SUMMARY / it’s one thing to be fearless, and another to fear your own domain.
AUTHOR’S NOTE / holy this is my THIRD time posting this. p sure my main is shadow banned so i’m here for now! (hopefully this fixes it, and if it doesn’t… man idk)
“Comin’ up for your shift, Lt?”
“Yeah, Johnny. Gimme a minute.”
Soap flicks his comms off, mumbling a few native insults while drawing out his “knackeredness.” The grumbles and complaints don’t end until he has his bag fully zipped up, glancing over in your direction with a lopsided smile.
“You sure you’ll be okay here, Cobra?” His brow quirks in slight concern, offering a dusted blanket over. “Bein’ alone with that dafty might drive y’a up the wall.”
“You’re not much different, Johnny.” The mock of Ghost’s accent on his nickname drives a scowl up his face, turning away with an impolite wave in your direction. “Night, Soap!”
“Haud yer wheesht!”
An amused snort follows the overly dramatic slam of the door, leaving you alone atop the headquarter’s watchtower. Despite being only roughly 100 feet in the air, you feel impossibly higher, nagged on by ravenous winds seeping through the open window above you. The loss of Soap beside you cultivates the space colder, crawling silent shivers up your spine despite the thick layers padded against it.
Siberia is a cold, dark place. Slithering with frigid hands and souls. Not a sliver of spare warmth would be welcomed in the Mother Lands, as if it was whispering to you in relentless gusts and coats of verglas.
You’re not Russian. You’re not welcome here.
In a sense, it was right. This was not your domain, and it showed in the steady increase of casualties and careless injury. Price had to call off his post from a fractured wrist, and Gaz nursed the brand of the bullet in his honor. Even worse, Ghost had bit the frigid depths of Russia with his forearm. The entire expanse of its left side, porcelain bandages dimmed to ivory in the night.
A soft abrasion of cloth and the dent of metal pieces what you could not see of him together. Quietly pulling Soap’s chair to the side to make room. Completely devoid of breath and reaction in his descent to the floor, and the silent twitch of his eyelid after that, snapped back to normalcy once he senses your gaze. The shift of his back against the sleeted concrete unshadows him further, breaking his quietude upon seeing the grin perched upon your features.
“What are you up to?”
The question is simple, tinged with a drop of faux irritation. You see straight through it, yet, feel the smile dropping from your face regardless. He’s quick to notice your change in posture, and turns away.
“Simon.” Your call falls to deaf ears, so you gently nudge his calf with your foot. “What’s up?”
“Nothin’. Don’t worry about it.”
His response is coarse, a bark amidst the chilling gusts of wind that carries it away. Filled to the brim with it a defensiveness you hadn’t witnessed in quite a while, packed with a sting that had you biting your cheek. You’d known it all too well, countless fights and acts of seclusion had spelled it out perfectly. And, as if you’d needed an extra push to confirm it, your eyes drop, taking in the soft jitter of gloved hands.
Just one of many callsigns of a brittle man’s anxiety. A fearless machine on the field turned to a wisp of the wind, eyes glossy and sour, silently corroding in his own skin.
It makes you feel sick, the pungent tang of fear coating your tongue in full. Your throat is chalk dry, sweat glazed eyes frantically coasting around the room. Desperately searching for something, a reason.. a way to stop it.
Ghost liked the scent of wood— liked nature even more. Wouldn’t have minded the slight mess of weaponry laid out in front of you, and certainly would’ve voiced his distaste on your habits if he had. Your mind raced as it went through a mental checklist of his behaviors, raking down to a slim line before you got it.
It was dark. Pitch black, nearly; only a soft glow of the moon reflecting off thick clumps of snow. The lack of illumination dimming his irises into a pool of gloom, flickering from the window to wilderness. Completely devoid of light.
You recalled it right there. In all the years you’d known him, some behaviors had remained the same. The way he would always gravitate toward the lighter side of the room, the bedside lamp he kept in his room, always on past noon. Even when it wasn’t dark. He abhorred the very thought of it.
It wouldn’t be an insane thought to say he was afraid, either. Never scared of a cointoss to tomorrow, or the day-to-day assaults on his life.
No, he was terrified of the dark. A loss of light meant the loss of traction. And with no traction, there’s no goal. No goal is the assailant of purpose. And without purpose, he is nothing.
A Ghost. He simply fears what he is.
“Hey.”
His back strikes up, fully effect and ready for the advance. Streaks of dirtied bone crawl up his face, settling around fiendishly creased eyes. Taut, vile, purely on the offensive. Tightly cradling an enigma behind snapping jaws. Snarling with the faintest taste of doubt.
“Soap left a flashlight around here somewhere, just hang on for a minute.”
Ghost’s eyes are practically shot open, watching mindlessly as the words replay in a broken record’s symphony. You’d figured him out, just like that, no strings attached. And God, it should’ve scared him. A consternation nestled deep within the mania. Command him to lash out on the breach of his security and—
Click.
The world goes quiet. His eyes shrink in the blaze of luminescence, back slouching down at the slightest as you set the flashlight down.
“You frosty?”
Exhausted. From the nightmares to the pain in the arse wound biting his skin.
“Fuck, affirmative. All good.”
Anyone is an enemy to him until he sticks around long enough. Mapping their face out, the things they hate, what he could get bit for and what makes him more tolerable. Bad habits that root him to an everlasting battle of loss and war.
“We’ll get your ass over here then, Simon.”
And, for once, he doesn’t feel like fighting.
The paralyzer demands he stays, act tough, you’re a goddamn soldier after all. It’s in his programming to isolate, but the deviant strand always lives. Hazed eyes remained fixated on the soft glow of the flashlight sprawled out across the post, licking into his soul, or what little he had left of it. And that part of him knew better, because it was full of you.
There’s no room to get hurt. But there’s no room to hurt, either.
He grumbles something lost to you, but moves nonetheless. Shimmying against creaking wood to claim the space beside you. Nearly mustering an eye roll as you drape a throw blanket over his shoulder. His skin is left searing from your fleeting touches, and he can’t help but look your way, following every finite motion of your irises.
You shift to the right, gaze pointed out the shabby window above. Ghost is quick to follow.
“I’ve heard some stories about the sky here. I forgot some of it, but they say the night sings around this time of year.”
“You sure that’s not some fodder you overheard this week?”
Your brows furrow, head lightly bumping against his shoulder. A glance is stolen your way before he’s back to the sky.
“That’s a stupid thing to lie about, don’t you think?”
“I don’t like liars.”
“Would that piss you off enough to kill them?”
He shrugs, offering a soft sigh of amusement.
“Maybe.”
Minutes drift into slow hours, dragging tranquility into the grey clouds drifting to and from your vision. Warmth escapes you at the quiet shuffle of Ghost’s feet, leaving half lidded eyes drooping into ice. Only when the grasps of sleep begin to claw at your consciousness are you roused once more, head tilting up at the soft call of your name.
“Think you’ll wanna see this.”
Both your and Ghost’s blankets are secured around your chest before you’re pulling yourself up, offering a questioning glance to the looming shape in the doorway. He steps aside, and you’re welcomed once more to the thrash and whip of Siberian breath. Yet, the cold stems at the surface as your eyes raise, mouth parting to suck in chill and awe.
“Holy shit…”
A blanket of flurried stars scatters across your field of view like splattered paint, giving background to the mass of constellations ahead of them. Woven further lies an array of colorful waves, stretching pink, green, and blue as far as you can see.
You’re rendered nearly speechless, infinitely impressed. Such a sight strikes ataraxia into the depths of your heart, circulating through the nerves and all that you are.
Ghost is nearly akin, eyelids pried open inches wider in a desperate attempt to burn it all inside. He’s allured, and he wants to remember you, collecting so much of the good that the hurt fades away. After that, perhaps he could forgive himself too.
Eventually, his gaze drifts down to you, who is no less shocked than you were five minutes ago. At this, he sighs. Long, cool, carefully enamored.
Such a feeling that eradicates the venom, allowing him to take a step forward and reach. Lowering his healthy arm to rest along the base of your shoulder. Timidly, softly as if you’d break. The star struck smile you return pumps life into his veins like a holy elixir. Shattering the boundary that is fear and the terror of what he deserves.
But, it is you. And, sometimes, it doesn’t feel like war.
areudirty
origamiaround
theartofmadeline