Aren't I just fantastic? Two chapters in two days! (It's because we've had snow days all week and I got bored)

So, I can recall someone telling me that chapter 30, right before Loose Ends, was their favorite Ghost/Queen chapter. That's about to change. This will be your favorite chapter.

Question of the Chapter: Do YOU think Queen will go back to her time? Or will she stay in the game?

Enjoy this chapter! Read and review!

-ecto1B

Chapter 35:

"Clean"

Day 7 – 17:36:12

Pfc. Mckinley 'Queen' Front

Task Force 141

Georgian-Russian Border

A knock came at the bathroom door. Mckinley felt her entire face flush red. Ghost. Quickly, she glanced in the nearby mirror and did her best to wipe away the smudges of dirt and grime hiding under her eyes and around the curves of her nose. Her hair… well, she didn't want to even deal with that beehive right now. Without much success, she made an effort to remove the visible locks of muck from her usually radiant red hair…

The knock came again. "Queen, love? You all right?"

"Er…" She made one last attempt at taming the mess of red atop her head, but it was to no avail. "Come in, Ghost."

Slowly, the door swung open, and before Mckinley had a chance to scan her eyes across him, absorbing every detail, his muscular form dashed forward and pulled her into a passionate but gentle embrace.

"Oh love… I thought I'd lost you…" he choked out, letting his fingers find their hold on her back and in her hair. "You… you don' know how bloody worried I was that you wasn't gonna wake up…" He kneeled on the ground in front of her so that the two were eye-level, and instantly Ghost pressed his mask-clad mouth to her cheek. She could still feel his icy breath sliding on her skin, though the mask kept those wonderful pale lips from actually touching her. "Don' you ever do something like that t' me again, d'ya hear?" For a brief moment, it sounded like he was scolding her, but then again, the desperation entwined beneath his British accent proved it was purely for good reasons. He loved her, and her bizarre actions had only driven him mad with panic.

"Ghost, calm down," she mumbled soothingly, kissing the mouth of the skull on his mask. "I'm right here… you didn't lose me."

"I guess I jus' got carried away… the thought of losing you scared me," he confessed, nuzzling his face into the crook of her neck. Again, Mckinley related the action to a young boy—frightened by something scary—hurrying to his caring mother for some much-needed comfort. Though she found it beyond adorable, she wondered for a moment if Ghost's actions mirrored how he acted with his mother when he was younger. Mckinley knew for a fact Ghost's father had been a terrible parent, and had done drugs, smoked, drank, and raped women for fun, attending rock concerts and cursing like mad around little Simon and his younger brother, Tommy. She wondered if he'd found refuge in his mother's arms, and was now finding the same consolation with her.

Suddenly, Ghost shifted in Mckinley's arms, interrupting her deep thoughts. He pulled away from her hug slightly to meet her gaze with his strangely uncovered blue eyes.

"So, I heard from Price that you needed my help with something?" His grip around her continued to remain protectively strong. "What was it?"

She blushed again and coughed. How the hell do I ask someone to help me take a shower? "Um… well… if you hadn't noticed…" Mckinley glanced down at herself, "I smell like shit right now…"

His eyebrows raised. "No, you don't."

"Uh, yeah, I do, sweetheart. Like grime and shit."

She heard him sniff a bit. "Smells like a battlefield to me."

When she gave him a pained look, he chuckled. "Don't worry, love. It's sexy."

"Sexy?"

Ghost shrugged. "Well, yeah. A hot girl that smells like she's just stuffed bullets up peoples' arses is sexy to me."

"You're kidding."

"No, I'm bein' serious, love. I find you rather sexy right now." When she motioned to all the scars on her face and the bloody bandages dotting her body, he shrugged again. "Those just give you a sharper look."

Mckinley stared at him in disbelief. "I seriously can't take you seriously right now, Mr. Simon James Riley. You're making me blush."

Ghost practically threw back his head and laughed. "You don' believe me?" When she nodded and crossed her arms across her chest, firing him a look of disbelief, Ghost ripped off his mask, tossed it lethargically over his shoulder, and crashed his lips against hers hungrily. Mckinley tried to shout in shock and—at first—protest, but at once fell victim to his taste: cigarettes, cologne, and mint toothpaste. She ignored the screams of shooting pain in parts of her body and let herself become completely entangled against him. Her hands clutched his now-exposed mess of blonde hair in furious desperation.

"Now do you believe me?" he asked her as the two parted to take a breather. She nodded vigorously. "Good…" With an almost feral growl, Ghost attacked her lips once more.

More kissing ensued, until Mckinley's torso built up so much discomfort that she had to pull away and cry out in pain. In his unquenchable thirst, he'd put an enormous amount of pressure on her ribcage that she couldn't stand.

"What's wrong?" Ghost asked her urgently once she'd wrenched from his grasp to clutch at her abdomen. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah… I'm fine…" She bit back another yelp as the pain surged again. "It's… just all the wounds…"

Ghost's eyes were clouded with realization. "You were plannin' on asking me to help you take a shower, weren't you? That's where the smell thing came in, and that's why we're sittin' in the loo." He glanced around the bathroom, and then looked back at her. "I'm right, aren't I?"

The pain had slowly begun to die down again, so Mckinley could remove her arms from her stomach. She did so, only once wincing, and then gave Ghost a bemused look.

"How the heck did you figure that out?"

"For a ghost, I'm pretty damn smart." He smiled. "So that's it, then? You need me to help clean your wounds an' stuff?"

"With no funny business… yes."

"Funny business? Of course not, ma'am," he said seriously, saluting her and rising from his kneeled position. He offered a hand to her, and she took it. "I'd be honored to help you, love." Ghost placed a delicate kiss atop her knuckles, and then went over to the shower. He turned the knob to a fairly warm temperature to start them off, and then went over to the cabinets below the sink to find a towel.

"Damn, Doc must've used all the clean towels when he was cleanin' up blood. I'll have to find one downstairs—"

Mckinley pointed to a small closet door inside the bathroom. "Try there," she suggested.

Once Ghost had found a towel and checked the water to see if it was actually warming up, he made sure there was shampoo, conditioner, and a bar of soap for their use waiting inside the shower. Then he went back over to Mckinley and helped her stand.

"Time to get in the shower, love," he said calmly. "There's gonna be a lot of bandages, so we better start takin' 'em off now, before the water's ready."

Reluctant at first to let Ghost remove her clothes, Mckinley finally gave in and let him assist her as each part of her clothes fell to the ground. Once her top coverings were off, she was sad to realize that it hadn't made much of a difference; most of her body was still concealed behind bloody bandages.

After a few minutes of aches, shooting pains, and winces, the two had successfully removed all of Mckinley's bandages.

Ghost checked the water temperature. He put his hand under the nozzle, and then placed his wet hand on her bare shoulder to see if it was too hot. Once she'd confirmed that it was 'just perfect,' he helped her into the shower itself.

"Hang on a second, love."

Mckinley, who was savoring the delightful feeling of water on her skin, glanced his way briefly to see what he meant and saw something that both thrilled her and startled her.

Ghost already had his shirt on the floor, and was in the process of unbuckling his belt.

"Ghost?"

He glanced up at her. His fingers fumbled with the belt as he did so. "What?"

"Um…" She watched in detached interest as his pants came off, and then so did his boxers. Ghost—completely nude and not seeming to care—stepped into the shower with her and reached for the shampoo. "Ghost… not that I'm unhappy to see you naked, because I'm not… but, erm… might I ask just what are you doing?"

He chuckled and wrapped his arms around her—gently, this time. "What did you think I was gonna do? Stand outside the shower and help there?" His lips landed on her collarbone. "No, I'd prefer to be in here to help my Queen clean herself."

Mckinley tried to hide a giggle. "I thought I said no funny business, Simon?"

"What? Kissing you isn't anything funny." His lips traveled up to the nape of her neck, and then he gave her left earlobe an affectionate lick before squeezing a quarter-sized amount of shampoo into his hand. He ran the shampoo deep into her hair, massaging it into her scalp and plucking out bits of dirt that appeared.

"Oh, I just thought I'd let you know," he said, leaning in so she could hear him over the rush of the water, "You're gonna let me brush this hair when we're done in here."

Giggling, Mckinley nodded. "Fine."

Minutes passed. Ghost finished washing Mckinley's hair—shampoo and conditioner—and then went on to clean her body with the bar of soap. Every so often, Mckinley would wince when one of her injuries stung, and Ghost would move his hands away and wait until she nodded before he continued. The injury that caused them the most trouble was the bloody gash in her side from the shrapnel. Ghost told her that Chemo and Doc had struggled to remove the mortar fragment from her side when she'd arrived. It was the largest laceration on her body, running vertically down the side of her abdomen. Luckily the bleeding had stopped, but the discomfort that came with water coming in contact with it was hard for her to bear.

Eventually, Ghost declared that she was as clean as she was going to get. He turned the water off and helped her out of the shower. While he went to retrieve a towel for himself, Mckinley snatched her towel from the bathroom sink and quickly swathed her dripping body in it.

"Though mildly painful, I enjoyed that," she said to him, grinning slyly. "You should work at a beauty salon and wash people's hair."

He frowned. "I only like your hair, though."

She laughed and turned to face the bathroom mirror. "Well… at least I look and smell better than I did before the shower. Thanks, Ghostie." He came up behind her and kissed the top of her head, putting his hands on her shoulders.

"I'm glad I could help, Queenie. And you honestly didn't smell that bad before." His nose rubbed against her temple. "I liked it."

She scoffed in response. "Oh sure. You're still just saying that to make me blush."

Ghost's damp, bare arms enveloped around her from behind, and he buried his face in her red hair. Mckinley reacted with a crestfallen sigh, coming back to reality and realizing that this was probably one of the last moments she'd get to spend with him before she went back to her time.

As if he'd read her mind, Ghost murmured, "Never leave me, Queen. Please. I couldn't stand a single day without seein' your lovely face smilin' at me." His grip tightened. "Please promise me."

For a second, Mckinley thought about making the promise, but her heart howled in protest. Don't you dare hurt him like that, Mckinley it told her. Don't promise it, but make it because of a good reason. You're going to have to tell him the truth soon enough.

"Ghost, I'm not sure I'm able to make that promise…" When his eyes snapped to her in bewilderment, she forced a smile. "Aren't we wanted criminals or something? We could be captured and killed."

"Not on my watch," he said sternly. "I'm not lettin' any bloody man touch you if he intends on turnin' you in."

"But what if—"

"No one's comin' near you, love." His azure irises grew intense and full of sincerity, locking onto her pale grey ones and not releasing her gaze. "I swear."

It wasn't necessarily an awkward silence that grew between them after Ghost's statement… it was more like Mckinley had no idea how to respond to him. She was flooded with guilt. Guilt that had no desire on leaving any time soon.

"Love, you are going to have to tell them. After that, you can return home with a clean slate, ready to relive it all. And you can do it."

Price was right—if she didn't tell them before she left, they would be confused beyond belief. Not only that, but they'd probably hate her, too. She definitely would feel awful if Ghost was unable to stand her because she kept the secret hidden for so long.

But what else can I say? It's not my fault I got whisked inside Modern Warfare 2, and I especially didn't know that Modern Warfare 2 was my future!

"So… um… Ghost?" she began tentatively, deciding to discuss that specific topic later with Price and focus on a different one with Ghost. "If you don't… er… mind me asking… how many men did we lose?"

His lips drew into a thin, dismal line.

"You want a list of names?"

"Just tell me who's here at the estate, if that's easier. I'll check off any names I don't hear."

Inhaling deeply, Ghost shut his eyes and started reciting off the names of the Task Force 141 survivors.

"MacTavish, Price, Nikolai, and I… you, Chemo, Doc, Taco, Archer, Toad, Rocket, and Ozone."

"Wait… so Chemo, Doc, Taco and Rocket were waiting at the temporary camp for us… right?"

Ghost only nodded.

"Archer and Toad were still on the ledge, giving you covering sniper fire and using the Javelin to cover our escape."

Another nod.

"Ozone…" Her memory slowly came back to her. "I thought he was dead… he wasn't answering his radio."

"He was sure as hell close to it," Ghost remarked, slowly begin to rock her back and forth in his arms. "Archer and Toad found him when they were makin' their way to the estate. He wasn't movin' or anythin', but he had a pulse, so they brought him here and started doin' CPR until Doc and Chemo arrived. He's been hangin' by a string since we got him here… I'm not sure how long he'll make it without a hospital and some serious treatment…" Mckinley could hear his voice cracking with every word he spoke. "You already knew that we lost Scarecrow, Spider, Hannibal, Reaper and Boxer… we've been out searching for their bodies so we could bury them, and we've found everyone but Boxer. And we found Bishop's body in the basement yesterday."

Mckinley, still hearing that traumatized tone in his voice, put a hand on his chest. "Ghost, stop, you don't have to tell me this if you don't want to."

"You haven't heard the worst part, love," he murmured. "We lost all the men at Encounter."

She gasped. There had been at least twenty or so men who'd stayed back at Encounter Base… and they were dead? How? Wasn't Encounter Base's location kept a secret?

Then it hit her.

Shepherd.

Ghost answered her, even though she'd figured it out herself. "Apparently Shepherd sent some of his Shadow Company to eradicate any remaining members… and then they…" He paused, and she glanced up to see a slight rim of tears brimming in his eyes. "They burned everything to the ground…"

DUNN DUNN DUNN