Pattern Breaker

Open Hearts and Minds With It, Johnny

6 Hours Prior

Something that isn't shown often enough, in Soap's opinion at least, is the effect on people's mental health when dealing with the tribulations of war. Sure, people talk about the PTSD. The flashbacks. Not being able to be around fireworks. Jumpy around sudden, loud noises. That kind of bullshit.

No one talks about the way a tag on your shirt itches against your body in a way that makes you want to rip your skin off. No one talks about the way a fly buzzing too close to your ear sends you into unimaginable rage. No one talks about the way, when a room is a little too stuffy, the heat suffocates you and makes you feel like you're drowning with no way up.

The way you can feel yourself changing permanently with every flash bang and broken bone. Your body may heal, but your mind never truly will.

And when you watch the physical personification of your shattered psyche be forced upon someone that you would tear apart the ends of the earth for– That changes you, too.

God, does it change you.

You sit and blame yourself for it, of course. You decided to do this. You picked this course of action in your life. The decision to watch peoples heads be severed and body parts shredded like roast beef, but this is the life that they chose. Those events came as almost a rite of passage to every soldier.

Price had ordered him to stay put while they tracked the originating location of the video. "We can't just go in there blind" he insisted. "If Ghost was dead, we would know it". Soap understood that. Why would they send a video of them violating every single inch of his skin in the worst of ways if not to keep him as collateral? They wanted revenge for El Sin Nombre, who wasn't even dead. Alejandro had said they were out for blood, right?

Soap would give them blood.

"Of course, Captain." He had responded. "You're right, Captain."

At some point, Alejandro had knocked on Ghost's door quietly, opening it to Johnny sitting smack in the middle of his bed as he reorganized his vest. Muttering some bullshit that Price had obviously sent him to say about "Doing this right" and "Having medical ready because of Ghost's condition". "We work best as a team." "We don't know what we're running into."

"I know you want nothing more than to go rescue him, Soap, and I admire that. But going at it alone won't end well. Remember what happened last time?" Thinking that would maybe help ground Johnny into not making any rash decisions.

As if.

Price was a fucking idiot for believing he wasn't going to go tearing through Mexico looking for his way home.

It wasn't difficult, not really. Breaking into the armory later that night was the easiest, surprisingly. He had reached a hand out to introduce himself in broken Spanish to the one soldier standing guard, yanking him towards his body and bashing his forehead into the poor unsuspecting man's nose before drawing him into a sleeper hold.

"Sleep well..." He had whispered, carefully laying the man down to the ground. He was going to have one hell of a broken nose to deal with when he woke, no need to add a concussion to the mix.

Every single available pocket crammed full with blocks of C4 and his favorite hybrid Sniper rifle strapped firmly to his body, his next objective was getting out of the base. He had already kicked Price's door down and stolen his laptop, leaving a sticky note with a latitude and longitude of the exact opposite direction of where he was headed. While the combination of the head injury and choke-hold would keep that other soldier down for the count for longer than what was normal– along with confusion and hopefully, mild amnesia– before he realized anything was missing, Soap probably only had about an hour at best head start before wind got back to Price and he realized what happened. Between that and the fact helicopters tend to be much faster than the truck he had hotwired and stolen from a gas station about a mile out from the base, he had a small window of opportunity to grab hold of.