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cumikering · 5 months

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Neighbour Ghost x reader 7

2.3k | angst, drinking irresponsibly If Simon could do it all again (part 1) (part 8/end)

“You don’t look good, sir.” The sergeant stood at attention, looking straight into his lieutenant’s eyes.

Simon had to commend the balls of Kevlar required to walk right up to him to point the fact out unprompted, but that was why he liked Sgt. Eric Jefferies the most. You had no time to waste when you raced with death on the regular - he would tell anyone they didn’t look good.

He knew he didn’t - it was the same bland face he had the pleasure to look at in the mirror each day. Annoyed, but not surprised by the darkening circles under his eyes, stark against his pale complexion. It didn’t help that he nicked himself in the jaw shaving that morning.

“Dining hall, sergeant,” he grunted.

“You’re barely eating, Riley,” Lt. Ramsay said, the same bloke who’d catch him sneaking back to his room. “You know you’re contributing to the food waste when you don’t ask for seconds, yeah?”

It was true, and the table chuckled, but Simon continued to shove whatever was on his plate into his mouth. It was enough to not starve.

“He never leaves his room anymore, not even on the weekends,” another lieutenant quipped, but was promptly elbowed by the officer next to him.

That, too, was true.

Simon had nowhere else to be, like how it always was before his mum came to Hereford. These days his flat was too empty and cold with the hole in his chest. He never came back after that night.

It wasn’t like he was thriving in his quarters either, but it was still a little better – at least it was untouched by you. Though his nights were dreamless at first, he kept waking, and waking until the dreams started.

It was a glitch in the universe, wasn’t it? That the memory that played in his mind to insanity was the last time he saw you, about crawling back to your door with limbs that didn’t feel like his, vision swaying with the lights, coming on and off, his heartbeat ringing in his head.

It’s not supposed to end this way… I want to try…

He sighed at another disturbed night. Tea would slow his mind. Instead, he found the box of Darjeeling you gifted him to take back to base. ‘So we can have the same tea over the phone,’ you’d said.

Was there a way to escape you, make you stop haunting? He needed an exorcism.

He put it back in his drawer. One day, it wouldn’t have to hurt anymore.

And the nightmares came back. It was once, then twice, and thrice a week of waking up in cold sweat in the dark.

Simon’s performance slipped. There was a reason sleep deprivation was a popular torture method. He requested sleeping medications - his career was the last thing he had and he wasn’t about to let it go. Any unrestful sleep interrupted by the vivid images his sickly mind conjured up was still better than no sleep at all.

Quitting you was impossible when the thoughts still followed. If pushing you away didn’t work, maybe basking in the memories would, even if it hurt more. Aching for your warmth, the scraps of it, he’d go anywhere you’d been to see your ghost. The pain was better than the void.

“You lads are volunteering at the soup kitchen this Saturday,” he announced to Sgt. Jefferies after hours.

“Saturday, sir?”

“It’s good for you. Reminds you why you’re doing all this.”

“Can’t tell me what to do,” he teased. “You’re not my L.T. on the weekends.”

Simon’s stare didn’t waver and the other bloke’s smile dropped.

“Copy, sir. I’ll tell the others.”

When the four burly SAS soldiers entered the kitchen, chatter and clanks stalled as all eyes turned to them.

“May… May I help you young lads?” one of the middle-aged ladies said.

Simon recognised her from his last visit, but he quickly realised this was a silly idea. He was out of place, knowing no one there.

He flashed half a smile. “Just wanted to give a hand. Got any lifting to do?”

The lieutenant and his sergeants hauled the food items to the kitchen, including the bread which he taught his sergeants to half and butter. They were offered to peel potatoes, but Simon decided it was wise to leave it to the pros instead.

People still avoided his gaze while his boys exchanged pleasantries with the other volunteers; Eric even got called handsome by the group of older ladies he impressed with his strength as he hefted the sack of potatoes. While the night was as pleasant, it wasn’t the same if you weren’t there to hold his hand and laugh at his jokes.

When the boys invited Simon to the pub at the end of the night, he said no. He thought he was ready, but even after weeks, coming back to his flat was just as sickening.

The silence pierced. Despite all the lights flicked on, the place made his skin crawl, the space too vast and empty. But he didn’t become a lieutenant from succumbing to his emotions.

As he lay in bed, he recalled that you too slept there once. That the mattress once dipped with the gentle weight of you, but unlike the bed that bounced back, you’d left a lasting imprint that disfigured his soul.

Simon wondered what you were up to, if you knew he was there drowning, miserable in his cold room. He couldn’t decide if he preferred your door to be closer or further: closer so he could catch a glimpse of you without meaning to, or further so he wouldn’t be so tempted to go over and get on his knees.

You said begging only reduced you to nothing, but for you, he’d beg and beg. There wasn’t much to lose when he wasn’t much to begin with. He was a stray for a reason.

He tossed and turned, and was granted a wink of sleep before the same bloody dream flashed in his mind.

I don’t care how hard it gets…

He sat up, feet thudding on the floor as he rubbed his face with a heavy sigh. It was always that one moment, like a broken record. Why couldn’t it be you on a night out, or kissing you on the kitchen counter, or simply, you smiling? It was a curse. If only the heart could follow where one’s feet went.

With no plans on coming here, his sleeping pills lay on his desk at base. He looked through the cabinets to distract himself, finding various bottles of dusty, unopened spirits he was gifted. They weren’t his cup of tea.

So he packed, to get his mind off you, from spiralling and digging a deeper grave for itself.

It was time for a change. With the accommodation he was provided, he never needed to rent, but he did anyway in case his mum ever needed the place. It was a good call he did, but with the divorce on the way, keeping it was pointless. He’d rather spend the extra money on his mum and nephew.

Yes, he came to remember- not to forget, but you wouldn’t leave, would you? In the dead of night, when he pulled the hoodie he’d forgotten about out of his wardrobe, he decided he’d had enough of his bloody flat and drove back to base.

He still had another weekend to before his next deployment, a two-month mission. He’d finish packing then.

“You’re right, sir, it feels good volunteering.” Eric grinned at his lieutenant. “We’re going again tomorrow. Also one of the ladies is introducing her daughter to Sam. See you there then?”

Never again. “Dining hall, sergeant.”

Simon was a fool for not finishing his lunch sooner and bolting, instead lingering for the announcement. With how atrocious he did on his tests, he must have been beyond high to still hope for a miracle, that despite everything, he still had a chance at a promotion.

He didn’t make to the top 3.

Amidst the wishes from the table, Lt. Ramsay’s turned to him. His grateful smile faltered.

Simon’s fists clenched. It was supposed to be him, his. But who was he to be mad. It was the fruit of his incompetence. He knew this was coming. Things were going to shit. The unforgiving truth was staring right at him mercilessly: he had nothing else.

He left for his office.

“Sir, sir!” Sgt. Jefferies called. “We’re heading to the pub tonight. Come with us.”

He gritted his teeth. Word travelled too fast.

“Let’s get out of the base for a bit,” he continued when he caught up to his long strides. “It’s the last weekend before we ship out.”

Simon eyed the display of vibrant bottles behind the bar as he listened to his sergeants’ orders, the names foreign to him. Above, the telly showed a rugby match rerun no one paid attention to.

“Jefferies, how much you reckon it takes me to get pissed?”

He chuckled. “You, sir? At least 10,” he said before taking a swig of his beer.

“Nah, 15 sounds more like it.” Richie, the designated driver for the evening piped up.

Sam downed his first two shots, hissing as he slammed the glasses on the bar. “Agreed. Do you know how much he lifts?” He nodded at Simon’s biceps, bulging under his loose black shirt.

It was a genuine question. Simon didn’t want to get pissed, he only wanted to forget. He didn’t mean to go over his limit he had no idea was at seven.

Drunk Simon was a weeping, blabbering mess. It didn’t help that he was massive, because his sergeants had trouble getting him to the car before Richie drove him to the address of his flat he barely managed to gurgle out before passing out.

“Sir, you’re paying for the bloody cleaning if you get sick in my car!”

Why did he think this was a good idea? He was never a drinker, barely even touched alcohol socially. It was the poison that turned his dad into a demon, and it too became his downfall. The only thing he thought he would always have – his resolve, let him down too. He’d lost you, his mum whom he was supposed to protect, his future, and now his dignity.

Desperation was a lethal sentiment.

And that dream came again, that he stumbled to your door. Legs wobbly, his vision in and out as the world spun in slow motion.

“Luv… Luv, it’s not supposed to end like this,” he slurred, the same line he always opened with.

A marionette, a prisoner in his own head, it was a loop he couldn’t escape. The awful show had to commence to end the same way each time.

“I’m sick of losing and I wouldn’t know what to do when you leave, after how much you’ve given. Instead, I left when you needed me. I should have been there for you, gone through all this with you, no matter how hard it got.

“If you would give me a chance, I’ll quit the SAS. I’d start all over again. I’ll butcher the carrots and apples with the bloody peeler, I’ll let the steakhouse mess up our reservation and eat a dozen soapy tacos… If you ever show up at my door with your pie again, I swear I’d kiss you, not scare you. And I’ll never let go. If it has to hurt, I want it to be you.”

The door clicked open, and like how it always went, it meant the dream was coming to an end.

“You make it worth it,” he muttered as his vision faded.

…

Simon gasped for air, this time staring up at blinding lights. He shielded his wet eyes, chuckling to himself.

“Bloody hell, I think I’m sick on the inside.”

“Only your past, but you are not your past.” Your voice echoed in the distance.

His body was too heavy to move. “Could you forgive me, for all of this?”

“Could you? You need to forgive more than you need to be forgiven.”

He laughed as another tear slipped.

Simon woke on his couch, still in his clothes from the night before. Dreaming of you always drained him, leaving him hollow and out of touch with his body.

He sat up with a groan, rubbing his face as the dizziness settled. He didn’t remember much after getting dragged to Richie’s car. Judging by the gnarly bruise on his arm, he probably fell last night, but he was glad he found his way back to his flat in one piece.

Stumbling to the shower, he hissed when his toe stubbed one of the boxes on the floor. It was a horrendous decision to drink so much, still having to pack the rest of his stuff. He leaned over the sink, staring at his bloodshot eyes.

His sergeant was right. He didn’t look good. He never did. What the fuck are you doing to yourself, Riley?

With his hair damp, he made his way to the kitchen. As he realised he’d packed all his tea stash in one of the bloody boxes, a series of knocks echoed in his flat.

He grumbled. It better be important for someone to disturb his peace, especially with the pounding of his head. He couldn’t be bothered putting a shirt on before he swung the door open.

It was you, a pie in hand like the first time he met you all those months ago.

“Hi, is Simon in?”

His heart lurched as he crushed you in a hug.

“Thought you said you were going to kiss me.”

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oh-meow-swirls · 1 year

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sgt. burly stop t-posing at me-

#puppy rambles #yo-kai watch #he's asserting his dominance-

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fatal-iistic · 1 year

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Ties That Bind (Pt. 2)

Summary: There’s objectives to be followed, but First Lieutenant Blair Moore can’t help but deny the unwavering loyalty and devotion into protecting one soldier in particular.

Pairing: Johnny “Soap” MacTavish x F!Original Character

Words: 8.7k

Warnings: Swearing, war, minor character death, injury/gore (minor descriptions)

January 8, 2021

Eastern Sovereign Base Area, Dhekeila, Cyprus

Lieutenant Blair Moore's reputation reaches John Mactavish before he can physically locate her.

Major Sprik mentions offhandedly in Soap's arrival debrief of "the American girl" and how at home she's already become amongst the British soldiers. Rumors swirl that she'd beaten anyone willing to compete in a pull-up contest, and one could spot her in the obscene hours of the morning running laps around the base.

She is intense, if anything (Sprik uses a more derogatory term, one that irritates Soap, if anything).

Sgt. Mactavish last saw Lieutenant Blair Moore in person when swaddling the Greater Caucus foothills in Georgia nearly a year prior in search of Al-Qatala's newest successor, Khaled Al-Asad. Though absent in presence, Soap can't help but think about her every so often. She is a remarkable soldier, formidable and smooth. But Soap recalls the fleeting rays of humanity and humility shining through her rugged exterior.

After their three days in Georgia wrapping up a failed ops in locating al-Asad, it's time enough for Soap to find himself drunk on that woman. She's an enigma – densely cored emotions and perspectives shelled by a rugged exterior. Surges of personality harken closely to Captain Price, shared components that Soap is certain stem from years of experience in the field. Hypnotized, that boy, Soap, is.

He’s a fool. There’s no plausible deniability for that case. He’d dated one girl seriously in the past, right at the tail-end of primary school when he’d signed with the army. Wore his heart on a sleeve, that boy did. His ma was convinced no other woman could strike John’s attention when he’s become smitten with one individual. John MacTavish truly believed he’d make that girl his bride, but when the demands of service and the demands of a relationship did not coexist harmoniously, the girl broke his heart.

Soap reckoned he would keep his sights focused on what mattered: serving the great good, serving his country, saving lives. His track record thus far has been immaculate (love life, or perhaps the lack thereof; not military disciplinary record).

And then there was is Blair Moore.

Their zigzagging trajectories. Two comets always passing but never colliding.

He doesn't see her for months following Georgia. He's eventually summoned to Verdansk, but Blair is seldom to be seen. He wistfully admits to his own consciousness that he's disappointed by this fact, but does not allow the perspective to plague his mind too heavily. Viktor Zakhaev is at large in Kastovia. There's a mission at hand.

Now.

It's January of the new year.

Viktor Zakhaev is several weeks dead and underground. On one hand, Al-Asad remains at large and fully dangerous. But the world's superpowers decide to celebrate one less terrorist, resting their heavy heads on their pillows and popping champagne at holiday parties.

Task Force 141 does very little to sleep on their conflicts. One less psychopath with access to weapons of mass destruction is one less threat, sure. The cesspool he was plucked from remains abundant and as murky as ever. Al-Qatala remains a threat, burly in numbers, intel, weapons, and backing. People were still dying at the hands of AQ.

Christmas slips by as quickly and quietly as the soft snowfall Soap watches from the window at his flat in Edinburgh. Days of sleeping in his own bed, and crushing family members in giant bear hugs, and overeating his mother's cooking until he feels remorse. He wouldn't take those days for granted nor trade them for the world, but he's almost itching when Captain Price calls him up. Unsurprisingly, the enemy never slumbers, and Soap would be flown down to Cyprus for another operation.

Details are hazy. Al-Qatala smugglers undertaking operations in a town just outside of al Mazrah. Intel pointed more toward drug smuggling, but sources also cited a potential for arms dealing and clandestine rendezvous with foreign figures. If it smelled and looked like a fish, it was fishy.

What tempers his emotions is the news of who he'd be conducting the mission with. Lieutenant Blair Moore.

She'd been in the Middle East for months. Operations in the Republic of Adal, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, among other places. Brushing shoulders with some of the world's richest individuals in Dubai and Riyadh. Collecting. Coercing. Confiscating. She's a master of covert affairs, coupled with an intense understanding of violence and timing.

John MacTavish can't tame his frivolity when he arrives on base in Cyprus (God, he feels like a schoolboy. Not a military-trained weapon of war).

Soap manages to solicit a late lunch ration from the mess hall before making his way out to search for Lieutenant Moore. Pvt. Reyes informs Soap that some soldiers were racing with Blair near the garages. So to the garages, he departs.

When he reaches the group, races are no longer being held. Blair is perched nonchalantly on a crate in her fatigues, cheeks touched rosy. She looks like a queen on her throne, shoulders rolled back as she laughs at something said by another soldier. Four other soldiers flock close to the crate, either propped against the building wall or lying docilely on the pavement. The other half dozen spectators mill about on their feet, passing jabs and jokes at the spent soldiers. Blair had just bested them; it didn't take further investigation to come to that conclusion.

"Oi, Mactavish, you come to get yer ass whooped too?" Sgt. Kelley calls out as Soap approaches.

"I think we've shamed the British Army enough by the looks o' it," Soap observes with a scoffing laugh. "I don't even need ta' know the stakes ta' know Lieutenant Moore would butcher me pride."

"Coward," a private whistles.

Soap is a millisecond from disciplining the private when Blair's airy laugh cuts through the tension.

"Ah, ya'll need to lighten up. Besides, I could use a break," Blair interjects spiritedly. Her deeply-Texan accent makes Soap smirk, so evidently different from the dialect of the UK-ers on base – her inevitable twang made her stick out like a sore thumb. She hops off her crate and strides towards the approaching Soap. "'Bout high time ya made it here, Sergeant Mactavish." Her eyes gleam with a hint of mischief.

"I told you before, call me Soap," he pokes.

Blue eyes sparkle in the mid-afternoon sun, as blue as the Mediterranean waters off the coast. "Ya haven't changed much, Soap," she remarks calmly. Her tone is genuine. Warm like an embrace. "I'm leadin' the team brief tonight. We'll do a recap tomorrow morning before wheels up."

"In the meantime, will you keep torturing these boys?" Soap indicates to the men still sprawled on the ground, blue eyes gleaming with a chuckle.

"They're already toast; anything else would be a war crime." She points her boots east, gesturing at Soap with an invitation to follow. "Walk with me, sergeant."

The two stroll along the sidewalk, quiet as the sea-salt breeze playful bats against their bodies. It's a beautiful winter afternoon here, the temperature is moderate for this time of year in Cyprus, but either soldier comes from snow-laden yards and blustery winds. They go without jackets, letting the sun kiss their bare arms.

Soap withholds his glances at Lieutenant Moore, but can't help but admire how her muscles ripple in her arms. One is completely covered in tattoo ink, images of dark trees and shadowy creatures, coupled with an intensely-detailed creature with a deer's skull and horns, adorn her skin. Haunting images. Fitting for the coarse woman.

"It's a wendigo," she notifies chirpily.

Soap blinks, dumbfounded. "Huh?"

She holds up her arm, pointing to the creature. "A wendigo. An evil spirit told of by the Native tribes in the Western Plains. They would kill and eat their victims."

Soap grimaces with a snort. His subtlety epically falters; not much escapes Blair's keen eyes. "Ain't that fitting, Moore," he rasps.

"You should see my other tattoos." She winks. A note of immodesty lilting on her tongue, something so fine Soap isn't sure if he's imagining the playfulness.

He blushes. "Uh…what?"

"Exactly." Her laughter is jovial, too much for a woman who can murder a man with her hands. A stark contrast to the woman he remembers in combat and under the duress of locating al-Asad in Georgia. Here on base, an amount of laxity manifests in the woman's persona.

Playful like a lynx.

Soap comes to the deliberation that he both admires and fears this woman, just as one would a natural predator. It's best to leave them at a distance, but Soap can't help but feel desperately entranced into her magnetic field. Hypnotized by her silken laughter and the mirth simmering in her eyes. The world is at war, all day, every day, but that detail doesn't burden him at this moment, here in the Cyprus sun.

"How about yours, Soap?" Without warning, she grasps his right arm, twisting it to inspect the artistry on his forearm. "That? Has to do somethin' with 141, huh? How patriotic. Price get one on his ass, too?"

Soap chuckles. "Fat chance."

"You're a proud soldier, through and through, hm?"

"Yes, ma'am," he replies back with a lopsided smile.

Blair pauses as she takes in Soap, her shoulders rolling back. Something brews behind Blair's eyes (blue; he reminds himself that his favorite color is blue, the color of her eyes). A storm at sea. Rigel, the brightest blue supergiant in the constellation of Orion. The toxic flesh of a dart frog. She possesses a minacious color of blue. Soap begins to brood that if he remains enraptured for too long in that gaze that perhaps he’ll turn to stone.

(But she is not Medusa, and he is not King Polydectes.)

The ice of her eyes lightens. Less like a storm. More like the gentle lap of ocean waves on the shore. A sapphire in the sunlight. The feathery plume of a kingfisher.

"I'm glad you have my back again, Mactavish. It'll be an easy op."

***

The chopper's rotors slice through the air as the machine prepares to take off again.

All seven soldiers kneel on the pavement until the metal bird levitates off the ground and suspends itself upward into the air. They remain fixated on the ground, faces tucked down as desert dust shifts in a cyclone around them. It takes until the helicopter is a safe distance back into the sky for the dust storm to relent. Another few minutes pass until it settles, and the soldiers maneuver to their feet.

The town outside of Al Mazrah is two hundred yards away from their landing site. The way is led by a trampled-down path created by the previous soldiers and Adal villagers, traversing these exact steps over time. They were sending a small team in to assess the direct danger. Six SAS soldiers. And then Blair — the latter informally labeled as their interpreter for the mission (it was simpler on paper than putting her down as a PMC consultant or combatant).

Even though the town had been labeled well and friendly to outside soldiers, any soldier worth his salt stayed on guard. Insurgents still slept in the bedrooms of these homes. They coerced, threatened, and harmed to get the job done. Any one of these villagers could have been paid or had their family and well-being menaced to produce cooperation. There was no absolute distinction between ally and enemy in this territory.

The trek through the taut desert grass is tense. Even a simple mission like this is riddled with anxiety. Enemies could be in any corner. Bombs planted under any surface. The local insurgents didn't play in terms of fairness and justice. They took the playing field and doused it in gasoline and fire.

They haven't been on the ground for more than five minutes before Blair feels sweat trickle along her spine. Uniformed, booted, and gloved, hardly an inch of skin is showing on Blair's body. It is the best principal she remains well-suited, the long blonde braid the only thing revealing her femininity. Protection from the sun. Protection from scrutiny from a majority of the villagers. Somewhere an old instructor says, “Protection from skimming bullets” (not that feeble material would safeguard from direct hits).

Blair props her M4 against the bulk of her vest. One hand caresses near the muzzle, the other trained close to the trigger (index finger kissing the cool gunmetal). If a firefight breaks out, seconds of time become either inefficacious or invaluable depending on the level of preparation. She keeps her cerebrum honed on her training, reflexes she's harnessed over the years in the field, holding those truths like a crux to her being. While adrenaline still runs in abundance through her bloodstream, she's tamed it to heighten her senses rather than hinder them.

The path remains unkempt but safe. No explosives. No concealed traps.

They step foot onto the cleared ground, following around residential buildings with fenced-in gardens and a few farm animals. It's a quiet afternoon here, Blair observes. Even the three pastured cows they bypass offer a hushed judgment from across their field.

The buildings become denser.

Private Shaw leads the way into the uneven streets of the town, McKinley and Kelly in step just behind him. Walsh and O'Conner are next, with Blair and Soap in succession at the rear. They walk with purpose, constantly scanning the scenery around them. Residents gaze back at the patrolling soldiers, hugging closely to their doors and not engaging any further than passing glances. They seemed heavily reluctant to acknowledge the presence of the Marines.

Blair's eyes sweep from corner to corner. Her mouth feels cotton dry. A wallowing pit of despair consumes all in her stomach. There's something deep within her gut.

This doesn't seem right.

But why.

She can't halt the troops based on feeling alone.

Bile burns from within. Her muscles scream with protest. Deep within her instinct, every fiber tells her to stop. Not to carry on.

Then something registers, white hot, in her cortex.

"Hold it," Blair commands with an absolute sense of resolve. Each soldier stumbles to a halt, pivoting to meet Blair's command with wide eyes.

"This doesn't feel right," she announces.

"Feel right?" Sgt. McKinley echoes, a bit of ridicule laced in his tone.

Eyes scan across the street and to the nearby homes. While the presence of foreign soldiers was typically met with a mixture of fear and excitement, Blair could not bring herself to accept the eerie quiet of the town. Only men stand in the doors or windows, gazing out with edgy curiosity at the Marines. She's been in many hostile environments, but most townspeople aren't part of the rogue militia – if anything, they are victims, scared and desperate for a way out. Albeit cautious, they typically respect and are receptive to foreign soldiers.

The people around them were craning on their toes, staying placidly behind the safety of their walls. As if watching and waiting, bracing for the impact of something ominous that Blair and the other soldiers couldn't see.

"Look around. There's no women or children," Blair mentions, blue eyes squinting to the horizon. She motions to the buildings around them.

"Children?" Not just McKinely repeats her words; nearly all six Marines join the chorus.

"The children," she repeats, firmer. She ignores the patronization radiating from her peers. "They usually meet us on the way from the landing pad, and not even a single one came out. Odd...isn't it?"

She thinks of little girls, hair twisted into ponytails or fashioned braids, totting younger siblings on their hips. They'd often been magnetized to her no matter what country Blair had visited – able to pick out the woman amongst the platoon, despite being covered in gear, head to toe. Soldiers would trade them a candy bar or a beanie baby to garner their favor. The small gestures won the adults as well. These soldiers, armed to the nines, aren't as bad as their local insurgents made them out to be.

An illumination of recognition lights up across the faces of each soldier. Enough of them had been on deployment before to know the cohesive bond between civilians and foreign soldiers. Even when language barriers and cultures from two ends of the spectrum wedged them apart, nothing could stop humans from being social. Their natural instinct to bond with other humans outmatches the tides of war.

Soap straightens, eyes sweeping back across the street. The town square is only a few dozen yards away. The town leaders await the SAS Marines and their interpreter to discuss the local smugglers. But that task would be put on hold.

A grip of stifled fear seizes the group of soldiers.

"Shaw, radio Wardog for immediate extraction," Soap commands. "Fall back to the landing zone."

No sooner have the instruction left his lips, the vehicle, a few meters ahead of Shaw and Kelly, ignites with a blast. The shockwave sends Blair crumbling across the ground, landing violently. She's lucky for her vest and helmet, the articles taking the brunt of the force from being tossed like a ragdoll. The smack of her guarded head still causes her ears to ring, and her vision blurs like bleeding watercolors for a moment.

Muscles tense as she fights through the scrambling of her neural circuits. Just as her training should, Blair's reflexes react swiftly to the situation. Cocking her rifle, she sends return fire into the street. There's an eruption of offensive shots, coupled with hostile shouts, as the enemy slinks out of their hiding places to rain bullets down on the soldiers.

"Return fire! Return fire!" Blair shouts.

Walsh, McKinley and O'Connor slip into cover and begin to counter their enemies' shots.

The state of Shaw and Kelly is questionable, and Blair hardly grabs a glimpse of where their bodies remain following the explosion. She can see Walsh grab his gun, firing rounds at several soldiers flanking him, and he doesn't last long before enemy fire brings him to the ground.

"Man down!" Another soldier cries.

The events unfold precariously.

It's incredible how seconds and minutes in a firefight seem to writhe by as if swimming in molasses. The viscosity of time is lost to the relentlessness of the moment. Blair can hear her rasping breaths and the roar of blood echo in her ears. It overtakes the distressing tinnitus from the bomb blast but mutes the shouts from the enemies and her comrades.

Two tangos to the left. Behind the truck, near the hood. Blair's inner voice instructs her motor control. She eases past the wall of her cover, catching one of the men popping above the truck's hood. She fires certainly, the man dropping to the ground. No sooner has he fallen, his comrade reveals himself and becomes victim to Blair's precision. Blair ducks back behind cover, bullets spraying around her.

The brick chips from the bullets, debris stinging against the exposed flesh of her face. Blair shutters, flinching away deeper into her cover.

Soap hunkers down behind the wall of the nearby building. He steps out to better aim at the enemies before suddenly crippling to his knees. He propels himself back into cover.

He's hit.

Blair feels the blood drain from her face. She sees O'Connor down the road. An enemy soldier slides closer, unloading bullets into the soft-spoken Irishman.

Her stomach sinks. They're royally fucked.

Firing several shots, Blair makes haste from her position over to Soap. She grasps the straps of Soap's vest, hauling the man to his feet before wedging her shoulder into his side.

"We need to get the fuck outta here, sergeant," Blair snaps.

They hobble down the alley, ducking behind buildings. She leads him further and further from the town square, slinking past small residential shacks and their ruddy, fenced-in yards. Soap is panting, sweating profusely from the shock the body has inevitably tapped into. Blair glances about, locating a rundown garden shed in one of the yards. She pulls Johnny into the shed, shutting the door behind her. She nearly crumples onto the ground on top of Soap, back propped against the door.

"Fucking fuck," Blair curses, jostling the M4 in her arms. "We are so fucked."

Soap is clutching his leg, retracting one hand coated in blood. A withheld groan rattles his chest, the man arching his head back and knocking it against the feeble boards of the shed wall. Blair shoots him a warning glance before sidling up closer to her comrade. She reaches behind her, jutting her shoulder uncomfortably to tear the medical bag from its straps on the posterior of her vest.

"I tooka bullet in my thigh," Soap grimaces. A breath hitches in his throat as he shifts his leg to catch a better glimpse of the crimson staining his pants.

Blair scoots, sitting perpendicular to Soap and propping his wounded leg on her lap. In any other setting, Soap knew he would've blushed. Her blue eyes don't unfocus themselves on the task, the woman fervently tearing packets of gauze pads open and antiseptic.

"It went into your lateral thigh," Blair observes plaintively, using two fingers to separate the shredded fabric of his pants. "I need you to prop up your leg. Bend at the knee." She doesn't wait for his active maneuver, and instead is already moving a protesting Soap before her command is finished.

"Whatcha tryin' to look at, Moore, my ass?" Soap growls, his additive response more solicited by the pain than any sort of emotional component, meaningful or otherwise.

Soap's prickly or suggestive remarks don't faze the Lieutenant. She's patched up soldiers a dozen times over, easily, and been in the same role of Soap as well (blast those bullet wounds, they'd knock you out of duty for weeks even if they were superficial). Pain mixed with the angst of a mission gone wrong is a hell of an irritant.

"I'm lookin' for an exit wound, douchebag," Blair snarls back, eyebrows furrowed. Her gaze never departs the bloody mess along his leg. "Don't get yer hopes up, Mactavish."

Despite himself, Soap stomachs a laugh. "Well, fuck me."

She clucks her tongue. "Not with a bullet wound like this, Mactavish," Blair replies cheekily. This time she flashes a gleam in his direction, smirking. "And definitely not in this shed."

"Where's your sense of adventure?" He hums.

Her back straightens a bit. A sudden air of normality, Blair's rigid normality, beseeching her once more. "Dead like our comrades in the town square," she responds, suddenly pressing a collection of treated gauze into the wound. Soap gives a surprised yelp, teeth slashing along the insides of his cheek to stifle the sound.

"Easy there, Mactavish," Blair murmurs. "It's a nasty wound, but you ain't dyin' on me."

"Medics always got sucha great sense o' humor," Soap accuses.

"Good thing I'm not a full-time medic," Blair reminds. She takes an unlawful amount of wrap, twisting the fabric around the outside of Soap's pants to hold the gauze she wedged over the wound in place.

Soap draws in several composed breaths. They bear a burdensome silence between them, Soap steeping in his pain while Blair listens attentively to the noise outside. They're far enough away from the commotion of the town center, but Blair keeps her guard raised. If the insurgents knew that only some of the soldiers had been caught by their attack, they'd be searching. As advanced of a tactical officer as she is, Blair can't make up for a sheer disproportion of numbers and Soap's currently-handicapped aim.

Neither can tell how much time passes before Soap draws in a long exhale and releases a sigh. He reverts his gaze upon Blair, who's painfully zoned out as she keeps in tune with their environment. In the dim light of this rickety old shed, Blair's stony demeanor is only shadowed further. Jaw clenched. Blue eyes icy. Wisps of her straw blonde hair stick to the sweat along her cheekbones. She's so direly beautiful, a fact Soap scolds himself for considering in a time like this.

And maybe it's the adrenaline mixed with the dismay, the fear that singes the tips of his senses as they lay cooped up in a rundown shed. The exemplification of otherwise diminutive emotions. But Soap can't deny the intense admiration for the woman who dragged his wounded ass out of the fire.

The attention manifesting back into Blair's body is clearly visible as her frame straightens and her eyes focus on Soap. She squints a bit, unearthing his admiring gaze.

"What's on your mind, Soap?" She prompts, almost innocently.

Soap snorts, shaking his head. When that response does not relent Blair, he decides to admit ruefully. "Yer the prettiest medic I've ever had, L.T.," Soap jests, masking his true intentions.

Blair snorts.

"Unfortunately, it seems like any blood in yer head is gone," Blair refutes.

"Well, if I die, 'least I got that off my chest," Soap replies with a touch of dramatics.

"We need a call in exfil," she ignores his remark. Gears are always turning, keeping in line with the objective. "We need to get out to the landing pad or beyond. But I'm not riskin' our hides with the heat on so high. We'll wait until nightfall."

"Aren't there dangerous creatures out at night?"

She offers an apathetic shrug, lacking concern."It's either a snake bite or a bullet in the head. I think I'll take my chances with the snakes."

Soap lifts his wrist to look at his watch. A coarse chuckle shakes him, the man wincing from the pain that pulses through him. "My watch is still on London time."

"We landed just a hair past 1300 hours," Blair informs. She squints up at the light streaming in from between the boards of the shed roof, as if she could determine the time by the rays. "We easily have…six hours…until dark”

"Tell me some good news, Rogue," Soap requests haughtily.

"You're alive."

Soap laughs lowly. It's rough and coarse, a vibrato that makes the hair on the back of Blair's neck stand at attebtion. "An optimist, aren't ya?"

"After all this time? Can't you see that I bleed sunshine and rainbows?"

His response is muted. The pain does wonders in altering Soap's nature.

"Mactavish," she states, resting her hand on his forearm.

"Call me Soap. Or Johnny. I don't care."

"Johnny," she tests the word against her tongue. For a fleet second, Blair seems consumed in her own thoughts. Reality snaps back into her prefrontal cortex; her blue eyes flick back to Soap's face.

"Joanna," she states. Soaps's only response is an unassuming, deadpan stare, to which Blair continues, "That's my legal name. I stopped going by that after we left my father."

"Left your father?" Soap echoes. She worded it in such a complex way. Confusing without context. It wasn't that her mother had left her father, but a collective we. A group effort. An entire family untangling itself from one entity.

"He…" she frowns, catching her breath in her chest. Suddenly, her gear feels cumbersome and her skin too taut against her body. Blair gulps, wringing her fingers against the security of her assault rifle. "Johnny Boy, I'm not sure you're ready to unearth my shitshow of a life."

"We have nearly six hours," he reminds with a fatigued smirk.

"Nothing of my past is normal."

"I didn’t ask for normal."

She resents him. Only because the code she's imprinted to her mind, the structural walls she's constructed over these years, don't yield to logic in his presence. Whereas others in the past, their brash judgment and lack of comprehension of Blair's uphill battles, made it evidently clear of their inability to withstand Blair's story, Soap had been opposite to dozens and dozens of their comrades. He's warm. Inviting. Like the sun in the springtime.

Chapped lips part, Blair contemplating the layout of her words. They burn like acid against her throat. A story she hasn't recounted in years.

"I was raised in a cult," Blair states. The sentence seems to flow from her lips before she has much sentience over them. A blustery confession. Her heart races from the adrenaline of its liberation.

She doesn't continue. Leaves that fact hanging in the air between them, dropped like a grenade and left to eplode. Soap's jaw drops indignantly when he realizes that she's concluded her life story in one sentence.

"What? That's it?" He snorts, unimpressed.

"That's it?" She echoes incredulously. "How many people do you know that were raised in a cult."

"Enough to know that story ain't finished at that, Blair Moore," Soap criticizes.

"What do you want from me, Soap?" Blair grouses.

"A damned good story to keep me mind off this wound. Or ya could listen to me bitch for the next few hours. The choice is yer's."

Blair scowls at Soap, sucking her cheeks in as she ponders her options. She drums her fingers against her rifle. A heavy sigh escapes her lips.

"My father was crazy. Still is," she starts, biting down on her tongue. The heat crawling along her skin as she thinks of Carl Moore beats anything the desert sun could provide. "He was in the Army for several years before being discharged. From there, he worked as a PMC. Eventually, he had some revelation, some calling that God was pushing him to do His work. So he enrolled in college to become a minister. He never graduated but still managed to kickstart a church in Texas."

"This isn't just some rip-off of Jim Jones, ain't it?" Soap jests.

"Nah. Google it when we RTB; it's valid." Blair shakes her head. She gives a deflated chuckle, her insides are aching but the weight of her recollection actually births a sense of freedom. "Hell, you might even see pictures of me as a kid. Pigtails n' everything, holdin' an assault rifle."

"Jus' another gun-lovin' American, no?" Soap tries to reason.

Her lips twist up with a rueful expression. "Perhaps, but when you start roping in the couple hundred people followin' ya, and you start delving into the deep end of politics, and the end times, it gets murky," Blair mentions. She sighs, a hollowness in her chest. "My dad...he was convinced that the government was hiding the AntiChrist. By the time I was born, he was making our home into a stronghold. My sisters and I were hunting and handlin' guns before we even had the training wheels off our bicycles."

"So you were just a dream for the Army to recruit, huh?" Soap quips.

Blair flashes him a scowl.

"Okay. Okay. I'll limit the commentary," Soap surrenders immediately, hands thrown up, "ya owe me more to this story, though."

She huffs. "To answer your question. I had a menagerie of religious trauma, emotional manipulation, and anxiety that stemmed from bein' trained as a soldier since I was two," Blair responds stonily. Her jaw clenches, fingers tapping anxiously on her rifle. "My father was a mean man. Strict too. Made my drill sergeants in basic look tame."

"What happened to him? To your family?"

"That's where I suggest you read about the coverage of the incident. From my perspective, federal agents were raiding our home to drag us and torture us into becoming followers of the Anti-Christ," Blair explains. "Really, my father had shot one of their agents sent to arrest him for evading parole. Led to a whole siege and raid. I almost shot an agent's head off during it all."

Soap snorts. "Your shot has improved since then."

"Thankfully," Blair exhales.

"And after that?"

"My family? We were victims. They tried to integrate us back into society," Blair replies (normal, they had wanted them to be normal despite no part of her upbringing was even in the same atmosphere as normal). "I did it all. The therapy. The doctor's eval. My sisters blossomed in the 'real world,' and I could hardly be more than what Dad manufactured me to be. I got in trouble. I wasn't interested in schoolwork, but I'd ace my exams. Hung out with the wrong people."

"So your only option after primary was the Army?"

She nods. "My only option was the Army," she repeats back to him. Her chest shutters. Ribs sore. She still feels the overpowering mass of her mother's grave disappointment, even fifteen years later. "My mom nearly had a stroke over it. We never saw eye to eye after that. I'd come home for leave, and it was always weird. We stopped talkin' nearly a decade ago."

"Oh."

Soap frowns. His mind wanders to his own family. They'd never understand the brutality and sacrifice he had to make, but he knew open arms and a fresh meal were waiting for him every time he came home on leave. Blair doesn't have that. She hasn't in ages.

"Joanna," Soap states, trying to divert that conversation from the bombshell Blair has just dropped on them. "It's a pretty name."

"Huh?" Blair blinks.

Even in the dim light of the shed, the bright blush of color washing Soap's cheeks is evident. "It's–uh, a nice name."

"My dad used to call me Jojo. Or Little Jo," Blair muses with a snort. "My sisters said I was always his favorite. But it left an even bitter taste in my mouth. Can't even use my real name without feelin' sour. I need to associate it with somethin' other than my bastard father."

"Well, ya could associate it with this damned shed."

She gives a loud, singular laugh – something more akin to a crow's squawk than anything human. Catching the sound on her tongue, she whips Soap an alarmed look – both mortified by her caw and acutely aware of how little noise they could have allotted. They held their breaths for a few seconds as if the timing afterward would erase the infringement she'd made.

"I guess that standard was set low," Blair remarks quietly, shaking her head with a controlled chuckle.

The two soldiers orbit back into another silence. It's at this point that Soap catches a yawn, body shuddering.

"Ya alright?" Blair quizzes.

"Exhausted," he sighs.

"Take a nap, Soap," she advises. "I'll keep watch. If I see or hear anythin', I'll be sure to wake you up with the gunshots."

He blinks, contemplating her offer. She scoots across the ground, situating herself beside Soap.

"It isn't 5-star, but I make a half-decent pillow," Blair instructs. "Catch a nap. Or so help me God."

He hesitates, mouth dry and hands shaking, before pressing his shoulder into hers and resting his head along it.

"Sleep tight, sarge," Blair breathes.

"Thanks, L.T."

The injured man slips off quicker than Blair anticipates. The military always bred oddities, one being the exceptional ability to sleep just about anywhere. However, Blair didn't expect Soap to knock out in less than five minutes. She stays alert, listening to the world outside of this damned shed.

Her senses feel pumped full of anxiety. At least the head-pounding adrenaline has subsided as she sits, reminiscing about her past to Soap. But there's nothing except the safety of the walls back at base that will allow Blair to relish in relaxation. Not in this shed. Not in Adal territory. Not with a collection of heavily-armed men back in town, probably sweeping the area for any survivors.

A manifestation of protectiveness flickers and flares from within the woman. She likes to perceive it as a conjunction of maternal instinct coupled and complimenting her resolute loyalty to her comrades as a soldier. Regardless, it is a hell of a stimulant. Even while her eyelids felt heavy and her body ached, Blair remains devoted to protecting her slumbering comrade.

Underneath the intense façade of soldier-like machismo, Blair also cradles the mere notion that she found favor with Soap. His willingness to see a human underneath her rigid soldier stature and all the blight she carries from her past. The sensation births a trembling warmth in Blair's chest, threatening to inhabit and overtake the empty space rented out between her ribs, spilling out into the light.

It scares her. It overwrites many competent functions of her somatic system, sending her into a muted frenzy of worry.

There are people Blair would take a bullet for. Any of her comrades. Any part of her squad. Anyone on mission with her. (She'd been manufactured for this.)

And then there are people Blair would die for.

That list was humble in quantity. Her mother and sisters, and her niece and nephew she'd never met, take the top echelons of that list. Kate Laswell meets the standards as well.

Some of the nominees are dead. That's how many vacancies persisted.

Sierra. Her first love. Twelve years gone.

Conrad. Partner. Confidant. Buried four years ago.

And now John MacTavish fits the bill.

It's a fool's errand to be divulging down this path. More often than not, anybody Blair gave a damn for wound up dead or ostracized from her. She isn't sure if either could be sustainable for her exhausted heart.

Beside her, Soap snores softly in his sleep.

Blair grimly smiles. She revels in his warmth, though it makes her slicker with sweat even in their shaded refuge. The closeness and contact, and her constant lack thereof, is poisonous yet something her body craves.

She catches herself nestling the side of her cheek against the top of Soap's head. He smells like polymer and dust.

There is no estate to entertain these consuming thoughts. The situation is extremely inappropriate, yet when all she can do is sit and listen and keep a hand on her gun, the thoughts scream over the white noise in her brain.

Fingernails dig into her palm, creating crescents in the calluses. She chews on the inner flesh of her mouth. In an attempt to divert the rage of emotions crashing tumultuously against her soul, Blair starts to imagine disassembling her rifle and cleaning it. She'd give her M4 the queen treatment back at base. Defaulting back to her factory settings, the one of a soldier, is the only thing capable of distracting her from the terror of giving a damn over John MacTavish.

She's onto round five of mentally disassembling and reassembling her gun when her consciousness slips. It isn't a fruitful slumber, but Blair loses acute awareness of her surroundings until a gusty enough breeze causes the boards of the shed to groan. She snaps back into wakefulness, pulse galloping.

Listening to the world around her, Blair realizes their little refuge is nearly bathed in darkness from the waning light beyond. The sky is a shade of navy, touched with a paling orange-yellow off in the western horizon. Somewhere an evening bird sings.

Blair releases a long inhalation from her lungs, settling her blood pressure. She'd fallen asleep, but they had been safe.

"Soap," her voice rattles his slumber. When he doesn't move, she places her hand on his forearm and shakes him. "Johnny."

He stifles a yawn, eyes blinking rapidly. "Hmmm?"

"The sun is goin' down. Let's get movin'."

Blair clamors to her feet, reaching for Soap's hands to haul him to a standing position. Soap gives a low groan as he places weight onto his wounded leg, wincing.

"We're gonna climb up into the hills. We gotta take the long way to the helipad."

"Can't just walk through town?" Soap quips. His voice sounds like it courses over gravel. Pale blue eyes blink away the sleep.

"Unless their opinion of us has changed since earlier…fat chance," Blair replies.

Blair steadily opens the shed door, rifle in arms, as she scans the evening terrain. These houses remain quiet. She wonders how long the residents will persist with hunkering down, turning face to the insurgents and their plans. It makes for perfection for two out-of-place soldiers, though. She doubts at this point the insurgents will be sweeping this area in hopes of locating the remaining soldiers.

The scene is clear, Blair motions to Soap for the all-clear. They thread between the outlying homes, Blair hovering close to Soap. The steep rocky slopes prove to be a challenge for the wounded soldier. He's a tough motherfucker, but Blair sees through the act.

Eventually, Soap stumbles, landing on his bad leg with a yelp. Blair hops down the slope to his side, pulling Soap onto his feet and wedging her shoulder into his side.

"Can't quit on me now, Soap," Blair growls.

They've trucked a distance before Blair eases Soap down. The landing pad is just over the next hill, but between Blair's own impatient dismay and Soap's deteriorating vigor, she determines it's a decent post to contact HMS Resolve. She takes out her radio and a small transponder from her pack. Working the wires, she rigs up something that can transmit a signal.

"This is Alpha Five-Two to Resolve Actual, do you read?"

Static bleeds back through the radio. Blair repeats the same call-out nearly a half dozen times before another voice finally breaks through.

"Resolve Actual to Alpha, status update. Over."

Soap and Blair flash one another a relieved glance. There's a heaviness that nearly uplifts itself completely from Blair's tightly wrung shoulders.

"Things went sour. We've lost five men," Blair rattles off. "Sergeant Mactavish and I are in the hills taking cover. Over."

"We can ready and send Wardog to extract you."

"Copy, Actual. I'll set a flare when we hear the angels chorus."

"Noted, Alpha. Readying a team and a bird now. Out."

Blair sinks to a seat on the dusty ground, finally releasing a sigh that's built up from the tension in her diaphragm for the last few hours. Her heart still hammers against her ribs, aching from hours of high stress. The moment the relief floods, Blair becomes acutely aware of the throbbing in her head, the ache in her left shoulder, and how scratchy her throat feels. She was in awful shape but still functional.

"We're gettin' out of here, Soap," she announces triumphantly, despite the burden of her discomfort.

Silence follows.

"Johnny?"

Her neck nearly snaps as she pivots to face her comrade. He's slumped on his seat upon a boulder, inspecting the soaked-through gauze.

"I'm bleedin' again," he wheezes.

Blair springs forward, kneeling down.

"You ain't gonna lose all yer blood, Mactavish. Take a deep breath. The shock and panic are gonna do you in sooner if anything."

She's crass. Words clipped. Coddling Soap at this moment probably won't nurse him along. But while her words are sharper than a cleaver, her hands are gentle. She fidgets to procure more gauze and wrap, packing it over the previously-instated supplies.

"Good as new, soldier," Blair remarks. She reaches and grabs Soap's palm, squeezing it. "We're gettin' out of here, you and me. Ya hear me?"

Soap twists a weak smile to his lips. "Yes, ma'am."

He manages to limp close alongside Blair up and over the last hill, boots sliding on loose stone with teeth gritting. At the landing pad, the duo crouch near the desert bushes near the edge. Blair scans the vicinity, grabbing her radio once more.

"Resolve Actual, this is Alpha. Requesting an ETA. Over."

Blair decompresses her lungs. Eyes rivet to the sky as if she could spot their guardian angel amongst the darkness.

"Alpha. Wardog One is six clicks from your location. T-minus ten minutes."

"Copy."

Tearing the package of flairs from her pack, Blair quickly strikes them to life. She tosses them to the edges of the cement of the landing pad, clearly marking the ground for Wardog to locate them. The area glows a surreptitious red, the smell of charcoal, sulfur, and fire burning against Blair's sinuses as she hunkers back next to Soap.

Commotion. Blair squats lower to the ground as she fixes her eyes on the town two-hundred-some yards away. The lights of the homes sparkle in the distance, but the noise exceeds that of a typical winter evening.

There are gunshots. Blair can't tell if it's in response to the sudden illumination of the landing pad or for other reasons, but she hunkers closer to the ground.

"Think you knocked on the hornets' nest, Moore," Soap remarks hoarsely.

Blair huffs, teeth grinding. "Knew it wouldn't be an easy extraction."

Across the two-hundred yards that plant them between the village of insurgents and the landing pad, she can perceive shadows galloping down the path. The gunshots seemingly pointed in their general direction -- though until they start striking the helipad's pavement, she cannot confirm or deny that these men were coming for the two 141 soldiers. Blair tenses, raising her rifle without hesitation.

"Looks like we're going to make friends," Blair expires.

Getting a good shot in the dark with minimal light is difficult. Blair sees her shots more as warnings. She doesn't need enemies down; she must keep them from lodging bullets into their skulls and sending them home in body bags. Beside her, Soap fires rounds into the long shadows of night.

Something explodes.

Blair is still determining what is launched in their direction. Still, it misses the actual target of the soldiers and desecrates the ground several meters off. The shockwave throws either soldier. Bones groan, and nerves sing as Blair is sent several feet across the land. She smacks her helmet against the concrete, brain-rattling like loose pocket change.

She combats the shiver of heat and pain that pulses through her body. Immediately she schools her dazzled eyesight for a glimpse of Soap, her heart thundering against sore ribs.

He's there in the dust, frame slumped.

"Soap!" She hollers, fingers scraping against the cement. Her eyesight is blurry from the smoke. She digs her fingernails into the ground for traction, fingertips hot from the pain.

Above the noise, through the shrill ringing of her injured ear drums, Blair can hear the radio crackle, "Alpha Five-Two, this is Wardog One. We are two clicks out from your location."

She throws herself over Soap, her torso flush to his back, and her limbs splayed to cover his own. She looks like a lioness protecting her cub, the features of her face sharing the same primordial savagery. Unholstering her pistol, she keeps firing shots into the dust to dissuade the enemy further. Once the magazine empties, Blair shifts back to her assault rifle.

The sound of chopper blades cutting through the air hums in the distance.

"Wardog Two, we are taking heat. I repeat–" Blair can't finish the call before her arm is shredded by a bullet. It tracks the lateral aspect of her shoulder, clipping skin and soft tissue but never fully entering her limb. Blood sprays. The woman bites down on her tongue to prevent a yelp from escaping her lips.

She falters off Soap's body, hitting the ground with an unceremonious thud. She remembers locking eyes with Soap, the man reaching out to grab Blair's hand and lacing his fingers through hers.

Not like this, comes a guttural cry from within Blair.

She pushes up on her free elbow. She's lost territory of where her pistol is. Her assault rifle digs into her chest, but the shredded flesh and crimson seeping from one arm makes Blair question the quality of her gun handling. Panic bubbles like boiling water in her chest, frothing over into an icy hot sheet throughout her torso.

From the skies, the chopper's blades cut through the air. Shots ring out from the helo, reigning down on the enemies present somewhere beyond the billow of dust enveloping Soap and Blair.

Blair's rattled thoughts are fractured by the crack of gunfire beside her. Soap musters a second wind and fires back at their enemies. Bullets ricochet off the cement, sizzling by both soldiers dangerously. Something nicks Blair along the cheek, whether it was a stray bullet or debris coming from another explosion, this one falling much shorter than the previous strike.

"Can't see much–" Blair hears Wardog warn, words clipping in and out of static even though they're only meters above. "Get clear, Alpha!"

Pushing up to her feet, Blair seizes an amount of Soap's uniform and hauls the man upward. They skulk to the far edge of the landing pad; eyes cast upward as the twister of dust whipped around them. It's an afterthought that both soldiers hold one another. Soap teetering on his wounded leg, and Blair's energy nearly sapped dry.

Their bird in shining armor.

Dust spits into Blair's sclera, mixing with sweat to create a burning in her vision. Eyelids squint shut. Fingers curl tightly around the straps of Soap's vest, body sidling closer. She tries to reopen her eyes, making out the form of the helo, the door sliding open, and boots hitting the ground.

Two soldiers assist Soap onto the helo, while another helps Blair limp to the bird. She nearly collapses onto the floor within the sheltering walls of the helo, head dizzying as the chopper begins to ascend while shots still ring out from the sides. One of the soldiers prop her up, shoving a plastic bottle of water in her direction and prompting her to drink.

The flight back to the HMS Resolve is terse. Blair remains glued to Soap's side, brushing off the medic who evaluates them both. Both soldiers are wrecked. Dust and blood and sweat drench their uniforms. They look more like prisoners than soldiers, which Blair could contemplate their entrapment in the shed for six hours akin to a jail cell.

"You're a tough motherfucker, sergeant," Blair rasps to Soap. She uses her frame to prop Soap’s upper torso up while the medic combs over his wounds. One arm snakes around his ribcage, a half-hug to support Soap’s waning energy.

His pants leg is permeated in blood, looking more crimson than camo. He hugs a swollen arm close to his chest, an injury the medic mumbling about potentially being sprained or broken.

A wiry, exhausted smile tugs at the ends of the Scot's lips. He looks bone-weary, beyond the ability to offer Blair much of a gesture.

Blair would rather be in a hundred places than in the Med Ward at ESBA. While the doctor assesses Soap, Blair sits across the room behind a curtain with a nurse. She cranes to listen in on Soap's condition. He is alive. He has all his limbs. But a pit of worry still festers deep in her gut.

"You need X-rays on the wrist, Sgt. Mactavish," Doctor Hanson reports, "And surgery to take that bullet outta your leg. But we'll have to transport you to Limassol General for that."

Blair fights to keep her focus as Doctor Hanson rattles off more details. The Limassol General Hospital was about an hour down the coast. They'd patch Soap up nicely. He is out of the woods – she hadn't completely failed in getting her comrades to safety.

Her stomach burns. She's been in squads and platoons with hundreds of other people. She'd failed many of those people during times of duress and combat. But she hadn't felt more resolute and devoted to ensuring Soap, of all people's safety. Blair inwardly chastises herself for the subtle fringes of attachment.

"Lieutenant," The nurse presses.

Blair snaps back to attention.

"Doctor Hanson can double-check, but you should be set to be discharged," she presses.

"What about Sargeant MacTavish?"

"He will most likely remain here until he's transported," the nurse replies.

"Then I'm staying."

"Lieutenant–" the nurse starts.

"I just lost a whole squad. I'm not leaving my last man," Blair argues, her voice rising.

"Blair," Soap heaves. She swings past the curtain of her space, retreating to his side immediately. "I'm alive. You look like hell. Go get some sleep. I'll still be breathin' by the time you get back."

She clenches her jaw. Eyes look ready to cry – or maybe that is just the reaction from the dust and sweat not quite evaporating. She'll play on the side of innocence, the adrenaline of her blossoming devotion to Soap still not comprehensible, and she's unwilling to face it head-on.

"Okay," she relents. Her chest caves in.

"Okay," he echoes with the ghost of a smile.

As she follows the nurse out of the room, Soap calls, "I owe you one, Blair."

She pivots.

Pausing.

"Joanna. You can call me Joanna."

#john mactavish x original character #call of duty fanfic #cod fanfic #johnny soap mactavish x original character #blair rogue moore

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ofcoming4th · 2 years

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Since I mentioned the Mad Hatter in a previous post I feel I should share his glory with all on Tumblr.

Here he is - Jervis Tetch, the "Mad Hatter", as played by David Wayne on the 60s Batman TV show. Which I watched as it originally aired.

(The hat had a flip up "memerizer ray" that looked like staring eyes. Like a Pez dispenser of evil.)

David Wayne played this character as so fey he made Bruce Wayne's Aunt Martha look masculine. Complete with outrageous lisp,pouting lips,and burly "henchmen" who he spent a lot of time with.

His schtick was collecting hats and using them for evil!

There was always a pretty blonde in orbit but I don't think any more happened than three cosmo lunches and weekly mani pedis. Plus mustache waxing.

He was obsessed with Batman's... cowl.

Yeah, that is what he's looking at, the cowl. Why he's standing close enough to sniff the Caped Crusader is not explained.

He could rock a fez. And a leftover uniform from the Sgt Pepper's album cover photoshoot.

His crimes were never too successful to tell the truth.

The best he ever did -

Turning Batman's cowl pink. Cause reasons.

But my tiny seven year old self was fascinated by the character and never forgot him. It wasn't until years later that I rewatched and understood that he was singing the song of my people. Should have gotten icon status just for making Dr. Smith from Lost in Space seem butch.

Really butch.

#60s batman #did I mention his costume was lavender?#how to impress a baby queer #damn I'm old #bless the scriptwriters of this show

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back-and-totheleft · 3 months

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"This is not a political film"

Inside a flimsy temporary office on a dusty movie lot here, a young man sits in front of a computer, showing off a three-dimensional rendering of the collapse of the World Trade Center. It was assembled by merging the blueprints for the twin towers — the before-picture, you might say — with a vast collection of measurements, including some taken with infrared laser scans from an airplane 5,000 feet above Lower Manhattan, just days after 9/11.

With a few clicks, Ron Frankel, who has the title pre-visualization supervisor for Oliver Stone's new 9/11 film, begins to illustrate the circuitous path that five Port Authority police officers took into the trade center's subterranean concourse, until the towers above them fell, killing all but two.

As Mr. Frankel speaks, behind his back a burly man has wandered through the door. He is Will Jimeno, one of the two officers who survived. He has been a constant presence on the movie set, scooting from here to there in a golf cart, bantering with the actor playing him and with Mr. Stone, answering questions and offering suggestions — a consultant and court jester. But he has never seen this demonstration before, he says, pulling up a chair.

Mr. Frankel, continuing with his impromptu show-and-tell, says the floor beneath Mr. Jimeno, Sgt. John McLoughlin and their three fellow officers dropped some 60 feet, creating a 90-foot ravine in the underground inferno. The difference between instant death and a chance at life, for each of the men, was a matter of inches.

Mr. Jimeno sits quietly, absorbing what he's just seen and heard. His eyes moisten. "I didn't know this," he says. "I didn't know this. I didn't know there was a drop-off here. This is an explanation I never knew about." He pauses. "We try not to ponder on it, because we're alive. But it answers some questions. That, really, played a big part in us being here." The countless measurements taken and calculations made by scientists and government agencies helped ground zero rescue workers pinpoint dangerous areas in the weeks after the attacks. The data also provided a fuller historical record of how the buildings collapsed and lessons for future architects and engineers.

Only a movie budgeted as mass entertainment, though, could harness all that costly information to reconstruct the point of view of two severely injured and bewildered men, who didn't even know the twin towers had been flattened until rescuers lifted them to the surface many hours later.

Their story, and those of their families, their rescuers and the three men killed alongside them, is the subject of Mr. Stone's "World Trade Center," which Paramount plans to release on Aug. 9.

The quandary that Paramount executives face is a familiar one now, a few months after Universal's "United 93" became the first 9/11 movie to enter wide theatrical release: How do you market a movie like this without offending audiences or violating the film's intentions? Carefully of course, but "there's no playbook," said Gerry Rich, Paramount's worldwide marketing chief. In New York and New Jersey, for example, there will be no billboards or subway signs, which could otherwise hit, quite literally, too close to home. And the studio is running all of its materials by a group of survivors to avoid offending sensibilities.

But Paramount, naturally, wants as wide an audience as possible for this film.

Nicolas Cage, who plays the taciturn Sergeant McLoughlin, says the movie is not meant to entertain. "I see it as storytelling which depicts history," he says. "This is what happened. Look at it. 'Yeah, I remember that.' Generation after generation goes by, they'll have 'United 93,' 'World Trade Center,' to recall that history."

Whether Mr. Stone set out to make a historical drama or a dramatic history isn't entirely clear. Mr. Jimeno and Mr. McLoughlin, who have both since retired from the Port Authority, say the script and the production took very few liberties except for the sake of time compression.

"We're still nervous," Mr. Jimeno said last fall, after shooting had shifted from New York and New Jersey to an old airplane hangar near Marina del Rey. "It's still Hollywood. But Oliver — it's to the point where he drives me crazy, trying to get things right."

There are many people of course who have been driven a little crazy for other reasons by some of Mr. Stone's more controversial films, "JFK," "Natural Born Killers" and "Nixon" chief among them. But in several interviews, sounding variously weary, wounded and either self-deprecating or defensive, Mr. Stone spoke as if his days of deliberate provocation were behind him.

"I stopped," he says simply. "I stopped."

His new film, he says, just might go over as well in Kansas as in Boston, or, for that matter, in Paris or Madrid. "This is not a political film," he insists. "The mantra is 'This is not a political film.' Why can't I stay on message for once in a while? Why do I have to take detours all the time?"

He said he just wants to depict the plain facts of what happened on Sept. 11. "It seems to me that the event was mythologized by both political sides, into something that they used for political gain," he says. "And I think one of the benefits of this movie is that it reminds us of what actually happened that day, in a very realistic sense."

"We show people being killed, and we show people who are not killed, and the fine line that divides them," he continues. "How many men saved those two lives? Hundreds. These guys went into that twisted mass, and it very clearly could've fallen down on them, and struggled all night for hours to get them out."

By contrast Paul Haggis is directing the adaptation of Richard Clarke's book on the causes of 9/11, "Against All Enemies," for the producer John Calley and Columbia Pictures.

Asked if that weren't the kind of film he might once have tried to tackle, Mr. Stone first scoffs: "I couldn't do it. I'd be burned alive." Then he adds: "This is not a political film. That's the mantra they handed me."

Mr. Stone says he particularly owes his producers, Michael Shamberg and Stacy Sher, for taking a chance on him at a time when he had gone cold in Hollywood after a string of commercial and critical disappointments culminating in the epic "Alexander" in 2004. "They believed in me at a time when other people did not, frankly," he says. " 'Alexander' was cold-turkeyed in this town, I think unfairly, but it was, and I took a hit. Nobody's your friend, nobody wants to talk to you."

Mr. Stone came forward asking to direct "World Trade Center" just about a year ago. He decided it would require a different approach from, say, "JFK." "The Kennedy assassination was 40 years ago, and look at the heat there, a tremendous amount of heat," he says. "I was trying to do my best to give an alternative version of what I thought might have happened, but it wasn't understood. It was taken very literally. 'Platoon,' I went back to a Vietnam that I saw quite literally, but it was a twisted time in our history.

"This — this is a fresh wound, and it had to be cauterized in a certain way. This is a very specific story. The details are the details are the details."

The details that led to the movie's making began in April 2004, when Andrea Berloff, a screenwriter, pitched a story about Mr. Jimeno's and Mr. McLoughlin's "transformation in the hole" to Ms. Sher and Mr. Shamberg. Ms. Berloff, who had no produced credits, was candid about two things:

"I didn't want to see the planes hit the buildings. We've seen enough of that footage forever. It's not adding anything new at this point. I also said I don't know how to end the movie, because there are 10 endings to the story. What happened to John and Will in that hospital could be a movie unto itself. Will flatlined twice, and was still there on Halloween. And John was read his last rites twice."

The producer Debra Hill, who had optioned the rights to the two men's stories, was listening in on the line. When Ms. Berloff was done, she recalls, Ms. Hill said, "I don't want to speak out of turn, but I think we should hire you."

Ms. Berloff and Mr. Shamberg headed to New York to meet with the two officers and their families, and to visit both the Port Authority Bus Terminal, where the men had once patrolled, and ground zero. In long sessions with the Jimenos in Clifton, N.J., and with the McLoughlins in Goshen, N.Y., Ms. Berloff says, she quickly learned that both families, despite the nearly three years that had elapsed, remained emotionally raw. "Within 20 minutes of starting to talk they were losing it," she says. "We all just sat and cried together for a week."

Before leaving, Ms. Berloff says, she felt she had imposed on, exhausted and bonded with the two families so much that she warned them that in all likelihood she would not be around for the making of the movie. "I had to say, 'The writer usually gets fired, so I can't guarantee I'll be there at the end,' " she recalls. "But I'd recorded the whole thing, and I said they shouldn't have to go through this with a bunch of writers. They'd have the transcripts to work from."

Ms. Berloff returned to Los Angeles, stared at her walls for a month, she says, and then wrote a script in five weeks, turning it in two days before her October wedding.

Ms. Hill died of cancer the following March. Mr. Shamberg and Ms. Sher moved ahead, circulating the script to Kevin Huvane at Creative Artists Agency, and to his partners Bryan Lourd and Richard Lovett. Mr. Lourd gave it to Mr. Stone, Mr. Lovett to his client Mr. Cage.

The agency also represents Maria Bello, who plays Mr. McLoughlin's wife, Donna, and Maggie Gyllenhaal, who plays Alison Jimeno. Ms. Gyllenhaal, who'd just seen "Crash," suggested Michael Peña, who made a lasting impression in a few scenes as a locksmith with a young daughter. (Mr. Peña did a double-take, he confesses, upon hearing that Mr. Stone was directing a 9/11 movie: "I'm like, let me read it first — just because you're aware of the kind of movies that he does.")

Given the need to shoot exteriors in New York in September, the cast and crew raced to get ready for shooting. The actors aimed for accuracy in different ways. Mr. Cage says he focused on getting Mr. McLoughlin's New York accent right, and spent time in a sense-deprivation tank in Venice, Calif., to get a hint of the fear and claustrophobia one might experience after hours immobile and in pain in the dark. Mr. Peña all but moved in with Mr. Jimeno.

Ms. Gyllenhaal had her own problems to solve. That April she had stepped on a third rail, saying on a red carpet at the Tribeca Film Festival that "America has done reprehensible things and is responsible in some way" for 9/11. She apologized publicly, then met privately with the Jimenos, offering to withdraw if they objected to her involvement. "We started to get into politics a little bit, and Will said, 'I don't care what your politics are,' " she recalls.

With Mr. Jimeno and Mr. McLoughlin vouching for the filmmakers, more rescuers asked to be included, meaning not only that dozens of New York uniformed officers would fly to Los Angeles to re-enact the rescue of the two men, but that there were more sources of information to replace Ms. Berloff's best guesses with vivid memories.

Ms. Bello, who had gone to St. Vincent's Hospital on 9/11 with her mother, a nurse, and waited in vain for the expected deluge of injured to arrive, contributed a scene after learning from Donna McLoughlin of a poignant encounter she had had while waiting for her husband to arrive at Bellevue.

Some of the film's most fictitious-seeming moments are authentic. Mr. Jimeno's account of his ordeal included a Castaneda-like vision in which Jesus appeared with a water bottle in hand. But Mr. McLoughlin recalled no hallucinations, or nightmares, or dreams: only thoughts of his family. "He kept saying I'm sorry — 20 years in the job, never gotten hurt, and here we go and I'm not going to be there for you," Ms. Berloff says. "So we tried to dramatize that."

Nearly everything else in the movie is straight out of Mr. Jimeno's and Mr. McLoughlin's now oft-told story: the Promethean hole in the ground, with fireballs and overheated pistol rounds going off at random; the hundreds of rescuers, with a few standouts, like the dissolute paramedic with a lapsed license who redeems himself as he digs to reach Mr. Jimeno.

And the former marine who leaves his job as a suburban accountant, rushes to church, then dons his pressed battle fatigues, stops at a barbershop for a high-and-tight, heads downtown past barricades saying he's needed and winds up tiptoeing through the perilous heap calling out "United States Marines" until Mr. Jimeno hears him and responds. Mr. Stone says he is adding a note at the end of the film, revealing that the marine, David Karnes, re-enlisted and served two tours of duty in Iraq, because test audiences believed he was a Hollywood invention.

Reality can be just as gushingly sentimental as the sappiest movie, Mr. Stone acknowledges, especially when the storytellers are uniformed officers in New York who lived through 9/11. And particularly when it comes to Mr. Jimeno and Mr. McLoughlin, who have struggled with the awkwardness of being singled out as heroes when so many others died similarly doing their duty, and when so many more rescued them.

"You could argue the guys don't do much, they get pinned, so what," Mr. Stone says. "There will be those type of people. I say there is heroism. Here you see this image of these poor men approaching the tower, with no equipment, just their bodies, and they don't know what the hell they're doing, and they're going up into this inferno, they're like babies. You feel saddened, you feel sorry for them. They don't have a chance."

Mr. Cage says he once mentioned to Mr. Stone that their audience had lived through 9/11: "That it's not like 'Platoon,' where most of us don't know what it's like to be in the jungle."

"He said, 'Well what's your point?' " Mr. Cage says. "And my point is that we all walk into buildings every day, and we were there, and we saw it on TV, so this is going to be very cathartic and a little bit hard for people."

Despite its fireballs, shudders and booms, Mr. Stone's film is also unusually delicate, from the shadowy intimacy of the officers' early-morning awakenings to the solemnity of their ride downtown in a commandeered city bus, to the struggle of their wives to cope with hours of uncertainty and then with false reports of their husbands' safety.

"It's not about the World Trade Center, really. It's about any man or woman faced with the end of their lives, and how they survive," Mr. Stone says. "I did it for a reason. I did it because emotionally it hit me. I loved the simplicity and modesty of this movie.

"I hope the movie does well," he adds, "even if they say 'in spite of Oliver Stone.' "

-David Halbfinger, "Oliver Stone's 'World Trade Center' Seeks Truth in the Rubble," The New York TImes, Jul 2 2006

#Oliver Stone #world trade center #the New York times #9/11 #September 11

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