I am so pumped that people are liking this, thank you, thank you, thank you! :D I truly have been intrigued by both McG and Hannah in the past few weeks, and I thought it would be a fun concept to try especially since they're not technically on the same team, so there's not as much stigma that would be attached to them dating like there might be between Dalton and Jaz. That said, like a certain man named Preach said, you can't deny a connection. ;)

Okay, so a quick thank you to the two guests who reviewed since I can't reply to you privately. :) I appreciate you reading and leaving your comments.

Onto the next chapter, I have to say I put in the research here. I'm still not sure if I'm completely accurate, but when you're googling Delta Force and trying to figure out how long each thing would take... it can get hard. I also spent about an hour last night scrolling through Dean's twitter replies trying to find any information that would help me write this as well. He did reply to someone a few weeks back saying that people like Dalton's team would not show emotions like others do, but seeing that we saw crack's in Dalton during Monday's episode, and going off the notion that despite being highly trained and skilled men and women, they are human, I'm going to take a little creative freedom here. He also said, which I'm sure many of us know that Dalton and Preach were together first, then McG, with Jaz being added about 3 years before. So it makes my initial timeline a little rough for his first deployments pre Special Forces, but alas, that is partly when Afghanistan was particularly bad and I'm keeping it.

Again, so I tried to make it so it was all accurate, but I'm merely a fanfiction writer with access to google. I try. Don't attack me if I'm a bit wrong. ;) That said, during the So Many Shows podcast after Monday's episode, I think it was Dean who said that writers can be sadists who enjoy putting readers/viewers through pain... I definitely agree with that statement. I've been known to make people wanna kill me for my writing. But! Like he also said in an interview a while back... human resiliency is underrated.

Finally, again, I own absolutely nothing. That's all NBC and our evil genius show creator Dean. I'm merely a fan of whump. ;)

PLEASE, let me know what you think. I like to chat. Enjoy!

*Peace, love, and Jaz*

Joseph McGuire didn't let his own mind get to him. Honestly, he never really had the time. With his team, they were always on the next mission, traveling halfway around the world and back in the amount of time most civilians would find insane. It left little time to think about the past, something he was usually glad for, but also made him question his own humanity. He reasoned early on it was better to stay busy. Before he was part of this Omega team, before he was in Delta Force, back when he was just a Specialist in the United States Army, on his first deployment he could think about things. He never realized just how much down time he had.

Catapulted into small arms fire and blown up Humvees, he used to treasure going back to his FOB and taking the crappy MP3 player out of his hiding spot and brooding. It made him feel better, it also gave him the ability to compartmentalize what he saw out there. Mangled bodies and hollowed eyes, broken soldiers and burning flesh. There were smells he'd never get completely out of his head. He reasoned most nights that he signed up for this and if he let the worst of it get the best of him, he was on the losing end of a battle he could probably win.

When he garnered the attention of his superior officers early on for his quick thinking, he assumed he must be doing something right. He was quick to be praised by career military men, told he had saved men from deaths that most others could not have. It should've given him an ego, but it only gave him further purpose. He deployed one more time, as he told Dalton, with the platoon he originally was placed in after signing up for the Army. That was the bloodiest year for him personally. He lost nine men, five in one go.

Compartmentalize. He went with that more and more as he survived deployment. He began to hate down time. He wanted to go. He wanted to be out there, working on saving others. He wanted the purpose.

When he returned from deployment, his CO at the time suggested (and later referred) him to look into the Delta Force. The thought was tempting but also terrifying to a 23 year old kid, who despite having survived two deployments to Afghanistan, thought perhaps he wasn't meant to be there. His CO thought otherwise. Again and again, he was told he was different. He was one of the few. Instead of just purpose now, it gave him a mission.

So, he did as he was told. He never realized what it took to get to Special Forces. It took heart, obviously. A sound mind with the ability to overcome great challenge. All the other crap they told him when he passed the Special Forces Assessment and Selection portion of what was known as the 'Q Course'. Then began the hardest year of his life training wise. He got to Fort Bragg early on in 2009, starting his training with small unit tactics and learning survival skills. All the things he thought he knew so well were thrown in front of him, but with more detail. He learned a language. He got his ass handed to him, grilled, and sautéed on several occasions, but when it came down to it, he succeeded.

In his last four weeks of training, he completed the collective training exercise and got his Special Forces unit. He worked under it for several years before crossing paths with Dalton. Dalton was also in Delta Force but another unit. He admired him, but at the time he never knew what it would mean for his future. When the position to be part of Dalton's team came to him a few months after that, he took it and never looked back. He was a part of the team (later adding Jaz, then Eli, and finally Amir coming in after Eli died) for several years and he'd never stopped.

He hadn't been to his hometown in almost two years. His mother had many questions about what he did, and it was hard to keep the secret. His mother was a nurse after all, and last she knew, her son was just a medic. Well, he was a medic. That wasn't a lie. It was just everything else she didn't know about that would probably kill him before any enemy ever would. If she ever knew what he did… he'd be a dead man.

All of it became a thing of compartmentalization. Tuck it away for another time. He knew enough even with this training that one day, all of it would come flooding back—all the death, all the loss and anger would hit him, probably when he was no longer a part of it and was retired somewhere doing God knows what. Even now, he had a moment or two when it would trickle through. Losing Eli was rough. The military sent them all for therapy, mandated of course, but it wasn't like he really felt able to talk to the guy. He didn't understand. He knew what he needed to say to get back to the team. He felt more at home with his team. With Dalton's leadership, Preach's never-ending positivity, and Jaz's … well, Jaz-ness. He knew that Jaz's own struggles with Eli's death hit closer than he could ever imagine. To lose your best friend. Regardless, when Amir joined the team there was a return to the wholeness he felt. It was a wonderful thing to have people beside you who you knew would be there—not like people say in civilian life—no matter what. Jaz's kidnapping rocked that again, watching Dalton falter—for God's sake Dalton never fucking faltered—sent a chilling reminder to him that they were not untouchable and this could call shatter before them at any given moment.

He knew Jaz had to sit through more therapy following her ordeal. He knew she hated it. He wondered what he would do if the tables were turned and he was the one in her shoes. He knew being in Afghanistan turned the faucet on, the trickle was constantly poking for attention, the drip, drip, drip, on his mind. Remember when that happened. Oh, forget THAT moment, remember that? Remember SPC Andrews begging you to tell his wife … all of it. Remember when Dalton took a hit about two years ago that nicked his femoral artery and Noah couldn't get you the medical evacuation you needed soon enough—and he'd almost bled out before you? McG startled himself out of the memory, only stopping when he remembered placing his knee on Dalton's thigh, no way to cauterize the wound at the time, so his last hope was to staunch the bleeding by his body weight. He'd never seen Top so pale, so out of it before.

He knew going down that rabbit hole was particularly dangerous because once you were in, the drip, drip, drip quickly became a steady flow, which then turned into a burst pipe, which then flooded the entire damn place.

"McG?"

His vision swam at the sound of his name. Amir stood before him, eyebrows furrowed at the taller man before him. "You good?"

"Of course," he said gruffly, swallowing the last few minutes from his memory, giving the CIA operative turned Omega member a brief nod. "What's up?"

"Dalton just got word. We're about to be briefed."

"Be right there," he said, and the man nodded, leaving him alone for the time being. Being in a FOB, especially one the size of Kandahar Airfield felt like a second home. He knew the ins and outs of FOB Sharana, having spent a year there, as well as Bagram. Kandahar he'd only been in with Delta and with Dalton, but he recognized it enough to know it was one of the better places to be if you were to be in a place like Afghanistan. Soon, they would be leaving the base and going into the sandy mess that was the desert.

Dalton's plan meant splitting up. He wanted Amir with him and Jaz (he kept Jaz closer these days, whether he would admit that or not), and Preach would take Hannah and he to Hannah's contact. Dalton would be gathering information from another source that Noah had uncovered back at the DIA. They would be leaving in a few minutes.

He'd lost track of almost two hours. Drip, drip, drip…

Where My Demons Hide

Hannah missed the field at times. Being with Dalton's team a few weeks back sent an adrenaline rush into her body, the addicting feeling of trying to save the world. Of course, she was undercover on her own in a cartel last time she was an operative, not with an Omega team as Dalton's, but the rush was there regardless.

Sitting in a Humvee with Preach and McGuire, she couldn't help but wonder if giving up the operative life was a mistake. She knew she made a difference from her desk at the DIA, but there was something about the field that resonated with her. But, the cartel had almost wrecked her, and she knew for her own mental health that down the line, long-term field time would do the opposite of what she needed. Besides, Noah had sort of grown on her.

"You're quiet back there," Preach said from the front, next to their driver who had also not said a word.

She wasn't sure who he was speaking to—McG had been weird since she saw him earlier, almost as if he was in a funk. Did she say something to offend him? She doubted that, guys like him did not really take hits easily. Besides, she caught him checking her ass out when they first arrived, earning an eye roll from Jaz, who pulled her aside a minute later stating, "I received one once over when I first joined the team." She gave her a slightly terrifying grin. "He hasn't since. I suggest you act early."

At the time, she had laughed, but glancing to the right of her now, she wondered what it was like to date while in a group such as theirs. Preach was married, of course, but the others were all single. Noah had mentioned that there were rumors of Jaz and Dalton having feelings for each other, but she suspected Dalton would never act on them for the sake of his job. Regardless, the last time that the man next to her acted on emotion, he'd landed them into a spiral of Russian spies and a near disaster.

Realizing they must've been speaking to her, as all eyes were on her, she smiled slightly, "What? I can't think?"

"Touché," McG said, giving her a toothy smile. He was a handsome man, if she were honest. Outside of her job, he would probably be her type. There was something about the tall, dark, and handsome stereotype you read about in so many novels. But to act on something like that, especially in their line of work, could get messy.

"We're almost there. About five more minutes," the driver said, and Hannah stiffened. She last saw Ameliah so long ago, so when her name came up the day's previous she was almost sure it had to be because she was dead. The woman was married to a top man in the Taliban, someone who called the shots on many successful attacks on American soldiers in this desert. He wanted to graduate to the American government now, apparently. She knew if Ameliah were to leave she'd be a dead woman, so she stayed with the man and fed information as she could to the American government instead. A dangerous job, regardless, and one she suspected would one day get her killed.

There was a pause in the Humvee, one just long enough to become uncomfortable when a flash of light blinded her and then, at least for a temporary while, nothing.

Hannah woke up to a sharp pain coming from her abdomen. She gasped awake, her mind consciously telling her that something was wrong. Obviously, she reasoned with herself at the absolute agony she felt they had been ambushed, or hit an IED… something. The last thing she remembered was McG and Preach yelling, before the silence. Now, she could smell a fire and she grimaced, trying to gain her bearings.

She was no longer in the Humvee which came as an act of mercy perhaps with it on fire a few feet to her right. Alarm quickly replaced that thought as the realization she wasn't alone slammed her. The pain stopped her from moving, and she looked down to see a round, thin piece of metal sticking out from her right side, just below her ribs. Great. It went all through, where the last piece of it protruded from the small of her back, a clean through and through had it not been, well, you know inside of her.

"Fuck," she mumbled, knowing if she stayed still it would probably hurt less, but she did not see her team anywhere around, though she knew that could possibly be a worse sign. She needed to move. She needed to find Preach, McG, the others… where was her earpiece? It wasn't in her ear anymore; she couldn't get in touch with Noah… she couldn't get help.

Then, Hannah saw a large body collapsed away from her, burrowed in a small ditch, closed in on himself.

"McG," came a hollow voice, one barely above a whisper and unable to be heard against a roaring fire. Angry, she tried again. "McG…"

Hannah hated being weak. She hated knowing that the piece of metal in her abdomen was probably more serious than it looked from the outside (which it looked bad enough already), but the damn medic of the team was down. And she would surely bleed out, or internally, if he was not able to help her. So, she decided in those moments she would crawl her way to him and pray that what she found once she got there was not a fallen hero.