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Darkness shrouded the figure dressed in all black as they approached the cairn. Faint wisps ignited on the tops of the stones when they stepped inside the circle. A voice — haunting and cold and oh-so-familiar — rose up as if emanating from the earth itself.
"Back already? What short life spans humans have."
"Again," the figure in black said in a low, rumbling growl.
"As you wish."
The world went black.
*
"I think I loved ye in another life," Soap says into Ghost's neck.
Rain pours down around them, the fires in the distance twisting black on white as soot and steam intermingle. Fingers skate down his spine, warm on his rain-drenched skin. Ghost hums in the way that means he's thinking.
"Don't love me now?"
"Dinnae be daft," Johnny huffs. "I just meant... it feels like I've always loved ye. Even before I knew ye."
Ghost hums in the way that signals his agreement.
Soap pulls back, and the scent of smoke and death fills his nose. The battle was hard won, and he's lost too many of his kinsmen and women today, but with Ghost by his side, whispering the secrets of the infernal English army into his ear, the highlanders have prevailed.
It won't always be that way. When the British finally catch on that they have a traitor in their midst, Soap can only pray that Ghost is able to escape. They risk too much even standing here, so close to the battle, bare chests pressed together. Only Ghost's disguise as a Highlander gives Soap any sort of comfort that they won't be discovered, though the mask he wears also prevents Soap from pressing needy lips to his mouth.
"Like tae see ye in a kilt. Suits ye."
"Shows off my handsome legs."
"More than yer legs," Soap growls, reaching up to squeeze Ghost's naked pec.
"Careful now. Don't damage the goods. Gotta present a clean image to the British pigs."
Soap snorts and buries his face back into the sopping fabric of Ghost's mask that hangs heavy around his neck. They have so little time together, Soap doubts himself at times. Surely he's misunderstood Ghost's devotion. Surely it will all end in betrayal.
But Ghost has been true for eight years now, slipping in and out from behind enemy lines to bring him information and, for seven years, to bring companionship and love in the tiny snippets of time they can be together.
In the end, it's not Ghost who betrays him.
Two weeks after Ghost slips away from his satisfied lover's bed to begin his journey back to England, Soap's own kin string him up for fraternizing with the enemy.
Two months later, the MacTavish clan wakes to find three men, including the man who accused John MacTavish of being a traitor, strung up in the same spot where John died. The letters proving their treachery and collusion with the English are stabbed into each of their chests with a dagger, and the gold they collected as payment is strewn in the blood-drenched mud at their feet.
*
Pain pulsed from where the arrow pierced his side as he crawled toward his dead lover's body. His family's howls of bloodthirsty delight filled the night, mixing with the terrorized screams of his lover's kin. But he could only focus on the blue eyes staring past him into nothingness and the cold blood pooled around the body of the man he'd vowed to love and protect only days ago in the deepest part of the forest between their lands.
They'd held their own ceremony, one not beholden to a god who didn't approve of their love, and consummated their vows with a night of pleasure.
One.
Single.
Night.
He crawled through the blood to curl around the empty shell once so vibrant with laughter and joy. Tears of pain and rage and brokenness streamed down his pale cheeks, and the sounds of his family's victory against their sworn enemy faded away in the face of his abject misery.
The earth rumbled under him as he gathered his lover's body to his chest and wept, his tears soaking the ground along with their mixed blood. Stones burst from the earth to circle around them, unearthly lights dancing on the tips of the jagged, curved rocks.
He paid no attention. His only thought was of the life of loneliness that awaited him without the man in his arms. He hoped he would die instead.
Until a strange, cold voice murmured in his ear for the first time.
*
The sea wind whips around Soap's face, his grin wide and feral as he leans forward in the netting. "Nothing on the horizon, Captain!"
He looks down to find his captain's brown eyes trained on him. They share a grin, and Soap's heart leaps in his chest.
In his younger days, during every moment of feeling out of place among his family and friends, he never imagined he would one day find such freedom. Nor such a devoted love. The so-called "church" might call them an abomination, but to Soap, his captain's body is a temple he gladly worships at as often as possible.
The man they call the Ghost of the Sea waves at him to come down. Soap nods but takes one more glance over the horizon to double check.
He freezes.
A speck has appeared in the distance.
He pulls out his spyglass and scans until he finds it... the ship's flag. At the familiar black and white, his blood runs cold.
"Captain! Pirates off the starboard bow!"
All the softness in Captain Riley's eyes disappears. He shouts orders to his crew, turning the boat toward the pirates. After all, this is what they were commissioned by the British Navy to do. The war between France and England might be on hold, but the pirates trawling the waters of the English Channel still need to be put in their place.
Namely, at the bottom of the Channel.
Soap swings down from the netting. As first mate, his place is at his captain's side in all things.
The pirates seem to be just as eager for a confrontation; the speck on the horizon swiftly turns into a massive ship. They've never engaged with a ship of this size before. Soap swallows and glances to his captain.
"Orders, sir?"
Simon gives him a smirk and a wink. "Might be time for the take-no-prisoners approach."
"The devil's hellfire?" Soap asks, awe imbued in every word.
His captain laughs, and then, in front of the whole crew, he presses a wild kiss to Soap's lips. "Do your worst, love."
Soap kisses his captain back and runs for the trebuchets. The battle that follows is the most difficult of their naval careers. Even with the bombs — thick ceramic jars full of a secret mixture only he and the captain know that spontaneously catches fire and can't be extinguished with water — the pirates fight harder than the British sailors expect.
Eventually, though, the fire does its job, and the ship begins to sink. With a whoop, Soap lifts his fist into the air, eyes scanning for his captain. When he finds the grinning face so precious to him, he yells again—
And cuts off as searing pain slices through the center of his back. His hand falls to his chest, finger pricking on the arrowhead erupting from the skin just beneath his sternum as he stumbles into one of the crew standing beside him.
In the span of a breath, the grin on his captain's face flips into abject fear. His lips form Soap's name, but for some reason, the world has gone quiet. Soap's eyelids are heavy, but as the crew member eases his body to the deck, he keeps his gaze on his lover until the world turns black.
*
"You toy with the mortals too much," a deep, warm voice warned.
"Would you have me deny him?" the cold voice answered. "Waste a life sacrificed — no matter how unwillingly — and the offerings of blood, pain, and tears?"
"I would have you give them a life together without strife for once."
"I do not lead them to strife, brother. They find it on their own. It is who they are."
A deep hum of doubt resonated through the void. But it didn't speak again, even when the shrouded figure reappeared and demanded yet another chance.
*
The trenches in December 1917 are cold and wet and full of vermin, but the letter from his mam warms Soap like the sun on a summer day. She's sent him new pictures of his siblings this time.
And one of his best friend, Molly, who his mam not-so-subtly reminds him is still unmarried.
He snorts and leans over to show his Lieutenant. "What d'ye think?"
After a brief glance away from his scope, Ghost snorts as well. "Not my type, Captain."
Soap glances around. A few soldiers are hunkering down under canvas tarps, trying to catch a bit of sleep despite the miserable conditions, and a few others further down are involved in a heated card game. He decides they're alone enough for a bit of affection as long as he's careful. He stands behind Ghost to block the view of the card players and hooks his chin over his subordinate's shoulder.
"Aye, I think ye know she's no' my type, either."
"Fuckin' right," Ghost mumbles.
They both stink of too many days in the trenches, but Soap presses a stealthy kiss to Ghost's dirty neck anyway. What he wouldn't give for a hot bath, clean sheets, and Ghost laid out beneath him like a feast. The most they've gotten in the years since this hell started are a few weeks here and there of leave in various towns behind enemy lines throughout Europe.
Still, it's been three years of the kind of devotion he hadn't experienced until the scrappy lieutenant — one Simon "Ghost" Riley — saved his life behind enemy lines and convinced him to transfer Ghost into his division. Ghost hasn't left his side since, and he's saved Soap's life a couple more times at least. He's better at stealth and quiet killing than any one man has a right to be.
And it's all for Soap.
Ghost has outright said so more than once. That he was made to love Soap. That it's his duty to protect him.
Too bad they're in the middle of a fucking world war.
Ghost turns away from the rifle and leans up. The clandestine kiss is hurried and desperate, just like everything they do — stolen moments and rushed pleasure eked out of a dismal life. As Soap deepens the kiss, he dreams of a cottage on a hillside. A place where they can live their lives away from death and chaos.
A place where he can kiss his lover any time he likes without the worry of prying eyes.
The major arrives that night, and though Soap fights it, Ghost is pulled from his side for the first time in three years. It seems his lieutenant's abilities haven't gone unnoticed, and the generals have a stealth mission that could use his expertise.
Ghost is declared missing one month later.
Soap holds out hope — and his division holds on to life — until the Battle of the Lys in April of 1918. His body is never recovered by his family, but locals report a strange bon fire in the middle of the coldest night of December 1918, one month after the end of the war... and the release of a Lieutenant Simon Riley as a prisoner of war.
John "Soap" MacTavish's ID tags appear on his parents' doorstep a month later.
*
"I want the life I never got with him," Riley gasped. "Please."
"You have made the sacrifice. It will be done."
The cold of the ground seeped into Ghost's knees as he held Soap's body in his arms. The pain of his loss was unbearable, the idea of moving on with his life impossible. The cold voice might very well be tricking him into a deal with a devil, but he didn't care. Nothing in life was worthwhile without Soap by his side.
Still, he would do well to at least ask.
"And if he's taken from me again?"
"Come back here, and the cycle will begin again."
*
The tunnel echoes with gun fire. Soap's shoulder burns, but he doesn't falter in the face of Makarov's bomb or at the thought of the death and chaos such a bomb would create.
He guides Price through the process. They get so close.
Until Makarov arrives to ruin everything. Again.
Terror floods his weakening body as Makarov and Price scuffle. He grips his knife, willing the adrenaline to give him one more burst of strength, even if it means bleeding out faster.
He has to save his captain.
For the millionth time, he imagines blowing Makarov's brains out in the helo over Verdansk. The false burn of satisfaction gives him strength.
He lunges.
But he's not strong enough.
The gun turns on him instead, the report nearly deafening him, but he can still hear the scream of his lover calling his name before the world winks out of existence.
*
"You think you can do better?" the cold voice sneered.
"I think I can make a different offer," the warm voice replied. "I think the man who came to you a millennia ago is not the same as the one who trudges up your hill now. A life made effectively immortal through your deal has made him weary. And what does a weary traveler want more than rest?"
"Fine. Make your offer. I grow tired of the repetition."
*
The final time he approaches the hill, the cairn will be gone. The wisps will not light. The cold voice will not speak to him.
Instead, a small house will be sitting on top of the hill, warm light spilling from windows shut tight against the cold night.
Ghost will fall to his knees in despair, but a deep, comforting voice will come to him in that moment and tell him to continue on, that his love is waiting for him, that all he needs to do to claim that life is choose peace. Ghost will approach the house with distrust in his heart.
How could it be so easy? After more than a thousand years and dozens of lifetimes, will he truly find rest?
He will find a familiar voice, a familiar embrace, a familiar pair of blue eyes offering him warm lips, soft hands, and a quiet life of rest — a single lifetime to live out together before they subside into the embrace of Death.
For Ghost, it will not be a choice at all.
All he has and will ever want lives in that house on the hill, and he will grab on with both hands, greedy for an end to the pain.
His friends, left on a Scottish cliffside with the excuse that Ghost needs time to himself, will look for him before they leave. But they will not find him there on the hillside. Nor will they find the house or a cairn. At the top of the hill, a soft, oddly warm breeze in the midst of the cold will play with their hair, whispering around their ears in a way that sounds surprisingly like melded Scottish and Manc accents murmuring, "Goodbye, dear friends, until we meet again in your life after life." They will leave, comforted by that seeming miracle of wind even as thoughts of loss and impossibilities float in the midst of their awe.
Local legend will say that the hill is a lucky spot for lovers of all kinds, and those who spend a night together at the strangely-warm top of the hill will remain tied to one another for the rest of their days.
And every now and then, a weary traveler lost in the night will find not a barren hill but rather a warm house with two smiling men welcoming them to rest and be easy... only to wake in the morning, cushioned on the softest moss, and well-warmed by even the winter sun, with the echo of Scottish and Manc accents filling their dreams.
After all, what is a "single lifetime" in a place where time has no meaning? And what is Death to those who have fought the unsympathetic hands of Fate and, with a little help, won their happy ending?
It is nothing more or less than an eternal love to be cherished and an abundance of warmth to be shared.