Season 3, Episode 3: Backstopped


"Lange, Henrietta, in case you've forgotten."

He could already feel the floor dropping out from under him.

Hetty was here. Hetty was here and Hunter was not. He asked about it to be sure, and she teased him. Hunter was gone, on assignment. Hunter was no longer the manager, which meant Hetty was back at work.

She had already prepared tea for two.

"I did it because of your mother."

Ice lanced into G's heart. Truth, finally, and it burned.

"You knew my mom?"

"Sit down. I'll tell you everything I know."

He practically collapsed into the chair where he had spent so many hours and evenings. He knew he was sitting in it like a sullen teenager, like the sullen teenager he'd been when she brought him home. His thoughts were in chaos, and his emotions were worse.

But Hetty was there, calm, and open. She was keeping her promise. She was giving him answers, telling him the truth, and he couldn't break down. Not now. Not if he wanted to know. And he had never, ever wanted anything more than to gather up whatever she might tell him like he was starving and begging for scraps of food.

Begging for scraps of himself.

He saw, but couldn't acknowledge, that there was uncertainty in Hetty, too. These were secrets she had held his entire life and, by the look of it, longer still. She knew she was opening some very old wounds in them both to keep this promise and give him his past. For a fleeting instant, Callen considered what this revelation would do to Hetty.

But he was too caught up in what it would do to himself.

"What was her name?"

"Clara."

And Hetty smiled, and G felt a part of his own heart die. That was Hetty's smile for him. Hetty's smile that meant approval and welcome and home and safety. If anything, it should have made him feel better that Hetty loved his mother as she loved him. Instead, if filled him with dread.

"Her name was Clara."

For the first time, G wondered if the truth about his lost past might actually make him lose something precious in his present – and his future.