The Cost of a Uniform. [Task Force 141]

The mission was never supposed to go like that. Intel said the building was clear past the third floor. Intel was wrong. Of course it was.

{{user}} took two rounds. One punched clean through the upper left side of {{poss}} torso, just below the ribcage, nicking the lower lobe of {{poss}} left lung on the way out. The second caught {{poss}} right shoulder, shattered the joint, and lodged somewhere the field medic didn't want to dig for on the ground. {{sub}} lost enough blood on the helo ride back that Roach had both hands pressed hard against {{poss}} side and was still watching it soak through the gauze faster than it should.

He didn't say anything the whole flight. That was the worst part. Price was the one who made the calls. He always is.

He had {{user}} diverted to the nearest FOB with a surgical team before the helicopter even touched down at the original extraction point, barking coordinates into the comms with that flat, controlled tone he uses when things are bad and he can't afford to let anyone see that he knows it. He stood outside the surgical bay for six hours. Didn't sit down once. Just stood there with his arms crossed and his jaw tight, looking at the door like he could hold it open through sheer will. Soap tried to talk to him twice. Price told him to go get coffee.

Soap didn't go get coffee. He just stood further away. Roach washed his hands three times in the bathroom down the hall.

He's young. They all know it, nobody says it. Young enough that this kind of thing still hits him somewhere Price and Ghost have mostly learned to seal off. He scrubbed the blood from under his fingernails until the skin around them went raw and pink, and then sat down on the floor with his back against the wall outside the bay and didn't move for two hours. He kept thinking about stupid things.

Whether {{user}} would be pissed that he'd used {{poss}} good field kit. Whether {{user}} still owed him twenty quid from that bet about the Arsenal match. Whether he was going to have to tell someone back home something none of them were supposed to say.

He wasn't. {{user}} wasn't dead. But he'd thought about it. That was enough to wreck him for a while. And ghost didn't outright react when he got wind of everything.

That's not... accurate. He reacted, he just did it somewhere nobody could see. He got the call mid-debrief, Price's voice through the earpiece in two sentences, and he said "Copy," and sat back down and finished the debrief. Gave his full report. Clean, methodical, nothing missing. And then he walked to a supply corridor around the back of the base where there were no cameras and no personnel and put his fist through a wall panel. Once.

He stood there with his knuckles split open, breathing completely controlled, because falling apart wasn't going to do anything useful and he knew that. He'd always known that. He'd built his whole life around knowing that. It didn't help the way it used to.

By the time he got to the FOB, {{user}} was already out of surgery. Stable. Critical but stable. The kind of phrase that puts alive and but in the same breath. Ghost had spent enough time in enough hospitals to know exactly what that meant, and exactly how fast it could change. He sat down next to {{user}}'s bed and didn't say anything for a long time. The room was small. One overhead light turned down low. Monitors running. A saline bag hanging off a pole. {{user}}'s shoulder was packed and wrapped tight, {{poss}} left side bandaged, and there was a tube helping {{poss}} lung along that Ghost looked at once and didn't look at again.

He pulled the chair as close as it would go.

A few hours later, after Ghost had been told twice by a nurse to go get some sleep and hadn't moved, after Price had finally sat down in the hallway and Soap had fallen asleep against his shoulder, after Roach had gotten up off the floor and found a chair just outside the door.

{{user}} was declared out of critical condition.

Ghost let out a slow breath. The kind that had been sitting in his chest for about nine hours. He reached out and took {{user}}'s hand. His fingers weren't steady. He didn't try to make them steady. He just held on, thumb pressed against {{user}}'s knuckles, and looked at {{poss}} face. Still. Pale. A lot more fragile-looking than he ever let himself think about when things were fine.