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If there was ever any concrete definition of evil, Mahmoud Maqtu met it down to every last letter.
“One more chance— one more chance to tell us where they are, or your men are going to spend the week scrapin’ up enough of you to send back home.”
He was taller than most men, and broader, too— dark scraggly hair hid dark, dead eyes, that no amount of expensive suits or cologne hid; he was a warmonger, first and foremost, and worse, one who took an immense amount of pride in it.
“Funny,” he replied, tilting his head back carelessly to look up at him where he was still cuffed to the chair— “I didn’t think a few children were worth international involvement.”
“Half those kids are foreign nationals,” Sandman said decisively, voice echoing around the empty warehouse. The six of them were scattered around the chair he was cuffed to, the warehouse dark and warm. “Hurt them and it’s an act of war.”
“I’ll release those ones, then,” Maqtu replied carelessly, fixing him with a dark glare. “And you can get out of my country and leave the other sixteen to die.”
“Stop playing games, and give the fucking location before we beat it out of you.”
Maqtu had made his living being the hitman for another warlord— and then, when that wasn’t enough, he’d killed him and taken his place. He didn’t just oversee war crimes, he encouraged them, participated in them, indiscriminate when he tortured and killed— in the dossier before the emergency mission, MacTavish had seen the pictures of hospitals, schools, homes, and the bodies littered outside.
“They’re schoolgirls,” Maqtu practically waved MacTavish off, spitting the word like a slur. “It’s hardly worth the effort.”
Blood rolled from the cut across his eyebrow as MacTavish scruffed him, forcing him to meet his eye— he met it evenly, disturbingly cold even in the sweltering heat.
“Touch a nerve?” Maqtu asked sarcastically, tilting his head like a dog.
“D’you genuinely believe you have the power in this situation?” MacTavish snarled, glaring down at him. “We’ve got our men after yours, they’re tracking down the locations as we speak. The only choice you have in this situation is whether we get that location quickly or painfully.”
“I know how your people operate,” he snarked back, lips pulled back to reveal yellowing, sharp teeth. It was like looking into the eyes of a predator, or a wild, feral thing— “your army will want to parade this victory in front of everyone— you touch a hair on my head, and see the way the world reacts to the brutality of your men.”
“You,” Robot sneered from the door of the warehouse, “are in no position to be talking about brutality.”
“I’m not interested in telling you where those girls are,” Maqtu let his eyes drift over to her, almost alarmingly careless, “and there is nothing you can do to me, unless you want my men all over the world to mobilise against you.”
“D’you think we’re fuckin’ scared of you?” MacTavish dropped him in the chair to bear over him, close enough to smell the scent of expensive cigarettes—
“What will you do,” Maqtu replied, and the derisive smile only served to make him look less appealing, face split open with his pride— “what, torture me? Kill me? How many armed conflicts all over the world does Britain have its hands in? How do you think they will react when they find out that instead of finding those poor girls, you wasted your time torturing an innocent man?”
MavTavish’s face was inches from his. It would only take one flex of his hand, one crook of his finger around a trigger, but—
“There is nothing you can do to me.”
But— he was right. Maqtu had his hands in far too many international conflicts, a dealer of violence. Even if they buried their presence there, it wouldn’t make a difference; they couldn’t kill Maqtu until he gave up the intel without legitimising his warped views— they couldn’t risk harming him without him giving up the intel without dragging international attention to him and his crimes. And if they didn’t get him to give it up, if the hostages spent their last few moments in fear, waiting for a rescue team that they had nowhere to send—
If they killed Maqtu, his cause won. If they tortured him, he’d win too— inevitably, someone would find out about them operating outside of the law, and the consequences would become a global PR nightmare. And if they didn’t get this intel, he’d win, and twenty-eight schoolgirls would die alone and afraid.
“We know ways of getting you to talk without leaving a mark on you,” Ozone took MacTavish’s place as he stepped back, assessing the situation. “You’ll be begging to tell us where they are.”
“I’m sure,” he could hear Maqtu agree smugly, as he turned his back, assessing the situation. There were six of them there in a wide, empty warehouse, miles from the nearest civilisation and deep in the unoccupied desert, but time was running out— even if they did physically interrogate him, all he had to do was last an hour. Neither the optics were on their side, nor did they have anything to hold over his head.
“Captain,” Worm approached him, voice quiet, “what’s our game plan, here?”
“All we can do is apply pressure. If we’re lucky, someone else who knows where they are’ll turn up, and we’ll have a lot more luck—”
At that moment, the door to the warehouse slammed open.
Even in the heat, Ghost never took off his layers. It made him look even bigger than he was— he darkened the entrance of the warehouse, a shadow of anger and violence. He was backlit by the sun, a burning orange, so that the edges of his silhouette were alight; in lieu of his normal black gear, he wore desert camouflage and a keffiyeh to keep the sun off of him, sunglasses hanging in his collar, and barely spared MacTavish a glance before making a beeline for Maqtu—
“Ghost—” MacTavish got in the way of him, grabbing a fist of his vest to hold him there— “Ghost, relax— we can’t leave a mark on him.”
“I’m not going to do anything to him,” Ghost replied, but kept his eyes firmly fixed on Maqtu, “I just want a civil conversation with the guy—”
“Ah,” Maqtu called, tilting his head to crane around Ozone, “the bad cop’s here?”
“I mean it,” MacTavish lowered his voice, tugging him gently by the vest to meet his eye. Ghost looked up at him, and for a second, his expression softened slightly. The furrow in his eyebrows relaxed, and his eyelashes fluttered as he took in his expression, before, with a little breath, he nodded.
Ozone took a step back, and for a second, it was quiet, before MacTavish loosened the fist of his vest.
The second he let go, though, Ghost crossed the distance between them in all of six steps, and kicked him squarely in the chest. Maqtu’s eyes bulged, and all the air disappeared from his chest in a wheeze as the chair rocked back— a second later, though, Ghost took a fist of his tie to catch him before he fell back, forcing him to look down at an impossible angle to keep his eyes on him as he swung precariously on the back two legs of the chair—
“Ghost—”
“You can’t touch a hair on my head,” Maqtu sneered, furious; “there is nothing the British Army can do to me—”
The choked-off laughter that cut across Maqtu was enough to make his mouth snap shut. Ghost yanked the tie forward to sit him on all four legs of the chair, wrapped a fist around the backrest in a facsimile of friendliness, forcing himself into his space—
“Do I look like British Army to you?”
As far as anyone else was aware, Ghost was as much of a soldier as anyone else— but he didn’t look it. Between the custom gear, the weapons, the skull mask, the flagrant disrespect for authority, and the fact that the only real indicator of him belonging anywhere was MacTavish’s tags around his neck, it wasn’t a stretch of the imagination— Sandman shot him a look, which MacTavish returned, the corners of his lips twitching.
“You think colluding with a mercenary’s going to look any better for you?” Maqtu taunted MacTavish, having to crane his neck around Ghost to look at him, but the smugness in his voice came off stilted, nearly specious— “the optics of this—”
“Who the fuck d’you think is going to testify I’m here?” Ghost cut across him, forcing his attention. “What, d’you think this lot’ll say anything?”
“No collusion if we just met,” MacTavish replied evenly, stepping forward to stand next to Ghost— “that hard to believe someone’d send out a hit on you, and we just happen to be here?”
“No chance,” Maqtu replied, glaring up at him, “no one’d believe that—”
“You know the neat thing about optics?” Ghost laughed again, and walked around him, forcing Maqtu to turn his head to an impossible angle to keep him in sight— “so long as it all disappears, no one really cares about the semantics.”
“Nothing disappears,” Maqtu shot back, a scoff of derision not quite hiding the light sheen of sweat across his forehead. “You should know that better than anyone, nothing ever disappears—”
“Plenty of things disappear,” Ghost replied, shrugging carelessly as he circled him, coming to stand directly behind him— “keys, pens, socks— you know there’s a dried up well about half a klick east? Quiet sort of place. Dark.”
Without warning, Ghost grabbed a fist of dark, gelled curls and yanked his head back, so he was looking at him upside down.
“Imagine how many things’ve disappeared down there?” He asked, eyes squinting into half moons, a shining blue. “Just not the sort of spot you’d think anyone’d check, is it?”
For the first time since they’d dragged him there, Maqtu seemed to be unable to come up with a response. When he looked behind him, MacTavish confirmed that the six of them were all standing by the door, quietly watching; when he glanced over, Roach patted about in his pockets and procured a box of cigarettes, shaking one out like he was on a smoke break.
Ghost held his head there for a moment longer than necessary, eyes gleaming like he was the only one who wasn’t in on a joke. He only let go of him when MacTavish gave him a look; with what almost sounded like a disappointed sigh, he let go of him. Maqtu hurriedly straightened himself with a grunt, and Ghost squeezed a hand on each of his shoulders.
“So,” MacTavish began, taking a step back and crossing his arms, “let’s try this again. We want to know where the hostages are, and you’ve got a perfectly good reason to want to tell us.”
“There’s nothing you can do to make me tell you,” Maqtu spat immediately, glaring— “I’m not telling you anything without— without some sort of deal.”
“What kind of deal’s that, then?”
“I tell you, you untie me. Let me go.”
“Aye, so you can call your men, have them hurry this along? Try again.”
“I’ve got a deal,” Ghost piped up, leaning more weight against his shoulders as he looked down at him. “How about this— how about, you tell us that location, and I don’t blow your skull to pieces. Seem fair?”
Maqtu shook his head— disbelieving, or a tremble he couldn’t quite stifle, MacTavish didn’t know— before looking back at him.
“You like to pretend you are so much better than us,” he hissed furiously, “like you’re above these underhanded tactics, but the moment the winds don’t blow your way, you are as amoral as anyone else. At least I do what I do for a cause— at least I have a purpose,” he snarled, leaning forward to glare at all of them in turn; Ghost pulled him back by the shoulders with a thunk, “what do you do it for— medals? A paycheck? Candy in your rations?”
“Did we not mention we’re on a bit of a time crunch?” Ghost’s voice was careless, nearly conversational, if not for the way his gloves creaked with how hard he grabbed his shoulders— “the time on that deal I mentioned is running out.”
“I’m not reasoning with a coward,” Maqtu rocked violently in a vain effort to shake him off. Ghost let go of him, and he turned violently in his seat to snarl at him— “take off that mask, what are you? You’re not any better than me— no, you’re worse, you’re—”
Ghost cut him off by smacking him around the back of the head.
“Focus up,” MacTavish told him, crossing his arms. “The location. Now.”
Maqtu’s jaw worked furiously as he glared up at him. There was silence for a moment; the heat was oppressive, pressing in on them all, and the sheen of sweat across his forehead shone in the dim light.
He opened his mouth, and then closed it, before scoffing.
“He needs convincing,” Ghost told MacTavish, mirroring him to cross his arms as he looked up at him. “C’mon, let me warm him up.”
Something about the pressure, or the heat, or the fact that of all things, Ghost sounded petulant; the corners of MacTavish’s lips twitched before he could stifle it, and he squeezed the hand around his bicep like a vice to keep his composure. The movement didn’t go unnoticed by Maqtu, his eyes widening before he fixed his face to a scowl—
“It’s going to be a lot more painful for you to tell us where they are through a mouthful of broken teeth,” MacTavish told Maqtu, whose lip merely curled. He didn’t miss the way his eyes flickered all the way to his right, as if he’d be able to catch a glimmer of Ghost in his peripheries—
“You ever been hooked up to a car battery?” Ghost asked him out of the blue, shifting so that he could stand by Maqtu’s side and lean against his shoulder like a friend.
“Come on,” MacTavish appealed to Maqtu, “don’t give him an excuse.”
“You know if you time it right— leave long enough intervals,” Ghost continued, giving him a friendly little shake, “you can break all ten of someone’s fingers without them passing out from shock?”
“It’s one location. They’re children.”
“We’re going to find them,” Ghost turned to him, and all the humour dissipated out of his expression in a second, leaving him suddenly very cold, “whether you tell us or not. The difference is whether you want to find out whether a meat hook can support the average weight of a man in the process.”
It was rather lucky that that comment was the one that finally got Maqtu to break out in a cold sweat, because otherwise, he might have noticed the way MacTavish’s eyes widened. Ghost wasn’t looking at him, or anyone else for that matter; his eyes bored in Maqtu’s dark ones as he leant in, uncomfortably close.
“You’d think it’s the hook that hurts the most, but it’s the way you squirm. It doesn’t even bleed that much, you can be up there for hours.”
“Ghost,” MacTavish cut in, but Ghost’s eyes were outright gleaming with malice, a shadow of danger—
“These lot have to worry about optics, about protocol, about time—,” Ghost told him, voice falling low as he grabbed a fist of his curls to keep him from slithering away— “you think anyone’s going to give a fuck about your cause when they can’t even recognise you out the hole they dig you out of?”
“Ghost.”
“There is nothing you can do to make me tell you where they are,” Maqtu spat furiously, turning to MacTavish. “Nothing. They’re going to die, and it will be their blood on your hands— go ahead, kill me, then. Martyr me, and see what happens, see what my men will do.”
There was no paper trail to connect any of Ghost’s actions to the 141. On the other hand, they were running out of time, the hostages were running out of time— there was no sound, for a moment, but Maqtu’s ragged breathing, and the silence of the desert around them.
“Fine,” MacTavish replied, looking at him. Ghost’s hand loosened for a moment, and Maqtu bucked away. “You’ve got a point, fine. S’pose we’ll have to find ‘em some other way.”
He turned, and looked at Robot— she gave a half shrug, and kicked the door open.
“I’ll leave the two of you to talk,” he told him, over his shoulder.
Ghost didn’t quite manage to stifle the laugh; it didn’t matter, though, because the unmistakable sound of a knife being unsheathed covered it. Seemingly getting the memo, everyone else began wordlessly filing out— Roach was the only one still watching, cigarette forgotten between his fingers, and as he walked past, MacTavish nudged his shoulder to get him to move.
“Let him work, Roach.”
There was the sound of scuffling, like someone wrestling away in a chair, the sound of a knife— a snarl that quickly got choked off, heavy breathing where he could practically imagine the tip of a blade too close to skin—
“Wait— wait—”
“You said there was nothing we could do,” MacTavish called over his shoulder— more scuffling, a panicked sound, a pained groan— “what did you expect?”
“No— no, this isn’t what I—”
The shlick of metal in flesh, an outright scream—
“Call him off— call him off—”
“He’s not a dog.”
“Not unless I’m asked to be,” Ghost corrected, grin audible in his voice. “Come on, isn’t this what you wanted? Wanted to be a symbol, wanted everyone to see what we do to people like you—?”
The tail end of his sentence was cut off by a crunch of connective tissue, and a wailing scream.
“Jesus,” he could hear Ghost goad, “you spend all your time doing this to women and children, I would’ve thought your tolerance would be higher.”
The sun was even more offensive as he stepped towards the exit, bright and harsh; he had one foot out the door when he finally heard it—
“Alright! Alright! I’ll tell you, call him off, get him off me!”
He knew they were on a time crunch— ahead of him, Sandman turned. Just to piss with the guy, though—
“What was that?”
“I said— fuck— I said I’d tell you where they are! Just— just get him off!”
MacTavish turned, just as Ghost yanked his knife out of his knee. The scream echoed around them, but Ghost didn’t step back, didn’t get out of his space, only brought the point of it closer to his neck—
“You’d better not be lying to us, Maqtu,” MacTavish began as he walked back over— “you know exactly what’s going to happen to you if we find out you lied to us—”
“No— no,” he gasped for air, and the tip of the knife pressed in closer, a new cut oozing blood across his face and a dark, glossy stain spreading rapidly under his knee, “no, I’m not lying to you, I swear to god—”
“Dunno if we should trust him, sir,” Ghost replied, glancing at him, “feel like I’d feel a lot better about this with a few broken fingers—”
“The factory my men used to use as a base, six miles outside of the capital, there’s a school a kilometre into the forest,” he reeled off panickedly, wincing away from the blade as he choked for air, “it’ll be guarded, but if you let me go, I’ll call them off—”
“Like fuck you will.”
“That’s twenty-five mikes out— if we leave now, we can make it before sundown—,” Ozone provided, from behind him—
“I’m not lying— I swear to God, I’m not lying. They’re there— I gave the location, now keep him off of me, call him off—”
“Some fucking leader you are,” Ghost hissed sardonically, taking a fist of his collar and pushing him all the way back, “took all of a minute to have you folding— what’re your men going to say to that, huh? Spending all that time worrying about optics, when you’re so—”
“Ghost,” MacTavish cut across him, and placed a very gentle hand on his upper arm— “settle down.”
For a second, Ghost looked like he wouldn’t back down— but a moment later, he met his eye, and softened like the edges of a flickering flame.
“Fine.”
The knife went back in its sheath, and Ghost took a little step back, out of his space.
A second later, though—
“If I find out you’re lying to me—,” Ghost kicked out, and this time, he didn’t catch him by the tie, so that Maqtu fell back with an echoing clatter, pinned on his side where he was still cuffed, “if I find so much as a bruise on any of those kids—”
“You won’t—,” Maqtu spat out, cheek in the dirt. “I don’t need them— I never did. They were pawns, they were—”
“Good,” Ghost replied, “then you’ll starve to death here.”
There was a moment of thick quiet that followed that.
“What?”
“We could just dispose of him,” Sandman muttered from behind them, reaching for his pistol—
“No— no, that wasn’t the deal, was it?” Ghost waved him off, and shoved his foot into his shoulder, so that Maqtu was on his back, eyes bulging as he stared up at him— “you tell us, and I don’t blow your brains out. That was the deal, right?”
“This— that wasn’t—”
“Some fucking symbol you’re going to be,” Ghost taunted, scathing— “what d’you think it’ll be, you’ll die of thirst or exposure first?”
“There’s scorpions in this part of the desert,” Roach provided quietly, looking down at him.
The expensive suit was stained with dirt, and Maqtu’s chest heaved as he glared between them all. Ghost laughed again at that, seemingly unable to help himself, before stifling it with a hand over his mask.
“We’re done with you,” MacTavish told him, glaring down at him with the sort of lack of sympathy that could only be learned in their line of work. “Get comfortable. We won’t be coming back for you.”
“Or we might,” Ghost grinned, with a little wave as he turned. “Better hope we find ‘em there, huh?”
“You lot. Let’s move!”
Roach dropped the cigarette, stubbed it out, and with that, they were out the door.
From beside him, Ghost wouldn’t stop complaining about how fast he was driving the truck over the winding road, the desert screaming by.
“Could you just—,” Ghost exclaimed at another pothole, grabbing the laptop he had in his lap in two hands to keep it from being unended, “can’t you just drive like you want to live?!”
“So breaking fingers is— fine,” Worm demanded incredulously from behind him, “kneecapping the guy was on the table— truck going too fast is too much for you?”
“I can’t believe you, of all people, are letting this happen. Don’t you remember Georgia?”
“Sit back,” MacTavish grumbled, shoving Ghost back in the passenger seat where he’d turned around to talk. “Focus on getting the co-ords.”
“How exactly will focusing make the program load faster? S’not like I can pressure it.”
The sun was just beginning to kiss the horizon in the west— which meant they were running very short on time. MacTavish pressed on the accelerator as the road curved towards the capital, and behind him, he could hear the thunk of several people hitting the side of the truck—
“You were just— going into way too much detail, is all,” Robot added, a hand on the back of his seat to steady herself— “what’s the word I’m thinking of— specific. You were very specific.”
“Don’t look at me,” Ghost waved her off, typing something furiously, “look at Roach. Fucking scorpions? Who comes up with that sort of stuff on the spot?”
“I was trying to scare him!”
“I hate scorpions. It was completely unnecessary. Why did none of you bother interrogating him before I got in there, anyway?” Ghost asked, turning around at just the wrong moment— MacTavish swerved to avoid a pothole, and Ghost practically fell against him across the bench seat, giving him a very sharp glare.
“That’s why I told you to sit back,” he grumbled, as Ghost shoved himself back in his seat— “we couldn’t risk doin’ anything to him because of the optics. How much longer on that location?”
“It’s triangulating, give it a sec—”
“I mean— but obviously, you were lying to the guy,” Sandman said, and he could hear the sound of him reloading all his weapons, getting ready to move— “I mean— you dress like you do, but you’re not a merc. Right?”
“There’s probably some paperwork out there that says otherwise,” Ghost shrugged, before— “we’ve got it to the square five miles, head eastbound on the next fork in the road.”
“Can’t you get it down any further?”
“I’m working on it—”
“But— I mean— the breaking fingers thing, the fucking— meat hook, that’s got to have been you just taking the piss,” Ozone said, practically shaking his head— “there’s no way that’s true, right?”
This time, MacTavish cut in before Ghost could come up with some sort of response.
“Mind your own, sergeant. That’s none of your business.”
It somehow had the effect he wanted and didn’t want at the same time. Perhaps at his tone, or the way he cut in, everyone went quiet; out of the corner of his eye, he could see Ghost looking at him, only slightly surprised.
There was no sound other than the whine of the engine for a moment.
“Well— he’s right,” Ghost said, after a moment. “What I do for fun isn’t any of you lot’s business.”
“For fun?!”
The laptop pinged.
“Location’s up—,” Ghost interrupted, immediately getting back into the mission, “twenty mikes east southeast, it’ll be faster to just go off road.”
“Alright,” MacTavish nodded, “hold on, then.”
There was a squeal of tires against tarmac, and the scent of burning rubber as MacTavish made a hard right— the force of it had everyone tumbling to the left of the truck, and Ghost stayed close to his side all the way until they got to the school, all the way through the breach, a shadow in the corner of his eye, like the moon trailing after the tide.
Despite their best efforts, hostage situations often went south. With the number of hostages against the soldiers they had, the careful situation with the optics, and the crushing time limit, they had gotten very, very lucky.
“And— she’s saying if you press the button on the bottom, all the doors open—” and then, a little exasperated— “yaerif kayf taemal altaayira—”
“No,” Ghost was saying, “it’s okay, she can explain it to me— ureed— uh, astamie, ureed astamie.”
The sun had dipped below the horizon, and they’d moved the children from the school to the abandoned factory, a rusted steel building that towered over the horizon, which was relatively better connected for their families to pick them up, and far safer than the abandoned school they were held in. They’d set up a medical tent and safety buffers around the building, and the sun had set to leave the evening cool; aside from being shaken up from the gunfire, the worst injuries had been cuts and scrapes from the way the hostages had been transported, and there was a quiet hum of conversation, between the schoolgirls in the tent, the medical team in another, the other soldiers scattered about, and the 141.
Sandman and Roach were under the shade of a tent, both stood by a mosquito lamp as a breeze wafted over the place; Sandman was puffing on a cigarette while Roach was carefully applying mosquito cream up his arms, which were already a miserable red. Ozone had received nothing but teasing since he had started a routine of stretching after missions two weeks before, but somehow, both Worm and Robot were sitting on the ground by him, stretching their hamstrings witn begrudging looks— it left Ghost, then, with one of the hostages and who appeared to be her older sister, on the concrete steps outside the factory as he approached.
The girl was younger, five or six, with her hair in pink ribbons, while the older sister stood several steps back, an early teenager, wary despite her sister and exasperated at the way she was waving her toy plane in Ghost’s face, pushing all the buttons as she babbled away in Arabic.
“She says— she says, the one on the tail makes it light up,” the sister was translating, as he came over— Ghost was sitting with his elbows on his knees, giving her his rapt attention. “Like— azhar la al’adwa— like when it lands, she says.”
“Your sister likes planes?” Ghost asked, glancing up at her as the plane lights blinked— she was still in her uniform, and crossed her arms, bristling slightly at the attention.
“She wanted to be a pilot.”
“Wanted? Doesn’t she want to be a pilot anymore?”
“She wants to be a soldier, after today,” her sister replied, and then, as her younger sister turned to her, “qult, ant 'aradt 'an takun jundiya.”
“No,” Ghost replied immediately, although his tone remained light, “we don’t need more soldiers. We need more pilots. She can fly people home.”
“Ghost!”
He immediately regretted raising his voice to call him when it made both girls flinch; always faster than him, Ghost distracted the younger sister by pressing the lights button on the tail of the toy. It lit up, and distracted, she laughed— her older sister said something to her, and led her away by hand so that MacTavish could speak to him.
“Alright?” Ghost replied, shifting to one side to give him a spot to sit. The night sky was speckled with stars, clear white and blue— MacTavish took the seat by him, knocking his knee into his.
“Fine. Good work today.”
“If you can call it that,” Ghost huffed, leaning back. The girls disappeared into the tent, and Worm made a very strained sound as he stretched out his other leg— a soft gust of wind blew, and granules of sand wafted across the tarmac road.
“You okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Dunno. Today was—” MacTavish considered his words for a moment, raking a hand through his hair as he looked over at him. “Today was a lot, wasn’t it?”
“Jesus, Johnny, what d’you think, I’m going to start crying as soon as someone mentions a bit of advanced interrogation?”
“It’s not advanced interrogation,” he replied evenly, “and there’s a difference between talking about it and doing it.”
Ghost’s eyebrows knitted slightly, and under the mask, he chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment; apparently unconsciously, his hand drifted to his side, gently pressing into the meat hook scar like he was checking if it was still closed.
“Didn’t expect you to have such a problem with it. I was only joking about the meat hook thing.”
“It wasn’t funny,” MacTavish replied stubbornly; Ghost shot him a little look, and just as fast, looked away.
A moment of quiet passed. There was a burst of laughter from the tent with the hostages, a welcome change from the tears and panic of the rescue—
“Well,” Ghost shrugged, voice surprisingly soft, “if there’s anyone who knows what actually hurts…”
The end of his sentence trailed off. After a moment, he huffed again, and let go of his side to rest his chin in his palm; MacTavish watched for a moment, the stars reflected in Ghost’s eyes.
The edges of dusk still stained the horizon, a deep lilac that coloured the edges of Ghost’s eyelashes like watercolour, the shades softening as they coloured his skin.
“You want a smoke?” He asked, tracing the fine lines around Ghost’s eyes, the edge of the scar through his eyebrow that peeked under the mask.
“M’alright,” Ghost replied, eyelids lowering as he looked over to the distance, “gave mine to Roach. He didn’t have time to get to the commissary.”
“I’ve got sweets.”
That, at least, earned Ghost’s attention.
“Hm?”
“I keep ‘em on hand when we’re on hostage recovery missions,” he replied, rummaging around in one of the pockets of his vest and pulling the packet out. “Here, they’re—”
“Sherbert lemons?” Ghost asked, but he could practically hear the way a surprised smile broke out under the mask— his eyes crinkled into a grin as MacTavish pressed the packet into his hand, and Ghost lifted the edge of his mask to shove it over his nose.
“I didn’t know you liked sherbert lemons,” Ghost told him, and he could see the sharp smile as he opened the packet to pull out two wrapped sweets, giving one to him first and taking the other for himself; he didn’t, really, but Ghost seemed so pleased with the idea that he let it slide. Instead, he watched the way Ghost pressed his lips together to stifle it, holding the bag between his knees to twist the wrapper open— and it was a strange thought that just over an hour before he’d been the type of figure that crawled out of someone’s nightmares, because the darkness softened all the harsh edges of the shadows, so that the only thing he could really focus on was the way he squinted at the sour lemon taste.
“D’you think—,” Ghost began, crunching down on the sherbert lemon to talk, “do you think the ends justify the means?”
“Don’t you?” MacTavish replied, tilting his head; Ghost’s tongue swiped across his upper lip, and he pressed them together, nose wrinkling, as he seemed to consider the answer.
“Joseph wanted to be a pilot.”
The hum of conversation didn’t stop, and the scent of the desert, like cedarwood and heat, wafted over the place. MacTavish twisted the wrapper in his hand for a moment, eyes fixed on the soft curve of Ghost’s jaw.
It was a complicated relationship they had with violence. They lived to carry it out, worked every day to prevent it, and knew that their very best efforts to stop it only wrought about more, like cutting the head off a hydra. It was hard to quantify it as justified, or even worth it, sometimes— but then Sandman turned to squat down as the girl from earlier rushed over to show him the lights on her plane, and Roach barely stifled the laugh as her older sister all but dragged her out of the medical tent by the wrist, her cheeks as pink as the ribbons in her little sister’s hair as she disappeared into another tent.
“She deserved the chance,” Ghost shrugged, chewing on the lemon sherbert, “is all.”
He didn’t say it out loud— but MacTavish didn’t need to wonder what it was like to be the one doing awful things to keep someone else whole, and knew that, without hesitation, he would have done worse for Ghost.
He wasn’t proud of it. He wouldn’t lie about it to himself, either.
“Are you not eating yours?” Ghost asked, with a little glance down at the shiny wrapper— MacTavish huffed softly, and unwrapped the wrapper, popping the sweet in his mouth; Ghost grinned, sugar shiny on his lips, and MacTavish tried and failed to imagine the press of them against his.
Unbidden, Ghost knocked his knee into his, and against the breeze, sat a little closer to him so that warmth leached through the contact. Dusk had disappeared, and the breeze had picked up in earnest, so much that he could see one medic begin unwrapping blankets for the hostages. Worm made a near wounded sound as Ozone coached him through a calf stretch, and Robot was nearly double laughing at it; Sandman and Roach were looking over their shoulders at the display, varying degrees of amused and exasperated, and Ghost rummaged around in the bag to procure two more sweets, handing one to him, and them himself.
The sour taste of lemon burst across his tongue as he crunched down on it. It wasn’t enough to make him wince, but the shards of it were sharp against the roof of his mouth— Ghost, however, had opened half of one wrapper to carefully lick off the sugar coating off the sweet as he watched the whole show, the edges of his lips curved up with a smile. As he watched him, he pursed his lips around it, before licking the sugar off of them, resting his head in hand; when he caught him looking, though, he only huffed a laugh, grin sharp and bright.
“Something on my face?”
It wasn’t like Ghost didn’t want the closeness. And it wasn’t like— well, it wasn’t like they had ever been good people to start.
Maybe the idea of it all— of him and Ghost— wasn’t as much of an impossibility as he had spent months convincing himself.
He probably shouldn’t have done it. Shouldn’t have even considered it, really, but the thought suddenly had his chest so light he couldn’t help himself—
“Just a load of sugar,” MacTavish replied, and before he could think about it, he lifted a hand to his face to scrub a thumb across the swell of his bottom lip, just hard enough to barely walk the line of platonic. “Jesus, you know these things’ll rot your teeth?”
“Piss off,” Ghost spluttered, batting him away with far more force than necessary, but it was fond, familiar— “you were the ones who gave me them!”
“Oh, as if you’ve not got a packet of biscuits on you anyway. I watched you stitch the extra pockets into your vest.”
“I need all the sugar,” Ghost replied stubbornly, stuffing the candy into his mouth and immediately pursing his lips at the sourness— “it balances me out.”
“Because you’re so bitter?”
“Exactly,” Ghost nodded, folding up the wrappers and tucking them away—
“No chance. I don’t believe that for a second.”
“No?”
“Come on, who are you tryin’ to convince? You’re such a sweetheart,” MacTavish replied, and Ghost scoffed, shoving angrily into him as he looked away. The flush was visible where he’d lifted up the mask and around his eyes, high in his cheeks and a kissed, soft sort of pink.
“Yeah,” Ghost muttered, chewing on the inside of his cheek, “piss off, Johnny.”
“Whatever you want, Simon,” MacTavish replied, and maybe— maybe, there was a chance, after all, after everything.
Half because Ghost wasn’t looking, and half because he couldn’t help himself, he brushed his tongue across the pad of his thumb when no one was looking, and tasted bright citrus and sugar.