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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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"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.

Yorick follows Sam, because he's bigger and stronger and is running with purpose, which means he might have a plan. Which is more of a plan than Yorick has.

There's a light dancing around Sam's face and they veer to the left. Yorick tries to make out where the light's coming from, if he can see Natalya who will have even more of a plan than Sam, which he looks forward to!

(ooc: Yorick is clearly the most useful member of the group!)

Natalya went up one knee enough to, reaching up, grab Sam's elbow and drag him down into the snow, swinging him by his own momentum around the tree and behind the view of another one.

"Down," she told him, and to Yorick as he came scrambling after, "down."

Sam didn't have to be told twice. He crouched down behind the tree, as much as he could considering his frame and the layers of cold weather gear bulking up around him.

"What the hell just happened?" he asked in a hushed voice, making quick work of catching his breath. The air was cold enough to almost hurt going down, but he took it gladly. He checked their tail to make sure no one was sneaking up on their rear end, shrugging the gun off his shoulder and into a more useful position.

Natalya pushed her goggles up and craned her neck to glance around the tree before she looked back at Yorick and Sam.

"No ideas. I am make struggle, hope to distract long enough for you two make escaping. SAS officer is shoot me in head. We are back in snow." She gripped her rifle hard and dug it into her shoulder, scowling.

"I am never hear any of this type things happening on island. Yorick, you are know what this is?"

Yorick was still trying to take all this in, eyes wide behind his goggles. He gaped stupidly at Natalya for a moment before he got a grip on himself.

"No. Hell, maybe? Which, you know, not fair, I've prayed once or twice."

"No," she said, pressing her back against the tree and closing her eyes, trying to center herself, "is Chechnya. This is happen to me when I am young, before, but what you are doing here with me, the both of you, this is..." She shook her head and her voice dried up.

She felt fine, now, of course. She was unharmed, she was fine, as were they- but the memory of the fear and the dread and the pain from the torture were still fresh. Surreal, but fresh, and she was ashamed to find herself momentarily stopped by it all.

Sam frowned when Natalya told them that she'd been shot in the head. Not out of concern, not directly right now, because at the very least she hadn't had to suffer more. But Sam and Yorick had both been in the middle of doing things. Usually the island had no rhyme or reason. That seemed like something.

"We just came back to the beginning, like--" He nearly choked on cold air when he got it, eyes going wide. The conversation with Neil, Neil who looked like utter shit in his back yard, shaken by what he had gone through, making a startling amount of sense now.

"It's a loop. This has happened before," he asserted, shifting in the snow. "We keep coming back to the beginning, every time, and go through it again. It happened to Neil, and Dean. They just kept living this day of Neil's childhood over and over."

But what that meant for them, and what that meant in terms of getting out of it, Sam didn't know.

Natalya stared at Sam, unmoving, visibly unmoved. A loop. Happening over and over again. She felt a cold sort of panic clench around her heart.

"Nyet," she said hoarsely. "Ny- no. No, this is not- this can no be-" She swallowed hard, gaze darting, icy blue in the reflection of the snow, between them.

"How long of day? How long was loop?"

"Uh..." Sam glanced between the two of them, searching desperately for an answer and having none. "Three, four times? I don't know. I know more than once. Maybe he said a couple? He didn't--"

Shit, he'd been in shock. Traumatized. Sam could see why if this was the sort of thing the island shoved them into. Licking his lips, dry from the icy cold, Sam shook his head. "He didn't want to talk about it."

Natalya was reeling, albeit silently. So the torture wasn't just waiting for her inside that building. She leaned around the tree, craning her neck, watching her comrades slip through the snow, then turned back to Sam and Yorick.

"Go," she told them both. "Run. Go this way, through heavy cover, keep low. Do not look behind of you. Go." She caught Yorick's arm and turned him forcibly, then shoved.

"But--"

But Yorick would have to trust Natalya. As much as he wanted to dive in front of every bullet, leave no man behind and all that, he didn't know what the fuck to do in this place.

For one frozen, aching moment, he missed 355 with every fiber of his being.

He gave a nod, eyes on Natalya, and ran, just like she'd said.

Sam didn't like the plan much either, but the reality of the situation was that it wasn't real. Yeah, this could be a bad choice and it might end badly, but if it did they would just start over. It wasn't as though this would be the last time they would see Natalya.

"You better be right behind," he murmured to her, the only thing he could say in lieu of a touch or a plea. Sam shifted his weapon back again, glanced over his shoulder, and chased after Yorick.