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You Can Never Go Home Again
How often had Callen and Hetty had disagreements in their many years together? How often had they been able to sit down and talk their problems through? But the older Callen got and the more he found out about his biological family from his 'adopted' mother, the more he wondered about the life that he once had there. Was he living in a fantasy world? If so, what was really going on?
Disclaimer: The characters and sets of NCIS: LA are all owned by CBS, Donald P. Bellisario, and Shane Brennan. I only own a copy of the DVDs from season 1-6. I do get to play with everyone, but they all have to be home by curfew.
A/N: All of my stories will be on temporary hiatus until further notice. I still need to have some medical procedures taken care of. Until they have been completed I have been told to spend limited time on the computer. The whole process may be done hopefully by the middle or end of December. Until that time, I will post when I am able. When things have been successfully completed, I will again continue to post new chapters regularly. I am sorry if this disappoints people, but I have to take care of me so I can continue to write.
A/N #2: Thanks to Gina for her story 'Tonight We Drink Alone' and to all those who reviewed the story, but special thanks to JaniceS, who sent me the first response I have ever received to one of my reviews. After reading all of this, Harvey, my six-foot invisible white plot-rabbit started chasing away all the other plot bunnies and kept Gibbs slapping me every time I turned my head. He told me that I had to write this – so here it is.
You Can Never Go Home Again
Callen walked Sam to the front door of his house and watched him get in the Challenger to go home to his wife and daughter. His partner had followed him home to make sure that the agent was okay after the hectic day that he had. The big man found Callen in his bedroom, sitting on the floor, drinking in the dark. The unopened envelope that Hetty had given him and his service weapon were laying there at his feet. Seeing both of these items brought a great deal of concern to Sam, and he moved the gun away with his foot as he picked up the envelope.
"What's this?" Sam asked.
"The information I was trying to get. Hetty gave it to me."
"You gonna open it?"
Callen took it back from the big man and threw it on the bed. "Nope."
This made Sam even more worried about his partner. The man desperately had sought anything that he could find out about his family and those people that surrounded them. For him to refuse to look at anything like that now was just not in the lead agent's makeup.
Sam had no idea of how much of the bottle of scotch his partner had already consumed. The bottle was half full, but Callen still seemed very coherent, as he picked up the bottle in his other hand and walked to the kitchen. Sam followed him and continued to press him.
"Talk to me, G. How do you feel?"
God, how he hated when Sam asked that. He knew that Callen was not someone who talked about his feelings. Sam usually had to drag them out of him, like he was trying to do now. He banged the bottle onto the counter, and growled at his partner, "Never felt better, Sam. Considering I've been tasered, I'm just fine. You feeling good too?"
Sam didn't say a word to him, just watched him absentmindedly rub the shoulder where Hetty had hit him with the prods of the taser's stun charge.
"Go on home, Sam. I'm okay."
"Come on, G. Talk to me. You know that you can trust me."
"I'm not so sure of that anymore." Callen retorted. He thought about what he just said and apologized to his partner. "I'm sorry, Sam. You should go on home to Michelle and Kam."
"And leave you here like this. We were all worried enough about you to make sure that we were the ones to deal with you, not Homeland, not the LAPD. Hetty..."
"Don't tell me what Hetty did or did not do. She didn't do it for me. She didn't do it for you. She did it for herself. That is the only one she cares about."
"Come on, G. She cares about you. You are her favorite."
Callen laughed so hard he spilled the glass of scotch he was still holding. "Oh, God. I remember when I thought that. I was so young then. So naive. So damn stupid. She kept me from having to live in jail. I would have broken out like I did, but I would have had to spend my life on the streets. She gave me a place to live. She took me in and showed her concern for me. I had no family, but she and Duke became my family. I owed her my thanks; but instead, I gave her my love...love of a child for a parent. We didn't always get along. We sometimes fought like cats and dogs. But we always made up. We never went to bed still angry with each other." Callen looked at the glass of scotch that seemed to be calling him.
Sam noticed where he was looking and got up and went to the coffee pot and turned it on. He picked out two K-cups and put one in the machine. Then he opened a cupboard door and grabbed two mugs off the shelf. "You need some coffee, G, if you're gonna finally talk to me."
"She gave me a place to live, Sam, but more than that, she promised me a home, whenever I needed it, for as long as I needed it."
"You never told me that."
He handed the first mug of coffee to Callen and waited for him to continue.
Callen sipped on his coffee, thinking back to that time, and wondering how much he was going to tell his partner. "I heard Hetty and Duke talking about me and they mentioned a file they had started on me. I thought they were just like all the other fosters I had faced. They were going to send me back into the system. I wanted to know what they found out about me, so I broke one of Hetty's rules and picked the lock on her study to look for that file."
"And she caught you."
"You know it. I thought I was dead, or at least had assured myself a one-way ticket back to juvenile hall."
"So, what did they do?"
"They sat me down and told me how disappointed they were that I did not obey the house rules. Then I came right out and asked them if they would send me back. Hetty told me she would not, but she did want an explanation why I chose to disobey her and enter the study."
Callen took another swallow of coffee, holding in his mouth for a second or two before swallowing it as if his mouth had dried up with the pain of the memory.
"Sam, I told her that I thought she was different. That she had given me her word that I wouldn't have to go back ever again if I didn't want to. That I had heard them talking about my file and I knew what the outcome was going to be."
Sam wondered at what his partner had just said. It almost looked like he was trying to keep a tear from forming in the corner of one of his eyes. Maybe he was wrong and it just was a trick of the light. He held his mug in both hands in front of his lips but didn't drink any, waiting for his partner to continue.
"Evidently they thought the joke was on me. Duke smiled as only he could do. He told me that he used to be part of the British Special Air Services and dealt with human intelligence gathering. He was using his contacts and his training to try to find my parents."
"God, G, that's what you've been wanting all your life. Did he find out anything to help you in your search?"
"If he did, I was having no part of it back then. I was mad at my parents for not wanting me, mad at the system for bouncing me around to all those foster homes, mad at just about everyone and everything. I remember telling them that."
Sam drank some of his coffee, realized it was now cold, and just set it down on the table. He looked at Callen and asked, "How did the two of them handle that?"
Hetty just told me to let Duke look into it for me, and if he finds anything out he would tell me and I could decide what to do with that information. Then she told me about one more rule that I would have to observe while living with her."
"And what was that?" Sam asked.
"She told me that no matter how bad the day had been, and no matter how we felt about each other, that we were family. She and Duke finished each day sitting down and having a drink together, to reestablish the family bond, especially if there was a dispute between them.
Sam smiled, "Wise lady. Chelle and I do something similar. We never go to bed angry, but we always stop to kiss and make up before we fall asleep."
"The three of us shared a cup of chamomile tea. That was the first time we did that ritual. And we have continued it these how many years. Even with all the things we have done to and for each other. All the stuff she has known or found out about my family and has told me about it or is still keeping it for some future revelation. All her plans for you, me, the rest of the team, and how that is supposed to impact my life. We always sat down at the end of the day and had a drink together. Even in the most painful situations, it told us that we still were family."
Sam smiled and said, "That's sweet."
Callen drained his coffee and got up pacing back and forth. How could he explain it to Sam?
"Don't you see, that is the problem. Today she went too far. She promised a young boy that she took into her home that she would never intentionally hurt him physically. And yet, she had no difficulty tasering me today. I told her what I had been doing. She found all the information I wanted. Then she told me that she forbade me to use it."
"So what are you gonna do?"
Callen looked at him and laughed. "I'm not stupid. She told me she would terminate me with extreme prejudice if I used it without her permission. Think carefully what that really means."
Sam paused for a moment as he thought about his partner's words. "Okay, you're not gonna use the information. You and Hetty are on the same page. The two of you are good, right?"
Callen just looked at him sadly and said, "No, we're not. She sent me home. We should have talked about it while we had a drink together. But she would have no part of that. She broke her rule or changed it because she no longer wants to deal with me."
"You know that's not true. She has a soft spot in her heart for you."
"Maybe she did in the past, but now I really wonder. We should have talked things out like we always did over a cup of tea or a glass of scotch. She told me that's what families do. By her refusal, it is obvious that she no longer considers me family, and I no longer have a home with her anymore."
"You can't be sure about that."
"That's how I feel, Sam, She's shut me out, and that hurts worse than any tasering. That hurts so much right here," as he pointed to his chest. "I let her in. I thought she was different. I can never look at her the same way, and never go back home to her again."
"Give her time, G. Things will go back to normal before you know it."
"Normal? Me? Hetty? Us? We never were normal. We never will be. I just don't know what to do."
"You know she cares for you. You know you love her like she was your mother. You have to trust those feelings."
"But it just seems so wrong to end the day without having a drink with her."
"Well, I'm not Hetty, but I will share one with you," Sam said, pouring some scotch from the bottle into two glasses."
Callen just looked at him and nodded his agreement. He picked up his glass as Sam gave the toast with his, "To family."
Sam never heard the sarcastic reply Callen gave under his breath, "Yeah, right."
Seeing that his partner was reasonably okay, Sam set his glass down and told Callen that he would pick him up for work tomorrow at the regular time. Then he walked down the hall and out the front door to go home to his wife.
After Sam went home, Callen walked over to his recliner, picked up his copy of Prestupleniye i nakazaniye Dostoyevskogo [Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment] from the seat and tossed onto the pile of other Russian language books next to the chair. He sat down and didn't know if he should just be angry at how he was treated by Hetty, or if he should just allow himself to let the tears he was holding back flow, until they wouldn't come any more.
There comes a point when a child comes to the realization that his parents are not the smartest, the strongest, the perfect people that he once thought of them. G. Callen did not know when this realization first started for him with Hetty. But he knew what the straw was that broke the camel's back. He couldn't believe that she had known that his father was alive in 2008 and living in the Russian village of Ruza. Callen had been in Moscow during that period of time. He could have met the man for whom he was searching all his life. But no, that information was not given to him until seven years later. Seven years after his father had died. Callen went to visit his grave, but all of the questions he wanted to ask were just met with the silence of the tomb.
Tonight he again felt like he was a little child, being sent to his room without supper. His older brother Sam snuck him a sandwich but then left him alone, to go back to his own room. Now here he was, alone once more, supposedly to think upon his breaking of Hetty's house rules, and trying to figure out how he could please her again.
Hetty had promised that he would always have a home with her. The little boy so eagerly grabbed on to that promise. It meant no more bouncing around from one foster to another. This place was different. The people cared about him. He could show them his love.
But the older he became, the more he found out that this house was just like all the others. Hetty and Duke did not subject him to any form of physical abuse, that is if you discount the taser that Hetty used on him today. He automatically tried to reach back and rub the spot where the metal darts had poured the electrical shock into his body. No, Hetty was the master of psychological abuse. She would dole out the bits and pieces of what she knew about his life, letting him know just what she would allow him to know. All of the time, she was still always controlling the information.
Callen tried to explain to her that he was only looking for information while trying to protect the integrity of NCIS and keep his 'family' safe. That was something that Hetty could easily understand. The only problem was, that Callen was looking for it in the wrong place to suit her. If he could find out anything from his 'friend' Arkady Kolcheck it might be information that she did not have. That would be information that she could not control and if he were to act upon it, there was no guarantee that she could control him. And Hetty knew from personal experience, that Callen's idea of 'safe' was a whole lot different than hers was.
The young man was still wracking his brain, trying to figure out why she refused a drink with him. Everything that he did was something that he had done before, something that hadn't pushed her over the edge. Why this time? What was it that she found so wrong in him that she would break her own rule about family bonding?
Yes, he went rogue, but this was not the first time that he had done this. If they could have sat down over a drink he could have explained this to her also. The team leader never did this on a whim, or because he just wanted to do things his way and not follow the rules. This was one of the things he did to 'protect' her and his team. If he was out on his own, whatever consequences that resulted from it could not be laid at her or the team's doorstep. This was another one of those areas where he was offering them 'plausible deniability', and was willing to suffer all of the consequences rather than have it fall on them.
Yes, Callen refused to check in. Well, duh... Isn't that part of going rogue? If he checked in then people would know what he was doing, and would be able to stop him from doing it. This is where he found himself a firm proponent of Gibbs' rule number eighteen: 'It's better to seek forgiveness than ask permission'. He wasn't going to give them a chance to order him to stop trying to find out some information about a man who was his friend, sometimes, his antagonist at others, and his enemy at still others. He chuckled to himself as he thought that the very same thing could be said about his relationship with Hetty. Yes, Arkady still had ties to the Russian government, and several branches of the Russian mafia. But these were ties that had to be cultivated and promoted. God only knew when they would have another mission that pulled them deep into Russia, where they needed to use these ties. Since Arkady already had those alliances, why not use them instead of wasting so much time trying to establish them all over again from scratch. I mean, how often does one have to reinvent the wheel?
Did Hetty accuse him of faking sick leave? That charge was almost ludicrous. The only time that he ever used up his sick leave was when he lay in a hospital bed trying to recover from bullet holes, savage beatings, or terrorist viruses. Even when the doctors ordered him to stay home and rest from these violations of his body, he usually found some way to drag himself into the office to do some work, even if it were the dreaded forms that Hetty required filled out after each mission. If he had to bring a note from the doctor every time he claimed sick leave, did Hetty still see him as a fifteen year old boy, trying to ditch school with a bogus sickness, so he could do something he wanted instead of something he was supposed to do?
The only personal days he had taken in the past few years was to spend some time with Mrs. Alice Dalton, his principle at Cerritos High School. The woman was dying from cancer and needed to know that the boy she helped save when he was fifteen had turned out to be a man who was worth all of her efforts. If you added together all of the hours that he spent with this woman and her daughter Vikki before she lost her battle with the disease and they buried her, Callen didn't think they would amount to more than three full days. The agent was a pure workaholic, often spending the night on the couch in the bullpen and not even going home. If he would have been paid by the hour, the overtime that he would have accumulated might just equal his salary.
Did Hetty complain that he didn't offer up a complete disclosure of his activities? Well, no one seemed to complain when the agent took all the personal funds that he could lay his hands on and offer up a substantial bounty to find Mattias Draeger. The man wanted to take Hetty back to Russia as his insurance policy, trading her for enough funds to live out the rest of his life comfortably. Even Granger, when he found out about it, just told the agent that was something he couldn't do. But the Assistant Director did not order him or try to do anything to stop him from posting the bounty. Of course, that was to protect Hetty. Anything that helped her was permitted. It was just when he did something for himself that it suddenly became 'wrong'.
Unsanctioned operations was another unfounded charge. Again he thought of the time that Mattias, and others, appeared to be looking to kidnap Hetty. There was no one who sanctioned his use of Nell Jones to impersonate the old spymaster at her Dovecote home, as they tried to lure these people out into the open. What was the ultimate result of that action? Nell was traumatized by her first official kill as an agent. Several of those seeking Hetty's capture were killed and the rest were captured. And what was the thanks that Callen received from all this? Hetty wanted him to pay for all the damage done to her home and furnishings.
If anyone claimed that unsanctioned info and deals with the CIA and Russian mafia were a charge that would have any legal legs to stand up anywhere, they could apply to be a clown in some Shriner's circus. Unsanctioned information was a joke. Did people expect him to cull through all the information available to him whenever he found anything, to make sure that he just was taking only the information that he originally was looking for? Well over half of their tips and leads came from information that they were NOT looking for. When they found it showing up where they were not expecting it, it opened up new directions in the case they were pursuing or other cases that they had been on.
Unsanctioned dealings with the CIA was a joke. The Office of Special Projects rarely operated outside of the continental US. Since the CIA was barred, by law, from operating within the territorial boundaries of the US, how could they deal with each other? We all know how law-abiding the CIA was. They would never go against their charter. So if Callen would ask a CIA agent for something as simple as directions to the men's room, would that be considered an unsanctioned dealing? After all, he didn't get permission to ask his question.
As far as the Russian mafia is concerned, all anyone has to do is look at the letter sent out by SecNav concerning the mission of NCIS. NCIS is directed to: combat terrorism through CBRNE (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive) devices, provide counterintelligence against espionage, stop criminal operations or activities that would degrade combat effectiveness, fight fraud against the government, protect Navy infrastructure, especially the computer networks, threat assessment and evaluation, and investigate crimes against Navy and Marine personnel. Wouldn't gathering information and working with agents of the Russian mafia to infiltrate its organization fall under most, if not all of these directives. So how could he be doing anything wrong if he was just being accused of doing his job?
Any charge of premeditated breaking in and entering would be just as ridiculous. Two years ago, nuclear detection technology was stolen, and it was determined that the Russians had taken it and were holding it at the Russian Consulate. Who was told to plan an off the books mission to break into the Consulate and steal it back? That in itself was an act of war. The Russian Consulate was Russian soil, and they had no business being there. Premeditated? Well, I guess planning the whole thing out in advance and then doing it would be called premeditated by some. So, what was the problem here? Could this have been any worse or caused any larger consequences?
All of these things he did as an agent, whether it was on the books or not. All of these things were sanctioned by his superiors, or if they were not sanctioned, everyone looked the other way while they were going on. Is he now wrong because he feels he needs to do these things for something personal? He helped Hetty out with her personal life so often. He protected her butt by leading the team to rescue Kensi from the Taliban when the 'White Ghost' mission blew up in hers and Granger's face. Hell, he followed her to Prague and then to Constanta to rescue her, no questions asked. Family did that for each other.
Why was she still treating him like a little child? Why would the woman he always considered his mother, not let him grow up and do adult things? Why would she be the one who could determine who he could and couldn't talk to? Was there a Hetty-approved list of contacts that he was allowed to speak to? If a parent continued to act this way, they were not helping their child. They were stunting their child's emotional growth. They were doing it to continue to keep that child under their control.
There was a line that was crossed between Hetty and Callen, but he was not the one who crossed it. He wasn't just trying to get away with doing what he wanted. He is trying to grow up. He needs to know who he really is. And right now he is so damn confused. He knows so little about his biological parents. And he is finding out now, that it almost seems as if he knows even less about the woman who took him into her home and became his surrogate mother.
She had changed so much since he first met her. Or did she really? Did that jolt of the taser finally open up his eyes to who Henrietta Lange really was? He looked back at all the little pieces of his past that she had laid out for him, those little tidbits of information that he was so eager and happy to receive. Did she really do it so that he could find out about his family or did she do it to keep him under her control? He was really starting to wonder.
Was he wrong for trying to do something that might help him grow up? Did he become a terrible person because he was worried about not hearing anything of one of his 'friends'? The last time he saw Arkady, the man had three bullet holes in him, one of them bleeding quite profusely. Should Callen not worry about the man, simply because he was Russian and had a lot of questionable contacts? Callen and Arkady had a history. They worked together in the past in Chechnya, Kosovo, but the worst was an operation codenamed 'Cossack' that failed in Russia but came back to the US to try to hunt them down. This man knew something about his father. Arkady proved that with the picture on the wall at the little cafe in Ruza. Maybe they were in the KGB together. Callen didn't know. But he sure wanted the chance to find out.
The only problem was that Arkady was as cryptic with his information about Callen's father as Hetty was with his mother. And now with Arkady possibly languishing in some Moscow jail or hospital detention unit, and Hetty turning on him the way she did, what chance did he have of learning anything new about his parents from either of these two people. Maybe it was time to resign from NCIS and let Hetty play her little power games with someone else while he went out on his own to find his past.
Was there anyone or anything that would continue to hold him here in his present position? He looked around him to his meager possessions, and, except for his bedroll and his memory box, he needed nothing in this home that Hetty had him buy.
He thought about the members of his team, the supposed family that he had. Kensi and Deeks were like two teenage siblings whose hormones had gone out of control. The two of them were more wrapped up in each other to concern themselves with his problems.
Eric was like a little toddler, the baby of the family. He was afraid of everything, even his own shadow. He would never think of disobeying mommy,
Nell was an enigma. She opened up her heart to Callen and started to break down his walls that kept him from any honest form of relationship with a female. But she was also Hetty's protégé, and Hetty was doing a great job of training the young woman. Nell was learning all the Operation Manager's secrets and all the different ways of playing those secrets. When Hetty had been called before the Congressional Investigative Committee in Washington, DC., Nell had access to many of Hetty's files. She read the ones that dealt with Callen, but she didn't share anything that she had learned. Was she just waiting for Hetty to retire, that she could take over the position and the ability to play with his emotional upbringing? She was like that snarky little sister, who always looks so cute and does such sweet things, yet is the one who has her nose in everyone's business, and always threatens to snitch to mommy on any offense she sees.
And finally there was Sam, his partner, his older brother. Callen had no idea what Hetty had done to change the man into Callen's babysitter. Somehow she had woven her web around him and she had drawn him in. He didn't think that Sam wanted to be the leader of the team. Maybe Hetty was working through the CIA, and it was through his wife that he became her tool. Callen had no doubt that the minute the big man left his house and drove around the corner, he was on the phone to Hetty. She would want to know that her little boy was contrite enough for her let him out of his room.
Callen knew that he could never go home again to NCIS, at least not to the family that now was there. They would never allow him to grow up. He would always remain an emotionally stunted juvenile if he tried to remain.
Maybe it was time for him to think about pulling up stakes and moving out of Los Angeles. His only problem was that he was running out of alphabet divisions of the government to work for. He already put in his time at CIA, FBI, DEA, and he partnered up often enough with ATF to be considered a member of their organization. Maybe he might try Homeland, although that might get a little dull for him if they didn't get to work outside the country.
There was always the option of going outside the country. He was sure that he could prove himself well enough to get a job with the British or the Germans. If nothing else, he heard that the Mossad in Israel was looking for some good operatives. Maybe he should investigate this Ziva David and see if things could work out between them.