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Natalya stood in the compound kitchen, watching her tea steep and winding her still wet hair into a coil against the back of her head. She slipped three bobby pins into it to hold it there before moving to retrieve a spoon from a drawer. Her hair hadn't been so long in, probably, ten years. Until she'd been recruited, she'd worn it in a straight blond sheaf, all one length, always tucked behind her ears and falling to the small of her back. Then she'd cut it to her chin and kept it there, a sleek bob that worked as well under a helmet as at an important function.

Hair cuts. Those used to happen. She mused on the nature of how mundane her life on the island was compared to how mundane her life in Russia had been, at least in between assignments. In some ways, Russia actually won.

She turned from the drawer to lift her mug and slipped the spoon into the steaming water, metal scraping gently against the porcelain, and when the tip of the spoon hit the bottom of the mug she went blind.

Or she thought she had, for a moment. All she could see was white. She was lying in the snow on a hillside, among drifts and heavily-laden trees. There was a low concrete building half buried in the stuff in the small box canyon below her. Seven figures, barely discernible against the ground in their white snowsuits, white and grey encasements on their guns and flashbombs, moved toward it. For a moment, as her body acclimated with ready ease to the cold and the gear and her hands fitted themselves more comfortably, naturally, against the weight of the rifle that was butted up against her shoulder, that she was completely mad. And then Llyumzhinov stepped on a landmine. The white lit up even more brightly, although the spray of red and black char and the orange-hued smoke that billowed upward quickly tempered the brilliance.

This wasn't happening, this couldn't possibly happening. Two doors of the compound kicked open, and enemy combatants rushed out, the muzzles of their AKs already flashing. The forward four were dropping to their knees and returning fire. She put her eye to the scope, knowing she'd see two go down quickly, recognizing the faces of her first away team as she did. Zacharov, KIA, Demichev, KIA. Eight Spetsnaz versus a militia. There were worse odds.

It became problematic when one factored in the presence of the Special Air Services. Four mercenaries Natalya knew were going to poke their heads out any minute. Three Chechen insurgents came out of an upstairs doorway to lay down fire on her remaining teammates. She shot the first through the eye. She shot the second through his left cheekbone. She shot the third more cleanly through the forehead.

It was as easy as breathing, although breathing, at the moment, felt very, very hard.

As far as dreams went, this was one of the more horrifically vivid she could ever recall. Scanning the rest of her team to take inventory, it became immediately and immensely more so. Faces that should have belonged to two of her fellow Vympel did not. She was so startled she sat back, up into plain sight, before leaning down and refitting the rifle to her shoulder.

Yorick Brown pushed his goggles up onto his forehead, and her stomach lurched.

This absolutely could not be happening.

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The Australian nodded fractionally.

"So you and the other American are hired guns." It was impossible to tell from his tone if he believed them or not.

Natalya wanted to scream. Her fingertips skirted around the floor by her ankles, looking for anything that could act as a weapon. She kept her eyes on the same non-point in front of her.

"Which means we went out of order." He stood back, and flashed Yorick a perfectly friendly, almost apologetic smile. He said something in the language that was not-quite Russian, and two of the Chechnans, not the other English speakers, went to Natalya's cell and raked the door open.

Natalya took a few measured breaths to brace herself for being hauled up by a combination of her elbow, behind her back, which hurt, and the back of her neck. She managed not to stumble as they started her out of the empty wall-less room and toward the chair, which someone was pulling Yorick up out of.

She did glance at Sam then, the first time she'd managed to see his face, and felt another stab of guilt and something deeper, and hotter, closer to shame.

It was like being caught in a damn foreign language film and the subtitles only worked half the time. Sam didn't have a clue what was going on except that they were in very, very deep trouble and Natalya was about to suffer for it. And there was nothing he could do.

He caught Natalya's look and struggled not to scream, hands tightening on the bars like he just might try to rip them from their place. Reason told him that there was nothing he could say either, not that would do any good and keep them out of further trouble. He kicked at the cell door and grit his teeth, a caged animal ready to kill.

The few armed men lounging by Sam's cell started slightly, looking back at him. It took everything Natalya had not to flinch. One of the SAS rubbed the pad of his thumb along the corner of his jaw, the first movement he'd made since joining the group. The Australian acted as though he hadn't noticed Sam's outburst, and dropped to an easy crouch in front of Natalya as someone bent behind her to loop the plastic around her wrists.

She met the Australian's gaze evenly, and after some long moments of silence between the two, he gave a tight, small smile.

"See, this, this is Spetsnaz training," he explained to Yorick and Sam, standing. He reached out and grabbed Natalya's chin and forced her head to the side, to face Sam, as if to present an example.

"See those eyes? Cold as ice. They go through things in training most civilized countries have long since abandoned for being barbarous." He turned her head forward again.

"But you're young, sweetheart, and this isn't going to go well for you." He stepped back and gestured a little. The ex-SAS she had kneed in the face, who still looked sore about it, flicked a knife from his wrist and walked over, pulling her shirt up at one shoulder and starting to saw the sleeve off. He ripped it in half lengthwise and discarded it on the floor, then went to her other side to repeat the process. Once both sleeves were gone, he leaned over her from behind and cut the front of her thermal along the sternum, straight down, about six inches. At the sudden cold, goosebumps spread along her arms.

"Involuntary reactions are a bitch," the Australian said, and she remembered that, he'd said that the first time. A dull and disturbingly nostalgic sort of panic began beating around the inside of her ribcage. She felt sick with dread.

The Second put his knife away and went to stand behind the Chechnan with soldering iron, who took a few steps to kneel by the arm of her chair.

"Who put your operation together?" Every instinct in her body kept her mouth shut.

What does it matter? It doesn't. Tell him. Lie, truth, it doesn't matter. Talking will keep them alive.

"I hate asking the same thing three times," the Australian was murmuring, and then she felt herself turn grey, even as she smelled that distinctive odor that came when human flesh was vaporized. Her arm felt like ice, because the nerve endings in what had previously been the unmarred stretch of skin over her bicep were dead, but the ones around the place where the soldering iron had been drawn in a precise, gently sloping line were still very much intact, and couldn't cope with the amount of pain they were being subjected to.

She made an extremely small, guttural noise, because her throat had constricted, half from her gag reflex kicking in and half from training.

It occurred to her from a distant place of reasoning, that it had been far too long since she was put under this kind of physical duress. Her defenses were in shambles. She wasn't prepared. She needed to regroup to find her voice.

"What is the eta for your backup?" She swallowed down the lump of pain, and looked at him, and then went through it over again because the soldering iron was tracing along the inside of her other arm.

So he wasn't going to let her answer. Well, that was fucking perfect.

"Did whoever assembled your team know about the nuclear element?" the Australian asked, casually indifferent to the rapidity with which her chest was rising and falling, the tension in her throat and stomach. There was not way to manage the pain of a 3rd degree burn. It wasn't something you could train a person to do. She could feel the extremely sensitive skin between her breasts reacting to heat that wasn't touching yet but was getting close enough to blister.

Maybe it was vanity, but something snapped.

She surprised the hell out of herself and several of the interrogators by gasping, wrenching out a "Yes! Yes. Yes. He's dead, the nuclear point is dead." Her throat hurt, and it was a blessing. She could try to focus on that instead of the idea of the skin on her arm turning necrotic. The head was gone from her skin. She could focus on trying to breath.

"Well, and that's progress. Looks like we've gone to the right well. Of course that means the others are extraneous."

Yorick didn't know what the fuck was going on, but he did know that he'd fucked up. What he said was wrong, because he was supposed to be in the chair, not Natalya.

He struggled against the guy trying to shove him back into his cell. "Look, just don't hurt her, she didn't do anything!"

Sam restrained himself from pointing out to Yorick that Natalya had been snipering their men and clearly knew what was going on so, yeah, she did do something, but words would only get them in trouble. Like words showing they cared about Natalya would only end up in her getting tortured more, to make them suffer too. So he saved the comment and just gave Yorick a look he probably missed asking why he was being stupid.

It wasn't like it was easy to watch Natalya getting tortured. The very opposite of easy, it made him want to reach out and grab someone and strangle someone until they changed their minds. Even though he knew that this was Natalya's life and some trick of the island's, Sam felt guilty watching Natalya suffer. Maybe he should have been fighting more, like Yorick only more effectively. Maybe he should have said something, given her some sign to keep her strong. Maybe a hundred different things, but none of them could he do. Sam just had to stand and watch, not turn away though it hurt him to see yet another person he cared about go through outrageous suffering.

Stay strong and plot their demise for later.

The Australian shot Yorick a slightly incredulous look.

"She just murdered seven freedom fighters in cold blood out there. Think that constitutes as something." He said something to one of the Chechnans, casually, as if to confirm. A shadow passed over the man's face and he seemed to jump forward, and managed to strike Natalya across the face with a closed fist before one of his comrades and one of the ex-SAS could grab him by the shoulders and pull him back, with some yelling. Natalya kept her eye closed, not from swelling yet, but to keep blood from pooling in it from the open gash on her forehead.

"Hmm." The Australian dropped to a crouch and caught her chin, bringing her face up and peering into her eye.

"Might have addled something loose, there. You should tell me everything I need to know, sweetheart, before I let these boys take out their aggression on you without my supervision."

"The Americans are not hired guns," she said, struggling to form the words and construct the lies through the pain.

"They are escorts. I invite you to kill them. The retribution will be far more severe than that from my country. Though that will come to you as well."

"Eloquent," he murmured, letting go of her chin. "And when will that retribution be finding its way here."

"It depends on how long I was unconscious," she lied again.

"The emergency beacons on our gear go off if a kill code isn't administered within a cyclical time period." Did that sound like a real thing? She was pretty sure it sounded like a real thing. The Australian seemed to be weighing the possibility of it being true. He straightened up and said something sharply, and a few men headed for the stairs at the end of the room of cells.

"Sit tight," he told her, with no trace of irony, and headed off himself. Natalya watched him go, watched the militia trail him down the hallway some and then loiter at the place the stairs emptied into the hall, next to the door, and linger there. They were still being watched, of course, but now they'd be checking the radios and their radar. It was a reprieve. She didn't gasp but let out a harsh breath as her head collapsed forward, neck either unwilling or unable to hold it up. She might have been shaking. Her body was slipping toward shock, between the untended burns, the concussion and the cold.

"Let this be a dream," she whispered, willing it to be true, so that she could wake up.

Edited 2010-06-05 05:31 (UTC)

Sam cursed under his breath, pressed up to the bars like it might do him some good. But too much noise would just bring the guards back, and breaking things was the only idea in his head just then. Starting preferably with the Australian's face. He needed Natalya to take the lead, tell them what to do, some direction so they could get out of here, take care of her and get some answers.

"Natalya," he hissed in a stage whisper, praying his voice wouldn't travel. "Hold on, come on, what'd you tell them? What do we do?"

Natalya didn't bother trying to lift her head for a moment. She was shivering badly, but under the cold felt leaden. Sam speaking to her did nothing to make her wake up, but seemed to make the situation that much more surreal. After a moment's internal struggle, she opened both of her eyes, dealt with the fact that she was still tied to a chair in a hallway, and turned her head fractionally toward Sam. Her hair slipped down, but she tilted her chin further to the side and it moved from her eyes.

"I am tell them for check beacons on gear. There no are any thing is recognizable as such. They will be back, five minutes, less patient. I..." She swallowed, against a wave of nausea from the pain.

"I am sorry," she said, though it came out a harsh sort of whisper. "I am not know how this... is possible or why you are bring here with me. I am-" Her voice hitched. She couldn't tell if her throat her lungs, were constricted from panic or impending tears, but she was quickly approaching the point of not caring.

"I am so sorry."

"What do we do?" Yorick echoed Sam, pleading in as soft a voice as he could make. They'd have time for apologies later, right now he just needed a way to get them out, and now that the guards had gone he was having a harder time keeping the panic down. This couldn't be like those trips home, none of them he'd heard of had been bad. Not like this. "What can I do, Nat? I don't know how to save you."

"Don't," he told Natalya, shaking his head. The last thing he needed was a tearful apology from her that sounded a lot like goodbye. They needed to keep going, and keep Natalya going if need be.

"It's the island. It's gotta be. Not your fault but we've got to figure out how to get out of this and Yorick and I need you to tell us what to do, Natalya."

Natalya registered the words, and even knew what they were asking, but coming up with a reply seemed as daunting as the actual prospect of escape. Her eyes closed again and she let her head hang, the muscles in her neck and shoulders somewhere between stinging and numb.

"Ten, twelve, fifteen hours, we are... will be rescue team for us. But I was last," she said, gritting her teeth, half to focus and half to stop her voice from giving away the fact that she was fucking crying, tears welling up past her eyelashes and sliding down the sides of her nose to drop silently onto the white snow pants, diluting the blood that had smeared there, before they dropped pinkish hued to the concrete floor.

"Is all different, now. Before when this is happen, I was left in cell for last." She wanted to shake herself out of it. She couldn't.

"We are have no ordinance, we are outnumber many to us, even with those we are take out in exchange, is no..." She shuddered and went quiet.

"Yorick," she said carefully, after a moment, "you would need unlock cell, get weapon in Sam's hands. I am not sure how I, how I can m-make this possibility." She tried to lift her shoulders and bit back a cry. The pain her her arms was excruciating.

Edited 2010-06-20 05:11 (UTC)

"Okay, right, okay," Yorick muttered to himself, trying to ignore the sound of Natalya crying. It was about as unnerving as 355 showing some kind of vulnerability, and he didn't have time to think about it, not right now. "I can do that."

He dropped to the ground, searching with his eyes and palms for something he could use. "I don't have my stuff, fuck," he hissed, "goddamnit...just one bobby pin, something..."

The floor was clean. There was nothing. Fuck all nothing. He stood and walked the length of the cell before realizing he had a belt. It probably wouldn't work, but fuck if he wasn't going to try.

Yorick whipped his belt from the loops and started jiggling the pointy part in the keyhole, closing his eyes in some poor attempt at focusing, hands trembling slightly.

Sam stepped back from the cell door, watching Yorick do his work as he plotted the next step, the part that involved him. Get weapon in Sam's hands. It was their only chance, but slim. Natalya couldn't run, not in her condition. Maybe they could carry her, but they'd need clothes at least to last in the wilderness. And those soldiers would be coming back from checking their gear soon. It was all or nothing.

"Dammit," he muttered under his breath. Ten, twelve, fifteen hours. No way Natalya would last that long at this rate, not if those men came back knowing she'd lied. No, better to go out fighting.

"There's a chance," he said. "There's a chance that if we-- when this is over, we wake up on the island, right?" he said, looking from Natalya to Yorick. "It does this, doesn't it? Sends you home and you're really just sleeping?"

Natalya laughed very softly, head lolling vaguely to one side.

"Maybe the world has ended and this is my punishment for learning my lessons so well. It will be just this, forever." She inhaled deeply through her nose, trying to use the cold to wake herself up. It was hard. Waking up meant hurting, more. She was starting to shake more violently, she knew, but she couldn't feel it.

"You are waiting," she told them, fighting to keep her voice level, eyes half open and fixed on the ceiling.

"Wait until they are take me in other room. They will want for your imaginations doing their works, will not want you see what they are do to me, only hear. Wait. When you are certain you can... can for get weapon, when you are take it, go straight way we are approach building from. Go in woods. You must do this, or sniper will catch you against snow. C-commanding control, they will look, will... rescue you. You must keep. Moving," she emphasized harshly, "or you will else be freezing and die."

There was just one problem with all of that. Yorick couldn't pick the lock. He tried until his fingers were numb, but it just wasn't working. The bit of belt was too thick, or...it just, of course it wasn't going to work.

"Fuck. I can't. Look around, see if there's...god, I just need a fucking bobby pin, anything!"

Why couldn't this be Sam's nightmare? Then they would have had handy lock picking tools. Frustrated, Sam wrapped his hands around the bars of his cell again, pushing and pulling, not to attract attention but to test for weak spots, vainly hoping for a way to force himself out.

"Maybe we just grab them," Sam suggested. "Wait until one comes over, turns his back, grab them through the bars. Someone must have something on them we can use to pick it."

"If you are grab through bars," Natalya murmured, head hanging again because it was starting to feel heavy, and she was starting to feel sort of cold and slow, "you will need holding at throat with back at you and use guards hand for shoot others. They will no hesitate for kill boths of you... in... if you are..." She blinked slowly.

"...Shit. I'm going into shock." She'd thought she was there already.

"Guns is first unless you are pick pockets." There was movement at the end of the hall, the sound of a door closing and the tell tale glow of wintry daylight appearing briefly. Natalya didn't bother lifting her head.

"And now I am have some explaining to do," she mumbled.

Yorick feels frozen with fear seeing Natalya like that. He can't dwell, won't let himself when the guards return. He pushes past the feeling of rising bile and shaky nerves and uses every ounce of well-practiced skill to pick-pocket the poor fuck who's stopped in front of his cell, back to him.

Just let this work...

Sam cast a wary glance Yorick's way. His own skills as a pick-pocket were minimal, which meant he had to rely totally on Yorick now, a guy he had only spoken to once, and be ready for pretty much anything, which included very dangerous men trying to kill him.

Grab a guy and use him as a human shield though. Buy Yorick time. That he could do. He just had to trust Yorick.

Fuck, they were screwed.

Two Chechnyans hauled Natalya out of the chair as the SAS with the broken nose strode toward them down the hall. He stopped in her font her, struck her across the face with the back of his hand, then curled it into an easy fist and punched hit her again, snapping her head down and forward.

"End of the hall," he told the two keeping Natalya on her feet. He caught her hair and pulled up so he could look her in the eye for a moment.

"Not a bad gamble, sweetheart, but hardly worth what I'm going to do to you, now." He shoved her head down again as they dragged her down the hall, away from Yorick and Sam. Natalya turned her head, tried to get a level look at Yorick to somehow convey that he needed to be patient, and just wait, and be smart, but seeing the movement the SAS reached out, grabbed her upper arm so his fingers landed where the skin was the most traumatized, and squeezed. She screamed.

It hurt.

The world blurred and dimmed with the sudden onslaught of pain and her knees gave out. It didn't slow their progress. A door was kicked open at the end of the hall- there was the door to the outside, the stairs up, and another door that she only remembered vaguely. She hadn't gone through it the first time. She was going to go through it now.

Natalya tried to find her feet, to turn and look back at Yorick and same, but they jerked her forward and shoved her, struggling, into the small concrete room. She knew with absolute certainty that she was going to die, but the chiefest concern then became- how the hell were Yorick and Sam going to make it out alive?

She leaned heavily against the wall, and tried to listen through the ringing in her ears for sounds of a struggle down the hall. The ex-SAS officer was in her field of vision suddenly, and she reacted. She focused, tried to think about shutting down all the pain receptors in her brain, tried to think of the armor under skin, the armor of her training that had, once, been stronger than almost anything else in her arsenal.

Almost.

She surged forward, driving her body into him and knocking him against the concrete wall, and started in on him with every angle she could use, her knees and elbows and skull. There were hands on her, pulling her back, and she lashed out at those too. She was hurt, badly, and it wasn't the most graceful assault she'd ever launched, but goddamnit if she could pull off enough of a distraction to give the two men in the cells down the hall the chance of getting out, it didn't matter.

There was a distinctive click and she whipped around, bringing her knee up to knock the pistol out of the Checnyan's hand, and there was another click and the ex-SAS officer had raised his sidearm.

She'd been shot before, lots of times, but never at point blank range. The bullet struck her and she almost felt it, for a moment, felt a tiny spot of cold against her forehead, and then everything went white.

She was lying in the snow on a hillside, among drifts and heavily-laden trees. There was a low concrete building half buried in the stuff in the small box canyon below her. Seven figures, barely discernible against the ground in their white snowsuits, white and grey encasements on their guns and flashbombs, moved toward it.

"....schto?!" she hissed, recoiling and looking around at the pristine wintry landscape. She looked back down.

How how how how how?

Without thinking, she jumped up and ran, crouched, rifle held in close to her, to a rock outcrop some ways down and all but threw herself down the hill toward the tree cover behind where Sam and Yorick were flanking the rest of the platoon.

Edited 2010-07-27 00:15 (UTC)

Sam stood rooted to the spot, unmoving despite the fact that he had been almost frantically moving two seconds before. The cold hit his face like a slap, the sharp scent of gun smoke in the air. He knew where they were now, but his mind refused to accept the logical answer because it was so illogical. They were not back where they started from. They just couldn't be. It didn't make sense.

And yet, when Sam did start moving again, he chose to act in a manner befitting someone who was learning from past mistakes. He tried for the exact opposite of what they'd done before. Sam shouldered his gun and took quick steps backwards in the snow. "Run," he told Yorick, then spun around and did just that.

One minute Yorick's inside, trying not to freak the fuck out, and the next he's outside. The cold is like a jolt to his very bones, and he can only stand and stare at first in dumbfounded horror.

He lifts a hand, turning it this way and that as though the glove that's suddenly on it will cease to exist. It doesn't, and the only thing that breaks him out of his stupor is Sam.

"I--"

Yorick runs, gripping his gun like a life vessel.

"What the fuck?" he hisses into the wind. "Where's Nat? What the fuck?"

Natalya scrambled for cover behind the sparse beginning of the copse of trees the minefield was next to and peered her head around, rifle at the ready.

Two members of the unit were running away.

"Thank God," she murmured, pulled a small slip of a reflective mirror out her kit and knelt, angling her arm uncomfortably out into the light to try and catch it across Sam's eyes. She didn't bother to be careful, there were no snipers on their position, but in a moment the rest of the team would notice two were missing.

She hoped. If they didn't, in another moment, there would be the tell-tale explosion of a Spetsnaz officer stepping on a land mine.

It was all snow. All fucking snow and snow covered trees. The light danced off the particles of ice like crystals, sparkling and hiding God only knew what in deep drifts. Sam squinted against it but didn't know why; he was running blind even if he could see with his eyes. This was as stupid and ill-planned as going down with the Spetsnaz team had been, but they knew what happened that way. That way simply wasn't an option.

Something flashed across Sam's line of vision, making his long strides falter briefly. Stuck in panic mode, his mind couldn't process what had happened until the patch of light streaked across his vision again. Someone was signaling. It sure as fuck wasn't the enemy. He slid as he angled towards the light, his foot sinking into the snow, but kept himself upright as he started in the direction of what he hoped was Natalya, waving his arm to tell Yorick he should change course, too.