Season 1, Episode 21: Found
She knew the instant he entered the house. Not because he was foolish enough to make a sound, but because she could feel the very shift in the air he brought with him.
How exactly he always knew which house she was using when, she'd never truly identified. Perhaps it was just another of his inborn gifts, the things that made him the finest agent she had ever known.
Hetty knew she should go to him. She should unwrap from the comforter pulled from her bed, stand strong and steady, and be what he needed again. As she always did. As she had sworn she always would.
She would be there to support and watch over G Callen to the end.
But today she had failed him.
Today, her agents had been required to watch Dom Vail be carted away under a sheet. Blood-soaked, broken, grieving, they had been forced to call Director Vance, to explain the situation.
Bless Leon for all time – he took over from there. He directed the authorities, managed the arrangements, and even offered to speak to Dom's parents directly. He did all the things Hetty should have done herself, but she was not there.
Hetty had watched her agent die on Eric's screens, and she had abandoned her post.
Treason, her heart whispered. Not to country, but to the people who were hers.
The only mysterious thing was that it had taken Callen so long to come find her.
Now she heard his step on the stair. He could move as soundlessly as the night if he wished, but he was wise enough to know when not to rouse her instincts. To sneak up on a person whose life had been so regularly in danger was not a way to ensure one remained free from bullet holes. But there was something in his step…
Ah. He had changed. The pants sounded like sweatpants, not jeans, so they were not his own.
Sam.
Of course.
As the team leader he was, he had seen to Sam. He had probably even sent Nate to Kensi and gotten Eric settled as well. He had looked to the pains of everyone but himself.
And he was still doing it.
Oh, she ached for his powerful heart. A man who could live through 37 foster homes and countless cold institutions, who could be beaten and starved, left without affection, who could be treated worse than a dog by the people who were supposed to care for him – how he could still love so very much, how he could still care so very deeply, it was a mystery that would never be solved. All of her agents were full of love – it was part of what made them special and set them apart.
And now their hearts were broken.
She should put on her proud face and open her door to the man who was waiting outside it. She should go and support him as he had supported so many others.
But she had never felt so very tired.
"Hetty?"
His voice was low and soft, and she could hear the mix of the boy he had been and the man he had become in its anguished tones. He was in such pain himself, but he was still so worried for her.
She couldn't leave him with no answer.
"I'm...I'm all right."
He made a sound that was no laugh. "No, you're not. Please?"
She closed her eyes.
He must have taken her silence for permission, for he opened the door.
The pants didn't fit him well at all, and the shirt was one of Sam's and hung off his shoulders oddly. His skin looked pink, as if he had stood under scalding water, scrubbing and scrubbing until the blood fell away.
But, in their business, it never truly did.
She meant to say something to him, something profound, something meaningful. She extended a hand to him and opened her mouth, hoping the words would come to her by some miracle and she could be what he needed once more, could be what he deserved.
All that came out was a low, wordless, sad sound.
In an instant, he was beside her chair, kneeling at her feet as if she were a queen. But his arms were around her and his head was pressed against her arm and he was shaking as badly as she.
Hetty held him as tightly as she could, and cried. Cried for Dom, for the team, for a life that should never have been lost.
And that brilliant, wonderful boy held her in return, and cried as well.
They didn't speak. There were no words for their grief.
The morning would come and find Hetty put in her own bed like a child, and G wrapped in her blanket on the chair he had lifted her from. They would move silently through breakfast, silently through a world that had lost a light they could never replace. There would be much to do, the bureaucratic work of death and the emotional work of rebuilding a team which had been shattered.
And throughout that first morning, Hetty would find in herself the same exhaustion that kept her from answering Callen, and it would eat at her. Her failure, the loss – they would dig into her heart, and from them would come a decision not made in reason, but in grief.
But that silent night was theirs. When the world was dark and full of pain, Hetty Lange found that she was not entirely alone. There was a strong shoulder beside her, and a gentle hand to hold hers through the storm.
Whatever many failures she had suffered, in that silence Hetty was reminded that her magnificent G Callen could never be one of them.