Now imagine Ghost getting captured during an op and ending up in an intense interrogation.
Maybe torture session would be more accurate. He gets beaten, starved, even electrocuted. But he never breaks. He's too loyal to his team, and he fully trusts them to get him out of that hell hole.
There's also you. His poor, innocent little wifey sitting at home, probably worried sick. It infuriates him more than anything that he's being kept away from you. He'd take a thousand more beatings as long as he got to assure you everything will be alright.
Softly staring or toying with his wedding ring is the only way to keep himself sane in between bouts of the mistreatment. He imagines how good it will feel when he gets back to you, how you'll hold onto him with all your strength. He thinks about your scent, the texture of your skin, the silhouette of your body.
After a week and a half with no progress on the side of his captors, it seems they're getting more desperate. All it really takes is Ghost being the slightest bit unsubtle one time when he brushes the ring on his finger for an idea to arise.
He refuses to let it show outwardly, but he's just about ready to break down sobbing and/or kill everyone within a mile radius, as his captor casually chats about the ring.
Got a little lady at home? She must miss you so bad. How about we pay her a visit? Get you two reacquainted?
The man sits down in front of him, slowly pulling out a knife. His expression is gleeful, which can't mean anything good for Ghost.
He tries with all his might to wiggle away as his captor moves his ring a little further up his finger, although he doesn't take it off fully. This isn't about the ring, it's about the entire finger.
Ghost nearly bites through his tongue as his ring finger is sliced off with a knife that's dull enough to make it take a while. He watches in tears as suddenly he's not wearing his ring anymore. The anchor of his sanity, the blessing you'd given him that beautiful day, gone just like that. He watches in despair as his detached finger gets picked up like a coin off the street, a small satisfaction to the man he swear to tear limb from limb the moment he gets out of his restraints.
But it couldn't just stop there. No, that would be too merciful. As if it's nothing, the process gets repeated on his other ring finger as well. For the first time since his childhood, Simon considers begging. Losing the finger he held your ring on was one thing, to lose even the chance to move it to the other one is downright cruel. Even if he logically knows there is much worse physical trauma they could inflict on him, this is mentally the most painful. It feels like breaking his vows, ones he took as, if not more, seriously than any op he'd ever been on.
The rest of his stay in that bunker is a blur. Without the physical reminder of his home, he feels like there isn't much time left for him. Either they'll finally fully break him physically or he will surely fall apart mentally. Every time he tries to reach out for his ring, he feels bile rise in his throat. Add to that the growing anxiety that they are going to find you and take you there too, and he isn't able to get any rest anymore in between visits from the monster who did this to him.
The day the Taskforce finds him feels like nothing but a dream. In a haze, they untie him, Price kindly pulling a balaclava over his bared face. It should feel like a homecoming, back in the security of privacy, but he's still too out of it to care. Regardless, a gun gets pressed into his hands and he knows what he must do.
He doesn't let himself escape until he finds the man responsible for the brunt of his pain. He shoots him in the shoulder, disarming the fucker so he can get what he wants.
Ghost is lucky enough that the guy still has it in his vest, simply forgotten in there as if it isn't even worth a nickel.
He stares at it for a while once it's back in his possession, nearly breaking down all over again as he realizes he doesn't know what to do with it now. Against the rumbling within his stomach that tells him it's wrong, he deposits it on his pointer finger instead. It's not a perfect fit anymore, but it's solid enough that it won't just slide off.
He shoots the guy in the knees for good measure, leaving him there to bleed out surrounded by the corpses of his teammates. It would be satisfying to do more, but Ghost finds it's not even worth it. It won't change anything.
He collapses the moment they reach the heli and doesn't wake back up until three days later, confined to a shitty hospital bed as they keep an eye on his well being. He's still a tad dizzy when he awakens, but not enough to not instantly recognize you where you're sitting by his side.
You all but leap into his arms when you notice he's awake and at last Simon can feel himself letting go of his suppressed emotions. With the little strength he has, he pulls you right on top of himself, sobbing into your shoulder as if this is all a dream that could vanish at any moment.
He doesn't notice he's apologizing until you pull back, shushing him with a soft smile. Still, he doesn't stop, wanting to make it clear that he would have rather died than been without that ring for even a second.
He finally stops when you, very softly, punch him in the chest. You're crying too, trying to explain how you couldn't give less of a fuck about a piece of metal as long as he came back home to you alive. You cup his face, telling him all the ways in which you missed him, in which you needed him, while he was gone.
You lay there together until you both tire yourself out from all the crying and love declarations.
