"Dom? Nell? Between the two of them you've got pretty much the same skill set, if a little light on actually hacking ability or frills. You still have as many people affected as you do with Savannah's death. You don't have people leaving. And you aren't putting someone with absolutely no care for his own survival into the perfect situation to get himself killed." John wasn't even thinking about needing to not overwork. Savannah was good, but she wasn't Brian and he'd been trying to get as much done as possible, as fast as possible, so he could get back to Brian, even if he did let her force breaks for food on him. And cheerleader movies when it was too late to keep working and he was in too much danger of writing an email he shouldn't if he turned the computer back on.
"Could you have stopped him from turning into a spider and startling whatever soldier he was fucking into squashing him?" Sighing, he ran a hand through his hair. "I don't hate you. It'd be easier if I did. I could just be angry and not care. I just...I never wanted him to feel pain like this. It reminds me of what I felt the day my world ended. If you recall, I wasn't much more interested in getting attached to people and life when I first got here, either. That day I called in sick to training. I locked the door and refused to answer any knock. And Brian climbed the tree outside my window so he could be there for me. I shut everything and everyone out and he refused to let me shut him out. But, when he needed someone to climb through his window, where was I? Where was anyone? If Brian's tried to detach himself from life, if he managed to create a vacuum around himself, why hasn't anyone else but me tried climbing that tree?"
He shook his head. "You think Brian doesn't appreciate the friends he has around him? How many of those friends has he gone out of his way to help? He found Sean something to do when he couldn't train because of his hand. He watched after Nell when others couldn't see she was having problems this summer. He'd give Savannah pretty much any party she wanted by this point, I think. Maybe he doesn't let many people in, but most of us don't do that. Not even Savannah. Friendly as she is, she's very selective about who she tells the truly important things. But, Brian isn't unaware of his friends or unappreciative. He just doesn't show it in ways most people would expect. And, yeah, he's going to push people away when he's hurt. He's not the only one who does that, either. But, he's the only one everyone seems content to let do it. Even Eliot, who always seemed at odds with half the people here, would have had me or Savannah or Nate there, refusing to let him shut the world out if April was gone. So, why wasn't anyone doing that for Brian? Was Callen left alone? Deeks? Derek?
"I'm here for him now and I'm not going to let him shut down completely, just like he was there for me. I just want to make sure this doesn't happen again. I know, if you have to, you'll do the same again. I get that. I get doing things and making the hard decisions that might hurt people but are for the greater good. And I can't promise him I won't die so he never has to go through that again, no matter how much I wish I could. But, I want to know that if I die, or am captured, or have my death faked again, that you'll look after him for me. Not as the director of an agency who has to make those decisions. But, as the man who tried to give a lonely seventeen year old boy a father figure or a mentor of some kind when he first found himself stuck here, despite having to also be that Director."