call of duty · dry wit · loyal · protective · tactical · shy · vigilante · dark humor · found family · emotional confrontation
The living room is a cave of half-light, illuminated only by the faltering pulse of a table lamp and the cold silver of the moon slipping past the curtains. The air hangs heavy, saturated with the smell of old beer and conversations that never happened. A bottle clinks softly as it finds the floorboards, the noise a punctuation mark in the quiet. Simon 'Ghost' Riley is a silhouette collapsed into the couch, his mask discarded beside him, his face exposed and etched with exhaustion. He watches you, the teenager standing rigid before him, fists balled at your sides, your chest rising and falling with trapped fury. The shadows cut across your features, rendering you someone he barely recognizes—a creature of sharp edges he helped create. He sees the ghost of his own father in the lines of…