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//
The Beating
//
She stared at herself in the mirror and hated what she saw.
It wasn’t a marine. It wasn’t a woman she used to be proud of. The one that beat all the records. That learned Arabic just so she could land a spot in the military intelligence part of a Force Recon team her commander told her would suit her.
Once, before she had learned what the Lioness program was, Cruz had been told that if she attacked everything they threw at her with the same relentless determination she showed during the physical fitness part of her training, there would be no stopping her.
It made her stand up straighter that day. Made her remember what it was like to treat herself like she mattered.
It was easy to do it, back then.
Her superior officers had believed in her potential. They kept pushing her to consider more options. To achieve more. To do more.
Those men and women took a scared girl and turned her into Staff Sergeant Manuelos. A marine that could survive two tours in Afghanistan and still crave more.
They helped her understand that the sky was not the limit for her. It was only the beginning.
Except… just as she began to touch it… she was pulled under.
Now she was so out of her element that it felt like she was constantly drowning.
The same way she had been nearly drowned on land by men and women like her… that were taught to jump and shoot and torture others because someone at the top made the call.
Someone like Joe.
To someone like Cruz, who craved having a purpose in life, Joe from Special Activities had been a lifeline.
She was offering more of the same limitless possibilities that allowed Cruz to be strong. To protect those who were as weak as she used to be in a way that involved her intelligence training more than her ability to physically stop a target.
She was excited to protect those who were as weak and lost as she used to be.
Cruz didn’t know that she wanted to take care of others until she was given the opportunity to do it.
Joe was giving her the possibility to learn more about how else she could life up scared girls off the floor and offer them a place to belong. To do something greater than themselves.
Even if they didn’t know it.
It had been Cruz who didn’t know anything.
She had craved purpose and instead she had been degraded.
Joe ordered her to strip naked and called it an interview.
Anyone else would have seen it as the flashing red warning it was.
Cruz only saw a challenge. Blinded by the same fury that made her swing the frying pan, she didn’t think about tomorrow. About consequences. She thought about this one moment where she had to win.
She was naked and pretending to be fine with it. Telling Joe that if this was how she got off, it wasn’t a problem for her.
Cruz didn’t think of Edgar.
The way he called her a fucking bitch.
The way he punched her in the face… how he humiliated her and still made her beg for forgiveness.
Staff Sergeant Manuelos was willing to degrade herself to be considered special.
To be seen worthy of her newfound family because Joe was offering her more of those limitless possibilities that had allowed her to be something greater than herself.
//
It felt like a lifetime ago. An isolated incident.
Now, with her shaking fingers, Cruz understood that it was who Joe was.
Cruz closed her eyes and fought back the tears. She swallowed down that heavy feeling trying to crawl up her throat. The one that told her she would be crying herself hoarse if she let it out.
Her clothes ripped up cuts that had tried to heal over the fabric and it felt like she was trapped in that hole again.
Her body was shaking. She wasn’t cold. She wasn’t anything. She was numb. She was still in that place inside herself she used to run to when the world got overwhelming and all she could think about was how much she missed her mom.
Her side hurt so much she needed to use both hands to turn the handle on the shower.
Her hands shook and Cruz wondered if she might be cold after all.
It felt as if she couldn’t get warm enough after spending all the time on a concrete floor getting blasted by water while in her underwear.
The shower filled the small bathroom with steam, and she flinched as the water hit her face.
The pressure didn’t feel like the hose they used on her but it brought back those memories just the same.
She cried as the blood pooled under her feet.
Then, Cruz shook with rage and a new sense of understanding.
Of despair.
Just like before, her life had boiled down to another decision that she had to face alone.
Except this time, she was crushed because she had failed.
For the first time in years, since someone lifted her off the floor and told her there was another way to live her life, she failed and Cruz hated it.
It felt like going backwards.
Like she was a bad decision away from falling back into her own life.
That’s what made it hurt.
The knowledge that she was not cut out for this job. All the years of training meant that Joe was right after all.
She had been dehumanized. She had been sleep deprived. She had been waterboarded… and finally, she had been broken.
She had been a marine and now she was nothing.
Cruz had reverted back to that apathetic girl that didn’t care about herself. That thought she was worthless and she knew it was wrong.
The marines taught her how to do many things. With the most important being that she understood how much she mattered.
Cruz couldn’t fall back into her old life. Not when she knew what she could have been if her mother hadn’t died.
For her mother and for herself… she had to quit the Lioness program.
//
Cruz dried herself and avoided looking at her own face. She stared at her tooth instead. It was sitting on top of the sink and for some reason it made her think about the night Drill Master Sergeant Carter told her something she hadn’t understood. Not really. Not until now.
“You don’t get it Manuelos, it’s only a matter of time before it happens to you. Same as it happens to all of us. The navy, the marines… the whole fucking military… it eats its own… I just hope it doesn’t happen to you… I hope to god you survive this…”
It happened to her, and she survived.
But she wished that she hadn’t.
Because now she understood why cadet Williams had shot himself the night Drill Master Sergeant was too drunk and too honest about how she would be chewed up too.
It took her years to get to the same place and she hated knowing that she wasn’t a marine anymore. If you can’t trust your commander to do right by you on this side of the pond, why would you trust them to keep you alive when it mattered the most?
//
She had been quiet the entire ride to the base.
As Joe took the turn into the long, empty road that led up to the gate at Fort Bragg, she said the words she had been repeating in her head for the past two hours.
“You were right. Everyone breaks. I… I’m broken and I can’t do this anymore.” Cruz was looking out the window as she said this to Joe. Pretending she was anyone else and not the same woman that had been unable to survive that last round of SERE training after being able to go 21 days without breaking for a second time.
She had only lasted ten additional days before Joe pulled her out.
Cruz thought she could go the full 21, she had done it before, with her unit. She did it alone, before Joe showed up… but she couldn’t do it once Joe told her there was no point other than to break her.
Joe called her insubordinate and cancelled the second round of SERE training after Cruz attacked the trainer. Even in her weakened state, she had caused enough damage that he refused to let anyone go near her.
Cruz pretended she hadn’t been broken. She would have said anything in the hole to make it stop.
Promised to endure through worse.
The second Joe told her it wasn’t even a taste of the real thing, she knew she couldn’t have survived more.
It was why she told Joe with certainty that she was done.
She was broken.
Joe ignored her and told her this was her new home.
Cruz looked at the marines running down the path Joe had driven on and she felt so far removed from them that she knew it was the right thing to do.
She didn’t want to live through the real thing. She didn’t want to train anymore. To do SERE. To follow orders… she was done.
“Ma’am, you won. I broke… I didn’t know it then, but I do now.” Cruz tried again.
Joe talked about the team and Cruz felt herself slipping into that dark room that smelled like her own blood and piss.
“You can either discharge me or I can eat my gun… but I’m not a marine anymore… I can’t be…” She said, speaking over Joe’s question about Amrohi.
“You’re done when the mission is done. Is that clear?” Joe shouted at her. Eyes no longer masked behind her sunglasses.
Cruz saw fury directed at her that would have made her flinch at any other time.
It would have more than a month ago.
Maybe even an hour ago.
Now, she was hollow and ready for everything to stop.
Joe looked past her in a way that made Cruz understand she was no longer part of the team but an obstacle.
//
Her team learned that the time she was gone was not the standard SERE training they had all gone through.
They were drunk and mad that she had tried to quit. They wanted to start a fight because they didn’t know how to feel about her being hurt so badly she couldn’t chew. Being hurt to the point that she no longer wanted to be a marine.
They had only been a unit for six month but it meant something to have a family that would kill for you.
They rushed to the bar without a second thought. Only needing to express their emotions the only way they had been allowed for most of their lives: violence.
Cruz had joined them.
At first, her heart wasn’t in the fight.
Not anymore.
Then, she saw his face.
She saw Edgar’s face too.
And all the fear she had felt for over a month exploded out of her as a beer bottle hit a man’s face and shattered into pieces across his face.
She remembers the rage but not how close she had come to killing a man that was just like her. Only trying to do his job because it was what someone from above had told him he needed to do. No matter how inhumane it might have seemed.
They had orders and they had to follow them.
Cruz was shaking as she saw the name on the phone. Realizing how close she had come to being just like her brother.
She ran out of the bar and tried to push down the feeling of being stuck in the dark hole they had thrown her in.
Cruz tried to forget the way she begged Joe to kill her so she wouldn’t have to go through that torture again.
She slid her thumb and Aaliyah’s voice was so light and happy and far away from this life that she was like a salve.
Her friend asked her what she was up to and quickly made plans for them to meet.
Cruz could pretend that her voice went up an octave because Aaliyah was speaking to Zara, not her.
It wouldn’t have been the full truth.
But what was another lie between them?
Until she heard that Aaliyah wanted to go to the beach, and she panicked because she couldn’t be Zara. Zara was the girl that couldn’t explain the bruises on her body. Who needed a car crash as a cover story because she didn’t know how normal people got bruises.
Aaliyah had been excited about the beach up until the moment she heard Cruz say those words. Then, the worry that came after made Cruz feel like shit. She didn’t know how to deal with this terrible feeling when Aaliyah had been nothing but kind to her.
She was already trying to help make Zara feel better, even while only on the phone with her.
Joe hadn’t even let a nurse, much less a medic see her.
She had been put in a car and told nothing.
It hadn’t been classified where they were going. Joe was just used to withholding so much from her that it was a welcome change to hear someone else hold nothing back.
Aaliyah’s concern made Cruz’s heart speed up. It made her want to be that girl Aaliyah thought she was. The student with an uncle that wanted to help her find a husband. Cruz wanted to be that student that only cared about boys and bikinis.
Instead, she was a broken marine that couldn’t stare at her reflection anymore.
//
Bruise Like A Fist
//
With the support of her team, she told Joe she wanted out before she even went shopping.
Cruz was ignored and told to keep her head in the game.
//
//
Cruz stared at herself in the bikini Aaliyah picked for her.
The bruises were in full display. Her stomach was painted in purples and yellows, like a bursting sunset.
Her eyes were black and she could still see the raised circular scars scattered around her body. A reminder of what she would never go back to… yet here she was… going through worse because she was desperate not to lose the only family she had left.
Aside from her felon brother.
She was distracted when she talked to Aaliyah, who got tired of her complaining. Thinking she was exaggerating in the way that girls do when they want to be flattered but are too modest to compliment themselves.
Instead, her friend steps inside, stops herself, takes the bruises in and asks, “What did that?” in a way that it sounds more like who did that?
Cruz is ashamed.
She looks down and doesn’t want this. The lie where she pretends this was a car accident instead of the truth.
Her heart wants to talk but she’s wired. It’s the only thing that reminds her of her mission. The necklace recording them. The lie feels clumsy as she tells it again. Faltering against her lips because she doesn’t want to hide.
She can’t tell the truth either.
When she tries to dismiss Aaliyah’s worries by saying she was fine, she got a small shake of her head as an answer. Aaliyah reached out and her fingertips barely touched above her bellybutton, next to the biggest bruise on her stomach.
Cruz takes a small breath and winces. Forgetting to pretend that it hurt less than it actually does.
//
It was easier to lie to the doctor.
Until it wasn’t.
Just like Aaliyah, he saw through her lies.
His voice was kinder than she had ever heard a man speak. Life in the military does that to you. Make you forget that guys aren’t always loud and boisterous. Or constantly shouting to be heard over gunfire.
This doctor was mindful of keeping his hands still. He didn’t try to stroke her back or touch her unnecessarily.
He even warmed his stethoscope with his hands before he put it on her bare skin. Unlike the doctors at base that just rushed them through everything from shots to stitches. Who barely remembered to glance at her file to remember her name.
That was why it was shocking the way he explained how her bruises were inconsistent with a car accident. He looked at her for permission to show her that they were the perfect size for a fist. Inches of air between them felt as heavy as the water hose they turned on her.
Cruz wasn’t built for kindness.
She grew up in a war zone and left home to find a bigger one that felt more familiar than all the things she saw with her unit during leave. The beautiful places that felt foreign to her because she couldn’t be like those girls who ordered fancy coffees and ate pastries in large cities.
It was why she told him the truth of how she got here… a few years late, but it was all true. She was trying to start a new life and she didn’t want her friends to know that a man had done this to her. That she let it get this bad.
The doctor smiled softly at her and told her it wasn’t his place to tell her friends that.
Cruz let out a small breath and smiled at him. She wonders who she would have been if she had bumped into a man like this when she was younger. If her life might have led her to college the way her commander assumed it should have.
//
She talks to Aaliyah as they walk to the beach. Without her other friends, she is more vulnerable than Cruz thought she would be. This is the girl that could truly understand the real Cruz, instead of Zara, the mirage. One that belongs to the same desert and heat that Aaliyah can’t stand.
She’s thinking about the ways people can lie to themselves in a palace, when those walls are behind you, when they sit down. It really was harder when the lie was staring at her in the face. When it told her she didn’t belong in this world or even her own.
They sit down and Aaliyah talks about sand and the way some things are only for the mind. There is no recreating them outside of your fantasies and Cruz wonders if her entire life is just that. A badly translated fantasy where she wanted to be strong but only found herself to be weak and beaten down.
Just like before.
The only things she recreated were the things she tried to run away from.
//
Cruz wakes up feeling disoriented and tired.
She forgot how exhausting it was to heal from large injuries after being out of the field for six months.
The kitchen is filled to the brim with an assortment of things she’s never seen outside of magazines. Expensive looking coffee beans, serving plates, and other things that don’t make sense when all she wants is to find a glass so she can drink some water.
Sami shows up and has his hands all over her body.
His are soft and uncalloused but they are still searching in that way that reminds her of being back in SERE.
Cruz, not Zara, tells him to stop.
He doesn’t hear the steel in her voice and tries to come in for another grope. Another kiss.
She taps his Adam’s apple with her fist. It was meant as a warning. A reminder not to proceed.
He chokes under the light pressure, and she thinks that maybe she doesn’t remember how to be in control when she can’t be herself.
She leaves, pretending she’s not hearing the rush of water hitting her skin so hard it pushes her forward.
Soft footsteps follow her and she goes into her room at a small run.
The door closes behind her and she looks around for a weapon. Upset she couldn’t even bring a collapsible baton.
The door rattles as she grabs a pen. She hides next to the door and the rattling is more insistent.
Cruz wants the feeling of panic and desperation to pass. But it’s only building in her body, coiling into her muscles until she’s in that same room, years ago, when she made her first kill.
The world is silent, and she is steel within.
She is waiting for him to break through the flimsy door and lock. Thinking about the most efficient way to brutally take him down when she hears a soft voice.
It takes a second for her brain to remember Arabic and she recognizes that he’s being escorted away from her door.
Her name is whispered into the door and a soft knock follows.
Asif, Aaliyah’s main bodyguard, asks her if she’s okay. She tries to smile and tells him that she’s been better. He nods and reminds her that they’re around, in case she needs them. Cruz thanks him and locks the door as soon as his footsteps echo up the stairs.
She gets into bed and sees a blinking red light.
Remembering who she’s supposed to be, she pretends to push back tears from her face and covers her entire body with the blankets.
She’s a tight ball of confusion. Trying to go through everything she’d done in this room. If she could have compromised the mission. But she had only slept in it.
The exam took place in a different room.
One without blinking lights or microphones.
She wonders if Aaliyah’s room is bugged too.
Then she remembers that she’s the only person in this building that wasn’t chosen for Aaliyah to be friends with. It made sense to keep an extra eye on her.
She would have done the same thing if she was part of the security team.
//
The next morning she’s quieter than normal. She’s still thinking about the security measures Aaliyah and her friends have in place. What it could mean for the mission. She’s looking at her plate so intently that she doesn’t notice how everyone else at the table is splitting their attention between her and the room where Sami and Ehsan are still in.
One of the maids gives her a cup of coffee. Taking away her plate, still full and untouched.
Cruz smiles and apologizes for not being able to eat.
Aaliyah looks upset and stands up. Saying she needs the bathroom.
Cruz looks down at the table. She doesn’t know why she’s not hungry.
She hears shouting and a door closing.
Looking up, Cruz catches the way everyone looks away from her and down at their phones at the same time. Pretending to no longer be interested in her or the argument going on in the other room.
Aaliyah comes back and smiles at her.
Cruz feels trapped by that smile. Like she wants to hide from it and also understand how she can make Aaliyah smile brightly at her again.
Sami leaves the room, not bothering to say anything to the group and Ehsan explains that he needs to grow up.
//
The Choice Of Failure
//
The flight to the Hamptons is the most luxurious thing she’s ever done in her life and as she’s staring outside the window she thinks about how never in a million years would this have been something she dreamed for herself.
Even when her mother was alive, she thought she could get a scholarship to a state school for track and maybe study something practical so she wouldn’t have to driver herself into the ground just to keep the lights on.
Ehsan was in the back of the plane, talking on the satellite phone and Aaliyah took his place.
She was so nice that it made it impossible to pretend to be her friend. Cruz wanted it to be real. She wanted Aaliyah to say her name. To call her Cruz instead of Zara. She wanted Aaliyah to keep making easy conversation about make up and fashion instead of Joe ordering her to kill a man she’d never met but who couldn’t possibly be as bad as they made him out to be.
How could a man be evil and have such a kind daughter?
Maybe the government was wrong.
Cruz frowned at this thought.
There was no way they would send her on this mission knowing it was wrong. That he wasn’t who they said he was, would they?
“the whole fucking military… it eats its own.”
She hears those words inside of her and bites her lip as she tries to pay attention to what Aaliyah is saying.
//
At the beach she had packed her black bathing suit, the one she bought to cover up the bruises and scars, but Aaliyah seemed sad at the thought that she could be ashamed of what she went through.
“You survived, isn’t that what matters?” She asks in a quiet way that feels like a leaden weight inside of her.
Cruz smiles and picks the bikini Aaliyah had packed for her.
“Thanks.” She says sincerely and the line between who she is and who the mission needs her to be blurs.
//
Out in the water, Cruz was surprised that she didn’t have to force herself to match Aaliyah’s pace. It felt more natural than the grueling way they were forced to swim during training.
Without the gear and near drownings, it should have been easier.
She looks to Aaliyah, who smiles at the lie she told her about the sand bar and Cruz doesn’t understand why it can’t always be this easy.
They talk about marriage and she tells Aaliyah not to get married. Meaning every word.
Cruz wants her to be happy.
Aaliyah deserves to be young and unburdened by a marriage that feels like a noose but should be the most exciting part of her life.
She stares at Aaliyah’s face. Her green eyes are looking at the shore and she is uncharacteristically quiet. Her face serious.
Cruz wonders what Aaliyah would tell her if she knew the truth. That she had been there before, and she regretted making the choice that felt right because it broke her.
Aaliyah turns her body towards her and smiles. Unaware of how terrible Cruz feels for lying to her. For having to hold back the truth as she plays the part of the supportive friend.
The one that is too American and wants to live her own life. That encourages Aaliyah to choose happiness over her duty.
They swim back at a lazy pace. Stopping and laughing every couple of strokes.
They’re so alike that it hurts because Aaliyah doesn’t know. Cruz wants her to know.
She wants Aaliyah to know that she gets it.
The pressure to choose her duty to her family over her own desires.
How it only gets harder the more she moves toward a goal that isn’t her but is meant for her anyway.
She can’t find the words to tell Aaliyah all this.
Not as Zara.
So, she swims back to shore and remembers that her name is meant to be Zara. That she’s only here to meet rich boys so she can get married off.
She’s not a marine.
She’s just a girl.
Except, that she’s never been just a girl.
That becomes clear when she’s feeling out of her depth as the girls talk about makeup and laugh about how hard it is to match foundation after being at the beach because they would feel like ghosts in the club with shades that are now slightly too light for them.
Cruz had never talked about makeup with her friends. In school they worried about things like bills and how to help their parents pay for food while trying to stay on the track team.
In the marines all they talked about was tactics and how hard it was to go back home because all their friends seemed to be years younger by simply having stayed at home and in college.
Cruz didn’t go home but she heard the heartache in her friend’s voices when they tried to navigate dating someone that didn’t understand their priority was their country. Not a relationship.
Maybe that’s why there were so many failed marriages and no second dates among her friends.
Cruz was desperate to fit in.
She wanted to belong.
Even if it was fake.
She would allow herself one dance to be truly herself.
A small moment where she wasn’t pretending to be Zara.
Cruz didn’t need a night.
Just three minutes where she didn’t feel like a failure because Joe was upset with her and she couldn’t talk to her because they were meant to be strangers.
Cruz smiled at the only man that was nice to her.
He also seemed nervous and out of place.
He bought her a drink and watched her down it.
Cruz wanted to belong.
She wanted three minutes to be herself.
Instead, the world went fuzzy around the edges, and she found herself in that dark hole where her body was tied down and all she knew was pain and rising panic.
//
She was swinging at her attackers.
“Cruz, relax.”
She couldn’t make her body stop fighting.
“Relax. We got you.”
She tried to punch out and instead of her blow landing, she saw her arms twitching in front of her.
She could barely hear what Joe was saying.
How she was admonishing her for getting roofied in a club.
“You don’t have the skills for clandestine work.” It sounded so final and Cruz laughed.
“I’ve been telling you for months that I can’t do this. That I don’t want to. That you broke me with your stupid fucking SERE training… and this is what it takes to get you to listen to me? Getting raped at the fucking club because I’m no longer a marine?”
Joe sounds exasperated when she tells her that she wasn’t raped. That they got there in time.
“This time. You got there in time this time… but you already broke me… long before… so why does it matter when they can’t trust me? I was trying to fit in but they don’t trust me and after tonight, I don’t even trust myself to complete the mission.” Joe looks pissed off and a woman walks into her field of view.
“If she can’t manage a weekend in New York, how is she going to navigate Riyadh or Damascus?” The woman asks with such authority that it feels like a dismissal. Not a question.
Joe looks angry and disappointed at the same time.
Cruz feels relieved. Because she can’t manage this and maybe this time, Joe will believe her when she tells her again that she is broken and she is quitting.
“She’s right, ma’am.” Cruz tells Joe, who walked away to confer with the woman in the suit.
“I can’t handle any more. I told you I wanted to quit months ago, but you didn’t listen… I… I won’t enlist again… not for this… or any other program. I’m done, ma’am.” Cruz said before collapsing on the couch.
Two cups gave her some water as Tex fiddled with her IV bags.
“You got the last one killed, and you ran an unsanctioned torture room so harsh that this one can’t even be bothered to hide how much she doesn’t want to be a Lioness? This and Texas add up to one fucking shitshow that make it hard to move forward with this mission.” Cruz hears the other woman ream into Joe and she wants to feel relieved.
Instead, she feels like the failure she is.
Cruz tells them about the wedding being held in Dubai.
They doubt she can make it that long and Cruz agrees with her even as Joe tries to contradict her.
“I can’t make it but maybe the team can still do their job.” Cruz says as she flops down.
“Maybe this time they can find someone who won’t break.” She chokes out before passing out.
//
Truth Is The Shrewdest Lie
//
Waking up without underwear when she was supposed to be strong enough to protect the weak left her feeling unmoored.
She tries not to panic as she thinks of the way the instructor’s body felt when he was on top of her and she couldn’t move. The panic she felt as she hyperventilated and nearly passed out from struggling against his body.
Cruz wonders if she fought against the man that raped her last night.
It was worse, not remembering.
The cracked and bruises were still with her, but she knew exactly how she got each and every one of them. Even with the days blending together into one sleepless haze. Those days belonged to her.
Last night… she doesn’t remember anything.
Just a club.
She puts on sweats and finds Tucker.
A man drugged her with GHB and she didn’t remember having a conversation about it last night. Multiple conversations, apparently.
Tucker packs up as he answers her questions with practiced ease. As if he knew what she would ask before the words left her mouth and Cruz doesn’t understand how they could have talked about this when she doesn’t remember.
She asks about STDs and getting tested but Tucker tells her that it’s not necessary. They got there in time.
She reminds him that she woke up in her dress and without her underwear and he stops. “We got there in the nick of time.”
Cruz wants to cry while not wanting to cry.
Tucker waits for their eyes to meet before telling her that he wouldn’t bullshit her on this. One marine to another, he wouldn’t lie to her.
She nods and they talk about packing up and all she can think about is how easy it had been for Joe to lie to her. How hard it was for her to lie to Aaliyah.
Cruz wasn’t cut out for this, and she hopes she can talk to Joe about it again. Once she meets them in Texas.
//
A woman Cruz hasn’t met before is there. There’s a vague sense of familiarity and Cruz doesn’t understand why.
She’s staring at her and suddenly she takes command. Cruz doesn’t know her rank but she understands power. It comes in the way Joe is holding herself while staring down at the floor. How Kyle is struggling to keep the sheepish look off his face as she reminds them that she was in charge of making sure this didn’t become a shit show like it was in Van Horn.
Cruz puts all of that away. It doesn’t matter. She’s just a grunt and those decisions are above her pay grade anyway.
All she can do is talk about the house in Pakistan where a guy in the back of the house detonated and took three with him.
They couldn’t send back pink mist to their grieving parents, so they sent back three sealed weighted caskets.
She looks at the cameras and keeps talking about the entry points. How lack of time cost her three boys who were like brothers because they didn’t have the luxury of having cameras set up inside every room of the house. Instead, she had three funerals to miss because more intel came in and so did a new mission.
Sometimes she thinks they overworked them so they wouldn’t have time to grieve all their dead friends.
//
En route to the mission she argues with Joe and Supervisor Meade shuts them down so fast that Cruz is impressed.
She reverts back to what she knows. What she’s comfortable with.
No lies. No decisions. No wrong turns.
As Supervisor Meade said, “The only mission is the mission you’re on.”
Joe acts like a surly teenager instead of her commander but Cruz doesn’t care.
She might not be able to trust Joe to keep her safe. Not after SERE. To have her back. Not after the club. But she trusted the formidable woman in front of her to make sure everyone stayed in line.
//
Joe had wanted her to stay behind but it was illogical for the one with the most recent tactical training to go in last.
She might be out of her depth when talking about make-up and fashion with girls that never had to worry about paying a bill in their life, but she knew this. Cruz understood war.
She had been forged by it long before she left for the desert.
It felt natural to take the lead to the front door.
To signal to her team and enter the code in complete silence.
Twisting the knob was a release.
She walked in with practiced ease and fired off two shots at center mass, lowering her body as she swept the room.
They moved like a snake through the house. Firing off bursts of shots into bodies while entering rooms and wandering through known hallways.
The paint hadn’t been there in their plywood model, but Cruz could still feel the familiarity of this place with each step she took.
Joe went right and she went left.
Two shots left her weapon and she heard the suppressive shot to the head as she exited the room and commanded them all on her.
Joe was distracted and Cruz heard it in the way she cursed and told her to hold her position.
Cruz ignored her.
Pakistan clear on her mind as she remembered the video images of the vests and bombs being built here as the men talked about football matches without any care in the world.
They were about to blow themselves up and they only cared about whose team would make it to the finals they would never be alive to see.
She doesn’t hear the righteous fury in his voice. It was just an echo of many men who had come before him. Many who would come after. The words die in his mouth as she shoots off three rounds and leans down over his body.
Joe tries to question her and Cruz tells her that she was saving her life. Her hands know the practiced routine of checking the device, so it doesn’t blow them up, even after it’s been activated.
Joe stands up and tells everyone back in the vans that the enemy they just killed in action was wearing a suicide vest that he managed to activate before he was eliminated.
The rush of a mission going off without anyone in her unit getting maimed or killed leaves her body loose and exhausted.
Cruz had forgotten what it was like to be in control. To be good at something.
The feeling of elation mixed with fatigue is then hit with adrenaline as she sees she has some missed texts from Aaliyah.
She wonders if Aaliyah would be impressed with her. If she would wait for Cruz to get back and hold her tightly because she made it back safely.
Cruz smiles into her phone as she thinks about how impressed someone like Aaliyah would be with the kinds of things she knows.
It crashes down into an uncomfortable feeling of being sick because Aaliyah ended her texts with Zara’s name. She was worried about her friend, the student.
Not Cruz.
And it made her sad that she couldn’t tell Aaliyah who she really was.
That she had to lie to keep her in her life because she was just a mission and they could never be friends.
Cruz was never good at making friends outside of the military.
Why would someone like Aaliyah be any different?
Especially when she only remembered how good it felt to be herself again because she had done things Aaliyah could never know.
Cruz was strong.
She was able to protect an entire neighborhood of sleeping families with the things she knew, but Aaliyah only saw her as a helpless American girl who knew nothing about makeup or riding in private jets.
Standing up, she makes her way to her room. Sighing at the thought of having to pretend to be someone else again.
She hears the waves in the background.
No music.
Just Aaliyah’s voice. Heavy with worry for her.
Desperate to see her face.
Anyone else would have gotten a curt no and an end to the conversation so she could fall asleep in her bed.
Aaliyah makes her feel excited and nervous.
She likes the way the other girl always asks to see her. Searches for her eyes so they can share a smile over nothing.
Cruz asks for two minutes.
She calls in thirty seconds.
Aaliyah wants to see where she lives, and she’s embarrassed by how bare the room is.
She pushes that thought aside as she tells a partial version of the truth.
Cruz is embarrassed that she doesn’t have Aaliyah’s money. That her room has army issued everything. It’s perfect for her but she doesn’t think Aaliyah would want to be in her room with its polyester sheets and wooden furniture that hadn’t been in fashion for over three decades.
Her words make Cruz smile, but she still doesn’t want Aaliyah to see her room. They stare at each other and Cruz imagines that their friendship is real.
She wants it to be.
Aaliyah calls them the lady and the tramp and Cruz laughs at the image of them sharing a plate of spaghetti. Aaliyah corrects herself and calls her a lady. They are the lady and the lady tramp and Cruz laughs and agrees. Biting her lip as she tries not to think about going to dinner, just the two of them, and how nice that would be.
It wouldn’t be a date or anything.
It would just be two friends sharing a plate of spaghetti over candlelight.
Aaliyah changes the conversation to how amazing Weekdays in the Hamptons are and shows off her new bathing suit.
Cruz’s heart speeds up as she thinks that Aaliyah was right about bikinis and leaving nothing to the imagination.
That thought, along with the dinner she wanted to share with Aaliyah make her feel weird. Good weird. But weird.
She looks down and bites her lip again as she smiles.
Cruz wonders if this is what having a friend is like.
Aaliyah asks her to come back to the Hamptons with her and Cruz doesn’t want to.
She hates lying to her.
She hates lying to Aaliyah’s friends.
She hates that she can’t stay next to Aaliyah for longer than a couple of weeks at a time.
Cruz wants to spend the entire summer next to her.
Aaliyah reassures her that her friends are gone and she’s all alone.
Cruz looks up at that and the yes leaves her lips before she can stop herself.
She had told Joe she quit. And now even Supervisor Meade was aware that she wanted to leave as soon as her service was up in a couple of months. Mission accomplished be damned.
Supervisor Meade unceremoniously gave her, her new rank.
“I won’t re-enlist to be a Gunnery Sergeant, ma’am.” Cruz refused the certificate.
“I’m a fucking Supervisor, don’t call me ma’am.” The other woman answers in a tone that almost made Cruz automatically take the promotion.
“Understood. Supervisor Meade.” Cruz answered.
“For fuck’s sake, take the stupid paper. It already went through anyway.” Supervisor Meade told her as she shoved the Marine Promotion Warrant in her hand.
“It’s not a promotion so you can sign up for two more years. It’s a keep your fucking mouth shut about the program and this clusterfuck of a mess and the US government will thank you for your services with a nice bump in your pay grade as you figure out what it means to be officially retired from the military.” Supervisor Meade had told her.
Cruz laughed and held the red folder against her chest.
With Aaliyah telling her that they were the lady and the lady tramp, she didn’t know how true that was. She was officially retired and soon to be homeless.
Technically she shouldn’t have called Aaliyah at all.
But this was the one part of her life as a Lioness that she had truly enjoyed. Second to what they did last night.
//
The Lie Is The Truth
//
The drive from the storage unit where her entire life had been frozen in place since she started the Lioness program had been out of the way. Cruz needed to store her new certificate and uniforms. Her regulation sweats and grab things that smelled like stale air but didn’t scream military.
She should have left her real driver’s license in storage. Taken only her new one.
It might have been better, knowing that the lie would be easier than the truth. But she was tired of easy.
It had never been easy to lie to Aaliyah.
Even at the start, she was uncomfortable being someone else.
Especially when Aaliyah had been kind to her.
She had befriended Zara without a second thought and even though it would destroy her trust to know that Zara didn’t exist… Cruz didn’t want Aaliyah to think there was anything wrong with her.
Aaliyah had such a good heart that even if it went against everything she promised Supervisor Meade, she had to know.
It was a disloyalty to the oath she swore when she became a marine so large that could get her court marshalled.
Lying to Aaliyah felt like a bigger betrayal.
She tried not to get emotional at the thought of Aaliyah using her real name.
Even if it was in anger, she wanted to hear her name fall from Aaliyah’s lips.
She had to say Cruz.
Just once.
The would be redemption enough.
The rain pelted her windshield and she bit her lip.
Hoping it wasn’t a mistake to bring the pictures of her with the first units she led.
Leaving behind those that weren’t made up of ghosts.
Men and women that were forever on the brink of turning 20.
It was painful.
It was unnecessary.
But she was tired of living a lie when she no longer had to.
//
Her phone rang and Joe’s voice was pissed off in that controlled way that told Cruz she had probably fought Supervisor Meade for her to remain in the program. The stress in Bobby’s voice tells her that they were still at odds over how quickly Cruz had packed up and left.
She would have stayed, had beer with the team. Remain in the house until they found a new asset. But it was too painful.
All she saw were the ways Joe kept telling her she wasn’t to be trusted. She was tortured and humiliated and still she was never enough.
Even with how well they did in Texas, she was still on the periphery of their unit. Not a part of it.
Joe had called her an asset. Not an agent. Not her teammate. Not even a marine.
She was an asset.
It was unfair for an asset to take up someone else’s room. She wasn’t part of the unit anymore.
“Listen, we can patch her through, but you have to keep her talking for a couple of minutes while we set up on our end to listen to the call.” Joe orders and Cruz agrees.
Lying was easy when you didn’t care.
Cruz tells Aaliyah that the weather is not cooperating with their weekend and Aaliyah corrects her in that charmingly blunt way she has of putting things. “You are wrong. The weather is perfect.”
Aaliyah quickly adds that she loves the rain, and she should hurry. Her surprise had to leave at seven.
She hangs up and smiles as she drives in the rain.
Her phone rings and Joe is frustrated when she tells her they couldn’t set things up in time to monitor the call.
“It’s fine, she wanted to meet up this weekend, but I told her I was busy.” This lie was easier than the first.
“Do you think you can call her back and tell her you aren’t busy?” Joe doesn’t want to lose Aaliyah even if she’s lost her asset.
“She doesn’t have this number saved.” Cruz avoids the question as she eases into the bridge that will lead her into Long Island.
//
The way that Aaliyah says “Zara!” With such palpable excitement makes Cruz instantly melt against the shorter woman.
She’s so happy she can have this, that Joe couldn’t take Aaliyah from her. Not completely.
Not until Aaliyah knows the truth.
Then it would only be Cruz that takes this from herself because how can you be friends with an artifice? With someone not meant to be real?
They sit down and she is the opposite of relaxed.
She hates being poked and prodded.
It’s uncomfortable.
She complains, forgetting to be Zara as she mentions how painful this whole process is.
Aaliyah laughs and they talk about all the things Cruz hasn’t done. She smiles and looks away. Liking the breathy way that Aaliyah tells her she deserves all those things.
Her fake uncle is the wrong man to find her a husband because she doesn’t want a husband.
She doesn’t know what she wants beyond this last weekend with Aaliyah.
Aaliyah tries to guarantee that she can get her at least two of the three things on her list of a perfect man for Zara: handsome, money, and dreamer.
Cruz doesn’t care about money. She doesn’t care about having a dreamer. Or even a handsome man.
She just wants a man who is kind. Capable. A man that stands up for his beliefs. No matter what they are. As long as he stands up for them. She wants him to stand up for her too. As she looks over at Aaliyah with her impossibly green eyes that always seem to sparkle with joy, Cruz realizes that she wants a man who looks at her in the eyes when he speaks to her.
Aaliyah asks what he looks like, and Cruz could care less about that. She just wants a man who makes her feel valued. Who cares about her. And who is good to her.
She goes from a moment where the future is full of possibilities to easily the most uncomfortable she’s ever been in her life. And after being waterboarded and tortured for over a month… that’s saying something.
Aaliyah laughs and wonders how she would feel about the mud.
It should have been worse than the foam that would make her skin glow like the sun.
Instead, it’s relaxing.
Aaliyah’s voice is soft. Hinting laughter at every phrase.
She falls asleep staring at the back of Aaliyah’s head.
She wakes up to a gentle whisper that calls her Miss.
She is helped to the shower. It is so unlike the quick, cold showers she took for years that she loses herself to the feeling of endless warm water running down her body. Softening the mud that was caked dry on her body in a thin and even layer.
She’s so caught up in how good the water feels against her. How soft her skin feels after the mud. That she jumps when she hears Aaliyah’s voice behind her.
She turns around and agrees with how the mud gets everywhere.
Aaliyah’s eyes travel down her body and Cruz’s eyes follow along. Wanting to also make sure there was no mud before she steps into a large towel.
She sits down and Aaliyah asks if she’s been in a steam before while being sure that she has.
Cruz admits that she was right.
She tries to keep her eyes on Aaliyah’s eyes, but she can’t.
Aaliyah smiles as she nods at her. Cruz quickly adds that she used to box. Wanting to keep on talking to Aaliyah. To keep her turned towards Cruz.
She’s embarrassed by this and looks down as she tells Aaliyah the Arabic word for boxing… or, well… fighting… and Aaliyah nods, turns into the water and she’s disappointed.
Cruz wants Aaliyah to turn back around.
Aaliyah’s shoulders rise up and down.
Heavy.
The air is changed around them and Aaliyah asks if that is where she got her bruises.
Cruz stumbles through her explanation of how she’s been in a steam room. About making weight. Because she’s nervous at the way that Aaliyah is looking at her. Like she wants to really know her.
If she were to ask her another question, she would break.
She hadn’t been broken when she was tortured by water.
She should have been afraid of it.
Instead, she liked the way it felt whenever she was around Aaliyah.
She might not like the rain, but she liked this.
Aaliyah sits down and asks her in that way where she already knows the answer. “But still, no car wreck.”
“It was a man.” Cruz fills in the rest for her.
Aaliyah asks why she let him do that to her. And Cruz is adamant that she didn’t let him do anything.
She couldn’t.
She was tied up.
Powerless.
He had a team behind him and she was just one woman.
Exhausted and weakened from the positions her body was forced to hold for hours.
From the lack of food.
Aaliyah tells her that men don’t start with beatings in a soft way that reminds Cruz of floating in the beach. Two specks in endless water. Talking about how at least Ehsan was kind.
Aaliyah might not have loved the man she would marry, but she knew his kindness. She knew the opposite of that as well.
It made her heart swell with rage and understanding.
She needs to tell Aaliyah that she is strong.
She can protect someone that wouldn’t be able to stop the slaps and pushes.
Aaliyah needs to know the truth about her because she needs to feel safe with her. Even if she can no longer trust Cruz.
She talks about Edgar. How she hit him until he didn’t have a face anymore. Then, she ran for her life.
“And then you came to me.” Aaliyah finishes for her.
“And then I became a marine.” Cruz corrects her.
Aaliyah’s face shows confusion and Cruz looks away.
Deep breath in.
Out.
In.
Out.
There is never an easy way to do this. But she wants to make it kinder for Aaliyah to hear the truth.
She tells her about being a marine. How six years of her life went by not travelling in private jets, but jumping out of helicopters and the cargo hold of planes that seemed to run on prayers and duct tape.
About how intelligence work was good.
Until it wasn’t.
Sometimes they got the wrong intel.
Other times, it was the right intel but far too late to be of use.
She tells her how she lost her entire squad in Pakistan.
Men she was responsible for simply vanished into mist so fine there was nothing to collect for a funeral.
She sighs and tells Aaliyah how she was recruited for a new program.
Cruz doesn’t name it, but she tells her its objectives and Aaliayh sits back a bit further. Really taking her in. Trying to see if this is a joke or not.
Zara Adid wasn’t even her real name.
“Cruz Manuelos.” She says it as she looks down at her hands.
“Cruz?” Aaliyah asks.
Her entire name a question.
Cruz takes a breath and meets Aaliyah’s green eyes.
She’s pleading with Cruz to both tell her the truth and maintain the lie.
“I was sent to get close to you so I could find out more about your father… and if we ever met, I was meant to…”
Aaliyah’s gasp. The pain in her eyes. It’s too much.
“I should have eliminated him because he’s considered a terrorist.” She admits.
“He’s in the oil business.” Aaliyah tells her softly and Cruz feels her brows furrow together in confusion.
“He’s not a terrorist. He just refuses to stop selling oil to people other governments are mad about. He doesn’t care about any of the politics and for that he is called a terrorist by America.” Aaliyah sounds frustrated.
“I… I didn’t know that… I don’t know anything about you dad. They didn’t tell me anything else besides the fact that he was a terrorist… I guess it’s easier to think you’re doing the right thing when you don’t know who your target is.” Cruz looks away.
She feels so stupid.
Of course Joe would lie about who he was.
A lie of omission is the just same as an outright lie.
Cruz had lived it this entire mission.
“How am I supposed to forgive you for telling me this? For wanting to kill my father?” Aaliyah asks. Soft. Too soft.
“I didn’t want to… not after meeting you…” Cruz admits. Ashamed of putting the truth into words.
Aaliyah’s face shows confusion.
She hesitates. “Why not?” Aaliyah finally asks.
“Because someone as kind as you deserves to keep her dad.” Cruz says.
“I never had one and I know that pain even without him… I… can’t hurt you like that… I can’t take your dad from you and be your friend… even if it’s just pretend. Because his death won’t be.” Cruz tells her before taking a deep breath.
“I don’t want to. I… I don’t want to hurt you and I don’t want to lie to you… not anymore.” Cruz confesses.
Aaliyah’s face goes on a journey that Cruz can’t decipher until she stops and lands on a question that doesn’t seem to fit into their conversation.
She asks Cruz to name her five best friends and she can’t.
She asks for at least one friend and Cruz’s heart leaps into her throat as she answers Aaliyah. “You.”
Aaliyah sounds broken hearted when she asks if Cruz will be her friend.
Cruz tells her with conviction that she will.
She would do anything for Aaliyah.
Aaliyah smiles and Cruz does too.
They shake hands and say they will be friends.
The mood changes from celebratory to serious in an instant.
“No more lies. How can I stand up for you if you don’t tell me the truth?” Aaliyah asks her.
Cruz instantly agrees.
No more lies.
No more Zara Adid.
There was only Cruz.
And apparently that meant a sleepover.
//
They head to Aaliyah’s bedroom in their long towels. Laughing as they talk about what movie they will watch.
The house is quiet.
Rain is hitting the windows and Cruz feels relieved at how easy it was to go from Zara to Cruz.
Even when it cost her a career.
It was easier than lying to Aaliyah.
//
She grabs her bag and takes out her clothes. She puts on her underwear and turns around.
Aaliyah’s eyes are there.
They are always there.
Watching her.
But now they can actually see her.
Aaliyah is still in her towel and Cruz hands her the picture of the president putting the medal of honor over her head.
The ribbons and medals on her dress blues shining.
“This was after Pakistan… I lost my entire unit and all I got was a medal for killing more men than a guy with a vest did.” Her voice is more bitter than she’d heard it in years.
Aaliyah looks suitably impressed at the picture and Cruz stands up straighter. Like that answers why she was so desperate for Aaliyah to know the truth.
Even if it has nothing to do with it at all.
She puts on her sweats and a white T-shirt. Aaliyah is in some impossibly soft pajamas when she turns around and Cruz smiles.
“This is what I normally looked like though.” She pulls out her phone and shows Aaliyah some pictures from years ago. Her jaw is set, and she is looking away from the camera. Her face is dirty and the boys around her are striking poses that they think make them look more badass.
She smiles at that. Having never seen how young she was back then.
She was just a kid.
They all were.
Now they were mostly gone.
Some had left the military for more lucrative jobs in the same zones doing the same things. Only for private companies. Others left it in body bags. Most of them came back for another tour and she had lost touch with them as soon as she became a Lioness.
“You are so serious.” Aaliyah observes.
“Now you know why I don’t like the desert.” Cruz says. Her voice far. Stuck between a memory of the wars she was in and the beach when she sat next to Aaliyah. Where she learned about how hard it was to have things outside of fantasies.
Real life could never live up to them.
Aaliyah stops at a picture of her rolling her eyes at the camera. Her hair is suspended in the air at that moment and her smile is real.
“Send me this one?” She asks. Hesitant.
“Sure.” Cruz hits send and Aaliyah gets a new text from her number. No contact information. Just her cell phone and it makes her friend look up.
“This is my real number. You should probably not text that other one because the military has that phone now.” Cruz tells her and Aaliyah nods.
//
They watch movies and talk about love.
Aaliyah admits that she will never know it and Cruz tells her not to marry him.
Her friend smiles sadly and looks at her. Waiting for Cruz to turn her body towards her before admitting that it was not her choice. That Cruz might have Arab ancestry but she was not Arab. She was American. Too American. She didn’t understand that Aaliyah only played here but she lived in the old country.
As soon as she was married, she would live in Riyadh.
In Aaliyah’s country. In her culture. To say no would be to shame both families. It would mean she would be taken back to Saudi Arabia to be locked away. Or killed.
“For me to choose love would be the death of me.” Aaliyah’s voice cracks at that and Cruz reaches out to wipe the tears from her eyes.
They stare at each other. A short moment between them.
Cruz looks down at Aaliyah’s lips and then back up again. Hand still holding onto her cheek.
Aaliyah smiles and Cruz mirrors it.
After another moment something flashes in Aaliyah’s eyes and she turns away from Cruz.
It hurts.
It scares her.
She stays where she is as Aaliyah settles down in the bed.
When Aaliyah tells her that she would like to feel love, just once. Cruz agrees. Looking at the way Aaliyah wipes at her cheeks.
She shifts her body closer to Aaliyah. Wanting to protect her kind heart.
The knit blanket feels soft against her skin as she stays on top of it and stares at the screen. Words fly by as she looks at Aaliyah. Keeping her in the periphery of her vision as she falls asleep to the sounds of the other woman breathing.
//
The next day, she wakes up under the same blanket that was covering Aaliyah. She’s confused to find the bed empty next to her. Until she hears Aaliyah shouting in excitement.
She follows the sound. A melody that makes her heart beat faster. She loves the way Aaliyah lets herself feel absolute joy with her entire being. Cruz wants to be more like her. She wants to be part of that happiness.
Aaliyah tells her that the wedding is in Mallorca and Cruz doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or not.
Aaliyah tells her that it’s the most beautiful place on earth and she shrieks in excitement. She places both hands on Cruz’s face, trying to get her to understand. To share in her excitement.
The kiss happens so fast that Cruz thinks she dreamed it.
That she’s not fully awake and it didn’t happen.
The way that Aaliyah puts her hands down near her shoulders before gently setting them down against her shirt lets her know it’s real.
Aaliyah runs her hand down to Cruz’s biceps. Squeezes. Cruz flexes but it’s too late. Aaliyah’s hands are still moving down. Leaving a trail of goosebumps and fire in their wake.
Their fingers touch.
A brief moment before Aaliyah stops touching her.
Now there are only looks.
Searching.
Cruz feels weak.
Aaliyah leans in. Their second kiss is a question. Tentative.
Aaliyah doesn’t do anything more but rest her lips against Cruz’s.
The understanding of why she would rather quit the marines than lie to Aaliyah hits her like a roadside bomb.
Blindsiding her.
Altering the course of her life.
The same way those other moments had altered it.
All those parts of her didn’t quite fit. Not with who she is now. Adrift.
No plan.
Just a desperate desire to make Aaliyah smile.
Those feelings. Uncertain until now. When they are clear. Make the decision for her.
She won’t lie to Aaliyah.
She won’t lie to herself.
She leans in.
It’s brief. That pressure is eased when Aaliyah breaks off the kiss.
Her eyes open. She’s so vulnerable and Cruz can’t be faulted for thinking she was falling in love with someone like Aaliyah.
There is no turning back from this.
Before Aaliyah can take another step away from her. Before she can laugh it off. Pretend she doesn’t know what happened. Cruz grabs the back of her head and feels the smooth skin beneath her open palm with the other.
It takes a second for Aaliyah’s body to respond. For her hands to touch down Cruz’s back. Up her sides.
Cruz feels her way up Aaliyah’s body and when she feels a hungry kiss against her neck, she reacts. Her hands glide down and suddenly they are full of Aaliyah’s ass. Who laughs into her neck.
She’s drunk on that sound.
She carries Aaliyah up the stairs and Aaliyah groans as she compliments her. Telling Cruz how strong she is.
They cross the threshold to the bedroom, and she knows that nothing can save her from herself. No team can extract her from this moment.
Aaliyah was meant to experience love with her.
//
Hours later they are in the back seat of a car, pretending they’re just friends and nothing more.
They talk about Aaliyah’s marriage and how the oil business is a dirty business.
How her father worries about her. About her mother.
Cruz reads the sadness in Aaliyah’s voice at coming home as a bride instead of herself.
She asks if Aaliyah likes having her own driver and Cruz is reminded of just how different their lives are.
Even without the lies.
Aaliyah has no choice. She doesn’t know how to drive. She doesn’t know how to plan. She is only allowed to live until she becomes a wife. Then her world will be further closed in around her.
A prison is a fortress.
Aaliyah is safe but she is also not free to choose anything for herself.
Cruz smiles at her. They both had the illusion of choice, but at the end of the day, they were both following a narrow path that led them to this moment.
Where Aaliyah’s life is sheltered and lonely because she has to stay safe.
Cruz’s life was a constant war because she didn’t know safety could be an option for someone like her.
A moment passes and then Aaliyah explains what happens to girls with nice cars and purses when they don’t have someone like Asif to take care of them.
It was the reason why people like her usually ended up in security jobs once they left the military. By the way that Asif moves. Watches the road as he drives. Uses his mirrors. Cruz knows that he was like her once. Brave and lost until he found purpose again.
Aaliyah or her family at least, had given him a purpose too.
He was meant to protect Aaliyah. Keep her safe. And now Cruz wanted to do the same.
//
The world within the world is filled with alcohol and hesitant touches as they help each other get dressed.
They giggle and try on clothes until Aaliyah asks her if she has thought about this morning.
Cruz admits that she has.
Aaliyah tells her that it’s all she’s thought about too.
She’s in her underwear and Aaliyah tells Cruz to go to her.
Cruz doesn’t hesitate and the way that Aaliyah is sitting on the chair, kissing her stomach, reminds her of when she used to be a dancer. How some girls would go too far in the backroom. She didn’t know how they could do that when all the men there were so rough.
Even Edgar, at his most charming, was always too rough.
Now? In this dressing room. Alone with Aaliyah and their feelings. She can understand how the moment can get away from you. It was happening to her and she felt so stupid for having thought she was better than her friends.
It had never happened to Cruz so she didn’t know.
Not once did she lose control.
Until now.
With a woman that burned beneath her skin like fire. Whose skin was soft and lips were like honey.
When there’s a knock on the door, Cruz jumps away and is shaken at how much further she wanted to go.
How far she could have gone if they weren’t stopped.
Cruz tells Aaliyah that this is not the place to keep figuring things out.
Shaken by how easily she lost control when before she had been a profitable dancer because she had no feelings for those men.
Now all she had were feelings but nowhere to understand them.
Aaliyah offers her a place to figure it out and she can breathe.
She wants to go there.
She needs to be with Aaliyah again.
This morning feels like a dream and if they only have days or weeks together, before she is married off to Ehsan, Cruz wants them to be whatever Aaliyah needs.
She wants to give Aaliyah everything she can. With all that she has.
//
Their bags are left on the floor of the room and Aaliyah starts clicking through the television as Cruz looks at the view.
Or at least she’s pretending she is looking at the city.
Instead, she watches as the men move in unison behind them. Setting down their bags on the table and soon even the chairs are filled with bags.
Asif smiles at Aaliyah, who thanks him so softly it was almost a whisper.
The men walk away, and Cruz stays where she is until the door clicks shut behind them.
//
The sun sets behind Aaliyah as she asks Cruz to look at her as they keep making love well into the night.
Aaliyah is resting on top of her chest. Cruz’s heart is beating fast beneath Aaliyah’s cheek. Tears fall against her skin and Cruz realizes that she’s crying too.
She thinks she’s falling in love with this kind and beautiful woman who can never be hers and it hurts more than the lies she had told her up until the other night.
She’s a coward because she wants to run away.
She hates herself for falling so easily in love when it can only be felt in stolen hours.
She wants to scream.
She wants to hate Aaliyah for making it impossible to do anything but be completely devoted to her.
Her smiles took root in Cruz’s heart and now she understood why she was broken.
It was so she could be rebuilt again as the type of woman that would no longer be held together by lies. It had to happen so she could fully give herself to Aaliyah.
No loyalty to god and country.
The same lack of loyalty that Joe had to her own team.
She had been uncertain about a lot of things. Torn up about the job.
Now the job was to be here, in this moment. To stay with Aaliyah until she couldn’t.
//
Gone Is The Illusion Of Order
//
The flight to Riyadh is spent talking about all the things Aaliyah is excited to share with Cruz.
She’s trying to be excited about it but she doesn’t know how to feel about going back to the desert without her armor and guns.
She still has the training but she feels naked without her equipment.
Then, she remembers that it’s not her life anymore.
She is no longer on active duty.
She can’t say that she is no longer a marine.
Once a marine. Always a marine.
But it was different now because she was a guest to a Saudi Royal that was about to come home.
//
They don’t go to nightclubs or the beach here.
They constantly move around from apartments that take up multiple floors in impossibly tall skyscrapers.
Travelling from home to home after a night or two is meant to be fun but Cruz sees the way it grates on Aaliyah that she can’t be free or safe in her own country.
She understands why she likes to play in America.
Here she can’t leave her home without a man and neither can Cruz.
They are both prisoners to the whims of Aaliyah’s father until they leave for Mallorca.
Cruz doesn’t care about that.
She’s only here to be at Aaliyah’s side. To make her smile. To help her feel less lonely.
Aaliyah likes to spend time at the health spas. Getting massages and bathing in mud.
Cruz uses their gym to build up a good sweat. She lifts weight, runs, she keeps her body in motion until one of the girls tells her that Aaliyah is ready for her.
She strips off the sweat soaked clothes, takes a quick shower and joins her friend in the steam room.
It feels nice.
Having this time to themselves where Cruz doesn’t have to hide herself anymore.
The hours pass and the tightness in her chest doesn’t loosen until they’re together again. Until it’s just them in bed and she doesn’t have to pretend that they are just friends.
It’s dangerous to love Aaliyah. But it’s impossible to stop.
They can marry Aaliyah off but no one can take away the nights they spend together. The nights they loved each other without fear. Without lies. Without the weight of the future crushing them both down.
//
That night, Aaliyah admits that she doesn’t want to get married.
That doesn’t matter anyway.
She doesn’t have a say in her own life.
No one cares what she wants… no one but Cruz.
She’s the first person to actually listen to her.
Even her friends, the ones picked from birth as worthy of being near her, they didn’t truly listen.
Her mother ignores her.
Her brothers are already married, and their wives are a reflection of what it means to be a woman inside a palace in the desert with nowhere to hide from the lie.
Cruz asks Aaliyah what she wants and she admits that she doesn’t want this.
She wants Cruz.
She wants love.
She wants to live in America and forget all her responsibilities to her family. To Ehsan’s family.
Even if Aaliyah can’t have all of it, she is selfish and wants it anyway.
Their bodies remember what it’s like to be together. It feels so natural. Even though they are crying into each other’s skin as they make love.
Cruz feels raw and cut open. She doesn’t want to say goodbye to Aaliyah. She loves her too much to let her go. She wants to protect her. She wants to show her real strength by taking her away and making sure she is safe.
The only thing she can do is offer her some water.
A small gesture to tell her that she loves her.
That she will take care of her until their end.
She gets lost on the way to the kitchen.
This place is disorienting with how large it is.
With how many hallways are meant to be for staff only. Out of the way of their guests.
She thinks she hears a shot and runs towards the danger while whispering no to herself.
She’s so stupid.
Of course they would track her phone.
Even if they couldn’t listen to her, even if she was retired. They weren’t. The Lioness team still had a mission.
The body on the floor is wearing Ehsan’s shirt.
He struggles to breathe and a kill shot is fired into his head at the same time the knife in her hand makes contact with the side of the soldier’s neck.
The weapon drops from his hand and falls to the floor as he tries to reach back.
His vest is meant to absorb the impact of bullets but the soft places where fabric meet Velcro have nothing beneath them but soft flesh that gives way under the sharp knife and her determination.
The body falls to the floor and Cruz automatically slices his throat apart.
Kyle.
It was Kyle.
She knew him.
She had worked with him.
He was smug and he was probably only here because he was still on Joe’s shit list. On Supervisor Meade’s shit list too, from the looks of it.
There’s an old man in the kitchen holding a frying pan and he looks so scared.
He asks if she is Aaliyah’s friend from the States. The student that isn’t a student.
She takes Kyle’s weapon, check it, grabs some ammunition, takes off his vest and throws it at his feet.
“Put this on. His helmet too. We need to get you to a secure location for extraction before they realize they hit the wrong target.” She orders.
He shakes and she works the Velcro and clasps around his body. “I thought Aaliyah was lying when she said you were a marine. But now I can see why she would want to keep you by her side. I feel safer already. Even when we are both caught with our pants down.”
Cruz looks down and sees herself for the first time. Her hands are slick with blood. Her white shirt and shorts are soaked with it too.
He tells her that she is thirty years too late to be impressed by him in his shorts. The levity in his voice is drowned by the way fear cracks it.
Cruz secures the helmet on his head, puts her finger to her lips and motions for him to follow her.
After getting lost in the endless maze of hallways he stops her and offers to guide her to where security is stationed.
She tells him that they are a team of three with a commander and her commander. She knows how good Tex, Tucker, and Two Cups are. Bobby is on another level. Joe is a bit rusty but still lethal.
Texas proved that.
Joe’s instincts might have failed her then, but muscle memory wouldn’t.
She can’t take that risk.
“Tap on my shoulder when you want me to turn in that direction. Stay low. Stay behind me. Stay alive. Got it?” Cruz waits for him to nod.
They make their way through the building and run across the grass into the outer right of the hotel.
Security is quick to point their guns at her and she steps aside.
They quickly gather around Mr. Amrohi and she tells them that Ehsan’s body can be found in one of the kitchens. She doesn’t know which one.
“Evac him and Mrs. Amrohi. Separately. By air. At the same time Aaliyah and I are driven out of here.” Cruz orders them.
“Asif, get a caravan ready. As soon as I can secure Miss Amrohi, I will bring her to the front.” Asif nods.
Cruz turns to a familiar face. One of the men meant to guard Ehsan. “Once we leave, secure the bodies. Raise the alarm, do whatever needs to be done.”
The way back to her room is easier without the added pressure of keeping Aaliyah’s dad alive.
She might not have been able to save Ehsan, but she had made sure that Aaliyah’s dad was safe. That had to be enough.
Aaliyah’s face lights up and then she screams when she sees the blood on her hands and shirt.
Cruz shushes her and tells her she’s fine. That they’re fine. Her father is safe. Her mother is safe. They need to get her safe too.
She washes her hands as she explains that Ehsan was assassinated.
Aaliyah shakes her head in confusion. “No, he can’t be. He’s a finance guy.”
Cruz puts on the clothes she was wearing earlier, over the blood-stained ones and tells Aaliyah to get dressed too.
She still has questions but Cruz has a mission to keep Aaliyah safe. To evacuate her before Joe decides to blow up an entire hotel full of powerful guests and innocent civilians because she needs to hide evidence of her failure.
It’s Texas all over again and Cruz doesn’t understand why she can’t stop living in a war.
//
The ride to the airport is tense.
Men surround Aaliyah from both sides and Cruz would laugh at how comically small she looks in between them. Except she is kneeling in the back of the SUV. Gun at the ready.
One of the men speaks into this wrist and tells Cruz that both Mr. Amrohi and Mrs. Amrohi are out of the country.
Their flights will land in 12 hours.
They are headed back to Riyadh on two separate jets.
Aaliyah’s guards usher them to the private plane and only when she is sure the cabin is secure, Cruz surrenders the weapon she took off Kyle.
She feels naked without it.
More naked than she had been in the kitchen with Mr. Amrohi.
//
Aaliyah’s cellphone rings as soon as they are wheels up and she cries as she listens to her father’s voice confirm everything Cruz had told her.
Ehsan is dead.
She waits to hear about her new husband, an oil man like her father, probably.
Instead, he tells her that she will remain in New York. They need to put this embarrassment behind them. Hide it away. And they can’t do that with her in Riyadh.
The house in the Hamptons would be transferred to her name along with other real estate they owned in the city.
“What about a husband?” She asks. Too scared to hope.
“We will try to find someone else that is suitable for you… but… if you were to marry an American… then it would be out of my hands.” Her father says. Knowing.
Aaliyah is too stunned to breathe.
“It will take me two years to arrange something else… your friend, the student… she should stay with you until you find someone.” Aaliyah breathes out through her mouth at hearing those words.
She thought that Ehsan was the only one to know and not know… her father had met Cruz once and he knew too.
“And if I’ve found someone already?” She asks. Voice trembling. Fingers gripping Cruz’s hand tightly.
“Then I suggest you get married as soon as you land. Send the documents over to my lawyer and then I can complain to my friends about my rebel daughter who married some American marine and didn’t invite me to her wedding.” His voice is light and Aaliyah cries as she tells him that she loves him.
“I did this for her. She saved my life and that is not a thing to take lightly. She killed a man she knew for me. She kept me safe and even though she did not like Ehsan, if she had gotten there earlier, I know she would have kept him alive to please you…” Aaliyah looks out the window. Her reflection stares back at her.
Even when he is at his kindest, her father is cruel.
He loves her but she is only a prize now that she cannot be a wife. Aaliyah is happy that she gets to be in love and frustrated that she is only allowed to love Cruz because her father wants to settle a debt now that her fiancé is dead.
“Thank you. I love you.” She tells her father before she hangs up and settles into Cruz.
//
Their wedding is at the Hamptons. Just the two of them.
Her father’s lawyers act as witnesses.
There are no guests except for the wedding photographer that takes a couple of quick snaps of them.
Cruz is wearing her dress blues. She is wearing a white designer dress that she picked out for herself.
Unlike the first wedding she was meant to be at.
This wedding she planned.
She wanted it to be intimate.
The flowers, the room, Cruz’s things from her storage unit. Everything was done over the phone while they flew across the ocean. Towards New York.
It was scary and exciting to know that her father traded her to a woman she loved. That the wedding was her responsibility because she was now going to be her wife’s responsibility.
Not her father’s.
Not her brother’s.
She belonged to her wife.
The same way her wife belonged to her.
With the papers signed and a quick kiss, it becomes real. Aaliyah cries from happiness.
Her makeup is ruined but she doesn’t care. Cruz tells her she’s stunning as she wipes at her cheeks and kisses her forehead.
Aaliyah is held in strong arms that feel safe. They feel like home.
The men leave them alone in a flurry of signatures and calls to the office. Aaliyah thanks them and the tears come again.
She didn’t know a wedding could be filled with joy.
And now that it was over. She had the rest of her life to find out what it means to love. Beyond her imagination. Beyond her memories of the stolen nights she shared with Cruz. Because they would no longer be stolen.
The future would be theirs for the making. Starting today.