AN: Forgot the disclaimer yesterday: They aren't mine; I'm just playing in their sandbox.


Chapter 2

Sam looked into the ops room and found the analyst sitting at her computer.

"You're here late." He walked over to stand by her desk. "I thought you'd be long gone, like everybody else."

She looked up at him. "I could say the same thing about you, Agent Hanna."

"Sam." He didn't want this to sound at all official. "Hetty's the only one who calls me Agent Hanna, and usually only when I'm in trouble."

She bit her lip, then nodded. "And... Is this a 'Miss Jones, what were you thinking helping G?' discussion? Or are you wandering around after a long day for some other reason?" To her credit, she met his eyes and didn't flinch.

Sam grinned. Girl had guts — Deeks and Eric still wouldn't be able to pull off that kind of question without their eyes going everywhere. "I'm guessing you were thinking that if G was actually willing to let us help bail his sorry ass out of trouble, you should do it." He paused. "At least that's what Hetty suggested."

Nell snickered. "Hetty did not say that." She cocked her head to the side. "Not unless she was impersonating you."

"It's what she meant." Sam shrugged, and his smile faded. "G doesn't trust many people."

"Usually just you." Nell clapped a hand over her mouth. "Sorry, that was a little..."

Sam couldn't help smiling again. "Blunt? Yes. But accurate." He hesitated. He and Hetty could talk about G without really ever talking about him, nothing said that would force either one to say something G would consider an invasion of privacy or a breach of trust. Nell was different, didn't understand G the same way. "G... He never asks for help. Especially if it's personal. And no matter how we spun it today, this was personal."

"Are you upset that he asked me? Or just glad he asked somebody?" Nell arched one eyebrow, and Sam had a flash of what Hetty might have been like as a young woman.

"He trusts you. The last woman he trusted who screwed him over-"

"Is now in prison for trying to sell arms to James Thomas Mason." Nell nodded.

He nodded, but hesitated. "He trusts me. He trusts Hetty. He might trust Agent Gibbs. In the field, he trusts the team."

"I'm not Tracey." Nell let one corner of her mouth quirk up. "I'm not Kristen Donnelly either. Is that what you're asking?"

Her expression was innocent, but Sam had too much experience with Hetty to be fooled. "That part only becomes my business if one of you does something stupid." He watched, but her gaze never faltered. "Although there are some who would argue that getting close to G in any way is the definition of something stupid."

"Thirty-seven families thought he was more trouble than he was worth as a child. People are often wrong." She stood. "Was there anything else?"

"He likes to go lone wolf. The further he gets from the pack, the harder it is for him to come back." Sam watched her slowly nod at his words, and he smiled, convinced she understood. "But he needs to run some — you can't turn a wolf into a Labrador."

"The day G reminds us of Deeks, we should worry. Check." Nell grinned, and Sam couldn't help laughing.

~NCISLA~NCISLA~NCISLA~NCISLA~

Nell sat in her car outside the OSP office and waited until Sam had pulled out before putting her car in gear. As she turned onto the deserted street, she hesitated. She had thought about going to talk to G tonight, but Sam's last words echoed in her head. Decision made, she turned her car toward home. She knew where G lived — it was part of his file, the part she and Eric could access to help them build a cover. They always tried not to put an agent's legend too close to that agent's actual residence, just to be safe. Nell hadn't joined the team until after Callen bought a house, but Eric had shared a few stories of trying to keep track of G's movements when he was switching places every few days or weeks.

She'd reviewed the old files on Arkady today to get up to speed, and that led her to the ones on Aliana Rostov. The address where Aliana had been living was familiar, and she'd wondered about that house, about what it represented for G. That was part of the reason she wanted to go there. But she forced her car to stay on one of her routes home. She took a few turns in the wrong direction, telling herself she was just covering her trail, a necessary practice for OSP staff. But when she realized she was headed toward G's neighborhood, she turned left at the next light and forced herself to take the most direct route to her apartment.

Sam was right — G didn't trust much, or many. He was never going to see her the way she wanted him to. She was too young, too short — too much cute and not enough beautiful. But she could be a friend, somebody he could turn to in addition to Sam. She just had to let him realize he could trust her.

~NCISLA~NCISLA~NCISLA~NCISLA~

G lay on his bedroll in the early morning hours, dawn still far from touching the sky. He stared at the chess board on the floor beside him, but his thoughts were on Hetty's final words to him.

"It doesn't even need roots, but they make it more stable."

The plant — the epiphyte — was on his mantel next to his box. The last two times he'd gotten up tonight, he'd looked at it as he wandered through the house, his footsteps echoing in the empty rooms. He'd heard about Kensi's comment earlier, her "He's got nothing to steal." She was right. He didn't. He wouldn't miss the chair, the lamps or the end table. He'd be a little off balance if somebody stole his bedroll — he'd carried it since he aged out of the system more than 20 years ago. The chess board was an inexpensive one he'd picked up at a shop in Venice — no value there.

He would miss the box. Or at least what was inside it. Those few fragments of his past, they would all be gone if somebody took the box. He guessed that was what "stuff" was for — things you would miss if they were gone. The reason Sam had a military-grade steel lockbox and Kensi kept a box in the records room. Hetty... Well, her office was filled with what he would consider "stuff." He could only imagine what her various houses looked like inside.

Still, Hetty was the closest of all of them to him. She had the fewest attachments, no family that they knew of. She herself had said Cole was the closest thing she had, and he had been an asset who knew he was an asset.

He wondered about Nell, if she had stuff all over her apartment. He knew she had family — he'd heard her mention them. He'd heard that she knew Nate, which was a puzzle he'd love to solve. She should remind him of Sam, but there was a little too much Hetty in her for him to quite believe that. She had helped him today, even though she knew it would run her afoul of Hetty. G made a note to plead her case before the operations manager tomorrow, when everybody had had a chance to sleep and to think.

Not that he was sleeping, but that wasn't exactly unusual. Getting distracted by Nell, that was the unusual part.

When dawn slowly lit the sky, G was still staring at his chess board, still thinking about Nell.