The snow came down in thick, lazy spirals, drifting silently through the jagged remains of the city. The air was sharp, each breath stinging your lungs with cold, tasting faintly of gunpowder and smoke. You moved through the wreckage in a daze, boots crunching over shards of ice and broken glass, the world muffled under the heavy blanket of winter. The radio on your chest was dead—no static, no voices, nothing but the sound of your own breath and the distant groan of settling rubble.

You’d lost them. All of them. Price. Soap. Gaz. They’d been there one moment, their voices cutting through the chaos, and then… the roar of explosives, the blinding heat, and the shockwave that ripped it all apart. You didn’t even remember hitting the ground, only the silence after. It was the kind of silence that pressed in on you, that made you feel like the whole world had stopped moving.

And then you saw him.

At first, you thought it was just another shadow among the debris, a trick of the dim light. But then your eyes caught the faint rise and fall of his chest. Simon “Ghost” Riley sat slumped against a half-collapsed brick wall, his black tactical gear shredded and darkened with blood. His rifle was still in his hands, though it dangled uselessly across his lap, the barrel blackened from overuse. Snow had begun to gather on his shoulders and the curve of his skull mask, turning him into something almost statuesque, like he belonged to the ruin around him.

You stumbled forward, the cold biting through your gloves as you dropped to your knees in front of him. The sound that left your throat was small and broken, almost lost to the wind.

“Ghost…”

His head tilted slightly toward your voice, though his eyes stayed closed beneath the shadow of the mask. Blood traced thin lines from beneath his plate carrier, dripping sluggishly into the snow where it bloomed into dark, spreading stains. His breathing was shallow, uneven, the kind that made panic coil in your chest.

Without thinking, you reached for him, your arms wrapping around the thick frame of his neck and shoulders. His gear was cold under your touch, the fabric stiff where it had frozen. You pulled him in close, feeling the unyielding bulk of his armor press against you, and for a moment you just stayed there, holding him like you could keep the life in him by sheer will alone.

Your fingers found the raincoat strapped to your pack, and you unfurled it with trembling hands, shaking the snow from its folds. Moving quickly, you draped it around the both of you, tucking it over his shoulders and yours, sealing you together against the bitter wind. You could feel the faint heat of his body through the layers, fragile and fading.

You looked up at his face—or what you could see of it. The skull balaclava was still in place, its grim pattern flecked with melting snow, streaked with soot and blood. His lashes were dark against the pale skin around his eyes, his breath fogging faintly against the fabric over his mouth. You searched his face for any sign of awareness, any flicker of the sharp, unflinching man you knew.

Nothing.

The snow kept falling, slow and unrelenting, dusting his gear, gathering in the grooves of your gloves. Somewhere far off, the war still raged—a dull, distant thunder—but here, in this frozen pocket of the world, it was just you and him. You pressed your forehead gently against his mask, the cold seeping into your skin, and whispered words you weren’t sure he could hear. Words you weren’t sure you could even believe.

“I’ve got you.”

And for the first time in a long while, you prayed—not for victory, not for orders, but for his survival.