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Ghost had once wondered what his mark could mean - or rather, how he would come to this. His eyes had roamed over the expanses of his ‘death’ for such a long time that he knew each crevice, each mark, and each line that crisscrossed over his whole body.
But then shit happened and he did not care anymore.
He did not ask himself that question anymore, this little how that had been nagging at the back of his mind for as long as he could remember. Being buried alive did give him this single small relief, he would think bitterly within the confines of his room during an umpteenth sleepless night.
What of them if he had already died, his body completely mangled and beyond repair?
At some point during that time before, he had wondered if he would die then, in that disgusting cell surrounded by those fuckers. But each time, his torturers took a sick pleasure in missing every mark on his body - though it was literally impossible given how they covered him from head to toe. When they realised that, they laughed.
They had laughed and gloated and cackled right in his face until his ears rang.
And after that, they made sure never to bring any fire to this little dirty room before plummeting him to the ground until he vomited blood and only a low wheeze would get past his bruised trachea. They had brought a lighter only once, turning it on and off, the weak light reverberating across the damp walls in which they had thrown him. They played with it, juggling it over their bruised knuckles, then catching it between two fingers before letting it precociously stand on their pinky as another emptied a bottle of cheap alcohol on the floor. That dumbfuck was too practiced to let it accidentally fall on the ground and Ghost made sure to keep his eyes down, never letting himself break.
In the end, they buried him, certain that those marks were not burns but rather the marks of decay as he rotted in that blasted coffin ten feet underground.
Mushrooms and disease could do wonders on the human body, they had joked, voices muffled through the thin wooden lid.
He had almost thought so as well. To die there, inside Earth’s belly while maggots festered inside the corpse pressed against his back and threatening to cave in under his own weight.
But then, he clawed himself out of that pit and realized... Those marks that supposedly predicted death. They were wrong. They were lies. It did not matter what his marks showed or told to those who had seen them, his body was proof of its own: he breathed, he lived, and he was already dead.
.
That mentality never changed, but it turned on him and slapped him hard enough to make him go dizzy when fucking John “Soap” MacTavish appeared in his life. Him and his stupid mohawk that looked more like a brick on his head than proper hair, his rough voice, ridiculous accent and that white round-shaped mark on his temple.
There were no real regulations about death marks. What could you even control when it dealt with that anyway? People preferred to simply ignore or conceal them out of politeness, respect or modesty. Some who died of old age liked to exhibit as much skin as possible during summer, to exert some sort of misplaced superiority over those with ominous shapes covering parts of their bodies. Only a rare few were bold enough though: even if there were no external marks of death on their skins, jealousy always led to sickening creativity in the hands of humanity after all.
And for those with an apparent mark, usually, they hid them behind clothes or simply never talked about it, eyes glossing over them for those whose marks were on their face, acting as if it never had existed in the first place. It was a painful reminder that no one wanted to deal with, especially with a job in the military.
Soap was different in a way that demanded respect.
Each month, on the dot, Soap went to the showers and in the single corner of the room where a lone sink was built with a mirror on top, all of it conveniently placed behind a wall so that nobody inadvertently looked at the mirror when they entered the room exhausted and sweaty. Soap would bring his hair clipper up and meticulously shave the sides of his head, his lips pinched in concentration while passing his fingers over the sensitive skin that constituted the gnarled scar on his left temple.
Each time, he would leave the bathroom with the hum of a song Ghost had never heard, confidently going back to whatever things he had to do. Usually, if he was this excited, it was to either train new recruits or blast new things up.
Ghost always followed him with a sort of reluctant admiration and something curling in the pit of his stomach.
Price, during one of their ‘Nights Out’ and probably a bit too inebriated considering the flush that crept out of his beard, had looked at his team with sorrowful eyes and Ghost had looked away from the older man to focus on Soap and Gaz, currently in a friendly fighting match - though it looked more like two fishes desperately flapping on the floor - while the crowd cheered them on. Soap’s scar was almost like a red beacon glowing on his head, everyone knew about it. But Gaz was different; he never talked about death marks and bristled anytime he heard of the words. Though he usually soldiered on and kept on a forced smile, he would always find a way to slither away from the room in a few seconds as soon as those words were breathed out. And at that moment, while trying to twist his legs around Soap’s neck to subdue him somehow, Gaz’s shirt had gotten free from under his belt and rose up, leaving the five short straight lines flash on his belly like a taunt.
Their Captain had breathed harshly through his nose and slammed his glass on the counter before squaring his shoulders and yelling at his two Sergeants to ‘stop that this instance, you’re only ridiculing yourselves with those pathetic hits that even a wet, wounded cat could take, for fuck’s sake!’.
Ghost knew of Price’s marks like Price knew of Ghost’s.
He somehow pitied the older man and it was clear that Price had a hard time coming to terms with what the future had in store for him. Though who wouldn’t after losing his whole team - because let’s be honest, no one assumed getting out of the military alive with that kind of scars, who would get a fucking headshot, stabbed or burnt alive as a civilian? - while he remained well and alive from the unseeable future.
But unlike Price, Ghost did not care.
Or at least, he had not.
Now, as he looked at Soap and his sunny smile, the way it pulled at his cheeks and made his whole face rounder while the skin on his temple shifted and creased at the corners of his eyes, Ghost was not that sure anymore.
Instead, he only hollered at the bartender and ordered another strong drink.
It was Price’s turn to pay for them all anyway, better make use of it.
.
His balaclava and face paint had been a sort of barrier against that dumbfuck of the world which had spit him out of the ground, catapulting him back on earth as if nothing had changed, like a final middle finger to his fucked up life.
It was almost frightening the speed at which Soap had managed to make him shed all of his barriers and layers, metaphorically and quite literally.
And the first time he had allowed someone to see him since...
It… it had not felt as good as he had thought - not ‘as he had hoped’ or ‘expected’, never those words, he could not afford them - it had left him weak and as trembling as a newborn. Soap looked at the expanse of his marred skin. His eyes roamed on each scar and lines that were so close to each other it looked as if his skin had been weaved by threads of flesh rather than being a bank canvas. But all Ghost could think of was the single small rounded scar on the side of Soap’s head.
And when Soap had cupped his cheeks in his warm palms, soothing whatever phantom pain he could feel from the various grotesque scars that had narrowingly made him lose his whole upper jaw or the one that crossed his eyebrow and hair, never quite growing back alright, Ghost could only flutter his eyes in ecstasy.
Soap’s touch was so warm, similar to a soft bonfire that slowly spread to his whole face while his chapped lips placed feather-like kisses all over his skin. It rekindled something inside his chest and kept on expanding until it converged to his eyes in a burning furnace behind his eye sockets. Only then would he take Soap’s hands off his face and hide his expression in the crook of the other’s shoulder while they rocked left and right, trying to find comfort and solace in their little world. He would nibble at the other’s skin, not quite kissing, preferring to put his lips and teeth on the rabid heartbeat he could feel under him and revel in Soap’s shallow breathing.
At some point, Soap had asked ‘do they hurt?’ and Ghost had snorted because what the fuck was that kind of question? But Soap had kept on looking at him with those tranquil eyes and Ghost had crumbled like a house of cards. He had simply muttered ‘no’ but when it was clear that it was not enough of an answer for the Scot, he had forced the words out of his mouth and awkwardly said in a grumble ‘it surely will, but right now I am here, right?’.
Soap had smiled. He had said nothing else, did not tease as Ghost had expected him after fumbling so clumsily around his words and thoughts. What Soap had done instead was to snuggle closer to Ghost, lacing his arms around his waist while he tucked his face against Ghost’s chest. Then he had looked up and it was such a weird angle it made them both go a bit cross-eyed but Soap had simply murmured a sleepy ‘they are painful for me, to think of what you will…' a sharp intake of breath, a shudder from both of them, then a soft ‘but I am here too, gonna be all fine Lt'.
Ghost had let himself smile. If only to match Soap’s one.
.
That soft warmth never left him and he slowly learnt to cherish it as he looked up at Soap and the other members of his team.
He let it in with each of Soap’s touches and let it out inside the other’s mouth, breathing the same air and nipping at his lips with reckless abandon.
He basked in its warmth, wafting from the other’s back as he hugged him in the middle of the night.
It lulled him to close his eyes and prompted him tighten his grip on the other’s body.
Heat was never enough for him and his greedy mind.
He latched on to it and wished to never let go.
.
But then, there was an inferno.
One that burnt him so painfully he felt his knees buckle and crash on the ground.
Now there was red seeping out of the normally white scar, open and letting out streams of lava that Ghost oh so wished, begged and pleaded to stop. If these flames, the ones that ignited whatever remained of himself, those that forced Ghost back on his feet despite the marks on his body and the proof of death’s failure, then he would rather give them all to Johnny instead.
Please not him.
As he knelt, his whole body on fire, so hot with agony that his insides were being scorched and reduced to ashes from within, he hung his head low and ignored the desperate calls from Price and Gaz over the comms. Their captain yelled, again and again, voice hoarse screaming at him to defuse the bomb.
And suddenly, it went deafeningly quiet.
Then, sorrowful resignation laced with one last trembling sigh over the comms before the last second ticked.
Ghost let his eyes close, a tear of scorching flames dropping out of his eyes as the blast took him in and fire engulfed him.
.
.
.