Sunny Days
SIMON 'GHOST' RILEY x FEM!READER TASK FORCE 141 x PLATONIC!FEM!READER The END of the BEGINNING
Traitors Among Us Masterlist
Summary: While leaving Task Force 141, you finally encounter Price, you encounter your team, and share a final goodbye.
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Was it fair?
That they'd get away with it...
Was it fair?
Every step felt like splinters...
That your body would never be the same...
Was it fair?
They'd only receive an extended period of service, a delayed deployment for their crimes against you...
Was it fair?
Nothing would be done...
You'd receive no real justice...
Was it fair...
That you were losing your fucking mind...
Moments ago, you'd been a tangled mess in your dormitory, alone in this overwhelming storm of emotion.
Clawing your skin raw in the corner of your room, unable to touch another piece of your life in this place, it burned and screamed with their memories, moments you'd be forced to hold onto.
Every bitter thought was loud, gnawing at the tender mass of your brain, sending painful bursts through your skin. Shaking, sweating through your shirt, every sob that rips through your throat is guttural, muscles locked with tension.
Nails biting through to your flesh, you dig in uncontrollably, trying to get rid of the ache with nothing in your life now to brace against or hold onto.
Maybe that's how you found yourself here...
.
.
.
Price had to be seeing things.
At first, he had felt it, the sudden weight of someone's presence looming over him, like a storm about to break apart and take hold of him. His eyes spring open fast, but not faster than his hand that extends to the underbelly of his desk, reaching for the gun that should've been strapped to the bottom.
He finds the holster empty.
As his eyes adjust to the dark, he sees the white of your eyes first, in the darkness of his room. Eyes that pierce into his own, suddenly he can't move, can't look away. Like an animal lurking in the dark, your eyes illuminate as you've found your prey.
How you stand unmoving at the foot of the bed, you give him nothing...not a blink, not a breath, not a move, until he opens his mouth.
But, he can't speak. He's frozen.
Though, he wanted to speak, to apologize, to explain, to confess the sins that have brought such a moment upon them. But, the words catch in his throat, he's lost it, every possible admission of his guilty conscious dies on his tongue.
What could he possibly say to make any of it right?
"I trusted you..." he stiffened, as you spoke in a whisper. Your voice a startling contrast to the previous silence of the room. "More than anyone I'd ever known up till Simon. I trusted...you."
Your foot comes up, bringing yourself up and over the end of the bed and onto his mattress, he can hear the light screech of your metal brace as you stand tall over him. In your hand, the pistol that had been missing from his bedside holster.
"You taught me what family was. What it could be..." you said, speaking plainly. "You taught me how to survive out there, find my place on the team..." you spoke quietly, allowing him the melancholy calm of your storm. "I would've never made it this far without you to push me, really."
Price says nothing, he can't, he's frozen, laying still as you right yourself along his mattress, your boots digging down and into the springs.
"You were the only semblance of a father in my life that I thought really loved me. The one that when everything went wrong...would still be there when I got low. Or when it all became too much," you admitted, slowly. "I told you so much shit. I told you about my life, my family, god, I even told you the things that haunt me still," And finally, he could see your eyes drop and blink, the glint in your eyes disappear for only a second before opening again, this time it's brighter, narrowed and angry. "And you'd act like you understood. Like you wanted to help, that you'd be there....and yet you..."
Your breath is sharp, your eyes filled with so much pain and anger, itâs overwhelming as you surge down and onto him. Finally, unleashing the violent wave of the betrayal you've felt, the rage that has brought you to him. "You!"
You push him down, hand grabbing at his jaw and nails biting into his skin, "I realized that wasn't who you really were..." you suck in a shivering breath, digging into his skin with every word. "I should've never...I should've just kept you far. Kept you at who you were to me. Captain. John. Price..."
His face swings to the side, his cheekbone burns red hot suddenly, he can already taste blood in his mouth as you raise the heel of the pistol you had just brought down on his face.
"You're a liar, you're sad and pathetic and scared of everything under the fucking sun because of course--" you seethed, "I had to be the traitor, right! It had to be me. ME. The one that came to you about everything, risked my life to protect you, dragged you out of the fucking depths!" You sneered. "The one that NEVER would've let anyone convict you without making them regret even thinking about it first!"
"I wanted to believe..." A maddening, howling laugh, tortured as you threw your head back with tears in your eyes left your throat. "I wanted to believe that you were pushed to do it, that you were fighting for me out there while you ripped me apart."
"But, the lie was so simple for you to just take all my trust in you and let it fall away," you brought him in as you cried, fists shaking in your anger, burning so hot you could barely breathe. "you didn't even hesitate to throw me away like it all meant nothing! Stripped me down, took the air from my lungs and left me in the dark for days, for weeks! You wanted to fucking KILL MEEE!"
You balled up his shirt in your fists as you screamed, enraged, eyes shot red and tears that poured down to his face so fast he could taste them. Price's eyes were bulged wide, his horror and the overwhelm of his mistakes and his current situation told by the pour of his own tears that shed like a river.
The two of you were a mirror for only a moment, staring at the other, expressions polar opposites but eyes a blistering hue of red as you both cried for the destruction of your love for one another, the daughter he'd taken under his wing and abandoned under the same.
Who was he to deny you this...
And then you bring the gun down on his head, using it like a pair of gloves as you strike him again and again hoping to god that he could feel every single hit to its fullest. The clink and shift of the pistol in your hand with every shuttering strike, you feel the blood that coats your fingers, flowing out of his nose, out of his mouth.
Still, Price says nothing, allowing his hands to stay glued down to the mattress, holding down the instinct to stop before it goes too far, but they've both passed that point. He's done worse to you, you deserve this much at least, this he can give to you, this he can allow.
He doesn't even know when he can't find the energy to bring his hands up to stop you.
And soon, finally, you stop.
Huffing wildly, face stained red, the underside of your nails filled with the torn skin of his flesh.
Looking up to the ceiling, you stare at the chipping paint for a while as Price coughs with a choke, taking another breath that strains wetly, he shifts uncomfortably and gurgles beneath you. His head going to the side to let the blood that had begun to pool in his mouth dribble out and soak into the sheets of his mattress.
"I was so afraid..." you breathe in. "...to see you. All this time, I was so afraid of you, John..." you sigh, your eyes sting, you realize, but it's different from tears, it feels like blood, as it crusts around your eye lids. "But, I realize now, I was just afraid of what I'd do to you if I saw you again..."
Price couldn't speak, instead he moaned from the pain blossoming across his face, a terrible migraine that had emerged from a broken nose and a shattered cheekbone, a tooth that had lodged into his wind pipe after swallowing it during your onslaught.
He couldn't see. Not just due to the dark but also the swelling in his face that squeezed his eyes shut and let not even a crack of light in for his pleasure.
His breathing having turned heavy and his hands pulled up and onto your forearm, unwittingly going for the only person around to anchor him away from the pain.
"I loved you, John," you confessed, quietly, to the deflated man. "Did you love me?"
He huffs out a heavy breath, opening his red stained mouth as you pull out of his grip. "...Always--th..." he spits out a bloody glob, sucking in a breath. "That hasn't...changed..."
"Captain!"
"John, you alright in there?"
"Price!"
Maybe you had ignored the knocking, the pounding, that had begun in the middle of you beating down on your former captain, the voices you could recognize as your former team.
The noise finally having pulled them all out of their slumber and toward the other side of the dormitory.
Shifting your weight to the side, laying next to your captain for a moment, lifting yourself off of him and to the side. As you listened to him wheeze and your team shift the door handle before starting to force their entire weight into the doorway.
You sit up, facing away from Price, "I--love you, kid..."
"If you do," you sighed as you sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for the remaining members of your delegated Task Force to break through the door to get to you both. "If you really do. Then, god, your love is shit."
You laughed just a little, the first in a while.
Staring down at the pistol you held in your grip still, the light from under the doorway illuminates it enough for you to see the drop of blood that falls from the metal before the door swings open.
Light coming in as fiercely as the sun, the light that pulls Price's attention to the doorway, and illuminates both bloody figures settled on the mattress in the corner of the room.
"CAPTAIN!"
As they race in, pushing open the door, determined to stop the noise and put an end to anyone that's made their way here to snuff out their captain. They lock eyes with you, putting them to a stop.
They stand there, eyes wide, frozen in place as they take in the scene you've strung out for them to see.
The chaos.
The anger.
The blood staining the curtains, the trinkets, the face of their disfigured captain.
The broken trust made all too real.
Their feet donât move. Their bodies, once in motion, are now rigid, locked in place. Theyâve seen enough. They donât need to look any further.
They just stand there, like shadows in the doorway, helpless but not innocent. Their guilt hangs in the air, palpable, and it's goddamn suffocating.
For the first time, you can look at them all, each and every one of them.
Kyle.
Johnny.
Your Simon.
And finally, your fears are gone, maybe it's the blood on your hands, maybe its the predicament they've all found themselves in, maybe it's the journey and the madness that's drove you this far already.
Whatever it was...took it all.
All but one thing.
You wished to feel nothing.
But, the rage still stays.
That...isn't going anywhere.
"Look at us, what a team," you managed a smile, letting loose a breathless laugh. "Together again, huh."
Price's blood even stains your teeth.
---
You leave freely in the morning.
Price presses no charges. He practically says nothing, this time accounting only of your innocence, ironic.
The one time you did do something...
Johnny offers to help with your bags, you hand him only one thing: the knife that should've pierced his heart the day he had confronted you.
Kyle meets you at the entrance of the dormitory, offering you a simple thing, a jacket, it's fresh, new. It's not his this time. "It's cold on the ride out, I just wanted to make sure..." he spoke, quietly. His movements slow, careful, as if not to startle you.
You just stare at him, eyes shifting from the gift back to him, hands kept close at your sides still. "Keep it. I think you'll be seeing colder days than I ever will again..." you declined.
His lips pressing together as you reject it, walking past him and into the vehicle, lifting your bag onto your shoulder before halting.
"And Simon?" You wondered aloud, out of curiosity.
Kyle swallows, briefly. "Somewhere around here," he reveals. "He wasn't sure if..." you wanted to see him.
He was right. You didn't.
You stand still though, waiting, Kyle thinks. But, then you take the passenger handle and pull yourself into the vehicle.
"I'm sorry, (y/n)," Kyle says, quickly. Face burning hot with the turmoil going through him, as he sadly watches as you depart from him, from the family all of you had built together. "I really am. More than anything."
You only adjust your bag across your thighs as the driver starts the engine, it roars to life before slowly pulling off. You give him nothing, not a word.
"(Y/n), please..."
As the car pulls from view, Kyle wipes his face, turning away from the vehicle, shoving his hands into his pockets before walking back into the dormitory. Shoving his way past Simon, "Give it up, Ghost, she's gone," Kyle grits out, bitterly, sniffling shortly at his lieutenant stares silently as his ex-fiancĂŠ leaves her life behind, leaves him behind.
Simon takes short, numb steps out into the sun, watching as the car exits the roundabout, pulling away as he can see you face once again. Your eyes meet for a final time, his mask is gone, he's just Simon Riley once more, he continues to walk as the car drives, hoping to catch the final remains of your presence here.
He watches and watches as the car drives into the distance, and he doesn't look away even as vehicle disappears at the horizon, driving down into the sunny day.
And as you breathe evenly for the first time in weeks, in months, a tear falling from your eye but wiped away to look to the sky. The clouds pulling away to reveal the beating sun, the rays giving a warmth you haven't felt for months. Reaching out, you let the gentle breeze run through your fingers and carry you away from this place.
Simon falls to his knees, hands clutching at the ache in his body, at the pain in his chest, at the mistakes he's made, at the ring he'd found at his door this morning. The one you had left behind. The one he had ripped off your finger the moment he'd doubted you.
He bawled, a guttural sound, in the middle of the street.
What a mistake he had made.
He wanted to scream, he wanted to shout, he wanted to take it all back.
But, most of all, he wanted to tell you over and over again:
"I"M SORRY!" he wanted to beg.
"PLEASE!" he wanted to hold you.
"DON'T LEAVE ME, GOD, (Y/N)!"
But, he could only claw at the gravel that stabbed through his uniform, that punished him for mourning so late, for letting her go, for not believing in her sooner, for not doubting the evidence that told such a blatant lie.
He could do nothing now.
It was too late.
Simon kneeled in the street, in the sun, he cried.
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Just reminding everyone, the journey isn't over! We've still got a few endings to go.
