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The door opened again, steel grating against concrete and cold light reaching through his eyelids. It was enough for Ghost to blink them open. He watched in a haze as three men stepped into the room, dressed in black paramilitary uniforms and impatience while they converged around his chair.
His chair. He almost wanted to snort to himself, although this was no laughing matter. He liked to think he hadn’t reached hysteria after only a few hours in captivity. But he was firmly acquainted with the metal, what with his wrists, ankles, waist, and even neck tied firmly to its bars with hemp rope—they’d made quite a show of yanking the knots as tight as they could, and the biggest bastard had managed to cut off circulation in his left hand—then wound the bindings with duct tape for good measure. It was almost like they were concerned he’d escape.
They left him his mask, though. They’d untucked and rolled it up to access his neck, but let it back down again when they were done, otherwise still in place. It was an interesting decision, considering they’d taken the rest of his gear. He wondered if they feared what lied under the fabric as much as he did.
But he’d run out of time for musing. The man who’d come in last was skinnier than the others, a weasely bastard who was obviously, and somehow, the one in charge, and no amount of stone-faced posturing could hide how giddy he was with their catch.
When he spoke, it was with the tone of a general receiving the shiniest of medals. Bloody yank. “Never thought I’d be the one to subdue the great Ghost. One-four-one’s best.” He stalked closer, pulling a long-handled scalpel from the pocket of his coat and toying with it between his fingers. “Pretty sure you know how this goes. So do I. But I don’t think you'll be telling us anything.”
He was bang on about that. Ghost stayed silent, staring straight ahead at the closed door and the two men at its sides. He’d been interrogated, tortured, held captive enough times throughout his life and nightmares that it was almost second nature to follow the protocol. Tell them nothing. Don’t react. Wait for rescue, if applicable. Part of him hoped Soap, Price, and Gaz had gotten the hell out of dodge without him, though.
The tip of the blade touched right above his sternum. Weasel’s voice was hushed next to his ear, like this was some fucking personal moment between lovers. “But it you do want to talk, now’s the time. Can’t say I didn’t give you a chance.”
Ghost didn’t twitch when the knife’s edge crawled up the striped design on his balaclava, not pressing hard enough to cut through flesh or fabric, but the threat was there. His jaw clenched underneath it, eyes facing front.
“C’mon, don’t you want to tell us about your fisherman friend?” It took Ghost a moment to realize he was talking about Price, making fun of the man’s bucket hat. The blade tapped the bottom of his jaw, but Ghost refused to lift his head. “What about your buddy with the mohawk? Where’s he?”
Ghost felt like growling out a sod off in response to that one, but he knew better than to give them a shred. His eyes narrowed behind the mask.
“My boss won’t be happy if I come out of here empty-handed, Ghosty. C’mon. Give me something.”
Now that was interesting, because the man currently poking a scalpel into Ghost’s chin was supposed to be the main boss of this splinter operation. If there was someone above him, it was news to Ghost, and would be news to Price too, if he could get that information back to him alive. It took a certain brand of idiocy to reveal information in an interrogation instead of obtaining it. His chances of surviving the encounter rose significantly.
Typical yank.
The knife drifted away from his face. “Figures.” A gloved hand patted his shoulder, too much force to be friendly. “I gave you a chance, Ghost. I really did. But if you don’t want to talk to us, I guess that’s your call.”
Weasel’s voice had been on the side of gleeful the entire time, but there was something foreboding tangled in those last sentences, something that sent his gut churning with the urge to fight or fly. He tested the restraints for the hundredth time, and of course, neither were viable options.
His interrogator inclined his head, and the two men by the door closed in. His breathing hitched when Weasel grabbed the edge of his balaclava, then shifted it up in increments until the plastic skull was up to his forehead, blackness covering his eyes. His nose, and everything below it, were suddenly freed to the cool air.
“Grab ‘im.”
Ghost snarled at fingers digging into his chin and jaw, peeling at his lips and trying to pry between his teeth, all while another set of hands forced his head straight with pressure against his temples. Gloved nails dug between his molars, the taste of gunpowder on his gums. He locked his teeth shut together tight, then tried to throw his head back into the man behind him. He hit empty air, and threw his head forward instead, the fingers around his jaw lost their grip. The struggle continued until a fist collided with his cheek.
It took only a few seconds for him to recover from the blind shot, but it took just a moment less for his jaw to be pried open while he was stunned, and a piece of metal shoved between his teeth. Cold steel cut into the roof of his mouth and tongue. He shook his head, trying to dislodge or loosen the ring gag, but a strap tightening at the back of his head, and the taped rope keeping his neck against the chair, held him back.
Fucking hell. If he had to guess, teeth pulling was what Weasel had scheduled for him. Painful, with the potential to be debilitating, but thankfully something predictable enough to steel himself for. He snarled like a feral creature when his chin was seized again and lifted towards the ceiling. Let them think he was out of his mind. Let them be disturbed as hell when he started chuckling through the torture. Fuck knows he’d done it before, and he’d do it again.
“Last. Chance.” Weasel finalized.
Ghost went silent, nonreactive. Let them have nothing.
“Silence it is.”
There was a horrible moment of clarity, when something sharp clicked against his front teeth. What with the telling statements Weasel was making, especially, like he just couldn’t keep the suspense to himself, it should’ve been obvious in hindsight. They were going to cut his tongue.
He froze, breaths he tried to keep steady and calm caught in his lungs, but the scalpel’s tip slid further down. Hands—the guards’, they had to be—held his head steady and straight up, while it snaked past the back of his tongue, triggering his gag reflex before it stabbed and sawed into his inner throat.
Whatever form of cruelty this was, he didn’t want to experience it with any clarity. That second-to-last resort for these situations reared itself in the darkness of the fabric bunched over his eyes, and he let himself fall into a dissociate haze, one usually reserved for only the most immense and inescapable pain. A tactic he’d been forced to learn.
Blood filled his mouth, his lungs, his stomach, for an eternity each. At some point he passed out. It felt like mercy.
To say Soap was furious was an understatement—an amalgam of fear and fury had settled in his stomach, and now it was fueling every bullet and bludgeon he put into the gang’s men. Ghost had gone dark. Neither hide nor hair of him could Soap see anywhere in their warehouse or courtyard, though with the mask, Soap had technically only ever seen either of those once. Then Gaz had overheard one of them saying they had him over their radio, and Soap saw red. Not Ghost. They couldn’t take Simon.
Ghost was the most secretive, stone cold member of one-four-one, and Soap had been desperate to get close enough to understand the moment they’d met on the tarmac. Tall and quiet, but when he spoke, his Manchester accent could rumble through Soap’s very being with enemy positions and shitty jokes alike.
He was a phenomenal sniper too, saving Soap’s life more times than he could count. Quite seriously, since there were plenty of well-timed moments Ghost still wouldn’t admit were his doing. He’d help any person on the team. But he’d only let Soap lay a hand on him without glaring daggers or shifting away.
Soap’s treasuring had turned into something closer, and he couldn’t pinpoint when, but he no longer knew what to do without Simon lurking about, watching their backs.
They couldn’t have him.
“Where are you keeping the Ghost?” Soap demanded in the most threatening growl he could muster, the injured man below him cowering away from the rifle barrel in his face.
“Th—in the north hall! Second floor, cell block! Only door that’s locked,” the man sobbed. They had what they needed. Soap shot him.
He radioed Gaz, relaying what the dead man had said.
“I’m closer,” Gaz responded, voice strained. He’d been up providing overwatch from one of the higher levels. “Meet you there.”
“Copy.”
Soap killed three more men on his way up the stairs. There was a man in a coat, pointing a pistol at him when he reached the second floor, but he crumpled with the sound of gunfire before he could take the shot.
Gaz rounded the corner, both lowering their weapons when they saw the other. “Found the cell.” He gestured back the way he’d came.
“Then let’s go,” Soap nodded.
The cell door was a slab of steel on a wall of concrete, a heavy padlock shackling it closed. Neither of them had the key, and without Ghost and a pair of convenient cutters they’d have to improvise. Two wrenches they scrounged from the previous room, hooked between the shackle, and Soap pried the lock apart, letting it snap to the ground.
He pushed into the room without a second thought. Gaz poked his head in after him, but stayed in the door to keep guard, expression just as nervous as Soap’s knew his was. His nose crinkled as soon as he entered. The room was over-lit and musty, like there was no ventilation between it and the outside world, and an undercurrent of blood and bile spiked through the mildew.
Ghost was slumped in a metal chair in the room’s center. His mask was pulled up on his sagging head, the plastic skull facing Soap like the reaper himself.
“Ghost,” he called softly. Rifle forgotten to tap at his legs, Soap leaned down over his Lieutenant, infinitely grateful to hear him breathing, ragged as it was through parted lips. So long as he kept doing that, Soap’d be happy. Ghost’s head lulled, and Soap gently took either side of his exposed face in hand. His jaw wasn’t strong, nor was it weak; square chin, clean-shaven with the smallest hint of growing stubble, but there was no time to revel in this little exposed part of him. Lifting Ghost’s head up gave a clear view of the blood on his lips, staining his teeth, dried streaks running from the corner of his mouth down to his neck.
“Yer lookin’ a pure nick, sir,” Soap slurred in partial panic. Ghost sighed, but otherwise there was no response. No 'English, MacTavish,' like he should've said. Shite, that wasn’t good. Internal bleeding, possibly. Neck trauma, though Soap couldn’t see any ligature marks under the tape. He pulled out his knife, starting to cut away the restraints, while thoughts of what they could’ve done to Ghost filtered through his head. Maybe the man bit his own tongue trying to keep quiet. Or bit one of his captors like the crazy bastard he was... The tape gave way to rope, and he sawed through that too.
“Can ye hear me, sir?”
Ghost struggled to hold his head up without Soap’s assistance, but he nodded weakly against the tape. With the last of the bonds around his ankles coming undone, Ghost reached a trembling hand up, pulling his balaclava the rest of the way down so the skull sat in its proper latitude. Brown eyes, shock-hazy and framed in black grease, stared down at him.
The last rope snapped against his blade’s edge. Soap helped Ghost up onto his feet, pulling the larger man’s arm around his shoulder for support as they trudged toward the door. He could feel Ghost regaining his bearings, steps becoming surer and his weight lifting away the longer he stood. Still, he hadn’t said a word.
“Wit they do to you?” Soap asked against him. It was war. Death and injury were expected, especially after torture, but Soap swore if Ghost was dying, he’d kill every man he’d found in this place a second time. He’d bomb this place to the ground; make the rubble their tomb.
Ghost looked down at him with tired eyes, and lifted his hand again. He grabbed his own neck through the mask’s fabric.
“They strangled you?” Soap seethed.
Ghost gave a thumbs down. He drew his thumb and forefinger down in two lines along his throat, then made a swiping motion against where his Adam's apple would be.
Soap still didn’t understand completely, but he understood enough. Gaz stared back at them with widened eyes.
“They cut his throat?”
Soap shook his head. No, there hadn’t been a single mark like that on his neck. Ghost was still staring back at him, almost passive. Almost pleading.
But there’d been blood in his mouth.
Soap whipped to Gaz, with an urgency he didn’t even know he could possess himself.
“Medical.”
Ghost was conscious through the escape from the warehouse, to the bird, to the base, and finally guided to the ward by Price’s orders and Soap’s firm hands, a gentle reminder that he wasn’t ignoring his way out of this check-up. For once, Ghost didn’t argue.
The rope had chafed, but the pain was a mosquito bite compared to the white-hot agony burning in his throat. Fuck, his throat. He couldn’t tell what was raw from sounds he couldn’t remember making, or what hurt because a scalpel had carved through his larynx.
When Weasel decided the job was done, the gag had been slipped out, but still all he could taste were pennies and acid, bubbled up and slipped past his parted lips, right alongside saliva he couldn’t swallow. His jeans had to be stained to hell, but it wouldn’t be the first pair. Fuck, it was like they’d slit his throat from the inside. He spit again into a trash can beside the medical cot.
They hadn’t cut his tongue out, though. He didn’t know if this was any better yet.
When the doctor asked what had happened, he explained in slow and simple BSL, hoping that if the doctor didn’t understand and Soap couldn’t translate, at least Johnny would be game at charades.
He knew it was good enough when Johnny’s eyes narrowed in growing horror and rage. Clarity. They’d put him under soon after, when he couldn’t swallow the pills they offered.
Ghost woke up staring into a bright fluorescent, his balaclava pulled up beneath the skull’s teeth with his mouth and jaw exposed. He could feel pins and needles in his left hand again. There was something beeping beside him, growing incessant and panicked—
“L.T.? Ghost, it’s alright!”
Soap.
Soap’s face drifted over him, hands grasping Ghost’s shoulders, secure. The panic ebbed away. He surveyed his position, eyes adjusting to the light.
He was laying in a hospital room, an IV in his left hand, and the chair Soap must’ve been sitting in off to his right. His throat didn’t hurt, courtesy of whatever they were dripping into him, but he could still feel an unnatural displacement in the muscles.
Ghost looked back up. Johnny’s pretty green-blue eyes were locked on his, his face ethereal, haloed as it was, and all drenched in concern. “You’re in the medical ward, sir, safe and sound.” Soap swallowed, pulling back to give Ghost some space while his breathing calmed. Maybe it was the drugs, but that was the last thing Ghost wanted.
“Johnny.” A fresh wave of panic rose, and fell as soon as it came. Ghost couldn’t feel his own voice. His mouth moved, his lungs forced air through, but his voice box wouldn’t cooperate. The sound that came out was raspy and quiet, only barely recognizable as the name it was. Fuck. Fuck.
A murderous rage took over Johnny’s features, eyebrows furrowing, but it was there for only a moment before he quashed it. Soap sat up again, grabbing a water bottle off the side table.
“Think ye can have a drink? Slow sips.”
Ghost pulled himself into a seated position, nodding. The water ached on its way down, every minute movement of his throat a shock of pain, but it went down nonetheless.
“They scoped your throat,” Soap started, setting the bottle aside when he’d finished. “It… didn’t look good, but they said it might’ve looked worse than it really is. There’s a good chance you’ll heal.”
Ghost stared back up at the light. Chance. He’d never had the best of luck, but this could right destroy him. No voice meant no comms, at least not quickly or clearly. He wouldn’t be able to lead missions. They’d discharge him, force him back to a civilian life he could barely survive with his voice. Without? That Weasel should’ve just fucking shot him. Gotten it over with.
That reminded him. He looked towards Soap, then slapped his palm sideways against his other index finger. His palms slid against each other. Soap watched in confusion.
When it was clear the gears were still struggling to turn in there, Ghost pointed at his throat, then narrowed his eyes in furious inquisition.
“The people who did this to you?”
Ghost nodded, and Soap smiled softly.
“Dead, sir.”
It was half a relief, knowing that the yank and his cronies were left dead in that warehouse, while he had been the one to leave it. But still, he was somewhat disappointed he couldn’t…
“Sorry, L.T., I know ye like to go after ‘em yourself, and I really would’ve made them suffer if I’d known what they’d done, but we were a bit too keen on finding ye to slow.”
Soap knew him too well.
Ghost slid his eyes over to the Scot with mock annoyance, enough to make any Rookie turn tail. Soap grinned brighter. He saw right through to the jest.
“Aye, sir, I’ll let you have at my captors if they ever get a hold of me. That’ll even us up.”
Ghost’s lips pressed together, forgetting that his mask was still pulled up, and Johnny could see the action. He didn’t really care. Let him know he disapproved. He knew it was an impossible promise, but he’d never let anything that happened to him happen to Johnny, too. Palms facing inward, fingers together, he swiped his left hand with his thumb up behind the other.
Never.
Soap blinked at him.
“’Never?’” He translated with overplayed indignation. “You’ll never come to rescue me? I take that back, you’re a cold-hearted man, Simon.”
“Smartarse.” Ghost exhaled, the word barely there. Soap’s light had been guiding him away from the bleak reality, but he laid back once more against the uncomfortable cot when it returned. No voice, no position. No Soap. That last one hurt the hardest.
They fell into silence.
Soap was biting his lip when he looked over again. “Ghost…”
“Soap…” he responded automatically. The S sound hissed through his teeth, but the rest even Ghost couldn’t hear. He sat up again, instead, to show acknowledgement. It wasn’t easy, fatigue was creeping back up on him.
“It’ll be alright.” Soap asserted. “Even if ye don’t heal on your own, Price already said he’ll sign off on whatever you need.”
It was a little. It was enough. He’d gotten through much worse kicking before, and he couldn’t let them win.
“And don’t you think I won’t be checking up on you! It’s antibiotics and soup up to your eyeballs, L.T.”
Ghost rolled his eyes, but he found he didn’t mind as much as he expected himself to. He’d get by. And if he didn’t?
He had an inkling Johnny would fight tooth and nail to be by his side.