Season 1, Episode 13: Missing
Callen posted the alert about Dom to the Interpol archive and seriously considered throwing his computer, the desk, maybe everything in range across the room.
Someone had taken Dom. Taken him, and they had lost him.
Of all the losses in his career, the sacrifices he'd made, the people he'd seen killed, none of it compared to this. It felt like it woke up an old pain in his heart, one that lived in the shadow of memory long gone. He'd heard once that the reason grief was so powerful an emotion was that the experience of grief triggered all past memory of grief in the human brain, so every loss was its own sorrow on top of every loss that had come before.
Right now, Callen believed it. He had never been so close to drowning.
Hetty appeared in his peripheral vision, regarding him with eyes he couldn't read for once. Then she moved back to her desk.
A moment later, Sam came down from his punching bag, sweating and breathing heavily. Sam's eyes were haunted.
G would have taken five bullets again to take that look out of Sam's eyes, Hetty's eyes.
"Come on, G." Sam sounded as though the words hurt to say. "Let's go."
G couldn't place it. He knew he was probably staring like an idiot at his partner, and he couldn't bother to care.
"You're coming home with me tonight. Sleeping where…"
Callen heard the rest. Where I can keep an eye on you. Where I know you're safe.
He leaned around Sam. Hetty was seated at her desk, but she was watching him closely. She gave him a nod.
And he understood.
"We all deal with things in our own way, don't we?"
Right now, he needed to find a way to deal, and Sam needed to take care of someone...and maybe Hetty needed to put G somewhere she knew he would be protected so she could do whatever it was she did; and whatever it was, G knew she would do it alone. This was a tiny butterfly bandage on a gaping wound, but it was all she could offer him, all she could give either of them.
None of them could make this right. But they had to keep going.
Callen gulped and nodded. He looked up into Sam's anguished expression. "Okay. Thanks, Sam."
Sam nodded. He noticed that Sam didn't move more than a few inches from his side while he grabbed his things. That Sam was on full alert, looking for threats behind the coffee makers and inside the lockers and in the shadows crossing the bullpen.
And G realized he would feel better if he had something he could protect right now, too. Someone he could protect.
Hetty didn't need him as much as Sam did.
Callen met her eyes as they passed in silence. He returned her nod.
I'll look out for him.
He could read her answer in every line of her face.
Take care of yourself, too. You're a survivor. I'm trusting you to survive.
G put her trust into his heart and held it there, a weight and a reassurance all at once, and vowed to do just that. If the only thing he could do for his team now was to survive, to be strong, to protect them, to lead – then he would not let them down.
But even he knew he couldn't save them from the loss of Dom.