When Jake meets a woman at the Hard Deck, the last thing he expects is for her to be a Navy Seal. And not just any Seal, the Commander of Seal Team 3. She's beautiful, smart, dangerous, and everything about her just makes him want to get close. Her...
Warnings: mentions of death, mentions of torture (not described), blood, dissassociation, mention of injuries sustained by torture (very briefly glossed over ie. mentions of cuts, bruises, broken bone), fluffy bits, flashbacks (marked in italics)
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Bear closed her eyes, tuning out the sounds of fist on flesh echoing through the little cell. Starbursts of pain splintered through her exhausted body, the fight trying to leave her with every screamed word in Urdu, every fist that was thrown, and every kick that landed against her already battered body.
Her gear had been stripped from her, discarded somewhere in the desert, leaving her in just her undershirt and pants. All her weapons were gone. Even the non-weapons that she could have used had been taken. Her belt had been used against her, she had open wounds to prove that. Her boot laces were also gone, having been shredded and thrown on the floor in front of her. She was defenseless, left hanging from her arms, toes just touching the now blood-spattered floor.
Bear was trapped. There were no two ways about it. Since her sacrifice for her team and Jake, she had been here, enduring the fists and curses of enemies that she had sworn to destroy. That sacrifice was 16 days ago. Five days ago, she had turned one of her boot laces into a garrotte, killing three men, before getting not quite a kilometer away. She had been hauled back by her hair, body bruised and scraped by the sand, being dropped in front of the man who had taken charge. He had been disorganized since the start, temper balancing on the edge of a knife.
He had screamed at her. Berating her. And thanks to the limited Urdu she knew, all Bear could figure out was that his boss was dead, and that she would tell them who did it. However, she had put the final bullet in their missing leader's body as she and her team burst through the doors of the bunker in the basement of al-Hameed's compound days ago. Not that she was going to tell him that. All she had said was her service number, over and over and over. 175-66-23. It had become a mantra that she repeated, frustrating him even more.
But her team. Shit. Was her team okay? Had they made it back after she blacked out? Had Jake survived? The only reason she was here was because he needed her to buy them time. God, if Jake was gone... no. NO! She couldn't think like that. Not here, not now. "Think Bear," she urged mentally, eyes seeing the knife that had been dug out from somewhere. "Think about Jake. What about that one night?"
Distantly, she felt the red-hot pain, but mentally, Bear was back in her office, pouring over files.
There was a knock at her door, making her glance up. It was late. Damn near 2100, everyone had gone home. So who was this? "Come in!" She called out, closing her folder.
The door opened and it was Jake, holding something? "Hey Teddy, hope I didn't disturb you."
She shook her head, smiling at him. "You didn't. Why are you here, it's late."
"You're still here," he countered, smirking at her as he leaned against the doorframe. "But I brought dinner. Figured you hadn't eaten yet because you are in the same position I saw you in before I left."
