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Breathing heavily, he shoved the snake-cam at Soap, pivoting in his crouch to keep a solid watch on any AQ trying to sneak up on them.
Price was behind them, two Marines trailing. All had their weapons up, primed, their heads on a swivel.
Soap was working, the cam under the door. Gaz pivoted, glanced down to see -
And the door exploded.
In slow motion, he saw the shrapnel spraying out. Soap’s body, his tac vest, absorbed most of what would have gone into himself and the Scot went down hard. Price was rolled, bounced off some piece of deco furniture.
Instinct took over. He rolled back over Soap, grabbed him by the shoulder straps of his vest, and heaved him into the safety of the now-empty room. He was vaguely aware of AQ troops having rushed past, shooting back over their shoulders at them. He pivoted because where was Price and froze.
His captain had managed to get a rifle up, had managed to return fire. Gaz was about to lunge out, to help -
- when Price was rocked. Blood sprayed out of his chest - why hadn’t his plates stopped the rounds - and time slowed down. The droplets flew in what would have been beautiful arcs and parabolas, had it not been blood.
Price’s blood.
Behind him, Soap was still, and he chanced a glance down.
Dull gray eyes looked up at him, unblinking, empty. There was a puddle of crimson spreading, reaching out from beneath Soap, from his neck, where a chunk of shrapnel had ripped away… everything.
The back of Gaz’s mind screamed that the white he saw… it was Soap’s spine, exposed when his throat ceased being a part of him.
He bit back panic, bile. Soap was gone. Price -
He lurched forward, back into the anteroom, and snatched for Price’s vest. He yanked at the straps, his heart frozen in his chest, and pulled with everything he had. They went flying back into the room AQ had been in, the mockery of safety it provided.
Some safety. Soap’s lifeless eyes bore into him. They didn’t even seem accusing, they seemed sad. Lost.
Price was struggling beneath him, weakly. He pulled him against the wall, let him fall back into his lap as he fell backwards, struggling to loosen the straps of his vest, to pull it away.
Burning tears formed behind his eyes, bile in his throat as the ruined vest fell away. Somehow, impossibly, the rounds had gone through the plates like they hadn’t even been there, like a hot knife through butter. There was a hole in his captain’s upper chest, far too close to the artery there to have not clipped it, and another wound in his chest, bubbling, gurgling.
The sound had him frozen, imprinting on his memory.
He’d taken enough emergency aid classes to know a survivable wound when he saw one.
This was not one of them.
This was a triage black.
This was his captain dying on his lap in a city that would never know what had been given up for them. He couldn’t stay - he still had a chance to disarm the missile in the air -
Price’s hazel eyes bore into him, blood trickling from his nose and the corner of his mouth.
“K-kyle-“ his name was soft, choked, as it crossed those chapped lips.
He tried not to watch as the blood seeped down, soaked into his collar, clumped strands of his beard hair together.
“Aye, Cap,” he choked out, petting the side of the man’s face with trembling hands. “I’m sorry, I-“
Price’s eyes went dark. “Its your fault, Sergeant. You could have stopped this.”
He blinked, his heart freezing in his chest. “S-sir?”
“You could have stopped it, mate.” That was Soap, his eyes still flat, empty, but somehow pushed up on his elbow. Gore dripped from his neck, landing in viscous chunks on his lap. Idly, like he wasn’t aware that he was dead, Soap tried to scoop up the mess, press it back into his neck. “You did a shit job.”
Price was still across his legs, his fingers digging into Gaz’s arms. He was still gripping the straps of his captain’s tac vest, his fingers locked in his growing panic. “Killed us all, Kyle,” the blood bubbling from his mouth had covered his teeth, was dripping down his chin. “Should have left you back in London.”
There was a rustle behind him, and he turned eyes that were shamefully wet away, only to meet with the barrel of a gun. The metal felt abnormally hot against his skin, burning like a brand as it twisted, dug in.
Laswell and Ghost were standing there, Laswell holding the gun, digging it in so hard it was forcing his neck back. Ghost was flipping a knife, its blade gleaming in the emergency lights, catching it rhythmically.
Thunk.
Thunk.
Thunk.
“You killed us all.” Ghost never stopped flipping his blade, his eyes black beneath his mask.
Laswell, her face normally a mask of professionalism, was pulled back into a snarl. “All of us,” she agreed, twisting the barrel against his forehead. “Thirty thousand people, all gone because you weren’t fast enough.”
He couldn’t speak, even if he had the words, the heat behind his eyes snapping and tears staring to trickle down his cheeks.
Ghost snorted, derisive. Cold. “Should have died in Al Mazrah,” his voice was cold, seeming to slither across Gaz’s mind. “Would have saved us all some bloody effort.”
He was hyperventilating, the air he managed tis suck in too thick in his throat, weighing down his lungs. They didn’t seem to notice, Soap flopping down over Price’s leg, the gore seeping down and coating them all as he went still. Price’s eyes were still locked on him, staring - leering - as the bubbles kept coming from the chest wound.
Ghost kept flipping his blade with one hand, his free hand coming up.
Kyle blinked, would have looked away if he had any control over his body.
He didn’t.
The balaclava dropped to down, landed across Soap’s still back, and left behind -
Ghost’s face was a skull. No balaclava, no skull plate - it was a skull - his face locked into a rictus grin.
Or was locked, until his jawbone fell off and landed on top of Soap, slipped down and landed on Gaz’s chest.
He looked up again, unblinking, as Ghost’s empty eye sockets began bleeding.
And he screamed.
“KYLE!”
He snapped awake with a sob, fumbling for the knife he had under his pillow, his throat raw. His breath whistled between his teeth and he could feel his lip cracking as it pulled back into a grimace.
Had he been screaming? He must have been for this throat to as wrecked as it was. His eyes cracked open, only to immediately snap shut.
The dim light of the hotel room was too much for his eyes, and his head immediately felt like it was caught in a vise. He let out a croak, more of a whimper, and tried to roll, only to find himself blocked by a warm body.
He shied away, another sound of terror escaping, and he cringed at how pathetic he sounded.
“Gaz.”
It didn’t matter how warm that voice sounded, or how worried, he couldn’t make himself uncurl enough to face his captain.
“Sergeant.”
Price sounded worried. He only pulled the rank card out, off-duty, when he was. He’d admitted as much after the first time they’d worked together, after Piccadilly, during the exfil from Georgia, just before the proper formation of the 141.
It had been the first time his CO had seen him in the throes of a proper nightmare, bought on by the bloody kid who’d gotten pulled up, snagged in a quagmire of his father’s sins.
Pointing a loaded gun at a child had fucked with him badly.
Price had just held him as he sobbed, had pet his hair. “I’d be more concerned if it didn’t affect you, lad,” he’d murmured into his hair, a solid weight for Gaz to fall apart against. “Despite what we do, at the end of the day, we need to live with ourselves, and redraw that line we can’t cross in our heads, yeah?”
He remembered vaguely falling asleep there, curled between Price and Farah as they flew out of Georgian airspace on Nik’s heli, each of them mourning pieces of themselves left behind. He’d only woken when they had landed safely at an allied airbase in Poland, tucked with his face in Price’s shoulder.
There’d been no commentary on how any of them had fallen apart on that flight, just a shared sense of camaraderie that came from mutual trauma.
A soft sound above him, what he realized to be an arm tugging him back against a firm body. There was a brush of skin to his forehead, then a steady press of it. “Come on, Kyle. You’re safe, lad.”
This time, he managed to force his eyes open just enough for his lashes to flutter. Price’s forehead was pressed to his own, his calloused hand caught up in Gaz’s knotted, shaggy hair. He’d showered as soon as they’d gotten to the hotel Laswell had arranged, but had curled up on his bed without even toweling it dry. He hadn’t cared at that point, and didn’t care now, not when it meant there were blunt nails drawing circles from the back of his head down and across the back of his neck.
Price seemed to know he was pulling himself back together and just held him, only moving so far as to let Gaz tuck his face into the front of his bared neck. The prickle of his captain’s beard was strangely grounding, a firm reminder of who held him as he broke.
They stayed still for a long while as Gaz came back to himself, processing.
Price had joined him on his bed, gathered him up like he was a lad half his age.
He couldn’t find it in him to care, or be embarrassed. In a task force like the One-Four-One, there was little space for privacy, for hidden secrets. They all broke at some point, it was just a matter of how, and how they recovered from it. He’d seen his captain and his lieutenant at their worst, and they at his, and they’d all come through… maybe not better, but stronger for it. MacTavish would be likely getting similar treatment from Ghost in the near future, and the four of them would pull together and build off it.
“Soap was dead.” The words seemed loud, breaking the silence, incongruous in the otherwise quiet room. He licked his lower lip, his tongue catching on dried skin.
Price just kept carding his fingers through his messy curls, a hum low in his throat. It wasn’t prompting, pushing, just… an acknowledgement.
“You too. Plates… didn’t stop shite. Laswell and Ghost…”
Price pressed his hand against the back of his head, pressing his face into his neck. Gaz took a shuddery breath, letting his nose brush his captain’s pulse. You don’t have to do this, Kyle the words were unspoken.
I need to, Captain.
“… missile launched.”
His captain made a soft sound, almost a mourning keen, and he found himself pulled closer, impossibly close.
His throat closed again and without conscious thought he was shaking as the adrenaline rush from the dream, the terror, faded. Throughout it all, Price remained his rock, soothing him but never shushing, his lips murmuring soundlessly against his forehead.
He didn’t sob; he was far too tired for that and Price was too warm, too real against him.
Price settled back against the headboard as Gaz finally slipped off to sleep again. The younger man’s hands were fisted in his sleep shirt, right over his heart.
The meaning wasn’t lost on him.
He smoothed out the curls he’d been combing through, pushing back his own regrets. He’d save his lads from this, if he could - all of them. Ghost, Soap, Gaz… it didn’t matter how long they’d been in the services, betrayal never got easier.
Bringing death and destruction wore on the strongest of personalities, and he would be the first to admit he was scared for them. Simon had already known enough death in his life, had almost lost his new sergeant twice in the last fortnight. Soap… well, Simon was likely dealing with a similar circumstance at that very moment, keeping Soap from breaking apart.
If the lad didn’t have a screaming nightmare, he’d eat his boonie.
Gaz… Gaz was like Soap. Expressive young men, their feelings, emotions hadn’t been quite snuffed out by the horrors of war yet. They were both like Alex, long gone now, lost in Georgia with no one save the pair of them, and Farah, to mourn.
Alex… he pushed the thought away with a barely suppressed shudder. That wound was too raw still, even after two years.
The dead were silent in their graves, their pain lost to all but those who held their memories. Even still, time softened the jagged edges, at least enough to leave those behind functional, if not whole.
Gaz sighed softly against his neck, forcing him back to the present. He’d need to keep an eye on the lads, all of them, with Makarov back. Ghost had already lost one sergeant to the madman; he’d need to give Soap a head’s up on what to expect from his lieutenant. The two of them… they were a good fit, one tempering the other without conscious thought. He’d seen it during the raid on the Los Vaqueros headquarters, as Ghost kept his overwatch on Soap, as the lieutenant forced his way past medical and assorted officials once Soap had made it out of the building to pull him close, had gone over every inch of him to check for anything the medics had missed. When Soap had slumped from exhaustion, skittering away from the grasp of a CIA operative come to probe for information, Ghost had placed himself in front of his sergeant, arms folded over his chest, with his sniper slung over his back.
The operative had fucked right off, and he’d be the first to admit that all four of them had a bit of an adrenaline-fueled laugh at the look on his face.
Yes, they’d be a good pair, and if a closer-than-seemly relationship kept them sane and hale, then, well… TF-141 wasn’t exactly the poster child of regulations, after all.
He reached down, tugged the end of the duvet up and over their legs. Gaz ran a bit colder than most, and tended to sleep under a veritable nest.
His mind wandered. If a mission hinged on it, he knew that Soap and Ghost would both make the right decision. It would kill them to do it, but their objective would be completed.
He knew full well that it’d be the same for himself and Gaz. As long as the y’all could still make that distinction, well…
No harm, no foul, as the Americans would say.
Doing his best to not disturb his sergeant, he slid down, forcing back a smile as Gaz tried to wrap his legs around his own. His hands stayed where they’d been, fisted against his chest, and he couldn’t help but to snort. Lad was a veritable koala when he got like this, and…
Well, he’d be lying if he said it didn’t offer him some peace as well, to hear feel the steady thrum of Kyle’s heart against his chest.
He reached over and flipped the light off, throwing the room into a semi-darkness. From the drawn curtains, only the faintest traces of light could be seen of the slowly waking city.
Despite the unfamiliarity of the place, he settled back and relaxed. Gaz was pressed against him, sleeping a sleep that hopefully would remain undisturbed.
If not, he’d be there, every time.