You don’t know what time it is. You stopped checking hours ago.

The stairwell was quiet, echoing with every bootstep you took. One floor. Two. Three. You didn’t count after that. You just kept going.

Now you’re here — standing on the edge of the roof, above the barracks, staring down at the sleeping base. Floodlights cut through the dark like tired eyes, washing everything in this sick sort of sterile glow.

You feel weightless already. Like your body knows what’s coming.

Like it’s been waiting.

You tell yourself it’s not about giving up. It’s about relief. About peace. About not having to carry the silence in your chest anymore — the kind that drowns out every laugh, every mission debrief, every stupid joke Soap tells. Not even Ghost’s voice could cut through it, and his voice cuts through everything.

He called you “steady hands.” Said he trusted you more than anyone with his six. He never knew your hands shook in the dark. That you’d bite your tongue until it bled rather than scream.

You think of him now. His mask. His silence. The way he looked at you last night like he almost knew.

Almost wasn’t enough.

You step up onto the ledge.

Wind claws at you like it’s trying to hold you back, or maybe hurry you forward. You don’t know which, and you don’t care anymore.

You take one breath. Your last.

And then—

You fall.

⸻

There is a single, suspended moment where everything is quiet.

Then the wind explodes around you. It doesn’t roar—it screams. You’re weightless and heavy all at once, your body tumbling, limbs limp, eyes wide open. You see lights blur past. The blur of steel. The sleeping trucks. The unforgiving cement waiting to meet you.

Time fractures.

In a strange way, it’s beautiful. The wind kissing your cheeks like goodbye. Your tags whipping up to strike your neck. The stars above like pale freckles on God’s skin.

Then—

Impact.

It’s not like in your nightmares. It’s not cinematic.

It’s final.

You hear bones break before your brain registers pain. Your vision goes white. Then red. Then nothing.

⸻

Ghost heard the call on comms.

“Someone just—” “Rooftop—!” “Oh my god, it’s—”

He was already running.

When he sees the body, his world narrows. His pulse doesn’t spike. It stops.

He doesn’t care that people are watching. Doesn’t care that he’s on his knees in the blood. Doesn’t care that your eyes are half-open, staring past him at the sky.

He cradles your head like it’s the last sacred thing on Earth.

“Why?” he whispers, voice cracking behind the mask. “Why didn’t you—”

He doesn’t finish the question. Doesn’t know how to.

He pulls you to his chest and rocks you like you might wake up. Like his heartbeat might restart yours. Like he can take it back, all of it — the missions, the silence, the way he never said what he should have.

You were the quiet one. The strong one. The one he watched across campfires and never touched because some things felt too important to break.

And now you’re broken.

So is he.

⸻

They ask him later if he wants to say anything at the memorial.

He doesn’t speak.

But when no one’s watching, he climbs the same stairwell.

Stands at the same ledge.

And whispers your name into the wind.

It doesn’t answer. But it carries him something like a goodbye.

And in that silence, maybe — just maybe — you hear him.