[Sarah]

xxxZ E L D A
─────────────────── [ #000000 Reader Character ] ─

“Hey Aaron, it’s me. You knew that. Listen I know you hate when I leave you messages like this, but something’s come up in the Australian office and I gotta catch the first flight out. I won’t have cell service for a few days. Three days max. I’ll call you the first chance I get,” you paused for a heartbeat, “I love you,” you said before you hung up. Mark, your handler, held out his hand for the phone. You gave it to him, grabbed your bag from him, and loaded onto the plane.

[Sarah]

Aaron had left that morning with his team. You couldn’t remember exactly where he was off to but that wasn’t incredibly important now.

Maybe it was important.

Electricity crackled. They knew you were awake. You lolled your head and tried to open your eyes. They gave you the time to do so. It was polite how they wanted you to experience your torture at full tilt. “Where’d you take her?” the man asked - again. You gave him a look that you hoped conveyed what you wanted to say. Wasn’t he tired of asking that question?

[Sarah]

Apparently not. The live wire was pressed into the flesh of your lower stomach and you didn’t have the capacity to scream. Your body convulsed and the feeling of active electricity against your skin did not turn into anything new or exciting. When it was over you could hear yourself making noise - it didn’t mean anything - nor did the tears running down your cheeks. You hadn’t answered their question not because you hadn’t broken yet, but because you didn’t know the answer.

[Sarah]

The design of smuggling the women out of the country was to make sure no one knew where they were going. As few people knew as possible. You were out of the loop. However, you were a better actor than you gave yourself credit for because the families had not stopped to think such information would be withheld from you. Your acting was the only thing keeping you alive.

How long had they done this for? Where had Aaron gone that morning? Had he gone anywhere? You were alone in your cement cell and you had time to think. He hadn’t had a case, but his phone had been off. You remembered he was a grown man and could be wherever he liked without a tracker. You also remembered he’d told you… something.

[Sarah]

Aaron had told you something and you could not, almost literally, for the life of you remember what it was. Okay. How long had you been captured? Two weeks at least. You could remember two weeks of time passing but once they set you up with their torture schedule time had been harder to track.

There was commotion outside. Something far off and not uncommon. Your head jerked up painfully anyway. They might’ve broken you to spilling secrets you don’t have, but you did still have hope. Your handler would know you were missing, the whole damn company would, and by this point Aaron would know as well. He’d know where to go. He’d know what to ask. For the first time since your mission had gone south you smiled. If no one else was coming for you Aaron was.

[Sarah]

The loud sounds that had filtered in unwarranted had died down and you were reminded of your predicament. They’d strung you up, so your arms were stretched above you enough that you had to stand on your toes to breathe. Your moment of hope was devoured, and you were left weak after an intense session of being electrocuted and artistically cut. You sank, stopped breathing, passed out, and when the evidence of it showed on the monitors the guard outside your door got you down and chained you to the floor. You could’ve woken quickly after your oxygen was returned but you didn’t.

[Sarah]

“Get up!” the order was barked sharply, and you startled awake. “Up. Now. Grab her,” the man in charge said. You’d not seen him before. You eyed him as your torturers – the men you’d gotten to know well – unchained you from the floor and carried you out. You were too injured to walk and too weak to fight. Even though you did want to fight.

“What’s going on?” you asked. The words surprised you especially since they’d come out of your mouth. Your voice was hoarse and quiet from the prolonged screaming and then electrical currents that’d played with every system in your body. The man leading you stopped, turned on you, thought better of it, and turned around again to continue walking. He picked up his pace.

[Sarah]

Okay… whatever was going on had to do with you. Whatever was going on had to do with you. Your heart soared so violently you thought you might choke on it. Hope, the dumb bitch, was giving you life. You weren’t about to waste it, even if it was going to be a waste. Two months? Your mission had not failed on its first day. You just hadn’t been able to contact Aaron like you’d told him you would. That meant, to him, you’d been missing for two months. Longer than two months if you took the foggy bits of the torture into account.

[Sarah]

Gunshots rippled in the air. The people escorting you out of the maze of the building didn’t even flinch. The man leading you all didn’t appear to be surprised at this turn of events. Had they been expecting this to come? You imagined they were prepared to defend themselves, but you wondered if their reaction now was from training or foresight. They’d had an eerie foresight about where and when you’d be vulnerable. This group hadn’t even been the one you were after.

[Sarah]

You barely heard the crack over the rest of the gunfire and shouting. You’d always suspected the walls weren’t really made from concrete and this was your answer. The plaster blew in and took the leader’s head with it. A bullet. You struggled to remember anyone with sniper training. Although with the amount of gunfire you were hearing the entire cavalry had been brought in for your rescue. You hoped that was the case anyway. It would be all to easy for your capture and this firefight to be unrelated.

[Pet Found]

[Sarah]

xxxA A R O N
─────────────────── [ #000000 Team Leader ] ─

Australian office… Zelda never made his life easy. He knew what she was, of course, and they’d come up with a code early on in case anything like this ever happened. He’d marched into Langley when he hadn’t heard from her in a week. Admittedly he’d tried to go in on the third day after Zelda left because she hadn’t called. She always called. His team had assured him it was too early to take action, but he knew a few of them had gone on to try and find her themselves.

[Sarah]

His first entrance to Langley had been fruitless. They’d pushed him out before he could get an accurate read on the room. Her handler, Mark, had not seemed overly upset. Aaron assumed they were in contact and let go of his worries the best he could. Something about her not contacting him had him on an edge he couldn’t step away from. If anything happened there’d be hell to pay. He’d expose their coverup before they could blink.

[Sarah]

Almost four months later he found himself deep in the desert. It had taken a month without contact before her superiors had even considered she might be a lost asset. Mark had given him the news only because the man didn’t want to see Zelda buried in the desert. Everyone thought she was dead.

When Aaron’s assets had come back to him with footage of a compound and a very blurry picture of last known contact with Zelda everyone had been surprised.

[Sarah]

He’d decided he wasn’t going to wait around to identify her body, and his team, bless them, agreed to follow him into the unknown. The desert was not any of their favorite places, but they put up with it for the sake of his wife. They knew the coordinates of the compound, yet they knew little more. Few numbers had been taken on the hostiles within. Those that had gathered the intel could not risk entering the building so any floorplans were best guess.

[Sarah]

A smattering of her associates came with him. They were useful. They knew the local languages better than he and his team, and they knew how to maneuver in a way that drew absolutely no attention. They knew how to better the sparse intel they’d been given, and they knew how to plan a break in that would result in a successful break out. It was only a week, granted a week Aaron didn’t want to spend, before everyone was feeling confident about finding Zelda.