Pattern Breaker

Don't Fear the Reaper

Everyone goes through a form of heartbreak at some point in their lives. Depending on the severity and depth of it will determine how it shapes you and changes who you are fundamentally. And it will, every time. From the rejection of your first crush as a teen, to the gut-wrenching abandonment of your soul-mate well into your adulthood. Long after you had already settled on the fact you were too fucked up and broken to deserve love. Long after you had resigned yourself to be a career driven vehicle of early expiration. An abstract concept of apprehension and warning.

Wearing your heart on your sleeve as a bleeding beacon just proves you vulnerable.

Fate likes to play games when you ignore the inevitable. It will teach you how to love and then break you down when you're at your lowest. When you're freezing, and need the warmth the most to keep the deadly hypothermia at bay. It will burn you, melting away the comforting ice that cools your body from fever. You can cherish the moments of reprieve whenever you find them, but it is simply the calm before the storm that is prepared to decimate every last bit of happiness you have ever felt.

Fate never fails. It wouldn't have mattered if it were in another life. It would hurt all the same.

It had been almost three full months since Soap had last laid eyes on Simon "Ghost" Riley. Almost three months of Soap mulling, crying, and screaming over his last words to the man in the dead soullessness of nightfall.

" Get out. " He had said. Pushing him away. Locking him out, losing the key into a vipers den of his own traumas and fear. Locking Ghost out had simultaneously locked Soap in . Alone and terrified. Cold. Lost.

" What?" Ghost had asked, confusion marring across his flushed features and swollen lips. " I don't -"

" Tell me you love me, and you can stay. " Soap had blurted in a barely audible whisper— without being able to stop himself, his voice thick and shaky with emotion.

Ghost hadn't responded. Just stared. Frozen.

That's what I thought. At that point, Soap's entire body was shaking and hiccuping from crying. " Get the fuck out!"

And there they were. He couldn't take them back. Or change the past. Only move forward the best he could, picking up the pieces of himself that had been demolished without clemency. Simultaneously dreading and looking forward to the next time he would see him.

Assuming there was a next time.

And there were pieces he would never be able to find again.

If he thought the night terrors he dealt with before were bad...They were nothing compared to what they turned into now, without Ghost's comforting (yet terrifying) presence lurking around. Even swallowed whole in his fury at the impudent actions of the man, there was no denying the solace he found in his mere existence being close in proximity.

The only thing that silenced them was Soap sleeping in Ghost's bed, under his covers, inhaling his essence. But the quiet didn't last long, and once Ghost's scent had fully faded from the small space, the nightmares returned in full force.

He couldn't remember any of them. Just bits and pieces. A flash of a gun firing, the hot coppery smell of fresh blood, the sensation of free falling. Sometimes his own panicked voice. He just knew that every night he woke up, sometimes shrieking, sometimes crying— sweat pouring down his face and heart beating painfully. They were never good dreams. Ever.

Soap did, however, remember in perfect clarity the day he found out Ghost was gone.

" It's a one man mission, Soap. " Price had said, shrugging his shoulders. " Long term. Ghost has done this a thousand times. I'm not sure what you want me to say. He asked for this, and the opportunity presented itself. "