Doing It All For Love (Ghost x reader)

Chapter Eight

SOTD- I Bet On Losing Dogs by Mitski

Landon fished carefully for his laptop, placing it gently on his lap. He opened it up and held his hand out for the hard drive. Ghost placed the hard drive in Landon's palm and took the seat to the left beside him. I took the seat to the right, anxiously waiting as Landon typed in his password.

"Alright," He mumbled under his breath as he inserted the hard drive into his laptop, successfully loading up all the footage from the enemy drones. "The first three show no sign of Soap," Landon informed Ghost and me. He clicked through two more drone footage showing a few unclear images of Gaz, Alejandro, and Price. The mission was the worst one yet.

I could still feel the taste of dirt in my mouth. I could feel the ground beneath me shaking from each neighboring explosion. It felt as if I inhaled a spoonful of cinnamon, my lungs close to collapsing. My nose was running and my eyes were watering from the countless flash bombs and tear gas cans that had been thrown close to my range. I could hear Price's orders through the coms. His voice slowly drowned out once I had a clear shot of Josiah. I peered at him through the scope, my finger gently wrapping around the trigger. As soon as I went to pull the ground beneath me shook harshly and the building had blown up. Chunks of rubble flew a great distance and the explosion had created a crater in the dirt ground. I had lost my hearing for about a minute due to the horrendous sound of the explosion.

I was quick enough to shield my eyes from the bright flash due to many explosives going off at the exact time the building exploded. I quickly looked through my scope, my ears still ringing. He was gone.

That was when I noticed Soap did not come out of the building. He wasn't consistent on the coms either. "Everyone okay?" Price's voice was low and quiet in the static coms. Everyone confirmed that they were in fact, okay. Everyone except Soap.

I stared intensely at the screen, soaking in every detail. "This drone, the sixth drone was adjusted at a different angle. It must've fallen," Landon explained. The drone had shown a low view and it clearly wasn't up in the sky like the others had been. This view shows the backside of the building. The drone was laying on rubble and gave us a view of the destroyed building. "Soap didn't escape." Ghost sounded very disappointed, as were the rest of us.

"All of this was for nothing." He then came off as more angry. I turned my attention from the screen and looked directly at Ghost. "It wasn't for nothing Ghost! Even if we didn't get what we hoped for we still got closure," I spoke softly.

Ghost stood up from his seat. He looked as if he were going to explode any minute. I stood up from my seat also, making my way toward him. "At least we know now."

Ghost whipped his head at me, anger flashing in his eyes. "We couldn't even give him a proper fucking funeral!" He shouted. Soap's casket had been empty since we weren't able to retrieve his body. "For a fucking year I hoped and prayed he was still alive! He's not! He's fucking gone!" I took a step back, trying to give him some space. "I know, Ghost. And I'm sorry." I tried my best to stay calm. I looked into his eyes seeing them gloss over. Was he about to cry? Of course not. Ghost would never let anyone see him cry. He would jump out of this plane without a parachute before he allowed us to see that.

"All of this was for nothing." His words sounded like venom as they rolled off his tongue, seeping through the skull mask. "Actually..." Landon spoke up, catching both mine and Ghost's attention. "I wouldn't say that." He turned his laptop to face us.

I stepped closer, squatting down to have a better view. "It's fucking rubble, Landon." Ghost sounded annoyed. On the screen, it had shown nothing but smoke and rubble. The rubble that was aimed directly at the camera's drone slowly moved until it had been fully pushed to the side.