AN: I own nothing. I started this in 2012, decided to finish it, and somehow ended up making it 5 times as long as it was, so maybe 6 chapters?

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Things went wrong.

It was a fact of life, and usually there wasn't anyone to blame.

It was pretty standard during their operations. None of them had ever participated in one that went completely to plan. The best way to approach it was to actually expect things to go wrong and make sure you had other options available. Exit strategies were helpful, too.

Their abilities to strategize and problem-solve in real time largely contributed to why they had as many successful operations as they did.

This time, Nell could trace what went wrong in a successive series of steps. Though it wasn't helpful after the fact, it made her feel better to deconstruct things and find the root of them. That way they'd be better prepared the next time. In theory.

It started with Deeks (as many unfortunate things did), followed by Eric, then Callen and Hetty, until finally Nell herself. Granger was in that mix somewhere, too, because he did shoulder part of the blame at one point. Maybe it wasn't technically fair, but she wasn't feeling too charitable, which meant it counted. At least to Nell.

It was supposed to be fairly straightforward. The first night of their new operation, Callen had a meeting with Salvatore Donatacci, the head of a local crime syndicate responsible for a number of offenses, including (they strongly suspected) the murder of two Navy sailors whom Donatacci had been using to smuggle weapons.

They'd hoped to find a lower level employee of his to turn on him, but Donatacci covered himself too well. He paid his people generously, and terrified everyone else. After months of getting nowhere, and the disappearance (and presumed murder) of the two sailors, Hetty had agreed to the last resort of an undercover operation.

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"It'll take a week, two weeks tops," Callen had proclaimed a few weeks earlier when the entire team gathered in Ops to go over details. He was overly optimistic, as usual. When Nell had cast him a skeptical look, he'd amended, "Maybe three weeks. Or more. It really depends on a number of factors. And potential problems."

"I know the problems," Nell insisted. "I wonder if there isn't a better way to –"

"Let me write this out. For the apprehensive among us." He glanced at Nell, who crossed her arms.

Sam wasn't convinced this was a productive use of their time. "G, do we really –"

"I got this," he brushed off Sam's concerns.

"I'd like to see it written out," Deeks added, rather unhelpfully, in Nell's opinion.

Kensi nudged him with her elbow and whispered at him to watch himself.

They'd already done much of the research. Callen started writing it out on a pad of paper – wait a minute.

"Where did you get that?" Nell asked. "I banned paper in here after Eric started that fire."

Eric must have been holding in his outrage at that, because he jumped in with far more enthusiasm than was warranted. "It was an arbitrary and unilateral decision that I objected to from day one!"

"You don't even like writing things down," Nell sounded distinctly exasperated. "Have you let go of that tablet at any time in the past four hours?"

"It's the principle of it," Eric complained. "You're taking away our freedom."

"That she is," Deeks agreed, for the hell of it. "Rebel, Eric. Rebel!"

Nell shifted her gaze to Deeks who pulled Kensi in front of him, presumably as a shield. When the two of them started shoving each other, Nell decided to ignore them.

She glanced at what Callen was writing. She was familiar with most of the plan, and this exercise in redundancy only served to irritate her. To her credit, she didn't react until she read number eight ('Nell, stop crowding me'). She ripped the notepad away from him.

"Nell!" Callen jumped up from his seat.

"We have technology for a reason." She threw the pad across the room where it hit Eric, purely by accident. He fumbled and then miraculously kept it from hitting the floor. Nell didn't know if she was more impressed with her accidental aim or with Eric keeping a hold of it. Yeah, definitely the latter.

"I could have been injured," Eric sputtered. "Watch what you're doing."

"I knew you would catch it, what with your natural athleticism."

"Oh, yeah, that's a given," Eric relented, instantly forgiving her.

Nell turned in a circle in the middle of the room, motioning to the dozen screens that surrounded them. "Embrace it, Callen. Technology is your friend."

"Know who else is my friend?" He asked. "Eric."

Eric took a step toward Callen, holding out the notepad to give back to him, and Nell stopped him with two words. "Go ahead," she kept her tone pleasant and non-threatening – in hindsight, a dead giveaway.

"This is a trick, right?" Eric looked between her and Callen with uncertainty and the slightest hint of fear.

"I will fire you," Callen threatened, and the color drained from Eric's face. He needn't have worried, though, since Callen was talking to Nell.

"You can't fire me. You wouldn't know what to do without me," she said sweetly. "Besides, who else would work with Eric every day?"

"Yeah!" Eric said, automatically backing Nell in this fight (how quickly his loyalties shifted). Then her words registered. "Hey."

"I'm kidding," she soothed.

Callen took the opportunity to contradict her. "You have to work with Eric? I have to work with Deeks."

"Funny, Callen," Deeks chuckled, though his laughter trailed off when no one else joined in.

"Except, technically, you don't work with Deeks," Kensi said. "I'm his partner, I'm with him far more than you."

"Seeing him around is enough," Callen argued.

"No, you get Sam most of the time," Nell reminded him. "You're lucky."

Sam winked at her. "You always were my favorite, Nell."

"Right back at you, Sam."

Deeks gaped at them. "I thought I was your favorite, Nell."

"You're everyone's favorite, Deeks," Nell reassured him.

"You're certainly mine now," he offered.

She grinned at him. "I've been told that I have my moments."

"That you do," Callen muttered, and it almost sounded like he didn't intend it as a compliment.

Deeks glanced at his partner and thought of everything she'd had to put up with from him over the years. She wasn't easy either, by any means, but he'd arguably been worse. "I have to admit that Kensi's right. I am, by far, the most difficult to work with. She should get a prize. And that prize…is me."

Nell grimaced and stepped closer to Callen to whisper to him, "You're right. You have it worse with him than I do with Eric."

Eric glared at her across the table. She'd forgotten how great his hearing was. "I'll at least give you credit for acknowledging that Deeks is higher maintenance than me. Now, since none of you are being productive in the slightest, I took the initiative to get the ball rolling." Eric pulled up a bunch of documents on the screen. Some of them detailed the background he was creating for Callen to go undercover.

"Look, Nell," Callen said, "since they're on a screen and not regular paper, you must be on board with the plan now, right?"

"I'm not against the plan," she insisted quietly, and the playful manner in the room disappeared at her obvious unhappiness. "Isn't there anything less risky we can try?"

Hetty entered at that moment. "It's already done," she said, directing the words at Nell. As usual, she appeared to know everything that had happened, though she hadn't been in the room. "Anyone who is not going to be helpful while we go over every step, from the beginning, may leave now."

Nell knew the words were directed mainly at her, and she supposed she deserved it, although that didn't make her feel any better. If they asked her, she'd tell them she thought she did pretty well when it came to not questioning their tactics. She truly didn't get enough credit for not losing it when the situation was warranted (and it was often warranted).

Callen nudged her arm while Hetty talked, and she knew he was trying to apologize. She wasn't in the mood, and pettily ignored him, focusing on Hetty.

She'd accepted a while ago that part of the price for remaining with their team was to get over her tendency to worry about them being in jeopardy. Danger in their line of work was normal, even expected, and their team always got assigned the worst of the worst. She knew it was a compliment to them; they were the best, which made them the most trusted to take down the truly evil people of the world, but in her opinion, there was a big difference between encountering danger in the course of a normal operation, and inviting it to come to you. Admittedly, this operation didn't necessarily involve more danger than most, so she had no idea why it bothered her the way it did – she had a bad feeling about it that wouldn't go away, despite trying to ignore it.

She decided she simply needed to stop voicing her feelings as much. She trusted them to take care of themselves and each other, and she'd do everything she could to contribute to that, even if she wasn't out in the field.

Eric and Hetty laid out the foundation of their plan. They'd recently put Salvatore Donatacci's most trusted money launderer out of business (aka 15-20 in federal prison), but it was on an unrelated case, and the man refused to flip on Donatacci for a lesser prison sentence, since he knew it would mean the death of his entire family.

The one benefit was that it left a dire need in Donatacci's operations for someone capable of moving money around undetected. Callen would offer Donatacci a deal he couldn't refuse: Callen would act as the middleman for his 'wife' (Kensi), a mid-level executive at a private bank with free reign to set up off-shore accounts, and who surrounded herself with similarly corrupt bank officials who didn't ask questions in exchange for a cut of the money transfers.

Deeks said he needed to stay away from the Donatacci family for 'personal reasons' and Callen swore he'd get it out of him later, but for the time being, they accepted his vague excuse and he was relegated to a behind-the-scenes role, along with Eric and Nell (as usual). Sam would go along with Callen and Kensi to meetings, waiting outside and out of sight.

Nell supposed she should take comfort in the fact that at least no one was heading alone into a terrorist cell (they'd already done their share of that this year). She considered asking for more time to surveil Donatacci before they went undercover, then decided against it. Hetty had made it clear this was happening no matter what, and a vague sense of unease was not a good reason to speak up.

More importantly, Nell didn't intend to give them more reasons for why she shouldn't work with them anymore. Not so much her team (as they'd made it clear she wasn't going anywhere if they could help it), but other people within NCIS. Like Granger, for one.

That had nothing to do with today, though. She nodded along with the plan, and when most of them had filed out, and Eric went back to his computers, Nell lingered. For some reason, she couldn't tear her gaze away from the screen where the results of Eric's hard work were visible to anyone left in Ops.

Callen spoke from a few feet behind her. "It'll be fine, we've been over this in every way."

"I wish you wouldn't act like my fears are unreasonable." She didn't turn to face him.

"I'm sorry if you think that's how I came across. It's not what I intended."

"Every time one of you leaves this building, I think about the possibility that you might not come back."

He came around to stand in front of her. "I know. Do you trust us? Me?"

"It has nothing to do with trust." When the silence stretched out too long, she added, "That's the problem."

He knew, of course, what she wasn't saying. That what truly terrified her was not that they would make mistakes or somehow fail at their jobs – it was that they couldn't control how anyone else acted. The slightest suspicion on the part of anyone they were trying to take down and that could be the end of the operation, or it could be the end of one of them.

"What does worrying accomplish?" Callen asked, and it wasn't a question, it was a reminder of a conversation they'd had before, which he brought up from time to time. Especially times like these.

"I know," she sighed. And she did. Worrying accomplished absolutely nothing, except to make people miserable over something that hadn't happened yet, and may never happen.

"You do worry way more than you…" Eric trailed off, realizing he'd spoken without thinking. "I am in no way eavesdropping on your conversation."

Callen almost made a joke about it, but considering it was Eric's actual job, the punchline was way too obvious. "Go home, Eric."

"Gladly." Eric switched off a few computers, and Nell found herself wishing it was that easy to turn off her thoughts.

"Besides, how often do things usually go wrong?" Callen asked as they walked out.

Nell stopped in her tracks. "You did not just say that."

"Yup, you jinxed it, Callen." Eric gave Nell a gentle shove to get her walking again. "Good thing you have us to watch your back."

"Wouldn't have it any other way," Callen said, and he meant it.

None of them knew how soon he'd need it.

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