A/N: And here is the second chapter.
Callen heard heavy pounding coming from the gym as he got closer and realised that Yana had taken to the punching bag, much like Sam. He entered and saw her hitting it with everything she had with every punch. She was barefoot and the reason became apparent when she whirled from her latest punch and lashed out at it with the top of her foot. Not wanting to be hit by a wayward throw, he waited until she danced around it and he came into her line of sight. He approached and didn't say a word as he held the bag in place for her, allowing her to hit it faster.
After a couple of minutes he realised that she wasn't going to speak. "Does this mean all my hard work for the past week with you has been for nothing?" It had taken him several days of almost non pulled punches to get her to relax around the mission. What he was feeling through the bag felt the same as that first day.
"No." came the reply in between hits.
He decided to try something else. "When we go into these situations, we always run the risk of losing someone. It was nearly me this time and I don't think I got the chance to say 'thank you'." The hitting stoped after one last thud. "So Thank You." Callen came out from behind the bag and looked at Yana, only she wasn't there. Just as he was about to move, a noise came from the floor beneath the bag and he looked down. Yana had collapsed on the floor. He knelt down next to her, calling her name. "Yana? What's going on? Was it the paper Hetty gave you?"
Yana didn't answer, just nodded before burying her head between her knees.
Callen didn't see a young woman in the look he saw on her face, he saw a little girl that had just been told some very unpleasant news. "What happened? Something happen to your family?"
"I can't go home." The words sounded like they had been forced out, like she didn't even want to say them, and they were laced with tears.
"What happened?" Callen was very worried now. If it was something to do with the Yard, Hetty would have known and told them all.
"It was an email address that was set up when I went under. The only time I was to use it was when I was given the address. It contained a photo of my family. I wasn't in it. It means that the people I was under with are still around and that it's too dangerous for me to go home." She looked up at him, tears running down her face. "I could expose the whole operation and get my family killed. I can't go home." Her voice broke with the last sentence and she started crying again.
Callen carefully reached out and touched her arm. She leaned into it and he wrapped his arms around her, allowing her to lose it. He wondered just how long she had been under, how old she was when she started. She sounded like a small child when she was telling him about the meaning behind the photo. After several minutes, Yana stopped and he felt her breathing even out. Thinking that she had fallen asleep, he carefully pulled back to look at her. Her eyes were closed and she had bunched his shirt in her hands. Moving one arm under her legs, he stood and carried her to the couch.
It was dark now and a note on his desk from Kensi said that they had left for the day. She had also included a sealed envelope (so Deeks couldn't read it) for Yana. Laying Yana on the couch, he managed to untangle her hands from his shirt without waking her. A memory suddenly sprang into his mind as he looked at her.
"Shhh, it's ok now son. Everything will be ok." A young man said as he stood from laying Callen and his sister Amy on a couch. His face was in the shadows and he spoke in Romani. Callen remembered crying and Amy's arms around him. He was clutching a toy tin soldier in his hand.
He staggered back as the emotions from the memory carried over. It was just after his mother had been shot, he was sure of it. Had it been his father he had just seen? He sat heavily in his seat trying to slow his breathing, all the while looking at the woman on the couch. Another memory came to him from that morning.
As Callen rounded a corner, bullets ripped the air around him and he went down. Yana behind him and still behind the safety of the wall pulled him back. "Cal, you ok!" She called out. Seeing him look up at her, she fired a couple of shots round the wall, hoping to hit something. It worked as the bad guys backed off a little. She turned back to him and looked him over.
He remembered hearing her let out a sigh after making sure that he wasn't hit anywhere else. He looked back over to her. There was something about her. He couldn't put a finger on it but there was something. The memory after his mother's shooting. He had never had anything after getting some memories on the beach in Romania a couple of years earlier. What was it with this woman? Would he be able to work with her? She called him 'Cal'. That wasn't by accident.
He was tempted to wake her and ask but put it aside when he realised that she had started to thrash. He watched her for several minutes, hoping that she would let something slip in her nightmare. She didn't say a word, just screamed and fell to the floor. She woke a bit then and Callen's suspicions about her having a gun on her was confirmed when she pulled one from under her shirt. Just a little two shot thing, but it would be enough to stop someone.
"It's alright, Yana, everything is ok. I'll be on watch." He copied Granger's words from the week before. It worked. Yana nodded and dropped the gun as she lost her battle with wakefulness. Callen got her onto the couch again and placed the gun on her bag next to Sam's desk. He would be glad when his partner returned. He decided to stay and rolled out his sleeping roll behind his desk. He could keep an eye on Yana and be there in the morning to tell her Hetty's offer. And spar. He wanted some answers.
Yana woke with something soft covering her face. Thinking that something was trying to smother her, she lashed out and pulled the blanket off her. Finding nothing near her and that she was still in the NCIS OSP, she relaxed a little and folded the blanket carefully. She stood and headed to the kitchen. She saw Callen there, making coffee.
"Can you make me a cup of tea while you're there?" She called out to him. She had quickly realised that he didn't like people sneaking up on him. While he didn't react like she did to Deeks, when she had first done it by accident, he had whirled around fast and stepped back. She made sure that when she did come from behind him, she called out well in advance. Yana noticed that he did it to her too.
"Sure." Callen pulled a cup from the cupboard and placed tea in a silver ball with holes in it. After the water boiled, he headed over to her with her cup. "Yana." He called out to her as he got closer.
"Thanks." She took the cup, had a sip then noticed the Callen hadn't moved on. He had sat in Deeks chair. "Can I help you with something, Agent Callen?"
Callen had been looking down at his coffee, try to figure how to ask the question he had and Yana had just given him the opening. "Shouldn't that be Cal?" He looked up and noticed Yana stiffen at the last word.
"Where did you hear that?" she was looking straight at him.
"You called me that yesterday when you pulled me back behind the wall."
After several moments, Yana sighed "My mother worked for the FBI for about fifteen years. While you were there. She saw you operate several times and I grew up hearing about you. I guess I developed a bit of a crush." Her cheeks had turned red and she dipped her head. "I always called you that when I asked mum what you had been up to."
"What was her name?"
"Marta Talbot."
"Never heard of her. Not surprising, I didn't mix with many people there." He got up and went to clean his cup. He heard Yana following him. "Still got a crush?" He asked. He needed to know that she would have his back, no matter what.
"Not since I worked at the offices for the past eighteen months." She dried the cups and spoons they had used.
"Found someone?"
"Yes. I just hope he understands why I had to leave. I left so fast that I didn't have time to call him so I sent him a letter."
"Why did you leave?"
"One of the people I was under with. I spotted him while I was on a coffee run for the guys I was working with. I'm pretty sure he didn't see me, but I didn't want to take the chance. I called them and asked them to get me out of the area. Mum suggested that I come here to Granger. He'd be able to help me adjust and keep in touch with my mother." Yana followed Callen to the gym.
"Granger and your mother are brother and sister then I take it?" Callen looked over his shoulder at her as he pulled gloves onto his hands.
"Yeah." She didn't say anything more and Callen let it drop.
After a few minutes of heavy punches and Callen winding up on the floor twice in as many minutes, He spoke as he got up from the mats. "I remembered something from when I was a child last night when I put you onto the couch."
"Oh?" Was all she said as she lashed out at him with her foot again. It seemed that the email from last night was still effecting her as she barely pulled it before it connected with his knee, staggering him. He was facing away from her so missed the worried look that crossed her face.
"Yeah." He groaned as he stood. "A man laid me and my sister down on a couch after our mother had been executed."
Yana paused halfway in a punch. "Your mother was murdered?" She stopped still and watched him.
Callen copied her "Yeah, he laid us down and said that everything was going to be ok. He spoke Romanian." He stood straight and asked her straight out. "Why would I get that memory from looking at you? Who are you?"
"I c…" She had a troubled look on her face but after a moment of internal struggling, she huffed, pulled a mask over her face and said in a voice that left no doubt in Callen's mind "I can't say. But what I can say is that I will have your back. I will always have your back, and Kensi's and Deeks' and the backs of everyone else here." She had stepped closer to him and had thrown her arm out at the last words to cover the OSP. "I'll be out of your hair in thirty minutes." With that she headed to the showers.
Callen called out "How can you do that if you leave?"
"I won't be far and Granger will call me if you need backup."
"Hetty's offered you a place here if you want it." Callen had crossed his arms now and was looking at her with anger on his face. He had hoped for answers from her but she was as good as Hetty in avoiding giving them. He could tell from her voice that she would have their backs, but still, there was something.
"You want me to hang around?" she had stopped at the door to the showers.
"Just until Sam's back." He sighed and dropped one arm, the other running over his head. "Look, the memory last night and you calling me Cal, I just want to know that I can trust you to have my six and that of my team."
"You had it the moment Granger brought me here, Agent Callen. And you will have it until I die." She turned from the door and looked at him "Do you want me here?"
Callen looked at her. Her eyes still looked haunted but not the extent they had when they first started sparing. And they still looked older than her years. And there was something in his gut that said he could trust her. And Gibbs always said to listen to it. "Yes."
"I'll see you in the bullpen in ten then, Agent Callen." She turned from him and headed into the showers.
He watched as she left and realised that she had called him Agent Callen twice within a couple of minutes. Wondering just what to do about it, he headed to the showers himself. After pulling on his shoes he headed into the bullpen to find Yana sitting on the couch with her computer. He sat at his desk and watched as his new partner shuffled papers around on the couch. He then remembered the letter that Kensi had left for her the night before. He got up and took it over to her.
"Kensi thought it would be a good idea to have a girls night out with her and Nell this weekend, if you're interested." He handed the letter to her. She looked up at him and he saw something in her face. He couldn't place it.
"Thanks, I'll think about it." She went back to her work without opening it. Heading back to his chair, he wondered what he had seen in her face.
He was working on his computer when the rest of the team walked in and sat at their spots.
Deeks noticed the tension that seemed to be coming off Callen and Yana. For starters, Yana was working on the couch, not at Sam's desk. Callen was looking shaken; he had never seen the team leader with his feelings so readable. He looked to Kensi, who had pickup on the same thing. They looked at each other and stayed silent. At least until Deeks saw Yana's fingers hovering over the keyboard of her laptop.
"They're for typing words in, Goldilocks." He dropped his stuff to the ground, ignoring Kensi as she tried to hush him.
Yana looked up, the tension gone from her face and a smile replacing it as she replied to the detective, "So, if I'm Goldilocks, then what does that make you?" she flicked her hair to emphasise it.
"Defiantly not Papa Bear." Kensi said as she sorted the papers that had appeared overnight.
"No, that's Agent Callen." Yana said as she headed to the kitchen. "Kensi's Mama, so I guess that leaves Baby Bear."
"Baby Bear." Callen and Kensi said at the same time as Yana. Callen and Yana looked at each other for a moment, then nodded a little.
"What, why?" Deeks whined. He had seen the small exchange that went to between the two and saw that Kensi had to.
"Because you like everything to be perfect." Yana said kissing the top of his head as she passed him sitting at his desk. She placed a cup of coffee on his desk then continued onto the couch. She grabbed her laptop and a few papers and went back to Sam's desk. She opened the letter that Kensi had left for her. She noticed that Deeks leaned in closer to see. She unfolded the paper inside, read for a moment then burst out laughing. After a moment, she looked up at Kensi. The two nodded just as Eric whistled for a case. Yana left the paper on the desk to deposit her cup back in the kitchen and Deeks risked a peak as he went past.
Callen waited for his partner then followed the others up. "What it say?" He wanted to know why Deeks' face had confusion written all over it.
"Nothing." Callen raised an eyebrow. "It was written in Portuguese. Kensi will let me know when Deeks isn't around. We good?" She held out a hand. She realised that when he had joined in teasing Deeks with her, he was ok with her.
"Just promise me that whatever you can't tell me won't interfere with a case."
"The moment it does, I'm gone, Agent Callen." He shook it and they headed up for the briefing.
"Cal." Yana turned and looked at him oddly. "It's nice to know that there was someone looking out for me at one point. And besides, the Agent Callen will get real boring, real fast."
They entered the ops room just as Yana said "Fair enough Cal." causing everyone to look at them.
"I take it that you will be staying for now, Inspector Talbot?" Hetty asked as they settled into the room. She noticed that Callen stood in front of the table and she stood behind it and a little to one side, just as he and Sam so often did.
"For now." She nodded before concentrating on the screen in front of her.
"Very well then. Mr Beal, Miss Jones." Hetty turned to the two analysts and the briefing began.
The case lead the team to a bar where a marine had last been seen dropping off some of his team mates. His comrades had arrived back at the ship but he hadn't been seen since. The club's security cameras were closed circuit which meant that Eric and Nell couldn't access them.
"Ah, Hetty, small hitch." Deeks spoke up when Callen said that the detective and Kensi would go in.
"And what would that be, Detective?" Hetty turned to him.
"It's a gay bar, and I did a drug bust there about five years ago. The same bouncer is still at the door. He and I got into it pretty good. Also, LAPD is still watching it as a distribution site for X." Which meant that Kensi would have to go undercover.
The team looked at each other realising that the only other member that could go in with Kensi was Yana. "You think you can go in?" Callen asked her. He knew that after being under for a long time, sometimes the last thing you wanted to do was go back under. And a club, dark place filled with noise and people, was the last place you wanted to go, no matter for how long or short a time.
"I should be fine. Haven't had a girl's night out in a while." She nodded, more to herself than to the others.
"Well then, I guess wardrobe."
Yana waited until Kensi and Deeks had left before asking "Hetty, nothing that shows my back please."
Hetty saw that she meant it. She also saw Callen's look of concern until she nodded. She waited until Yana head out the door after Kensi and Deeks. "Mr Callen, care to share?"
"Last week while we were sparing, I grabbed at her but only got her top. It tore and I saw some pretty bad scars on her back." He looked at his boss. "Whoever she was under with wanted to make sure that she was who she said she was. She said that they whipped her." Callen left the room, his hands bunched and his steps faltering.
A/N: Hope you enjoyed this one. For the moment there will be more questions than answers, but everything will be revealed, I promise.
