Chapter Text
“Really? Rebecca asked to start playing rugby this year?” Johnny tried not to sound surprised as he shouldered the front door of his terrace house open, carefully juggling his phone and a bag of groceries as he pushed his way inside. The Rebecca he remembered from Christmas the year before had been a quiet young girl, more interested in playing video games with her brother than anything else going on.
To be fair to his niece, he remembered visiting his own Gran’s house for the holidays and how boring it was, so maybe it wasn’t a fair judgment to make.
“That’s right!” Fiona’s voice was bright and cheerful on the other end. “I guess she got to play in school and fell in love with it. Begged for weeks to try out, she did.”
“How’s she liking it?” he asked, leaving his boots lying by the door so he could shuffle through the living room to the kitchen in the back. It was far warmer than the chill of early November outside, even if the peeling pink wallpaper was an eyesore. He hadn’t touched the extensive list of renovations he had in mind for the house yet, but one day he would.
“Still loving it,” Fiona replied. “You should see her out there! Our wee Becca can be downright vicious sometimes, you know.”
“I didn’t know,” he laughed, dropping the bag on the counter. “What does your husband think of all this?”
“Daniel? Oh, you know him” -he really didn’t, but Johnny wasn’t going to tell her that, not when his sister was so happy- “he just wants the kids to be happy, even if he doesn’t always get it.”
The line went quiet for a moment and he- well, he knew what was running through both their minds.
If only their own parents thought like that.
He cleared his throat to break the abrupt, awkward silence. “Good. That’s good. And what’s Joshua been up to?”
As far as attempts to change the subject went, it was weak and painfully transparent. Fiona was a good sport about it, though, likely because she was searching for one too.
“Josh? Well, he got a part in his school’s Christmas play this year,” his sister said, and the pride she had in his niece and nephew was so clear, so genuine, that it made his throat ache.
Johnny was glad his niece and nephew had his sister and her husband as parents, he really was, he just wished… well, it didn’t really matter what he wished. Reality was that their parents would never be like Fiona and her Daniel.
“Good for him. He likes acting, then?” he asked, pulling what would eventually be dinner for him and Simon out of the bag and leaving it on the counter for later. He’d get the oven on and throw the bagged salad together in a bit.
“Oh yeah,” his sister gushed. “Just loves it, you know? And Daniel’s home this year to see him perform, too.”
This conversation was veering close to a subject he’d been dreading and avoiding in turn now: plans for the Christmas holidays. It was inevitable that it would come up eventually, Johnny knew, but he’d held out hope that it would keep a little longer.
“Weans must be excited about that,” he remarked as casually as he could.
“Rebecca is, but Josh is almost a teenager now, John,” Fiona told him with a laugh. “Just means he’s excited and pretending he isn’t.”
“Right,” he chuckled. Was that a normal teenager thing? He didn’t know; he’d spent his teens alternating between wishing Margaret and Thomas would acknowledge his existence in some positive sense and desperately hoping they wouldn’t acknowledge him at all, right until he lied his way into the military.
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Fiona started cautiously, and Johnny knew his luck had run out. “Do you have anything going on for Christmas this year?”
“Haven’t really thought about it,” he lied through his teeth.
There’d been precious little else on his mind as the season approached, especially with him being between major deployments. Training manoeuvres didn’t occupy his mind quite the same as shipping out did, and the last few months had left him with a lot of time to think about how everything had played out.
Where there’d been radio silence from his parents and brother, and thank Christ for that, his sisters had made a real effort to reach out to him. In turn, Johnny had done the same, and it felt… good. Felt like they had a real relationship now, especially between him and Fiona, now that they were both adults and she wasn’t trying to straddle the role of sister and mother for him. And he was closer than ever with Mary, too.
He still found himself wondering where the others were and what they were doing now, but it was… they’d made their choice, and so had he.
The first few months after last Christmas had been the hardest; Johnny had been torn between continuing to nurse his simmering resentment for his sisters and digging into those bruised feelings to finally deal with them. In the end, it had been Simon who had sat him down and urged Johnny to do something about it, whether that involved reconciling with any of his family or washing his hands of them for good. Hell, Simon had even suggested at one point that Johnny would be well-served talking this over with a professional.
At the time, that had gone over like a lead balloon and marked one of their first major fights. He’d snapped something about not needing someone psychoanalysing everything he said, Ghost included, and Simon had come back with ‘I’m just trying to help you, Johnny.’ He hadn’t been ready to hear that. The evening had ended with Ghost storming out of the house, slamming the door behind him after shouting about not wanting to hear from Johnny until he dealt with his shit.
God, he’d sat in his dark living room for hours, just staring at the remnants of the night. The half-finished plates from dinner, the drinks he’d poured to go with them, and all his fucking hang-ups his family had left him with. The entire altercation had left him feeling like he’d been hollowed out, his mind blank and frozen and disconnected from any kind of emotion. Finally, he’d fallen asleep, right there on the living room couch.
Days passed in a robotic haze, with Johnny going through the motions and doing what was expected of him until he could go back to his empty house, where he just… existed, slowly realising just how colossally wrong he had been. Three days passed in that fashion, and on the third night he couldn’t take it any more. Halfway through cobbling something together that could pass as a meal, he’d broken down, tears streaking down his face and over his trembling lips as he realised exactly how badly he’d fucked up.
He knew, he knew, that Ghost genuinely wanted the best for him. He wanted to help Johnny, and he’d thrown it back in his face like a child. Christ, he’d been more scared than ever before in his life, terrified that he’d well and truly gone and fucked up their relationship beyond repair. That night, once he’d dried his tears and caught his breath, he’d called Simon, praying he would pick up. His voice had shook when he told Simon he was sorry, he was so sorry, he would do better. Be better.
It was only when Ghost had shown up on his doorstep fifteen minutes after that call that Johnny understood he hadn’t ruined anything. Instead, that fight had acted as a catalyst for him to do what he needed to do.
“You haven’t? Do you-” Fiona paused for a moment, taking a deep breath before continuing. “Daniel and I, we’re hosting dinner at ours this year, and we wanted to you to know there’s space at the table for you and Ghost both.”
Her choice of words was not lost on him; it would be a long time before he forgot how last Christmas ended.
“Thanks, Fiona, appreciate that,” Johnny murmured. Despite his sisters regularly asking after Ghost, it still surprised him that his LT -and partner of almost a year- would be included in holiday plans so easily. Was it something he’d ever get used to? “This a big family get-together, then?”
Were their parents going to be there? Their brother?
“It is,” she replied. “Mary’s coming over; don’t know if she’s bringing her girlfriend or not, but we’ll see. We, um, we also invited da and David. I know you’re not speaking to them, but-”
“It’s fine, Fiona,” he interrupted before she could get too far down that rabbit hole. “I don’t expect you to host two holidays just so I don’t have to see them, you know. If they can behave themselves, then so can I.”
That didn’t mean he would enjoy a single moment in their presence, however.
There was a name missing from that list, he realised. Mary and maybe her girlfriend, Megan, he expected, then his da and David would be there too, but where did Margaret fit into this equation? Fiona had made no mention of the matriarch of the MacTavish clan.
“I’ve told them if they can’t act right then they’re welcome to not come at all,” Fiona said with an annoyed huff, and coming from his sister? That said a lot. “I’m not having a repeat of last year in my house, and that’s that.”
“Really? How’d they take that?” Johnny asked, surprised.
“They were good about it, actually. Time will tell if they’ll follow through, though,” she sighed.
“They were?” he sounded like a broken record, but he couldn’t help it. The David he knew would not be okay with being told to be behave, never mind being told not to bother showing up for the holidays if he couldn’t. “That’s hard to believe.”
“I know, I know, I can’t believe it, either,” Fiona confided in him with a quiet laugh.
“What about-”
“Mam?” his sister finished his sentence for him, a childhood bad habit of hers that she could never quite kick. Her voice turned solemn when she said, “she won’t be there. She wasn’t invited, and she’s not welcome.”
“Wait- what?” He swore under his breath as he fumbled his phone, nearly dropping it in shock. Not invited? Not welcome? Margaret hadn’t been invited to a MacTavish Christmas? What in the bleeding fuck had been going on since last year?
“A lot’s changed, John,” Fiona said, and Christ, was that the understatement of the century.
“Yeah, that’s for sure,” he agreed faintly, staring at the empty canvas bag he’d left on the battered old countertop of his kitchen. The laminate was scratched and peeling in places, and desperately needed to be replaced. Much like the matching olive green cooking range and refrigerator that looked to have been brought into the house the last time it had been renovated, it was all on the list of projects Johnny wanted to tackle inside the house.
“Look, I- I didn’t mean to take you by surprise with this, it’s just, you were very clear that you didn’t want to talk about them, and I wanted to respect that,” she stammered quietly, and Johnny swallowed a sigh. She was right; he hadn't wanted to hear a single fucking thing about what the rest of the family was doing, but holy hell. “I’m sorry, I-”
“It’s okay, Fiona, I’m not mad, just- I’m surprised, that’s all,” he cut in quickly, before his sister could sink too far into that anxious place in her mind that hated any kind of confrontation. “There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
Fiona sucked in a deep, shaking breath, clearly audible through the speaker of his phone, and held it for a long moment before letting it out. “Even David doesn’t want her around,” she continued in a calmer, hushed tone. “Won’t say why, mind you, but you know it has to be serious.”
“Has to be,” he echoed, mind racing from one possibility to another. What could Margaret have done to alienate David, of all people? There was something else that stood out to him. “And da’s alright with all this?”
The line went dead quiet for a moment. Before Fiona could say anything, Johnny glanced up at the analogue clock on the stove and swore under his breath.
“Ah, shite, hold that thought, Fiona. I’ve got to go. Ghost is going to get here soon, and it’s our last night home before we deploy again. I’ll call you when we get back, aye? And I’ll pass the invitation on to Ghost and let you know. Love you,” he said in a rush. He didn’t give his sister a chance to say anything, instead ending the call and dropping his phone on the counter so he could get moving.
When he’d left Stirling Lines before Simon, he’d intended to stop by the shops to grab dinner and head home. The lasagne was supposed to get into the oven and the salad made so he could tidy the kitchen up before his boyfriend showed up, but then Fiona had called, and he was lucky he’d made it home before she sidetracked him too much. Not that he wasn’t happy to hear from her, especially since they were due to ship out bright and early, but she’d given him a lot to think about in the meantime.
There was whatever she was going to say about Margaret and Thomas, and why his da was spending a holiday away from his wife for the first time Johnny could remember in his life, and then there was David’s newly developed issues with their mam, or his newly developed conscience, or something. Beyond that, though, there was the prospect of attending another MacTavish Christmas so soon after the last. Something that was daunting at best and downright miserable at worst.
Christ, he didn’t want to see his brother again any time soon, even if he had allegedly done some growing up. But… it had also been a year since he’d last seen any of them. He’d gone longer without visiting before, though it felt different now that he was on better terms with his sisters.
That, and there was still a part of him that desperately wanted to be included, to be one of them. To be welcomed into the fold in a way he’d never felt like he was before. Johnny set the oven to preheat with a deep sigh, and pulled the frozen lasagne out of its packaging. He wanted that acceptance so badly he could nearly taste it, and yet…
The sound of movement at the front door heralding Simon’s arrival banished thoughts of the holidays from his mind for a moment.
“In the kitchen!” he called, dropping the lasagne and turning just in time to catch Ghost shuffling into the kitchen on silent feet. His mask must have been left at the door, because his face was bare to the warm overhead light, and the sight of it sent a rush of warm affection through his chest. “There you are.”
“Hi Johnny,” Simon murmured softly, the fond expression coming over his face a perfect mirror to Johnny’s own feelings. He stepped into Ghost’s space, wrapping his arms around his waist and pulling him close. It was like Simon’s strings had been cut; the tension seeped out of his tightly held frame all at once and he curled into Johnny, wrapping himself around the smaller man as much as he could. His face was buried in the crook of Soap’s shoulder, warm breath puffing against the fabric of his jumper. “Missed you.”
“You just saw me,” he chuckled, slowly rubbing his hands up and down Simon's back. Ghost was a surprisingly affectionate man, something Johnny had been delighted to discover after last Christmas when they'd decided to really make a go of things. And he loved it, loved every touch, every kiss, soaking it up and giving Simon back just as much as he gave.
Another discovery he enjoyed was that his sweet sap of a boyfriend always got a bit clingier around deployments, determined to make the most of those final hours before the 'Simon' and 'Johnny' they got to be outside of work had to be put away. It was a necessary evil, they both knew, an understanding that had arose between them after they had struggled through their first few operations as more than just brothers in arms.
Just having Simon like this, soft and wrapped up in him, was worth every difficult moment they had faced so far, and Johnny knew it would be worth any challenge that laid before them still.
Even if that challenge was yet another Christmas spent with his family.
“It’s not the same,” Ghost mumbled into his shoulder.
“I know,” he agreed quietly, sighing and tilting his head so he could press a kiss to Simon’s temple. “It isn’t.”
Ghost pulled back so he could meet Soap’s gaze, sweet brown eyes searching his own intently before cupping Johnny’s jaw and drawing him in for a proper kiss. Slow and tender at first, it was easy to get lost in the easy brush of their lips meeting over and over again, heat beginning to build between them.
The shrill beep of the oven finishing its preheat was a rude surprise for them both, forcing them to reluctantly separate so Johnny could slide the lasagne into the oven and set a timer.
“Meant to have this done earlier, but Fiona called,” he said, an explanation where none was needed. Simon wasn’t the kind of man to be bothered by something as trifling as a dinner of frozen lasagne being fifteen minutes later than Johnny had planned for, but he did like hearing about his sisters reaching out to him. Even if Ghost’s own feelings about them were complicated.
“And how is Fiona?” Simon asked, leaning against the kitchen counter while Soap grabbed out two small glasses from a cupboard. Honey brown eyes followed his movements as he pulled two bottles down from that same cupboard. One was a nice enough bourbon Johnny had picked up for Simon a while ago, something to have on hand to offer whenever he came over. The other was a fine scotch, one that Price and Gaz had bought him as a housewarming gift after he’d finally finished moving his stuff down from Glasgow.
“Oh, she’s good, she was just catching me up on the kids,” he replied, pouring a measure from each bottle into the glasses before passing one to Ghost. He took hold of Simon’s free hand with his own, lacing their fingers together and tugging him in the direction of the living room. “C’mon, we’ve got an hour to dinner.”
It was another space in the house that Johnny meant to do something with eventually. The tile in the kitchen gave way to short, worn brown carpeting that had likely seen better days around the time he’d been born where the furniture from his cramped Glasgow flat now sat. Even that lumpy little loveseat had made it down from Scotland, much as Soap wanted to get rid of it.
Still did. Damned thing did no favours to his back when it was in that little flat, and that hadn’t changed since it had been brought down to England. Not to mention, it looked a bit ridiculous sitting in a much larger space the way it was. He wanted to do it with Simon’s input, though, and he didn’t… he wasn’t sure how to ask him that yet.
“So we do,” Ghost said, the barest hint of a smile quirking his lips. He folded himself on to the little couch and pulled Soap down beside him. He landed with a muffled oof and settled into his LT’s side easily, scotch still in hand.
“She said we’re welcome at hers for Christmas, if we like. Both of us,” Johnny continued after taking a sip of his scotch. “She was very clear on that point.”
“Nice of her,” Simon commented mildly, swishing the bourbon around in his glass before taking a mouthful. Fiona’s gleeful rendition of the Riley family’s murders was never far from mind for him, Johnny knew. Neither was the lack of sympathy the rest of the MacTavish clan met the story of their lives and deaths with. It wasn’t something he would be forgetting any time soon, either.
“She’s got David and my da coming in for it, too.” It came out quietly, but the moment David’s name came out of his mouth Simon was levelling him a sharp look, brows high on his forehead.
“And you want to go?” he asked slowly, disbelief clear in every word.
“Should show my face eventually, don’t you think? Be nice to see my sisters again, too,” Johnny said with a half-hearted shrug. “Besides, I can handle anything David throws at me.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Ghost said.
“But?”
For the second time that evening, a scarred hand reached out to cup his jaw, tilting his head so Simon could stare down at him with those big brown eyes. “Do you want to go?”
No, no he really didn’t want to do it all over again. Fiona could claim David wouldn’t be a complete and utter prick if they showed up to her gathering in Edinburgh all she wanted, but she hadn’t seen the texts David had sent him before he blocked his brother, she hadn’t been party to the more foul things David had done and said to him.
He had no such faith in the man.
It really would be nice to see Mary and Fiona again, that was true, and if Megan was there then all the better. Hell, meeting Fiona’s husband, Daniel, for what would be maybe the second or third time ever would be alright, too. The week he had spent packing up what life he had in Glasgow had been a busy one, not conducive to making social calls to his family, and the only spare time he had up there he had spent taking care of another errand. One that he could only do alone.
But was that worth subjecting himself to his brother’s presence for any amount of time?
“No,” he admitted softly. The rough pad of Simon’s thumb swept gently over his cheek, and Johnny sighed into the feeling.
“Then we don’t go.”
It sounded so simple when he said it like that. Simon had a way of doing that, of cutting through the noise to get at the heart of things. When he set aside the sense of obligation that always seemed to dog him when it came to his family, the conclusion he was left with was…
He wasn’t ready to have another go at a proper MacTavish Christmas yet, not so soon after the last, and maybe he never would be. So he wouldn’t go, just like that. Did that make him selfish? Maybe it did, Johnny thought, maybe it did. After spending his life trying to be the dutiful son, seeking acceptance that he would never receive, was that so bad? Did he not deserve to be a bit selfish?
Besides, it could be nice to spend the holiday alone with Simon once they got home from this deployment. Maybe they could even make some memories of their own this season? There were the classics, like stringing up some lights or putting up a tree in the living room, but what he really wanted was to take Simon up to Manchester and make a proper day out of visiting his family’s graves. Could see if he could get Ghost to tell him another story about the Rileys while he was at it.
There was one he’d told Johnny, right around the time Halloween decorations started popping up in the shops, about one of young Joseph’s birthdays. His last birthday, before…
Before.
A distant expression had come over him, those sweet brown eyes stuck on something only he could see, and Simon had told him that money had been tight that year - when had it not been? he’d chuckled - and they weren’t sure how to celebrate Joseph’s birthday. What every single Riley had been sure of was that it needed to be something special. It wasn’t every day that a little boy turned six, after all.
Johnny had watched as a small, secret smile tugged gently at the corners of Simon’s mouth as he explained that Joseph had discovered some old children’s movie at the library and became fixated on it the way little kids did, sometimes. It had all the classic fantasy elements in it: a knight in shining armour setting out to rescue a princess from a dragon’s tower, aided in his noble quest by a fairy godmother and his loyal sidekick.
Was it a good movie? No, not at all, but Joseph had fallen in love with it all the same, and so they had done what they could to make it real for him. Naturally, little Joseph had taken on the role of knight in shining armour, kitted out in the finest black sweatpants and grey long sleeved shirt they could find, plastic sword and shield from a second-hand shop in hand. Tommy was his loyal sidekick, and Beth was, of course, the princess to be rescued. That left Alice Riley as Joseph’s fairy godmother and Simon?
Well, Uncle Simon was the dragon.
Joseph had come home from school that day buoyed by birthday wishes and the excitement of getting to dress up for class to find his family ready to go in their own cobbled together costumes. Watching Simon meander his way down memory lane had been dearly precious for Johnny, something he tucked away to hold on to for himself. He looked so much softer, so much younger, and yet there was such a deep sadness that lived behind every fond remembrance that it left his heart aching. There was a photo of that night, one that some kind stranger took for them when the whole lot of them took Joseph out into the garden to play out the story of the movie.
It was one of his favourites, Simon had murmured, one of the ones he wished had survived the fire.
Johnny leaned forwards and planted a soft kiss on his boyfriend’s lips.
“Alright, then. We won’t go,” he breathed before kissing Simon again.
He’d call Fiona when they got back and let her know.
+
“Watcher-1 to Bravo-6… Watcher to Bravo, over.”
“Laswell, go for 6.”
“John - Makarov is out!”
“Say again, Laswell.”
“Makarov is out! He’s on the move, John.”
+
“Had him right in our fuckin’ hands…”
“I should’ve killed him when we had the chance.”
“What stopped you…?”
+
“We do deals for intel all the time.”
“He’s right. Road to hell or not, Garrick’s right.”
“Boss, we got this. Johnny, you with me?”
“You know it, LT.”
+
“Six to Watcher - we are on the X… going for Makarov.”
“Solid copy. Go get him, John.”
“This bastard won’t go down easy.”
“Yeah, well neither will we, sunshine - alright. Come on.”
+
“0-7 to Six - we’re punching through now!” Ghost growled into his mic, his eyes on the service door ahead of him and Gaz as the last hostile finally fell.
Everything he was hearing come through on comms only added to the sense of urgency that had sprung to life in his gut. Knowing that he wasn’t on Johnny’s six, he didn’t have his back, he wasn’t in sight, all added to it. Gaz was more than capable, someone he viewed as a friend and ally, but he wasn’t Johnny. It left him feeling off-kilter and driven to get to their other two teammates.
God, he wanted to have him in his sights. See he was okay for himself.
As they reached the service door, their eyes met. There was no time to lose, they needed to get out there, no matter what was waiting for them. He nodded at the sergeant, and Gaz pushed the door open.
The sound of yelling and gunfire met his ears, nearly deafening in their intensity in the acoustics of the Chunnel. They pushed in, rifles up and at the ready, and Ghost nearly choked when Price and Johnny came into view, ice trickling down his back and through his chest. He felt frozen, even as they continued to make their push forward.
Nothing would ever erase this moment, this scene, from his mind.
His Johnny, bleeding from multiple gunshot wounds, his arm hanging uselessly at his side at an angle that spoke to a nasty break and-
A gun to his head.
There was nothing he could do.
Ghost broke into a sprint with Gaz hot on his heels, but it didn’t matter how fast he ran, he knew he wouldn’t get there in time for it to make a difference. Makarov was too close to Johnny to get a clean shot on him - the angle was all wrong - and Price was elbow-deep in the bomb.
The sickening realisation dawned on him as the pounding of his heart drowned out the sound of their footsteps pounding against the concrete floor of the Chunnel, the sound of fighting, and whatever the fuck Makarov was saying to his sergeant.
He was going to watch Johnny die.
This was the end, and there wasn’t a single fucking thing he could do about it.
His voice caught in his throat as his entire world narrowed down to a single point:
Johnny.
His knee, the one that was supposed to have a brace on it, especially after the hell they’d been putting their bodies through, gave out.
In the same moment, Makarov pulled the trigger. The gun in his hand went off, and Ghost swore the sound would haunt his dreams for the rest of his life.
It was impossible to see what happened after that; the Chunnel erupted in fighting again. The muzzle of Gaz’s rifle flashed as he squeezed the trigger over and over, his shots finding their homes in Konni bodies and dropping them to the floor. Ghost fired round after round at them, watching in detached horror as what remained of Konni rallied around Makarov and helped him escape through another service door.
Hard to care about Makarov escaping when Johnny was laying in a growing pool of his own blood. How could anyone live through a shot to the head? Was there any chance he was alive? They reached Price moments later, Gaz joining him at the explosive device to do… something. Disarm it, maybe.
It didn’t matter.
If Johnny was dead, then it didn’t fucking matter. Nothing did. And if he was alive? If, by the slimmest possible chance, his Johnny was alive?
Fuck the bomb, fuck the Chunnel, fuck all of it. He’d get Johnny out of there and worry about the rest later. Or never.
“Johnny…” he croaked.
Ghost dropped to his knees, eyes glued to the way his Johnny’s brutalised body had fallen, and reached out with one trembling hand. He slipped it under the top edge of Johnny’s tactical vest, his gloved fingers searching for any patch of skin he could find, and-
He was alive.
His chest rose and fell under his hand, laboured and shallow, but Johnny was breathing.
“We need medevac, now!”
+
The distant rattle of the ancient vents as the heat kicked on shook Ghost from his reverie. He stared down at the phone sitting on the desk before him, then glanced at the script he was meant to use and took a deep breath. This was a phone call he never looked forward to making, and the fact that it was for Johnny made it all the worse.
He leaned forward, listening to how the desk chair under him creaked with every movement, and sighed. Putting it off wasn’t helping anything. Instead, every passing minute that he held off made it that much harder to start, and made it that much longer until he could return to Johnny’s side.
He wasn’t awake yet, and wouldn’t be for some time given the severity of his numerous injuries. He was alive, though. That counted for something, even if Ghost’s rattled mind struggled to wrap itself around what had transpired. Everything that had happened after calling for an emergency medical evacuation had been a blur of sights and sounds, leaving him feeling like an observer in his own body. Johnny had been whisked out of that tunnel by a team of medical staff, Ghost right behind them until they put him in the back of an ambulance and left him standing in the middle of the street in his tactical gear. First responders and other officials milled about him while he watched the ambulance peel into traffic, lights flashing and sirens blaring.
As for the rest of the 141, Ghost didn’t know. At some point they joined him on the street, and Price had taken charge the way he needed him to. The bomb Makarov and Konni had planted in the Chunnel must have been disarmed, but fuck if he knew anything about that.
With a slow shake of his head, Ghost reached for the phone and dialled the number he had been staring at on the page before him for the last hour.
After three rings, the line picked up.
“Hello?” Fiona sounded both wary and impatient, and fuck did he ever not want to do this, but… better this than knocking on her door to deliver even worse news in person.
“Is this Fiona Saunders?” he asked; a necessary formality that had to be observed, even if he knew damn well it was Johnny’s sister on the other end. At least it was her and not Margaret fucking MacTavish - a small blessing. His sergeant had put in a change to his next of kin when they’d returned to duty after the last holiday season, thankfully.
“Yes…?”
Ghost breathed deep and glanced down at the script before him.
“This is Lieutenant Simon Riley calling on behalf of His Majesty’s Special Air Service, 22nd Regiment, to inform you that John MacTavish-”
“Oh God, no,” Fiona breathed, fear and grief lending her voice a tightness that Simon was intimately familiar with. She knew there were few reasons they would ever call her, and none of them were good. “No, no no nonono, this isn’t happening, this isn’t happening, tell me this is a bad joke! Please!”
He wished it was a bad joke. Fuck, did he ever wish this was a bad joke. If it was, though, he wouldn’t be using his real name to make the call, and Makarov would never have had the opportunity to shoot his sergeant. None of this would be happening.
“John MacTavish has been critically injured in the line of duty and has been transferred to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham where he will receive treatment until he wakes from a medically induced coma,” he said, a painful recitation that left him aching with grief. On the other end, he could hear Johnny’s sister desperately trying not to cry and failing miserably, every wet sob stabbing right at the heart of him.
“Oh God, oh God,” she gasped. “Is- is he going to be okay? Please, is he- is it-”
“I- we have every hope that Sergeant MacTavish will make a full recovery, but we have no further details at this time.” They wouldn’t know until Johnny woke up.
If he woke up.
He had been saved by his knee giving out on him, but the bullet had still made glancing contact with his skull, and there were concerns about how that would impact his brain in both the short and long term. That wasn’t a conversation he would be having with Fiona today, though.
“When? When will you know more? Will you- will I be n-notified of any changes in his condition?” she asked tremulously, her breath hitching as she spoke. “He was supposed to bring his boyfriend for Christmas again and now- now-”
“I know, Fiona, I know. I’m sorry,” he said with a heavy swallow, and he could feel the moment she realised who he was. Letting the conversation become personal and letting Johnny’s sister know it was him wasn’t in the script, and if this phone call was about anyone but his Johnny, he wouldn’t have deviated. But it was about Johnny, and that made all the difference.
“Wait, Ghost? Ghost, is that you?”
Would she be angry with him? Find Johnny’s injuries as unforgivable as he did? Would she rail against him for not keeping him safe? Or would she be furious that when she had once asked how dangerous Johnny’s job really was, they had lied to her face, fed her some meaningless pap about how there was always a risk when it came to their job. Ghost wouldn’t blame her if she did - he deserved it, for letting this happen. He hadn’t been there when his sergeant needed him the most.
He also knew that if he let himself keep going down the rabbit hole of blame that he’d spiral completely, and that wasn’t going to help anything. Not right now. He needed to keep it together, get through this call with Fiona, and get back to Johnny.
“Yeah,” he admitted in a hoarse croak. “Afraid we won’t make it to Christmas this year.”
“But you’ll be with him, right? John won’t be alone?” That was her concern? Fiona, after finding out her brother had a brush with death closer than any of them ever wanted, wanted to know that he wouldn’t be alone?
“He won’t be alone, I promise.”
Not now, and not ever. Not if Simon had anything to say about it.