"Absolutely Not."

Chapter 10: Ghost

All eyes were on me now instead of one pair. Different shades of browns and blues watched as my body froze, and I could feel their hardened sympathy from wherever they stood. Boring holes right into my aching head.

I'd been the last to find out the truth.

As I had secluded myself in the mountain ranges of Russia, estranging myself by ridding my rotted brain of social media and cellular devices in general, it left me with the inability to contact anyone or to be contacted. What I'd seen of Shepherd 'killing' Simon was all I'd given myself.

Selfishly, I ran away to save myself, only looking behind my shoulder to see how close my old teammates I'd betrayed had gotten to my heels.

My jaw opened and closed a couple of times like a damn fish out of water as my mind frantically swam through turbulent thoughts.

Simon was alive.

In front of me.

I had run despite not knowing if he was alive or not.

A gunshot to the shoulder, followed by a shower of fire.

And I fucking ran.

"Yera go 'way. I told you to stay quiet," Soap hissed over at Simon. He then directed his attention to me and spoke in a less pissed-off tone, "Listen, I know it's probably a lot to handle, but-"

I cut him off, twisting only my head to give a narrowed glare. "Probably? Probably? There's no probably about it."

Traumatized was an understatement of what hell I'd witnessed and had to heal from during the past year only to now reassemble the truth to fit the new narrative. The nightmares were for naught, and now I dreaded to sleep tonight, knowing that they were bound to resurface.

A never-ending snowball of events turned me into a coward. Too much death made me into a sequel of Appointment in Samarra, fleeing from the inevitable. No matter where I went, death was sure to follow.

"I've spent the past year thinking he," I pointed at Simon without looking, "was dead. And now he's not? How do you explain that?"

"It's not as complicated as you may think," Price started to explain, and my glare went to him next. "Someone saved him, and, well, the rest is a bit complicated, yeah."

Soap lifted his arm to motion towards the man in the corner, "Maybe it's best to leave it to the one it happened to, to give the story?"

Simon huffed loudly before answering. "Oh, now I'm allowed to talk?"

"Not like you were bound to listen, making' a right bags of things."

Their squabble was cut short by my curt tone and a narrowed leering up at Price, "You couldn't have led with the fact that I was wrong? You never corrected me."

With a shake of his head, arms still crossed, he stated plainly, "You wouldn't have believed me if I had just told you. Someone who was shot and set on fire, rising from the dead."

"Then why did you give me the letter?"

An uncomfortable, stifling tension stretched through the already-strained atmosphere, suffocating the life of any placidity that might have survived through our war of words.

From the brow-raised look Gaz gave, he was trying to not be entertained nor intrude in any of this. He'd long decided that this was not his battle, but he'd serve his due diligence as our audience.

"Because you needed closure," Price answered.

Deadpanned, I challenged, "For a dead person you knew wasn't dead."