Rating: T

Disclaimer: I don't own the NCIS characters and I don't profit financially from this story.

Beta: This story has benefited greatly by the awesome beta-skills and input of Arress and I want to extend a humungous thanks to her for all her assistance. And you all know the drill... any boo-boos are my bad :)

Warnings: This is a tag of sorts to Aliyah and since I am NOT a TIVA and not a fan of the Ziva character either (and Aliyah would be a big part of that reason) if you are a fan then this is probably not a story that you will enjoy. The second major warning I need to issue is that the death of a major character that takes place but the identity will not be revealed until chapter 4 of the story; which leaves me with something of a conundrum. How do I balance the need for people who won't read this work unless they know who dies versus my desire to maintain the mystery and heighten the suspense? Which, as much as people complain about cliff-hangers, serves a very important purpose in fiction for both the reader and author of building tension and maintaining interest! Anyhow... I have come to a compromise of sorts. If you are one of those individuals who simply won't read a story with a major character death in it unless you know who it is, then feel free to PM me prior to reading and I will give you a spoiler re identity. That way, I don't spoil the suspense for everyone else who enjoys a little mystery.

A/N I've ended up with another 'What If' scenario this time taking place following Aliyah. I know that there have been a heap of stories surrounding this episode already, some TIVA based and many also authored by people like me, appalled at the plot holes and the assault that takes place and seems to be excused by some on the basis of grief. And perhaps even more distressing, the lack of consequence for that act. I admit I find it incomprehensible the willingness by some people to applaud it or justify it as being deserved in some way.

This story is AU and its main theme is retribution. While the setting is post Aliyah, the genesis for the story is also my frustration that throughout the entire ten seasons but perhaps none more so than the disappointing Season 10, there has been the ad nauseam use of revenge based story lines. Apart from the fact that it must be extremely insulting to the integrity and professionalism of the real life law enforcement personnel and agency to be portray as constantly giving in to base personal desires to extract revenge and not have any consequences for their vigilantism, it is pretty unimaginative writing. Add it up: Gibbs and Ari, Gibbs and Pedro Hernandez, Gibbs using his position to cover up the death of Cpt Joseph Norton by his mother-in-law Joanne Fielding, Gibbs and Harper Dearing, Mike Franks and Arkady Kobach, Jenny Shepard and La Grenouille, Ziva David and Tony re Rivkin's death , Ziva David & Leon Vance and Ilan Bodnar. So apart from the moral ambiguity of having so many law breakers and murders working in the agency, it is a plot that has been done to death if you'll pardon the pun. And I'm not even going to point out that the theme was used in writing another two major story arcs involving mass murder/serial killers with revenge as the perps motivation.

So although set post Aliyah, this story also begs the questions: What is the hidden cost of pursuing vengeance? What happens to the innocent victims of revenge, and how can the people that selfishly demand retribution justify the collateral damage that inevitably occurs when the thirst for revenge and blood lust wins out over the quest for justice for the victims and the community? Which after all, is why civilized societies have law enforcement and justice systems. Alright already... time to climb off my soap box and get on with the story.

One final caveat, this is a dark, angsty story so if you want light and fluffy, press the back button now. Having said that, I hope you'll take the journey with me. I look forward to your feedback and just so you know I have taken some creative licence with Jimmy's back-story.

An Eye for an Eye Leaves Everybody Blind

Chapter 1

I arrived at my friend's apartment, not sure what I would find when I got there, but the message I received from my boss alerted me that whatever I was stepping into, it was something pretty horrific. Yet nothing prepared me for what I did find! Is it not enough that my friend had to deal with more tragedy, trauma, bad luck and betrayal? Yet as I sped towards his place, it seemed that destiny had more suffering in store for him and I wondered how much more he would be forced to endure, how much more he could endure. Seeing an ambulance and a van that I immediately recognised as being used to transport dead bodies, when I pulled up, I was utterly shocked. I knew right then that something unspeakable had happened, even without the clue of the anguish in my mentor's voice as he summoned me here ASAP in a terse phone call.

Steeling myself for what I knew that I didn't want to see, I took a deep breath as I stepped across the threshold. Following the throng of individuals, some familiar, some strangers, I made my way to where my mentor was waiting for me and I stared in disbelief at the dead body on the floor. I stared at my boss, hoping that he would tell me that this was just some elaborate joke, even though I knew it wasn't. I'm no stranger to death, and as much as I wish it otherwise, all that was left was a shell, the soul long gone. My mentor… my father figure, filled me in quickly and with a minimum detail, unusual in such an ebullient individual and I realise dazedly that this was actually happening.

Although we will never know exactly what would cause someone that we knew so well to do such a thing, we both suspected, no we just knew, that revenge was a primary motivation. Thinking about that disturbing fact, I found myself inevitably thinking about the effect that revenge has had on my life, and I can't help but wonder how this vengeful act may impact on my future, all of our futures. A future that I thought was all laid out for me. Of one thing though, I am certain – this is going to shatter our close-knit little ensemble, if not completely destroy it! I wish that I could say that I'm a stranger to retributions, but that would be a lie.

My name is Jimmy Palmer and I am the Autopsy Assistant for Dr. Donald Mallard, Medical Examiner at the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, or NCIS for short. The NCIS mission is to investigate and defeat criminal, terrorist, and foreign intelligence threats to the United States Navy and Marine Corps—ashore, afloat, and in cyberspace. I have been working here in this job for the last five years, which is something that never ceases to amaze me, because when Dr. Mallard hired me, it was only meant to be a temporary job. I was supposed to be filling in for the ME's previous assistant, who had been shot in the shoulder by a terrorist and was out on sick leave. Gerald never did return to work, though, a combination of physical issues and psychological ones too I suspect, although Ducky would never say, remaining the model of circumspect medical discretion.

My boss, Dr. Mallard, is a man of rare honour, courage and integrity and that is very important part of why I chose to remain at NCIS while I worked my way through medical school to become a doctor. Seeing first-hand the voice that he has given his patients in death, his desire let them speak and gain justice for their demise, many which are violent and untimely, changed my life. He inspired me to specialise in forensic pathology when I qualify as a doctor rather than general medicine, which had been my intention before I started working for him. The other major factor that inspired my loyalty to NCIS was Leroy Jethro Gibbs and his team of talented investigators, who I always considered to be brave, honourable and highly principled individuals. They fought alongside Dr. Mallard for justice for victims and survivors and stood up against the scourges of corruption, evil, greed and vengeance.

If I am honest, I would have to say that of all the qualities that I most admire in my mentor, Dr. Mallard, and in the case of Tony and Abby, my two close friends; it would have to be their incorruptibility and refusal to allow themselves to be overwhelmed by the seductive allure of retribution. I knew all too well that it can have a magnetism that is difficult to ignore, especially for anyone who works in law enforcement and sees the worst of human nature day after day. It is far too easy for the morally weak to give in to the need to avenge, especially after seeing so much pain and suffering as we do, day in and day out. Yet the moment that the burning need to seek revenge overtakes the striving for justice, the forces of darkness have won and the individuals who succumb to it have lost the war.

My childhood… my life so far, has been shaped by revenge and the consequences it exacts. I understood all too well the sheer futility of pursuing this foetid desire and the absolute necessity for anyone who calls themselves evolved and civilised individuals, to rise above the need for petty retribution. Unfortunately, I also know what happens when we cannot control our base need to avenge wrongs committed against us. At NCIS I have always taken comfort, feeling as if we were making a real difference, redressing the balance and defending justice.

I learnt about Martin Luther King Jr. at school in civics class, obviously like any other American student, but I was already well acquainted with the good Dr. King from a much earlier age. My mom was a huge fan of the Reverend and everything that he stood for. Her favourite quote, amongst many that she would haul out and cite verbatim whenever there was an appropriate situation was "We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear... That old law about "an eye for an eye" leaves everybody blind... The time is always right to do the right thing... Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal."

As with all of his quotes and speeches, she would always find teaching moments to educate me, and often my friends, since revenge was something that Mom felt very strongly about. She felt it was at the root of much of the ills that we face the hurt, pain, death and wars. My mom felt passionately that revenge inevitably ended in fresh pain and anger and perpetuated a never-ending cycle of violence. She reckoned that it never fed the soul either, if anything it suffocated it; never subscribing to the maxim that revenge is a dish better served cold.

The first time I could remember experiencing this lesson first-hand, was my first day of school when Joanie Jenkins pushed Suzy Taylor off the monkey bars and made her cry. Suzy had two older siblings and she knew how to rough house, so when she finally stopped her crying, she stood up and went and thumped Joanie and she fell, too, except that she landed funny and broke her wrist and had to go to hospital and have it set. Unfortunately, it didn't stop there, because Joanie's big brother Jason swore that he would teach Suzy a lesson because nobody messed with his little sister.

And then Suzy's big sister, who went to junior high, had to avenge her little sister and bash up Jason to teach him a lesson, too, and soon Joanie's dad and mom were also slugging it out in the playground verbally and physically in a weekly brawl session with Suzy's parents, and it developed into a feud that remained bitter and unresolved for the next twelve years of our school careers. My mom said that if everyone had tried to forgive, forget and move on, then the families would never have ended up having two dads being arrested by the cops and charged with assault. When the judge found them guilty, Mom said that the idiots would have a criminal record for life.

Over the years at school, I continued to learn that revenge never ended up fixing anything or making it better, it only ever made everything worse. By the time we were in junior high and girls and boys started dating and going steady, revenge became second nature almost, as girls stole each other's boyfriends and boys stole each other's girlfriends and bitter feuds were sparked. Somehow the angst seemed to be intensified as we battled raging hormones and greater autonomy as mini adults.

One girl in my class who was in the popular crowd, her name was Daphne Richards, and she was a cheerleader; she ended up caught up in a bitter feud with her best friend Sarah Mitchell after they both had a crush on the same boy. He was a basketball player called Jake Waters and he started seeing both of them on the sly. When they both found out, it sparked an argument that was such a bitter feud it ended in a cat fight in the cafeteria and ended a longstanding friendship. After months of tit for tat incidents inspired by wanting to get revenge on each other, Sarah ended up depressed and tried to kill herself by taking an overdose of her mother's tranquilisers.

While I was always something of an awkward kid who didn't have to worry over much about girlfriends, because of my mom's lessons, I realised how easy it was to fall into a never ending spiral, trapped by the desire to avenge real or perceived wrongs. What I soon realised though, was even if revenge was achieved, it created a new bunch of victims that could simply perpetuate the cycle, and so where did it stop? Only when someone with the courage to stand up and say enough and forgive their aggressors was the vicious cycle finally broken and everyone could start to heal and live again.

In my final year at high school the insidious cost of the desire to achieve revenge was tragically brought home upon my family when my mom's brother was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was an innocent victim who was sitting minding his own business at a sidewalk café, enjoying a cappuccino and an olive and feta cheese bruschetta. Uncle Liam got caught in the crossfire of a vendetta involving two rival biker gangs who had been engaged in a series of retribution shootings for years. Unfortunately, the bikers weren't particularly concerned about the escalation of innocent casualties who were deemed collateral damage, but to every family of every innocent individual who died while the bikers engaged in a futile but deadly dance of vengeance; it meant their world was shattered. My cousins and my aunt will never get over Uncle Liam's death and Mom was heartbroken to lose her only sibling, while I lost my only father figure, all for a base desire to avenge a never-ending vendetta.

It was a year or two later that I furthered my education into the utter pointlessness of revenge, vengeance or retribution; whatever you want to call it, it still destroys people's lives. It also doesn't change the fact that it is futile, destructive and was essentially a black hole of negativity that sucks everyone and everything into its vortex, and there are seldom any survivors. I was at college, pre-med and since my mom was a single parent, I had to work my way through college and medical school. Mind you, I'm not whining about it… I'm just telling you how it was.

When I was a kid, my mom and I used to volunteer at an animal shelter since she couldn't afford to get me a dog or a cat. Being a Type 1 diabetic, it was a pretty huge financial burden on our limited resources what with the doctors' visits, daily insulin and the occasional hospital visit, and we needed to live rather frugally. So anyway, all the hours that I'd spent, walking the dogs and playing with the cats and kittens and cleaning out cages also taught me valuable lesson about responsibility, nurturing, unconditional love and a score of qualities that have helped make me who I am.

All that aside, though, it gave me plenty of practical experience which translated into transferable skills and secured me a job working as a veterinary assistant. It was a job that ultimately changed my life in many ways and set me on the path to starting my career at NCIS. It wasn't a glamorous job; it was more of a dogsbody position working at the local veterinary clinic part-time. I basically helped the vet techs and cleaned out cages or exercised dogs that needed potty breaks that were hospitalised for surgery or been injured or ill.

The veterinarian, Dr. Carey Sutton, even let me help out on some simple procedures and observe some routine spayings and castrations, since he knew that my intention was to apply for medical school when I graduated from college. I remember the thrill I felt when Dr. Sutton taught me how to suture, and even let me make several sutures as we worked on a Maltese Terrier called Fi-Fi-Belle, which had been savaged by a bull-mastiff. The feeling that I was helping the terrified little dog to recover was overwhelming and exhilarating, and right then and there, I determined that no matter what it took, I WOULD become a doctor and save lives.

And as much as I loved that job, not to mention Dr. Sutton and my co-workers, and especially the patients and the clients, it was also the scene of one of my most painful and shocking life lessons which, combined with the loss of my uncle, shaped my destiny and cemented my abhorrence of anything even hinting at revenge. As with many life changing moments, it wasn't some warm and fuzzy experience that shaped me so fundamentally, it was something so awful, so disturbing that even to this day, I have trouble talking about the act that was inspired by a desire for revenge.

It was one of those bitter lessons which illustrated bleakly how the line between love and hate was such a fine one and how easily it blurred, enabling someone to step over into the abyss. How someone could hate so much that they could intentionally decide to hurt their spouse, a person they have sworn to have and to hold, in sickness and health until parted by death. In retrospect, I was still a naive kid the day that Boyd Stevens came into the veterinary clinic with his cat, a beautiful pampered silver Persian named Prentiss, but by the end of the whole dreadful saga, I had become a man, albeit a cynical and tortured one.

Boyd brought Prentiss in to be euthanized. It was his first time at the clinic and he explained that Prentiss was his and his wife's cherished surrogate child who had been diagnosed with bladder cancer before they moved to D.C. last month. His wife, Janet, was beside herself with grief and although their vet wanted to euthanize the cat when he diagnosed him, Janet wasn't ready to say goodbye yet. Over the last week they had seen a steady decline and the cat started having trouble eating and seemed to be in pain, so they had decided it was time to let him go peacefully.

I can still remember the way that Boyd stroked the beautiful silken fur of the obviously much loved cat, and I wondered why it always seemed to be the pets that were loved and cared for that developed the incurable diseases. I helped Dr. Sutton with the euthanasia process, gently restraining the sweet feline as the vet shaved the hair on his hind leg to access his vein and start an IV line to administer the overdose of anaesthetic that would ensure that the six-year-old Persian slipped into a gentle and calm sleep. Finally, the vet delivered the second dose of the drug which stopped his heart, and Prentiss died quietly in my arms.

I really hated euthanasia, as did the rest of the staff, but when an animal was suffering and there was no hope of saving them, euthanasia was the ultimate act of love, even if it was probably the most difficult decision a pet owner would ever face. Boyd was a case in point and he shed tears before gathering up Prentiss' body and explained he would take him home and they would bury him together. Dr. Sutton agreed that memorialising his passing was a crucial part of the grieving process, and he suggested that taking a paw print and a lock of hair may afford Janet some comfort as she started to process her grief in the coming days. He handed Boyd some printed brochures on pet loss grief and how to deal with bereavement. He patted him on the shoulder and told him how sorry he was for his loss and walked him to his car.

I remember thinking how lucky Boyd's wife was to have such a compassionate and caring spouse, and I so admired the professional but kind and gentle manner with which Dr. Sutton handled what was a difficult situation for everyone. He was a gentle man who was in his early sixties and he loved his job and he loved his patients. It hurt him when he wasn't able to help fix them, but he told me that euthanasia was also one of the most important and difficult procedures he could perform for his patients and clients.

Euthanasia he explained to me, comes from the Greek and means 'good death', and the veterinarian knew that if he failed to achieve that good death, if the animal struggled or was distressed, panicked or experienced pain, not only had he failed in his duty of care, but he could traumatise the clients severely and it would retard their ability to grieve their loss. It was an awesome responsibility and I could see that while he was sad that Prentiss had cancer and he couldn't cure him, he had ensured he experienced a very peaceful passing and he took pride and solace in that.

It wasn't until a week or two later that Dr. Sutton received a letter from an attorney representing Janet Stevens, informing him that they were suing him for the unlawful death of Janet's prized Persian Prentiss Stevens. It turned out that Janet was having an affair with Boyd's best friend and he had found out about it. When she went away with her lover for a week in the Caribbean, telling Boyd she was at a work seminar, he decided to get revenge by killing her beloved cat. Since she was unable to have her own children, Prentiss had become her child substitute, and when she arrived home she found the beloved cat's dead body waiting for her in their bed where she had cheated on her husband; his body well into the process of decomposition. No doubt her vengeful husband wanted to make sure that her final memory of Prentiss would be a gruesome and traumatic one.

It was then that I finally, painfully became an adult as I realised that it was possible for someone who loved their wife so much that when she betrayed him by cheating, for that love to transform itself into such blind hatred that his desire to hurt her back could become all encompassing. So ugly was his need for revenge that he could take out his anger and hatred for what his wife had done to him upon an innocent animal, one that he obviously loved, unless he was an extraordinary actor, all to gain revenge on his wife. And if all that wasn't bad enough, his need for revenge had caused him to come up with a complicated and complex web of lies that had made Dr. Sutton and me complicit in his repulsive desire to achieve vengeance. He never even stopped to consider the damage he was imposing upon innocent lives.

And the damage that he wrought upon Carey Sutton was immense. The veterinarian, who had devoted his whole life to relieving pain and suffering in animals and those that loved them, was devastated to think that he had been duped into being the agent of Boyd Stevens' ugly reprisal. The fact that he euthanized a perfectly healthy, much loved cat that could well have lived for another ten years or more and that by putting Prentiss to sleep, he had caused untold pain and suffering to his owner was too much for him to deal with. Dr. Sutton became clinically depressed and decided to sell his practice, since he felt that he couldn't trust his clients any longer. He was also overwhelmed with guilt for the trauma that I as his assistant, had been subject to since as his employer, it was his responsibility to protect me. It was a responsibility that he was no longer prepared to shoulder.

It was then, when I watched him walk away from a job that had been his life, a vocation really, that I learnt the painful lesson that even if you live a blameless life and strive to do the right thing, it wasn't enough to ensure that you weren't shielded from evil. And make no mistake; revenge is evil, insidious and an unfathomable pit of malevolence. I finally realised why veterinarians, along with dentists, had one of the highest rates of suicide of all the professions. I feared that the depression Boyd had selfishly unleashed on my mentor would drive him to kill himself so he could find peace from the unending guilt and pain that were unrelenting. As a veterinarian he had the knowledge of drugs and mindset to carry out a suicide if he decided to do the deed, and I knew that there wouldn't be any last minute regrets or second chances.

So while Carey Sutton became impotent in a depressive state, I became filled with rage, where the smallest slight or look from a passer-by filled me with murderous rage, and I was finally forced to seek help from a psychologist. She very quickly ascertained that I still had unresolved grief issues relating to the death of my Uncle Liam that would need to be processed as well. It was an exceptionally dark time, and for a period of time my diabetes, always assiduously maintained thanks to the wonderful training from my mother, spiralled out of control as I skipped meals, ate a diet full of carbs and wasn't careful enough in measuring my blood sugar levels. I even managed to land in a hospital in a diabetic coma for several days, which was a wake-up call of sorts.

I eventually managed to get my act together in better managing my diabetes, but even after starting medical school finally, I was in a bad place and felt like I was rudderless and that my life had no meaning. It was around this time that someone told me there was a temporary job up for grabs at NCIS as an autopsy assistant. One of my professors was waxing lyrical about how a giant in the world of forensic medicine needed an assistant and what an unbelievable opportunity it would be for a young medical student. I admit that my motivation at that point was based on pure pragmatism; I needed money and I hoped that I would pick up valuable skills that would help me in my anatomy and physiology classes. The thought that Dr. Donald Mallard, being a giant in the medical fraternity, might have useful contacts that I could utilise was another factor, too, I'll admit.

Yet I rapidly found myself falling under the spell of the cultured and gentle man that I found to be my boss, and he proved to be an amazing teacher. Not just in all things medical, but as a true mentor, as he showed me through deed and thoughts, the true measure of a man. When Gerald decided not to return to the job and Dr. Mallard asked me to stay on permanently, I knew that I had finally found a raison d'être to move on with my life. Not to forget the past and the lessons that I had learnt about hate and revenge, but to take the pain and grief and use it to help make the world a better place. And yeah, if that makes me sound like the world's biggest dork, well, so be it

My job isn't the easiest way to put myself through college; the pay is crappy and the hours can be long and sometime tedious. Sometimes it can be dangerous, as Gerald could no doubt attest, or the time that I was nearly shot while at a crime scene. My medical school buddies thought I was nuts for working in a job where my predecessor had been taken hostage, shot and almost killed, but after having an uncle gunned down while minding his own business at a café, I was more pragmatic about the potential risks, I guess. Death and violence can stalk you wherever you were or whatever you were doing.

Working so closely with the MCRT and Gibbs, Tony, Cate, Abby and Dr. Mallard, was a privilege that was helping me get my mojo back again, as Tony would say. It even earned me a nickname from him, and initially I resented the tag 'Autopsy Gremlin' when Tony first coined it, but in time came to embrace it, thanks to Gerald, who put me right when he called in one day to say hi to everyone. He told me that Tony only gave nicknames to the team and that he'd never gifted him with a nickname in the two plus years they'd worked together. After that I took it as a sign of affection and acceptance, and totally revelled in it. It was a great feeling to have found a home, a second family of sorts.

And what a family, too! So damned smart, courageous and incorruptible, and although the team changed somewhat over the years when first Tim joined Gibbs' team and Cate was killed by the same bastard that shot Gerald and seemed to have sworn some sort of blood feud with Gibbs; which made me question my beliefs in Gibbs somewhat. Then Ziva joined the team, but it still retained its core strengths of giving a voice and justice to victims, and upheld the principles of the rule of law that ensured that it was justice not revenge that they sought for their stakeholders.

Oh, sure there were times when individuals behaved badly, cruelly even, or made mistakes that hurt people and team members were injured over the years. Yet in all these years, I knew with a certainty that whenever push came to shove, this group of people who held themselves to a higher standard of integrity, honour, veracity and courage, would be the bulwark in the fight against anarchy, cruelty and blind vengeance. That they would fight to the death to uphold the principles that they held so dear.

That unswerving belief is what I would have sworn on a stack of bibles, too, if you had asked me up until that moment. Now after standing there in Tony's apartment, staring at the carnage, at the bloodied corpse that had been left behind in the pursuit of retribution, not to mention the shattered remains of the wounded survivor, I was shocked to my core. My beliefs have also become victim to the senseless violence as well.

I find myself questioning if I still want to remain a part of this group of people who I believed held themselves to a higher standard than your average individual than to surrender to their base emotions. Now I have say, I'm not sure about anything anymore. And even if it will kill me to leave, I don't think I can stay any longer.