Re: Dom/Callen
"There are two other lead agents," G pointed out. "While it's flattering you think I make these decisions in a vacuum, if we're going to keep everyone alive, we have to all be on the same page."
His mind was working through the rest of what Dom had said, the part about when he'd left. And there was so much to the situation Dom couldn't tell him. Sam had died and G had left. Had they been together in that world? Had Sam loved him? Had he loved Sam? If he had, had he known it? Or, had losing Sam made him see it? How similar was their background? Had G tried to drive his partner away only to have Sam persevere? Had they gone to Fallujah, where G finally came to accept that Sam would always be there? G had been on medical leave. Had Sam held him there as he'd bled out on the boardwalk? Dom couldn't answer these questions and G wouldn't ask them.
"Hetty won't find him by pulling strings. If we are alike, he's a ghost. He'll contact her when he's had time to put his head back on straight. Or, someone who knows him very well, who he'd go to when he was in that much pain, will tell her when he asks."
G sighed, piecing together how to explain what he thought happened, what he would likely had still done in that situation, why it was different from this one. "If their partnership and friendship was the same as ours? If they'd been through even half of what we have together? I would have done what was best for the team, what I felt I needed to in order to protect them -- from me. And, if he's as much like me as you think, that's what he did. A leader too lost to grief, the sort of grief that can only happen when the first man to die under your leadership is your own partner, best friend, and brother, to think rationally is a danger to his team and needs to step down. Ironically, Sam seems to be the only one who would have understood my reasons for doing things alone."
And if Sam had been so much more, G would have been useless to them for a very long time, if he ever got over it enough.
"But, this is still a different set of circumstances. The team dynamic is different because of things that happened in our world after you died, things that wouldn't have happened in yours without his presence there. Things have happened over the last year, over the last four months, that would affect the outcome." Things like Savannah and the promises he'd made her not to leave her here. Or, the fact she wouldn't give him a chance to be alone long enough to get away. Or, the fact he had to stay with these people in order to get home because if he lost Sam, the only other things he had left of who he was were back in the world where he actually existed.