A/N- This has been resubmitted with edits from the precise pen of Angelprincesslilac. Huge thank you for all your work Angela.

WAR GAMES
By: cdewinter78
Edited By: angelprincesslilac

As he watched Jay from across the clearing, that a few hours earlier had been a secret ELE base, he couldn't help being drawn back in time. In the disheveled remains of the Militia's main training ground, now crawling with FBI and agents from all quarters of the Government's unofficial and official sectors, the teenager stood out in Callen's mind like a sore thumb: from his oversized combats, to the way he was trying with all his might to keep in the unmanly tears that threatened his makeshift, hard-ass mask. Jay really should have been hanging with his buddies and not kneeling in the dirt sporting a bloody face and that God-damn awful goatee!

Callen smiled wryly as he replayed the moment the kid had sassed him about his inability to grow facial hair. It had been at that moment, trading "at least I" insults with the boy, that he had been struck by a painfully strong sense of bittersweet déjà-vu. Jay had even smirked slyly like Travis.

Travis Boyd had been ten years old, the same age as G, when he had become another victim of the less well-regulated side of the State's Child Protection Services. G owed Travis his life. Travis, one of a handful of ghosts from the past the NCIS agent felt he needed to settle with. Seeing Jay pull a gun on him and Sam in the hut they had been thrown into, had turned Callen's blood cold; not because he or Sam were at risk, but because it had come too close to that day a million years ago. The day that had ended in G covered in a blanket, trying hard to look inside himself and avoid the outside world of pushy cops, defensive, drunken, Foster "parents", and well-meaning social case workers who always arrived too damn late… And Travis' blood.

Back then G had had no control. Not over his past, his present, or his future; if he made it there. That was no longer the case. G was utterly in control. His defenses were airtight. Today, he'd had the chance to save another kid from taking the same life lessons that he'd been subjected to; the ones marked "learning the hard way". He had already talked Jay out of sharing a transport with the rest of the gun-toting weirdoes with their ZZ-Top fetish, and was now half-listening to one of the higher-ups running his request through for leniency for the boy, on the grounds of his help with the peaceful resolution of the operation. God, how desk jockeys loved their word counts! Fifty words where one would do!

When he finally got the green light, he made his way over to Jay. The kid's head was hung so low he looked like a weather-beaten scarecrow, but, when you looked into his bruised face, you could see he was just plain beaten. Slowly, G watched that mask crumble as he told Jay about his near-brush with a prison record. Callen had to swallow a lump in his throat as he listened to the kid's resolve break with one word:

"Mom?"

They teased each other a little more; he and the Jonas brother, partially because Callen wanted to preserve some of the young boy's dignity in front of the glaring hillbillies; but mostly because G was having a hard time, himself, keeping a grip on the emotions he usually had dead-locked. When the kid mentioned waking up and saving his life, G felt the burn in his eyes. Though he managed to answer the kid and wish him well, he knew he had to find some space … Fast. Melting down anywhere near his team was not an option.

Kensi and Sam had finished their initial debrief and the first of four sets of paperwork when Kensi spied Callen cutting away from the clearing.

"Huh. Who'd you suppose he bribed to get out of all this?" She waved the offending sheets in the air.

Sam was about to loose one of his usual smart-ass remarks about Kevlar G, when his friend passed close enough to a blazing searchlight to outline the haunted expression on his face. Frowning, Special Agent Hanna let it slide. This would be one of the hundreds of "don't ask, don't tell" moments between him and his enigmatic partner, except this time… Callen had been crying. Sam literally shuddered to think what could draw that kind of response from the man who had turned deflection into an art form. With something big enough to push all Callen's buttons this way, Hanna knew one thing for a damn fact … G was going to level with him!