Chapter Text
Soap trudges through muck of melted snow and churned earth, sludge that sticks to the soles of his shoes and saturates the ends of his trousers despite his every effort to stay dry. It’s deep, the freeze in this area of Russia, permeating far deeper than the base levels of mud that his boots slip against. It permeates deep into his bones, too, sucking at the marrow until every inch of him feels entrenched in cold.
At times like this, he understands Ghost’s mask more than ever. He understands the man’s need for anonymity— respects it too, knows how much it means, why it means what it does, because long nights sharing drinks with the other has loosened both their tongues — but he also thinks the fabric must be convenient for keeping some of the chill out. For now, Soap merely plunges his nose further into the neckline of his coat, eyes narrowed behind his headset and glaring into the thermal scope of his rifle, scanning the world around him.
But Ghost isn’t who Soap should be thinking of, just like how Ghost shouldn’t be thinking about Soap. It’s why he’d asked to work with Price in Bravo rather than Ghost in Alpha for this mission, and for the foreseeable future. When Soap thinks of Ghost, he thinks too much. He sees too much, and that complicates their relationship and endangers their entire team. Because Ghost is 141’s incognito — their empty page, their blank file, their unknown, the odd man out within all of their missions. He was the one who lived in shadows and snuck out when you finally thought the sun was rising. He was not made to be known. He was not made to get attached to others in turn.
But then Soap had gotten shot in Las Almas. And in the heat of that night, with the blood of innocents staining the streets and with Ghost quietly leading him through the streets, Soap had caught a glimpse — just a minute, barely there grasp on the thing behind the mask that had a bit more than just an empty page and a thousand-mile paper trail of redacted mission files.
And then Soap thought more of Ghost’s stupid jokes, the way his voice often assumed a smirk even when his expression stayed clearly neutral beneath the mask. He thought more of Ghost’s wide, red eyes shining out of the darkness, filled with inexhaustible fear as Soap fled, sliding down that hill with grass and rubble shredding the hole in his arm. He thought more about the way Ghost had spoken to him — not confirming any like or dislike, but confirming he wanted Soap alive. He thought about how Ghost didn’t do that. Ghost lets people die on a daily — Soap vividly recalled his first time meeting the man, listening to him insist that securing Alpha’s crash sight and getting a sitrep was futile. In the end, it had been.
It’s why he’s asked to be separated from Ghost. Because Ghost leaves Soap off-kilter, presses up against the back of his temples and prods at the thoughts there, has worry and fear knocking against his back like heady waves. And because Soap is not oblivious to the fact that Ghost has grown attached to him in turn.
Their target for extraction is Shepherd. They cannot afford attraction and attachments.
Soap hears the crackle of the comms and a voice coming through, thick and deep. “Alpha 1. How copy?” demands Price, Soap barely able to hear him over the roar of the snow. Barely able to see him, too, despite the two of them only being a few feet apart, Gaz on Soap’s other side. There’s a brief pause in which the howling of the wind is the only thing that can be heard in his ears.
“Bravo, all Alpha deployed on your 12. Advancing on the first building.”
Despite the two having relatively similar accents, Soap has never had any trouble distinguishing between Price and Ghost’s voices. He scans the first building and shakes that thought quickly from his head, thermal lighting up their own forces as beacons in the darkness. No other movement can be seen, though Soap knows better than to give an immediate all-clear.
Soap’s breath rattles in the seconds before he speaks, throat clogged. When he finally opens his mouth he makes no attempt to clear it, and his voice comes out deeper, throatier. “Bravo 1, Alpha 1, no external movement. We’ve got you on your six, Alpha 1. You’re clear to enter.”
“Leave no stone unturned, boys. If you engage, end it quick and quiet.” Price clips out, before the channel goes quiet and Soap follows the older man’s lead to set up behind a large outcropping of boulders, mounting his gun on top of the rock and steeling himself to sit back and watch for a while.
An extraction mission like this would usually have more hands on deck. But Shepherd is a well-kept secret, a fuck-up so extraordinary that only those that need to know, know. That leaves Soap providing peripheral support with Price and Gaz while Ghost, Alejandro, and two new sergeants — Jameson, a brag-rag world record holder and Kaz, a relatively young woman with a perfect track record for extraction — move in to do the dirty work. He really should be down there doing Alejandro’s job, but the other man had insisted on coming despite not being a part of the 141 — something about needing to get the hijo de puta who hired Graves in the first place arrested and locked away. So Soap had faded into a supportive role, away from Ghost, away from action, and he had not complained.
“Door unlocked. Go in quiet and look for intel,” Ghost says, his voice even quieter than before, yet Soap hears it loud and clear, hyperfocused on the man. Soap watches through his thermal as Ghost uncrouches from the ground and pushes open the front door with one hand, body coiled to strike. “Alpha 4, push to second deck on my six. If anyone engages, finish it quickly and silently.”
Still tracking Ghost, Soap watches as Alejandro and the other man quickly but quietly advance up the stairs to second deck. Something catches his attention out of the corner of his eye, and Soap jerks his scope to the side, peering out to the second house and the white shape of an unmistakably human form approaching from the front door. “Alpha, be wary of movement on second building, first deck. Stay low,” he says, listening to the howling echoing of the wind through his own comms. Static. Then:
“If he gets far enough from the building take the shot.” Ghost’s words are clipped, but he heeds Soap’s warning, Alejandro and him both tuck themselves behind the stone fence bordering the porch outside to hide from the enemy's gaze.
Soap’s hands are bitter cold despite his gloves, and his breath frosts against his coat. “Price, any need to account for distance?”
“Negative. Watch for anyone comin’ up behind him.”
Soap scans the area for any other signs of movement. He focuses on the doors and windows of the other buildings, crumbling as they are, trying to spot anyone that might see the man go down. When no such thing reveals itself, he takes a deep breath, pause in the middle of it, holds his air, and shoots. It cracks out silently and the man falls to the ground, head made of mush, Price’s scope swerving to glance at the casualty before it looks back to the second building. “Got ‘im. Eejit dinnae know what hit him.”
“Good work. Try out english next time you kill someone, Johnny,” says Ghost good naturedly in response, and Soap splutters internally, clicking his tongue behind his teeth at the sass.
“Translation:” he hauls out, a grin in his words and instinctively tugging at his lips at the banter, “Bloody id’ot didn’t know wot hit ‘im.” The resounding groans from Gaz and a few of the sergeants at Soap’s broken English accent are more than satisfying enough, even if Ghost never responds.
But the comms fall silent a moment after. They’ve got a job to do, and for as much banter and bickering that they pass around, the shit they give each other both on the field and off, they’re all professionals. No one has to be told to shut up and get to work — Ghost and Alejandro have been silently confirming no movement on second deck for the entirety of the exchange, while Gaz, Price, and Soap have kept their eyes on their thermal.
There’s the sound of a brief struggle over the comms. “First deck clear,” comes Kaz’s voice, slightly strained with exertion. “Lots of tech and computers round here, but no Shepherd.”
“Second deck clear. Alpha 2 n’ 3, set up down on first and figure out what they’ve got on those computers.”
“Affirmative.” Jameson’s record might have quite a bit of useless chest candy scrawled all over it, but it seems he takes orders easily enough. Perhaps that’s why he has so much official praise. Ghost and Soap and Gaz have hollowed out a space for themselves in the military where they remain legendary. It doesn’t mean they’re great at following common demands.
Alejandro makes it out of the building first, Ghost following behind him with haste. The door taps up against Soap’s kill’s boots, making the bloodied corpse’s legs jerk, just a little, at the force. Behind Alejandro Ghost pauses, a boot of his own moving to tip the man’s head upward and expose the currently concealed logo on his chest. “Shadow Company.”
Soap curses beneath his breath and readjusts, feeling phantom pain run sharp through his right arm. “You sure, Ghost? Thought we took enough of them out,” asks Gaz where he sits on Soap’s other side.
“Positive.” A harsh breath as Ghost unzips the other man’s coat, exposing thick, dark plates of armor. Alarm bells ring out — armored men mean men who knew they’d be getting into a fight. Ghost pauses before stating what they’ve already seen. “He’s armored—”
The building behind them shatters. Soap jerks upward where he’s watching as it blinds him, looking away from his scope to stare instead in horror at the distant mass of shredded plaster and wood and concrete flying in every direction. Fire erupts, the technology and intel left within the building destroyed. Kaz and Jameson had been inside on the first floor, and Soap can see that the explosion had been concentrated there. Ghost had been inches from the explosion, with Alejandro right behind him, and neither Gaz nor Price nor Soap had been able to stop it. The explosion buzzes over the comms, several other detonations rattling off and sending the building’s foundation belching debris everywhere it can reach.
“Alpha, sitrep!” Price breaks the silence, body tense and hunched over as he looks back down to his scope. Soap follows, feeling a sharp mishmash of hope and fear beat at his back. “Alpha- how copy!”
The silence is resounding and loud in Soap’s ears, his chest tight against his uniform, skin damp with sweat despite the cold. He watches from his scope as Price shouts into the comms again, his own voice echoing back as Gaz turns his on as well, shouting not for Alpha, but for — “Ghost! Alejandro, how copy!” — because there’s still hope they might be alive.
Halfway through his questioning, Gaz’s voice goes completely silent, and Soap is struck with the realization that he has just sent Alejandro into a trap in his stead as the comm lines go dead in his ear.
He hears nothing but a high-pitched whine in his comms, the radio dead and all the lights in the surrounding buildings knocked off. Whoever had set off that EMP wasn’t afraid of taking down their own digital advantages and communication and that means one thing — they’re confident and geared for a fight, and probably Shadow. Soap hauls his ass up off the ground and sprints, seeing Price and Gaz do the same out of the corner of his eye. They race down the sloping hill and out of the protection of the trees, all eyes focused on the smoldering ruins of the building Ghost and Alejandro had just been standing next to.
To most, gunshots are not a comforting noise. To Soap, it means that the enemy has someone to shoot at, and his pounding heart is comforted only an inch, immediately diverging from his beeline path to where he sees the gunshots coming from. Soap runs by the light of the moon and the fire consuming the buildings in the secluded area, checking his scope when he can, desperate, angry, scared—
The snow cuts his face where it is exposed, wind howling in his ears, and all Soap can hear with any clarity are his own feet on the ground. His body slams short against a decrepit stone fence, ivy and grass overrunning its strength and structure. There— movement directly ahead of him, and he says so aloud before remembering that no one around is there to hear it.
He’s got grenades if he can reach them fast enough. His pack will only make him more vulnerable in the long run anyways, so he sheds it, rummaging around for the absolute essentials. Pulling the pin on the retrieved explosive, he cocks his arm back and throws the grenade, hoping Price and Gaz are far enough behind him or beside him to be safe. The world shakes, and Soap screws his eyes shut for just a moment to avoid the full light of the explosion as it hits the ground and the earth spews mud.
They didn’t designate him as a demolitions expert for nothing and he takes pride in that fact, sam as he does as a sniper and a perpetual FNG. He hears screams and shouts, both angry and pained, as the active grenade sends men flying and blows out half of the exterior of building 2. A shadow looms to his left and Soap lifts his gun, ready to shoot, when he sees Price, soot-covered face narrowed in anger — not at him, but at the situation — as he gestures for Soap to join the fray.
“No sign of Ghost,” he shouts above the roaring of flame, and Soap thinks, rather hysterically, that it’s awful funny the man still has his hat on, the stupid-looking lump of fabric pinned to his skull and soaked in snow. “Gaz got Alejandro, they’re making a run for the trees! We need to get out now!”
Soap can see them through his thermal — one blobby white figure with the other leaning off their shoulder, the two racing away as quickly as possible. He curses as he realizes just how many Shadows are all around them, planting his gun on the fencing and starting to take as many shots as he can.
They’re all armored. Every single one of them. But just as much as Soap’s a demolitions expert he is an SAS’ sniper, and he makes his shots 9/10, popping heads open like watermelons while he tries his damn hardest to cover Alejandro and Gaz as they make their way toward the trees. Price leaps over the short stone wall and advances towards the first building, gritting his teeth when the third building is rocked with another explosion. Any trace of intel, any possible place that Ghost could still be alive — the second building is where it all rests.
Gaz throws a flash-bang behind him and Soap takes out as many distracted Shadows as possible. He watches as Alejandro falls, overcome with his injuries, sagging to the ground, blood saturating one side of his body and being steadily pumped from a nasty wound to the side of his head. Gaz follows him to the ground, presumably attempting to grab him up and get him to keep going when a stray bullet clips his arm and he stumbles.
Soap growls and pushes up from the wall, switching out his rifle as the expanding fires make it even easier to see. He races past Price, ducking behind large piles of rubble and avoiding Shadows as he watches the other man run to the second building, abandoning the first, a grim expression on his face. Selfish and disgusting and almost cruel, Soap revels in the knowledge that the only two dead in the building are Kaz and Jameson, not Ghost.
He skids to a stop not far from Gaz and Alejandro’s position, firing several shots into the group of shadows, hitting as much as he can despite the thick body armor making them significantly more complicated targets. He whoops as the firing from the enemy is split between Gaz, wildly firing shots behind him into the crowd, and Soap himself.
“ Get the fuck out!” He roars, hoping desperately that Gaz can hear him. He’s got another grenade in one hand, making it clear both to friend and foe what he plans to do, waving his arm to demonstrate before he ducks behind the wall, avoiding several shots from the opposing forces. They pound through the stone and rebar and plaster, and Soap can only pray that he doesn’t hit his allies as he pulls the pin and throws the grenade overhead.
The Shadows scatter, attention torn by the explosion. He doubts it’s caught very many of them with such warning as him announcing his plans to the world, but it gives Gaz and Alejandro an opening to run. Sure enough, when Soap takes a gamble and darts out from the wall, the Shadows are momently distracted, giving him time to make his way to the second building. No sign of Ghost as he moves, but sometimes, with Ghost, that’s better than seeing him at all.
“Price!” No response as he rushes to look at the second building, thick white brick and crumbling buttresses that make it look out of place, excessively old fashioned and well made. He chances a look through the open side door, smoldering where his earlier explosion had touched down, and finds an empty front room, stained in blood. The thick hardwood is cracked near his entrance, black and brown, isolated fires slowly going out where someone’s thick blood has already coated it.
It drips from the ceiling, though has no clear origin. It saturates the bottom of Soap’s boots as he runs, not even thinking that Price might have already fled, might have never even entered the building. Perhaps their brains function on different plains, their plans running perpendicular, occasionally tangling, making Soap think they’d been on the same page. He’s blinded by the tangy copper, the bitter scent of blood biting at his tongue as he scrambles up the stairs, gun held high.
He slips on the final step. The light of the fires and the moon are more subdued inside, but Soap carelessly forgets his thermal scope. On the final step on the stairs, he trips in a puddle of what he can only assume is blood. He narrowly catches himself on his elbow, coat managing to soften some of the blow as he hauls himself up onto the second deck, gun raised, poised to shoot, to save, to greet, to do whatever it takes.
Ghost’s chest heaves, a knife plunged into his shoulder, blood running in rivulets down his face, balaclava in tatters and skull mask gone. He is haloed in fire, framed in his own shadows, wrapped up in darkness with one thick hand wrapped around a long, sharp pole of rebar, coated in blood. Corpses line the room, leaned up against chairs and thrown roughly to the ground, slumped over with near identical holes punched through their chests.
“Simon,” Soap breathes in relief. Ghost turns to him, eyes wide, and Soap can see the imprint of the other man’s barely open lips behind the mask, and—
The world shatters into a million pieces as the building explodes.