Archive of Our Own ^beta

Simon had always existed at an epicenter of the world's grit and gravel, sharp rocks and twigs scraping through his malleable skin until they burrowed deep and splintered bone. He'd experienced the scrapes and bruises of a childhood well spent exploring before he'd ever had the opportunity to leave his home.

Ed Riley had learned quickly to only leave the back and blue welts, and the blistered burns of a cigarette, in places that could be covered by worn and pilled woolen sweaters or frayed shirts with a high neck.

Simon's father had been an angry and cruel man. Worse even, he was unpredictable in his bouts of rage.

There had been a familiar pattern that Simon was able to latch onto, a warning of the impending fury of intoxicated fists and biting words.

Whenever Ed Riley was in a good mood, due to a winning bet or a stroke of luck, it was almost a certainty that he'd come staggering home the next day with blown pupils and a trigger finger for violence.

That was when Simon learned to be silent. Quiet. Practiced and curated his ability to blend into plain, peeling walls and vanish into the slightest shadow cast by a flickering lamp.

To become a ghost in his own home.

When Ed Riley had died, high out of his mind as he stepped off of the sidewalk into a busy street, Simon had felt nothing.

And over the next several years, despite the losses being his own flesh and blood, he continued to never feel anything.

It was just an emptiness, like a jar that was supposed to be full to the point that fractures would split across the fragile glass, but his glass never filled.

It continued long after he the day he had signed his body away to the government, going through the rigors of basic training and the constant battering of deployments.

Long before he had earned his callsign through slit throats and bashed skulls, the way his steps carried muffled over tarmac and his gaze inspired a quiet panic, Simon had finally felt a faint crack through the wall of apathy.

A dull twinge in his chest.

It wasn't when one of the soldiers in his squad was shot down or blown to bits. It wasn't when the captain of the platoon he had been stuck with the longest decided to paint the walls with the red viscera pounding through his skull.

It was an op in Urzikstan, the sand stinging his eyes through the hole in his balaclava, the sun beating it's rays unrelentingly into the dark fabric under his tac vest. His canteen had been practically emptied by the time they started their trek back to the current base of operations.

There was no reason for him to be checking every alleyway, or every shadow between buildings, but it was something so ingrained that his eyes automatically shifted to any area that could hold a threat. Any dark corner that someone could be hunkered down in, wielding a rifle with the power to rip through flesh and muscle.

While he was so caught up in catching the faintest movement in the smallest spaces sheltered by the sun, he almost missed the immobile form on the side of the dusty road.

The dog had likely been there for a few days, it's body emaciated and it's tufts of matted fur tangled with gritty sand from the steady breeze over the last few days.

Simon wasn't saddened by it.

He didn't feel anger or disgust. He felt resignation.

The dog represented how most would be left behind, shriveled to the point skin was parchment and bones were just an echo of a structure that used to contain strong pulsing organs that had long seeped into the earth.

A representation that regardless of what or who you were, of what was thought of you, everyone ended up a dusty carcass forgotten by the rest of the world the minute their heart shuddered to a stop and their brain ceased to fire impulses.

The dog was just a premonition of his future. The future of anyone he met. The future of people he didn't know, and didn't have the opportunity to.

That's when Simon truly learned that everyone dies, and at some point, no one cares or remembers.

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When Simon was recruited to Taskforce 141, he was no longer Simon.

By that point, he'd settled comfortably into the hardened exterior that was Ghost. It was a mask he knew well, both literally and metaphorically, the skull becoming a reinforced titanium wall guarding the weakness that still sometimes fluttered within his chest.

Price always seemed to have a flicker of recognition and insight when he directed his gaze towards him, the Captain being one of the only people alive who had known him before the mask.

Thankfully, they both seemed to have an understanding. Price gave the order, Ghost followed like the wardog he'd been trained to be.

Ghost had worked under Price a fair few times, learning his tells and expressions. He knew how to read every eyebrow twitch and every quiver of his mustache. He learned to trust the man to make the correct decisions.

Not long after, Ghost was made to work alongside Kyle Garrick. Or "Gaz", as Price elected to call him.

Gaz seemed like a fresh soldier who was fed the same old slop that they were doing things for the better good. Ghost believed it for a long while, the man's friendly and easy-going demeanor eluding to such a thing.

The day Gaz ripped Price a new one, and demanded blood after an op went sideways, was the moment he realized that maybe the darkness and filth from the harshest parts of the world had tainted the sergeant's mind.

It wasn't that Ghost wanted him to be jaded by the hatred and violence that pulsed under the earth's crust, under the skin of humans, but it made him a bit more at ease knowing that Gaz knew just how horrid and broken the world truly was.

And then John MacTavish crashed into the taskforce like he was radiating the pure heat and power of the sun.

John, or "Soap" as he insisted to call him, was a square block that Simon had to fit into a triangular shaped hole. He was cheery and encouraging, and exuded a brightness that the world should have already snuffed out by that point.

The man just never quit, always slipping into any existing cracks and looking for the next weak point within a plate of armour that he could worm his way through.

The worst part?

He seemed to never carry any intention of malice, never looking to slip past defenses to thrust a knife into a vulnerable underbelly.

Soap just seemed to thrive within the deepest existence of others.

Ghost hated it.

He continued to hate it for a long time, giving him the cold shoulder, brushing him off.

And then, without realizing one day, Johnny had slipped through the fractures in his walls before he'd even realized. Pressing against the sheets of ice that surrounded his heart and trying to melt them gradually, instead of swinging down a sharp pickaxe.

And maybe, at some point, Ghost learned to live with the constant thinning of his walls.

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Ghost couldn't pin down when things shifted if he even tried.

Scouring his memories, he could select a few instances where things had perhaps had the opportunity, but a certain breaking point? He couldn't be sure.

He'd always known that someday, those in the 141 would be gone.

Succumb to blood-loss, red spilling out over broken concrete. Eyes blinking slowly into empty sockets, bones crumbled into dust.

He knew they'd be gone.

But at some point, he almost yearned that it wouldn't.

He didn't think the jar he held carefully deep inside the fortress of sharp metal and unyielding rock would stand up to the life draining from Price as his blood seeped through his tac vest. It would crack at the sight of Gaz being crushed by collapsed cement and rebar.

It would shatter if Johnny was torn apart by a loud explosion of RDX and a trigger.

Every mission, every op, Ghost pushed it from his mind. Maintained his cold and unshakable exterior, keeping his interactions short and blunt. Yet...

Johnny always seemed to wriggle his way into those chunks in his armour. And Ghost... Ghost almost didn't mind it.

As much as he wanted to thrust it away out of instinct whenever it got too close, when Johnny got too close, he felt the cliff of ice melting down into a small ridge on the ground before he'd even realized.

He began to almost dread when any of the 141 would crack and crumble under the pressures of violence.

When Johnny would be lost to the dredge and destruction of endless war.

And that was what made it so jarring when it was Ghost who'd collapsed under the crushing weight instead.