I figured I might give this NCIS fandom another go, mostly because my muse won't shut up and I'm just at my wit's end with him.

I don't claim to know much about politics (by that I mean foreign politics), but I guess (or hope?) that I know enough. This story does occur beyond the world of NCIS, so to speak, but is, of course, centered around the show and its characters. This will probably be about three chapters long. I'd prefer to think of it as an extended one-shot, because the idea of writing a chaptered story makes me want to hyperventilate.

I searched high and low to be sure that this plot had not been done before, and though my search (thankfully) yielded no results, that doesn't mean it hasn't been done. So I'm sorry if this is an old plot. I really don't think it is.

Anyways, I won't be cute about it because this chapter is heavy, but please remember to review. And remember my proposal - you leave a review, I'll return the favor.

Thanks.

- Cricket

Yetoma

The sun sits upon the lip of the horizon, plump and red like a ripened pomegranate. It casts a shroud of soft, pink light through the sky, throws shadows behind schoolhouses, streetlamps, the ankles of the men and women padding softly down sidewalks and alleyways. Cars clot the streets; they gleam in the pink morning light, crawling along in a haze.

In a marketplace on the far side of Jerusalem, an old woman loads swollen loaves of bread into her basket. Arabic floats sweetly between vendor and customer, melodic and soft, for the morning is quiet, the air is thick and warm.

The eyes in the leathered faces of the elderly gaze blearily into the morning, dark with a kind of fleeting contentment; a passing knowledge that this moment of warmth and serenity can be, will be broken, as easily as it has descended. Hearts beat carefully beneath their breasts; pulses throbbing thickly.

Four children in an empty street chuck stones into the gutters. A thin, tired pup lifts its brown head from the pavement and peers sleepily across the sidewalk, tail kicking dust up off the ground. The backdrop of buildings throws a shadow across their shoulders, but the children scarcely notice, happily plucking rocks from beneath street signs and gaping black windows, drawing their thin arms back and tossing the rocks across the concrete. Fat stones, too cumbersome to travel the distance, simply hop across the ground and settle there, a yard or two away from the little flock of children; but the pebbles fly farther, hit the gutter and roll and travel on. Some make it down the incline of the street and tumble lightly down the steps of the ancient city, clanging and clicking and making the streets echo. They stop at the foot of the steps and settle in the darkness there, quickly cooling in the nooks of space which the sun has yet to reach.

Old wounds of bullet holes on brick in the buildings around them is a simple, unremarkable feature of the environment. The phantom sound of the drumming of gunfire pulses quietly in the backs of the minds of the children, a memory, familiar and unclean – but, for the moment, a memory and nothing more.

To the north, a man meanders stiff-backed down a hallway and turns a set of silver keys into the tumbler. He pushes the door open and enters his office, going quickly to his desk to lay his jacket on the back of his chair, to sort papers, to make phone calls. He sinks into the chair and nurses a mug of coffee. The phone rings.

Just outside his window, a bird is preening its feathers from the tip of the flagpole. The flag is beaming like a ribbon, flashing blue and white in the lazy morning breeze.

Far away, a woman turns in her bed and wearily regards the moonlight glowing on the far wall.

The sky across the desert goes white.