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Needful Things
Twenty feet.
Fifteen.
He’s coming.
Ten.
He pauses for a second, hanging, unsure, like a deer catching the hunter’s scent.
I stand, paralysed. Waiting.
He takes another, cautious step.
Nine.
Looks up.
Ah, he must have seen me now. His arms drop to his sides, leaving all pretence of preserving his modesty behind. It’s nearly dark in here. There’s a subterranean moistness to the air, a thickness. That must be why I’m finding it hard to breathe.
Six.
Stopping again for a moment, he hunches his shoulders, bending forward slightly, as if bracing himself; a brief build up of silence and then he sneezes, a wet, human sound. Clever touch, that. Clever, making me think he’s really—
Three.
One.
He stops, lifting his head, fixing his blue eyes on mine.
“Snake,” he says.
Nothing more. That one word is enough to undo me.
His tone is everything. In here, in the dark, he’s everything. I can feel my resolve unravelling, my joints unknitting; I’m coming apart, piece by piece, and I knew it would happen, of course I did, I just never thought it would happen so fucking quickly—
He reaches his hand out to me, reaching to his sinner. My stomach twists, a stab of pain. I put an arm across it, shielding myself. He pauses, then, slowly, he retracts his hand. I realise with a kind of sick exhilaration that I can barely restrain myself from seizing it, from lunging and grabbing for him, from crushing his slender wrist in my fingers. I imagine the crunch of bone between them, the tearing of sinew, his cries of pain.
He’s weak now. He’s vulnerable now, isn’t he? It would be so easy.
He frowns: it looks as though he’s frowning at me, as though somehow he’s been listening to that inner monologue of mine, but his eyes look through rather than at me, and I realise he’s not frowning but wincing with pain. My muscles tense in response to it, a weird kind of empathy. Face pale and unreadable, he takes a breath, holds it, and then exhales, shakily. For a second he looks exhausted; he looks drained. His optimism has been siphoned off; that aura of impatience has evaporated, leaving him somehow more restrained.
“Are you—“ My voice comes out a croak. I open my mouth again, but I can’t finish the sentence. Unspoken, the words hang between us like stars in the gloom. What did they do to you?
“I’m fine,” he says. His voice is oddly flat. Maybe it’s just the acoustics in this tunnel.
Reaching out again, more slowly, he lays a light hand on my shoulder. Though he gives me time to prepare myself for it, I still flinch. My dumb body has an agenda of its own; it has reverted to primitive responses, fight-or-flight behaviour. My conscious is a separate entity altogether. A shudder goes through me unbidden at his touch; I feel agonizingly histrionic.
Satisfied, he removes his hand, closing his eyes for a long blink and veiling that frightening hard gaze. Blanketed by shadow, his skin is dappled by the weak striplight attached to the wall. Patches of dark leave half his face obscured. He stands, legs close together: between them is a sliver of blackness, the corridor behind him.
The silence lengthens. I’ve got to say something.
“Are you all right?” Good. Natural. My voice is halfway back to normal.
“I’m just fine, Snake,” he repeats sardonically. “And you?”
“I’m— I’m—“ Suddenly I’m struggling for an answer, though I know he knows the answer anyway, and I know it’s pointless to lie. He could tell if I lied. Suddenly, I’m certain of that. Suddenly I can’t stop shivering, though he’s the one who should be cold. Why isn’t he cold? Why hasn’t he asked for his clothes, his weapons?
And— why hasn’t he— why hasn’t he mentioned—
“You’re cold, Snake,” he says, eyeing me coolly. “I suppose I’ll feel it when the numbness wears off. You know how it goes.”
There it is. The first pointed reference.
I flinch. Again.
He smiles.
~
You’re wondering how it ended up like this. Maybe you’re wondering what happens next— but I don’t want to know what happens next, so don’t make me find out for you. Though, on the other hand, that would be a good excuse to just do it and fuck the consequences, wouldn’t it? Just for curiosity’s sake. ‘Someone else told me to’. It’s always worked before, taking orders. I’ve always been great at transferring responsibility. By now, by this late stage, I should be fucking fantastic at it.
Strange, but it’s easier for me this way: it’s easier to lay this out for someone else, someone who can’t talk back. I made you up; it’s okay to tell you what I’m going to tell you, because I invented you. Bear with me. It gets easier after a while, so I’m told. Hal is a Codec call away, but I could never talk to him about this. Can you imagine? “Wait a minute, kid,” and then calling Hal’s frequency to ask him what I should do next. He’d probably listen to me, too. That’s the thing that makes me hate me the most. Of all the people to screw over, it had to be him. And talk about kicking a man while he’s down, with Emma and the rest of it. I can’t get the image of his face, grey and tight with grief, out of my head. Until then he hadn’t cried since Shadow Moses.
He gained a hardness after we escaped from that island, what someone with a bent for the figurative might call a steely thread through his inner core. It was, as with so many things, all in the eyes. I caught a glimpse of it sometimes, that unfamiliar flash of strength, often when he took his glasses off to rub the bridge of his nose when something bothered or irritated him. This habit surfaced usually in the evening, when Meryl would wrap her arms round me for no reason and whisper suggestions in my ear, so filthy that I’d laugh despite myself, then she’d kiss me and he had to just— sit there, obviously feeling the awkward third wheel. He would straighten his shoulders and stare into the hearth, watching the fire, his glasses catching the light and reflecting blank silvery discs, concealing whatever emotion may have been visible in his eyes.
After Shadow Moses he had nowhere to go and I was happy to have him stay, even though he and Meryl did not get on. They didn’t argue; they didn’t have enough in common for that. They just didn’t acknowledge each other’s existence.
He loved my dogs, though, obviously thinking about Wolf, and they liked him; that was part of the reason I was so quick to offer him my second room. They would whine and leap up to him like puppies, these so-called one-man huskies, their big paws knocking his glasses askew, slavering tongues washing his face raw, his cheeks flushing against the icy Alaskan wind. He would be the one that I’d see at the end of the course, waiting beyond the finish line, squinting against the glare— he didn’t wear his glasses then because they just got steamed up— and the sled would jerk forward as the dogs hurled themselves into the last furlong, desperate to get to him, to lick the hands of the man who never minded playing with them when I was busy.
That fateful time— I think it was in February, at the qualifying stages— out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of something yellow beyond the finish line. The dogs strained at the harnesses, running faster than I’d ever seen them, yelping with sheer exhilaration. The red flags at the end whipped past in a blur; I pulled up on the reins and the dogs slowed to a trot, bringing the sled round in a circle to a gradual halt. The official told me my time— better than I’d ever had before— as I got down, muscles stiff. I bent to let the huskies lick my hands, rubbing their sleek heads, unfastening them from the sled. The judge handed me my clear time written on a piece of thin paper.
“Good race,” he said in French. The drivers there were mostly European, a few Asian: the same went for the judges. “Excellent time. We’ll award you your money later, at the ceremony. Stay within shouting distance, won’t you?” He shook my hand and went to find the second place sled.
Then the dogs began to bark, joyfully, and I looked up to see Hal hurrying towards me, almost running. Grinning like an idiot he grabbed me round the waist, hugging me, ecstatic.
“You won!” he yelled as the remaining sleds came in, one by one, slewing to variously graceful stops. “Dave, it looked amazing! You won!”
“What the hell do you feed those dogs?” one of the other drivers asked belligerently as he dismounted, his accent something eastern European. “I swear, you son of a bitch, that wasn’t winning, that was divine intervention.” He busied himself unhooking his sled, speaking in what sounded like Romanian to his dogs, rubbing their shaggy coats as they stood panting, grinning, red tongues lolling.
“Divine intervention,” Hal repeated under his breath in a mock-dismissive tone. “You had something way better than divine intervention, Dave.” He beckoned me behind the sled. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a squeaky clown toy. A bright, luminous yellow, squeaky clown toy, furred all over with teeth marks. The dogs loved that clown toy. They went crazy every time Hal brought it out, climbing all over each other to get at it.
“I’m pretty certain that would be construed as cheating,” I said, trying not to laugh.
“Cheating?” He grinned again, squeezing the clown. It squeaked. One of the dogs yapped hopefully from around the front of the sled, setting off a chorus of yelping. “That wasn’t cheating. You would have won anyway. They’d do anything for you.”
“They’re an eager bunch anyway,” I said, dismissing the compliment. ”Highly strung. They were bred to love racing.”
“But they only run like that for you.”
His words hung with emphasis in the frozen air. My heart bumped against my ribs, suddenly loud as he leaned towards me. I can’t remember what I said, but he said: “It doesn’t matter,” in reply. The clown dangled from his fingers, forgotten. I felt the permafrost layer crunch beneath my boots as I shifted my weight, suddenly self-conscious. When he spoke again I almost caught myself blushing.
“Congratulations, Dave,” he said quietly. “You were great out there, honestly you were.”
“Wasn’t anything special,” I said, and then, seeing his face tighten almost imperceptibly, “sorry.” He’d taken me to task before for supposedly not being able to accept compliments. His ears were pink, as was his nose, with either cold or embarrassment, and he was wearing this thin-looking sweater with SISKO SYSTEMS on it.
What a nerd.
That was the last coherent thing I remember thinking, with this huge, uncomplicated surge of affection. What a card-carrying, dyed-in-the-wool nerd.
“Why are you smiling?” he asked, smiling himself.
“I’m not.” I knelt in the wet drifted snow beside the sled, beginning to unhitch the dogs, still grinning.
“See, when your mouth goes up at the corners like that, Dave, that’s what we mere mortals call a smile.”
“Sorry, was that sarcasm?” I pried open the catches, my fingers sticking to the freezing metal. “You know, it was so deftly subtle I think I missed it.”
“Don’t worry. I didn’t expect the likes of you to be able to comprehend my elevated yet razor-sharp wit…”
“Yes, what a pity…” I got up to deal with the ropes, brushing the snow off my knees. “Because your sarcasm is surely enough to make grown men cry, if only they could understand the delicate nuances masking its acerbic edge, the devastating—“
“David?” he interrupted suddenly.
I stopped at the use of my full name; turned to face him, giving him in turn my full attention. “Yeah?”
“C’mere,” he said softly. Just that.
Then— just like in any trite romance novel and yet not like that at all— then he kissed me.
When his lips touched mine I could barely feel it; we were both nearly frozen. His tongue slid against mine, clumsy and sudden; warmth spread through me from that contact, down to my chest, to each nerve and blood vessel. His arms went around my waist, my hands on his shoulders. I closed my eyes…
There was a loud, wheezing squeak.
We jerked apart. Faintly stunned, he looked down. We regarded the yellow clown together for a moment. It grinned stupidly up at me. Got you, it said, its blank plastic eyes staring vacantly, giving it a slightly sinister look. Got you. So what’re you going to do now, Dave?
Slowly he put the thing into his pocket. There was excruciating silence for a minute or so, during which I distinctly heard the English-speaking judge announce my sled number. At any other time Hal might have made a crack about parking violations and would the owner of sled number six please remove it from the disabled parking bay, but now he remained quiet. Now, I realised, it was different. A boundary had been overstepped and, irreversibly, the boundary line erased. The icy grey sky above began to shed feathery snow, the kind of thick, wet, soft flakes for which only the Inuit people have the proper name; behind me, our footprints were already filled in and rubbed out.
The dogs whined.
“Better go,” I muttered, avoiding his eyes. “Still have to get back and feed them before it gets dark—”
“Yeah,” he said, interrupting for a change, shoving his hands into his pockets. It was usually me who interrupted him. Neither of us failed to notice that subtle change, but neither of us mentioned it, either. Feeling like a coward— but what else was I supposed to do? — I sidestepped him and went up to collect my winnings. I wanted to know afterwards whether he’d joined in with the applause or not, but as well as everything else it seemed plain idiotic to ask, so I never found out.
So that was that, until much later. Until one day, about six months later, when Meryl decided the ice and the silence and my ‘preoccupation’ with keeping the dogs in good shape for racing had become too much, and she, legally dead, as the Colonel had said, left. And that, yet another chapter of my life, was that.
She said she was going to find him, the Colonel: he was her only family. I mean, fair play to her: she was too jumpy for a place like Alaska. Unlike me, she couldn’t make herself slew off her figurative soldier uniform. She wore the military way of life like a second skin: in the beginning she would often sit bolt upright in bed at five thirty on the dot, her body responding to an inbuilt clock that said it was time to do that morning’s press-ups. When I shook her she would turn her head and stare at me uncomprehendingly as I guided her gently to lie back down again. Sometimes she would then grip me tightly to her, pressing her face into my neck, as if afraid that I would disappear if she let go. She brought it all into that small cabin with her, whereas I left it out on the vast snowfields as bits of disconnected memory: beaten-in plans of action, weapon technology, even the vocabulary blowing about in the wind. All of that, lost to me all day, sometimes coming back to me with a vengeance without warning when I slept, in the form of fragmented, unpleasant dreams that I could never remember when I woke up. What a pair we made. Two soldiers, one unable to let go the past, the other unwilling to acknowledge it at all.
And then, after she had gone, there was only Hal and I and the silence outside. You can imagine. You can understand when it got too much and there he was, waiting patiently. You can imagine how easy it was. How right.
But I can’t start thinking about that now, or I’ll lose it completely. I’ve already said too much about him and me. That first moment we shared at the end of that race was private; I shouldn’t have told you. Even though you’re completely hypothetical and technically me to boot, I still shouldn’t have told you. I knew you wouldn’t understand, about the dogs, and the snow, and the race, and everything else. I know it doesn’t make sense, Hal and me. I could taste the metallic edge to the wind as I remembered it to you; I could taste him on my tongue. I didn’t want to recall it so vividly: it’s like itching a wound until it opens and bleeds. It’s too messy.
And telling you about him, about the way my dogs loved him, even about that stupid yellow clown: it makes me the bad guy, in your opinion. You conjure yourself a picture: you wonder how I could deviate from a life as idyllic as that, how I could walk away from someone so kind and so good for me. Twice, now, I’ve done that: from Meryl to Hal, and now from Hal to him, moving from person to person as if they were simply distractions, objects to be toyed with for a while and then put aside to make room for newer, better, more interesting. It makes my feelings, my— divided loyalties, seem even more appalling.
You see now, don’t you? You see who’s to blame.
Or you think you see.
~
It was her idea. Olga’s. I know that sounds as though I’m shrugging off responsibility for it in the old way, and sure, I’d like to, if didn’t feel this pressure now, talking to you, to be so fatally honest. Like I say, Olga’s a smart woman; she knows how the game is played. Okay, let me rephrase it: we decided, together, that we’d use him to get me inside Arsenal Gear. He couldn’t know, of course. We agreed on that. It had to be a convincing performance.
The boy will sweeten the deal more than you can imagine, she said. They will be so pleased to have their hands on him that you could walk straight in and no one would bat an eyelid. He has caused much disruption for them, that boy. He is a liability, a variable that they will be glad to have out of the way. It will be easy, I tell you. Easy.
Easy. What a word. How easy was it to look him flush in the face beforehand, how easy to open my eyes over Hal’s shoulder and see him standing there, awkward, hand on his hip, eyes darting quickly away from mine— I thought he was afraid to be caught staring— and how easy to lead him over to the cargo elevator, hearing the small squeak his boots made against the polished floor, ignoring his exclamation of annoyance as the lift refused his keycard. How easy to stand there and let him be confused, let his tone grow annoyed to cover his growing unease. Something was going to happen, he could sense it: he just didn’t know what. Easy for me to say that with such sangfroid, of course, me being in on the plan. Try to imagine it from his point of view. It must have been truly frightening. A soldier’s worst nightmare, to find your allies have turned on you in the thick of the battle.
And then, of course, it was his understood comrade, the Ninja, who was the root of what his soldier’s sixth sense told him was indefinably wrong: that itch on the far edge of his consciousness, that inexplicable wariness. The utter shock on his face might have been funny in any other circumstances. The blade reflected silver in his eyes as he glared at her, and then at me, not knowing by whom he had first been betrayed. A dextrous flick of her thumb and she electrified the blade. His head was flung back by the first jolt, blue eyes wide with shock and pain, his arms jerking wildly from his sides. I felt like I was watching it in slow motion; I predicted his body would react a certain way and then, what felt like an age later, it did, limbs jolting violently as he staggered, hanging on to his senses with what must have been sheer willpower. Olga shot me a glance, warning me not to intervene, and then switched the voltage up a level.
So it was that I stood there impassive, watching with all the compassion of an executioner as his body seized up, juddering, and then went limp. He fell to his knees, eyelids fluttering in the last involuntary throes of consciousness, and then collapsed on to his left side. His fingers tensed for a moment and then slowly relaxed around the butt of the SOCOM. A glimmer of dulled azure and he blinked, heavily, lifting his eyes with what must have been an excruciating effort to meet mine. His confusion, almost childlike, didn’t cut me as it should have. Hating my detachment more than what I was doing, I looked away. What would a normal person feel on sending someone— a supposed ally, no less— into Ocelot’s torture chamber? They’d probably be eaten up by guilt. They might even try to justify themselves.
I felt nothing.
Actually, that’s not true. I did say I was going to be honest, didn’t I? Well, here you are. I felt pleased. Pleased that we were finally getting somewhere; pleased that the plan had gone off without a hitch. Pleased that he hadn’t been able to put up much of a fight due to the sheer shock brought on by my sudden about-face; that he was lying there in that corridor, unconscious, our unwitting bait. I didn’t put a label on it before. I didn’t call it pleasure. That’s why it feels so much worse now.
Saying nothing, Olga pulled off her helmet. She was removing her gloves as she walked away from me, just around the corner. She reappeared a few moments later wearing her vest, combats and boots. Strangely, she looked more feminine in the loose-fitting pants and shapeless vest than she did in the skin-tight ninja’s suit.
“Stay alert,” she ordered brusquely. “I’ll tell them.” She used the radio strapped to her hip instead of her nanocommunications. She took it out of its holster, pressed the communication button, held it up and spoke into it. “Shalashaska,” she said, her tone gaining a certain veiled contempt. “I have the intruder.”
There was a pause, then that familiar voice, smooth as glass and twice as slippery: “You didn’t kill him, did you?”
“No, I did not. Unlike you, I can remember orders. He’s unconscious,” she knelt and tipped his head to the side, placing two fingers to the side of his neck, checking his pulse, “but alive.” She straightened, scratching her short hair. “How do you want him?”
The radio crackled. “Relieve him of his equipment.”
“Understood,” she said. Not bothering to enlist my help with what seemed so straightforward and menial a task, she knelt and pulled him on to his back. Always near to the surface though still unmistakeably out cold, he made a helpless, restive sound that was caught somewhere between a moan and coherent speech. She murmured something in Russian to him: it was comforting nonsense, like something you’d croon to a child. Something clenched in my chest; it was sudden, sharp, and it almost hurt. I hadn’t felt it in some time, you understand, so you’ll appreciate why it took me a moment to recognise it. Guilt. I felt guilty. For Christ’s sake, what was wrong with me?
It was stupid of me to feel like this; we needed him to be captured, needed the diversion. His sacrifice was necessary for his own eventual progress. Strange how logic works. I folded my arms across my chest, as if cold; I stared at the blank wall opposite, listening as Olga stripped him of his weapons, dropping each one with a muffled clatter at the edge of the metal pathway. Ruthlessly efficient. I should have been there on my knees too, helping her, but even the thought of moving was too much of an effort. For the first time in over twenty hours, I felt tired. Overwhelmingly, numbingly tired, the kind of tired that takes you beyond irritable, into a kind of stupor. I began a yawn, but then stopped; I was only yawning because I was thinking about being tired, and I hate convoluted gestures like that. It’s like those people who hack and cough just when they’re telling you what a bad cold they have, as if they have to prove it to you, as if you won’t believe them otherwise. I looked at my own blurry reflection in the polished metal. Were my own eyes making it blurry, or was the metal just cloudy? I blinked a couple of times. It didn’t change.
Get it together, I told myself, looking away, turning back to Olga at last, pull yourself together. I couldn’t afford to lose it, not now.
“Shalashaska, are you listening?” She had picked up the radio again and was now staring down at the skullsuit. “He seems to be wearing special clothing.”
“That too. Take everything. Lock it away somewhere secure, and—” he broke off. On the other end there seemed to be a hushed discussion. Olga waited, eyes turned heavenwards, obviously less than pleased at the deliberations.
“Hurry up,” she snapped after about thirty seconds. “I don’t have all day.”
“All right, Olga,” came the faintly patronizing reply. “Not long to wait now. I’m sending a patrol to bring him here. They’ll meet you halfway.”
“You think I can’t handle this on my own, comrade?” she said coolly. “Keep your patrol. They are needed elsewhere. I will be fifteen minutes at the most.”
“Independent as always, eh? Well, if you get tired dragging that boy all the way over here, milaya, just call.“ He barked with laughter.
With a terse, angry motion she switched the radio off.
“Bastard,” she muttered. She shoved the radio back into her belt and turned to me. “That is the first time he has spoken the mother tongue since we got here,” she said, with a grimace that spoke volumes. Every time she spoke about Ocelot her mouth twisted, her lip curling with an aloof sort of disdain that thinly masked the hot, dirty anger simmering just below the surface.
“And it was to call you ‘my dear’?” I responded dryly. “You must be honoured.”
“He is a treacherous dog,” she said flatly, as if she hadn’t heard. “He all but passes for American now.” Unconsciously her hand went to her left hip, resting on her USP. “I wish it could be my gun that ends him.”
“Olga, there’s not much time,” I reminded her awkwardly, cutting into her pensive silence. “We should get on.”
“Yes, of course,” she said, clearing her throat, taking her hand from the pistol. “Forgive my self-indulgence.”
As if turning a switch she seemed to shake off her melancholy, dropping to her knees beside the unconscious form of our quarry. I took a step forward, and then paused, that unfamiliar guilt rising again, unchecked. From the beginning he had trusted me, wide-open trust, from the moment he turned his back to me and felt secure doing it. Though he was reticent about it, I could see it in his eyes, that trust, and when he found out that Iroquois Pliskin was in fact the legendary Solid Snake, it was cemented for good. How could he be betrayed by Solid Snake, member of anti-terrorist group Philanthropy, partner of a genuinely nice guy like Otacon?
Noticing my absence at her side, Olga glanced up.
“Help me with this,” she commanded, not commenting on my initial hesitation. This wasn’t tact; it was a display of the cool focus of a true soldier.
You’re lucky, I wanted to tell her smooth fair head, bent diligently over its task. You’re a soldier, you command an army, and it doesn’t go any further than that. The military, in all its forms, is a simple thing at heart, whatever they tell you to the contrary. You kill the enemy, you win; you don’t, you die. Strange that politics aren’t important in wars, when that’s what often starts them; in war you don’t get activists, you don’t get idealists in among the blood and the mud and the deafening silences between the roar of anti-tank rounds. Christ, I almost sound wistful. It’s the simplicity that I miss, though. Not the killing itself. That’s what I tell myself. That’s what I want to believe.
I’ve been dreaming about it lately— I know, those stereotypical soldiers’ dreams about war, I’ve had my share of those, but these are different. In them the battle’s already lost, or won, I’m not sure which, and I’m covered in someone else’s blood; it drips into my eyes, it’s warm on my skin. It feels good; it feels natural, as though I’m wearing a protective coating of it. I stumble into that high-ceilinged room, dripping blood on the floor, and he’s there, right in front of me. He opens his arms for me. I never want to, but I always go to him, and he holds me tightly, sometimes sensually, like brother and lover combined. I remember him as inhumanly tall. He hugs me so hard that my ribs should ache, but I can’t feel a thing. The blood spattered over my skin cools off. Nothing else happens. Nothing else, that is, until he asks me, calling me by my real name, a name that he couldn’t possibly have known, why, before I killed him, I never once called him Father.
It’s then that I usually wake, sweating.
“Snake.” Olga frowned up at me, impatience radiating off her tensed muscles. “Are you going to help me with this, or have I to do it myself?”
She had propped him up into a half-sitting position, his head lolling back against her arm. So I knelt beside her and slid my hand under his prone form to run my fingers over his back, looking for the hidden fastenings. Finding them, a row running up his spine at intervals, I turned him halfway on to his stomach and began to undo them. Beginning at the small of his back, slowly I worked my way up to the back of his neck, revealing a steadily lengthening gap of bare, smooth skin. With the smell of industry and disinfectant hanging in the air and the hum of electricity from the computer terminals and Olga’s no-nonsense approach it was the strangest, most un-erotic scene, and yet I found my mouth dry, my pulse speeding up far quicker than anything my mind could have summoned to stimulate it. Silently Olga lifted his pale hair out of the way and I unsnapped the last tiny fastening. I tugged the suit off his arms, down to his hips; it opened like a fruit being peeled.
He had a beautiful back, hard and smooth as polished marble, with skin that seemed so delicate and ashen as to be almost translucent. Olga didn’t do anything as coy as turn aside when he was fully nude. She didn’t even bat an eyelid. I, on the other hand— I was trying not to stare. I let my hand linger a fraction of a second too long as I tugged the suit off and laid it aside. It lay there like a shed reptile skin. It probably smelled like him. The only way I could look at him without my brain fusing, I thought, was to take a small section of him at a time. Slowly I looked him over, wanting to shield my eyes, as if looking at the sun. He had a barcode tattoo on his thigh, another one on his chest, on his left arm. I wondered where he had got them from, if they were an army thing. He lay on his back, half across my lap, breathing deeply, evenly. I held his head back to check he wasn’t bleeding from the nose or ears. His skin was cold. I checked his pulse: it fluttered, weakly.
“You worry without reason,” Olga said, hard eyes looking straight into me. “He is as stubborn as you are. And Ocelot, he is preoccupied at the moment, too preoccupied to think of anything inventive to do to him. The boy will be all right.”
“He’s just a kid,” I said without thinking. “He’s what, nineteen? A kid. Don’t you think that’s off?” I appealed to her military reasoning. “Come on, for something this big? This important?”
She opened her mouth to reply, but her radio crackled. Face blank again, she took it out of her belt.
“Are you coming or not?” Ocelot’s voice was edging on petulance. “We’re impatient to begin.”
“Calm yourself, old man,” she said evenly, her voice dripping with an icy contempt. “You will have your interrogation soon enough.” She was about to end the transmission, but checked herself, adding, “I think you will specially enjoy this one, though. The boy is very pretty, is he not?” She waited a perfect beat. “Though I’m sure you have noticed that for yourself already.”
“Bitch,“ he spat, reacting on cue. “Little bitch! What gives you—"
She cut him off, replacing her radio. There was a hint of a satisfied smile on her lips as she looked at me. Her pale cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. Getting a rise out of Ocelot, while obviously not as good as killing him, brought her closer to happiness than I ever saw her.
“Come,” she said. “You need to get inside Arsenal Gear, do you not? There is a ventilation system from what they call the stomach into the ascending colon. The security systems will have been disabled to allow me through with the boy. You will be able to come with me almost the whole way.”
She moved forward, bent over, about to pick him up, but something made me put my hand out to stop her. “I’ll do it,” I said.
She narrowed her eyes, probably thinking that I thought she wasn’t strong enough to carry him. I had noticed that only speaking to Ocelot could make her touchy about her femaleness. I didn’t bother to explain; I couldn’t explain. How could I reason away my incessant urge to make sure he was breathing? How could I tell her that I wanted to touch him, that my fingers flexed with the urge to run over his body, to touch his skin, to see whether his strange barcode tattoos felt different from the rest of it?
I slid an arm under his legs, the other across his shoulders, and lifted him into my arms. His head fell back, exposing his graceful throat, its vital, slender blue vein. I shifted his weight, moving my shoulder so that I was supporting his head. His bare feet dangled, somehow childlike. He frowned in his deep sleep, turning his face involuntarily towards the warmth of my chest. I thought about what it would be like to kiss his cold mouth.
Olga straightened, like a fox getting the scent, and glanced around, a fitful tenseness in her movements. She had his weapons and skullsuit in her arms. “Shall we go?” she asked, shifting her weight from foot to foot. I nodded.
We made our way deep into Shell 2’s core. The place was deserted; the security cameras hung limply, lights switched off, eyes blinded. We walked in silence, Olga and I. Neither of us was much for talking, as it turned out, so it suited us both fine. Olga glanced down at the boy in my arms.
“He is not as intelligent as you, I think,” she said, “but he is very beautiful, so I don’t suppose it matters.“
“That’s your opinion,” I said shortly.
There was silence for a few moments. I felt her looking at me, sensed that she was about to speak. She walked lightly, despite her heavy Russian army boots. I made more noise in my SEAL gear. Those damn headphones weighed a ton.
“Ocelot likes him, you know,” she said conversationally, indicating Raiden. That was such a weird codename; I wondered fleetingly for the second time what the story behind it was.
“Likes him?” I asked, responding to the bait despite myself.
“Like he likes you. He has nothing but… respect for you, you know.”
“Respect. Right. I really felt the respect when he was torturing me.”
“Interrogating, Snake, please.” She shot me a sideways glance, a sly smile. “We like our euphemisms too. And perhaps respect is the wrong word. He said he liked the way you move. The way you kill. The way you— ah— were. On Shadow Moses. You know.”
I opened my mouth and then closed it again. The thought gave me chills. I remembered telling myself that however bad it got I would not make a sound, but I was unprepared for just how bad it would be. Such pain, such unrelenting, burning pain in every nerve, every muscle, every inch of skin. My heart was pounding, the blood roaring in my head; my chest ached so sharply that I could barely breathe. I didn’t realise until afterward, when the restraints snapped open and I found myself staring into that circle of bright white light, trembling with the dizzy high brought on by sheer, shameful relief, that the scream that rang in my ears still had been mine. Unable to focus properly, I shied away from his blurry face, the animal tang of fear sharp in my nostrils. Those interminable lights above began to spin, slowly at first, and then faster and faster until they spun into an explosion of dazzling white and then extinguished themselves almost as quickly, leaving me alone in the darkness.
I woke up lying on my side on that hard cot in the tiny cell, the stench of unfresh death ripe and apparent as soon as I reconnected with my senses. I was sore all over; Wolf’s scratches on my cheek stung, contrasting with the dull, nauseating ache left over from the electric current. The bright, alive feeling of a fresh wound: It was almost a welcome sensation, almost invigorating. It cleared my head. My mouth was dry, and tasted strange. I felt cold, strangely humiliated. My head ached. I sat up and met the eyes of the guard through the bars of the cell. He smirked; I remember he did that, because it pissed me off.
But how would the kid cope? Would he cope at all…? How was he supposed to know what to expect, when no one seemed to tell him anything?
Olga had stopped at the end of a corridor at a security door marked 8. She put down the box containing his weapons and suit and held out her arms.
“You must give the boy to me now.” She looked at my face; she must have seen something in my expression because she added sagely: “I should not have told you what Ocelot said about Shadow Moses, perhaps. It is that which is making you anxious.”
“I’m not anxious.” Feeling the blood rise to my face, I shoved him unceremoniously into her arms. She hoisted him up, unfazed.
“You will see him soon,” she said. “I will release him once they are done in there.”
Arms occupied, she indicated a small air vent with her chin, one that I hadn’t noticed.
“That’s it?” I said in disbelief. “That’s all I have to do?”
“Well, there will be guards, obviously,” she began, but then she stopped and shook her head, face cracking into a grin. “They make it too easy for a man like you, Snake.” She grinned again, and I could have sworn she winked. Then the door swished shut behind her and she was gone, leaving me alone with the flat metal box containing his belongings: the suit that held his scent close in every elastic fibre, the weapons, still loaded, that wouldn’t do him any good where he was now.
~
“Aren’t you going to ask me what happened? Don’t you want to know?”
He sounds only mildly curious. I can’t stop comparing how he is now to how he was before; it’s as though all of his emotions have been pared down, siphoned off to their most basic, austere forms, too washed-out to tell apart as they flicker across his hitherto expressionless face.
“I can guess.”
“But Snake…” And he steps forward now, closing the last fateful gap between us. His face is lit with a cool smile that sends a jolt of ice into the pit of my stomach. Slowly, deliberately, he nudges my legs apart. “But Snake,” he says again, softly. “I want you to know.”
Without preamble he presses his thigh to my crotch. My breath escapes me in a kind of soft grunt, which, as he lifts his hard blue eyes to mine, turns into a half-groan. He’s as tall as I am, a strange experience, to look him directly in the eye at such close proximity. He’s naked, ostensibly vulnerable, and yet somehow he’s turned it to his own advantage. Though I knew he would do something in revenge, I never thought it would be this. I can’t handle this.
I’ve got to say something.
“Your— your suit— it’s—“ Christ, I’m trembling. I take a deep breath and try again, trying not to let my breath hitch as slowly he shifts his weight, pressing deliberately up. “Listen, you must be cold—”
“No,” he says, cutting me off. He smirks.
I flush. This is like being in emotional freefall; I’m scrabbling, flailing, but I can’t find a handhold. Any word, any innocuous phrase from him sends me lurching off course all over again.
How to describe what happens next? I’m not even sure myself what’s happening; there’s a strange buzzing in my ears that could be blood, or shame, manifesting itself to me like a swarm of insects. There’s the cold, dispassionate as ever. There’s his eyes, the same. There’s my dumb body, willing to the last. It makes me wonder: who are we kidding? When it comes to this, human beings are no more complex than the next mammals in heat…
Enough talking in circles. Here’s the truth. Here, god help me, is the motherfucking truth.
I’m afraid.
And I’ve never been more afraid, ever, of anything, than I am at this moment. It’s easy to say an absolute like that and not mean it, of course, but trust me. I mean it. The thing that I couldn’t pin down when he was walking down that corridor towards me is suddenly creepingly obvious, and it’s nothing more complicated than this. He scares the shit out of me.
He’s pressing down on my shoulders, gentle but insistent. My legs fold like a puppet’s.
He undresses me and I’m shivering, convulsively, my teeth clattering together, my breath visible, white steam, in the air. His hands are everywhere, rubbing heat into my body, his breath warm on my neck. He kneels between my thighs as I draw my legs up; I turn my head aside and he kisses that place below my ear, sending a flood of sudden heat through me. He can obviously sense it, somehow he can tell; he kisses me there again, prolonging it this time, nipping my neck with his teeth, and my stomach tenses and relaxes in a brutal spasm of pleasure. I bite my tongue, swallowing a groan. This is lunacy; this is bizarre. It is, it is. Why isn’t anyone listening?
“You’re a legend,” he says only half-mockingly, looking into me with those luminous blue eyes. “I’ve done all your missions. I’ve killed all your enemies hundreds of times. Each time I do it I know a little more, get a bit further into your head. Every time I get inside your skin it fits a little bit better. Don’t kid yourself. I already know you in all the ways that count.”
Somehow we’re standing again, raised by an unspoken command. His body is inhumanly perfect, its temperature inhumanly cool compared to my own. In this freezing corridor, stripped completely bare by his skilful hands, I feel feverish with my own body’s heat; I’m sweating, perspiration prickling down my neck and back, between my thighs. He slips his hands behind my head, drawing me toward him. His eyes are alight with curiosity and desire. I stare at him, his eyes on a perfect level with mine. We must be almost exactly the same height. He smiles, a small smile. His blue eyes catch the dim light; glinting, knowing.
“All the ways except one,” he says, softly, and as he leans in to kiss me, he slides his hand smoothly between my thighs.
Christ help me.
I’m frozen. I can’t move. My blood has stopped in my veins; my eyes see, but do not believe what they see. Sound fades in and out like a badly tuned radio: the only constant is my own breath, loud in my ears, and the incessant red rhythm of my heartbeat resounding, echoing in the cave of my chest. It’s like being a fucking virgin all over again; it’s like a black awakening. Like a kind of painful relief, as if subconsciously I’ve been waiting for it the whole time; waiting for and dreading it.
It’s I with his hands in pale, soft hair this time; I who grits his teeth and shudders with the jolting, erratic pleasure as the smooth motion escalates, I who thanks a god he doesn’t believe in for this smallest, rawest of mercies. I grasp his shoulders, feeling my nails digging into his flesh. I don’t make a sound.
And when it comes, when I come, when it comes it washes through me, a tide of heat and guilt and bliss heightened impossibly further by the iciness of the metal pressed against my back. Shuddering, I clench a fistful of his soft hair; he holds my other wrist up against the wall, pinning me in place. My body tenses of its own accord, muscles pulling tight, like a zip being done up. Images, images, it always happens like this: blossoms scattered like litter across a sunny stretch of pavement; blood seeping through crystals of hard, icy snow, and a dog licking up the frozen blood; faces of people I’ve known, people I’ve killed— who can tell the difference now, anyway? — and through it all there’s Meryl, there’s Hal, there’s him, watching with almost clinical interest, his glimmering eyes made flat and catlike with it. He moves his hand from its place between my legs— damp, now, warm and damp as moulded clay— and presses it against my cheek, a strangely paternal gesture. If I were to speak I know my voice wouldn’t sound like my own. Besides, I can think of nothing to say. A pulse ticks inside me, a residual thing, a reminder. Blood, thou art blood. Where have I heard that before?
“Mm,” he says, a noncommittal sound, eyeing me. He closes his eyes for a second and then opens them, wide, as if stretching them, pinning me with their electricity. “What are you thinking?” he asks, sounding genuinely interested this time. Clinical. Intrigued. Detached. All of these. It’s frightening.
With an effort I shove myself away from the wall, forcing my legs to work, pushing him aside. My head feels oddly light, as if I’ve just woken up. I feel slightly sick. I take a step towards my clothes and almost stumble over thin air. I can feel his eyes on me; can feel his amused little smirk. And why shouldn’t he smirk? He’s managed to throw me, the goddamned Legend, for a loop, after all. This is insane. I keep thinking I’ll wake up in bed, the sound of traffic buzzing through the open window from fifteen stories down, the sunlight filtering in through the wooden blind, illuminating that stupid anime poster I’ve surreptitiously been trying to get rid of for the last six months. I wake up to the damn thing every morning, so no wonder I can picture it now: Heavy Metal Princess goes up the side in kanji; it’s got a mecha on it (I can’t believe I know what it’s called) piloted by a girl in a sailor fuku who looks about fourteen. Twisted? I think so, but Hal doesn’t. Didn’t. Which? This is so fucked up.
Suddenly I want him here so badly that it’s like a sharp ache in my chest. His grey eyes will look at me with the kind of deep understanding that makes words irrelevant and he’ll tell me, without a sound, that I’m all right, that we’re OK. And then he’ll say something completely unrelated, something so odd and disconnected and absolutely typical that I’ll be startled into amusement. His eyes, those grey, clear eyes behind their wire-rimmed glasses, lit with a beguiling inner brightness…
His arms go around my waist. Not Hal’s, but this strange boy’s, this Raiden, with his startlingly beautiful features imbued with the kind of drama— that breathtaking contrast between almost-white hair and ice-blue eyes— which totally eclipses Hal’s gentle good looks. These unfamiliar hands, their long, slender fingers, they touch my stomach, my navel, my chest, like a blind man memorising the topography of a favourite area. I could easily resist, could tell him to get the fuck away from me, but instead I stand still and watch, arrested by the striking contrast of his skin (pale, no scars) against mine (tanned, coarse-looking).
”You have a girlfriend,” I point out lamely, speaking to the empty corridor ahead. Your girlfriend is called Rose, and she calls you Jack. “Don’t you?”
“Not in any of the ways that count.” The ways that count. He seems fond of that phrase— or maybe he just doesn’t realise he’s used it once already. “Don’t misunderstand me,” he goes on, his voice warm on my ear. “I want who I want, regardless.”
Regardless. What does he mean, when he talks like this? Regardless of others’ feelings? Regardless of gender? The ambiguity of that one word is enough to set me off, panicking. I can’t understand him. It’s a different type of not-understanding than when Hal talks about anime or hacking or both— then nothing happens in response to my bewilderment apart from him laughing and trying in vain to explain whatever it is, trying to appeal to my vanity by saying things like, “With your IQ you shouldn’t even have to ask”. God knows how he knows my IQ. I’m supposed to be an intelligent man— but then, what are the claims of a little piece of paper in Real Life’s bleak and untidy terms? 180 points, the sum of my intellect, scored via some stupid little tests. What the hell is that supposed to prove? And they took that test after all my drinking. Doesn’t alcohol kill brain cells? Maybe I would have scored 190, even 200 if I hadn’t indulged that habit. God, who gives a damn, anyway?
“You’re thinking about something else.” His body is warmer than before, pressed against my back, as though it has absorbed some of my excess heat. He’s gaining emotion now; his voice is losing some of that metallic coolness, gaining shades of feeling. He touches my collarbone with the interest of a scientist, running his finger along it, into the hollow of my throat. “Tell me.”
“Fuck off.” I can’t quite bring myself to call him ‘kid’; the word sticks in my throat. I manage to shrug him off, reaching down for my suit. He grins. I can’t see it, but I can feel it, boring into the back of my skull. He runs his finger down my spine, pressing hard into the nerve core, the awkward sensation drawing me upright, making me squirm.
“I don’t have time for fucking games,” I snap suddenly, turning on him.
He looks down. I follow his gaze. I’m clutching my suit in front of me, holding it up like a shield. My fingers dig into the tough fabric, stretching it. Stupidly, now that I’m staring at my hands, I don’t want to meet his eyes. Scowling with apprehension, I watch as his bare feet come soundlessly closer. He stops, waiting. Overcome for a profound instant with the senselessness of it all, I lift my head; bracing myself against something I can’t even put a name to.
He kisses me on the mouth. He does it gently— damn him, if he had forced I would have responded to the aggression and broken away— knowing exactly how to slide beneath my defences, how to avoid the backlash. I think I make some sound, some protest, but he catches my wrist, tightening his grip, immobilising me. His other arm goes around my neck, deepening the embrace for a brief moment, before it relaxes and slides away.
He moves back, just a couple of inches, stands before me, arms at his sides. I can see the finger marks, red indentations on his shoulders. His skin is so pale— everything you do to him probably shows up like ink on white paper— it makes me angry for some reason. I want to hurt him, to make him bleed redly all over the floor, for doing this to me, for leading me to this. I can’t make my hands stop shaking. I cup his face in my hands and pull him roughly towards me; I kiss him, blindly, tremblingly. Eyes closed, his fingers touch my face, glide over my cheekbones, slide back into my hair. The kiss deepens; my tongue touches his. He tastes sweet, with a sharp edge; like honey dripped on metal, like a dusting of sugar on a blade. He draws back. The air between us churns with the white steam of our shared condensing breath.
“What’s your name?” he asks, kissing my ear. My legs feel weak. “Your real name.”
“I don’t have one.” I don’t want to tell him. I don’t want him to know.
“Oh, come on.” I swallow hard as he puts his hands on either side of my face, forcing me to look at him. His mouth twists into that impossibly knowing smile. “Come on, Pliskin… out with it. I bet Hal knows.” I feel my eyes narrow at the mention of that name and his expression grows pleased. He moves one hand down to my hip, sliding the other into my hair. His fingers feel as though they’re gripping my skull. My head begins to ache. Without thinking I put my hand to my temple, as if I could physically press down the pain. God, it hurts. God help me, it fucking hurts. All of it.
“What’s the matter?” he asks, his tone arch, his grin tilted and knowing and— sexy; my brain won’t think of a less damning synonym. “Am I not doing this right? I haven’t had that much experience, you know.” He lets that sink in for a minute before lowering his voice to a suggestive murmur as he leans in to kiss my cheek, a quite spectacular marriage of innocent and slut: “What do you want me to do?”
“Didn’t you learn this in VR too?” The minute it’s out of my mouth I wish I could recall it, stuff it back in. The sheer crudeness of it makes me want to cringe. He recoils as if struck and fixes me instantly with a hard blue stare, all remnants of playfulness gone.
There’s a pause that seems to last for years.
“You do want me,” he says at last, coldly, his eyes never leaving mine, daring me to deny him. ”I don’t care what you say; I can tell. You want me so badly you can almost taste it.”
Skilfully he manoeuvres us around so that he has his back to the wall. He shifts slightly, parting his thighs. Despite myself I’m more than ready: the subtly erotic gesture, combined with the surprisingly ardent heat between his smooth thighs, has ensured that. Slowly he slides against me, deliberate, sinuous and supple, a transparent promise of what I could have if I just— gave in… I clench my teeth and fight not to groan aloud, but it doesn’t make any difference; his eyes are on mine again as he stands straight, leaning forward to speak directly into my ear.
“You’re pathetic,” he says, almost affectionately. “But you know that, don’t you?”
Then he lays his hands on the small of my back and, without the slightest hesitation, he presses me inside.
Heat. Bliss. I can’t describe it more lyrically; it pares down to just these. For what must be at least a full minute I can acknowledge nothing but the relentless pounding of the blood at my temples. For that single awful, wonderful frozen moment he’s still too, as if awed at his own nerve.
And now the world begins to crunch into rotation again and his eyes are open wide, bright with some indefinable emotion, glittering with the barest fragments of desire and pain and something that looks like triumph before he leans his forehead against my shoulder and spreads his legs wider around me, making a small sound as I shift my position. I freeze, caught motionless, not knowing what to do. My anger dissipates, his previous taunt forgotten, and suddenly it’s imperative that I don’t hurt him— god knows I don’t want to hurt him. Not like this. He’s unbelievably tight around me; his muscles are taut, tensed to breaking point. He wanted this; he started it. He started it. The childish refrain seems inexorably twisted.
“You stupid kid,” I manage to half-gasp. “You stupid, stupid damn kid—”
He lifts his head. A light flush stains his cheeks a dusky pink; his eyes crackle with electricity, they snap with life. He looks invigorated, as though I’ve somehow sent a jolt of electricity to his very core. Deliberately he curves one leg around mine, opening his eyes wide at the flood of sensation such a simple action brings.
“I’m not— a kid,” he says deliberately after a second, as if this is the absolute qualifier. “I’m not stupid. I know what I’m— nh—”
Suddenly, convulsively, he bites his lip, hard enough to draw blood. I didn’t move, I swear I— but even now that pain is evidently forgotten; his fingers dig into my hips, already urging me deeper, and his cool mouth finds mine, keen to explore in his heedless arousal. Being kissed by him is a strange experience on many levels, but mostly because he does it so chastely, not even using his tongue. He’s kissing me now as if it were a first-date kind of kiss, as if the rest of his body, moving against mine in a rhythm that’s becoming increasingly frantic, his legs shuddering sometimes at pleasurable friction, is acting independently; it’s as if only the purely physical part of him has thawed, as if in some part of his mind he’s still nervous— kisses shyly— but something else tells him to keep going, to push it as far as he can, to establish the boundaries.
“Why have you—“ he begins, breathing hard, eyes half-closed like a cat’s, “why’ve you stopped? Don’t—“
We don’t have to. The words are clear only in my own head as he shifts his weight on to his toes, arching his back like that cat again. You don’t need to do this. His internal muscles clench and I can barely see; a blinding wave of pleasure flashes through me, leaving me trembling and sickening by the second for more. I can’t think of any more platitudes to placate my quailing conscience. All I’m aware of now is how he’s heated up unbelievably since he walked towards me first; the blood burns beneath his pale skin and his hair sticks to the back of his neck; and oh, god, his mouth, his hands, the sheen of sweat in the hollow of his throat…
“Snake…” he groans as I lick him there. His thighs tense around me again and he searches for my mouth, missing a couple of times before he finds it. A convulsion seizes him; he bites my lip in the midst of another naive kiss, his arms tight around my neck, skin flushed all over with pleasure. He presses his forehead to my shoulder again and twines his legs around me, making a small, keening sound of encouragement.
I don’t think he expected anything from me outwith the basics.
Stupid kid.
For some reason that makes me want to laugh— no, to clench my fists and howl with rage. I don’t know why, but all of a sudden a muscle in my brain seems to lock and there’s this surge of anger like a tide of black blood that’s so blisteringly hot and senseless that I want nothing more than to hurt him all over again, to tear and scratch and make him damn well bleed…
You want attention? I ask him silently, his hair brushing softly against my cheek as I rock forward, beginning to double the pace. He draws a sharp breath, obviously pained, and I feel my lips draw back from my teeth in something resembling a smile. Sure, I’ll give you attention. TLC? Not used to it, but allow me. Want me to look at you in that special way while I screw you? Anything, kid. Anything.
“What’s— your— name?”
Except that.
He says it between short, sharp breaths, tensing around me with each word, every muscle supremely taut, body wonderfully tight with anticipation. I can taste blood; there’s blood in my mouth. I must have bitten my tongue. It’s impossible to think straight now; even if I wanted to answer him I couldn’t. That tight liquid feeling, the almost unbearable itch of pleasure… I hate the loss of control; the crazed few seconds in which I feel as though I’m melting from the inside out, in which nothing matters and yet I know everything will come crashing back the second it’s over…
And as is often the way with me, I finish silently— nothing as simple as letting it all go in a cry of release, or even calling his name: no, it’s me, so I press it down inside myself, relishing the shock with which he stares into my eyes, his body shuddering with my climax even though he hears nothing— not even the smallest squeak— to mark it. Silence. McDonnell Miller once slapped me hard across the face, like he probably would a woman, for cursing when I got caught by one of his nastier traps. I had forgotten all about my slip by the time I finished the assault course; I stood before him, waiting for praise or dismissal or you should have been faster, and got slapped down instead. Literally. That was when I was eighteen and he, leaning down from the dizzy heights of experience, was twenty-four; when I was as green and raw as they come, when I didn’t yet know the virtue of unconditional silence.
He comes a moment after, tagging on the end of my lead, biting my shoulder, trying as ever to follow my example and not make a sound but not quite succeeding; it’s a half-muffled yelp that he gives, sounding almost surprised, and I would smile in any other circumstances. With anyone else, I would smile. As he rests against me, heartbeat hammering against my chest— he must be about to faint, considering the speed and irregularity of it— I yank his head up by the hair and kiss him, hard, bruising his soft mouth. He’s too pliable, far from alert, a blissed-out look on his face. I wonder if he even notices. I shove him aside. He stumbles to one knee, off-balance, then sits down abruptly against the wall. Still spaced, eyes wide, slowly he begins to get his breath back.
I rest my forehead against the wall above him and feel nothing. A minute ago I wanted to kill him, to cry, to beg forgiveness from the part of my conscience substituting for Hal— but now it’s as though I’ve been drained and filled up to the brim with ennui; indifference has been stitched into my soul. Fill in your own cliché. It’s vaguely disturbing, this empty feeling, but nothing like that surge of anger— anyway, it’s not his fault. How could it be? I may have resisted to begin with, but it’s really not as if he had to persuade me. Not as if I pushed him away.
Minutes pass, and we’re both still in the same positions: him on the floor, me upright but hot and sick with self-loathing. After another minute or so his voice breaks the silence, his breathing almost back to normal.
“Wild,” he says, adolescent-like. “I don’t know if my legs are working…”
Mechanically I offer him a hand. He takes it, getting to his feet.
“You OK?” I ask him gruffly, trying not to think about how lame that actually sounds. But if he’s hurt, how am I going to explain when his girl or Hal asks why the hell we’ve been in this tunnel for the best part of half an hour?
“What? Oh, yeah. Sure. I’m fine,” he says, flicking his damp hair out of his eyes, already almost recovered. “I was only kidding.” He looks perfectly calm; as though, to use another apt cliché, butter wouldn’t melt. He glances around quickly over my shoulder, looking for his gear, and then makes to slide out from between the wall and me. He begins to tug his suit on at speed, not bothering to check and see whether I’m following his lead. After a moment’s stunned indecision I do.
“We should go,” he says, looking me unblushingly straight in the eye. ”Rose didn’t sound right the last time I talked to her, did I tell you? And the Colonel, he was weird too. I have to find out what’s going on. If she’s hurt I’ll never forgive myself, I swear I—”
He breaks off and looks at me in confusion, not knowing why my fingers are there, tight around his wrist. His confusion melds into apprehension as, slowly, I begin to twist. He’s staring at me, frantically trying to work out why as the pain steadily heightens, his skin to begin to burn, but I’m giving no clues.
Slut. Tease. Liar. Fucking use me, would you?
And yet I’ve got enough self-awareness left to realise it’s my stupid pride that’s hissing like a wounded animal; I know I’m too used to being the one who behaves exactly as he is now: casual, careless, offhand, and it’s killing me that I’m the ‘weak’ one. A flash of clarity and suddenly I have the weirdest feeling that I’m Hal, and I’m looking at me. Infuriatingly blasé David seems to care so little sometimes when I as Hal care so deeply, so much, that I have to ask myself what the point of it all is…
“Snake, you’re— you’re kind of—“ Raiden says awkwardly, his clear azure eyes uneasy, his voice too loud in the silence. You’re hurting me. He doesn’t want to say it, maybe sensing that I know exactly what I’m doing and putting it into words wouldn’t change a damn thing. He’s scared: he can sense my anger, perhaps realises he shouldn’t have made it so blatantly obvious that… what? I still can’t decipher his logic. Time to find out the why, then.
Spinning him round, I wrench his arm up behind his back, wringing a sharp, shocked cry from him, like a twig snapping. He fights to get away for a moment before he evidently realises that struggling too hard could get his arm broken.
“I’m sorry,” he says after a moment between gritted teeth, though it’s obvious he doesn’t know why he’s apologising. Studying his shoulder blades, I can picture his chest moving in and out; quick, shallow breaths. “I’m sorry, whatever I—”
“Why?” It sounds almost conversational, not melodramatic at all. And ambiguous. I’m pleased about that. “Just wanted to see if you could? Is that it?”
He doesn’t answer. A swell of power rises in my chest, that awful, uncomplicated feeling of control, and then he tries suddenly to twist away.
Bad move, kid.
Really bad move.
Disconnected, I watch myself drag him round, slam my fist fluidly into his stomach. His choked yell of pain bounces off the metal walls and echoes in my brain, and I punch him in the jaw. He stumbles to his knees, arms across his stomach, groaning. I bring the heel of my boot down on the back of his neck; he cries out— he’s remarkably resilient— and then yes, finally he flops forward, like a puppet with its strings cut. He doesn’t put his hands out to break his fall, and his head strikes the floor with an appalling crack.
Two thoughts. God, that was easy tussles with I wonder if he ever got any of that in VR training?
I am snapped from my reverie what must be about ten minutes later when my Codec erupts with a burst of static. I put a hand to my ear, activating the relevant channel.
“Snake?” Hal’s voice. Like the first cigarette of the day or the drug addict’s first hit, it triggers a strange, queasy delight. “Is everything okay?” he asks. “Did you find Raiden?”
“Hey, Otacon…” I sound warm, confident, rock-steady. “Yeah… I found him… and yeah, everything’s fine.” I nudge the kid’s prone form with the toe of my boot. He doesn’t move. “We’re both just fine.”
“Great… I thought you’d—“ static, “—each other quicker than you did, though.”
“What?” Too jumpy! Calm down, idiot! I force my voice back down into its natural range and say more calmly, “I didn’t catch that last bit.”
“I said I thought you’d find each other quicker,” he repeats, raising his voice. “I mean, he didn’t have that far to go until he should have bumped into you, did he? And yet since you spoke to me last it’s taken about half an hour.”
“Yeah… well… the kid’s a pain in the ass. Green as they come. Trust me, if I could have hurried him along I would have.”
“Don’t be so tetchy with him. He may be green, but he’s doing his best.”
I fight the bizarre urge to laugh. Persuading me to be nicer to the kid… Now that, my friend, is irony. I turn my back on the boy in an attempt to quell the sudden pricklings of mirth.
“You’d better get going, Snake,” Hal says. “Tell Raiden good luck for me, would you? I can’t be bothered patching into his Codec just for that.”
“What about me?” I ask, skirting his request. “Going to wish me luck?”
“According to you, you don’t need it,” he says, laughing. “Okay… Call me if you need to...”
“I will. Thanks. Later, Otacon.”
“Take care,” he says warmly, then: “Oh, wait a second, Snake, I just remembered someth—”
And then a sharp, quick pain at the back of my thigh. My head jerks forward with surprise and the delicate connection is broken. Hal is replaced with static, and the static with a continuous dull whine. I can’t seem to feel the wound. My left leg is quickly going numb, though time seems to be slowed, dripping in trickles instead of flowing smoothly. To my eyes everything takes on the blocky appearance of VR. There’s pain sensation, even a sense of urgency… Oh, God, what’s happening to me? Maybe I went crazy years ago, and I’m only now recognising the symptoms…
There’s at least a ten second gap in my inner monologue in which I have to use all my energy to force my body— this cold, unresponsive, disjointed bundle of limbs— to turn itself round. My jaw aches with the desire to yawn, though my head tells me I’m not tired. I shouldn’t be tired. My legs feel kind of funny now, sort of rubbery and rigid at the same time.
“What are you doing?” I hear myself ask him with crystal clarity, though my voice seems to be coming from a long way away. “What did you do?”
Calmly, taking his time, he reloads the M9 pistol with another dart. There’s a thin trickle of blood running down from his temple. His mouth is ruby red in the gloom and I realise he’s bleeding there, too. He cocks the hammer and the weapon ratchets the dart into position with a familiar arthritic click-click-whirr that’s usually comforting. He’s gripping it with both hands as he aims it up into my face from his kneeling position on the floor, as though he’s afraid he might miss. At point-blank range. I’m numb to the waist now and I don’t know how I’m still standing but my face is still working: I feel my lips twitch, the birth of a smile.
His beautiful pale hair glimmers in the half-light. His eyes narrow; his mouth twists itself into a victorious smirk— and suddenly I know he’s been waiting to say this for hours, planned it and rehearsed it in his head. And I know exactly what he’s going to say, because it’s completely, absolutely, wholly perfect.
“Bed time, Snake,” he says. I mouth the words as he says them, keeping perfect time.
Then he pulls the trigger.
There’s that pain and numbness in the side of my neck, and I know it’s a matter of seconds before I pass out, but I don’t care. I don’t care at all. I can’t think of any time in my life when I cared less than I do at this precise moment. It’s great not to care, isn’t it? I never knew how great, until now. Nobody ever tells me anything. Always the last to know, the grunts are always the last to know just before they get shot or bombed or blown to bits…
And someone’s laughing.
I think it’s me.
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