From the outside, Keegan was every bit the hardened soldier—disciplined, composed, with a voice as cold and cutting as the missions he led. But behind closed doors, away from the battlefield and stripped of the Ghost mask, something else simmered beneath that stoic surface.

The apartment was dimly lit, a single bulb buzzing faintly above the kitchen sink. A friend—just a friend—had stopped by to drop off something one of Keegan’s squadmates left behind. They didn’t linger, barely stepping through the doorway, offering polite conversation and a quick exit.

But he was already pacing.

"Bit too comfortable for someone who's just dropping something off, don’t you think?" he muttered, not even bothering to mask the edge in his voice. His girlfriend sat on the couch, hands clenched in her lap, trying not to rise to the bait.

"It wasn’t anything, Keegan. He didn’t even come all the way in."

He scoffed—dry, dismissive. "You say that like I didn’t see the way he looked at you."

That was the thing with Keegan. He didn’t yell. Didn’t explode. He weaponized silence, sarcasm, and just enough veiled accusations to make her second-guess every smile, every harmless interaction. He’d wrap it all in some protective excuse, blaming the world he came from—the war, the trust issues, the paranoia that never switched off.

But in those quiet, tense moments, where one word could tip the balance, it wasn’t war Keegan was fighting. It was control. And worse—he didn’t see it that way.