tagging: @tyler-t0t (this is why I didn't go to bed until 4 lol)
trigger warnings: mentions of torture and being left for dead.
~
"No mercy for traitors." was what Ghost snarled at you as he helped Soap push you off the boat.
Arms tied behind your back, legs tied together with a large cinderblock weighing them down, a bag shoved over your head, you were plunged into whatever body of water they dragged you out on a boat to.
Thing is, you weren't a traitor.
Far from it, actually.
You caught wind of something that they didn't. You brought it up-mentioned how the new medic wasn't fully fledged and flighted; they didn't even know how to properly stitch up wounds.
You were ignored.
Just for being the youngest.
The only female on the team.
Just because they didn't like the idea of you to begin with.
Perfect plan, actually. Initiate a new member to the Task Force, add in a new apprentice medic, and slowly turn the tables.
When they got the information and found out that vital safe houses were destroyed and supply chains were disrupted, they were very quick to point fingers.
Not on the 'golden child' of a medic who could seem to do no wrong, no, on you.
Didn't matter that you'd barely been back for a few hours from a separate mission where you were solo. Of course.
Grabbing the wet bag from your face, you gasped in the salty air, realizing that they'd dropped you several miles offshore of some sort of coastal town. You could faintly see the lights, and thankfully, see the circling light of the lighthouse.
Better get to swimming.
Pulling off your tactical vest and starting to pull off any unessential parts of your outfit that was weighing you down, you started swimming back to shore.
Thankfully, they hadn't dropped you closer to the poles, otherwise you would've been dead from the shock and hypothermia within minutes. A small mercy.
Starting towards shore, you started to go over a checklist in your head of everything that went wrong. How you were set up. What evidence you could show, and at this point, there sure wasn't a hell of a lot.
Didn't help that the traitor was on the boat that dropped you off. You could still hear their voice, clear as day. And what they said shook you to your core, because it meant that they knew. They knew that you knew all along.
"Night night, butterfly."
One of the photos you had seen while you were trying to dig up anything you could find on this medic led you to another photo, of a member of the Russian KGB. They had a very distinctive butterfly tattoo on the left side of their lower torso. A monarch.
And what did you see when the medic was stitching you up horribly? His shirt lifted just enough to see that tattoo. You could've sworn he caught you staring, but you dismissed it too easily.
Bad mistake.
Grabbing fistfulls of wet sand, you dug your hands in, using the last of your strength to pull your body up onto the shore, away from the waves.
You barely remember what happened next, but you woke up in some sort of brick building. Lying on a bed in front of a fireplace that was almost stifling with heat, you groaned faintly and that caught the attention of a man sitting in a chair just out of your sight.
"You're alive!"
"....barely." Your voice hoarse from swallowing so much saltwater.
"Don't speak, sit up carefully and drink this."
Carefully sitting up, you realized you were naked underneath the blankets-where there seemed to be at least six piled on you-and an IV in your arm. Hooked up to an actual IV pole, with several bags of empty saline and blood. The man handed you a warm mug with a tea bag in it, and you took a tentative sniff.
"If I wanted to kill you, I would've already."
You nodded in agreement.
In the mug was a mixture of bitter tea with a good amount of honey, enough that it helped soften your throat for you to be able to speak.
"You drag me out? Put in IV? Clothes?" Quick, to the point. You barely had energy to stay conscious, let alone form words.
He nodded as he took the now empty mug from you and went about to refilling it.
"Dragged you off the beach. You were blue and shivering so I took your clothes off - They are hanging outside to dry." You took a second to look around the room again and noticed your boots by the fireplace, soles taken out and laces completely undone.
As if he had practice with doing this sort of thing.
"I used to be a medic in the wars, yet now I just tend to this here lighthouse, and rescue people who get washed up on shore, apparently."
Handing the now piping-hot mug back to you, he dragged the chair into your eyesight near the foot of the bed.
"Tell me what happened."
Considering how weak you knew you were and how exhausted you felt, you decided to tell him everything. To the task force, you were technically dead, so nothing really mattered at this point. Except killing the actual fucker who did this to you.
It took several days until you were able to be steady on your feet again and recover from the majority of your injuries. They tortured you for a bit before Price gave the order to toss you into the sea, and your ribs were still crying out from that.
The man said you were crying in your sleep. You didn't doubt it.
You helped him cook and clean, in turn he patched you up. He took out the old stitches from the fake medic and cussed them out the entire time he did so.
"Fucker knew what he was doing. Meant to make it get infected and scar...."
"Then blame everything on me while I was delirious and in the medbay. Plant my room."
"He did. That's why you're here, hun."
You nodded solemnly. You weren't ever given a chance to explain yourself; it was if they were happy to finally torture you.
Two weeks later you were saying your goodbyes to the man, who you now came to know as Cian. (Kee-an)
He told you to visit anytime, especially after what you were planning on doing.
"Go kick some ass."
You were in more common clothes, a black shirt, a pair of beat-up jeans and sneakers, with an old baseball cap of Cian's that he put on your head just before you left that looked like it'd seen better years decades ago.
You took off. Into the village, you got a ride to the nearest city with a embassy. And a friend.
Said friend, known only as 'Miriam' was very excited yet also extremely confused to see you.
You'd been reported dead two months ago. It was across all networks of agencies that dealt with taskforces or things that were supposed to remain quiet.
It was odd, as you had only been at the lighthouse for a little under a month, and then it hit. The torturing.
They kept you in a windowless room for over a fucking month.
Pulling nails, cutting into your skin, burning cigarettes and cigars into your stomach and arms. Whipping your back and then pouring seawater onto the fresh marks, making you take 'truth' serums that after you didn't tell them what they wanted, said were fake and didn't work. (They did, you were telling the truth...just not the one they wanted to hear. One you didn't know.)
Miriam promised she wouldn't tell anyone you were alive and gave you a new code name to use. Baba Yaga.
The boogeyman.
Fitting, as you were about to become the task force's worst nightmare.
It took months to track them town. They were good, clever. But you ran with them for two years, and you knew how they worked and operated. Knew where they'd likely be stationed at.
And you were right.
Port of Spain. They were in a small military camp with high fenced walls topped with barbwire, well-armed troops with dogs, timely reactions to threats. It was almost laughable how easily you were able to slip though the defenses.
Dressed as one of the guards, you joined a rotation where you would be patrolling the outside of the fence for four hours and then switch to inside for the next four, before being switched out. It was easy to make friends with the guards, chatting in the local dialect of Spanish that you'd perfected over the course of a week. Picking up on local slang and various shops and restaurants with history around town, you were easily added into the folds. Becoming chummy with a Lieutenant, even.
That led you into said Lieutenant's quarters that night, right next to the warehouse where you've caught sight of the traitor along with your old team. Price stepping out for a smoke break with Ghost. Gaz talking shit with Soap. It all felt...normal. But you knew that it wasn't.
You had been secretly gathering evidence again the traitor for months. Photos, videos, papers, texts, everything. It laid out exactly what happened, and how you were (supposedly) killed as the traitor, when all along, it was the fucking medic.
One night, you saw the medic laughing with them at a local bar, in your spot, right between Soap and Gaz. You had enough.
You took the file and set it on the main table in the room where they were gathering intel on their next target, noted by a half-burnt cigar and some timers for a bomb you knew Soap was building.
You also might've paid the waiter handsomely to slip something in everyone's drinks. Not enough to drug, but enough to become pliable. And you laid your trap.
They came stumbling into the warehouse later that night, while you sat in the rafters. Dressed in your old boots and now dyed-black kit, you pulled a black balaclava to cover your face from the nose down.
Watching. Waiting.
As the doors closed behind them, they didn't notice as they locked. Or that all of the doors to the warehouse were locked and barricaded. No way out. At least, not easily.
Price saw the folder first. Confused, he opened it and sobered up real quick. Spreading the pictures, printed messages and screenshots, and lastly a flash drive onto the table.
Ghost took it and hesitantly put it into the computer.
Big mistake.
The screen flickered once, then it emitted a high-pitched noise before it shattered, plunging them into darkness.
Shouting ensued, and you dropped the smoke cans.
Even with them grabbing their flashlights, it did nothing with the smoke flooding the building,
They called out to each other, and soon enough gathered with their backs to the table, handguns and flashlights drawn. They didn't realize they were missing someone vital, however.
After two minutes the smoke mostly cleared and the emergency generator kicked on, flooding the building with blinding light.
You anticipated that, they didn't. Fools.
You stood facing towards them as the smoke cleared, with an arm around the neck of the fake-medic. He was grabbing at your arm fitfully, yet he was already turning pale.
"Let him go!" rang Ghost's voice as he spotted you.
"Wait," Price started, squinting at you before turning pale himself.
"It's her-"
"It can't be-"
"She's supposed to be dead-"
You shouted, voice cutting through the chaos.
"ENOUGH!"
You pulled your handgun and aimed the muzzle at the traitor's head.
Everyone stared at you, eyes wide.
"You wouldn't kill him-" Soap started.
You nodded towards the table. "Check those papers again."
They took a second to look back down at the table and finally came to the same idea.
"You didn't betray us."
"Never did. But you all were all too happy to tie me up and started pulling my molars out."
Ghost winced. You had barely seen this man flinch, yet now he seemed to be physically regretting everything that was done to you.
"Put him down, I'm sure we can come to some sort of agreement, right?" Price was trying to bargain. They needed the traitor for information. That they'll never get.
You laughed dryly as you clicked the safety off the gun.
"You already made it perfectly clear where you stand."
