Baby fever got me thinking abt ghost and kids <3
Ghost finds himself leaning against a stone wall, fiddling with the straps of his gear as he listens to the bustle of the locals. He's in a more rural part of the city, one half full of shops and restaurants and the occasional pub (of which Ghost is waiting for Gaz and Soap outside of), the other half being a neighborhood on the other side of the cobblestone wall behind him.
It was meant to be a more casual mission, gather some intel and do a bit of a stakeout. Gaz and Soap would chat with a man that has information for them, while Ghost waited outside in case there was trouble or they needed to make a quick escape. After a few hours, he quickly realized this wasn't much of a mission at all.
It was peaceful though, a breath of fresh air compared to the adrenaline and bloodshed of his usual work. He was debating on calling it all a bust and dragging his boys back to base when a small sound hit his ears.
He went silent for a moment before he heard it again, a small whisper of a voice beckoning for his attention.
Ghost lets out a sigh. "The hell...?" He looks around, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound.
"Psst. Up here." A small voice calls from... above him?
Ghost looks up to see a face peering down at him from the top of the stone wall, a few meters above him. A small child, a little girl with short, red curls, peeks over the stone to look at him with big brown eyes.
The two of them just stare at each other for a few beats, observing one another warily until the girl speaks up.
"Are you a soldier?" She asks him with a surprising amount of confidence, speaking with a bluntness that only children seemed to possess.
Ghost pushes himself off of the wall to turn and look at her fully, glancing back at the pub to check for his team before looking back at her.
"Affirmative." He says simply, giving a little nod before falling back into silence.
The girl looks puzzled at the unfamiliar word, but uses her context clues to conclude that it means yes. She steps up a little more, crossing her arms over the top of the wall to look down at him better.
"My nana was a soldier... I think." The little girl says, her tone a little uncertain. "My mum said she used to fly planes and we have a picture of her with a bunch of medals."
"I've never seen a soldier in real life, though." She adds.
Ghost can't help the small chuckle that rumbles from his chest at the child's observation. "That so? Your nan sounds pretty interesting." His eyes crease as he smiles up at her from under his balaclava. "I'll let you in on a little secret... being a soldier's pretty boring a lot of the time."
The girl gives Ghost another quizzical look, blinking those big doe eyes at him. "How? Don't you get to fight bad guys and shoot big guns?"
Ghost supposes she isn't wrong. A lot of his work does include diving headfirst into enemy territory, fighting the desert sun and blowing up old "friends". He still lets out a small laugh at the girl's naivety. Ghost wonders if he'd ever been that innocent once, maybe when he was a toddler and the cruel world his father built hadn't yet beat down on him.
"Sometimes." He says finally. "But there's also a lot of sitting—waiting for things to happen. And paperwork." He tacks on.
The girl makes a face. "Like taxes?"
Ghost nods solemnly. "Like taxes."
The girl makes a soft, long "oh" sound before they fall into silence. Ghost looks back at the pub, half hoping to see Soap and Gaz walk out and half hoping they stay inside so he can keep talking to this silly little kid.
"My names Ginny, by the way." The girl pipes up. "What's yours?"
He debates in his head for a moment. "Ghost." He says finally.
Ginny makes another face. "Ghost? Like a dead person? That's a funny name." She says bluntly. "Is it a nickname? Technically Ginny is my nickname."
Ghost listens as she rambles a little, waiting for her to finish so he can answer her questions. "Yep, like a dead person. And yes, it's kind of like a nickname."
"Do they always give you silly names in the mil-militry?" Ginny tries to ask, scrunching up her face a little as she struggles to pronounce "military".
"Sometimes." He says again. "Sometimes you choose your own, sometimes it starts as a nickname that sticks around."
"Did you choose yours?" She asks.
"No." He replies.
Before Ginny can bombard him with any more questions, a voice calls from somewhere far off, making the girl look behind her. She calls back to whoever is summoning her and turns back to Ghost.
"My mum's home, I've got to go." She says, her tone a little flat as she seems disappointed to leave.
"Alright. I'll see you around, Ginny." Ghost bids her farewell. "Be good for your folks."
"I will! Bye-bye, Ghost." The girl gives a determined nod, waving goodbye to him before stepping down and disappeared behind the other side of the wall.
Ghost stands there for God knows how long, in his own little world until Soap walks up behind him with Gaz in tow. The sargeant claps him on the shoulder about how the mission was a bust and apparently the man didn't have all the info they needed. Thankfully, he'd have what they needed at a later date. All Ghost hears is "we'll be coming back here soon".
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