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It’s always the simple missions, isn’t it? Where everything goes wrong.
When the day began, it was with Soap waking to his alarm, even though he could probably get up just fine without it.
He’d grabbed a quick breakfast before scooting off to the scheduled meeting that Price had told them to get to “strictly on time”, which is frankly ridiculous because none of them were ever late to any meeting.
05:30 sharp, Price had said. And Price was not lenient with times.
Soap was there at 05:15, entered just as Gaz did; and was completely unsurprised to see Ghost already there, lurking in the darkness of the room.
Soap wonders how long he was there. If he was there earlier than Price.
It didn’t seem completely unlikely.
The room, frankly, smelled old, which made a bit of sense; it was all brick and metal. Down to the tables and the screens that hosted their technology.
It was dark, but it wasn’t like there weren’t lights in the room; there were faint ones, but the heavy door shutting and blocking the hall's light didn’t do much to help with the creeping shadows.
Price tells them that they’re going to raid a compound, and gives them details Soap would be reprimanded for if he repeated.
They clean and load their weapons; Soap simpers at a borderline flirtatious remark Ghost makes in the barracks when they’re changing into their field gear, something about stripping and first dates.
Soap claps Ghost on the shoulder when they’re entering the transport vehicle that’ll take them to their drop-off location, somewhere deep in some woods near abandoned apartments; their target.
They’re to enter, get intel, maybe shoot it up if the odds are in their favor; but to report everything that happens.
Ghost sits across from Soap in the van. Soap does his best not to stare at him, but Ghost doesn’t seem to be making the same effort. Ghost keeps his eyes trained on him for quite possibly half the ride.
Gaz snickers at a joke Soap makes on the way over, and Ghost just good-naturedly rolls his eyes. It makes the rocky ride more bearable.
They split into teams of two once they get to the apartments. Soap and Ghost, Gaz and Price.
The complexes are fairly towering, but were clearly abandoned. The outside features broken windows and one or two collapsed levels.
They all enter at the same time, eerily quiet as they were trained to be.
Gaz and Price work their own route while Ghost and Soap make their way up multiple flights of stairs, through at least three levels.
Soap and Ghost clear multiple rooms, both because they were empty or because they killed whoever was in there, before they hit one with multiple soldiers and a shit ton of crates.
They trade fire for what must’ve been seconds but felt much longer. Soap manages to duck behind a few crates.
Two men go down, and a third man gets shot somewhere in the arm. Ghost begins a dash to some crates to the right of Soap, out from the door-less doorway; to cover.
Then a particular crack splits the air. It’s no different sounding than the others before it, but this one is… wrong.
It doesn’t hit the rotted wood wall. It doesn’t make a thunk as it lodges in oak.
No, it sounds almost. Wet. And then it thunks.
The noise isn’t from Soap. Soap isn’t the one who gets hit.
And it goes like this: it’s not like Soap hasn’t seen people die before; his job is killing people, for fucks sake. It’s just… different, this time.
It's different because it’s Ghost , Ghost who is supposed to be like his namesake, Ghost who is always going to be the last one standing, Ghost who suffered so much that he became untouchable.
In Soap's mind, he is almost… immortal, in a way. Like there's no way this mountain of a guy can simply die .
There’s no way a simple bullet can take this guy out, this guy who’s gone through so much misery and forged it into armor.
It’s ridiculous, really, because Soap has seen many die in the field. Ghost is not a special case, Ghost is not an exception; they are trained to kill, trained to die, and truthfully, they are trained to watch each other die.
And yet, in Soap’s mind, there's some brief confusion before the panic splits through his mind like a lightning bolt, because there's no way he's mortal .
But he is.
The wet noise Soap heard milliseconds prior was a bullet hitting Ghost's neck. Going through it .
Ghosts' eyes widen as the realization hits. Like he’s almost as surprised as Soap is.
He crashes to the ground, one hand shooting across his body to clutch at his throat, the other still connected to his gun, but not even his large clothed hands can keep the river of blood from flooding through the new slit in his neck.
Soap yells his name. Quick and desperate.
He doesn’t get a proper response. It’s just this horrible gurgling, and surely Ghost is suffocating in all that blood because his mouth is covered by that goddamn mask, none of it can escape .
“Ghost,” Soap cries out, gruff and cracking slightly from the harshness of it, “Ghost get up .”
He almost pleads to Ghost again, but the words die on his lips because Ghost actually listens to him the first time , and he shoves himself up onto an elbow.
Soap does his best to provide covering fire. It’s not overly successful; the very few remaining men keep dodging behind crates as Soap and Ghost were doing.
Ghost actually seems to be trying to move for cover from where he is exposed between crates; to where Soap is.
Soap just wants Ghost next to him again.
He wants to be able to help put pressure on his neck and cradle him, just a little but not enough to have anyone think anything, and tell him they’ll get out of this, they’re fine, they’ll be fine. It’s okay.
He wants Ghost to tell him it’ll be okay, too.
Soap wants them to get out of this, he needs them to get out of this. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Ghost doesn’t come out of this whole.
Soap says, “Aye, Ghost, just a wee bit farther,” as Ghost drags himself over, almost to the point of Soap being able to grab him and help pull him over.
Soap pops up, takes his eyes and focus off of Ghost, and manages to shoot another one of the other soldiers.
But then another bullet hits its target.
Soap wishes so very desperately that the target was him and not Ghost.
But it is not him, not right now, because Ghost is already on the floor. For once in his life, Ghost is the easy target.
Ghost's head snaps back and Soap is fucking disgusted by the warm spray that hits his face when the bullet connects with Ghost's forehead. It goes through it.
Soap's eyes go wide, and a sharp, "No!" rips itself from his throat before he can shove it back down. Everything has gone cold, his stomach feels like its being scooped out of him.
It gets in his mouth. The blood. A little of the brain matter.
It’s like he can taste Ghost dying.
And it goes like this: in the end, Ghost is not a ghost. He is still, somewhere, Simon Riley, and that’s why blood pours from the holes in his body.
There is no big finale to Ghost’s life. No celebration for all he achieved throughout his frankly funereal, morbid, miserable life. There are no last words. Ghost is not even granted that.
Ghost's body just crumples, fully, a marionette with its strings cut, to the ground. His face is angled awkwardly to the side, so his last sight is the people that killed him.
For a moment, Soap desperately tries to see Ghost's eyes, because he can’t see his mouth or his expression under his mask so he can’t, for a moment, tell if he’s really gone.
He is.
Ghost's beautiful, long-lashed, tired eyes have stopped moving.
They will never again affectionately rest on Soap after he tells some incredibly corny joke.
They won’t ever become squinty when he gets blinded by Soaps flashlight on a mission, won’t get that exasperated tinge to them when he spits, not truly angry, Johnny, angle that damned thing at the floor.
They won’t get almost imperceptibly brighter, just the tiniest bit cheerier, when he sees a K-9 unit, all while slightly shielding Soap from looking at it because he knows Soap doesn’t like dogs much after his experiences with them.
They will never see anything again.
They seem to focus on the other side of the decrepit room they’re both trapped in, but Soap knows if he waved a hand in front of those frozen eyes, they wouldn't move.
It’s not like they’re worlds apart. Soap could reach out a hand and drag him to cover. But Soap doesn't need to be right up on him to know he is dead.
The bullets keep flying, only now there is no returned fire because Soap is kind of freaking the fuck out and that’s because Ghost is.
Gone.
A third bullet hits Ghost and Soap is snapped into action, yanks Ghost’s likely still-warm body to where he is. He feels sort of incredibly dirty and disgusting for letting Ghost's body be hit a third time.
Soap pops up and fires multiple shots over the crate before ducking behind it again. Successful hits, it seems, because the gunshots stop, the bullets stop flying at him.
Soap double-checks. The remaining soldiers are dead.
So is Ghost. It is not a good trade-off.
Ghost's head is in his lap, limbs splayed out awkwardly, and Soap does his best to organize them. He also tries, with incredible difficulty, to ignore Ghost’s dead eyes. The lump in his throat that has become unbearable.
His hands are rigid as he fruitlessly checks Ghost's pulse. He has to make sure.
If there’s even the slightest chance he’s alive he needs to know but.
Well. Ghost is long dead. A bullet to the middle of the brain isn’t something you live through, is it.
After gingerly trying to use his gloves and sleeves to clean some of the blood off of Ghost's mask and ever so slightly exposed face, mouth trembling, Soap curls his body over Ghost's corpse. Rests his forehead to his chest as to avoid drenching himself in half-dried reddish-copper. Picks up one of his hands and holds it. Does his best to forget he’s clutching a corpse.
He finally clicks on his comm and says, mouth full of ash and cotton, “Ghost is down, over.”
Price, seconds later, responds.
“Repeat, Soap. Over.”
“Ghost is down,” he repeats, almost angry, because didn’t he hear him the first time, why would he make him say it again .
“Copy. How bad?”
Soap wants the freezing pit in his gut to stop growing. Wants to pretend that it’s still this morning and they’re still at base and Ghost has just made some bullshit joke about what is Luke short for, a stormtrooper , and Soap has just retorted aye, wheesht, L.t and Ghost seems to be slightly grinning under his mask, because Ghosts incredible ice seemed to have melted a little since he'd met Soap.
But Soap doesn’t get to pretend.
Not now. Not ever.
“He’s dead. Over.”
There’s radio silence for a moment. Saying it out loud makes it real, and the nausea that rips through Soap after he speaks is proof of that.
He never wants to say those words again.
He wonders what Ghost's funeral will look like. If he even would’ve wanted one at all. If he has anyone to give him a eulogy. If he has anyone outside of the 141.
“Copy.” Price says, and the way Price says it has Soap's heart falling impossibly further.
Soap wants to keep curled over Ghost's body and stay there until Price orders a fallback. He wants to do a lot of things. But he still has a job to do.
So he rips himself away from Ghost's corpse. And he does his job.
He completes the mission like a good soldier would, and when Price asks him, staring cautiously into Soap's empty gaze, where Ghost's body is, Soap leads them to it.