Who Is Vetting These Gaza Gofundmes Because I Have Seen Quite A Few "vetted" Campaigns From Supposedly

they’re beautiful 🥹🙏

lol Soap’s the only one not in his gear, oops 😂 Bro just hopped the call 🤣🤣

(hope my art is not too terrible for an arts student..)

I may or may not did study at this papi....

I may or not become part in the fandom and that is all thanks to The Mandalorian ahii

I know it stress and all in this point of time, stay strong everyone and stay safe peeps!

Reading this when I am on the verge of resigning on my shitty job lol.

how the task force 141 men react to you complaining about your job (f!reader) ⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

simon doesn't even blink as you throw your head into his lap, eyes still focused on the television while his hand subconsciously moves to smooth your hair.

"jus' quit."

you pause in the midst of your whining, staring up at him like he'd just grown a second head. "what?"

simon shrugs. "makin' enough."

"i... i can't quit my job, simon."

his eyebrows twitch up a bit, indifferent. "up to you, love."

you pause, considering. "well..."

johnny doubles down. not only does he tell you to quit immediately, he also throws in that the military will pay him extra if you two get married.

mind you, johnny already rates BAH and has been making it since before you two got together. there won't really be any change to his pay besides separation pay when he's gone for more than a month. however, this is his opportunity to gauge your reaction to the idea of marriage, and he's taking it.

kyle. sweet, sweet kyle. he doesn't tell you to quit. not because he wouldn't support you financially - he absolutely would - but because he knows how important it can be for a woman to have a sense of independence. he also worries about how you'll handle the potential isolation if he's away for an extended period of time and you don't have a job to occupy your time. also, he's happy to pay the bills, but if you're working then you can afford all of the pretty things you want and deserve!

john? john price? ... funny of you to think that you're working while you're with that man, lol.

note: was bored and wrote this in like 10 mins. just had to be done lol. BAH is Basic Allowance for Housing in the American military (i'm not super familiar with british military allowances so using BAH for easy fic purposes lmao) - lower ranking enlisted military that are married can get it or single qualified enlisted (usually ranked sergeant and above) can be approved for it. it's extra pay that you receive to live off-base to cover housing expenses calculated by average cost of rent in the area and family size!

reblog if you’ve read fanfictions that are more professional, better written than some actual novels. I’m trying to see something

Fran Thoughts 1

I know this isn't healthy to let it out here but better something than nothing-

Some people thought being art student is easy but it is not, between juggling to general education subjects and doing major art subjects makes the time difficulty especially this online class.

Not only that you missed and craved the interaction between your peers especially while your doing artworks with them. Even if the art profs not teaching *ehem* just really giving projects to you. Or that after school fatigue yet became gone atleast for awhile because hanging out despite getting four hours of sleep is worth it.

Now on online class it's only not much interaction between classmates because we had many things to do not only in school but many personal things happening at home. It felt like just passing time doing plates (projects) and doing requirements of school yet felt like there was no reward for it.

Yet despite the negative feelings, we still strive to be if not best do better for ourselves.

“How dare you. I was peacefully resting, and you dropped me off the side of the bed? Not fair, man. Not fair at all.”

Now, when the public thinks of a man, they think of deep, heavy chuckles that resemble that of an earthquake. However, Soap giggled like a little girl on steroids.

Still smiling, he wraps his arms around your waist and leaves kisses into the skin of your neck. “I’m sorry, my lovie. I didn’t mean to drop you.”

You sniff and pretend to be haughty by crossing your arms. But he can tell that it’s not the reality when your hand rises and rests on his cheek. Obliging, John continues to whisper adorations into whatever skin he can get his mouth on until he can see a smile curl itself on your lips.

His whiskers tickle the sensitive flesh, but you wouldn’t have it any other way. Not after having been away from him for so long.

The mission required one day of preparation, allowing both of you some time to take a small break. There was much paperwork to be done, but just enough that it didn’t encroach on your time together.

The whole day could be spent together, apart from the hours of briefing and prep.

You sat on a separate aircraft with your squadron, preparing for a drop off on the outer ring of the forest to prepare for stragglers trying to escape. They would be picked off quickly and cleanly and then you would return back to base, hopefully successful.

The mission went spectacularly well, with the recovery of Captain Price. It was clear that Soap had missed the captain very much, especially when he handed over his favored pistol. He had told you a bit of his history with the captain, explaining how the captain had taken him under his wing and treated him like a son. The 1911 was physical evidence of everything he detailed.

The captain had found you about a week later to thank you for your help. He patted your shoulder when you said that it was just your job. “I know. But you’ve done more for me than you could know.”

He disappeared around the corner and moments later, Soap rounded out of the darkness. He held his head high though the last week had been strenuous. “Did you hear all of that?” you asked. Playfully, Soap bumped his shoulder into you.

“Of course. Price keeps trying to get out of the hospital during his walks. They’ve told the old bastard that he needs to slow down and take it easy, but he doesn’t seem to care.”

You sighed. “The captain is a shark. If he stops moving, he won’t know what to do with himself. I’m guessing this is his most recent attempt to get out.”

Soap groaned, “Yes. The medical staff has been trying to keep him contained, but I think his brain is still in defense after the gulag.”

He grew stoic. “Price had been there for so long…I wasn’t able to stop what they did to him.”

You rub his shoulder with heavy empathy. Your own mentor had been captured and was never seen again when the search parties were sent. His sons and daughter told you that they didn’t hate you for what happened to him, but his wife couldn’t even look at you on the day of the funeral.

“What do you say you and I will go out for some food tonight? Any restaurant that you want to visit is where we’ll go,” you say. His regular cocky smile comes back up full force and you see his spirits rise almost instantly.

“As long as you’re buying. We’ll meet tonight at my house but for right now, I need to go find Price.”

He walks past you and a rush of cold air swirls against you.

Then the world went to hell.

Ghost and Roach were killed and all contact with Sandman and his crew was lost. They were assumed to be MIA, but too little was known at the time. All while you were in France, Price had screamed out to you that Shephard was not to be trusted and in a matter of seconds, two of your own soldiers turned on you. You managed to down both traitors with the help of your fellow men, but not without being tagged as an enemy to Shadow Company.

Fortunately, you had an ex-pilot in your three men, and he found a spare helicopter for you to get to the Middle East as soon as possible to regroup. You would never thank Shephard, but you were grateful that he did not have any forethought about how his action of forcing you to drag soldiers back out into the field would benefit you. But the comms crackled and through them, you heard an awful sound.

A sickly crunch of bone under the compressive force of a bolo knife and the groans of the whipping wind rung in the tight box of the helicopter.

Soap was stabbed brutally in the chest by Shephard. You could hear rushing blood in your ears and you almost lost the cool facade of a captain. Your grip tightened on the stock of your rifle.

You could imagine the worst, him bleeding out in a dust storm on the other side of the world. Price would take care of him, surely. But the captain was an older man and would not be able to protect Soap from Shepherd for long. You had to hurry.

The remaining two men that weren’t pilots watched you jerkily pace to call for the pilot to move faster. “I’m going as fast as I can!” he exclaimed. You clenched your fist into a tight grip and swore when you came to the realization that if Shepherd didn’t die now, you would hunt him down and destroy him the same way he did to Soap.

Four minutes later, Price was radioing in. John was still alive and he had killed Shephard. A calm blew into the tense hull of the helicopter, both of your remaining soldiers slumping over a bit. The adrenaline high was falling, but your fear reminded you to stay ready.

Nearly fourteen hours after plane hopping multiple times, you touch down in India. Raging bullets fly throughout the city, whizzing into the helicopter’s armor. Your pilot lands at the point where Nikolai reported the stop was at and before the helicopter lands, you’re already on your feet.

You hopped out and Nikolai had rushed to get your remaining forces inside. “Where is he, Nikolai? Tell me,” you charged. He looked frazzled. “Price is waiting for you outside the operating room.”

Without much word, you had hurried away, running down the crammed halls of the holdout. Whizzing past you were hundreds of eyes widening in fear of being trampled and voices yelling out in indignation, urging you forward.

You heard the captain before you saw him. Yelling out orders to any soldiers without tasks, he took complete charge. When he saw you, however, his distraught expression changed. Unlike any of the other soldiers, he hobbled as quickly as he could to meet you halfway. With two blackened eyes and enough bruises covering the majority of his skin, Price looked damn near dead.

“What’s happened?” you cried to him. He explained to you on your way to the makeshift hospital that Shephard had gone after them because “we knew too much.” In anger, you nearly grabbed the captain by his shirt and screamed in his face that that was hardly a reason for anyone to go after your beloved and your friends. Instead, you settled for squeezing the holt of your pistol like it was responsible for your pain.

The hall ended near where three old chairs sat unoccupied. Price gestured towards two wide doors before speaking. “That’s the room, love. They’ve been working all night.” He turned to speak into the comm which crackled with gunfire and yells. Before turning to rush down the hall, the captain puts a reassuring hand on your shoulder. “He’ll be out soon.” With that in mind, he left you to wait.

The waiting gave you time to think, to think of the possibilities of what could be, of what will be after all was done. Like a caged tigress, you paced back and forth outside the operating room. No one dared to stop you.

When the surgeons came out dragging their feet across the floor, your heart dropped through the floor. Without hesitance, you raced to the head doctor’s side and begged him to tell you whether or not your Johnny was still alive or not.

He nodded. You nearly fell to your knees in gratitude, but managed to keep it together when they began to move his bed to a room down the hall. Instinctually, you should have seen the foreshadowing when you followed behind the procession of nurses silently, but it didn’t strike you then.

In the cramped room, you got a much better look at him once the nurses left. The center of John’s chest was covered in gauze and medical tape, a light pink blossoming underneath. Bruises and cuts covered what else you could see of his body and face. Weeping wasn’t normal for you, at least not around others besides your family. However at this moment, you couldn’t stop yourself and the welled up emotions made you tremble.

Burying your face in your hands, you had cried at his sleeping side well into the night, only pausing when Price came to check on Soap. He had pulled up a chair next to you, apologizing for not being able to come sooner. Thin flesh colored bandages covered the cuts on his face. He looked worse than you had ever seen him, but ignored it to not make him self conscious. The captain wasn’t a man of many words, only speaking when he felt he needed to. But, if he knew that his appearance made you uncomfortable, he would make it very clear that he wasn’t here for you anyways.

You’d prefer to have him with you anyways.

With the consistent hum of Soap’s many monitors, the captain began to drift against the wall. He was quiet, but you noticed his flinching like he was being beaten or electrocuted.

You did your best to slip your own jacket off without disturbing the captain, careful not to move too quickly while removing your bulletproof vest. Cautiously covering him with it, you watched Price tuck his head inward to the warm coat. For a second, he looked more like a tired old man rather than a feared military captain.

Instead of resting, you quietly walked to the window. The land around the base was in chaos. Fires shone brightly throughout the city and many of the windows in the buildings were dark, but up above a brilliant blanket of stars covered the world.

A groan came from the bed and you looked over your shoulder to see John stirring. His eyes rolled back and forth underneath his swollen eyelids and you perched yourself at his side. Like a frog, his legs stretch out to their full length to flex the wound up muscles. He attempts to try to do his arms too, but his fingers tremble as he tries.

They fall limp at the sides of the bed, so you lift them back up to rest on his stomach. Soap’s as pale as a ghost and his forehead is coated in sweat. Though he’s not moving much anymore, his face is still contorted in a grotesque expression of pain.

You’re not a nurse. Never would be in this lifetime, at least. But, you do have enough training and first aid experience to determine that wiping his face would be okay. Tenderly, you take a small tissue dampened with water from a nearby faucet and begin to clean the exposed bits of his visage. Some of your tears fall and wet the bandages on Soap’s chest and you do your best to stop crying.

When you’ve finished there, you wash your hands and run your fingers through his hair. Your hands are cold and dry, a contrast from the warm clamminess of his body. With the limited amount of medicine around, you really hope that he doesn’t get an infection.

Exhausted from the events of the day, you slide off into a chair beside the bed and allow your mind to run itself to sleep.

Price wakes you up in the morning. It is not an easy rising because you have to hurry to your next position in fending off the invading armies. However, you’re allowed to return that night when he flutters into consciousness.

-

When Soap awoke, he did his best to center on a point in the ceiling.

“How long have I been out?” he asked. You leaned closer to say, “Don’t worry about that right now. Just try to rest. Please.” Snapping to attention at your voice, he tries to focus. You can tell that he’s struggling by the flutter of his eyelids.“You’re here…but how?” he asks.

Gently, you reached for his hand and brought it up to your cheek. “I survived Shephard’s men turning on me. We stole a helicopter and flew here after Price informed us about what happened. You’ve been in surgery for the past fifteen hours.”

John’s calloused thumb rubs through your lashes as he turns the thought over in his drug induced mind. His eyes widened when he figured it out and two heavy arms lashed out to pull your face against his. Planting your hands on the bed to prevent him from dragging you down, you hold your weight to stop him from being hurt. Between the frantic kisses, he muttered to you, “You’re …you’re here.”

You kissed him one more time before responding, “I would always come back to you. Don’t even think for a second that I wouldn’t.” He did his best to glue you to his side but in his drowsy state, he couldn’t move more than a little bit without contorting in pain.

You pulled away from his grip and returned to the chair beside the bed. “No, John. The wound is too fresh.” Pouting like a child, he dramatically tosses his head to look away from you. You sigh, but thank the heavens that at least this little bit of his personality stayed intact.

All at once, exhaustion drowned every desire to do anything more and you laid your head down on the side of the bed. Soap starred as you did so, watching while his blue eyes drooped and he fell asleep under the influence of his drugs. You don’t remember what happened next, but you do recall feeling the calmest you’ve felt in a long time.

Nearly a month and a half later, the remainder of the disavowed Task Force 141 had been allowed to start work again around the old Soviet base. John spoke with the surgeon, reassuring him that he was ready, though the surgeon was adamant about not sending him out again.

So, Captain Price came up with an alternate plan to bypass all of the surgeon’s warnings. Soap would be sent out on small jobs, not fully inducing him into the mindless blood soaked hills of the battlefield. He would have to learn how to operate again.

Not to mention, the countries of the world were still hunting you all down and to protect yourself, you would have to keep moving.

It bothered you quite a bit. Obviously, stabs as deep as this need time to heal and seal the cavity within. But Price assured you that Soap was safe and was slowly healing and John himself assured you that he wanted nothing more than to be out and about again.

They were wrong. John had been thrown back into the fray too hastily when the surface of the wound had barely started to heal. You had seen it when he removed his shirt to change clothing. The skin was still too pink and he hissed when something brushed against it too hard.

That was the reason why he died.

You didn’t hate that he made this decision for himself; you knew he knew what he wanted, though the logical part of you knew you should have begged him not to push it.

If you hadn’t been separated from the group, you could have saved his life. Could have done something.

Price blamed himself for Soap’s death more than anything, though. He was there with him the whole time and suffered for it. The Captain had never apologized, but expressed his sorrow through an act of contrition of watching over you. You knew that he did it for Soap and not for you, but you hoped that he would also come to care for you too.

A whole lifetime had passed since you had admitted that you wanted to build on your relationship. Together, you had built a world of beauty and wonder, but now that John was gone, you weren’t sure what to do now that your dreams had crumbled.

Your legs had started to go numb from sitting on the floor for so long and your back was starting to hurt, so you stood to stretch out.

The radio chirped multiple times. For about ten minutes, you had been sitting there not moving and now the nurse thought you were dead.

“I’m here. Just stopped for a moment,” you proclaimed. The team let out a deep breath, “Oh, good. We were worried that you were out.”

You paused. “Don’t worry. I’m okay.”

The wood of the windows creaked in the bright heat of the sun.

Before you walked out the door never to return again, you glanced back at John’s body. He looked as if he were asleep, but you knew he would never awake again.

You knelt to say goodbye.

“I don’t want to do this. I’m so mad at you for leaving me. But, you need to rest and I’m not going to be with you for some time,” you told him, eyes burning. “I will miss you. I don’t know how you did it, but you found your way into my heart and I let you carve out a space for yourself. You have changed me. For better or worse, I don’t know. And I find that I don’t care.”

With a heavy heart, you stood and kissed the cold skin of his forehead. “I love you. I always will,” you whispered to him.

Your hand laid on his as you stepped away, every pace towards the door ripping a wider hole in your soul. The sun blazed into your unguarded eyes and a breeze blew through the square. But before you could step out, you turned back one last time. Bright tears rolled down your cheeks, soaking into the dusty wooden flooring.

For a moment, you questioned your own fortitude. Could you really leave all of this behind, knowing that you had felt something so ardent that it could only be equated to nirvana? But a bloom of bravery and hope bled itself into the cracks of your heart. If you didn’t walk out this door now, you would run back to your dead soldier’s body and languish in this old house. He wanted you to live. And living wouldn’t happen here. So you walked out into the street and stood watching a dragonfly twitter on a tilted telephone pole.

Beauty still managed to exist here despite the ugliness of humanity. That was a miracle unto itself.

You sat down on the busted hood of a car, marking the point on the map for a dead body. In a click, the comms buzzed under your hand to communicate. “Awaiting at Point S for evac. I have a dead 141 soldier with me in need of a body bag.”

The radio crackled and in the background, you could hear the rumble of the medical caravan echoing through the quiet city.

The comms went silent and you basked in the warmth of the sun contrasted by the cool breeze. There wasn’t much to do but sit and wait, so that’s what you did.

Out of the corner of your eye, the nurse ambled into the square, two cans resting in their gloved hands.

“Look at what I found,” they call. They hold up both hands to show two preserved jars of jam. You slide down a little bit. “Where’d you find those?”

They give you a full mouthed smile before showing you the cartoonish labels. “I found them in that old hotel over there. There’s a pantry full of food that’s still okay to eat. Do you think we can let the other medics know when they get here?”

You nod and take the proffered jar from their hands. The glass hadn’t shattered, in some miraculous stroke of luck and you ran your fingers over the grooves making a design on the side.

Strawberry. A typical favorite for many in normal times, but a rarity now. Nobody you knew had the time to grow them regularly, and the price for them became steep.

A loud pop echoed through the square and you startled up. The nurse had opened their can of jam and was now happily digging through their satchel for an issued spoon.

Once they had it, they scooped some of the near completely black jelly and shoved it into their mouth. A great big sigh of joy echoed as they had a taste of something that they hadn’t had in a long time.

They shared the glass jar with you and you also pulled out your spoon. Passing it back and forth, the two of you shared the blackberry jam as you waited for the trucks to come and get you.

When the caravan pulled into the square, the head medic got out and beckoned for you to come.

“Are there any civilians or survivors?” he asks. “Yes, but they’re soldiers and are mobile,” you say. “They’re headed towards the base, so tell your guards not to fire on them.”

He nods, assuring you that they will be taken care of. You start to walk away to help in packaging the dead and make it about half the distance that you traveled from the building to the hood before the medic calls to you.

The medic motions towards a vehicle near the entrance of the center that was still turned on. His voice raised, he cried, “Price called in. He’s waiting for you in Paris.”

You nod and board the carrier back to the base. As your driver begins to pull out, you watch as the nurse turns to wave goodbye and you send a small smile their way.

The driver mutters something about being tired to their neighbor in the front and they continue towards the base. As they continue along the road, you tug at your fingers and look out the window. Though you would be cleaning the majority of the time that you were with Price, you were still anxious to see him again.

•

Paris was just as pretty as you remembered, even if it was in shambles. Through the window of your troop transport, you could see the open fields blend into the city limits, and the sheep that ran at the dragonfly hum of the helicopter.

The scene was almost too nostalgic to not be shared with anyone, especially not with Soap. You thought about the store with the white dress. Would it still be there even after the attacks? Maybe it was. Either way, you would find out sooner or later.

The carrier touched down at the airbase and the small figure of Price approached at a reasonable speed.

As the bay doors opened, you paused to look back at the window that displayed the green field behind you. The captain called, “Are you ready?”

You nod at him and draw your attention down to the hand holding the stock of your rifle. For so long, you had waited to come back to this place, but never alone. Now you’re here, but for a completely unrelated reason than what you originally wanted to come back for.

“I’m ready.” Price grabs the separate bag that sits by your feet as he walks up. To not startle you, he nudged your side gently. “Let’s go then.”

He walks down and you follow with a heavy heart.

-

Returning home was bittersweet. You found your parents and your siblings all still alive, and you promised that together you would help to rebuild a new home. They were happy about that, but even more so, they were proud that their child had survived through many hardships that they would most likely never know about. They could still see that something weighed heavily on your shoulders and did their best to support you in getting back to the UK.

Your family was concerned how you would do on your own, especially when you received a message from Captain Price inviting you back for the funerals of Ghost, Roach, and Soap. Your family made sure that you were aware that you could always come back to them before you left. You assured them that you would be alright.

There wasn’t much of anything of your personal items that you needed to take back home with you, so the bag with your civilian things was relatively light compared to all of your combat gear. You would be taking it back with you, though you wanted nothing more than to abandon it in an alleyway somewhere.

From the airport, the long drive towards your destination began as the skies opened up. The storm cast a gloomy ambience over the Scottish countryside as you pulled into the driveway of your simple home.

When you made it home to your little house, you did your best not to dwell on the dust covering the shelves and cabinets. Nobody had touched this place in a long time. A very long time indeed when you looked at the calendar that had marked when your last deployment would be.

The cottage was quiet apart from the wind and rain, and you found that you hated it. It would take some time to get used to being alone, but you could do it. Just take care of yourself and it would all be okay. You started by doing your best to clean. That wasn’t easy.

Besides there being huge dust bunnies everywhere, small critters had found their way in and made themselves at home. The two apples that were left on the kitchen counter swarmed with rot and fruit flies, so you threw the whole basket holding them away.

Every part of the house had to be scrubbed and polished and without a doubt, would take at least a week. A schedule for what to tackle each day was drawn and you paused when you remembered the closet.

That would involve the most crying, so you set it for the coming Friday.

•

This neighborhood you lived in had not been hit by bombs or gunfire, but the people were dramatically affected by the war. Children played in the street together, but would scatter if something loud came close. The adults weren’t in much better shape either. They too had seen the horror of war and would stay up late into the night, unable to sleep or dream. Dreaming was meant for a happier time.

Still, they labored in bringing fresh food to the marketplace that you wandered through. Piles of sweet apples, cartons of berries, and tables of fresh bread were scattered through. It was the most food that you had seen in a long time. Purchasing a rather thick loaf of bread, you place it in your bag and continue onward. Two young boys chattered to each other as they walked past you and you paused to scan the scene. These two smiled and laughed at a joke the other made. The world was starting to heal again.

•

Price met you on the day before the funeral for Simon and Gary at a peaceful park closer to where he and Mrs. Price had now retired. He had been slowly healing, looking drastically less thin than the last time you saw him. But his steps were a bit slower and his voice was quieter when he spoke.

“Good to see you back. Are you ready to go?” You walked with him towards the park you both would be tracing. “Yes.”

A semi comfortable silence settled over the two of you. On one hand, the two of you had suffered so much and to bring it up would cause pain to the other. But, on the other, there were questions and many things that needed to be said.

So for the sake of your friend, you extended an olive branch.

“Have you been doing okay?” you say quietly.

He looked at you, crows feet furrowed more heavily than ever.

“I’m alright. How about you?”

You watch the green pond where multicolored mallards clean themselves.

“Okay. Just not sure what comes next.”

He hummed. Captain Price was not one for small talk but it seemed even he was not sure how to approach what needed to be said.

“What will you do now that it’s over?” you ask.

Price keeps walking, but says, “I’m not really sure yet.”

He looked thoughtful, but tired too.

“I think I would like to just rest for a while. I’ve grown old and haven’t held a normal job in a long time. I don’t even know what constitutes normal anymore.”

You nod in agreement and look out over the pond. The ancient willow trees circling the pool whispered with the breeze and you looked to a nearby field where a group of workers picked the rich peaches of the orchard and dumped them into wide baskets.

Price carefully spoke, “And what will you do?”

You turned to sadly smile at him as the pavement began to climb up a hill.

“Not sure. Might go pursue one of my other interests. But I do agree that some time to rest would be nice. Lord knows we’ve earned it.”

Price nods and at the top of the hill, he pauses to gaze out. You stand at his side and close your eyes to relish in the freshness of the breeze.

When you open your eyes, a pink and blue haze drifts out of view as you adjust to the brightness of the world around you.

The Captain motions to a nearby bench. You walk and sit next to him. In this peaceful environment, the tension has eased drastically.

He starts first, and your hackles raise with what he says. “I don’t know how to say this to you. But I’m sorry. I should never have thought he was ready.”

You fidget to stop the angry tears from spilling again. “It’s hard to forgive. He listened to you- trusted you. And you willingly allowed him to go out there when you knew he wasn’t well.”

“You know every time he saw you, he saw the man that he considered his mentor, his friend, his brother, his second father? All of those titles shouldn’t belong to you, but they did and still do.”

Price takes it all in stride, but with every word that is spat from your lips, his heart dies inside him a bit more. You know this and want to further his pain so he could feel what you felt, but when he hunches over just a degree, you know that he felt more than you knew.

“And though I don’t understand why he cared about you til the end, I know Soap would have wanted me to watch out for you as well. He would have told me to do it for him. So in that spirit, that’s what I’ll do.”

John Price looks up and you force eye contact. If forgiveness could be expressed physically, you hoped it was this. His eyes are red as tear tracks begin to streak down his cheeks.

You’re certain that his face matched yours, so you shut your eyes in hopes to tamp down the spilling drops of human grief.

They don’t stop though.

So, you cry together.

-

Ghost and Roach’s funeral was going to be an event that you would hate.

Both would be laid in Brookwood, a closed casket because of the grotesque nature of their bodies.

Still, throughout the war, you had hoped that they were still alive. Maybe in another life, they would have survived and they wouldn’t have to go through the torturous death that killed them.

As it started, you held the flowers that would be thrown on their graves in a death clench. The juices of the perishing flowers filled the crevices of your nails and produced a sticky, sickly smell that clung to your hair as the clergyman spoke.

When it was your turn, you tossed the flowers like Shephard threw the lit cigar and prayed that their families would forgive.

-

Some days it seemed like nobody wanted to acknowledge the war.

There were nights when the sadness left you broken and you curled up. The PTSD sometimes became too much to handle and you nearly cracked the screen of your phone calling one of your family members.

For years to come, Mrs. Price would become a great friend. After Price had passed, the old woman had no one else to take care of besides herself. You worried about her and sometimes you wondered why you did. Was it because she had also lost her life companion? Or was it because you inherently knew that you needed each other in a time like this?

Either way, you spent more time around her, meeting for coffee at a little corner shop, inviting each other for little excursions around the city

On a particular outing, Mrs. Price had brought something that she said she found while rooting through some of her husband’s old things. She had tied a bow of silky white ribbon around the notebook that you had seen many times being toted around by your lover. Price’s wife explained then that the captain had wanted this given to you after his death.

It had accompanied Soap just about everywhere, and when he had down time, he could be seen scribbling away at one of the pages. John had no doubt poured bits of himself into it, you were sure.

Later that night in the safety of your own home, you had pulled out the notebook. The leather had small points of weathering from being handled so much, in the shape of his hand.

If you opened the book, the memories so carefully stored away would be dragged back out. You stayed sitting at the table til the early morning hours, the cries of dogs echoing late into the night. When you went to bed, you rested your head on your pillow and cried.

The morning came too quickly. You didn’t have work, but you still had chores and errands to run. The chickens and your donkey needed to be fed and cleaned up, then from there, you would need to run to town to gather some extra feed and fertilizer for your garden. The book could be left for tonight. You left it on the table and walked to the other room.

•

After a simple dinner with Mrs. Price, who was staying in Scotland for three weeks, you flipped the lights on in your kitchen.

The notebook stared back as you pulled out a brand new bottle of wine. Pouring it, you downed the first glass and prepared a second. Lord knows, you’d be needing the courage to make it through.

Slamming the bottle and glass down, you clawed at the book until it slid over. Prying up the cover like you would a crate, you pulled at the pages and they crinkled a bit under your lead hand.

The few blank pages opened to piles of notes on every blank surface.

In the book, sketches of almost everyone you had fought with sat inside. A doodle of Captain Price with a little caption, a tiny drawing of Roach with antennae, Ghost playing with a rubix cube, a half finished piece of Yuri, and even one of the layouts of a building. They lay between notes, immortalizing everyone you had lost. Cheeks damp with tears, you threw the book down.

The notebook had turned on its pages and realizing your mistake, you rushed over to pick it up. None of the pages were bent when you flipped through them, but a drawing you hadn’t seen caught your eye.

Brushing back to it, you nearly dropped the book again. Two full pages dedicated just to you opened. There were drawings of you sitting on a bench reading a book, you passed out against the wall of a helicopter, you petting a stray cat that he knew you loved, but a mirror image of yourself staring back at you was what caught your attention. Smears of shiny silver graphite smudged under John’s watchful hands had formed your face.

It became evident that what he saw was not a woman worn down and tired from war.

He saw beauty. Each feature was decorated with a detail that could only be described as being loved.

Beside it rested a side note that nearly buckled your legs. It said, Every dream I ever had.

You staggered to the hallway with the book still in hand, dragging yourself to the bathroom where you splashed frigid water on your face.

Practically reverting to the way you were just after his death, you collapsed on the floor and did your best to focus on the nails of the wooden floors. What would he think if he saw you right now? Would you still be the woman drawn in soot? Would you still be what he dreamed of had he lived?

As you sat there in silence, you came to the conclusion that you had come to a forked path. You could dwell in the valleys of the past, pinned under the good memories you had. Or, you could try to build up your strength and climb out of the rockslide.

This would not be easy. Logic asked you to move on. But, your heart wished to hurt itself again and again. You wouldn’t let it.

•

There were times when you went to sit at his grave. There were new flowers placed there every week, marigolds, lavender, poppies, and the reddest tulips you could find. Though they were cleaned away regularly, you still brought them along with snacks that he liked.

There was another woman that frequented the cemetery more regularly than you did. The only difference was your age and the fact that she was heavily pregnant. At her wife’s grave, she would cry about being alone, about feeling lost, about not knowing what to do next. There was a kindred spirit of suffering between you and you did your best to let her grieve on her own. You weren’t in a position to give her advice.

Then she disappeared. She had gone to have her baby, and you knew that you wouldn’t be seeing her for a while. Still, you hoped that your graveyard companion would come back. And she did, this time not alone.

Gone was the big belly she had once sported and now a new car seat carrier came with her. The young lady never stayed too long, now having to worry about the wiggly infant that whined when he was too cold.

You were happy that she returned, but by no means were you envious of her situation. She was haggard and looked like a woman worked to the bone, kind of like yourself not so long ago. Which is why when she left with her baby, you cleaned and honored her wife’s grave by yourself.

Years of repeating the same cycle left both of you older. The woman’s son was no longer a tiny baby, but a young boy that talked endlessly to his mothers about what he learned in school that day.

It was endearingly domestic to see him grow larger by the week, the aurora of youth in every step he took. The mother grew too. She was doing better each time you saw her, a new spark lit under her. She was still sad, but time and responsibility heal.

It was on one of those rare occasions when the sun decided to peek out from behind the clouds that your regular routine had changed. The day was bright and the world smelled fresh from the night of rain before.

You had slept well the night before and praised the heavens for your good rest. The bakery down the street had a freshly baked loaf of bread cooling in the window and you purchased it for later.

All of the good things compiling together made the day feel happier and you dared to hope. Perhaps the girl and her son would be there.

Though the ground had the consistency of a wet sponge, you still decided to spread out a blanket to sit. The picnic basket hanging on your arm had been set out and its bright red and white pattern stood out against the somber hills of green.

Stretching out, you quietly prepare the fresh bread to be eaten together. A slice for him and a slice for you goes along with a happy bouquet of crisp wildflowers next to his quiet grave.

Before you eat, you tell him a bit about how you’d been and anything that crosses your mind. When he was alive, Soap enjoyed listening to your rambling because the military had taught you not to share your thoughts.

Another car pulled up and you perked a little bit. The woman hopped out and walked to the back car door to put her child down on the ground. She quietly admonished him when he got too loud with his ramblings and picked up her purse. The duo walked to the other side of the cemetery and sat down. The soft hums of their conversation lulled you to relax. They too soak in the drowsy warmth.

Eyes drawn to the sky, you silently relish in the feeling of the sun warming your face and turn to look back at your husband. “It’s a beautiful day today. Seems nice enough for a walk. Maybe I’ll go when I’m finished here.”

“Go where?” a high pitched voice asks.

Soldier’s instinct kicks in and you whip around to see who snuck up behind you. The woman’s son stands about a yard away from you and you take a closer look at what he’s doing. He holds a small ziplock bag of mini cookies, curiously watching you.

You release your breath and smile at him. “Just going to go for a walk, kiddo.” His big brown eyes narrow like he’s unsure if you’re telling the truth. When he deems that you are, he shrugs and looks at the headstone behind you.

“Who’s that?” he asks. You turn to where his pointed ogle was. “Ah, that is my husband.”

He tilts his head and pauses to mull over your words. “He’s dead?” the boy asks.

You nod slowly. “Yes.”

His face contorts into a skewed second hand sadness. “Why did he die?”

You pause, unsure of how to give the boy the truth without telling him too much.

Successfully deciding what to say, you respond, “He was a soldier, my dear. His job was to protect those that needed him.”

“But, why though?”

He walks a few steps closer. “Well, think about it this way. You have people that you love like your mom, right? They care for you. He had people like that too,” you explain.

You can see the wheels turn in the boy’s head about what you just said. He asks, “So, he wanted to protect you?”

The air feels suddenly thin, and it makes you feel light headed.

“He did.”

The boy steps a bit closer to the grave. “Can you read what it says to me?” You smile at him through the strangulation and begin to read aloud.

“In memory of John “Soap” MacTavish. Beloved son, brother, and husband. Your sacrifice will be remembered for years to come.”

A silence spreads over the lonely gravesite. You watch the boy’s reaction carefully to see what he does. He doesn’t give much away, but rubs at his eye.

The little one then reaches into his bag of cookies to pull one out. He says, “Do you think he’d want a biscuit?”

A laugh bubbles from the bottom of your chest, true joy at the sweetness of the child’s statement.

“Yeah, I think he’d like one, kid.”

The boy smiles and puts the little treat down on the grave next to the slice of bread.

His mother huffs and puffs behind you, crying to her child to not run off on her.

She puts her hands down on her knees and pants from her run. With a hoarse voice, she tells you, “I’m so sorry, miss. My son doesn’t usually wander off from me and I was just distracted, and I’m just really sorry.”

You dismiss her anxious rambling with a smile and a wave.

“No harm done. Your son was just asking about my late husband.”

Her chest falls as she relaxes. “Oh, thank you for making sure he didn’t run off.”

“No worries, sweetheart,” you say. “I’m just glad that he’s okay.”

The young mother motions for her boy to come stand by her side, and he willingly goes to stand with her.

Curiously, she makes eye contact with you.

“You lost your husband?”

The boldness certainly passed to her son, you noted.

“I did. And I assume you also lost someone?”

She nods and a fresh bout of tears fills her eyes. “Yes, my wife. I miss her quite a lot.”

You nod as the woman puts herself out there.

“My name is Isla. This is my son Elias.”

You kindly tell the younger woman your name, and offer her a place to sit and some of your bread.

She declines the bread, but her son asks for some. You cut off a large chunk and pass it to him and his mother leaves to gather their items. After walking back to where your blanket is, she drops down beside where her child sits, happily wolfing his way through a thick slice of bread.

For the next hour and half, you spend some time talking to her. You learn that she has no other family in this country besides her son and that her boy is in the first grade.

All the while, Elias interjects little tidbits of information about his favorite foods, his friends, his activities. For the first time in a long time, you feel a bond of friendship begin to creep in.

•

Throughout your years, the pain of losing your love haunted you everyday. But the joy you felt when taking care of your family built itself into a home for everyone within your neighborhood.

The local children flocked to the field beside your home and played with animals that loved their attention. The adults would come spend afternoons and evenings with you, relishing in the fact that there was someone else there that understood their loneliness and suffering.

The few veterans that survived sometimes visited to speak about their experiences, and they asked about John often. You were pleased that his memory lived on, but were still sad.

You knew you would meet again someday. And that day did come, simply later than you expected.

Your family gathered at your bedside when the hour drew near. And although you knew they had traveled a long distance to see you, you searched for other faces besides theirs.

And you found them.

Price’s iconic silhouette was outlined in the darkened doorway, Sandman and his crew peered over the crowd, Roach hovered beside your weeping sister, and a serene Ghost stood as a silent sentry to your bedchamber. But where was Soap?

The strings of life were quickly snapping, but you cling to them with what little strength you had. Please let him be here. Don’t let me die alone.

You sense a new presence in the room over the flutter of your family members. They’re crying and stroking your arms, but you aren’t focused on them anymore.

Scanning each face, you frantically search any and all corners in the room. Where is he?

A light, warm dragging sensation trails along the length of your upper arm, and a familiar smile enchants you all over again.

As beautiful as the day you had first met him, he’s knelt as he did many long years ago.“John?” you murmur.

Excitement and fear sparks trepidation in your failing heart. “I’m scared. I’m really, really scared.” His expression curves in reassurance, though he never speaks.

At your other side, a voice chimes in. Elias.

“Auntie, who are you talking to?”

You smile at your husband who grows more vivid with every passing second. “Don’t worry, honey. I’m only talking to myself.”

The older boy’s eyes squint in a concerned manner, not seeing that you were happy to be where you were.

Closing your eyes, you straightened your spine and took a deep breath.

Inside your heart, you knew that you wouldn’t last much longer when your machines started to beep in rapid succession. A bone deep ache spreads through your body, hurting more than any injury you sustained during the war.

As the last of a dying breed, it wouldn’t be long now.

And it wasn’t. Death was just like falling asleep.

Perhaps there was dreaming. Was there singing? Who would know?

•

The tarmac is brightly lit by huge overhead lights, drowning out some of the less bright stars. As the troop carrier bumped over the potholes in the road, you looked at each of the unknown faces that sat with you. A few spoke softly to each other, but nothing loud enough to be heard from where you sat. A poet had probably written about this same situation; something about human solidarity and alienation and all of that. You didn’t really care, though.

Over the comms in the vehicles, a crackling voice announces that you have about a minute till you meet your new team. Laswell had taken care to notify you about your new position and made sure to tell you about each specialized individual who would make up this motley crue.

There were three Englishmen (one being your captain) and a Scotsman. They were rumored to be the best of the best, efficient and strong in a fight. There wasn’t a doubt in your mind that they would do their job and they would do it well.

The truck slows as it turns for entry and you mentally prepare for meeting your new compatriots. As it pulls to a full stop, the other soldiers gather their bags and split to find their new commands.

You’re the last one out. The whole base is alive with camouflaged people running back and forth, helicopters landing, and loud crowing from the speakers scattered about. Between the fray and frenzy, you catch sight of the grim reaper standing near the back of another vehicle.

Laswell had described the man that you were to look for and this soldier fit the description of Lieutenant Ghost fairly well. Approaching, you hefted your bags higher on your shoulder as another man started to speak to him. He clapped the lieutenant’s shoulder heartily and turned to rejoin the group he had been with.

Trotting towards the vehicle you supposed was your next ride out, he glanced your way and your eyes met. His expression changed from one of confidence to something pensive and unsure. He didn’t pause though, and didn’t turn back to look at you.

But, in the quick moment that you had with him, there was a spark of passing recognition about his face. Something about his facial structure, or the way he held himself made you double take. Somewhere, you remembered seeing him… or someone that looked like him.

He would change your life. Just a thought.

I effing love platonic fics 😭🥹

Legacy

I have to do everything myself. /nm

ship: Captain Price x filo!141!reader

summary: running away from your birth family and then using a new name to enlist in the military came back to haunt you… of course it does.

a/n: I awakened my daddy issues and create a little something for the platonic dad Price lovers of the fandom.

tags: sfw. angst comfort. platonic dad Price. reader is a member of 141. post-mw2 (2022). Price calls reader “kid” but they are an adult (Price is just a dad). John Price being a good dad because look at him he’s literally dad shaped, Filipino words, Price speaking Filipino

Keep reading

CW- military type stuff, some blood, alluded sexual content

Tears have always been expensive.

For all the time you had known him as a fellow captain, he possessed so many wonderful qualities that made him a wise leader, a valued companion, and an even sweeter lover. He held so much of your heart in his broken body. But what you admired the most was his innate strength that you trusted as you would your own heart.

“Please, please, don’t leave me here,” you begged into his hand. “Don’t leave me all alone.”

His grip tightened on you, as if to steady himself in the steady waves of pain that flowed from his side. “Hold on. Keep holding on.”

You could hear Captain Price barking out commands for a medic to rush to the table, but you didn’t care.

Your hand was pressed to the pulse point against his wrist while Yuri watched from afar. It stuttered, but held true. Between groans, you heard Soap speak once more to you.

“Sing to me, lass.”

You lifted your head from where his hand held it. “What?”

“Sing for me. I’m going to die anyway. Before I go, I want to hear you sing to me.”

You paused to look at him. His eyes shone with the welled truth of his unspoken love.

You nodded softly before asking him, “What song would you want for me to sing for you?”

His soft eyes crinkled like he was smiling. “You know the one.”

Your heart hurts then. You knew exactly what he wanted you to sing but, you knew if you sang it, it would mean that this would be truly over.

“Not that one. Please, anything but that one.”

He squeezed your hand in his clammy grip before replying, “It is my wish. Please grant it.”

“Okay.”

You straightened your spine and readied yourself for the pain that was to come. Despite the bustle of the room, there was never a more tender silence in your life than this.

One last time, you looked for him to tell you he was ready. He blinked and quietly, you began to hum the tune.

“How unfair, how unfair they’ll sing as they dance across the darling rooftop wreck

He’ll trip and she’ll pretend not to have seen,

Burying her head into his chest and clinging to the moment, ‘where have you been?’

She’ll whisper ‘I’ve waited oh so long for you to come’

And as the stars above them hum and hear them he’ll turn to her and say ‘that’s what she said..”

You paused to move his hand from your cheek to rest at the side of your neck. In death, you prayed he would not remember the words of the song itself, but the way the vibrations of your love rose and fell for him.

“It’s not fair, it's not fair how much I love you

It’s not fair cos you make me ache you bastard

And she’ll say

'Oh how, oh how unreasonable

How unreasonably in love I am with everything you do

I’ll spend my days so close to you cos if I’m stood here

Then I’m stood here

And I’ll stand here

I’ll stand here with you.”

Your eyes dropped to where a tiny diamond softly shone atop John’s glove. It rolled down the fabric, losing liquid as it fell, til it slipped onto his skin.

The little droplet spread through the invisible crevices of his scarred forearms, laying on him like a tiny hug.

Every part of me wants him to stay.

John’s hand drew you out of your thoughts as he moved to brush away the droplets on your cheek. Silently, he looked at the space on the side of your face.

A bittersweet smile spread across his face. “I’ve never had someone cry for me like this, A ghràidh,” he said. A cough rattled through his broken body and when the captain held John’s head up, underneath was a rapidly spreading puddle of blood.

Yuri stood back for a few seconds, watching the table like a silent sentry.

Price quickly laid his friend back down and screamed for a medic again.

The glass of the windows was blown to pieces and bullets whistled around you.

You could care less.

What mattered right now laid on a diplomat’s repurposed hickory table, bleeding from a wound that would never heal.

“Oh God, please…I can’t lose you too,” you softly cried to him.

John’s normally glass blue eyes glittered a soft cornflower through the tears.

He spoke in a whisper, hoping you could hear him over the roar of the firefight.

“I had a dream once that you wore the white dress that we saw in Paris… and it was me waiting for you. We would live together… and I hoped that one day, we would have a family to care for.”

He paused for a moment to cough.

“I want…to live that life. But, even more so…I want you to live.”

An ugly sob that encapsulated your misery escaped your throat and the burning in your eyes mixed into the blood on the table.

John turned to the captain that was still actively begging for his friend to stay alive.

He spoke, “Price…Makarov knows…Yuri.”

You don’t know what was the first mark that John had finally passed. It was either the wail that the captain let out or the limp grip of a hand that was still tucked in yours.

The memory of what happened next doesn’t come easy, but Price would tell you later on that he had never heard a scream that scared him quite like yours.

A soldier approached you about leaving right away. Their grip guided you towards the stairs and to the evac point, but your heart was a hundred miles away right then. With every step, you cried for them to let you go back to him, to be by his side, to let you die of a bullet wound. So you would not be alone.

Underneath your sternum, a searing pain started to spread like wildfire through a dry forest. It burned through your organs, submerging your core into the terrible inferno and you groaned at the torturous pain growing within. The soldier guiding you down the stairs glanced over, concerned at the hunch in your spine growing more prominent.

He sped up, but held you closer.

The captain stood over a collapsed Yuri who was explaining what Makarov had said, and quite frankly, you did not care.

The man you loved was dead by the hands of a slimy bastard and you would make sure that he felt the chasm that he opened in your heart.

Not even a week later, you were sent back out with what remained of the 141.

The plan was simple, but clearing the building was hard.

With every bullet you shot, bloodlust and a thirst for revenge coursed in your veins, rushing with power. You rushed the hotel with a furious vengeance, men loyal to Makarov collapsing under the weight of your intent. They were thrown against walls and beaten with the fire that swallowed your grieving heart whole.

But the anger you felt was no match for a helicopter.

Perhaps it was fate. Perhaps it was a chance, but you were thrown against the wall, knocked unconscious.

Yuri did his best to wake you with what little time was left and the two of you stumbled to the roof, a four legged beast made of determination for revenge.

And when you made it to the top, Yuri raised his gun with the intention to kill.

In the end, it was Yuri that died from two gunshots. Makarov had almost hit you before Price pulled him down and slammed him into the cracking glass. The noose that was wrapped around his neck caused Makarov to thrash.

Before the dark curtain that was starting to layer your eyesight could settle again, you picked up the handgun that lay nearby and did your best to aim at the glass.

For John.

The glass spider webbed under your bullets.

A fuzzy darkness enveloped your vision.

A slow thudding pulsed within your head, audible if you concentrated hard enough. For a second, you thought you were dead. But, the sensation of thin cotton trapping you and the cool temperature of the room made you realize you were still very much alive. Comfortable, even, but that was really a stretch. You didn’t really want to open your eyes to see where you were, and you made no move to do so until situational awareness demanded that you try. When you did, bolts of pain scratched at the insides of your skull and you closed your eyes to stop it.

Warm tears helped to wash away the grittiness that persisted under your eyelids and you decided to try again. Slower this time, you patiently waited for your eyes to adjust to being used again before looking about the scene before you.

You laid in a hospital room, connected to many beeping machines that cluttered your bedsides. A curtain was pulled between you and your new roommate. They made no move, but the steady white noise of the heart monitor assured you that you were both alive. Clearly they were asleep, and you had no intention of waking them.

Everything around you smelled of a sterile cleanliness, even your own body. A quick look over to take inventory of what had been done to yourself came back with no results.

You wiggled your toes and stretched out your legs. The hands that had carried you through battle were opened and closed, and through it all, no new marks were born upon your skin.

A miracle.

Finishing observing yourself, you scanned your memory for where you were and how you got there. You don’t remember anything after the time you took your shot. No matter. If you were here, that meant Makarov had perished. Swearing to the heavens, you hoped that whoever killed him made it hurt. The little burst of hatred was gratifying, but taxing.

All of the energy you had after first waking up had sapped nearly instantly, giving way to a massive headache and a terrible dizziness. Settling back down, you accepted that this would be your first bit of rest in a long time. Ever since the war started, you rarely got a full night of sleep.

Gazing out the window, the light of the moon shone through to the right edge of your bed, luminous and full.

It was so beautiful, so lonely up there with no one but the stars as companions. The light that it shed toyed with your tired eyes.

Dim shadows danced in the corner of your room like a ghost of holy night. They came to your bedside and laid themselves beside you.

Their eyes shuttered closed and you followed them.

The second time you woke up, someone was holding your hand. The Captain. He sat reading a newspaper with a publication date from before the war started. Most of Price was fully intact, a badly bruised face and what looked to be a broken nose, but he was alive.

You squeezed his hand.

He looked at you and you swore that the man that sat next to you carried a burden so heavy that his soul could not hold it. He looked nothing like the teacher that had been a trusted companion to you.

His smile was still his though. Quietly he told you, “Don’t move too much just yet. You’ve been out of it for about a day now. You somehow only got a concussion out of that whole ordeal.”

You sighed before speaking. Your voice cracked and broke when you spoke. “Hurts like hell right now. My whole body aches for more rest.”

Price put the newspaper on the bedside table then brought his hand to cover his eyes.

“I know, I know. But we’ll be alright, love. It’s just you and me now.” He hunkered down in his chair again, taking a brief hiatus from his reading to relish in doing nothing.

Neither of you had had a chance to do that in a long time.

Left alone with your thoughts, you wondered when they would inevitably send you back out to gather the dead. They needed volunteers and nobody enjoyed handling corpses, so the government would hastily acknowledge the accomplishments of the 141 and would reassign the remaining two. They’d have to wait until you and the captain were released from the hospital. Till then, you would lay in your bed and take time to rest.

The lull of the captain’s quiet presence combined with the warmth of the sun shining onto your bed dropped you into a state of near limbo.

Before you could slip away though, you heard Price murmur to you one final thing.

“I think he saved you, girl. That boy must have done something to protect you one last time.”

Price’s calloused hand came to rest on your head. He stroked it in an uncharacteristic display of gentleness, but you were so tired that you did not mind.

“I’m glad he did.”

Sleep came easy then. You knew you were safe with Price and whoever else watching over.

About a week later, you were released from the hospital under the understanding that you would report to Price should any extra pain or injuries emerge.

When returning to the base, central command alerted you that your next job would be without Price.

They were sending you out to aid in the search and rescue teams, but unknowingly, they sent you straight back into the heart of Prague.

Price would be sent to retrieve the bodies of Ghost and Roach and when he had completed that task, would rendezvous with you in Paris.

It did bother you that you wouldn’t be with him, but he assured you that you would see each other again very soon.

Before you boarded the helicopter, Price grabbed your arm.

“Let me know if anything comes up. My comm lines are always open for you,” he said. The last few days had been anything but kind, and you gently patted his shoulder before replying, “Don’t worry about me, captain. Take care of yourself too.”

The ride over was nothing special, but it put you back into hopeful headspace that the ground wouldn’t be covered with the nameless bodies of dead civilians and soldiers.

You were wrong. The pavement was littered with bullet shells, military grade weapons, and dead bodies, all of them cold. Vehicles of all kinds lay about, some of them were covered in the rubble of collapsed buildings.

It became evidently clear that drifters had been wandering through the silent streets with the amount of ransacked stores you found. How sad it was to find some civilians stagger out of concrete buildings, asking for water and food because all of it was gone.

At one point you found a whole group of women and their children hiding in an abandoned mall. Each shop had a family packed inside, cramped. They watched you with fear in their eyes, trying to gauge whether or not you were a threat to their safety.

A translator medic explained that the war was over and that they could come out to the field hospital for food and water. Most of them sprang into action, gathering what they had left onto their backs, babies wrapped in cloth scarves around their chests. Others that were more cautious stayed back, but followed when they could judge that there was no threat.

Some of the women made eye contact with you, but they didn’t hold it for long. They were more concerned with making it to a safe place than with whatever you were doing.

Once the building was cleared out, you searched it for any stragglers. There was one.

A bundle of dirty blankets wriggled beside a curled up body in a sleeping bag. A lady and a tiny child.

You rushed over to check the vitals of the woman. Her pulse was close to nothing and her eyes barely showed any recognition of your presence. The baby was still very much alive and looked to be healthier than its half dead mother.

Another woman must have been taking care of the babe for her, but left the child in the mass Exodus.

The lady grabbed your hand. “My husband is a soldier. Is he alive?” she asked, teeth chattering. You held her hand tighter. “I don’t know him, miss. Let’s just try to get you out of here, okay?”

You called for backup and two other medics ran around the corner. With your help, they pulled her onto a stretcher and you picked up the baby.

When you arrived outside, nobody came to put the infant with its mother. You, an agent of war, stood unsure of what to do with the little one.

That was until a tiny hand tapped your chin. The baby did not cry at your tired face or wail when you shifted your arms. It didn’t even care that you jerked your head away when it tried to grab your tied back hair.

You swore that you had never met a more quiet, curious child than this one. Then the baby’s probing hands pulled on the loosened glove on your right hand.

The glove slid off and you struggled to hold the baby and pick up the fallen glove. The child babbled and you felt two little hands reach for your middle finger.

A silver anxiety ring with woven hearts jingled. The baby was fascinated by the sound it made when the rings rotated and for a moment you paused.

That ring had been a gift from your team as a group Christmas gift. They were gone now, but the moment was bittersweet when the child in your arms shrieked in joy at finding the big heart again.

Tears dropped onto the child’s head and it looked up at you, confusion in its eyes. You smiled sadly and for a moment, the little one stared like it was really seeing you.

Then, another medic walked to you and explained that she would take it from here. You handed the child over to her, and wiped away the wetness on your cheeks. The glove remained in your left hand and the ring stayed wrapped in the baby’s hands.

Countless more hours were spent clearing buildings and ushering in volunteers willing to help with moving the rubble.

Before you knew it, two days had passed. Your body withered under the exhaustion of the tough work, but the base you were staying at was well equipped for that.

Every night, you powered through your fatigue and washed away the dust that settled on your face. When you looked in the mirror though, the woman staring back was almost foreign.

The shape of your face was a bit more shallow. And the thin scratches from being thrown at the side of your neck had seen better days. But what scared you the most was the look in your eyes.

A grief so disconsolate reflected back to you. There had been no time to let yourself mourn, and frankly, you did not want to.

To accept that he was gone was to give into the heartbreak that every lost lover knew.

You couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t have wanted you to cry.

But you wanted to do it anyway.

There was so much pain welling up in your body, coming close to drowning you in it. Some days, misery clogged your throat and made it hard to focus on anything at all.

Those days made for the worst nights of all.

But you lived through it. You prayed for good dreams.

Other squads of medics had worked their way through the city with the intention of meeting you in the center. The capitol building was waiting there, and strangely enough, it was deemed as safe enough to not need as many guards as what was necessary.

You dreaded going back there.

So, you begged the head medic to let you sit this one sweep out. He explained that he couldn’t allow it. There just weren't enough people that could clear out buildings and he needed you on the ground.

That night, you lay on your cot inside the gym of the base, listening to the soft hum of other women and their children sleeping. By no means did you think it would change anything but, you hoped that wherever Soap was now, he would remember the song you gave to him.

That sentiment stayed with you till sleep found you.

When you awoke, the sky was still dark. Quietly, you slipped out of your makeshift bed and gathered your clothes to rush down to the empty locker rooms.

Once you had fully prepared for the day, you walked into the empty halls. Nobody was quite awake yet, so you wandered.

Each floor of the base was filled to the brim with civilians, soldiers, volunteers, and medics. Not one room was underutilized.

With no destination in mind, you went to the roof of the building. There wasn’t much up there, except an old office chair and what looked to be a pot for cigarette stubs.

The sky was starting to lighten, though, and with it a heavenly array of colors painted themselves.

Black faded into blue, which soon became pink, then red and orange, and finally, a shade of yellow before the sun emerged.

A warmth bloomed inside you despite the cold of the morning air and before you knew it, you heard doors and voices down below.

Down the stairs you went into the halls. Quiet murmurs echoed in the building and throughout the courtyard. You wouldn’t load into a vehicle for about another half hour, but you couldn’t help the way that beauty brought some hope.

Though the head medic could not allow you to stay on the base for this mission, he did advise you on breathing techniques to calm the mind and body.

You practiced those on the way to the drop off.

The drivers hurried on the road and they reached their destination all too soon.

You hopped out and hefted your weapon.

You would be sent to look through the buildings and streets of the quiet city. This would be your last day on this job before moving on to meet with Price.

Before they sent you off to look around the buildings, you looked up into the blue sky and watched a little bird fly overhead. If that bird could make it through the war, surely you could live through the day.

Perhaps this was a silent reassurance from the cosmos that the world would recover. That you would recover.

You went with your group and followed their directions to split without hesitation. As if the squad leader wanted to punish you, she ordered you to take your nurse to the area closest to the capitol building.

Your nurse was a newbie, a volunteer who hadn’t seen the full extent of the damage done to the city. Their eyes widened at the grotesque smattering of bodies, but it seemed they were more curious than cautious.

Without much proper training, they tried to wander away instead of staying with you. Under constant reminder, they reluctantly glued themselves to your side as you worked your way through the hotels and business buildings.

Inevitably, you found some civilians that the nurse promptly took care of. There were never any attackers, but there were the remains of Makarov’s forces.

A few of them seemed to recognize you and tried to avoid your dead stare as much as possible. They seemed to recognize that if you could kill them, you would and used the nurse to put some distance between you and them.

They cautiously watched the brand new gun in your hands swing back and forth, but they never tried anything.

Your merry travel buddy finished their job then motioned for you to lead the way. You kept going, but quickly recognized the way both of you were walking.

The resistance had set up headquarters in a lonely square, and it sent fear pulsing through your veins from the last time you were there.

Resistance fighters were strewn on the stairs and their bodies stunk. No doubt it would stink even more on the inside.

The nurse peeled off on the excuse to go check the rubble for somebody and you couldn’t care less.

Stepping over the bodies, you push on the door gently. Nothing exposed itself, so you stepped in. Bullet casings for one 1911 were scattered about the floor, like golden petals before a bride.

Not yet.

The rooms upstairs were mostly empty, except for four soldiers preparing to shoot you. Once you told them not to shoot as best you could, the men recognized you and allowed you to explain.

All of them were happy to hear that you and the captain had survived, but when you inquired about the rest of their teammates, their faces fell. They lost most of their squad, and wanted to know about Yuri and Nikolai.

Your hesitance told them much. “Nikolai is alive. He’s with Price right now. Yuri…did not make it,” you said. “I’m sorry.”

The oldest of the men spoke. “Don’t be. The good in this world is worth dying for.”

With nothing left to say, the fighters gathered their things and clunked down the stairs. The youngest patted your shoulder. He looked to be about eighteen, but spoke like a man. “Yuri was my brother. He would be happy to know that you are okay.” He proceeded for the door, but paused to look back with an expression that you had seen too many times.

Defeated. Unfocused. Sad.

It didn’t belong on one as young as he. “Your husband is cleaned up. I did it.” Your heart leaps in your chest at the boy’s admission. This young man had done something for you not knowing if you would come back. All you had done was taking his family member from him. In that moment, you wished that it was Yuri reuniting with his brother, not you. Softly, you approached the young man.

He did not flinch or back away when the glove on your hand came off, nor did he do so when your hand came to rest on the side of his face.

His eyes welled with tears and his throat bobbed at the tender touch. A moment passed before he burrowed himself into your palm.

You nearly wept at how young he looked and was. This child had gone through so much pain and loss in a war that was not his to fight. Most likely, he had not been touched like this since he was with his mother, wherever she was.

Silently, you thanked her for raising such a gentle, good natured boy. When his skinny arms trembled, you held them still.

“We each have lost someone we loved. Just…don’t let it consume you, okay? I promise that your brother loves you so much. He will always be there when you need him.”

The young man’s crystalline tears fell between you before he wiped his cheeks with his sleeve. You rubbed the boy’s shoulder.

Down the hall, a shadow in the shape of a man stood. “I think you should go, kid. Be happy,” you said, ushering the boy towards his older friend.

The larger man slung his arm over the boy’s shoulder and tucked his head low as they walked down the stairs.

With a deep breath in and one out, you followed their pathway down. There was a hypocritical desire to run from what was coming, but avoiding him would never bring closure. You had seen so much suffering both mentally and physically and experienced it as much as anybody else, but this was possibly the most terrifying feeling of trepidation ever. What would happen? Will something change? Were you afraid of that change?

As you stood at the bottom of the stairwell, the doorway gaped open, the shining sun blazing in. Unconsciously, you shivered under the warmth.

You prayed for a modicum of strength before setting your sights on the room ahead.

You were ready to meet your groom.

Slow and steady steps lead you through the walkway and there he was.

John’s body wore most of his military gear except for the vest. The 1911 rested in his hand on his chest and there was no blood on the table. There was none anywhere, not even on his boots.

The young man had cleaned him up very well. But it was clear that this man was dead.

His face had sunken in and his pallor was an unhealthy gray. The stiffness in the joints also were giveaways that he had been here for a while now. You sat on the floor at his side as he lay on the table. It hurt to see him like this.

The soldier you had met when you were both young is nowhere to be seen.

When you first arrived to meet your squad, Soap had been the first man that you truly noticed at the base. He was smiley, had beautiful eyes, and a wonderful physique. You were only human, a woman no less (even if you were desensitized). How could you refuse to look?

Price introduced you to each other as sergeants and the grin he gave you practically made you swoon(if you told her, your mother would have been over the moon that you found one you liked).

Then you actually met him.

He had been headstrong and cocky beyond belief, but he had the skills to back up all the silly claims that he made. That cockiness had been what originally drove you away from him, but it also drew your interest.

You didn’t want to be killed by his recklessness, nor did you want to be involved in whatever silly mistake he chose to do this time. However, you found him to be considerate and kind to anyone he met. Then, you both were given a higher rank and sent out on different missions with new people.

What little you did know of him faded to oblivion in the three years of assignments that you did as a lieutenant. However, you were both thrown for a moment when work brought you back together.

Like mixing together red and blue, somehow you both managed to clash perfectly. The reckless boy you remembered had grown into a responsible man (even more attractive now). But he still had the spark that had drawn you to him in the first place.

It had all started on the field. As teammates, you had to learn to get along with one another. As leaders, you tussled for power. As friends? You had a barely there budding relationship.

But all good things start small and as time went on, your bond grew deeper.

You learned more about one another through talking, joking or working together, and observing the other’s mannerisms. You fought together and fought each other. Whatever you chose to share with him he would share with you in turn.

In the end, both of you emerged with a better understanding of one another.

Conversations became longer and longer, texting each other when you had breaks between missions, meetups were far more frequent, and down times were spent around each other.

You remembered the first time he had invited you into his home. He lived about an hour away, so you went to the store before taking the train towards the nearby station. John had always mentioned wanting to try his hand at cooking, so you suggested that you cook dinner together. That was the first time you had placed your boots next to his.

You brought the groceries and John would provide his home and tools. Together you worked, one unit on the field and one in the kitchen too.

In the end, you successfully made some pasta and a mess of his kitchen, but it was absolutely worth it. After cleaning the dishes and kitchen together, you made him promise that the next time would be at your house.

Those happy meetings kept happening for years to come. It was during one of those when you finally decided to stop beating around the bush and address what had grown inside of you unknowingly.

What was a friendship was no longer strictly platonic, new feelings being poured into a fathomless bond. Your own emotions grew in strength whenever he was involved.

You would be sent to different places and would miss his quips about your L115A3 in the first fifteen minutes on the flight. Other times, he would be deployed and suddenly the whole idea of him being hurt would hinder your work ethic. And when you returned or he came back, he was the first one that you wanted to see.

It became common to see you two around each other, so much so that it allowed rumors to grow exponentially. Most of them were ridiculous and some were just not plausible. At one point, you even found a note balled up on the floor of the briefing room that two soldiers had been passing back and forth about whether or not the tension between their two captains was real.

There were whispers whenever you walked past the other female soldiers in the locker rooms. None of their intentions were ever malicious, just incredibly curious. It didn’t bother you that the others talked, in fact it was quite amusing. What bothered you was that neither of you were allowed any privacy at all.

The murkiness had made it hard to determine where the line between attraction and friendship began. You did know that you wanted more of him though. In whatever way that was.

Sadly, you also knew that there was a possibility that whatever you felt was not reciprocated and he wanted to keep you as a friend. You had never felt something like this for anyone before, and if you managed to screw this up, you would never forgive yourself.

But fortune favors the bold, so you decided to make a risky move and tell him what you felt. Good communication is key, after all.

It was after a meal with him that you jokingly touched on how lonely your home felt when it was just you there. John caught onto the poorly disguised emotion in a matter of seconds.

“Are… do you enjoy having me around?” he asked. You smiled a bit.

“You know I do. I have something to look forward to whenever you’re here.” He inhaled shallowly as you both strolled down the driveway to his car.

You waited a moment to hear what he had to say. “I can’t say that I don’t feel the same, lassie. I’d be lying to you.”

“Then don’t lie. Tell me your truth and I’ll tell you mine.”

He kissed you then, and you swore that the deities in the heavens above must have crafted this man from the most hallowed materials found on earth.

Moments of touch followed. There was no lust in the connection you shared, only a steady, sweet desire to pick up on all the lost time that had taken so long. His forehead rested against yours, cheek flushed a soft rosy shade, loving arms wrapped around you, and you finally understood why love was the muse of artists.

For the past four and a half years, the two of you spent even more time together, attentively nurturing the blooming tree that was your relationship. There were many firsts together and many hopes for the future. The largest one was marriage.

In your line of work, marriage wasn’t rare, but it most certainly was dangerous. If the enemies you fought found that their adversary had a partner, it could potentially put both of you in the crosshairs.

The discussion happened on a variety of occasions. Sometimes, it occurred in the middle of the night in the mess hall when neither of you could sleep, sometimes it was in the warm sleepiness of a winter afternoon.

John wanted to get married as much as you did, but both of you knew that it would change the carefully planned dynamic in the warzones. Work would always get in the way, but the future was never promised.

So, when he unwrapped himself from your bed to wake you up one night on break, you didn’t hesitate to follow him. He wove through the quiet rooms of the house, leading you to the kitchen. John had pulled a chair out for you to laze in as you waited for him to speak. He sat down as well.

His leg hopped up and down and he tapped his finger against the table in an erratic pattern. John looked everywhere but you. Instinctually, his activity signaled an anxious man that needed to be calmed, but about what, you weren’t sure. You lightly nudged the side of his leg with your foot to get his attention.

John paused to glance at you and his blue eyes caught a small ray of moonlight through the blinds. They burned and frothed with unknown intent threatening to spill out this night.

You did not break his stare. You feared that if you did, something inside of you would scream for doing so. He looked so inhuman in this lighting, like he was old in spirit but still retained all the wondrous strengths of youth. Then you registered a movement at his right shoulder.

He reached out to hold your left hand. You watched as he lifted it, running a calloused fingertip over the delicate bones under the tougher skin. John did not rush his exploration of your hand, rubbing the joints down to the nails in a non methodical manner. He reverently stroked your ring finger, only pausing when the skin filled with blood as he pressed down.

Both of you had been working together for a long time, so you could read the other’s body language like a book. Being around somebody for that long will do that to a person. But this time, he did something that you couldn’t predict.

Flipping your hand up, he compressed it against his own, as if comparing the lengths of your hand to his. Glancing at him, you find he is already watching for your reaction.

Unsure of what his desired outcome is, you press back against his hand to test the waters. He pushes back till your fingers spread and lock together.

You decide to break the silence at your kitchen table. “Is something wrong?”

John does not release your hand, but pulls it down to let it dangle between your chairs.

“No.”

That isn’t the truth, though. You can tell when you start to lose him again because there’s a furrow coming between his brows.

So you do the only thing you can and sit in a palpable silence til you can’t handle it anymore.

“Tell me.”

He stops staring into the shadows of your kitchen to reply to you. “Alright.” He paused like he was unsure of how to start next.

“ I…I feel that we’ve become something more than what I expected,” he said.

Your eyes narrowed, preparing for the sucker punch to the gut that he was about to deliver.

“We’ve been together for so long that this is just normal. You being in my house, in my office, in my kitchen, I mean. Everytime I look at you, I realize that you’ve just integrated yourself into this place naturally.” You recoil inside, feeling like a younger self being critiqued by a nasty partner that had nothing good to say.

“And now I can’t imagine a time when it didn’t have you in it. I’ve seen so much pain and suffering in the world and I understand the impermanence of life. So…what I’m trying to say is that this is the life that I want. Permanently.”

Oh. Oh.

He wanted something you could give. You chewed on his words a bit as John watched with bated breath.

“I think that can be arranged,” you started. “You’re certain you’re ready? I don’t want you to make an impulsive decision for my sake. I would stay with you even if you didn’t want that.”

He gripped your hand tighter as if that could prove what he was saying was true.

“More than anything.”

Soap watched as the wheels in your head turned, and then a smile he wanted to see forever spread across your lips.

“When? Because the kids will be pissed if we don’t tell them we’re getting hitched,” you say.

John’s eyes crinkle in a smirk.

“I was thinking right now. And don’t worry about them. They’ll forgive us eventually.”

Your eyebrows draw upwards. “Right now? Honey, it’s the middle of the night. And if you want to get married in a church, that would take, lets see… at least two to three months to arrange.”

He laughs. “Not right at this moment. But in the morning, we can go to the legal offices.”

You reply, “Well, I know one thing for certain.”

John curiously beamed at you. “And, what is that exactly?”

Calmly setting your expression in a facade that hides your intentions, you only tell him what you feel deep down.

“That I’m beyond excited to be Mrs. MacTavish.”

He can tell that there’s more. “That all?”

Your lips curve up into a clever smirk.

“And that you ought to take me to bed, Johnny.”

His eyes close and a soft groan stems in his throat before he stands and grabs your arm to lead you up the stairs.

“Bloody hell, woman. You’re a real piece of work.”

Your laughter drifted down the hall and that next morning, both of you were married.

But the sweetness of marriage soured quickly.

Tensions in all corners of the world began to increase. World War Ⅲ started and everything that wasn’t necessary was sidelined. Both of you were thrown into your work and deployed to aid in the fight. You were sent to defend the United Kingdom while Soap was assigned to gather intelligence in Russia.

The battle was long and bloody and every hour felt like another day in hell, but the promise that you would be free when it was over brought you the strength to survive. Every night, you hoped that a life with Soap waited for you after all was done.

Inevitably, you met again when the order to rescue Prisoner 627, an invaluable enemy of Makarov in the gulag, was to be carried out. When Soap stepped out of the helo, he gave a polite nod to all of your other men. Ghost and Roach stood behind him, quietly saying hello to you as well.

Soap showed no major response to you, only saying, “Good to see you, lass. Let’s get to work.” It didn’t irk you, mainly because he caught you later when you were alone.

After getting done with the briefing for the retrieval, you had walked down the hall to the filing room to finish some extra work. While looking over the papers, you forgot to check the intersecting walkways. A huge weight suddenly slammed into your side, dragging your body back into the shadows.

Your mouth was covered to stop you from calling for help and you considered beating this man to a pulp for underestimating your strength until an raspy accented voice tickled the side of your neck.

“Did you really not see me? My god, you look so tired,” he says, relaxing his hands. Leaning back into him, you reply, “I was busy, Captain MacTavish. And for the record, you have the same eyebags that I do.”

Twisting your head to look over your shoulder, you feel a scruffy sensation scratch the side of your face. “And what is this? Something I missed?” you say to him.

Soap’s soft chuckle rumbled in his chest and through your body, so normal to anyone else but heavenly to your joyful ears. He mutters, “I didn’t have time to clean up.”

You flip your body around to embrace him then. It was wonderful to feel so safe and warm after not being able to be with him for his last mission.

Gently rocking, you murmured into him, “Did you get any new injuries?” He smiled into your hair. “You worry about me too much, woman. I’m fine.”

“I’m your wife. I think I should be a bit concerned about your health,” you said. Soap leaned back against the wall before saying, “That you are. Are you alright as well?”

His eyes dragged around your body and you spoke. “I’m okay, just tired. Been running back and forth, trying to keep Shephard happy.”

His visage visibly darkened at the general’s name. “Is he overworking you?” You slid your hand up and down his arm. “I think he’s doing that to all of us. There’s just too much to do and not enough people.”

He stays peering into your eyes before burying his head into your neck. “I’m tired of this. Do you have any more work to finish?” You gently tuck your hands into the thick mess of his mohawk and rub through it.

“Just a little bit more, but you’re always free to sit with me while I finish up.”

Soap smiles. “Okay.”

Less than ten minutes later, John’s head lays in your lap, completely relaxed. You don’t think you’ve ever seen a man that could fall asleep as quickly as he could. That or he was really tired. His position on the floor was hardly comfortable, but clearly he didn’t seem to care.

Having finished working five minutes earlier, you lightly play with the skin around the back of his neck and watch as little goosebumps pop up in their wake. The heart trapped in your ribcage flutters.

For some wonderful reason, John trusted you with his life and that made these moments all the more precious. Gently, you ran your finger over the scar on his eye.

When he got this, he didn’t want to have you see it. What he did not expect was for the nurses to tell him that a certain female lieutenant was asking about him. That was the beginning of a much larger realization that came little over a year later.

He startles upwards when your finger stills for just a second too long, years of learned instinct triggering his fight response. The top half of his body flies up and off of the floor into a scanning position.

You draw your hand back and wait for him to thoroughly search the area for danger before turning back to you. When he realizes that everything is alright, he sighs back into your legs.

“I thought you were going to wake me,” he says gruffly. You rub the tight muscle in his shoulder before saying, “I just did. Let’s go to bed.”

Later that night, he came to you. Though most men were not allowed near the section of the base dedicated to female soldiers, you had your own room and not one person cared what you did during a time like this. In the silence of the sterile barrack, you heard the soft knock at the door.

Opening it gently to not wake anybody else in the hall, John stood backlit by an emergency light. There was no need for any kind of request; you let him in and shut the door behind you. The war waged on outside, but you had tonight and that was good enough.

The bed was small but to two touch-starved individuals, this was plenty. John all but buried his face into your chest, half asleep already and you rubbed the side of his head that was exposed to you.

He had groaned in delight at being cuddled and you laughed softly. This huge, commanding man was more than happy to curl up next to you and soak in the warmth of your embrace.

You would happily do this everyday of your lives if you could, just the two of you in a home you made together. In your mind’s eye, you could see it. One bed would sit in a room you shared, a kitchen large enough to survive any of John’s wild ideas, pictures on every wall, and two pairs of boots would sit by the doorway.

His snoring pulled you out of your mind. He looked so serene laying there, so lovely in the moonlight peeking through the blinds on the window. A pulse of true want caused you to curl up around him even more, cradling his head even more than you already were. You always did sleep better when he was there.

When you woke, one heavy arm was thrown over the small of your waist, a familiar face tucked under your chin. You dozed, only watching as the first light stretched across the grounds. There was smoke creeping over various places in the city, a reminder that the war had not ended and would most likely not be ending until the Russian president had been restored and Makarov had been extinguished.

Shepherd wasn’t making it any easier either. With every passing day, he pressured you to find the remaining survivors of other squadrons and lead them back into the fight with you. The unfortunate thing was that most of these survivors were either badly injured or suffered from extreme cases of PTSD. The few that were healthy enough to fight did rally beneath you, but often didn’t make it back alive. Those that did were your most trusted.

You were so lost in thought that you didn’t notice the hand behind you slipping down your side to rest just under your rib cage. When you did, it was too late. A loud yelp of laughter erupted from you when the fingers started tickling your stomach. “Stop, stop, stop. Oh god, stop.” Another chuckle filled the room and you covered your mouth to prevent from waking everyone else in the hall up.

You pushed yourself up and shoved the invading grip away from your sides. John sat up on his elbows and you lightly slapped his shoulder. “Oh love, you wound me,” he laughed. You straddle his waist and smile down at him. “I can’t believe you just did that,” you exclaimed. He grins. “Believe it lass, cause I might do it again.”

He tugged you forward as you tried to escape, his calloused fingertips digging into the tender flesh of your middle. You writhed around to escape but ended up rolling off the bed. The cold ground was hard and when you look up, a sheepish Soap is peeking over the side. “Sorry about that. Here.”

You playfully slap his extended hand away and clamber back onto the bed. He allows you to curl into his side for a reprieve from the bitter frost of the early morning.

This truly is the last thing I want to say on this blog and then I'm done, but given how the fucking catastrophe started it's only appropriate this is how I end it—

You have racist bias whether you like it or not. Particularly if you are US American, racism was baked into your worldview no matter what kind of household, liberal or conservative, you grew up in. Racism is quite often far more covert than it is overt. It is not just a voluntary behavior; it is more often the subconscious ways you organize and hierarchize other cultures and people.

In the case of Gaz—sure, you might actively believe that he deserves to be more included. You think he's a good character and people really should think about him more! But you personally headcanon him a certain way, and really it's not a headcanon you're actually all that into, so that's why you don't talk about him as much. It's not because he's black, it's because he doesn't fit the thing you like talking about the most. The fact that he's black is really just a coincidence, you're not excluding him because of that. In fact, you're sure other people like him for exactly the reason you're not all that into him, and you'll just leave it to them to pick up the slack. Or you'll get to him later! In fact, you have some ideas for him. You just haven't gotten around to them yet.

Take that and multiply it by thousands of white women in fandom—not just this fandom, not just Gaz's character, but every fandom and every character of color. It doesn't matter that there's no active malice behind not personally liking black characters and other characters of color. Non-white characters still take a backseat to their white counterparts, because white women in fandom cannot wrap their heads around black, brown, indigenous, and Asian characters as complex, complicated characters worthy of their interest or frankly, their desire.

They cannot wrap their heads around this because they were conditioned not to by decades of racist culture.

Case in point; plenty of white women in this fandom have fallen head over heels for Makarov and Graves. The sins of these out-and-out villains are totally forgiven by virtue of their sex appeal, and because they are portrayed by attractive, charismatic men who put a lot of passion behind their performances.

But can we say the same for Hadir? Can we say the same for Hassan?

The sins of these two Middle Eastern characters do not outweigh those of their villainous white counterparts, yet how many angsty fix-it fics have been written exploring Hadir's complicated relationship with violence and imperialism? How many enemies-to-lovers or even lovers-to-enemies fics have been written about Hassan, the face of whose homeland has been irrevocably marred by US interference?

No one who points out the racism of this trend is accusing these white women of active, militant white supremacy. I'm not saying any of you even have to like Gaz, Hadir, or Hassan. But your preferences have been tuned for you by a culture shaped by slavery, imperialism, and white supremacy. That is not something you can escape merely because you support the BLM movement or reblog vetted Palestinian gofundmes.

The only way you can truly fight your own racism is to be actively anti-racist. It is about far more than who you give money to or what graphics you pin on your instagram. It is an everyday practice of learning how racism has shaped your worldview for you.

This is not work that is done in a week, a month, or a year. Becoming anti-racist takes as much time as it took to make you racist in the first place. For some of you, the work may turn out to be easy. For others, it may be hard. You must do it either way.

Some good places to start:

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Ain't I a Woman? by bell hooks

We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity by bell hooks

A Burst of Light by Audre Lorde

The Body Is Not An Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor

Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

Being Palestinian edited by Yasir Suleiman

Call of Duty Modern Warfare Overview

Are you new to Call of Duty? Don't know where to start? I've got some videos for you! Here's a great way to get to know the games so far...

Modern Warfare is a reboot of the original Modern Warfare series from the 2000's. Many of the characters are re-designed, but there's quite a few that are introduced for the first time as well. Here's a video on the original series:

In addition, Call of Duty released a comic book about the original Ghost. It can be found here (TW for child abuse, torture, gore, psychological abuse, drug abuse, and more. Please read at your discretion)

On to the reboots!

@oleworldblues made a great guide that you can find here, (Which includes the SpecOps missions and the Atomgrad missions) but here's some other videos as well

This goes over the two campaign stories thus far (MW2019 and MW2022) and provides a great but detailed summary of the gameplay.

However, if you want to watch the actual games, which I highly recommend, you can find MW2019 here and MW2022 here. Honestly, they're really enjoyable because of the absolutely fantastic quality, and the no damage in particular makes for a very realistic gameplay. They also have no commentary, just pure gameplay

Warzone

Warzone is the multiplayer PvP version of Call of Duty where the 141 and their allies (Known as SpecGru) face off against their rival PMC KorTac. While not directly part of the campaign, the season clips are connected to the main storyline. Here's a great video with all of the warzone seas clips:

(Not included in the above- Shadow siege event)

Finally: The upcoming game. MWIII

There's been a number of trailer releases thus far:

Makarov reveal: Where we are introduced to the main villain of the game

Teaser Trailer: What we can expect to see in the upcoming game

Gameplay trailer: Footage of actual gameplay

Bonus: Call of Duty Zombies, which will be an addendum to the game and not part of the campaign

Finally: Here's the Call of Duty wiki, which is a great place for general questions about characters, but should not be taken for pure canon as there is sometimes inaccurate information included.

This is not an exhaustive list of everything, but I hope this is helpful in introducing folks to the canon events thus far. For future updates follow the Call of Duty social media on Youtube

Welcome to the fandom, and welcome back for those returning! See you in MWIII!