Dislcaimer: I don't own NCIS:LA or its characters…

Author's Note: So, lots of random storylines/scenes involving Callen and Nell have been plaguing me lately. Here's another, which could be a stand alone (written purely for the emotional content) or could be expanded/continued (for better fleshing out the context).

Nell/Callen Friendship, but you could read more into it, if that works for you.

WARNING: CONTAINS COARSE LANGUAGE AND SCENES OF MINOR VIOLENCE (NOTHING GRAPHIC)

It was such a classic showdown, that Nell Jones would've found it laughable if she wasn't in the midst of it.

Or not.

G Callen had slowly approached, SIG drawn, until he was ordered to stop just a few yards in front of the black SUV he'd driven out to the remotest of remote desert locales. He was wearing what Nell and Eric secretly called 'Angry Callen Face'. All business, and barely restrained fury. He was less than 30 feet away, but surprisingly she didn't feel the instinctual compulsion to run to him. Perhaps, it was because she was just so damned relieved to see him. Perhaps, it was the large hand clamped down on the back of her neck, and the Beretta that had been pointed at her skull but was now trained on the very irate federal agent shouting at the group of thugs standing in the middle of the desert.

"I'm here," Callen said. "What do you want?"

The tall, suited man of Nell Jones' party (ha, 'party!' hardly an appropriate word to describe what was in no way a good time) stepped forward a pace, and Nell caught the flicker of recognition on her would-be-rescuer's face. She found it hard to believe, after listening to hours of the asshole's lecturing and ranting about the traitor G Callen and the necessity of retribution, the nature of Honor...blah, blah, blah... that her captor had not already revealed his identity to the agent he was fixated upon, apparently choosing to anonymously negotiate this meeting for Nell's return.

Goddamnit, Callen, what is it about you that makes all of these psychos obsess about avenging themselves upon you? How can you even keep track?

"Lukas Braun."

"Oh, you remember me, Mr. Callen?" he asked, his tone oddly conversational compared to the rage that flared while he ranted against his nemesis, the emotion thickening his Germanic accent.

"Yes." The gun didn't waver, but she saw the muscles in Callen's jaw clench.

"Then you must also recall that there is a debt owed between us," Braun said, pacing slowly until he halted before Nell, glanced at her. She glared back, but only half-heartedly. She was pissed off, but also terrified. And the only glimmer of hope she could grasp onto was the agent standing so close yet impossibly far from her.

"How should you pay this debt, I wonder?"

Nell felt a cold spot form in her stomach. Surprisingly, despite knocking her around when she resisted, the group of thugs hadn't hurt her. They apparently weren't sadistic. But the tone in Braun's voice intimated that if he thought Callen valued her enough, that her death would repay whatever 'debt' the agent owed, then he would kill her.

"Me for her," Callen said. There was no response, and Callen seemed to realize at the same moment as Nell that his offer was a mistake, that he'd revealed she was important enough to him that he'd sacrifice himself for her. Therefore, harming her would hurt him.

"So... I did capture the correct one," Braun said, grabbing Nell's chin and forcing her to look up so as to study her face. "I suppose she's pretty... in a way."

Her captor looked her straight in the eye, his expression cold and dark, unforgiving, before he turned away and ordered her death.

"Kill her."

"Wait!" Callen shouted, as she was tossed towards the man apparently designated to do the dirty job of blowing her brains out. She stumbled into him, a giant, muscular bulk covered in sweaty t-shirt. Hands like the paws of a grizzly clamped down on her shoulders and she was preparing for a fight to the death, literally, when the man in charge echoed Callen's cry to stop the execution proceedings. Her hair had fallen in a curtain in front of her face, but given a brief reprieve, she tossed her head back, clearing her vision, and oh, god, no!

Somehow, she broke the hold the large goon had on her, perhaps out of the pure intense ferocity of her shocked, reflexive reaction. The threat to her own life hadn't been enough, but now there was only one thought. Not a confusing, sickening combination of various emotions, the fear of death, fear of not dying immediately and suffering, thoughts of leaving those she loved behind, and regrets. Now there was just one thought, one instinct. To get to him.

G Callen had the most intent expression on his face, his blue eyes as bright as the sky and as fierce as the blazing sun. The sun that was glinting off the nickel-plated P226 he held tucked up under his chin, the muzzle kissing his flesh in the most sinister of embraces.

She only made it a single step before a terrific pain seared over her scalp and stopped her in her tracks. And then she was tugged backward by the hank of her hair grasped in the meaty paw of her designated executioner. She fell backward onto her ass, twisting about on the ground in a futile attempt to free herself, screaming at the man whose primary bargaining chip had somehow become to commit suicide.

"Let her go, and I'll give myself up." Callen's voice was eerily calm, and only made her cries for him to stop, to get the hell out of there, sound all the more desperate. "The other option is I pull this trigger and your Honor is never satisfied. And you have my word of Honor on that."

Lukas Braun was quiet as he mulled the proposition over. Callen glanced at her, briefly, but she'd been staring at him, willing him not to do any of the things he just promised, and caught the blue eyes that tore through her soul. His calm confidence settled her and she stopped shouting at him and struggling against the painful, pulling hold setting her scalp aflame.

"You turned me over to suffer the most horrific torture, yet you were following orders and I still believe you to be a man of Honor," Braun said. "We have a bargain."

"She takes my SUV, and when she's far enough away, I'll surrender to you." Callen continued to hold the gun flush to his neck. "And you will not take any further action against her or anyone else just to hurt me."

"I think you will find that harming your friends is not required to hurt you, G Callen."

Braun grinned wolfishly and Nell felt a wave of protective anger flare up. She dug her nails into the wrist of the hand that was twisted into her hair, and thrashed madly, trying to get her feet under herself for better leverage, to stand and fight. But sometimes the ground was a better place to be, and so instead she hunkered down and kicked out, striking the thug in the knee and causing it to buckle with a loud, satisfying crunch. She sprung up and ran.

This time she made it ten whole feet closer to her destination, before she was tackled to the ground by one of the smaller, but no less powerful of Braun's men. Unfortunately, she failed to put up much of a struggle, since he'd forced the air from her lungs when he knocked her bodily to the rough, baked desert topsoil. He twisted her arm behind her back and half-marched, half-hauled her back to the Bad Guys' side. She was angry, frustrated at being thwarted, aching everywhere, but still slightly satisfied to see the big man rolling about and moaning on the ground, clutching at his shattered knee.

"None of this will work, however, if you don't convince your little Ginger-Snap to cooperate," Braun said to Callen.

"Nell."

His voice. How could she not look into the blue eyes that sought her out? How could she not listen to the words of the man staring at her like she was the only person in the universe?

"You will take the SUV and go back to Los Angeles. That's an order."

He slowly, exaggeratedly pulled the keys from his pocket and tossed them in the dirt a couple feet before her. She was released from the arm lock and instructed to get her 'tiny freckled ass' moving by Braun.

But she couldn't. She couldn't just leave Callen. Did he really come here alone? He couldn't have come here alone. She looked about, scanned the barren horizon for a glint of light reflecting off the scope of Kensi's sniper rifle, the merest hint of a good blind where Sam Hanna and Marty Deeks were hiding in wait. Or a shimmer in the air that denoted a small UAV watching from overhead.

But there was nothing.

There was no plan.

Or this was The Plan.

"This is a stupid plan, Callen." She didn't want to leave him in hostility, but she suddenly was angry at him, for choosing her life over his own, for making her run away.

"Nell, you have to go. This is the only win we're going to get out of this."

She swallowed back her anger and fear, picked up the keys and began to walk towards the SUV. Maybe they could run toward the vehicle, together. When she reached him, she would just grab his hand and pull him along with her. She recognized the Excursion. It was from the OSP's motor pool, a tactical unit vehicle, equipped with bullet-proof glass and moderate armor plating in the doors and side panels. If they could just get to the SUV... The logical part of her brain, just as Callen already apparently concluded himself, pointed out that their survival in such a situation was an impossibility. The Bad Guys were six (well five, not counting blown knee, laying on the ground in agony, brute) strong, all armed and two equipped with assault rifles. They would be cut down quite quickly upon Lukas Braun's order. And while the best prize appeared to be to take Callen alive... in order to... to torture him, their deaths would be preferable to letting them escape entirely.

"Let me say goodbye to her," Callen said, a quaver in his voice that was all too sincere for Nell's breaking heart.

"Fine. Make it quick." Braun's patience was getting thin.

She paused just before him, but off to the side, so as not to block his view of his enemies. The cursed SIG never wavered from his throat. God, the man had nerves of steel.

"Go straight to Hetty." He was still giving orders, as if... as if all of this was routine. Her being jumped and kidnapped outside the supermarket, drugged and waking up in a dark place, lectured on the evils of the man she probably respected most in the entire world, dragged to the middle of the desert and ordered by the very same man to abandon him to an unimaginably cruel fate. No. This was not routine.

"Don't do this, Callen," she pleaded one last time, knowing it was futile, but needing to make the desperate attempt nonetheless. "Please."

"Be strong, Nell," he said. "Go straight to Hetty. No stopping." His maddening resolve faltered, and she saw the fear flash in the depths of his oh-so-beautiful eyes, before they became as hard as steel once more. "Don't look Back."

He stepped forward and around her, nudging her into motion with his elbow, the solidity of his back pressing against hers ever so briefly before she began to walk the final few yards to her freedom, knowing he was covering her, shielding her body as much as he could, standing between her and the enemy, even as she abandoned him.

Her emotional self must have shut down momentarily, for it was the only way she could have climbed up into the SUV, put the key into the ignition, turned the engine over, and driven away. As she drove, Nell coldly considered her options. She was now in an armored vehicle, stocked by the OSP. But they had searched it after Callen had exited, stripping it of the rather substantial arsenal stashed in the trunk and glove box. So she had no weapons except the vehicle itself. She could turn around, and run those bastards down. But she couldn't be certain that she wouldn't maim or kill Callen in the process. Not without...he'd told her not to look back.

But if there was a chance, surely she should take it.

It was generally automatic programming that she glanced into car mirrors periodically as she drove, but she had avoided them all in the maybe five or ten seconds she'd been driving through the open desert. So obviously not quite on autopilot. And now, now she had to look.

She felt bile rise up fast in the back of her throat and she swallowed it down, averting her eyes quickly. But then she was drawn to look again, like a gawker mesmerized by a train crash. Only she knew the doomed passenger. The Excursion was kicking up a lot of dust despite her reluctant speed, but the cloud was unfortunately not enough to obscure the scene behind her. The group was a tight knot of men, and she could only briefly see the flash of Callen's cerulean shirt close to the ground as they shifted about the fallen figure, taking turns kicking at him.

Nell wanted to die. Wanted to go back and throw herself on the older agent, to shield him with her own smaller, frailer body. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that he could suffer while she went unharmed, that she be burdened with the guilt of his pain and free of her own physical agony. But damn her, she was too fucking intelligent for her own good. She knew the best course of action was precisely as he suggested, to go get help, back up, and rescue him. But why hadn't he done that in the first place? Why hadn't the fool brought help along to save her? Did he really believe it wasn't worth the slight risk that the team would be found out and she would be killed? What the hell was wrong with the man?

Tears were streaming down her cheeks in a torrent so severe as to blur her vision. She swiped at them, pounded her open palms on the steering wheel in desperate, helpless rage.

Stupid, fucking stupid. Fucking idiotic, stupid, stupid, stupid, noble man.

She swiped away even more tears.

She'd find him. She was going to get a gun, and some friends with guns and find him. And save his stupid ass. How dare he! How dare he sacrifice himself for her!

He wasn't going to get away with this.

A/N: What do you think? In some ways, I like this scene on its own. I know it raises a lot of questions as to how precisely they got here and how it will be resolved, but those are superficial aspects, I think, as opposed to the emotional content I was entirely taken by. Love me some noble self-sacrifice. And it's something I think is at the core of Callen.