#tranquil highland | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sprout-fics · 10 months

Text

Falling Down to Earth (Part Two)

(Simon "Ghost" Riley x F!Medic "Fix" Reader)

Part Four of Snowblind

Rating: Mature Wordcount: 7.3k Tags: Slow Burn, Heavy Angst, Trauma, Found Family, Taskforce 141, Team Dynamics, Hurt/Comfort, Unreliable Narrator, Self Esteem Issues, Referenced Familial abuse, Mom Laswell, Domesticity Warnings: Discussions of childhood verbal abuse A/N: Fix was originally written as a reader insert, and has since graduated into something more of an OC. Her series with Ghost is written in second person POV, but many aspects of her character remain complex and dependent on the lore I've created for her. This chapter details her past, and in doing so details childhood trauma and verbal abuse. Please mind the tags and read at your own discretion.

In the weeks that follow, the wind carries you in your descent down to Earth.

There's a peace, a tranquility to Laswell's home that feels wholly unfamiliar to you. Nestled in a quiet, unassuming suburb, you wake just after dawn to the sounds of birdsong and leaf blowers, of dog walkers and parents hustling children into cars on their way to school. The scent of arabica coffee wafts from downstairs in the kitchen, and with it comes the memory of Ethiopia, of the moss green and sandy highlands that peeked beyond the flap of your medical tent. You journey back there behind fluttering eyelashes, remember the aching loneliness that even now sits hollow inside your heart, and once more recall the dusty wind as your only friend.

You keep Paula and Kate's company, but even there it feels like a piece of you is missing. You've long since stopped trying to recall the voices of the 141, feeling the healing wound in your side ache fiercely every time the memory of their faces flashes in your thoughts. You press it down just like you do with all things, compress it down into your marrow no matter how much it hurts, and think perhaps the fractures it gives you will heal into something stronger. You hide the ache behind your vain attempts at a smile, and you feel a flutter of alarm in the cast of concern behind the gazes of Kate and Paula as if they know.

Nobody can know. If they see, if they know...

You shove away the thought before you can finish. Each time it is summoned you try desperately to revoke it, to keep your hands busy so as to distract you from the tumult of your thoughts.

The first week at Kate's is spent memorizing the routines of the two women, of trying to find ways to make yourself useful. Paula chases you from the kitchen more than once when you offer to cook, relegating you instead to chop vegetables or wash dishes. So you try other ways to earn your keep. You take Whiskey on long winding walks until he tugs in the direction of home. You repair the ice maker, you find the issue with the vacuum chord, you fix the flickering light in the basement.

"I see why they call you 'Fix'." Paula remarks to you, and you offer a faint smile, unsure how to say the thing that weighs heavy on your heart. That you need to do this, you need to do this so you can stay.

By the end of the second week you have exhausted all available opportunities within the house and take it upon yourself to busy your mind with the studies you neglected during your off-days with your team. Old lessons of Arabic and Russian are refreshed in your brain, and Kate finds herself a welcome conversation partner at dinner, much to the mild annoyance of Paula, who fails to discern the language between you two. Kate smiles in offering small corrections to your syntax and pronunciation, supplying the words that make your brow furrow in concentration.

"No Russian." Paula chastises her wife, pointedly gesturing at her with a salad fork, and Kate relents with a chuckle.

Yet when you ask Kate for materials, for reports in Russian that you can read and decode in helping with intelligence for the Taskforce, Kate only levies a grimace with a distant, sad concern underneath.

"Not yet Fix." She tells you softly, and you don't stop falling, trying to navigate this dimension in which you aren't useful to them, in which you can’t prove yourself so they’ll keep you a little longer.

Yet it seems the more you pre-occupy yourself, the more worry festers behind the eyes of the two women who have taken you in. You can't understand it, fail to comprehend the anxiety you see when they look at you.

"Have you ever considered allowing yourself to take a break?" Your therapist asks you, in his cluttered office filled with plants and sunshine.

You stiffen in your chair, shoulders taut with energy you can't conceal, a gale brewing in your thoughts as your mind reels under the scrutiny.

You don't answer, but your silence speaks volumes.

"I have to prove myself." You write in your journal that night, lit by the dim glow of the desk light in the guest room. "I need to be better, to do better. I need to prove I can do it. If I fail here too, where else is there to go?"

Yet even as you write the words in rushed, slanted handwriting, you already know.

"I can't go back to them. To him. Not after what he did to me."

Memories of a different kind. Shiny black shoes and perfectly styled hair ribbons, mahogany desks and lace white napkins. Your crumpled school uniform and bandaged knuckles that sting almost as much as the sound of your father's infuriated, booming voice. It's wordless, the things he said to you long since carried away by the wind, but the imprint of them lays imprinted on your skin, upon the tremble of your hands as you grip the pen in your hand like a scalpel with which to dissect yourself.

It hurts.

You think, somewhere deep inside, it's always hurt.

Yet you've long since de-sensitized yourself to the pain, feeling it shred inside you like a cyclone ripping branches from the elm of your heartbeat and ignoring it so you hike up the mountain of expectations where you'll never see the zenith. You don't know how else to live, don't know a way to find the childhood of yourself before you changed into what you are now. You think you glimpse the figure of your younger self as you fall, see her pass through the clouds just as you do, hurtling down into an unknown future neither of you can predict. Just like the ever-changing tides of the ocean below, you can't find the wavering headwind to catch under your melting wings.

She reaches for you in your dreams, your younger self, a tiny outstretched hand as if she can save you from your rapid descent. You don't know what it means, but you can't resist the urge to reach back, try and embrace her as you so desperately wanted when you were both the same. There's a distant part of you that thinks perhaps if you hold her long enough, you can undo the scars that have never healed inside you. You think maybe you can save her.

The reminder of your own failure lays heavy against your side, stitches that crisscross over purpled flesh where the last of your infection fades away. You know the scar of it will keep just like all the others- a blemished history of failures that effaces your flesh.

It's the threat of being one more failure away from cataclysmic impact that drives you to wake early, to read Russian news over breakfast, to skim the news from the Middle East in the afternoon, to spend long hours at the Red Cross doing every manner of task they request of your honed medic skills. It's the same force that has you trying to run to the edges of the Earth and back just to say you can.

You wonder sometimes if it's enough, if it will ever be enough.

No matter how hard you try, to prove to Kate that there isn't a looming maw of despair and regret inside you, that she seems to see past your efforts anyways. She tries to tell you to rest, that you don't need to try as hard as you do. Yet all it does is make you panic, knowing her gray eyes can peer past your forced smiles and laughter, your achievements and your vain efforts to prove that you're fine. That everything is fine. It always has been. Why would it not be?

You tell your therapist just as much, from where he sits across from you. You web your fingers together on your lap, hide the tremble there with an easy, practiced smile, force your shoulders to relax as you maintain a poised air of perfect composure. You convey to him your achievements as of late, boast about your ability to understand the Russian newscasters and the Arabic of the woman at the Red Cross who delights in your knowledge of a familiar language. You tell him how you're valued by the other volunteers, that you are getting back down to your regular time on a 5k run, that you're doing fine. Better than fine. You're making the most of your time on your forced leave, you're ready to go back.

Your therapist looks unconvinced. He listens serenely, nods to what you are saying. Yet he doesn't speak. He lets the silence between you two weigh down, and it feels so much like the calm before the storm, the one where a thick veil of ocean thunderclouds rolls in your thoughts.

"How is this different from what brought you here?"

You blink, and all at once the air in the room seems to suck into nothingness, an abstract absence of noise and movement in which the only thing you feel is the pressing weight of his eyes upon you. Even so you smile carefully, ignore the way your breath catches in your chest and try to ask him what he means.

When he sighs, pulls his glasses to rub at his brow, you feel the familiar sensation of sinking pull you downwards. Down, and the chasm of the dark churning ocean yawns below, beneath the grey blanket of storm clouds you hurtle towards in an imminent doom.

"You were injured, and you started trying to rush your healing process, and in doing so injured yourself further." He elaborates, nodding to your almost healed injury at your side. "How is this different?"

You swallow, try not to taste the distant scent of sea salt on your tongue. The wind rushes in your ears along with the thrum of your heartbeat. It feels unstoppable, and once more you find yourself helpless to the sensation of freefall, trying to claw back up towards the sun.

"I'm not injured." You supply, careful to keep your voice composed, even, to not give a single indication of the doubt you harbor inside yourself. You know this routine. You’ve had to pass psych evaluations before. To stay composed, to not let the cracks inside you show, to not allow them a single modicum of doubt is how you’ll survive, how you’ve always survived, how you’ll continue to survive even as something inside you howls into the gale in a desperate bid for mercy.

He only shrugs. "I'm not talking about your injury." He tells you plainly. "I'm talking about the reason why you're here."

Your hands are shaking. He can see it. "I'm here because I was caught trying to hide an injury from my CO." You force yourself to say carefully, measuring your words.

"Why were you hiding it?" He presses, and you feel like you’ve been caught in wolf jaws, a sudden snap of teeth against your flesh. It makes panic flare inside you like a sunburst, and you try vainly to push it down as you always have, deep into those dark tidewaters that beckon to you. You’ll never rise out of it if you fall, you know that. You’ll sink, sink further still, weighed down by the burden of your failures, unable to see the sky you’ve fought so hard to reach.

“I was hiding it because I didn’t want them to see something that was my fault, something I could have taken care of myself.” You reply evenly, but it’s too late. He sees you, he sees you like they all do, is slowly peeling away the hardened shell of you to see the rotten interior you’re trying so desperately to hide.

“If you could have taken care of it yourself you wouldn’t be here.” He states, and you flinch. His voice has taken on a flinty sharpness, seizing upon your weaknesses and sending you into a doomed tailspin ever downwards.

“You needed help from your teammates, but you didn’t want to accept it because you wanted to prove you could do it on your own, even though it nearly cost you your life.”

“No-“ You try vainly, feeling your muscles tighten, begin to tremble. Caught in a sniper’s scope of your own design. It’s too late, you didn’t realize it was your own finger on the trigger.

“You did it because you don’t think you are enough despite them telling you so. They’ve already accepted you, and yet it isn’t enough, so you’re still trying to prove yourself even now, and in doing so only hurting yourself further.”

“T-that’s not-“ You can’t breathe. The wind has stolen the oxygen from your lungs. You can’t see the sky.

He pauses, looks at you. You’re shaking, ramrod straight in your chair, eyes wide and unseeing of anything except your inevitable descent. You can’t stop it, and the mere thought of the cataclysmic collision to come drops the floor out from under you, makes the walls close in, shifts the axis of the world so you no longer know where you are.

In the midst of it, you see them. It’s in the vision of the four men who have accepted you as one of their own that the man before you murmurs a final, devastating mystery you refuse to speak the heart of.

"Fix, who hurt you to make you this way?"

You’re on your feet before you can think twice about it, heart hammering and eyes unseeing. Adrenaline slinks sharply through your veins, alighting your nerve endings with a panic you forgot you knew how to feel. Your jacket is in your hand and you turn, breathing heavily and all but stumbling from the office before he can stop you.

He calls for you, but it’s lost to the gale.

“I see you. Just you.”

You can’t be seen. You can’t stand the feeling of being flayed open, of having your ribcage cracked just so someone can dig their hands into the blooming bouquet of chlorosis in which lays your still tender heart. To see you is to peer inside while you’re helpless, prone, unable to stop the discovery of the putrid thing that’s been festering inside of you for years. A hate so dark and deep it spans the globe in a watery grave. Your ocean is filled with misery, a tempest of failure you’ve tried desperately to avoid and yet seem to plummet through the clouds towards as the debris of your wax wings hangs suspended in the air around you.

They’re going to see. They’re all going to see, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

They’re going to see how much you hate yourself.

You stagger from the office and out of the building and into the eye of the hurricane. It’s mindless, the way your feet carry you, searching aimlessly for a destination you don’t know. You think somehow if you walk far enough you’ll arrive back to them, and manage to convince them through trembling shoulders and half-hearted smiles that you aren’t broken, that you can stay, that they don’t need to leave you behind yet.

Through the streets, even as the lampposts flicker on and the afternoon rush hour fades into a low hum of passing cars. People seem to dodge you, and even they seem to see the haunted look in your eyes, the way you’re walking to the end of the earth as if it will save you.

Eventually you find yourself amongst a small throng of people, and as you try to weave through them you instead find yourself pulled by the current. They tug you in the direction of somewhere inside, of music and the smell of cigarettes and clinking glasses. It feels familiar, like the pubs off-base you used to frequent with them, and yet it’s not there, too different. If you close your eyes, however, you think maybe you’re back there, that you’ll be beckoned over to the corner booth that seems to be exclusively for you and them.

Instead you find yourself perched on a bar, rasping your order for a heavy scotch that you finish under the eyes of the bartender before you order another just as quickly. It’s on your third that you force yourself to slow, see the perfectly cut ice cubes swirl amidst a cloud of amber as your senses fuzz to a distant din.

When was the last time you went drinking with them? It was before the campaign to Latin America, perhaps during that period of blissful late September in the Staffordshire countryside. You can still remember the taste of your outraged laughter when Soap hauled you into the air while sparring, with brawny arms fringed with coarse hair that tickled against your skin. You’d scuffled with him in the dirt, had felt the golden glow of camaraderie as Gaz and Price watched on with broad grins.

Then Ghost, who had lingered in the shade of the building you four were beside, had stared into your soul in that cursed way where you almost wanted him to see. Like a dark sorcerer, it’s always been Ghost who has been able to peer past your gaze and discern the things inside you desperately try to conceal. Yet he’s never once said anything on it, has simply observed in silence, as if waiting for you to stop yourself as you descend into the unfathomable depths.

You’re still thinking of him when there’s a figure out of the corner of your eyes that draws your attention. He saunters over towards the bar, catches your eyes and smiles but sits with a barstool between you both. Watching, waiting, curious.

He’s tall. Brown haired, a smattering of freckles across his nose that pinches just a bit when he smiles at your blatant staring. His hair is short at the sides, longer and curly on top in a way that drapes across his forehead. He looks like he’s come from work, a blue collared shirt tucked neatly into jeans, nice shoes perching on the rail of the barstool.

He has brown eyes. Almost rust colored. Almost like him.

He looks at you, and you realize he doesn’t see. He doesn’t see who you are, sees instead the pretty, lonely girl at the bar on her third scotch that’s quickly becoming watered down. He doesn’t see you the way Ghost does.

You smile then, tilt your head at him a little coyly, blinking slowly like a cat. Come closer.

He does. He’s drawn in, scoots over one seat and introduces himself as James. You almost tell him your call sign, and then you almost tell him your real name, before settling at last on an alias that makes him raise his eyebrows in consideration.

“It suits you.” He says, and you smile at that, at the idea that somehow you’re so invisible to him, that he has no idea of who you really are. He doesn’t know the things you’ve done, the people you’ve killed, the person you’re hiding inside. It’s a heady rush of power that leaves you grinning, drunk on scotch and this strange covertness you drape yourself in.

“So, what do you do?” He asks in classic D.C. fashion, in a city full of social climbers with keen eyes looking for allies.

“I work for the government.” You tell him, and fail to supply which secretive three letter agency that entails.

“…Doing what?” He inquires as you sip at watered down scotch. You shoot him a sly grin, a flutter of eyelashes that makes his eyes widen imperceptibly.

“If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

He laughs at that, thinking it’s some sort of joke when it’s not, and presses no further.

He tells you he’s a political consultant, one of those sharply dressed men who wander Washington in search of esteemed politicians they can sell their services to. You wonder if he knows your brother, of the same breed of self-proclaimed big thinkers self-righteously destined for greatness. Maybe there’s a cabinet position in his distant future. You’re not sure if you’ll live to see it should you continue to be a soldier.

You offer fleeting conversation, but mostly you just listen to James regale you of his accolades, more than happy to ramble your ear off. He orders you a fourth scotch which you barely touch, not fond of the idea of being more inebriated than you already are. You watch him with a smile summoned only by the pleasant haze of liquor. It seems to encourage him. When he tells you a joke you laugh only because you know you should, watch the brightness of his eyes dance under the dim lights of the bar.

“You’re very mysterious.” He tells you, leaning closer.

“I’ve been told I’m very good at that.” You reply enigmatically.

He seems entranced by that, somehow, finds the vague apparition of you riveting. You relish it, the way he doesn’t really see you, in the way you want to be seen. Mystic, confident, beautiful, a thing to be lusted after and desired even though he knows he’ll never unravel the secrets inside you.

“I actually don’t live far from here.” James tells you a low, conspiratorial whisper, and you tilt your head in consideration. You shouldn’t. You’re tipsy and off balance, internally reeling from the things you can’t control. Yet the thought of not being alone, of forgetting everything just for an evening, is too tempting to refuse.

“Alone?” You ask silkily, and James’ eyes flick down to your lips before they dart back up to your piercing gaze.

“Yes.” He whispers breathlessly, caught in your spell. His hand bridges the gap between you, spreads across your thigh in a way that sends a sudden current of doubt through you. It burns brightly in the back of your thoughts, the way this suddenly seems to feel wrong. You push it down and instead force a little shiver at the touch, grinning coyly at him with half-lidded eyes.

“Want me to buy you dinner first?” He asks, and it’s strangely boyish, that. Almost endearing.

“I think scotch counts.” You supply, quick to imply your readiness to leave, to get on with this before you have second thoughts.

James seems to catch your meaning, and escorts you from the bar after you settle your tabs, a hand on the small of your back in a gesture that makes your shoulders tighten uncomfortably. It doesn’t take long to hail a taxi, and soon you’re in the back of a dark car with him leaning over towards you. You only half return his kiss when he offers it, feigning a pleased little noise that seems to encourage him as his tongue slips clumsily against yours.

“You like that?” He husks, and you don’t bother to answer, hand sliding up to his shoulder in a loose grip. He tastes like the bitter bite of tequila, tinted with lime, and again your mind floats back to Venezuela and the half open bottles of home brew that shattered under bullet fire. You remember the smell of the spider infested hideout in the jungle, of the thick humidity that blanketed over your senses like a sheen of warm sweat under the weight of your tactical gear.

You remember the trap door, the bullet lodged against your ribs, not being able to breathe, the fear on Gaz and Price’s face, the skeletal gloves that offered you onto the med-evac like handing a lamb to the altar.

You remember him. You remember his voice.

"You're only seeing me."

You pull back like you've been burned, nearly bite his lips in the process, feeling your eyes widen in horror as the truth of what you're doing pierces through you. This is wrong. It’s all terribly wrong. You shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be drowning yourself like you’ve already fallen from the heavens.

“Stop the car.” You rasp hoarsely, your hand still on his collar in a vice-like grip, trying to anchor yourself futilely.

James looks at you, the shock on his face apparent for just a moment as the car passes under a streetlamp.

“Wait- what’s wrong?” He asks, caught off guard, and you don’t answer, mind running too fast, circling down into a tailspin. It’s too much, you’re drowning, you’re gasping-

“I can’t.” You try, voice cracking, unable to clarify any more. “I-I have to get home.”

James’ face flickers between confusion and disappointment. Yet his voice is gentle as he asks: “Are you okay? Was it something I did?”

You shake your head. No, no it wasn’t him. It’s you, it’s always been you. The taxi driver pulls over to the curb, and again James tries to press for answers you don’t have.

"I’m sorry, I can't do this." You tell him hurriedly as the taxi comes to a halt, gathering your jacket and things and swiftly reaching for the door.

“Wait-“ He tries, grabbing your wrist, and you’re ready to snarl at him like a defensive animal when you see the concern in his eyes. There’s a pause as he regards you, seems at last to see you for what you are.

“Take the taxi.” He tells you softly. “I’ll catch another one. Just…get home safe.”

You swallow, still tasting scotch in your mouth.

“Thank you.” You whisper, unsure of what else to say.

James nods, releases you, reaches for his door. He’s halfway out of the taxi when he turns back to you.

“Can I have your number?” He asks in a last-ditch attempt, and when you shake your head he looks down at his fancy business shoes and closes the door.

There’s silence for a few minutes before you murmur Laswell’s address to the taxi driver, who gives you a look of pity before he pulls away into the night.

The glow of streetlamps pass above. You somehow find it in yourself not to cry.

It’s shortly before 2am that the taxi pulls up on the quiet street where Laswell lives. The lights in the house are dark. You wonder if either of them called you when you weren’t home for dinner. Your phone is still turned off in your pocket, the messages unread.

You quietly thank the taxi driver, sidle up the steps and unlock the door as quietly as you can. The house is silent, and you’re sure both women are in bed as you turn towards the stairs-

“Fix.”

You flinch hard, not expecting to be caught, feeling so much like a teenager sneaking back in after breaking curfew. It would be comical if it weren’t for the even, passive inflection of Kate’s voice that sounds like disapproval.

You turn towards the sound, notice for the first time that the kitchen light is on over the barstools. Gently, you pad over to the doorway, and find Kate sitting upon one of them. Her hair is tied back, she’s wearing comfortable night clothes, and the sight itself is so strangely at war with the common image you recognize from her. Buttoned shirts and fitted slacks, utilitarian jackets and boots to match those of the team she oversees. There’s a glass of water beside her hand, and as you glance at the stool across from her you see an empty one just for you.

“Couldn’t sleep.” She shrugs at your questioning gaze, and you both know it’s a lie you won’t call her on. “Come sit.”

You shouldn’t. You should go to bed, wake up in the morning and pretend this evening never happened, try to salvage the image of the person you try to be.

Yet Laswell’s gaze is not to be questioned, and you slide into the seat with averted eyes even as she pours you a glass. You fidget uncomfortably, trying to summon a myriad of explanations to excuse your midnight arrival. You wait for Kate to begin questioning you, to interrogate you as to your movements, but instead she stares passively down into her own glass, twirling the water for a few moments before speaking.

“They ask about you.”

You blink, excuses abruptly forgotten as your eyes dart up towards her. “What?”

“The boys, they ask about you.” She repeats quietly. “Every time I talk to them, they ask how you’re doing. They want to know how you’re doing.”

You’re stunned into silence, and when you don’t speak, Kate continues. “I tell them what I can, but I tell them they should really be asking you themselves.”

You frown, eyes softening with dismay. It’s been weeks since you left, and you’ve not heard a single message from them. You check every day, have nearly deleted your conversations with them in a mixture of despair and heartache. It weighs heavy inside you, their absence, and you yourself can’t find the courage to talk to them first, thinking perhaps they’d only reject you if you did.

“They…haven’t talked to me.” You whisper faintly, chest achingly hollow.

Kate meets your eyes then. The normal flinty sharpness of her gaze has softened into a soft, dove-grey stare. There’s sadness there, a touch of regret, and it festers in your still healing wound.

“I know.” She replies, and her shoulders drop. The gesture has a murmur of apprehension bubble inside you, muscles stiffening as you mentally bastion yourself against whatever terrible news she’s about to deliver. “I talked to Price today. I asked him why they haven’t reached out.”

They’re going to leave me. You think in growing panic, air growing short in your chest as Kate frowns into her glass. This is it. She’s telling me I’m off the taskforce.

“He said…he didn’t know if he had the right, after what happened.”

The wind changes direction once again. You look at Kate, stare at her in clear confusion. For once it’s her who avoids your gaze- Kate, the prophet, the soothsayer of your team, the one who divines the wind now refuses to look at you, and her face speaks of guilt.

“We failed you, Fix.” She whispers, voice faint. It’s the loudest sound you’ve ever heard.

“We all saw how you were struggling, we saw that you were fighting something we couldn’t see. We wanted to help, but you were so determined to do things on your own that we didn’t see how much it was hurting you.”

Kate sounds lost. She’s staring at a map she can’t conjure, trying to trace the paths between her grief and your own distant pain, feeling it flare inside her in turn. You’re unsteadied by it, by this sudden exposed vulnerability of a woman so unshakeable in her foundations you’ve stared at her with stars in your eyes since the moment you’d met.

“We should have been here for you, Fix. You shouldn’t have to do this by yourself.” She confesses at last, voice fragile in a way that you can’t understand. “I’m sorry.”

“No one fights alone.”

His words, from that time. When he has clasped you to him and prevented you from falling into frost. You’d clung to him in your rawness, burrowing into his warmth under the guise of hypothermia. He was doing it to keep you alive, or so you thought. An obligation as your comrade, as your superior to ensure you didn’t die. Now you see it was so much more than that.

He did it because he cared.

He cares. They all do. In your grief it wasn’t clear before, but now you feel the dark clouds you descend through part way to allow the glimmer of sunlight to show through. You grasp at it blindly, remember the sounds of their laughter, their smiles, the firm touches and playful jabs that fill the emptiness of your chest in which the dark wind howls. You’d felt it filled, in that moment where you’d burrowed yourself into Ghost’s chest, wondering if perhaps it was empty too. You’d fallen asleep in his embrace and had remembered at the edge of deliquium that all you’d ever wanted in your whole life was to just be held.

"Kate,” You breathe at last in a rapid whoosh of air that changes the headwind that howls in the emptiness inside you. “…there's something I need to tell you."

Kate sits before you silently, expectantly, and you don’t lift your head to look at her. Your hands rest on the glass tumbler, the warming ice water inside.

“My name…isn’t my real name.” You confess quietly, and despite how small your voice is it feels loud- louder than gunfire, than grenades, explosions, RPGs. “I changed it.”

Your hands grip tighter to the glass, brow scrunching in a distant ache as you go on. “I changed it because I didn’t want people to know who I was, who my family was. I didn’t want to bring them with me.”

A pause.

“…but it seems like they came with me anyways.”

You look up then, slowly, into the knotted brow and thinly pressed lips of Laswell. Her eyes are soft, sad in a way that feels foreign and yet so welcome.

“My father. He’s a senator. He has been ever since I was in high school. He’s on the Armed Services committee. You might have even met him.” You don’t say his name, still afraid to even admit that small truth- the fact that you once called that man father.

Laswell is quiet for a long time, as if processing the information you’ve given her. She seems to be weighing it heavily inside her, finding the thing that needs to be said. Her fingers tap every few beats against her glass before she finally speaks.

“I knew.” She sighs at last.

You blink, look up at her once more, confusion coloring your eyes. She returns your stare, a little guilty, before she elaborates.

"I knew, Fix.” She admits and reaches for the pitcher to refill her glass and yours. “I had a feeling. I've met the senator before, I remember faces. The first time I met you, it rang a bell. He said something about having a daughter in the armed forces. You...look similar."

You wince at that, a small gesture of vague displeasure that you can’t rid yourself of his resemblance. Yet then you look back to Kate, to her steely grey eyes watching you, waiting for you to speak. You’re not entirely surprised she knew. Laswell’s intelligence background means she likely knows more about you than you know about yourself at times. It’s her job to know. Yet it doesn’t explain…

“Why didn’t you say anything?” You ask in scarcely a whisper, trying to contain the small feeling of hurt inside you.

At this, the guilt in Kate’s expression deepens. "Maybe I should have.” She offers regretfully. “-but you never once mentioned your family and when I looked up your file, saw you had changed your name...it didn't take much to connect the dots. I had my suspicions about you...becoming estranged from them. It's no use to bleed a healing wound."

"A wound." You laugh mirthlessly. "Yeah, seems like I've been getting plenty of those recently."

Your side aches.

"Fix." Kate’s hand stretches between you two, comes to rest over your tightly webbed fingers with a featherlight touch that settles into something firm. "Tell me what happened."

It’s not a demand. It’s a request, almost a plea on her part, wanting desperately for you to reach out in turn, grasp her hand as you fall. You instinctively want to pull back, to shield yourself from her keen eyed stare, but after today, after tonight, after a lifetime of wearing yourself down to brittle bone to hide who you are…you’re tired.

So you unclasp your palms, turn them up so her hand settles in them, keeps you there so you don’t descend further.

"I don't even know where to start.” You confess, and your voice suddenly sounds so much younger than who you are now, like the child inside your soul has finally reached you in your freefall. “I was the youngest daughter, an accident my dad told me once. The extra."

You breathe out a shuddering exhale, as if releasing the ache that howls in the hollow of your chest.

"He always hated me. I'll never know why. Maybe it's because I'm a girl. Maybe it's because I was a tomboy, or hated dresses, or that didn't fit the mold of being the perfect obedient little doll he wanted me to be for the cameras…” You pause, feel a splinter of pain flare at the center of your healed bullet wound. “Maybe it's because I...was too much like him."

"I was always second best. The wrong child."

"He loved my brother, still does. Sees him as his successor. Wants him to run for office.” You pause with another humorless little laugh. “Hell, he might even be in office right now. I haven’t exactly been in contact with them.”

Yet then you swallow, your face pinching in dismay once more. “All my father ever needed of me, all he wanted was for me to be like my mom. Docile, subservient, cowed, perfectly poised even when he cursed her for having me."

White, pristine white, the color of lace and freshly pressed dinner napkins. The color of the pearls resting against your mother's throat. When she swallows your eyes dart up to her face. She's looking past the gauzy pale curtains of the banquet hall, outside to the hazy, dimming streetlights beyond. Her eyes are distant, sad.

"I don't think...abuse is the right term.” You go on, and your voice wobbles now, your resilience fading as the memories pile in. Polished wood floors, carefully maintained picturesque bedrooms, furniture you weren’t allowed to sit on, the mahogany desk in your father’s office. “I was provided for, some would say I was spoiled. Part of why I changed my name was I didn't want anyone to figure out they were shipping out with the spoiled rich girl from Chevy Chase."

You pause then, feeling the silence of the kitchen press down on you. You remember the loneliness of your first assignment of distancing yourself from your squad, of trying to conceal yourself and aching for it. You’d whittled yourself down to your marrow, forcing down every ounce of hurt and pain because you had to, because you only ever had yourself. If you reached out, if you asked them for aid, if they saw…

“I didn’t want them to see.” You whisper, barely audible, wide eyes staring in horror at the dark churning ocean below. “I didn’t want them to see what he made me.”

It’s silent then, in the aftermath of what you’ve spoken. The truth of it hangs in the silence between you both. Like the lingering air after a typhoon, the atmosphere presses heavily on your shoulders, threatens to weigh you down so much that it loosens your grip from Laswell’s hand.

She only clings closer.

"Fix.” She says, and her voice is suddenly so soft, aching with emotion. “What you went through was abuse. It wasn't physical unless you haven't shared something with me-“

"No.” You interject. “No he never- he never did anything like that, I swear. Not even to my mom. I think...I think he knew how much it could hurt his career- his...reputation."

"All he did was just..."

"He told me I was worthless, Kate.” You whisper, and your throat seizes with a sob so sudden and fierce it threatens to shatter you at the seams. “He said that I was a waste of space, and no matter how I tried to get good grades or honors or be good at athletics or make friends or anything. It didn't matter. That even if I tried to tell anyone what he said to me that they wouldn’t care because I was useless."

Salty, briny tears flood your eyes. The words that have haunted you this entire time, the words you’ve tried so desperately to fight against, to prove aren’t true are the ones that he told you. That your purpose of being alive was futile, that your mere presence was a burden.

"I...I was never good enough Laswell.” You choke out, shoulders heaving with the effort to contain your sobs. “I-I'm not sure I'll ever be good enough."

Kate moves then, and it’s so quick that you think for a moment she’s letting you go. Instead, Kate stands from her chair and comes over to your side, uses her hands to press you against her in an embrace so fierce it forces the scarcely contain sob from your throat.

"You are enough, Fix.” She tells you, her voice suddenly sharp, severe in a way that isn’t meant for you. “You've always been enough. I wouldn't have chosen you otherwise. I wouldn't have given you to them if I didn't think you were enough. Understand?"

You shudder, another hiccupping sob you can’t contain bubbles up your throat. Your hands raise gently to her, afraid that if you touch her further maybe she’ll pull away.

"Laswell...I..." You try, absent of words. She seems to understand.

"If I could go back and change it, I would.” She tells you, and holds you tighter, arms wrapped around you protectively as if they can provide you shelter, as if she can cure you from the sins of the past. “You didn't deserve what happened to you, Fix, and you don't deserve to feel this way about yourself with all you've accomplished."

Yes, the things you’ve done. Your medic skills, your military training, the languages you’ve learned, the missions you’ve fought in, all of them in a desperate bid to prove a better version of yourself than you truly are.

"B-but I failed, Kate.” You sob, chest finally loosing itself of all the ache there as you cry freely. “I got myself injured and then nearly killed myself trying to push too hard, and I-" Your voice chokes off as another sob wracks your shoulders.

Laswell pulls back from you then, holds you at arm’s length so she can peer past your watery eyes. Her hands clench on your shoulders, and you see she might be crying too, eyes shining with unshed emotion.

"What matters now is that you're here.” She declares, voice hoarse with choked tears. “You have a family, Fix. With us. You never have to speak to your father or mother or brother ever again if you don't want to. We will always be here. No amount of failure on your part will ever change that."

You still yourself, look at Laswell like you want to believe her, and you do. Laswell would never lie to you unless it was to keep you safe, and this…this…

Your quivering inhale releases as a chest-cracking sob, and then another, and as you raise your hands to try and scrub away the tears from your eyes you finally let go. You allow yourself to cry, like you’ve wanted to for so many years, like the way you thought you’ve forgotten. You cry like the child you still are inside, the little girl looking up at a world too large for her and wondering how she’ll ever grow to fit it. It spins dizzyingly underneath you, an abstract of blue and green where you descend through white clouds. Sunshine warms your skin, and the air whooshing past your ears stills into a gentle, cradling breeze.

You stop falling.

Tag List: (Reblog this post to be added to future fics from this series! If you'd like to be removed please DM me!)

@dankest-farrik @zwiiicnziiix @moondirti @sritashimada @ladiilokii @yeyinde @sandinthemachine @verdandis-blog @guyfieriiii @fan-of-encouragement @starlitnotes @alicesfracturedmirror @rentaldarling @mockerycrow @atenceladusiaawfytbwb @tinykaka @dumb-djarin @homicidal-slvt @soapskneebrace @nightingale-ghost-writer @selinn777 @nachtcirce @jujubashow @mutuallimbenclosure @kkinky @trash-boi-4-life @scatter-mind001 @alittlefansthings @allaboutirem0 @keiva1000 @makariaspresence @achelois-is-here @nightingale-ghost-writer @altered-delta @thetimidsarcasticcat @nestaarcheronss @bitchykittenconnoisseur @ghxstyops @whotfislynn @gazs-blue-hat @obi-wansorrow

#simon ghost riley #simon ghost riley x reader #simon 'ghost' riley #mw2 #cod mw22 #Simon ghost riley x oc #reader insert #cod x reader #fic: shadow and bone #oc: fix

243 notes · View notes