Into the Fire

by UltraVioletSoul

Paris, March of 1978. Corinne Lafleur is a simple school teacher who meets Alex Mason in rather unconventional circumstances. After a peaceful evening in a café turns into a nightmare, she only wants answers from him. The only thing that Mason wants is to fulfill one last request of an old friend, whom everyone thought to be dead— or is he? Eventual MasonxOC. DISCONTINUED.

1. If We Ever Meet Again

A/N:

This is my first CoD fanfic, and no… I won't tell you to go easy on me. In fact, flames are welcomed since I am not new to the world of fan fiction so, if you have something bad to say, please do. I think I am mature enough to stand harsh criticism, so I don't care what you say as long as you review (?)

I've found myself inspired on a fic about Soap MacTavish called 'Sour Cherry', by brenda macia, which is unbelievable wonderful! I'm still waiting for the authoress to update it ; A ; if you ever read this, Brenda, I beg of you: DO ME SOME JUSTICE AND UPDATE! (end of pointless rambling).

But even though my inner fangirl dies for Soap, I decided to write something for Mason because I think he never gets enough love as MacTavish does :(

I already know that this piece of whatever you want to call it might not be good to the eyes of diehard Call of Duty fans, but still I wanted to post it for a potential reader who could enjoy it, regardless of others that may not (hey, I cannot please everyone, can I?).

I've been playing Black OPS and, to be honest, I really like the game. Being one that has been following the series ever since CoD2, I think Treyarch is doing a decent work with the series so far. I'd like to point out that this originally was written in second person for Lunaescence, but since reader inserts are not allowed in this site, I had to change it to a third person point of view (I really do hate first person stories… don't ask me why) so it doesn't infringe the rules.

This fic was somehow inspired on… ahem, the Jason Bourne films (or, at least, tried! ; A ;), and is sort of an AU since it doesn't follow the storyline to a T (and Mason still works for the CIA in Black OPS II).

Forgive my strange English and crappy grammar. Some mistakes have surely fallen through the cracks… and I apologize for that.

Hope you enjoy (or hate?)

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DISCLAIMER:

I do not own Alex Mason or Black OPS, as they all belong to Activision and Treyarch. All I own is this lame plot I came up with.

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WARNINGS:

AU, possible OOC-ness and OC. THE STORY DOES NOT MAKE ANY SENSE SINCE IT JUMPS AROUND IN TIME A LOT (like the Black OPS game, I guess)… and I expect hate :)

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IMPORTANT NOTE:

The date at the beginning has been changed from 1979 to 1978. I realized I've made a big mistake by overlooking some important facts, so I tried to correct that :(

You'll understand why in later chapters, though I have the feeling some of you are suspecting the reason why I did this.

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Chapter I

[REDACTED] The Sanctuary

[REDACTED] Mason [REDACTED] August 25th, 1978

I.

"So… it is unlikely that we'll see again, right?" The young brunette had asked, trying to hide the hurt in her voice as she stared at the grass covered in crystal dew beneath her bare feet. The morning breeze softly hit against her weary face as the light rays of the rising sun started to warm her once cool skin. Still, she rubbed her forearms after a feeble quiver made its way through the muscles of her body at seeing the man that stood in front of her wearing an impassive gaze.

"Probably." His husky voice answered as if nothing and she felt her heart sink further into the depths of misery at his words. A painful knot had begun to form in her frail throat, and all that she had wanted to do was sprinting to his arms and cry to her heart's content in the break of dawn. But she just stood there, doing nothing to keep the man she loved from leaving for, no mattered how hard she tried, it seemed she was not able to move an inch from her spot in the field. And even though the voice in her head screamed for him to show some kind of compassion, deep down she knew that he was only trying to make things easier for them both by not getting her hopes high.

This was merely him being himself. Truth was, she had never thought of Alex Mason as the romantic type and, being honest, she would find it odd if he told her one of those cheesy lines the girls she had known back at home so enthusiastically went crazy about. If he had been one, it certainly was way long before she was even brought to this world; perhaps when he was a youngster, hunting elk and grizzlies with his father in the wilderness of a freezing Alaska. He used to tell her he was the youngest marksman in the history of marksmanship competition, and seemed to be quite proud of it when he related her stories on how he became a Wimbledon Cup winner with only twenty-three years of age, while smoking a Pal Mall cigarette during one of those long nights that neither of them were able to sleep.

And she merely sat there, by his side, attentively listening to him, utterly and helplessly engrossed in his narratives and anecdotes; laughing like a kid at some of them; holding a respectful silence in others and, finally, giving him an understanding look when he tacitly meant that sometimes remembering was too much for him to take. The migraines still persisted, and were as painful as the first day. He often told her they felt like needles prickling on his susceptible brain, and the only thing he could see was a red monster swallowing him whole in a void of blood and hallucinations that would not leave him alone.

One of those nights, while she was with him trying to warm her body next to the fire in the chimney of the bedroom, she asked him what happened in Vorkuta and who Reznov was. He simply fell silent and gave her a disturbingly aggravated stare from his spot on the comfortable wooden chair as if debating whether to share such a private memory with her or not, and the young woman thickly swallowed at the sudden change of mood. She had asked too soon; she had asked in the wrong time. How fool she was for thinking his trust was unconditional to her. He still considered this world was a place of lies and deceits, and who could blame him for it. If there was one thing she had learned during her time with him was to never believe in everything you thought you knew— even with proof, sometimes you still needed to doubt. What you think happened, in the end turns out to be a chain of lies created to convince you into doing their bidding, and was no different from a brainwashing that wanted to destroy any chance at getting close to the truth.

"You don't have to know." He finally decided, getting up from his seat, and she knew she had crossed the line this time; he had directly let her know she was not allowed to disturb those dark waters of his mind. He did not like to talk about it, did not want to. She would never understand what the feeling of being forgotten, betrayed, and abandoned felt like, after all. "You'd better go to sleep. Tomorrow will be a busy day."

Once he said he had failed those dear to him so many times, and that so many chances for him to redeem himself were irrationally wasted during his life without thinking of the consequences that would bite at his conscience afterwards. Many times he had wondered if things would have been different had he done things right. If only he had been there for his sister Marion when her first child was born; if only he had seen his Mother before she passed away to a better life; if only she had not thought it was okay for him to not be there for her until her last breath because he was a hero, it would have been easier for him to think he was not at fault; if only he had tried to save his relationship with his family instead of letting the hidden fears the ghosts of Vorkuta had left, and his strong drive of finding and terminate Dragovich and his minions, destroy what was left of the man Alex Mason had once been.

If there was something Dot was right about, it was that his son had died… he had died in that damned Gulag.

People change; the horrors they see and live turn them into something they never intended to be, little by little; it sickens them to the point they forget who they are— it ends up breaking them to pieces like glass. His mind was broken, in shambles, unstable and vulnerable. There was no cure for this malady, this virus that had uncontrollably spread through the depths of his soul, corrupting him, devastating his life and taking all that had been beautiful away from him.

She was cognizant that he had endured many hardships throughout his life, and she was not expecting some kind of comfort in this foreseen goodbye. Battle had hardened this man; life had given him that tough and callous look in those eyes that had seen many sunsets in the wild. He had lived many more years than she had; he had seen what her eyes would never have the misfortune of seeing, much to his solace; he had done many things he did not dare to confess to her for her own good and psychic wellbeing. Those stories would certainly make her feel sick to the stomach and, probably, steal her sleep.

She knew, from the start, that love was something so trivial and insignificant to this old fox and, even so, her silly heart had chosen him the day she caught glimpse of his serious and hazardous eyes amidst the sea of unknown faces she never bothered to look at— only his. He had been intently staring at her, and she had almost forgotten how to breathe when he approached the table she was sitting at and greeted her with that deep voice of his. She remembered she had felt weak at the knees at the sight of his tall and strong form, and had started stuttering as she felt the intense poise and authority he imparted by saying a simple 'Hello'.

And that was how it all began.

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II.

"So… what's your story, stranger from Far Away Lands?" She joked with a small laugh, trying to swallow the nervousness that was making her have a hard time as she anxiously swirled the cocoa in a black mug with a teaspoon. She practically could feel his greenish eyes on her but refused to look at him out of natural shyness, instead settling on watching out of the window and at the snowflakes that kept falling in the packed streets of the city. Despite not knowing if he was from 'Far Away Lands', though his accent gave her a vague idea that he could be American, she had thought it would be funny saying such a corny line without considering that, possibly, she could make a fool of herself in her first meeting with him.

Honestly, she did not know why he was even wasting his time with her.

"Would you believe me if I tell you, Miss?" He asked in what she believed to be a charming manly voice while he took a taste of his hot black coffee, his eyes furtively scanning the surroundings of the café with an attention she certainly failed to notice since she was too busy thinking about her next lines. "I must warn you, my tale is not for the faint at heart."

Even though he was serious, she, however, could not help but take it as some kind of stunt from a man who was trying to get her attention. It was not that she was a conceited and vain girl— not at all— but it was not every day she spoke with such a handsome man and, suddenly, having one asking if he could have his coffee with her was something that inhibited her to the point of falling silent due to her diffidence. This only seemed to confuse him, since he gazed at her, expectant of her response and she fell into account that she had yet to follow his game— at least, that was what the youngster had thought it was.

The female tried to seem cool and relaxed and shrugged her shoulders in a casual manner as she took a sip from her drink, relishing in the sweet flavor it left in the tip of her tongue. It helped with her nervousness at some point, until she felt his knee accidentally rubbing into hers. She labeled it as an accident and not an attempt at getting close to her, she would not flatter herself that way, since the circular mahogany table they were seated at was rather small and little space was left between the two of them.

"Well… err… it… depends." She answered with burning cheeks and an awkward smile, making him arch an eyebrow in query and interest at the way she reacted to his subtle advances. The way she lightly scratched the side of her face in evident anxiety, and her flustered gaze diverted from his eyes made him smirk inwardly as his hand dangerously drew near hers.

"On what?" He encouraged her to keep going and, at this point, she suddenly found the black mug in front of her interesting in some strange way she did not understand. Oh, she did not want to be so shy but this man was something else! There was something to him that made her feel shaky when she looked into those baffling eyes of his; it made her heart beat faster whenever his rough voice talked to her; her skin seemed to burn when his lips cracked a faint smile at her… and her stomach was in a tight knot that was beginning to numb the rational thoughts in her mind.

"On… on the books you've read, of course!" She half-laughed, suddenly stopping when she realized the stupidity of her words after that. For her dear life, she did not say that, did her? She wanted to believe it had been something she had made up in her head, but the way he quietly laughed at her let her know otherwise. She should not have said that! Why would she let him know she was some kind of book-worm? That was not appealing, at all. But her inner confusion only seemed to amuse him all the more since he gave a dry chuckle while eyeing for a third time the novel that she had set aside.

"Well, then. It seems like we're goin' to get on just fine."

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III.

Her fists painfully clenched at her sides and she pursed her lips to stop herself from begging him to stay; to tell him that there was a reason for him to stay. She could not do it, now of all times. This was not how things were supposed to wind up. He had to go; he had to. And if she told him her secret, there was no telling of what he would do. Would he stay regardless of everything? Would he still leave her to chase after this dangerous venture in the lands of Africa to track down the brother of Daniel Clarke? She was dying to know, but she did not want to place him in a situation in where he had to choose between what his heart truly desired, his path to redemption, and her, because she knew that, in the end, she would lose.

And there were not going to be hugs this time; there were not going to be kisses or pretended 'I love yous'. This, she understood very well… and still she wished he could at least say he would never forget her; she mentally shouted for some kind of warmth coming from him only to meet his hard expression and the kind of look he gave her when he silently reprimanded her for something she had done wrong— like a father to a child. It was not a gruff glare, however, but a look that showed the faintest hint of concern behind the depths of blue-greenish eyes and it made her chest ache.

She did not blame him for the pain her breaking heart was feeling now, and she forced herself to look unfalteringly at his eyes and smile, even though she felt her insides were mercilessly being ripped apart at the prospect of knowing she would not see him anymore. But he had a duty, he still had a destiny to fulfill; and she had to be strong, she had to make him proud of her.

She could not cry now; she could not let him know how devastated she was.

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IV.

"I need you to listen carefully, and no questions for now." He started as he partially covered his mouth with the back of his hand, resting an elbow on the reddish table. "Can you see those two men there?" He discreetly nodded to his left and she followed, as subtly as she could. It was not easy to spot them, since the café was sort of crammed —it was not strange given that it was after-hours and the café was well known— and there were a lot of people there. But when he told her what they were wearing and doing, it was then that she saw them prudently watching their every move, not just once but several times before she began to wonder if making 'friends' with the man in front of her had been a good idea in the first place. "Act normal. Keep talkin' to me."

"What's going on?" Her chest painfully tightened and concern began to take its toll on her hazel eyes, even though he had told her to act composed.

He reminded himself that she was a mere citizen with what appeared to be a normal and average life and, therefore, would act on fear and impulse. In spite of this, he still had hoped for her to have some common sense to think and act before danger, and started to worry about his choice. Perhaps she was not the ideal person for this deed. Perhaps he should have listened to Hudson and, instead, chosen one of her male cousins. He had thought she would be easier to deal with, and would willingly cooperate if he was smart enough to seduce her…

But there had not been time for this.

He was not one to talk, though. He had always had a strong tendency to act out of impulsiveness, and that had been a trait he could never subdue. If he was able to think before doing something, he would not have ended up in the hands of Dragovich. Honestly, dying would have been the best option then. None of this inferno would have happened. Or maybe it was an unavoidable disaster— a doom he could not escape, it did not matter the perspective he saw it from.

The only good side of jumping off the plane was that he was able to save the life of his teammates during Operation Zapata, when they tried to assassinate Castro but had their plans thwarted by Cuban and Russian counterintelligence. Only he knew what horrible things would have happened to them, had they been captured. His mind could live at peace, at least knowing that he had the chance of sparing them from the same tortures and cruel treatments he had endured in the flesh.

"No questions. If you wanna get out of this alive, you'll do as I say." He stated with a blank face as he waited for his executioners to get distracted by the waitress, and took a pen out of his jacket. Heedlessly, he grabbed a paper napkin and scribbled on it, his eyes staring out of the window they were seated next to only to spot a grayish car parking across the street and two more men in it. "We've got trouble, so I want you to—"

"Trouble?" She was beginning to feel panicked, and his ominous words did not make her feel any better. Why did she have such a bad luck? Why in her first 'date' her man turned out to be some kind of fugitive that had a bunch of men trying to kill him for reasons she did not care to know about. The only thing that crossed her mind was that she was too young to die, and how much she wished she could have the chance to contemplate the beauty of life for a last time.

This was scaring her, terrifying her beyond any belief, and when the sudden detonation of gunshots shattering the windowpane next to her took her by surprise, she could not help but cry along with the other customers as she felt her body being roughly pushed to the floor, like a ragdoll. Barely having time to register the pistol the brunette man had produced from the hem of his pants, and the dreadful fact that he had already shot the two men inside the café down, she could only try to keep herself out of harm's way, the gunfire muffling her hopeless screams and hurting her eardrums.

Her eyes widened in shock, she felt her breathing get heavier with every gasp of air she took. She was hyperventilating by now, and she wished the carbon dioxide would not leave her body that fast. Oh, why? Why did she have to go to her favorite café today? Why did she have to decide this would be a nice day to go out? When she was heading to this place, she never imagined this could turn out to be the worst idea she had ever had. She was supposed to have a hot drink while reading her book in peace; she was supposed to have a good time after a tiresome week of work.

Everything was out of control now, and there was not any logic to what she was living at this very moment. The picture she was seeing was so surreal that for a second she believed she might be delirious, that this might be all in her head. This could not be happening to her; this had to be a nightmare from which she would soon wake up— or so she hoped.

But it all seemed so real, so cruel. This was murder with the face of a dead man in the ground next to her— it was despair in the form of a mother clutching her crying child in her arms, it was horror in the eyes of the people around her that silently prayed to get out of this unharmed. And she was losing heart, losing her mind. She did not know what to do for never had she been so close to Death's gates before now.

It felt like hours before she heard him speak over the hum of sobs and sniffles that flooded the place in a distressing song that made her feel so miserable, so exposed, that she did not dare to look at him for fear he might kill her if she did.

"Are you okay? Did you get hurt? Can you walk?" He asked her all at once while reloading his gun, the metallic sound of the deadly device making her shiver in apprehension at the thought of having been nearly shot at just a few moments ago. She only nodded, her voice suddenly lost, and he grabbed her by the arm, shoving her into crawling to the direction of the large wooden counter a few meters ahead of them. "Grab your things. We need to get out of here. Now!"

He knew that if he did not move fast, more of them would be coming after him. By now, he was sure they already knew where he was and he would be stupid if he let himself to be caught in such an easy to work out situation. As a veteran of the brutal Vietnamese and Korean Wars, and a seasoned warrior that had been through hell and many tricky and testing circumstances before, he knew this was a walk in the park.

They had to be scouts, or else he would have had an entire task force after his trail— something he was sure would not take long to happen.

"I'm not going anywhere with you." He heard her utter as she tried to wriggle from his grasp, miserably failing when she felt her hands and face sting at the new burning and sharp pain that began to boil her skin. To her alarm, small shards of glass had painfully dug in her flesh during her adrenaline rush, and warm blood was oozing from the cuts. She felt more desperate now that she knew she was hurt, and anxiously tried to pull them out only to find that her slick and bloodied hands pushed them further in, making her yelp in frustration rather than pain.

"Don't." He kept her hands from doing any more damage and she looked at him, noticing that he also had some nicks on his whiskered pale cheeks, but the pair of black leather gloves he was wearing had managed to protect him from the sharp crystalline flakes, that inertly twinkled on the floor next to her feet dressed in brownish chamois boots. "We'll take care of that later."

"I said I'm not going with you." She weakly but mulishly stated, forgetting the discomfort she was feeling when his narrowed eyes darted to her confused form, scrutinizing it with such a nerve-racking stare, his thin lips curved into a light sneer of irritation at her rebuff. He did not look pleased with her words in the slightest, but at the moment she could careless as a noxious foreboding coldly crawled up her spine and to the base of her nape, leaving a trail of unwanted sensations that made her tremble in fear.

"Very well. Guess you can take care of yourself, then." He scoffed through his teeth, swiftly turning his back to her, and started to walk away in a crouched position while she gave him a befuddled stare from her safe spot under the table. "You can stay here and be dead meat, or try and get out of this mess on your own. I don't care."

He admitted he felt a little guilty by having dragged her into this disaster, but at least he had offered his help— a help she unthinkingly refused to accept out of distrust. He did not blame her, though. No one in his right mind would trust a man they barely knew after being almost murdered, but if she was caught there was no telling of what would happen to her for the next forty-eight hours… that was, if she managed to survive the first twenty-four ones— they thought she was his friend and for a moment he had thought she could be one, too. He knew what they would do to the girl once she was captured. It was a matter of time until she collapsed and gave in to their psychological and physical pressure. He, better than anyone else, knew there were many ways to break someone… but none of them was of any use if there was nothing to be revealed in the first place.

He had barely made it; he almost could not endure the pain of such torments inflicted upon him… he much doubted she could undergo the same and live to tell the tale; and once they were done with her, it all would result in a case of someone who was at the wrong time, at the wrong place. Her forced disappearance would become a file that would gather dust in the filing cabinets of the Police Department of her country. Witnesses would be threatened or paid to keep their mouths shut; family and friends would spend their years expecting to hear news about her whereabouts and what had become of her. No one would speak a word; all would be forgotten, eventually. What a cruel way for her life to end for, meanwhile, her ashes would have scattered all over the wastelands of a deserted landscape, leaving no traces that her corpse had burnt there. Or perhaps, she would end up in the depths of the ocean inside a block of concrete; maybe her flesh would serve as food to the hungry wolves of the woods. In any case, they would find a way to get rid of her…

If her body was found, investigations would conclude that a psychopath, namely him, was the one who had murdered the young and sweet teacher of primary school; of course, not before making up some gory and disgusting story about how he raped her to death, carved her limbs up with an ax and all the sickening background revolving around his disturbing record of crimes.

Why did he even bother with her.

Trying to pull herself together, she dared to throw a last glance at the corpse beside her, and violently shivered at the thought of sharing the same fate. To think that only a few minutes ago the poor man had been chatting about how happy the idea of being father made him, with whom she guessed was his wife, before harshly collapsing to the floor with a dull sound and bullet in his temple. For goodness' sake! What kind of world did she live in? This was what she wondered as she watched the woman cry her eyes out while holding on tightly her beloved's lifeless body. She wanted to cry, too, but the initial shock had not allowed her to shed any tears as her eyes travelled to look across the room, spotting the other two dead mean limply reclined on their seats, one displaying a fleshy opening in his left eye and the other one with signs of having died of a shot in the neck, since his bloodied hand was still grasping his throat in what looked like an action made out of reflex after the projectile had painfully torn the soft muscles of his esophagus. The two of them had carried handguns that now loosely dangled from the tip of their fingers, and she found herself futilely conjecturing on who had been the one to make the first move.

That was when a burst of bullets had made their way past just above her head and caused her to bite her tongue in sheer fright due to the sudden blast, tasting the metallic bittersweet flavor that began to invade her mouth as a new ripple of screams erupted from the civilians that were squatted or prone on the floor. She did not want to die. She did not want to die. She was not going to die like this, once and again those thoughts flooded her mind in a vicious whirl that wiped what little commonsensical logic was left in her.

Slowly, apprehensively and without knowing it, the words had left her mouth in a frantic and wretched manner whilst she awkwardly tried to crawl on the floor, desperate to find some kind of shelter and protection in him. Her mind could not weigh the consequences of her actions just then. The only thing she knew was that if he had saved her once, he could do it once more.

"Wait! Please, wait!"

Talk about reverse psychology, he fleetingly thought before the sight of her slightly scratched young face reminded him that she was not that far from being a child— at least, in his eyes.