Second Hc Soap's Middle Name Is Jamie Because Isn't That Ironic And Hilarious - Tumblr Posts
MW3 Spoilers!
When Soap dies Ghost lifts the dog tags from his body with more care than he's taken to do anything. They're looped around his neck beside his own. There's no need for them to stay with Johnny's body, there are people to identify him. The people who love him are the ones to file the paperwork. Lieutenant Simon Riley is supposed to sign the death certificate. He never does.
The metal of Soap's feels unnaturally colder than his own, the weight heavier. His body knows he wears two pairs. His mind knows the addition of the second ripped something crucial from his already fractured soul.
When Ghost dies he does so alone. His team isn't there to collect his remains, they aren't there to give him a small but never the less sad funeral, they aren't even there to file the paperwork. They didn't abandon him, he ran away. It's not that they don't love him, it's that they knew he needed the space.
When the men come to collect his body, to record the death, to make him just another number sacrificed in the endless war for peace they find two identities wrapped around his neck. Names pressed to his chest like the locket of a lover.
RILEY SIMON, J. 2073357 O POS ATHEIST MACTAVISH JOHN, J. 2073521 O NEG CATHOLIC
They thought there must have been some sort of mistake, a mix-up in the paperwork somewhere because there was an unknown soldier in the field wearing the identities of two men who had died years ago. Simon Riley, from what they could find went MIA after his team was betrayed well over a decade ago and was declared KIA years later when they couldn't recover him. John MacTavish's tag was newer, shinier than the other, but supposedly he'd been shot years ago. That's what they could find anyway.
No one could account for the body rotting away in the morgue unidentified and unnamed. No one knew him apparently, not even the team he was with.
Laswell finds out a month later, she'd been keeping silent tabs on him until he disappeared. She calls Price as soon as she knows, holding back tears the same way she did with Soap. "He has a grave," she says quietly. They visit with Gaz the day after.
Price laughs when he sees the gravestone. Then he cries.
The other two join him.
They stare at the engraving. Something that should have could have been real if only things had worked out differently. If they'd been a little faster, prepared a little bit more, if Price had let Soap pull that trigger all those years ago. But even though it didn't everything still led to this moment, the three of them at this grave the same way they would've been if things had changed back then. The hilarity of it was heartbreaking.
They'd combined them for the records. Created an identity for a soldier that never existed to mark the resting place of one who died carrying two dead men with him.
In death, Ghost is content, for the first time ever, with the identity his name provides him with.
Simon J. MacTavish Soldier, Lover
Price is the last to leave. He does so with a smile and another glace at the stone, "congrats boys," he says to no one in particular, "wish I could've been there to see it."