A/N: Wow! Thanks for the alerts, favorites, and reviews! It's great to read all of them, they really brighten my day!

Thank you, Maira Panda, for pointing out my mistake in the last chapter!

Disclaimer: I don't own NCIS:LA or its characters. They belong to Shane Brennan.

Sam Hanna

10. When he was a kid, he wanted to be a doctor. He didn't think he was cut out for a cop's life. He was a good kid, smart, shy, almost. He didn't like loud noises and guns weren't all that interesting.

But his dad was a soldier. His dad was a hero, and he went off and fought in a war and he got himself killed, and Sam, the dutiful son, followed in his dad's footsteps and made his ma proud.

He was a good soldier, and then a good agent. But he still dreamed, sometimes, of being Dr. Sam Hanna, M.D.

9. He prefers Arabic to English. It was harder to learn (age factor and all that) but Arabic is easier than English—it's faster, more fluid, more straightforward.

Arabic, much like Sam himself, doesn't bullshit. It says what needs to be said, and then it insults your mother just for kicks.

(8.5. Okay, well the insult-your-mother part is mostly Sam. He can't help it, really.)

8. He didn't resign from the SEALs. He was honorably discharged, because the Navy didn't want to be associated with someone like him, after what he did in Somalia.

7. He also didn't want to join NCIS. He was perfectly content to drink himself blind, thank you very much, and wallow in anger and self-pity.

But then a tiny little woman who may or may not control the known universe showed up at his favorite bar and somewhere between the sixth and the eleventh drink, she hired him and he passed out and woke up in the bullpen the next morning.

6. His first impression of Callen is that the man would make an awful SEAL. He's wild and irresponsible and doesn't know how to play teammate to save his scrawny ass.

Four years later, he loves the guy to death, but Callen would still make an awful SEAL, and that doesn't sit quite right with him, not at all.

5. His greatest fear is being left alone. Maybe it's childhood trauma, what with his dad and all, but he wakes up at night panting and sweating and aching and he's got to drive around L.A., to his team's apartments, to check that they're alive and dreaming happily.

He finds them alive, always, and he sits in the dark, watching them protectively.

(4.5. He knows they see him, too, and he's extremely grateful that no one ever talks about it. They all have their neuroses, and they all put up with each other's.)

4. He worries about Deeks, more than he should. Maybe it's because he lost Dom and Mo so soon after each other, but he worries about the cop incessantly, because really the boy has no self-control at all—he runs his mouth, sticks his nose into everything, and generally paints a great big target on his back that says "shoot me!" He's not even like Callen, who also does all these things but can take care of himself. He just does and doesn't think, and Sam quickly loses count of how many times he saves that floppy blonde head.

Sam thinks that maybe this is what parenthood feels like.

3. He will always, always blame himself for Mo. Logically, he knows it's not his fault. Mo got himself involved with terrorists. Mo made the deal that, ultimately, got him killed.

But Sam killed Mo's father, and if it wasn't for that maybe he'd be alive in Somalia, the leader of his village, or at school somewhere, becoming a doctor or a lawyer or something more than a former terrorist, more than a child killed to early, left hanging like a piece of cut beef.

He carries this knowledge to his grave.

2. He lives to be eighty-three.

This is nearly twice as long as Callen, five years longer than Deeks, and two years longer than Kensi. He is alone, the grizzled old veteran that no one visits at the nursing home. He doesn't have any family—he never married, never had kids, and Eric and Nell live too far away now to come and see him often.

He makes it to eighty-three and his heart, weakened, finally gives out in his sleep during the spring. That night, he dreams of Deeks and Kensi, Hetty and Nate.

And Callen smiles big and wide, and offers Sam his hand.

1. Sam Hanna dies smiling.

Thanks for reading!

-Blue