I would have loved you. If I had known, if I had remembered, if the world of espionage as a whole had not conspired to keep us apart, I would have loved you. I would have kept us together, would have been the man you needed even though I was younger. I would have protected you, as much as I could. I would have helped you remember our parents, would have listened to every story you told about them. I would have followed you around; I would have provided for you like how I provided for myself.
And I cannot pretend my grief for this loss is solely on your behalf – I grew up alone too – but I can say truthfully that my biggest regret of it all is I never got to love you. I would have. Amy, sister I never knew, I would have loved you with everything I had.
But Callen never writes these words, because he never thinks them. Sometimes he sits and watches the tape of his family play silently, their smiles flickering on the ancient recording like the fleeting things they are – but he never wallows in the pain. After all, self-pity doesn't make an orphan into a highly sought after agent. But more than that, to think these things would be to face head-on the incredible loss he never knew about, to look into the faded eyes of a sister he never knew and acknowledge the reality of her lonely death. Of his own lonely childhood. Of how close they had been to each other even as an eternity separated them. So Callen doesn't think these words, and he doesn't write them, because he is an NCIS agent and that is all. He is not a brother; doesn't even know how to be one. And somewhere in the darkest part of his soul, he stores this fact away as yet another thing that was stolen from him. It will be remembered, but not contemplated; will be used to draw anger from, but will not consume him. He is an NCIS agent – nothing more. So he never writes these words.