Okay, folks... this is it. For those of you who've been waiting so long, I apologize. For those who haven't been waiting, great! To all of you, welcome.

As of Sept. 6, 2011, this novel is COMPLETE!

Disclaimer: In addition to the usual cast of characters we all know and love, I've borrowed another one from Donald P. Bellisario and Company. It was a character who only appeared in one episode in season two, but the character's interaction with Gibbs, and Gibbs' reaction to the character, stuck in my mind and became the basis for the plot in "One Less." I appreciate and acknowledge the inspiration. Finally, this novel was started LONG before current political events occurred, though I must say its subject matter has become awfully timely.

And on that note, on with the show.

One Less: Prologue

by joykatleen

(Before the Credits Roll...)

Two nights ago, Nicky'd had a heart to heart talk with President Bartlett.

No, wait, that wasn't right. The President was Bush. No, that wasn't right either. It was the new guy. Obama. That was right. The President was Obama, not Bartlett. Bartlett was the TV president, on that West Wing show he used to watch at the shelter. But it was definitely Bartlett who called Nicky two nights ago to talk about the war in the Middle East.

No, that wasn't right either. Nicky was in his room alone all night that night. He remembered he was sitting on his bed, or rather the moth-eaten cushions he used for a bed, and then he heard President Bartlett ask for his opinion on what the US's next move should be. He couldn't have called, because Nicky had no phone. Therefore, he must have imagined it.

Reaching that conclusion, Nicky felt better. The doc said he was smart enough to reason these things out. All he had to do was apply logic and reason to the voices, and he could figure out which were real and which were in his head. Auditory hallucinations, the doc called them. Nicky always wondered at that. Years ago, he'd had some great hallucinations. And sometimes some not so great ones. But they were always of the visual kind. This whole auditory thing was pretty new to him. He knew why he sometimes saw things that weren't there: Too much booze and too many good drugs in the bad years. But how can you hear something that isn't there?

Nonetheless, Nicky knew that the President was Obama, and Bartlett was a TV guy, and neither one of them could possibly care what a crazy old man thought about the latest crisis overseas. So he must have imagined the whole conversation. So there.

But what about the dead Marine?

Between the phone call from President Bartlett and another, equally odd conversation with David Letterman – who lived in Connecticut, not in Washington, DC, and who therefore could not possibly have stopped by to visit old Nicky, another one logiced out – he'd heard a loud bang and then a bunch of men yelling and fighting. He didn't know if it was real people or more hallucinations, but it didn't really matter: either way, Nicky wanted nothing to do with it. So he'd laid on his mattress and covered his head with the old army blanket he'd gotten from the Salvation Army – hey, that was funny! – and tried to make it go away.

It hadn't worked very well. Even under his blanket, he could still hear them. Angry men, screaming terrible, hateful things. The most vivid auditory hallucinations he'd ever had.

The voices of those men had been harder to reason out. His auditory hallucinations – how does that happen anyway? – had always involved the people Nicky saw on TV in the waiting room at the VA hospital or at the TV store in the mall. David Letterman, President Bartlett, Dr. Phil, Judge Judy, even Oprah sometimes. Never fighting men. But on the other hand, how could it be real? Nicky lived in an abandoned storage warehouse next door to an old packing plant, deep inside one of the hundreds of small rooms people used to store their extra stuff in. It was warmer than the streets, and usually pretty quiet. Sometimes he'd run into other folks like him, folks with no place better to take shelter from the biting cold that came with the Washington winters, but never had he seen Marines. Yet when the angry men wouldn't shut up, he'd risked a look and seen them: three Marines in fatigues, beating on a fourth man in strange clothes, and yelling, yelling, yelling.

The VA doctor told him he could reason these things out. That the hallucinations would come and go, but that he was smart enough to figure out what was real, if he just thought it through. Still, this one was tough.

Nicky moved through the city like a stray dog. Few people ever acknowledged him, and those who did usually took a quick look then turned away. He didn't blame them. He wasn't exactly a sight for sore eyes. More like something from a side show. When he was in the war, he was caught in a terrible fire, and his face had been badly burned. The scars were horrible, even scaring him sometimes when he caught his reflection in store windows or when he had to look in the mirror. It didn't bother him, not that much, anyway, but almost fifteen years later, they were still real bad. No wonder people avoided looking at him.

Other than the VA doc, and that little nun at the church who let him do odd jobs in exchange for a shower and a change of clothes, Nicky didn't talk to many people. Not that he needed people to talk to: He had great conversations with famous people most every night. But not really. He knew that. He was actually pretty smart, when you got right down to it. Just because he'd fried his brain a little with the drugs didn't make him stupid.

Still, it was hard. Sometimes he wished he could be normal. It was why he went to the doc, why he took his medication when he thought to. The voices went away then, and Nicky was alone. And as much as he sometimes wished he could be normal, get a job, maybe have a family, not having the voices to talk to got lonely too.

For awhile, he had tried to be normal. He dried out, got clean, and worked for a little while picking up trash in the local parks. But his face scared the kids. The last thing Nicky wanted to do was give kids nightmares. Lord knew he'd had enough of his own as a child. So he quit. Collected his disability checks and lived off them. It was easy to do when you had no house and no car. And when you weren't picky about what you ate.

He was still clean and sober, though. Going on nine years. He was very proud of that fact, even if no one believed him. He could see in their faces when they passed him on the street. He was just another drunk: almost invisible, but not quite. He always made sure never to talk to anyone he couldn't see when he was in public, no matter what they said. Because face it, that was scary, watching someone have a conversation with someone who wasn't there. And unless Nicky could see them, how did he know for sure they were there?

But the Marines, them he'd seen. He'd snuck out of his room, down the long hallway to the stairwell, down to the first floor. It was warmer on the top floors: heat rises, you know. The Marines were on the first floor, in the large, open area that used to be warehouse receiving. They were over in the corner where the street light shone in, yelling and screaming and carrying on something awful. Nicky hadn't stayed long. Real or imaginary, they were big and scary, and he didn't want them to decide he 'needed to be taught a lesson' like they were teaching the man on the ground.

After awhile, the angry voices stopped, and Nicky was able to fall asleep. In the morning, when his stomach told him it was time to go looking for breakfast, he'd slipped down the stairs again and seen the man still lying on the ground. He was battered and bloodied, and dead. And scary as all get out. It had been a lot of years since Nicky had seen a dead man, in real life. He saw them on TV a lot, and he tried to remember what show this dead man had been in, but he couldn't.

He'd gone back to the VA hospital that morning, to get his medication refilled. He didn't mention the dead Marine. He didn't want the doctor to think he was having trouble reasoning it out. Because that would mean a trip to the nut house, and that place was scary. Full of crazy people, bouncing off the walls and talking to people who weren't there. Yelling at them even. Nicky had been there a couple of times when he was drinking, and he didn't ever want to go back. So he told the doc he'd only just run out.

It usually only took two or three doses for the voices to go away. He took the first at the doctor's office before lunch, then another with his dinner. A third at bedtime and the dead man should be gone by morning.

But he wasn't.

This morning, when he came down from his room, the dead man was still there. There were rats there, too. Nicky hated rats. In Kuwait, the rats grew big as Chihuahuas. Here, they were big enough to bite and chew and pass on diseases and fleas. Seeing them there, sniffing and – eww yes, chewing – made Nicky want to run. But if the man was real, didn't he deserve… something?

So Nicky yelled and stomped and made the rats go away, then he crouched next to the dead man. He was lying on his back, blank eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling. With a hand trembling only party from the cold, he reached out and touched the man's face. He was cold, like the cement he was lying on. Real, not a hallucination. The man was wearing strange clothes: tight pants and boots with heels and an unbuttoned shirt with a little short shirt underneath, all of it under an orange trenchcoat. His short brown hair was spiked up in all directions. There were several necklace chains around his neck. Among them, a silver beaded chain that Nicky would recognize through the worst of his hallucinations: dog tags. He reached for them and felt at the tags. Too dark in here to read them, except he recognized the third line: USN. A sailor, not a Marine. And definitely real.

He had to do something. He couldn't call the police: they would find him here, and then they'd ask questions. When they found out who he was, they'd probably take him to jail. Last time he got caught stealing food from the 7-11, he'd been 'cited out' on a promise to show up in court. Then he forgot to check what day it was and didn't show up for court, and Nicky was pretty sure that meant there was now a warrant out for his arrest. The police would definitely take him to jail if they knew who he was. He'd been to jail once before, years and years ago. It was as scary as the nut house, and way more dangerous.

But the man was a sailor. Nicky liked sailors. A long time ago, Nicky had been a Marine, and even though there was a tradition of sailors and Marines not getting along, he'd had lots of sailor friends. It was a really long time ago, true, but once a Marine always a Marine, and he had a duty to be always faithful. To Marines, and to sailors too. He couldn't just leave the man here, now that Nicky knew he was real.

Nicky carefully lifted the man's head and pulled the dog tags off his neck. He held them in his palm, let the chain pile atop them, and put them into his pocket. Then he used his thumb to gently close the man's eyes.

"Semper Fi," Nicky whispered, and nodded to himself. He would do the right thing. He had to.

(FOOF)

To be continued...