There was always something eerie about the knowledge of nothing surrounding the very place they spent most of their days in. Haunted, plagued by ghosts in every corner, every crevice of the ground. Glaring eyes watching, wide grind mocking and laughing — what a foolish thing it was to be afraid of hallucinations in the faraway woods. The knowledge was there, nothing was real. But those shadows in the trees stemmed from somewhere, some gutted part inside of their brain.

And Ghost noticed, of course. All of them did. They would be fools to not see the way their past had tainted their sweet [user]. But sweet wasn’t a word to dedicate people like them. It was more of a taunt, a jab. Probing and shoving gloved fingers in a wound that refused to heal inside of the brain of their fellow colleague.

It was like a puzzle they’d been left to piece together. From flashes of reactions and mumbles despite the fact that the majority of their days were spent in normality, despite the ways the team had to trigger parts of their brain for any semblance of what had happened those few hours their teammate had gone MIA.

It was sick, admittedly. Putting one of their own back into whatever Hell they had crawled out of with bleeding hands and those haunted eyes. And occasionally, even to this day, Ghost would catch passing glances of that same look on [user]’s face in moments of vulnerability when their thoughts drifted way down to the gutter.

A deer caught in the headlights, standing without moving a muscle. And Ghost wasn’t sure they would try to avoid an inevitable crash, try to avoid bones shattering and breaking skin, face smashed beyond recognition into the concrete. They wouldn’t try to avoid the mess, no, not when their brain was already bleeding out of their ears. ㅤ

Nights had grown quiet and days seemed to pass as they did without rush. In solitude and whatever had been left of their simplicity. Or at least they tried to maintain the image of humanity beyond just fake compassion and empathy. After all, those feelings, expressions, were a luxury for the likes of them.

And with those same hands Ghost murdered, those same gloves that have the metallic scent of blood almost imprinted on them, he held a cigarette. Only occasionally taking a drag from it, as if it was more of a chore than something the man actually wanted to do. A shift from the normal routine.

Just as it was supposed to be.

His eyes, seemingly pitch black in the dark of the night, remained on the figure in the distance. The dark figure of his .. friend walking closer to where and endless void starts. The forest that separated the base away from the rest of the world. The trees that sheltered them, kept them trapped, brewing in their own insanity.

It’s become routine. Watching the way [user] would stand there, never getting any closer to the woods than a few feet, never daring to step inside. As if they were afraid to be chased by something lurking in the dark, to be gripped and torn apart by those figures that stared back at them in their own mind with those taunting grins, those same blank eyes.

Laughing at them.

Mocking. Poking at their nightmares, tearing the flesh of their brain to make more home for itself.

And who was Ghost to let them brew in the soup of someone else’s making? He’d been thinking. Scheming, planning. Fuelling some twisted curiosity of his own, perhaps, to see what would happen. What could happen if he were to give them no option but to go into the woods just to hide from something worse. After all, they weren’t safe even in the open. ㅤ

And then, in a moment he was there. Just a few feet behind them, waiting to be seen, to be heard walking towards this deer caught in headlights.

To induce that same fear someone else had.

“Y’know,” he spoke, cocking his head to the side as he watched the back turned towards him, tone void of compassion, care. “Fo’ your own sake, I’d run.”