Chapter Text
The mission wasn’t supposed to go like this. At all.
What it was supposed to be was an in and out job of surveying an old Soviet military facility in the Ural Mountains of Russia, something Soap and Ghost can easily do. Their job was to simply watch over the building from afar for about a week, writing down every shift change or new truck that came in. Basically a break for both of them.
Intel told them that Makarov and his men were seen at it, possibly planning on using the old Soviet weapons for themselves. So their eyes were peeled for any new bombs or guns being taken or even created.
Apparently the intel was slightly delayed, as Makarov’s plan was already set in motion.
And the next part of his plan was using these new weapons to attack the small Russian village next to the facility.
The only warning both Soap and Ghost got was seeing an abnormal amount of tanks leaving the building and continuing down the dirt path.
Silently and naturally hidden with their camo uniforms, they crawled their way to a ledge overlooking the town to see these same tanks used to strike down small homes in its path.
Soap quickly brought himself to a kneel, eye looking through his scope. The only thing stopping him from shooting was Ghost yanking his gun down, his brown eyes emotionless, staring down Soap.
“We can’t take on a bunch of tanks, Johnny,” Ghost scolded quietly, though by now in their friendship Soap can hear the hidden frustration and sadness behind his voice.
Soap nearly stuttered something out before he grabbed his radio and spoke into it. “Bravo 7-1 to Watcher-1, Makarov’s men are attacking the nearby Russian village. Over.” His accent was thick with stress, possibly hard for the American woman to decipher through the channel as it took a minute for her to reply.
“Bravo 7-1, this is Watcher-1, you said Makarov is attacking a village?” Laswell’s voice was steady with only an edge of worry.
“Aye. We need reinforcements. Now.” Soap looked out at the town. They were close enough that they could see civilians run into their home, only for their safe haven to be blown to pieces. They could even hear the screams filling the dark night. It was a shock to see the quint village being nearly destroyed by tanks and newly made guns. This shouldn't have happened.
“We don’t have reinforcements,” Laswell said, “You two have to get out of there. Over.”
Soap glanced at Ghost who looked back at him. “We cannae just leave. Our job is tae protect civilians!” His voice grew loudly only to be silenced as two men in gear walked below them.
With a loud kick to the door, they forcefully entered the small house closest to the pair. Soap drowned out Laswell’s reply, he could only hear the angry Russian shouts from inside followed by a type of plea. He couldn’t see any of it, but he could see the scene in his head perfectly and that made his blood boil.
He tried aiming his gun inside, in a feeble attempt to protect these villagers, but two loud shots were already heard from the inside, and the shouting ceased.
When the two men exited the same door they came in from, Ghost jumped from the small ledge they were watching from, surprising Soap. He watched as his Lt went behind one of them, knife digging into his throat violently.
The other man tried to go after Ghost, but Soap was finally able to release some of his anger and shot the man in the head, though it only satisfied him slightly. The chaos in the background dampened the sound.
In silence, Soap jumped down to join Ghost. Their eyes made contact, but for no more than a second when they heard a loud scream coming from the home. The home where the couple was just murdered. And the scream sounded young and frail.
Soap rushed into the home, gun raised up. Ghost followed whether he wanted to or not (Soap guessed not from the grunt he heard from him), gun also ready to protect Soap and himself.
The corpse of a man and woman laid in front of the door the cries were coming from, almost as if they were protecting it. If Soap had gone in just minutes before, they would still be standing. He took a deep breath, he couldn’t panic in the middle of combat. He’s been doing this for years, he should be over this by now, but he knows the image of those corpses will be in his head for years.
Ghost must’ve noticed Soap was frozen in his place, so he took it upon himself to move the bodies out of the way by himself. The Scot snapped himself out of it as the cries got louder, the door not muffling it anymore.
They both entered the room where the cries came from to see a small wiggling baby in the crib. Soap brought down his gun quickly, though Ghost tightened his grip on his.
Soap took small hesitant steps to look over the crib. He’s heard of some fucked up things a terrorist group would do and he didn’t want to be killed via exploding baby.
But all he got was a view of a small chubby baby, wrapped in a crochet blanket that was sliding down as the baby swung their arms. Legs kicked up as their big brown eyes looked up at Soap, a vague recognition of fear jolted them open and the cries became louder.
Ghost looked over Soap’s shoulder at the baby, fingers adjusting on his gun. “Get it to be quiet, can’t have more alarms pointing to us.” He looked around the nursery, mostly looking out the windows at their enemies.
“Hey, calm down little one.” Soap’s hand came down to try to tickle the baby’s chest like his nieces and nephews liked, but he only got a sharp scream in response.
From next to the window, looking out, Ghost let out an irritated sigh as he watched Russian troops be alerted to the baby and begin looking around.
“We have to move,” He backed away from the window, looking towards Soap.
“I’m not leaving a baby,” He said quickly.
“We can’t get out with a screaming baby.” Ghost whispered loudly, “You’ll die,”
“If I cannae save the village, at least I can save this baby.” He quickly scooped the baby up along with the blanket. He held their face into his neck, quieting the screams. They squirmed against him, trying to break free.
“Don’t be a hero, Johnny.” Ghost warned. He could hear Russian voices getting closer to the home, they didn’t have time to talk about this.
“I’m just being human, Ghost,” He adjusted the gun in his one arm, while the other wrapped around the baby. “Let’s go.”
He rushed past Ghost, who, after rolling his eyes, followed close by him. They snuck out the back door, which faced away from most of the troops.
Hugging the walls of the row of homes, they remained as quiet as possible. Soap, as gently as he could, shoved the edge of the blanket in the baby’s mouth and held it there, the cries finally stopping. Though he could still feel the baby shifted wildly in his arms and soft whimpers escaping the blanket.
After passing by the row houses, they came across a large road in between the next row of houses. They paused and both nearly glanced out from the side when a man, one of Makarov’s, stepped out before them. He was just as shocked as Soap was, but Ghost didn’t get caught off guard easily and threw his knife quickly before the man could inform the others.
But they couldn’t see a large group from behind the corner who saw the incident. They heard loud shouting and they both knew they were caught. Both of them grumbled out curses as they rushed to the edge of the village, where they were heading before, just much quicker this time.
Soap ran as fast as he could and Ghost followed behind his back, gun shooting every few seconds, bringing down a man each time. Soap could only shoot from his right side as his left side held the baby, but he still shot rapidly, striking men most times.
But much to their detriment, the village laid in a large ‘ditch’, having something like manmade dirt ‘walls’ surrounding it, similar to the ledge they came from.
Soap looked up. He could easily climb up normally but right now he held a squirming baby in his hands. A regretful thought passed by that he should have left the baby like Ghost wanted to, but that washed away as quick as it came. He couldn't think like that.
“Cover me.” Ghost said behind him and he grabbed the top of the dirt wall in front of them, clinging on to the grass, and heaving himself up.
Soap tried his best to do as his CO said, but his movement was limited and he wouldn’t allow himself to turn around and possibly expose the baby. He looked up to see Ghost was out, and Soap almost expected him to leave as punishment for taking the baby.
But his arms extended out, “Give it to me.” Soap will have to talk to him about calling them an ‘it’, but right now all he did was thrust the baby up into the waiting arms. Ghost swiftly held them tight to his chest with one arm, the other reached down to pull Soap up.
Once up, Soap reached his arms out to grab the baby again, expecting Ghost to give them straight back, but his arms were left empty as Ghost rushed forward, away from the village.
Soap followed by, now covering Ghost’s back until the village got smaller in the distance, and he could rest his arms and they simply ran out.
They slowed down as large pine trees began to get less sparse, allowing them to hide among them easier. Their steps were also getting more steep, making it hard to walk steadily in the damp spring dirt.
Soap stopped, making Ghost stop with him. He leaned against a tree lazily, huffing out his breaths. Ghost was still on alert, looking around every corner, but his arm around the baby loosened and they were able to pop their head up after being shoved into the blanket for a while.
“I think she likes ya more than me.” Soap let out an airy laugh, making Ghost raise his brows.
“You think?” The bigger man looked down at the baby. Both sets of large brown eyes looked at each other, both a little nervous.
“She was crying more with me than you.”
“Well I wasn’t the one who snatched it from the crib.” Before Soap could protest, Ghost spoke again, “How do you know it’s a girl?”
“The pink blanket.” Soap pointed out, “I guess we can’t be sure til we change her nappy.”
They both went quiet for a moment, the baby’s chunky hands exploring Ghost’s tech vest was the only sound that was present.
“Shit, we don’t have anything for her.” Soap groaned, the back of his head lightly hit the tree behind him. He ran his hands down his face, breathing deeply.
Ghost remained silent, watching the baby fiddle with a zipper on his chest, legs kicking out playfully when she was finally able to tug it open. She looked up at him as if she wanted to see his reaction, but only saw an emotionless skull face.
Ghost assumed that it would scare her off, but instead it brought her curious hands to the eye socket of his skull mask, tugging it down.
Soap looked over at the duo and laughed as Ghost turned his head away from the baby, but her fingers remained wrapped around the hard plastic of the mask.
“See? I’m not the only one that wants ya tae take off the mask!”
“Take her.” Ghost grunted out and held the baby away from him. Soap laughed as he happily took the baby, swaying his legs once she was in his arms.
She looked more stiff in his arms and her hands weren’t trying to touch every little thing on his vest like she did with Ghost. She moaned slightly, leaning back away from him.
“Ah ken, ah ken,” Soap said softly, “Daddy Ghost will play with ya in just a bit.” He looked up to see Ghost’s reaction, only to see his back facing him as he walked away.
They wandered aimlessly for about ten minutes when the baby began crying again. Both of the men stopped to look at her, Soap trying to comfort her while Ghost glared.
“Why is she crying?” Ghost asked, arms crossing.
“Why would I know?”
“You always talk about your nieces and nephews, I expect you to be good at this.” He replied back in a gruff voice, but Soap could tell he was teasing.
“I always gave them to my sisters when they cried,” He whined, “…If I were to guess she’s hungry.”
Ghost hummed in response, “We should only be a few minutes away from the safe house.” They both began walking again.
Soap looked around at their surroundings, realizing it did look familiar. Apparently he was the only one walking carelessly, while Ghost knew the whole time where to go.
Seeing the small shack in the distance brought more joy than he would have thought it ever would. The place was definitely not luxurious; it had no running water, only a pipe outside, and it was cramped with only a small bedroom as they were supposed to sleep at different times.
Definitely not the best place for a baby, but it’ll be good to get her inside and let her finally sleep.
Once in, Soap laid an old blanket on the ground and sat her down on it. She kept herself sitting up without him, so she must be around six months if Soap could remember his nieces and nephews' early lives correctly.
She stared at him before a loud cry came out and she flopped herself over. Soap sped walked to the cabinets where MREs were kept. Some had a small package of formula, for cases similar to these, though Soap never thought he’d have to use them. Her screams got louder and he began to feel sweat gathering on her neck and forehead as he read the directions as fast as possible.
But, as he finished up reading and nearly headed to grab some water, the cries died down slowly. He glanced over, almost nervous to see, but all he saw was a happy baby on her tummy playing with Ghost’s tactical vest on the ground.
He looked over, seeing Ghost head down the small hallway to the bedroom. Soap let out a playful scoff at Ghost pretending he didn’t leave his vest for the baby.
He stopped sweating and his knees stopped shaking before he knew it. Smiling to himself, he walked outside to grab some formula for their baby, knowing she was alright.