So I wrote this in less than an hour and I know it's shit and totally forgot about the dating part but I wrote this for @hahaifolded
Enjoy
Tags: Ghost x Reader, implied relationship but not really, hurt no comfort, very little detail because I just Don't Care, mcd (not the band), implied serious injury but absolutely no details, I've never tagged before so idk, feels like a character study or essay more than an actual fic
I lied about not writing again. I made an Ao3 story about this.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/68070771 or Tales From the Unwanted by SadieM777
1263 words
What person in the military isn’t fucked up? Some haven’t seen battle themselves, but their mind is definitely altered. The difference is that your trauma goes further back. Now, that isn’t uncommon, many people leave horrible families to join the military. The true difference is that you go through random bouts of dissociation and panic attacks that not even you know the cause of. You could go to therapy all you want, you still don’t know.
Ghost goes through similar things, and so you tend to be closer to him because you both are similar kinds of Fucked Up. There’s only one major difference between you two: Ghost has killed because he was touched while dissociating, and you never quite know what’s real without being touched. You still are touch-averse, but you need it a lot more than him. There’s only one issue about that; you’re shit at talking, especially for serious topics like trauma. So, naturally, nobody KNOWS that you need touch.
You’re all sitting in the rec room one day, when all of a sudden you’re curled in a ball, eyes unseeing. You’re stuck in a time long past. You’ve been in the Task Force for years, and yet nobody’s quite figured out how to handle it. Soap walks up and starts trying to talk you down, but it isn’t helping at all. Price lays a hand on your shoulder, and you flinch. Nobody goes near you after that, hating the look of your terrified, glassy, unseeing eyes. A couple hours later, you’re wandering the halls aimlessly, trying to figure out how to ground yourself.
You find yourself in front of Ghost’s room, your fist already raised to knock. You sit there for a moment, wondering if you knocked already and were too out of it to remember, but decide to knock again to be sure. After a couple seconds of waiting, you start to walk away, deciding that being wrapped up in a blanket might help. Then, all of a sudden, the door opens and you sense him walk out to stand behind you when you freeze, unsure what to say. You slowly turn around, slightly terrified of what he’ll say, he always manages to find unique insults that dig under the skin, especially when somebody destroys his peace. But, miraculously, he takes one look at you and invites you into his room.
You tentatively step in, and stand frozen for a moment, unsure about what to do. He motions to his bed, so you sit at the edge, ready to bolt. He stands in front of you, still trying to figure out what to say himself. After a few minutes of tense silence, you lean forward and rest your face on his stomach. You instantly regret the decision when he rips you away from him and steps back. He doesn’t need to say anything, you leave on your own. Once you’re back in the safety of your room, You feel a single tear fall, feeling worse than before.
For a couple weeks after, you seem to be back to normal. You’re eating normally, and making jokes like you always do, but there’s no hiding the fact that you avoid Ghost as much as you can. He doesn’t even make any effort to fix the situation, and seems to be avoiding you as well. When he gets to the mess after you, he’d rather sit at another table when the rest of the Task Force is sitting with you and the only seat open is right next to you.
You and Soap go on a mission together, and are gone for a few months. Ghost feels lost without either of you acting as the glue keeping everything together, and finds himself having panic attacks more without Soap to calm him down. And yet, he doesn’t think of you once. When you two come back, you act like you never went on a mission at all. You pretend like the act of murdering doesn’t make your skin crawl, doesn’t make you feel dirty in a way that’ll never be washed away. Ghost gets the feeling - you know he does - but he’s so focused on having Soap back that he doesn't even realize that he hasn’t seen you stick near him like you always have in the past. Eventually, you grow quieter and quieter as you realize that Ghost has Soap and Price has Gaz. You feel like you’re just floating, and nobody wants you around. You feel like you’re just a part of the Task Force on paper, and that you’ve been sent on solo missions a lot more than anybody else.
You start wondering if they even think about you when you’re gone. If they even miss you, or notice that you’re missing. That’s proven true when you stop going to the mess with everybody else, stockpiling food in your desk drawer to eat in your room. Nobody stops by to check up on you, and it hurts. You feel like you’re back in that time before, where those people not only didn’t care, but did everything they could to show that they didn’t care and that nobody was coming to help you.
Naturally, you go to Price to request a solo mission to get away and hopefully collect your thoughts about if you want to transfer units or just leave the military altogether. He silently hands you a file of a mission to send you on, and you thank him and leave. When you get back to your room, you stare at the file for a while, wondering if they would even care if you never came back. When you get on the airplane to leave, nobody is there to see you out or wish you luck.
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It’s just your luck that you get captured. Some terrorist group thinking that they could use you as blackmail to take Price down once and for all, maybe taking Ghost’s head as a trophy while they’re at it. You know they have a camera on you, you know they’re recording everything, but you don’t care at this point. They torture you for information for weeks, but you never give anything away. Loyal to a fault, even to the people that hurt you. Just like then. You know that at some point they send the recording to Laswell, but just as you expected, nobody comes. Maybe if you were to wait a little longer you could’ve gotten help, but you don’t see a point in waiting when you know it won’t change anything. You know that they’ll just go back to the way things were as you get medically discharged.
The terrorist group eventually gets impatient and holds a knife to your neck while screaming at the camera in a language you couldn’t give enough of a shit to learn. Not that it would matter anyways, you wouldn’t give away any information even if you knew their language. When that doesn’t work, they let you go and laugh as you struggle to drag yourself through the snow. You make it to a small abandoned cabin, but you know you won’t make it through the night. You don’t even bother writing a note before you fall unconscious, knowing they wouldn’t care enough to save you. You finally die two months after being sent on that mission, while on that same night Ghost and Soap have sex for the first time, cuddling for hours afterwards. It’s the first time that Ghost gets a full night’s rest, feeling like that touch scares all the nightmares away.
