I slammed the flat door open, hard. The handle smashed through the wall, and wedged there. I screamed in frustration through gritted teeth and kicked it free, lumps of plaster and dust exploding over the carpet. It slammed shut with an echoing bang, and shuddered in its frame

Breathe . I told myself. Breathe .

I inhaled, and focussed, my hands clenched into hard fists, the cut skin of my right knuckle burning and the edges of my nails pressing like blades into my palm. I held the breath, gripped it until my lungs felt like they would burst, and then I exhaled.

I opened my eyes, and let my knees buckle beneath me. The bloodlust had sucked everything from me, and I slumped to the floor, shaking. I flopped back, the coir of the carpet tiles poking through my thin cardigan, scraping the bare skin of my neck.

Well… fuck .

I had never fought outside the ring before, never lashed out in a rage. I brought my right hand up to my face, examining the ragged slash across my knuckles where it had connected with Riley's teeth. I flexed my fingers and winced at the sting of cut flesh, but felt relieved that it all still worked. A drop of blood pooled at the lip of the wound and ran down the back of my hand. I wiped it away.

I needed a drink. I dragged myself upright, brushing off the dust and staggered into the kitchen. I had a bottle of Stoli Elit in the cupboard with the teabags, in preparation for times of seduction and crisis. If this wasn't a crisis, fuck knew what was.

I poured myself a generous measure of vodka into a mug. In the glassy black door of the microwave I examined my face, poking at a red, shining mark on my forehead. Carpet burn , I realised, a souvenir of Roach et al's heroic intervention. It stung when I touched it.

The spicy undercurrent of the vodka punched my throat, and I had to fight not to gag. Yet, the distraction was welcome, stalling my churning mind just enough to allow it time to start processing.

I wasn't furious, it was more complicated than that. I was angry at being dragged out here and being forced to work with stupid misogynistic fuckwits with chips on their shoulders (Riley), angry at being made a bargaining chip in international politics, and angry at being made a fool of (Riley, again). I slammed the edge of my clenched fist against the table in a rage, and yelped as the force stretched the torn skin of my knuckle further.

I spooled through the alternative timeline: Riley grabbed me, I jumped and screamed, and then he laughed at me. Maybe my current timeline was better, because he certainly wasn't laughing now. I smiled at that, at the sudden expression of surprise that had flashed across his face when my fist connected. There was going to be trouble over this business, and I was going to have to deal with it, but I had given him what he deserved. My mind whirred and clicked through all the outcomes, all the variables and all the chaos in between. The only certainty I had was that I had got one over the arrogant ginger lump and I was just toasting this to myself when I heard the knock.

When I opened the door, I wasn't at all surprised to find MacTavish on the landing. He looked me up and down, his eyes lingering this time on my amateurly bandaged hand, and then on the carpet burn on my temple. If it scarred, I decided that I would make a coin purse out of Riley's scrotum. I stepped back wordlessly, and let him in. There didn't seem any point in formalities: we both knew he why he was here.

He ran his hand over his head, brushing droplets of water from his shorn scalp, the frisk of his fingers through his mohawk sending a fine spray of water across the room. I had barely registered the pattering of rain on the windows, but it was clearly pissing it down out there now. The field jacket he'd pulled on without closing was saturated, the air around him reeking of damp, sweat and that spicy cologne he favoured. Perhaps I'd had a bit too much of the Stoly, or the after effects of adrenaline had really gone to my head, but the sheen of rain on his skin, the sheer looming mass of him in the narrow hall and that scent gave me a little arousing jolt that I hurried to suppress.

He looked past me into the kitchen, searching it quickly with his eyes. I wondered if this was just force of habit, or if he thought I might be concealing some other random man within. He looked at the hole in the wall, and then he looked at me and whistled.

I said nothing, regarding him as coolly as possible in return. I didn't know how this would play out, and although I didn't get to debrief or interrogate until the big guns had worked over their prisoners at least once, I still had some idea how it worked. He was not getting any freebies from me.

"I just had an interesting report from Sergeant Sanderson..." He said, using the same dry, observant tone that he might use to tell me that he'd seen a particularly fascinating article in his newspaper. He plunged his hands into his pockets and leant against the kitchen doorway.

It took me a moment to parse that statement, then I realised that he meant Roach.

He continued "...Informing me of the need to transfer a certain Lieutenant Riley to the hospital as the result of an altercation in the mess room."

"Hospital?" I said, with genuine interest. This new state of affairs surprised me, and I felt a little pang of guilt. Surely I hadn't hit him that hard?

"Yes, apparently his nose was... 'Completely rooted' according to Royce."

I looked at him blankly.

"That's bad." he explained.

"I'll try and find him a nice card that says "You got what you deserved" on it." I said, abandoning my pretensions to ignorance. I was suddenly tired of this charade.

MacTavish sighed. "I don't suppose that you want to explain how this course of events occurred?"

I didn't really, but I knew that I was compelled to. MacTavish was in charge of the base, even if he didn't have direct command over me. Yet no matter where I fitted in the 141's org chart, MacTavish had a duty to get the story straight and mete out whatever praise and punishment he felt necessary. So I told him about the mess room and the sudden darkness. By now, I'd figured out that Riley'd been inside all along, pining for Roach to come back, slumped out of view on one of the sofas.

When I finished, MacTavish had tapped a cigar out of a flattened packet from his coat pocket and was rummaging around trying to find a light. He paused to regard me sourly, and then said. "Did he try anything… improper."

I looked bewildered at him, and then I laughed.

His brows furrowed, and then I knew he wasn't actually joking. Oh dear . I bit back my smile, shaking my head and composing my features into a more serious expression. "No. I don't think it was like that… I think he thought it would be funny, you know, give the new girl a scare by creeping up on her. Roach had been with him, I think, and then gone out of the room before I got there, but was obviously coming back. He said, when he came back, that he'd only gone for a piss or something. Not the most optimum circumstances to start raping someone."

"Er…. right." He looked about shiftily, clearly alarmed by my frankness. "So, then what?"

I thought about it. "I tried to leg it whilst it was still dark, but Roach caught me and then we realised the identity of my unknown assailant and then it was "Why did you hit me, you stupid bitch?" and "What were you trying to attack me in the dark for-"

"Power cut." Interjected MacTavish. "The whole area's still out. Took the emergency generators a few minutes to kick in."

"Oh. Right." I had been thinking that Riley'd engineered that somehow, but I had overestimated him "Well, then he came at came at me, and I thought he was going to strangle me." I didn't like thinking about that much, and as I replayed that part over in my head, I had a flush of fear as fresh as if he was still in the room. I shuddered. "Still, what choice did I have?" I said, brightly. I wasn't going to give anyone the satisfaction of knowing my real terror.

"So you hit him first?"

"Yes." I said, in a tone that added the 'and what of it?' for me.

He sighed, exhaling through his nose, his mouth a thin, flat line. Eventually he spoke "Sounds like self-defence to me. I mean, you aren't the first person to take a swing at the stupid bastard, but…"

"But?"

"Well, I don't know what the fuck he was playing at." He snapped.

"Aren't stupid, life-threating pranks one of the many things that put the "special" into special forces?" I said, derisively, with jaunty air quotes for emphasis.

He glared at me. "I gave your file to Ghost. I'm guessing he didn't read it." He patted his pockets until his grip closed around what he was looking for. He pulled out a box of matches, and struck one. The end of the cigar caught, flaring with his indrawn breath. Yet another thing I hadn't realised was incredibly sexy until he did it. "I would have thought that he might have balked at having a go at a certified unarmed combat instructor, but who knows?"

I shrugged. "Everyone's got to have a hobby."

"Christ." He shook his head, and laughed. I suspected he was thinking about when he put his hands on my waist in his kitchen, wondering how close he came to getting his nose spread across his face. I thought about what I'd found in his search history, and suspected he was going to get a kick out of it.

An awkward silence descended until he said. "Roach told me that you and Riley had some words earlier?"

I rolled my eyes. "Yes, he had something to say about our little tete-a-tete in the Silk and Dagger last night when I came back."

I realised that this exchange wasn't going to do anything for MacTavish's profile of Riley as some kind of mad-dog sex offender, but outing Riley was my ultimate trump card, to be played only when all other options were burned, and preferably backed out with some tangible evidence beyond lingering, furtive glances.

"What did you say?" He asked. He pulled my empty mug across the table and tapped ash into it.

I made a show of racking my memory. "That it was none of his business... and he was unfuckably ugly?"

MacTavish rubbed the stubble of his chin, the rasping loud in the silent kitchen. "I can't imagine why he wouldn't have liked that." he said.

Silence descended, but in my head, I could hear the voice of the Stoly calling my name. I was already tired when I went to make myself a cup of tea -something I had entirely failed to achieve altogether, now I thought about it- and now, I was just exhausted and it still wasn't over.

"So what now?" I said, gesturing in the air.

"Are you going to press charges?"

I laughed "I'd rather gnaw my own arm off than get involved with the military justice system, not that I think they're that bothered by you lot punching the shit out of each other on a regular basis, really?"

MacTavish shrugged, resignedly. "Fair comment. All right, I'll deal with it." He said, darkly, "Just keep out of his way."

I suspected, knowing MacTavish's previous line manager had favoured extra-judicial reprimands along with his passion for losing vast amounts of money on the turf, what this was likely to entail and I didn't think it was going to help much. Whilst I wasn't military, I had several long years of experience in the back-stabbing and groping politics of intelligence. I might not have the skills to aim a mortar, but I knew how to deal with people, and I came from a school of management that favoured other methods of motivating rational adults.

"Can I speak freely?" I said.

MacTavish looked me up and down, surprised, but he didn't say no, so I continued.

"Riley clearly has some fucking chip on his shoulder about working with a posh bint, and I think this fucking nonsense is about trying to put me back in the place he wants me in. He doesn't want to be taking orders from me."

"So?"

"Well, he might listen to you, because you're his boss, but he might just write your opinion off as being the result of manipulation by me."

He considered this. "You think I should leave it?" He sounded incredulous.

"No. I think I should bend his ear first."

"Is that… entirely wise?" He asked

"I think I should give him an ultimatum: either he works with me, or not. If he's a shit, I just give up and some other poor fucker can make a go of it."

I dreaded the consequences even as I spoke. I didn't want to see Riley, but I had to make a show of force somehow, press home the advantage I had bought myself.

"You know how much fucking work went into getting you here?" MacTavish asked, his eyebrows raised at my surprising statement.

"Precisely. If you were Shepherd, and you had to make a decision about… asset valuation, say." I held my hands, palm up, physically weighing the options. "About your chances making it through that Gulag without working that prison control system…" I tailed off, letting him do the maths.

"You…" MacTavish gestured at me with his cigar. "Are a devious bitch"

I smiled.