Stitches (Part One)

Stitches (Part One)

(Simon "Ghost" Riley x F!Medic "Fix" Reader)

Part Three of Snowblind

Rating: Mature Wordcount: 6.1k Tags: Slow Burn, Heavy Angst, Trauma, Found Family, Taskforce 141, Team Dynamics, Major Character Injury, Whump, Hurt/Comfort, Unreliable Narrator, Self Esteem Issues, Referenced Familial abuse, Hospitalization, Self Sabotage Warnings: Explicit Injury mention, Forced sedation A/N: The needed, heavy, heavy chapter for Fix. Please head the warnings and read carefully, and practice self care if you need to

The first time you need heli-evac, it's in Venezuela.

Tracking down a cartel supplier to AQ forces, Laswell tells you. International arms dealers. The mission is off the books, quiet. Clean house, harvest intel. Price and Gaz could have cleared it easily, but for some reason Laswell mandated the full task force. Something about the intel not adding up, too many loose ends. You know better than to question her, all of you do.

Unfortunately for you, Laswell's prophecy comes true.

You see the rug on the floor shift a moment too late. The trapdoor flies open out of the corner of your eyes as you spin, and there's yelling in Spanish just a split second before the bullet rips through your side. You fall backwards just in time to avoid the next hail of fire, and the motion throws off the aim of the attack long enough for you to squeeze off a round, the cartel member's figure jerking grotesquely as your aim rings true.

There's voices then, as your head falls back against the floor, cursing blindly at the pain. You'd been shot before, but this, the bullet inside you feeling for all the world like it was trying to twist inside you further, deeper, makes your voice crack hard and dry in your throat. There's iron in your lungs, breathed in with every staggered inhale, lancets of agony etched across your torso and spine. Something inside you feels wet and warm and abstractly wrong.

You press a hand to the center of the pain, and when it comes away red there's a cognizant dissonance to it, a small 'oh' that manages to filter through your thoughts as the stain blossoms scarlet against your side. It's the sight that manages to make the world begin to spin, hazy and unfocused even as there's shouts and it's Gaz's face that flickers into view, trembling like the hazy after effect of a poorly animated CGI movie.

He's talking, but with the blood rushing in your ears you barely hear him, blinking and trying to clear the strange filter that obscures the pure look of fear in his eyes.

"Stay with me, Fix. Gonna get you out of here."

You nod, and it's all you can really manage, heart pounding relentlessly, pain bubbling up your throat in a choked, pleading cry that has Gaz's face grow ashen with concern.

It's Price, then, who shoves the sergeant aside, and even in your dissociative, blank-minded state you see the tremble of his hands as he fumbles for the med pack strapped to your kit.

Oh. You think a bit groggily, blinking as you remember. I'm the medic.

That's probably bad.

There's no time to process it further, because suddenly Price is pressing down on your side and you yell, try and flail away from the pain. Gaz has to hold you down, face pinching with something that tears further at you, an emotion that feels far too concerned for what you're feeling. There's a distant part of your mind that runs through the possibilities, of the bullet lodged up against your diaphragm, through your spleen, or possibly even your lungs. You can breathe, you can kick your legs, but the dizzying rate of the spinning world around you does not bode well for your near and distant future.

"...x...h-ey...Fix! Keep your eyes on me, mate."

You try to, from behind the veil of tears that clouds your vision as the hurt coats the underside of your tongue in an open, confused whimper. Price is yelling something you can't quite make out, and there's a tone to his voice you've never heard before. It cracks and makes you blink, forces you to try and raise your head at him, only to have Kyle's gentle, gloved hand resting you back down against the floorboards.

When you try to breathe you choke, feeling your chest compress down painfully. The air in your lungs stales, and with a wheeze you grasp blindly at Kyle, feeling panic race potent and toxic through your veins. You catch his eyes then, and the worry there has now transformed into something all consuming. Terror.

He snaps at Price, and though you can't hear the words you hear the tremble in his voice, and you realize at that moment just how terrible things must be, because suddenly Price is cutting the straps of your tac vest and shoving it rudely aside, ripping your jacket and shirt and placing an ear to your chest.

He pales.

It's that bad. Something in your thoughts whispers, and then, in a sudden, macabre burst of clarity. Try to say goodbye.

When you fumble for Price, however, he only snaps at you, tells you to stay still and stay awake. You try, you do, but the world is too bright, oversaturated, spinning like the lights of the county fair rides you saw once as a child from the window of a car. Fluorescent, vibrant, dizzying and enchanting. Glittering in the distance from beneath the grey haze of incoming mid-season thunderstorms. Now it's tinted with a putrid, vile taste of metal and bile and a sudden wave of nausea washes over you, as the skies grow green in your memory. You close your eyes against it, trying to find ground on which to retreat where there is none. Price says something about a helicopter, and whether it's moments or minutes later you feel the dull whump whump whump in the distance, beating the air around you slower than your stuttering heart rate.

Who's arms hoist you up, you aren't sure, but you can smell the scent of them. Charcoal. Gun oil. Sweat. Musk. It's familiar somehow, but it isn't until you see your blood seeping red over white skeletal gloves that you understand.

It's the last thing you see before the world goes dark.

---

You wake about eighteen hours later, and the first word out of your mouth startles Soap so much beside you he barks a laugh.

"Your mother teach you to curse like that?" He asks, but mercifully dims the overhead light when you whine at him. You ignore the fact that your mother would turn you over to your father if you ever spoke like that, deciding that such a tiny detail isn't really worth the time it would take to convey it to the Scot.

When you turn to him, Soap's brow is furrowed in a way you don't recognize. He sits in a chair at your bedside, hands clasped, shoulders hunched forwards, leg bouncing and fidgety. Wound too tight. Anxious. His blue grey eyes are drawn with concern, brow furrowed. He doesn't look at you.

"Scared us stiff, hen." He murmurs low, enough that you have to strain to hear it. "Nearly kicked the bucket- Christ on a cross, Fix. There was so much blood."

You don't reply. There's not much to say, really. You messed up, forgot to check a corner like a goddamn rookie, nearly bled out a result but you're here. Alive, mostly whole...minus the hole.

You tell him as much, but when Soap laughs it's a little mirthless, his head shaking as if he's deciding between disbelief or a reprimand.

It isn't long before Price appears, leaning on the door with a weary smile that betrays his concern. You wonder if he's slept recently, or if he's subsisting only on cigars and a gluttonous dose of black coffee. Cognac, if he found it.

The captain gives you the rundown of your injury. Gunshot to the left side of your ribs, nothing short of a bloody miracle it missed your major arteries. However, it managed to puncture your lung, collapsing it and forcing you to briefly asphyxiate on the helicopter. You were unconscious by the time you were handed off to the med-evac crew, flagging by the time you got to the hospital. Had there been a chopper unavailable, and had it not been for Gaz's quick attention to your labored breathing, it very well could have been your death would have been in a sticky, spider infested cartel hideout, far, far away from home.

That fact makes you feel your heart drop down to your stomach, and Soap sends the captain a look. Yet Price's eyes remain locked on you, arms crossed, head slightly bowed, gauging your reaction. He's waiting for you to say you want out, for you to quit, to go home.

Home, wherever that may be, to the waspish gaze of your father and the sad, docile eyes of your mother. To linen sheets and pristine, white French doors, a garden where you aren't allowed to dig your hands into the soil.

You refuse. You don't speak to Price, returning his gaze with your own. Silent, unwavering, a bough not bending to the howling gale of your thoughts.

He nods to himself, then nods to the nurse hovering by the door, and promptly vanishes.

Gaz comes to visit you, and in the days that pass between him and Soap you are hardly ever lonely. They brings cards, games, sneak you snacks past the nurses. Slowly, their laughter and banter eases the unspokenness between you, the 'What if?' that hangs as a constant reminder in the shape of your bandages. Yet you see it in their eyes, the way they glance at you when wince after laughing too hard, when your eyes grow distant in the silence.

Price floats by, brings with him a thermos of hot tea. It's unlike him, and when you question him on it he merely shrugs, tells you to drink up. Yorkshire gold, you recognize. The same kind you mother liked, with her British sensibilities.

You try to ignore the bitter ache of disappointment that settles inside you when Ghost doesn't visit, acrid like over-steeped tea.

It's on Price's third visit that he tells you you're cleared to head back to base with them. After that, however, you have a mandatory six week leave to fully recover.

It sinks your stomach.

Six weeks. Six weeks they'll be deployed without you, six weeks you'll be trapped at base, not knowing the details of their missions, not knowing if it's at that very moment that they need you. All because you got caught off-guard, because you didn't check your corners and nearly bled out in from of your team.

You swallow hard at the news, but know any protest on your part is futile. Price's orders, as per the doctor's, are absolute.

The next day, you find yourself being assisted down to the tarmac, Soap present at your side and offering little jabs that mask his worry. Price deposits your pack beside his, between the three others. You blink then, see in one of them the thermos he brought you, and wonder why it isn't stored with his own things.

Ghost watches you from where he sits, locks eyes with you when you glance from the thermos to his silent, piercing stare.

Ah.

Yorkshire Gold.

You settle in one of the seats, wave off Gaz's fussing as he checks with your pain. You'd been dosed shortly before the flight, and by the time the plane is in the air you find yourself drifting off to sleep, slouching uncomfortably as drowsiness takes you.

Strangely, when you wake shortly before your landing about eight hours later, it's not your seat you find yourself in. Instead, you lay on the floor of the cargo hold, head braced by a folded jacket. You can smell the scent on it. Charcoal. Musk. Gun oil. You have just enough time to turn and bury your face into it before Soap is shaking you awake and helping you back to your seat.

No sooner have you landed are you rushed off to medical once more, checking your stitches, rebandaging the gash in your side. The doctor frowns when he examines you, pushing his glasses up his nose and commenting within ear range of your captain to not undertake any strenuous activity, that you may require eight weeks instead of the six you've been issued with.

Eight weeks. Fifty six days. Two months without your team.

Stuck alone on base, in the dim light of your room, praying that somehow they return whole, unharmed.

Price must sense your thoughts, for he lays a heavy hand on your shoulder, offers you a conciliatory smile that you feel only deepen the wound in your chest.

"It seems like a long time." He tells you genuinely, voice dipping low, rusty with cigar smoke. "It'll be over before you know it."

You don't have time to reply, because to your horror there's another soldier at the door, saluting before conveying that the captain is needed in the briefing office. When you trail behind Price, he only turns, settles both his hands on your shoulders and gruffly tells you to rest.

When you watch his back vanish down the corridor, you try not to hear the sound of creaking bones and rifle bullets, of cataclysmic destruction that leaves behind only the aching void of loneliness in its wake.

You don't even have time to say goodbye.

You watch from the windows of the barracks as the plane lifts off to an unknown destination, vanishes behind the veil of clouds, and then there's just you.

Alone. Again.

Alone with your thoughts, with the embrace of rumination that feels like the whisper of the witching hours, desolate, dark, restless. You feel it wrap around you even in sunlight, and the ghost of solicitude loops her lithe arms around your neck like a lost lover, kisses the inside of your thoughts with the taste of temptation.

They aren't coming back. They don't need you. They've seen how weak you are now, they'll never return.

"They'll be back." You whisper aloud to yourself in response, placing a trembling hand against the glass pane. "They haven't given up on me yet."

---

You wander the base aimlessly for the next few days, haunting the mess hall and rec room, trying to find yourself in the silhouettes of others. Your small collection of paperback novels is polished off quickly, tiny notes scribbled  in the margins of 'Dante's Inferno' and 'Wuthering Heights'. Eventually they stack in a tiny tower at your bedside, spines creased gently and pages dog-eared.

You heal slowly. Far too slowly. The pain has become mostly manageable, but there are nights when you rise in your sleep with a wheeze, pace the dark confines of your room trying to escape the shadows there. It doesn't help that your dreams are plagued by them, your comrades, bloodied and broken, reaching out for hands that aren't there. Hands you cannot reach.

One night you wake in a cold sweat, gasping for air, the visage of a cracked, bone white skull mask haunting your innermost thoughts. The eyes blank, cold. Dead.

Laswell tells you little about the mission. You get bits and pieces, but every time you push all you receive on the other line is a disparaging sigh and "Fix, you need to rest. I'll keep you updated if anything goes wrong."

You hate it. You don't want to know when things go wrong. You want to be there when they do, to prove yourself to them, in hopes that maybe they'll keep you just a little longer.

Soon. You remind yourself by day five of the team's absence, constantly pacing the corridors, trying to find instances of them in your loneliness. Soon they'll be back. Soon they'll need me again. Soon, I'll know I can stay.

You wake on day six before dawn, gasping awake as you fall in your dream, endlessly into the chasm of failure, where the crippled bodies of your teammates reach out for you with emaciated, broken limbs.

The training grounds are still dark by the time you get to them. You run them, blasting music, circling the perimeter over and over again like you're trying to stay to the edge of a dark, endless whirlpool. Running so as to avoid the chasing, predatory self-doubt that nips at your heels with feral eyes and jagged teeth.

The sun rises, and soon it begins to bake the back of your neck, your shoulders. Eventually you stop, and the inertia of your motion threatens to drag you off your feet. Your chest aches, but you welcome the pain. It's a distraction, a reminder. An anchor against the fraught silence that plagues you more than any wound.

By the time dinner rolls around you're back again, circling the drain until well past sunset, after your playlist has looped for the third time that day. By the end of it you're bent over, breathless, shaking, and yet somehow there's triumph. Yet it tastes hollow, bitter like over-steeped tea, and you push down the part of you that offers a gentle respite, a reminder of self-preservation.

If you run, you can flee, can hide from the perilous self-doubt that threatens to haunt the shadows of your thoughts, spinning cobwebs of dismay that overtake the empty caverns you've long since carved out. Fight or flight fuels every waking moment, a spiral you mimic with your steps across the training field, running a rut in the grass so deep it resembles the abyss that haunts your dreams. Perilous failure, a chasm where the wind howls in your ears and bites across your skin. You feel like a doe in the twilight glade, heaving heavy breaths as the wolves of your ruminations bark and howl, nip at the hocks of your legs.

The entire time your mind flashes with visions of them. Of Gaz's grin, eyes hidden by his sunglasses that reflect the sibylline brightness of daytime. Of Soap's jovial laughter, the corners of his eyes scrunching and broad chest rising, a sound that feels like trumpets announcing victory. Of Price and the sulfurous mist exhaled like dragon's breath, floating up into the same sky where you silently offer wishes for his approval.

Of Ghost, of the stygian, merciless presence of him that feels less like the visitation of a reaper and more of shadows in which to shelter yourself from the dazzling brightness of all things blinding. You lean into him and wordlessly, he has you, watches you from afar and traces your steps that mimic the history of his, observes you ascend the precarious tower of expectations you've yet to dismantle inside your soul. He extends his arms, prepares to catch you if you fall.

You need them. More than they need you, and it's the realization of that which has you clawing your sheets in your dreams. You need them to keep you, here in the place where you've found a home, dangerous and fraught that it may be. There's nowhere else for you. Not with your parents, not with your former company. You need to not be alone. You need to prove to them you can stay. Even if you can just fool them, be selfish enough to trick them into keeping you, you need them to smile at you long enough for the smoke to clear in your hideous self-deprecation, to drink in the oxygen of them like it's your last breath.

If you can heal faster, can show them how resilient you are, then everything will be fine, everything will be-

Red. On your fingers.

Wet, warm, crimson as you delicately prop under your shirt, hissing at the feeling of something torn and damp against your skin. It shines rusty under the scant light of the dark training grounds, coats the pads of your fingers like scarlet ink with which to smear a forbidden oath.

You stare down at it mutely, realizing with a strange sort of distance that it's yours. Gingerly, your hand snakes under your shirt, reveals a torn gash in your side. When you press down your knees nearly buckle at the sudden wash of pain, dark and viscous and choking you. Your voice chokes in your throat and you hate the sound of it, hearing the useless whimper of agony that chases up your windpipe. How you didn't notice the tear before is beyond you, something about imbibing in the hurt, letting the ache fill the crevasses of your heart like liquid metal seeping into a fissure.

Your hand clings to the fence beside you, fingers tangling with the chain link as the distress of your injury washed over you all at once.

Fuck, it hurts.

You've done something, whatever that may be, and now your mistakes seeps over your fingers.

This is bad.

Bad not just for you, but for your recovery. Shit, the looming eight weeks ahead of you seems to stretch into infinity, into an inexhaustible leave where they leave you behind, dismiss you and curse you to roam the earth endlessly, looking for a place in which to rest.

The infirmary.

You have a key, of course, being one of the medics. It's probably empty at this hour save for the sergeant on attendance. You can probably sneak past them, grab enough supplies to see to this yourself without one of the nurses telling on you to Price or Laswell.

You stumble in the direction of the barracks to retrieve your key, shrugging on your jacket to hide the blossoming stain across your side.

You don't hear the plane land.

The barracks are quiet by the time you reach them, most of the officers and squaddies already tucked into their quarters, the commanding officers lounging in the rec room or officer's lounge. It makes your journey easier as you traverse the corridors, trying to avoid any questions lest someone see you even now, realize what a complete and utter wreck you are, dipping falsehoods onto your fingers. Your feet nearly trip over the stairs, hand clutching at the rail ad dragging yourself upwards despite the effort it takes to not think about your leaking wound.

Carnations, scarlet and blotted with vibrance, blossom where stitches meet skin, a grotesque bouquet of regrets with the scent only of iron to color your senses.

When you reach the third floor, and turn the corner, you feel a wave of nausea suddenly wash over you, green and viscous and sour. You have to brace on the wall for a moment, waiting for your stomach to settle before making your way down the hall.

Then you see him.

Tall, imposing, clad in black. He soaks up what little light there is in the dim hallway. The unshed tactical gear makes him look bigger than he is, looming like a phantom outside your door. His scarf trails behind his back, and for a moment it feels almost like the cowl of a specter, his bone white mask a flash of white before it all ends and you're sucked down into an obsidian infinitum.

His hand is raised to knock, hovering over the metal surface. You can smell the grenade smoke wafting off of him from where you stand, acrid, burnt, molten metal like the glint of his stare. You blink as you realize he must have come straight from the plane, not bothering to untack or store his gear before coming to see you.

You startle at the sight of him, and it's in the corner of his stained vision that somehow he sees you, turns with an alert gaze that's soon masked by an expression of disinterest.

"Ghost." You hoarse, and his eyes narrow at your tone, closing the last few steps between you, stopping just short of you. Not touching, not moving, not reaching for you. Contained in his own orbit that you're drawn to anyways, looking up into his eyes, where the ink of his paint has faded from his blonde lashes.

"Fix." He greets, hands loose at his sides, chin tucked to fully regard you. The strap of his helmet creaks as he does, and briefly your eyes dart up to the night-vision goggles still strapped to his head.

"Price sent me to check on you." He offers in the silence that follows, and there's enough clarity within you to note that it somehow feels rehearsed, too practiced.

"Well-" You huff an anxious laugh, try to not let your eyes dart to your door handle, mind running to your desk drawer, where you keep your clinic key stashed. "Consider me checked on."

There's a pause between you, and within it lies the heaviness of the unspoken, the unsaid. All the confessions inside of you threaten to bubble up like the last gap of air before drowning in the deep, dark ocean.

I'm glad you're safe. Where are the others? Are they hurt? Did you need me? Will you forgive me when I wasn't there?

"How's your injury?" He asks suddenly, voice flat, but beneath the feigned disinterest you see his eyes, framed by blonde lashes, dip to your side. Your heartbeat flutters -too loud- as you pray the blood has yet to seep through the fabric of your jacket.

"Fine." You answer, a little too quickly, and that dark gaze sweeps up to your face, pins you to the spot without a single touch. You feel your chest tighten now not with the constricting compression of pain, but with something more phantasmic, a byproduct of his very presence. A prickle of awareness that breathes across your neck every time he ventures close, a reminder of him where he smears his ink stained fingers on the inside of your skull.

Door. Desk. Drawer. Stairs. Five minute walk. Clinic. Back room. Supply closet. Third shelf.

Your mind runs the steps ahead of you, but you can't sidle past, not with Ghost's immense, towering form blocking the width of the hallway. His dark gaze stares down at you, scrutinizing you, and it feels somehow like you're being flayed open by his knife, skin parting from bone as he dares a glance at the hidden, duplicitous interior of you. You try to not meet his eyes, knowing that if you do he'll see it, he'll see all of you, with his gaze that feels like black holes, threatens to tear you asunder with the gravity inside them.

He says something else when your eyes again dart to your door. When you don't immediately, he tilts his head at you, eyes narrowing.

"Fix?"

"Sorry-" You supply immediately, eyes darting back to Ghost. Yet the world around you wavers then, and you frown, blink, trying once more to tether yourself firmly to gravity. Even as you focus, however, the room seems to tilt and sway under you, and you can't help but rock on your feet a little in a subtle but desperate bid to find balance. "W-what did you just say?"

Ghost stills suddenly, and his eyes narrow from behind his mask, form going rigid as he appraises you.

Don't. You think desperately, both to yourself and to him. Don't look.

The wound must be worse than you thought, because the sudden wash of dizziness makes you threaten to sway on your feet, lost in inertia. You can feel the tug of it, your feet carrying you in endless circles as you spiral down a familiar whirlpool, lost in despair.

"...You alright?" Ghost asks tentatively, as if not expecting you to give him a straight answer.

"Solid." You reply almost instantly, and even as you tilt your head up to regard his massive form the shape of him seems to shift before your eyes. Despite being pinned under his stare you try not to sway, not to buckle.

Just breathe. You remind yourself, forcing manual inhales and exhales in an attempt to remain composed. The warm wetness of your wound is already bleeding through your bandages, soaking the gauze packed against your side and dyeing it a rancid scarlet that reeks of failure. You know the longer you stay here, the longer he questions you that you run the risk of being discovered, of your ruse being revealed in horrific, dazzling color.

God, you wonder if he can smell it on you- the bitter, iron taste of blood.

"Don't lie." He states, stepping closer, and when you instinctively take a step back you nearly stumble, one arm dropping to your side in an attempt to find something to balance with. "You don't look fine."

"W-what do you mean?" You try, but your voice wavers when you speak- as unsteady as your form. A sapling in a thunderstorm. Lighting bursts across the darkened skies of your anxiety.

"Fix." Ghost states, and that sends a flash of panic through you, the way his voice evens with seriousness, eyes suddenly steely and trained completely on you. A hunter's scope, and you're caught in the snare.

"Don't." You manage, and take another step back, retreating-

The world shifts under you.

You have just enough time to blink, for your lips to part in an 'oh' of realization before the weakness in your legs finally gives. As they buckle your eyes dart to Ghost's, and you catch a single glimpse of shock that flashes plainly across his gaze before he's moving, reaching for you-

When the world stills again it's to the sensation of an arm under your back, the hand snaking around your side and pressing close to your raw, seeping wound hidden under your gear.

You choke on the pain, the sound a strangled gasp that bubbles up your throat and forces the air from your lungs.

When Ghost moves his hand you feel it, feel the crimson ooze soaking through your shirt and jacket against your side, and painting his glove in dark, glistening wetness.

"FUCKING hell." Ghost snarls when he realizes what it is, his eyes darting down to your side where red colors across the fabric of your white tee.

"G-Ghost-" You manage, even as the world spins around you, an abrupt kaleidoscope of shape and color. It's the white of his mask that grounds you, mirroring his wide, surprised gaze as it turns from his glove to your ashen, stricken expression. "LT, wait-"

"You stupid girl." Ghost snarls, and you flinch.

Before you can stop him, Ghost reaches for his radio, and when he presses down it leaves a bloody stain on the casing.

"Price." He barks, voice grating deep in his chest- the one he uses to issue orders, bring men back into line. "Fix is injured. Tore her stitches."

In a desperate bid you try to reach for him, face alight with pain and shock as you try to stop him, try to grapple the radio away. Yet Ghost merely knocks your hand aside and fixes you with a stare so harsh and cold it freezes you in place.

"How bad?" Price's voice crackles from the other end of the comm, and you swallow, try to answer.

"I-I'm okay." You supply, but Ghost snarls at you.

"She's not okay." He echoes over you. "She's fucking bleeding out."

"I'm...not-"

"Shut up." Ghost bites at you, but there's a waver in his voice you don't recognize as it harshes inside his chest, grinding and impatient and...somehow scared.

You hear Price curse on the other end of the radio.

"Where are you? I'm on my way and sending Gaz to find a medic."

"Southeast hallway. Third floor. Outside her bunk." Ghost replies sharply, and at once he's readjusting you, laying you down on your uninjured side. You curl into yourself, feeling tears threaten as he does so.

It hurts.

The pain itself, but the knowledge that with every stained drop you're exposing yourself, letting him know you failed, that you aren't fit to stand by him, that your injury is-

When Ghost's hand presses down against your wound you yell, the agony of his touch unexpected and horrific as he tries to stem the gush from your side. It blinds you, sends white shooting across your vision in brilliant white specks, blotting out the brightness of the humming fluorescent lights above you both. The aftertaste of it lingers in your mouth, like burnt pennies, thick and vile as it clogs your chest, grips your heart-

"Stay. Still." Ghost tells you on no uncertain terms even as you writhe, tears now spilling from your eyes and tracing down your cheeks in hot, furious trails.

"I'm sorry-" You try, but your voice is cracked, caught in your throat as a sob. "Ghost, I'm sorry-"

"Why did you do this?!" He hisses, as he uses one hand to press against your shoulder and anchor you. "Why didn't you say anything?!"

You swallow, but it does nothing to stop the ache in your throat, the pain that laces up your side and cross your spine, your hips, your heart.

"I-I didn't-" You hiccup, and the world is in chaos now, with your cries and your secrets exposed, with his gaze raking over your trembling, injured form. "Didn't want you to see, Ghost. I'm sorry-"

He stills.

Then, Ghost's eyes take on a light you've never seen before. Frustration, anger, disappointment, these things you've been witness to in your lieutenant. However now the color of Ghost's eyes is dark not with these things, but with fury.

"Have you gone bloody mental?!" He bellows at you, and the world feels like it's trembling with the volume of his voice alone, shaking at the foundations of the earth itself. "Do you have any idea the danger you put yourself in?!"

There's a note of his words that ring true in you, that cleave apart the shell of doubt and allow radiance to seep through. You hide from it, curl further into yourself on the cold linoleum of the hallway, a sob cracking your throat as the weight of the world comes crashing down around you.

They're going to leave you for this. You're going to be alone again, all because your life seems to be a litany of failures, an impossible grave to claw out of as dirt pours in from the top.

You're heaving now, breaths too uneven, too ragged, and when it presses down on your lung the hurt is enough to make you cry out a strangled yell, kick out your feet in an automatic reflex.

Ghost's voice sounds distant now as blood rushes in your ears, your heartbeat wild and banging against the inside of your chest like a frantic, trapped bird. His hands are on you but you hardly feel them as panic engulfs you, and the whirlpool roars as it drags you down, down, down.

"Hey! Calm down, Fix! Fuck, just breathe!"

It hurts. Everything hurts. Your chest, your side, your lungs, the pain feels like it's seeping into your bloodstream, blocking your airways, poison running through your veins.

Another set of hands. Cigar smoke, ash.

"Soldier! Fix! Look at me!"

You can't. You refuse. If you see Price's gaze now in the moment of your ruin the stitches that bind you together will come loose at the seam and you'll unspill, empty cotton falling over their fingers. Fluff where there's supposed to be iron.

"Where the fuck is the medical team?!"

"They're on their way. Keep pressure on the wound."

Hands on your face. Gloves that smell like gun smoke.

"Fix, darling. You're having a panic attack. You need to breathe, you're going to hurt yourself if you don't."

You shake your head, dislodging the captain's touch.

No. You think with a ragged heave of air. Don't look. Don't look don't look please don't look.

The ground trembles as footsteps draw closer, and there's voice you don't recognize, hands pawing at you, light in your eyes-

You flail blindly, confused, scared, and when a heavy pair of hands lands on your shoulders to pin you it only makes your voice choke out with a frantic cry.

"We need to put her under."

No, no, please don't. Not sleep, not the nightmares-

"Do it."

Price. Captain. No, please-

"It's alright, darling. We've got you. You're okay."

Don't-

A jab, a little pinch on the inside of your arm. You try to make a noise, a whimpering sound of protest. There's a sudden flash of clarity before the darkness, and you open your eyes (When did you start crying?) to Price above you, his face pinched, distraught. Ghost is holding down your legs, and as your eyes drift to him he becomes nothing more than a shimmering phantom, blurred dark at the edges, a void in contrast to the too bright world around you.

"Please-" You whisper, the word heavy on your lips, eyes blinking-

Then there's nothing.

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