Home - COD Simon Ghost Riley X Female OC

Chapter 20

It was quiet on base, but MJ didn't feel like going to bed just yet. She wandered outside, looking for one other she knew had been left behind.

"Hey." Leanne Rossi sat outside in her usual spot.

"Hi." Mariana came to sit beside her.

They sat in comfortable silence for a while. The air held a certain warmth the reminded MJ of hot, hot summers in the city. It washed over her like melancholy.

"I had a question for you." She said to the medic.

"I'll do my best to have an answer." She had let out her usual slick bun and her long hair blew in a gentle breeze. Her trustworthy face had been a constant comfort to MJ since she arrived.

"I stopped dreaming a while ago. I can say I've been sleeping better since I got here, but they haven't come back. I don't understand why."

"Well," Leanne leaned back on her hands, "I'm no psychologist. But it's rare for someone to skip rem sleep entirely, and if you were, you wouldn't be functioning. It's essential." She looked over at the other girl. "My guess is that you are dreaming, you just aren't remembering them."

MJ fell quiet. Rossi kept watching her. The blonde was just another soldier, picked for this task force for her skills and her extreme loyalty. She knew the people she worked with well, she had traveled the world with them. This girl, this fellow American, she hadn't asked to be there. She hadn't trained for torture and capture and combat like Rossi had. Lieutenant Riley had made it clear to her that Mariana Ricardo was not a prisoner there and if she didn't consider him particularly brilliant, she might think he didn't understand the definition of the word.

He had also said he had no special interest in the starving woman, and maybe he hadn't been lying in that moment but it hadn't taken him long to change his mind. Mariana had presented herself as still, quiet, and immoveable. She had experienced what the medic would call extreme trauma. Kidnapping, captivity, rape, starvation, physical abuse. But she had lost none of her life and none of her resolve, not from what Leanne could tell. Maybe it had to do with the tall soldier who had suffered his own share of horrors, how he had given her a safe place to hide because he had such an intimate knowledge of a particular type of pain and loss. There was a gravitational force between the two of them. Everyone watched it and said nothing. If it wasn't acknowledged, maybe it would burn out on its own without burning anything down.

Fate wasn't real and love wasn't an option out here. Maybe if he had rescued her in some other universe, she would have had the chance to rescue him, too.

MJ said goodbye to Leanne a little while later and made her way to bed. She may not be as tired as she would be if she were skipping essential sleep stages, but she was tired. Simon slept so little and she had been matching her schedule to his for long enough to feel it.

She showered and crawled into bed in her usual sweats and t-shirt. She tried not to let herself wish she were next to him, and she drifted off. It was shortly after that a sound woke her with a start. She lay still, a hand over her racing heart, and listened to see if it was something she had imagined.

It wasn't. Gunshots rang out on the other side of the base. She sat up slowly, waiting to see if it stopped. The guards must have seen something. Whatever it was, they must have gotten it because a few minutes of silence followed. Just as she was about to lie down again, another shot rang out. That one was closer. Not the guards at the gates. Two more rang out and she swore they were from inside the walls. She climbed out of bed on weak knees. There were only a few of them inside the base. And really, there was nowhere for her to go.

She caught her breath and steeled her shoulders. Maybe it was nothing. Even if it wasn't, there was no running and hiding to be done. She wrapped a jacket around her shoulders and cracked her door. She stepped out into the dark hall, feeling her way to the end where she could see lights on in the common area, but no one shooting from what she could tell. She turned a different direction and made her way back toward the med bay. If the sounds she had heard had been a shooting, or some kind of accident, maybe Rossi was up taking care of it.