slightly late PriceGhostWeek Day 7 ! prompt: fate
(crossposted on ao3)
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟
Simon Riley was born to die.
He was first ment to die as a child, sick and half starved, shivering in his bed. He survived by his mother's bleeding heart, manifested in the form of a thermos of hot soup, carefully slipped under his pillow.
Fate found him next as a teen, scrappy and aggressive, with all the tells of a stray dog ill-equipped to survive the coming winter. Fate cornered him in a dark alley as a pack of drunk classmates, jeering, swarming, hungry for blood.
Fate beat him down and kicked in his ribs, disgust and fervour in its eye– leaving him to limp home and lick his wounds hours later.
The third time, fate almost had him. Trapped in a filthy compound in Mexico, cut open and taken apart piece by piece, fate should have prevailed. But once again, Simon Riley evaded death. Though he crawled out of his grave as something changed, something less than what he was, he continued on.
With dirt under his nails and his body forever marked and alienated from himself, he foolishly supposed that Fate’s due had been paid.
Fate finally cashed in the day Simon Riley burned to ashes in his family’s home, surrounded by their bodies. Each one a payment for every time he had denied his birthright.
Simon Riley died that day, and Ghost was made in his place.
Ghost was not born to die. Neither was he born to live. Ghost was forged as a weapon– a hairpin trigger to be kept trained on the enemy, liable to go off at any moment.
And so, he’s placed under the careful watch of one Captain John Price.
Price is a man of routine. Steady and consistent in a way Simon had never been, and Ghost will never be. He wakes up every day at the crack of dawn, rising with the sun to set the kettle and get an early start on the day’s work.
It’s soothing, oddly, to know that no matter how long he lingers in the dark– haunting the halls at night, earning his namesake– that Price will always be there with the first rays of dawn's light to cajole him into a light breakfast and to set a hot drink in his hands.
Price is the first person to treat Ghost as human. He’s the first to call him by his predecessor’s name, the first to see life in him where others see only deformed metal and melted bone.
It’s in Price that Ghost begins to catch glimmers of Fate.
It scares him, at first. Fate is unpredictable, vicious and frivolous, lurking in the hearts of men and embedding into the earth’s machinery. Ghost first catches Fate sparkling in blue eyes, reflecting the harsh fluorescent lighting of a hospital room.
They tell him there was an explosion, that the building came down too close to his position, burying him under the rubble.
He doesn't remember, of course. Can’t muster up anything beyond choking on dirt and struggling under a crushing weight, nothing to dig him out. When he opens his eyes, Price is holding his hand, dust lining his nail beds and scraps running up his forearms.
“Mornin’ lad.” He says, smiling, and Fate glints down at him like the reflecting scope of a sniper rifle. He startles, and the blaring alarm of his heart sends nurses to his side, pulling him back down into lucidity and out of consciousness.
He forgets the first time, until Fate finds him again.
This time, Fate flashes in the spark of a lighter, burns in the ember of one of Price’s fancier cigars. It’s a Christmas gift, Ghost doesn't know from who, but Price offers the cigar to him anyway. He passes it over easily where they’re huddled together on a small balcony, somewhere in one of the lesser used wings of the base, lets their fingers brush for a moment too long.
The tobacco soothes the reflexive anxiety Fate brings, as does the contact.
“Come with me,” Price says, “I know you’ve got nothing better to do.” Fate pours from his mouth, exhaled from his lungs with the smoke.
“I have a spare bedroom” he continues, watching Ghost out of the corner of his eye, shooting for casual even as fate’s glow gives him away.
Ghost stays silent. If Fate means to chase a bounty already caught, he’s smart enough to know that running will get him nowhere. His instincts, still those of that forever wretched stray, are to fight, though it would likely be fatal.
Despite it all, he never learned to accept the odds, doesn't quite know how to swim with the tide, even as his muscles cramp and his body tired from fighting the current.
Eventually, Price sighs, pats him on the back. His hand is warm and comforting, and Ghost almost breaks. But Price says “The offer’s open, Simon, I'll wait until you’re ready,” and that’s that.
He leaves Ghost with a lingering look, one that gives him the distinct impression this is about more than just the leave, more than the spare bedroom. He doesn't follow the thought, doesn't dare.
Price finally takes his leave a couple days later, alone. Ghost slinks around the dark corners of the base, spends his Christmas training, fighting, working as a weapon should.
It’s for the best. Fate is a human concept, after all.
Fate doesn't leave him, though. Glimmers of it appear in a splash of milk stirred into carefully brewed tea, in the warmth of a knee pressed against his own under the table, in the pages of a book left on his bedside table, neatly wrapped in brown paper, on a date that should no longer holds significance to anyone alive.
Fate trails behind him like a noose cut from the tail, looped around his neck like jewellery. He waits for it to catch on a patch of brambles or a low-hanging branch, but it always seems to slip out from under every obstacle, protected by something unseen.
As time marches on, he learns not to fear the dust Fate kicks up behind him– begins to wonder, even, if Fate can be kind.
The day fate takes the Ghost is not unlike their first encounter. He’s sick, curled up on his bed, sniffling miserably under the covers as he sneezes for the third time in 5 minutes. Though this time, he’s not alone.
Price holds a dedicated vigil at his bedside, armed with soup and ginger tea, fingers tangled in unkept blond curls. Fate hangs heavy in the air, swirling with the steam from the soup, catching in Ghost’s throat with every sneeze, overlapping Price’s gentle hums of sympathy.
Price scratches gently at his scalp, and as Ghost presses into his touch, an odd noise released from his chest, he knows this is where Fate catches up to him.
“Price,” he rasps, shuddering as the hand in his hair slides down to rest on the back of his neck. Price tilts his head down, raises an eyebrow. “I want to come with you.” Simon says, and Price smiles. It feels like absolution. It feels like letting go.
Fate takes Ghost in the night, but leaves behind Simon, wrapped tight in a strong embrace, human once again.
