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#3 in the After the Fade to Black series

Tag to Identity

Season 1 Episode 1

Four months after Legend Part 2

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In three years you never once called me G.

That because it's not a name it's a letter. Now if you were to tell me what the G stood for?

I don't know. Nobody ever told me.

- Hetty and Callen, Identity

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I hate paperwork.

Paperwork gave you time to think even and most especially when you didn't want to think.

G Callen finished his expense reports for Hetty and laid down on the couch, replaying the case in his head. They had solved the murder, found the girl, ensured the raid wasn't compromised, and got the bad guys.

G was glad it was over. For a first case back it wasn't ideal. Thankfully, Sam hadn't seemed to notice the flashbacks during the shoot out or at the house.

Nate had been pestering him about his quarterly psych eval already and it wasn't even for a month. Sometimes G wondered if Nate was really as oblivious as he seemed. G could tell Nate was worried about him even if he was less in your face about as Sam was or as motherly about as Hetty.

G really did not want Nate after him about this. The panic attacks were gone, the flashbacks were down to only happening when there was a gun in his face, but the paranoia was at an all time high. Which was why he moved every other week no matter what lame ass excuse he gave Sam. He still felt like someone was watching him.

He liked Nate he really did, but G didn't like his own head sometime he sure as hell didn't want Nate in there poking around and bringing up something he hid for a reason. If he lost it on Nate, Hetty would pull him faster than his head could spin.

I wonder what Nate would make of the fact that I sleep with my gun under my pillow even in OPS. I know Hetty will kill me if I accidentally shoot something after waking up from one of my nightmares.

Nightmares were the reason G didn't sleep more than 40 to 60 minutes at a time. Everyone thought it was because he had insomnia. He fell asleep fine but after the first nightmare woke him he had no chance of sleeping until his awake brain convinced his subconscious it was really just a dream.

This case would cause some nightmares for sure. A father kidnapping his daughter to leverage his brother-in-law for information on the raids against the drug cartels in Mexico. The father was a man behind a mask. He had fooled everyone for years.

G wonder who really knew him. What most people saw every day was just a persona, a mask to keep people at arms length. Some days he wondered if he had lost himself to the mask he showed the outside world.

How many masks must you wear before you do not recognize yourself any more. One hundred? Four hundred?

In the records department for the DEA there are two filing cabinets full of alias for him. The FBI has forty five divers' licenses. The CIA has sixty-three complete lives. And at NCIS are 362 safety deposit-like boxes with alias for him. There are twenty-four identities that no one has record of that he has for himself if ever needs to disappear. Some were only used once for a few hours. Others were his cover for years.

G Callen is the best at undercover because he doesn't know who he is.