She's a journalist trying to uncover the biggest story of the decade. He's a Special Forces soldier, constantly trying to save her from it.

A/N: I'm loosely basing this story off the Syrian conflict at the moment – now I emphasise loosely, because I don't want this to actually happen but it was an idea that popped into my head quite recently (also I don't want to get in trouble, eep!).

I've changed names of Presidents etc to ensure that this is just a story, because I will be changing a few things. Also my knowledge of Army protocol is very limited – so don't kick me in the butt for a couple of errors! I tried! Also there is a LOT of very, scary and confronting material in here so just beware.

Also this chapter is a lot of explaining, so it's very wordy and it takes a bit to get to any Fabrevans moments. I apologise, but please, stick around!

Chapter 1

I knew there was possibly something wrong with me, because who actively thinks it's a smart idea to join the Army and then progress through to make Special Forces. Yeah, my mother wasn't too happy with the idea, but I was proud of the thought of being a true patriot – as fucking corny as it sounds. It made me feel like I had a purpose, that I was truly doing something to help people and that made me believe that I could do anything. But when good ol' President Erickson pulled us out of Iraq, I wasn't sure how I'd cope with the idea of going home – not that I wasn't grateful for it. Home to me was leaving it at age seventeen, a bag of clothes over my shoulder and leaving behind a family that never truly understood me. I'd dreamt of being in the army ever since I could remember, films like Empire of the Sun or Black Hawk Down started something in my bones that my parents never understood. My mum was a teacher and Dad was an engineer at a car company, so I guess that idea of something radical like the army wasn't really in their to do list, per se.

When the call came from himself, President Erickson, asking me, Samuel J. Evans during meal time at the family Evans home to come back to Fort Bragg, North Carolina for a briefing, I jumped and sprinted up to my room to get me there as soon as possible. The goodbyes were hideous, as usual, mum was a blubbery mess and dad was so choked up, his voice was barely audible, but it was sweet and pretty nice to have them think that much of me. My brother and sister, Stacey and Stevie, both thought that what I was doing was pretty sweet so thank god they didn't make too much of a fuss when I finally was out of the house.

It was only about an hour and fifteen minute plane ride, which had me trying to understand what on earth could be happening that they'd need me back at Fort Bragg, which was the American Army's Special Forces Unit's Headquarters. I only had a few months left till I actually had to go back here, so it must be something urgent that requires a number of military personal back. When I finally got there, I met up with my old Alpha Company buddies who were already huddled around the small TV in the living room, watching what seemed to be a baseball game where the Giants were smashing the Dodgers. Puck, a mad LA Dodgers fan, who had a classic Mohawk – don't ask me how he managed to sneak that past our company commander - was almost on the verge of tears as the Dodgers were almost about to call the game.

"Giants winning?" I call out, walking past him with a small grin and wasn't surprised that all I received back was the lovely almost middle finger. Puck had broken his other fingers in the middle of an insurgent fight back in Iraq a couple of tours back. He didn't feel the pain of course, since he's a tough bastard, but he didn't realise they were pretty messed up till we got back to HQ… five days later. He ruined his pinky and his ring finger, almost proving impossible to bend them and the only thing Puck was grateful for was that it wasn't his trigger hand.

Then we have Finn Hudson, and not to doubt Finn's abilities, but we've all wondered how he managed to get to Special Forces. We're all around the same age, me being the youngest at twenty-three, while Puck is the eldest at twenty-five, with the rest of us scattered in between – only in our company of course. Far as I know, Finn's somewhere in that bracket, but with the maturity of a ten year old and I've always wondered how he managed to slide in here. He's smart, to a degree. He's street smart and always quite intelligent as to what to do when there's a firefight with insurgents, but when we're back at base talking about… well, the only thing we find common ground on, the ladies, he's a bit dumbfounded. Of course, it doesn't really help that he's almost as tall as a tree and has a goofy look on his face seventy percent of the time, compared to Puck's terrifying demeanor. We all are pretty grateful for his presence, as much as it doesn't sound like it, even though ninety percent of the time we have to tell him to shut up about the new Call of Duty game he rambles on about.

Then there's Mike Chang our Engineer Sergeant. Forgot to mention earlier that Puck looks after our weapons, Finn does communications and I'm the Medical Sergeant. Mike Chang is gifted with anything and I once saw him create a small bomb out of an electric toothbrush, scary shit. He's pretty quiet, but not when we're in battle and he knows exactly when he's needed. Once we tried to get him on a date with a very, very lovely looking Arabian woman, who turned out to be… a very, very lovely looking Arabian man. That was definitely a night to remember and we never let him forget it.

Of course there are twelve men in our "Operational Detachments-A" or commonly known as "A-Teams", but these three guys are the ones I've mainly grown close to. So of course, we're all sitting down watching the Dodgers admit defeat before our Captain and Commander walk through the door with clearly unimpressed looks on their faces. Puck, naturally not being the one for detail, wails as the Dodgers finally call the end of the innings causing the whole room to erupt in snickers.

"Sergeant First Class Puckerman." Captain Schuester announces and Puck halls himself to his feet, bright red and completely embarrassed. Hudson and I share a glance, both trying to hold back our chuckles.

"I know as appalling as the Dodgers are, we have a mission." Puck swallows, nodding and I glance around the room to see who's been called in. To my surprise, there are a number of Government officials in the corner of the room. Suits, we call them. They love to ruin our fun. We're commanded to sit down at the large briefing table, all of us receiving a leather document folder and when I open it, I'm startled by the images before me.

I glance at Puck who's frowning, his fingers tracing over the pictures of the bodies and when I turn to Chang, he's got the same grim expression on his face. This is something we've never seen before.

"Chemical Warfare." The Commander announces. Commander Foley is a tall, blonde haired man with a build so huge I'm sure if I ran into him I'd bounce off him. I hear Finn echo the words under his breath and I'm pretty sure I need Foley to repeat it again so I know I'm hearing it right too.

"Now, I'm glad I'm seeing a pretty grim expression on all your faces because this is something we've never come across, not our battalion anyway." He continues, walking around the table before standing beside a laptop, clicking something. The wall lights up and more images come up, causing me to turn away. "It's something so deadly the President called me up to personally get my ass down here, which I'm sure he did to all of you." I look around, everyone is nodding and I intake a deep gulp of air, feeling a little queasy about what we're getting ourselves into. Immediately, Finn's – Hudson's – hand shoots up and I try to hold back a groan, hiding a little so it looks like I'm not in on what he's about to say. Last time he did this he asked to go the toilet, which ended up in him having a newspaper thrown at him from half way across the room.

"Sergeant Hudson." A few people snort, causing me to shift lower in my chair.
"How are they weaponising it?" Finn's question impresses me, which is a terrible thing to say and I give him a small smile, which matches his goofy one as everyone seems to nod and wonder in agreement.

"Well, from our reports they've managed to use it like a smoke grenade, so pressurized canisters."

"What are the symptoms?" I ask, my six years of medical training in the army kicking in.

"They're nerve agents. They block transmissions of the nerve cells, including the ones that are needed to breathe. Many victims are seen with convulsions, excessive saliva, pinpoint pupils, blurred vision and respiratory distress." The Commander starts to play a video, I wince, but I'm grateful there's no sound. "They start to have difficulty breathing, next they have paralysis in their chest muscles and then they have a convulsion which ends in a coma." A very grim, slow way to die. Definitely not a way I'd like to go out.

"Now, President Erickson has been talking at the G20 summit to try and get this under control, we've discussed airborne strikes but at the moment there isn't a whole lot they can do without killing more innocent lives." Captain Schuester says, pulling off his cap and moving to sit down at the front of the table. His expression is weary and tired. "We're sending you boys back in."

I'm cold and cramped and my eye is twitching which is making me feel totally uncomfortable, but we've got an hour left in the jeep before we can get feet on the ground. We've travelled halfway across the world to Turkey, where we have intel that a small group of insurgents, mercenaries, whatever you want to call them is smuggling in the ingredients for making the chemical agents in a small town called Ceylanpinar, right off the border of Turkey and Syria. Syria is the big band country at the moment, housing Chemical weapons that they claim aren't real, but from the amount of evidence I've seen over the past few days, I want to go in there and shoot every son of a bitch in there.

The Jeep is small and only houses the four of us. Puck's driving and Hudson's asleep in the front seat, snoring so loudly I wonder how he never managed to get detected on missions. The Captain is riding up front in another car with the other guys and Chang's sitting beside me, playing with one of the C4 explosive devices as he fiddles around with the trigger mechanism. I'm watching him very closely.

"You're making me uneasy here, Chang." He lets out a soft laugh, something I don't hear everyday from him.

"It's not live."

"Still." I counter, a smirk on my face. When he looks up at me, he's matching the same grin.

"Did I ever tell you I rewired an ATM?" I shake my head but laugh, Chang's never the one to tell us any details about his life. "Instead of rewiring it I managed to trigger off the defense mechanisms that cause it to start off the alarms," I hear Puck laugh and now that I think of it, I can't hear Hudson's snoring so he must be listening in too. "But I still managed to spit out this money, so I'm standing there, holding about twelve grand in fifty dollar notes when security comes asking me what the hell happened." I smile knowingly that Mike would definitely have gotten out of this mess. "I tell them my Aunty Anna, from China, left me a sum of money because she's gone back and the machine overloaded from my withdrawal. They thought nothing of it, told me to have a nice day and left." We all start bursting out with laughter, Hudson howling the loudest.

"What did you do with the money?" Hudson asks after we die down and we all see the Chang smirk that we only see when his master plan works, but he just shrugs and continues working. We all hear Finn whine, causing us all to laugh.

Soon after we all arrive in the merry old town of Ceylanpinar, which houses a population of 68, 774 give a take a few thousand and is as inviting as my grandmother's hoarders house. Just a few months prior a stray mortar fired from a Syrian town killed someone, so the place is hot and we try and keep a low profile. We arrive at night, which happens to be when it's so bloody cold and without all our gear we're not particularly enjoying it. We cross through a small part of the town where a local man called Abdi, the one to give us our intel, instructs us on where the exchange happens. We give our thanks and find vantages points to where we can watch the exchange. I'm situated behind the small building where we intend to breach later on when our intel arrives, and I'm already starting to feel a little uneasy about the whole situation. Chang has already rigged up the place to blow just in case if we can't get a working solution to our problem. Plus it's the middle of the night and our night vision goggles always make my eyes sleepy.

Finally, right on cue there's a truck with what I can see, three men inside.

"Three men, entering the go site, everyone hold fire." I hear Captain Schuester buzz in my ear, echoing my thoughts and makes me more alert. I crack my neck, keeping my eyes on the men as I look through the scope of my weapon. Then, all of a sudden, a woman appears from the truck and from what I can see under her black hood, she's a blonde. Next thing I notice are the rope ties around her wrists.

"We've got a hostage, female, blonde and rope ties." I whisper into my mic and I glance over at Finn. He's nodded in confirmation because he's got the clearest of views and I can see him tracking her with the barrel of his weapon.

"Puckerman, Wilshere sweep." Schuester again and I glance off into the distance to see Puck and Wilshere emerge from a building, moving silently in the dark as they make their way to the truck.

"What about the hostage?" I whisper, her blonde hair imprinted into my mind.

"Not important." I grit my teeth, but hold back, glancing back at Captain Schuester who's conveniently sitting on a merry ledge all the way back with his Sniper Rifle. I believed in orders, but this order wasn't my favourite.

"Wait, something's not right." We hear Ramsey, one of our Sergeants who was perched on the other side of the building say before we all hear gunfire.

"Arms free!" Schuester shouts and I run forward, ducking behind the wall before I see the hostage, making a run for it.

I look around, making sure that I'm covered, which I am since everyone is preoccupied with what's going on in the house and I run. I sprint and dive, crashing this woman and me to the ground as I pull her behind the truck.

"Don't touch me!" She screams, and I realise from her accent, she's American. Thank the lord. I clamp my hand over her mouth and push my night vision goggles to the top of my helmet, looking down at her. For the first time in my life, I'm actually speechless for words. The hoodie has fallen off and I'm staring into a deep abyss of hazel goodness, surrounded by a pool of wavy blonde hair and a face so beautiful I could stare at it forever. Then, I'm lurched out of this somewhat dream like trance as soon as she bites down on my fingers.

"Fuck!"

"Evans, you alright?" Puckerman.

"She bit me!" I groan out, not releasing her from the hold I have on her. I hear Puck laugh and I'm about to snap something at him before I hear more gunfire.

"Let go of me, right now!"
"Ma'am, I'm apart of the American Special Forces and if you haven't noticed, there's a fucking fire fight going on right now so if you can just shut up and sit tight that would be nice." I groan out before glancing back down at her. She's looking up at me with this expression that's full of hope and I feel the need to just touch her… or cradle her. Instead I give her a nod and begin to stand, keeping a firm grip on her wrist.

"How many have we got?" I ask into the coms, a little breathless from the moment I just had with the blonde beauty beside me.

"There were three in the back of the truck, two are down and the rest are in the house." I look down at the woman, assessing her.

"Are you checking me out, seriously?" She hisses and I shake my head, rolling my eyes.

"I'm trying to determine whether you can run or if I'm gonna throw you over my shoulder."

"Wow! How manly of you!" She barks back and just to piss her off, I grip her and throw her over my shoulder. She whacks my back with her rope ties but I sprint and before I know it, I've stupidly drawn fire. I duck behind a building before letting out a groan at the bullet that's impacted into my body armor, but I put her down.

"For five minutes, just co-operate with me, okay?" I ask her as I pull off my vest and remove the bullet, before untying her ties and wrapping the vest around her.

"What are you doing?"

"Protecting you, what do you think?" I mutter back, glancing back around the wall to see if they've still got eyes on us but thankfully Puck has drawn fire. It was a probably a very stupid idea, giving her my vest since I don't even know her and for all it's worth, she could probably be some undercover spy for Syria.

"They're down." I hear in my ear and let out a breath, sitting down beside her as I pant a little.

"I'm Quinn, by the way." She murmurs and for a second, I almost forgot she was there.

"Sergeant Samuel J Evans of the American Special Forces." I murmur out and she sort of smiles, making me smile back. "Seems like you've had a hell of a ride."

She shrugs and then smiles.

"I've had worse."

Well, that's it! Any thoughts, comments etc. please don't hesitate to hit me a review!