Phoenix in the Light

Stars

Writers Note: Another short chapter that's a bit of a filler. Expect POV to skip around a little bit in this chapter and the next chapter. The build up to the reunion is gonna be long and juicy... and not what you expect. Next chapter is going to be short as well, followed by a SUPER long chapter. It may take me a bit to finish that chapter, so bare with me. Luv y'all.

Trigger Warnings: suicidal contemplation, Ghost has a panic attack.

Ghost didn't believe what he had just heard, there was just no way he heard what Soap had just said. His ass lifted from the chair as he watched the GPS dots moving on the topographical screen over him. There was just no way.

"Holy shit," A breathy Gaz said through his headset comms.

"What the hell is going on?" Price cut in, his voice was dangerously low, a hint of disbelief in the thick British accent.

"Sir," Soap's tone was chilling, "we may have mistaken the American Special ops from the transmission."

Laswell leaned down to speak in the mono speaker that would reach all of the team, "what is it?" She asked, her voice shaking with anxiety and frustration.

"Ma'am, it's-" Soap's voice cut out again, as if he was still finding the ability to speak and breathe. "It's Jamie."

Laswell's eyes flicked to Ghost whose mind had retreated somewhere into the back of his brain, trying to make sense of the things he was hearing. It wasn't logically possible. It wasn't physically possible. They were in the heart of eastern Russian, thousands of miles from Kootenai or the Canadian border. She hadn't been able to breathe; she hadn't been able to breathe in those last few minutes under all of that rubble. She had a stake the size of a spear going through her thigh that was bleeding like a stuck pig. Every bone in her body had been broken. No one could have survived that fall, let alone a tiny little girl like Jamie.

Bracing his shaking hands on the desk in front of him, he tried to breathe but no air that entered or exited his lungs satiated the violent curdling of his need for oxygen. The images cycled in his head again, and then again, trying to find something that he had missed. When he had walked away from her, or more like Soap had pulled him away from her that day he was certain that her heart had stopped beating. She had been dead. Gods, he had fucking buried her. Price had informed her mother and younger brother.

"What are you going on about?" Price's voice asked, quite violently. "Gaz use your fucking words."

"Sir, Staff Sergeant Hendricks is here. She's the badly wounded American special ops that was being transferred," Gaz answered, out of all the voices, he trembled the least. Images of the moment Gaz looked up at Captain Price and signaled that there was no helping Jamie under all of that rubble in Kootenai flashed in Ghost's head. There was no way that it was her, not after what he had seen, not after the way her body was torn apart and bleeding.

"Run that by me one more time," Price said through the comms. Ghost was grateful for Price saying exactly what he needed to say... but couldn't.

"Staff Sergeant Hendricks, callsign Ash, is alive and here, both her legs are broken and are unable to walk," Gaz said.

"What about Alex?" Laswell spoke up from behind him.

"Affirmative, he's here as well," Gaz confirmed.

"How is that possible? How could they both be in the same place?" Laswell barked, then pulled out a heavy satellite computer and began to type away. Ghost saw the flash of the CIA's home login page before he had to squeeze his eyes shut with black dots beginning to dance along the outside of his peripherals.

Shock waves of something Ghost had never felt burned through his body: confusion, disbelief, pain, happiness, excitement, resentment. He couldn't really describe the thought processes that he was having, nor the dread that flowed in his bloodstream when Gaz's voice spoke again, "the mission is to retrieve Alex sir, what do you want us to do with her?"