It happened in silence. No alarms. No warnings. One moment, you were leaning over John’s shoulder to slip a doodle of a grumpy cat into his mission file, giggling when he sighed your name with exasperated fondness. The next you were gone.

They took you while Price was briefing command while Ghost was off-grid while Gaz and Soap were monitoring comms with too many distractions and not enough eyes. The timing was too perfect. Makarov had planned it down to the breath. Not to kill you but to unmake you.

They didn’t ask questions. Didn’t interrogate. There was no purpose beyond cruelty. You were stripped, beaten, starved, left in the cold filth of concrete and rot. Sometimes they used words. Sometimes they didn’t bother.

And then they hurt you in ways that don't belong in memory. Ripped from yourself. Deconstructed. Every day a new scar. Every touch laced with venom. Sexual violence, emotional warfare, physical torment. Makarov didn’t just want to ruin you. He wanted to poison everything you meant to Price.

Price didn’t sleep. Didn’t eat. He took to the hunt with the kind of rage that made even Shepherd nervous. TF141 shifted into something else, relentless, vicious, surgical. Ghost’s fists were raw from extracting confessions. Gaz had to be pulled back before choking a handler. Soap stopped smiling.

They found you after 11 days. 11. Each second stretched like a lifetime. You were in a basement beneath a shell of a building, chained to a rusted bedframe, naked from the waist up, skin a canvas of bruises and dried blood. You didn’t scream when they broke down the door. You didn’t blink. You didn’t even look up.

John, your John, sank to the floor the second he saw you. His hands trembled when they touched your cheek. You flinched so hard he fell back like you’d struck him. And maybe you had, without meaning to. Maybe the damage was already too deep.

Back at base, the med team treated you like porcelain. Broken but salvageable. They didn’t see the way your eyes no longer tracked movement. The way you refused blankets, flinched at water, cried without sound. Price saw it. He never stopped seeing it.

You wouldn’t speak. You barely breathed. You didn’t cry, scream, or rage. You existed. That was all. You slept under sedation even then, your body curled into itself like it was still hiding from hands.

Price was shattered. He never left the med bay. Sat there day and night, watching, begging sometimes silently, sometimes aloud. But the woman he loved, the chaos gremlin in bunny slippers who once tied pink ribbons in his beard while he was asleep she was gone. In her place was a ghost.

He blamed himself. Even when everyone told him not to. Even when Soap grabbed him by the collar and shouted, “We’re gonna get her back, Cap. You’ll see. Just hold on.” Even when Ghost muttered, “We kill them all. Slowly.” Even when Gaz cried in the corridor because he couldn’t face your bruised body.

They did get revenge. Makarov’s facility was reduced to ash. His men? Gone. Every last one. But it didn’t undo what was done.

Therapy began in whispers. Gentle coaxing. Touchless greetings. Some days you’d sit in the sun with a blanket around your shoulders and Price beside you, not speaking. Other days you wouldn’t get out of bed. Sometimes, when the nightmares came, you screamed until your throat gave out, fists thrashing. Price would hold you anyway. Take the bruises. Rock you. Breathe with you. Wait.

The first time you whispered his name just John he wept. Right there on the floor.

The healing isn’t linear. Some days are worse than others. Sometimes you cry without knowing why. Sometimes you stare at your hands like they belong to someone else. And sometimes, for just a breath, you laugh. Just a little.

And when that happens, Price holds onto it like it’s a spark in the dark. He holds onto you.

Because he needs you. Through it all, the blood, pain, silence, he never stopped loving you. Not once.

Even if you never come back the same, you’re still his and he’s still yours.

Always.