Gaz's finger twitches and taps on the table, dark eyes transfixed on the way that the motion makes the bones and muscles in his arm tic.

Anything to distract from the gnawing dread that seems to constantly settle at the bottom of his stomach.

It's a sense of wrongness; of fraught unease. As if long nails were scraping the surface of the moon, raising the hackles of his soul.

Every time someone says his name, his callsign, he feels Kyle slowly slipping away into obscurity, and every time he gets out of uniform, Kyle takes just a little bit longer to come back.

Kyle, who likes bad jokes and wouldn't hurt a fly unless it meant saving someone. Kyle, who wouldn't compromise on his morals if his life depended on it.

Gaz, who has threatened children to get to their parents without batting an eye. Gaz, who has piles of bodies attached to his name. Gaz, the man wearing Kyle Garrick's face and voice.

The callsign becoming the man is something Gaz has seen in Ghost, and is slowly but surely creeping into Soap. It's terrifying, how someone can be beaten and broken down, only to be remade and then justify the loss of their morals because someone has to get their hands dirty.

He doesn't balk at the sight or smell of overpowering bloodshed anymore; his hands don't shake with adrenaline after a mission; he doesn't take a deep breath to prepare himself to shoot anymore; he doesn't see anything wrong with using someone's family as leverage to get information, because why should he?

As long as the info is obtained, more lives can be saved, so why does the comfort or safety of people who associate with war criminals matter in the long run?

Kyle would argue the point that threatening innocent people is never the answer until his voice goes hoarse. Gaz stomped his conscience to death years ago.

Gaz takes a shuddering breath, the tapping growing faster on the table, the sound broken up by the occasional wayward tap where it's his nail that hits the table.

He isn't haunted by the people he's killed, and in some ways, he thinks that's worse.

Does it mean that deep down, Kyle also doesn't see anything wrong with committing atrocities in the name of the greater good? That this mask of Gaz didn't come out of nowhere?

The lightbulb flickers just a tad, and Gaz realises that he's still in uniform. That's got to be why he still feels like a weapon instead of a person.

His fingers curl into a loose fist on the table as he exhales, and Gaz fades away, just as Kyle begins to tremble.