Title: Detour This Way
Author: kaylashay
Rating: FR13
Disclaimer: I'm not Bellesario or CBS, so I don't claim to own them.
Challenge: ncis_drabble; Challenge #71 - Detour
Timeline: Pre-Series
Word Count: 300

Crossposted: ncis_drabble; ncis_haven; ncisfanfic

Summary: Every place I’ve ever been was just a detour on my way to someplace new.

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Every place I’ve ever been was just a detour on my way to someplace new. After my mother passed away, my father remarried. When that went south, she got the house and we packed our bags to a new house and a new wife. Thinking back on it, I’ve never had a place to call home.

Once I walked out of my father’s world and into college, it was one cramped dorm room after another. Then everything I owned was packed into boxes and taken to a new town and my first apartment. There I became a cop, low man on the totem pole. I thought briefly that I would stay the course, climb the food chain, but I didn’t.

Two years later, the boxes were shuffled to another stopping point in another city. Maybe if I knew what my ultimate goal was, I could reach my destination. But I’ve never figured it out, so I just keep following the broken signs along the road.

Next came Baltimore and I found something I was good at. Every criminal I put behind bars gave me a feeling of accomplishment. I was doing something that made a difference in the world and on the outside, I let that feeling shine in my smile.

But on the inside, I was still lost and the road signs were becoming less clear every day. I didn’t have anyone to share my accomplishments with. I wanted to have that connection to someone, but that someone wasn’t in Baltimore and I didn’t know how to find them.

Then, just after the world had gone to hell with 9/11, there was a flash of a federal badge and a gruff voice saying, “NCIS. This is our scene now.”

“Detour this way,” was what I heard and I smiled.

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