Simon 'Ghost' Riley - The Spiders Web

15

When Soap and Ghost entered Ilyins office with guns raised, they scanned the room before freezing at the doorway when they realised Ilyin was already dead. He lay lifeless on the floor beside his desk, laptop destroyed, in a pool of his own blood dripping from his neck and a wound somewhere else they couldn't quite see from his dark clothes.

"Shit."

"Tell me you've got Ilyin." Price spoke over comms.

"Well, someone certainly got him." Soap added unhelpfully, staring down at his body.

Gaz entered a minute later sounding out of breath.

Ghost turned immediately. "Any sign of her?"

"No, sir."

As a dark figure entered just behind Gaz, both Ghost and Soap shouted at him to move and raised their guns.

The small woman immediately raised her hands. "Friendly!" She shouted immediately.

She would have been so pissed if one of them had shot her.

Gaz turned, looking relieved once he realised it was her.

"Christ, we could have killed you!"

Ghost and Soap lowered their guns, the former looking furious.

"Where the fuck have you been?" He all but yelled, storming up into her personal space while Gaz backed away a step.

Tina had to crane her neck back to maintain eye contact and she knew, although she had done nothing wrong, that she was in deep shit.

Ghost, although a harsh person, had never dared raise his voice at Tina.

"When we call for you, you fucking respond!" He demanded. "Do you understand?"

She opened her mouth to snap back at him but Soap interrupted.

"Can we get back to what the fuck were meant to do with this broken piece of shit?" He gestured to the laptop practically smashed in half on the desk. "Price won't be happy."

Tina matched Ghosts icy glare with her own and despite the gigantic size difference between the two, she refused to back down even if she reached way below his shoudlers. He gave her a look that said 'we're not done yet' and turned to face the others in thought.

Gaz was reaching down beside Ilyin to reach up to his collar. He pulled it back, revealing the bloody wound that serrated through half of his neck open horrifically, wire sticking out of his skin in odd sharp angles. His lifeless eyes stared up at the ceiling.

As Tina stepped slightly further into the light, Ghost watching her out the corner of his eye, he noticed crimson glistening across what was showing of her hands. It had soaked into the fabric of her gloves.

She stood stiffly, watching him piece together the dots and saw how his gaze flitted from the body to herself.

His grip on his gun tightened and she braced herself, closing her eyes slightly to hold back a flinch when her arm was seized and she was yanked towards him. She almost stumbled, yanking back on her arm but his grip was like a vice clamping down on her wrist that burned beneath the layers of their gear.

"You disobeyed direct orders." He all but growled, the closeness of the two making her heart race uncomfortably.

"Lt, I dont think-"

"-ask her. Ask her where the fuck she was."

Gaz and Soap shifted, uncomfortable and surprised at the accusing tone he was using for their team mate. The two stayed quiet and Tina grit her teeth as Ghost's eyes bore into her own.

He was daring them.

"Let go of me." She warned, fingers tightening into a bloody fist. He could see the faint cuts along her knuckles, just above the gloves where the barbs had stuck into her skin.

He leant down closer towards her, an intimidating force towering over her. "Answer the question. Where the fuck were you?"

The woman stayed quiet. The tension in the room was so thick none of them could speak.

He growled. "We were under strict orders to keep him alive-"

"-until we got the information from him." She cut him off sharply, free hand reaching into her pocket for something before slamming it against his chest for him to grab. In doing so he released her arm and she backed away a step, allowing herself the space to breathe. "Which I fucking did."

He looked down at the hard drive in his skeleton gloved hand. His fist tightened around it and she wondered then if he would break it.

"I didn't go against any orders, I got the fucking job done."

He shook his head slightly and she wanted to strangle him. "You think this let's you off the hook? You deliberately went rogue and ignored your team, you didn't tell anyone your plan, you could have been fucking killed or taken again and none of us would be the wiser thanks to your selfishness!"

Tina's expression hardened. "My selfishness?" She hissed.

"I don't think now is the time for this." Soap cut in, eyes darting between the two arguing.

"Yeah, your selfishness," he hissed, reaching a finger out to jab her in the shoulder. She recoiled, blood boiling. "You could have jeopardised this whole thing just because of your stulid personal vendetta."

Ah, there it was.

Tina could have laughed. Oh, she wanted to bash that skull mask of his in until it mingled with his own fucking skull. For someone so observant, she wondered how the fuck he'd got this far being so wrong.

Personal vendetta; he believed that she would put her own fucking team in danger to get a fickle semblance of revenge. He thought she was that kind of soldier. She would not have made it to the 141 if she was someone like that. Weak, selfish, naive. Did he think that was all she was?

Tina wanted to scream at him. She wanted to fucking tear her own hair out at the insinuation. If he even knew her at all, if he even tried to know her, he wouldn't be accusing her of such bullshit.

"Are you done?" She asked finally, scanning the ice in his eyes and surprisingly calm herself despite the mental storm swiling inside her skull.

Instead of raising her voice or resorting to the violence she so desperately wanted to, Tina simply reached into a pocket and pulled out something, closing her fist around it. She tossed it at him and he caught it swiftly, eyes leaving hers to fixate on what was in his hand.

"My fucking comms got shot out."

And if he'd have let her talk or explain instead of judging and assuming, she wouldn't have had to be berated like a fucking child in front of her teammates.

Tina didn't bother sparing the burly man another glance, simply being the first to head out so they could reach the heli and leave back for base. As she got to the doorway, though, she glanced over her shoulder and said back sarcastically, quietly -

-  "Nice to know you have such faith in your teammate, though. Thanks for that."