Archive of Our Own

Soap is still just the FNG when he watches Captain Price force-feed a man his own shattered teeth for the first time. He has no sympathy for Al-Asad. Fucking cowardly bastard. Blowing up his own people to spite his enemies, wiping out tens of thousands of lives with a single button, and hiding away in the mountains. Soap killed men to get into this barn. Their bodies are still warm. He’s been killing for years now. The greenest SAS soldier has seen things that would make the average soldier shake.

So he doesn’t understand why he almost flinches, the first time Price backhands the man with the butt of his pistol. He’s ashamed of it, disappointed in himself.

Price makes all torture Soap has seen before look like a dress rehearsal. It was always planned, dispassionate, neat. This is chaotic and raw. Violence on the scale they deal out always feels deeply impersonal, but there’s nothing impersonal about this. Price puts so much anger behind every punch. Soap can see it on his face as he watches, drinking in this new side of the captain he wants desperately to know. His lips pull back into a snarl. He grunts with effort and barks demands. It’s like they’ve unleashed some hulking great dog. When Price jerks back to swing he swears he hears the clatter of his choke chain. There’s no pause, no hesitation. For some reason Soap wasn’t expecting this from him. Again and again he strikes, and Soap just stands there, uselessly wishing he was trained to do this so he could feel closer to Price.

This op might be sanctioned, but Price doesn’t need that permission when he towers over Al-Asad. There’s no judge, jury, or executioner here, though Price could be all three if he wanted. This is penance and confession. Guilt is pre-established.

Soap is fascinated. He’s disgusted. He wants to be Price - like he always does, but more intense - and he wants to drag him off the poor bastard. He’s a child in church with his sins being dragged out of him and a weary soldier waiting for a long night to end. Is the audience making Price hit harder or softer? Is that the point, that they carry this for him like they carry the heavy gear?

“You can step out if you need to.”

Gaz appears next to him from nowhere. His words are almost buried under one of Al-Asad’s screams. Soap drags his eyes away from Price’s show. Gaz looks bored, except for that uniquely Gaz look in his eyes, the twinkle of mischief. It sets Soap on edge. “Need to…?” What? Take a piss?

“Catch your breath. Get a break from this.” Gaz flicks his gaze back towards Price and Al-Asad for half a second. Soap doesn’t. He hears a sickening crunching sound.

This is a test. Gaz’s attention is too close. This is how he looks when he’s watching people running the cargo mock-up. Price calls Al-Asad a useless arsehole, and something metal collides with a thick head. Soap grits his teeth, but Gaz keeps his bright eyes on him. He tilts his head and makes a sympathetic face that Soap wants to claw off him.

Definitely a test.

“Nah.” Soap shakes his head and clenches one fist to hold back his wounded masculine pride. “I’m good.” Their conversation is private, concealed by the sounds of Price’s back alley cosmetic surgery. It doesn’t matter. Anything Gaz sees or hears gets back to Price eventually. If it were just Gaz and not Price, if they didn’t come as a pair, Soap isn’t sure he’d want to pass so desperately.

One side of Gaz’s mouth quirks up. “Alright. Just checking. Captain Price is a heavy hitter. Some people need a minute the first time they watch him work.” Not you though, say Gaz’s eyes, almost approving. You’re one of the good ones.

It’s so simple, suddenly. “Not me.” Soap folds his arms and turns back to the scene, forcing himself to stare. He’s intensely aware of every muscle in his face. I’m one of the good ones.

Al-Asad’s own face crumples under Price’s fist again, and more blood spills down like a fountain. It looks black on Price’s knuckles in the moonlight, the garb of a priest taking confession. Price glances down at his fist. He stretches out his fingers, curls them back in, and smiles a sick, satisfied smile. His men watch and listen, like any good flock.

Soap gets to know Price better. Price saves his life again. Price dies, and Soap is given stars on his shoulder that he doesn’t want by a new Shepherd. He gets over it – or at least he tells himself he does – and life moves on. Five years stretch between him and Al-Asad’s limp body in a ruined barn.

He does learn how to torture effectively. Enough to know that even if he’d been at Al-Asad’s side with a handbook, he wouldn’t have been able to follow Price’s logic. There was none. You don’t just senselessly punch. You don’t smash the teeth out of someone you need information from. How would they talk then? You don’t execute people without a word to anyone above you, without trying to find out everything they know. It’s a game of information and terror that you quickly grow numb to, and the angrier you are the less effective you’ll be.

But Price is dead, and he saved his life, and Soap isn’t a good enough leader to have any right to question the sacrifices Price made to keep their hands clean. So he never thinks about the beast in the barn when he imagines Price. It’s always the perfect captain he knows he needs to be and never will. Soap has tried to emulate Price in every way imaginable. He smokes Price’s cigars, quotes Price verbatim, organizes his team the way Price would have, has Ghost to be his eyes and ears the way Price had Gaz. He’s unnecessarily rough. He catches his men when they fall. He gets shit done. But Price liked to torture with his bare hands, with his men watching. Soap has never done that.

Oh Soap can torture. He’s efficient at it too, though he’s not sure the army shrinks would be thrilled to hear his theory that OCD gives you an edge in torture. He almost never has to do it though. He has Ghost.

A romantic might imagine Ghost on bended knee, dutifully dirtying his hands so his captain doesn’t have to. The truth is though, it’s no duty. Ghost loves it, and he’s better than him at it. Better than Price too, he sometimes lets himself admit. He enjoys it more than he should, but he doesn’t wear that satisfied smirk Price did. He goes about it efficiently, holds himself back. Ghost is always holding himself back from being something worse. Sometimes they don’t even have to actually hurt anyone. Just the sight of that mask coming towards you holding cables pushes some people into hysterical confessions.

Watching him teaches Soap the fine balance in this process. It’s not morals that stay Ghost’s hands, it’s that he’s weighed up what he stands to gain by striking versus what he stands to lose, and he’s decided what he could do would only cost them information or time. So he doesn’t feed a man his own teeth. He goes for the fingernails instead. Soap watches the same way he watched Price work. Except he was never checking out the flex of Price’s muscles as he wrenched a knife free from bone.

There’s no change in Ghost when they’re filing away at humanity. He’s still recognisably Ghost the entire time, and that should make Soap feel worse about him, not better, but it doesn’t. It makes him like Ghost even more, because he’s predictable, and honest, and he has himself under control even when he’s indulging himself. This is just work to him, to both of them. Soap asks the questions, leaning against whatever filthy building they’ve found themselves in this week, and Ghost makes sure their victim answers. He’s proud of some of their work. He enjoys the aftermath, when they’re thrumming with the pride of a job well done, and then Ghost lets his control slip. Just for him.

So no, he’s not judging Price morally or intellectually. It’s hard to get judgemental of how other people torture once you’ve done it. Harder once you and your lieutenant have dry humped each other up against the wall outside a torture cell because one of you – not naming names, but he had a mask on - was too worked up to wait. There’s no high ground from any position after that, and Soap doesn’t want it. Not more than he wants Ghost, at least.

(Ghost judges Price, and he’s the only man who could ever get away with it. “No offence,” he says once, “but your old captain sounds like a shit torturer.” Soap just laughs, because he doesn’t want to admit that he thinks Ghost might be right. He doesn’t want anyone’s opinion to have more weight to him than Price’s.)

He just… thinks about it sometimes. The differences between the way Price did things and the way Ghost does things. Even the way he does things on the rare occasions where he must get his hands dirty. Whenever he does what Price never would and sends the team away – always finding some excuse. It’ll take some time, there’s another objective, go stand watch. Ghost stays, but that’s different. That’s Ghost.

Comparing himself to Price is a daily habitual measuring of all the ways he falls short. Just another thing for him to count – like gear, and shoelaces, and plans, and failures. But he can’t get himself to stretch for those extra centimetres on this like he does on everything else. He doesn’t want Roach to stand awkwardly off to the side like he did, chastising himself for flinching, questioning how well he knows his captain. He wants to protect his men, even from things they don’t need protecting from. Ghost would probably like it, and they’re only doing what’s necessary, the same way Price did what was necessary. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Maybe he just wants that time for himself and Ghost. Maybe it’s their date night, or some other fucked up allegory.

It occurs to him one of these times, as he’s watching Ghost drag out intel with the minimum effort required, that Price never did get any information out of Al-Asad that night. Everything they learned came from one lucky phone call. But the thought doesn’t match with his vision of Price, so he dismisses it and locks it away somewhere.

“He’s your best?” Nikolai asks Soap, throwing a glance over his shoulder at Roach, who’s collapsed, exhausted, onto his back. Brazil fades into the distance through the windows. Except… he doesn’t say it like a question, more like a statement of fact. “You think he’ll be in your shoes someday.”

Soap frowns. “How can you tell?” He does think that, but he’s never expressed it. Not even to Ghost, though he’s pretty sure he thinks the same. There’s no way Nikolai could get that from the past twenty minutes, watching Roach tumble from rooftops and stumble his way to the helicopter ladder. It was a farce. (One Soap takes all the blame for. He should have told him to drop his gear, damnit. Almost lost him.)

Nikolai shrugs. “Something Captain Price said once, when you and I met.” The name makes Soap stiffen, gripping the headrest behind Nikolai hard. Nikolai looks him up and down cautiously. For a moment they both pause, feeling it out. Price weighs heavily on the two of them whenever he’s brought up.

Warily, Nikolai continues, “I asked him why he brought a fucking child to rescue me.” It cuts the tension immediately. Soap snorts, caught off guard. Nikolai looks all too smug about it. “And he said: the best soldiers are always the ones you can shape up yourself.”

“Yeah, well,” Soap looks back at Roach. He’s pulling off his helmet, running a hand through messy hair. Ghost flicks him in the side of the head and he startles, shooting him a betrayed glare. “At the risk of blowing smoke up my own arse, Price was right about most things.”

Nikolai is looking at him, not Roach. “Da,” he says quietly, wistfully.

There’s a gun to Roach’s head. His sergeant, his Roach, is on the floor and there’s a gun to his head, and Soap doesn’t think. He draws his pistol, steps up, snarling. “Drop it!” Hammer cocked, blood rushing in his ears. It doesn’t matter how badly they need 626, how quickly they can end Makarov’s little war with him strung up for bait. If he kills Roach then Soap will put him down.

626 twitches. “… Soap?”

It’s impossible.

It’s real. Roach’s wide eyes have narrowed into a frown. So he must have said it.

Soap’s grip on the gun loosens. He blinks back shock like tears. “Price?” They both straighten. He can see Worm and Roach looking at each other in confusion, but he doesn’t care. Price takes up the entire room, like a burning vision. A saint, smudged with dirt and blood.

Soap swallows pointless syllables. There’s nothing he could say, no words for the feeling in his chest. So he lowers Price’s pistol, holds it out like an offering. “This belongs to you sir.”

Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. – Luke 24:39

Price reaches out. His fingers are bony, and warm.

“Where’s your lucky pistol?”

Soap watches the medics drag Price away, fussing and fretting and taking vitals as they walk. Nikolai – and Soap didn’t even know he was still tagging along with the 141 – darts after them, frantic. “Don’t call it that,” he says, absentmindedly.

Ghost steps up to his side, pressing a little closer than he should. Soap can’t blame him. It was a close call. Normally he’d sweep the two of them away somewhere private, take a minute. Normally. It’s not every day you witness the resurrection. The sun is going down and he wants to spend what little daylight they have left bathing in this sacred feeling.

Ghost frowns. “You never go anywhere without that thing.” It’s true. Even when he has better weapons, Soap still straps the pistol on, meticulously clean and in its proper place. It’s been a little piece of Price protecting him from beyond the grave.

“It’s back where it belongs,” he says, still staring after Price. He hopes Nikolai catches them before they get Price lying down. If Soap has to attend to his work, then at least one person who understands, who was there, can be here now.

Ghost’s hand brushes over the empty holster where the pistol always sits. This is sacred too in its own deeply human way. It’s tender and out of place. He must have been really scared. “Don’t like it,” Ghost mutters. “Doesn’t feel right.”

Why is Ghost fussing over him and a pistol now? Doesn’t he see? Doesn’t he understand what’s happened today? Captain Price is right over there, back from the dead, and Ghost hasn’t spared him a glance. They have Price back. Nothing bad will happen now.

On the way back here Soap scribbled angry, tense thoughts in his journal. The ones he always has after a mission. Ways they could all have improved, ways he almost got them all killed, ways he’s failed to whip his team into shape. He was going to chew Ghost out for his slow work. Now they’re on solid ground, and Price is still here, none of it feels like it matters. They have a captain who knows what he’s doing at last. The weight shifting off his back for the first time in five years leaves him so dizzy he thinks he might need Ghost to carry him to medical.

Five years is a long time.

For all the affection Soap feels for Price, he’d forgotten how hard it is to have a conversation with the man. It’s not like Ghost, where an easy physicality lets them talk even without words. It’s not like Shepherd, where he knows the right formalities and lines between them. He’s never spoken to anyone quite like Price. The closest he can remember is his first father. Every conversation filled with a quiet desperation for approval that he needs to show and conceal at the same time.

It's not surface level. He doesn’t even know if Price is aware of it. There’s a reckless, scrabbling feeling in his chest as the conversation speeds past him. It’s like he can never quite grasp Price, never touch him. He doesn’t make conversation with Price, it just happens to him.

“When I left,” Price says around the cigar in his mouth, while Soap is searching his pockets for his lighter, “you were a skinny, green thing bouncing off the walls like this was all a game.”

“I was never skinny,” Soap protests, finally shoving a lighter under Price’s cigar and clicking it on. He can’t deny the charge of naivete. He remembers the first time he watched a cigar in Price’s mouth light up red at the end, the smoke in his wide eyes.

Price inhales deeply like it’s his first real breath of oxygen in years. The thought of how long he’s gone without cigars makes Soap uncomfortable. If Price has spent five years not smoking his villas, and Soap has spent five years burning through them, which of them is which? What is Price if he’s not all the little details Soap has been trying to emulate? What is Soap?

Price doesn’t cough, miraculously. He pulls the cigar from his mouth and blows out a heavy load of smoke straight into Soap’s face. Just like old times. Suddenly his aimless questions don’t seem to matter. He feels almost silly. Price is Price and Soap is Soap, and those are very simple roles. Maybe the oldest roles in history.

“And you didn’t smoke,” Price adds, returning the cigar to his mouth. Soap rolls his eyes and pulls out his own cigar, sets about lighting up.

They’re not supposed to smoke in medical. Price isn’t even supposed to be sitting up, but he’d already been on the edge of the bed when Soap had come in. Nikolai had warned him when he’d finally, after what felt like painfully too long, left Price’s room, “The old asshole wants to end the war right now, all on his own! Unarmed in a hospital gown!” Soap had muttered something about Price always wanting to do things with his bare fists, and the two of them had paused, grinning at each other. Wordless euphoria and disbelief. A shared grief lightened.

Price, of course, immediately noticed Soap carrying his brand when he took Nikolai’s place. All he’d had to do was hold his hand out. Price wants things and he gets them.

“You had good taste,” Soap mumbles around the cigar in his mouth. He doesn’t talk about the first time he bought this brand, or the dark, empty feeling in his chest, the desperation for some part of Price, even just his smell. What would be the point?

“Have good taste,” Price corrects the habit, blowing more smoke out. “Glad to see you followed my example.” Soap glows. He crosses his ankles to stop himself kicking his legs like a pleased schoolgirl. The cigars have never tasted quite so smooth, but the smell is overpowering with two of them in the room.

Price shifts beside him and sighs. There’s a careful distance between their shoulders. He’s never touched Price outside of a battlefield.

“I’m fucking glad you’re back,” slips out of him before he can catch it.

Price’s eyes have closed, focusing on savouring the taste. He doesn’t stir, just nods. “They told me you were all dead you know,” he says, casually. “I don’t believe what I don’t see with my own eyes, but Gaz was dead, I knew that much. He was one of the best men I ever worked with and you...” One eye opens, regards Soap. “You were so young.” Price doesn’t elaborate. He doesn’t need to. Soap recognizes, in Price’s voice, the tight feeling he can’t help in his chest when he watches Roach stumble into danger.

Price lowers the cigar. He looks Soap up and down with both eyes now like he’s trying to commit him to memory. “At least I got one thing right,” he says warmly. Beneath the exhaustion in his eyes there’s pride. It’s exactly what Soap has needed to hear for five years, and it sends a heady rush like tequila straight to his head. The actual words skim over him, meaningless except for Price’s approval. Worship isn’t critical. It’s all about the feeling.

“You’ve got a good team here.” Price blows smoke towards the ceiling this time.

“Take it from me,” he says immediately, desperately.

Price gives him a look he can’t interpret. “I intend to. Just wanted to make sure you didn’t feel put out.”

Soap frowns. “Why would I?”

“Old man, out of action for five years, comes stomping into your territory and wants things back the way they were? Yeah, why wouldn’t you want that?”

Soap blows smoke at him, just a little. “I was just keeping your seat warm sir.”

Price laughs at that, and it’s finally enough for his abused lungs to wake up and protest the sudden cigar smoke. He coughs, doubled over at the middle, until it sounds like he’s retching. Soap stares. He’s never seen Price... well, in his mind Price has always been untouchable, strong as an oak. Right now he’s shaking.

When he finally stops coughing his face is red and his eyes are watering. He grins and, for a moment, he looks completely insane. “Just like old times,” he says in a croaky voice that still manages to sound conspiratorial and condescending. Captain bonding with the new recruit. Dad letting his son in on a secret he’s too young for. An inside joke that he’s not supposed to get, but does.

It’s not the old times.

Price can fix that. He can do anything, even come back from the dead. Price will put the whole world back the way it’s supposed to be, and then it really will be just like the old times again. He won’t cough, and Soap won’t worry about everything.

Price has fucked it. Price has fucked it all to bastard buggery shit. There are five different generals shouting in Soap’s ear, alarms going off, shocked reports coming in, in three different languages. And Ghost is still screaming.

“I know!” Soap shouts, grabbing for the 141 comms like a lifeline with one hand as his other traces the missile’s path. It’s too loud here. He never runs support. If he’d had his goddamn shots up to date, if he’d been with his men, in command… “We know Ghost, we can fucking see it!”

Ghost screams another curse, the 141 are frantically chattering, and Soap wants desperately to be on the ground with them, helping. But he’s on support, and there’s a missile in the air, and he’s got too many people to talk to and too much to do here. So he compartmentalizes. Price might be doing god knows what, but Ghost is still there. Ghost will handle their team. The 141 fade to background noise. He talks backup plans with overworked response teams. Satellite feeds are pulled. Numbers, lengths, expected casualties, and the whole time Soap is just going through the motions while his real brainpower is devoted to trying to puzzle out why. He tosses Price and the missile back and forth in his head, trying to understand why he would do this. Why he’d do this to them.

There must be reasons. Price wouldn’t betray them. He couldn’t. Not his captain. If he was that different from five years in the gulag, if he was that broken, Soap would have known. He would have seen. Right?

“Sorry,” Price says to him, just him, later, when the light is fading over their satellite base and the fires must be fading in Washington too. The two of them sit alone on a roof, looking out across a small, well-hidden compound. Somewhere beneath him, the 141 do not sleep. Ghost and Roach sit up playing a card game they invented themselves. Soap left them to it half an hour ago to get up here and clear his head. There’s an argument brewing between him and Ghost that he wants to put off as long as possible. When he left the team around them were wide awake too, muttering about how insane their new captain is. If Price cares what they think of him, he hasn’t demonstrated it.

“For not telling you I mean,” Price elaborates when Soap doesn’t say anything. He fiddles with his hat, adjusting it over and over again as the sunset blinds him. “I don’t like keeping you in the dark Soap, but you would have had to stop me.”

Soap glances at him from the corner of his eyes. He’s cloaked in shadow and blazing bright at the same time somehow, orange and burning in the sunset. “I wouldn’t have stopped you.” He’s certain of it, though he didn’t realise it until just now.

Price smirks like he’s just said something funny and shakes his head. “Yeah I thought you might say that. All the more reason I couldn’t tell you. My plan, my risk, my discipline to take. You and the team needed to be squeaky clean.”

And it worked, didn’t it? This war is turning around. The moment of madness might even be over. Clearly none of them needed to know for it to work. Why would they? They’re not Price. Sitting here, knowing that he was right, that Price has fixed everything just like he knew he would, is the closest Soap has felt to peace since childhood, when there was certainty. Even Ghost, the team… he feels it’s all going to work out. How could it not?

Price withdraws a cigar from his pocket. Soap loses track of the flame of his lighter in the haze of orange surrounding him. It feels like a good time to pray, but Soap hasn’t been to church in years. There’s not enough time in confession for him, for any of them. So instead he watches Price, and the uncomfortable feeling lingering in him disappears again. All that’s left is awe, and disgust with himself. How could he have ever hoped to replace this man? Once again Price sacrifices and saves him, and he just stands there and watches.

“Well they don’t call me Soap for nothing,” he croaks out, desperate to say something and Price laughs so hard he starts coughing again.

It’s not the first time Ghost has shoved him into a closet, but it might be the first time he’s done it when they have somewhere to be. “Hey.” Soap pushes against him, but even his admirable bulk can’t shift Ghost when he’s determined to do something. “We don’t have time for a quickie.” He needs his mind clear for Makarov, not distracted by lingering, phantom touches.

Ghost tsks and reaches up to pull his glasses and mask off. Soap blinks furiously. His eyes are still adjusting to the dark room, and he’s not entirely sure he’s seeing what he thinks he is. Not a quickie then. Ghost would just roll the mask up. “And we really don’t have time for-”

“Shut up,” Ghost huffs, though there’s badly repressed laughter behind the words. “I’m trying to be serious.” It’s a little easier to see in the hazy dark now. The familiar lines of Simon’s face are there alright. The perpetual frown, the crease in his brow the mask usually hides, the scars, the cracked lips. Strawberry hair falls over his eyes. Soap didn’t even know there were so many names for hair colours before Simon, before he needed all the words he could get. It needs a trim.

He shakes the thought, the unnecessary information, off. When they get back from the mission Soap will sit him down in his personal bathroom and tame it for him with the little scissors. He could do with a shave. They all could, it’s been a rough few weeks. Soap will handle that too. As soon as this is over, he’ll dedicate a whole weekend to Simon. Just the two of them. He’ll make up for all of it: the tough, constant missions, the on again off again argument about Price, the bloody yanks.

Maybe he’ll even be a bit selfish for once in his life.

Soap has to close his eyes for a second. This is why. This is why they can’t crowd into closets just before a mission. It’s so easy to get distracted by Simon, caught up in ideas and daydreams that don’t help him do his job. Looking at Simon’s face is about the only time he has those.

Simon snaps his fingers between them. “Hey. Pay attention.”

“Fuck you.” Soap opens his eyes, smirking.

Simon rolls his eyes. “You need to stop thinking about fucking me.” He falls silent again when it’s just the two of them staring at each other. Soap likes to think that maybe he’s a little distracting too, because then he’s not alone in this.

He almost misses Simon’s hand moving in the darkness, but it’s impossible to miss the feeling when it brushes against his cheek. It’s almost a caress. Almost too soft for them. “Be careful.”

Soap squints. “I’m always careful. You get on my back about it all the time.” It’s not like Simon to worry before a mission. They both know the risks of the job. More than any of the team, Simon knows. At least that’s what Soap likes to believe. It makes him feel better about ordering the man he loves to do death defying feats of human stupidity for the greater good. He’d tell the whole world to burn for Simon’s sake, and that’s exactly why he needs to accept that he can’t.

There’s a lot of things, in their line of work, that you just don’t let yourself think about.

Simon’s face twists into something pained, like the thought hurts him too. “I don’t mean like that. I know you can take care of yourself. I mean… be careful with him.”

The soft, bubbling feeling in Soap’s chest sours immediately, turning to stomach acid crawling its way up. He glares at Ghost. His skin pulls against the soft hand still on his cheek, and he knows he must look stupid. “Ghost.”

Ghost’s hand leaves him, thankfully. “He’s a fucking maniac Johnny.”

“He’s the greatest man I’ve ever served under,” Soap argues back. It’s familiar. This is a back and forth they’ve been having ever since the gulag. They put it down, they pick it back up, they say the exact same words to each other, and nothing changes. Except every time Soap’s patience wears a little thinner.

“See that’s exactly what I mean.” Ghost points a finger at him accusingly. “Don’t worship him like that.”

“It’s not worship!” It is. Soap thinks Price hung the moon and gave it the stars to keep it company. He knows the limits of his own knowledge, and he knows that those limits don’t exist for Price. He will do whatever Price tells him to without questioning him, because you don’t question faith.

“It’s stupid is what it is,” Ghost growls. “He’s unstable, and if you follow him without thinking it’s the blind leading the blind.”

“Don’t fucking call him that.” Soap’s hand clenches into a painful fist. Not one for punching, one for holding back. Ghost doesn’t have the right. None of them do. “Do you want me to start questioning all my orders? You want me to tell Shepherd to fuck off when he sends us on a suicide mission?”

“Shepherd doesn’t lie to us. Shepherd doesn’t fire nukes at the United States. You don’t worship Shepherd.”

“And I don’t worship Price!”

“Yes, you do,” Ghost says like it’s a fact, not an opinion. He looks… devastated, for a second. It replaces all the anger on his face.

It almost looks like pity, and that has Soap’s pride scrabbling against his chest, claws out. “I admire him,” he grits out through his teeth. “He taught me everything I know.”

“He treats you like his dog.” Ghost’s lips curl around the syllables like a snarl.

“You want to talk dogs?” Soap is never cruel to Ghost. Never. But going for Price and his pride in one go is a step too far. He’s nobody’s goddamn dog. He’s Price’s- He wants to be- He can’t say the words. It’s stupid and infantile. So instead, he says the next worst thing. “Who’s my attack dog, huh?”

“You don’t want a dog for your second,” Ghost says confidently, almost smug about it, like he knows Soap better than Soap knows himself. It makes him angrier; the way Ghost assumes. He thinks he knows everything, but he wasn’t there at Credenhill, in Azerbaijan, on the bridge. “You want someone who’ll push back, and I do. It doesn’t fucking matter what it looks like to everyone else.”

How can one man be so infuriatingly stubborn? “Then why does it matter what Price looks like to y-”

“Because the worst part is, I think you wanna be his dog.” Ghost pauses for emphasis, dramatic bastard. Soap is angry enough that he can’t get the words together to interrupt before Ghost continues. “It makes you vulnerable. You can’t curl up and let your guard down like that.”

“Do you let your guard down with me?” Soap pushes. “Do you trust me?”

The expression Ghost gives him now is the same one he’s seen him give hysterical civvies. Like he’s stupid, irrational. “Of course I trust you. You prove I can trust you every day. If you pulled some crazy plan without telling me about it, I’d stop trusting you too. But you wouldn’t because you’re stable.”

Because you’re a better captain than him. Which is what it all comes back to really. Ghost doesn’t like taking orders from a new CO. He trusted Soap, and he’s decided it’s Price’s fault that he’s being asked to trust another person now. “None of us are stable Ghost,” he says pointedly.

Ghost glares at him properly. “Fuck off.”

“You’ve only seen him in desperate situations.”

A gloved fist collides with the wall. Soap doesn’t even flinch. He can take Ghost, but he knows he won’t have to. The lieutenant doesn’t waste time punching inanimate objects when he’s really mad. He goes for what’s pissing him off. Ghost leans in, up in his face, teeth bared. “Desperate situations are exactly where you see what people are really like.”

Soap could have said that line, for the number of times he’s heard it from Ghost since Price came back from the dead. He rolls his eyes like a petulant child. “Price is not your old CO.”

The words are out before he can stop them, snapping and cruel. He swears Ghost’s eyes flash.

Immediately, Soap throws his hands up, closes his eyes. “Stop.”

Ghost stops.

It gives him the space he needs to reorient himself, the silence and the black space behind his eyelids. Inches away from him, Ghost is breathing heavily. He must be doing it too. He counts to five on an inhale. Counts to five on the exhale. He counts heartbeats until he can’t hear Ghost breathing anymore.

When he opens his eyes, Ghost is looking at the floor. When did they get so close together? They were further apart when the argument started. The closet is too small for all their words.

Soap sighs. “I’m sorry. And I’m not doing this.” He pauses. “I don’t want to do this. Not before a mission.” Not when we don’t know if we’ll be alive to make up.

Simon shifts. Slowly, he looks up. The crease in his brow is as deep as ever, but the way his lips are turned down looks almost sad, apologetic. “Me neither,” he agrees. “Especially not when we’re gonna be apart.”

“And who’s fault is that?” Soap doesn’t say it with malice, even if it is just an extension of their argument. Even if he knows exactly why Simon volunteered to lead the second team. Simon rolls his eyes, but when Soap holds his arms out he steps into the circle of them. They’ve done this before, too many times to count. It’s one of their unspoken rules. Don’t go into battle on an argument. Simon settles his chin on top of Soap’s head, and they press into each other’s warmth. It’s not relaxation. It’s more like two desperate animals clinging to each other.

He really does hate not working with Ghost. They’re such a smooth team. Even before they started sleeping with each other, they were almost telepathic in their communication. He sighs again. “Maybe I should be going with you.” It doesn’t make sense, really, to send the two captains to one objective and let the lieutenant lead the other. If it was Soap’s call he wouldn’t have allowed it. “I can swap with Roach.”

He feels Simon shake his head. “No. I know I just said…” He doesn’t finish. Neither of them has enough tact to stop the argument blowing up again. “But honestly? You are the only person that can keep the fucker grounded. You need to be with him.”

Price and Soap are a package deal. Ghost and Soap are too. But he knows Simon is right. His lieutenant can function and focus without him. Price will work better if he has Soap there. He always needed a right hand. So Soap nods, though every atom in his body is screaming at him to go with Simon, to go where he always wants to be.

“Besides,” Simon mutters. For a second, Soap isn’t sure he’s meant to hear it. “If I can’t drag you out from under his bloody influence at least I can keep Roach safe.”

Soap pushes at him, nudges him half a step back with his weight like they’re playfully wrestling. “Don’t be an arsehole.” He’s grinning into Simon’s chest as he says it.

One of Simon’s hands comes up to play with his hair, pushing through the short mohawk. (If he’s called on it he’ll say he’s messing with it to annoy him. Soap doesn’t need to call him on it. He knows.)

“I meant it though,” Simon says quietly. “Be careful.”

“Simon-”

The hand in his hair smooths over him like Simon’s petting a cat. “I know he’ll keep you alive,” he says, though it sounds like it had to be dragged out of him syllable by syllable. “I know he cares about what happens to you at least. But he thinks he’s untouchable. He thinks he’s in control of everything, and that’s fucking dangerous. So just… just be careful anyway, okay? For me?”

Soap has never been able to deny Simon anything. (Except a denial of Price.) He nods and leans back, tilting his head up and cradling Simon’s cheek to pull him down. “For you,” he agrees. “And you be careful too. Bring Roach back in one piece.”

Simon kisses him. Thorough and passionate and a little bit messy. He was like this before the ACS recovery mission too. They both were. A little desperate. Canines catching on each other’s lips, and slips of tongue, like they could send each other away with borrowed pieces. They rarely work apart. Why would they?

He pulls away, breathless. “I really meant it when I said we didn’t have time for a quickie.” But he lets Simon push him further into the cupboard. Borrowed privacy and borrowed time.

“I know,” Simon breathes against his mouth. “Don’t want that. Just…” The hand not resting in his hair strokes up and down his side greedily.

Just a bit more time together. It’s all they ever seem to be asking for.

Price jumps out as soon as the ramp is up, while the plane is rapidly gaining altitude. He doesn't even open the door, just... hops over it and runs for the stairs. Soap stays in the car. It rolls back and forth as the plane climbs and the clattering, metal sounds fill the space between his ears. The nausea in his stomach might be seasickness. It's completely absurd, and none of it feels real.

The plane levels out. They put air between them and Shepherd's trap. The adrenaline fades out and numbness sets in. It's like frostbite but colder.

Soap lets the car move forward to somewhere he can secure it, and then kills the engine. He slowly extracts his arms from the stiffening cage of Rook’s. He gets out of the car. The world feels muted and outrageously loud, like when you start your morning routine after lying awake all night. He locks the car into place, checks the knots and belts, wipes blood from his gloves onto his arms when he notices the stains. It doesn't all come off.

Price is still gone. He's up above with Nikolai somewhere, probably already hashing out their next step. Soap doesn't move to follow him or think about those next steps. He doesn't think about anything. He stares blankly at Rook's lifeless body, hands still clutching the steering wheel in a death grip. This is the last of his 141. A good man trying to help them, even in death.

Soap moves on autopilot, still not really thinking and guided more by instinct, by a twisted urging in his stomach. His face is blank, his limbs mechanical. He opens the door and unbuckles the belts. Carefully, slowly, he slides his arms around Rook and pulls him from the car. The weight is heavy in his arms. More blood stains his chest, his arms. It's back on his gloves again. Rook’s feet catch against the metal floor, dragging awkwardly. Soap hoists him higher, almost over his shoulder, and carries him to the bench. He lays Rook down and works his helmet off. Red, fleshy pulp comes away with it. Soap stares down at it for a second calmly, like it's supposed to be there, before he lays it aside. He closes the staring, accusing eyes with two fingers, and then closes his own for a second, just to catch his breath. He takes Rook's arms and arranges them across his chest, crossed neatly. There isn't a blanket to put over him. He'll have to ask Nikolai.

Soap looks away from the body. He sits down beside it and stares ahead. How long? He has no idea. Maybe hours, or maybe a few minutes.

His hand comes up to his mic. Changing his frequency takes a few tries because his fingers are shaking so badly. Dead air greets him.

".... Ghost?" His voice comes out hoarse and rough. He swallows. "Ghost, how copy?"

He waits. He tries again. Repeat. For the first time in his life he thinks, stubbornly, that Price is wrong. It's Ghost. Price came back from the dead, and Ghost has done it before. He could be laying low, finding a way out of this mess. Maybe he even has Roach with him. Soap should leave them alone so they can do what they need to do. Ghost can handle himself, and he doesn’t need him fussing.

Soap closes his eyes. "Simon?"

There's nothing. It’s just him, the silence, and the dead man.

You should have gone with him. You should have swapped. Roach should be sat here right now. You should have died with him and let Roach live. This is what it was like. This is what it felt like when he laid beside a dead body but couldn't rot with it. This is why he used to wake up crying. You won't survive it. You don't have the stomach to rip Rook's jaw off and dig your way out.

Hours tick by. Rook goes cold.

Price returns eventually. He stops on the stairs, taking in the scene. Soap knows he's there but he can't... He can't make himself care. He flicks his radio between different channels. Anything. Anyone.

Price approaches slowly but steadily. He sits beside Soap and sighs, rubbing at his eyes with one hand. "Hi," he says unnecessarily. Soap doesn't respond. "How are you doing?" Price asks, warily glancing at the corpse Soap is keeping watch over.

Soap wants to scream. He wants some emotion to break through the hollow, gaping feeling in his chest and crash out of him, large enough to break something to pay the world back for the things of his that it's broken. When is reality going to bite? This drawn out, doddering pace of grief is too much for him. Better to get it over with before the worst hits.

(Oh yes, he knows this isn't the worst. The worst is coming, and he just hopes Price doesn't need him when it gets here.)

"Fine," he croaks out, because they haven’t invented words yet to describe how he feels.

Price's hand lands on his shoulder, solid and unyielding and grounding enough that Soap thinks maybe he could cry now. Maybe he's close enough to reality to do it. He cringes towards Price's heat, wanting to burrow into it, but... No. Price is TOO solid. He's not looking to hold him.

Price stares down at him, watching the odd position he's contorted himself into. There’s an expression on his face that Soap can’t parse. "Stay with me Soap. We're on our way."

To the safehouse. To the bodies. They're going to look for Ghost and Roach, for Archer, Toad, Scarecrow, and-

"We're gonna kill the bastard."

... To Shepherd. Right. Of course. You have to prioritise during an emergency situation. You have to deal with the tank before you can get the wounded out. Soap is lucky to even have one body to bury. There wouldn't have been time to retrieve Rook if he hadn't been in the car.

Soap doesn’t want to fight right now. He wants to collapse into Price, to be held like a child, sobbing out a nightmare in his father's arms. He wants to be the tortured believer clutched to their loving Father's chest, finally safe. When you've lost everything the list of what you want is endless, and all of it impossible. Except for Price to take his face between his hands and tell him how to fix this, how to put the pieces back together.

And he has, hasn't he? Soap's hands curl into fists. The world around him comes back, blurry as it is. Price looks relieved when he meets his gaze, almost proud. Soap will cling to that, to the expectation and the trust, until the familiar pressure moulds him something that feels like it could be the diamond standard soldier’s focus. It’s all the instinct he has, all he can catch himself with when the world has fallen out beneath him. He needs to be a soldier. He wants to be a soldier, not a useless grieving man and a failed leader. Everything he needs is right here. A captain and a mission.

Kill the bastard.

That'll fix it.

Shepherd’s exhale is harsh, ragged. "You know what they say about revenge: you better be ready to dig two graves.”

Soap is bleeding from somewhere, but he has a pistol and Shepherd doesn’t. He can feel its rough grip through his gloves. The sand catches on the exposed skin at his wrists. The sight stares resolutely at Shepherd’s temple. These are the first details Soap has noticed since Price started talking about victors and history and Soap let the words wash over him without hearing any of them. A numbing, beating drum to count himself in on. They come to him startlingly clear. Like waking up from a dream, except the nightmare came up with him.

His eyes are stinging, but he can’t blink. Shepherd stares back at him from where he’s leaning against the car, clutching his side. His brow furrows, a moment of real emotion. Then he sneers, lips pulling back to reveal teeth that Soap wants to feed to him. Is he savouring the moment or bound by the habit of five years spent listening to Shepherd’s every word? “Go ahead and end it. It won't change anything.”

He’s right. Wear the teeth as a necklace maybe. Embed them into tombstones, one for each man he couldn’t protect. He’s right. Break his fingers one by one. Drag him to the safehouse in chains and make him demonstrate whatever he did to Ghost and Roach. He’s right.

He’s right.

What will this change? Will he be able to carve something off Shepherd and stuff it into the wounds in his heart? He’s waiting, still, to feel something now he’s standing in front of Shepherd. If this is revenge then where’s the relief, or at least the fury?

Killing Zakhaev didn’t change anything. If it had, they wouldn’t be standing here. He remembers the feeling down to the hollow ringing in his chest as the gun fired, the world dropping out from under him with his purpose. All it did was bring Zakhaev’s blood out to pool on the bridge, mixing with Gaz’s, and Soap had wanted to pull him off, to use the last of his energy to rip him away from Gaz because how dare he. How dare he be made of the same weak flesh? How dare Gaz not be something Zakhaev could never touch?

Zakhaev’s temple shakes in his gun’s sights.

Shepherd looks at his quivering arm. Reassessing. Captain MacTavish should be thinking. He should shoot him, or at least make up his mind about Plan B. Soap stands there, a tool without a user. Is Price dead too? Will it just be him - all alone - once he takes this shot?

“Hmph. I knew you couldn't do it.” Price isn’t there, but Shepherd is. Shepherd, who gave him a mission, and a purpose to carry him through that first terrible year after Zakhaev.

The first time Soap met Shepherd, the general was doubled over, examining a newly mounted gun on a heli. He had to straighten up, just like he is now, pushing himself off of the car. They were – and are - the same height, but Shepherd had carried himself like he was twice his size. He was a confident, sturdy anchor in a world that had ceased to make sense. Soap stood to attention immediately. Instinct cries at him to do the same now, and it makes him feel like he could vomit.

When he stands there stupidly, finger on the trigger, Shepherd closes his eyes and shakes his head, exhaling heavily. “You're a good soldier.” Why is he listening to him and the praise he hasn’t earned the right to give? Why isn’t he shooting? “But you could never take that extra step to do what was absolutely necessary."

It’s like a match striking up. C4 blasting debris over his head. His eyes blow wide. He fires immediately, almost snarls just to get some of the boiling heat out of his chest. Fury at last, but none of it for Shepherd.

Shepherd ducks. He moves like a man half his age, like he isn’t even injured, and Soap is reeling, burning up, too crazed to keep track of him. It’s over in a few feverish seconds. There’s searing agony like lighting arcing up and down his every nerve. He screams, finally, like a dam bursting or a wall crashing down, but the knife in his chest almost feels good because he deserves this.

A good soldier. Not a good leader. He never was. That’s exactly what Shepherd was counting on this whole time, since the day they met. What was it Price said? You have to trust somebody to be betrayed. His own naivety called the shot.

“5 years ago… I lost 30,000 men in the blink of an eye.” Shepherd inhales heavily above him. He shudders beneath him. “And the world just fuckin’ watched.”

30,000 is easier to lose than a task force. That’s too many names to put faces to, too many people for one man to fail. You can’t kill 30,000 people by yourself. Shepherd lost his men. Soap killed his. Led them to it like lambs to the fucking slaughter. Roach. Fuck. He was so young, and…

And Ghost…

He swears his chest flutters weakly, that he can feel his muscles butterflying their way around steel. He groans through gritted teeth.

Shepherd is still fucking talking. Maybe that was how he got his claws into Soap so fast in the first place: these stupid, pointless monologues that remind him of Price. Like any of this matters. This doesn’t mean Shepherd has won. It just means Soap has failed once more. Shepherd is going to die too. Maybe not today but somewhere, somehow. Does it really matter which order the men who killed the 141 fall in?

“I know you understand.”

He does. When Shepherd points the gun to his head, Soap leans toward it. His neck and shoulders strain with the effort. His chest screams at him. When he opens his mouth a puff of air escapes his ruined lips. Maybe he’s begging.

An animal smashes into Shepherd.

It’s furry, except for the strange, flapping skin on the top of its head. The beast howls and screams. It rakes its claws savagely against Shepherd’s face, the gun lying uselessly beside them on the ground. It swears, rough and British.

Price.

Soap goes limp. This time it’s a relief when his purpose is swept out from under him. His final duty, the last thing standing in his way, is over. He can die now. That was always how this was going to end. Thank God

The world fades in and out, little snapshots of Price and Shepherd’s struggle. Until, somehow, Price is on the ground. The gun lies forgotten as Shepherd… as Shepherd brutalizes him. There are flecks of blood artfully thrown up in the air from Price’s face. His captain goes limper and limper, and Shepherd just keeps shouting.

Soap almost can’t process it. For a single moment he’s convinced it’s a hallucination. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. Soap is human, fallible, but Price isn’t. He tries to move but the pain almost makes him black out. He breathes raggedly, forces his eyes to stay open. If only the gun was…

His eyes land on the knife.

The knife embedded in his chest.

The knife that’s probably the only reason he hasn’t bled out yet.

There are so many cultures, so many religions, that ask you to sacrifice. Blood is the least you could possibly be asked to give. How much blood do you owe a man who has saved your life three times over, who died for you? Trick question. It’s not even your blood in the first place. It’s His. Your salvation.

Ghost was the one that taught him to throw knives, back before they sorted themselves out. Before Soap knew what his face looked like, or the scar across the back of his thigh. They stood closer than they had any reason to, one of Ghost's hands on his waist and the other trailing up and down his raised arm, possessively rearranging it as he demonstrated how to throw a blade.

"Easy," Ghost whispered just behind his ear. Even through the mask the warm air against newly shaved skin made Soap shiver. He tried to ignore it. Captain MacTavish had only the most professional interest in a very useful skill. He did not find it hot when his direct subordinate threw knives around, and he was not struggling to focus with his lieutenant pressed close to his body. He couldn't. He wasn't allowed. There would be too much at risk.

So many wasted months.

Finally Ghost drew back, trailing his hand along the entire length of Soap's arm. It was obvious. Almost a caress. Soap was too focused on not giving any signals of his own away to pick up any from Ghost. Maybe signal isn't the right word. Maybe none of it was intentional but rather the inevitable result of the magnetism between them. The same snare that pressed Soap's back to Ghost's solid chest, that drew Ghost's hands down to rest on his hips as he shifted to peer over his left shoulder. "Alright then MacTavish. Do it."

Not try it. Not have a go. Do it. Get it right MacTavish. A challenge, or belief?

Soap inhaled. He pulled his wrist back. Ghost’s breath hitched beside him. They were standing so close he could feel it, hear it.

The knife flipped through the air gracefully. It was soaring for seconds, or maybe hours, and then it snapped into place. The sound of success, a sharp crack, came as it embedded itself in that bright red bullseye. Soap sighed with relief. He melted back against Ghost with a stupid, proud smile on his face.

"Beautiful," Ghost breathed. His hands gripped Soap's hips hard enough to brand the bone and his voice fell impossibly lower, thick with something too dangerous to name. "Right in the eye, sir."

There’s a conversation almost every soldier with as much experience as Soap has had, and it starts a little like this: what did it feel like?

The traditional first answer is that it hurt like hell. Everyone knows this, and they know that you’re going to say it, but they respect the place in the ritual for the useless words. It’s like the closing of a prayer. Or maybe the opening of one.

But then they ask again. No, what did you see? You feign ignorance. You pretend that you have no idea what they could possibly be referring to. C’mon, they insist. When you died, what was it like? Again, they know what you’re going to say next. You follow more steps in the ritual, more things you say to stop the rot of despair creeping through your ranks.

Sometimes, if you’re really lucky, you have someone you can be honest with instead, and here’s the cold truth you tell them: It was nothing. It didn’t look like anything, it didn’t feel like anything. It didn’t exist. None of it, from the time you closed your eyes to the time you opened them properly a week later, happened. There’s a vague sense in you that something happened, like when you wake up late and the whole world feels slightly tilted. Little half-formed hallucinations. Words or things that really occurred, and some that didn’t. None of them did. Not really. You have to be conscious for things to happen to you and not your shell. If time passes in a forest and there’s no Soap around to hear it, does it really pass at all?

But it also isn’t nothing. Nothing is final, defined, simple. That halfway purgatory between life and death is anything but that. There are incomplete snatches of memory, impressions that you know you had but can’t quite remember. It’s something you can’t put into words. So stop trying. Stop looking for them. Take the facts of the matter and accept them, and don’t poke beyond.

The facts of the matter are this: Soap dies, twice, and Price and Nikolai ruin it.

It’s difficult to quantify when purgatory ends. When do life or death take over? Resuscitation doesn’t do it, he’s still unconscious. Waking up for five lucid seconds doesn’t do it, he’s barely aware of where he is. Soap is on so many painkillers, under such intense observation, that the week of near-death experiences extends into several weeks where he’s half alive and half dead.

Did Price call him son? He remembers it, but he doesn’t know if it was real. He can’t ask Price, because he isn’t sure when Price is real. There are many Prices. Some of them are younger and some of them are older. Some of them are neither. Those ones are something altogether more terrible and wonderful. He knows they aren’t real because they talk like a priest. One Price called him “son.” He was warm and terribly sad, and he didn’t say anything else. Just that one word.

It doesn’t really matter, of course, which Price called him what. When the morphine is dulling his edges, it’s all real. Price, Ghost, Roach, Nikolai, his team, his mum. They’re all crowded into his head and they come and go as they please. He likes it. Things are nicer in this hazy world where he doesn’t have to think or exist. Whenever he struggles against the currents of his medication it just drags him down deeper into a world where he doesn’t ask himself questions like “Am I alive?”

“Soap?”

“He can’t hear you, John.”

Soap can. He just doesn’t care. The dead don’t need to turn their heads when God calls. He’s all around them. They’re one with him.

Ghost kisses him lazily, sprawled across his chest. Soap kisses back as desperately as he can, which isn’t much when Ghost won’t let him move. There’s weight on his chest, hands on his body, wet warmth against his lips. It’s all too startlingly physical to be a dream. The good stuff will do that to you, he’s reassured countless soldiers before. It’s like a frog in boiling water, or when you’re completely submerged in water. Drowning. It’s more peaceful than he imagined.

“Aren’t you dead?” He asks when Ghost pulls back for air he doesn’t need.

“Of course I’m dead.” Ghost’s hand phases through his chest, caresses his heart. “I was dead when you met me. You knew that. That’s why they called me Ghost.”

Soap blinks. He smiles like an idiot. “Oh yeah.” Somewhere – a place far away - hospital equipment hums, and Price sighs.

Someone is talking in Russian.

Roach holds up his hand and extends his index finger, waving it shortly from side to side. He’s frowning.

“I don’t know. I didn’t hear them,” Soap answers. “Ghost, how’s your Russian?”

Ghost is leaning against him on the bed despite the strangers in the room. His hand is on Soap’s hand, but Soap can’t feel anything. It’s like an afterimage. He wants the dream back - the weight. “He wants to lower your dosage.” Ghost points at one unfamiliar figure, then to the other. “He says you’d still be in too much pain to talk.”

Soap frowns. “What happens when they bring me round?” Roach points between himself and Ghost and waves his right hand outward from his chest. He smiles while Soap’s heart picks up speed.

“Look at that,” Ghost says brightly. Too brightly. Ghost was never this cheery. “You get to kill us again, sir.”

Everything fades back to merciful black.

He’s supposed to be dead. He’s not supposed to have to deal with this, any of it. The nightmare should be over. He earned that right when he soldiered through to the knife in Shepherd’s eye, so why has it been taken from him?

Whenever he surfaces the guilt is crushing and immediate. Grief and pain hit him at the same time. It’s not a fair fight at all. He just has to lay there, a broken body and an even more broken mind, and try to breathe through it. These are the worst moments, rare at first but they grow more and more frequent. There’s no mission to pursue, no orders to follow. He can’t even reach his journal.

Until one day he wakes up to Price - at last, the real Price - sitting in a shitty, torn up chair beside his cot. Price means a mission, orders, something that will explain why the fuck he’s forcing him to stay alive. An answer to a question or a problem, that’s what Price has always been.

Except… he’s not holding a file, or smoking a cigar, or staring boldly off into the horizon. His head is lolling to one side, his arms hang limply over the arms of the chair, and his legs are stretched out. For a terrifying second, Soap thinks he’s lost Price too, that now he really he is all alone. He opens his mouth to… scream? Maybe, if he can get a hoarse noise out through the throat that’s been abused by tubes. But just as he’s losing himself to panic, Price shifts. He snores.

It feels almost like he’s getting his next painkiller dose. He sags back against his pillows, sighing … and one hand curls into a weak fist. Foiled again. There’s no way out for you Soap. He’s here, which means he needs something from you, which means you’re not allowed to die yet. He looks at Price from the corner of his eyes, brow furrowed. For the first time in his life he wants to tell him to go away. Except he also wants Price to stay by his side forever, to never leave him alone and purposeless again.

Price’s chest rises and falls slowly. He’s frowning in his sleep, deep and troubled, and every so often he grunts or bares his teeth. It doesn’t look like a nice dream. There are enormous bags under his eyes. If he weren’t sleeping right now, Soap would wonder when he last did. The bin between the chair and the bed is overflowing with tissues and food wrappers.

Price seems strangely small in the ruined chair, and terribly vulnerable with his loose, sleep-limp limbs. So… human. Lost in the wires and equipment of this hastily cobbled together hospital room. Rooms usually seem to bend around Price’s will. This one crushes him into a tiny place that somebody else set out. He doesn’t look like he has any control here. It makes Soap frown, even deeper than Price is, and his heart speeds up with panic again. This time there’s nothing to calm him down.

One of the machines takes offence to his speeding heart. It beeps obnoxiously. Price jerks awake immediately, frantically turning towards it with bleary eyes, but he sees Soap first. He freezes. His eyes go stupidly wide, torn between joy and the confusion of sleep. “Soap?” His voice is croaky and weak.

“P-” Soap only manages a letter before he’s coughing and retching, feeling every painful twitch of his throat. Price leaps up and darts out of the room. Soap is expecting a team of doctors to come in, summoned by their master, but Price returns alone holding a glass of water. He sits on the edge of Soap’s cot and holds the glass up to his mouth.

“Shh, shh, here. Drink,” he reassures him, speaking softer than Soap has ever heard him. His bark is gone. There’s no choice but to drink when Price deems it necessary. He has to accept the gift of water, the gift of life. Price watches him like a hawk with narrow, concerned eyes that Soap stares resolutely into. There’s a peculiar shining in them. Like unshed tears, except Price doesn’t cry. Soap knows he doesn’t cry. Even when he sees water trailing from the corner of Price’s eye, he knows he can’t really be seeing it.

When Price finally takes the glass away it quivers in his hand. “There we go. It’s alright Soap,” he says quietly, wetly. One clammy hand comes up to press to his hot forehead. “You’re alright. Just take it easy, son.” The word comes out choked, like a confession drawn out of him by a higher power.

Price is just a man; a scared, confused old man, and God is not supposed to die in hospital rooms but nonetheless, there sits his corpse. Soap hates him for it, suddenly and overpoweringly. Hates him for asking him to live for this. For ripping belief away from him when it was the last thing he had to hold on to.

Price is the last thing he has in this world, and certainly the last person who cares about him. If mum were still alive the official government verdict on him would probably kill her anyway. Fugitive. Outlaw. Traitor. They should be fixing that. Why aren’t they? Well, Makarov has blown the world to hell for one. But somehow Soap gets the feeling they wouldn’t be working on clearing their names even if WW3 wasn’t breaking out. Price has one plan, and it’s the same plan he spoke over Rook’s dead body. Kill the bastard. That’ll fix it.

Fix what? What is left to fix?

But he doesn’t ask that. Of course he doesn’t. He sits on a little folding chair, still half bandaged up, barely out of recovery, and he listens as Price outlines the next steps to him, Nikolai, and the new Russian. Yuri? Yeah. The other two men listen intently and Soap wants to ask them how they can possibly care. Don’t they feel numb and empty too? Is it really just him? Nobody notices how little attention he gives Price. Nobody is expecting him to concentrate when he’s still struggling to bend down to put his boots on right. (And what a workout that is, when you have to do it twice.) They probably think he’s still woozy from painkillers. He wishes he was. Do they still have some, somewhere? He’ll check later, while the others sleep.

Yuri and Nikolai watch Price with all the confident awe Soap knows he used to watch him with, the kind you can only find on a Sunday looking at a pulpit, or in the eyes of a man who has made a terrible decision. He wants to shake them. He wants to rip Price’s hat from his head and scream at them. The emperor has no fucking clothes. The emperor is stark naked and raving mad and only slightly saner than them. But he doesn’t. He just watches Price’s strange, ironically Russian cult worship at his altar, and grits his teeth as he listens to the matter-of-fact delivery, the orders that Price always has and never consults on.

“Just like old times, eh?” Price nudges him as they’re all getting up. In the old times Ghost would have been on overwatch, and Roach would be sitting where Yuri sits now. Does Price not miss them? Doesn’t their absence grate against his skin, crumbling him down to nothing, like cheddar? He remembers how quickly Price had moved on. The curt way he’d told him to give up screaming their names, that they were dead. At the time it had seemed pragmatic, Price marshalling himself while Soap couldn’t. A steady pillar Soap could lean on in the chaos. Now it feels cold blooded. It rings in his ears, and he wonders if Price even cares. If he did, he wouldn’t say things like this. It couldn’t possibly be the old times without them. Soap would laugh. He’d be happy. Price being near would be enough to convince him they could fix everything.

But they’re dead. It’s dead. All of it. He doesn’t want to fight for a dead thing. He wants to mourn it and then lie down to die with it. What’s the point of any of this?

The point, he reminds himself, hands clenched so tightly around his stock that it hurts, is that people are dying. It’s their fault Makarov is still free, they’re the only people who can stop him, and the last person Soap has left in the world is looking at him with warm hope in his eyes. So he forces himself to laugh, to nod at Price. He takes his gun apart and puts it back together, he counts his ammo, and he focuses on being the best, most mindless, empty soldier he can be. It’s the only thing he was ever good at, wasn’t it? At least he can go out with as few extra lives on his conscience as possible if he can get this right.

“The thing about torture is,” Simon said once, laying in bed, because this was his idea of pillow talk, “half the time it’s ineffective.”

Soap, his heavy head on Simon’s chest, looked up at him quizzically. “Are you gaining a conscience?” They both laughed. Soft, quiet exhales.

“Nah I’m just saying, it’s just another tool.” Simon’s hand traced idle, out of place, soft patterns on his shoulder. Half an hour ago that hand was gloved and soaked in blood. Now it stroked over his skin like an archivist’s hand barely brushing precious, rare materials. “You can’t rely on it exclusively. Can’t get romantic about it.”

Soap raised both eyebrows. “Romantic huh?” He leaned up, braced on his arm, to kiss Simon. “Interesting word choice.”

“Shut up.” Simon wrestled him down into the covers again, flipping them over. The two of them laughed loudly. The world was at peace.

When did this conversation happen, exactly? What was the context? Soap can’t remember a date, or a place. It all blurs together with a million other soft memories of Ghost in his bed. That’s where most of their memories are – the only place they were truly alone and safe. They’re more feeling than fact. He only thinks of it now, as the gas is pouring into the room, as the view through his mask goes hazy, because it feels… relevant. He just wishes it didn’t come with the ghost of a finger on his collarbone, lips against his chin, the hollow ringing in his ears and the screaming gunfire of the boneyard.

All of his memories are like this now. He doesn’t get the luxury of feeling any particular way about it. He just has to keep marching blankly on. Keep walking. Keep moving. If he ever stops…

So why is he stopping now? Why is he hesitating?

Price ignores his concerns. He always ignores Soap, and every opinion except his own. Why would he need input when he knows everything? When the world bends to his will?

Of course their man spills his guts in the end, but Soap can’t put that down to Price’s omnipotence anymore. He’s been stripped of that power. It was pure luck that worked it in their favour. He finds himself annoyed not with his own softness, but with Price. It’s just like Al-Asad in the barn all those years ago. Price’s lust for blood put their whole plan at risk, but this time Soap isn’t a rookie with little experience in torture. This time he hears Ghost in his ears.

“Unstable.”

He looks at Price, made inhuman by the stretch of his gas mask. It was reckless, uncalculated torture that was more about power than effective work. It gave them a countdown they didn’t need. Ghost would never have approved this, never traded control for the thrill of sadism even if he wanted to. Captain MacTavish would never have approved this.

But they’re both dead. So Price stands there with his eyes blazing, head tilted up like a bloodhound scenting the kill, and Soap glares at him from behind his mask. For another second, as before, he hates him.

Soap has been trying to be the best soldier on the planet. He’s thrown himself at it with all the enthusiasm of a nippy terrier, because it’s the closest thing to a purpose he has left. It hasn’t shaken the heaviness from his shoulders, and the worst part is he doesn’t know if he’s doing it right, because he’s not even sure what the perfect soldier looks like anymore. It used to be Price. The man in front of him now shifts with the smoke, fluid and hazy and diluting before Soap’s very eyes. If Price is his blueprint then he’s not sure what he’s building. It isn’t the perfect soldier. It’s something ugly and brutal, and no less empty than he already feels.

Which means he has nothing. No guide to follow, no ideal to strive for, and no hope. It’s just him counting ammo like an idiot and telling himself that any of it will lead anywhere, that he cares about where it’s taking him.

“How many people,” Soap asks him later, when Nikolai is flying them out, “do we have to kill to fix things?” Price stops short of the hook he’s reaching for. He shoots Soap a confused look over his shoulder. It’s not exactly unwarranted. Soap knows he doesn’t usually talk outside of work anymore. At the other end of the plane, Yuri does what Yuri does best: pretending he doesn’t understand English well enough to follow their conversation. “I mean,” Soap continues, before Price can get into one of his fucking monologues. “It never works. So why do we keep doing it?”

The confused furrow in Price’s brow deepens into a trench. He abandons hanging up his things and crosses the vibrating floor to crouch in front of him. “Are you alright Soap?”

No I’m not fucking alright you old bastard. I need you to drop me off somewhere and leave me there to die. I need you to take me to an unmarked grave at an abandoned safehouse. I need you to act like the human I know you are, for once in your life, and tell me you mourn them too.

But Soap can’t say any of that. None of the anger can reach beyond his lungs. Price is all he has. He loves him like a father and he hates him like a father.

He shakes his head and looks away from Price’s searching gaze, feeling stupid, like a child that’s thrown a tantrum he knows he’s too old for. “Sorry, I… Sorry.”

Silence passes between them, and this is what Soap really wants. Some sort of acknowledgement of everything they’ve been through, to know Price feels the weight of it too. But the moment only lasts a second before Price pats him on the knee. “I understand,” he says, quietly. But he doesn’t. He’s moving forward, focused on the future, on Makarov, and Soap is still standing in the boneyard and screaming.

Price stands up and makes his way to Nikolai. He always seems to be with Nikolai these days. Yuri watches him leave and then, with secrecy you can only learn from living in a house of paper where the floor is littered with eggshells, creeps across the cramped space. Soap folds his arms and sits up stiff and proud, trying to tell him without saying anything that he hasn’t been invited, that he wants to do what he always does when he’s not shooting at people these days and sink into the safe fugue of counting gear. Yuri sits down beside him anyway. He’s bolder than he looks.

“I didn’t like it either,” he confesses. Soap isn’t sure that he cares what Yuri feels. He grunts noncommittally. Yuri chews on his bottom lip, staring off into the distance, seeing something Soap can’t. Finally, the Russian exhales. “I said I wasn’t going to do anything else that made me uncomfortable,” he finally, bitterly, says.

Somewhere, Soap knows he should question that. He used to be sharper than this. A piece of him, the scar from Shepherd’s knife, is intently aware of how little he knows about this stray Price is bringing closer and closer into their fold. But it’s for that exact reason that he says nothing. The less he knows about Yuri, the less he has to do with him or anything else in this world, the safer he is. You have to trust someone to be betrayed. Instead of latching onto Yuri’s lapse, he grunts again and looks away.

“But,” Yuri tries again “Nikolai says Captain Price is experienced, right? And he’s doing it for good reasons, and it worked. So…” He trails off and smiles reassuringly. There’s something false and self-aware about that smile, like he’s saying something else if you listen in the right key. “That’s what matters, I think.” The thought of being taken into Yuri’s confidence makes Soap want to shoot him.

These are the most words he’s seen Yuri speak to anyone, and he wishes he hadn’t spoken them to him. He likes the guy, but only because his silence reminds him of Roach. Sometimes, on instinct, he moves to shove Yuri out of the path of danger, only to find he’s already moved. But now he’s speaking. He’s beefier than Roach, subtler too, and he doesn’t seem bewildered by the world, but exasperated by its limitless depths.

It makes him angry at Yuri, suddenly. Angry at Price. Angry at the barren air on his right.

Soap turns back to him, teeth bared. “He’s a shit torturer,” he growls, with the ghost of a Manc accent in his vowels. Yuri blinks at him owlishly and then, finally silenced, looks away. It should feel like victory, but all he’s left with is the feeling that Yuri has somehow dragged classified information out of him.

Soap stares from one eyes, pressed almost painfully tight against the seat, at the sleepy rise and fall of Yuri’s shoulders. Night has fallen, and every so often the passing streetlights bathe him and the car in yellow. Even though he’s exhausted too, he’s accepted that he won’t be getting any beauty sleep while they’re on the run. The futile nightly efforts have become a familiar routine, almost enough to replace the one that does let him get some sleep.

“He’s fine,” Price says confidently. “He’s just-”

“He’s not fine,” Nikolai interrupts. “He barely even talks to you now.” He’s been tense all day. Nikolai can drive any vehicle in the world, but he only does it gladly when he’s in the air. Unfortunately for him, most of European airspace is operating on a Shoot First Ask Questions Later policy right now. They had to touch down not long after Soap and Yuri’s awkward conversation. So now Nikolai and Price take shifts creeping their way into Europe, Yuri snores, and Soap sits in the back and relives his childhood: Pretending to be asleep and listening to his parents fight.

Not that Nikolai can fight Price. Nobody can. Price dismisses his worries with a gentle scoff. “He nearly died Nik, of course he’s out of it. But Soap’s a tough old boy. You don’t know him like I do.”

“I have known him,” Nikolai says, quiet but firm, “for five more years than you.”

There’s silence from the front for a while. The car takes a turn and Soap, feeling eyes on him, relinquishes his blurry view of Yuri for darkness. It must be Price. Nikolai won’t take his eyes off a road.

Nikolai continues finally, blundering into the awkward minefield he’s laid down, “I have never seen him this… empty. Not even after you died. He just follows you around and does what he’s told.”

“Of course he does.” Price sounds confused. “He’s a soldier.”

“He’s a leader,” Nikolai corrects. Soap’s stomach twists painfully, cramping like he’s about to spew his guts all over the back of Nikolai’s seat. “All the years I have known Soap he has planned, and planned, and planned. He would be giving you plan Bs, plan Cs, plan fucking Zs.” His accent is heavy on the fucking. “Now he just sits there counting his ammo. It’s unsettling. He needs help.”

Soap doesn’t need to open his eyes to see Price’s glower. He can picture the hateful look he’s throwing at Nikolai just fine. Price is his business and he’s Price’s. Nobody else gets a say in how good he’s doing. But then Price – closer, he must be watching them sleep – speaks, and his voice is light. Teasing. “Who are we gonna get help from Nik, huh? You know a good therapist who specializes in wanted fugitives who’ve lost all their friends?” Nikolai’s sigh is enough of a response. “That’s a shame.”

“Don’t mock,” Nikolai warns. He sounds exasperated in a familiar way that grates on Soap’s bones.

“It was a genuine question. I wouldn’t be surprised if you did.”

There’s a beat of silence that’s so warm Soap wants to scratch his skin off. He can feel their shared smiles. He wants to sit up and scream, make Nikolai drive them off the road and into a ditch. If he’s lucky they’ll all die. “Not all your friends,” Nikolai murmurs privately, so soft that it has no place in this car, their lives.

“Yeah,” Price whispers now. It doesn’t suit him. He was made to bark and yell. “Not all of them.”

Until now, Soap had imagined Nikolai as a fellow sufferer at best, as a naïve fool at worst. Now he hates him, viciously, with the force of claws tearing skin from bone. If Soap has nobody else, then so should Price. They should be trapped down here together. Nobody is holding Soap’s head above the water.

“He’ll be fine,” Price repeats into the gentler silence. “I may have missed 5 years but I know we’re all soldiers. We get the job done. We do what nobody else can do because-” and just like that, Price is monologuing. God. How did he ever stand this man’s running mouth? It used to make him think of historic generals, speeches given by a lone, brave man running up and down his front line on horseback. Now it reminds him of Shepherd. Pointless words that don’t really mean anything, except that someone has to listen to you. The same as it is during briefings, during missions, when Price acts without consulting them, when Shepherd gave them orders without consulting them. No questions asked. No speeches interrupted. He can see so clearly now, how much of Price he was searching for in Shepherd. The self-confidence that borders on self-delusion, the theatricality of their leadership, the absolute conviction that their word is law and their will inevitable.

Soap’s wrist almost twitches, his fingers reaching out for phantom limbs that aren’t there anymore, for a grave chilled hand to twine around like a wreath. It’s not fair. It’s not fucking fair. But that’s life, isn’t it? Trapped in a car heading somewhere you don’t want to go, hearing things you don’t want to hear, and sometimes, just sometimes, the exhausting monotony of the despair lulls you to sleep, and you get a brief respite from it all.

The wheels keep turning, Price drones on, Nikolai listens indulgently, and Soap MacTavish dreams of sheep being devoured by wolves.

Price has gone off somewhere without telling them. Maybe he’s getting intel, or just finding them food, or ending this war singlehandedly without asking any of them for help or opinions. Maybe when Price gets back this war will be over and another one will be forming from the wreckage he leaves behind. Soap is already dreading the moment Price crashes through the door and drags them off to do something on no more sanctioning than faith and his command. For now, blessedly, it's just him and Yuri, ignoring each other and listening to the sounds of war creeping into Europe. Not that it ever really left. This all began in Europe, decades ago, with one bullet in Pripyat. It might as well end here.

Soap has spent an hour organizing the place into something that probably looks like chaos to anyone but him. Ammo where it belongs and accounted for. His gear stripped clean. He even ran the water in the sink for five minutes just to make sure nothing was accumulating in the pipes. The radio is garbage and there’s no view from their basement, so all he can do now is stare at the wall and imagine things. Shapes. Numbers. People. The staining on the wallpaper almost looks like a skull. It might be a good omen, or a terrible one, or maybe he’s going crazy and finding meaning where it doesn’t-

“Are you okay?” He jerks his head across the room to Yuri, frowning at him for intruding on the private moment. Yuri stares back sceptically. “Your hand.”

Soap looks down at those distant limbs. His left hand is clenched in a fist on his thigh. His right hand has been flicking a folding knife open and shut, open and shut, open and shut. The rhythm soothes him. He remembers snapping at Ghost for doing that, four years back on a stakeout that dragged beyond the limits of human suffering.

“Bored,” Ghost had said in response, continuing to flick the knife. Open. Shut. Open. Shut. Every snap of metal pin pricking on Soap’s skin as surely as if Ghost had actually stabbed him with it.

“Find something else to do,” he’d growled, turning his back to his lieutenant and trying to focus on the target building, on anything but counting those little noises.

Click. Flick. Click. Flick.

“Ghost.”

“It’s a nervous tic.” Ghost’s eyes were sparkling when he turned around, too full of mischief to be nervous.

“It’s annoying.”

Those stunning eyes blew wide. “I didn’t mean to annoy you, Captain,” he drawled, taking his usual sarcastic liberties and sending the usual shiver down Soap’s spine, “but there’s fuck all else to do around here.” Something had been building between them for a while. They’d fed it willingly and unwillingly. A dangerous mixture that had been left to sit untended for too long, and in that relentless week of nothingness, it had begun to boil. It bubbled and rolled in the breathless pause Ghost took then, threatening to overcome its limited container and spill between them. “Gimme something to do,” he pressed. A challenge. His eyes were so dark.

“I’ll give you something.”

He’d only meant to wrestle with Ghost for a few minutes, burn off his energy and ignore the tightening in his stomach. But he’d come away scalded. The scars are still on his hands.

As is the blood, trickling from minute bites the knife has taken into his thumb.

He doesn’t curse, or jump, or react anywhere near quick enough to pretend to do these things. Instead he sighs wearily and stares at the bleeding hand he can’t feel. Yuri frowns, but he doesn’t say anything. He gets up and disappears into the bathroom. The weight of his judgement goes with him and Soap sneers at the door. What the fuck is he doing? The question has been running around his head for a long time now.

Yuri emerges with a wet rag and some plasters. He ignores the narrowed eyes Soap watches him through and crosses the room, settling on the other side of the table. He grabs Soap’s wrist, and Soap is so surprised by the audacity that he doesn’t protest when Yuri drags his hand to the middle of the table and forces him to uncurl his fingers from around the knife.

“That’s mine,” he manages to growl when Yuri takes the knife away.

Yuri frowns at him. “You can have it back when I’m done.” But he puts the knife into his pockets, and something desperate and angry comes up in Soap’s chest.

“It’s mine,” he repeats, as Yuri examines his hand, the red lines on his thumb. “Give it.” Yuri ignores him. He wipes at the blood on Soap’s hand and mutters something to himself in Russian. With efficient, ungentle hands he cleans and covers the shallow wounds. The knife isn’t as dangerous as it used to be, back when it saw service. These days it’s mostly for sharpening pencils.

He works in silence and Soap watches like Yuri is working on someone else’s thumb, listening to the ticking of the only clock in the room, counting. Yuri twists and manipulates the hand like it’s his own – and it might as well be. Finally he nods and releases the hand. “You should probably put gloves on,” he says dispassionately, like he sees people doing this every day. “Captain Price will ask questions if he sees this.”

Soap blinks. He looks down at the wrapped thumb, the concealed proof of the shredded state of his mind. Slowly, he lifts his hand and examines the pale flesh, free of thin lines of blood. He looks at Yuri and the empty, unjudgmental eyes that stare back at him. “… Thanks,” he says, quietly. Yuri shrugs, and Soap holds his other hand out. “My knife.” He swallows something heavy down. “Please.”

Yuri hesitates. He looks between the good hand, the damaged one, and Soap’s eyes. Finally, he sighs, and retrieves the knife, depositing it reluctantly into Soap’s open hand. Beneath his unblemished thumb the sharp grooves of the miniscule skull, carved with the fine point of a captain’s knife, rub back against him reassuringly. It’s the only thing in the room he can feel. It’s the only thing, other than his journal, he’s never left behind. He swallows. “Thank you,” he says again.

Yuri nods. Just like that, the transaction is complete. Yuri stands up and Soap feels some sort of line between them – a tentative connection, a secret shared – stretching taut with the movement. “Be more careful,” Yuri says, but he smiles wryly, like he already knows Soap isn’t going to be careful at all.

“Do you think we can beat him?” Soap asks. “Makarov?” Yuri tenses. The question surprises Soap himself, and his mouth hangs open slightly around the words. “That’s not what I… I mean. How did you end up here? Or… you believe in this? In what we’re doing?” In Price.

Yuri blinks. He looks, for a second, like a cornered animal. But then he looks at Soap again, and something about him relaxes. He shrugs. “What else can we do?”

“I just…” Soap stares into the wall again, into the staining that doesn’t really look very much like a skull at all. “Yeah,” he finally sighs. “Yeah, you’re right. That’s why I’m here.”

Yuri looks like he wants to walk away, properly this time, but he hesitates. He looks at Soap with eyes that suddenly seem older than his. Is Yuri older than him? He has no idea. “You believe in it then?”

“Yeah,” Soap says, but the words ring hollow. His tongue itches. “It’s just- sometimes I wonder if maybe there isn’t some other way to do this. If we’re not just doing this because it’s all we know.” He holds up his injured thumb. “Blood.”

Yuri’s gaze is assessing. “All Price knows.”

“Yeah.” There’s a pit beneath him that’s going to swallow him up. Hell awaits the nonbelievers. “All Price knows.”

A beat passes. Yuri sighs. He sits back down and levels Soap with a look so honest, so open, that it scares him, and he looks away before he can witness anything Yuri has to share. Have to trust someone to be betrayed.

“Soap,” Yuri says. It’s his turn to swallow now, to think carefully about his words. “If you disagree with anything Price is doing – if you doubt – you need to tell him.”

Soap shakes his head. “No.”

“You have to,” Yuri insists. “You have to speak up while the doubts are small, niggling little things, before they become something bigger.” He stares at the wall now. A bizarre thought occurs to Soap as he watches Yuri hunch toward their shadows, the darkness: Yuri should not be here. Something about him is wrong, haunted and out of place. “Before you lose him, or yourself, or something else, maybe.”

“I can’t.”

Yuri blinks, just the once. He looks very sad, suddenly, and very tired. “Then none of this matters because it’s too late. It’s over.”

Soap watches him. He bites his tongue to hold back the questions. Yuri stares at the wall for a moment longer and then, mercifully, he releases both of them. He stands up and marches the wet rag back to the bathroom. Soap’s thumb strokes over Simon’s knife, and he wonders, idly, if there’s any way you really can avoid losing someone.

He thinks about what Yuri said, tossing it around his mind like a math problem. That’s how they defuse bombs these days, maths. Soap was never good at maths. The very thought that he could admit to doubting Price, could say no to Price puts him on edge. It shifts the world, and Soap’s world is already teetering at an impossible angle over an abyss.

Price has a plan, inevitably. It’s Price’s plan, because all plans are, no matter how involved they all were in the pieces coming together. He stands in their hideout, tucked away from other men Nikolai has dug up from who knows where, and lays out the terms. Kamarov. Makarov. This, Soap thinks, is all very familiar. A crazy man who wants to burn the world down. The mentor and the protégé. An assassination from an empty hotel window. Gas instead of radiation. Maybe that’s why it slips out of him, while Nikolai is congratulating Price on his brilliant plan.

“You and your fucking Russians.”

At first Soap doesn’t realise the words have come from him. It’s only when he realises the room has gone quiet and looks up to find Price, Nikolai, and Yuri staring at him, that he realises what he’s said.

Price frowns at him. Not displeased, just confused. “What?”

“Nothing.” Soap shakes his head. His eyes dart to Yuri for a second, but Yuri isn’t looking at him.

“No.” Price steps closer to him. Beside him, Nikolai is watching Soap like he’s rigged to blow. He’s been looking at him like that a lot lately. “Not nothing. What about Russians?”

Soap shifts uncomfortably under Price’s stare. “It’s not about Russians,” he says, which is the truth. “It’s about Kamarov.” Which is a lie.

Price smiles. The relaxed slump of his shoulders seem to ask: Is that all? “Kamarov might be a pain in the arse, but we can rely on him here. He owes me.”

Again, his mouth moves without his permission. “Like he owed you when we were rescuing Nikolai?”

Being countered stops Price in his tracks. He blinks, and Soap feels distantly disgusted with himself. How long as he been lying at Price’s feet like a dog if one insistent protest can shock him? Beside Price, at the table with the map where he’s been laying this whole plan out, Nikolai shifts from foot to foot. Yuri stares at the wall, looking guilty. He’s going to blame himself for this, for the ugly thing that Soap knows is about to happen.

“He did help us. In the end.”

“When Gaz threatened him.” Soap looks around the room. “And Gaz isn’t here this time, is he?”

Nikolai inhales through his teeth. He looks at Price with an almost offensive amount of concern in his eyes. Price stares back at Soap, impassive, but his voice is colder when he replies, “Kamarov has already helped us. We don’t need to threaten him.”

“And you trust him?”

“I know him.”

And I know you, Soap thinks bitterly.

“So are you omnipotent? Or do you just love Russians that much? Do they know how much they mean to you?” It’s not courage that pushes him forward, but reckless anger. The kind that lights in Price’s eyes when he’s got a man strapped to a chair. The kind that won’t get you what you need to hear. It’s cruel, but so is asking him to trust after everything they’ve been through, so is treating trust like something that can be ordered. Price decided Soap should keep trusting Shepherd. Price has decided Soap should trust Kamarov.

So the wall in his throat crumbles. There was only so long it could have stood for against this constant pressure. The words finally come out of him. “How much they don’t mean to you?”

Price perks up like a dog sensing a threat, alert and threatening to charge. “What does that mean?”

Soap jabs one finger at Yuri. “If he dies tomorrow, are you gonna mourn him?” His accent thickens, clogging in his throat. “Or are you gonna brush him off, like Roach? Just leave me to remember him, yeah?”

“Soap.” Price glares at him now. “What the fuck are you talking about?” The spark he gets when he’s punching some poor fucker isn’t in his eyes yet, but Soap knows it isn’t far off. He’s stepped away from the table, and he’s flashing his teeth with every other word.

But he wants that spark. He wants – suddenly, recklessly – for Price to beat him black and blue. At least it would be something to feel. Maybe he’ll even be useful, if Price can let off some steam and think clearer for it. So he scoffs. “You do recognize that name, yeah? Roach? Skinny little guy. He shadowed you with a sniper rifle. He thought you were a tough old bastard he could look up to, that you were looking out for him. But when he died-”

“Soap.” Nikolai interrupts now, stepping between them with his hands out. “It’s been a long week.” He shoots a worried look at Price, and that only pisses Soap off more. He’s the one hurting here. Roach is the one that’s dead. God forbid the world not revolve around Price and his cult for a second.

“You remember Roach, Nikolai?” Soap barks, drawing Nikolai’s attention back to him.

The Russian chews on the inside of his mouth. His eyes stray to Price again, like he can’t help it. The old man is still glaring at Soap through narrowed, dangerous eyes. “Da.” Nikolai nods, smiling awkwardly, like he’s not sure if it’ll help or make things worse. “Roach was a good soldier, we all-”

“He was a good man.” Soap bristles. Soldier. The word irritates the stones in his throat, thoughts he’s swallowed down. “He was a good fucking man.”

Nikolai is looking at him with something akin to mounting panic. “Of course-”

“And he reminded you of me, didn’t he? So it’s weird, isn’t it?” Soap looks back to Price, ignoring Nikolai now. This is nothing to do with him. “That you cared about me but not about him. What if I wasn’t useful to you? Would you leave me to rot too?”

“Of course I fucking wouldn’t.” Price snaps, his voice like a whip. “And I didn’t leave Roach to rot either.”

“You didn’t pause over the body though, did ya?” Soap growls. “You didn’t pause over any of their bodies.”

Price gapes at him. An explosion threatens. The red on his face builds like wine stopped up by a cork. But his eyes drift to Nikolai and he exhales deeply, trying to reel it in. “No, because we had things to do for them. Like this. Makarov.” He jerks his head toward his little heist board, like he thinks Soap needs the reminder of his batshit plan.

“How does this help Roach?!” Soap hears the crack in his voice. Pathetic and weak. His anger rushes inward at himself. His nails bite into the skin of his palms. “How does it help any of the 141?! They’re dead!”

“So we finish what they started,” Price says gravely. His mouth opens again. Soap wants to punch it shut.

“Don’t you monologue at me. Not today old man.” He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t dare risk hearing himself cracking apart again.

“Soap, where the hell is this coming from?!” Price demands. He’s never looked so off course, so utterly confused about what he’s facing.

“See!” He feels hysterical, like a live wire. It’s too late to put a stop to it. Fine. One more thing that can’t be fixed shattering to pieces in his hands. “You don’t get it! If you cared, you wouldn’t need to ask that. You’d just-” He tries to grab the air around him, to strangle it with his injured hand. “You’d be thinking about them.”

“Soap.” Price steps forward, ignoring the desperate, placating way Nikolai holds his arms out. Yuri looks between all three of them with the wide eyes of someone who’s seen this all before. Price clenches his jaw. At his side, his hand twitches. “Stand down.”

“We’re not in the fucking military anymore, remember?” Soap spits. “I follow your orders because I choose to.” That’s a lie. There’s no choice in this. Price points and he goes. Price needs a tool and Soap contorts himself into the right shape. It’s as instinctive as breathing, and he hates it.

“You’re not well you stupid bastard,” Price snaps. He glances at Nikolai. The silent conversation they have in a second, the way Nikolai inches toward him, and most of all, the way they both seem to think he can’t see any of it, infuriates Soap. He wonders what contingency plan they have. Did they have fun, whispering back and forth and speculating about his inevitable mental breakdown? Do they keep a straightjacket around here, for men who are crazy enough to dare to question Captain Price?

“You’re not well,” Soap retorts. And then, because he knows how childish it sounds, “You’re a fucking narcissist with a lust for blood and you think everyone’s just got to do whatever you tell them because you know best.”

“I do know best.” Price’s voice booms, he draws himself up to his full height, chest puffed up in a way that would be funny if Soap didn’t want to punch him so bad right now. “I’m twice your fucking age and I’ve got three times the experience. I know you, I know Makarov, I know Kamarov, and I’m the one with a plan. What’s yours?”

“He wants to hear MY plan now?!” Soap laughs too loudly. Yuri flinches. Nikolai takes another careful step towards him. “That’s a new one! You never want input! You think you can do whatever you like and it’ll all work out as long as you tell it to!”

Throwing whatever restrain he had left aside, thinking of dead bodies rotting where he can’t touch them, he advances on Price. Inevitably, because he wouldn’t be Captain Price if he didn’t, Price stands there, his feet planted. Defiant and strong. Nikolai moves to intercept him but Price shoves him out of the way. The funniest part is that Soap helps him. They work together to toss Nikolai aside, to get within striking distance of each other. Then they’re face to face, glaring into each other’s eyes. "Stop it, you stupid pair of-!" Yuri grabs at Nikolai's hand, cutting him off with Russian that goes too fast for Soap to parse.

“You said you never trusted Shepherd.” And here it is. The one question he needs to ask. The one trouble he can’t put aside for any greater good. “Did you know?” He demands. “Did you know he was going to betray us?”

Price reels. There's something uncanny about seeing the old man stunned, like this isn't really happening. The thought only makes Soap more reckless, swept away in this suicidal attack. Price trips over his words. “Why would you think-”

“You bragged about it,” Soap growls. “Lorded it over me while I was still screaming Ghost’s name. Did you think to tell us about your doubts?”

“What good would that have done?"

“We could have fucking prepared! Maybe if they’d had their guard up-” The words elude him. He’s too furious right now to imagine a happy world where Ghost is here in his arms. “You have no idea what we were capable of. What we could have done if we’d had the information.”

“What would I have told you, that I had a bad feeling about the man? None of your men trusted me anyway. You needed your heads clear.” Price’s voice is confident, defiant, but the words are a chaotic list of excuses torn from his throat and as false and hollow as Price himself. And still he continues.

“Did you know?” Soap repeats. “Or do you just like to think you knew? Did you lie to them, or lie to me?”

Price grabs his best shield - more righteous anger, another contemptuous glare. “I was going to handle him myself. I’d have told you when you needed to know.”

“Aye.” Soap sneers. “And look how well that worked out.”

The words echo around the empty shithole they’re waiting out World War Three in. Yuri is holding Nikolai back, Soap is dimly aware. He and Price lean further into each other’s space, chest to chest now, teeth bared like dogs going at each other for a thin piece of steak. Whenever Price breathes, he feels it, pushing back against him. Even his breaths must follow Price’s holy plan. Everything inside of him rallies against it. This is the betrayal, the rebellion, for the sake of pride. The archangels wrestle, free will against Michael’s sword. A snake crawls on its belly for shame and a recruit crawls on its belly for barbed wire. The story of soldiers is as old as mankind.

“You uncaring bastard,” Soap growls when Price doesn’t say anything, just glares at him and waits for him to remember the place he’s never going back to. “You never gave a shit about any of them, and you only give a shit about me while I can help you. You don’t care that Makarov’s killing people, you care that he has the audacity to be alive when you want him dead. And the worst part is that you think you can fix anything, when this entire thing is your fucking fault.” He shoves at Price.

Price grabs the arm and shoves him back, harder, teeth bared. “I’m not the one shooting up civilians. Makarov is. Get that straight Soap, if you can’t remember anything else.”

“You shot at Zakhaev.” Soap pushes. “You didn’t confirm the kill.” He pushes again and Price, to his distant astonishment, steps back. “You are the reason he lived to train up his little protégé and buy more nukes.” He shoves. Price stumbles. Nikolai shouts. “You planned to exfil via that fucking bridge. You chose not to tell us about Shepherd. You gave my men a reason not to trust you. YOU chose to go after Shepherd instead of Makarov! YOU are the bastard that Makarov wants to flush out!”

At some point he stops stepping forward and just smacks Price. Or, at least, the first is a firm punch to Price’s shoulder. But almost immediately, and partly because Price doesn’t hit back, he dissolves into useless little slaps against Price’s chest. Kitten swipes compared to what he’s capable of, what he knows he can do, but he feels as if all the strength has been drained out of him. He’s sure he saw a flash in the corner of his vision at the first punch, Nikolai moving to grab him. Now he just stands there, watching. Pitying. Soap can’t bear to look at Price’s face.

As if to make his life difficult, Price trips on his next backwards stumble. He goes down on his ass, landing without a cry, not even a sharp exhale, and Soap towers over him. Price stares up at him with an expressionless face. An uncaring face. Blank of any of the misery Soap wants to see reflected back at him. For a second, he thinks he’s going to throw himself at Price, and this time really hit him. But his fists won’t clench. His muscles feel loose. He stares through Price. It’s not even him he’s angry with. It never has been.

“You-” Soap points at him, j’accuse, chest heaving- “are not a fucking God!”

He turns. Nikolai and Yuri both try to stop him, but he wrenches his arms free of them and carries on walking. There’s nowhere safe for him to run to in this room, in this world. But he barges his way into the bathroom, slams the door behind him, and stares at uncannily white tiles as he locks it clumsily, without turning to look. He smacks his head back against the unsolid wood. He breathes.

The silence is overwhelming.

It only takes ten minutes for the panic attack to hit.

Soap ends up sitting in the bathtub, his knees pulled up to his chest and his arms hugging himself as he stares down the drain. It feels like the safest place to be. The strangest part is the fact that he’s still got his boots on. It’s God knows how long after he starts to shake, a gap in his head that he’s more grateful for than concerned about, when he notices this. The world comes back into focus slowly, hazily. The first thing he does in unlace and relace those boots, retying them into a firmer knot.

What little he had left has been shattered to pieces because he can’t keep anything safe, no matter how much he loves it. Price will throw him out and let the world eat him up. It won’t take long. Without Price he’d have been dead a long time ago. Or worse, he’ll make him beg for forgiveness and Soap knows without having to think about it that he will. He’ll kneel before Price and take whatever punishment for his blasphemy is necessary. The five seconds of relief aren’t worth this lost, wandering feeling. A sheep should be with the flock. And how dare he, really, doubt Price? Price has been keeping them together, shouldering the weight of this war, chasing down Makarov while Soap follows him in a useless daze.

But he was so… angry.

At Price? At the world? Maybe just at himself. It doesn’t feel like any of it really happened now. The why is blurry in his head and the adrenaline has stopped pumping. He sighs. He undoes his laces and knots them tighter still, and it makes him feel even more like a stupid kid, not an archangel rebelling against the almighty. He rocks from side to side ever so slightly. Ghost and Roach used to do that sometimes. They said it was relaxing. All Soap feels are the cold sides of the bath, pinning him in.

Someone tries the bathroom door, but the lock holds firm. Soap pauses. His heart takes up the rhythm, fast and uneven. Have they tried to get in before? How long has he been sitting here? The loud silence in the wake of the handle’s resistance persists… and then, there’s a hesitant knock.

Soap closes his eyes for a second. He sighs. He pulls himself out of the bath. This is inevitable. You can’t fight fate, or claw back your free will. It’s not like Soap to hesitate, but he does, standing in front of the door and staring at the handle. It lasts a second, and then his arm jerks forward like it’s out of his control and undoes the lock, pries the door open.

Price stares back at him. His mouth is twisted unpleasantly and he’s holding a brown paper bag in one hand. He looks Soap up and down, unsurprised and uncritical. Behind him, the room is deserted. There’s a calmness about him that reminds Soap of his mother.

“Hello,” Price says, like this is the door to Soap’s apartment. (What’s become of the old place? He only slept there twice. Did they seize it? Was there anything left there for them to seize, for him to mourn?)

“Hi,” Soap says, in the awkward way he might test the syllables of a foreign language.

Some tension in Price that he didn’t notice until it left bleeds out of him. “Can I come in?”

Soap opens the door a little wider. “Make yourself at home.”

He sits on the bathtub, the edge this time. Price lowers the toilet lid and sits on that with his brown peace offering on his knee. The bathroom is cramped. Their knees are almost touching. Soap could move away, but he’s not sure if that’s a good idea, so he stays exactly where he is. They’re sizing each other up, but not for a fight.

Price reaches into the paper bag, and the rustling echoes painfully off the tiles. “Thought you might be hungry.” He retrieves a white Styrofoam takeout box and holds it out, leaning forward. Soap almost doesn’t need to take it, it’s practically in his lap. He looks between the box and Price’s face. The old man smiles tentatively, awkwardly, and the lines in his forehead struggle to rearrange themselves into a softer shape. It’s like he’s never had to smile before today.

Soap is relieved, suddenly. Stupidly, childishly relieved. He feels himself smile back and sees his hands take the box from Price, who smiles properly now, wide and Price-like. He loves him. It’s a feeling so fierce that he thinks it might claw its way out of his chest to make itself known.

“Not exactly fish and chips,” Price mutters, fishing his own box out of the bag as Soap opens his to reveal a burger and a paltry portion of fries. “But what can you do? Nik’s never picked good takeout.” Soap laughs, though he didn’t think it was very funny. They eat in silence. Food is life. It’s a contract. To provide food is to make yourself responsible for someone else. It reminds him of his ma, of holidays by the sea eating out of tubs like this with her. Or of his fathers, and pizza after he played well in goal.

It’s nice, for a while. Then Price gets to his last few chips: the sharp ones he’s been pushing around the box for ages. He sighs. He closes the box. Though the noise is squeaky and inoffensive, it sounds like the banging of a gavel to Soap. This is it. Here it comes.

“I know things have been…” Price hesitates. It’s so strange to see him struggling for words.

“Shite,” Soap fills in for him.

Price nods. “Yeah. Shite.” His stupid southerner accent ruins the word, but Soap lets it pass. “I know you’ve been struggling, and I know it still hurts. I didn’t know your team, not like you did, but I knew Gaz. I remember Gaz.” Something funny happens to his eyes, and Soap realizes Price isn’t really seeing him at all. Does Gaz come to Price with a whole face, or leaking blood? “I remember losing you, and almost losing you again.”

“I’m good at getting lost.” Ever since he was a little boy. Wayward little sheep. What are we going to do with you, eh? Always getting yourself into trouble. Always distracted and throwing punches when you should be praying peace. Such a shame, too, when he’s such a gift for art. What’s God’s plan for this one? Prison? The streets? The military? Sure as hell it won’t be anything respectable.

Price doesn’t hear him. “If it’s seemed like I don’t care… It’s only because I needed to keep moving. I needed to keep you alive. But I know it hurts, Soap,” he repeats, a little helplessly. “I’ve lost my men before. I know you just want to… burn the whole world down.” He doesn’t. Fuck’s sake. Can Price still not see what’s really going on? Was he not clear enough? “So if you want to take it out on me once in a while….” Price looks at him again, finally, and smiles wryly. There’s nothing but forgiveness in his eyes. “You be my guest.”

Soap hates him.

It hits him like lightning, like electricity biting through clamps, like a dog bite. The anger boils so bright inside of him. The old bastard won’t even let him apologise, won’t even let Soap have that tiny crumb of control. Price has already judged him, and already forgiven him without even letting him earn it. It’s all out of his hands. It always is.

Price is watching him still. He’s put his empty box on the floor. There’s tension in his brow, nerves gathering in the corner of his eyes. The lines on his face are taut. They’ve grown deeper since the first time he met him. Time and grief and pain etched into an old man’s face. “Just,” Price speaks again, his voice catching, “don’t leave, son.”

The anger fizzles out. It catches Soap by surprise, shifts air out of him. He breathes deeply and cleanly, like a great weight has lifted from his chest. Price is a scared, confused old man with aching bones and ghosts pressing in on him from every side. He gets things wrong, and he gets them right. He commands like it’s the easiest thing in the world, but he struggles in conversation. He’s a human.

And that’s not his fault.

Price’s eyes don’t ask for worship, his open hands don’t ask for prayer. Soap wonders, now, if Price even believes his own myth, if he’s aware of the grandeur he’s built himself up in, or if that’s all just the simple business of being alive to him. All he’s asking for, is for Soap to be there. He’s making it up down here in the trenches too. For the first time since the boneyard, Soap doesn’t feel alone. He also feels like the loneliest man in the world, standing on an precipice that Price doesn’t even know exists.

Soap puts his box down. He opens his arms, and Price beats him to his feet, jumping up. They embrace, clinging to each other. Price holds him like he’s his own beloved son, the way his ma used to. The way he always wanted his father – first or second – to hold him. It’s everything he’s ever wanted from Price. It's smothering and cloying. Price is going to suffocate him. Price is going to kill him, like Ghost said. They're wrapped around each other so tight and stumbling around blind. Sooner or later one of them is going to catch on something, and they'll bleed out when they rip apart.

His hand, fisting Price’s vest, clenches harder around the material. Price’s hands – reckless tools of a man who only knows blood and violence – clutch at him, keeping him in the circle of his arms. They are, after all, a circle. Aren’t they? They’re not a line, stretching onward to Roach. The branch has been pruned. He buries his nose in Price’s shoulder, inhales the comforting, familiar scent of his cigars, and closes his eyes to the world around him. He smiles.

Where else would he go?