A/N: This is the long-awaited part four of my CIA series. (It is long-awaited, isn't it? ...well, I've been long awaiting it.) It takes place about a year after part three, I Have Loved the Stars Too Fondly. At about chapter 33, there will be a reference to an episode in season 9, A Desperate Man, and makes reference to a oneshot episode tag I wrote called Lost. Otherwise, there are no spoilers in this story, and it's still within the AU which began with Followed.

One note about the Arabic text and translation: It is my own work, and I apologize to anyone who might be fluent in Arabic and can see how clunky some of my Arabic is. I fully admit that I only really know Modern Standard Arabic and that I'm much better at translating medieval texts than I am at conversing in it. :)

Disclaimer:I do not own NCIS or any of the characters therein. I am not making money off these stories. Alas.

One Existing and One Perceived
CIA Series, part IV
by Enthusiastic Fish

The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist.
~Erwin Schrodinger

Prologue

The door clanged open, revealing a man, bound to a chair. His head was drooping onto his chest. He was wearing only enough that he wasn't naked, although occasionally, they didn't even give him that much dignity.

He stirred very little although his mind was still horribly clear. He sensed every moment, heard every word...felt every pain. They were unaware of how much he was taking in, of how much he was noticing his surroundings. They thought he was broken. In some ways, he was. ...but in the ways that mattered most, he wasn't.

He hadn't told them anything. They didn't know his real weakness. They knew only that they wanted something from him...and that he wasn't giving it to them.

The first swing knocked the chair over. This had happened too often for him to be surprised by it. He had stopped trying to suppress his screams, his moans, the indications that they had truly hurt him. Why bother covering up something they both knew? Lately, he had taken to only groaning...not out of strength but out of weakness. It took too much energy to scream in pain...and he had none to spare.

As the beating continued, the man found that he was able to continue his strangely logical train of thought. It was funny. Even as he was groaning with the pain being inflicted on him, a part of him was separate from all that and was laughing at them thinking this was going to get him to do what they wanted. After so much experience with pain, he wondered how long it would take to put him beyond his limits of endurance. They weren't even close yet. His body might be giving up, but his mind wasn't. His mind was sitting cozily in its space wondering why they thought this would work.

They righted the chair, using his hair to pull him up. Then, they waited. He laughed at them. He was weeping, shuddering, trembling from the extremity, but he laughed. Hadn't they seen all the scars? The tokens of his broken legs, the melted skin on his back, the patchwork from the shrapnel...and those six small thin scars on his torso? Did they really think it would be this easy to break him?

"You think this is funny?" the man hissed at him, grabbing his hair and lifting his head. The English was accented but easily understandable. "You think this is a joke?"

Struggling, he opened his eyes (or he opened the one that still functioned normally) and tried to blink away the tears. "A joke? N-No. But funny? Yes. Y-You're...not going to...get what you w-w-want from me...and you...think that this...will help. That is very funny." He laughed again.

The man backhanded him across the face, so hard that the chair fell over again. This time, he landed strangely and felt something crack. That was enough to make him scream...but not to talk. The man was angry and kicked him in the stomach before walking out of the...cell...room...space.

Four years. Four years of saying that he might be in danger from terrorists. Four years of fighting against people who tried to beat him down, tried to take control of him. It had taken four years for their worst fears to come true. ...and even then, all their precautions had been for nothing. Somehow, they knew who he was, they knew at least something about what he could do. He thought he might know how...but he wasn't sure. He wouldn't be sure unless they told him...and he wasn't sure that he wanted to know. If he was right, it would only hurt him more.

Would it help to know how they had found him? Maybe for the future...but right now, he couldn't see much of a future...and what he could see was all drenched in pain.

He lay there on the floor for a long time, hearing the wind outside, wind that occasionally carried in swirls of sand that got into his eyes. He suddenly realized that there was a window in his cell and he could look out it from his current position. It was nighttime. How strange to consider the possibility of time passing. In here, it was generally just long periods of isolation or else short periods (which seemed very long) of pain.

He could see a star, but only one and he couldn't tell which it was. He didn't even know which direction he was facing, how much time had passed...nothing.

If they left him in this position all night long, he could know where he was in relation to the North Star. That was something...a positive note amidst the agony of laying on his newly-broken arm. He kept his one working eye trained on that star. ...and waited as time marched very slowly along. The star moved. It wasn't the North Star, then. Too bad. That would have been easier. Too easy, probably. His life wasn't easy and hadn't been for a long time.

What they couldn't know was that they had, in a way, made his life a lot easier. In the past, he had been conflicted about what he was doing, with whom he was working. The ethics, the morality of the choices he had made ate at him. ...but these guys. There was nothing to be conflicted about. They were trying to get him to betray his country. That meant he had to refuse. That meant they were terrorists. That meant that he didn't have to worry about ulterior motives or anything else. All he had to do was resist. ...and he could hate them. He could try and kill them if the opportunity arose. ...but in the main, all he had to do was resist...and he was good at that. It was an amazing feeling of freedom that buoyed him up even as they broke him down.

At some point, he knew, he would be pushed over the edge and he would try to help them. He couldn't hold out forever. ...but if he could hold out long enough, he wouldn't be able to help them, no matter how much he might want to. The question was how long he could last until it was too late.

The star moved out of his narrow field of view and vanished. Other stars appeared after another hour or so...but he wanted to know what that first star was. He wanted to see those stars which had so unexpectedly lit up the night.

Considering the way his life was currently going...they might be the last beautiful thing he ever saw.