Chapter Text
The last time Kyle had seen you alive, you were smiling because he had just stopped by your desk to offer a flower and a kiss. You blushed and looked at him like he had performed a sonnet he’d written special for you. You had a way of making him feel like the loveliest person alive for such small gestures. He knew it couldn’t be true, he couldn’t be the loveliest, because you were right in front of him.
Of all the ways the love of a special task force agent’s life could die, it was the simplicity that hit Kyle like a sack of bricks. When he heard what happened, the soldier that had borne witness to wanton murder and perverted cruelty was reduced to a heaving, sobbing mess.
A car accident. Straight through the windshield. A snapped neck, and you were gone in an instant. You felt no pain.
And you weren’t at fault. How could you be? No action on your part, no time for reaction. He almost wished it was you that plowed your car into another, so that he could forgive you. He wished you were alive.
He wanted to see your body. He wished he hadn’t been so stubborn. Price told him it was a bad idea, he didn’t care. It was awful.
Your pretty face, he could see where you took the brunt of the damage, the skin on your forehead bashed open from the impact when you collided with your windshield, he could see your fractured skull. Your beautiful eyes - which always made him feel so adored when they landed upon him - …one was glassy and unfocused, and the one just under the point of impact was completely mangled. He saw where the glass cut into your delicate skin, dragging down your neck all the way to your torso. It ended just above your belly button, where the front of you was penetrated by the ragged glass of the remaining windshield.
Your death was a violence he never expected from you.
The team crumbled without the ribbon holding them together. You were not only Kyle’s love, but the beating heart of his entire team. Initially a quiet, steadfast and hardworking secretary, you bloomed into a precious aspect that provided love and comfort to a team full of broken men. Then you were washed away.
They performed their missions as usual, but the easy, casual atmosphere that emerged in between froze and shattered beneath your casket. Both Kyle and Johnny would make an effort to engage, but neither could be bothered to push when met with a brick wall.
The little light between the lines of their grueling work extinguished, replaced with nothing but scorched earth beneath their feet. The wound your death had left seared with every word left unsaid between Kyle and his team. He felt desperate to pull it together, but the hurt was still too raw for him to do it on his own. He could imagine what his team felt. Nobody could be there for each other.
The grief was all consuming, but it couldn’t affect their work. They were tough and tanky enough to push through to the end. They had to be.
Until, one day, it all fell apart.
It was a few weeks after your burial. They were almost done, they had already called in exfill, when their truck collided with a citizen vehicle. The team were all fine, but the citizen who had been driving the car that hit them was not. The picture of this man, crumpled through his windshield, wailing in agony and begging for help in a language he did not understand, shattered Kyle in that moment. He had been hardly tied to reality to begin with, sloughing through the days with little notice, floating through the motions. But this snapped him back so brutally that his mind could not withstand the shock.
He was completely bereaved, he clambered over Johnny to reach the door so he could tumble out and land heavily on his hands and knees. He heaved, vomiting up his meager breakfast and sobbing so hard and loud that he could’ve certainly blown their operation to pieces if his team weren’t so quick to abandon their totaled truck, collect him by the straps of his uniform, and drag him to the meeting area. He sputtered and stumbled the whole way, dragging his feet and becoming so overwhelmed with grief at times that he collapsed and heaved all over again, but Simon refused to leave him behind.
If he was able to be present, he would’ve heard Price updating exfill with their new location in a voice so shaky and unlike him that Laswell asked if everything was okay. He would have seen Johnny stumbling and weeping beside him, keeping himself just together enough as to not place any more of a burden on Simon, who Kyle would’ve felt dragging him along with determined fury.
Kyle couldn’t even register that they were in the heli and off the ground. He couldn’t even realize they had made it back to base. He couldn’t notice that, while Price and Soap had stayed with him to monitor him in his way, Simon had disappeared.
He entered a fugue state, unsure for how long. Visions of his teammates blurred at the periphery of his sight, he was mostly thinking of you.
Every day and night he wished for you to still be alive. He wished for all of this to have been a horrible nightmare. Every morning, you were still gone, and the pain never went away.
Eventually, after days of being dragged to the shower and having food shoved down his throat with almost no mind for who was doing it, his consciousness sank back into his body. Completely exhausted, dehydrated, and in severe need of a bathroom, Kyle exited his bunk. After languidly washing up, he entered the common room to find Price and Johnny sitting in muggy silence. Despite his disorientation from being inebriated with his grief, Kyle was still able to sense the immense tension in the room. They had just learned something horrible.
“What happened,” he asked, more like a statement. Johnny looked at him unquietly over his shoulder, eyes wide, like he was scared. Price was much more firm, looking directly into Kyle with such humid meaning that he felt like he needed to understand without a word. Normally, he would be able to. He didn’t know if it was per his discombobulation, or if it was because he was missing a piece of the puzzle.
He heard the back door open, and watched Price and Johnny snap their heads toward the sound before laggingly turning around to find Simon’s silhouette blocking the door.
“Kyle,” Simon grunted, in a way that might’ve convinced Kyle he was surprised. “I see you’re up.”
“Yeah,” Kyle shrugged noncommittally. He looked back to the others, whose eyes were trained toward Simon, searching. Johnny looked pale.
He turned back to Simon, who sighed and looked down. There’s a loud silence, Kyle could hear the questions festering in Johnny’s mind, feel the anticipation rolling off him and Price. Simon himself was motionless, hesitant in a way Ghost never is. Kyle heard a shuffle, like shoes against the floor, and found his head snapping toward Simon. Eyes trained and searching, just like the others.
Simon’s eyes found his one more time, which would be his last warning, before stepping aside.
Behind him was you. Alive.