Chapter Text
Blood spattered across the room, painting everything it came into contact with a deep crimson. The spacious bedroom was everything you’d expect from a large, neighbourhood home like this one, bar the cowering terrorist in the corner.
The knife wound wouldn’t kill yet, but the target would still bleed out without treatment. Good. He had it coming, producing weapons like that. One of his enemies or another would’ve finished him off sooner or later. Ghost and the 141 had just gotten there first.
A swift bullet to the temple finished the struggling man off, and his head snapped back, hands falling limply from where they had been clutching the knife. Ghost grasped the handle, barely glancing at the man before placing a boot on his pelvis and tugging, pulling the blade from his still-warm body. Stooping to wipe the blood from his favourite dagger, the masked man stowed it in one of the many sheaths decorating his uniform.
“Target neutralised,” Ghost grunted, pausing to holster his handgun at his side. The radio crackled as he let go of the button, waiting for the familiar voice of his captain to fill the silence. He finally took in the room around him, having been too concentrated on what he’d been sent to do to even notice the bedroom. It was plain, gave nothing away, was a far cry from the illegal weapons he knew were probably already halfway across the country. The bed. The dresser. The bloodstained carpet. All of it was a perfect veneer for the man slumped against the wall. How many people had met their ends at the barrels of guns he’d produced and distributed? Ghost shook his head slightly. There was a reason that only the military could own weapons.
“Copy. Move to evac point.” Captain Price had taken on the role of guarding the only entrance and exit of the house, the front door, while Ghost cleared the rooms until he either found the target, or came up empty-handed. His voice across the comms was a small comfort. To know there was someone watching his back was always a good feeling. Ghost surveyed the room one last time, taking in the bare walls and plain bedspread, before moving to leave through the - slightly battered - door. His footfalls were light on the carpeted upstairs hallway, movements living up to his nickname. He was like a ghost. The rest of the house mirrored the bedroom, undecorated and plain. A perfectly normal front to one of the best weapons dealers in the south of England. The stairs complained as they took the combined weight of the muscular man, along with all his tactical gear, but the small creak wasn’t a threat to his safety now. He allowed them to groan, instead of taking the quieter route around the outskirts of the steps, where they met the wall.
Finally reaching the bottom floor of the home, he strode through the equally bare kitchen, instinctively taking the safer, less exposed route through the middle of the house. Bootprints tracked his path through the tiled floor, and Ghost realised that the carpet upstairs must bear similar marks. Blood red never looked good splashed over the immaculate ebony of his military-issue boots.
Finally, he ducked into the low-ceilinged living room, where he’d first entered. This part of the house seemed more alive, somehow, the soft light from a streetlamp filtering through the beige curtains casting an orange glow. A small sofa and a TV was all that filled the room. Nothing to distinguish it from any other house on this street, this neighbourhood, this country. Ghost’s eyes scanned the area slowly. Nothing in particular had made him pause, but his instincts urged him to stay, just for a little while.
And there it was. A quiet, muted rustle of skin on carpet. Ghost’s gaze snapped to the source, the sofa, but… nothing. His footfalls mimicked the noise as he stalked toward the couch. Small. Silent. Quite possibly deadly. How could he have been so stupid as to let whoever this was escape his watchful eyes? It could have ruined the mission, or worse. His large frame made it easy for him to check behind the sofa, making sure there was nothing there.
The sound of breathing, shallow and quick, too quick, reached Ghost’s ears. His boots tracked red-tinted prints onto the carpet as he circled around to face the sofa. The breathing continued. In. Out. In. Out.
As suddenly as it had started, it was cut off in a gasp. The familiar skull balaclava he always wore met the eyes of what was hiding under the sofa as he bent to check beneath it. And it definitely wasn’t another terrorist.
A child, no more than five or six, scrambled backwards, out from under the beaten settee. His breathing seemed to have returned, soft intakes of breath against hands fisted in his curly mop of hair to protect his head. Wide brown eyes squeezed shut when the boy - no, the child - realised that there was nowhere else to go. He was trapped, trapped between the hard corner of the wall and Ghost’s advancing figure. His shaking hands lowered slightly.
Ghost, meanwhile, was stunned. In his years as a soldier, his many hours of training and preparation, this had never been something he knew what to deal with. Hostage situation training only showed up until they were safe and out of the way. And this wasn’t even a hostage. He dropped into a crouch uncertainly next to the boy, knees cracking. “Hey, kid.” The words felt heavy in his mouth; unused.
The child opened one eye, then the other, staring openly up at Ghost. His hands moved down to brace against the carpet, and he pushed himself up into a sitting position again. “Are you the Grim Reaper?” he asked haltingly. The soft lilt of his voice was like a river in the desert. It didn’t belong in this shithole house in the middle of a mission.
“No– I’m not,” he answered, the words only fully registering after a beat.
“You look like him,” the boy stated. And - to some extent - he wasn’t wrong. Ghost was most likely covered in blood from the waist down, dressed all in black tactical gear, and wearing his signature skull mask and balaclava. “Well, yeah, maybe,” he began, hesitantly reaching up to his face, “but it’s only a mask. Look.” The soldier reached for the hem of the fabric, where the mask met his skin, and pulled, up and over his head. His short brown hair was stubbly and well-groomed, interrupted by his comms wire running up his neck. Blue eyes pierced those of the younger boy’s, who was searching his face so thoroughly that it looked as if he was trying to memorise it. “See? All human.” He quickly slid the balaclava and the hard shell of his mask back on, keen to conceal his identity again.
“Oh.” The kid paused again, thinking. “Then what are you?”
“I’m a soldier.”
“Like in movies?”
“...Sure. Like in movies.”
Ghost hesitated again, his headset crackling to life. Price. Something about how long he was taking. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that this kid was safe and not alone.
“Do you want to come with us?” He wasn’t sure if this would work, but it had to.
“Where’s my daddy?”
Good question. His daddy was currently soaking into the upstairs rug, but it would have to be something that could wait. “You need to come with us.”
“I don’t want it. He– will use a belt again.”
That single sentence was enough to let rage cloud his thoughts. Suddenly, he was glad that the man was dead and gone. The blatant fear in the boy’s voice hit a little too close to home. “Your dad won’t do that ever again. Come on.” He stood to his full height, and hoped the kid would follow as he backed away a little.
But the kid didn’t. So, turning back, he offered a skeleton-gloved hand to the child, fingers outstretched to help him off the floor. “What’s your name, little one?” The nickname rolled off his tongue as easily as if he had been calling someone that for years. “My name’s Oscar. What’s your name?” He smiled up at him as Ghost replied.
“I’m Simon. Now, let’s go.”
One small hand reached up to grasp Ghost’s larger one.