Ashes in the Darkness

Reckoning

My face fell to the floor as I pictured everything that Ghost had to go through, resenting that he had to go through it at all. The world, fate, God, whatever deity was up there looking down on us seemed to hand out good and bad lives randomly like a poker dealer and deck of cards. Ghost. Simon... he had been dealt a hand from life that was more unfair than the rest of us, yet he hid it so well behind that mask of his. "He never took his mask off... ever," Captain Price said, bringing his glove up to rub his eye that was watering slightly. "Until just now."

I felt my mouth go dry with the insinuation of what Captain Price was saying to me, and it turned my stomach into knots. The fact he was no longer having night terrors, the fact he took his mask off in front of the entire team, the fact that he let me in the way that he did... I was healing him. My face drained of color and fear turned my muscles rigid. As if being brought out of a haze brought on the rollercoaster of emotions I was having, my eyes locked with Ghost as I watched him. Price continued to say something, but his words were drowned out by the ringing in my ears. Ghost's eyes looked at me the same as he looked at me when Laswell brought me to meet the team in Washington D.C. for the very first time. As if I was a dot on his radar that was pinging over and over again. Doing this with Ghost was a blood-sport, a blood-sport that neither one of us would be able to walk out of alive.

"Jamie," I hear Captain Price say, bringing me out of the nightmare I had slipped into, "What you do in your time off mission is none of my business, but don't let it happen on company time," He nodded and sauntered off. But I was unable to move at all, fear still rippling in my mind like misfires of neurotransmitters.

"I doubt you will have to worry about that anymore, sir," I say as the decision to stop this now before it goes any further cements itself in my heart and mind. "Am I dismissed?"

Price gives me a nod and I walk off towards the van where the rest of the team waits for me. Ghost watches me, though I don't look at him while I load my gear, picking up my pack and gun. "Everything alright?" he asks in a low voice; he shutters just slightly as the change in our dynamic seems to filter even more into reality. I can't even look at him anymore, I can't even bear to lift my eyes up from my bag.

"Ash, you're in this car!" I hear Gaz shout to me from the black SUV in front of us. Price is stepping to the passenger side seat.

I finally let my eyes look at Simon and my heart skips a beat. "I'll see you on the other side," I say as pull the bag over shoulders. It's not the answer he wanted, and he makes that clear from the way the darkness in his eyes consumed the slight concern he had before to a much more violent anger. I don't give him a chance to say anything, taking a deep breath and walking to the car at the head of the caravan.

I sit next to Gaz in the back while Alejandro drives and Price sits in the passenger seat. "Ash, we are gonna head under the base until we come up to the helicopter tarmac, you and I will use the helicopter to clear a way for the boys, they'll be on the ground. Alejandro and Gaz are gonna go and get Valeria. You'll be piloting."

I nod in confirmation that I understand what the mission plan is. The rest of ride we spend going over worst-case scenarios and what if situations, the entire time I force myself to stop thinking about what happened in that field. There was more there then 'letting off steam' and pent-up frustration. There had been something dark and hungry and been all consuming. We both had felt it, yet neither one of us recognized that dimension of power surge and emotion or where it came from. I had hoped that he didn't see the tears in my eyes as I laid next to him, trying to catch my breath, trying to make sense of the fact that another man had been inside my body.

No.

I had allowed another man inside my body. I had allowed it, I had said yes, I had given permission this time and I had wanted it. Although I had to acknowledge that there was hesitation as I thought about it in that moment, but as Ghost's arms had surrounded in the same had his black flames did. That darkness that we seemed to feed on together that told us to forget all risk and morality, let the violence in, let the hatred in, let the... depravity in.