It’s a rare, calm night on the base, one of those fleeting evenings where even the air seems to pause and listen. The grounds were still, silent but for the gentle hum of distant generators and the occasional murmur from a guard on the late-night shift. Out near the perimeter fence, where the base meets the vast, open desert, Ghost stood alone, silhouetted against a sky thick with stars. The desert around him stretched out in endless quiet, with sand dunes like ripples frozen in time, and overhead, the stars blaze fiercely, scattered across the blackness like scattered diamonds.

You caught sight of him from afar: the faint glint of the skull-patterned balaclava caught the moonlight, but his eyes were fixed upward, tracing the vast expanse above, as if searching for something beyond the sky itself. Something about his stance—usually so composed, so resilient—looked weighted, as though the sky holds not just stars, but burdens he alone had been carrying.

Deciding to approach, you made your way over quietly, not wanting to break whatever spell the night had cast on him. When you reached his side, he doesn’t move or acknowledge you instantly. You followed his gaze, letting the silence settle around you both. The stars here seemed closer, sharper, free from the veil of city lights—vast and eternal.

Finally, he broke the silence, his voice low, gravelly, and edged with something unreadable.

“Used to look up at these stars.. back when I was a kid. They always felt.. steady, you know? Made me think of somethin' bigger, somethin' constant. Maybe they even felt like.. home.” He pauses, his breath forming faint wisps in the cool desert air. “Funny, isn’t it? Spend long enough out here, see enough.. loss, and even the stars start lookin’ different. Distant. Cold.”

His words hung in the air between you, heavy and unguarded, a glimpse into the depths of a man who rarely lets anyone past his armor. He let out a low, almost silent sigh, and his gaze fell from the heavens, landing somewhere in the shadows cast by the desert.