Earlier
“You know, I can't help but feel like we don't ever escape the corpses, even when we're on vacation." Tony DiNozzo crouched down to get a better look at the plexi-glass cube and its contents: a pile of bones clothed in something vaguely resembling trousers and ragety linen shirt. Leather straps, a very old pike and other mining implements had been arranged around the corpse. Everything was neatly labled and the multi-lingual information sheet tacked to the back of the cube gave further information about the remains and some pictures of salt-mummies .
"It's a good thing that this is just a display on the dangers of mining and not a crime scene. I'd hate to have to investigate anything this old and degraded. A few hundred years take it well out of our jurisdiction."
They had visited the salt mines of Hallstatt and afterwards decided to take the foot path down to town to warm up again. It was a hot summer day and there were various educational display cases alongside the path dealing with salt mining and how it had influenced the region. For some reason Tony hadn't expected the mine to be so cold, but it had been fun. Sliding down long wooden slides
and wandering around the man-made caverns was a nice counterpoint to their lazy days on the lake shore.
The man he was addressing stepped beside him to study the display. “Yeah. Not to mention that the poor shmuck wasn't a member of the Navy or the Marines, or an US citizen at all.”
“And if you wanted to stick your nose into it, that would stop you because?” Tony impishly grinned up at his partner, bestowing a long admiring glance at the casually clad body. Jethro the tourist was a delight to behold, standing there in the sunlight with the panorama of craggy mountains and a lake in the background. Nobody back home would recognize the usually conservatively clad Special Agent in his current get up of khaki-shorts that exposed muscular legs to the sun, sneakers, and a simple dark blue T-shirt. It went, at least Tony thought so, very well with the lightly tanned skin and the ruffled, sweaty hair. And the most delightful details were his partner’s relaxed stance and the lack of a scowl on his face.
“Ducky would love this! He would tell us that this reminds him of the one case where-" An exasperated growl was the only warning before Tony was forced to stop mid-sentence because Gibbs pulled him to his feet and shut him up with a kiss. Not that Tony minded, kissing was preferable to talking and they were on a vacation, the perfect time to indulge a little bit as long as-
Someone tapped him on the shoulder and he reluctantly separated from his lover to look at his daughter. Sam was eying them with the typical slightly horrified expression of a child at the cusp to teenager-hood who didn’t know if she should be disgusted or delighted about the fact that her parents showed affection for each other. Thankfully the delight was, for now at least, winning. Tony wasn’t looking forward to the day when his coltish little girl would decide that kissing was only for the young.
‘Eek! The parents are at it again.’ She signed and then wriggled between them to get a better view of the display case.
Gibbs groaned. “I knew that buying her the Addams family DVD collection for her birthday was a bad idea.”
Tony just laughed and ignored his partner’s grumbling. “It could be worse. She could quote the Simpsons.”
That earned him another growl but before they could delve into the never ending discussion about appropriate viewing material for little girls, said girl demanded their attention again.
‘Wow! Not as cool as the crypt beneath the Stefanschurch or the mummies at the arts museum but this is interesting as well.’ Sam had crouched down before the cube, unconsciously mimicking Tony's earlier pose and then turned halfway around so she was able to sign to them. Her gestures were so energetic that she lost her balance and tumbled backwards. Without the fast help of her fathers, her butt would have painfully met the stony path. The little incident didn’t curb her enthusiasm at all, she thanked them and babbled on. ‘It reads that salt is a very good preserver. Well, duh! I knew that long ago, Ducky told me. And it says that they discovered dead miners under cave-ins who looked like they died yesterday instead of hundreds of years ago.’
Tony turned his head and shared a smile with Jethro. Watching Sam often reminded him of observing a yearling. All legs and muscle with no coordination and grace, quick to stumble but equally quick to shrug it off as nothing afterwards. Typical teenage behaviour.
The sound of hands clapping together drew his attention back to Sam who was staring at them indignantly. ‘The information sheet doesn’t say anything about how- ‘ The girl paused and took another long look at the bones. ‘how she died- and weren’t female miners rare?- no cause of death, if it was an accident or- do you think she was murdered? Maybe she found something valuable, the guide said something about cat gold?’
Ok, this part was not so typical for the average teenager and Tony a very clear picture that, not far in the future, there would be another scandalized teacher demanding a conference with him. Somehow teachers didn’t take it well when their students gave ‘to conserve a corpse’ instead of ‘makes food taste better’ as an answer to the question about what salt was good for. He still had nightmares about the time he had to explain that Sam was the child of two law enforcement officers (and very interested in forensics) and not a future criminal mastermind because she knew how to make writing visible again after someone emptied their drink over the sheet of paper. If they were florists their daughter would be interested in flowers. If they were veterinarians it was likely that Sam would be interested in cuddly pets. It wasn’t Tony’s fault that daisies and puppies were more socially acceptable than old bones.
Both men often regretted that it wasn’t always possible to shield their child from the harsher realities of life, but even if they tried… it was impossible to turn back time and Sam becoming interested in forensics was, in their opinion, far better than her being irrevocably scarred by the events when she was eight.
Jethro switched to Agent-mode, eying the bones thoughtfully. ‘Good question Princess, but I don't think we're going to be able to answer it. This is anything but a pristine crime scene, you know? I would have to see the pictures the archaeologists have taken before moving anything to even make an educated guess.’
They discussed the old skeleton on their way down to the town. When asked what she wanted to do next, Sam dug deep into her backpack and handed them a folder. ‘This should be interesting as well, the Gebeinhaus!’
‘Gebeinhaus?’ Tony opened the crinkly folder. It depicted a white room with a low ceiling. It was full of skulls with names painted on their foreheads. The text stated that due to the lack of space for graves it was a common practice for the locals to dig up their dead after a few years and display their remains in a special house. Yep, no way to escape the corpses and this country seemed to encourage it to boot. Austrians were a really, really morbid people, but at least the landscape was great.
.-#-.
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