Actions And Consequences Chapter 4
A/N- Thanks to everyone who reviewed my last chapter, sorry it took me so long to post this one.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters in this story, they are property of CBS and Shane Brennan. I also don't own any references to other movies.
Enjoy!
TheAlphabetSong xx
"Hetty-" Nell started.
"I'm sorry Miss Jones, but there will be no further discussion," Hetty said sounding like she meant it. Whether she actually did was the question.
"But what about Kensi and Deeks?" Nell protested further.
"Oh, that was a long conversation with Director Vance and SECNAV that I'm not having again. Let me tell you that they're anything but pleased with Miss Blye and Mr Deeks' situation."
Nell rolled her head in a circle, thinking of another argument.
"Hetty when have you ever been one to do as you've been told?" Eric questioned.
"It's not that I don't think that it will work between you," Hetty explained again, "it is becuase I am being frowned upon by people higher up and I don't like frowning," she continued, "and all that's just from one relationship between my employees, imagine the scandal of two."
Nell was starting to get irritated, but she wasn't going to hide it, "so you're saying that you can't afford to lose one of your best field agents but you could spare a Technical Operator or Intelligence Analyst?" she asked rhetorically.
"I have no intentions of losing anybody," Hetty replied.
There was zero point arguing with her on that.
She turned on her heal and walked up to Ops; gathered her stuff and left.
"Hetty, come on," Eric pleaded.
"I suggest you follow in Miss Jones' footsteps and that the both of you take some time to talk this over," Hetty recommended.
Eric nodded and followed exactly in Nell's footsteps.
00..
Nell should not have been driving in her state of mind so luckly she made it back to her apartment unscathed. She had tried so hard not to cry on the way home that it took her six attempts to insert her key into the lock and a further three to open her door. With her vision blurred she walked in, caring not that her apartment door was still open. She let her bag drop to the ground next to her kitchen table, whilst she got herself a glass of water.
There was a knock on the door even though it was open. She turned to see who it was. Michael, the nice French guy that lived a few doors down stood there.
"Hi Michael," Nell greeted even though she didn't sound very cheery or look the part.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"I'd be lying if I said I was," Nell replied, turning back to the sink.
"Bad day?"
"Understatement," Nell replied bitterly.
"Understatement of the century," another; more familer voice said from the door.
Eric.
She turned around again and walked into Eric's open arms.
She heard Micheal's retreating footsteps followed by 'good day' as he left.
Eric closed the door and rested his head on top of Nell's encircling his arms around her even more. She curled into him, feeling a warmth that only he could bring. The feeling of absolute completion. The safety net. Her safety net. The person in the world she knew would never let go. She knew if he never let go of her she wouldn't let go of him and even if he did drift away slightly she'd drag him back again.
Eric wasn't great at comforting people, his skill set was pretty much limited to computers, technology and awkwardly rambling. Which meant that by default he was terrible and very inexperienced with relationships becuase he'd spent all of his college years counting cards at the blackjack table, hacking Law Enforcement agencies and pretty much being an all round geek. But, his current method of hugging her and letting her cry into his shirt seemed to be effective so he stuck with it.
She hadn't cried too much becuase she was tougher than she looked, but just for good measure he placed a kiss in her hair.
"I'm sorry," she mumbled.
"No, don't be," Eric comforted, "this isn't your fault, this isn't my fault. This it all on Hetty," Eric replied in a soft tone edged with anger.
"You can't blame this on Hetty," Nell answered, "as much as we both want to. We can't," she said looking up at him, and stepping back slightly.
"Why not?" Eric asked, frustrated, "she was the one who hired both of us."
"She could never have known that this would happen. She could never have known that Kensi and Deeks would happen."
"She 'Master of the Ent-"
"'Entire known Universe'. I know that's what you think, and I partly agree with you on that... At times, but there is no way that anyone could predict the outcome of so many variables, that's beyond even the powers of the mighty Henrietta 'master-of-the-entire-known-universe' Lange," Nell explained, "even though it would be a near impossible idea with ordinary people working ordinary jobs. But in our line of work the number of variables is insane. And not even Hetty could calculate that."
"I know, I just- I don't want the blame of this all to be on us," he replied glumly.
"Especially after what happened to Dom..." Nell added quietly.
That spiked an emotion in Eric that Nell hadn't seen before, or at least in a long time. He turned and walked over to her couch flopping tiredly down onto it. He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes, and stared down into his lap.
"Is it stupid that I still blame myself for what happened?" Eric asked a while later.
"No," Nell responded sitting down next to Eric on her couch, "it's not stupid that you still blame yourself," she said taking his hand and lacing their fingers together, "it's stupid that you blame yourself in the first place," she expanded, "I never knew Dom, he was before my time. And I don't want to sound insensitive but you can not blame yourself. I didn't know Dom, but I know you. You always do your best. And you try to do better than what is physically possible and that is just on an ordinary case, Dom was a friend. And from what I've heard you found him. Without you no one would've known where to go to rescue him," Nell finished.
"That's not the point I'm trying to make," Eric replied, "the point I'm trying to make is that if even six years later I still blame myself, whether I was at fault or not. In six years from now am I going to blame myself for whatever comes from this?" He asked, "that is why I blame Hetty, because I want someone else to blame besides us."
Nell sighed as she said,"Yeah, it's like that," she replied dismally, tired of being the eternal optimist, "every action has a consequence that someone has to pay. And Hetty is making us pay ours, instead of forcing someone else clean up the mess she's convinced we'll leave."
"But, what do we do about it?" Eric asked.
"Well we have the next two days to figure that out."
"That we do..."
That was what broke Nell, he was just too calm. As far as she knew, it was physically impossible for Eric to yell because he was angry. Yes, she'd heard him yell at her. Once. And it wasn't even yelling he just raised his voice -which for Eric is still a feat- and that was because he was stressed and anxious- never when he was angry. He was just too kind- hearted to yell at anybody; especially her. But sometimes she needed to know that someone else was feeling the same as her. And because he was so consistently calm she always felt as though her feelings were irrational. So because she had no interests in making herself feel guilty by shouting at him- because this was in no way his fault- she was limited to taking deep breaths.
"I hate this," she stated firmly turning over to lean on Eric's shoulder, "because it's one situation that I can't analyze to find a solution "
"Yeah, and anything that doesn't involve technology is not something that I'm particularly good at."
"Well we all have our skill sets."
"I suppose."
"If we stare at it long enough maybe we'll notice something that we didn't."
This was the part when they were meant to start bouncing ideas off each other except Eric spoke.
"Who was that guy you were talking to when I got here?" he asked.
"That was Michael," Nell replied before expanding knowing that he, although he would never admit it, was the jealous type, "he's lived here longer than I have. And he's basically the landlord, because somehow he seems to know when everyone's rent is due... I am yet to discover how," she explained.
"That's not weird at all," Eric responded, "did he have an accent?"
"French."
"Does he know you speak French?" Eric asked, his curiosity piqued.
"No, which also means that he doesn't know that when I'm bored I used to eavesdrop on his phone conversations."
"Miss Jones, how could you?" Eric fake mock asked.
"Guilty as charged," Nell replied, surrendering.
This action sparked a smile from Eric, it was one of his special smiles that she was pretty sure was reserved just for her, but then again she didn't want to get big headed by thinking like that. Of course that didn't stop her from smiling back, what did was Eric standing and walking over to the smallish kitchen his smile slipping as he did so. He took a glass out of one of the top cabinets; that smelt oddly of pine wood. He filled his glass with water from the tap and drank it dry. Leaving the cup upside down on the drying rack he collapsed into his hands as if he were exhausted, which was probably true.
00..
"I'm hungry," Eric stated sometime later, "what about you?"
"I don't have much of an appetite," Nell answered.
"Okay, but I'm going to get something," he stated, pocketing his keys, "you sure you don't want something?"
"I think if I eat it will reappear on the bathroom floor."
"I'll be back," he said impersonating Arnold perfectly, which produced a small smile and laugh out of Nell.
Nell knew that sitting there attempting to analyze the situation would not do any good for her mental health. She was too wired to try and sleep or stop thinking it through. She needed a distraction, anything to de-rail her train of thought.
Music, movie, novel... ? Movie.
Standing up slowly as not to bring on a wave of nausea she eventually made her way over to the DVD cabinet.
Once upon a time they had been in alphabetical order but after she and Eric had started making their movie nights a regular occurrence, other than just happenstance. They would watch one to two movies a night and she'd be too tired to re-arrange them in the morning and therefore she'd just slot them in where ever they fit. Now it was a mess of titles and summaries.
Nell didn't want to watch anything that had even the smallest hint of a romance plot in it which ruled out pretty much every movie in existence.. Okay so maybe that was an exaggeration. It was still rather difficult because most movies involved either a love triangle, love affair, or at least had a happily married couple. There was nothing in her collection that didn't have a romance plot with a happy ending. Actually in a lot of cases that depended upon who you wanted to end up together. Take Twilight for an example, love triangle: Bella, Edward and Jacob. Or even Harry Potter: James, Lily and Snape. There are always people rooting for the character that ends up broken hearted. Many people were all for Team Jacob, but then Bella marries Edward and has his child. So someone is always going to be disappointed with the way that things turn out.
She'd had her head running about Twilight for a while now so she searched through the titles to find it. She put it in the player and watched the screen come alive as she turned on her tv. The movie started with Bella narrating 'I'd never thought much about how I'd die, but dying in the place of someone I love. Seems like a good way to go', as she started re-alphabetizing her DVD collection.
This was why half an hour later when Eric got back he found her sitting on her living room floor surrounded by stacks of DVD's with sticky notes on top of them.
"What are you doing?" he asked putting the bag of Thai food on the bench.
"Distracting myself with a movie and the task of re- alphabetizing my DVD collection," she replied, before adding, "that smells really good, what is it?"
"Thai food," he answered, "Vegetable curry and Penang chicken; and enough in case you change or changed your mind."
"Well it does smell really good so maybe later," Nell said, "but I just started watching Twilight and re-alphabetizing DVD's, now I'm a little bit busy."
"Which Twilight?" Eric asked coming over to sit on the lounge with a bowl of Thai.
"The first one," she answered, "because unlike you I can't start in the middle of a series, watch the next movie then the first and after that the last one."
"Well, I'm sorry that I don't get my story lines confused," Eric said, jokingly.
Nell let out a light laugh because she knew that he was trying to make her feel better because he had confidence that they'd figure it out; confidence was something she was lacking.
Eric didn't pay much attention to the movie playing he, instead watched Nell reorganize her DVD's trying to figure out exactly which stack was what.
"What is your system of reorganization?" Eric asked.
Nell turned her head to face Eric, "It's a little confusing but I'm sure you'll be able to wrap your head around it Beale," she started, "First, I put all the movies into their genres- unsorted," she gestured to some of the half- stacked piles, "next I categorize by rating within each genre, then within each genre and rating I place them in alphabetical order."
Eric was bewildered that someone could even think of an ordering system like that, yes his were ordered, but he did not go to that much trouble to order DVD's.
"Why do you go to so much trouble to sort your DVD's?" Eric asked.
"Because it then takes less time to find what I'm looking for," she replied simply.
"Okay, can I help?" he asked, sliding off the lounge to sit on the floor with Nell.
"You can sort the romance pile."
"Okay."
Working in tandem it only took them ten minutes to sort and put away all the DVD's. After that they were just sitting on her lounge watching the movie.
Nell sat with her legs tucked next to her and with her head resting on Eric's shoulder.
"Why can't life just be like the movies?" Eric asked, even though he knew Nell wanted to avoid the topic.
"Because then life would be scripted and we wouldn't get a choice in what happens," Nell replied softly not taking her eyes of the movie.
"And we get a choice in this?" he asked.
"Normally we're allowed to write our own scripts, but someone else has taken ours away because they don't like our storyline," Nell replied blunt and dismally, "It's like in a book my niece was telling me about last time I saw her," Nell continued, turning to look at Eric, "the book's titled: A Thousand Pieces of You. The main character is a girl called Marguriette, her parents are theoretical physicists they developed a device that allows inter dimensional travel. Before they could test it one of their lab assistants, Paul stole it, killed Meg's father and then ran by jumping dimensions. She had no choice but to take two of the prototypes that another grad student had made fully functional and go after Paul to avenge her father's death. She had her script taken off her so she took someone else's and continued writing."
00..
Hetty walked into OSP the next morning, the sun glistened off the glass windows and splayed itself throughout the office smothering each surface with golden light and warmth.
She walked over to her desk and noticed a letter on it, addressed to her. It had the distinct look of a letter if resignation, formal formatting, neat, loopy handwriting; carefully sealed shut.
She didn't touch it instead she let it sit there, she would open it later once she had taken care of other matters. She put her bag down, started to boil some water for tea, opened her laptop and started working.
Later in the morning after the rest of the team had started to file in she knew it was time that she opened the envelope. She didn't ever want to lose any agent or analyst, or anyone she employed for that matter, she employed only the best of the best at their skills, they were never easy to replace.
She opened the envelope.
"Damn," she sighed.
A/N- Thanks for reading, please leave a review and check out my NCIS LA fanvids on YouTube.
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