Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Simon was a mutt. A feral little bastard who didn’t- who couldn’t do what he was told, who refused to lie down and take it like a good boy. He knows this because of the way he would bare his teeth when his father pinned him to the bathroom floor, close enough to smell the sickly rot of alcohol and gum disease. 

He knows that he growls, and barks, and bites. Anything to keep his father’s attention on him, to stop him going after his mum. After Tommy, mostly. He’s just a kid. So was Simon - but who cares about that? His little brother was defenceless, all soft edges and bleary tear-stained eyes. 

He’d curl in on himself when threatened, and when Simon failed to stop the punches and the kicks that would rain down on him, Tommy’s bruises would bloom across his back in murky greens and purples. Simon was different. He was his brother's guard dog - he could thrash, he could kick, he could bite down on the hands that would try to restrain him. He could take it.

It was his duty to protect Tommy, God knows his mother wouldn’t. Simon knew she wasn’t really to blame, but that didn’t mean that he ever fully forgave her. Not until he was standing in front of three gravestones and it was too late. She would be his father’s first port of call, and Tommy’s first line of defence - if she cried enough, begged him to stop enough times, there was a chance that he’d get bored or run out of energy and spend the rest of the night on the sofa in a puddle of stale sweat and vodka. 

Tonight, their mother had failed them on that front. She lay in the corner of their dingy living room, trying to blend in with the wallpaper yellowed with years of smoking as she sobbed quietly. Simon was at the top of the stairs looking down, chewing his lip anxiously as he heard his father pace back and forth just out of sight. He knew where Tommy was, Simon gave him the same instructions every time they heard the door slam in the dead of night. Under the bed. Don’t make a sound. Don’t come out until I say so.

Even before he became the elusive Ghost, Simon was always good at sneaking around. He could enter a room silently and leave without a trace, his fellow soldiers have always teased him about it. And if there’s one thing he can be grateful to his father for, he had the best training possible - an entire childhood of tiptoeing around volatile drunks without a sound. The footsteps downstairs stopped, and then got louder as they headed towards the stairs. Simon fled, silently. 

This time, two pairs of feet echoed up the hall. A cough sounded, more high and reedy than his father’s. This wasn’t too much of a surprise to Simon, sometimes his father would bring ‘friends’ over, people who had nowhere better to crash than their cesspit of a house. Never women, though. It was the only semblance of loyalty his father had for his mother. Simon hadn’t noticed the extra guest when he was pacing downstairs - he must’ve been lounging back in the one threadbare armchair they owned whilst his mother was beaten senseless.

Simon was in his bed now, every muscle in his body tensed. Muffled voices became clearer as the footsteps came closer to the bedroom door. 

“...Now let’s see if this little shit is awake.”

He sat up, despite every reflex in his body screaming at him to curl under the covers and hide. He knew what would happen if he did - and he preferred to meet his father’s violence head on. Let Tommy escape from it, if he was lucky. The weak light of the hallway pooled into the bedroom as the door creaked open. Two figures were silhouetted against the doorway, his father and a smaller, scrawnier man.

Simon glared at him. It was a cold and wet autumn, and the house was damp with the neverending grey drizzle of Manchester. When more so since the cash for the electricity meter had been used for vodka and sleeping pills. The one advantage of this was that Simon was in his thickest pyjamas, and the way his father gripped his arm to roughly lift him off the bed would result in bruises tomorrow but no breaking of the skin. Not that it made much difference to him, but Tommy didn’t like seeing him hurt. 

Simon writhed and kicked, but a thin twelve year old was no match against a grown man - even one who survived on corner shop liquor and cigarettes.

“The bloody cheek of you, ey?” His father sneered, as he dragged him towards the bathroom. He liked to see the results of his actions, Simon thought. He’d learnt early on that blood stands out best under fluorescent lights and grimy tiled floors.

“So this is the runt you’ve been telling me about?” Mused the other man, looking Simon up and down in a way that made him want to crawl out of his skin.

Simon bared his teeth at him as he tried to wriggle out of his father’s grip, but it only made the man chuckle. “He needs some taming. Nothing you can do with a rabid dog but put ‘em down.”

His father paused, cocking his head slightly as if in thought. A tiny grain of something - Simon wouldn’t dare call it hope - settled in his chest. His dad held no warm feelings towards him, he knew that. It was a mutually hateful relationship. But suggesting putting him down, maybe that crossed a line? That grain vanished as his father chuckled, revealing a flash of yellowed teeth.

“There’s only one way to tame a dog.” He said, looking at Simon distastefully. The lanky frame, the shock of unkempt blond hair, the light eyelashes that quivered under the buzzing light. What a poor excuse for a son. 

“You’ve got to beat it out of him.” He murmured. 

Before Simon could react, his father’s hand struck him across the face and blood started to pool between the cracks of the bathroom floor.

-

As soon as he looked old enough, Simon got an apprenticeship at the local butchers. Day after day he would cut steaks, separate ribs, carve bones. He’d imagine that the dried blood under his nails was his fathers, that his bones were the ones crunching under his blade.  

It earned him some good money, and for the first time in a long time he was able to give Tommy and his mother some proper meals. The physical labour gave him presence and muscle, too. He was no longer an easy target for his father, who had taken to sulking around the house in silence, and then later on the streets.

And after work, walking home under the orange haze of sodium streetlights, he’d toss the stray dogs the entrails and bones nobody would want to buy. It wasn’t that he felt sorry for them, it wasn’t even that he particularly liked dogs. But there was a hunger in their eyes, in the way they lurked in the shadows warily. 

He’d seem the same look in his own eyes, starkly illuminated in the cracked mirror of his childhood bathroom.

Chapter Text

A man who joins the army and expects to be treated as anything more than a piece of meat was foolish, Simon knew that. But he was tired of chopping up carcasses in a room surrounded with grimy white tiles, and he wanted to - shit, he wanted to at least try - to do something useful with his life. And maybe it wasn’t so bad being a tool, if he could be a good one.

His mum sobbed when he left, clinging to him as if it would make him stay. His brother was gone, off in a drugged out haze with his ‘mates’. His father sneered at him, would have spat on his shoes if Simon wasn’t now towering over him. He was a tall man, but age and cruelty had made him warp and shrivel.

Simon passed basic training with flying colours. Stamina, endurance, strength? Shit, he had a whole childhood of running and defending himself to prepare for it. So why not aim for the SAS next? Sharpen the weapon that he was becoming. He had people’s respect, some of the time anyway. He was needed. Simon liked the feeling of a gun in his hands and throwing a knife into the centre of a target, and the value it gave him. He’d fling his opponents to the ground in sparring matches, and the wide-eyed fear in their faces made him finally feel more like predator than prey.

Tommy was still on the drugs, and his mother couldn’t cope. So he went back home. His captain authorised his break, begrudgingly. Told him how much harder it was to qualify for special forces when you aren’t training consistently in an army environment. But Tommy got clean and met a girl. And when Joseph was born and he got the chance to hold the delicate thing in his arms, he found that army training was the last thing on his mind.

He liked the domestic life. Helping Beth out with the baby, keeping his mum company, hell, he even let his brother practice tattooing on him when he became an apprentice. Ghost keeps his arms covered now. But the pull of the army was coming back to Simon - he felt restless, on edge. He would stay outside smoking for hours just to have something to do with his hands. So he went back to the army, and the army welcomed him with open arms.

He wasn’t a mutt anymore, he was an attack dog. He follows orders, it’s been drilled enough times to do it nearly as a reflex, even as his insides twist when his instincts tell him to talk back. To be a bad dog. And to be honest, most of the time their orders are complete bullshit. But the approving look his superiors give him is worth it. He is worth something. He respects the chain of command, he’s loyal. He’s a good soldier. 

And then Major Vernon finds him, and the look he gives Riley is somewhere between his father’s scrutiny after he survives a beating and the old men in the butcher’s shop appraising raw meat splayed in front of them. But apparently he likes what he sees, because the next thing Sergeant Riley knows he’s cargo in a transport helicopter headed for Mexico.

There’s a distance between him and the other men, even on the heli. It’s not just geographical, or cultural, although Riley is the only soldier on the task force who isn’t U.S. Special Forces. It’s a six man operation, including Riley. There’s the Major, sitting at the end of the interior and squinting at his new recruits with shrewd, grey eyes. The other men are Skyes, Washington, Cumberland and Sparks. They carry themselves with an innate bravado. They each laugh louder than the next, and Simon can tell that behind their friendly punches is a contest to prove their strength. 

He’s different from them. He doesn’t take any shit, and he stares calmly and unflinchingly ahead when all eyes turn on him as Vernon introduces their new teammate. But he’s always quietly waiting for something to go wrong - the helicopter shot down, a nasty brawl breaking out. Maybe the others can sense this, and that’s why they treat him like a nervous animal they’ve caught. Patting him on the shoulder with reassurance that’s only just recognisable as patronising, laughing at his expense and expecting him to join in.

Riley takes it. Even when his father’s cackle echoes in the ghost of their laughter, and he can feel the path of Vernon’s eyes tying him down like a leash. It’s worth it - to have a semblance of camaraderie, to be used. And everything has a cost, right? He’s willing to pay the price.

Maybe he wasn’t so wrong about things falling apart, because the moment they jump out of the helicopter Skyes’ parachute fails. He was alright, quieter than the rest of them. He had long slender fingers which skittishly ran up and down his parachute kit throughout the flight, checking it was secure. From the air they can see Skyes below them, rapidly getting smaller as his limbs twist and thrash and pull his parachute cord to no avail. His corpse is strewn across the cornfield they land in. More viscera than man, it reminds Riley of the entrails he’d feed the dogs in Manchester. 

-

It’s late evening now. He’s just arrived but already Simon can’t wait to escape Mexico, to get rid of the oppressive humidity coating his skin and the mosquitoes which he’s unable to shake off. The sun set hours ago but the day’s heat still radiates from the dusty earth and crumbling brickwork. They’re drinking in a dingy bar next to a potholed road, where every few minutes the building shakes with the rumble of trucks passing. 

The dim glow of the fluorescent bulbs and neon lights is barely enough to see the sticky floor and stained tables, but it’s enough to notice the glint in Cumberland’s eye as he plies Sparks and Washington with drinks. He seems to ignore Simon, clearly he’s been deemed too unimportant to consider. Harmless, even. Riley’s eyes narrow as he considers this. Women saunter up to them, and he sees Cumberland slip a crumpled banknote into a woman’s skirt as she loops her arms around Washington’s neck. 

Cumberland slinks away from them, and Riley suppresses a shudder as a prostitute comes up to him with a knowing smirk on her face. He sees the slack features of a dead woman in a bathroom stall and his father’s laughter, and firmly pushes her away. She stumbles back, her mouth a perfect circle in her expression of shock. Not that Simon notices - he’s too busy pushing past the sweaty mass of bodies to follow Cumberland.

-

As it happens, Simon was entirely right about things falling apart. Cumberland is dead, Skyes’ parachute was intentionally sabotaged, Washington and Sparks are MIA, and Vernon is a puppet for the cartel. As if that wasn’t bad enough the henchmen of said cartel are chasing him through the Zaragoza estate, and as Riley weaves through elegant topiary and manicured lawns he’s pondering the most entertaining way to retell his first mission to little Joseph when he reaches home soil. 

He’s vaulting over the south wall and making the connection between Vernon’s moustache and a particularly bushy caterpillar when it hits him. He suddenly feels a sharp pain pierce his side, and collapses on the ground. Under the haze of panic and the blood pumping in his ears, he hears heavy footsteps approach him as the world around him dances and blurs. The last thing he remembers is the cloying scent of cologne as someone crouches down to see his face.

Ghost can handle the smell of decay, the way blood hangs iron-heavy in the air and rot crawls up his nostrils. He can comfortably linger in a room where other soldiers have gagged and fled. Despite this, there’s a specific blend of bergamot and amber that even now he can’t smell without throwing up.

Chapter Text

Every SAS soldier undergoes intense Resistance to Interrogation training, or RTI for short. Whatever your captors inflict upon you, the basic instructions are the same - either respond with dead silence, or name, rank, serial number and date of birth. Most of the training consists of a 72 hour exercise, where bit by bit your assigned interrogator would try to strip your sanity and ego away. It would start small - some slapping around, humiliation, sleep deprivation. Then they’d get rougher. International law had rules on where the lines were when interrogating hostiles, but the SAS crossed them without hesitation whilst straying just shy of causing significant injury. Nothing that left a lasting scar was allowed - physical scars, anyway. The number of candidates in Simon’s SAS selection group had halved after the mock interrogation. 

For Riley, it was just another part of training that he excelled in without too much difficulty. Sure, the punches hurt. The food and sleep deprivation wasn’t too nice, either. But he’d been through worse, and had learnt to distance himself from the torture as it was happening. He’d see himself from outside his body, and detachedly wonder how long it would take for his captors to get bored of him. Riley added this to the very short list of things his father had helped him with. After Mexico, his therapist would call this dissociation, an unhealthy coping mechanism - but compared to most of his other habits he’d say it was pretty sensible. 

Roba was not an SAS exercise. He didn’t want information, he didn’t need to keep Simon sane or stable. He did still want to keep him alive, for some reason. Roba was not an interrogator. His only aim was to torture Simon, to break him into shards small enough to swallow. His only mercy was that Roba’s attention was divided between Simon and his other captors. He knows this because of the screams and cries which would echo down the damp corridors, and the creaking doors of other cells. 

All of the voices were American. He could recognise the thin, scratchy timbre of Major Vernon even through the dripping of pipes and distorted echoes. He must have ended up on Roba’s bad side for fucking up on his last mission. There were others too. He couldn’t tell for certain but Simon guessed that they were the only other remaining members of their taskforce, Sparks and Washington. Their pleas sound like they really believe they’ll be released from here. 

-

Simon doesn’t know how long it’s been. It's hard to count the days with only a small window to see daylight through, even harder with a mind fogged by food and sleep deprivation. He can still hear the other screams but they’re weaker. He tries not to give Roba too many of his own. All of his attempts so far to break him - waterboarding, pulling fingernails, stripping him naked to humiliate him - the SAS prepared him for all of it. Granted, it was meant for limited periods whilst you wait to be rescued and not for an indeterminate time in the Mexican desert, but Simon is a tough fucker. 

And Roba’s patience with him is wearing thin. Over the weeks - or has it been months? - the cruel glimmer of malice in his eyes when he steps into Riley’s cell has been replaced by steely determination. He almost seems bored, as he grabs Simon’s overgrown hair and waterboards him for what must be the tenth time since he was shocked awake by the slam of a cell door and a bucket of icy water. 

Time passes. As as Simon refuses to break, Roba gets more creative. He’s shoved into a dog cage, the metal wires digging into him as he struggles to fit into its cramped confines. The logical part of his brain patiently explains it to him - Roba’s goal is humiliation, loss of ego. But that part of his brain has been getting quieter recently, ignored by the far larger, more animal part of him. He snarls as the thin metal wires dig into his skin, made tender by the constant cuts and bruises inflicted upon him.

He doesn’t break. He doesn’t show weakness. But the first food he’s been given in days arrives in a grimy metal dog bowl, and with his hands perpetually cuffed, he has to shove his head in it to eat. Simon sees his warped reflection in the curved steel surface. Sunken eyes, hollow cheeks. He doesn’t recognise the animal staring back. 

It doesn’t take long for Roba to grow tired of the dog cage. He finds other tactics that take his fancy, like pitting his captives against each other in desperate, pitiful fights. He stitches them up, keeps them alive, and forces them to watch on the operating table as the surgical knife cuts through their flesh. 

-

Simon can’t hear Vernon anymore. He hasn’t for a while, now. The Americans are silent too. Ears pricked, as always, he hears footsteps get louder as they approach his cell. A pitiful sound - almost a whimper - gets trapped in his throat as the door opens and muddy light spills into his cramped quarters. He doesn’t bother pleading, human language sounds too unnatural coming out of him.

Roba has been experimenting with jumper cables and electric shocks. Simon’s fists are clenched so tightly that he’s leaving half moons in his palms but that doesn’t stop his hands from shaking. He curls further in on himself as the footsteps stop beside him and the nauseating scent of bergamot invades his nostrils. He thinks of Tommy, bruises blooming along his ribs. As he got older they moved down to the crooks of his elbows, trackmarks scattered over his arms. They cleared up, and the only bruises he should have now are from playfights with Joseph.

Simon’s wounds were still fresh, the hole where they pierced a meat hook through him was tender to the touch. It took hours for him to stitch himself up with the grimy needle and thread they gave him, his shaking hands going over, under, over in the pale moonlight. Not that it mattered, the stitches were torn open a couple of days later. Roba was smart. He toed the line between being in pain and being unconscious, suffering and death. Sometimes one of his henchmen would get overexcited and Riley would wake up hooked up to an IV whilst a masked figure in a hospital gown prodded around his insides. He never saw those henchmen more than once, but then again - their sneers and fists and kicks all blurred into one.

When they confine him to a small wooden crate and scorpions crawl over him, he can hear his father laughing as he holds a snake to his face. Sometimes when he looks up he sees him, grinning with yellowed teeth. Sometimes it’s just a skull with hollow, empty eye sockets. Sometimes it’s a woman smoking his father’s cigarettes, blood dripping from her nose.

Simon doesn’t know it yet but Sparks and Washington have broken already. They’re obedient and loyal and ready to sabotage their countries for Roba. Riley is his last problem, the fucker that refuses to yield. What use is a dog if it can’t follow commands? 

Simon wakes up with a mouthful of dirt. He turns his head and spits it out, and as his vision comes into focus he sees Vernon’s maggot-laden, decaying face beside him.

-

He tells the nurses that he doesn’t know how he got there. He wakes up in a Texan hospital room and panics - but the drugs they’ve given him stop him doing more than opening his eyes wide, his skittish gaze looking but not seeing the sterile room he’s in. His ailments are listed off. Dehydration, malnourishment, more broken bones and fractures than he cares to remember, major bruising and scarring, electrical burns. Sunburn. Simon almost cackles when they say that. Sorry, I’ve been held captive for months at the hands of a cartel druglord so sorry I forgot to pack my factor 30 when I escaped? 

The beeping of his heart monitor makes him flinch, when the doctors come in with their masks and hospital gowns the beeping speeds up until another syringe of something is injected into him. They have to restrain him to the bed later on, when the drugs wear off and he’s desperate enough to yank out his IV and walk out with at least 4 major fractures, to escape from the needles and the monitors and the gloved hands. 

He expects his SAS captain to visit. He doesn’t expect him to be accompanied by a General, introduced as Shepherd. He’s a tall, wiry man with gunmetal eyes. Simon’s still seeing skulls. 

Simon knows there’s a blank case file nearby, waiting to be filled with an objective account of every month of his absence. He tells them he doesn’t remember how he got there, he doesn’t remember crawling - like a dog - across miles of parched soil, fingernails caked in sand and soil from the grave of a dead man. 

He doesn’t remember waking up next to him, Vernon’s face hardly recognisable under the rot and the maggots. The way his jawbone dislocates too easily from his skull as he grabs it. The SAS always spoke of resourcefulness, of adapting to unexpected situations. Well, extra credit to him, he used the only tool he could find in a rotting coffin six feet underground. Soil invaded his every sense as he clawed his way out. 

It takes him thirteen hours. He won’t tell them that he remembers every minute of it, each excruciating breath as his weakened body fought to survive. God knows where his sudden will to live came from, the animal instincts of self preservation must have kicked in.

He’s in the hospital bed. His captain is talking about surgery, physical therapy, counselling. The General is silent, inscrutable. Riley is thinking about how Christmas isn’t too far away - how he needs to buy Joseph a present.

He’s hoping his hands will stop shaking enough for him to write a christmas card.