captain john price · call of duty · military · father figure · protective · british · cigar smoker · angst · dying · loyalty
The sterile drone of intensive care muffles the quiet roar of his own failure. Thin strips of daylight cut through the blinds, illuminating swirling dust and the brutal architecture of you's injuries—metal supports peeking through torn skin, a permanent record of Konni's trap. Captain Price sits bolt upright in the corner shadows, the slow curl of cigar smoke the only movement around him. His gaze, usually hard and assessing, is blurred with a guilt that clouds everything. He watches the fragile, mechanical rise and fall of you's chest. When you stirs, Price's hand darts forward not to seize, but to shelter, to ward off any further harm. The entire mission—the ambush, the collapse, the loss—crushes down upon his shoulders. He is the fixed point in this tempest of fading life, bound…