Soap was dead. Three weeks ago, you’d watched the light leave him. Three weeks ago, Gaz had been sprawled helpless across a filthy floor, his hands trembling as he pressed against a wound that could never be closed. Three weeks ago, you’d all heard the gunshot that had split reality in half.

Three weeks since Johnny MacTavish’s laughter had been silenced mid-breath.

And in those weeks, everything had collapsed. The 141 wasn’t a unit anymore—it was a collection of fractured souls orbiting an absence. Team coordination? Gone. Missions felt like walking into enemy fire blindfolded. Ghost was worse than ever, his temper sharp and venomous, snapping at anyone who dared suggest a “replacement.” His mask was the only thing holding his rage together, but his fists had bloodied more lockers in the past month than enemy skulls.

Price carried his grief like stone, heavy and unspoken, hidden in the lines of his face. And Gaz—poor Gaz—Gaz was unraveling thread by thread. Nightmares clawed him awake at night, silent tears soaking his pillow, his voice hoarse from sobs he never admitted to. More than once, you’d found him sitting alone, staring at Soap’s dog tags clenched so hard his knuckles turned bone white.

You’d all convinced yourselves: Johnny was gone. Irreversibly, cruelly gone.

But then—

The glass slipped from your hand, shattering against the cold concrete floor of the common room. You barely heard it. Couldn’t. Because standing before you, bathed in the dim yellow glow of the overhead light, was a ghost that shouldn’t exist.

Soap.

He stood there in civilian clothes, a battered jacket zipped halfway, jeans scuffed at the knees. His hair was messier than usual, his grin wide, disarming, alive. There was a faint, jagged scar across his temple, like the echo of the bullet that had ended him.

“Miss me?” he drawled, his voice that familiar warm burr that used to fill rooms with easy laughter.

Your breath hitched. The room seemed to tilt sideways. Your body locked between running forward to touch him and retreating from the impossibility.

Gaz’s chair screeched against the floor behind you. He stumbled to his feet, eyes wide and wet, his whole body trembling. “No. No—no, this ain’t real. This—” His voice cracked like shattered glass. “I buried you, mate.”

Soap’s grin softened. He took a step forward, hands raised slightly like he was calming a spooked animal. “Aye, I noticed that. But, uh… turns out I’m harder tae kill than most.”

The silence that followed was suffocating. Heavy. Charged.

And then Gaz lunged. Not in anger—never in anger—but in desperation, his arms wrapping around Soap with the force of a drowning man clutching a lifeline. A guttural sob tore out of him, shaking his whole body as he pressed his face against Soap’s shoulder.

Soap let out a soft, almost broken chuckle, his own arms winding tight around Gaz’s back. “Easy, Gaz… I’m here. I’m here, laddie.”

From the hallway, you heard boots pounding—the others had been roused by the crash of glass, the commotion. Ghost was first through the doorway, mask glinting in the low light, his frame taut and trembling with barely restrained rage at the intrusion. But when his eyes landed on Soap—

He froze.

His breath audibly hitched, like a gasp strangled halfway through.

“...What the fuck is this?” His voice was low, dangerous, cracking around the edges in a way you had never heard. His gloved fists clenched at his sides, like if he didn’t, the world itself might split apart.

Soap, still holding Gaz, met his gaze. And for once, the cheeky grin faltered, replaced by something raw.

“It’s me, Simon,” he said softly, accent thick with sincerity. “It’s really me.”

And in that moment, with Gaz sobbing into Soap’s jacket, Ghost frozen in silent war with himself, and your hands shaking violently at your sides, you realized—