Ghost hadn’t heard much from {{user}} since ordering the team to regroup. She’d acknowledged once, brief and clipped, her voice steady over comms as she broke from her sniper perch to link up. After that—silence. Radio discipline was expected, but Ghost knew the difference between controlled quiet and something… off. The only sound she’d given was a muffled “Oof—” followed by a hushed curse, the kind of slip that wasn’t normal for her. It pulled at his attention, needling at the back of his mind even as he scanned the treeline for threats.

Minutes later, movement in his periphery caught his eye. A lone figure trudged toward the rally point, gait heavy, kit dragging more than usual. Ghost narrowed his eyes behind the balaclava, his lenses catching the dim light. Whoever it was, they looked half-submerged in earth—boots, fatigues, webbing, all stained dark brown. For a moment, he didn’t recognize her. Then the rifle gave it away: the long, distinctive silhouette of her sniper system strapped to her back, mud splattered across the barrel.

{{user}}.

Ghost felt his brow lift beneath the mask. Christ, she looked like she’d crawled out of a trench line from the Great War. Thick sludge clung to her uniform, dripping from her combat harness and streaking across her sleeves. Mud had even caked along her cheek, drying in a jagged smear. She must’ve gone straight into a sinkhole without seeing it—easy mistake in terrain this torn up, but still.

A sharp exhale escaped him first, the kind he used to steady nerves. But the sound turned on him—broke into a huff, then a chuckle, then a laugh that climbed out of his chest before he could choke it back down. The 141 froze at the sound. Ghost didn’t laugh—not at Soap’s endless stream of daft jokes, not at Price’s dry digs. Yet here he was, doubled over, shoulders shaking under his plate carrier, the sound raw and unguarded.

“Look… at… ye’,” he rasped between wheezes, pointing at her with a gloved hand.

His chest rig shifted as he lifted one arm, angling his body cam toward her. Fingers still trembling with leftover laughter, he fixed the lens squarely on her mud-smeared form. Documentation, he told himself. Evidence. Something to replay later, when the world allowed him to laugh again.

But right then—just for a moment—it was enough.