Author's Note: This winter hiatus for new episodes is killing me. Come on, people! I want more! Anyway, here's a little bit more emotional rather than action-y chapter.

PART ONE: CALLEN

Chapter Fourteen: Contemplations in a copse of pine…

Everything was somehow fine, although Callen didn't let himself breathe until the night sky began to grey in the twilight before dawn, and he'd found a dense copse of pine that would serve as a good shelter for a respite. Nell Jones was dead on her feet, had been for several hours, trudging them audibly through the blanket of needles and twigs covering the ground. He hadn't bothered to scold her for the noise. They were certainly out of range of any more search parties. Unless Sloan was a complete idiot, he'd called them back hours ago.

Callen handed his worn out companion the canteen and ordered her to drink, fishing out the emergency thermal blanket he'd stashed in the pack, for night could get cold even in the warmer seasons. He laid it out on the ground, a good barrier between their tired bodies and the cold earth. Lying down, he told Nell Jones to join him, and she did so, more in a collapsing umbrella sort of way than usual human locomotion.

When she didn't close her eyes immediately, he knew something was bothering her. They'd been walking all night without halting for more than a minute here and there. There were dark circles under the young woman's eyes, and she'd lost all of her seemingly boundless energy. She should've fallen unconscious as soon as she was horizontal. But she hadn't.

"We're definitely safe, now, Nell," he said. "Don't worry. Just get some shut-eye."

She yawned so widely that her jaw cracked, which set off some early-morning risers of the avian persuasion to chittering even more fiercely.

"It's not that," she said quietly, turning on to her side and wriggling closer to him. He put an arm around her, grateful for the warmth of her body as she snuggled into his side. All of the physical exertion, the constant movement, had staved off the cold of the night, but he'd found it creeping rapidly in as his body settled and cooled.

"What is it?" Callen asked, yawning himself under sleep's insistent pull.

"Do you think C4 charges could start a forest fire? I'm not really familiar with the result of such an application."

Well, wasn't that an alarming thought?! But only at first. That particular variety of explosive was primarily a focused blast resulting in concussive force and a quick burn. Wood, especially still living, at least required a more consistent application of heat to combust. At least, he hoped...

"I don't think so."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive. If you had started a fire like an evil pyromaniac pixie, then we would've seen Bambi and all of his friends running for their cutesy woodland lives."

Nell made a noise, which might have been an utterly exhausted version of laughter, just above that of silently shaking with amusement.

"So we don't have to worry about Smokey the Bear hunting us down?"

She said it with humor, but... wasn't that just another lovely thought?

"Not Smokey, anyway..." The general rule with wild animals, was leave them alone, and they'll leave you alone. Given the probably quite fragrant human stench lingering about their sweat-coated, unwashed selves, no creature with a predator's nose was going to just stumble upon them unexpectedly. But still.

"You're just full of lovely thoughts, today, Nell," he said with some significant amount of sarcasm. "What happened to the sickening levels of optimism you usually tout?"

"Too tired." She certainly sounded it, so when she spoke no further, he let the silence settle over them like a blanket, the chirping and singing of various non-human creatures providing a rather riotous lullaby.

Nell Jones fell asleep within seconds of uttering those last words of the night, breathing deeply but rhythmically, her hand lying lax on his chest. As for Callen himself, it took him several minutes to fall asleep despite his weary state. There was just too much for his brain to process. He'd been forced to slip out of an alias he'd been living under for the better part of a year. And to be honest, that wasn't an easy thing to do. In order to survive, when it came down to it, one had to not just assume a false identity, memorize a back story and behave according to certain character guidelines. That was all well and good for actors, but it fell short in real life. In real life undercover work, the agent had to become the alias. G Callen had ceased to exist, had been packed away and stored in a tiny part of the man who had been known as Jack Corley for the past nine months. But like breaking the seal on a pressurized container, G Callen had flooded back into his mind fully. Granted, ultimately the federal agent had to be in charge, in the background, running the operation, observing, collecting information, but with little actual influence on the day-to-day life of the alias. But when Nell Jones had appeared, that had all changed. And all the consequences of throwing off one personality for another, of two entirely different lives colliding, threatened to become an overwhelming deluge of mental processing that he'd had no time to work through, had simply suppressed while he'd taken care of business.

Now, now as he lay exhausted on the cold ground in the growing light, with an utterly worn young woman curled up to him and gently slumbering, he had to try to get his head on straight or sleep would not bless him despite how badly he required it.

The worst part about reshuffling his sense of self back to G Callen, federal agent, was the overwhelming, frustrating sense of failure. All those months of undercover work gone to waste. Time he would never get back. But it wasn't a waste. It wasn't.

And why wasn't it...?

Well, he knew the names and faces of the members of the little anarchist group. Whether he could get anywhere solid with that was doubtful. But at least he might be able to put them up on some watch lists, and when (hopefully not 'if') they popped back up on the radar, he could track the bastards down.

Or not. Really, this wasn't his responsibility. He'd been roped into it by the fricken Agency. He knew better than to ever go backwards, but nope, he'd let Director Vance talk him into doing the CIA a favor and work a mission for his old employers, incompetent at they may be.

Nope. This was not G Callen's responsibility. He'd done his bit. It just hadn't panned out. And when all had failed, who had his back in the end, anyway? Not the CIA he'd been doing a favor, but his NCIS team. In particular, one petite, relatively green intelligence-analyst-turned-field-agent. They were the ones that mattered, and that he'd soon return to… home.

He took a deep, calming breath, pushing out all of his worries and guilt. The scent of cedar filled his nose and lungs, that unexpected scent of Nell Jones, still strong in the midst of the forest, even tinged with the tang of perspiration. It was a surprising comfort, as he finally closed his eyes and sleep finally came.

A/N: So, not a huge climactic resolution, but remember how there's a part two coming up? :-)

A/N 2: If the mood strikes me, there will be a separate story posted with a romanticized insert for this story, under the title The Scent of Cedar. If you're enjoying this story as a simple 'friendly-like' fic, then just continue on reading this one. I think it will be an interesting challenge to write the companion piece so that the romantic version smoothly works into the primary story, but we'll see if I have the time/inclination to try.