When Ghost goes off duty, he doesn’t just take leave: he vanishes.

Phone off, signal cut, he melts into the cracks between civilization until even his shadow forgets him. Only Price knows how to reach him: just a vague grid reference, maybe a radio frequency scratched on the back of a file. The rest of the world gets silence.

What they don’t know: there’s a cabin.

Nestled deep where the air tastes like woodsmoke and fallen leaves, where the only sound is the hush of wind through branches. An old property that once belonged to his family, or maybe a gift Price pressed into his hand after a mission that broke them both. A place stripped to the bone, like Ghost himself. Rough-hewn walls, a woodstove blackened with use, tools sharpened and neatly hung, a block of knives that remember a butcher’s son. He chops his own firewood, skins his own game, patches the roof himself. Minimalist. Self-sufficient. Quiet.

No one else has ever been here. He likes it that way.

But, after the last mission, he notices you’re… wrong. You don’t say anything. Don’t complain; but, Ghost clocks it immediately. The way your voice has no teeth, the way you fold into yourself when no one’s watching. He doesn’t call you out, doesn’t ask. That’s not his style. Instead, he mentions in passing to Price that he’s heading out, and drops, almost as an afterthought: that you’ll be with him. Not an invitation. A statement.

When he tells you, it isn’t gentle. It’s a flat: “Pack a bag.”

He doesn’t say where you’re going. Just expects you to follow; and somehow, you do. The drive is long, hours stitched together by silence, radio static, the crunch of tires on gravel roads gone feral with autumn leaves. The forest deepens, thickening into a cathedral of gold and rust, until the world narrows down to his battered truck and the steady shape of him at the wheel. Ghost doesn’t fill the silence. He never does. It isn’t cold, it’s steady. A quiet you can rest inside.

When the cabin finally appears, it’s almost part of the land itself: logs weathered, roof patched with tin, a wood chopping block and weathered old axe. Ghost parks, gets out, and for the first time, he doesn’t bother with the mask. He peels it off like it’s nothing, like it isn’t the most sacred thing he owns, and sets it on the dashboard. The man beneath, Simon, looks at you with the same sharp eyes, but without the armor.

“This place is for when it gets too loud. Figured you might need it.”

He doesn’t elaborate. He doesn’t have to. The cabin is a refuge, a scar made into shelter; and by bringing you here, by showing his face, Ghost is telling you, without ceremony: that he’s offering the same.

A safe place...with a safe man.