A/N: I'm not particularly great when it comes to writing descriptions, but I'm hoping my story doesn't disappoint! This is my first Rizzles chapter fic, and also my first AU fic. If you have any constructive criticism, or could just shoot a quick review, that would mean the world to me. Also, all my stories are un-beta'd, so all mistakes are my own.

Disclaimer: All familiar characters in this story belong to Tess Gerritsen, Janet Tamaro, and TNT. I do not own anything except for the story plot itself.

The gunfire rattled incessantly, a sound Dr Maura Isles had learnt to block out long ago. In the moment she registered the sound she only noted that it was at least from a distance, and that their small tent was still secure.

Men and women were brought in, a never-ending stream of broken bodies and broken spirits. Books and films made war look glamorous; soldiers were brave, heroic. They undoubtedly were, but war was not. The mutilated limbs from a bomb, the spread of red across the khaki, the paleness of death… War was a monster that ate up humanity, and spat out the ugly remains.

Garbed in the blood-stained scrubs that announced her position as loudly as the red cross on her scrub cap, Maura bent over the newest arrival: a young man that looked barely eighteen, with a slowly spreading crimson patch on his leg. Despite the discolouration of the uniform, Maura could count the four bullet holes in the material. Turning to a nearby medic, she called for some more anaesthetic. There wasn't any left. Looking back down at the man, the boy more like, she tried to fashion her voice into one of gentle sympathy and reassurance, as she cut away the cloth covering the wounds. It was going to hurt a lot, Maura knew, but in war, beggars cannot be choosers.

It had been two years, nine months and eleven days since Maura had been dispatched to work as a medic in the harsh Afghanistan landscape. She wasn't sure why she had counted the days so precisely. She had no one to return home to, no job waiting for her. Only an empty house in the higher end of Boston. Filled with her fashionable clothes and expensive heels. Comfortable chairs and sofas, a warm bed. Comfort. There was little of that here, as Maura worked endless shifts day and night, trying to save the people who had been brave enough to fight for their country. Or foolish enough. It was a harsh thought, Maura knew, but the rational part in her could not understand what the powers hoped to achieve by sending men and women out to lay their lives down for a reason the politicians never seemed able give.

If Maura was lucky enough to have the night shift off, she would kip down in a small dusty tent with a fellow surgeon, but sleep rarely came easy. The sandy, rocky ground was not a comfortable surface to lay upon, and the Afghan climate had little consistency – sometimes granting blazing heat for days on end, but come night, the icy winds would blow as heat was leeched from the Earth's atmosphere into the open atmosphere. But those were things easily conditioned to, and Maura barely registered such petty discomforts anymore. It was the moans of wounded people, in the always-busy tent nearby, the screams of humans in a pain beyond their imaginings that kept the doctor awake in the night. The images of burned flesh, broken bones, the ever-present red that was everywhere – clothes, skin, bed sheets, floor – lived behind her eyelids when she closed them. When sleep decided to visit, more often than not, the horrors of war decided to visit too.

But there wasn't long left. Only two months and nineteen days left. She was due to be honourably discharged on the 30th June. On the 1st July, she would be a civilian again, not a war surgeon. Yet a very large part in her wondered if she would ever really leave this place. It was a dark place, filled with horror, despair, pain. There was no joy, no brightness, no beauty. Oh, how Maura missed it, missed seeing something beautiful. She couldn't even remember what something beautiful would even look like. It had been too long. To Maura, things were just… grey. Everything was grey, the tent was grey, the clothes was grey, the beds were grey, the sheets were grey. Only the hot redness of fresh blood broke the lack-lustre world the doctor seemed to have fallen into. She guessed she must have just been hanging onto reality, or sanity, or both.

It wasn't a question of living anymore. These men and women, shattered, broken, they were still alive. Maura was alive too. Moving, breathing, seeing, doing. These were actions only capable of a living being. An organism capable of respiration would be classified as alive. It was when the chest stopped moving, when the consciousness left a person's eye, when the heart stopped pumping and the blood slowed down, when the brain could no longer function, that a person would be dead. Science taught Maura that she was very much alive.

And so she went about her days, watching the bodies come into the tent. If it wasn't too bad, she would do the best she could, bandage the soldier up, and set them aside for transport to the nearest proper hospital, when the transport was not in demand. If the situation was more dire, she would do the best she could, and the fastest convoy, or a helicopter if they were lucky enough, would ship the soldier to the hospital as quickly was possible. More often than not, it was an injury that didn't require desperate medical attention of the sort that only a hospital could provide. It was small comfort though; pain did not just disappear with a non-fatal injury. Often the pain would be worse, with pain relievers in short supply, and no bliss in unconsciousness.

Two years, nine months and eleven days had made the daily grind a harsh routine. It was no more to Maura than, quite simply, her life. This was her life. The gunfire, explosions, screams, yelling and moaning was the soundtrack to it. The battered men and women, the guns slung over shoulders, bandages covering bodies, arms, legs and faces, and harried looking surgeons were the images to it. Maura could hardly remember the other world, the other life that waited for her in America any more. It was like an elusive dream, as she looked into the faces of hurting humans, so like herself. Regardless of their age, gender, colour, height… Maura saw the same every single day, in every single person. A human who had fought for their country, and paid the price. Do they remember what home feels like? Do they remember what freedom is? It was a strange twist of irony that they should fight for freedom, by slaving under fear. Maura was a scientist. She dealt in facts, in proof, in truth. And yet, here were people fighting because of words, without the proof to go with it.

War did not make sense in Dr Isles mind. But she decided, as she did every day, that it did not need to make sense. Her job was to take what did make sense to her, and use it to try and save her fellow countrymen. And to hold on.

Maura was woken by the shouts coming from the medic's tent. Wrenching herself out of her sleepy state, she sat up, and quickly found her scrubs, which she threw over the thermals she'd been wearing underneath. Next to her, Dr Nelson was also pulling on her dark green shirt, roused by the commotion that was still emanating from the tent. They barely exchanged a word, nodding at each other grimly before emerging into the slowly lightening dawn.

Making their way over to the entry way of the makeshift medical centre, they saw a huge group of men and women alike, calling desperately for help. Maura called out to the nearest soldier, a private judging by the insignia on his arm, and he immediately moved aside at the sight of the scrubs and cross. When his comrades realised that a doctor was on the scene, they all moved aside as best they could, to reveal the sight of an unconscious woman on a stretcher. She was wearing the typical uniform of an American soldier, but the helmet that barely sat on her head bore the single bar of a lieutenant. Her uniform was ragged, and caked in dust. There was a tear in the leg, and a hastily applied bandage could be seen poking out through the rip.

But Maura wasn't looking at the soldier's body. No. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the woman's face. It was dirty, and a smear of blood covered her left cheek. A cut over the eyebrow was visible, and another was at her neck. Maura couldn't help noticing just how sharp-featured the woman appeared under all the grime and blood. Her hair was pulled back, but just under the helmet, Maura caught sight of untidy brown locks. As her eyes slid over this young lieutenant's features, she realised the woman couldn't be much older than herself. Suddenly a voice broke into her thoughts.

"Doctor… her hands…"

Maura suddenly remembered where she was: in the middle of a battlefield in Afghanistan. And she was standing there, staring at a wounded soldier. Giving herself a mental shake, she quickly turned her eyes down towards the woman's hands, and saw them wrapped in thick white gauze… or it had been white before the blood had soaked through every layer.

Maura immediately went into doctor mode. "Move her inside immediately. Private," she glanced at the man she had called to earlier, "her name, status, injury."

The private immediately snapped to attention and began. "Lieutenant Jane Rizzoli, of 1st Special Forces Group. She sustained the injuries in an enemy camp, after infiltrating and attacking our target. The camp was mostly taken down by the time most of our division arrived, but Lieutenant Rizzoli was overpowered by our target, who…" the young man lost his composure for a moment. "… who pinned her hands down with… scalpels… right through both her hands. The captain found her, took a shot at the target, and freed Rizzoli, but it wasn't fatal, because he managed to get his hand on another scalpel and almost attacked. Rizzoli had enough sense left to grab a gun with her maimed hands and killed him. We managed to see the shot, and then she collapsed right there. Captain instructed us to bring her back straight away, and to get the best care possible."

Maura nodded, her eyes focused on the bloody bandages. Judging by the report, the amount of blood on the bandages and the pallor underneath the dirt and grime, Lieutenant Rizzoli had suffered severe blood loss, and would have serious damage to both her hands. After a moment of deliberation, she shook her head. "We need to get her to the hospital, there's nothing we can do here. I'll apply a pressure bandage, Dr Nelson, is there a convoy available?"

The other doctor had gone ahead to check on vehicle availability. "Even better, we have a helicopter that's just come to bring fresh supplies, they can take her to the hospital."

Maura's heart leapt. This was a rare stroke of luck, and she quickly set to work on tightening the bandages around the woman's hands, to prevent further blood loss. When she was done, she guided the men that were bearing the stretch out the other end of the tent. But she didn't let go of this soldier's hand.

Emerging into the light of the morning sun, they all shielded their eyes against the glare and the dust the helicopter blades had swept up. The doctor glanced back down at the brave, injured woman by her side. Unsure of what made her do it, she reached out a hand and brushed aside a loose strand of dark hair from the woman's eyes.

And they opened. And Maura was drawn into two dark brown orbs. She couldn't look away, couldn't move, until the lieutenant blinked hazily. Maura could see she was in some strange half-conscious state, not fully there. She recognised the presence of pain, despite the bleariness of the soldier's eyes. Rizzoli's eyes moved about, flickering around and trying to catch up with her surroundings, before settling back on the doctor's face. A finger twitched in pain, but the soldier stared at Maura. Even under such unfocused scrutiny, Maura felt her heart beat a little faster.

"Lieutenant Rizzoli? Can you hear me? We're sending you to a hospital, they'll take very good care of you."

Maura wasn't sure if she'd heard any of it, or registered it. But she felt the hand in hers shift a little, and Lieutenant Rizzoli, without taking her eyes off the doctor, only whispered. "You're beautiful."

The hand went limp, and her eyes closed, unconsciousness pulling Lieutenant Rizzoli back into its grasp. The bearers moved her towards the helicopter, leaving Maura in a state of shock. She watched as people strapped the stretcher into the helicopter, as medics crowded around the stretcher, shielding the woman from the doctor's sight. But Maura stared after the helicopter, even as it took to the skies again. You're beautiful. The words echoed in her mind, filling Maura with a kind of warmth she hadn't felt in two years, nine months and eleven days. Perhaps even longer than that. Maura hadn't seen anything beautiful in so long. Hadn't even heard the word spoken in all her days out here in the desert. You're beautiful. She had forgotten what beauty was. Just an insubstantial wisp on the corners of her mind. But she remembered now. She remembered what beauty was. You're beautiful. Maura smiled. Yes, she smiled to herself, Lieutenant Jane Rizzoli… she saw those dark eyes, that face, in her mind again. She didn't find it so hard to hold on any more. She's beautiful.