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reds-skull · 6 months

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Not Alive, Nor Dead

[PREV PART]

If you didn't see that post, I've started cross posting this on ao3! This one was a lot of fun, a lot of angst, just how I like it. I wasn't that satisfied with the last chapter, so I consider this one a fix for it lol

“PRICE!” Ghost bangs on the door. He jolted out of his shock after minutes of staring at the blood slowly seeping into the tarmac concrete, and immediately sped towards the Captain’s office.

Price shoots through his head “stop making a scene and get in Lieutenant, fucking hell”

He enters and slams the door shut, “what the fuck happened on Soap’s mission?” he spits.

Price in silent for a few moments, and Ghost realizes he’s looking at the mental image burned in his brain, of Soap, leg missing, face half-burnt, remaining eye dead and staring through him-

“Did he go to medical?” Price interrupts his thoughts.

“He- Garrick followed him. Don’t know where he went.” Ghost sputters.

Price clicks his mouse a couple of times, “I should have the report from his CO here…”

His brows furrow and moustache twitch, “Says here he infiltrated an underground facility, which stored weapon manufacturing equipment.”

Ghost sighed, “and it exploded.”

Price gazes at his eyes. Ghost clenches his jaw when he sees pity in them.

“It collapsed on him. The unit got orders to stay back, MacTavish radioed in to inform them he can’t walk, but they didn’t want to risk rescuing him with all the chemicals burning…”

Ghost’s chest shuddered.

Price continues, “Soap dragged himself to exfil… it took him three hours.”

The Captain said more afterward, but Ghost wasn’t listening anymore. He’d seen a lot of wounds, hell he inflicted the worst himself, but something about the image of Soap, helpless and alone, dragging himself through miles of wreckage…

“Captain.” Ghost lets out in an eerily calm voice.

“I won’t let Soap on another mission under a different CO.” Price’s eyes narrow as they see his thought process.

“Whatever you’re thinking of doing, Ghost, it would be wise not to vocalise it.”

Ghost looms over Price, eyes itching to close. The Captain launches a flurry of thoughts, distractions, tearing his mind away from the call of Limbo.

They both stare at each other, eyes wide. Ghost hasn’t lost control like this in… years.

“...I’ll do what I can, Lieutenant. For now, go take care of Soap, make sure he gets to medical.”

Ghost hardens himself to the hurricane of emotions fogging his head, “yes sir.”

Medical is quiet, the nurses barely glancing at him before doing another take to gape at the Lieutenant. He asks the head nurse about MacTavish, and the man shakes his head, face confused.

Where the hell did Soap go?

He decides to search for Gaz instead, hoping one leads to another.

Ghost didn’t have to go far, and after calmly demanding from several recruits information on him, finds the man looking dejectedly at a door, Soap’s door.

“Why didn’t you take him to medical?” He voices behind him. Gaz visibly jumps and turns around, his face crestfallen.

“Bloody hell… Soap went straight here. Didn’t listen to a word I said.” Garrick returns to look at the door, “Just locked himself up and hasn’t made a sound since.”

Ghost stares the door up and down, and knocks. He’ll try to be civilized, even if his blood is close to boiling.

“Sergeant? Open the door.”

Nothing.

“That’s an order, Soap.”

Not a squick.

Ghost’s hands form tight fists, he takes a step back, and mutters, “don’t say I didn’t fuckin’ warn you…”

He’s about to kick the damn door to high hell when Garrick stops him, “are you mental?! Let me get the lock picking kit from your room, you fuckin’ animal”

“How the fuck do you know I have a lock picking kit there?” Ghost growls.

Gaz just gives him his signature ‘are you shitting me’ look before turning around to go get the kit.

The lock easily clicks, and Ghost hesitates for a split second before entering. There is no place for things such as emotions right now. The earlier almost-disaster showed him so, he needs to be the Lieutenant now. A soldier first, human last.

The room reeks of tangy metallic blood, and is shrouded in darkness, the light peeking through the shitty military blinds is all that lets Ghost see the vague shape of Soap. The Sergeant has curled up in his bed, facing the wall, hugging his blanket tightly.

When his eyes start adjusting, Ghost can see blood already seeping through it.

“You were supposed to go to medical, Sergeant.”

Gaz joins him in the small room, and flicks the light on.

Soap instantly shoots up, a furious way to his movements.

“Shut it off! Why the fuck are ye all ‘ere!” He near screams.

Garrick frightens, “we just wanted to know if you’re bloody fine-”

“TURN THE LIGHT OFF” Soap yells. He makes an effort to hide his face.

Ghost reaches over and slams the switch off. The room plunges back into the dark and Ghost’s chest is hammering confusingly. Gaz seems as equally shaken as his mind.

“Sergeant-”

Soap cuts him off “Aye aye ‘ye need teh go teh medical Sergeant’ what’s the feckin’ point of it huh?!” His silhouette goes rigid, voice tense, “ye all know they don’t help me. CAN’T help me. So why are ye all really here?”

Garrick tries to start, “we were worried-”

“Worried?! About what? It’ll all heal anyway.” He barks a chilling laugh, “a month or two and there won’t even be a scar. No, I know why yer all here.”

Ghost grinds his teeth as Soap continues, “yer here to tell me ‘I told ye so!’, yer here to tell me how feckin’ dumb I am, how ye all saw it coming, and I didn’t listen to any of it.”

It’s at that moment that Ghost notices Soap’s fingertips hadn’t been lit since he came back.

He notices because his hands suddenly ignite, flames going up the back of them as he gestures.

“Well, I’m sure ye all are laughing now! Gaun yerselves! Piss off!” Soap’s one good eye shines oddly at the light, the fire casting sharp shadows on his mangled features.

Gaz opens his mouth, but Ghost grabs his shoulder, and turns them both around. Only when the door is shut behind them, he tells Garrick, “we heard enough. Price will handle it from here.”

Gaz mouth turns downwards, “but-!”

“That’s enough Sergeant.”

The Sergeant sighs before storming off. Ghost doesn’t blame him.

Price has notified them that Soap is currently on medical rest, and according to his previous injuries, should be able to walk around in the next 5 or so days.

8 days later, Ghost hasn’t seen the door to his room open once. He knows Gaz has been leaving meals outside his room, and that Price often communicates with the Sergeant through it.

The Captain tells him on the eighth day that Soap isn’t healing as fast as he should, and hasn’t left the room because he can’t. It’s on that day Ghost decides he had enough, and against Price’s orders to leave Soap alone, comes to stand in front of the accursed door and knock.

As expected, no one invites him in, so he opens the (luckily) unlocked door, and shuts it softly behind him.

Soap is sitting in his cot, looking cleaner than over a week ago, but Ghost can’t tell the extent of his injuries under the blanket and the new medical face mask adorning his nose and mouth.

The Sergeant is warily looking up at Ghost now, like he’s readying for an attack. Ghost takes a sit at his desk chair, and maintains eye contact. Soap looks more uncomfortable by the minute.

“Heard you haven’t been healing.” Ghost slowly remarks.

Soap turns his head away, looking straight on at the wall. “I… I’m not sure why.”

Ghost taps a finger on the desk, “you feel like it’s pointless.”

Soap laughs humorlessly, “does it matter what I feel?”

“The brass loves to act like our powers are explained by science, by logic.” Ghost drags a nail on the fake wood grain, “like to say they can control it, when we barely control it ourselves.”

The Sergeant nods slowly.

He decides to drop the question that’s been at the top of his list of ‘Soap’s mysteries’, “Why do they not let you use your explosions?”

Soap then looks back at Ghost, partly amused, in a sad kind of way, “they allowed me to use them. I demanded not to.”

“6 years ago I was…” Soap sighs. “It’s classified.”

Ghost’s throat chokes on red tape yet again, “tell me what you can.” he encourages.

The Sergeant is lost in thought for a moment, shifting in bed.

“When I died, my Reaper asked me what I wanted most”, Soap inhales, as if the next words need more space in his lungs, “I said I wanted to live.”

Ghost edges closer to Soap, almost whispering, “what did it say?”

Soap leans in, “that I was wrong. That I wanted… revenge” His eyes bright with untold stories.

Revenge.

“WHAT DO YOU NEED, SIMON RILEY?

I need

To kill him.

I need to kill all of them.

YOU NEED REVENGE”

A mirthless laugh echoes in the small room, “and I got it, but not in the way I wanted…”

Soap grims, “I never wanted… to murder all those people…”

“And you don’t use explosions because… you’re afraid?” Ghost inquires, mind still whirling with emotions he’s not made to be capable of.

“I don’t deserve to use them.” Soap said with an air of finality.

“But you deserve to get blown up every other week?” Ghost reacted incredulously.

The Sergeant didn’t reply.

Flames dance in his palms, flickering to imaginary wind, almost as fast as the emotions did on his face.

“Killing yourself won’t bring them back. It won’t change a thing.”

“It might make me feel less shit.”

“Did it?”

Soap purses his lips “...no.”

“You’re a good man, Soap. Guilt’s a sign it’s true.”

Soap side eyes him, “You don’t know what I did. You don’t know how…” He grasps his blanket tightly, “how much destruction I…”

“You know, some of the rumors about me are true.” Ghost spares him from the self flagellating spiral.

Soap frowns, “which ones?”

“About me sending friendlies into Limbo.”

He feels the horror that those words represent leak into the air.

“The higher ups were mad with power. Saw me as a cheat code.”

Ghost regards the twisted expression on Soap, “used it as much as they could.”

Soap swallows and whispers, “what made them stop?”

“The costs outweighed the benefits. Limbo became something even I can’t fully control.”

The phantom pain, the loss he felt all those years ago, Ghost sees it in Soap’s eyes. In the way he acted all those weeks ago on the training grounds, as if rediscovering his own powers. But in his case, he held his own leash. He handed the controls to the brass, to men who see numbers instead of sky blue eyes.

Ghost won’t let him go on this path anymore. It may be the easiest, but it’s killing him. No matter how ‘explosion proof’ he is.

“Show me your face” Ghost says.

Soap’s eyes narrow in amusement, and he shoots back, “that’s very rich coming from ye.”

Ghost rolls his eyes, should’ve seen that coming. The decision to lift his hand and roll up his mask up to his nose was, a little worryingly, easy.

Soap’s mouth drops in surprise, and a smile almost forms on Ghost’s lips from how dumbfounded the Sergeant looks.

“Well? Got any other excuses, MacTavish?”

Soap blinks rapidly and glares at him, “right bastard you are…”. He carefully takes off the medical face mask, to reveal the still burnt flesh, and the teeth poking through his cheeks. He averts his eyes down, the little confidence he built up during the conversation dissipating into nothing.

“Still as shite as I remember.” Ghost says, half sarcastically.

The flesh around his mouth contorts into a mockery of his usual smile, “always had such a way with words, LT”

They become silent for a moment, Ghost thinking about his next course of action.

“Haven’t seen Price this active in revenant training in a while” he muses.

Soap looks at the blanket confused.

“Since you arrived, he’s been talking about how much potential you have.” He elaborates.

“Fat load of shite that gave him…” Soap mumbles.

Ghost used his commanding voice, “Are you saying I’m lying, Sergeant?”

Soap startles and straightens his back, “no sir”

Ghost exhales, “because I’m not. Gaz has been much more happy with you around. Finally found someone as annoying as him”.

Soap’s mouth stretches in a smile, and Ghost watches the wounds starting to close, “oi! Someone has to bring fun to you old sods.”

“I know how to have fun.” Ghost mutters in fake incredulity.

Soap laughs, and the flesh on his cheek covers his teeth completely, “Aye LT, yer a real party animal.”

Ghost feels a small smile grace his face. The burns are now barely visible, the Sergeant looking more like himself than he has in days.

“I’m… glad to work with you again, Sergeant.” Ghost lets out.

Soap stops his giggles, and he smiles in that way that makes Ghost feel warmer, “I missed ye too, LT”.

They stay like this, talking and taking the piss for who knows how long, all while Ghost watches the various injuries disappear from Soap’s body.

They may be broken beyond repair.

But maybe they could find a way to heal.

Anyone that caught the reference to the comic will receive my eternal love.

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