Eccomi eccomi!

Eteri: nice to see you again, you got me worried there! You know Cal, he won't stay put for long and some Gillian is there for him.

So, what did Gillian find at Cal's place? And who is this mysterious attacker? Answers coming your way

The theatrical wasn't intentional, but mostly a necessity.

Because of his injuries Cal struggled with strong lights, hence the deem atmosphere in the room, and with one eye still fairly swollen his peripheral vision was also not that good. So he sat behind his desk, slouched on the chair, Foster not too far leaning with her back on the wall. Torres and Loker occupied the two chairs on the other side, while Reynolds took one of the armchairs and brought it closer. Any other time he wouldn't have needed that, to sit down and be close, but Cal's voice was a little distorted by a shooting pain in his cheek every time he spoke, and judging by the look on his and Foster's faces they were in for one hell of a night time story.

Once they were all set, a room full of smart people too tired, scared and confused to still feel that way, Cal and Gillian exchanged a quick look and a nod, confirming the others' theory that whatever was going on was a two people dance.

"Right, let's get on with it." Cal started off suddenly, as if he was about to tell the funniest joke. "Let's start from the beginning, what happened - Last night?" He stopped for a second, blinking with a confused expression, realising he didn't have a good enough grasp of time to place the event. Unfathed, he asked the last bit looking over at Foster, who nodded in confirmation. "I woke up to go take a leak, went to the bathroom and did my business." There was some eye rolling, they all wanted to know what happened but not with that much detail. "I was washing my hands when I saw something, someone by the door. I turned around and before I knew it he grabbed my head and smashed it on the mirror. I wish I could say I put up a fight, but I got my ass handed to me. He tossed me around like rugby, nearly choked me to death with the bloody shower curtain and left me vomiting blood and guts before I passed out."

He let it sink in, with all of them. Reynolds was experienced enough in fights and reading crime scenes to have guessed most of it and then some, while Loker was mighty glad the boss was keeping it somewhat PG. Torres and Foster, who had seen the bathroom, were actively trying not to associate his words with what he had said but it wasn't all that easy.

"When I woke up he was gone. I managed to get to the phone and call Foster then I dragged myself here."

"Do you know who he was? The attacker?"

It was Torres who asked on everybody's behalf. Bit of a trick question really, they all knew he had been rambling about someone being back so the question was somewhat redundant. However, that was just one of the reasons why Cal and Gillian looked at each other: sure, the trace of disdain in Torres' voice had not been lost on them, but the main reason was that he did have the answer to her question and it wasn't going to make any sense. The young woman was picking up on their silent double act, which added to her frustration, but they weren't going to acknowledge it beyond those consultory gazes.

"Lucas Ward."

Cal said the name out loud, his voice grave. The name did nothing to the listening trio but clearly brought up something for the two people on the other side of the desk.

"Who is he?" Reynold asked, eager to move things along.

"NSA agent." Cal left everybody enough time to process the agency name dropping, sending major alert vibes. "Bad apple, of the worst kind. He was involved in a lot of shady things, abuse of power at its best. Taking bribes, falsifying information, violence on witnesses, selling confidential information…you name it. Every dirty thing he could do, he would."

"How are you connected to him?" Loker asked, glancing at Foster. "Both of you, I assume?"

Gillian nodded, appreciating that at least someone could ask the right question without sounding accusatory.

"After years of this behaviour rumours started to go around and people started looking into him," Cal carried on. "This was after the Doyle stuff. I knew my days at the Pentagon were numbered but I was still trying to do my job and, who knows, maybe keep it. Ward was good at being bad, he had gone undetected for a while so I proposed to lead a team to investigate him internally."

"With Foster?"

It was Reynolds' turn to pitch in, and Gillian nodded. Then she looked down at Cal who glanced at her in return, a two-ways flow of memories and emotions going through between them as they recalled what had been, in a way, their first case together.

"We needed to be slick about it. Whatever shit Ward was up to he had always been very good at covering his traces. He was decorated, he'd been with the agency for years." Cal went on, smirking in disgust. "Then we suddenly had a way in."

"He had been part of a task force, tracking down illegal weapons' shipments," Gillian explained then, all eyes suddenly on her. "During the raid he was shot, it wasn't major but by protocol he had to talk to a psychologist, and he was assigned to me for the routine psych eval. My role was to make him talk, not just about the shooting but other things. Cal and I would prepare the questions together."

"Were you recording the sessions?"

Gillia nodded at Torres' question, feeling the painful irony but deciding to move past it.

"It was mostly a surveillance operation. Ward had always been very careful so we figured we had to play smart too."

"Cal would watch the sessions, see what kind of things would get Ward to tick." She stopped for a moment, her face suddenly darkening. "Someone else was working with us, Paul Merton, another NSA agent who had worked with Ward a few times. He was pretty much the only one who had seen something off in him and might have some direct knowledge of a few things, so he was really helpful in providing us with some notes."

"It was going slowly but we knew it was going to take time. What we didn't know was that he made us, somehow." There was a lot of regret in Cal's voice, a lot of negative emotions he didn't even try to hide. "He didn't know who I was but of course he knew Merton. Maybe we made a mistake or Ward was just too paranoid, either way he got to him somehow. Ward kidnapped him, and tortured him for a day to find out who else was after him."

For a moment, their audience thought that the sudden stop in his speech was for their own benefit, to let them process the information. Soon however, they realised that the pause was for themselves, for something they had been through and had hoped it was in the past. There was a good chance that what they were telling wasn't the full story, that they were sparing them, and themselves, some details, but for a group of people so used to lying the level of truth in the room was frankly astonishing.

"I tracked him down, Ward. Merton was still alive, barely." To hell with whatever appearance they might have been trying to keep up until then, Foster moved closer to him and gently placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it with strong affection, knowing what was about to come "There was no time to wait, I had to do something. We tasselled, I got hold of his gun…and I killed him."

This time the silent break was definitely for his audience. Loker, Torres and Reynolds looked at each other, their faces a mixture of disbelief and acknowledgement. There were many things about Lightman past they didn't know but could only guess; he had shown more than once that he was no stranger to getting his hands dirty, he clearly was confident with guns considering he owned a few and he could certainly hold his own in a fist fight. Even knowing all that, to hear him blatantly confess he had taken a man's life was a whole different thing.

Not to mention, the man he just said he killed was apparently the same one who had beaten the crap out of him a few hours before.

"How-"

"I don't know." Cal shook his head, sharing the confusion in Loker's voice. "I don't know how it can be but trust me," he looked at up Gillian, who seemed to struggle meeting his eyes for the first time, "I know who I saw."

"It doesn't make any sense." Reynolds protested, standing up from his chair. "Are you sure he's dead?"

Cal sighed and looked at Gillian again, this time their silent complicity was back but she still had some troubles putting her fingers to it.

"You don't believe him," Torres stated, making that face she had when her own reads surprised her. "But you don't think he's lying."

"You're the natural, Torres," Cal quipped, leaning forward on the desk and staring at her. "Am I lying?"

"You believe what you say, I can see that. But it makes no sense."

"I'll agree with you on that, but Ward is who I saw."
"I'm sorry Lightman but this is nonsense," Reynolds moaned energetically. "You're telling me the guy who attacked you died what, 7 years ago?"

"Give or take."

"You do realise it's not possible? Is that what you want to tell the police?"

"No Ben, but if they find any unknown prints they could check, right?" Gillian knew she sounded somewhat desperate, but in reality she was only trying to be helpful. "I mean, if there's a match-"

"It's insane, Gillian. Besides, if this guy was a disgraced NSA agent I doubt they'd let anyone near his records."

"I can help with that."

Cal's announcement was intended to bring some much needed explanation, and perhaps some levity considering the strange chipper tone in his voice. But the attempt felt out of place, even if he decided to ignore the failure and stood up from the chair. Limping his way around the office, smirking and grimacing at the painful signs his body kept sending at every movement, Cal slowly made his way to the safe that was still open. He had to get down on the floor to reach inside, knowing he would have needed help to get up again, then browsed inside the safe until he came up with a thick folder. As expected, the series of movements had taken a toll on him and he just sat on the floor, handing the folder to Reynolds as he caught his breath.

"That's Ward's file, the one we kept on him while investigating." Reynolds frowned, clearly wondering why, but Cal simply shrugged. "Everybody thinks it was the Doyle mess that got me kicked out of the Pentagon but this was it. Call me sentimental."

Reynolds took the chunky file from his hand, honestly shocked someone so adverse to paperwork as he remembered Cal to be had put together that amount of information. He opened the folder, first thing first familiarising himself with the face of Lucas Ward, then absently browsed through it until he found the fingerprint set.

"Well I can certainly do something with this," the agent mumbled, closing the folder again and looking at the thickness of it. "But I doubt it will explain how a man you supposedly killed years ago came back from the dead."

"Ask them." Cal pointed out, waving his hand to his colleagues. "Ask them if I am lying."

"I'm not saying you are Lightman, but excuse me for not taking your word for it."

"No worries, mate. I get it." Cal stretched his arm up asking for a hand, and Reynolds obliged, carefully pulling him up to his feet. "I can barely believe it myself."

Once up again, Cal started to hobble his way back to the desk while Reynolds kept browsing through the file. He was almost there, almost back at the safety of the chair, when his legs seemed to give in and Gillian swiftly reached out to hold him up and help him in the last stretch. The rest of them watched as Cal, the seemingly indestructible Cal Lightman, smirked and muttered "thanks love" while she manuereved him back to his seat, but Torres rolled her eyes with a silent scoff.

"Are we just supposed to go with it? A dead man attacked you?" Then she addressed Foster directly. "You don't think he's lying, but you don't believe him either. Which is it?"

"Alright, maybe we should take a step back and-"

"Oh, give it a rest, Loker!" Torres blurted out. "You can't possibly believe-"

"I found something at Cal's."

Gillian fiercely interrupted the exchange between her two employees, not having the energy for that silly squabble. When she spoke, sharing her discovery, Loker and Torres quickly forgot about their own argument and stared at her, surprised by the revelation but not as shocked as Reynolds was.

"You took something from the scene? Without telling me?" She didn't answer nor nodded, just stared at him as if to say sorry, not sorry. "What the hell Foster!"

"What was it?" Loker asked then. He knew he shouldn't have been that invested but somehow the intrigue of the whole thing was far more interesting than anything else.

Once again, Gillian and Cal locked eyes and exchanged silent notes, then she sighed and once more dug out of her pocket the item she had shown him before. She put it on the desk and let the other three come closer to take a look, so they all ended up staring at the Pentagon staff pass for Paul Merton.

"Ok, that's weird," Loker mumbled. "Is that real?"

Gillian gave him a hard look, disappointed, and he recoiled on his seat with a shrug.

"Where was that?" Reynolds asked, a bit annoyed truly.

"In the kitchen. I'm sorry Ben, I saw it and- I don't know."

A long and deep silence followed her stuttered words. It was a lot to take, and everytime it seemed to be over something else piled up. The Pentagon, again, internal investigations, the NSA, torture and murders, not to mention dead people showing up seemingly very much alive. The worst part about it, in a manner of speaking, was that it was all true. Sure, it sounded crazy and impossible, but despite the fatigue, the bewilderment and perhaps some personal issues getting in the way, the lie experts in the room all agreed that Lightman was telling something he believed to be the truth. Granted, he was the best liar in the room and he might have been fooling them, but there were many signs pointing to him being truthful. Foster trusted him, and she certainly was the one better equipped to get an accurate read on him. Besides, there really was no reason for Lightman to be lying. It was obvious that something had been going on at his place, the bathroom and his conditions spoke to it, and if he meant to hide something claiming he had been attacked by a dead man didn't look like a smart move.

"I don't know how, but it was Ward. I don't forget a face." Cal said after a while, absently staring at the pass on the desk. "Not that face."

"And even though it doesn't make any sense-" Gillian sighed, supporting him as best as she could. "Listen, I don't know what's going on here and I know it sounds crazy but…Cal is not lying, I can see it. And that," she pointed at the pass. "That I really can't explain."

"Assuming this is true, that it was this guy Ward." Reynolds said then, trying to reel everybody in but mostly addressing Gillian and Cal, holding up the folder. "What do you want to do? I mean, no offence guys but you usually like to deal with this kind of stuff on your own but-"

"What do you suggest?"

The question coming from Cal shocked pretty much everybody, including himself. He was the action man, the do-something-about-it and fly solo kind of person. Best case scenario he would tackle things on his own, precaution be damned. To hear him ask for help was strange enough, but to see him ask for direction was downright disturbing.

"That we continue what we started," Reynolds answered eventually, him too well aware of the magnitude of the moment. "I'm gonna take a look at this, and I might have some questions. But first, we take you to the ER." Cal grumbled something, not liking where that was going but the agent rolled his eyes and carried on. "We called the police at your place to investigate a break in. We take you to get checked out, then off to the precinct. You tell them exactly what happened, and you give them his description." He held up the picture of Ward from the file. "They don't have to know he's supposedly dead, or who it is at all. I'm sure you guys can handle telling a few lies."

"Then what?" Gillian asked, seeing the rationale in that course of action but needing to know more.

"Then that's taken care of. If it is Ward and if he did leave prints the match might come up." He didn't sound like he believed that but he was grateful none of them called him out on it. "I know it's not much, but at the very least there will be an APB with his face out there."

It wasn't a bad idea, not at all. After a while Gillian started nodding, thoughtful but in agreement, where Cal opted for a wide smug grin showing all his appreciation for the agent's disposition to go a little outside the box.

"I knew we rubbed off on ya!" He mumbled, all pleased with himself as if that was something to be proud of.

"Well don't get too excited, Lightman." The agent admonished him. "If this thing blows up you're the one who's going to have to explain how you got your ass kicked by a ghost."

"Deal," the scientist shot back.

Gillian rolled her eyes, it wasn't easy to go with his sudden enthusiasm. But there were a lot of things about that plan that she liked, especially the part about him going to the hospital to make sure there was nothing majorly wrong with him.

"Alright, let's get you to the hospital then."

"I'm coming with you."

Gillian's announcement didn't surprise anybody, aside from Lightman. He stopped as he stood up, giving her an oblique look, then smirked and let her give him an arm to balance on his own two feet. Truth was he had nothing against that, and he was mighty grateful she had offered because he had already been thinking about a non paranoid and overbearing way not to be separated for a while now.

Once she was up she came closer and wrapped her arm around his waist, carefully supporting him as they started walking toward the door. Gillian expected him to protest, to affirm he could do it on his own, and the fact that he didn't and simply accepted the help spoke volumes about how he was feeling.

"What are we supposed to do in the meantime?" Torres asked then, feeling like the leading trio was forgetting something.

"See what you can find on Ward, over the past six years" Gillian suggested. "It probably won't be much but it's worth a try." Then she glanced at Cal, their eyes going off in one of their deep conversations, and he nodded at her before she addressed Loker and Torres. "Lock yourself in after we leave. Stay in the lab, get the cameras on."

For a brief moment Loker and Torres thought she was joking, that all of the sudden Gillian Foster had developed a twisted sense of humour and enjoyed terrorising people around her. But that wasn't the case; she was deadly serious and they should have known better. And as they watched the three leave they looked at each other and wished, for once, that their bosses would just keep them in the dark.

I should probably say that things will start to get a little edgy.

I hope to hear from you all what you think about it.