A/N: Hi everyone! So my other story did pretty well, and I decided to keep going! The other one isn't done, but I think I'm going to leave it for a bit, to step back and gain some skills.

These are going to be a series of one-shots based on a prompt table I have- all different characters, emotions, ect.

I hope you enjoy it!

Disclaimer: I do not known. All of this belongs to Mr. Shane Brennan.

"Evidence of what you cannot see
But what you hope for
The world that holds your fate
Is not visible
Invisible." -Evidence, Everlife

Prompt: 001- Evidence
Characters: Henrietta Lange
Word Count: 700

Her hands are small and shaking as she opens the drawer.

Dust clouds the air. The drawer is old and it's been years since she's opened it, years since she's needed to open it.

She sneezes, the dust tickling her throat.

The drawer is stuffed with papers. Some are ancient, yellowed, curled inwards. Others are a bit newer, still yellowed but not cracked, worn.

The most recent visible date is March 5, 2015. It's 2021 now, and she's eighty-something, her hands a mess of blue spider-web veins and wrinkled, puckered skin.

She didn't expect to live this long. They certainly didn't, and damn that still cuts like a knife, every single time.

She closes her eyes, briefly, feeling memory prick at them, wet and hot.

Carefully, she begins to look through the papers gathered in the desk, starting at the bottom.

1971. Her first partner. His name was Paul. She might have loved him, a lot. From the picture a man beams at her, wild-haired and bright-eyed. He has one arm slung around a little girl, maybe five or six, and the other wrapped around a woman's shoulders. The woman is scowling, but the girl is grinning. She was kidnapped, and the man, Paul, saved her.

It made the front page.

Paul was also killed by a drunk driver in '73 and it still hurts now, nearly fifty years later.

1984. Another partner. Her name was Lucy. Her picture is yellowed, crumpled, but she still sees the slight, curving grin and the curling hair. Lucy took down an infamous rapist all by herself, saved two young women, his next victims.

She died of cancer three years later.

1999. Jenny Sheppard. Red hair, sharp eyes. Not her favorite partner, but still. Jenny was brilliant—driven, fierce, fresh out of Paris with a gleam in her eye and something to prove. She didn't lose Jenny—rather, Jenny left her behind clawing to the top.

Hetty didn't see her again, not until 2008, when she was so damaged the casket was closed. Even then she didn't get close because there was a sliver-haired man gritting his teeth at the thing and a brown-haired man pacing like a wild animal, scaring her off.

1999, not six months after Jenny. Miami heat ripples off this particular page, touching her face, her hands. She remembers for a second, so strongly she wavers, almost falls to the ground.

Sullivan.

She moves on.

2010. Brown eyes, young face, a sort of sheepish grin. Dominic Vale, with all his youthful enthusiasm. He was a hero, this is absolute.

He died in service to his country.

2012. Nate. Her Nate, quirky, intelligent, caring Nate, so desperate to prove himself that he went to fight a war that wasn't his.

They never found his body.

2014. Blue eyes, floppy blonde hair, a wide, pleased grin. Marty Deeks. Also a hero—he died for her, for Kensi, leaping fearless in front of a bullet like he was made of steel.

Needless to say, he wasn't.

2015. The last, final blow. G. Callen. He was the hardest to take, the closest to her heart. Perhaps it's selfish, but he was her son, in a way, and he was more important to her than any of the others.

She did not go to his funeral, and the day after, she handed Vance her resignation.

Her shaking old fingers rest on top of his face, stroking the yellowing page.

She should go back. Tomorrow is her eighty-third birthday. Sam will be there with Kensi, and Eric and Nell, and there will be a party, and the memory of heroes will hang around their heads like streamers, evidence of what they cannot see but feel so strong it chokes them.

Hetty sighs, closes her eyes again, fighting it all back, damming the flood.

Soon, she says to herself, across the dusty years.

She sees them then, standing side by side, Paul, Lucy, Jenny, Sullivan, Dom, Nate, Deeks, and Callen, beaming like children.

We'll wait, they say. We promise.

She smiles then, old face wrinkling, crumpling like the papers. I know, she murmurs, closing the drawer, getting up to go back. I have the evidence right here.

A/N: Thanks for reading! I have 29 more to go, so if you could review, I'd appreciate it!

-Blue