Title: A wooden jacket for Armless John.
Author: WriterKos
WWC #: 40
Rating: FR18
Parings: McGee/OC
Characters: McGee, DiNozzo, OC, with homeophatic doses of the rest of the team.
Genres: Romance, CaseFic, Humor
Warnings: It can happen anytime on season seven.
Summary: A marine is murdered, and their only eyewitness left the country. Gibbs sends Tony and Tim after her, but will they survive the food, the bureaucracy, the corrupt cops and the thieves on their trip? Written for the Weekly Writing Challenge 40.
a/n #1: No poor foreigners were harmed during the writing of this fic. The events narrated here are based in true facts, not fiction, but the names and the situations were changed. Brazil is an amazing place, but we, Brazilians, are not blind to it's faults and problems. Hope you have fun.
a/n #2: No, I do not live in Rio.
Chapter 1: A Captain Just Hit His Boots…
Portuguese idiom: Bater as botas
Literal translation: to hit the boots
Meaning: to die.
Somewhere in Georgetown
Washington DC
Thursday 3:21 am
If there was one thing that you can be sure is that, regardless of where you are in the world, the skies will always be the same. The stars on the deep dark cloth stretched out over us may vary, but the sun will always rise on the East and set on the West, and the moon, in clear autumn nights like this, will be shining its pale light over us, bringing a special beauty to the buildings and people who dwell under its nightly kingdom.
The light wind that announces the upcoming winter makes me shiver, and I point my Canon 450D to the sky again and smile at the moon, and try to capture its beauty and magic with my zoom lenses. Looking through them, I see the moon's seas and rocky formations, and deeply envy those who dared to dream to touch its soil, and those that toiled day and night and were brave enough – or insane enough – to achieve their goal.
In nights like this, it's easy to understand why pagan religions frequently worshiped the full moon, before the advent of monotheism and the all-seeing, all-powerful God.
Those that had only nature as a representation of the powers of the Gods above could easily be fascinated by the beauty shining down on me, bathing my sun-kissed skin with a ghostly night.
I lower my camera, and regret that this is my last night here, and I really wish that I could stay, and be able to witness the beauty of the moon from here, from America, but family and other commitments demand my return. My holidays are over, so I say goodbye to DC with my lenses, and feel the music of the night silently whispering its goodbye to me.
As I silently greet the moon, I hear the murmur of voices in the alley besides the roof where I'm laying on a blanket. At first I ignore the voices, as they only disturb my communion with the night. My camera silently registers the beauty before me in several shots, and I feel a pang to know that, unfortunately, I have no one to share the beauty of it with me.
The voices get louder, and I leave my warm nest to see who dares spoil my goodbye shots. I go to the edge of the roof, and look down to the small alley behind my friend's apartment building. Even though I started one month backpacking trip staying in hostels and, later on, in fellow couchsurfer's houses, a good friend of mine offered his place for me to crash before my flight tomorrow, as he would be staying with his boyfriend in Maryland.
As I was never a person to deny a freely given gift, I promptly accepted it, and had truly enjoyed my stay in his small flat in Georgetown for the last three days. But why these guys were arguing in this alley? I simply sit down near the ledge, between the shadows, and see two men. A shiver runs through my body, as I see their argument escalating, so I simply hide behind a stone gargoyle smiling ironically towards the night, point my camera, and start taking pictures.
I had no idea how that action would change my life forever.