Wait what? I haven't posted this? I wrote this two years ago! Two entire years!
I don't actually follow CoD- that's my brother- but the one aspect that gripped me from the start was the camaraderie between Soap and Price, and later Nikolai. It started as a 'okay, this is quite nice' feeling, then MW2 came and Soap instantly went "This belongs to you, sir" and I was just sold. Entirely.
And then he died. I still harbour a guilty glee that one of my favourite levels is Blood Brothers, purely for the fact that it is basically Soap bleeding out his life through the entire map while Price grows increasingly frantic. And then Price punches you down an entire flight of stairs.
This is the cutscene for Stronghold. Contains references to Soap's Journal. I know nothing of how the UK military works, only the little that wikia has told me about that clocktower. Also, cannot stress this enough: fiction, fanfiction, written by a casual fan. No intention whatsoever of going anywhere near real life.
Price flips open the laptop, starts it up. As he waits, his eyes gravitate, almost reluctantly, to the small leatherbound book that lies just next to his hand.
The door swings open, and the muted "Captain Price-" is quickly cut off. Nikolai shuts the door and takes a chair next to him, and if he sees the black eyebags on Price's face, he is smart enough to not say anything.
Price tears his eyes away, and goes through the now-familiar process of contacting his old captain. The terminal beeps, and he pulls on his mic and headphones in time to hear MacMillian's greeting of "John."
For a moment, his breath catches, and the pain comes flooding back again at the sound of Scottish-accented words.
"John? You there, son?"
"I-" The syllable is choked. He wrestles his voice back into control, and goes straight into it. "You have jurisdiction over the clocktower?"
By his side, Nikolai stirs and questions him, even as MacMillian goes quiet on the other end.
"There's a clocktower in Hereford..." He begins, eyes going back to the black journal, the words he had read and re-read through the night. "Where the names of the dead are inscribed."
Now it is Nikolai's turn to suck in his breath, and it does not escape nor surprise Price that the Russian's eyes go straight to the wall, the few pictures tacked on with tape, the dog tags swinging limply from the knife driven into the surface in a fit of rage and grief.
Softer, he continues. "We try to honor their deeds, even... as their faces fade from our memory."
But the answer's easy. At least to me.
"Those memories are all that's left, when the bastards have taken everything else."
It's a safety. ON or OFF.
He drops his head into his hands, struggling to compose himself. He can feel Nikolai's hand on his tense shoulder, can almost feel MacMillian's silence as a blanket, but for the moment all he wants is to see his war-hardened face again, hear his Scottish voice, have the fresh-faced recruit from Selection back at his side again.
"What happened?" MacMillian asks, gentler than Price has ever heard from him.
"...He killed Soap." Voice hoarse, as he gives back the M1911 all over again. "He's gone, Mac."
"What do you need from me, son?"
Price looks up, barely noticing as Nikolai jerks away from him with fear in his eyes.
The answer's easy for me too, Soap.
His mind races as MacMillian feeds him intel, equipment and plans falling into place one by one, and by the end of the briefing, he has compiled a list and sends it over with a click of the mouse.
"That's a lot of hardware, John." MacMillian sounds almost impressed. "What d'you plan on doing?"
It is only now that he notices the savagery written all over his face, the promise of death to the devil who has taken it all from him.
He does not care. "What you taught me to do."
"Kill them all."