Chapter Text
GHOST
The wind blew through the air, so loudly it almost filled the void beside Ghost. Almost. The bag on his shoulder feels heavier than it should've considering the fact barely anything was in it. Except everything was in it.
Ghost thinks back to the day in London. The train station, the silence after the battle. The lull after a fight. Usually filled with relief, filled with some kind of hope that maybe they were one more mission away from peace, one more mission away from never having to do this job again.
But the silence that day...
The silence that filled the air that day was harder than the fight itself.
If he thinks about it hard enough he swears he still could see Johnny breathing. Maybe just the slightest rise and fall of his chest, barely there, and barely visible to anyone but someone insane enough to pay that much attention. He thinks he could still feel Johnny's pulse. Faint, light, a flutter, but a hint of life.
And he wonders if they made the wrong call. He dreams about it. Nightmares of Johnny being buried alive. Johnny being cremated while still fighting to stay alive. He knows it's not sensible. Knows that no one survives that much blood loss, or the injuries Johnny sustained, and if they did, he knows they'd never be the same. But the 'what if' is always stronger than rationality.
It's good for now, Ghost thinks. The voices in his head plaguing him, criticizing his every movement, they fill up the silence.
He looks beside him. Garrick, and Price. Both still reeling from that day. Both probably still trying to make sense of their new reality. He remembers the days after Johnny. It was like the 141 fell apart, ripped apart at the seams. It wasn't just Johnny who they lost, the fact was that they also lost each other. Johnny would've hated it. Would've hated how they all avoided each other, yet when they had received word that Johnny's ashes would be making it back to them, they all collectively agreed on one last thing. One last mission as the 141. One last mission with the four of them.
Of course it was unspoken. The fact that the 141 was nothing without Johnny would have made the situation too real. For now it was easier to pretend. To just ignore the absence left by the loudest member of their group, and pretend he was on leave, or a mission. For now.
Ghost shifts the bag off his shoulder, placing it at the ground by his feet and Garrick's. Slots it right where Johnny would've been. The sun was setting. Oranges, and pinks swirling above the lake they found themselves staring over. It's what Johnny would've wanted. It's what Ghost hopes Johnny would've wanted.
Price glances over at him. His shoulders are tense, his jaw hardened, eyes flickering back to the horizon. It's time.
Not yet. He's not ready yet.
Price doesn't give him the option. The sun is setting, they're running out of daylight.
"He was the best of us," Price starts. His voice is flat, steady. Probably because he was compartmentalizing. Ghost tries not to let his brain wander and create scenarios that maybe they had all moved on. Maybe he was the only one still stuck in that tunnel.
"The toughest," Garrick adds.
Or Price was the anchor they needed. Because unlike Price, Garrick's voice rasps, shakes, like how it did during the debrief, and the endless psych assessments following. It makes Ghost remember that Johnny was gone. He wasn't on some mission, or on leave, because if he was Garrick wouldn't be crying, and they wouldn't be in the middle of Scotland holding a funeral for a man who's ashes had no home except for in a broken task force.
"He would've fought the world barehanded," Ghost says. Robotic, forced, he couldn't spare any emotions right now. If he lets himself cry, he doesn't think he'll be able to stop.
Price clears his throat, ready for round two. Garrick clenches his hat in hands. The wind blows stronger. His hood threatens to fly off. Pieces of his blonde hair fall in his face. He looks up at Price, the older man nods.
Ghost reaches down at the bag by his feet. His fingers brush against the cool metal of the urn. It takes him a second to remember he's not wearing his gloves. It takes another second for him to actually fish the urn out of the bag.
It sits like a weight in his hand, but it feels so light at the same time. Johnny, the man who could fill a room with just his presence reduced to nothing more than grams. It doesn't feel right. Nothing feels right.
Garrick's hand presses down on the top of the urn, Price joins, grabbing the other side. The latter starts speaking again. Ghost forces himself back to present.
"Who dares win. Sleep easy soldier,"
"See you down range brother. We'll take it from here," Garrick says.
That hurts Ghost more than he cared to admit. They wouldn't take it from here, he knows that for a fact. He can see that in Garrick's face, in Price's face as they turned to face him. They would go back to base. Go back to doing their own jobs, and try to move on.
He spent the past three weeks fighting with the voices in his head telling him they mistakenly declared Johnny as dead. He had been kept awake by nightmares of it.
Stage one of grief: Denial.
He learnt that a long time ago. He witnessed people experience it. He thought he had gotten used to death, that he could skip the four stages, and skip right to acceptance.
He hadn't realized he was in denial until Garrick's words shakily and painfully made their way out of his mouth.
Johnny was gone.
And no matter how long he spent thinking about it, there was nothing he could do.
But what he can do right now is send Johnny off the way he would've wanted. In his homeland, the place he always talked so proudly about. It would never be enough, but he could at least do this one thing for him.
"Rest in peace Johnny," he mumbles.
He doesn't feel any different after saying it. The black void in his chest is still there, and that horrible silence still lingers. He doesn't feel any different but he thinks he's accepted the reality. Nothing was ever going to be the same again.
His hands remain on the urn. Clutching tightly, like if he were to let go Johnny would be gone forever. Garrick, and Price both let go, and turn to face him. They were letting him do it.
He thinks about Las Almas. He remembers the rain, the jokes, the smell of sweat and blood. He remembers the ride to Rudy's safehouse. He remembers pulling the bullet out of Johnny's arm.
He remembers the feeling of finally letting someone in. Finally letting down his walls, letting Johnny burrow his way into his life.
But now he knows he's going to remember the feeling of letting go. And he knows that it's going to haunt him forever.
The urn is cold against his bare hands. He twists the lid, and then swiftly, dumps the ashes into the air. He lets Johnny go. The ashes fall before the wind picks them up. And whatever is left of Johnny flies over his homeland, finally free of whatever shit show was happening in the real world.
The silence stays, filling the space of all that was unspoken. Ghost looks at the empty urn, and then back at the sky. The wind howls and takes Johnny away.