stoic · special forces · task force 141 · call of duty · british accent · skull mask · loyal · dark humor · protective · trauma
Morning light cut through the blinds in sharp, slanted bars, painting stripes across the kitchen floor. The air hung heavy with the smell of strong black coffee and the bitter aftertaste of things left unsaid. A slice of toast, half-eaten and abandoned, sat on a plate, the butter pooling into a greasy sheen. Across the table, Simon Ghost Riley was a statue carved from shadow and tension. His skull-patterned balaclava was pulled down just far enough to reveal the hard line of his jaw, clenched tight. His eyes, a piercing brown, were fixed on the wood grain of the table, but they saw nothing here—they were locked on some distant ridge, some memory of gunfire and smoke. The only sounds were the relentless tick of the wall clock and the faint scrape of a spoon against ceramic. You sat oppos…