lifeless. For a moment Palmer is smothered in silence. But the words want to come out. He stares at the mirror, seeing too much of the past in it. "I've been Doctor Mallard's assistant for three years now," he says distantly. "It seems almost every day we're inside some body. So many." It takes him a long time to continue. The liquid isn't strong enough to drive away the demons. He wonders if anything is.

"Men, women, children. How many? I've stopped counting." He moves to take another gulp but decides against it. "Most times the bad guys send them to us. Sometimes Ziva does, sometimes Tony does." He looks at Gibbs. "Sometimes you do."

He can't keep the contact, looks ahead again, but that turns him to the mirror. He is there and he likes that image less. His voice grows thick with inexpressible tears. He can no longer bear to look at himself, or anything else. But closing his eyes only shows him the darkness of Hell. "But this ... this is the first time I have ever had to deal with someone that I put on that table."

x

Gibbs puts his glass down with a clunk. "Did you have a choice? Could you have saved Megan Wood's life from across that room if you hadn't fired?"

Jimmy replays the scene he'll see in every nightmare for the rest of his life. He opens his eyes, unable to bear the darkness any longer. "No. As it is I nearly didn't." He takes a drink, then a deeper one. "So! A murderer is punished. That's what they call 'justice', I guess."

"Justice." Gibbs takes another drink. "They say Justice is blind." He looks closely, perhaps for the first time, at the young man with whom he'd never considered sharing a drink. "Justice isn't blind, Palmer. Do you know what it is?"

"What?"

"Sometimes Justice is a damned Bastard. It punishes the guilty. Sometimes it punishes the innocent." He taps Palmer's glass. "I've seen it destroy them."

Palmer takes another drink, not sure if he wants to be destroyed or not. When he'd started, it had been a thing to be avoided. Now he isn't sure if it isn't preferable.

x

Setting the glass down with a thump, he asks his real question, the one that had been burning him all evening. "How do you do it? How do you put on that gun," he implores, "and do what you have to do and not feel like this?"

"You don't." Gibbs takes another. "The day it stops bothering you; that's the day you know it's time to pull that trigger one last time."

"Then what do you do?" Of all things, Jimmy needs an answer; either that or the guilt will drive him mad.

Gibbs turns full on to him and his eyes burn into the younger man's soul. "You hold on. Tight. You hold on tight with both hands and you never let go of what's important. You never let go of what's really important."

"What's 'important'?"

Gibbs finishes his drink with one last swallow, puts a bill on the table and stands up. "You know what's important."

Patting Jimmy on the arm, Gibbs walks out of the bar. As he passes the rest rooms, he doesn't glance at the young jet haired woman who steps out of the ladies room. She had been in there for a while, crying, and now looks at the departing man's back through dark glasses.

x

Michelle Lee leaves the doorway, steps to the bar and wraps her arms about Jimmy's arm. Now that she has vented her misery and sick frustration she feels in shape for another try. But there's something different about her previously sullen and unresponsive lover. He looks up as she removes her glasses, wanting there to be no barrier between them. Her bandaged, cut and bruised face is marked with her pain and far worse; but it is his pain, his torment that drives her.

Jimmy sees in her expressive almond eyes what words cannot say. He stands up unsteadily, tries to be careful of her pains, but she remains silent as they hug, as they hold one another close.

Fin

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Next Episode: 'Sacramental Seal'

The murder of a Marine leads to a crisis of faith. Loyalties are tested, a secret past is revealed, trusts are broken and an agent makes a fateful decision that will forever change the NCIS.