Author's Note: Sorry this took me much longer than I intended! Thanks to all readers and reviewers, I truly appreciate it. I really had no idea where I was going with this story when I first posted it, so I hope it's going somewhere remotely plausible.
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"You don't listen," Callen told her, but his eyes never left the man 20 feet from them.
"Correction, Agent Callen, it is you who doesn't listen," Nell said smartly, "thus forcing me to disobey the orders of our direct superior." She was proud she sounded so calm, despite her inward terror.
He risked a quick glance over at her. "We're back to 'agent' then, are we?"
"We never left it," she said, smiling without humor.
"Who is she?" The man on the opposite side of the room demanded. Since he held a gun, they were both very inclined to listen to him.
"She's my…associate," Callen replied carefully.
Because Callen was trying to protect her, she resisted the overwhelming urge to roll her eyes.
"Associate?" The man asked, assessing her. "Another agent then, yes?"
Nell looked back and forth between them. Despite his vaguely threatening demeanor (and the gun) the other man didn't seem that menacing. And Callen was trying to tell her to stay quiet. God knows she'd seen that look a thousand times before. "Yes, in a manner of speaking," Nell said, solely because the man was looking at her expectantly.
"Your name?"
She couldn't outright refuse, though another glance at Callen's rigid stance told her that he was none too happy with the other man's interest in her. "I'm Nell."
"Nell," he said slowly, trying it out. "I'm Mikael. What a delightful name you have. "
"Thanks?" She said, and it came out more as a question even though she simply meant to cut off his questions cold.
"How did you find me, Nell?" Callen demanded, and it was more to distract Mikael from her presence than anything else.
She debated what to tell him. He wouldn't like anything she had to say. "I have my methods," she finally said, ducking her head. She heard Mikael laughing and guessed Callen was trying not to scream at her.
"I told you to stay behind. I told you to wait until I came back –"
"Which is what you always do!" She exclaimed, absently touching her arm which was still in a sling. She would ignore, for the moment, that she was arguing with her boss who had given her a direct order. After all, orders had meant nothing to her lately. "What was I supposed to do? Sit around? Wait until someone called to tell me that you were dead? No thanks, Callen!" She was breathing heavily by the end – until she had said it, she was entirely unaware they were words that needed to be said.
He took a moment to try and compose himself, and failed miserably. "It was not your call," Callen hissed, taking a step toward her.
"Yeah?" She snapped. "Well, as far as I'm concerned, it wasn't yours, either."
Callen shook his head, deciding to change tactics. "Alright, you followed me. But you couldn't even exercise some caution and wait for me outside?"
She shrugged, knowing he probably wouldn't like her answer: it simply hadn't occurred to her to wait. She would come up with a better reason, then. "It didn't…seem like a threatening situation?"
Oh no, even she knew that was too terrible to be considered an excuse.
"It's a rundown warehouse in the middle of nowhere, Nell," he stared at her, aghast. "What do you consider threatening?"
"Um…that guy?" She nodded toward Mikael.
"I'm flattered," Mikael said, smiling at her.
She smiled back weakly. "If you'd been outside the building, I definitely would have thought twice about following Callen inside."
Callen pressed his hand to his temple as if he were getting a headache. "You should have thought twice anyways! Where's your sense of self-preservation?"
She had to think about that, and when she did, she knew it was another answer he wouldn't like. When it came to him, self-preservation took a decided backseat to making sure he was alright. Not that she was much help to him, especially in a situation like this.
Then again, they were still alive. That was something. Maybe she was making a difference! She could successfully distract Mikael with her delightfully charming demeanor, he'd think she was too wonderful to kill, and he'd let her and Callen go with a warning.
And to think Callen had been furious when he saw her (well, by 'saw' she actually meant 'heard her accidentally knock over a stack of milk crates', despite her attempts to be stealthy – something she decidedly wasn't). But the fact remained, she'd basically, singlehandedly, saved both of their lives, and –
"I'm going to kill you both now," Mikael said, bringing her self-adulation to a dead halt.
"What?" She yelled, barely noticing Callen moving slowly toward her. Mikael was pointing the gun at her, but instead of being afraid, she only felt numbness.
"I said –"
"I know what you said," she snapped. "It's just…you can't do that."
"And why not?" He asked.
"Because…I don't want you to."
In response, he merely quirked an eyebrow in disbelief. Yeah, it was a lame reason to him. But to her it meant everything.
"No one is killing anyone," Callen interjected, holding out his hands in supplication.
Mikael turned his attention to the agent. "Are you ready to answer me now?" He turned the gun on Callen, and Nell started to panic. Why had she been so calm when he pointed it at her, but now that it was on Callen, she felt like her heart was going to stop from pure terror?
"I'll ask you one last time, as I did before the lovely Nell arrived, what are you doing here?"
Callen shook his head in refusal of the question. "Don't play innocent. You already know."
Mikael tsked and, if it were possible, his eyes grew colder. "Perhaps I wasn't clear," he said, turning the gun back toward Nell, even as his words were directed solely at Callen. "What are you doing here?"
Callen's body must have been operating on an unconscious level, because he was only aware that he'd taken a step toward Nell because of the way Mikael glared at him, and moved closer to Nell himself. He knew Mikael, and had no doubt the other man would kill Nell, if only to get answers from him.
"Don't," Callen breathed, amazed he was able to get the word out when he was pretty sure he could no longer breathe.
Mikael's smile was like ice, and though he was a cold son of a bitch, both Callen and Nell could recognize that he was enjoying this. "Don't worry, Agent Callen. Whether I hurt the lovely NCIS Agent is entirely up to you. Are you going to answer me or not?"
"I'm here because of you," Callen said, talking as quickly as possible in hopes of distracting Mikael. "I – Nell and I were shot at several nights ago. I want to know if it was on your orders."
At his words, Mikael started laughing, so heartily that he lowered his gun and stopped focusing on Nell. Callen took advantage of Mikael's amusement to close the distance between him and Nell, automatically putting his arms around her. If he were honest, it was to reassure himself as much as it was to reassure her.
He pretended not to notice that she was shaking, and swore to God if they got out of this, he would eventually put a bullet in the head of Mikael Novak.
"Surely you're jesting, right Agent Callen?" Mikael asked, apparently not caring that Callen had moved. "Let me assure you, if I had ordered a hit on you, you would not be alive to ask me about it."
Callen sighed, dropping his head to Nell's shoulder. He had guessed as much from the surprise on Mikael's face when he initially confronted him. "I guess it was too much to hope for," he muttered, and Mikael could barely make out his words.
"How, exactly, did you think coming to see me would work in your favor, if I were really out to kill you?" Mikael asked, too intrigued at the strange reasoning to resist asking the question.
"I wanted to make a deal," Callen said, which was the truth. And now he wished it had been Mikael Novak who had been behind the attempt on their lives, because he probably could have gotten out of it by making a deal with the man's family. Now that he knew they weren't involved, it meant he had to keep searching – and looking over his shoulder, wondering if someone were out to finish the job.
"A deal?" Mikael had to smile at the other man's audacity – not many would brazenly walk up to the person they suspected of trying to murder them. "You are either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid. Yes, I could see how this 'deal' that you speak of might have worked, but still, it took a lot for you to come here, didn't it? And with your girlfriend no less? I almost admire you."
"With my what?" Callen asked, as Nell huffed and shoved him away in aggravation. Of course he would find Mikael's wording the most objectionable part of this encounter.
Mikael merely shook his head. "I'm going to give you a pass this time, simply because you've amused me."
Callen wisely kept his mouth shut, knowing that the real reason he and Nell weren't going to be thrown in the Pacific was because Mikael would have to face the consequences of his family if he took such a drastic measure without their approval.
"You're saying that –" Nell abruptly broke off when Callen gripped her arm.
Mikael smiled, entirely without amusement, despite his earlier proclamation. "You can leave here knowing that it wasn't your family's enemies who called a hit on you. And for the simple fact that they would have ensured it was carried through. Surely you're not that dense, Agent Callen."
Callen stopped himself from replying as he grabbed Nell's hand and practically dragged her out of the building in his eagerness to get away from Mikael. He knew he'd been borderline-crazy to meet with the man alone, but now that he knew Nell had followed him? He was nearly beside himself at the danger he'd unintentionally put her in.
The old Nell never would have tracked him down, she would have waited until he came back; she would have listened to him. He didn't know when, or why, she had changed, but this new version of her was constantly doing things he couldn't predict. Like showing up at his house in the middle of the night when he was taking a personal leave, and she'd been explicitly told to stay away from him. He should have known better than to tempt her by ordering her to stay behind.
"I'm sorry, Nell," he said, scanning the area once they were outside. He could hardly believe that Mikael had simply let them leave – then again, the man had no reason to pursue them. It was, after all, Callen who had tracked him down.
They were in an alley and she shrugged, as if she had done nothing out of the ordinary. It was infuriating, but he didn't react; he was afraid anything he did lately might push her further away.
"I thought you might need me," she said, which wasn't the truth at all. She'd been terrified, actually, that he might be doing something that could endanger his life. That had led to her using every resource she had (and every resource she could force Eric to use) to figure out where he might have gone. Deeks had given them the starting point a few days earlier, with the name Mikael Novak (Callen must have been having a careless moment to actually give Deeks, of all people, a name).
They'd gotten lucky with the information that Novak, a sworn enemy of Callen's birth family, had entered the U.S. a few weeks earlier. From there, they'd narrowed down Novak's known associates, and had agents trail them until they found his hide-out. From there, it was only a matter of staking out the warehouse until Callen had, inevitably, shown up. And she'd breathed a thanks to God when he had, because if he hadn't, she'd had no other viable leads to pursue.
"You do realize that you took twenty years off my life when you showed up?" Callen asked, referring to how she'd walked in when he'd been arguing with Novak, as if it were nothing unusual for her to randomly appear in the last place anyone would expect.
"Consider it payback for how you left me behind, for the seventeenth time," she said, trying to hide her bitterness and failing miserably.
"Come on, it was hardly seventeen," he said.
"It doesn't matter how many times it was," she argued. "It's that you don't trust me."
He shook his head slowly. "You've got it all wrong. You're one of the few people that I absolutely trust. It's just too dangerous for you to come with me. You're not trained for this kind of thing, Nell."
"Oh and you are?" She asked, incredulously. "I didn't know you were trained for meeting with a personal enemy of your family who you suspected of trying to kill you. With no back-up, by the way, and without telling anyone where you were going."
He merely stared at her, for he had no argument. The fact was, she told the truth, and they both knew how risky it had been for him. It was incredible that he was walking away from the meeting with nary a scratch to show for it. "I didn't really think it through," he admitted. The fact that he hadn't thought it through because of his anger that she had almost been killed went unsaid.
And from the look on his face, she most certainly knew what he was thinking. "Callen, I'm…"
"Alright," he laughed, though it was forced. "I know that."
She swallowed, trying to meet his eyes, but to her dismay, he wouldn't look at her. "Do you?"
He gently touched her bandaged arm which was still in a sling. "I do know. That doesn't mean that it's okay."
"I didn't die," she said firmly. "And neither did you. That means we go on."
"Nell…" he whispered, his thought going unfinished when he pulled her in for a hug.
She hugged him back as well as she could with one good arm, and tried desperately to think of what she might say that would comfort him. The problem was, she'd already said it all. And there was more here, something she'd been missing. The way he'd looked at Mikael Novak…it stirred something in her that made her uneasy.
He leaned back and absently brushed some hair away from her eyes. He must have seen the look on her face, and known what she was wondering. "He's my cousin," Callen half-laughed, but she heard the fear in those words.
It was in that moment that she understood his worst fear. It wasn't death – it wasn't even close.
She stared at him until he had no choice but to meet her gaze. "I know what you're thinking," she said softly, "but who he is has nothing to do with who you are."
To cement her words she leaned in to kiss him. He was completely surprised, meeting her lips for the briefest time before pulling away.
It wasn't enough, not nearly. "You are not him," she swore fiercely, pulling him back for a real kiss, determined to distract him however she could.
Unfortunately, instead of distracting him, she ended up conveying her feelings for him far more than she could have with words. And that was something she hadn't meant to do – not now, maybe not ever. But it was too late to think about that, and for a few moments she forgot everything except the feel of him. In that span of time, if she had been questioned about who she was, or who he was, or what they were doing, she could have done nothing more than respond with a blank stare.
It was Callen who finally pulled back gently, because she was so reluctant to let him go that she might have held onto him forever. Reality came flooding back, but rather than making her want to distance herself, it only made her want to hold onto him tighter.
"He and I…" Callen tried to explain, trailing off. "We're family, you don't understand –"
"Blood means nothing. Nothing. Not when you share it with a man like him," she said fiercely. She had read Novak's file, too, and if there was anything she was sure of in this world, it was that Callen was the complete opposite of Mikael Novak.
"Nell –"
"You are not any of your relatives," she said, unwilling to hear his arguments. Her voice dropped to a whisper, though it was still impossibly loud to him. "You are your own man."
"I don't…"
"You are more than all of them put together."
In response he shut his eyes and held onto her as tightly as he could. In fact, the force of it hurt, but she reveled in it, because she wanted to be as near to him as she could.
And not just now.
Always.
The word came from nowhere, and she started, leaning backwards to stare at him, somewhat in wonder.
"Nell," he began, feeling he owed her an explanation – of what, he didn't know. Who he was, why he acted as he did, or maybe how it was possible he had such terrible family ties – but she cut him off by pressing her finger to his lips.
"G…Callen," she smiled, thinking how strange it was to use his 'first' name. "There is nothing you can say to explain this sufficiently. What we have…what we are…I don't know where it came from, and I don't know why. I don't know how to explain it. Maybe there is no explaining it."
No, he thought, pulling her as close to him as possible, maybe there was no explaining it. If there were some real world explanation as to why he felt this way about her (and she about him) he didn't know if he wanted to hear it; that would acknowledge the possibility that it might never have been.
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"This has nothing to do with your family?" Eric asked, yet again. He was having trouble believing it.
"I'm telling you," Callen said, "if it did, Mikael would have known. And there's no reason for him to lie to me. In fact, I got the feeling that he wished this did have to do with my family, so he could have the pleasure of telling me. Or finishing the job himself."
Eric sighed. "That means whoever shot at you was probably someone connected to our current case."
"What about our past cases?" Kensi asked.
Eric nodded. "That's also a possibility, but it begs the question of why someone would wait this long before taking their revenge. It's more likely that someone connected to our current case is the shooter."
"You weren't even on the most recent case, G," Sam reminded him. "Since you were on leave. That means whoever shot at the two of you followed Nell to your house."
Callen looked at Nell who met his glance with an unfazed look of her own. He wished that she were more scared, because he would have felt better if she admitted the danger she was in. Since she apparently didn't, he had to stay as close to her as possible until they solved the shooting.
Callen ran his hands over his face, remembering the files he'd read earlier, but they only told half the story. "Refresh me on the recent case."
"We were investigating the murder of NCIS agent Derek Smith," Deeks said, his voice conveying his discomfort with how close the case hit to home. "He was cheating on his wife with at least one woman, possibly more. We haven't determined whether he was murdered by his wife or a lover out of jealousy, or by someone completely unrelated to his personal issues."
Nell nodded, remembering how she'd been intent on briefing Callen on the case when she went to his home a week earlier. "We were going in circles and couldn't find any answers. That's why I went to see you last week." She refrained from adding that the real reason she'd gone to see him had nothing to do with the case, despite what she had since claimed.
He stared at the screens, trying to put it together in his head. Nell stood only a foot away from him, and he found himself distracted by her mere presence. That was new, but he couldn't say it was entirely unwelcome.
"Have you interviewed Smith's wife and mistress?"
Sam nodded. "Nothing from either of them. Both deny any knowledge of his recent work for naval intelligence."
"He was working on a new chemical weapon, a nerve agent similar to sarin gas that kills instantly," Deeks informed him. "And not pleasantly."
The last comment was decidedly unnecessary, since anything close to sarin would be unpleasant by nature. Callen glanced at Nell, wishing she would acknowledge him in some way. She merely stood unmoving, staring resolutely at the computer screens.
Eric started prattling on about the last known locations of Smith's wife and mistress, saying how it was unlikely – but not impossible – that they had been behind his death. Callen listened, but the entire time, his focus was on their junior analyst.
She moved slightly toward him during Eric's explanation, and it was so casual that he didn't know if she had done it on purpose or not. By the time Eric was finished, he and Nell were mere inches apart.
"Deeks, Kensi, get on the wife and mistress, interview them again and look for any inconsistencies in their stories," he ordered. Nell turned to him worriedly, clearly wondering if one of the women were behind the shooting that had nearly killed them.
He didn't wait for any kind of sign; in his mind, her being right there was enough of a sign for him to reach out and put his arms around her. He held his breath, letting it out slowly when she leaned back against him in response, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, when in reality it was quite odd (probably even unacceptable – not that he was going to look into the guidelines) for two NCIS agents. But the fact was, he didn't care; he didn't care what the rest of his team thought, and, for the first time in a long time, he didn't care what Hetty thought. The only thing he cared about was if Nell were alright, and if she needed him to get through this, he would willingly oblige her.
He had no idea when she'd become so necessary to him that he'd overlook the rules of his job, but it didn't matter.
Deeks and Kensi looked at them strangely, but didn't comment as they nodded and left to track down the two women. Sam pursed his lips, but wisely kept his mouth shut, and Eric was so oblivious that Callen thought he and Nell could have started reciting vows to each other and the analyst would be so wrapped up in his computers that he wouldn't notice.
It was only Hetty entering the room that made Callen reconsider his actions, and wait with apprehension.
"Miss Jones," Hetty said briskly. "I thought I told you that you were off this case?"
Nell closed her eyes briefly, before turning to face Hetty. "I know what you told me, and I'm aware that I'm not following orders."
"Then you must also be aware of the punishment for ignoring my orders," Hetty said, somewhat hesitantly. She didn't want to officially reprimand Nell, but if the other woman were openly defying her, she might have no choice.
"I am aware of the consequences," Nell said softly, stepping away from Callen. She would not hide behind him, she thought adamantly. She would face whatever Hetty threw at her.
"I must inform you of the disciplinary consequences," Hetty said slowly.
"Before you do," Callen cut in, "you should know that whatever you demand of her as punishment, I will follow, too."
Nell turned to him and shook her head slightly, but he only met her disapproval with grim determination. He didn't care what she wanted – if she were going to be punished, he wasn't going to let her suffer alone.
"This is not your fight," Nell told him.
"Maybe this isn't," he answered, "but you are."
Nell bit her lip, wondering how she could possibly respond to that. She couldn't.
Hetty sighed heavily and looked back and forth between them, finally focusing on Nell. "What am I supposed to do, then? If my lead agent is going to follow whatever I deem as punishment for you?"
Nell had no answers for the woman; how could she, when she didn't even have answers for herself? "That's entirely up to you, Hetty."
Hetty stared at the ground, as if it would give her answers. "I can't let this go unanswered, Miss Jones. You realize that, I hope. I previously put you on medical leave, and I told you to stay away from Agent Callen for the near future. You disobeyed both orders, and now I'm forced to place you on disciplinary leave for the next two weeks."
Callen tried, but he couldn't fully contain his anger. "Hetty, I know you're trying to punish Nell for the behavior that put her in harm's way, but I disagree with your methods. I hope you understand why I'm also going to follow any punishment you give her."
Hetty sighed and sat down in the nearest chair. "I won't lie to you and say that I understand it, Mr. Callen."
"Hetty…" He implored, before she held up her hand.
"But I accept it," she said, her voice brooking no argument.
"Thank you," he said carefully, and though Nell said nothing, he knew by the way she gripped his hand that she felt the same.
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