Work Text:
Visceral
adjective
a strong, instinctive, and often emotional response to something
It was too quiet in the depths of the forest. Snow covering ground, trees gnarled and haunting in the way they leaned and swayed in the cold, near silent wind. Crunching of boots echoed and the light sound of clinking weaponry accompanied it harmoniously. The atmosphere was dark as one might expect, as three men shuffled towards the exfil point, one being carried by a hulking, masked monstrosity. The first mission together with the new addition, and Ghost of all people nearly gets his brains blown all over the Russian base wall. The near sound of their heli pushes the three Sergeants to walk faster and push through the snow and the cold to reach the area. And when the dust settles, when all three are calm and the medic is working on the rest of Ghost's injury- they all look back on the moment that had two of three freezing.
______________ flashback _____________
A glint. That was all it took for the Sergeants to turn towards the upper floor staircase of the multi floor base they were currently clearing. And the glint was just enough to force them all to calculate just what was about to happen. Soap froze, heart slamming against his ribcage, brain overworking so much it actually had his body feeling like stone. Heavy and sinking into the ocean, pulled by gravity down, down, down. Gaz flinched, his mind working fast over calculations of where that shot was heading, but his feet couldn't move, wouldn't move. His eyes darted towards his Lieutenant, their Ghost, and all he could do was watch as the man didn't even seem to notice that damn sniper.
And then it happened. A sound, loud, a shot, and a body moving and dragging the Lieutenant down, down, down, a quick move, a quick save. A loud, pained groan from the skull masked man on the ground, shot in the shoulder, not clean, but not shattered. Yet the blood was too much, and still, Soap and Gaz watched Grim, whose single uncovered eye looked wild, and they realised that this was a man who didn't even think. A man who didn't flinch, who ran into fire, who ran into carnage and chaos. And the man who was currently knife deep in their Lieutenant's shoulder, digging out a bullet and had one of his hands being clasped between the masked man's teeth as low, pained near screams escaped, muffled. They watched Grim disinfect the wound, hand still beneath teeth, bleeding and him not reacting at all. The wild look remained, until he stuffed the wound with gauze, wrapping it tight to hold it together before they could get to medical. And then they watched him stand.
And they watched him look out that fucking space that the sniper hid in, and he grabbed his own rifle. Looked up, body language serene, pace calm, and then they watched him shoot out. Six bodies dropped, one by one, hidden yet caught in the storm that Grim himself was. One by one, head shot, head shot, head shot, head shot. Throat, throat. Gurgles, two men bleeding out and trying to stop it to no avail. And Grim stalked closer, only to stomp. Hard, fast, vicious. Searched them each, pulled pieces, weapons, intel. They carried what the team was searching for. Luck, it seems, was on their side.
"Exfil." Grim growled, looking at Soap and Gaz, snapping them out of their stationary moments of panic, and they suddenly both hurried in movement. Grim picked up the Lieutenant, steady grip on thighs, chest leaning on his back, and he followed his fellow Sergeants. Soap was lowly speaking in comms, Gaz following direction for exfil, and Grim stalked behind them, blood on his hands, blood on his boots, leaving bloody footprints in pristine freshly fallen snow.
The Hound of Death awake, stalking, protecting, following. He could hear her, whispers in the wind carried like a loving caress, she's not taking this one. Good. Grim had grown attached already- this team different from the one that he still carried, yet not at the same time. It's been a month now, that he'd stayed with them. No missions he'd been needed for, just training, getting used to the team (to a team, again). He had the easiest time coming to love Johnny MacTavish. His Scottish drawl making his mind flash to an older woman whose soul was a brilliant flame not unlike Johnny's own. He was loud, unfiltered and passionate, and he asked too many questions, spoke too much. But Grim could only hide his appreciation for it anyway. He'd respond in clipped, one word answers, voice rough with not enough use. He'd still laugh at his jokes, no matter how stupid, but it would be a silent kind, the kind shown in the glimmer of his eyes, short but there.
Then Grim had caught Garrick. And saying it like that was undoubtedly necessary, seeing as he was... Different to what Grim was used to, even from his old team, and from both lives. None of Harry's friends had ever really been this kind of soft. Never carried this kind of terrifying competence and yet this kind of gentleness. Kyle Garrick was an enigma. He was a tactical man with a kindness to his pretty eyes and a gentleness to his smile, paired with soft touches. Garrick was the only one to touch Grim without him flinching, calloused hands gliding over his shoulder or a press of a hand to his back. Each touch soft, there and never fleeting, strong and stable. Garrick was an example of a stable man, calm with a side of chaos to him that made Grim's decaying heart tremble. Of Grim's old team, Garrick reminded him the most of Marg in an unexpected way. Kyle was insightful, sharing his thoughts on certain files if he caught Grim with any, and he didn't mind or dig into Grim's silences when the masked weapon couldn't find the correct words. Still, Grim found it easiest to speak to Garrick, whose presence made something inside him loosen slowly. A brick taken from the impossibily high wall.
Now, the man on Grim's back was a surprise. Lieutenant Ghost was as much a legend as Grim himself was. The two of them with identical folders, though Grim's own held far worse brutalities and far worse actions. Far more marks against him than for him, in any case. Yet Ghost had observed him, from the first day and everywhere else afterwards - in training, in the barracks, on the field during Grim's morning runs. Ghost was everywhere. But Ghost also noticed things. Their stock of Earl Grey tea being always full. The food served to their team whenever Grim wasn't near then being better, the mug on Price's desk being newer and sturdier, yet without any inscription but the #2 Best Captain on the bottom. He saw Gaz with a leather bound journal with an inscribed "Garrick's Grumblings" on the bottom in elegant, familiar script, and he saw Johnny's snack stash always full, and his guns cleaner and somehow sleeker than when he'd left them. Ghost also received a box, quietly sat in front of his office door on base. A shipment of high quality, high durability and thermal regulation balaclavas for various weather conditions and even some good for desert trekking with a short, thin, sheer black veil to block out the sun just so. All of them custom, skeleton stitched, with a tiny tag on the inside stitched with a terrifying, wide open maw of some kind of canine, looking like a blood filled grin. Ghost cherished them quietly, saying nothing. But he laid off on his stalking, and started instead joining Grim on the outskirts, both of them smoking and lost in sounds of the base, as well as their own inner sound. Grim, however, grew to enjoy Ghost's silence, and had reciprocated as such. Feeling the quiet of the man's muted emotions drown out the loud feedback of the base. Grim felt a tiny drop of belonging, in the darkness of Ghost. And that is even more so cherished.
Price, however, was a different beast. Grim, if he were an honest man, can admit to feeling terrified of someone or something when he's presented with them for long enough. And Price? He was too much like Sebastian for Grim to find comfort in the steadiness, the calm or the obscene warmth that cling to the captain's emotions like a large, quilted blanket. Grim was skittish around him, all three of the others had noticed. But Ghost saw it once... Grim had been wearing only a half cloth mask that day, pulled up over the bridge of his nose and a cap over his head that blocked out the sun when they stood out on the outside training yard, having finished their round of exercise for the day off with a run. Price was talking to them and casually clapped Grim on the shoulder firmly twice. Ghost had seen it unintentionally, a miniscule flash- there one second and gone the next- but it was deep rooted, paralyzing terror of a man who for a short moment wasn't there with the rest of them, but lost in his own head.
Price walked off, a small smile on his face having not seen what the Lieutenant caught, and when Gaz and Soap walked off, animatedly talking, Ghost decided to stay behind.
"I know you saw it." Quiet, but firmly said. "I did." An admission, still quiet but softer. "They're too similar." A confession to something deeper, but Ghost wouldn't dig. "How?" A question, but not the one Grim was expecting.
"He was the same height, the same build once from pictures I've seen- same tone and capable of the same cruelties. The echoes feel similar, but not the same. Still too close."
Ghost didn't know what the echoes were, but they were important enough to mention. "Cruelties against others, or against you?" Quiet, compassionate, knocking on a door that wouldn't yet open, but the other was listening.
"Not me, this time. Not me yet. I'd take it if it ever happened. Though.... I would shatter again. Might be the final time." That was loaded, like a gun was in his mouth with the safety off and he would be prepared to press that trigger if that was the case.
"He wouldn't. Not to you. Not to us. Not unless you betray this, and us." Ghost's voice was near silent, but there. Grim's eyes were dark, shadows shifting and turning them into the purest of silver for a few moments too long. A breath pushed out. Quiet, strong.
"You might be right." Admission, slow and measured.
After that, Grim had tried to find and dig deeper within Price. And what he found had harshly settled him, quickly disarming him. A good man, competent, collected, a pillar and a comfort. He already knew everything, as much as he could at least, from the many files and rumors about what went on win the Laverty home. Price wasn't blind, but he was not treating Grim like he would break, and this? Grim could build on this. And so he had.
They were his, but they were still...a task. Maybe until it was completed. Just until then, they would remain so. But Grim could feel it. The echoes of Death and the echoes of his lost, that told him he had found what he was meant to find. What Harry had found before he decayed, and what Hadrian had never gotten to have before he was gone. But Grim? Grim had a home once, and that home is now lingering, even if gone. But he also found something that changed too. Because he found his task, he found his...belonging, and he's certain that, soon enough, he would finally find his true home too. Freedom in choice, freedom in care, and freedom to finally claim what he had always desired. Home.
______________ flashback end _____________
Grim looked out from his perch in the heli, eye casually passing over the Sergeants and for a few lingering seconds stopped over the settled body of his Lieutenant. He is fine, Grim repeated in his head. He was patched up by Grim first and by a med team after, he is fine. But the adrenaline still burned in his veins, still scorched through his system like a river of lava and rage. He nearly let one of his own die on his watch. Grim was beyond angry at himself for not catching on earlier. He had fucking empathy and his legillimency too! He should've sensed them up there, he should've known. If he hadn't done what he had... Fuck, if he hadn't.
"Grim" a deep, gravely voice echoed in the silence of the heli. Grim's eye darted up, his Lieutenant called for his attention.
" 'Tenant" came the response, tone low, yet the smallest of hints of anger bled through.
"You did good." Firm, a quiet but strong statement that had the effect it was meant to. Shoulders slumped, a small, barely noticeable reaction, and the visible eye widened just a fraction.
"Sir." Affirmative.
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