He was a man of joy. He could lighten up the mood of all the people surrounding him – Gibbs included, and that was something he could definitely be proud of – whenever it was needed and when it wasn't, too. Sometimes he could piss people off with this gift but in serious situations he made a joke so that everyone laughed. But he kept working efficiently although lightening them up. He wasn't one of the most productive people, granted, but he still did what needed to be done. And he looked beyond the horizon when thinking about something related to a case. He came to conclusions, others wouldn't even dream of.

In the most depressing moments he couldn't keep his mouth shut. He started joking. But it rarely pissed his colleagues off – okay, it did sometimes – but usually it was a relief for them to know, that there was still someone who showed them another side of life, which was concealed for them. A side full of humor, hope, friendship, harmony, peace… all the things that stood in contrast to what they had to handle everyday at work: tense, hopelessness, loneliness, some kind of war… violence, torture, death…

~*~*~

He was a man of everlasting childlike behavior. He never lost his humor and his charm. He also never lost his curiosity or his carelessness. He was an optimistic sometimes naïve kind of guy. He always though they would solve the current case when they were working hard and almost gave up, because they couldn't find anything. He never doubted Gibbs would look for him and find him when he once again got lost during an undercover operation or when he had gone too far and couldn't get out of the shit he was in. And he always hoped, in the end everything would be okay.
Although he didn't act like a grown-up man in his mid-thirties very often, no-one could take him that amiss. Of course, who could take something amiss what a little child did? No-one. He was like a child, so what? Who could? Indeed, there were some lousy days when they wanted to kick him in the ass for his jokes, when the nerves were too strained, but on the other hand it was a good thing to have someone around who saw the world through another sight. Someone naïve, someone who held onto something that maybe didn't even exist but gave the team new perspectives of thinking. That was a big benefit for the team.

~*~*~

He was a man of honor. Everything he touched went into gold immediately. Everything he did, he did it for the other's, never for himself. He was definitely not selfish. He did it to help them wherever and whenever help was needed. Sometimes he didn't obey the others given to him, instead just thought of rescuing someone in misery and then he paid the price for it when something went wrong. He didn't think about what consequences his actions could have on his job or his career, if he could be fired in less then five minutes. He didn't care, if he had to cope with the danger, if he could become another victim or if even he could die. He did what needed to be done, but nobody gave a damn about.

~*~*~*~*~

Everyone has a down-time anytime and so has he. He might be enlightening but sometimes it all is just too much for him to bear. And when it all catches up on him he can't just hide or escape. He is caught in his own world and because everyone thinks he is strong and stable and fearless he doesn't show them that he is weak sometimes, too. That's why he never told anyone about his problems.

Sometimes when he went to sleep he couldn't close his eyes. When he did he saw images of death people. Most of them were victims, some of them murderers he shot in the line of duty. Some of them were from his time as a cop in Baltimore, some of them from his time as a Federal Agent for NCIS. But they had something in common. They haunted him in his sleep, letting him wake up in the middle if the night, soaked in sweat and breathing heavily. They blamed him, because he couldn't rescue them in time, because he let the murders happen, because they had to die innocently.

First it was relatively easy to push the images away and just fall asleep. He ignored them as if they weren't there. But they were and from day to day, week for week, month for month they blamed him more and more. The voices became louder and louder until they screamed at him. And then there accrued more and more death bodies, whose voices screamed at him. Sometimes there were at least twenty voices screaming at him at a time.

~*~*~

After four years working for NCIS it seed as if the images were screaming at him so loud he couldn't even close his eyes and blind them out when he couldn't stand it. They days, when he came to work late increased from month to month and so did the times when he couldn't manage at least one or two hours of sleep before returning to the headquarters.

Two years earlier it had helped when he came back to the office late at night when nobody else was around and work through the paperwork left from the other day. It had been a good idea to shut the voices down, because he had to concentrate on something and couldn't be distracted. The demons often left on their own when they realized that he wouldn't let them caught his strength and mind. But the success didn't last long.

He missed a bed, wanted to lie down and sleep for days and weeks. He wanted to sleep without being disturbed by the dead men and women he hadn't even known before the telephone rang and the team got called to a new crime scene with another dead body – a new image to haunt him. The problem was they didn't stop haunting him. It didn't even matter if he looked at them or not. He could just look away or convince Gibbs, that he would look for evidence, not sketch the body but therefore he had to talk to his boss and he definitely wouldn't agree until he knew the reason.

He knew he was getting insane. Not really insane, but he was like a schizophrenic and of that he was afraid the most. He always thought he was normal and wouldn't let something like death affect his work. It didn't exactly affect his work but it affected him. He knew the only thing he could do was talking to someone. One of his colleagues, maybe. But he didn't tell anyone. Not his friends, not even his doctor. But it was getting worse and he didn't know if he could take it any longer. And most of all he is afraid of losing his job over something stupid like that.

He had to tell someone. The reason why he didn't was because he thought when he tells someone about the voices in his head they wouldn't honestly believe him. It's not like him; he wasn't someone who seemed to have problems to cope with all the things they saw. No-one would expect him to have nightmares because of a dead body. And otherwise he thought they could send him to psychiatrist. He knew this would be the best sometimes, but he was just too afraid of it. He never would let that happen.

The only opportunity that was left for him was to endure all the pain the insomnia and the voices, the images – the schizophrenia – caused. He knew that he would break in the end but he didn't know what to do instead. Quitting his job was definitely not an option, because the only people, who kept him upright, were his colleagues and without them he would be all alone. So he kept working further and further, no matter how long it would take until finally the images in his head disturbed him…

~Fin~