AN: Thanks for the feedback! It means everything.

XXXXXX

The strange memory of that night, talking with Callen about his personal life (or lack thereof) has stayed with Nell for the past six days. She wonders if she should have said more, pushed harder. Been braver. She can't find the boundary between what they are and what they might be – if she's imagining it or if it's really there. She can't pin down what he feels (if he even knows, or if he'd acknowledge it if he did – because there have been plenty of opportunities for him to tell her, and he never has).

At times, she thinks he's trying to tell her he doesn't want to be with anyone, ever. And that would be okay, he's entitled to want to be alone. She'd never begrudge anyone their happiness, especially not Callen, whom she feels is more deserving of it than those who've been carelessly happy their entire lives. He's certainly more deserving of happiness than her (she also knows he'd never agree with that thought, so she's never shared it with him).

What they are to each other is a question she's run around her mind in circles since…when? What had made her start questioning? Was it Georgia? Or had it happened before then – maybe after her session with Cameron, or did it go back near the beginning, when he told her about learning to protect himself as a foster kid? Further still, to their first session and beginning to trust him, or perhaps before their training had even begun? Had they seen something in each other and not consciously recognized it?

More than anything, she can't stand the thought of broaching the subject and being summarily dismissed. Though it's more likely he'd let her down easy, and they'd both swear their friendship wouldn't change, but it would, she knows that, and they'd end up distancing themselves from each other due to awkwardness or discomfort. She could lose everything if she makes a wrong move, so she's found herself at an impasse where it's better to keep things as they are rather than risking the friendship they've found in each other.

She thinks she should learn to be more grateful for what she has and stop speculating about anything more. At least her introspection isn't causing her to miss much.

Granger and Callen are too evenly matched to be getting very far with each other. Nell always forgets how good Granger is because they don't have many opportunities to witness him in action. It's also easy to dismiss him since he's older, though she suspects Callen is being sharply reminded to never underestimate their boss.

Granger currently has an arm around Callen's neck and is encouraging him to get out of it with one of the new techniques, but Callen didn't read the manual and has no idea what Granger wants him to do. Every time he makes a move, Granger informs him it's not what he's supposed to be 'demonstrating to the class'. Kensi and Deeks are offering increasingly unhelpful suggestions, and Callen's becoming more frustrated that he can't rely on any surprise maneuvers – he'd already agreed.

"You guys are not helping," Callen tells them harshly.

"This is not a fight, Agent Callen," Granger says, for probably the dozenth time. "It's a demonstration from our new guidelines. I know you read them, right?" Everyone hears the mocking in his tone.

"Right," Callen manages to get out, "cover to cover. How else would I know how stupid they are?"

"I'm not surprised at your lack of discipline, how many times have I told you that our rules are in place for a reason?" Granger scolds him.

When Granger tightens his hold, Callen apparently decides he's had enough. He uses his free arm to elbow Granger around the solar plexus and takes advantage of his surprise to twist away. He thinks he should be commended for not resorting to any of the more painful methods he could have utilized to escape.

Granger is none too pleased. "You promised you'd help me demonstrate in a fair manner! As everyone can see on page 57, that is not what you're supposed to –"

"Owen!" Hetty appears out of nowhere to stem his impending lecture. "I hate to interrupt this very…enlightening demonstration, but we need to actually start evaluating. Unless you want everyone here until dinnertime."

It's an obvious out that she's given them, and it has the intended effect. Besides, Granger can't imagine the horror of spending an entire day with them. He goes to retrieve his papers while everyone retreats to their own mats.

Nell suppresses a sigh when Granger returns to her and Eric, first. "Jones and Beale, ready to put in some actual effort?"

She forces herself to concentrate and Eric (momentarily) overcomes his fears when his basic training kicks in, and they miraculously perform a few simple takedowns without incident (unless she counts his constant complaining as an 'incident'). Granger judges the two of them as 'adequate' – and is he actually checking things off on a clipboard? Fantastic.

"Sir, I can't help but think that I'm being unfairly judged based on Eric's reluctance and complaining. Mostly the complaining."

He doesn't look impressed. "I'm moving on, Jones."

Eric waits until Granger makes his way to Deeks and Kensi's mat, starting to explain the points system to them. "Nell, stop trying to blame me for everything."

"Then stop giving me things to blame you for!"

Eric takes another break (she suspects if she were keeping count, it'd be somewhere around his 15th) and Nell soon realizes that she's unhealthily distracted. She keeps glancing to where Callen and Sam are sparring (or more accurately, arguing about sparring). She knows exactly what's happening – the more she tells herself not to think about something, the more she thinks about it. She curses her unrelenting subconscious.

She moves closer to their mat in order to better overhear their conversation and doesn't notice when Eric returns. He grabs her to get her attention and she automatically twists her arm to force him to break his hold.

She spins around ready to apologize (she knows that move hurts) and he catches her off-guard by pushing her in petty retaliation – she doesn't expect it from him, though she supposes he deserves praise for surprising her twice, now. Things escalate quickly into – well, she can't even call it a fight so much as it's a shoving match, all sense of form forgotten as they deteriorate into a completely childish fight. It ends when he shoves her back with enough force that she stumbles onto the middle mat (she's equal parts irritated and impressed – who knew he had it in him!).

Unfortunately, he's pushed her right into Callen, who has braced himself for his partner – Sam's running at him, and Callen has better reflexes than Nell, because in the split second it takes her to realize she's going to get taken out, he pulls her down to the mat with him. When Sam sees that he doesn't have to stop short or try and divert, he decides to jump over them instead.

"Show-off," Callen tells his partner, as he and Nell get up.

"I could have been a hurdler in the 1996 Olympics," Sam informs them, and no one can tell if he's kidding. "What a time to tag in, Nell! Your attraction to danger tells me you've been spending too much time with Callen lately." He's joking – they're spending about the same excessive amount of time together as they did in the beginning.

Callen likes that description way too much. "Attracted to danger, huh? I can see that."

"I mean the situation, G." Sam rolls his eyes. "Why did Eric push you, Nell?"

Of course he saw that; he'd been facing them while Callen had his back to her. She looks over at Eric who had retreated to the far side of the mat the second he realized what he'd done. "We got carried away," she covers for him. Besides, she might share some of the blame for the petty fight they'd just had as if they were elementary school students.

Callen sends her an arch look, not quite believing her. He keeps his mouth shut, though.

"This is how people get hurt," Granger says as he walks over. He'd witnessed the entire ridiculous scene. "I'm giving everyone an X for this round. Zero points."

"Sounds good to me, at least we're not in the negative. Yet." Sam slaps his partner on the shoulder and strolls off for a drink.

"X for excellent," Callen agrees as Granger waves his clipboard in a vague, wordless threat and then goes back to the bench. Nell's about to follow him when Callen stops her (he feels like he's always trying to stop her from walking away). "What was that?" They both know he's referring to her fight with Eric.

"Nothing," she says, as impressive a liar as always. The difference is he can read her now, and he tries to think back to a time when he hadn't been able to recognize the slight furrow in her brow when she lied, or the way she fidgeted with her hands when she was nervous. It's hard to remember that he hasn't always known her this way.

"Right, nothing." He lets it go. She doesn't have to tell him everything. There are plenty of things he's better off not knowing, he's sure.

"Thanks for the save," she adds, as a dismissal.

His voice lowers to a quiet, burning intensity, and he must not know that alone would keep her there, since he grips her arm, too. "You don't ever thank me for saving you."

She has no idea if that's supposed to be his way of saying 'no problem', or if it's a promise, or if it's some kind of weird threat. It sure sounds like a threat, but it doesn't feel like one in the slightest.

She goes with the craziest option at hand to respond to him, obviously (he'd taught her well). "And why not? Thanks for saving me. Agent Callen." She throws on his name at the end because she knows how much it irritates him when they argue. He hates the idea of her deferring to him because he outranks her, even when he knows she means it mockingly.

His hand tightens imperceptibly on her forearm and his eyes darken. At first she thinks it might be anger, until she looks closer and realizes that no matter how well she knows him now, there are still parts of him she doesn't know at all.

It's exciting…in a terrifying kind of way.

He blinks and the look in his eyes vanishes, the moment gone. She slips her arm out of his suddenly lax hold.

He desperately wishes he could read her thoughts. He remembers the many times she's told him what she was thinking. He'd found it easier to share stories than feelings; she's never had that problem. He doesn't think there's a story she's ever told that hasn't included her descriptions of how it made her feel.

She doesn't seem to mind when there are things he can't say; sometimes, she seems to know how he feels without him ever saying a word.

They'd gone to his sister's grave, somewhere between sessions 73 and 74. It wasn't planned that way. It had been an afternoon where they'd called it quits early after wrapping up a case, the sun still shining brightly. It felt unnatural to leave work in the early afternoon.

She'd asked him if he wanted to train with her, and he did, but he couldn't. He told her why – he'd been planning to visit his sister that day.

He hadn't invited her. It had been on the tip of his tongue to do so, but he held back at the last minute, worried she'd find it odd or morbid. He didn't know how she knew; perhaps they could reach each other that well by then. Maybe it was the way he said it, or the way he lingered in the hallway afterward, as the others had rushed out, no one wanting to waste a precious minute of free time.

"We can do that," she'd said, including herself automatically as she walked ahead of him to his car.

He waited to feel taken aback or upset that she'd invited herself along on what was supposed to be a personal visit – except the feelings never came.

If there was anything he still kept to himself at that point, it was his memories of Amy. Mostly because there wasn't much to say: he and his sister hadn't been together long enough for there to be much worth telling.

Thoughts of his sister hurt because they always reminded him of the 'what ifs?' The dream of a life he could have had, should have had, with her in it – it hurt more to think of the way that life had been stolen from him than it did to remember nearly dying.

Before that day, he hadn't known if it was necessary to tell Nell any of it. Not because he didn't want to, but because she seemed to understand the careful way he talked around the subject of his sister. She seemed to know. He'd suspected long before, and their visit that day confirmed that she'd heard the things he never said out loud.

He knelt in front of Amy's tombstone and tried not to think of what might have been. He'd accepted her death long ago; that didn't mean he'd accepted the circumstances, or his own guilt over the matter, no matter how much he wished he could. More than anything, the grave marked where his memories of her rested, a monument to the girl he remembered as beauty and light.

Nell waited a few feet away, studying gravestones and giving him privacy to talk to his sister. She had a stray thought of Callen trying to teach her to fight in a graveyard and couldn't help her slight laughter.

Callen stood up from where he'd been kneeling and turned to her, keeping his face as blank as he could. "Cemeteries are amusing, huh?"

He regretted his words the second the mirth left her eyes, and she clapped a hand over her mouth, trying to explain, "No! I'm not…that's not –"

He couldn't keep it up; he went to great lengths to avoid erasing her smile, and that had been a rare misstep. "I'm kidding, Nell."

Her expression cleared and she hit him on the arm. "That's not funny."

He absently rubbed his arm; it didn't actually hurt. "What were you laughing at?"

"It's…" she shook her head in amusement. "Sorry, I can't help picturing you explaining the best ways to fight someone in a graveyard."

His mind spun over the possibilities. "Slam their head into a gravestone," he suggested. "You could also break someone's back if you bent them the right way over it. Enough pressure and…" he snapped his fingers.

She automatically winced. "That's a lovely image, thanks."

"What do I say? Fighting can –"

"– Kill you. Yes, I know. Besides, how do you think I'd be strong enough to do that?"

"You're right, you might have to go another way." He pretended to think about it. "Do you know any summoning spells to call forth the dead?"

"Zombies. That's your suggestion." She decided to play along. "Alright, in this completely realistic scenario where I'm being chased through a graveyard and conveniently have knowledge of supernatural spells and enough time to perform them to bring forth zombies to help me face my attacker…what's to stop the zombies from coming after me, too?"

He sounded distinctly amused. "I didn't say it was foolproof. You know how to run, don't you?"

"Couldn't I have run in the first place? Before the spells and the zombies?"

"Yeah. That would have made the most sense." Truthfully, they'd been over real-life scenarios dozens of times. He always stressed that her best option when facing an opponent that outmatched her was to run and hide, if possible. At that point in her training, he made sure that she knew she should only engage someone if she had no chance of escape. (They'd had their fair share of 'practice drills' through NCIS's headquarters, and he almost always caught her – that one time she'd tried to hide behind Granger had been a particularly poor choice.)

"I'm sorry I brought it up," she said, though she wasn't. He kept her entertained. She sank onto the perfectly manicured grass, sensing he wanted to stay for a little bit. "It's quiet out here today."

He sat next to her. "Well, yeah, we don't know any summoning spells." Off her look, he laughed. "If you're looking for excitement, you're not going to find it in a graveyard. They always remind me of Halloween."

"Who hasn't spent at least one drunken Halloween in a graveyard, right?" From the look Callen sent her, she figured she might have to reevaluate.

"At least one? There was more than one?"

"High school was a trying time," she argued.

"I don't know," he sent her an approving glance, "sounds like you had it figured out."

He clearly wanted more information and she wasn't going to indulge him. "Anyways, I thought I had the best costumes as a kid, though looking back, I see I was particularly unimaginative. I went as a nurse, a witch, a bride –"

"A bride?" He couldn't help himself. "I would have expected you'd dress up as a teacher or a scientist." He thought about the stories she'd told of her parents' deep involvement in her education. "From the way you turned out, I would have thought your parents encouraged you to dress up as a NASA engineer."

"Nope, they let me do what I wanted, and I wanted girly costumes all the way. I think I went as a 'princess' for three years in a row during middle school."

It went against everything he imagined her being as a child, and he liked it. He liked her parents for letting her do what she wanted as she grew up, and supporting her in the same way as an adult. Not everyone was that lucky.

"You should go visit your parents," he told her.

"I will, maybe around the holidays. Don't worry, we skype as much as they're able to get ahold of me. My mom says you take up too much of my time, by the way."

He didn't fight the accusation. It was true. "Tell her I'm sorry, but she can't have you back."

"Don't worry, my parents have their hobbies and grandkids and a myriad of other things to fill their time. My mom has her scrapbooking and this annoying habit of sending me memory books of my childhood. I keep telling her to stop, I mean why do I need…" She stopped talking when it struck her that Callen must not have many pictures from his childhood, and she felt incredibly selfish to be complaining about having so many that her mother made entire books of them.

His thoughts had gone a much different way. "I'm going to get some of those pictures of you."

"You won't have to try that hard, one word and my mom will send you plenty." She somehow knew he was going to do it because of her suggestion.

"She better include Halloween pictures," he teased.

They lapsed into silence, and a sort of melancholy must have overcome Callen when he said next, "Aren't these places sad? I feel like if you're here, you have to be sad, even if you're trying to remember things that are happy."

It reminded her of a recent conversation. "The other day, my mom told me something really sad," she began, unsure if she should go on.

Callen was surprised; her stories were almost never sad. He waved at her to continue.

"She was looking through pictures of us from when we were kids. She was holding this one of me at age 5 on Halloween. I was a cheerleader."

That struck him as adorable. He tried to imagine 5-year-old Nell cheering in exchange for Halloween candy at every house. "I can see that."

"I had pompoms and everything, it was great. I thought she was going to talk about how much fun we had that year." She bit her lip and glanced away. "Instead she told me that growing up…it's like dying in a way."

He tilted his head, not getting it, and she didn't blame him.

"She knows I'm here, I'm an adult and I live my life far away from her; she can still see me and talk to me. But the little girl in the picture, the 5-year-old me running around making up cheers about candy on Halloween? She doesn't exist anymore. In a way, my mom said, the little girl that I used to be…she's gone." Nell remembered the unusual sadness that had surrounded her mother as she spoke. "She wasn't trying to say it's like losing a child or…anything like that. She meant that, at times, she would look at our pictures and think of us as kids and get really sad that those kids aren't here anymore."

Callen thought of the few images he had of his sister. "They're just…gone."

She pulled at a blade of grass, not daring to look at him. "Yeah. And it kind of upset me, because I'm not gone, you know? But I saw where she was coming from and what she meant. I told her to look at our pictures and be happy about them, not dwell on how the moments are long gone. I mean, isn't that the point of most pictures? To remember the happy times? What's the point of going through them and being sad?"

He didn't say anything.

She knew he could take her story as sounding really selfish and it was the last thing she wanted. She hadn't meant it that way. She didn't know how to tell him that the only thing she wanted for him was happiness. The sadness that surrounded him when he spoke about Amy, remembered her, it was understandable, but she knew part of it came from unfairly punishing himself. She wished he could forgive himself for things he hadn't caused, and things he could never change. "I'm sorry. I'm not trying to…"

"No, you don't have to apologize for trying to make me feel better. I know what you mean."

She smiled at him, faintly. "I know what you mean, too." At his puzzled look, she added, "When you talk about Amy – or rather, don't talk about her. From the few things you've said, I know, Callen. And it's okay."

"What do you know?" He challenged, because she couldn't possibly –

"I know that when you think of her, you miss the idea of her more than anything. You miss the life you should have had and you think that makes you selfish, and you hate yourself for it. You shouldn't."

How had she pieced that together from the few things he'd told her? Either he'd said more than he meant to, or she read him better than he thought was possible. He didn't bother denying it. "What kind of person can feel that way, Nell? Every time I think of her, I find myself thinking about a life where it might have been different. It becomes about me when it should be about her –"

"There's nothing wrong with it, with you." She leaned closer, not daring to touch him. "It's normal to feel that way. You loved her as a child, you love who she was, but she was gone from you long before she died. It's okay to miss the life you should have had. The fact is, you didn't get to grow up with her and learn to know her – and love her – as a person outside of a few childhood memories. You have a right to miss that. You didn't get a chance." She looked over at Amy's headstone. "Neither of you got a chance."

"It's not okay," he insisted.

"The situation? No, it's not. How you feel? Yes, it is." She spoke with such conviction that he was tempted to believe her.

His guilt wouldn't allow him to do so. "Nell, it's not that easy –"

"I think Amy would agree with me," she interrupted, unable to stand listening to him try and argue his way out of it. She knew she was being presumptuous, but she needed him to seriously think about everything she'd said.

"You know Amy now?" His voice changed instantly, became sharp and disapproving.

"No." She felt her face burn at his tone, as if she had no right to use his sister. Maybe she didn't, and if she hadn't felt as strongly as she did, she never would have dared. She also knew what he was trying to do, and she wouldn't be dissuaded. "What I know is…if she was even one-tenth like you, I can't imagine her ever wanting her brother to hate himself because of circumstances that were out of his control – circumstances of which you were a victim as much as she was. I can't imagine her resenting you for wishing that you'd had the chance to love her the way you would have, if your lives were different. I don't think she'd want you to –"

He abruptly got to his feet, staring down at his sister's gravestone.

"– be unhappy whenever you thought of her," Nell finished quietly, as she stood up behind him.

He couldn't look at her, not when he wanted to lash out for what she'd said. It wasn't her fault for picking up on his thoughts, and it wasn't her fault for disagreeing with them. He wouldn't take his anger out on her.

He thought of Amy, the brilliant, smiling girl in his handful of memories. Giggling and playing together when they had nothing to worry about in the entire world. One thought had always haunted him – which memories were real? Which ones had he imagined? Which ones did he only think he remembered, when they'd been from a video reel? How much of her had he really known, at all?

He tried to picture her scolding him, hating him for the way he felt. He couldn't. What he knew of that girl was too happy, too good; she'd never been marked by the world the way a person did when they were forced to grow up in it. The irony of it was she'd been cruelly taken from it too soon to truly recognize how cruel the world was.

He glanced over to find Nell slowly inching farther away, moving down the row of gravestones as if she were about to make her escape any minute. He might have hated what she said, calling him out on one of his greatest shames, but he also knew that his reaction had everything to do with him and nothing to do with her. Once he recognized the true source of his anger, it slowly evaporated.

She was right.

"Nell," he spoke softly, as if to not break the spell of their surroundings.

She stopped her progress and slowly walked back over. "Yeah?" She sounded hopeful, and a little wary.

He tapped the back of her hand with the back of his, and she recognized the silent apology.

He might not have known Amy the way he wanted, but there were a few things he did know – that he had complete confidence in.

"My sister would have liked you."

She inhaled sharply, twisting her hand around so she could grasp his before he pulled away, threading their fingers together. She knew there was more he hadn't said, more he might not ever say. That was alright.

"I would have liked her, too."

XXXXXX