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Call him superstitious, but Soap had almost known something was bound to go wrong the moment he’s suddenly shipped out for a mission on a cold, damp, miserable Halloween evening.
Supposedly, the cause for its last-minute nature had been urgent intel that he and a small team had needed to retrieve stat—and retrieve they had, with little difficulty, until an ambush, an unexpected and much-too-large explosion, and Soap’s separation from the group.
So, really, it’s safe to say that things are just great as he wanders through the Siberian wilderness, wondering just when he’s meant to find some safe house he’d been told to lay low in until someone could safely reach him for extraction in a week or so.
Stupid weather. Stupid mission.
As a frigid chill bites at his cheeks and snow crunches beneath his boots, he finds himself missing when Halloween had just been homemade, hand-stitched costumes, and trading sweets with his sisters in the living room. Though, in some sense, he does suppose that this is only his own fault.
In part, at least. Not like he could have predicted the overwhelming amount of enemy gunfire that night—but he could, however many years ago, have not made the decision to join the military when his entire family had begged him not to.
But alas. Here he treks.
Only by the time he starts thinking it possible that he’s just been walking in circles for hours does he finally happen upon the destitute cabin, less relieved as he is in disbelief of it still standing in spite of the very thick layer of snow that sits undisturbed on the roof. He's almost certain that the building is leaning heavily to one side, and that the eaves have a bow to them, and Soap half expects it to collapse the second he steps any closer.
He’ll accept it for the time being, though, if it means shelter from the unforgiving cold.
It takes some effort to wedge the front door open, fighting against frost and rust and whatever else is keeping the old hinges in place, but Soap eventually manages to slip inside once he’s cracked open a large enough gap to fit through—of course, only after he’s shed the bulk of his gear and dumped it inside before him. The wind makes certain to slam the door shut on him and his damp pile of equipment the moment he’s fully indoors.
The cabin isn’t particularly warm by any means, but it still remains as four walls and sufficient cover, as cobwebbed and dust-coated as it is. Uncaring to do a proper sweep at this point, Soap kicks off his boots and makes a beeline for the kitchenette, trailing a finger across various surfaces and mindlessly rubbing the filth between his fingertips as he ransacks what few cabinets there are for any sort of food. Most of it—of what sparse contents there are—are cans past their expiries, or teetering well close to the dates printed on the tin lids, but the sergeant knows how to make do.
He’ll just file away that information for later, as he continues to explore.
As far as safe houses go, the cabin is hardly the worst place Soap has ever stayed. It's more than spacious enough for one, comfortable for two… a bit cozy for any more. More than outdated for anyone—and Soap doesn’t just mean the food. The decor is near ancient; a moth-eaten sofa, a rotting coffee table, curling and yellowed wallpaper. And his favourite part, of course—the old paintings hung crooked along otherwise unoccupied walls like someone had once meant to make the place seem homey for those lost soldiers like Soap.
Which might’ve been a successful endeavour, if not for the large and very unsettling portrait poised above the mantel of the charred fireplace.
It looks… reluctant, somehow, like the artist had been studying an uncooperative subject. The figure is dark, shadow-like, not quite objectively human. Any hint of a face is obscured by a skull broken away from its mandible, only the unsure shape of a pale jaw and throat painted beneath, fading into more flowing, inky black. Soap had always believed the notion of a portrait’s gaze being able to follow one’s movements to be silly, but shifting uncomfortably beneath the watch of dark pupils hidden in the hollow eyeholes of the skull makes him want to beg to differ.
That’s decided then—he’ll have to find something to cover the painting for the week he’ll be stuck holed up in the cabin. Otherwise, he may not fare so well waiting on exfil. Not with that thing staring at him all the while.
Soap manages to set himself up in the safe house after that, doing his best to never let his attention drift back to the portrait. He tries to keep back in the furthest corners of his mind the trailing gaze of the figure above the hearth, and the moment he finds a spare, ratty blanket in the cabin’s sole dresser, he drapes it over the wretched thing, and finally takes a deep breath.
Out of sight, out of mind, he tells himself. Repeats, like a mantra, out of sight, out of mind.
But it barely feels that way at all, even with plenty else to distract him.
Thankfully, however, when Soap finds himself in a sudden desperate need of sleep, he discovers a separate bedroom entirely sheltered from the presence of that painting. It’s cramped, sure, the bed pushed up against three of four walls—but the oldies decor has been mercifully forgotten, other than the ugly patchwork duvet that Soap doesn’t think has ever seen better days.
He has to suppress a shiver, locking himself away for the night. Soap prays that maybe his paranoia is all a cause of his exhaustion from an overall miserable evening—hopes that maybe tomorrow, with a fresh start and some daylight, the portrait will hardly seem so eerie.
A week, he sighs internally. He can manage a week.
Sleep doesn’t do much to help Soap—especially not once discovering, after daring to leave the safety of the bedroom, that the blanket he’d thrown over the portrait appeared to have disappeared entirely since the night before. He checks the fireplace, the space beneath the sofa, every other nook and cranny where it could have possibly fallen, but there’s absolutely nothing.
And still, the figure watches, those deep, dark pits for eyes too real to be mere oil strokes on canvas.
A new tactic is needed, then.
He grimaces, stepping closer to the portrait and pushing up onto his toes to fit his fingers firmly beneath the frame before lifting the painting off its hook. He then flips it in order to bend the wire that had held it in place to hang over the lip of the frame. Once satisfied with his work, Soap reaches up again and sets the portrait back in place, only backwards and a bit lopsided.
Surely, he thinks, nothing could possibly happen this time.
At worst, it falls; a naturally occurring thing. There isn’t any way he could lose an entire portrait like he had the blanket, right? That’d almost be too absurd to be a coincidence.
Well, really, in all honesty—it almost already is.
Soap endeavours to risk hunting instead of idling around thinking about it. He has the time and gear, and sticking around otherwise would be a waste, painting or not. He quickly dons everything he needs, some of it still damp in spite of sitting for hours in front of the fire he had kindled the previous night, and leaves the cabin behind.
He never expects there to be much game around, not when he doesn’t intend on wandering too far from his safe house, and he returns empty-handed in the end, anyway. But successful hunting hadn’t been his goal, and he’s plenty happy to have gotten away with finally settling his mind from the unwanted mix of feelings that stirred about his head as a cause of the thing sitting above the mantel.
Except then he decides it’s time to go back inside to scrounge for something to eat, and to Soap’s chagrin, he finds that the painting has somehow, miraculously, magically managed to turn itself back around, hung perfectly straight as it had been before Soap had pulled it from the wall.
Soap doesn’t know whether to groan his frustration or cry out in fear.
It shouldn’t take something so little to make a hardened soldier scared, in the grand scheme. But when a portrait has become seemingly sentient, he supposes the feeling of wanting to flee as far as possible from this miserable cabin isn’t too crazy of an idea. Any normal, sane person should understand, at least.
This time, he sets the thing outside, and barricades the cabin door.
Later, when he goes for a piss in the tiny bathroom barely large enough for its porcelain toilet and sink, the painting, in retaliation, reappears in its place over the fireplace.
Soap thinks he might be losing it. He goes to bed immediately after that, not wanting to give himself the chance to ponder the haunted thing any further.
The next morning, he doesn’t once glance at the portrait. He goes about routine casually, nonchalantly, just in case the painting can also do some bullshit like read his mind. Then, around ten in the morning, he goes out to collect wood, returns, and begins stoking a fire, all with a schooled calm on his face.
Once satisfied with the size and heat of the fire, Soap pushes to his toes like he had the day prior, hooks his fingers beneath the wooden frame, and goes to tug the portrait off the wall yet again.
Nothing is quite as permanent as being fed to flames, Soap is certain of it.
Then sparing one last look at the imposing figure as the painting is finally in his grasp, Soap tilts the frame toward the blaze with a manic sort of triumph, and—
“Don’t even fucking think about it.”
For the first time since the shit-show of a mission, Soap is glad to be without any of his team if only because it meant no witnesses to the embarrassingly boyish shriek he lets out when the shadowy portrait speaks. Soap nearly drops it in the fire anyway, purely on instinct.
With fleeting sanity, he hastily hangs the painting back in place and takes several steps back until his calves hit the coffee table. Cursed feels like the understatement of the century in describing the portrait.
“Tell me I imagined that,” Soap pleads with himself, arms held up in surrender like the figure might jump out at any second. He’s not sure whether or not he wants an answer.
But then the figure unmistakably shifts within the confines of the canvas with an odd sort of fluid movement, like live brushstrokes painting over what had previously occupied every inch of space, and Soap briefly thinks that he might be mesmerized by it, if he weren't so terrified first.
“What do you want me to say, then?” The figure speaks again in that gruff, irritated tone, staring daggers at Soap. Shadows meld together almost like the crossing of arms, and Soap sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth.
Helplessly frightened, Soap can only shrug, his voice pitching up an octave. “Oh, I dunno… maybe somethin’ like, no Sergeant MacTavish, this isn’t real and you’re not insane?”
The portrait stares at him a moment longer, ominously silent. Then, the tilt of a head—or, skull, more accurately—and, “Well, then I’d be lying. No use in that, is there?”
Soap opens his mouth to argue, because maybe practically, no, there isn’t any use, but he currently feels all kinds of sorts and would like to feel, for just one second of the several days he’s already been trapped in the cabin, not like he’ll need a psych eval the moment he’s evacuated—but his protest is beat out by the figure in the portrait.
“You said you’re a sergeant?”
Soap finds himself gradually sitting back on the old table at his legs. Hesitant, fucking scared—yet also increasingly curious. “I did,” he says slowly. “Why’s it matter?”
“That means someone’s looking for you?”
Soap nods.
The figure hums, seemingly considering something with eyes glazed over in thought, before coming to some conclusion. “That means you’ll be leaving soon?”
Another nod; a slight shrug. “Aye, I’d sure as hell hope so.”
“Then you won’t be helpful to me,” the figure decides. It squares its vague shoulders and sits back in the void of space in which it exists. In only a second, a mere blink, the paint seems to solidify again, that fluid, unnatural movement suddenly and instantaneously ceasing without a trace of that strange, impossible sentience.
Soap is left in stunned silence for only a moment before his brain catches up and he’s scrambling to his feet. “Hey, wait, you cannae—hey!” Soap grasps at the frame, peering up into the figure’s eyes—though still again, they are no less piercing. “What d’you mean helpful? C’mon, you creepy bastard!”
Soap himself may be stubborn, but it appears the figure is twice as much. He huffs, finally backing off the frame when he realizes the figure wouldn’t budge. The fire has since begun to dull to embers. Leave it to Soap to have a painting abandon him.
Though he does have to admit, whether the portrait is living or possessed, it’s a little less terrifying now, having it displayed in the cabin. On the other hand, however, his mind has become overrun, plagued with questions.
But with nothing better to do, and a painting that won’t respond, he returns to his boring daily regime in wait for his rescue.
“You’re still here?”
Two days later, and Soap is nearly jumping out of his skin at the 'arrival' of his sudden new company.
“Jesus Christ!” Soap exclaims, hand clutching at his chest. The figure stares impassively, either unaware or entirely uncaring that it had almost induced a heart attack in the sergeant.
Soap votes the latter.
“Of course I’m still here, you absolute weapon. We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere. These things take time,” Soap grouses. He folds his arms across his chest. Even with his heart still racing, he already feels just a little less… intimidated, this time. “What’s got you talkin’ again, anyway?”
“You haven’t left yet,” the figure states plainly. Soap has to resist rolling his eyes.
“I’ve realized,” Soap snorts. He moves to plop himself down on the moth-eaten sofa. “So what is it, then? Am I… helpful to you, all of the sudden?”
The figure is watching him closely, as always. Assessing. “Maybe,” it says. Hums, “Seems like you might not have anything better to do.”
Soap scoffs, though he hardly has reason to be offended when it’s only the truth—bitter and reluctant, certainly, but it’s nothing less than his current reality. “Right, then. What have you finally decided I can help you with?”
The ghost of a smile is apparent in the figure’s voice as it says, “Getting me out of this stupid portrait.”
Soap’s eyebrows instantly knit together. Figures this eerie, shadowy, sentient entity with a skull for a face would want free will—but thinking the idea itself to be possible is entirely laughable and downright puzzling. To escape a painting is, well. Magic. Something of which is far beyond Soap’s capabilities. Beyond anyone’s, as far as Soap is aware.
“But you’re…” Soap hesitates, uncertain as to how to word his concern with the request, “...not real.”
Within the boundaries of the canvas, the figure seems to lean forward, almost like it could just step out of the painting itself without Soap’s aid. It narrows those cold eyes, glinting in a nonexistent light. Soap has to stop himself from backing away on instinct.
“Aren’t I?”
Soap first thinks to disagree. Opens his mouth to do so, but stops himself at the last second. Because on one side of things, the answer is surely no—the subject of a painting cannot be real in and of itself—but on the other side, this particular subject talks and comes to life in its own bizarre way, and Soap figures that’s probably reason enough to be considered something… nearly tangible.
The figure sits back slowly, satisfied, smug, like it knows Soap’s final conclusion.
“If it helps you any to decide,” the figure is saying anyway, “I haven’t always been… here.”
Soap’s frown deepens impossibly so. “Here as in… the cabin?”
“Here as in the canvas,” the figure corrects. The rough scratch of its voice is near chilling, as something forlorn overtakes it for only a moment. “I was a soldier, once, like you. About a decade ago.”
It takes only a split second for Soap to allow himself to entertain the claim. It takes him by enough surprise and intrigue to push the figure to continue—farce or not. Nothing better to do, right?
The figure understands the pointed silence to be its cue to continue. “I was a lieutenant. SAS. Mission went to shit because of false intel, ended up here with a team that apparently meant to betray me the whole time. Learned all this magic garbage actually existed that day, and I’ve been trapped ever since. Real enough for you?”
Not quite, Soap wants to say. Wants to say the details are still general enough that it could be anyone’s story, but he bites his tongue.
The figure seems to sense his apprehension anyway. It raises its chin and peers down a nonexistent nose in clear offence taken. Soap can almost hear its sneer as it says with a renewed brusqueness, “I was under the command of a man named Major Vernon at the time, working with two American soldiers—Sparks and Washington. They’d been acting strange since deployment; paranoid, like they’d done something Vernon wouldn’t be able to cover up.
“I was stupid not to question it, then. Stupid to let them corner me when we got to the cabin, stupid to let them read from this old journal with shaking hands like they meant to repent for something. Then suddenly I was… in this void, alone and caught between four invisible walls with no way out, and stayed that way for ten years after the other two left, and you’re the first person I’ve seen in just as long. Is that better?”
Vernon is a familiar enough name to Soap—he’d been a private when the major had gone missing just days before he was supposed to be dishonourably discharged. The only reason he knew about it was some off-hand mention by Price however many years ago, something about the major being involved in the officially-declared unofficial-death of another SAS soldier he’d once worked closely with.
Which would have been approximately a decade ago. And if it’s truly been that long since the figure’s been stuck, it’d have no other way of learning those names. That story. Vernon had been wiped from records, and Price wouldn’t lie about the KIA status of a friend.
The name of the lieutenant, it’s on the tip of Soap’s tongue. Silence rings in his ears along with the soft whistle of wind blowing against the thick, foggy windows of the cabin as the figure remains quiet, letting Soap piece together and settle into facts.
Soap’s gaze slowly trails up toward the portrait, an ominous presence hanging over the mantel; over the cabin itself.
“Did you ever know a John Price?”
The figure tenses, wispy silhouette stiffening—but not completely freezing. Its voice is near inaudible, broken. “Sergeant Price?”
Soap’s mouth ticks upward in a half-hearted smile. “It’s captain, now.”
For the first time since any encounter, the figure hardly seems imposing, muttering a quiet oh. Good for him.
It’s then that Soap supposes he may as well help. He has some semblance of reason now and, well. Isn’t that good enough for a soldier to try and accomplish some good, especially for someone who shares his line of work?
Soap stands from the old sofa and approaches the mantel, setting his hands on hips. Everything seems far less intimidating, in that moment, with that glimmer of humanity that had been noticeably missing until just then. Until the figure finally meets his gaze without malice in those dark irises.
“Alright,” Soap says decisively. “I’ll do whatever you need me to do. But I’ll need a name, at the very least—you owe me that much for an attempt.”
The figure considers the request longer than Soap is comfortable with.
“You can call me Ghost,” it finally supplies. And while it may not be quite exactly what Soap had been wanting, it’s a better start than none. Maybe he’ll just have to search his brain for the name Price might’ve given him all that time ago.
“Okay, then, Ghost.” Soap lifts his chin. “Let’s figure this out, shall we?”
The next few days’ worth of effort only ever prove to be fruitless. Ghost doesn’t have much information on the curse—though, granted, that whole situation happened a long time ago, so Soap can hardly be upset over poor memory—and Soap can’t really think of any logical way to break it, if only because he hadn’t known magic was a thing until Ghost had told him so.
In the meantime Soap is also informed over a crackling and fading radio that exfil had to be delayed because of worsening weather, so he’s started to feel a little confined himself. Ghost terrifies him the way he goes mute when he hears another voice, a blankness washing over his eyes for an hour following, though he never solidifies back into that real, frozen painting form.
And yes, he, Soap deduces, from the way Ghost sparsely reminisces of a past life. Something about the gradually more and more convincing idea of a real human being stuck on a canvas makes everything seem all the more dire, and it makes Soap all the more concerned when they can’t come up with solutions.
Because what’s meant to happen when Soap eventually leaves? It wouldn’t exactly be easy to explain a seemingly random desire to take the cabin’s portrait along with him—but also knowing what he knows, he can’t just leave Ghost. He can’t leave the lieutenant with his fate, left alone in a cabin that may not see anyone else for years just like the first time. But he may have to, in the end, also knowing how the portrait always seems to return itself to its rightful place the moment there aren’t any eyes to watch it.
The only positive thing to come about Soap’s new source of stress is the tentative friendship he forms with Ghost.
Soap’s almost entirely certain that it’s born of delirium, but he doesn’t intend on taking it for granted regardless—not when he has so little else currently keeping him sane. Ghost isn’t bad company, anyway.
That is, of course, after Soap has finally gotten over Ghost’s otherworldly, still mildly creepy nature. Nothing about a cursed portrait should ever make a man feel comfortable, above all else, really. But he gets by. Sort of… has to.
But it is Ghost, ever the supernatural bastard, that directs Soap to a loose floorboard and its hidden stash of vodka, so Soap can’t quite afford to be so ungrateful as he drinks himself into a comfortable warmth he claims to be strategic.
He hasn’t dared touch the fireplace since Ghost explained burning the canvas would only kill him.
Haphazardly draped over the couch and not at all sober, Soap spews half-hearted ideas of possible ways to get Ghost free from his current predicament while said man listens to Soap’s ramblings with a quiet but terribly obvious amusement.
“What if… what if there’s like—some stupid shite tha’ I have tae recite?” Soap slurs, melting further into the cushions. His head hangs back over the armrest to awkwardly peer back at Ghost. “Remember anythin’ like tha’?”
Ghost shakes his head. “Already told you everything I know, Johnny.”
Right. There was that, too. Something Soap didn’t have the time of day to address until he gets anything, anything a little more pressing solved.
Soap huffs. He twists himself to perch his chin on the armrest, the uncomfortable angle of view finally straining his eyes. “Well, what else could it be, then? True love’s kiss?”
The suggestion is merely a mockery of the kinds of endings these stories receive, if in their best-case scenarios. But the contemplative silence that follows from Ghost has Soap frowning. He hadn’t meant it seriously, and Ghost seems like the last person to ever take it as a genuine answer.
Alas.
“What? Expect me tae get on my toes and kiss varnish?” Soap snorts, begrudgingly pulling himself into a proper sit, “You dinnae even have lips, Ghost. And I barely know you enough for… that.”
“Right,” Ghost grumbles. “Maybe not a kiss, then.”
A lazy, lopsided grin pulls involuntarily at Soap’s face. “You sound disappointed.”
Ghost scoffs. “Hardly disappointed. Just wish it were that simple.”
Soap sweeps the half-drunk bottle of vodka off the ground from where he’d left it beside the couch, flicking off the cap before tipping it toward Ghost as if they had anything worth the toast. He takes a swig that burns an already raw throat, slumping low in a way that’ll surely tweak something in his spine if he stays that way for long.
“No shame in bein’ a hopeless romantic, LT,” Soap sighs. “Could use being open to any kind of theory in these trying times.”
“I’m not—” Ghost cuts himself off with a frustrated grunt. Soap’s brain is almost too hazy to register the words in the first place. “Just try not to polish that thing off so soon, yeah?”
Soap doesn’t ever particularly process what Ghost says, then—only finds his heart racing when he glances up to the portrait to see the paint solidified again like it hadn’t been in days. The cloud lingering over his mind clears almost instantly as he’s staggering to his feet with useless pleas on his tongue. Something about boredom and inebriation and a new kind of desperation has him begging not to be left alone again.
“Oi, prick, you cannae just—Ghost, fuck, I ken you can still hear me.” Soap glares up at the portrait, half tempted to grab the frame and jostle it. “Don’t leave again, please.”
The request—demand—only falls on deaf ears. Soap chokes out a laugh, humourless and hollow, when he comes to the reluctant acceptance that Ghost would remain stubborn as ever. He shrinks back from the painting, away from the mantel, and drags his feet to the bedroom.
He doesn’t sleep. Only curls up beneath a scratchy duvet and attempts to will away the unwanted emotions that drinking had seemed to dredge up.
Soap hopes, for the love of any and everything good, that his next safe house will be normal.
Leading up to Soap’s final confirmed departure, it’s just a repeat of the first time Ghost had gone quiet on him. It’s radio silence, even on Soap’s last full day, when Ghost could surely see him milling about, organizing what little he had with him, tidying what little he had moved around.
Dutifully tucking the vodka back beneath the loose floorboard.
Every step of the way he can’t help but glance over to Ghost, frozen in his prison of the last ten years. Soap begins to fear it may continue to be just that for another ten more yet.
The strange longing is such a stark contradiction to when he’d first arrived at the cabin and had done everything in his power to keep his attention miles away from those ever-observing eyes. To when he had wanted nothing more than to get rid of Ghost and the creeping sensation that same gaze he now willingly seeks out had left him with.
Ghost shows no sign of movement, though he’s surely heard that Soap is leaving in less than twenty-four hours. Perhaps he’s decided to give up on the idea of freedom.
However Soap, in the meantime, would feel too guilty to so much as think about stopping brainstorming every possibility. He’s even begun to go so far as to rack his memory of what little story Price had offered, once upon a time, about a lieutenant whose name is still just on the tip of Soap’s tongue—he just needs something.
But memory only comes up empty. No full enough of a picture to be of use, no single, perfect detail to put an end to this dilemma.
Soap puffs out his cheeks with a new kind of frustration, a new kind of fatigue. He’s standing in front of the fireplace yet again, eyes narrowed and searching the canvas as if it had any hints to offer up that he or Ghost hadn’t thought of, or might’ve missed. He doesn’t care if Ghost is watching him stare—not while the bastard is so keen on ignoring him.
He’s at no less of a loss when a name appears in his mind like some final call, a last hope; a potential saving grace.
“Simon Riley,” Soap breathes, gasps. He says it like a revelation, which he supposes it is in part, but it also feels like something more—like a rush of cold wind through his body, a flood of memories that aren’t his to harbour. It’s the sense of something happening, finally, and Soap has to screw his eyes shut as if it’s the concluding step to bringing closure to what’s plagued him for nearly the past two weeks.
Yet, despite the sudden surge of intensity of everything, nothing happens. Soap eventually blinks his eyes back open to be faced with… nothing. Not even the barest of reactions from Ghost, who most definitely wouldn’t have ever expected Soap to know a name he had not given.
The first thing that hits Soap is disappointment. Maybe it’s his upset with his ultimate failure, his growing irritation with Ghost, or a plethora of other factors, but it’s what hits him first, and it’s what hits him the hardest.
Maybe it’s the lack of chance to say goodbye. Because Ghost deserves that much, at this point—it’s the least Soap could manage in the wake of not succeeding, but it seems he won’t even be afforded that opportunity.
He goes back to uselessly checking his gear for the nth time without anything else left to offer to the problem. If he feels eyes boring into his skull all the while, then he pays them no mind.
He’s given up too. And by that last evening, it’s the first night he sleeps without anxiety over anything, knowing he’d finally be returning to a better semblance of home soon—a place less desolate and instead teeming with human life; a place with a familiar bed, and food that didn’t just come in cans. It’d be his again, in a matter of only another day at most.
And with a decently restful sleep, Soap is awake with the sunrise and beyond ready to leave for the predetermined RV point for his retrieval.
It takes him an embarrassingly long time to notice something’s missing.
Soap doesn’t even think to spare Ghost one last look as he slips on his gear, his focus entirely locked onto leaving the cabin behind, once and for all. He gets everything he needs done with a furrowed brow, and an unshakable, inexplicable frown steady on his face. It isn’t until he’s about to shove the door open does he finally cast a look over his shoulder, only to have his heart sink to his stomach when he sees the portrait is empty.
It’s still in its place—the only painting hung straight on the wood-panelled walls of the cabin, perfectly centred above the fireplace. Only now, that inky void of black is all-consuming without Ghost poised in the middle to make it appear a little less daunting.
Soap’s head whips around the cabin, though it achieves fuck all—there’s hardly enough space for him to have completely missed an entire person that hadn’t been there prior. He feels his pulse race, unable to think up any reasonable explanation for the disappearance.
Then again, the whole curse situation had been insane to begin with, well beyond reason.
Soap automatically assumes the worst.
“Ghost?” He calls out, voice wavering. It’s a pointless endeavour, but he needs to try anyway. “Are you here?”
The lack of reply is expected, really, but it’s far from satisfactory. But before Soap could devise any sort of plan, the door—the handle of which Soap still has a white-knuckled grip on—swings out and drags him with it, having him stumble right into a solid black mass where there should only be a vast expanse of snow and forest.
Where there especially shouldn’t be anything that’s… warm.
Soap does his best to regain his bearings quickly, taking a step back from whatever he’d collided with only to have his gaze sweep up and up to see a familiar skull face.
Only now, Soap can clearly see that it’s nothing more than a mask.
“Ghost.” Soap’s eyes widen with the realization and a surprisingly profound sense of relief, finding that he doesn’t struggle with disbelief nearly as much as he might’ve anticipated.
“Johnny.”
Though still never having seen it, Soap can tell Ghost is smiling. He can hear it in that gruff voice—less muffled, less murky than it had been coming from the portrait—and he can see it in the corners of those dark eyes that are actually the loveliest shade of russet and honey.
Soap can’t help but gawk at the man, finally three-dimensional, finally tangible in spite of Soap’s doubt.
“You’re actually—”
Soap can’t get his words out before he’s engulfed in a tight hug, so unexpected it has him staggering back into the cabin. The door shuts loudly with the biting wind as Ghost moves with him, squeezing tight like he’s afraid to let go.
Soap wouldn’t blame him.
“I don’t know what you did,” Ghost mumbles into the shell of Soap’s ear, “but fuck, Johnny. I can’t thank you enough.”
Soap laughs quietly, finally reciprocating the gesture with a much gentler hold.
“Dinnae ken what I did either,” Soap mutters into Ghost’s shoulder, a teasing lilt that almost felt foreign after days upon days of living in a state of worry. His tone immediately softens, relaxing into the hug he doesn’t suppose Ghost plans on giving up any time soon. “‘M glad it worked, though.”
A lull settles between them, in what little space of their bubble isn’t intertwined. Soap knows they’ll have to separate at some point—if either of them eventually plan on being anywhere but that godforsaken cabin—but right now, he wouldn’t dream of pulling away. Not when Ghost—Simon—has been a decade without simple touch like this.
A sudden question pops into Soap’s mind. He wonders aloud, “What were you doing outside?”
Ghost adjusts his hold to be just a tad looser, though he still makes certain to cling to Soap. “Haven’t been out for a while,” he says. “Needed to feel… anything. The cold.”
Soap hums, the sound vibrating through the both of them. He exhales softly before stepping back, though he maintains a grasp on Ghost’s arms, not needing to break apart completely just yet.
“You’ll get to go out to a lot of places, now.” Soap grins, mindlessly rubbing his thumbs across the clothed, inside junctures of Ghost’s elbows. “You’ll get to feel. Maybe even reunite with some people.”
Ghost’s eyebrows raise beneath his mask as he swallows audibly. His breathing is a bit erratic, if only from a lot of pent-up things finally being released. “Yeah?”
Soap nods. “Hell, Price’ll probably be here to get me. Imagine the look on his face if he sees you with me, huh?”
“Won’t have to imagine it,” Ghost says. “Bet it’ll be great.”
“Bet it will.” Soap’s grin grows impossibly wider. “Let’s get goin’ then, yeah?”
Ghost peers past Soap and around the cabin one last time before nodding once; a final decision made.
Soap’s hands slip away, arms falling back to his sides. He gives Ghost a once-over—for checking his outdated but sufficient gear, he reasons—before leading the lieutenant out into the wilderness, more than happy to leave the safe house far behind—for the both of them.
Ghost follows dutifully behind the entire time, what’s visible of his face still in awe of an outdoors probably unchanged from the last time he’d seen it.
And all Soap can think, every time he glances back at Ghost, is that once away from all of this, he wants nothing more than to spend the rest of his life getting to know Simon Riley—the man in the portrait.