The sky was blue.
And Roach stared up at it, unmoving. Red was seeping into his vision but he'd never seen so clearly before. He saw the flames licking all around him and he saw Ghost's blank eyes from behind his shades staring lifelessly into a point somewhere in all the frustration of Shepherd's betrayal, all the dozen different shards of the things and memories that flashed by when one was dying. He saw Captain Mactavish's stern face above him as he clung onto dear life on the snowy ridges. That had been so long ago. Or was it? Everything was flooding into the blue, blue sky so fast and he felt himself slipping.
He saw Ghost, and then he lifted his balaclava away from his face and there Riley was, leaning in with those painfully intense eyes staring right through him. He saw beads of sweat rolling down the sides of his face, and through the harsh rumbling of the world around him, he could almost imagine those were tears and that Simon was really crying as though he knew that that was going to be the last day of his life.
Everything had gone silent. He didn't have the strength left within him to hold onto John's hand any longer. The world whirled past him as John's anguished face disappeared into the distance above, his arm still outstretched towards him. He gave the whiteness above him a crooked, bitter smile and the world bled away.