Call of Duty Oneshots (Mostly Ghost)

a dance with shadows.

I danced with the shadows as I crept closer to the hostiles. My toes, nimble as a ballerina's, glided noiselessly down the halls, and my arms mirrored the tree limbs cast along the walls from the moon's watchful eye. The only pair of eyes I'd allowed to spectate my routine.

Gun drawn, my focus was only one thing: kill. Kill, kill, kill.

They'd killed my best friend, and my blood boiled, lusted for revenge. Their dog tag burning a hole in my pocket and my steady finger ready to squeeze the trigger, I ignored the beads of sweat trailing rivers down my neck. I ignored how stuffy this fucking building was, with no insulation whatsoever.

And I ignored the fact that my team awaited my response with bated breath, not wanting their last words spoken to me to be hissed protests to not do this.

It would eat me alive if I didn't do this. If I didn't open welcome a duet with karma.

With open arms, we waltzed further into the building, and we whispered to one another how good vengeance tasted. Sweet like chocolate, we decided. Melt in your drooling mouth good, vengeance.

Karma must have taken over completely, swirling me into a red oblivion as that was the only color I saw. Splattering across my face, in my vision, I lodged as many bullets I had left in my mag into their two thick skulls.

They hadn't even suspected me coming, either, and it made even more sickly sweet. Their surprised, wide-eyed expressions, and their hands as they tried to draw out their weapons.

But they were too slow.

Karma's elegant hands too quick.

Vengeance melted on my tongue, and god did it taste delicious as I took an eye for an eye. Finger-licking good if I hadn't been wearing blood-smeared gloves.

I felt nothing but numbing satisfaction when I slipped back into the shadows' company, the smell of iron pervading my nose. I wasn't sure whose blood I was coated in the most, my friend's or those men, but it was a cost of priceless vengeance.

Chocolate had nothing on this.

However, I should have expected the only person who could find me in such dark places to have found me as easily as he did.

Death himself with a mask shaped as a skull.

Shadows could never truly hide from their blended counterparts, especially from a god such as Death.

Still in the throes of karma's waning ravishment, there were a few seconds of us silently struggling against each other until I figured out who had captured me, his hands gripping my arms so tightly it made me wince.

"What the fuck?!" Ghost hissed angrily.

My breathing labored, and I answered the best I could. "They killed-"

"I don't give a shit. You don't disobey my orders to do something as reckless as you did! What were you thinking?!"

I wasn't, that was the problem.

I didn't need to say it, though, we both knew. He knew that I knew that it was a stupid decision to go through with something like that alone when I could have easily had backup.

My body swayed as he shook me. "Did you not hear me when I said I was coming? I was on my way to you!"

"Simon..." my voice came shuttering out of me as if I were learning to breathe again.

"Don't 'Simon' me when I'm this pissed at you."

The thrill of my adrenaline pumping through my once-eager veins was beginning to sizzle to vapor, giving karma no longer having anything to latch onto.

Even through the mask his eyes couldn't hide the heart-wrenching worry I'd given him, and the guilt rendered me dizzy.

It was like waking up hungover after a full night bender, finding bruises that you had no explanation for and a mushrooming headache that made you feel like your head had been struck with an ax.

A side effect to the addictive stuff I'd discovered vengeance to be.

Riddled with shame as it all washed over me, I stared up at him. I didn't know what to possibly say to remedy what trust I might have tarnished.

He could have been holding my dead body right now instead of a living, breathing one if I had made one wrong move, only to leave with two separate dog tags.

Those two men would have died tonight regardless of whose gun had to do it, but there could have been another dead body to add to that room that already stunk of death's pungent perfume.

"I know you're hurting, but I need the living to stay that way," he said, leaning to be more on my level. "Do you understand?"

I nodded. "Yes, sir."

A frustrated sigh filled his mask. "Don't 'yes, sir' me either right now."

"I'm getting conflicted reactions, Simon," I said, tone gaining some traction, some confidence.

"You could have died," he muttered, "you could have died..." His words wavered and softened as if he wasn't sure if he wanted to still be angry or not.

"I know. I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking."

"That much is obvious."

His arms slipped around my shoulders, bribing me in so that the side of my face pressed against his vest. I breathed in gunpowder and cigarette smoke, smells that made me feel alive. Smells that burned my lungs as they burned his, thirsty vices that kept us breathing with lungs that I was surprised still breathed with all the shit we've seen and inhaled.

Cigarettes and blood were things we craved, and the shadows witnessed us partaking in taking in both of those too many times, countless times. The shadows were the worst - or best, depending on how someone looked at it - enablers. Their warm embrace, just as warm as his, always welcomed us and egged us on to shed as much life as we could.

And it was never enough. The edge would always be taken off for a time, but the craving would always come back with a vengeance of its own. Karma always had a sense of humor.

His arms tightened around me, reeling me back into the shadowed hallway. He murmured one word, and I knew he hadn't stayed mad for too long.

"Idiot..."