A giant Thank-You to my beta reader, SilverSentinal21, who's been enormously patient.
I don't own NCIS: LA or its characters.
Los Angeles, March 2013:
Monday had been a tough day, so when Nell got home, she hastily made a turkey sandwich and loaded the rest of the plate with an artisan kosher pickle and mass-market chips. She unlocked her laptop and went straight to fanfiction, hoping for some escape and relaxation. She clicked through her favorite stories, where she found only one author had posted a new chapter. She read that as she ate her sandwich. After that, she looked over her favorite authors, all of whom had spent the weekend frustratingly quiet. One of them had started a new story, but the one chapter lasted only through her pickle and chips. She braced herself to run a search in fanfiction on herself. As she went to the kitchen for Oreos, she decided not to include the M ratings.
The search generated only a few new stories, and Nell found herself talking to the computer—or the authors—as she looked through the results. "Me dating Callen… Me dating Eric… Me dating Tony DiNozzo… That's just weird! Calleigh Duquesne from 'CSI: Miami' replaces Kensi as Marty Deeks' partner. That should serve him right! How did it come up in a search on me? Oh, here it is: I get sent to Miami!"After she'd read a few paragraphs, she tried out the look. "Well it looks, Lieutenant Kane," and she took another bite of Oreo, "like Miami's got a new breed of lawman."
After she recovered from her giggle fit, she got a snifter of Drambuie and plowed on through the search results. "Good grief, people! Would you just stay out of my bedroom?" After her frustration settled down a bit, she read on. "Here's one. What's this? One author posting stories by another author—about me... This is weird…I better go back and read all three stories."
Nell spent the next forty-five minutes in a whirlwind of mixed emotion, trying to puzzle out what the stories were saying. She had to interrupt her reading and re-reading. She had stared so hard at the screen she needed an evening round of eye drops. Finally, she went to bed with her mind confused and her stomach in knots, wondering whether Hetty had a problem with her current work.
Tuesday morning's leisurely pace gave her space to avoid Hetty and time to quietly ruminate on her discovery. At noon, she implemented the plan she had formed: The surf report predicted bad waves, so she caught Eric and casually asked, "Hey, what are your dinner plans? I was thinking of celebrating the time change by having a dinner picnic on the beach. You interested?"
Eric's shoulders squirmed in excitement."Well, I was trying to decide whether my dinner plans involved Marie Callender or Mrs. Paul, so this sounds like an improvement!"
"You flatterer!" she teased. "I rank ahead of something you fish out of a microwave? Gee, thanks!"
"Nell! I said it was an improvement!" his volume rising slightly in frustration. More quietly, he continued. "I shouldn't have to say that it was a real big improvement," he grumbled.
Nell relented, and with a grin, she said, "Alright, I'll let you off the hook… this time."
A bright smile lit up his face. "Thanks! Anything I should bring?" he asked as he pulled his shoulders back in excitement.
"This is all an impulse. Why don't we stop by the market on our way there?" As she turned away, her lips curved into an enigmatic smile.
That evening, over tortellini salad, she told him what troubled her. "I got a surprise last night. I was reading fanfiction dot net, and came across some postings by NCISNewbie, who had apparently met with Hetty. She asked them to post three stories about me! I know it was Hetty." Really fired up now, she barreled on. "She used the pen name theGardenGnome, and the East Germans always called her 'Gartenzwerg,' and that's what that translates as. And they're set in the future. The nerve!" Nell's fork vented all the frustration she felt upon four innocent tortellini. "Why does this NCISNewbie get told about my future before I do? And what is Hetty doing scripting my future out in the first place? I don't know who I should be maddest at: Hetty, or, or …"
She paused for a second, and her tone changed from anger to confusion. "I don't know! I know I don't want to be rooting around Chernobyl six years from now, though! If that's what life in the field is like, I'm not willing to go there: it seemed so cold and lonely, and everybody else was getting the credit for my hard work." The waves were peaceful and rhythmic, yet the turmoil in Nell's mind kept even her breathing in jarring syncopation.
"Wait a minute, Nell. Bring me up to speed, here. What were the stories like?" Eric asked in confusion.
Nell briefed him on the stories; with the same tone of voice she used briefing the team in ops. "Well, in the first one, I'm an agent in deep cover and near Chernobyl I find a shipment of girls being sold into human trafficking. Then, there was a story about my husband and me with the American Consulate in Shanghai, and I helped stop a Chinese and North Korean cyber-attack on the US."
"Cool!" Eric sounded impressed, but then his brows furrowed in worry. "But wait, what was your husband like?"
"It never really said, but he was doing cyber security stuff, too."
Eric reached for a piece of driftwood near their blanket. As he hurled it into the nearby dune, he let the spray of sand blast away the images in his mind of even a fictional Nell far away and sharing her life with someone else. His frustration vented, he prompted further. "That's two. You said there were three stories she wrote about you?"
"Yeah, in this last one, I was with the National Security Council. I sorted out an international patents and pollution dispute with Mexico." Here, she gave a little smile, part pride, part—just perhaps—wishful thinking. "There was a pharmaceutical waste problem, and I figured out why: prevented environmental terrorists from blowing up a dam."
Eric resisted the temptation to ask about her love life in that story. He figured his curiosity grew from the same perverse desire that had Nell reading about herself in the first place. Instead, he asked when they were set.
"That's the strange part. They were all set in January, 2019. How could I do three amazing things on three different continents in the same month?"
Eric smiled in relief, for Nell's voice had returned from the tone of outrage to the familiar puzzle-solving they used in Ops. "Maybe you're not supposed to. Maybe Hetty's just outlining possible outcomes for you."
"I guess that explains it. In one of the stories, I have a daughter, but in another, it's a son. Hetty's not careless. She wouldn't do that by mistake." And although she thought she knew the answer, she had to ask, "But why is she writing, and how did she know I'd read it? Did you tell her I read fanfiction?"
Eric looked down and started rummaging through the bag for the cheesecake. By the time he'd found fresh forks, his blush had subsided a little bit. That one blush in the dying sunset justified this whole picnic.
Rather than cop to Nell's accusation directly, Eric changed the subject: "Now that you mention it, this isn't the first career-related thing that Hetty's done lately. First, you've been in the field more, second, she was grilling my pretty hard about you a few weeks ago, and third, her friend showed up from the White House."
"That was when you told her? During that 'grilling'?"
Eric promptly folded to Nell's interrogation. There was no point in denying it any longer. "Umm… yeah." He tried to give his charming smile, but it turned into his nervous smile.
"What do you think she's doing? Is she dissatisfied with my work? Trying to ease me out?" she asked nervously.
Eric put into his voice all the reassurance he could offer. "No way! I told her only good things. She must have gone to a lot of effort to write those stories and hunt down somebody doing fanfiction. Besides, she set you up to meet the President. She wouldn't be doing that if there were a problem!"
"Well, why, then?"she murmured as she cocked her head in puzzlement.
While watching a retiree leaving her footprints in the wet sand, Eric voiced his thoughts. "Nell, maybe she's the one thinking of your career, trying to get you to think about it too. Not so much pushing you out as opening doors up...Have you thought about what you'd like to be doing, say, six year from now?"
Nell spoke slowly as she thought through her answer. "I've never had much time to think about it, but her stories did get me thinking. NCIS stretches me, but it's starting to get routine, and jobs are moving people around more than our parents' generation. But it feels like I just got here. There are a lot of people who've been with NCIS longer than I have. You're more eligible to move up than I am."
"Right. For a straight NCIS techie career, I might be ahead—or, ummm—I'd have seniority," he said trying to pull the foot out of his mouth.
"So I can't leave until you do?"
"That's not what I mean at all." Eric reacted to the sting of yet another false accusation. "In fact just the opposite! You—there's so much you can do! Our interests are so different that you could follow a completely different career from mine. In only one of those stories would I do what you were doing: the one in China. You're much more well-rounded than Eric-the-techie." He decided to inject some humor into the situation, so he repeated the joke his college roommates had told about him. "If it doesn't have surf wax or a microchip, I won't know what to do with it."
"What about me, Eric? I don't have surf wax or a microchip?" she asked with mock hurt.
"My point exactly," he replied ruefully, and Nell gently laughed at the painful truth of that statement.
Nell raked her hand through the sand as she gathered her thoughts. "What do you think I ought to do, Eric?"
Unconsciously, Eric allowed his hand to mimic Nell's, playing in the sand. "Maybe the start is just to listen to Hetty. She's the one who wrote those stories, so she can tell you why, and help you think about your long-term goals."
"Are you pushing me to transfer? To sacrifice my happiness and any family I may have for the country?" The pitch of her voice raised and her words came out clipped and harsh, hinting that her anger lurked just below the surface nearly ready to explode.
"No! Good grief, No!" Eric raised his hands in surrender, and then he continued more calmly. "In a couple of the stories, you actually had a family. Maybe Hetty thinks she can help you find ways to find the balance that works for you. Just listen to her."
Nell stabbed at her plastic plate with such force two of the tines broke off her plastic fork. "Why should I listen to her? I got through the University of Chicago in three years with straight A's when I was just eighteen. Got a Masters at Cal Sci. a year later! Even Owen Granger treats my IQ like a state secret! I'm smart enough to figure this out on my own!"
"I'm not saying you're not smart, I'm just saying this takes a different intelligence." It took about fifteen seconds for Eric to calm down. "Look, you just asked me what to do, and I'm stumped too. What you need is advice from someone with experience. Anna worked for Hetty, and she turned out okay. Hetty probably had the contacts to make that happen."
A hint of accusation colored Nell's voice. "Are you saying Anna only got on that career track because Hetty pulled the strings?"
"No way. Hetty or no Hetty, you don't get to be the link between the President and the CIA without being the best in your field. We all need contacts. Hetty has a real skill for finding talent, and she'll work to help those who have earned her respect. All I'm saying is I really think you should talk to Hetty." Nell found a piece of beach grass to tear up while considering this, and after about a minute Eric changed his approach. "How about this: Talk to your mom about the situation. She's certain to be on your side, certain to give you good advice."
"But she thinks I work at a TV station." She paused and thought some more. "This TV producer cover is getting old. Sometimes I wish I could 'come clean' with my family, let them know what I'm really doing."
"Do you think Anna's still keeping her job secret from her family? Do you think the Nell in each of Hetty's stories has to keep it secret?" Sensing no serious resistance, Eric prodded some more. "Most importantly, is that something that will influence any decision you make?"
Meekly, she answered, "That… that I'll have to think about."
So Eric let here think. Nell watched a dog frolicking in the surf and it brought a smile to her face. Seeing her relax, he decided to press on. "As for talking to your mom about Hetty wanting to help, that's not a problem. Just tell her that your boss wants to give you advice, maybe even help set you up for a better position. It's the same thing you'd say if you were at a TV station."
"Yeah, but Mom's just so…normal, ya know what I mean? You and Hetty: you're smart enough to understand me. You guys are my contact with the world. You guys and Nate helped me find a place where I'm stretched, where I don't have to 'keep my light under a basket,' like they say. My mom—she thinks I'm on a path to being a local news anchor, but I think she'd like nothing better than if I turned out…I dunno… a High School Science teacher back home."
Skepticism pulled Eric's voice into a higher register. "Really, Nell? That's what your mom hopes for you? Your parents sent you off to the University of Chicago, early, so you could be a schoolteacher?"
"I don't know, actually, but I do know how much stress my intelligence caused for my family." Real remorse shaded Nell's voice, but it concealed so much beneath the surface that Eric could never know. Nell remembered dragging her mom out to Johns Hopkins for "genius camp" for three years in a row, starting at age twelve. The time Mom spent in her apartment through the first three months of college served, ostensibly, to protect Nell in the new environment, but Nell had the sneaking suspicion that it acted more in the form of a trial separation. "It wasn't that I did anything I shouldn't—drugs or boys or booze or anything—but that I knew things I shouldn't. I thought about things nobody else was thinking about. I came to conclusions nobody else was ready for but I was naive enough to say them as absolutes and piss people off: people who were important to me." Her voice trailed off as she cringed and thought about some of her youthful excesses.
"'Aye, there's the rub,' "she thought to herself. "My smarts and my smart mouth were the reason I didn't act up with boys—or even date. A razor-sharp wit is a vicious weapon to keep the boys away. When I got here, the same thing nearly ruined things between Eric and me. And now…and now it seems my IQ could ruin things again, just by forcing me to move."
"Eric, What about us? Our 'thing'?"
Nell's timid question caught Eric completely by surprise. He shook his head with resignation and confusion. "I really don't know,"gentle warmth and caring filled his voice as he said, "and I'm just one voice of the two that you should listen to about our 'thing.' What you want is just as important, in fact, more important to me." He barreled on resolutely, onto ground he knew held dangers, but he knew he had to say it. "Whatever you do, don't let our 'thing' take you away from doing what's right for you. I hope nothing stands in the way of your happiness." The warmth in his tone matched the supportiveness in his words.
As Nell thought, she picked up a handful of sand and let it drain out to form a cone. In the past, she had thought about the effect her career would have on the man in her life only in passing, and only in the abstract. Generally, "career" and "man" lived in two separate corners of her mind. Similarly, before that, you could put a ball gown and a fireman's hat on the same paper doll. That game of mix-and-match had no place in real life. The consequences of that simple, shocking realization stretched out before her. Eric's declaration made clear the special kind of man she'd have to find if she were to rise to her potential in the rarified air Hetty's stories let her think about reaching. "What on earth do you think Anna's husband is like?" she asked herself.
After a few more minutes contemplating the waves and watching a freighter steaming out of Long Beach, Nell broke the silence. "Hey, listen. I'm getting a little cold. Maybe let's call it a night. I'll need to get up a little early tomorrow to call my mom. There's a two-hour time difference to Minnesota, so I'll call before work." They divided up the leftovers, and fell into a friendly system of collecting their trash and folding the blanket. They cooperated so well on these domestic tasks that it would have surprised an outside observer to see them get into separate cars. After they loaded up the cars, though, Nell pulled Eric in for a hug. As she enveloped herself in his arms, she said, "I think I put you through the wringer tonight, so thank you so much for listening. You've helped a lot."
Surprise made Eric pull back just enough to look her in the eye. His lips curved into a lopsided grin. "I was glad to. Thanks for inviting me. See you tomorrow."
Nell confirmed, "See you tomorrow."