Welcome to 2020! I hope you enjoyed the end of 2019 and anything you might have celebrated. In my end of the world, we wrote down all the things from the year we were ready to let end with the year and burned them in a box at midnight. Very therapeutic.
So, this episode is the one that ends with the realization that Kensi is in trouble in Afghanistan after a series of jokes about Joelle in Callen's life. Thus was born this transitional oneshot.
Welcome back, and enjoy!
Season 5, Episode 18: Zero Days
It wasn't so much a card as a folded piece of computer paper tucked under her laptop. Hetty thought it must have been dropped off while she was getting an update on a secure line, but she hadn't seen anyone come or go, and that could only mean Callen.
She shook her head as she pulled out the folded sheet. On the front was a drawing of an angel drinking a cup of tea. The angel had helicopter blades for wings and rounded glasses. The tea set was a crude recreation of her own on the table beside her desk, though the angel's tea set seemed to be hovering in midair.
Hetty was almost afraid to open it, remembering the last time Callen had left her such a doodle. But she sighed and persevered.
On the inside was written a simple poem:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Apparently I'm dating now
I pretty much blame you
She frightened at least one person into running for the door by her bark of laughter.
At the bottom of the card was a post-script.
P.S. Thanks.
She shook her head, smiling. That boy was still ridiculous.
A text arrived shortly thereafter from Michelle Hanna, who sent a picture of a simple flower arrangement which had arrived anonymously. It was the sort of thing Michelle would rather not worry Sam about given the choice.
Hetty noticed that the flowers were white roses and violets and texted a response explaining that certain agents who were partnered with Michelle's husband had very unique ways of showing gratitude, and that Michelle didn't need to worry.
Michelle sent back a grinning smiley face emoji.
That problem solved, Hetty turned back to the matter of the card and its poem. She had some time before she would need to go upstairs and check in with Owen in Afghanistan, and she didn't want to let such a missive, heartfelt and silly as it was, go unanswered.
However, Hetty had actual blank greeting cards in her desk. And they had teacups on them, too.
She wrote a quick reply, then tucked it in his locker. It didn't matter if he didn't receive it for a few days if he was otherwise too occupied in the morning to come in for a workout. He'd find it eventually, and that would suffice.
If music be the food of love, play on.
Your poetry, however, impresses no one.
And your punctuation, or the lack thereof,
Says little to recommend your love.
And yet, your grasp of verse and rhyme
May serve you well another time.
Save your words for your Joelle rose -
Or perhaps try some better prose.
She couldn't have known what would happen to keep him from finding it for several days, of course. From the moment she began her conversation with Owen, everything else ceased to matter.