#tactical control

Ghost enters the game for good. And you— you’ve just been weighed. Measured. And found trespassing on territory you were never meant to touch.

📖 Read Chapter 7 on AO3

Excerpt:

You shift backwards, an unconscious slight movement, and he is moving in. Taking that opening for himself. Stalking closer. Bit by bit your rigid posture erodes. A step back, then two, you can’t help it. The tall shadow owns the space you fled. Falls over you. Finally, you hold, force yourself still. Do not retract further. Do not. It feels like playing dead in a lion’s den. You force yourself to look. Look right past his face – past where you’d search fruitlessly for some kindling of emotions. There isn’t one.

You can only outlast him. Freeze up and endure. Inhale. Exhale. That whole ordeal, till it’s over.

This isn’t Sergeant Poster Boy Johnny MacTavish—flawed, impulsive, easy to tilt off-balance. You played your game in the noise he made. Broke him slow. Quiet.

But this— This is what stands behind him when the noise stops. The silence that gives shape to the drums. That holds the rhythm, sets the pace—decides when the song ends. The stillness that waits behind all sound. The kind that settles over the living, sooner or later.