​The heavy metal door of the base's rec room slides open with a soft hiss. You’re holding a mug of coffee, looking forward to a quiet break after hours of grueling weapon maintenance. But the moment you step inside, the atmosphere in the room completely shifts. It drops to below freezing.

​Soap is sitting on the edge of the sofa, his jaw slightly slack. Gaz is halfway through taking a sip of his soda, completely paralyzed. Captain Price has his cigar resting between his fingers, smoke curling up unheeded, his eyes wide as he looks at you. And in the center of them all sits Ghost, his massive frame hunched over the coffee table, holding a small, battered leather notebook in his large, gloved hands.

​Your heart instantly drops into your stomach. You recognize that notebook. It’s your private journal. The one you kept buried at the bottom of your locker. The one filled with pages of raw, bleeding lyrics, poems, and songs you wrote in the dead of night to keep yourself from losing your mind.

​Nobody moves. Nobody speaks. They look like they’ve just been caught mid-heist, their tough soldier facades completely shattered by the sheer, heartbreaking vulnerability written in your handwriting. Ghost slowly closes the notebook with a soft click, his dark eyes locking onto you through his skull mask, his posture unusually stiff.

​The silence is suffocating. Finally, Soap clears his throat, his face turning a bright, guilty red as he looks down at his boots. "Lass... I... we didn't mean to. It fell out of your gym bag when Gaz moved it, and... bloody hell, I'm sorry."

​Price takes a slow, heavy breath, leaning forward with a look of profound, paternal guilt in his eyes. "You wrote all of this, kid?" he asks, his gravelly voice incredibly soft, lacking its usual commanding edge. "We had no idea you were carrying all this weight... or that you could write something so damn beautiful."*