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Three and a half weeks, nearly a month; twenty-three days, seventeen hours, fifteen minutes and 20 seconds counting. The heart monitor beeps steadily in the distance, the noise hammering into Ghost’s head; counting the seconds.
It started in Dresden, along die Elbe in some dive you happily trotted to like a dog on its way to the park. All five of them were shoved in a booth in the corner but the air was sweltering with joviality; no matter where you tried to hide away the ruckus from inner reaches of the pub snaked out and soaked into your skin.
You and Soap were four pints down in some German beer that you couldn’t say without slurring and it didn’t look like either of you were going to stop; It got to the point where even the waiter couldn’t fully understand you. Price and Gaz were reminiscing, swapping their sides of the same story to each other, arguing over who was giving accurate details— oblivious to the fact that no one else was listening. Ghost was sandwiched in the middle of it all. Fatigue ground at his bones, cemented within the bags under his eyes. In any other situation the feeling of Gaz’s constant shifting or your consistent weight on his arm would annoy him to no end. Now, though, it was a reassuring anchor.
German slipped off your tongue in quick succession, her voice like thick lacquer, coating Ghost’s psyche as you sputtered next to him in a language that made his head swim. Soap on the opposite side of the booth slurrying incoherently back at you in a thick accent; like molasses. Trying to keep up. Trying and failing and laughing all around.
“Would ya quit jabberin’ on wit ya runny mouth of yours and down the round you’re behind, bonnie? Almost makes me pity the piss drink not passin’ yer lovely lips.”
“Du magst es, gib es zu, Barbarische Schotte.” You rolled your eyes, bringing the bottle to her lips. Ghost caught Soap’s annoyance at another dodge to his flirtations.
“English ye daft woman, I’can’t understand a damn word comin’ from ya anymore.” Soap groaned, setting down his bottle.
“You wouldn’t understand German if it hit you in the face.” She took a swig. “If it tastes like piss then why’re you drinkin’ it like spring water?”
“Alcohol tempers my judgment, hen.”
He wasn’t the only one.
Ghost was nursing his second glass of a scotch blend you recommended, a smooth, burning taste that billowed throughout his body the same way your slurry German scraped across his skin, raspier throughout the night as the alcohol soaked your vocal chords.
This all started in Dresden.
It started when Soap pulled away from the conversation, turning his attention over to Gaz to bother him about something Ghost didn’t care to listen to. Your hand slinked to his glass, turning it between her fingers.
“You don’t like it?” Your voice heavy but soft, the opposite of your tone with Soap. He hummed, reaching out and pushing the glass deeper into your hand. “Pengelig.” You looked at him through you eyelashes as you brought the drink to her lips. You looked at him like he held the world in his hands. You thigh nudged his, mirroring the way your shoulders never parted. Ghost wouldn’t have it any other way.
It was probably the alcohol.
Maybe it started before Dresden. Maybe it started before your warm, alcohol soaked body leaned against him in that pub beside die Elbe two days before their departure to Slovakia. Maybe it was before, when his ears were ringing from a flash bang somewhere outside of Merano Meran; when your body lurched under his arm and pulled him away.
“Stay above the tide, big boy.” You had said so softly despite the present situation. Probably assuming he couldn’t hear her.
Maybe it was even earlier, in a ghost town in-between the stretches of Qa’im and Rutba, when they uncovered hostages; children and women cowering in corners. Your broken arabic making them giggle as you clutched the younger ones in your arms.
When you began to pass glances at each other during briefings, when your partnership finally clicked and you became each other’s mind readers. Calls across the battlefield where as little as a single word was uttered. When he could finally become reliant on another teammate despite his better judgment.
His reliance will be his downfall.
There was always a mission that felt like the world was collapsing. Makarov’s lackey, Mikhail Drozdov was right in their hands, and you were right in his; bloody and bruised, six inches of steel jutting into your guts before the heel of your hand collided with his throat, so the story goes. Soap landed a shot on his shoulder, finally taking the wight of the man off your body. You gasped, gagged, and coughed up blood, the excess dripping from the corner of your mouth. Ghost heard the shouts over the comms, frantically looking through the windows of the abandoned warehouse through the scope of his rifle to put image to sound. You could be dying— dead— and he would have no idea. No control. His hands buzzed, cemented to his rifle. But like a good soldier he stayed in place, just in case there was more to come.
He heard Price over the comms; Drozdov was contained. But between the relief of a mission success there were shouts for medical. An airlift. Something quick.
There was too much blood. And you were dying.
Maybe it was really Munich where it all began. Early in your acceptance to the 141, past just being a fill in; a volunteer. They hid from spies hunting their trail in her safehouse outside of the city. It was a surprisingly cold place, looking so un-lived in considering your sentimental nature. The same person who decorated themselves in talismans and pictures of every little person and thing that impacted your life. Here everything was plain. Blank. Dreary cream walls with off-white trim. The whole place felt like a past better left forgotten. Like the cracked walls in his childhood home.
In a desk drawer he spotted a creased photo beneath a stack of papers; a group of five, including you, all in full dress. Uniforms sparkling. You froze when he mentioned it, eyes wide like he pointed a gun to your head. When the two of you cleared the place of all traces of your stay he shoved the photo into a pocket of his vest. Not knowing you were watching him the entire time.
“Why’d you take it? The photo?” The truck hummed beneath them, Munich left behind.
Ghost kept his eye on the road, “dunno. Didn’t think something like that was worth leavin’ behind.”
“Some things deserve to be left behind.”
It was the chipping at your layers, ever so many of them. They coated you like candied chocolate, chipping and falling away once one’s fingers were pressed against the surface; Melting. Your file was nothing; nothing against the red tape that wrapped around you. Ghost tried but pulling station got him nowhere. Only an arched brow from Price and papers soaked in redacted text. You don’t talk about Igarka, not allowed to, unless your bleeding out in your arms, spilling everything, high on adrenaline and gripping the sleeve of the only person around you thinking your loved ones’ memories will die on your lips. The image is burned into Ghost’s retinas: You, prone in Soap’s arms, shivering. Eyes wide like he was death himself, ready to take you away from this wretched world. Maybe to somewhere calmer, warmer. Easy now after a life of pain and pain. Again and again.
“We were betrayed. To livestock to kill. Numbers on a page. Expenses to be paid. What’s a couple grand for some funeral expenses to send in the mail. Little envelopes and a boxed up flag.” Your forehead pressed hard against his shoulder, your eyes squeezed shut. “Not like I had any family to pay.”
The heart monitor beeped. It had been three and a half weeks since he pried you out of Soap’s quivering arms. Since you were put under; comatose. Ghost never left your side, he couldn’t. Price had to rip him away from you when you went under the knife, when you were transported to a hospital D.C.; an ocean away from it all. He couldn’t leave you after Soap’s account; his hands writhing and knee bouncing as he was made to tell every detail of their capture from start to finish for insurance’s sake, his voice was rasped, like he screamed a hell’s worth before this moment.
Ghost believed it.
“He wanted names of spies, as if we had the time to sneak past his britches and infiltrate his bloody program. They gave him shite, it was the fire in their eyes that made him remember them I think.”
Now Drozdov had a new motive. The last lamb he was promised to slaughter. Ghost can’t shake the look of his Sergeant’s eyes, even now, as he recounted the next moments; the grip of his hands together tightening to white knuckles.
“It was like he was a wild fuckin’ animal, invigorated and all; threw them down to the ground with no regard-” the reason for the ever-blooming bruise on your cheekbone started to make more sense. “He liked watching them bleed, watching them cry. Like some sick snuff film. He wanted to kill them slow.” Soap had swallowed a world of emotions between sentences. Price’s hands hovered over the keyboard, a distant look in his eyes; they all had it.
America was stuffy, at least in this hospital it was. The nurses were all the nicer, though they didn’t hide the apprehension in their voices around him. You were home; a home that never seemed to belong to any part of you except your accent. It was like an anchor, cementing you to this identity that never exactly fit. Though you never fit in one singular box. It was something Ghost always liked about you. This unique versatility. It helped you meld to your old team. And this one.
Ghost lingered in your hospital room, not needing to swap shifts with anyone, even if asked he would refuse. Though sleep often found him. There were many times that he was roused from a fitful nap to a blanket around his shoulders and a tumbler of tea on the table beside him. Still you were stagnant in the bed. Ghost stared until he could spot your chest rising with every breath. The heart monitor still beeped in the back of his head.
Again and again.
It may have started in Dresden, or Munich, or in the streets of Italy, or in the deserts of Iran; before this all when you walked into the briefing room for the first time, heady and determined, a fire in your voice when you spoke of the man that ruined your life. It may have started without Ghost really knowing, but it led him here. To staring at himself in your hospital room’s bathroom mirror gripping at his skin asking himself why the fuck wasn’t he there with you? Why wasn’t he faster? The image of his two closest friends coddled together gripping onto each other as an anchor as their realities tore themselves apart burning into his eyelids, the sound of your pained gasps as your punctured lung began to fail searing into his ear drums.
“I can’t forget it, never. They’ve been through everythin’, I know it, but I ain't’ never heard them cry like that.”
Three and a half weeks, twenty-three days, seventeen hours, fifteen minutes and 28 seconds counting.
29.
30.
Deep breaths. There were tears stinging at the corners of Ghost’s eyes. You’ll wake up, he knows it. You damn well could claw out of hell on your hands and knees if it came to it. It was the after, the thought of seeing it all on your face again, the remembering. You were so peaceful at this moment, your long eyelashes gracing the apples of your cheeks. Sleeping beauty, you. Your chest swelled at an even pace with every breath. A solid assurance. The chain you dutifully wore returned to its spot against your chest.
Your father’s crucifix, your old captain’s dog tags along with your own. and a singular dog’s canine tooth.
So sentimental.