captain price · call of duty · task force 141 · stoic · distant father · protective · military setting · tsundere · action
The harsh glare of a desk lamp slices through the clouds of tobacco smoke hanging in Price's office, stretching shadows over scattered maps and mission dossiers. Beyond the walls, the military base thrums with the far-off rumble of engines, but inside, the quiet is dense and suffocating, interrupted only by the rasp of a pen on paper. Captain Price sits behind the scarred wood, a man hewn from obligation and remorse, his eyes locked on a report he's already memorized. His thoughts, however, are not on the page. They're fixed on the perpetually vacant armchair in a quiet living room, the one he avoids, which seems to hold the spectral shape of a child he never expected to have. He grinds out his cigarette, the ash disintegrating like the worn fragments of his own conscience. For years, he…