I hope your day is as amazing as you.
What would happen is soap was Makarov's son who run away to live with his Scottish Aunt? He knows Russian and how Makarov operates and wants to stop it, that is why he joined up. What would happen with the team and Makarov finding out?
Have a lovely rest of the year. I hope it is restful and relaxing
i actually love this prompt so much !! thank you, and i hope you are doing well :)
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The first thought in Soap’s head upon being passed a photo of his father isn’t of revenge or abhorrence like he thought it might be—it’s wondering if Ghost notices the tremble in his hand as he’s given the picture.
His second thought is that he must have, because Ghost isn’t even looking at the photo pinched between his fingers.
He’s looking right at Soap.
“Makarov,” Price supplies, though Soap needs no introduction. He’s more familiar with the task force’s newest target than he’d like to be.
But he’d been waiting for this. Soap had been surviving out of spite and the hope that maybe one day he might finally reach this point. That maybe he could be the one to put a bullet in his father's skull for all he's done.
Ghost’s eyes continue to bore into the side of his face up until a passive dismissal from Price, and even then there’s a second set of footsteps behind Soap as he leaves the bar.
His shadow only lets him get as far as the elevator of the run-down hotel they're posted up in for the time being, before the emergency stop toggle is pulled just as the doors slide shut and the car moves upward.
Soap is suddenly shoved up against a wall, Ghost's forearm pressed to his throat while a handlerail digs into his spine. He could fight the lieutenant off, he could—but Soap’s senses tell him it'd be futile. That whatever it is Ghost wants from him would be inescapable, inevitable, no matter how hard he tries.
"You know something," Ghost says, barely loud enough to be heard over the blaring elevator alarm. His eyes are intense, dark—and for a moment Soap is in full understanding of the fear Ghost's enemies carry for him.
"Not sure what you mean, sir," Soap replies. And maybe a part of him knows exactly what it is Ghost is talking about, but a louder majority is panicked. Confused.
Soap's throat is squeezed tighter. A threat, from his own lieutenant.
"About Makarov," Ghost grunts. "I saw your face when you looked at that photo. There's something you're not saying, MacTavish, and I reckon you'd spit it out before I make you."
Soap's eyes go wide, never having even thought of Ghost picking up on his expression. Never having even thought there was an expression. He feels his heartbeat jump pace, thumping in his throat as he struggles to swallow. This isn't how he'd imagine telling anyone his place in this. Who he really is.
In all honesty, he hadn't imagined it happening at all, mostly because he wished for it to never have to come up.
But perhaps Soap should've known that Ghost is too smart for that to be possible.
"Don't think you'd believe me if I told you," Soap rasps. He knows it's the wrong answer for Ghost, but he's not quite sure what else he could say.
Thankfully, Ghost doesn't suffocate Soap further, though he doesn't budge his hold yet, either. Not as he hisses, "Try me."
Soap screws his eyes shut, huffing air through his nose to brace himself for whatever reaction he'll receive. For whatever reaction he doesn't want to wait on.
"I'm—" Soap sighs his uncertainty, his voice quivering, "Makarov is my father."
Though Ghost scoffs, Soap can feel some of the pressure on his windpipe mercifully lift. "Bullshit he is. Why would you be hunting him?"
Soap finally begins to scrabble at the thick forearm at his throat. "I ran away when I was old enough. He... he made me do awful things for him, LT, and I—can you please just let me go?" Tears sting the corners of Soap's eyes. "I'll explain everything, I just—"
Ghost suddenly frees him, and Soap doubles over, heaving in gasping breaths as he rubs at his neck and collarbone. The alarm stops ringing as Ghost pushes the emergency toggle back in place, and the car begins moving again.
It's a blur, being led to Ghost's hotel room, but he's appreciative to not have to think about his steps as Ghost drags him along and seats him on the foot of the made bed.
Soap opens his mouth to let his explanation begin tumbling out, but Ghost shushes him before he gets the chance.
"I'm getting Price, Gaz, and Laswell before you say anything," Ghost tells him. "Whether you like it or not, I'm not keeping this secret from the team if it'll help us take down your f—Makarov's operation."
Soap understands, he does—but that doesn't mean it hurts any less to hear the distrust in Ghost's voice that Soap had only recently managed to work away.
Ghost pauses in the doorway, and for a hopeful second Soap thinks he's changed his mind.
"I'm sorry," he says instead, before turning and heading back into the hallway.
The door clicks loudly shut, the electronic lock mechanism resetting. Soap sighs, feeling his shoulders slump uncomfortably low as he waits. He suspects he has a night of storytelling ahead of him, now.
If only he'd been more careful.
*
The team takes in the new information better than Soap had anticipated.
Ghost says nothing the entire time. Asks no questions and offers nothing more than a grunt or huff to acknowledge what's being said. Soap only hopes his walls haven't been permanently rebuilt.
Price takes the information in stride, just as Laswell does. They both ask questions that pertain more so to their current mission, poking and prodding to see if any of Soap's personal intel could help them find more and easier success in the near future.
Gaz sits with him and tells Soap it changes nothing about who he is. That because he's still fighting for the right cause, nothing else matters—not his past nor paternity.
Soap is just grateful that beyond his confrontation with Ghost in the elevator, no rash decisions have been made otherwise in the face of this revelation.
But after everything—Soap just wants to sleep. He just wants space.
It takes longer than Soap would’ve liked for it to happen, but it does eventually. He’s finally allowed to leave the room and shuffle to his own, though not before Price catches his arm in the hallway, once Gaz and Laswell have both disappeared, Ghost’s door having long since been shut.
“This isn’t to say I don’t trust you to do it,” Price says, “but if it comes down to it, Soap—you can’t hesitate.”
Can’t hesitate to kill Makarov, Price means.
“Of course, sir.” Soap nods. In no world does he need to be told to take action. “I understand. No second-guesses.”
Price hums. “Good,” he says, and pats Soap’s shoulder. “Now rest up, sergeant. Lots of work still to do.”
Soap nods again and bids Price goodnight before finally slipping into his own room. He barely takes the time to toe off his shoes and shed his jacket before collapsing onto the bed, more than ready to curl up and sleep for an eternity.
But alas, as Price had said—there’s still plenty left to do.
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Oooo for a prompt: Jiang Cheng raises a-Yuan thinking he’s actually Wei Wuxian’s biological child
Anon, you really said “I will cater to Letter’s interests” with this ask.
When Jiang Cheng finds the boy, he’s still grieving. He hasn’t stopped grieving since they received the first terrible news of Jin Zixuan’s demise. He grieves, he rages, he cries and carries on. A circle reminiscent of the schedule followed by a boy burned out by loss.
He grieves when he pulls a-Yuan from the ash. The child is barely breathing, malnourished too, wrapped in an adult’s cloak.
Wei Wuxian, he thinks, and presses the boy close to his neck, hides his face when he hurries down a troubled path where his most trusted disciples wait. They do not question him, they ask nothing at all but how quickly they need to return home.
Fast, is his reply. He’s seventeen again, running across the countryside on bloody feet to get his brother home. He saved Wei Wuxian then, he saves a-Yuan now.
The healer asks him how old the child is and Jiang Cheng has no answer for her. He’s so very small, sleeping off his fever under her care. She thinks he is around two, perhaps a little younger, but they have no way of knowing. Everyone who would, is dead.
Like the rest of Jiang Cheng’s family, all of them, but Jin Ling. His nephew is a healthy baby, chubby fat and dressed in only the softest of silks. He’s loud too, crying out for parents he doesn’t have anymore, in everything but this, the exact opposite of a-Yuan.
Jiang Cheng hadn’t questioned a-Yuan’s presence in the Burial Mounds the first time round, too caught up in all his other anger. Maybe he should’ve stopped fighting with his brother to ask. Why would Wei Wuxian give everything up for the Wen if the Wen wasn’t his?
The following weeks agree with him. A-Yuan grows into Wei Wuxian’s smile, no longer asks for the dead as his memories disappear. Jiang Cheng wonders if his brows resemble Wen Chao, Wen Qing or her brother, any of them. Jiang Cheng has no clear memory of them he cared to keep, but he knows Wei Wuxian, hears him in the way a-Yuan phrases his question.
He knows his brother’s child.
Perhaps the other parent doesn’t matter, maybe the story there is as sad and terrible as every other.
His sister and her husband are dead, his brother is gone, his nephews are orphans both.
Jiang Cheng is tired of losing family.
The clan registry burned when the Wen attacked them. Jiang Yanli painstakingly wrote a new one when they rebuilt. He stares at her handwriting as he adds a-Yuan’s name to it. No one will ever look at this document, see that his sister put Wei Wuxian down as their brother, see that Jiang Cheng never struck him from the books, that he adds his son.
The Yiling Patriarch is dead, his legacy is cruel and terrible and it perished in the Burial Mounds.
A-Yuan is here.
The maids call him Jiang-gongzi, Xiao Yuan, Yuan-er, and a hundred different little endearments they’re quick to adapt for Jin Ling too when Jiang Cheng is allowed to take him to Lotus Pier.
A-Yuan loves his little cousin, and maybe if Jiang Cheng raises them together like this from the start just right, they’ll never break apart.
Only a handful of disciples know just where Jiang Cheng picked his nephew up, everyone else believes him a deceased cousin’s son.
It is for the best.
There’s no place in the world for Wei Wuxian’s son after all, none at all, unless he remains Jiang Cheng’s nephew first.
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