AN: I stumbled across this idea when I started waching Numb3rs, as I was an NCIS:LA fan before.
Please take note that I will adapt a few facts of both shows a bit to make this Cross-Over work, so if you see any variations from Canon this may very well be the reason.
This starts a little after a year after Nell has started at NCIS, Owen Granger is already working there as well. Nell has the active field status. So we would be roughly Season 3 of NCIS:LA. In my story Nell is 22, and went to College as a teenager being placed into analyst-training after this. Nell went to Princeton although she was older than Charlie, but in the show she says she's got a high IQ so I chose to reflect this. I think she would have combined maths with computer science, Spanish possibly as an addition to supplement her scientific coursework.
We move around Season 2 in Numb3rs at the same time, so Charlie is roughly 29. His clash with Amita already happened and as opposed to the series she actually accepted the position in Harvard.
Basic idea is that Nell is starting to work on her PhD, because she thinks it is a coverjob that would make her family proud of her.
With a happy sigh, Nell looked around in her new office. She had met her thesis-adivsor, Professor Flynn, an hour ago and now she had finished putting up all her things in her new office at CalSci: Well mostly a few books a blackboard that she had placed on hooks in the wall and her NCIS-approved 'out-of-office'-laptop. She had taken pains to make sure that nothing would trace back to the mission, she had her blackberry on her person and another laptop in her go bag for that, which was now stored in a lockable drawer on the old-fashioned wooden desk.
Luckily she would be here under her real name so no weird under cover stuff she had to remember for this assignment. But Hetty had suggested for her to work on a PhD to please her parents, after all they couldn't understand how their brilliant daughter, who had graduated from Princeton at 19, studying maths and computer science, could end up as an editor for a news-channel. So Nell had claimed that this 'self-finding' phase was now over and that she would put some serious efforts in her maths.
This endeavor would placate her parents for a couple of years, and even if they caught a case, Nell could concentrate on those, blaming irregular working hours for any longer periodes of absence in the office. Despite the excitiment coming with a job at the mission, they didn't really catch any cases more often than once or twice a month. The rest of the time individual members of the team spent time recuperating from various bruises or other injuries, practicing hand to hand combat or their shooting skills. And she could schedule the sparring with Sam and the shooting training with Kensi around any office hours she would have. Aside of those rather offensive skills, Hetty had always incouraged them to learn languages, so Nell had dutifully taken a copy of "Анна Каренина" by Лев Николаевич Толсто́й, Callen had given that to her when she had asked him for lessons in Russian, and placed it into the shelf with the other books.
They had a good support crew in OPs anyway, so she could oversee this from here as well, once she installed a safe line 'home'. Meanwhile the OPs support staff swiped the intel for any things to be reviewed by Nell and Eric. And if anything urgent happened, she could come over.
After a last glance through her office, Nell closed the door and went into the deserted hallway. Apparently most other people had already gone home, but across the hall there was one door that was still open so she went over, and peeked inside. It was probably the most cliché proffessor's office she had ever seen and most likely Hetty would have skinned her alive if any of her agents had taken anything work related to such a chaotic place. However the inhabitant, a man, maybe a bit older than herself, with curly hair and clad in rather plain washed jeans and a faded grey shirt, didn't seem to mind as he was immersed into the writing on his blackboard.
Nell knocked on the doorframe and smiled, when the man nearly jumped and turned around to her. He looked nice enough, and certainly not an eyesore even if he wasn't as athletic as most of the OSP-Agents, but then that was OSP where even the support crew had regular training scheduled, Hetty and Granger always insisted on every employee being trained in security measures and basic self defense. Not to mention the training the agents got, and Nell as well since she had aqquired her active field status.
"Hi!" she said, coming closer.
Meanwhile Charlie had recovered from being startled, he took in the stranger's appearance, small, redhead with a dark blue dress and lighter blue jeans jacket. She could have been one of his students but he couldn't really place her, unil he remembered Alexis harping on about her new PhD-student who was some level of brilliant. But after a couple of minutes worth of praises about this new wonder kid that might even outsmart the famous Charlie Eppes, he had zoned out of the conversation and went back to his work.
"Uhm hi," Charlie replied with a kind smile. There was no need to brush her off now and the girl actually seemed quite nice, so he added "Can I help you?"
"No, I just wanted to introduce myself, but everyone else apparently already went home. I'm Nell Jones.", she replied.
"You're Dr. Eppes right? This looks interesting, point of origin analysis!", she continued cheerfully and looked at the board behind Charlie. She had already worked on those to track down terrorists at the NCIS so the equations seemed familiar. She knew that Charlie worked with his FBI-brother on cases, even though this was 'just' a cover job she had inspected what felt like every nook and cranny of CalSci including all the people she would deal with.
"It's for the FBI, yeah", Charlie replied and came to halt next to Nell.
"I heard about that.", the younger woman replied and smiled up at him, before she continued "I haven't seen this equation with more than one orginating point yet though. Usually one's enough."
"Mostly, but the FBI didn't come up with a suspect in the first hotzone so we tried to see if there is another one, like home and workplace for instance. It's not done yet, though. Want to work with me on this? Most people just call me Charlie by the way", he asked out of an impulse. He had rather enjoyed bouncing ideas with Amita or Larry but since Amita went to Harvard, and Larry being busy with with his most recent project, he worked alone on Don's cases most of the times.
"Sure!" Nell replied and studied Charlie's work carefully. His equations were amazing, she couldn't do much than run them through with him, so she plucked his laptop off the desk and started plotting the data Charlie gave her into a map. Working with the computer was something he had always disliked, preferring some solid ground to write on, but Nell seemed very much at home working with his laptop, so he just let her.
"Have you ever worked with data like this?", he asked. She was really fast with this, much faster and more efficient than he could be, so he just stood next to where she had sat on his desk and watched over her shoulder.
"Not exactly, but something similar," Nell replied trying to evade the question a little. She could hardly tell Charlie that she occasionally used them to track down terrorists in hiding. That would probably not go over too well despite him having a pretty high security clearance. Enough to know about OSP, but Hetty was against outside consultants, preferring to hire her own brilliant minds. And Charlie would probably not actually go looking for them out of the blue, so she was most likely safe for now.
While the two mathematicians were working, Charlie mostly giving Nell the data for the map, Don had come over to CalSci to collect the data. Charlie had texted him earlier saying that 'they' were almost done and would come over soon, which had him curious. Since the fiasco with Amita, Charlie had worked only with Larry and Don knew the physicist was not in LA at the moment. As they had no new lead and were waiting on the data from Charlie he had decided to drive over and fetch those and his kid brother himself, all the same wanting to find out who Charlie was working with.
Don contemplated to knock at the door but ultimatively decided against it and peeked inside Charlie's office. It yielded the usual chaos, books and papers strewn over the floor. But there was Charlie and working with a woman, cute redhead, a couple of years younger than himself. They seemed to get along pretty well, much like Charlie had done with Amita. Like back then, the girl was working on the laptop with his brother hovering next to her. But she seemed to have a much better awareness of her surroundings than all the other people around here: Almost the moment he peeked around the corner, he could read in her body language that she was aware of the fact she was watched, even though she didn't react. That was pretty remarkable, most of the scientists here were usually so absorbed in what they were doing that they completely forgot about what was going on around them. This girl didn't only seem to be able to follow Charlie's directions without any problems, but also payed attention to him snooping into the office!
With a knock on the door frame he made his presance known to his brother as well.
