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Ghost learns at a very young age that he would have to be self-sufficient if he wanted to survive.
And that’s not a tragedy—at the very least, by the time he has reached thirty-three, he refuses to see it as such. He is an adult, and he has learned to deal with the way the world is. He has never received kindness nor pity from the place he grew up, and he is okay with that. Sometimes, that is simply how the world is. It is not an injustice. It is just a fact.
But back then he was six and terrified and he did not know the whole world. He knew only his father and mother and little brother; he knew only both the best and the worst. Sometimes, he thinks of what he would have been like had he not had his mother. Sometimes, he thinks that would have turned him into more of a monster than anything else could have.
He is six, and he is scared, and not for the last time in his life, he will have to fend for himself.
One day, Simon cuts his knee while he is playing, but he doesn’t cry. Tears are reserved for something much bigger than this; in the same way that he only laughs when his father shakes him and tells him to, he only cries when he cannot help it. That is to say, he doesn’t cry at all.
Calmly, he stands up. His knee is bleeding badly, but he has walked out to these woods himself and he will have to walk back. He is eight and alone and terrified, but he knows he does not have time to feel any of these things. Briefly, he thinks of pulling a leaf or something around his leg to stop the bleeding, but in the end, he is only eight. There is not much more he could have done.
Instead, he walks. He walks and he walks and he walks until his legs cannot hold him, and then he keeps walking. Maybe he doesn’t know it in so many words, but he is eight and he does not want to die yet.
When he gets back to the house, no one is there. His mother is out with his little brother. His father is simply somewhere else; and Simon will do a lot of things for him, but he will not follow without being called. His father is not home, and he knows this is a blessing.
He walks to the bathroom. He cleans his knee, and watches as his blood drains down the sink. He hopes this will be the last time he sees it fall.
(He is only eight, but he knows better than to believe it.)
That night, he curls up on his threadbare bed and pulls his knees close to his chest. No one has come to take care of it but him. For a while, he was worried that it would bleed forever and ever without his mother to kiss it better, but it stopped, and he did it all on his own!
It should feel like an accomplishment.
Instead, he tightens his grip around himself; a half-formed hug. He is quiet, and he is awake in the darkness of his room, and most of all, he is eight years old: he just wants to not be alone.
Simon has been alone his whole life.
He is eighteen now. Old enough to drink—at least legally. His father had shoved burning liquor down his throat so often that he thinks that he will never forget the taste. The thought of drinking—alone or with friends—is so sickening that sometimes, he can’t breathe quite right.
He has found his place, here, in the military. Maybe it’s not the glamorous life he had wanted when he was eight, but it is a life. He is alive, and that is more than he ever thought he would be.
(And maybe he is not the person he wanted to be when he was eight, but maybe he is the person he needed to become to survive. He’s not ashamed of that.)
He is eighteen, and so he follows his superiors blindly. He goes on mission after mission and ignores the signs that tell him he is becoming more man than monster; pushes away the sounds of crying children. He does not have time to comfort them. That is not his job. All the same, he is alone, even in this pretend camaraderie between the others and him. They are normal. They will grow up and become something that matters. They will grow up and leave.
Simon will stay. Even now, he does not know how to live when he is not fighting. He will stay, and he will rot here, and everyone else will pass by. He will stay here, and he will die here.
(Even now, he knows this.)
It’s another job when the reminder is forced down his throat again. Another mission. He is aiming and he is pulling the trigger and then there is a sound and a shout and there are hands on his mouth. He is eighteen, and he knew he would die here, but he is not ready for it to have come too soon. Maybe that's selfish. Maybe he doesn’t care. But there are hands around his mouth and neck and he can’t stop thinking of his father and he can’t breathe and will someone else—
He wakes up in a compound, and then he wishes he never woke up at all.
No one comes to help him there. He is in a cage like a dog and there are too many hands on him and they laugh. It’s a horrible sound because it doesn’t sound horrible at all—it is joyful and bright and reminds him of his little brother as he kicked down Simon’s sandcastles. They are laughing as he cries, and he knows that the eight year old that he still has somewhere deep down in him would be ashamed of the tears on his face but he can’t help it. He cries, and he cries, and he cries, and then they are taking knives down his cheeks as if they want to make the tear tracks permanent.
“Ready to comply?” the man in front of him whispers. He is too close. Simon-Ghost-someone can smell the alcohol on his breath.
He shakes his head. He won’t—he won’t. He can’t. He is eighteen, but the eight year old inside of him is screaming for someone to help. He is eighteen, and he is an adult and he is grown but he wants to see his mother just one more time before he dies.
Because he will die. Here and now or there and later it doesn’t matter. Maybe he’s already dead. Maybe Simon died all those years ago, when he was eight and holding a skinned knee like it was the end of the world.
“Oh, come on,” the man murmurs. Simon does not want to be there, but he cannot move. There are hands on his face, tracing the tears of blood, and the man licks them off.
He is eighteen, and he is dead. Even if he makes it out with a beating heart, he knows this; Simon Riley dies in a compound with no one around to help him. Simon Riley dies with no one to hear his screams. Simon Riley dies, the little eight year old still banging his fists inside. Simon Riley dies alone.
He wakes up in a coffin alone. He digs out the corpse’s rib with his own bare hands, and he digs to his salvation with only himself to pray too.
When he returns to the place he grew up—he doesn’t think he can ever call it home— he is tired and dying and just doesn’t want to be alone anymore. He is waiting to fall into his mother’s arms like he is a child again; waiting to feel the warmth of touch meant to save instead of hurt.
And then he sees the blood.
There is only a drop in the entryway. A smear on the bottom of the doorknob, as if someone had almost gotten out.
(He tries to ignore the tiny fingerprints. Tries to ignore how no adult is short enough to only come up to the underside of a doorknob. He is a monster, but he deserves at least this peace.)
The bodies in the rooms are just that; bodies. Ghost has seen a hundred by this point, but none with faces so similar to his own. His brother and sister-in-law are together in the living room. His father is in his bedroom, beer bottle in-hand. His nephew, small and so like Simon had been all those years ago, is alone in his room, arms clutching a stuffed animal tightly against him. Ghost sighs, and runs a calloused hand over Joseph’s eyelids, and pretends that they are both only asleep.
His mother is bent over the bathroom sink, blood from her eyes dried on the porcelain. He wonders if she thought she was going to make it. He wonders if she knew no one was going to save her, too.
He is in the house he was born in and the house that the last sliver of Simon Riley goes to die.
There is no one left; not even a ghost. Here, in the house he spent his childhood in, he is alone and dying and there is nothing left of him. Here, he is falling into pieces, and there is nothing of him left to save. He is alone and always has been; he is ready to spend his life in solitude until he is dead.
It starts to change when he meets Soap.
And Ghost doesn’t like change. Change has never been good. Change has only ever brought moments of pain, and though he has stuck it out this far, he is worried that one day the world will be flipped on its head and Ghost will no longer be able to pretend that he is not the little boy with the skinned knees.
And now, they are here, the both of them, stranded together in a city with no ex-fil in sight, and Soap is shifting like Ghost can’t see the bullet wound in his side. Simon Riley is already dead, but with Soap next to him, he wishes that weren’t the case.
“Lt,” Soap says. He is beautiful here, even with the bags under his eyes and the grease in his mohawk. “I’m tired.”
Ghost holds back the reassurances at the tip of his tongue. This is not the place for them. “Don’t go to sleep.”
Soap laughs. It is quiet and self-deprecating. Nothing like the horrible laughter of the men who had held Ghost until he became the monster he is now. “Dunno if I have a choice.”
“You do,” Ghost says. There is always a choice. There was a choice when Simon got up from the woods. There was a choice when he climbed his way out. Despite everything, Ghost has been offered more choices than he deserves. Inexplicably, he thinks he would have given them all up if only to be able to choose to let Soap live.
Soap groans. His head comes to a rest on Ghost’s shoulder. Ghost shudders, pushing away tears of blood and decaying flesh against his neck, and Soap flinches.
“Sorry,” he mutters, trying to lift his head.
Ghost brings his gloved hand around Soap’s side. “No,” he says.
Soap blinks, beautiful and bleeding. “What d’you mean?”
Ghost does not know how to tell Soap that he is the first person who has made him not want to be alone anymore, so he doesn’t answer. Instead, he just brings Soap’s head to his shoulder, and sucks in a breath. “Rest.” Maybe that simple command is the closest thing Ghost can get to speaking the words that rest deep inside him.
“Don’t want to leave you alone, Lt,” Soap says, but he is slipping away into a sleep where Ghost cannot follow. Not the final one—not yet—but his eyes are closing and his breath is warm and soft against Ghost’s neck.
“Maybe I’m meant to be alone,” Ghost says. Maybe there is a reason that no one has ever come to help him. Maybe Soap will realize that soon enough, if he lives long enough to.
Soap laughs again. Ghost wants to hear that sound for the rest of his life, however short. It is bright and beautiful and just like the man sitting next to him. “This is no time for teenage angst, Ghost.”
Ghost shrugs. He can feel the smile that only Soap can pull from him twitching on his lips. “There’s always time for teenage angst, sargeant.”
Soap hums. He doesn’t say anything else. He is beautiful and blinding and bleeding and dying, and Ghost doesn’t want to be alone again, no matter what he’s saying.
“We’ll make it, Johnny,” he whispers, only once he is sure Soap will not remember it. “We’ll make it.”
The city is silent and crumbling, and Ghost cannot help but feel like he is too.
The ex-fil comes like salvation above them, a single helicopter. Price steps out, an eyebrow cocked to conceal the pain in his set jaw. Is he…
He gestures towards Soap on Ghost’s shoulder. Ghost shakes his head. “Not yet. Jus’ sleepin’.”
Price nods. “Okay then.” When he reaches his arms out for Soap’s unconscious body, Ghost cannot help the way his hands spasm, unwilling to let go.
There is a horrible sort of understanding in Price’s eyes. “Simon—you have to let me take him. You can’t carry him like this.”
Ghost is dimly aware of the blood running down his abdomen, but he has lived his whole life covered in it; what’s a little more? Soap is warm and alive but fading next to him, and Ghost does not want to be alone again, even if he should be.
“I can take him,” Ghost says.
Price is quiet, and then he sighs, cursing the both of them. “Then take him,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “We need to go.”
Ghost nods. He hoists Johnny up against his chest, wrapping an arm around the bottom of his thighs and pulling him close. It is suffocating, but he is too tired to pretend that he doesn’t want to know what love feels like, and with Soap’s soft breaths on his neck, he thinks this is the closest he has come in years.
They take him away eventually. Ghost blinks through the helicopter ride and the landing and the after, where everything is fast and nonsensical. He stays next to Soap’s hospital bed until Price forces him away, and then he comes back. He should feel scared to be this attached, but all he can feel right now is guilt. He is looking at Soap’s face, soft in sleep, and he feels as if he has somehow done this—as if breaking his vow of solitude was what led to the bullet in Soap’s stomach.
Ghost is sitting next to the man he might love and the man he might have killed, and if Soap has to die, Ghost will not let him do so alone.
When he wakes up, Soap’s eyes are open.
Ghost doesn’t know what to say, so he stays quiet.
“Morning, Lt,” Soap says. He’s wearing that sharp smile again; the one that the Simon before Ghost might have been brave enough to kiss. “Fancy seeing you here.”
Ghost grunts, but he runs his fingers through Soap’s mess of hair, and there is a quiet joy that he cannot breathe through strumming in his lungs.
Soap is quiet for a while too. Then, he raises a hand to Ghost’s mask.
Ghost flinches.
“I’m not going to take it off,” Soap says. When Ghost looks at him, there is nothing but careful devotion in his eyes. “Just—just wanted to—I don’t fuckin’ know. See if you’re alright.”
Ghost tilts his head. “You were the one who got shot, Johnny.”
Infuriating, Soap only laughs. “Sure, but I wasn’t the one spouting depressing shit.”
Ghost shrugs.
Soap’s eyes turn more serious. “You’re not meant to be alone,” he whispers. “I promise.”
“And we all know you keep your promises,” Ghost says sarcastically, thinking of the Soap who forgets and fumbles and tries but never succeeds.
“I’ll keep this one,” Soap says. God , he’s lovely. “Just for you, Lt.”
Ghost inhales sharply. Before his courage can fail him, he slips Johnny’s hand under his mask, letting it rest against his own warm cheek. “I’ll hold you to it.”
He won’t. They both know he would do anything if Soap wanted him to, even if it means tearing himself into scraps.
“You won’t need to,” Soap murmurs. He is slowly running his hand across Simon’s cheek, and surely he can feel the scars but there is nothing but devotion on his face. “I won’t let you live alone forever, Ghost. You deserve better than that.”
Ghost does not believe him, but with Soap’s warm hand on his face, he thinks that someday he might be able to.