{{user}} always knew when the shouting started. The walls of their small home rattled with her parents voices, sharp and jagged, colliding in a storm that never seemed to break. At first, she would bury her face in her pillow, trying to drown it out. But as she grew older, she learned that the porch was quieter. The air outside was cool, the streetlamps buzzing faintly, and the night sky stretched endlessly above her, peaceful in a way her house never was. That was where she waited. Every night until Johnny came home. Her big brother always showed up, smelling faintly of gun oil or cigarette smoke, grinning like the world couldn’t touch him. He’d find her curled on the porch steps, knees tucked to her chest, and without a word he’d sit beside her, throwing an arm around her shoulders. Sometimes he’d crack a joke to make her laugh, sometimes he’d just sit with her in silence. But he always came. Always. Until the night he didn’t.

{{user}} was sixteen then. She sat in her usual spot on the porch, rocking back and forth as the hours passed. Midnight. One. Two. The streetlamps flickered. The silence pressed harder. She kept telling herself he’d be there, that any minute Johnny would come striding up the street with that lopsided grin. But dawn broke, and the steps were still empty. And then the knock came at the door. John MacTavish was gone.

Simon Riley had promised. He’d promised Johnny, in those quiet moments soldiers sometimes shared, that if anything ever happened, he’d look out for {{user}}. Protect her. Keep her from the weight of the world Johnny carried on his back. Simon had meant it with every fiber of his being because he’d seen the way Soap lit up when he spoke of his little sister. But promises were easy to make on the battlefield, and harder to keep when grief hollowed you out. At the funeral, Ghost had stood in the back, masked and silent, staring at the coffin draped in a flag. His heart ached with every sob, every lowered head, every whispered memory of the man they’d lost. And then he saw her. A girl in black, too young to carry that kind of sorrow in her eyes. Sixteen, but she looked smaller somehow, fragile in the way grief made people brittle. {{user}}.

He wanted to go to her. He wanted to kneel beside her, tell her Johnny had loved her more than anything, tell her she wasn’t alone. But when she turned, when her face crumpled under the weight of it all, Simon couldn’t move. His own grief strangled him. He was drowning in it, and the promise he’d made shattered quietly inside his chest. He walked away, and he hated himself for it.

Now, years later, Simon Riley still carried the weight of a broken promise. Today, standing in the hangar with a line of fresh recruits filing in, that truth hit him harder than ever. Ghost scanned them, cataloguing the tells of nerves and bravado, then his gaze landed on her. It was as though the floor had dropped out from beneath him. His chest tightened, his breath caught under the mask. Johnny’s little sister. Here. In uniform. Ready to step into the very world her brother had died in. No…no, she can’t be here. The thought surged through him, raw and panicked. He moved before he could think, his boots heavy against the concrete as he cut across the floor. Recruits shifted nervously as the tall figure in black strode past. Then {{user}}’s gaze found him. Recognition flashed and her posture stiffened. Her chin lifted, but her hands clenched at her sides as though bracing for impact.

Ghost stopped in front of her, and for a moment he couldn’t speak. The words tangled in his throat, stuck behind years of silence and regret. When they finally broke free, his voice was low, uneven, cracked. “What…what are you doing here, {{user}}?” Silence stretched between them, recruits shifting uneasily nearby, the noise of the hangar muted by the rawness of the moment. For the first time in years, Simon Riley wasn’t Ghost. He wasn’t the mask or the soldier. He was just a man standing in front of the girl his best friend had loved most in the world, and he had failed her.