Chapter Text
It wasn’t unusual for the 141 to hang out together in the common room. Usually, you’d see Ghost cleaning his knives or reading, Gaz planning pranks, Soap drawing and Price sitting in the rocking chair watching everyone (or sleeping). Today though, Gaz and Soap were chattering on about different conspiracies. Soap swears up and down they’re a club, and honestly, Price and Ghost don’t care enough to poke fun at them for it. Their topic of choice today was serial killers.
Ghost looked up when Soap suddenly stopped speaking mid-rant about Jack the Ripper and gasped, “Did you ever hear about the Riley Family murders?” and suddenly, Ghost’s interest is peaked.
Price’s head doesn’t move, but his eyes snap to him, silently worrying about how Ghost will react.
“Do I? Dude, it happened when I was still in boot camp, and it scared the fuck out of all of us. We went on a deep dive and everything, but there’s hardly any information about it shared publicly,” He pulls out his phone as if trying to find information on it now, “All we gathered from online and from our CO’s was that there were some higher ups murdered and suddenly, poof, and entire family is wiped out! One of their sons was in the military, supposedly connected to those higher ups. I know they say they found his body, but sometimes I wonder if maybe he set that up, what if their son did it and he’s still out there?”
Soap suddenly turns to his CO’s, “What aboot both ah ye? Were both already pretty deep intah the military, did ye get any information we laddies didn’t that we can know now?” He looks excited, and Price looks to Ghost. He knows this is a topic Ghost generally avoids, even with Price, who knew him before everything went down.
Ghost looks to Price, shrugs, “All I heard was that he was slaughtered beyond identification, only thing to confirm who he was being his dog tags. Some of my old buddies thought he might’ve started to haunt the bases closest to Manchester.”
Soap turns to Price, waiting, and he just sighed, “None of us were told much, lad. There were conspiracies about it being an inside job, about the son murdering his family and faking his death, but I’m still barely of high enough rank to obtain that information. Plus, it’s been years, it’s none of our business no more.” He says it in hopes that Soap and Gaz will drop whatever interest they have in the situation, but it only seems to make them want to try and dig up the information themselves.
Price looks to Ghost again.
Surprisingly, he looks calm. His shoulders aren’t bunched like they were any time Price had brought it up during their meetings, his eyes aren’t hazy like they had been for so long after the incident, his hands not reaching for a weapon on instinct as he recalled that day.
He looks… fine. Amused, even.
And Price knows what that means. Every once in a while, Ghost will play into Gaz and Soaps little conspiracy club, make a joke about hauntings or scare them using whatever their latest conspiracy had been, and he knows, with Ghosts’ expert knowledge on this topic, his Sergeants are in for it.
Ghost suddenly stands up, Price tenses, waiting for the memories to hit him, waiting for Ghost to start attacking as if he was still fighting for his life in that torture chamber, because it wouldn’t be the first time, but he just stretches his arms above his head and yawns.
“All I know,” he starts, walking backwards towards the door, “is if Simon Riley was still around, he’d be a spooky fucker today,” and he slinks into the hallway, leaving an eerie silence behind him in the common room.
“So did anyone else know the lads first name before right now or was that just Ghost being Ghost and having random knowledge on everything again?” Gaz shakes his head, almost as if he is in shock, and Price just laughs, standing up to leave as well.
“You know how he is Soap,” Price shrugs. He left with the intention of going to his room, it was too late, and he was too old, but he veers away, heading towards Ghosts’ instead.
He knocks when he got there, entering before Ghost could answer and locking the door behind him.
Ghost is sitting on his bead, stripped of everything but his black t-shirt and cargo pants, just finishing pulling his shoes off.
“What can I do for you, sir?”
“Don’t sir me right now. I’m coming to you as a friend,” Price sits in the desk chair across from the bed. “Are you okay? I know you don’t like to talk about it, even with me, no matter how much I try. If you aren’t comfortable with them digging into it or bringing it up around you, I can say something. Make them shut up about it without giving everything away.” Price is concerned, and he has a right to be considering how he is used to Ghost reacting when his family is brought up.
Price couldn’t help but worry anytime his family is brought up. At first it was a struggle to keep it under wraps that Ghost was Simon Riley. People talking about their own family made him shut down, anyone asking Ghost about his, or alluding to the murders at all were swiftly pinned against the wall, knife to their throat as Ghost growled a quiet, ‘Don’t you ever speak about them’ into their face. Sometimes he would even get hazy. Price would see his eyes unfocus and he would call his name, his real name, and he’d see Ghost physically recoil, sometimes even become so deep in the memory that he would attack anyone around him. In those states, everyone was Roba.
Price didn’t want to see Simon like that again.
Because he would never say it to his face, but Ghost is still Simon to him. He knew him before the murders, before he was taken, before he left Simon in that coffin out in Mexico. Before he became Ghost. He hadn’t seen much of him in the last few years, but the 141 seemed to bring it out of him. He spent time with his team now. He would joke and banter, play fight with his sergeants in the sparring ring, he even sat in the mess hall with them now, even if he still got his food when they were done and ate it in his room. He wouldn’t ever say it to his face, but Price was seeing Simon come back, little by little, even if Ghost isn’t aware of it yet.
Ghost trusts his team. It seemed Simon did too.
He waves off Prices concern. “I know they don’t mean harm, and honestly, I think it’d be funny to just keep messing with them about it. They don’t need to know who I was, but they’re having their fun, and I’ll have mine.”
This doesn’t make Price feel better. He knows where this is going and honestly, he can’t decide whether he should back up Ghost or remind him that they may be his sergeants, but they’re still scaredy cats when it comes to their conspiracies. He decides to let the situation play itself out and hopes that nothing bad happens.
The sergeants don’t let it go anytime soon, and neither does Ghost.