Persona Non Grata

by Motsie of Atlantis

Callen is just about ready to retire from NCIS. He is ordered to attend a conference on Counterterrorism where he runs into Eric and Nell for the first time in over ten years. He learns something that makes him examine his role as team leader at NCIS-LA.

Persona Non Grata

Disclaimer: As always, every character or place you may recognize are not owned or controlled by me. The odd little people that interact with them are solely the products of my imagination and do not represent any real person - past, present, or future.

A/N: This started out with a dream that I had about Callen singing "Needles and Pins" by the Searchers. The plot bunnies drove me in that direction, then veered off in a sharp turn. This is the result. I hope you enjoy it.

Los Angeles
Tuesday, March 11, 2025

Callen found himself celebrating his birthday as he usually did, alone and at work. He finished the last of his paperwork and sorted out the files, placing them into small stacks. He turned off his computer, took off his glasses, and stretched to try and get out all the kinks in his back.

"You gotta get out of this business," he said to himself out loud. He didn't care about talking to himself and being accused of going senile. The only people left at the Mission were the night tech people, and they were off in a separate area up on the second floor. "Memo to self, write letter of resignation and hand it in to Granger. He will love it that he will finally be rid of me. Revise memo to self - write memo and date it for June 30. Then give it to Granger when I get back from this latest op. He'll have to arrange a retirement ceremony and give me my 35 year pin. Won't that stick in his craw." Callen snickered, as he imagined how the Operations Manager of the Office of Special Projects would take it.

He picked up one small stack of the files and took it to Granger's office. He could remember what it looked like when it still belonged to Hetty before she retired. If he squinted hard, he could still see her ghost appearing here, there, and everywhere, like the little ninja she was. He put the files on Granger's desk and, turning around, saw Hetty right there in front of him, with a smile on her face. Granger had made this office his own, removing all trace of the former occupant, but he could never exorcise her ghost from the room, no matter how hard he tried.

Callen went back to the bullpen, and couldn't believe his eyes. He was confronted by three more ghosts. He knew they were apparitions, because none of their true forms had visited the Mission over the past year. Sam retired after he had again been shot to form his own private security agency. He no longer went out in the field, but lived in his office and came home every night to Michelle and the kids. While he missed the action, he gladly traded it off to spent the quality time with his family that he desired for so long. Deeks had returned to LAPD when Granger took over for Hetty. But when Kensi became pregnant with their first child, they both resigned from their respective agencies and got married. Marty was recruited by Los Angeles County as a junior prosecuting attorney, a job that was far more suitable for a family man. Kensi stayed home raising their little Deeks and littler Kensi and was still learning how to become a domesticated wife and mother. They too had smiles on all their faces, as if they knew that Callen was going to retire, and not end up as another picture on the wall, along with Macy, Dom, Renko, and Hunter.

Callen shook his head to clear away the ghostly images. A couple more files to deliver up to ops for the techs to work on tomorrow and then he could go home and sleep for a few hours. Hopefully, the ghosts of his nightmares would not appear. The meds that Nate had given him seemed to help. Maybe those spirits were starting to feel their age, like he was doing more and more, and needed their own time to rest before again taking up the job of tormenting him by night.

Going up the stairs and through the doors to ops, Callen looked up and saw the ghostly images of Nell and Eric, looking at their computer screens and each other, but not at him. A tear came to his eye as he remembered the two. Nell had been the first of the team to leave. Hetty enrolled her in the leadership courses at FLETC, the first step of her becoming the youngest Operations Manager ever appointed at one of the other NCIS offices. When Eric found out that Nell was leaving, he asked Hetty for a transfer to FLETC to be with the analyst. Reluctantly, his transfer was approved and Eric was made an instructor, teaching advanced courses in computer investigatory techniques. After that, Callen lost track of both of them,

"I hope the two of you are happy together," Callen said to the spirits. His subconscious mind kept arguing with him that he could have been the one with Nell instead of Eric. His stupid rule of not dating anyone with a badge kept him from asking her out. Before he could overcome the pride of keeping his self-made rules, Eric had established his relationship with Nell. Callen would never have done anything to damage the bonds that had been built between those two, so he never tried to get closer to her after that. Their images started to fade, and Callen turned around and left the building to go home for the night.

Los Angeles
Friday, March 28, 2025

Granger called Callen into his office. The agent knew that nothing good could come from this, but followed him into his office and sat down in the intended chair.

"What is it now, sir?" Callen asked with an icy tone to his voice. "I have three more months for you to dream up useless missions for me and then I am gone forever."

"Well, Agent Callen, you will be our representative to the Regional Conference on Counterintelligence in Dallas next week." the Operations Manager told him.

"Come on. Me? Taking notes and reporting back here? Why don't you send one of the agents that can benefit from such a session? What part of only three months left for me do you not understand?" the senior agent asked.

"The other agents are all on assignment. If you would have ever allowed yourself to work with a partner after Agent Hanna retired instead of always going off on your own, you would probably be on a different assignment." Granger told him. A small smile started to creep across his face, "Just look at it as my way of putting a leash on a lone wolf."

"Right. OK, What do I have to do?" Callen said, as he slumped further down into the chair, his anger very apparent as he resigned himself to the fact that Granger held the upper hand.

Granger grabbed a file, opened it up and referred to it occasionally as he said: "Monday, March 31st, you will catch the 9:00 AM flight out of LAX to Dallas/Fort Worth International. There you will be met by an agent from the Dallas office. He will drive you to the motel in Arlington where you will spend the night. The following day you will go to the meeting site in the hotel that the Regional Office has chosen. You will spend all day in meetings there, taking notes. You will return to your motel room in the evening. This will be repeated for the next two days. On Friday, April 4th, the final day of the conference, you will be done by 1:00 PM. An agent will drive you back to the airport and you will board the 3:30 PM flight back to LA. The following Monday morning, you will bring your notes to this office and report to me. Is that clear, Agent Callen?"

"Yes, Sir." Callen said, snapping to attention and offering the Operations Manager a salute, before he spun on his heel to leave the office.

"And Callen," Granger continued as he closed the file. "Play nice with your fellow agents."

"Don't I always," Callen answered without turning around as he walked out of the office and continued to walk right out of the building.

Dallas
Tuesday, April 1, 2025

Callen woke up even earlier than usual the first morning of the conference with a pain in his lower back. Looking at the bed, he said to himself, "I knew it was too soft. I shoulda slept on the floor."

He jumped into the shower and turned the water on as hot as he could stand it, letting the water pulse on his back, trying to relax the tense muscles. It worked, up to a point, but that nagging pain was still there, lurking way down deep.

He put on some shorts and a tee shirt and sought out the motel's exercise room. The equipment wasn't much, but he made maximum use of it. When a few other agents started to show up, he relinquished the room to them and headed out for a five mile run. When he was done, Callen returned to his room, showered again, put on a pair of black jeans and a light blue button down shirt and headed over toward the meeting room.

Finding his name on one of the packets, he took it over to a table and glanced through it. He was surprised to see in the printed brochure that Nell Jones was the Operations Manager of the Dallas Office on Counterintelligence and was the host of the conference. Looking a little further, he saw that Eric Beale was listed as a presenter for tomorrow afternoon's session. He was now glad that he had come, because he would have the chance to catch up with his two old friends.

The conference began with some guy from FLETC coming out and apologizing for Ms Jones not being there to welcome them. One of her teams had triggered a break in a case that they had spent three months developing and it looked like it was quickly drawing to a close. Callen looked around him and saw absolutely no one that he knew or even recognized. All of the other attendees looked so young, their newly scrubbed faces so fresh, that the LA agent started to feel not just old, but almost ancient. His mind kept wandering off, wondering how many of these other agents would even begin to see as many diverse cases as he and his team had covered.

Before he realized it, it was time for a break. People started to get up and head for the big coffee urns placed in the back of the room. Callen joined the procession, his eyes moving back and forth, trying to decide which little group to join and listen to the latest scuttlebut. Shortly after filling his cup, he heard a laugh from off to his left, near one of the room's rear exits. There was something that sounded naggingly familiar about that laugh. When he went over in that direction to investigate, he saw Eric talking with his mouth and hands, to a group of similar looking tech-type people. Callen waited for the group to break up, then went over to join the younger man.

"Hey, Eric," Callen greeted the tech.

"Oh, Hi Callen," he returned, with very little emotion in his voice.

Callen could sense some tension in Eric's voice and wondered why it was there since he had just been talking and laughing with several people before Callen walked up to talk to him.

"I saw that you were a presenter tomorrow. Are you still over at FLETC or have they posted you to one of the field offices?"

"This is my home now. I have been here in Dallas for about a year."

"I'm surprised. Didn't think they would let you go from FLETC or if they did, you would get posted out to the west coast or Hawaii because of the surfing"

"Well, I followed something that I loved more than surfing."

"Nell?"

"Yeah."

"Well, how's that working out for you. You two still together?"

"It's off and on, we've had our problems like any couple".

"It really surprised me when you left LA. One day you were there and the next day you're gone, and no one knew where or why. Same as for Nell. We later found out where you went, but no one learned why. Hetty must have known, but she never told us."

"Well, it should have been obvious to everyone that I left to be with Nell."

"Do you know why she left, I mean, I always expected her to go to FLETC, but I expected Nell to stay in LA for a couple more years before Hetty would start her out on that career path." Callen said.

"I know, but I think that is something that you need to hear from her, not me. I am not going to say anything more about that. Excuse me, Callen. I need to go back to the office and get back to work." Eric turned around and quickly left the room.

Callen was really confused. He tried to remember what was going on right before Nell left. He couldn't think of anything that would have caused her to leave. He would just have to find some time to talk with her.

He got out his cell phone, checked the brochure for the Regional Office phone number and called.

On the second ring the call was answered, "Good morning, NCIS, Central Field Office, Dallas, to whom may I direct your call?"

"Would Operations Manager Jones be available? This is Agent Callen from the LA office calling." he asked.

"I'm sorry, sir. She is not available at this time. Do you wish to leave a message?"

"Yes, please. I'm here in town at the Conference on Counterintelligence, staying at the motel. Could you have her contact me here?" he asked.

"Of course sir, I will see that she gets the message."

"Thank you." Callen said as he hung up.

He went back to the conference and took enough notes that he could satisfy Granger. Some of the things that were being discussed he knew would never work out in the LA area. Other things they talked about had already been implemented by the LA office. There were only one or two things that he felt might work for them out there and he paid extra attention to those details.

He stopped at the desk on his way to lunch. "Any messages for G. Callen?"

"I don't think so, sir. Could you please tell me your room number and I will check."

"Room 263."

"I'm sorry sir. There is nothing"

"Thank you anyway."

Lunch was the typical hotel conference type fare, plastic looking, only slightly warm instead of being hot, with almost no taste. The afternoon sessions droned on for Callen, just like the morning ones did. When they stopped for their break, the person at the microphone picked up a small card and read an announcement. "Will Mr. G. Callen please go to the front desk. Mr. G. Callen, front desk please."

Arriving at the front desk, Callen told the receptionist, "I'm G. Callen, I was asked to come to the front desk."

The receptionist checked her messages. She pulled one up and informed him, "You have a message from a Ms. Jones. She says she will meet you at 3:15 PM. in the Plano room." Checking the clock on the wall, she continued, "That's about forty-five minutes from now. You can wait there if you want to, or just join her when she arrives."

"Thank you," he said. "I think I'll wait for her there."

"It's just down this hall, third room on your right," she directed.

Callen went down the hall and found the room. It was a small exhibit hall with three small tables, several chairs at each of them, scattered among the conference exhibits. The agent browsed the exhibits, but found nothing that excited him, so he just went and sat down in one of the chairs to wait out the remaining time.

When Callen first saw Nell, he couldn't believe his eyes. She exuded the aura of a monumentally imposing person, even though she hadn't gained an inch. His immediate thoughts were that this was the same image Hetty would have projected some forty years ago. He felt a tingling from the tips of his fingers all the way down to his toes.

The past ten years had been very kind to Nell. Her hair was no longer in a short pixy cut; instead, long auburn locks curled down onto her shoulders. She was dressed in an impeccably tailored, camel colored pantsuit and her soft curves perfectly filled every part of it. Just from looking at her, one knew that she kept in shape.

Callen began to wonder why he didn't pay a lot more attention to how fine a woman Nell was when they were in LA. Yeah, she was Eric's partner, and everyone assumed that they were a couple. He could have made a play for her before the two techs had hooked up. But it was his stupid pride in following the rules that Gibbs first drilled into him and then the biggest one he added on his own of never dating a woman with a badge that made him overlook what she had to offer.

Yet Eric had said that their relationship was now "off and on". Maybe, after he retired, he should check out just what the tech meant by those words.

She walked up to the table with an air of confidence, her short heels giving off staccato sounds on the polished floor. He tried to give her a welcoming hug, but she easily sidestepped it and sat down at the table.

"You wanted to see me, Agent Callen?" she said icily.

His first thought was, **Again, all this hostility, the same as with Eric. I just wonder what the hell they thought I did to them to deserve it.**

"I'm glad to see you, Nell. You're looking fine, as always."

"Thank you." was all she said.

"I heard you caught a break in the case you were working. Did everything go OK?"

"For the most part. My team and I did what we needed to do to get the job done. The only thing left to do is sort out all the pieces and get the reports written. I'll have to read all the agents' reports and sign off on them, and finish the one I have to write."

"I guess it is reasonable that you have to write a report as Operations Manager."

"No. You don't understand. I write a report as a member of the team. Even though I am in the office and the agents are out in the field, down here I am a member of every team I send out. I make sure that everyone that works a case out of our office knows that they are a member of the team." Nell said.

"Just like it was in LA when you were there". Callen smiled as he fondly remembered some of the cases they worked together.

"Right", she said, the icy sarcasm was enough to drop the temperature of the room ten degrees.

A puzzled look came over Callen's face. "What do you mean?" he asked her. "We always included you as a member of our team."

"It never looked that way to me. Team members always help each other out. Most of the time I felt that on your team my help was always expected, but I received very little in return." she explained.

"I still don't understand what you are talking about." He said, the wondering look on his face deepening.

"You left me alone to fight for my life. Not just once, but on two separate occasions. You said you had my back, but each time it turned out that I was all by myself. Alone. You just weren't there for me. But I learned right then and there that I really couldn't count on you. You kept telling me how much I was part of the team, but I found out what that meant, too. I was part of your team when you needed me. If you wanted some information looked up, if you needed a story or alias backed up, if you needed a layout for a building, or someone to try and find a vehicle for you, then you thought of me as being part of your team." Nell blurted out.

"Nell, it wasn't..." he tried to say.

"Don't give me that crap,...that you didn't think of me that way. Why was I left alone at the Kill House? After I had been captured and you guys finally decided to show up, what happened? It was a Mexican standoff. Everyone said they had no shot. God, I'm not that big. Marc Inman wasn't ducking down behind me. How much of his body did I cover up? If I wouldn't have reached up and demaged him, we still probably would be standing there. If it would have been any other member of your team you wouldn't have hesitated. You would have taken the shot and killed Inman. You didn't, because you looked at me as a hostage and not a member of your team."

"No, Nell, that's not the way it was."

"Ok then, explain to me why you let me baby sit Robert Brown all by myself. Isn't it in your list of rules that when at the boathouse, no agent is ever alone with a suspect? Or was it that you felt Robert Brown was safe enough that you didn't have to assign an agent to watch him. And I was available, me, the non-agent, the geek who is only a part time member of the team. Where was the team that day, AGENT CALLEN? Even after I stabbed him a couple of times, he was still ready to blow my brains out. I was trying to push that gun away from my head with every ounce of strength that I had. I knew that I was going to die without anyone else being there. Sure, all of you came crashing in a few moments later to rescue the poor damsel in distress. And then you kept whispering to me how sorry you were, as I laid there on the ground with you kneeling over me. Your words said one thing, but your actions shouted another. Geez, it was Deeks who gave me his hoodie when I couldn't stop shivering because of shock. Deeks, the guy who had to claw and scratch his way to prove himself worthy to be member of your team. He knew what it was like not to be a member of the team, that's why he whispered 'I'm sorry' as he gave me the hoodie off his back. His eyes told me that he accepted me as part of the team, but that the rest of you were too self-centered even to consider it."

"I don't know what to say..."

"There isn't anything for you to say. I stopped believing your words a long time ago. It was like you developed a new persona to be used in the office, the sweet talking Super Agent, who condescends to spend some time with his adoring staff. You know, I bought into that completely. I had the biggest crush on you. Crush, hell, I fantasized over you. If you would have asked I would have crawled into bed with you whenever you wanted. Oh, that's right,...you didn't have a bed back then. Well then, I would have had sex with you on the table in ops, the couch in the bullpen, even Hetty's desk. I didn't care where. But then I began to notice how you were using me. And I didn't want to be "just there" in any intimate relationship like I was "just there" on the team. That's why I asked Hetty to get me out of there as fast as possible."

"I didn't know, I always thought that you and Eric were already hooked up." Callen raised his voice a little as he thought about his missed possibilities. "Hell, you left and he left and you both ended up at FLETC. That's why I didn't say anything."

"DON'T YOU GET IT?" Nell was nearly shouting now. I didn't want words, words are so cheap, especially to someone like you. You use them however it suits you, and never realize how anyone else is affected by them."

A look of sorrow came over Nell's face as she lowered her voice and continued. "And as far as Eric is concerned,...he tries so hard to give me what I need. We were together for a while, broke up, hooked up again. Poor, sweet Eric has followed me to every posting I have been given. Both he and I know that no matter how often we get together, it will never be anything permanent. It's just not in the cards for us. But that will not stop Eric from loving me and offering his life up for me."

"Well, in three months things might all change for you." he said.

"What do you mean by that? Nell asked.

"I'm getting out of the business. I'll have my 35 years in and can settle down. Maybe I could move back down here and we can see what happens between us."

"Agent Callen,...THERE...IS...NO...'US'." Nell said definitively. "Once upon a time, there might have been. The damsel in distress could have been swept off her feet by the knight in shining armor. But too much time has gone by. The armor now is rusted. The damsel has found her own way out of her distress. There is not a 'happy ever after' ending to this story. Turn to the last page and all you will see are the words, 'The End'."

Nell got up to leave. "And now, as in that story, this conversation has come to an end. If you will excuse me, I have operations to oversee and a team to work with. Goodbye, Agent Callen." And with that, she turned and walked away.

Callen just sat there, completely shocked by what Nell had said. Just like a pincushion, filled with needles and pins, each and every one of her words punctured the very core of his being. Had he really treated her like that? He didn't remember it going down that way. She said that he was the one who had done it, she was the one who had it done to her. Of course Nell would see it differently than he would.

Sure, he was only human. He knew he made mistakes, almost every person at OSP could point them out to him. But Nell's words were so full of anger and hurt by what she felt he had done to her. He wouldn't have hurt her like that, would he? Hell, he had thought about building a relationship with her, thinking it would have been different, because he wouldn't have to lie to her about who he was and what he did. Had he treated her like all the others? He knew that when he slipped into one of his personas it was so easy to enter a "use them and then lose them" relationship. Was Nell right? Did he have an office persona that he used with her?

He knew he could not go back in time and change the outcome of the events that Nell had described. But, as he continued to think about it, did he really have to? Nell had been young and naive when all that happened. He really hadn't done all that to her. She just thought that was the way that it had happened. Nell had been a kid then, with a schoolgirl crush on him. She was not seeing things realistically, how did she put it, she had "fantasized" over him. Someday she would see that her version was not correct.

G. Callen put on his I-don't-give-a-damn-but-the-boss-ordered-me-to-do-this persona and went back to the main conference hall.

Los Angeles
July 1, 2025

Operations Manager Granger arrived at his office as usual, but saw something unusual sitting on his desk, Callen's NCIS badge. The agent was supposed to meet with him at 10:30 that morning, when they would go over all the rules on what a former agent could and couldn't do. Why was it here? Could Callen be sticking it to him again like he had done yesterday, getting the office to spring for his retirement party?

"Callen, AGENT CALLEN!" Granger roared, his voice carrying throughout the mission.

Waiting for a full two minutes and hearing nothing but the hushed murmurings coming from the bullpen, Granger called to the agent that he had last tried to partner with Callen, "Davis, get in here".

"Yes, Sir." the young man replied, appearing at the office door almost immediately, afraid of what the Operations Manager wanted with him.

"Take Howard and go out to Callen's house, find him and bring him in here. Arrest him and cuff him if you have to, but I want him in my office as fast as you can get him here. Is that understood?"

"Yes sir." Davis answered, now even more afraid, knowing what Callen was capable of doing to him.

Twenty minutes later Agent Davis called back to the office and reported to Granger. "He's not here, Sir. The house is completely empty. The few possessions he had in it are gone. There is a 'For Sale' sign on the lawn. I contacted the realtor and he said that Callen put the house on the market yesterday and that the money from the sale is to go to the United Way to set up a scholarship fund for orphans." He hesitated a minute before going on. "So what do you want me to do now, Sir?"

"Just get back here to the Mission." Granger told him. "We'll keep looking for him for a while. But I know Callen. If he does not want to be found, he can disappear and no one will ever find a trace of him.

No one knew what persona G. Callen had finally put on. It was as if he really never even existed...