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War, as it turned out, was suffocatingly busy.
“What am I s’posed to do with these?”
“Give them over to the armoury— have the sergeant do inventory, make sure he gets it done by today.”
It was overwhelmingly fast, everything constantly moving— not the way it was in the field, either, but mindlessly loud with no focal point, a ship rocking over waves.
“Scarecrow’s been asking for new equipment for two weeks at this point— his bag’s practically falling apart at the seams, and logistics’re dragging their feet—”
“Go see the captain— he’s in his office, he’ll make them speed it up. In the meanwhile, check the stock rooms, they’ve always got spares no one uses.”
Ghost had never considered himself to be out of practice with it, but the weeks of it had only highlighted to him how much he’d gotten used to being isolated, away from the team, left to fend for himself. The corridor was still bustling as he walked through, the skies white and grey outside, and just as he was about to turn the corner, the quartermaster, Wagner caught him, eyes narrowed with a scowl—
“Lieutenant!” He called out, as he approached Ghost— “I need to talk to you.”
“What’s this about?” Ghost stopped, tightening his grip on the folder he was holding.
“The barracks phone,” he began immediately, waving vaguely as he spoke, “your sergeant, Archer, keeps getting angry at me, because I’ve had to limit the use of the barracks phone to ten minutes per person— tell him that he needs to get in line, because—”
“He’s just had a kid,” Ghost cut across him, impatient— “for fuck’s sake, just give him my time, let him have an extra ten minutes, and tell him to reapply for a secure terminal phone.”
“I did— look, this isn’t about the phone—”
“I thought you just said it was?”
“It’s about his attitude,” Wagner insisted, folding his arms, “you need to talk to him.”
“I will— I will,” Ghost replied, but Wagner wasn’t done—
“Will you? Because this isn’t acceptable, and I can’t keep having this conversation, and having to interrupt everyone’s comms because of your inability to manage your—”
“I’ll talk to him,” a voice sounded behind Ghost, and they turned around at the same time— behind them, MacTavish was standing, looking between the two of them.
Ghost blinked, and then straightened slightly, but MacTavish didn’t look at him, eyes on Wagner, not even sparing a glance towards him.
“The request’s on my desk,” MacTavish told him, tone authoritative in a way Ghost still hadn’t figured out how to manage, “and I’ll expedite it so this stops being a problem.”
“You’d better, captain,” Wagner replied, exhaling harshly before turning on his heel to walk off. Watching him go, Ghost turned back to MacTavish, as his gaze landed on him—
“I had it handled,” he couldn’t help the urge to defend himself, “I was going to talk to Archer, you didn’t need to—”
“I was looking for you.”
Ghost lifted his eyebrows slightly, and looked up at him. MacTavish looked exactly as he always did, shoulders tight with a certain type of hypervigilance and eyebrows always slightly furrowed— he swallowed, tongue feeling too big for his mouth.
“You— were?”
“I needed those logs finished on my desk an hour ago. You’re late.”
Oh.
“Oh,” Ghost replied, and then, after a moment’s delay, held out the papers he was holding, not saying anything to the decidedly neutral tone with which MacTavish was talking to him with.
“I’ve got them here,” Ghost replied, clasping his hands together in front of him in the absence of anything else as MacTavish took them, “I just needed to get the updated numbers from transport, it took a while.”
His eyes didn’t meet Ghost’s for a second, eyebrows furrowed as he appraised the folder. He flicked through it, efficient, eyes never lingering, before snapping it closed—
“What date did transport give you their numbers up to?”
“Hm?”
“I want everyone up to the same date— if transport’s given you their most recents, I need everyone’s most recent numbers, too,” MacTavish replied, handing the folder back, “I need these for three— go back, fix this, so that I—”
“I know— I did,” Ghost told him, hands tightening around each other as MacTavish’s eyes flicked up to him. In the light of the corridor, his eyes were an insistent green, stable like an anchor in a storm. “I called, all the numbers’re for the same period, they’ll be fine for you to use.”
“Oh.”
It was MacTavish’s turn to seem slightly surprised. He opened the folder again, double-checking it a final time; Ghost watched for any shift in his expression, anything to suggest he was pleased, before the same expression was returned to him as MacTavish looked back to him. “Right. Good.”
With that, and nothing else, he stepped past Ghost, back to his office. The corridor was still busy, and several people had seen the interaction— likely thought nothing of it, too, seeing as it barely lasted a minute. Ghost nodded, more to himself than anything else, and walked the other way to turn the corner— he wanted to pretend no one saw him leave, but like the scope of a sniper, he could feel the prickle of eyes on him.
It almost felt insane to admit that he felt better suited to days and weeks alone, afraid, with no one to rely on, than as a part of a functioning team. By nature, Ghost didn’t like to rely on people— but what was worse, what made his skin crawl, was the fact that people seemed to rely on him.
It had been a long time since he had been anything but a ghost, a long time since anyone had wanted him to be— and as much as he trusted MacTavish’s judgement, Ghost knew he was better suited to it when there was a problem with a clear solution, one where he was only expected to switch off his mind and do anything it took to get to it.
It was busy. There wasn’t a moment of quiet, not a moment where he could stop and think— and worse than that was the way that people looked to him as he thought, waited for his opinion, staked their own on his.
Second-in-command. The words didn’t even suit him, came out oddly on his lips as he sounded them out.
He wasn’t suited for it. That much he knew. Maybe on paper he was, maybe by some arbitrary metric— but Ghost had lived more than enough of his life knowing that for some people, nothing he did would ever be good enough; and as a corollary, it had to mean that no matter the reality of the situation, for some people, whatever he did had to be good enough for their sakes, regardless of the reality of the situation.
The door to the rooms was quiet as it clicked behind him, the first real moment of silence that day. To make space for more personnel, rooms had been doubled up, so the private officers room he was in had been kitted out with four bunks, four sets of luggage, four trunks, and four people’s mess. By habit, Ghost stepped over all of it, unwilling to disturb the room with evidence of his presence, as he sat down on the edge of his bed. It was cloudy through the windows, a cool breeze bringing with it the occasional splatter of rain; outside, the green view was perfectly inconspicuous, the black site they were stationed at barely even on a map.
It wasn’t fair to not do what was asked of him; it wasn’t fair to MacTavish, who was singlehandedly managing everything alone. Ghost owed it to him to put his head down and do as he was told, at least to not be more of a burden.
And even more than that, he owed it to MacTavish who had given him the position as a favour. He had no responsibility to get him out of the mess Ghost had entangled himself in with Shepherd, no reason to help him, no reason to give him the position or do anything for him at all.
The sound of the raindrops peppering the windowsill was soothing in a way he didn’t know what to do with. Leaning forward, Ghost rested his elbows on his knees, resting his head in his hands.
At the very least, he knew that the fact MacTavish had given him the command had nothing to do with anything Ghost could do for him, and everything to do with the fact that above all else, Captain MacTavish was a good person.
It didn’t do anything to assuage the twisting feeling in his stomach that he was incapable. It did nothing to help the fact that he knew he didn’t belong there— it did nothing for the fact that he knew everyone else knew it too, that everyone knew that he didn’t deserve to be second in command, that he was having a favour done for him and nothing more.
Nothing more. It did nothing for the fact that it was nothing more.
A gust of wind brought with it a scatter of rain. Ghost glanced up at the window at the sound, feeling the cold air drift through the glass; with a deliberate effort, he took a long breath, and then readjusted the mask, flattening the hem of it against the bridge of his nose.
It was suffocating. The mask itched something fierce, seeing as he’d barely had the chance to take it off, but even the room didn’t feel private enough; it felt like the feeling of it all was crawling under his skin. For a long several moments, Ghost took several deep breaths, trying and failing not to focus on the fact that he was needed outside of the room.
The one good thing, he supposed, was that war made it very easy to avoid what he didn’t want to be near. Idly, Ghost leaned back to wrap his arms around himself, squeezing his hands in familiar spots; it didn’t feel the same, so he let go to fold his hands in his lap, and tried not to focus on it. The rain drummed against the window, and with a long sigh, Ghost sat up straight, moving to stand—
As he did, his heel brushed against something soft tucked under his bed.
“What the— fuck?”
By instinct, Ghost kicked it away, and his entire bed gave a lurch as an arm flopped out from under his bed— he shot to his feet, but a groan sounded, echoing around, and—
“What— Sanderson?” Ghost exclaimed, incredulous as he watched Roach crawl out from the gap under his bed, still groaning softly as he did—
“Did you need to kick me?” Roach complained, crawling out on his stomach and sitting back unsteadily on his knees— Ghost glanced between Roach’s bunk, still set up with the sheets tucked in the corners, and the way Roach was currently scrubbing a hand through red hair. His heartbeat was still thumping in his ears as if with a vengeance, but he took a deep breath, trying to sound calm—
“What the fuck’re you doing under my bed?” Ghost demanded, still glaring at him— Roach spluttered around the answer for a moment before sighing and pulling his blanket out from under the bed.
“Well— if I sleep in my own bed, people come in here and— and ask me what I’m sleeping for, don’t they? Your bed’s right by the wall, no one can see me under there!”
“What are you sleeping for, then? It’s two in the bloody afternoon!”
“Not you too,” Roach grumbled, and then, off the daggers with which Ghost was glaring at him— “I was up all night. It’s not like I’m skirting my duties,” he insisted, to which Ghost folded his arms— “I did everything the captain asked last night, while everyone was asleep, and I’ve got my phone on me with the ringer on, so if he needed me—”
“Fucking hell…” Ghost cut across him, in disbelief.
“Don’t get pissed off at me,” he insisted, scrubbing at his eyes in a way that reminded Ghost unnervingly of Tommy. “I tried sleeping under my own bed, but Ozone was the one who came in and asked me what I was doing!”
“You’re— ridiculous, you know that?”
“I don’t understand how you do it,” Roach complained, pulling his blanket free. He bundled it up in his arms rather than make any effort to fold it— it was something from home, soft and decorated in bright red with some children’s cartoon. “You were up all night too, weren’t you?”
“I slept.”
“Where?” Roach asked, looking up at him— “you were here for an hour before you left. You didn’t even take your mask off!”
“I never take my mask off,” Ghost replied, frowning slightly. In the absence of adrenaline, he felt oddly empty— but as he glanced back to the door, he found no urge to leave. He glanced back at Roach, who was still watching him— “you watch me sleep?”
“No,” Roach scowled, folding his arms. He threw the blanket onto Ghost’s bed, and in a move that felt more familiar than Ghost deserved, sat down on the mattress like Ghost had invited him to— “the door squeaks when you open it.”
Despite himself, Ghost huffed softly. He copied Roach, but more reluctant, sitting on the edge of Roach’s bed to face him.
“There’s no way you heard it over Sandman. He’s like a lawnmower.”
“Miracle he’s made it to be the oldest person in the task force. How does he not give away our location on every mission?”
“They call him Sandman for a reason, don’t they?”
Roach laughed at that— unlike Ghost, he never made any effort to hide it, easy to smile and even easier to laugh. He had a gap in his teeth that made him seem deceptively younger, and the sunburn that only covered the bridge of his nose scrunched up as he laughed. Ghost felt his lips twitch at that despite himself, and relaxed slightly, leaning back.
“Do I have something to worry about, then?” He asked, as Roach looked up at him. “Am I going to find you watching me sleep tonight?”
“I don’t—” Roach spluttered, incredulous, before crossing his arms defiantly— “I don’t watch you sleep— I just meant—”
“Is that why they call you Bug? Go crawling under beds, monitor people’s sleep— that why you’re napping at two in the afternoon?”
“No— and you’re the only one who calls me Bug,” Roach scowled, leaning back petulantly. He sighed, looking away, and then fiddled with the edge of his blanket— “I just— I just couldn’t sleep.”
Outside, another gust of rain fell against the window, despite the sun that shone through it the next moment. It caught the dried marks of droplets, the dust in the air of the room— it was a little cold, and Ghost pulled his sleeves up past the cuffs of his gloves, glancing at the door again.
“What,” Roach followed his gaze, observant to a fault— “you need to leave?”
“Probably,” Ghost replied, but made no effort to move. “Don’t you have somewhere to be, too?”
“I already told you— I did all my work last night, I don’t need to—”
“Everyone else is training outside. Together,” Ghost added, in case it wasn't clear. Roach shot him a look, shuffling backwards to lean against the wall.
“So?”
“I know why I’m avoiding them,” Ghost replied, lifting an eyebrow. “What’s your excuse?”
Roach’s expression went still, before exhaling as he looked away. Slightly confused, Ghost followed the movement, as Roach messed idly with the edge of the blanket.
“There’s no point getting attached, is there? Spending all that time for nothing?” He answered finally, hazarding a glance up to Ghost as he spoke as if to check for his reaction. “We’re at war.”
The bleakness of it caught Ghost off guard.
Roach, as a person, was unnervingly happy to be where he was; happy to be around people, happier still to be behind the scope of a rifle, to be covered in blood and clutching a knife, to be in the middle of a battlefield, as everything exploded. He didn’t seem particularly proud of the admission, but wasn’t quite ashamed, either— he had pale eyes that looked even paler in the light, as if he was always slightly surprised.
“That’s stupid.”
Roach glanced up at him, expression hardening.
“It’s not like you’re out there, either,” Roach shot back, apparently unable to help himself.
“War doesn’t make a difference,” Ghost’s arms tightened as he leaned back slightly, eyes narrowing. “They’re just as likely to die on a normal day.”
Roach huffed at that, even though it wasn’t particularly funny, but lightened all the same; in the distance, there were the sounds of boots scuffing against the floor as people moved around the base.
“Is that why you’re the way you are, then?” He asked, meeting Ghost’s eye with the slightest shine of amusement in his eyes. Exhaling, Ghost cast another glance at the door, and found he cared about it less and less.
“Course not. I was born this way”
“You wore the mask as a baby?”
“Why d’you think I enlisted?” Ghost replied, leaning forward as if he was telling him something important. “Guidance counsellor took one look at me, and told me I’d be right at home.”
“Right,” Roach nodded, as if he was agreeing. “The Army’s not got enough gloomy twats.”
“The quota for the 141’s been filled, at least.”
“You trying to kick me out of here?”
“A bit of peace and quiet would be nice.”
“Right,” Roach laughed again, eyes narrowing with it. “I forgot I was talking to the new deputy.”
Ghost huffed softly, but the comment landed slightly sour; a second later, he regretted it when, like a sniper on a target, he could practically see Roach catch onto it. He opened his mouth to come up with some sort of snarky return, but came up empty— instead, with a long sigh, he rested his elbows on his knees, the back of his mask lifting from the back of his neck. Roach followed it, copying him to lean forward; he watched in his periphery as Roach’s eyes narrowed, frowning slightly before rearranging his expression, like a commander trying to figure out where best to place his troops.
“Bet your guidance counsellor didn’t warn you about this,” he said finally, watching Ghost’s face for his reaction. Ghost glanced up at him, and he watched as Roach seemed to catalogue something Ghost couldn’t even see to himself— “no one warns you how much paperwork’s in the Army. Death by a thousand papercuts.”
It wasn’t lost on him that Roach was trying, on some stilted level, to comfort him, as if he needed it— more than what he said, the absurdity of the moment, of it all, suddenly seemed to catch up with him, the soft laugh catching them both off guard.
“Would’ve never enlisted if she’d’ve told me. She probably knew that.”
“Didn’t want you becoming a serial killer,” Roach agreed sagely, brightening the more Ghost seemed to respond. He leaned back when Ghost didn’t say anything, resting on his hands behind him— “I can’t imagine you in sixth form. I can’t imagine you outside the Army, actually. What were you like?”
“Same as I am now. A miserable twat.”
“Gloomy,” Roach corrected, holding a finger up. “You shouldn’t undermine your achievements, sir.”
“Don’t know what bloody achievements you’re on about,” Ghost replied, scrubbing at his face as he sighed again, long and slow. “Not got a clue what MacTavish was thinking.”
He said with the inflection of a joke, but it didn’t seem to land that way— Roach frowned slightly, as if he’d said something confusing.
“What— what, you don’t think you— deserved the promotion?”
“I never said that,” Ghost replied, sharper than he meant when Roach was brushing uncomfortably close to the truth— “I just— I didn’t think we were at the point where we were— scraping the bottom of the barrel, yet,” he scoffed as he said it, like a joke someone else had made.
It was frustrating, in a way, that Roach seemed to laugh at everything except what he wanted him to. He was meeting Ghost’s eye in an almost uncomfortably insistent way, and the sudden vulnerability of the conversation seemed to catch him by surprise; shaking his head, Ghost looked away, first to the door, and then to the window, where the clouds were darkening with the promise of another burst of rain. The boots scuffing had disappeared, and the bed creaked under him as he attempted to sit in a position that was passably comfortable; Roach nodded, more to himself than Ghost, before sitting back again, wrapping the blanket around his index finger.
“Royce wasn’t happy when he heard,” Roach provided, instead of anything else. Despite himself, Ghost lifted his eyebrows, amused as he was incredulous—
“What— he thinks he deserves it more?”
“No— no,” Roach replied quickly— “he was annoyed at MacTavish. He thinks that the captain makes you do too much.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” Roach nodded, bringing his feet up on the mattress to sit with his elbows resting on his bent knees. “Don’t get me wrong, he listens to the captain, but he was really pissed off about it. And he doesn’t even like you,” Roach added, like an afterthought, “so he must really be mad at MacTavish.”
“I’m going to have to talk to him, aren’t I?” Ghost grumbled, to which Roach hummed his agreement— “just for the record, I don’t like Royce, either.”
“I know. You don’t like doctors. It’s not a bad thing,” Roach added, to the face Ghost had made, “everyone’s got their thing. Captain hates dogs. Archer can’t stand parachute drills, s’why he’s always the first out.”
“You don’t like being around the team, apparently,” Ghost added, only half joking— Roach frowned, but the slight twitch of his lips gave him away, as he flattened his blanket.
“I don’t think you get to lecture me on this,” he replied sniffily, as Ghost smiled wider at his misery.
“Haven’t you heard? I’m the new deputy, aren’t I?”
“Deputy Ghost,” Roach echoed, scrubbing a hand through his hair to flatten the red locks that stuck up at the side of his head. “Got a nice ring to it.”
“Deputy Roach doesn’t sound as nice, does it?”
“Oi,” Roach frowned, making a face. “I like my callsign.”
“Roaches are pests.”
“Roaches can’t get killed,” he insisted, and, in an oddly familiar movement, let his legs flop down on Ghost’s bed like it was his. “I like how I got it. No one even knows you’ve got yours.”
From outside, the sounds of drills were still going. A glance at his watch confirmed that there was nowhere Ghost needed to be— it didn’t matter that he probably should have been gone by that point, and carefully, Ghost tried to copy the casual way Roach just seemed to take up space.
From outside, a gust of wind blew through the window, making the blinds gently rock and a wash of cold air pass over the back of Ghost’s neck, where his mask had ridden up. He ran his hand over it, and then down over the skull patterned cheeks, trying to soothe the itch he knew would come pre-emptively—
“You really want to know?” He asked Roach, into the silence.
At that, Roach perked up. He had been flattening the blanket as if to fold it, revealing more of the cartoon in the process— it was a soft thing, careworn from childhood, belonging to Roach in the same sort of shameless way that everyone else got to have things that belonged to them. His eyes flickered up to Ghost’s, narrowing as he seemed to judge it.
“What— what, you’ll tell me?”
“If you don’t tell anyone else,” Ghost offered, leaning forward conspiratorially.
“No, no— I won’t,” Roach reassured him, nearly embarrassingly fast— “I won’t, but— so how did you get it?”
It probably wasn’t good to draw so many parallels to Tommy, looking at Roach. But it made it easier, somehow, to remember things about him when he was looking at them through Roach; he remembered how Tommy would get when Ghost needed tell him something, the earnestness that would cross his expression when he wanted to tell him something important— it made his heart do an odd thing in his chest, to be able to remember, without the splitting ache it normally brought about, the way Tommy would lean forward to listen, the way he’d frown to concentrate, the way he’d always believe anything Ghost told him.
“It was while I was in basic,” Ghost began, watching the way Roach’s eyes widened a fraction, surprised.
“You got your callsign that early?”
“Yeah— I know it’s not all that common, but—,” Ghost repeated the movement of running his hands over the pattern, before letting his hands drop and resting his elbows on his knees— “me and my brother— well, my brother mainly— he used to have these— nightmares, growing up.”
“Yeah?” Roach nodded, eyebrows furrowing slightly.
“We had a system to deal with them, the two of us— with the sheets, and— well,” Ghost waved it away as he spoke, interlacing his fingers as he looked away, “it doesn’t really matter. The point was, it was the first few nights, and I’d never been away from home, and Hereford was having this massive storm, right?”
“Right…”
“Thunder and lightning, rain, the whole works. I was dead scared. Kept waking up, too— you know how it gets between nightmares?” He glanced up at Roach, who nodded— “you’re so confused, you don’t know where you are?”
“Yeah— yeah, I do.”
“Well— I’d wrapped myself up in the sheets like always, but I was practically pissing myself scared, and I needed to be able to see,” Ghost explained— Roach nodded along, eyes never leaving his, hanging on to every word. “But I didn’t want to take them off, so I did the obvious thing— I took a pair of scissors, and cut these holes in the sheets that I could see through.”
“Course,” Roach nodded seriously, jaw set, “obviously.”
“I couldn’t stay there,” Ghost shook his head with the memory, deliberately staring into the far distance. “I got out of bed, didn’t even know where I was going. And then, there was another burst of lightning— everyone woke up, and—”
“You’re having me on,” Roach blinked with the realisation, the trance of the story breaking. “Aren’t you?”
“I am,” Ghost admitted, unable to help the grin as Roach threw his hands up, exasperated.
“Dickhead,” he groaned, rolling his eyes. “I believed you!”
“It’s just a callsign, Bug,” Ghost replied, leaning all the way back against the bed with a creak of springs. “Nothing to it.”
“So the thing with your brother?” Roach asked, glancing over at him. “You made that up, too?”
In the interim between the wind and the rain, when it was only the sun slanting through the dusty windows, it seemed quieter than it had any right to be. Ghost frowned at the question, but Roach didn’t seem offended, or more curious than he had a right to be— as he spoke, he’d run his hand over the blanket, smoothing out the pattern over the familiar parts.
“No.”
He didn’t know why he admitted it. There was no reason to tell him— no reason to encourage Roach’s curiosity, constantly seeking out information Ghost didn’t even know what he needed for. Despite himself, though, he continued before he could stop to consider what he was doing—
“But it wasn’t with the sheets. It was with the pillows. I’d layer them all on top of him, and— and it would just look like a pile of blankets. No one knew he was there.”
Roach nodded at that, but didn’t say anything else; the quiet didn’t feel as intrusive as he expected, though, no silent expectation for the other shoe to drop for the crime of being honest. One of Roach’s feet tapped as he seemed to consider it, and Ghost watched him trace the patterns on the blanket again without having to luck, muscle memory alone.
“Me and my brother used to make blanket forts,” Roach said, out of the blue. He glanced down at the blanket, and then up at Ghost, who lifted his eyebrows.
“You’re not wanting to build one now, are you?”
“I couldn’t build ‘em,” Roach replied, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “He could, though. I’d just stack up all my pillows next to the bed and crawl under it, and he knew it was awful, but he’d crawl under there with me. Used to call it a clubhouse, even if there wasn’t even any space.”
He glanced down at the blanket as he spoke, warm in his hands. It had been repaired more than once, the stitches blue on the edges, sticking out against the red fabric.
All the way at one end, past another little cartoon, was a tiny, embroidered set of initials, that decidedly didn’t belong to Roach.
“This the brother you don’t talk to anymore?” Ghost asked, before he could stop himself. Roach glanced up at him, but Ghost was still focused on the embroidery, on the careful stitching of it all, on the way it almost reminded him of his mother’s careful stitches when she was fixing Joseph’s clothes— until he looked up and met his eye, and found him uncharacteristically hurt.
It was too late to take it back; too late to backtrack, or correct himself. He must have made an expression, though, that Roach somehow picked up on even under the mask— he watched as he seemed to consider it for a moment, hesitating before he spoke.
“I—” Roach began, and shook his head slightly. “I never talked to him.”
“Hm?”
“He was— two years older than me?” Roach continued, halting as he spoke. “But he never talked— not as a baby, not when he got older. My mum was always worried about it, but she was too embarrassed to take him to the speech therapist, so— so she didn’t.”
Even before, Ghost had never considered himself to come across as particularly trustworthy— to be someone who was given things that were important enough to hesitate over. It almost reminded him of MacTavish, the way he’d simply trust him with things, things he could easily twist to use as a weapon, as if Ghost was worthy of it; it always made him feel slightly unsure, but it was only the idea that he would mess it up that was worse. Roach didn’t speak for several moments, and Ghost agonised over what to say, unsure that he’d say the wrong thing, lose what little peace he’d stumbled across—
“That’s why you know sign language?” He asked finally, watching the way Roach’s expression changed, as if he was returning from a distance, flattening the blanket again with the faintest hints of a smile.
“My mum didn’t like it. But my grandma dumped us at this community centre one day, and they were doing this lesson about it. I was seven, and he was nine. He never shut up after that,” Roach huffed, softer with the memory than he’d ever seen him, “couldn’t get him to stop. He always had something to say.”
There was a moment that Ghost didn’t know what to do with. It was almost embarrassing, the way he had never known what to do with the sort of quiet most people got when they thought about their families since basic; he’d learned not to say anything, easier than trying to pretend to understand it, but in the quiet, Roach seemed to become aware of himself, stiffening by reflex.
“He’s probably dead,” he said, like that explained it.
“Oh.”
“He ran away when he was nineteen,” Roach added, as if to clarify, glancing up at him— “the police said that there was nothing they could do about it. He was an adult. I waited, but— he wasn’t coming back, so I ended up enlisting.”
“How’d you know?”
“Hm?”
“That he wasn’t coming back,” Ghost explained, suddenly hyperaware of the fact he’d been nineteen when he’d left home, too. Roach gave half a shrug, like it didn’t really matter, sighing as he leaned back, not meeting his eye.
“He’d get— confused. Randomly. About where he was, or what was happening. He’d start shouting, and then he’d scare people,” he told him, dragging his hand through his curls. “And— and I know if he left, he must have been confused— he got confused, means he can’t get home.”
He had Tommy’s light eyes, and Tommy’s habit of chewing on his lips as he spoke, even if he was a few years younger than him. By habit, Ghost glanced at the door; in its frame, the pane wobbled with another lashing of wind and rain.
The bullet that had killed Tommy had been a high enough calibre that even though the entry point, between his eyes, had been small, the entire back of his skull had been blown off. Unbidden, the image of it suddenly gripped Ghost, the way his hair had been slick with blood and pieces of brain matter when he had lifted his head to cradle it, sticking to his hands, under his skin— the way it had reflected the Christmas lights, red and white, as he had held him.
“Spent eight years in those stupid sign language classes every week,” Roach mumbled, far away from where Ghost was, “trying to keep up with him.”
“Spent all that time for nothing,” Ghost echoed his own words back to him, softer than he meant.
Roach’s eyes snapped up to him. The contempt in his eyes, at the very least, was familiar; the exhale of amusement Ghost couldn’t help only served to incense him more, and he watched as his eyes narrowed, as he opened his mouth to snap a reply—
“My brother’s dead,” Ghost cut across him, before he could say anything. Whatever retort Roach had been waiting to say visibly died in his mouth; Ghost gave the same half-shrug Roach had given him, as if what he was saying wasn’t important, and wiped his gloved hands on each other to try and chase away the sensation of him on his hands.
The sounds from the distance seemed to have momentarily disappeared. In the silence, Ghost suddenly didn’t know what to do with himself— he sat up slightly, scuffing one boot against the floor, leaving a smear of mud where he had tracked it in.
“So you get it,” Roach replied finally, looking up at him. His hands had gone still over the blanket, buried in the soft fabric. “What’re you trying to get me to go out there for, then?”
Ghost blinked at him. Roach was meeting his eye with the same calculating look, the way he might have looked at him through a wall with thermal imaging, tracking him even as he hid; idly, Ghost repeated the movement of scrubbing his hands over his mask, exhaling softly.
“I dunno,” he replied, more honest than he expected. “Had some good times with him before he died, I s’pose.”
At the very least, Roach didn’t dignify the admission with a response; instead, he flattened the blanket one more time, but didn’t actually fold it, as if he couldn’t bear to actually hide the pattern. Ghost didn’t comment on it, and for a second, it was quiet— not the quiet that followed a bomb, or the quiet that followed the thump of a body against the ground; quiet, in a way Ghost closed his eyes to savour, taking a long, deep breath out. The rain chose that moment to drum against the window, and Roach yawned, stretching luxuriously; amused, Ghost huffed and leaned back, some of the tight feeling between his shoulderblades finally beginning to dissipate.
A knock sounded on the door, and if he wasn’t so annoyed by it, he might have been amused by the fact that Roach shot the door with an identical glare to the one Ghost was wearing. The next moment, however, the door swung open, and the knot of emotions Ghost had been staunchly burying twisted violently as if to remind him it was there at the sight of—
“Captain MacTavish,” Roach shot to his feet by apparent instinct, even as MacTavish waved him away, eyes on Ghost like a physical weight.
“At ease. What’re you doing here?”
“Did you need me?” Ghost replied, looking up at him.
“I need you in my office before half past,” MacTavish replied, with half a glance over at Roach.
“What about the meeting?”
“It got pushed. Don’t be late,” MacTavish told him, before turning on his heel to leave. Ghost opened his mouth to say something, but the door clicked shut before he could— he closed his mouth, and had to consciously remind himself to pull in a breath, staring at the spot where he had been. Roach was still standing, but when Ghost looked over at him, his eyes were also on the door, tracing over the absence of him; apparently sensing Ghost’s gaze, he looked back over to him, face colouring slightly when he realised Ghost had seen him. He sat down as Ghost lifted an eyebrow, frowning—
“I don’t like him,” Roach told him, like he had just decided it.
“Really?” Ghost replied, amused, as if the glimmer of admiration in Roach’s eye could have been mistaken for anything else. More insistent at his disbelief, Roach nodded stubbornly, folding his arms—
“Royce is right. He’s always asking you to do things. It’s— it’s not right,” Roach stressed, even as Ghost couldn’t help the slight smile. “You should tell him to give you a break.”
“Right.”
“I’m serious! You need to— stand up to him more!”
“If I stand up to any more commanding officers, Bug, they’ll kick me out,” Ghost replied, as Roach only got more stubborn, only frowning deeper.
“What does he have on you? Why d’you listen to him?”
“Pictures of my face,” Ghost deadpanned; Roach, predictably, blinked owlishly at him, eyes wide.
“Really?”
“No.”
“He’s been worse, recently,” he mused, as if he hadn’t heard Ghost. “I don’t even know why! It’s not like you did anything.”
“Have you ever considered that he just doesn’t like me, Bug?” Ghost replied, scrubbing a hand over his face; of all things, Roach only got more indigent, an incredulous laugh sounding between them.
“You’re not serious.”
“Why’s that so hard to believe?”
“He just gave you a promotion, made you second-in-command, who’re you kidding?”
“I don’t know what he was thinking,” Ghost defended, frowning at the way Roach only smiled wider in disbelief, shaking his head.
“He probably thought you’d be good at it. You are, by the way,” he added, so sincere that it gave Ghost pause; he couldn’t even comment on it as Roach continued: “and besides, he just walked all the way from his office to come find you!”
It almost had him in disbelief, the way Roach did it— stubbornly casual about it, too, as if the way he observed things was normal, as if anyone would expect him to have seen it. Ghost snorted before he could stifle it, and the sound had Roach’s eyebrows raising a fraction—
“You’re always bloody watching, aren’t you?”
The corners of Roach’s lips twitched, as if he was deciding between several things to say. Idly, he glanced down at the blanket, before pushing it to one side to talk, leaning forward like he was telling a secret.
“He does a face— when the two of you talk. His eyebrows relax.”
“His eyebrows relax,” Ghost echoed, half of him in disbelief, and the other half almost impressed by the way Roach said it like it was a truth anyone would believe. At his reaction, Roach shook his head, but didn’t back down, meeting his eye insistently—
“You just don’t see it. You would if you looked.”
He didn’t know how to explain to him that looking at MacTavish was like looking at the sun— like everything burned as he did, as if it would blind him if he did it too long, even if he could feel the way his skin warmed with it, the way his entire world fell into orbit with him even when he wasn’t there. Instead, he shook his head as if Roach was the one being ridiculous, despite the way his entire chest seemed to light up with the reminder that he really had walked all the way from his office to come looking for him; with a sigh that was only partially exaggerated, he stood, stretching as he did.
“You’re going?”
“Better go see what he wants, shouldn’t I?”
“You know the situation’s bleak when you’re hoping to be sent out on an op,” Roach commiserated, before sighing and scrubbing at his eyes. The wind battered against the window, sending a gust of cold air that brushed against the back of Ghost’s neck before he readjusted the mask; he got all the way to the door before he thought to turn, looking back to where Roach was eyeing the ground like it was a mattress.
“Sanderson.”
“Hm?”
“There’s a few offices that aren’t being used up by the medical wing. The ones on top.”
“Yeah?” Roach frowned, sitting up slightly. Ghost shifted from foot to foot as he decided to say it, folding his arms across his chest.
“The one right at the end of the corridor— it’s got a cot set up in it.”
“Oh?”
“I’ll give you the key,” Ghost offered, as Roach’s expression shifted, eyes narrowing slightly to follow, “if you go outside and run those drills with everyone else.”
Like he could see right through it, Roach frowned at that. Holding his ground, Ghost watched as his eyes flickered between the blanket, and up at the window, before he could practically see his conviction wavering, glancing between him and the rainy view outside the window.
“In this weather?”
“I’ll show you where I keep my Hobnobs.”
“Deal,” Roach agreed immediately, practically shooting to his feet; he had to be rubbing off on him, because Ghost couldn’t help the involuntary way his lips twitched at that. He left Roach to struggle to tug his boots on as he left to find MacTavish in his office; the office block had less windows than the rest of the place, so the lights had been switched on and the entire place was bathed in a yellow glow as he walked through it.
MacTavish’s office had been set up at one end of the corridor— no placard had been set up, but Ghost knew which it was without having to spare it a thought. Forgoing knocking, Ghost simply twisted the handle to let himself in, finding him engrossed in his apparent task of annotating a satellite image, writing hard enough to indent through the paper. He glanced up at him as he approached, and, like it was muscle memory, Ghost traced over the familiar indents of his scars, the lines around his eyes, from the safe distance of behind the desk. There was a split second before either of them spoke, where he could have sworn something familiar, almost tender, flashed in MacTavish’s eyes— the next moment, however, it disappeared behind the same sheen of detached professionalism, as if it had been a trick of the light.
“You asked to see me, sir?”
“Give me a second,” MacTavish told him, glancing back down at the map.
In normal circumstances, Ghost might have sat down on the seat opposite the desk without invitation; he wouldn’t have needed to think about it, the space already implicitly his. Instead, he stood by its side, hands clasped in one another, watching the way MacTavish finished up.
“You’re managin’ everything okay, then?” He asked, when Ghost didn’t say anything; he didn’t look up as he said it, as if it was only small talk, and Ghost nodded before he realised he couldn’t see him.
“I think so.”
“Good,” MacTavish replied, clicking the pen shut and folding the map away into a dossier. He glanced up at Ghost for a split second, before looking away, back to the papers on his desk— “we probably should have done this sooner.”
Ghost didn’t exactly know how to say how little he agreed— he didn’t know where he’d start if he did, if he’d mention the fact that he barely knew if he was managing the work, the way that he didn’t know what to do with the new trust everyone seemed to look at him with, or the way that, on more than one occasion, he’d gone to sleep with his palm pressed flat against his cheek, brushing his thumb up and down in an arc, in the blind hope that for a second when he woke up, he might think it was someone else. He stayed silent, because it was what he knew, and exhaled slowly as he looked away, back to the little window in the room, where the sun was just beginning to peek from behind the clouds again.
“I got the phone approved,” MacTavish began finally, picking up a padded yellow envelope and holding it out to him. Ghost nodded as he took it, feeling the familiar weight of it in his hands—
“You got Archer’s expedited?” He asked, turning it over— “he’ll be pleased, him and Wagner’ve been going on about this for the last—”
“That one’s yours.”
Ghost paused where he was still holding the envelope, eyes flickering up to MacTavish. The envelope was unmarked, and a little confused, he tore it open, looking at the contents.
“I— didn’t apply for one,” Ghost frowned— packaged with a few other papers, the phone was distinct from the depersonalised brick phone Shepherd tended to provide him with for orders, a smartphone that had been modified for security. It was shiny, cold even through the gloves, and he looked up at MacTavish for an explanation.
“It’s a pay-as-you-go SIM,” he told him, “it’s— it’s not in anyone’s name. I figured you might like your own phone number.”
The envelope creaked slightly in his hand as Ghost’s hand tightened around it. He blinked at it, and then blinked again, before looking down at it again, pulling the others paper free— they weren’t anything official, but he flicked through them— an email address set up with a secure relay, a blank medical form for him to fill in, and, hidden right at the bottom of the envelope—
“Is— is this a library card?” Ghost asked as he pulled it free, looking at it in his hand. It was plain, striped with pink, and emblazoned with the logo of the Hereford Central libraries; he turned it over, and in letters deliberately unlike the heavy-handed scrawl MacTavish always wrote things with, he found his own name, written in neat, legible letters at the back.
It had been an embarrassingly long time since he’d seen his name written on anything but a gravestone. He stared at it, reading it over and over, suddenly worried that the heat of his hand might end up smudging the ink—
“Don’t let anyone see that.”
“No— no, of course,” Ghost agreed immediately, tucking it in an inner pocket— he looked down at the rest of it again, tilting his head to take it in— “but— I didn’t apply for any of this, why did you—?”
“Shepherd said a probationary period of 12 weeks,” MacTavish replied; he never normally fidgeted, but Ghost watched the tight-fisted way he picked up the pen from before, clicking it open and closed— “before then, it’s too risky to get anything approved with your actual name on it— but I figured there was no harm in a headstart.”
Putting it right. That had been what MacTavish had called it; giving him back an identity, because he wanted Ghost to be able to say no to him before he’d let himself say yes.
Ghost’s heart was doing something odd in his chest. His desk was covered in things he had to organise, to plan, to do to make sure people didn’t die in the midst of a world war— in the middle of it, even stationed miles away from home, he’d found time to get the documents, to secure him a phone, to get a headstart— almost as if, if Ghost dared to believe it, he was as desperate for it all as Ghost was.
“Oh,” Ghost said softly, the only thing he could think to say. He glanced down at the phone again— a smartphone, almost passable for the type of thing a civilian would carry, unmarked, not designed for the sole purpose of being as indestructible as possible for missions.
“They’re selling phone cases at the commissary,” MacTavish told him, as if Ghost’s heart wasn’t suddenly drumming so fast against his chest he was sure MacTavish could hear it too. “There was one with a skeleton on it.”
He’d looked. He hadn’t been able to buy it, because he had no reason to, but MacTavish had looked at the phone cases— as if he wanted Ghost to keep the phone, as if he needed to keep it safe, as if it wasn’t temporary.
When he looked up at MacTavish, it was the same expression as always— the detached, practised expression they all had to wear, distant and objective. But the phone in his hand was cold, and the handwriting in his inner pocket was tucked close to his heart, his own name written— he had to know what a risk it was, the amount of trouble both of them would get in if anyone caught Ghost carrying it around, but all the same, Ghost pressed his hand over it to feel the shape of it through the fabric of his jacket.
“Is— that alright?”
“Yeah,” Ghost replied breathlessly, when he realised he hadn’t said anything. He swallowed, throat oddly tight, and nodded again— “yeah, it’s— fine, sir.”
“Good,” MacTavish replied, and for a moment, they just looked at each other. The furrow in MacTavish’s eyebrows seemed to disappear as he did, the lines around his eyes softening— he tilted his head slightly as he looked up at Ghost, and the light from his desk lamp seemed to soften his features, hiding the shadows under his eyes and painting the scar over his eye gold.
The sun caught the raindrops in the window, reflecting them as little spectrums. The sounds of the drills were louder from the office blocks, and the horizon was visible in a green that didn’t even compare to the shade of MacTavish’s eyes as they caught the light, deep and earnest.
In the distance, a door slammed, and it seemed to blink them both out of the moment. MacTavish blinked, and then looked back down to his desk, picking up a second envelope with Archer’s name on it, and the dossier containing the map he had just been annotating.
“Give this phone to Archer— remind him about the standards when we’re guests on base, even if he’s upset at Wagner,” MacTavish added, as Ghost took them— “look over those, tell me if you see any better vantage points than the ones I’ve marked.”
“Copy.”
“The meeting’s starting in five minutes— look them over, annotate anything you need to add, see if you can get any satellite pictures of the base that’re more recent.”
Straightening, Ghost nodded, tucking the phone carefully into his pocket to hold the papers under his arm.
He wasn’t suited for the position— he was barely managing to keep on top of the responsibilities MacTavish had given him, let alone what everyone else had trusted him with; it was overwhelmingly fast, far too busy, utterly centreless in a way that made him feel constantly unmoored.
“Thank you,” Ghost replied, more earnest than he knew what to with, “captain.”
MacTavish’s eyes flickered down to the papers, and then back up at him, meeting his eye.
“Bring those back here as soon as you can, alright?”
Back to him as soon as he could. Ghost nodded, the feeling of the mask itching suddenly dissipated with how warm his skin felt under the mask.
“Yes, sir.”