We Were Ghosts Before We Died
A dark Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley x fem!Reader fanfiction
Click here for the AO3 version
TW: pills, suicidal idealisation, gruesome physical deformities, depression
23 years. 23 fucking years on the force — 23 years of scarring missions, 23 years of putting himself through gruelling horrors, 23 years which he spent loyal with his life — all to prove meaningless the moment his left leg got caught in some forgotten landmine and rendered completely useless.
Couldn’t he just do paperwork? Classified documents couldn’t be released to those not directly involved. What about management? Same problem, and the 141 already worked well without one. Goddamn it, couldn’t he just be some sort of medic then? Not until his leg had properly healed up and he had gone through the necessary training. Both of which were impossible.
And so, without much more discussion and even less of a goodbye ceremony apart from getting wasted at the bar, Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley, legend on and off the battlefield, a mere myth to some and the worst nightmare of others, was honourably discharged.
That was a month ago. What a load of bullshit.
In some ways, he couldn’t even bring himself to care. Following the loss of his best friend earlier that year, following having to watch the life leak of of his once-twinkling eyes with a horrifying clarity, he just about lost all of what little sense of emotion he had remaining in him. John Price — captain, mentor, guide — recommended therapy, because even other people could see that Simon was being even more reclusive and alone than his usual isolated self.
Not that Simon ever went. He had enough on his plate without having to waste extra energy to hyper-analyse what it all meant. Everything was hell, he knew that already.
In other ones, he didn’t even need to care about the change for it to impact him. That job was his life. His purpose. Without it, he was nothing. An empty shell of a man, brutally honed since he could remember for a use that he could no longer perform. It was ironic, really, how everything turned out in the end. How Makarov still lived, Johnny didn’t, and Simon was left in the middle of it all, completely useless to do anything about it.
The moth-ridden sofa creaked under his weight as he shifted. He didn’t dare look down at his legs as he did, keeping his eyes firmly on the damp ceiling where black mould spiderwebbed out from every corner — he’d just get sick again and clog up the already-faulty toilet. It had already happened too many times.
Outside, the dull evening sky of Beswick was cloudy and miserable. It was all he could have expected, in a town like this — one of the roughest areas of Manchester, and that was saying something. If he was being honest, that was exactly why he was there. To torture himself, to make himself suffer, to pay for the sin of how he lived, and Johnny didn’t. How his breath was wasted on someone who could barely move, when it should have been spent on his brilliant, cheeky, too-fucking-good friend instead.
And look where that got him.
His bloodshot eyes flicked to the various pain medications splayed across the floor, as the soft tick-tick-ticking of the grandfather clock, the only nice piece of furniture he owned, droned into his mind like a metronome. They were always there; they that there as an option, a last resort. Maybe not even that. Maybe something more impending.
Was that what it was, what they would turn out to be? They called to him like a siren song, tainting his thoughts, taunting his mind. They could end it, if he gave them a chance.
With a grunt, with the shifting of something in his mind, he hauled himself off the couch and suddenly gathered all the pills he could find into a pile. Death couldn’t be worse than the life he lived right now. It would be quiet, peaceful — even that was more than he deserved. Was a better, easier way to go than the agony that Johnny endured in his last moments, surrounded by chaos and gunshots, suffering with the agony of his wound. But it would at least be a relief, the repentance of his sin. He had no-one to bring sorrow to with his disappearance, save for perhaps the captain and Gaz. But they hadn’t been in contact in months, and wouldn’t find out for probably another year, by which time he supposed he’d already be fuzzy in their memories, a man once known now turned into a faceless figure in their minds. One that they perhaps knew a one upon a time, but that time was long gone.
His leg cramped painfully. That was the last straw. Simon’s eyes blazed in frustration and agony, both mental and physical, and he pulled himself to his feet, dragging his stupid leg along the floor with sickening thumps as it hit various objects strewn around. It only took two hobbled strides for him to reach the peeling door, throw on an old army cap, and force himself out the door. He hadn’t even bothered with a mask. He wouldn’t need to, if he wouldn’t see anyone else after this evening.
The hallway was quiet. It always was — no one in their right mind would live in one of these apartments, save for the occasional squatter. And even they avoided the place once they realised who their neighbour would be.
Rational humanity feared him. Hated him. He couldn’t blame them; so did he.
A lone streetlight weakly lit up the path down the road once he left the building, bulb flickering precariously every few moments, the way a flame would. No matter. His destination was only another few miles further, and he preferred the dark anyway.
Not even crickets chirped as he limped along. It was as though the entire street was dead — to be honest, it probably could be, and Simon wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. Most cars avoided this part of town, too, and with good reason. Lucky for him, he supposed, because the pavements were always disgustingly filthy.
Ka-thump. Ka-thump. Ka-thump.
Jesus Christ, he felt like the monster in a fucking horror movie. He hated his leg — despised it. Abhorred it to the point where… well, where something like this came about. With every hopping step he took, it hung behind him like a phantom, hitting the concrete with soft, eerie thuds.
The sky had somehow deepened to an even gloomier shade of grey, a singular crow cawing its dissonant song, as he walked up to the restaurant of his choosing. The only place he wanted to visit just one last time
An American-style 80’s diner. Blinking neon signs, checkerboard floors, red booths, the whole pizzaz. Stupid, really, and a goddamn stain on Johnny’s name, but… he couldn’t help it. It was oddly comforting, served good food, and he figured he may as well enjoy it one last time, if nothing else.
Knuckles knocked on the door harshly. After a moment he let himself in and slid (with some effort, damn leg) into the booth furthest away from the singular other occupied table, then waited. Soon enough, a waiter approached him absently. “Order?” The young man asked drily, mind clearly occupied with something else other than the customer in front of him as his eyes kept lingering on the kitchen door.
Simon bristled at his tone. “…Black coffee and a steak. Medium rare.”
He nodded, and whilst it wasn’t an order that needed to be written down, Simon would have appreciated a little more confirmation that he understood the order. “Got it,” he said after a moment, before promptly disappearing off.
Bloody friendly, he was, thought Simon with a soft scoff, leaning back into the oddly textured but plush seat as his eyes drifted towards the ceiling. Everything so far had been… uneventful. He didn’t know what he was expecting, leading up to what he planned to do, but a normal evening definitely wasn’t it.
The family in the other corner’s conversation was loud, and it reached a crescendo of giggles and exclamations once he was settled, but instead of tuning it out at he usually would, he listened to the discussion quietly.
Simon had never cared much for others — that much was clear in the way he attached himself to only a mere few, never dated for more than a few weeks, and was just distant generally. He found people not confusing, but immensely tiring. He could read everyone too easily and it got to a point where it just drained him to try.
Johnny, and the rest of the task force for that matter, was different. He had definitely been tiring, but in a good way. In a way that left Simon fulfilled. He was in no way a good man — none of them were, with the amount of blood that stained their hands — but he was as good as he possibly could have been. Good, and far too brave for his own good. And now he was gone, forever, and soon Simon would be joining him.
Life was a funny thing, really, Simon decided — his food having arrived as he began to chew on the steak with slow, firm chews. Given so freely, lived so differently, and taken so easily. An innocent child could be killed before even offered the chance to experience it, and a murderer could live to a ripe old age without any morals before passing away peaceful.
He knew it was never fair — he didn’t think anyone truly believed that. But sometimes, in his bunker with the snores of his sleeping teammates the only sounds to accompany him, he used to foolishly hope that maybe things didn’t have to be tragic. That whilst bad things did happen, there were people who did good, too. They may not get recognition, and no one may ever know how many there were or what they did apart from the receivers, but they still went on for the sole purpose of bringing others joy.
It didn’t matter. The world would still go on without him, and other people could analyse human behaviour and have the same hopes that he had—
An unfamiliar voice cut through his thoughts. “Hey, just letting you know your waiter’s shift ended, and I’ll be your new one.”
Simon jerked in surprise — locking eyes with you as you smiled at him kindly. “I— oh, okay. Sorry for overstayin’ his shift.” He was a blunt man, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t polite. And also didn’t mean that he wouldn’t at least try to live his last hours showing kindness to people who showed it to him, especially after all he had thought about. Maybe the stuff he was taught in kindergarten did have a use, after all.
You smiled even wider at the large man before you as he muttered out his response. Because you recognised the expression he had had on his face as soon as he had walked in the door. “No worries! Hope you enjoyed your dinner. Would you like anything else?” I have to keep him here for a while. I can’t let him leave like this. You wouldn’t. You weren’t the kind of person to let things you could’ve changed slip by out of cowardice or laziness. Whilst you were no saint — and could’ve accurately been described as the complete opposite a few years back — recently you had tried damn hard to do the best you could.
He hesitated, and the thoughts that ran through his head were laughably obvious on his face, for a man you assumed lived most of his life showing nothing at all, judging by the faded army cap on his head.
You almost sighed in relief when he decided, “…Yeah. I’ll take another black coffee, thanks.”
“Sure thing!” You chirped, gathering his empty plates before scurrying off behind the counter.
He watched you as you left, blinking at your sudden but attentive departure. You were… quite eager. Sweet. Maybe a little younger than him, and definitely more naive. In any case, he preferred you to the man who had served him previously. He could only assume that you were fairly new as a waitress here, though, because he’d never seen you before.
Or maybe he’d just never cared to take notice.
The constant reflections that his ultimatum prompted him to have sobered him a little. Put life into the kind of jarring clarity that only hindsight could provide. It was refreshing, really. Allowed him to really see what kind of person he was in the past, and then what kind of person he had become now.
But never the kind of person he could be in the future.
“Here you go!” You had already returned, sliding the piping-hot coffee in front of him with pride. “Made it extra large. Figured you might appreciate it.”
So, you’d noticed? That was interesting, Simon thought. Didn’t really matter, though, because you were most likely just into him and trying to flirt. It happened far too often. “Thanks.”
You froze at his quick reply. Oh, no. You weren’t going to let him dismiss you just like that. Your mind went into overdrive in a moment, desperately trying to cling to something that you could bring up a conversation with, before you asked hesitantly, unsure if the query was too forward, random, or private, “So… army, huh?”
The man stiffened, muscles tightening beneath his vest, and you feared for a second that you’d said the wrong thing. But he didn’t push you away, and instead asked roughly, “How’d you know?”
Thank God. You had been certain that he was either going to yell or ignore you. This was much better. “The— the cap.” The few words you omitted were still loud — and the scars. They were beautiful on him, really — battle marks that reflected what he had been through. What he’d had to endure to be here today. They curled over his cheeks like spiderwebs, cutting through his pale eyebrows. Some trailed up into his scalp, under his short blond hair, and some pulled at his lips. The most notable one, and the one that first caught your attention, wasn’t a scar at all — just his crooked nose. Broken multiple times, by the way it bent awkwardly. Something no amount of surgery could ever truly fix. Something no surgery even needed to fix, in your opinion.
The man cocked his head at you, brown eyes roaming your face like they’d give him the answers to the questions of the universe. “And how’d you figure ‘army’ from that?” He was fair to ask the question, as it wasn’t exactly conspicuous. Wasn’t even vaguely camo or embroidered with any obvious logos.
You flushed a bit at the speed at which he caught on to your slip-ups. “My dad has a few from when he served.”
That got his attention. “Huh. What did he do?”
“Oh, nothing particularly interesting, or anything similar to something like the SAS,” you said casually, though you internally jumped as you saw the spark of recognition flare up in his hazel eyes as you mentioned the one division he was most likely in. Or had been in. That, you couldn’t tell quite yet. “People used to get excited when they asked him about it until they realised that he was just a colonel.”
“Good on him,” the man rumbled after a pause, dropping his gaze again to stare at his coffee. “…But the SAS isn’t all that. He’s much better off for not being part of it.”
Your eyebrows raised in faux surprise. Bait for him to latch on to. “Yeah?”
“I was in the SAS.” The words are spoken almost bitterly, and forced out the way a confession would roll off the mouth of a sinner in church. You expected him to continue, but he remained silent.
His eyes cut back to yours again, sharp and piercing, moving as fast as they had left. “That. And I don’t want to.” Ah. There was the defensiveness, not that you expected anything different. The privacy. It was hard — of course it was, to even try and talk about the bare minimum of the stuff he must have had to go through.
He wouldn’t have that look in his eyes if it wasn’t.
You nodded slowly, not pushing, but also not leaving. Lingering in case there was something else, anything, he was willing to offer you.
“Hard night, then?” You asked softly.
Something shifted in his composure. He slumped, though almost imperceptibly, and his ink-soaked muscles loosed. “Somethin’ like that.”
A warmth filled your chest, despite his defeated words. The man before you was obviously heavily scarred, both mentally and physically. You didn’t know yet what haunted his dreams, what formed his phantoms at night, and whose screams echoed in his mind, but you intended to find out. You had to make it better for this one man who you had seen walk into the diner so many times before, always silent and alone, and save him from his own mind like you weren’t able to so many years before. You were determined. And you could tell that you had already eased down his first line of defence. “Well, there’s always tomorrow, yeah? Nothing gives you a brighter perspective on things than the dawn of a new day.” You paused, watching him take your words in, before you added, “If you message in advance and come early enough tomorrow, I might just be able to get you some free pancakes. Extra maple syrup.”
You laughed lightly. “But not saying no to the pancakes, I see. Here—” You quickly grabbed a napkin and scribbled down your number with the pen attached to your shirt, before shoving it in front of him so quickly it could’ve been burning you. The only opportunity you could see was now, and you intended on taking it.
The man stared down at the napkin like it was some sort of alien.
Didn’t throw it away or turn you down outright, though, you thought.
When he glanced back up at you, he only nodded. Silent, but the action spoke volumes.
You beamed; the smile was more genuine than any of the others you had offered that evening. “You come here a lot. Nice to finally chat to you. Diner opens at six tomorrow, just a heads up. Have a nice evening!” And with that, you disappeared behind the counter one final time, and didn’t reemerge.
Simon honestly didn’t know why he took the crumpled napkin with your number, when he hadn’t accepted that offer from women for years, and put it into his phone —albeit under the name ‘Diner Waitress’. He also didn’t know why, when he walked back through the door into the apartment, he slid the pile of pills to the side instead of taking them as he planned. And he certainly didn’t know why he had decided to see you again tomorrow for pancakes, and intended on not changing his mind.
Something deep in his bones compelled him to do all that, and whilst he didn’t enjoy it, he also didn’t hate it. It gave him a chance to occupy his mind, and a chance to get free food from his favourite diner. Two things he didn’t necessarily despise. He also hadn’t thought about his leg all evening, he realised, climbing into bed with the usual amount of heaving effort. Besides, the pills could wait for a while. They were still an option, it wasn’t as though he couldn’t just take them in a few days.
That night, Simon slept completely dreamlessly — a rarity, considering the chilling nightmares that had been plaguing him for weeks on end, now. And you were right. The morning was a little more refreshing, cheered him up just a bit more than he had been feeling the night before.
He wrapped his fingers around his phone, resting on the pillow beside him.
Pancakes? Was the lone word he sent to your number the next morning, 6am on the dot.
Taglist: @moonfriesbruv @snburntandsad @asweetheart @vampsauce91
(This is the depressed Ghost fic I mention a few weeks ago, remember?)
This is one of the most favourite series I’ve written so far, so I hope you enjoyed ❤️
Please ask for the taglist, and feel free to share any thoughts below! Every comment makes me inexplicably happy :)
