Chapter Text
The throbbing in your shoulder and forearms pulled you from the depths of unconsciousness, a dull ache at first, and then a ripping, shredding agony all at once. Your breath came in short pants, your nose whistling sharply with each exhale. The pain radiating from the bridge of your nose coupled with the taste of blood, acrid and sharp, trapped in the corners of your mouth told you that it was probably broken.
Taking the butt of a gun to the face could do that.
Fabric covered your head, obscuring your view. It smelled of mildew and rot, and beyond that you could smell only sweat and the iron tang of your own blood. You pulled against the zip tie pinning your hands together painfully behind your back, grunting with the effort and sending your shoulder into another flare of agony. Each movement caused a sharp stab of fire along the ladder of your right ribs. You weren’t in good shape, and you would need to be in better than good shape to get out of this mess.
You knew, deep in your aching bones, what would come next. You had trained for it. Hell, you knew what your team would do if they caught an operative sneaking around on base. You were no stranger to torture, had partaken in it yourself, given and received. But still, it was an effort to remain calm knowing what was coming. An effort to reach deeply inside, down to the coldest, most remote tundra of self, and calm your breathing so you could think. If you lost your head, it would be over before it had even begun.
“Don’t lose your cool now, Ice, yeah?” rumbled a familiar, gravelly voice.
“Ghost,” you whispered, and his name was a prayer in your mouth.
***
“Ice, how copy?” Ghost’s deep voice crackled over your comms.
You looked through the scope of your rifle, cold concrete pressing against your chest and thighs as you settled into overwatch. The air around you was cool, a fine mist falling over you from the dam water rushing down from above.
“Solid copy,” you responded, hand on your radio. “In position. Let’s get this show started, boys.”
“Copy that,” came Soap’s voice in response. “Got my popcorn ‘nd everythin’.”
Your crosshairs hovered over the lieutenant’s bulky form far below. His heavy gear made him appear even larger and more menacing than you knew him to be in real life. As you watched, he crept up behind a Konni soldier and jammed his blade deep into the soft spot in the man’s throat, once and then twice. There was a struggle, and then the soldier went to his knees on the ground, resting in a spattered arc of his own blood.
It was a thing of beauty. You whistled with appreciation.
“Lookin’ good out there, LT,” you said.
“Yeah, yeah,” he responded a moment later, voice dry but not without humor as he pulled out his handgun and loosed two rounds in quick succession into the leg and throat of another Konni, approaching after having heard the sounds of struggle. “More shootin’, less oglin’.”
You smirked into the solid, familiar weight of your gun, setting your sights on a Konni soldier hiding behind a wall just beyond Ghost’s position. “Affirmative, sir.”
The man slid from behind the wall, pointing his gun at Ghost’s approaching form. Your finger squeezed the trigger of your rifle, and the gun’s report rang out into the night, despite the suppressor you had affixed to it. You watched through the scope as the soldier’s insides became his outsides, splattering against the wall behind him.
“That’s a girl,” Ghost rumbled through the radio.
You rolled your eyes, pulling back the bolt and chambering another round. Your crosshairs shifted slightly to the right, focusing on a group of soldiers gathered in a corner by a doorway that led into the dam. At their feet was a red, explosive tank. You set your aim on the tank and pulled the trigger a second time. A small explosion rang out, the flash of it blinding, and the force tossed the Konni men into the air. They landed feet away, aflame and unmoving.
“Fuckin’ hell,” Ghost said, voice crackling through the comms. “If they didn’t know we were here before, they bloody well do now.”
Right on cue, a blaring alarm started up and agitated chatter traveled over the night air. Voices traveled farther over water, and you could hear much from your position at the top of the dam.
“Have a little faith, Ghost,” you chided, loosing another bullet into the head of a soldier at Ghost’s six.
“What’s that?” he asked, the words colored with sarcasm. Rapid gunfire echoed. And then, “Konni’s guarding a building to the West at the base of the dam. Moving into the gatehouse.”
As Ghost moved interior, you could no longer see him.
“Roger that. Lost visual. I’ll keep the entrance on ice for you,” you said, loosing a bullet into the head of a soldier running for the gatehouse. He collapsed to the ground.
There was more gunfire and yelling from within, and you kept your gaze closely trained on the gatehouse entrance. For a long moment, there was no chatter on your radio—long enough that you reached for your comms to check in.
“Bomb defused,” Ghost’s gruff voice said before you could press the button. You breathed out, relaxing. “Gatehouse clear.”
His tall form exited the gatehouse, gaze and gun sweeping the area. Lucky for him he had an excellent sniper to keep everything neat and tidy for him.
“Ice, how copy?” he asked.
You snorted softly. His second status check of the night, and you were just getting started. The record number of check ins you had counted during your tenure with 141 was fifteen within a few hours during a particularly challenging mission. What could you say? Your lieutenant was nothing if not attentive.
“Chilly up here,” you answered. “Could go for a bath after this. Some bubbles. Maybe some wine.”
You squeezed the rifle trigger again, sending another Konni soldier sprawling a foot away from Ghost.
“Where have you found a bath on base?” Soap’s voice interrupted.
“Shut it, Soap,” you said at the same time Ghost said, “Keep it tactical, Johnny.”
“Oh, aye,” Soap’s wry voice came through your earpiece. “Taken many tactical baths, have you, Ice?”
You laughed, not bothering to press your comms button for that.
“Wouldn’t mind a nice dry red,” you went on dreamily, as though Johnny hadn’t interrupted you and been scolded for it. In your scope, Ghost rounded a corner and moved toward a vehicle.
“Don’t start the wine talk yet. Too early for that. Visual on a bomb—back of the truck,” Ghost alerted.
“Affirmative,” you said, watching as he hoisted himself into the back of the truck and approached the payload, setting to work on defusing it. “I’ve got your six.”
You took out two soldiers in a two-for-one as they rounded the corner and ran out of the darkness, lining up perfectly. You whistled to yourself, impressed, as you chambered another bullet.
“Wish you’d seen that one. Bet you’d even be impressed,” you said, smug.
His voice was less amused when it came through the radio. “Yeah, well, when this bomb detonates, yer gonna wish I’d seen which fuckin’ wire I was cuttin’. Bomb defused.”
You snorted softly.
“Unlike you, lieutenant—” A shuffle echoed behind you, and you paused a moment, glancing over your shoulder. Only metal and concrete and cold, dark water, and so you turned back to your scope. “—I know the meaning of fai—”
A rifle shot rang out, and not one of yours. You felt the heat of sparks showering over your thighs, heard the ricochet of a shot missed. Instinct kicked in, and you rolled away and out of sight, pulling out your close range weapon.
“Ice, copy,” Ghost’s voice spoke into your ear. There was no levity now, no restrained amusement. There was only frigid calm, dangerous focus.
You didn’t dare speak, your eyes straining as you searched the darkness for movement. You peeked around the corner of the ledge, and another shot echoed, bullet ricocheting inches from where your face had been.
“Ice, how copy?” Ghost repeated, and you could hear the impatient growl in his voice.
You saw it now, that little red dot on the concrete, the thin red line shining through the night, seeking you out. Looked like you weren’t the only one with a bird’s eye view of this place. If that thing got its sights on you, your brains would be splattered just like those Konni soldiers down on the ground.
“Goddamnit, Ice,” Ghost yelled in your ear. “Respond!”
“I’m compromised,” you spoke into the comms finally. You twisted your arm out, firing blindly in the direction of the red dot, the pop pop pop echoing, receiving a pained yell for your efforts. “Looks like there’s a little friendly competition for best sniper spot up here.”
There was a beat of silence, and then, with relief, “Got my money on you.”
You were a big girl. You could take care of yourself, and he knew it. Ghost had never babied you before, and you didn’t want this to be the assignment in which he started.
“Thanks, big guy. Sweet of you—” You heard a click, and then a whoosh, and then the clink of something metal hitting the ground. From the shadows at the other end of the platform, a frag rolled out into the moonlight. It’s pin had been pulled. “—oh, fuck.”
You dove out of the way, but not fast enough. The frag exploded, sending shrapnel flying through the air. Your arms came in front of your face out of instinct, and you cried out as your forearms were peppered with slivered steel.
You tumbled across the platform and over the edge, gloved fingers scrabbling for purchase on the concrete ledge, forearms screaming with pain as your muscles flexed and pulled taut around shards of metal. Unable to stop your own momentum, you slipped from the side of your sniper perch, your side hitting a ledge lower down. Your ribs hit the concrete, and you yelped as you bounced off, the breath knocked out of you. You hurtled down the side of the building, your stomach all the way into your ass like you would shit it out.
When you landed, it was against a metal bin with the full weight of your shoulder. There was a tear, and a crack, a popping from deep inside your body that reverberated through all your bones. You screamed, a deep, raw, primal sound of agony that you had forgotten you had inside you, the sound of it so loud that it cut through the night air.
For a long moment, you lay there in breathless pain, unable to do anything but urge your diaphragm to move, goddamnit. Fucking breathe, you useless lungs. There was static in your ear, broken by the interspersed urgent tones of your lieutenant. There were other sounds, too. Footsteps coming closer to you, the report of gunfire, and Konni chatter drawing louder and nearer.
“Fuck, tha’ sounded bad.” It was Soap’s voice in your ear now, your comms finally sorting themselves out.
If he had heard your scream from clear across the dam, there was no way you didn’t have enemy soldiers converging on you from every direction right now. If only you could just get up. Get up, you urged yourself.
“Ice! Fucking copy!” Ghost’s enraged yell came through the radio, sounding entirely like an ice pick to your probably concussed brain. There were gunshots in the background, and the pounding of his heavy boots on the ground. He was coming to baby you—you just knew it. “Soap, I'm en route to retrieve Ice.”
If you had the extra breath, you would have groaned. But, as it was, you needed all the air in your body so that you wouldn’t pass out. You moved a bit, ignoring the aching protest of your body, and searched the ground around you. Your weapon, it was gone, lost in the blast if you had to guess. You had nothing but the blade at your thigh, and you weren’t really in a position to use it, unfortunately for you.
Finally, with the footsteps of Konni soldiers bearing down on you, you sucked in a deep, shuddering breath, then coughed so hard your chest ached unbearably.
You pressed down the button on your comms with painstaking effort, sucking in another wheezing breath.
“Don’t bother,” you said, coughing.
“Bleedin’ Christ,” Soap’s voice said in your ear, accent heavy under duress. “She’s fuckin’ alive.”
“Johnny, prep for early exfil,” the lieutenant said, his voice commanding, leaving no room for argument. “Ice, location, now.”
“LT—” Soap began to argue.
Fear wedged its way into your chest. This mission was too important to abandon. All those people in that city below…
“Don’t bother,” you said again to them. The Konni were nearly on you now. You could hear their voices asking where you had gone, could hear them turning things over only a few paces away, searching for where you had fallen. With some hesitancy and difficulty breathing, you went on, “Frag blew me clear off the top of the fucking dam. Landed on my shoulder—think it’s broken. Some of my ribs, too. Guess a bath wasn’t in the cards for tonight, boys.”
To yourself, finger off the comms button, you said, “Fucking idiot.”
You’d been distracted, cocky. This was why tactical only was so important—no distractions. But you’d been too busy chattering to hear the Konni asshole sneaking up on you. With great physical effort, you sat up from the cold ground, growling at the pain that radiated through you.
With bitterness, you added into the comms, “I can barely stand, Ghost, and this mission is too important. I’m dead weight. So don’t you dare turn around for me. There are two more bombs to defuse, lieutenant, and if you don’t, people will die.”
“Shut your fuckin’ mouth,” came Ghost’s gruff response a second later. “We’re a team.”
He said nothing more, and there was crackling silence in your earpiece. As though that were an answer in and of itself. We’re a team. Right now, teamwork was getting in the way of saving a town full of innocent people. You were one person, and far from innocent, and they deserved saving more than you.
“Stay chilly, Ice,” said Soap after a long moment. “We’re coming for you, like it or no’.”
You huffed, disappointed, resting your head back against the damp concrete. You had been gathering your strength as you lay on the ground and finally felt collected enough to rise to your feet, groaning, hand against your bruised ribs. You used the wall beside you to steady yourself, smearing bloody handprints against the concrete. If you could just find a weapon and somewhere to hunker down, maybe you could weather this.
You panted, vision going black around the edges as you dragged your weight along the wall. You limped up a set of stairs and toward a door, a feeling of dread and panic falling over you like a veil. Part of you, a deep part, a selfish part, wanted Ghost to come for you, wanted to feel the comfort of his heavy weight supporting you, the reverberation of his gunfire through his body against yours. You wanted his watchful eyes on you, like a vicious guard dog, and the feeling of safety that came along with it. You were never more safe than when he had your back.
But you were alone, and despite the echo of gunfire in the distance, you couldn’t see any sign of Ghost, and so you pushed open the door in front of you. Your blood dripped along the stairs beneath you, slicking the metal with red. You glanced cautiously inside the building.
And that was the moment the butt of an assault rifle broke your nose.
***
The first rule you were ever taught about torture was to come to terms with the reality of your situation. Be realistic—because hope and denial could break you just as fast as a blow torch to the face, or pliers pulling out your teeth, or a turcas under the nail ever could.
Rule one was always this: prepare yourself mentally for what was about to happen to you.
Behind you, there was the deep rumbling of mechanics and the deafening roar of water rushing. You could smell the damp mist in the air and knew that you were at least still somewhere near the dam. There was a cold metal chair beneath you, and it squeaked with your movement.
“Where are we?” you asked, voice hushed through the material of the hood over your head.
Beside you, Ghost grunted. “Powerhouse,” he said, voice deep and gruff.
You nodded. The big building at the center of the dam. That sound behind you—that must’ve been the turbines.
“What happened?” you asked after a moment, needing the answer, dreading the answer.
“Fuckin’ Konni. Got swarmed,” Ghost said. “Took a round to the leg. Now I’m ‘ere. Johnny got out.”
You nodded again. “And the bombs?” you asked.
There was a beat of silence. “Two still armed.”
Fury crept up your throat. “I told you to leave me behind,” you hissed, pulling against your restraints. “I told you this was too important. You could have used me as a distraction.”
“That’s not your call, sergeant,” he said, reminding you of your rank despite your familiarity, voice raised. “I told you. We’re a fuckin’ team.”
Vitriol pooled in your mouth, something acidic creeping into your chest, but before you had a chance to rail against his call—his stupid call that had gotten him captured along with you when he would have been fine, he would have been safe, he wouldn’t be here, he wouldn’t see what was about to happen—you heard footsteps approaching. Both of you went silent.
You breathed deep, in and out and in again. Despite knowing you must remain cool, despite your attempts to remain calm, to let yourself empty of everything like a sieve, your heart—that foolish traitor—beat hard against your broken ribs. This was it—this was it and you knew what you were expected to do for your team, and you would fucking do your duty until your throat was raw from screaming your loyalty.
Laughter echoed directly behind you, and you swallowed your panic down deep, hid it in a place you would not find it again.
“What have we here?” spoke a masculine voice, Russian accent thick. “A ghost in the flesh. But who’s this?”
In a single movement, the mildewing bag was swept off your head. Your hair fell out of your ponytail and into your face, and you shook it away. You blinked the bleariness from your eyes as they adjusted to the change in lighting. Your gaze swept the room, and within a second you took in the computers riddled with bullet holes, the dead dam workers slumped against the wall, and then Ghost across from you, also zip tied to a folding chair. Under his skull balaclava, his gaze was dark and intense on your bruised face, then slid to the man standing behind you.
With a sharp whistle and a raised brow the Konni leader stepped into view, and you pinned him with a hateful glare. He was older, wrinkled, with a salt and pepper beard and his hands folded behind his back. His brown gaze slid from you to Ghost, an amused look in his eye.
“You should have known better than to bring a beautiful woman here, Lieutenant,” the man said, his affect easy, almost affable. “Shame I had to break her nose, though.”
Even through his balaclava, you could see Ghost’s jaw clench. His shoulders tightened, and that look in his eyes—it was sharper than any of his blades. Still, he said nothing, and neither did you.
The Konni leader turned back to you and leaned down. You didn’t flinch away, but instead met his eyes.
“You fucking little bitch,” he said, that affable demeanor fading a bit, and he reached one hand out, pressing into the bridge of your broken nose with his thumb, cupping your face with his palm. Pain exploded behind your eyes and you blinked away the tears that came unbidden, refusing him the satisfaction of crying so soon. “You’ve been making my life very difficult tonight.”
Across from you, Ghost’s chest rose and fell jaggedly from the effort of remaining calm. There was a promise of death in his eyes, and the look of it scared even you.
The thumb moved from your nose; the pain stopped. Relief flooded you, even as you knew there would be much, much more pain to come. The man knelt in front of you, smiling.
“Do you know what we do to women like you?” he asked.
“Yes,” you answered, voice unwavering, because you did know.
“Good,” the Konni leader said, grinning widely, showing his crooked teeth. “Then you know there will be no point in fighting back.”
***
“Didn’t take you for a bondage kind of guy,” you said, smirking up at Ghost as he knotted a rope around your wrist.
His eyes met yours through his balaclava, and the look in them was patently unamused. To show his displeasure, he jerked harshly on the rough material around your other wrist until it was painfully tight where it pinned your arm to the chair. The material chafed the sensitive skin of your arms, and you knew that was probably the least amount of discomfort you would feel all day.
“When one of Makarov’s fucks has you tied to a chair, it won’t be a laughing matter,” he scolded, deadly serious. “You know what they’ll do to you if they catch you, yeah?”
Your smirk faded. It was always a toss-up as to whether your lieutenant was in the mood for jokes, and it appeared that today’s coin toss hadn’t landed in your favor.
“I’m a woman, Ghost. Of course I know what they’ll do to me,” you said, just as serious, and then added, “My mother gave me a better talk on this subject when I was seven.”
Ghost towered over you, a surgical tray at his side. It was metal, lined with waxy blue paper, and held every manner of tool—from pliers to bone saw, blow torch and scalpel and a goddamn fucking speculum that you desperately hoped he wasn’t planning on using on you in any capacity today.
“I’m not your fuckin’ mum, Ice, and this ain’t the birds and the bloody bees,” he said, and his tone made you lean back into the uncomfortably stiff chair. “When you’re in that cold, dark room, a bag over your head and not another sorry soul around to save you, what the fuck are you going to do about it?”
You sat up straight in the chair, meeting Ghost’s intense gaze. “I’m going to accept the situation that I’m in, sir, and I’m going to keep my mind free of panic. I’m going to use my circumstance, whatever it may be, to my advantage. I’m going to look for an opening, and I’m going to slaughter Makarov’s fucks first chance I get. And if there is no advantage, and there is no opening, then I will die there in that cold, dark room with a bag over my head and no sorry fucking soul around to see it.” You paused, breath harsh. “I will die for my team. I will die for you, but no matter what, I will not break.”
Slowly, Ghost blinked and then nodded, satisfied with your answer, something other than anger and annoyance in his eyes now. He shifted on his feet.
“They’ll disarm you, take your guns and knives,” he said. “But you don’t need your weapons; your body is your weapon.”
“I know,” you said, meeting his searing gaze unflinchingly.
“They’ll take your clothes, Ice,” he went on. “Humiliate you. Worse than that.”
You swallowed. “I know,” you told him.
“They’ll cut you, burn you, waterboard you…and that’s if they lack imagination,” he continued, arms crossed and dark eyes diamond hard as he stared down at you. Then he said, jaw clenching, “They’ll fuck you. Don’t take no imagination at all to reckon that.”
“I know,” you said again, losing patience as the circulation began to cut off to your fingers, and you wished he’d just get on with it already instead of whatever this was. “I know, Ghost. I know what I signed up for, and I can handle it. Can you?”
Those eyes, so expressive, the only part of his face you could see beyond the eyeblack and his balaclava. In the dim light, they glimmered with the promise of violence. “Breaking isn’t an option, no matter the circumstance.”
Because you couldn’t stop yourself, you said, “And if—”
The question died in your mouth, but the words hung in the air between you, and Ghost’s dark eyes had already pinned you again, waiting.
“And if I’m not alone?” you asked, finishing your thought.
His brows furrowed, and then understanding lit his eyes. What if someone else was captured with you, you were asking. What if someone else in Task Force 141 was compromised alongside you? What if it were him there to see them cut you, burn you, waterboard you, fuck you?
“Then you better not break, Ice,” Ghost said, voice low, “’cause I’m sure as fuck not gonna.”
“Good,” you said, unblinking. “Don’t.”
***
As you heard the shuffle of boots on tile behind you, saw Ghost’s dark gaze flicker to the approaching Konni soldiers just out of your view, the full weight of your situation settled with all the gravity of a planet on your chest.
“Take her,” said the Konni leader, that warm affect in his voice gone now. Cold command was all that remained. “I will handle the ghost.”
Your heart sped up, and across from you Ghost struggled against his restraints. Blood pooled beneath his left leg, dripping from the gunshot wound at his shin. There was no sign he felt the pain, no sign he felt anything other than murderous intent.
Hands grasped your arms in a bruising grip, a Konni soldier on either side of you. They dragged you out of your chair roughly, knocking it over with a clatter. The two men chattered in your ear in Russian, laughing darkly, and you knew enough of the language to know that you couldn’t let them take you upstairs.
Adrenaline rushed through your veins, flushing your system. The pain you felt sharpened into a pin point, into a tool to be used, and everything around you seemed to slow and become very clear. You could see everything—the knife in the belt of the soldier to your right, the two Konni moving to bracket your lieutenant, and the shine of Ghost’s eyes following you so intently.
You jerked against the hands on you, and in the moment the soldier to your right stumbled, you saw your opportunity.
It happened so quickly.
You headbutted the man as hard as you could, aided by his own momentum, and there was the crack of bone against bone and a yell of pain. Beyond the adrenaline, you had no sense of your own pain, but knew the headbutt had hurt you as much as it hurt him when you tasted copper in the back of your throat and felt the blood gelling over your bared teeth.
There was no time for pain. In a millisecond, you wrenched your wrists apart, snapping the zip tie around them.
“Fucking bitch!” The soldier to your right yelled, hand coming up to staunch the flow of blood from his nose and mouth. His hesitation was his first and last mistake.
You reached for his belt, the bones in your shoulder grinding painfully, and your grip closed around the knife sheathed there. A moment later, the weapon was liberated and found its new home within the throat of its previous owner. You felt the give of flesh, and the toughness of cartilage, and the grating of blade against bone. His blood released in a spray that doused your shirt, staining it, and just like that he was dead on the ground.
Ghost was free as well, had made quick work of his restraints in the chaos, and the full, murderous height of him rose like a tsunami from the metal chair. There was a sickening crunch as his elbow landed, blindingly fast, against the face of the Konni soldier to his right. The man collapsed, out cold. The other soldier grappled with him, but Ghost kicked his leg from under him and sent him flying to the ground in a heap before he could fire a single shot. His skull cracked against the tile, and he didn’t move again.
The Konni soldier who gripped your left arm didn’t seem to know where to aim his gun between you and Ghost, and it was easy enough for you to slide the knife in your hand into the soft flesh beneath his chin while he was deciding.
A gunshot echoed through the powerhouse, and you ducked out of instinct. Your eyes flew to Ghost’s form, racing over him from top to bottom—was he hit, was he hit? Terror soured in the deepest pits of your gut, and your chest squeezed tightly. You found him looking at you too, eyes wide and full of rage. But he was unhurt, save for the wound at his shin, and relief made you feel so boneless that it was an effort not to collapse.
“Drop the knife, dorogoi,” said a voice behind you. You glanced to the side and found the Konni leader at your six, gun pointed at your head. He stepped into you, his chest pressing against your back and the gun muzzle cold against the back of your head. He leaned in, so close that you could feel his breath against your ear, and said, “Or I’ll fuck you with it.”
You peeled your fingers away from the knife hilt, and the blade clattered to the ground, then held your hands up at your sides.
“Very smart,” said the man behind you, then he pointed his gun at Ghost a few feet away. “Sit the fuck down or I’ll make sure you have nightmares about what I do to her for the rest of your life, zasranets.”
Ghost hesitated, looking between you and the man behind you, and you could see the mental battle happening inside of him.
“Do it!” he yelled, and suddenly your arm was wrenched behind your back.
The adrenaline in your system waning, the full brunt of the pain in your broken shoulder hit you. The tearing agony sent you to your knees with a shriek that echoed through the powerhouse, and your vision went black around the edges for a few long moments.
When you came to, Ghost was seated. Your face was against the cold tile, your arm still wrenched behind your back at an excruciating angle, and your knees pressed painfully against the ground with your hips canted into the air. It was a compromising position to be in, and everyone in that room knew it. A hand pressed your face down, and your breath came in sharp huffs that blew strands of your hair out of your face. Your eyes met Ghost’s and you were now beginning to feel the serrated edge of panic fraying your nerves. From the look he gave you, you could tell he saw it. He knew you well enough to tell.
“Where did your little comrade scurry off to?” the Konni leader asked. His hips dug into the back of your thighs, and his weight pinned you to the ground.
“I don’t know,” you said, breathless, voice breaking.
The man behind you tutted. “What a shame,” he said.
The hand on your head fisted your hair, tugging you up so hard that your spine arched painfully concave. He had taken the knife from the ground in his other hand, and used it to rip your shirt open in a single slice, hanging in tatters off your battered body. And then even your sports bra was roughly sawed in half, baring your chest to the lieutenant across from you.
You gasped, struggling against the hand in your hair, but he pulled you even more taut. The air was cold on your bare flesh, and you heaved for breath but couldn’t seem to catch it. Shame, horror, disgust, humiliation—you were flushed with the mixture. With the man’s hand in your hair, there was nowhere for you to look but at Ghost.
He looked away.
“Look how frightened she is,” the Konni leader said, and then he placed the blade against your throat and you could feel the burn of its edge against your skin. You could feel how your fear, your humiliation excited him—the evidence of it pressing against you. When Ghost would not look, he yelled, “Look at her!”
Ghost turned back to you, and there was nothing sexual, nothing appreciative in his eyes on you. The look was clinical, perfunctory in a way that eased your shame.
“Tell me where the operative you call Soap is, Ghost,” the Konni leader commanded. “I know he is here.”
“Nothin’ to tell,” Ghost said in his deep, deep voice, shrugging. He was very good at looking as though he didn’t care at all, and you hoped he would keep it that way. Needed him to.
The Konni leader laughed a bit. “You don’t seem to care very much for this woman,” he said, dragging the knife along your sternum.
Ghost leaned back in the metal chair, his long legs spread wide, and for all intents and purposes seemed very relaxed.
“I don’t,” he said definitively.
“No?” The Konni leader smiled at that. “I thank you for not telling me the truth,” he said, “because now this becomes very fun for me.”
The knife flicked downward, popping the button off of your tactical pants. The hand in your hair disappeared, and then you felt fingers clawing at the waist of your pants until they were slipping down your hips. The panic you had been pushing away hit you then, and the full force of it shot through you like electricity, until you burned from the inside out.
“No, no, please, don’t, no,” someone screamed, and then you realized it was your own ragged voice pleading even as your clothing betrayed you and slipped further down, baring your thighs.
Even as all of your military training went out of your head, even as the only thing left inside you was the burning, millennia old instinct of a woman beneath a man with violent hands. You pushed until you were on your back, your nails clawing across his face and leaving bloody streaks behind. He cursed in your ear, and his hand closed around your wrists, brought them above your head. Your shoulder, your shoulder, and you couldn’t—you couldn’t—
His other hand yanking your legs apart and up over his hip and disappearing between you and you could feel him and he was, and he was and he was and he—
A gunshot.
A bullet straight through the Konni leader’s eye, and the hot spray of his blood over your face, and you flinched beneath the body atop yours, and there was nothing else.
For a long moment you didn’t move, just lay on the ground as his weight rested on you, as his blood emptied out of his body. In the wake of the gunshot, there was a deafening silence. And then all at once you awoke, and all the sound came back in a deafening roar, and you couldn’t bear the cooling touch of the stinking cadaver on you anymore. You shoved him off, scrambling away from the body but never taking your eyes off of it. Your back hit the ledge of the pool that contained the turbines, and the water was cool mist on your bloody face.
With your adrenaline gone, everything inside you twisted at once, and you turned and threw your body over the ledge in time to empty your stomach into the churning water below. You vomited until you felt empty again—purged of the feeling of his flesh against yours. Cool gloves pulled your loose hair away from your face.
“Just breathe, yeah,” came a deep voice beside you. “Just breathe.”
You turned, wide eyes on Ghost as he knelt in front of you. Great shot, LT, you wanted to say.
“Oh, my god,” is what came out of your mouth, followed by an ugly sob. “Oh, fuck. What the fuck.”
You were cold and shaking like you would shake apart, like you would just disintegrate right there until you were nothing but dust and DNA, until you were nothing at all.
“You’re in shock, Ice,” Ghost said slowly as he shrugged off his jacket. “I’m going to touch you, all right? I’m going to put this around you, yeah?”
You nodded jerkily. Ghost reached around you—cautiously, so cautiously, as though you were a wounded animal that might flee at the first quick movement—and brought his jacket over your shoulders, covering your destroyed shirt and bare chest. It was so large on you, swallowed you up—and you felt as though you just wanted to be swallowed whole in that moment. The material smelled of him—of gunpowder and leather and his sweat and his blood.
“You’re safe,” he said gruffly, gun in hand. “I won’t let anyone fuckin’ near you, got it?”
“Okay,” you said, nodding. “Okay, okay. Okay.” And because you couldn’t stop, you said, for good measure, “Okay, okay.”
Ghost’s eyes were hard on you, assessing, and you didn’t want to know what he saw in you in that moment. You didn’t want to know what you must look like to him now, with your shredded shirt and ripped pants, your bare thighs and bloodied face, with your shame and your disgrace as heavy and ill-fitting on you as his jacket.
Gunshots echoed from outside the powerhouse, and you flinched, blanching at the sound. Ghost turned, gun drawn and ready to splatter brains against the wall, ready to make good on the promise he had made to you only a moment ago.
“LT!” called a familiar voice.
Soap.
Soap’s bulky form breached the doorway, boots thudding against the ground, and you watched his expression change as his gaze swept the room. The dead Konni soldiers littering the ground. Ghost kneeling before you, ready to kill. And then, finally, falling on you. It felt horrible, recognizing that shock in his eyes as he took in the state of you, and in that moment you knew that you must look even worse than you thought.
“Oh, fuck,” he said, confirming your suspicions.
“Report, sergeant,” Ghost spat, tone all ragged viciousness.
Soap visibly collected himself. “Remaining two bombs are disarmed, Lieutenant. Ready for exfil.”
“Then let’s get the fuck out of ‘ere,” Ghost said.
***
Strapped into your seat in the evac helo, a blessed numbness finally came over you. You could feel nothing, not even Ghost’s dark eyes watching you from across the helicopter.