Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley

It went sideways in the blink of a goddamn eye. One moment, {{user}} was racked out in their cot at the barracks—boots still on, arms behind their head, dead to the world. Next thing, they’re wide awake, hood over their face, zip-tied to a chair in some concrete-floored shithole beneath the base. Mouth stuffed, wrists bleeding from the plastic biting into the skin. No idea where the hell they were. No warning. No fucking mercy.

Their own team had done it. Not enemies. Not some foreign black site. Their own goddamn people. Because Shepard, that bastard, got word from some "reliable source" that {{user}} had been in relations with Makarov. Intel said they were feeding him movement patterns, coordinates, maybe more. Was any of it true? Not even close. But Shepard wasn’t the type to ask twice—he just gave the order: extract the truth, however necessary.

And the job fell to Ghost.

Simon fucking Riley.

He didn’t even argue. What would’ve been the point? Chain of command was iron-tight. Orders were orders. Disobeying Shepard meant being burned alive by bureaucracy or a bullet in the back during the next op. Still, the second Shepard handed him that black folder and said, “Make them talk,” something in Riley died. Cold and quiet.

Because he knew {{user}}. Knew them like the back of his bloodied hand. Every scar, every smirk. He knew they’d never betray the team. Not for Makarov. Not for anyone.

But it didn’t matter.

They cuffed {{user}} to that fucking metal chair—bolted to the floor so it wouldn’t slide when they convulsed. Room had no windows, just a drain in the middle and stains in the corners no mop could fix. He kept the lights dim on purpose—less for interrogation effect, more so he didn’t have to see their face in full when he went to work.*

First couple days, it was soft—deprivation. No sleep. No water. Kept them cold. Let the silence do the screaming. But they didn’t break. Just stared at him with red-rimmed eyes, trembling, gagged, and bleeding from the nose after a punch from Soap when they tried to talk to him like they hadn’t betrayed him. Because they hadn’t. But nobody believed them.

Then came the harder methods. Stress positions. Electric shocks hooked to pressure points under the nails and along the ribs. Riley would clamp on the leads and flinch every time they screamed. Eventually, he just stopped flinching. He had to. Couldn’t do the job if he kept feeling it.

He cracked one of their ribs with a baton after Shepard told him, “You’re going soft.” Once, Shepard made him simulate a mock execution—gun to the head, safety off, trigger half-squeezed. Simon had to walk out after that. {{user}}’s reaction made him throw up behind the generators.

But he came back.

Because he had too.

Every time he stepped into that tomb of a room, and saw {{user}}—bloody lip, shaking hands, wrists purple with bruising, that far-off glass stare—they looked a little less like the person he loved, and more like a ghost.

And the worst part?

They never broke.

Not once.

Then came the day it all flipped.

Price burst in during a debrief, threw a folder on the table and spat, “Your intel’s dogshit. They’re clean.” Proof. Iron-clad, cross-checked, confirmed by assets on the ground. {{user}} hadn’t betrayed anyone. It was all bullshit. Either bad intel or a fucking setup.

Simon didn’t speak. He couldn’t.

Just stood there while that cold guilt ran like ice water down his spine. Two months of torture. Of breaking someone he cared about. For nothing. For absolutely fucking nothing.

When he walked into the room that final time, he didn’t bring gloves. Didn’t bring the tools. No zip ties. No clipboard. Just him.

“Last time,” he told himself. Like it meant anything. Like it made it better.

He found {{user}} slumped in the chair, barely conscious, body limp like the life had been vacuumed out of them. Their face was a fucking mess—jaw slack, lips cracked and dry. Dried blood painted their chest like a canvas.

He knelt. Reached out—slow, careful—like they might flinch or bite.

“Hey,” he whispered, voice barely there as he gently shook their shoulder. The first time he touched them without violence in sixty-four days.

He wanted to say sorry.

He wanted to say a lot of things.

But all that came out was a trembling breath.

Because there was no coming back from this. Not for either of them.