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He’s so cold the snow doesn’t melt when it lands on his cheeks. The world comes back to him in flickers—heavy beats of helicopter blades and snow-packed silence. Ice burns his cheeks, meltwater trickles down his back. Awareness tugs at him in chunks, then all at once:
It’s dark. It’s cold.
He has no idea where he is.
“What’s it mean anyway? Ye never told us.”
“Never told you, you mean?” he deflects instead of answering properly—the truth, that he doesn't remember. The chopper jolts and Gaz throws out a hand to grab something. His breath catches in his throat mid-sentence.
Soap’s fist thumps against his chest when he notices, brogue in the radio, mischief in his eyes. “Should have called you ‘Lucky!’” He flicks the carabiner on Gaz’s hip and laughs.
“Leave him alone, Soap.”
“Superstitious, LT?”
Ghost rocks easily with the turbulence of the helo, similarly braced against the handrail over his head. He gives them both a dry look.
Focus.
Sharp, damp air snakes into his raw lungs. Burnt. He’s been inhaling smoke—he reeks of it. Something wet slicks the back of his neck. No helmet. Lost it. His fingertips are shiny and slippery when he inspects them, but there’s no pain except for the dull pounding that gets worse when he moves. Have to move. A voice like grit and gravel chafing the back of his mind. For a split second, the heady scent of cigars replaces the snow burning his nostrils. He coughs and sends the flurries spinning into the darkness.
He’s in a forest, half-buried in a snow drift, back to a steep incline.
He fell down a bloody mountain.
Sure. Okay, he can get himself out of this. He slowly pats the area around himself, sinks his fingers into the snow and finds a rifle digging into his side. Good, he thinks. Protection from… someone. He had to have been running. There’s orange on the horizon over the hillside, cast on the underside of the clouds. Snow dampens the noise but he thinks it’s shouting he hears, fire. Less good. Move.
It hurts. Nothing’s broken from what he can tell, but one arm’s stiffer than the other and his hand’s red when he pulls the glove off. The jacket’s stained red. It’s a struggle to stand, and the snow is deep, up to his calves. There’s a shock of red glinting in the snow where he was lying, a particularly macabre snow angel. He buries it the best he can, but it’s not like it’ll matter much if he’s leaving behind a trail of footprint’s anyway. It’ll hide how injured he is, though. He might need the advantage.
He’s not sure where he’s going, can’t remember a damn thing besides… he doesn’t want to think about what he can’t remember, just that he needs to get away from what he was clearly running from before.
It’s equally grueling and pathetic the way he’s more staggering than marching. Something in his leg twinges dangerously, threatening to give out every other step. His wrist must be sprained too, smarting under the weight of his rifle.
At some point, he becomes aware he’s being followed. He doesn’t know how, but the hair on the back of his neck stands and his ears start to strain against the ringing that hasn’t quite stopped since he woke up. He’s not walking fast enough, can hear them in the snow now. It’s pure chance the small overpass appears out of the steady snow in front of him. It’s an obvious site for an ambush, but it’s cover he desperately needs.
He starts to make his way down and fucks up. He severely underestimates the bank down to the road. His foot slips out from underneath him and he hits the ground hard. His vision goes dark for a moment and he thinks he cries out.
He definitely hears footsteps.
Rifle—rifle, get your fucking rifle on him, sergeant—
He has about three seconds to figure out what to do. His arm spasms again. Unlucky, unlucky unlucky—
“Friendly—” He gives up on his rifle, finally gets his pistol unstuck from beneath him. He doesn’t get the chance to fire. Something catches in his brain—a safety pin, a failsafe—a rough accent, mean bark, meaner bite. It moves fast, even through the same deep snow, hardly more than a shadow as it kicks the gun out of his hand. The boot doesn’t stop there, pins his wrist down. Something bone-white with hollowed eyes stares down at him and he loses all the breath in his lungs. “What the fuck are you doing, Garrick?”
Kyle “Gaz” Garrick.
“I—holy shit—”
His voice is flat and annoyed. “Almost blew my fuckin’ head off. Been trying to find you for the past hour. Missin’ half your kit. Where’s your radio? And your helmet?” When Gaz fails to answer, he shakes him with his foot, steps off. “Garrick.” He’s British. Has to be friendly like he says.
“Broke it when I fell. Lost the helmet.”
“You fell?”
“Down the hill.”
Another flat look. It’s too dark to see the color of his eyes. He thinks he should be able to remember but he’s still processing the shock of the skull, the mask staring back at him. He swallows thickly as the man corrects him. “The cliff.”
“Sure, the cliff.”
The silence stretches out as the man gives him a clinical once-over before reaching out to his bad arm. Gaz forces himself not to flinch. “Shot?”
“Think so. Graze.” Lying through his teeth, maybe. Does it count if he doesn’t know? The man looks back up at him. Gaz tries not to lean away but he thinks he fails. “We should go before they follow.”
“It’s still a hike to the LZ. Can you make it?”
For some reason he bristles. “Do I have a choice?”
He gets a low hum in response. The man stands, grabs his forearm to help him to his feet. Again, he’s scrutinized and Gaz in turn questions the claim of ‘friendly,’ even if it's the first turn of warmth in his chest since waking up.
He thought the walk would warm him up, or at least slightly numb him to the jarring pain in each step. He’s wrong. It’s unclear to him how far they’ve walked. He should know this, should be able to figure out where they are in relation to their LZ, their target. Instead, all he knows is the shape of the man’s shoulders in front of him, occasionally fading out of focus. The snow has stopped, slowed into what might barely pass as flurries.
He barely hears the grunt ahead of him. He’s fallen behind. “Almost there.”
“Copy.”
Something in his voice must give him away because he stops and turns even though the pace they’ve been walking has been dizzying.
“Gaz.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re bleeding.”
He gives a demonstrative shrug of his weak shoulder that sends a wave of pain through his body so strong it makes him sick. “Obviously.”
“From your head.” He sounds like he’s gritting his teeth, closes the distance between them. He senses the hand reaching behind his head but doesn’t touch, only pulls gently at the crimson-stained collar of his jacket. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“It wasn’t important. Just have to make it to the LZ and back to…” his mind blanks for the briefest second, mouth moving too fast, and that gives him away completely.
The man’s voice loses all tone completely. “You remember where we are, sergeant?” Silence. “Right then, what day is it?” Gaz opens his mouth, even though he knows he won’t say anything. And then—
“What’s my name?”
For some reason, that’s what finally makes him panic. A breath so sharp all of it hurts at once, white at the edge of his vision.
“Fucking hell—”
“Something’s wrong.”
“You hit your head.”
“Where’s—where’s Cap?” He knows who that is, knows he should be here and that if he was, this shit wouldn’t be happening. He’d fix it.
“Christ. We have to get moving.” Ghost is taking away his weapons. Right. Not safe.
“Can’t.” It punches out of him against his will and he hates himself for it.
“Wasn’t a question. In front.” There’s a soft but insistent push in his least injured shoulder and he takes a step, then another.
He’s herded now, a lone sheep. If his companion minds their stumbling pace, he says nothing, even when Gaz finally gives out, crumpling into the snow with a stifled choke. He only moves onto his good side, and helps him back up with Gaz’s arm over his shoulder. Gaz has little energy left to swallow his pride.
It’s as he’s twisting his fist in the man’s jacket that the realization hits him like a truck. “Ghost.”
“Comin’ back to ya?” Dry, half-interested. It might be relief, or he might be projecting. He’s not sure it makes a difference if he’s wearing a mask. Might be the point.
“Yeah.”
Once it starts, the rest comes easier—slowly trickling back into his mind one dizzying revelation at a time. He chokes them down silently, leaning more and more weight on Ghost’s shoulder until he’s almost being carried. He nearly collapses the rest of the way when the safehouse finally comes into view, marked only by Ghost’s soft, “Hold on.”
It’s a dilapidated warehouse on the edge of an industrial park. He remembers it now, a cold flood of relief down his spine when he recalls the mark on a map during the briefing he’d studied so diligently. Ghost all but kicks the door down and dumps Gaz inside before doing a swift clear of the building. He feels like he’s only blinked before he’s back, starting a fire in the tiny wood stove and instructing Gaz to take off his soaked outer layers.
He can’t say how long it’s been since they botched the hit at the base and he took a dive off a cliff-not-hill. He also can’t say how far they’ve hiked since, pure exhaustion setting in. The worst bleeding has clotted on both wounds by now but they have to be cleaned and dressed before exfil. They have hours to go, Ghost will have to play nurse.
“Weren’t lying. It’s just a graze. Lift for me.” Gaz does, swallows the wince. Ghost’s eyes flick up anyway. “Bad?”
“No.”
“Lying?”
“No.”
“Lucky.” There it is again.
“Not going to feel lucky in a second.”
“Probably not.” And he doesn’t. Even though Ghost’s touch is as gentle as possible, and Gaz is impossibly numb with exhaustion, it’s pushing his limit.
“Steady hands,” he says, just to say something.
“Would hope so. Shakin’s bad for sniping.”
Fuck. “I knew that. I knew that.”
Ghost leans back to set away the soiled cotton, doesn’t look up. “It’s temporary. Focus on what you remember, ‘stead of what you don’t.” Like it’s easy. Like he knows what he’s talking about. Gaz watches him, forces himself not to look away and pull some kind of smaller memory forward. Something innocent, maybe. Ghost keeps tending to him best he can, wraps the wound on his arm. He very, very gently cleans the blood from the back of his head. “Better?”
“Yes, sir.”
He snorts. “Sir? Didn’t have manners before.”
It gets a smile out of him, albeit grim.
He’s packing up the IFAK, cleaning up all the bloody gauze and bandages to take with them. “Out with it.”
Gaz curses himself for being so transparent, or Ghost for being so perceptive. “I need a favor, sir.”
Ghost hums. “Big ask.”
He swallows his scowl, but he’s not sure he pulls it off. “I haven’t asked it yet.”
“Haven’t you?” He turns serious, if he ever wasn’t. “It’s brain trauma, Garrick.”
“It’s barely a scratch.”
“Then you shouldn’t have a problem with me tellin’ him what happened.”
Grit and cigars.
“He’ll bench me.”
“So you want me to lie for you?”
“You asked what I remember, Ghost,” he rasps. It’s Soap, bleary-eyed at a morning briefing, two cups of coffee in and still unintelligible. Ghost, wrangled into a party hat at some office-mandated function, glowering at the lot of them. It’s the rec room, the cafeteria, the gym—its work.
It’s the alarmingly bare flat waiting for him when Price finds out what happened and places him on medical leave. Two weeks, he’ll promise. Then four, when the tests come back with something the doctors don’t like. Two months—six, a year. A discharge.
Of course, he can’t say all of that. But he’s always been an open book from the beginning. It’s always gotten him in trouble. But it’s also what led him to Price.
“Gaz.”
His nails have dug pits into his palm. He clears his throat. “I know.” He hesitates for a moment. “I wouldn’t ask someone who wouldn’t understand.”
Ghost doesn’t react because Gaz has crossed a line.
The truth is he has no idea what kind of life Ghost has outside the team. He doesn’t know much at all about Ghost, really. He works alone, and when he doesn’t, he works with Soap. The only reason Gaz is here with him now is because one of them was unlucky enough to—
He’s so sick of the word.
They’re close enough. It’s hard not to be after you’ve taken a bullet for each other. But normal people don’t like being accused of not having a personal life like it’s not a bad thing.
“Gaz.”
Does it make him a bad person that he doesn’t care? That he likes this more than the rest of it—even now? They can have it. He wants that for them, is happy, even. But team. This. He’s not like them, cares about people in the wrong way, he thinks—protecting them from too far away in ways they don’t like to hear about. With the 141, at least, it’s one and the same.
He doesn’t want to remember how hard it is to say this part out loud. “I can’t lose the team.”
This is what he was afraid of forgetting the most. It’s the only thing he has to remember in the first place.
The longer Ghost gazes at him in a way he can’t parse, the more frustrated he gets. I know you keep secrets, what’s one more? Please don’t take this from me. Tell me you understand.
Price meets them on the tarmac. Gaz picks him out before they’ve even touched down—recognizes him. He can’t stop smiling, doesn’t even care that Ghost is watching him. Price hounds them before the helo even spools down, nearly shouting over it with an eyebrow raised. “It was supposed to be quiet. In and out.”
Ghost grunts. “Don’t worry, old man. Didn’t leave a trace. No fingerprints.”
Price sighs begrudgingly, then squints, looking between him and Gaz. “What the hell happened to your helmet, Simon?”
He shrugs. “Lost it.”
Gaz grins, pats the one on his head. “Just unlucky, sir.”