This idea came to my head out of the blue and so I wrote it down. Hope you guys like it!
When anyone asked her name, she could only say Jodelle, her surname. She had been an orphan child ever since she can remember. As far as her memories go back. Her name is G. Jodelle and she's fourteen.
If she could only imagine that the guy that stands there pretty much every day is also named G., but he's G. Callen.
Callen used to watch the kids from the orphanages he had been. Finally he understood why Hetty was taking kids from the orphanages when he found himself willing to do the same. He saw on them great skills that would make out of them good Agents, but some had their lives so broken that they might not have the chance of being someone.
He wanted to train Jodelle because he saw on her special competences that would make her a good Agent. But she wasn't the only one he noticed. Before her, he had noticed some others that he'd like to teach. He just never knew how to approach them. But Jodelle had noticed him too and was always keeping an eye on that mysterious man.
It was sunny morning, Jodelle was wandering around the city, skipping classes and he was looking at the ocean when she walked to him and quietly sat next to him; she recognized him.
"You should skip school…" He said.
"Who cares? It's dull!"
Callen looked at her, telling her. "Well, going to school helps you being educated and smart."
"I'm a smartass and I don't need school. Besides, what future can I have when I'm stuck there? Everyone steps away when they know I live in an orphanage."
"You know, I was in several orphanages and foster houses and I've succeeded. I became an Agent."
"An Agent like a real estate agent or a travel agent?" Jodelle mocked him. Callen was expecting that, he knows it is hard for an orphan to open up like that.
"A Special Agent."
"Look over there," She pointed at a kid playing in the sandbox. "that's Aiden. He eats sand and shoves crayons up his nose. He's special!"
"I was looking forward to recruit you…" She snorted, mocking him again. Callen showed her his gun in the holster, knowing that it'd something to draw her attention. "If you change your mind, I think you'll know where to find me."
It had been two weeks since Jodelle came to talk with Callen. He was sitting at an esplanade, reading the newspaper when someone occupied the chair in front of him.
"Were you part of a team?"
Callen put down the newspaper and answered. "Yeah. I was in charge of a team of six. There was Sam, my partner. He's a Navy SEAL. Then there was Kensi, she started as a Junior Agent but soon proved she was worth being recognized as much more. And there was Deeks, our LAPD liaison Agent; Nell, she was our Intelligence Analyst and Eric our Tech Operator."
"Seems like you guys had everything over control."
"Pretty much everything. Obviously there were times when things got a little complicated, but we always got over it."
"You had a boss?"
"Yes. Her name was Henrietta Lange and everyone feared her because she always knew everything!"
"Let me guess, she was the one who recruited you."
Callen was silent for a while and then told her. "I think that for her I was more special than the others she recruited. I was the only one she kept under her wing and I was the only who worked with her."
The girl accommodated on the chair, stretched her hand at him and said. "I'm Jodelle, G. Jodelle."
Callen smiled and gave her a handshake, introducing himself as well. "Callen, G. Callen."
"The gun…? Does your offer still stand?"
Callen got up and beckoned her so she'd follow him. "Grab a couple of empty cans and follow me."
Jodelle did as he said, taking with her seven empty soda cans she found along the street. They walk for a few miles into the woods until they reached a wasteland. Callen placed the cans in a line, over a small wall, took the gun of the holster and asked her.
"Have you ever fired a gun?"
"No, but it won't be a big deal."
Callen put the gun in her hands, and after the first shot, she learnt how it is to fire a gun.
"Not bad." He said once she finished. "6 out 7, not bad. Let's try it again."
Callen lined up the cans again, taught her how to reload the gun and let her shoot at the cans once again. This time she hit all seven.
"A little harder now." He said, piling up the cans. "Hit the third counting from the bottom." Jodelle did as he said, hitting perfectly.
Callen grabbed one by one the cans, throwing them away, making Jodelle firing them before they'd hit the ground. He confirmed what he had seen on her: she'd be an amazing Agent.
"Do you have other plans in recruiting others?" She asked.
"Yes… I've seen eight other potential kids just like you. They are all between 8 and 15 years-old. I just need your help to approach them."
"Okay, I guess."
"Give me the gun." Callen said while taking the gun of her hands because she was attempting to shoot down a bird flying by.
Two weeks later, Jodelle had spoken with all the eight kids Callen had closely watched. He met them all in that same wasteland and told them to meet him three days a week at the abandoned hotel, the Ferry Place Hotel. In there, he'd teach them the arts and necessary skills to turn them into Agents. The only thing he needed from them was only two things: their commitment in learning and going to school.
Between practices during day or night, the kids were learning everything from Callen. They claimed the twentieth-fourth floor as theirs, as the floor of the Junior Agents in practice. Every once in a while, instead of training them, Callen would share with them stories from missions he had been and moments he had with his team.
With their fight skills and deceiving tactics, the kids would use them to earn money by pickpocketing and do other petty thefts out in the streets. Callen's nine protégés started going to the abandoned hotel even when Callen wasn't going there. They were becoming closer, like a family.
12 years later
Jodelle knocks lightly on Callen's door, holding a scotch bottle. He opens the door with an arm wrapped with a bandage. He had been shot at close range by an old enemy of his. Jodelle shows him the bottle and he smiles, letting her in.
"Not even after growing old you come to your senses!"
"Why does everyone who enters that door says the same thing?" Callen claimed, referring to Sam, Deeks and Kensi who had been there as well and said the same.
"Because it is true! You're retired and should rest."
Callen brought two glasses and the two sat on the floor, drinking scotch. "It's not like I asked to be shot at!" He joked.
The two continued chatting and drinking. Callen's recruiting days were over; it had been seven years already. After five years of recruiting orphans and turning into Agents, he had trained twenty-four orphans. He helped twenty-four kids to break their futureless lives, encouraged them to be educated, trained them into becoming great Agents and employed all of them on NCIS, future which they might never have if he hadn't stepped in.
Just like Hetty did to him.
Jodelle learnt her name a couple of years ago, it's Gretsch, and the first person she told the news was Callen. The one she saw more than a recruiter. She saw him as someone who turned her life around and gave her a new future, before her eyes, Callen was like a father to her, the father she never had. She was now twenty-six-years-old and she was the one who was closer to Callen.
For him, all the kids recruited weren't just a number or an accomplishment, they were human beings, they had a name and he knew them all. He knew their birthdays, their pasts and always knew where they were and how they were. He was always looking after them even if he wasn't around.
But none was comparable to Jodelle. He kept a closer friendship with her, not because she was the first one he recruited, but because there was something else. He always tried to keep her working at LA, and for him, she'd always be his little girl, the child he never had. And it was all reasonable. Back in the days when he found her, Jodelle used to much more spend time with Callen, hanging out with him, even sleeping over at his house.
There was this unexplainable connection between him and Jodelle. Just like it happened with him and Hetty…
Review and tell me what did you think!