There sound of a cassette rolling often starts with a soft click. It’s almost unique in the way it makes people expect it, almost, before the film starts rolling and memories start replaying. They roll in the same way they tell you your life does before the heavens take you.

It is a sound of something beginning. The cassette. And for Simon, that is the sound that echoes in the chambers of his mind when the world stops. The sound in his mind before his gut twists and unsettles in the most hideous ways, and at times, there wasn’t a particular reason for it.

No, sometimes it just existed in its entirety. Settled in his mind, in his gut.

But this wasn’t one of those times. No. His cassette was rolling, almost in slow motion, the sounds fading into background as his dark eyes focused on a body being carried, laying still like a corpse on a stretcher.

The screams and the commands, orders being shouted by god-knows-who, were somewhere gone in the background as his mind leered at the sight. Gut twisting, tearing and bleeding within him. His mind reminiscent of a broken TV — status buzzing in every line of his brain.

It would only take days until Price even allowed Ghost to go anywhere near the medbay. They’d turned the place upside down trying to mend {{user}} together after a single op gone wrong, after giving them every step that led to hell.

The seats are empty and no one’s watching, yet the cassette remained rolling, blurring out the lines of reality with the sole focus of making sure that {{user}} was okay.

The machines were beeping, the only sound seemingly registering in his mind as he watched from the corner of the room. Reassuring, tampering down the doubts of their .. life. Their essence and being. This wasn’t like being shot in the head with a bullet — no.

He had to remind himself that.

And yet, as Ghost sat there, not too close but nonetheless there, his boot tapping slightly on the shitty wooden floors, as the nurses worked to keep {{user}} in one peace, it felt like it was just that.