Disclaimer Ubisoft own AC and Maria is fictional therefore doesn't really work for Sky TV. The political opinions expressed are for the purposes of the fic and are not necessarily mine, except when they are :D

A/N this is set in modern day Syria, during the present civil uprising against the Assad regime. I had to alter time lines slightly (journalists got booted out earlier than my story suggests but then I'd have no story) but have been as accurate as possible.

The cover image for this fic is titled Amal it belongs to Wolfsfussel and it's featured on her DA page. She kindly agreed to let me use it. Amal is the Arabic word for hope, which considering the subject matter of this fic I think is incredibly appropriate :)

His pace slowed as he neared the pavement, head low but seeing everything he needed to see. His hands reached out to gently push some men aside, needing to pass them but not wanting to draw any attention that would happen soon enough.

His brother was approaching from the other side, both with the same goal and both wearing the same blank expression. They looked like everyone else; nothing about them distinguished them from the crowd they now moved through.

The doors of the department of finance building swung open and burly men dressed in black suits all wearing dark glasses began to emerge. His tongue flicked out to moisten his lips, he felt nerves but it was what he considered the good kind, the sort that made you ready for anything.

His let his hand relax by his side, not quite the right time yet but soon... Then Assad came out flanked by even more men and accompanied by others also wearing suits but he knew they were no risk the lighter suited men would run and hide. His brother moved into place in front of the bodyguards and he took his cue, advancing slowly -still not making any moves that would be noticed- he moved behind the group.

A woman on the edge of the group noticed him, he wasn't making any threatening moves but she saw his face and immediately understood the threat. Her high pitched scream caused confusion and panic among the men and all hell broke loose.

The battered 4x4 maintained its relentless pace along the dusty roads between towns, the luxury of a tarred surface was no more than a memory to them now. They were bounced around like children at a fairground as they traversed yet another steep rocky mountainside path. Maria pushed her sunglasses back up her nose and adjusted her position looking for comfort that simply wasn't there and hoped for the thousandth time that Ahmed would manage not to roll the car.

Graham her cameraman leaned toward her and smirked, "I've heard of off-roading but this is fucking ridiculous."

She tutted, "Give it a rest will you, I've been listening to your crap since we left Homs. We'll be fine he's got us this far hasn't he?"

"Oh yes we're fine! Between the Cholera and this maniac's driving my arse feels like it's been gang raped by a group of well hung convicts on Viagra but you are spot on as usual Maria... it's all ticketyfuckingboo."

Her laughter only increased his irritation, the poor guy was having a miserable time but God he was funny when he was bitching. Since their second day in Aleppo he had been suffering the worst case of Delhi-belly and it was showing no signs of letting up.

"I'm glad you think my cholera is funny."

Right on cue they were sent sprawling from their seats.

"Why are there no seat belts in the back of this car?" pointing an accusing finger at their driver come translator, "He has one! I am not getting in another car without seat belts and working AC!"

"Shut up! You don't have cholera you twat." She rummaged in her bag and passed him a bottle of water. "Drink this and stop whining, we'll be back in Damascus soon."

Sadly the water never shut him up for long. "I get why we took the detour to the shelled village, we got some golden footage there but why not just go back to the proper road now?"

"Do you remember the last military check point we tried to pass? Because that village is in the middle of a shit load of those and this is the only way out without having some armed Syrian creeping around your already tender orifices with a torch and a shovel."

He groaned and Maria took pity on him. She climbed into the front seat, "Lie down and rest but cover your head with your jacket; you've had too much sun and it's made you menstrual."

She pulled a notebook from her bag and began scribbling she showed the note to Ahmed.

YOU HIT THAT LAST BUMP ON PURPOSE!

He gestured for the pad and paper and leaning on the steering wheel scrawled a reply, Maria noticed this didn't make his driving any worse than usual.

HE IS ANNOYING

She jerked her thumb toward the back seat and made the international hand gesture for male masturbation.

His feigned look of horror quickly disintegrated into a grin. "Promise me you will never marry any sons of mine."

Her eyebrows arched and her eyes twinkled, thankfully Ahmed had learned to recognise her mischievous look early in their friendship... "If you say one word about my daughter I will stop this car and bury you up to your neck in the sand!"

"Don't be such an old fuddy-duddy, we both know that deep down, I mean like DEEEEP down you adore me."

He laughed and when Maria asked if his daughter was pretty he laughed even louder earning them both another ear bashing from the back seat.

She liked Ahmed, sure he was charging Sky a fortune to ferry them around but why the hell not? He had driven them through some pretty hairy places from Aleppo to Homs and beyond he always kept them safe and somehow managed to find somewhere decent for them to eat. Besides it was almost over now and from what they were hearing the press were not going to be welcome in Syria much longer. She leaned her head back against the seat and let her mind wander over all she had seen in the past nine days.

Driving in Damascus was painfully slow at the best of times but as they neared the city centre things came to a standstill. They could hear sirens wailing and ahead of them a huge crowd of people had gathered.

She told Ahmed to turn off the main road and park up a small side street.

"What do you think is going on?"

She had been looking towards the crowd but she turned back to Graham when he spoke, "I have no idea but I do know it's my job to find out."

"Maria I need to have a shower and die in a nice warm hotel bed!"

He really did look like crap and she preferred the idea of not having him tag along so she suggested. "Okay Ahmed would you please take Gloria here back to the hotel then you can go home. I'll get there soon, I just want to walk along a bit and snap a few pictures." She reached into Graham's bags and pulled out his small camera and took the keys from Ahmed, "Just in case I can actually get the car back to the hotel car park later."

Once amongst the crowd she tried to find someone who could speak English but the best she could find was a young woman who told her in broken English that there had been an attack on a government building and it was possible that Bashar al Assad was the target.

There was absolutely no way she was getting through the crowd, the police had blocked off the streets and forced the people behind cordons. She decided to make her way back to the car and try to get better access from another area.

She raced back to the car her mind whirling with thoughts of exclusive pictures and interviews. In too much of a rush to open the door she dropped the keys. She bent to scoop them up but she stayed still when she heard two loud thumps and a man muttering. The woman in her wanted to stay low and hidden but the journalist won out and she stuck her head up to see what was going on.

There were two men standing on the other side of the street, one of them clutching his left arm the other was supporting him. From what she could make out the one doing the supporting had blood on his clothes, this was not something she wanted to involve herself in. She looked behind her –she was pretty close the main street- and she began walking backwards not taking her eyes from the men.

The one holding his arm spoke to her in French but her high school knowledge of that language was long gone. He saw she didn't understand then tried again in English, "Please don't worry we don't mean you any harm."

Reaching the corner she saw there were policemen and soldiers within shouting distance, she looked back at the men and bit her lip.

"Is this something to do with you?" pointing in the general direction of the uproar, "They are saying Assad is dead."

She knew it was, not the details but that they were involved in whatever had happened was obvious, "There are soldiers and police all over the streets, there is nowhere safe for you to go."

The men spoke to each other low and in Arabic but when they looked behind them further down the side street and saw a dead end Maria got an idea, it was insane but if it worked... It would be epic!

"I can get you out of here, I have a car."

The one with the short jacket and hood whipped his head towards her, "Why would you help us?"

She took a few tentative steps towards the men, "I'm a journalist this is sort of a dream come true for me."

Now they both eyed her suspiciously, "You would endanger yourself for a story?"

Maria ignored the obvious scorn in the question. "No, he said you meant me no harm."

"That was before we knew what you did."

"Okay fine have it your way. I won't help you, good luck getting him to a doctor." She took another couple of steps away from them but this time in the direction of her car.

The one with the long dark coat took his hand away from his arm and held it up to stop her, it was dark with blood, "Wait, will you drive us out of the city?"

She wanted to shake herself, this had to be a dream she would never do anything this dumb but it all seemed real enough, she really was this stupid.

She approached the car and opened the back door, it took an almost super human effort to stop her hands shaking and she was sure they could hear her heart hammering in her chest. "You might have to duck down but there are still some quiet roads out unless the panic from whatever you did has spread to the suburbs already."

They joined her at the car and after he helped his friend into the back seat he turned to Maria, "How well do you know the roads out of here?"

She walked to the back of the car and took a small black case out, "Probably not as well as you but I do know we came in from Qarah this evening and there were no road blocks. We used the hills until Kafr Batna and it was clear all the way." Tossing him the keys she got into the back seat beside the injured guy. "We need to try to stop the bleeding."

"What's your name?"

Her eyes moved from his arm to his face, now pale and covered with sweat. "Maria Thorpe and yours are?"

The driver threw a warning look over his shoulder but he was ignored, "I'm Malik and our friendly chauffeur over there is Altair."

She glanced over her shoulder at him but his attention was back on the road, "Okay Malik St John's first aid doesn't cover bullet wounds. I don't know what to do."

He put his good hand over hers, "Don't worry you are doing well Maria, even just by helping us get out of here. For now all we can do is apply pressure as you said we need to stop the bleeding."

She nodded and pulled the first aid kit from the case, feeling a tad pathetic for needing comfort from a guy who had a hole in his arm but then again judging by the scars on his body he was no stranger to injuries and by the way he had only winced a few times when his coat and shirt were removed she guessed pain was something he was accustomed to as well.

There were no gloves left in the kit, she had used the last pair on another of Graham's life threatening scratches. She looked down at herself and almost laughed, a bit late to worry about blood now...

She placed all the gauze she had carefully on the wound and began wrapping a bandage around it, "Do I make it as tight as possible?"

He smiled taking the bandage from her hand and spent the next few minutes talking her through placing a tourniquet and padding the wound. After she helped him redress she positioned herself behind him and pressed her hand over the gauze.

They drove on into the darkness leaving Damascus behind them and since nobody spoke Maria had all the time in the world to doubt her decision. There was every possibility that the impetuous side of her nature her father had always warned her about had finally gotten the better of her. No matter how this ended it was going to take some incredible luck to get out of this unscathed.

Ten days ago she would have run off and left them to their fate but 10 days ago she hadn't been in Daraa and watched as they held a mass burial for the most recent victims of the government's crackdown, one of the things Graham referred to as "golden footage " she wanted to slap him every single time he said it.

She wasn't a war correspondent she was what the hacks referred to as a "parachute journalist" , her editor had only sent her here because she had covered the flooding in the UK months before and he felt she was ready to step up a gear. She didn't try to fool herself that she was the best reporter for the job, they wanted to broadcast her pretty face set against the back drop of civil war but she had taken the assignment determined to do a professional job.

Helping rebels escape from whatever the hell they had just done wasn't anyone's idea of professional. Still it was done and she had to go with it for now at least. The strangest thing of all to her was how calm she felt, there was a man on her lap probably on the verge of bleeding to death, a man who had likely just done something illegal and violent yet the only thing troubling her was the thought that he might die.

"Altair he feels cold, should we wake him up?"

"I'm not sleeping but I am freezing, does the heater in here work?"

She tightened her free arm around him and rubbed his chest, "I'm sorry not much works, it's either too hot or too cold. There is some camping gear in the boot, when you can pull over and grab a sleeping bag."

The car veered over to the side of the road and he got out. Maria saw the boot open, "At least now you'll be warm."

When he made no reply she assumed he had passed out again.

Altair leaned in with the sleeping bag unzipped and began tucking it around his friend's body.

"He needs a doctor; there is a gaping hole above his elbow. I think there's an exit wound but I'm not sure."

"There is a place I can take him but its hours away. The situation changes almost daily as does who we can trust." He glanced at her and noticed she looked pale and tired, "Are you okay?"

She offered a brief unconvincing nod while pulling the bag over Malik's exposed shoulder.

Malik was in trouble... he was shaking and sweating profusely, he wondered where they would be if this woman hadn't aided them. "I'm not sure why you are doing this but you have my gratitude."

"I'm not sure either. But if you want I can make a call. My guide Ahmed is certainly no friend of the powers that be, he might know a place we can get help."

When her offer was met by silence she continued.

"I think your friend needs help sooner than you can safely get it for him. I can't promise Ahmed will not betray us but if he does it will be my arse as well as yours, I'm just as involved in this as you are but I'm willing to risk it."

He still looked doubtful but said, "Okay make the call."

She reached for her phone; she had 7 missed calls mostly from Graham. "I can't deal with your drama right now." She called Ahmed.

His phone rang a couple of times then she heard an agitated voice answer, "Maria, Graham has been calling me non-stop where are you?"

"Ahmed I have a situation but I can't go into too much detail over the phone so please just listen and help me..."

When she finished speaking the unflappable Arab asked no questions he simply told her what to do, Maria would have kissed him if he had been there in person. "Here is what you do; go back to where you fed the dog your scraps today and past that you will find a small group of houses behind the hill. Go there and ask to speak to Shamir, it's not a real name but it will identify you as a friend of mine, they will help you there. Then call me from a landline when you are there Maria, I want to know exactly what you have got yourself mixed up in."

She shoved her phone back in her bag and passed on what Ahmed had told her, "We have to go to Mesraba and at the next village along we are to ask to see a man called Shamir. It's not his real name but it will let them know we have been sent by a friend."

"He could be telling the authorities to expect us there as we speak you know that don't you."

She leaned her chin against Malik's head and fought the urge to tell him to let her out of the car. "I know that but we have to trust him, what choice do we have?"

He glanced back at the two passengers and said almost to himself, "Absolutely none."

This story is based on an idea Enrychan had, I wander to her page sometimes when I need an AltMar fix and it was there. The idea is brilliant and all hers however the execution is mine so if it sucks I'm sorry but I tried. Someone good should write this fic but this is the best I could do.