4,846 cases

i'll try anything once

[note: based upon the scene in 5x19/communications breakdown where sid speaks lithuanian to hawkes in autopsy.]

--*--

"Mac, we can't ask her anything when we don't know any people who can translate Lithuanian!"

"Yes, we do."

--*--

He's not quite sure how, but translating what Mac's saying comes a lot easier than he expected. He's a touch rusty, as it's been a while since he last brushed up on his Lithuanian, but the words still roll straight off his tongue and he can't help feeling a little relieved when the victim's mother actually understands what he's saying. Going over his pronunciation by repeating words aloud to himself and having to actually think of how to put these words from his own native language into someone else's are two completely separate things, but he's happy to find that it still comes second nature to him.

He's not entirely sure how old he was when he first started learning the language, but he remembers his grandmother teaching him a bunch of new words every time he went with his mother to visit her from a young age. By the time he was a teenager he was fluent, and since then, he's tried to keep it that way through reading anything he can get his hands on that's written in Lithuanian, be it an article about medicine or the small collection of paperbacks he's managed to accumulate over the years.

It feels nice to be able to use the skill he's worked so hard to keep up, but what's even better is the disbelief on Flack's face when he starts translating.