Home - COD Simon Ghost Riley X Female OC

Chapter 32

MJ had watched Rossi and a couple of men she didn't know pull her shirt the rest of the way off and put an IV in her arm. She couldn't even feel it. All she could feel was absolute devastation that Simon had left her there. She supposed they had pushed him out. She wasn't too far gone to be overwhelmingly humiliated by the apparent commotion she had caused, or to feel the pain of it. She couldn't really feel her arms and legs but her head was pounding, not unlike the way it had after someone planted the butt of a rifle in it.

She closed her eyes. The last coherent thought she had was that she had told Simon that she loved him. No, that she thought she loved him. And that made her a coward.

She fell into sleep so deep that she couldn't be sure it wasn't reality and she sat alone with her thoughts for a long, long time. Somewhere in wilderness, as she was now accustomed, she felt crushed by how stuck she was again. The solitude of her mind was as much a prison as the one she had just managed to escape. Only he had been with her there, at least for a short while. He wasn't here. She could hardly even remember him.

She was glad she was the one sinking into the darkness now, not him, despite the fact that it would be more of his time and resources wasted as he waited to see if she would resurface.

She contemplated whether she would or not. It was quiet there, and nothing hurt. And she hurt no one, pestered no one with questions, she was meaningless. She could finally have peace in spite of the weight on her chest and her inability yet again to save herself. Maybe she should just lie there and let it slowly push her into the earth where no one would find her, no one would unchain her and carry her to safety, no one would be searching for her. Maybe it wasn't a prison, maybe it was just a nice place to rest. And she was so tired. She could rest there for a while. Maybe forever.

--

Someone Simon didn't recognize, a man, came and got him a little while later.

"You must be Simon." He reached out his hand and Simon shook it. He didn't know how the man would know who he was. Rossi had probably directed them. "Follow me."

They went through the mysterious solid door he had been watching all night and entered a hallway. It looked exactly like a hospital which was unsettling, it took him out of the desert, out of the mission, and into a different kind of eerie discomfort.

He hadn't been in many, truly. In the field, one was either dead or alive and a base infirmary was there to keep you alive until the next place. A place like this.

"This is hers. Let me know if you need anything." Simon watched as he walked away.

They had stopped just outside of a closed door and suddenly he didn't like being there alone. He had known he would be, no one else was down there to go with him. He hadn't wanted anyone to. Only he didn't know what was going to face him on the other side of the door or what it would do to him.

He didn't blame the man for walking away. No doubt the ghost came there with a reputation and he was one hundred percent sure that currently he looked completely unwelcoming. And no one really knew, not even Rossi, what the woman inside meant to him. He wasn't even sure he knew. He just knew that whatever the answer was, Mariana was his, and for all the railing against it he had done outside, he had an incredible desire to see her now.

He steeled himself. There was nothing scary on the other side of that door. Mariana was in there. It wouldn't be loud and dirty and reeking of blood like a battlefield or cold and echoing like a torture chamber. It was just a bed and an injured woman. He opened the door.

--

Mariana was confused. She had tried to let the weight bury her gently, she had wanted it to, to finally quiet the thoughts that she now felt were shouting at her. She pressed her hands over her ears. She didn't want to hear anything, she didn't want to think at all.