Haunted - COD Simon Ghost Riley x Female OC

Chapter Eight - Azrael

Due to the newspaper pasted over the windows, your sense of the passage of time warped and shifted as you passed in and out of consciousness. That glowing red light haunted your waking moments as your captors taunted you towards a submission you refused to give into. Your skin was covered in a mixture of sweat and blood in a myriad of smears and smudges. The floor around you was splattered with what had dripped from your fingertips and lips. Hazy vision caused you to no longer search out the face of your captors when you laugh at their attempts to break you. With your hands taped to the arms of the chair, you couldn't brush back the hair that continuously falls in front of your eyes or wipe away the sweat and blood that spills into them. My little wildcat. He whispered it into your ears, repeated it over and over again as you fought him. If he wanted a wildcat, you could be a wildcat. Fighting against him consistently, thrashing in the chair. Aiming to break his nose at least once more.

In the moments when you were left alone to drown in your own thoughts, staring down that ever present red light, you closed your eyes and tried to call forth memories to strengthen your resolve. Tattooed arms, brilliant blue eyes, broad shoulders, and warm hands often filled those quiet breaks. You wished that your final moments with him weren't filled with words so heavily laced with venom but god damn did he drive you insane. You yearned to know what he was hiding under that mask. The thin Henley's and sweaters he wore around the base left little to the imagination with how muscular and built he was under his flack vest. You wished you could bury your face in his neck and breath in the scent of his cologne and bourbon. You wished you could throttle him and scream in his face that he's denser than concrete, trying to pry answers from his lips for his actions.

At first, the sleep deprivation and dehydration weren't overly taxing. However, the longer they dragged it out, the more often you started to hallucinate. At first it was just those hauntingly beautiful blue eyes staring at you from the dark corners of the room. Then it was the Captain, standing behind the camera, shaking his head at you, telling you that you should just let go. Finally, it was Soap and Gaz's laughter filling the room when you were on the verge of breaking down. Those blue eyes were the worst. Staring at you, flaying you open and leaving you feeling as if you were bearing your soul to an invisible monster.

An explosion gripped you tight and pulled you from your reverie. Your head hanging to the side as you tried to pry open your eyes. Shouting and gunfire rang out through the din of your captor's safehouse. You hear something banging against the door to the basement that's become your cell. The splintering of wood sounds off and the shouting becomes louder. You try and focus your eyes so that you can make sense of what's going on around you. Blinking hard through the haze; the swelling in your face making the task more difficult than it should be, you look up and search through the room. You hear someone suck in their breath and release a long string of curses low enough that you can barely make out what they're saying.

A bearded man with a tilly hat and sad eyes comes into focus near your face. "It's okay kiddo, we've got ya." This hallucination seems more tangible than when he's standing behind that ghastly red light. You can even smell the faint traces of tobacco and cigar smoke mixed with peppermint. His calloused hands cut away at the layers of tape binding you to the chair, muttering kind words and apologies to you as he tears it away from your sensitive limbs. Tears roll down your face from pain of being jostled, creating fresh tracks in the mud and blood caked onto your cheeks. A portion of your mind wishes that this was the final hallucination before your heart gives out. That being rescued was your brain's way of telling you it was over before you pass on. Another part tries to signal to you that this could be real. That Price's warm hands and curse words are not just another figment of your imagination as you tried to cling to your humanity.

Price gathers you into his arms, lifting your weakened body from the chair you've been held captive in for an unknown period of time. You struggle to stay conscious through the pain as wounds are reopened with the unexpected movement. You must have cried out because a string of barely whispered apologies falls from Price's lips again as he holds you close. Your head rolls to the side, looking in front of you as he begins to move, and that's when you see him. His white mask marred with blood and ash. A black hooded cowl drapes across his shoulders, the hood drawn up over his head. The cape coming down just past the backs of his knees was torn and frayed from battles past. His black tactical kit was made impossibly darker by blood, the remnants of one of the soldiers that had stood in his way dripping off his fingertips while he clutched at a knife. Your own personal angel of death. Maybe this was the end and the Grim Reaper himself had come down to this derelict basement to drag you off to hell. Those piercing blues eyes bore into you and you tried to hold their gaze but you could feel your consciousness slipping once more. You swore that you could hear Ghost's husky voice call out to you as you slipped into the darkness again.