Hey all,
I am so sorry for the delay. Life has been WEIRD. On the plus side, I managed to quit my old job with my less-than-stellar boss and got a new one which I start next Monday! But that, plus the current state of illness in the world has been taking just about all of my attention.
So, here are these 2 chapters, and then I'll take off a couple of weeks to acclimate to the new job and then I'll go back to posting regularly, I promise.
This episode is absolutely, positively one of my favorites. Opening with Callen putting out a bounty on Matthias to protect Hetty, and it only goes from there? Oh, heck yeah. So I hope I did it justice!
Enjoy!
Season 6, Episode 4: The 3rd Choir
G couldn't have stayed away even if it cost him his life. Not when Hetty had walked out onto the floor to that man. Not when he hadn't been sure he would get to her before Matthias did. Not when Duke was dead and her homes were compromised and Matthias had actually been in Ops. Had actually stood in their office and dared point a gun at Hetty.
If Hetty hadn't shot that bastard herself, he would absolutely have done it. And in an even worse spot than she chose. Far more painful, at least.
Hetty must have seen something in his expression — he knew he wasn't controlling his face now with his heart pounding and his blood singing and his nerves wound tight. He hadn't slept while he'd roamed the city to come up with the bounty, and he hadn't eaten except when forced by Sam because food tasted like sand while Matthias was hunting her. His whole being had become a live wire, a living weapon with one target and one objective.
She must have recognized it in him, because she had quickly manipulated matters accordingly.
Granger started making noises about needing to debrief, and Hetty shut him down.
"I'm tired, I'm bruised, and I've been in vile company — and that's not counting the time spent in Washington," she had said. "I am going home."
"You can't," Nell had said. "Hetty, your personal information…"
"I know." She'd raised a hand. "But not all of it was leaked, and I have a few tricks left up my sleeve."
And she had turned to him, eyes flashing a silent message.
He was moving before he even realized he'd understood. "I'll get her someplace safe," he promised.
A lot of glances were exchanged, fond smiles and exasperated frowns hidden, but in the end, that's what Granger agreed to. He and Nate opted to brief the Director while Sam coordinated with the ambulance for the DOJ investigator and Kensi and Deeks handled Matthias.
Callen hadn't actually decided if he was going to kill Matthias anyway. He was still thinking about it. But that could wait. For now, the only thing that mattered was collecting Hetty and taking her to one of their safe houses, watching every instant for anyone who might pose a threat or be tracking them. Matthias was a slippery bastard, and there was every chance he had a few more contingency plans waiting.
G couldn't help the idle thought that he wouldn't mind if Matthias had sent one more round of goons, though. It would give him the chance to hurt someone, and after the last few days, he really, really wanted to take it out on someone deserving of his rage.
But no one followed their car, and no one followed them on foot through the network of blind spots that led to the tiny, thankfully un-compromised safe house. It wasn't an NCIS location — it was one Hetty and Callen both knew and had used a time or two in the past. It wasn't someplace Hetty normally stayed, but it was stocked with the basic provisions just in case. And it had tea.
As if any safe house Hetty knew about wouldn't have tea.
They didn't exchange so much as a word until both were settled in threadbare armchairs in the small living room with their mugs of tea.
Only when she was sitting across from him, shoes off and feet tucked under her, only when he could take his gun from its place at his back where he could draw it quicker than the eye could track and set it on the table instead — only then did he clear his throat.
"I'm sorry."
"What for?"
He swallowed. "I thought about checking each of your houses when we first found out they had your information. If I had, I could have saved Duke."
"Or you could have ended up lying beside him." She shook her head. "No. I already lost one member of my family on this one. I am...grateful not to lose another."
"But I could have warned him."
"And the result would have been the same." He could hear the heaviness of her grief in her voice, but also her certainty. "Don't blame yourself, dear. I am simply grateful that you are alive and unharmed, in spite of Matthias's best efforts."
He nodded, accepting her forgiveness, but that led him to something else he needed to say. "You should have stayed in Washington. You were safer there."
"I shall make you a deal, Mister Callen," she said. "If you refrain from attempting such a ridiculous argument with me of all people, I shall not call out your hypocrisy." She pinned him with a look. "Or would you rather I enumerate all the times you have walked into a situation just as dangerous for the sake of what must be done? The lengths to which you have gone to protect someone?"
He opened his mouth to argue that it was different, that he did it for cases and national security, not because he was overly protective...and the words died on his tongue.
Okay, she had a good point.
"Right," he said, and he sipped his tea.
Hetty leaned back in the chair. "I understand you offered a reward to anyone who could bring in Matthias. That was a very foolhardy decision, and could have placed you at great risk."
"I'm not sorry for doing it," he said, though he was a little sorry that she knew about it. Not that he reasonably could have kept her from finding out one way or another, but still. "We needed to locate him."
"Someday, Mister Callen, that desperation is going to cause you to make a misstep. Possibly a fatal one."
"Maybe," he acknowledged. "But not this time."
He stared into his mug of tea for a moment. Now that the adrenaline was gone, now that Matthias was locked up — and he still might kill the bastard — and Hetty was safe, even looking at his actions over the last few days in the light of retrospect, he couldn't regret any of it. He'd have done the same for Sam or Kensi or Deeks or Nell or Eric or Nate.
(Probably not Granger, not unless Hetty asked him to. But then he'd be doing it for Hetty anyway, so that wouldn't count.)
Well, if he were honest with himself, he might not have pulled his entire life savings for anyone else just because he might have opted to leave some cash in case it was needed to help them in other ways later or something. To empty every single stash wouldn't have been his first move with anyone else. But if it were needed, if it were the only move to make to help them, then he'd have given up every dollar without another thought.
Hetty had already done the same thing herself, of course, for Kensi in Afghanistan. Which was part of what got her into trouble in Washington in the first place.
Well, at least he had precedent for it.
G couldn't decide if he wanted to ask her about Washington, about the hearing, about how exactly she got out of it, or if he just didn't want to know. If it was going to come back to bite them later, he'd need to know eventually.
Maybe he'd leave it for another day.
Or, as Hetty regularly reminded him, he'd leave that worry to his enemies and focus on what was right in front of him now.
He stretched his legs and started telling his body that it was okay to relax again. They were both safe, and he was going to keep them safe. He could sense Hetty doing something similar in the other chair.
If he was having trouble letting go after this had hit so close to home, he couldn't imagine how she was feeling. She'd have to give up Dovecote and Briar Patch and the others, now. Would have to bury Duke. Would have to go back into hiding a little, just in case.
That must hurt, he realized. Hetty was a master at tradecraft, had lived for so long and so comfortably before being compromised in this way. Not only was this a blow to her homes and to Duke, but to her pride.
To say nothing of actually forcing her to reveal a little more of herself to the others.
If that part didn't bother Hetty, it certainly bothered Callen. He liked their little world of just the two of them, the secrets they kept from the others. It was a game, and it was home, and it was familiar, and it was family.
Damn Matthias anyway.
But right now, maybe just having her back in LA, back where he knew she was safe, back where he could watch over her — and she would be there to watch over him, too — maybe that was enough.
He tipped his head towards her. "By the way."
"Hmm?"
"How come you never told me about the secret passage in Dovecote?"
She smiled. "A girl's got to keep some secrets, Mister Callen."
He chuckled, knowing that had more significance than ever today. "Even from me?"
"Call it an old habit." Then she glared at him over her glasses. "And do not take that as an invitation to search the rest of my homes for them."
"Oh, you can't even stop me now." He grinned. "I'm going over every one of those places with a fine-toothed comb." Then he paused. "You know, I didn't even think about it until right now, but...you didn't give Nell the information on the rest of the houses. Just five or six."
"The main ones, yes. Even Miss Jones doesn't need to know every piece of property I own in a hundred mile radius, unlike certain nosy agents I could name."
G let out a breath and finally felt that everything was going to be all right again. Even if some of Hetty's life had been made known to the others, there were still things which only he, and, okay, maybe his cousins, maybe, would ever really know about her. And that was how it should be.
But, still. He had to tease her anyway. She was home. He'd missed it.
And he was also still trying to keep her from circling back to the fact that he would soon be investigating all those properties until he knew every secret passage and door and trick he'd missed before.
So he pretended to shake his head at her, tutting. "Secrets again?"
Hetty saluted him with her mug, eyes knowing. She probably knew every thought in his mind right now, and that, more than anything else, proved to him that they were back where they belonged.
"Always, Mister Callen. Always."
