Call of Duty Oneshots (Mostly Ghost)

the great war.

The drain at my feet greedily drank an entire week's worth of filth as I washed away the dirt and blood I'd accumulated during the mission.

'Finally. Home," I'd breathed, kicking off my mud-caked boots at the entryway. I'd returned early and hadn't expected Simon to be home yet. Not like he'd never seen me coated in layers of the aftermath of an extended mission, I'd just preferred to be without the scent of iron and outside when allowing him to capture me with his arms and those lips...

My hands flew to my chest, feeling as though I still wore my heavy bulletproof vest that had saved my life too many times to count even before my most recent assignment. But all I felt was drenched, damp flesh. I patted a few more times and gazed down to visually verify I was still standing underneath the cleansing showerhead and not in the murky depths of death and adrenaline.

No strange arms wrapped around my small frame to try and carry me down the hall.

No serrated knife digging into my throat, flirting with my carotid artery.

'There was no danger here,' I tried reminding myself.

With a dry mouth that felt as though it had never licked a drop of hydrating fluids, I desperately tried to gulp down the nausea as it climbed upwards. An antagonizing fluttering caught my breath right from my windpipe, plucking it as if it were something pretty to collect for fun, and it was stolen before I could realize the thievery had happened.

Palms flat against the damp, slippery wall, my chest heaved as fresh memories tore through my reality as my bullets had buried themselves into the unsuspecting eyes of those hostiles. I watched the continuous stream of diluted red water transferring specs of brown dirt disappear into the metal hole, thinking that if I could ground myself by watching it, it would help in some form or fashion.

I leaned into the shower's enclosure, letting the water spray against my back as my brain scrambled to keep its composure. My ribs morphed into cages, squeezing out any room for my lungs to breathe, constricting tighter with each shallow breath.

Regret pooled into my already boiling-over stomach as it reached capacity when I closed my eyes, the memories now having a proper background, an opening, to weasel themselves in for a better view for me to see.

All of it became some sort of slideshow, flickering to the next scene before I was ready, before I was done processing what I was watching.

The unhesitating squeeze of the trigger as I drove a bullet into a wide-eyed, brown iris, splattering his red essence across my dirt-crusted face.

I could still feel the tough muscle my teeth had clamped onto, the arm that seemed to have emerged from the shadows, lurking until the right moment. Like a predator waiting for its next meal, attacking from behind. However, his expectations of me to be just as bloodthirsty were just as low as I'd suspected to be pounced upon.

I supposed that was what happened when two predators were trying to sneak up on each other, surprising the other simultaneously.

"NEXT!" The memories chanted, a taunting chorus.

My knees had hit the pavement after breaking free from his grasp, now blooming in a nasty haze of light brown and green. The wind was knocked through my spine as I could have sworn my kneecaps were demolished from that height and-

"NEXT!" They screamed for the next flickering haunt.

My fingers curled around the hilt of my pocket knife-

"NEXT!"

His scream took real estate briefly then, and it was all I could hear. The shower didn't rush around me nor did I sense the soft flapping of the curtains nor the screech of its hooks as I tried to gain my balance, grasping onto something. Anything.

My hands coated in his blood-

"NEXT!"

Over and over, death after death played on a neverending loop as if it were my phone stuck on one short video as I'd fallen asleep while trying to distract my exhausted mind with social media.

"NEXT! NEXT! NEXT!"

Fingers digging into my scalp, I clawed my way to return to the shower that now burned into my half-cleaned skin. At least my back wouldn't need any more attention.

I didn't know when I'd balled up onto my sore knees, uncertain of which memory had struck me down onto the porcelain beneath me, blood and dirt still being shed off of me even if I couldn't perceive it through the ambush.

A dry, calloused hand gently cupped my back as the sound of the faucet being quickly twisted to turn down the heat by another quick hand, ripped me out of my reverie.

As swiftly as the hand had swept me out from the grasp of the memories that screamed at me to retreat back to them, I maneuvered my body to where I now fully sat facing them. With legs crossed, the tub giving no room to do anything else, and my hand closest to the person who had approached now gripping onto their upper arm, the other hand ready to swing, I stared into a pair of familiar grey eyes.

Patient and worried, they bore into me.

He looked into me.

I wasn't sure how much time passed, how much time he gave to me to comprehend where I was. The blurred surroundings of reality sharpened slowly with each breath that I finally was able to take, the constraints eventually loosening around my stinging lungs.

A strangled sob squeezed its way through my aching throat, and I leaned against the wall of the tub as the initial panic subsided.

I watched as he cut the water off with another quick twist before he leaned his forearms on the edge, the tips of his fingers brushing against my purpling knees.

"What can I do?" He asked gingerly, the softness of his voice he only reserved for me easing my panic a bit more. When I didn't respond, he asked another question that could prompt a nonverbal reply, "Do you want me to help?"

Hesitantly, I nodded. My muscles panged with overuse, and everything now hurt. It took too much energy even to nod my head to answer him.

"Do you want to finish showering?" He asked. His tone held nothing but patience.

I didn't deserve him.

I nodded anyway.

His movements were slow and deliberate, careful to not potentially startle the still-excitable memories again. He didn't make me move at all, working around what my sore limbs would allow, scrubbing away the rest of what I hadn't been able to finish.

The hands that carried so much death themselves purified my skin of the destruction that followed me home. He knew I'd do it for him. We both knew I had before.

He didn't push for answers as it would be purged out of my mouth eventually. A couple of days or weeks, I'd confide in him. And even if it never would, as unlikely as that was, he wouldn't want to reopen those invisible wounds. He'd let me do it myself with my own teeth.

Him, never forgetting but never prying.

Me, more openly emotional than him.

Both of us, lethal soldiers on the battlefield.

Both of us, a part of a great war inside of our minds.

Neither of those battles, able to be fought alone and never having to.

The war we fought paled in comparison when emotional turmoil would not subside, but at least we didn't have to do it alone.