NaNo #8: Election Day (NCIS:LA)

[miss_lucy21]

"Did you go vote yet?" Sam asked, as they got in the car on Tuesday afternoon.

"How?" G asked, cocking his head at Sam.

"How what?" Sam replied.

"How would I go vote?" G clarified.

"What do you mean, how would you go vote? You go to the polling place, sign in and..." Sam trailed off as the penny dropped. "You're not registered, are you?"

"Nope," G said, shaking his head.

"And you can't register, because you don't have legal ID," Sam finished.

"Well, no, I have plenty of legal IDs," G replied.

"Yeah, but they're all for aliases, aren't they?" Sam asked. "Because G Callen doesn't exist."

"Yup," G nodded. "I haven't exactly asked a lawyer, but I think that would be voter fraud, and that's probably not ethical. Or good for my cover."

"No, probably not," Sam agreed. "Have you ever voted?"

"Sure," G said. "I had ID in my name until the FBI wiped me, and that didn't happen until I was about 30 or so."

"Huh," Sam said. "Wait, how'd you get ID without a birth certificate?"

G shrugged. "There's ways around it. That's how I found out I didn't have a birth certificate, actually, when I went to go get my driver's license and my social worker told me I didn't have a birth certificate. I'd never thought about it before that."

"Well, sure," Sam said. "Who thinks about having a birth certificate when they're 16? I don't think I'd ever seen mine before I went to go get my first license, either."

"At least you had one," G said. "I had to get my social worker to send a letter to the state to search their records. And then it took months for them to come back and say that there wasn't one on file. So, then my social worker tells me that they probably couldn't find it because we didn't have the right birth date, which is how I found out they just made up my birthday when I entered the orphanage."

"Wait, they made up your birthday?" Sam asked, incredulously.

"Uh-huh," G said. "I looked later, though, when I was older, and there's no record of anyone with my name being born in California in any of the years that I could have been born."

"Any of the years you could have been born?" Sam asked.

G shrugged. "Later on, I sort of said I was 18 when I was 16, so my official birth year became 1969. But they guessed on the year when they gave me a birth date anyway, so I *could* have been 18."

"So you actually don't know how old you are," Sam said.

"Not exactly, no" G shook his head. "Officially, I'm 42, and I think that's probably about the oldest I could be, but I'm probably actually younger. I probably won't ever know. Although, it's possible that I could actually find my birth certificate now that I know I was probably born in Romania."

"You gonna look?" Sam asked.

"I don't know yet," G said. "It's still sort of sinking in. And there's no guarantee that I'd find it, either. Hetty didn't know my father's name and she said the CIA doesn't know either. I don't know whether my mom was using her birth name or a cover name when I was born. Romania was part of the USSR, so who knows if there's even records to find. Might just be another dead end."

"It might be," Sam agreed. "But it might not, too."

G shrugged. "Maybe." he said, and fell silent.

"You know I got your back whatever you decide, right?" Sam said, after a few minutes. "But I think you'll feel better if you try."

G sighed. "Yeah, probably. But I'm kind of, I don't know, tired, I guess. I thought I was going to get all the answers, and it turned out there were hardly any and the ones I did get just have more questions attached."

"I know," Sam said. "You don't have to decide now, you know. If it's out there, it's still going to be out there later on."

"Possibly. But if there are people who remember my mother- and who don't want me dead because of something my grandfather did- then they're getting older and they may not be around if I don't start sooner rather than later. It's starting to feel like I might be running out of time," G said.

"Well, if you're gonna go off to Romania again, you'd better take me with you," Sam said.

"Yeah," G agreed. "I will. When I go."