A Soothing Nightmare

Au. Note: These wonderful characters are the NCISLA writers' intellectual property. I just enjoy juggling them around into my scenarios. Therefore, I own the story. I hope the transitions between "scenes" are not hard to understand. I tried to make them as comprehensible as possible. 

Furthermore, I'm not an English native, so I apologize for any possible typos or grammar mistakes that might still exist, despite the numerous proofreads I've done.

Have a nice read!

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Three months had passed by since Anna's eyes last saw the one for whom she had miserably but lovingly fell for leaving, after they managed to rescue Nikita from Pavel's despicable hands.

The days in Cuba began to be unbearably boring and lonely. Anna barely left the minute place Joelle had arranged for them to stay at unless she had to buy groceries and necessary means.

After what had happened at the old facility where Volkoff went down, her affiliation with Joelle and with the CIA wasn't being that productive. If Anna was honest with herself, she wasn't even a bit proud of that connection. Joelle knew how to be cold when she felt like it, and she had already gone to god-knows-where. Anna saw many things in Joelle but a truly trustworthy person.

During one of those warm but solitary Cuban nights at that badly lit, silent, and dingy room, Anna couldn't keep her mind from drifting off to the one she had seen go. She could still feel her heart breaking into pieces as if that moment was happening repeatedly in front of her.

While sat barefoot and cross-legged on the crappy bed—it had a pretty shoddy mattress with some second-rate sheets on top—Anna's greenish eyes stared at the wide, gridded window and beyond. She could see part of the distant landscape covered in a cool mist, which didn't allow the stars' shine to reach her eyesight. With a deep sigh, she moved her torso slowly towards the wall behind her until she could rest her head against it. The night was calm, silent, and beautiful, but its tranquility didn't match the storm going on in her spirit.

In order to try ceasing the longing and the pain a little—like in preceding nights—Anna moved a little to her left side and reached for the right pocket on the back of her jeans. A small picture of Callen, which she had brought along with her ever since she had been awaiting her sentencing, slowly entered her visual field. Anna's delicate but skilled hands held that tiny piece of happiness as carefully as they possibly could and her whole being contemplated it. The photo was taken during their first trip together as a couple, back in the very beginnings of 2017.

Suddenly, Anna began to relive that moment.

She recalled Callen's dumbfounded semblance when they arrived at Legoland. The place was huge for its theme, he thought. However, his hesitancy over that place soon disappeared when both found a short table at a not-so-noisy nor crowded place and sat down opposite to each other with the table in the middle, a couple of hours later. Their goal was to rest a little from the walking, but Anna noticed that there was a little figure ready to be built on that table and she didn't resist giving it a shot. Ever since she touched the first piece, joy and serenity radiated from her face.

In that precise moment, Callen subconsciously bet that such a positive scenario had the power to cheer up the saddest of beings and warm their hearts. The way his girlfriend's physiognomy kind of transformed itself as it revealed how she was mentally going back to her happy childhood memories was perfectly noticeable to him. A sudden instant of what might be named as selfishness flashed through Callen's heart, and he wished he could feel some of that contentment and ease about his own childhood.