a/n: Well, I don't think this is going too badly. I'm glad that I've been reviewed because they really are helpful in aiding me to understand what I need to do to improve. (especially writetheorange & TED1OUS) Except one anonymous review which was neither helpful nor particularly nice. I expected some character hate, being a female OC and all, but sure... Next time I'll make it realistic and have Makarov choose an overweight, ugly and untalented woman to take care of his needs. I'm sorry, but when he's choosing a woman for himself, I'm fairly sure he's focusing more on what's aesthetically pleasing as feeling anything towards her is not on his agenda. But anyway, the other reviews I have received have been very appreciated so thank you!

I realize I haven't given you a whole lot to go on with Nina/Yael, but if I tell you everything about her straight away then it's going to get boring, isn't it? Personally, I find it more interesting to find little things out as you go along. Personality coming to light as she's put in different situations. Recollections of her past and history being spread out and not in giant bulk. But maybe that's just me, I don't know. Don't worry though, more is coming, I promise.
I'm also going to start writing chapters that are just flash backs and separate from what's going on with Yael/Soap/Price in the present. These will focus on time spent together between Nina and Makarov. It will help you better understand why she is feeling the way she is right now toward him and how they progressed from the first flash back I have given you describing her capture, to the way they are at the beginning of the story. Maybe they will help ease any confusion you may have about how she is acting. I know it's a little jumpy right now but things will slowly start to tie in and I hope it will get better for you.

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Anyway, here's the next chapter. I really hope it doesn't disappoint because this took a little longer. I've been planning what's going to happen in the future, but was struggling a little finishing the now. So I apologize, not my best work. Thanks for reading!

Yael Yitzchak sat stiffly in her uncomfortable wooden chair.

Retelling this night was clearly drawing out a myriad of different emotions from her. Something in her voice gave it away, not her eyes or her facial expressions or her body language. It was her voice that was sometimes shaky at the recollection of the events, not calm and collected like it had been beforehand. Especially when she was talking about Yuliya and the shooting of the pregnant woman, he'd noticed. Strangely enough, however, not so much when she was describing of her own capture. This confused him slightly; shouldn't that have been the most terrifying thing of all? His face wasn't showing sympathy as such yet his expression had softened a little from earlier. He looked less appalled by every breath she took but she hadn't taken the time to notice. Regardless of what he thought of her, she'd put herself in a dangerous and apparently traumatizing situation to get to this man. If she wasn't serious about bringing him down, would she really go through all of that to get close to him? It seemed incredibly unlikely. But this woman, she was trained to deceived people in situations precisely like this one. There was no way he was going to rely on anything she would tell him. She wasn't going to take him for a fool again; to use them and play with them for her own gain.

It fell quiet and he could only assume that she was done with the details. Finished with her nightmarish story.

"So he picked you out of all those women? Sounds like you got lucky."

The way he had spoken almost made it sound like he was accusing her of being too lucky. It caused her to grit her teeth.

"It was not so simple like that." She interjected, not blinking. It could hardly be described as lucky, either. "Let me finish before you interrupt."

Makarov's eyes scanned each of the women before him, inspecting them as if they were not human. As if they were a mere product he was checking for flaws before he could send them on their way. It was more than degrading. He brought a few girls to step forward from the rest as he progressed up the line. They were too scared to look at each other and verbalize the questions that were running through their heads about why they had been chosen. What was going to happen to them now? Once he reached Nina, his eyes explored every inch of her just like he had done with the others. It made her feel dirty. Exposed, somehow. Like maybe he knew who she really was... The thought of being found out sent her heart in to a frenzy. The truth was she was too scared to look back in to his eyes, so instead she kept her gaze fixed out of a window on the opposite side of the room, like a coward. It seemed strange that she was mentally begging that something about her would captivate him enough that he would want to keep her when her natural instinct was telling her to get as far away from this man as she possibly could.

But he did not ask her to step forward. The girls he had asked forward were much more beautiful. They were bony and thin and had long blonde hair, perfect lips and almond shaped eyes. They were young – early twenties she suspected – whereas she was almost twenty nine. Maybe she had been the wrong choice for this assignment after all, like she had tried to tell them. Makarov stood before her, looking pleased with his choices, turning his attention away from her with disinterest. It was then that sobs begin to drift towards the church, steadily growing closer to the old, rickety building. Those sobs made Nina's heart drop for being achingly familiar. It took a few moments, but her fears were realized as one two of Makarov's men walked into the church, Yuliya in their grips.

"We have found a straggler." One of the men spoke up, pushing her with some force in the direction of the other girls.

"Nina, I'm sorry." Yuliya cried as she saw her friend in the line up.

"Shut up!" The same man as before shouted at her as if she had no right to talk whatsoever.

Makarov watched the girl with a taunting smile as she sobbed loudly in to her hands, his head tilting to the side slightly. Before Nina could even stop it, she let her own little muffled whine leave her lips. Yuliya was going to end up like the rest of them. The apology had torn in to Nina's heart. Why couldn't she have just hidden her a little better? Why couldn't she have just kept quiet until the men had left again? That hiding space had never been meant for anyone but Nina – a cowardly backup plan if she were to decide she couldn't go through with being taken – but she hated herself for it not working. More so than if it had been her hiding in there. The sound she had made was enough to bring the attention of the mismatched eyed brute back to her once more.

"This woman is a friend of yours?" Makarov asked, speaking directly to Nina this time. Clearly he had heard her.

Scared of receiving a bullet to the brain just like woman a few people down from her, she nodded her head at his question. She automatically assumed noncompliance would end in her demise, no matter how much she didn't want to converse with him in any way.

He reached out without any kind of hesitation, taking Nina's shoulder and pulling her to stand closer to Yuliya. He looked pleased with her answer, even though it had been one he was expecting.

"I'm sorry Nina," she whispered again, her voice hindered by the shaky breaths she was taking between sobs. The woman was a shuddering mess. Her eyes were red and her full, freckled cheeks were sticky with tear trails.

"It will be okay." Nina told her, offering her the best smile she could muster up under the circumstances. It was more of a twitch at the corner of her mouth than anything else. Makarov appeared to look on in amusement. Would it really?

"Decide for me this, Nina." Makarov said calmly, as if it were set to be the most reasonable suggestion in the world. "One of you accompanies me. One of you dies."

That had not been what she was expecting him to say and it soon became clear that this was all a game to him. What kind of twisted person did he have to be to think of these things on the spot? This wasn't just about making money to fund his cause. He enjoyed causing hurt and suffering.

How in God's name could she choose that without feeling like a monster? The goal she had been set was to get close to Makarov by any means necessary but she would have never imagined that this would be the cost. If she let Yuliya live, she herself would die and would fail what she had been sent here to do. She didn't want to die and she most definitely didn't want to fail the people who had trusted her to do this right. The people who had put blind faith in her even when she, herself, had none. Yuliya would go on to live what she could only assume would be a life worse than dying. If Nina was to step forward and go with him, it would almost be like saving her friend from a life of pain and suffering at Makarov's hands, right? Her heart stopped and there was a lump in her throat that made it hurt to breathe. The fact she was trying to justify what was essentially letting her closest friend for three years be killed was making her feel sick. This was why she was not supposed to get involved with people. When you got involved with people it made things complicated. But she had never been good at taking advice.

"It will be better for you to die than to live your life with this monster." Nina murmured, turning her attention back to her friend. Her helpless friend with no say in this matter whatsoever. She couldn't have cared less whether or not the statement meant anything to Makarov but figured he had heard much worse. The blonde's eyes grew wide at the words and the realization that she was about to die clearly set in. Nina wished she hadn't looked back at the girl. The memory of how scared she looked would haunt her forever.

It was clearly taken as a final answer because before Nina could even say a word of apology or goodbye to the girl before her, the sound of a gunshot rang out through the room and Yuliya fell to a heap on the floor. Lifeless. Nina jumped. Several of the women looking on let out screams. Blood pooled around her and seeped into the cracks and crevices in the stone, spreading slowly towards Nina's feet. She took a step back, her eyes so full of tears that wouldn't come out that she could barely see through them. They were burning. She was burning with anger and fear and guilt. This was too much. The sick feeling in the pit of her stomach was too much. She wasn't strong enough for this. Who had she been kidding in ever thinking she was? Why did she always have to bite off more than she could chew?

"Who killed the child?" Makarov asked, turning to his men, still gripping on to his gun tightly. The topic had switched quickly and he completely ignored the sobbing Nina and the carcass of her friend on the floor.

A few near the front of the group shifted awkwardly and turned their heads toward a member near the left. He was the tallest of them all.

"You will lie next to him."

The soldier parted his lips to speak, clearly to offer some kind of explanation that it was an accident, but before the words left his lips, he joined Yuliya and the pregnant woman. Dead on the floor by the hands of his boss after an easy squeeze of the trigger. Several of the men surrounding him shifted awkwardly; clearly disheartened by the fact Makarov was so quick to kill one of his own, trusted men for what they could only see as an accident. And without any kind of real warning, too. Makarov saw it as nothing more than carelessness.

"Time to go." He nodded toward his men who took it as their cue to start escorting the women to transport. The group split without any other orders, uniformly carrying out their duty.

Then he turned to Nina, taking the top of her arm and leading her out of the exit of the church. He was somewhat less forceful than the other man had been when they were dragging her to this place and she kept close behind him, his pace rushed but not unreasonable. Once Makarov was out of sight, she could hear the other women start to cry again and she knew she would never see any of them ever again.

There was a chill in the air as he dragged her silently towards his car; it seemed strange considering earlier she had observed it was quite mild for the season. Makarov didn't hesitate in opening the back door, helping her inside of the vehicle before slamming it shut once she was securely seated within. Although inside it looked like it should smell of that unique new-car smell, the only scent in her nostrils was that of sour and coppery blood. She was shaking from head to toe and he could feel that as he'd walked with her. Everything had happened so quickly she was fairly sure it hadn't all set in yet. Maybe it wouldn't for a while, that the man she was supposed to get close to had just murdered three people before her very eyes. One of her friends. Even though she had thought she had prepared herself for this moment, it was nothing like she had expected it to be. There was no way you could ever make yourself prepared for a moment like this.

Eventually, she was going to die at the hands of this man, wasn't she?

"Where are you taking those women?" She looked over at him as he got in to the other side of the vehicle. The truth was she knew exactly where those women were going, but it seemed like a question an in-the-dark girl would ask in her situation. They would be shipped from the port, to faraway countries for slavery, prostitution and organ harvesting.

How did he sleep at night?

Makarov ignored her question bluntly, getting comfortable in his seat as he pulled the door shut behind him carefully. He leaned forward and spoke to his driver, giving him instructions on where exactly to take them. The vehicle buzzed to life and it didn't take long for them to race away from the scene of death and destruction like nothing had even happened. She wondered how long it would take before someone stumbled upon the village and realized everything was wrong. When the lifeless bodies of the men and elderly dragged in to the streets would be found. When the children locked up inside a room, alone and frightened, would be rescued.

The journey back to his safe house was long. They travelled for what felt like hours without a break, in a silence which she was sure was on purpose, to force her to submit to her thoughts. To replay the events of the last few hours over in her head like she could think of nothing else. It had worked. The sight of Yuliya endlessly repeated and every time she wanted to cry once more.

"You think I am a monster?" Makarov turned to look at her as they neared the end of their journey, speaking to her for the first time since they had left the church. He didn't seem fazed, as if somehow her replying 'yes' would affect him in any way. It wouldn't.

Nina took in a deep breath through her nose, the sound of his voice causing the hairs on the back of her neck to stand on end. She wasn't going to answer him. What was she supposed to say?

"Answer me." He said, not sounding angry as such, just firm. He lifted his handgun to point at her torso and there seemed to be something so casual about the way he looked as he did it. Like the idea of killing someone meant nothing to him. She was sure it meant nothing to him and all she could think about was the idea of one day, turning her own gun on him. Maybe that thought would be the one that saved her. "Now."

Nina's bottom lip started to tremble uncontrollably and she nodded her head stiffly in response to his question.

"Was that a yes?" He looked at her and raised his eyebrows, pressing the gun into her ribs.

"Yes." She said aloud desperately as she started to cry, closing her eyes and still nodding. "Yes."

"You are scared of me, aren't you?"

"Yes, I'm scared of you..." She breathed.

The gun retreated away from her and returned to its holstered position. Makarov fell silent without any kind of response to her but somewhere inside of him he was satisfied. The fact these Loyalist dogs would cower from him was satisfying. Satisfying in ways he could not explain. He sat with a blank facial expression and not one word left his lips for the rest of the trip. He didn't speak to her again directly for almost two, long days.

Soap watched as she came to a stop once more, her expression a forced kind of blank. It was as if she needed to cry or get angry or emotional but she refused. Her body or her mind, or maybe both, refused. Maybe it was because he was sat observing her so intently it was almost invading, his suspicious eyes trying to really work her out. Trying to determine whether or not he could believe a word she was saying. Maybe she had spent so much time with Makarov that that recollection wasn't even the worst. Maybe she'd seen so many evil things that she'd closed a part of herself off before the emotions could consume her entirely. Maybe that was the easy way out.

"That's rough," he breathed out. What he'd meant to do was apologize for the loss of her friend but he was entirely sure it wouldn't be appreciated; not from him. It wasn't however a surprise that Makarov and his men could behave in such brutal ways when he'd seen it firsthand. He couldn't imagine going through such an ordeal and that was the God's honest truth.

"Life is 'rough'." She said curtly, staring back at him. "I am not a slave to a rich man with absurd and perverse wants and desires. I am not used for amusement for Makarov's lonely men. I am not face down in an Egyptian desert, missing organs that have been harvested against my will. To say that I had it rough is an insult to the women he did not choose."

"He must have ended up treating you pretty good for you to defend him like that earlier though, eh?"

"Do not judge me, MacTavish!" She spat, the increase in volume catching him off guard. Unlike Price, he was pushing all the right buttons, accidentally, but nonetheless it was drawing out anger. Emotion. Emotions he knew were harder to fake than stories that could be perfected with years of rehearsal. Emotions could ruin the best of liars. "Do not judge me when you do not know what it was like."

"Nah, you're right. I don't know what it was like. But I'm certain nothing he could do would ever make me sympathize with him. You've been in too deep for too long."

Yael's well groomed eyebrows pulled together in an angry frown, her eyes narrowed dangerously at the man sat before him. Did he really just say what she'd thought he had? Was he insinuating that she couldn't handle the situation she was in? When she had been first captured by Makarov, she had even questioned that herself. But not now. After everything she'd been through, she refused to believe she could have played out her role any better. Who the Hell did he think he was, sat there judging her like he knew her? Like he knew what she could and couldn't handle? Like he knew what she had spent four years of her life doing?

"Are you suggesting I cannot do my job properly?" Her voice wasn't loud as it had been previously. It sounded quietly outraged at his accusation. "I do not sympathize with him! He is a monster!"

Yael's mind was whirling. Did she really sound like she sympathized with him? She was frankly unaware that she had talked enough to give off any kind of impression of how she had felt throughout this ordeal. Nothing concrete enough to build such claims upon, anyway. How dare he try and tell her how she was feeling when he had barely a clue what was going on!

Each word that left this man's lips made her grow angrier.

Soap shrugged, looking as if it was a perfectly viable explanation.

"Not saying you can't do your job, but if Makarov gets in your head, plays with your mind a bit, drums up some Ultranationalist ideas you agree with? You might lose it. Forget what you're in this for. That's what he does. Then hey, look at that. We've got ourselves a rogue Mossad operative."

"Stop talking or when I get out of this chair I will remove your tongue."

"Would you be as defensive if you thought I was wrong?" he responded, obviously not taking her threat seriously.

"I mean it, MacTavish."

Soap looked at the woman before him with a shake of his head. The tone of her voice which was obviously supposed to sound intimidating only made her sound like she was some kind of insane. It wasn't completely unrealistic to assume she was insane. Her hair was still damp and had twisted in to haphazard ringlets as it started to dry, unattractively frizzy in most places. Some strands clung to her damp skin, framing her oval face. What appeared to be very light make up lines zigzagged down her anger-flushed and bruised cheeks. She was a mess. Her eyes were bloodshot, her body was shaking but she made it easy not to feel sorry for her. Not to want to help her.

"It astounds me how you waltz right in and pull me out of a world I spent seven years trying to be a part of and you expect me to just cooperate with you. You have no idea what you have done. Makarov will never take me back now. He will have expected me to have betrayed him for promises of my freedom. That if you keep me safe, I will lead you straight to him. He would never take the risk of being found to have me back."

It felt like something was cutting off her air supply. A frustration like she had never before felt was consuming every part of her. It was as if everything bad she had been through was for nothing because it was all over now. She was never going to see Makarov again. Unlike she would have thought, the idea didn't bring her any feeling of relief. More than anything, she felt a confusingly overwhelming feeling of regret. Like she hadn't done enough to justify her being sent there in the first place. She hadn't helped enough. And it was all thanks to some men on some kind of personal mission; men who had fooled themselves into thinking they could bring down such a powerful man.

Yael sighed helplessly. They did not understand.

It was then, to the surprise of both of them in that room, the supposedly hardened and superiorly trained intelligence officer broke down in to a flood of silent tears.

As he looked on, Soap shifted uncomfortably for a moment in his seated position, unaccustomed to such situations. He had never been good with crying and emotional women. Well, women in general, actually - as they could be quite a rarity on the job. What was he supposed to say? Was she gonna stop? The man got to his feet and pushed the chair he had sat on aside in silence – all apart from the occasional sniff and heavy breath coming from the weeping woman before him. It was only now he felt the first pang of guilt for having kept her tied up and cold, grilling her on a situation that had clearly deteriorated her. Although for the entire time she'd been trying to give off the impression she was some kind of emotionless, unaffected warrior, he could see now that it wasn't as simple as that. She wasn't a strong as she acted and he couldn't help but wonder whether Makarov had done this to her. It was either that or she really had been a poor choice for such an assignment. Deep down, he suspected it was the first.

"I'll go find you some dry clothes and something to eat." Soap spoke up in a gruff tone that didn't reflect his minor change in perception of her. Maybe that was what she wanted of him. "But don't get your hopes up. You're not going anywhere until we figure this shit out."

Yael didn't respond but he hadn't expected her thanks or acknowledgement. At least the tears seemed to have subsided somewhat. Like they had served as the outlet she needed and she was beginning to calm herself down again. She was heading back to the cold and collected state she had been in previously.

As she sat, her shoulders aching incessantly at the stressful position her tied hands were subjecting her to, she watched him walk away from her. Towards the heavy looking metal door that was the only way in or out of the chilly, basement like room. His steps were agonizingly slow to a woman who just wanted him to shut the door behind him and leave her to mull over what she was going to do. How she was going to tackle this predicament she was in and come out on top. How she was going to convince them that she was one of the good people here, that her intentions had always been the best. Because they had and she never doubted this for a second. And then he stopped. He turned to face her. He spoke.

"Are you in love with Makarov?" he asked slowly, sounding as if he were unsure as to whether or not he wanted to hear the answer.

The response required no thought and she responded hastily. It sounded as if she was offended he even needed to ask such a thing.

"No."

As soon as the word left her lips, deep down, she knew it was a lie.