Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Afghan air is so dry and sand-drenched that it whips into you like a physical thing, snaps your head around like a backhand. You shimmy up behind an outcropping in the cliff and pull your scarf over your face. Hunkered down in your temporary shelter, you adjust your scope and peer into the distance, searching for the peaks and dips of your target base through the storm. All you can see are vague shadows, blinkered lights; the sand whisks over the desert beneath you with all the senseless ferocity nature conjures - deadly, and lacking entirely in cruelty. You’re alone with the wind and the rocks. Alone, except for -

- a flash of light in the distance: bright and sudden as a crack of lightning. A sniper sight slices through the wind current and stutters over your shoulder. Green, friendly. You brace your palm against the rock and whirl around in time to see a bullet go whizzing through the temple of a Red Army Soldier sneaking up behind you. He hits the ground and goes rolling down the side of the cliff, his limp body smashing against each outcropping until he disappears beneath the storm line. You stare after him, watch as the air around him is split apart by a black whirlwind. Listen as the searing wind is drowned out by a screeching howl, a darker noise that settles deep in the spine. You know this sound: to you, it means safety.

A moment later Quiet materializes beside you. She tips her face to the side and examines you with her supernaturally sharp eyes, searching for damage. You shake your head at her, jerk a thumb east where you heard a jeep stop beneath you earlier, a patrol you missed when the storm set in. Her eyes spill ink, the parasites surging close to the skin as she stares between the grains of sand. She nods, tosses you a fresh suppressor, and then is gone. When the sandstorm clears, she’s standing beside an abandoned vehicle and surrounded by three men: two unconscious, the third with his own knife jammed in his eye.

“- oss,” Kaz’s voice crackles over your radio. “Boss, we lost you for a minute there. You okay?”

You scale down the cliff and analyze the downed men while Quiet watches over you.

“Boss, report in.”

“I’m here, Kaz,” you mumble into your receiver, prepping your fulton balloons. “Just got caught in a storm. No damage. Almost missed a patrol, but -”

You hesitate before praising Quiet. It’s a sore subject. Still, without her you might be dead.

“Boss?”

“- I got lucky.”

When you turn around to smile at her, she’s gone.

Kaz lets the man sit in his cell long enough that you begin to think that maybe he won’t do anything about it.

You hope he won’t do anything about it, not without asking you first at least. It’s been harmonious between you and him since the shaving incident. He’s begun to turn to you, rather than away. His shield drops, just a few inches, when you’re alone. Even his voice is different when he speaks to you over the radio. You’re wearing him down, chipping away the armour just like Big Boss did in the old days.

Kaz lets the man sit in his cell long enough that the question becomes: what are you going to do with him?

“What are we going to do with him?”

“Boss, you’re not suggesting we execute him. We can’t -”

“I never said that, Kaz. But I don’t think we gain anything by keeping him here if he isn’t going to speak.”

“He never seems to run far. He’s got an ulterior motive. If we just -”

Footsteps in the hall. They You stop, cross your arms, mouth flat as the staff member rounds the corner. It’s no good to show dissent in front of the men, so you don’t. The medic gives you a nervous smile as he passes between you, feels how thick the air is, how it sparks with a brewing argument. He takes a deep breath as he -

“What are we going to do with him?”

“Take him back. Patch him up.”

“You serious?”

“I could tell when I looked at him - that was his first time in the field, and he nearly took me out. Imagine what he can do with the right motivation. Imagine what he can do for us.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes.”

“Boss… really? You’re… sure?”

The men are drinking together beneath a tarp, listening to ‘Black Magic Woman’ on the radio as the rain bounces against the makeshift roof. The Boss YOU are leaning against a tree, staring off into the distance - towards the Colombian army’s camp, where you left the arrogant POW to stew in his own juices for a while. Yeah, you haven’t been so certain of something in years. That’s what he said, what he whispered into your ear: “I was dead certain about Kaz. On the battlefield you can know who someone really is the first time you look at them.” You knew -

- a week later, making excuses - no, not excuses, educated arguments.

“I won’t take orders from some arrogant, green-behind-the-ears kid, Boss. You said it yourself, he’s -”

Mosquito shuts his mouth the moment your hand shoots up. They’re all here on the outskirts of camp - the oldest of the MSF men - huddled beneath an outcropping in the cliffs to speak about… well, not treason, but it feels like treason: questioning one of Big Boss’ orders. It’s inconceivable, but here you are, blinking against the sudden light of his zippo, watching him light his cigar slowly, deliberately, with relish.

“Go on,” is what he says.

“You said it yourself,” Alligator argues. “He’s never seen a real fight before. And his first one… we kicked his ass! How can you promote him to -”

“The title of Commander is just a word. You’re right- he’s green in the field. That’s why he’s going to be working an administrative job. We need this - someone to handle the finances, the fine print in our paperwork.”

“Boss -”

“What, Alligator - you wanna do the math?”

“N-no -”

“Then trust my judgement call.”

(Something in your chest twists; it feels wrong, giving so much authority to some kid, but you trust him. You trust Big Boss, travelled halfway across the world just to be here with him. If he says that Kazuhira Miller is going to be your Commander, well - you’re gonna call the kid Commander.)

The man sits in his cell for two weeks while you try to decide what to do.

Sunday morning - bright sun reflecting off the white panels of the Medical Platform’s core facility. It’s dead silent except for the soft sound of DD’s loyal feet padding behind you, two steps for every one you take.

Sunday morning... you go to the Medical Platform and - in the back of your mind you can hear it, the ringing strains of Laura Branigan’s voice quivering above the static of the radio that blares into Quiet’s cell, day and night. “‘I think you’ve got to slow down,” she sings. “Before you start to blow it.”

You’re at the edge of Quiet’s cell. She’s leaning against the bars, fiddling with something - it’s her sniper rifle, the one that you had uniquely requisitioned for her but that she is forbidden to touch except when she’s out in the field. She’s got a wedge of slate rock and she’s chipping away at the upper receiver, filing it down. When she notices you watching her, she starts and disintegrates in a cloud of parasites, letting the rifle clatter to the floor in three pieces. The radio is so loud that even if she could speak, you probably wouldn’t hear her.

You saunter up to the bars and give her a steady smile. She’s still watching you, even when you can’t see her. She’s always watching. The smile says: it’s okay, you’re safe, I won’t tell. It’s easy, communicating like this; words are so easy to twist, to misunderstand. Words can tell lies, hold manipulative untruths. Words can kill without the responsibility of pulling a trigger. That’s the one thing Skull Face said that actually made sense to you - his twisted vision of a Utopia began in the right place: stripping humanity of their words would create a new language where deception was impossible. There was beauty in that, all of humanity coming together, learning each other anew and from a different angle like the fumbling first touches of inexperienced lovers.

You slide your field knife out of its sheath and toss it to her. Her fingers materialize around it like a handful of black sand rushing to cover a magnet. The rest of her follows a moment later: her bones, her flesh, her skin. She’s already smiling back at you when her mouth forms over the place where her teeth attach to the gums.

You put your toes to the edge of the grating that once covered her cell. The room below is empty now, as if she’d never even been there. Like she hadn’t even existed. DD seems to sense your troubled mood and nudges his snout up under your hand. You scratch between his ears absent-mindedly, eyes lifting as your cast your vision towards the blinking green light above Paz’s sick room…

“Good boy,” you murmur, sparing DD a kind look as you pat his neck. His tail goes thumping against the steel platform.“Stay here.” He tips his head, forlorn, but doesn’t follow you into the facility.

When you swipe the door open, you’re surprised to find Ocelot exiting Paz’s room. He stops, looking vaguely caught for a moment.

“What are you doing here?”

Ocelot smoothly adjusts one of his gloves and crosses his arms, his expression settling into a flawless and unreadable mask. “Wanted to make sure the girl was doing okay. And if she remembered anything.”

“Ocelot,” your tone is a warning one, edging the tip of a blade that promises… promises what? There’s no reason to threaten Ocelot, you trust him more than anyone in the world. He keeps your secrets, does your dirty work. He’d never disobey you. He’d never do something as drastic as torturing an innocent girl without asking you first. Not like -

You blink, rewind. Try that again.

“I wanted to make sure the girl was doing okay,” Ocelot says.

“She remember anything?”

Ocelot shakes his head, sighing. “No, and to be honest, Boss, it doesn’t look good. She hit the water pretty hard. I think this amnesia might be somatic - she might have irreparable brain damage.”

You glimpse over his shoulder, at the door. “What does the medic think?”

Ocelot shrugs. “That we should leave her alone for a bit. Pushing is only causing her more trauma. She’s been… picking at her stitches again.”

“I don’t like this. She’s been responding well to the photographs.”

“Has she? Whenever she sees something that might make her remember her past as a spy, she retreats further into her student persona. It doesn’t seem like she’s repressing - it’s more like there’s nothing there anymore.”

“Ocelot -”

“Immanuel Kant said that the universe possessed properties that the human mind can’t conceive of. Even so, the filter that we see it through is still meaningful. Right now the outside world is a metaphysical property she can’t grasp. The idea that she’s still a student is her filter - it’s the only way she can make sense of the world.”

You can’t help but chuckle at that. Ocelot is truly shameless when he argues like this. “I really doubt that’s the sort of justification Kant imagined when he wrote Critique of Pure Reason.”

“Even so, Boss, maybe this is what she wants. To believe that your ‘Peace Day’ -” Ocelot drawls the word peace, more than a little condescendingly. “- is coming soon. Maybe right now it’s best to just do what she wants.”

“Even if it’s allowing her to live inside a delusion?”

Ocelot doesn’t say anything to that. His answer is merely to look disappointed - calculatingly disappointed - and brush past you, leaving you alone in the yawning silence of the corridor.

Maybe it’s just best…

You pull your earphones over your head and click play on your iDroid’s cassette deck.

… to give someone what they want.

A crescendo of disco-inspired synth roars to life in your ears - a relic from a decade you missed most of - and drowns out the silence.

Even if it’s not good for them.

You touch the edges of your flesh fingers to the rim of one earphone and then head out into the light.

Kaz doesn’t acknowledge you sliding into his room, but only because you spend most of your nights on Base in here, with him. You cross the room and set both hands on his shoulders, rolling them over the ugly knots in the muscles there. He moans as you massage them out with the inside heel of your palms, turns his head to nuzzle against your prosthetic.

“Snake,” he sighs. You put your mouth close to his ear and whisper.

“Kaz. What do you want to do?”

He lifts his head so that he can look at you, eyes alert.

“With the man I brought in,” you clarify. “What do you want me to do with him?”

Kaz sucks in a shuddering breath. His body goes taut beneath your fingers, but you hold him steady.

“... meet me in Room 101,” he says.

“When?”

“After sundown.”

He’s been thinking about this.

“What should I bring?”

“What you usually carry.”

You raise an eyebrow. “No machete?”

Kaz turns away, turns back to his work. His shoulders are still trembling. “No,” he snarls. “That man didn’t touch my arm.”

“Killing Skullface didn’t make me feel any better…”

(But he still begged you for Huey’s blood.)

You remember -

- you remember when you found Quiet, when you saw her surrounded by a pile of broken bodies. Her life, weighed against the lives of ten men… is one life really worth that? But when you saw the state she was in... you saw her face, the way they’d pulled down the pants of her prison garb. You felt satisfied that they were dead. You would have done it for her if she couldn’t. Ten lives weighed against one… but now that they were dead, they couldn’t hurt anyone else.

(“Killing Skullface didn’t make me feel any better…”

But the world is better off for his absence, you know this.)

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, but if the right person takes both eyes then that solves the root of the problem, doesn’t it? So you need to be the man who makes that call. You need to be Big Boss.

Kaz waits for you outside the appointed room, all done up in his formal uniform and with a nervous-looking soldier at his side. When you arrive, the DD recruit hands you a bucket full of sea-water and a portable radio, then anxiously reels on his heel to leave.

“Remember what I said,” Kaz calls after him. The soldier freezes and slowly looks back over his shoulder. Kaz is boring holes into him through the panes of his aviators. “Not a word.”

The soldier gulps and pauses to look you over - look the both of you over: standing less than a foot apart, bathed in shadow and secrets. He presses his eyes shut hard before finally turning away to leave. You know what the men think of Kaz, and what they think of you, but you can’t help but wonder sometimes what they think of your relationship.

“Thanks for this, Boss,” Kaz says when he’s gone, voice soft now. He leans in close and for a moment you think he’s going to kiss you. He doesn’t; except for momentary lapses, the distance Kaz keeps between you outside the bedroom is mostly professional. Instead, he looks at you, searching your expression, your mouth, your eye for something he apparently needs to see before you do this.

When you reach out to touch his face, he brushes away, folds out of your space effortlessly. He slams his cane against the door of the cell and grunts. “Well. Let’s get this over with.” He glances at you - grinning, just a little bit. Like it’s a joke. Like he hasn’t been waiting to do this for half a year. That makes something plummet into your gut. Makes it twist around. It’s a bad idea, your hands are saying, as they flex around the hard, plastic handle of the radio. This isn’t good for him. But you take a step forward anyway, because you have to -

It’s dark inside. The overhead lights have been dimmed, the temperature raised. You begin sweating the moment you step inside, but Kaz is unruffled even beneath three layers. He hooks his crutch beneath his elbow and takes the radio from you.

“Wake him up,” he says, waving you towards the prisoner.

The man is tied to a folding chair in the center of the room, stripped down to tank-top and plain slacks, a black bag over his head. His top is sweat-stained and he stinks, like he’s pissed himself recently. You round on him with the bucket of water, check him over quickly for damage, then heft the whole thing onto him. The sea-water slams into him. He wakes with a strangled yelp, thrashing against his bonds so violently that he tips himself over. Hits the floor hard on his shoulder, crying out a second time. By the time you kneel in front of him, he’s already hyperventilating. The bag expands and contracts around his head like a lung.

Behind you, Kaz flips the radio on. Turns the knob until it’s loud enough to drown out the Russian soldier’s terrified gasps, loud enough to drown out your objections, his screams -

He uses his cane to shove the radio flush against the door, which dampens it. When he’s finished, he comes to stand over you. He says: “now we’re alone.”

The soldier whimpers when he hears Kaz speak.

“You recognize my voice, don’t you?”

No response. Kaz jabs his cane into the man’s gut, twists. He says, louder: “you recognize my voice. Yes or no?”

The prisoner nods, desperately. Kaz scoffs.

“All of them pretended they didn’t understand a word of english. Different tune now, huh?”

“Pl-please-” the prisoner gasps. Kaz jabs him again.

“You say that word again and we’ll cut off your lips. Understand?”

The prisoner’s breathing evens out. After a moment, he nods again. Kaz takes a step back and turns his chin to you.

“Let him see.”

You yank the bag off the man’s head. You’re surprised how good his face looks. A fading bruise just above his left eye, from where you slammed him into a wall to knock him out… otherwise he’s immaculate. He has not suffered yet for his imprisonment. His pupils dilate wildly, adjusting to the light, scanning over your face, Kaz’s looming figure. Kaz is close enough that you can hear the soft click of his sunglasses being folded over the sound of the radio. From the corner of your vision you see his naked eyes, and the anger burning in them.

“Yeah… yeah, you know exactly who I am. What about him?” Kaz jerks his crutch towards you. “Know who he is?”

The prisoner’s lip trembles. “B-big-” he stutters, “Big Boss.”

“Heh. Didn’t I tell you? You’re really fucked now.”

“Kaz -”

“Help him up, Boss. If he’s good, you can untie him too.”

You do as Kaz says. He slips his shades back on and watches you with a guarded expression. You take the prisoner’s shoulders and drag him to sitting, the chair with him. His eyes are pulled wide, but he’s trying to keep calm. Good training on this one - he barely flinches when you draw back to regard him.

“Do you know why you’re here?” you ask him.

He steels his jaw, presses his lips tight together and nods a third time.

“Good. No point in doing this if you don’t know what you did.”

“I -” the prisoner starts to speak, but Kaz cuts him off with a smack to his shins.

“No. You don’t get to talk yet.”

You reach out and touch Kaz’s shoulder. You have no idea where this is going and that makes you uneasy. He reaches into his holster and pulls out a gun, but not the .45 AM-D114 he usually carries. Instead, he’s carrying a revolver. You raise an eyebrow at the sight of it; you never thought you’d see Kaz willingly use Ocelot’s signature weapon. He turns the gun over and holds it up to the light so the prisoner can get a good, long look at it.

“The revolver isn’t a very efficient or cost effective weapon,” Kaz says conversationally, “so normally, I wouldn’t carry it. It’s flashy, antiquated… the only reason to use one is if you’re trying to show off, or -” he pauses, dramatically and levels the gun so that it’s pointing at the prisoner. “ - if you’re trying to prove a point.”

You can see sweat beginning to bead on the prisoner’s brow.

“Boss,” Kaz lets his wrist roll towards you. The motion shucks the revolver of its cylinder, curves it open so that you can look inside. “Tell the man how many bullets are in there.”

“One,” you say truthfully, staring hard at Kaz the entire time. The corners of Kaz’s mouth twitch.

“In Russian, Boss. Remember, he’s not great with English.”

You scour your brain for the basics you’ve picked up over the last few months. “Один,” you repeat, your american accent flattening the ‘ah’ sound.

The prisoner swallows thick, keeps his mouth shut.

“Spin it, Boss.”

You take Kaz’s hand in yours. It’s to steady his grip on the gun, but you let the touch linger, let your thumb tenderly stroke the inside of his wrist - that narrow strip of skin between the hem of his shirt and glove. The prisoner’s eyes follow the motion of your fingers subtly. You see his expression change, as if he’s figured something out.

“We’re going to play a game,” Kaz says. You spin the chambers and he whips the gun up so that the cylinder slams back into the place. He limps forward and sets the muzzle against the prisoner’s temple. “I’m going to ask you four questions, and if I like the answers -” he clicks off the gun’s safety, “- I won’t pull the trigger.”

“Kaz...”

He pretends not to hear you and begins dragging the muzzle down the side of the prisoner’s face. “So, even if you give me four bad answers, that’s still a 33% chance of survival. Not bad odds, considering what you’ve been through.”

“Kaz -”

“Boss,” Kaz says, pleasantly, “you asked me what I wanted to do with him.”

“I did, but this? There isn’t any point to this.”

“C’mon, Boss -” Kaz laughs tonelessly. “The purpose of torture isn’t interrogation - it’s intimidation and behaviour modification. You taught me that.”

“Kaz, you aren’t -”

“Boss,” he says, voice knife-sharp. “- are you with me, or not?

Kaz knows the words, the exact right words, to send a sour stab of guilt right between your ribs. He’s right, you asked him to do this. And -

“ - and if you’re doing it alone I… I- - then I’m doing it alone too and I’ve -”

- you left him alone for far too long. You won’t leave him alone again.

The prisoner’s eyes flicker to catch your gaze. “Помогите мне,” he gasps. “You are… Big Boss. I… I pledge allegiance -”

Kaz pistol whips him. The blow’s not as hard as it would have been from a man with two-legged balance, but it still cuts an ugly gash into his cheek.

“You don’t look at him,” Kaz hisses. “You look at me.” He uses the barrel of the gun to force the man’s head up, sets the muzzle beneath his chin. “First question. You with me so far?” The prisoner nods, tears in his eyes. The music in the background begins to fade and the room fills with his laboured breathing. “Okay. This one’s easy. When they first brought me to you… did you have any fucking clue who I was?”

“Nyet -” Kaz pulls the trigger. The prisoner screams, jerks his head away as hammers slams down. A new song blares to life on the radio. The hollow percussion bounces off the walls, drowns out the sound made by cylinder clicking over the stop, loading a fresh chamber. One down, four to go.

“It is t-t-truth!” The prisoner stutters. Kaz whips him again, holds his face in place with the body of the revolver.

“This isn’t an interrogation. I didn’t say anything about letting you off the hook just for doing something as easy as telling the truth.”

The prisoner shuts his eyes for a panicked, furtive moment. You watch the whole thing go down with your hands hanging at your side. Your prosthetic arm has never felt so heavy as it does right now, leaden with the self-inflicted responsibility you’ve given yourself to allow this to happen.

Kaz sets the muzzle against the prisoner’s lower lip. “How many people,” he asks, voice like gravel, “have you tortured? Before me.”

A rivulet of sweat breaks between the creases of the prisoner’s brow and streams down the center of his face - over the ridge of his nose, into the dip of his philtrum and around the circumference of the revolver's barrel. He seems to be weighing his answer carefully, turning over numbers, values in his mind, gauging what kind of truth his captors want to hear. The tinny drum machines on the radio throb against your eardrums, it thrums tension into the room, distorts when it hits you. You can barely think like this, how can he -

“... ten, if… also you,” the prisoner says, confidently. “That is… also truth.”

Kaz’s thumb twitches over the edge of the hammer, but he doesn’t pull the trigger this time. “Hn. Good answer. Wouldn’t have believed a lower number, to be honest, but any higher and it would’ve sounded like you were bragging.”

The prisoner lets out a sigh of relief, but it’s short lived before Kaz pistol whips him a third time, bursting the cut on his cheek open and eliciting a broken grunt of pain. “What? You feel good about that? Admitting that you’re a sadist and a murder?” Before he can nod yes or no, Kaz jams the gun between his teeth, gets the sight in under the incisors and pries them apart. It’s obviously hard work for him; Kaz has finally started sweating as he tries to balance his elbow on his crutch and lever the man’s mouth open at the same time. He falters and you catch him, hold him with both hands so that he can put all his weight into it.

“That was a question,” Kaz growls, sliding the muzzle into the prisoner’s mouth. The prisoner gags around it, so Kaz forces it deeper. There’s a brief struggle - the prisoner whining low, sweating, flexing against his bonds, trying to jerk his jaw away as an ugly noise gutters in his throat. He loses eventually, gets tired of fighting. His shoulders slouch and he pulls his head back, tries to accommodate the revolver scraping at his uvula.

There’s a lull in the music and Kaz whispers: “Cоса́ть.” It’s not a russian word you’ve heard before, but it makes the prisoner’s eyes go wide enough that you can see the veins at the edges. “Do it,” Kaz says, louder. So the prisoner does it. Begins to move his head, bob back and forth. Works his tongue along the underside of the revolver’s narrow shaft, tears in his eyes. Oh.

Kaz pulls the trigger. The sound sends a jolt down the prisoner’s whole body and he howls ugly around the gun. Starts to sob, spittle running down his chin. “Not like that. C’mon, make love to it. Do it like you mean it.” Kaz pushes the gun in deeper, cutting into the top of his gums, making him choke and cough up blood. “Do it like you want to live.” The prisoner’s mouth closes around the gun, instinctively, and he gets another sharp jab in the back of the throat. His whole body convulses and he vomits around the cylinder and down the front of his filthy shirt.

You -

- remember crawling along the slick linoleum, covered in other people’s piss and guts, Ishmael’s rough, demanding voice reverberating inside your skull. You taste bile at the back of your throat. You try to hold it back. You swallow your own tongue. You -

- look at Kaz instead. His arm is shaking from the effort of holding the gun upright, from keeping it in place. You’re the only thing keeping him on his feet. His teeth are clenched - chattering, grinding against each other. You can see veins at the edge of his sclera, eyes pulled open just like the prisoner’s. This isn’t right.

“Do you,” Kaz grounds out, “like what you do? Take pleasure in your work? Think real carefully before you answer this one.” He clicks the safety off and on to the beat of the bass-line.

This isn’t -

“This isn’t right.” You tug Kaz gently, try to shake him out of his trance. He ignores you, so you tug him harder as he forces the prisoner to deep throat the revolver.

“Kaz -”

“I’m not looking for a three point essay on the politics of torture here,” Kaz pistons the barrel of the gun down the prisoner’s throat brutally, mechanically.

“Kaz -”

“Just a simple -” Kaz cocks the safety off, thrusts the gun deep, “- yes or no question.

“Kaz, STOP!”

You grab his elbow and yank him away. The gun goes flying, ripping open the side of the prisoner’s mouth and taking a chunk of his lip with it. He’s past screaming; he just moans and drops his chin to his chest, curling in on himself. You whirl Kaz around and hold him by his shoulders, clamp down with your prosthetic so that he can’t escape.

“Stop,” you say, quieter. He’s staring at you with fury, his eyes wide and disbelieving, mouth twisted into a vicious scowl that shows his teeth.

“What’s your problem, Snake!?”

“This. Isn’t. Right,” you repeat. You can’t... you can’t find the right words to explain it to him, what’s wrong with it, how it hurts you to see him like this - all torn at the edges, killing himself in inches. You grab his hand, hold it tight.

“You said that you’d let me have this. You promised -”

You squeeze his hand a bit too hard, make the joints crack. It strangles the words in his throat. You lean in close so that he can hear your breathy whispers over the pounding back-beat of the pop song on the radio. “Let me do it.”

His breath catches - you can see it even if you can’t hear it. You can feel him freeze up in your arms. “What?”

“Let me do it. Let me do this for you.”

“Don’t… don’t patronize me.”

“I’m not. I -” you - tentatively - rest your forehead against his. He bristles at the intimate contact. His gaze flashes towards the prisoner, like it matters what he thinks, like it matters what anyone thinks. You grab his face and force him to look at you. You say: “Kaz, I want to do this for you.” And Kaz, he -

(- looks at you -

- like he’s never seen the sun before -)

“Boss…” he breathes and the way he looks at you is like how he looked at you - pin drop silent between you, the sun streaming in through the porthole window to bathe you both in glittering-dust - when you reached out and took his sunglasses by the bridge -

He looks at you with something wet rimming the corners of his eyes. Not tears, though. Don’t be ridiculous, Boss, of course I’m not crying. “Jesus Christ,” he mutters, glancing away, leaning his cheek into the warmth of your palm. “Snake, you really are unbelievable, you know that?”

You let go, and he... goes. Without argument. He limps around the table at the back of the room and takes a seat behind it. You can feel his heavy, besotted gaze on you even through the impenetrable wall of his aviators.

I want to do this, you tell yourself. So if something goes wrong, Kaz, blame me. That’s right - it’s fine. You’re the man who’ll take both eyes. The man who will deliver justice. You can shoulder Kaz’s burden and afterwards you’ll hold him in arms that are soaked through with the blood he craves. That’s what it means to be Big Boss. That’s what you were made for.

You move over the prisoner and begin to untie his bonds. You’ll need his hands for what you want to do. He rolls his head around and tips his chin to call you near. The radio is murmuring news in French behind you and his cracked voice rises above it like a wave cresting on a beach.

“He… spoke of you,” the prisoner says.

You stare at him steadily.

“He... spoke you name as if you were божество… ah, some… religious figure. When alone or…” the prisoner looks away, “when he... could not help it. But… if we had known -”

“If you had known what?” you ask, precise and calm.

“If we had known -”

The radio changes over, begins playing a new song. Mellow this time, soothing. You unravel the last knot in the prisoner’s bonds and the rope falls away from him like a dead skin. He’s smart enough not to move except for bringing his arms in front of him. He rubs his wrists, looks at you with such sincere regret in his eyes that you almost believe him. Everything a man says is true when he’s afraid for his life, after all.

“If we had… kn-known - that y-you -”

“Were still alive?”

“Th-that he was… that he w-was…”

“My partner?”

“Y-your -”

“My lover? You wouldn’t have done it?”

The man nods vehemently. You glance at Kaz, whose expression is hard and unflinching. It’s for him that you grab the man’s chin and force him to look at you as you leisurely slide your knife from the sheath.

“You shouldn’t have done it anyway. It doesn’t matter who he is, this isn’t how you treat a human being.”

The prisoner’s eyes follow the motion of your knife, terrified. You set a comforting hand on his knee, pat it twice. “Don’t worry,” you say. “I’m not gonna kill you. That’s a promise.”

“I… I believe you…”

“But this is going to be rough. I didn’t bring the right tools.”

The hope drains from his face and you… you almost relish it. You think about how Kaz trembled when you touched his face to wake him that night you found him in Afghanistan. You think about -

“Get the… fingernails first. Rusted… metal beneath them.”

- how Kaz trembled in your arms, his throat in your hand, when he told you -

“Leave it like that. Sepsis only takes a week to turn deadly, e-every… every soldier knows that.”

You take his wrist in your prosthetic and he lets you. Asks: “What are… you going to…?”

“Eye for an eye,” you grunt and, without warning, you shove the tip of your blade beneath his fore-finger’s nail, pop it off with a single flick. Somehow he finds his voice again and a shredded scream rips out of him, widens the cut at the corner of his mouth. “Arm for an arm,” you continue. “We’re outside the law here. This is the only kind of justice you’ll find outside of heaven.”

Groaning, he pushes his free hand against your face. You grab that one instead and - with the mechanical and fluid ease afforded to you by the bionic prosthetic - snap his wrist. His hand twitches once and goes limp but he’s still struggling, tugging against you senselessly. A ribbon of blood spurts from his open finger and gets in your beard. He squirms, kicks at you, begins to rock the chair back and so you roll your hand down and use the ridge of his broken wrist bone to hit the button on your palm that activates its electric shock. The energy bolts through him visibly. Blue lightning sparks over his chest, makes the whole room go bright for half a second as he arches his back in a perfect, agonized curve. A noise rattles inside of him - doesn’t quite get all the way out - and he slumps in his seat: passive, eyes shut.

You slap him to make sure he doesn’t pass out.

“Stay with me,” you say as he gasps awake. “We’ll go slow this time.”

“Nyet,” he begs. “No, nyet, nyet -”

Words will get him nowhere. Words are a poor currency to pay for sins of the flesh. You twist his hand so that his thumb is facing up, then drag the tip of your knife along the place where the fingernail meets the skin. With a slow, deliberate movements you pry it open like peeling off a layer of dried glue. “O мой Бог,” he whimpers.

“Shhh,” you soothe, getting the tip of the blade under the nail.

“это пиздец,” the prisoner pants. You wrench the knife up so that the tip digs into the pulpy flesh beneath. He yells, so you hit him.

“Pl-please. I will… do anything you want…”

You keep going, slice the knife in a half-circle, digging out the skin beneath. “Is that what he said to you, when your friends did this?”

The prisoner doesn’t answer, just heaves, trying to catch his breath, trying not to sob like a child. You smile, unkindly.

“Of course that’s not what he said. I know Kaz and he has too much pride to beg for anything but death.” The blade gets down to the cuticle. You stop for a moment, let it rest there. “He’s not like you. You broke immediately, shamelessly. We’ve barely done anything to you and already you’re like this.”

The prisoner nods, then shakes his head. He’s confused. A spray of sweat hits your face when he shakes his wet hair out. You begin moving the knife again and his whole body goes rigid. “There’s no shame in that,” you tell him. “It’s a human reaction to pain. But I do think it’s strange that a man so unaccustomed to it would be assigned as a torturer. You wouldn’t trust an uneducated man with a heart surgery. This is -”

(“- a man with medical training knows his way around the human body better than most of us. If you get into a tough situation, I don’t want you to panic and do something you’d regret later -”)

“- the exact same thing.” You’re languid about this... the nail peels off slowly, sticking to the base of the cuticle by a few strands of gummy flesh. You let it hang, let him watch it hang, listen to his heart hammering behind his ribs so fast that it’s like he’s a rabbit, a mouse, some sort of terrified prey animal exposed in the daylight and desperate for a place to hide.

“Three to go. Not so bad.”

“Стоп…”

“This is the easy part,” you assure him. “The hard part comes after this, when we leave you alone.” You isolate his middle finger and push the other ones down. You don’t go as slow this time, you cut down to the cuticle in one, confident push. “The hard part comes after this, when we leave you alone. When we let the wound fester.”

“Why…”

The nail clips off, but you keep going, digging the knife beneath the finger’s upper layer.

Sepsis only takes a week to turn deadly, every soldier knows that.

“If you think this hurts...” you watch the wrinkled skin ripple and bunch up as your blade shaves it off the bone. “That’s only because you haven’t felt what an infection is like. These wounds are gonna crawl up your arm sooner than you think. Then you’ll know what pain feels like. The way it’ll feel… you’ll be begging us to let you -”

“ - do it yourself next time.”

You blink your eyes open, breathing hard. The linoleum is stained with blood, the lights above you are sparking. You’re beneath a broken window, glass digging into your bare feet, your arm throbbing from where Ishmael snapped it back into place. The hallway is blinking dark, yellow, red, dark again. You look around wildly trying to find him as a helicopter whips close overhead behind you. You’re not sure he’s even real. He speaks to you in your own voice. When you look at your arm, you find yourself gripping your own shoulder. Do it yourself, says your voice inside your head. Do it yourse -

- you keep going, with the knife, you keep going, shear a strip of skin from the back of his hand, crack his knuckle down the center with the brunt of the blade. It makes a sick crackling sound as the cartilage pops open. His hand is covered in blood. Slick, sticky - it streams through your fingers. When your eyes hit it, something goes bright behind them and the blood turns white -

- you’re falling down the stairs. You see yourself in the window as you go and the blood on your face is thick and black. Ishmael gets his hands under your armpits and he drags you to your feet. Your emaciated legs shudder beneath your weight, fold from the pain of your sprained ankle. Do it yourself next time. You have to do it yourself, to stand on your own feet, to bear the mantle of this great man. Ishmael’s shadow dissolves before you and the room spins -

- the room spins and you slip. The blade digs deep into the prisoner’s arm and you slice it down hard, shove it as deep as you can. It gets jammed, stuck between the radius and the ulna, embedded deep in the muscles webbed between them. He’s screaming so loud it entwines with the crooning from the radio and drowns everything out. You can’t hear the slick noises of your blade sawing through his flesh, you can’t hear Kaz saying your name behind you, you can’t hear the voice of Ishmael in your head telling you to… telling you t-to… what to do -

- dragged through the fire, through the puddles on the floor either from the overhead sprinkler system or leaking from the X.O.F. soldier’s guts and heads, you can’t tell which. Your vision fractures and you see strange things: a man on fire, a floating child, another patient who speaks to you with your own voice… a week later, the first Red Soldier who comes up behind you, you grab him by the neck and crush it until he stops moving. Ishmael whispering in your ear: this time, do it yourself. You press your eyes shut and -

- when you open your eyes, the chair has been thrown back and the prisoner is between your thighs. You’re hitting him. Again and again and again.

“Boss!”

Kaz’s hand is on your shoulder and you come back to yourself. You pull back, heaving, suffering palpitations. You... assess the damage. The prisoner is still conscious - nose broken, lip split in two more places, missing a few teeth. One of his eyes is hidden beneath a puffed up bruise.

“Стоп…” he gurgles. The knife is still in his arm. Your eyes track down to his ruined hand: missing three nails, the bone of his middle finger and knuckle visible where you skinned a line of flesh right off of it. His last two fingers are crushed into pulp. You don’t remembe - you struggle to you feet but the room is so hot and loud and dark and your vision reels around and around until you can see nothing at all.

You hear an empty chamber click, followed by the resounding thunderclap of a gun being fired. The sound clears your head. What you see is: Kaz standing over the prisoner, holding the revolver. The radio is off. It’s silent, except for your breathing.

“Kaz, what did you -”

“What had to be done,” Kaz slides the revolver back into its holster. “Don’t worry about it, Boss. What happened in here stays in here.”

You and Kaz stand shoulder to shoulder in the ringing silence.

“Shit, Snake,” he says, voice thin. “You really did a number on him. What the hell happened? Are… are you o -”

“I don’t like what he did to you,” you interrupt. Your voice is barely louder than a murmur. It sounds like a storm on the horizon.

That stirs something in Kaz. “You…” he looks at you. “You did this… for me…” It’s not a question. Of course you did it for him, right? That’s what you said. You gather him up in your arms, breathe into his hair.

“God,” he whispers, “kiss me.” He’s clinging to you, casting his weight in a way that means he’ll fall if you drop him. “I need it… I need you to -” You -

- say no, somewhere, you say no somewhere in the back of your head but he pulls you in with his one arm, with his desperate eyes, with the way he bites down on you lip and digs nails into your scalp, sobbing upon inhale. Your eyes roll around the room and spot the dead soldier, linger over his brains spilt across the steel floor, roll back in your head as you stutter, as you -

SMACK

Kaz rears back, stumbles a step before falling hard on his hip. He doesn’t make a sound when he hits the metal. He stares up at you: afraid, amazed, aroused. You don’t remember hitting him, but there’s a line of bright red going from his lip to the dip in his chin. “Boss,” he says in the back of his throat, voice thick with primal need. You’re - on him in a blink, licking up the blood greedily, snaring his bottom lip and biting down so hard that it causes the knick you made with your fist to yawn open. He whines into your mouth, a high keening sound that mingles with the blood. It tastes sweet. You drink it in, bundle him up in your arms so tight it makes him gasp for breath. You force his mouth open with your tongue and breath into him, share your air with him. You keep him alive.

“Snake,” he hisses, pleads. “Snake -”

You slam him against the wall. Smack him again, to send his sunglasses skittering. You grab him by the chin, hold him up that way as he paws at your torso, claws his fingers into your belt and fumbles blindly at the buckle. You lick a hot line up the side of his face, tracing the shape of the bruise you beat into it. “C’mon,” he pants, bucking his hips into yours. Your hand leaves a bloody palm-print on his lapel, on his chest, streaks blood down his thigh as you grip it tight and hitch him up. He sighs when you lift him off the floor. You grip him with your flesh hand and wrap your prosthetic around his neck. His eyes light with excitement as you begin to crush it, begin to crush the life out of hi -

- you open your eyes, breathing heavy. Kaz is still on the floor staring up at you - waiting, with a finger pressed to the cut in his lip. The room wheels wildly around you - light and blood and… and Kaz is the only thing you can see clearly. So you… you don’t touch him. You’re afraid of what will happen if you touch him. You turn away, face the mess the two of you made together.

“I… need to clean this up. Go get some sleep, Kaz.”

He inhales loudly, biting down on his disappointment. You listen to him clatter and struggle to his feet, have to ball your hands into fists so that you don’t go to help him. The desire to set an arm around his waist is nearly instinctual.

“... come see me after?”

You don’t answer. It’s… you stare at the blood on your prosthetic. It’s not a good idea.

“Boss… ple…” he pauses, swallows a choked sound down his throat. This word has never been easy for him. “Please come see me after.”

“... yeah.”

When he leaves you unhook a petrol bomb from your belt and scatter the gas inside it over the corpse. Then you light a cloth and throw it onto him, take a step back as the body goes up in flames. You stand close enough to feel the heat, to hear the way the fat beneath his skin bubbles and snaps, pops like bacon. You breathe in the scent of cooked meat and black smoke and you watch as your shadow changes shape on the wall.

Kaz is waiting for you, sat against the wall with his hand over his eyes. You don’t wait - you go right to him. You crawl into his arms. He takes you in without a word, slings his arm over your shoulder and breathes deep, pulling you close to him. You slide your hands up over his knees, slide them along his thighs so that they lock around his back and your cheek comes to rest against the hollow of his abdomen. Then you close your eyes and lay your head there for a moment, listening to the wash of sounds a human body makes: a steady, distant roll like the crash of waves. He threads his fingers through your hair, permission for you to keep going - to push him down on the bed so that you can crawl on up, crawl over him, put your nose to his jugular and sniff at the sweat that pooled there from long hours in a room with no windows. He shivers beneath your lips, and actually laughs.

“Hn… you haven’t done that in a while…”

“What? Smell you?”

“Yeah. Don’t you remember? Every time you used to come home from a mission, you’d come up behind me and bury your nose in my hair like you were a damned dog. You’d get mud and shit all over my clean uniform, too.”

You lie. “Mmm, I remember.”

Kaz is silent a beat. When he speaks, his voice is very low. “What do I smell like now?”

“Fear,” you answer easily, pulling back. You fan his hair away from his face and grip it in both hands so that he has to look at you. “Kaz, what are you so afraid of?”

He stares at you - cheeks flushed, split lips slightly parted, but eyes hard and locked. You wish that he would just talk to you like he used to. Wish that you could just make him talk. You feel, sometimes, like you could squeeze it out of him, like if you just tightened your grip… if you just.. it would be so easy to -

(- it’s very easy to crush a human skull with your red right hand. You did it once, in Masa Village, before Eli took over and purged all the adults. You caught a man out back, behind one of the storage rooms beating a kid with the butt of his rifle and you

- slammed him into the wall at the wrong angle. Suddenly everything was so dark, so loud, the kid staring at you in horror as you… to stop the man from screaming, stick your fingers down his throat and squeeze his cheekbone so hard that his eye pops out. No more secrets, if you could just crush his skull in until it leaked out of him -)

You pull your hand away from Kaz’s face with a gasp. He follows you up, hooks his arm around your neck and kisses you, doesn’t notice that anything was wrong, didn’t feel the way you clamped your thumb down hard over the soft flesh of his temple. He’s already got his one good leg hooked over your hip, so you follow his lead and grind against him, pull a stuttered moan from between his lips, keep your mechanical arm braced against the head-board so you don’t -

(- it’s so easy, with your red right hand, to crush a man’s windpipe like it’s made of paper. You squeeze the soldier’s neck so hard that his tongue lolls out of his mouth. In your head, Ishmael says: Do it yourself this time.)

- so you don’t do anything you’d regret later.

You try to give Kaz what he wants but you can’t stay hard, your cock goes soft inside him. It’s not him, you just… can’t stop thinking about -

“That man didn’t touch my arm.”

“Cоса́ть.” Kaz whispers, and the prisoner’s eyes go wide enough that you can see the veins at the edges.

Kaz pants against your cheek. “Snake, what’s wrong?

You answer him with a kiss and take him in your hand so that you can stroke him to completion, trying desperately to think about nothing at all. This isn’t the first time this has happened. It won’t be the last; you’re not a young man anymore, and neither is he. The sound Kaz makes into your mouth is all you need. You roll off when he’s done shuddering through his orgasm and curl around him, keeping your bodies close on the narrow cot.

He’s looking at the ceiling, not you. After a while, you ask: “Are we gonna talk about what happened?”

“I told you. It stays in that room.”

“No, I meant -” he blinks and looks at you. In the half-light like this is the only time he doesn’t squint with his shades off. He looks so much younger with his eyes open this wide, with his hair in his face. “What happened in Afghanistan. What did that soldier do to you?”

Kaz pulls his thumb along the curve of your sternum and sighs. “Do you remember… I told you this story once, about how I bit part of an American sailor’s ear off when I was a kid.”

Often, when Kaz asks you questions like this, you’ve got a foggy sense of the past - lines on a map with no words. But this? Nothing.

“We were -” his breath hitches a bit, “- between camps. February, ‘73, the time we got in that tangle with a cartel and they burned our tents. You and I were huddled out in an abandoned barn that smelt like shit, trying to get the radio to tune in and… I could barely keep my eyes open, we’d been marching for fourty-eight hours, mostly going in circles, finding our scattered men telling them where to meet us but you and I- you-”

Yeah, you… you remember this part, but you don’t remember seeing much of Kaz in the chaos - but that’s not right, back then - unless you were on a mission - Kaz was practically attached to your hip -

“- you just kept me talking. Kept me sane. That’s the thing I never got about you, Boss - how you can make me feel so crazy one minute, and pull me back down to earth the next.”

“I don’t try to make you crazy, Kaz.”

“Yeah, that’s what you always said: Kaz, you do it to yourself.”

“Did I? ... I don’t remember.”

“I wonder,” Kaz’s fingers crawl up your neck and chin, come to rest between your eyes. He dances them over the scars on your nose and forehead. “- how many memories a person has to lose before they’re not themselves anymore.”

“Kaz?”

“If what makes us human is the sum of our knowledge and experience, then losing that without any hope of recovery is kind of like dying in a way, isn’t it?”

“Do you… think I’m not myself anymore?” Asking the question actually sends a bolt of fear through you. It’s hot liquid that settles in the bottom of your gut.

“No it’s just…” he makes a frustrated noise. “You’re right here, Snake, but… I miss you sometimes.”

“Kaz,” you trace the shape of his cheekbone. “I’m with you. Don’t worry.”

He shuts his eyes for a moment and nods. “Y-yeah.”

“So… what happened? With the American soldier?”

Something ripples through Kaz’s expression at that - resentment, confusion, hurt. He smiles bitterly before turning his back to you. “Better remember soon, Boss, because I’m not gonna humiliate myself again.”

Something changes again after that.

Not good this time.

“Are you worried about Miller?” Ocelot asks, kneeling down to catch a sprout of African Peach between two fingers. He turns the leaf over and examines it. Thick drops of dew roll over the edge and splash against his glove.

You shield your eyes against the sun streaming through the grate above. A thick mist hangs in the greenhouse. It gathers around your waists and cuts the light into squares. You say: “Kaz has been…” but you can’t finish the sentence. How has Kaz been? On a rampage. Assigning triple shifts to even the D ranks, metting out latrine duty to anyone who looks at him wrong. To you? He’s been perfectly polite. Cold and clipped. You went away for a week on a mission in the Serengeti and when you came back, he’d reprogrammed the lock-code to his room so that you couldn’t get in.

“Boss?”

You shake your head. “- I don’t know. I’ve lost him again. He won’t tell me what’s happened.”

Ocelot clicks his tongue. “A shame. And you two were getting along so well for a while there too.” As he stands, DD jumps to attention and trots over to him, shoving his snout beneath Ocelot’s hand. Ocelot pets the dog enthusiastically, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lip. He almost looks human like this.

“He… needs time,” you say. It’s what you always say. Ocelot and DD start walking again, towards the tarragon plot. You follow after them, eye downcast, staring at the roots of the plants as you go. They’re shallow, tangling together as they vie for nutrients in the artificial dirt.

“Well, don’t worry. He knows his place. Knows what his role is.”

“That’s not what I -” you curl and uncurl your mechanical fist. “That’s not what I want. I don’t want to put him in his place.”

“You know…” Ocelot says delicately, “- it might not be a bad thing, this distance between you.”

Your head snaps up to see him shooting you a pitying look from the periphery of his vision. He goes on:

“It’s no good to mix business and personal affairs. It makes you short-sighted. That’s part of went wrong between you two in the 70’s, wasn’t it?”

“I -”

You reach the tarragon. DD lays on the floor, letting his front paws dangle off the platform as he sticks his nose into the yellow blossom of the nearest plant. You stare at the bright flowers swaying in the breeze and think about Colombia.

“You never watched Miller closely enough. That’s because you were looking at the wrong things.”

(“You said it yourself. He’s never seen a real fight before. And his first one… we kicked his ass! How can you promote him to -”

“I was dead certain about Kaz. On the battlefield you can know who someone really is the first time you look at them.” )

“No, you’re wrong. Kaz and I were a good team. We just -”

“ ‘Need time’?” Ocelot drawls skeptically. “How much time, Boss? It’s been six months. How much time are you going to give him? A year? Five years? You need to stop treating him like he’s made of glass. He needs you to be his Boss.”

You reach out and take a tarragon petal between your fingers. You rub it - gently at first, but you can’t stop yourself from pressing harder and harder until the flower dissolves, leaving glistening dust on the pads of your glove. You hear Ocelot shift beside you, hear him take a deep breath.

“The way you’ve been handling it so far… I hate to criticize, but what happened with that prisoner last month was…”

You glance at him. “You know about that?”

“It’s my job to know everything that happens on Mother Base.”

“I see.”

He hesitates, holds out his hands. Very diplomatic. “The body was a real mess.”

You crouch down on your haunches so that you can pet DD. You’ve been trying not to think about the night you and Kaz spent in Room 101. The thing is... you have to think about it. It’s critical to understand what went wrong. What you could have done differently. Looking back on it sets off bright sparks inside your skull. You can’t remember the order of events, aren’t sure who did what. In most of your memories, Kaz is the one standing over the body with the gun. But when you dream about it, it’s you - you’re the one who pulled the trigger.

“I don’t like what he did to you -”

DD’s fur is soft even though the fabric of your gloves. He’s warm beneath your hand. You can feel his heartbeat. He leans into your touch and wags his tail, tongue lolling out in the humid evening air.

“Boss, really now: what were you thinking?”

“Aren’t you the one who told me to give him what he wants?”

Ocelot doesn’t reply. That makes you… it’s not anger, not quite. It’s like there’s a mental block in your head that stops you from becoming frustrated with Ocelot, no matter how far he pushes you. Your oldest friend, your most trusted agent. Ocelot always has your best interests at heart. He’s loyal to you, more than anyone. He’s the one who told you to… who suggested that you...

“Ocelot, you’re the one who gave me the idea.”

He laughs, like he doesn’t believe you. “How so?”

“When we talked outside of Paz’s room.”

That earns you a look. A look that you don’t think you’ve seen on Ocelot’s face before. He’s got one eyebrow raised right up towards the hairline: shocked, genuinely. What does that mea -

You pet down DD’s back, long even strokes. “When you said that you thought we should abandon therapy with Paz… that you didn’t think it was going her any good…”

“Boss -”

You quote him: “ ‘Immanuel Kant said that the universe possessed properties that the human mind can’t conceive of. Even so, the filter that we see it through is still meaningful.’ If a delusion is the only way someone can process the world, you told me that maybe it’s fine to let that delusion go for a bit.”

Ocelot stares at you quietly for a very long time. Then he takes three step towards you and leans over to examine you face.

“What?”

“Boss, I’ve never read Immanuel Kant.”

Your hand tightens, grabs a fold of DD’s skin. Shakily, you reply: “That explains your opportunistic interpretation of him, then.”

Ocelot’s brow knits together, perplexed. “No, I mean… we never had that conversation. You must have -”

“I must have what?”

Ocelot sighs. “Imagined it -”

You don’t realize how hard you’re twisting DD’s pelt until you hear him whimpering. It’s a high and pitiful sound, but he doesn’t try to escape until you tear your hand away in horror. He leaps to his feet and canters around Ocelot, hides behind his knees, looking betrayed.

“Sometimes, after a coma, there can be negative side effects, especially with the…” he touches the tip of your horn. Even such gentle contact makes your eyes blanche for a second. You pull away from him and stand up.

“You’re telling me that you never met me outside Paz’s sickroom? I imagined all of that?”

Ocelot looks like he’s swallowed vomit. He moves his hands through the air, rolling his wrists as his face contorts. You can practically hear his thought process: how to say this kindly. How to make sure the Boss doesn’t think that I think he’s crazy. Even though we both know -

- he is.

“Paz died in Costa Rica,” is what he says. Blunt, and staring straight at you. “Nine years ago. Remember, Boss?”

(- and then she’s on her feet, stumbling towards the open hatch of the helicopter, her sutures flexing and leaking with every unsteady step. Your hands fall away from Kaz’s waist and you reach out to her. It’s okay, Paz, it’s okay, we got it out, you don’t have to -)

You grab your forehead as a blinding spike of pain goes through it. All that, all that and she died anyway.

“Of course,” you growl. “Of course she died. I know that.”

“Boss…”

You spit at him, like a rabid dog would. DD flinches at the sight of it.“You’re dismissed, Ocelot.”

“It’s not -”

“I said: you’re dismissed.”

He clips his mouth shut, lips pressed into such a tight line they disappear. “Whatever you say, Boss,” he demures, bowing like a performer showing himself off-stage. DD follows at his heels and soon you’re alone. It’s good, that’s fine - the sun, the mist, the silence, the heady scent of peat and damp leaves, it quiets your brain. You slide your earphones over your head and flip on the newest tape in your collection. The tension drains from your nerves the moment the music hits your ears. Everything makes more sense when you’re alone.

Ocelot wasn’t trying to be cruel, there’s no reason to blame him. He’s right: you lost more things to that helicopter crash than just your arm and your soldiers.

(Kaz asks you: “- how many memories does a person has to lose before they’re not themselves anymore?”)

It was a dream. A hallucination. Now that you think back, the entire day seems hazy, like a mirage shimmering in the distance. Ocelot waiting for you outside the sickroom, Quiet’s empty cell, Kaz’s hand around the hilt of the revolver… all of it, you must have -

- imagined it.

Kaz receives you in his office.

When you approach him, the look he gives you is complete indifference. It would be easier if he were angry at you. You know how to handle his anger, how to bridle it, to bend beneath it. You know how to hold it in your hands and turn it into something you can use. This is unbearable. This feeling lives at the bottom of your ribcage. It’s sharper than violence.

“You need something, Boss?”

The expression he shoots you is perfectly hollow; this is the same way he talks to any other soldier. His casual tone is a sharpened blade, you remember it from the 70’s: a big ol’ smile beaming bright as he hands you your quarterly performance report -

(No, that’s not… that’s not right.)

You throw a file-folder on his desk. “We need to go through the new recruit intakes. Go over staff reassignments.”

Kaz stares up at you through his eyelashes. Stares at you like he’s trying to outlast you, like if he stays silent long enough you’ll give up trying to talk to him and just leave. It won’t work, you tell him with your eyes, with your steady hand rooted on the surface of the desk. You’re more patient than him, and your patience for him is infinite.

He capitulates with a soft exhale and gestures for you to sit down. “I already filed my suggestions in the central data-bank, but if you insist -”

“I do.”

And there it is - Kaz’s eyes flash brilliant for a moment. For a single, beautiful second he’s furious with you. It disappears as quickly as it began, but you hold on to it, cling to it like a buoy in a storm. You reel it out like a rope as the two of you talk - strictly business, cheques and balances, the strengths and weaknesses of your men and women… he flips, disinterested, through the folder you presented him until he hits the page you were waiting for.

He rushes past it at first, but you watch the recognition dawn on his face in steps. One eyebrow twitches. His hand freezes in the air, a page trapped between his thumb and forefinger. Then his eyes goes wide. He flicks the pages back frantically, slams his finger down in the middle of the soldier’s face.

“I -” his breath is coming out fluttery. “I… know him -”

Of course he knows him - the man is the commander of the Red Army unit that took him from the SKULLS. It’s the man who ordered his torture. Kaz’s face contorts in pained confusion.

“How do I… know him…?”

You did your research, tracked the man down in his office in Da Ghwandai Kar and put your arm around his neck while he signed off on a requisition forum. You recognized his face as well, because he was also in charge of the unit that -

(- when you found Quiet, when you saw her surrounded by a pile of broken bodies… when you saw the state she was in... her face, and the way they’d pulled down the pants of her prison garb -)

“He’s the fourth man,” you say. Kaz looks up at you slowly, his mask of perfect disinterest shattering for a second time. It’s not anger this time. It’s something deeper than that.

“You…”

“It didn’t feel right, leaving a loose end like that.”

Kaz breathes in hard through his nose, smacks the folder shut. He puts his hand up under his aviators and rubs his face, palm into the hollow of each eye, lower lip trembling as he tries to compose himself.

“Boss,” he whispers. “You really didn’t have to -”

You grab his wrist, yank it hard so that he’s pulled half over the desk, so that you can put your face close to his. His sunglasses tumble off and hit the desk between you. “Kaz, talk to me. Tell me what’s happened.”

His naked eyes search your face, but you have no idea what he’s looking for. You stare back, your gaze temperate, understanding; you’re saying to him: it’s okay, you’re safe, trust me. You try to communicate it with the way your grip on his wrist softens, in the way your thumb runs - gently - over his pulse. It’s impossible to talk to him, sometimes, because Kaz puts too much stake in the currency of words.

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

He relents, retreats a half inch, his expression crumbling into something more vulnerable, like sand being pulled out by the tide. You don’t let him go. You want to see his eyes as he carefully chooses his words.

“... do you remember,” he begins, “how Paz used to help out around the Sick Bay?”

“Yes.” You remember it so clearly that hearing her name evokes the balmy scent of summer off the Caribbean coast.

“Then you… remember how during the month before she hijacked ZEKE, the month leading up to Peace Day, she and I were working on a song together?”

You can hear her humming to herself as she sorts the the bandages. Her voice is beautiful, like bird-song. Her hair catches the light like it’s full of stars. Having her here is so important. It proves that this army can build just as well as it destroys. Your guns aren’t just for killing, they’re for saving lives as well. That’s what Paz represents, singing songs of peace and love beneath the forward guns as the sun rises over the South Atlantic.

“I couldn’t forget a name as silly as ‘Love Deterrence’,” you reply with a grin. Kaz doesn’t respond to the jibe. He tries to jerk his hand away, so you let him go.

“I was thinking about the day she accidentally let Nuke into the Sick Bay,” he says, slipping his sunglasses back on. “And that damned cat got behind the wall panels and wouldn’t come out. You remember that?”

Like it was yesterday. “- and you were fifteen minutes late for morning drills because you had to help me find the cat before he got into something important. The -” Boss was so cranky, your mouth wants to say. You stop - every part of you stops as you try to unwind the memory. The Boss can’t have been upset, because you’re the Boss and you were there. You were in the Sick Bay that morning, telling Kaz to check behind the defibrillator while Paz wound her tiny hands together and apologized over and over again -

Kaz’s mouth goes flat. “I really should have known,” he murmurs to himself, leaning over the desk to touch the tip of your horn. He drags a finger down its length, catching every rivulet with the seam in his glove. “Then again, we see what we want to see, don’t we?”

“Kaz?”

He settles back into his seat with a defeated noise. “What do you want me to do with this?” he asks brusquely, waving his hand over the face of the Red Army commander.

“I don’t know yet,” you answer. It’s the truth. What you wanted was for him to talk to yo - “He needed to be removed from the field. I read the HEC reports on this man and his units have been wreaking havoc on both their Mujahadeen prisoners and the local civilians.”

“So you brought him here instead?”

“He won’t be the first murderer we’ve turned around. And -”

Kaz lifts his eyebrows. “And?”

“It wasn’t just you, Kaz. This man was in charge of the unit that took Quiet.”

Kaz’s incredulous expression does not change, so you keep talking.

“When I found her, they’d treated her savagely. No remorse. The way that she killed them…” your eyes flash dark. Behind them, you can see her stabbbing their captain viciously, mechanically, fifteen times in a row. “- it said a lot about how they conducted themselves. It’s easy to excuse these kind of things when you’re telling yourself that it’s just ‘following orders’. So I removed the ‘orders’ from their chain of command.”

Kaz looks at you with silent deliberation. It’s nearly mathematical, the way his gaze rakes over you. You can’t read what his face means - the curl in his lip, the ripple in his brow, the way his eyes narrow minutely. Kaz puts too much stake in words, hides behind them so expertly that he’s learned how to lie with every movement that he makes. After a protracted silence, he lets out a long, rocky breath and he looks you straight in the eye.

And he says, very softly: “Who’s Quiet?”

The question hits as hard as a gunshot in the dark. You mind goes numb immediately and the moment stretches out in front of you like you’re staring up at a wide and empty sky that is impossible to touch. Your blood runs high in your face and a sound loud as storm wind rises in your ears. You can’t speak, can’t admonish Kaz for being so petty as to pretend she didn’t even exist. But -

- but he… he looks so concerned, like Ocelot looked when you told him you forgot that Paz was dead. You try to stand, groping clumsily at the edge of the desk. When you stumble back into your seat, Kaz shoots up out of his and limps over to you urgently. He sets his hand on your head, runs his fingers through your hair.

“Snake, what’s wrong?”

“Quiet was the sniper I fought in Aabe Shifap Ruins…”

“Those ruins are abandoned, Boss. You only passed through them once, when you went to collect Emmerich.”

You’re shaking your head. “Kaz, I brought her back here. You were furious with me, but she worked for us -”

“We only have one female sniper, and no one with a code name like that.”

“She -”

“- why would I be furious at you for recruiting a talented soldier?”

“She was… an XOF assassin…”

Kaz quirks an eyebrow. He lets his hand slide down your face so that he’s cupping your jaw. He tips your face up so that you can look at each other. “Snake, listen. You’ve been working long hours lately. I’ve been piling too many jobs on you, it’s obvious that the stress is taking it’s toll.”

“Kaz, I didn’t -” imagine her. Not like Paz. Quiet was real. She -

“As your X.O., I order you to take a week on rest leave.”

- she lived on the Medical Platform. She got Shibani’s necklace out of the chlorine plot. She was the one who saw the parasites first, tried to cut them out of Reckless Jackal’s throat. All evidence of her presence on the Base have been erased, but you know that she was real.

“After a week, we’ll get you a check-up with the Medic, huh? Make sure the shrapnel hasn’t pushed deeper. You know this thing can cause hallucinations, right?”

He sounds honest. He sounds earnest. He looks -

“Don’t worry Boss.” He looks like he pities you. “I won’t tell anyone about this.”

He’s taking advantage of you -

You swallow down a knot of bile and fear. You’re sweating so hard that Kaz’s glove is slick with it when he pulls away from your face. Kaz wouldn’t lie to you. You assure yourself of that. He has your best interests at heart, he would never lie to you, he would never -

“Oh the battlefield you can know who someone really is the first time you look at them.”

“The first time Kaz and I’s eyes met, we were both holding a grenade.”

“- never let him start talking if you expect to win an argument. Giving Kaz a verbal in is like letting him strike up a match to light a sewer.”

“Do you remember? We were between camps. September, ‘73, -- you and I were huddled out in an abandoned barn that smelt like shit, trying to get the radio to tune in and --”

“-- that day the damn cat got behind the wall panels and --”

“- s-sorry, I am so terribly embarrassed… I fed a fish to Nuke as I was on my way over but did not realize that he had -”

“Hey, c’mon Paz,” Commander Miller chimes in cheerfully. “Everyone makes mistakes!” He begins pulling open the medicine cupboards with far more energy and enthusiasm than someone who’s been awake since the crack of dawn should ever have. The Commander brings the scent of coffee and cheap cologne with him wherever he goes. When the Boss is around, he also reeks of cigar smoke. That scent is so strong on him this morning that Paz actually coughs when he brushes past her. Now that you think about it, his uniform is a little rumpled, looks slept in.

“It was just so foolish of me. I did not mean to take my eye off him.”

“I don’t mind Nuke,” you assure Paz as you dip down to check beneath the gurneys. “I wouldn’t mind him being in here except that sometimes he chews the wires. A frayed wired in Sick Bay could mean the difference between life and death.”

“Ah… yes,” Paz nods, huffs a bit. She spins on her heel - skirt whirling around her knees in the shape of an umbrella - and begins patting down the shelves, clicking her tongue and calling the cat’s name.

“I thought I heard something -” Miller says suddenly, slamming the cupboard shut. He shimmies up to the wall and sets his ear against it.

“Commander?”

“I think the damn cat got into the walls.” Miller smacks a palm against the wall and, sure enough, there’s a skittering sound behind the steel.

“How in the world did he…” your eyes flicker towards the ceiling, where the panels are made of detachable segments. Sure enough one of the panels is slightly ajar.

Miller laughs: “looks like Nuke wants to apply to the stealth unit.”

“He must have been taking lessons from Snake,” Paz agrees, giggling as well. Her mood has finally lightened, but yours has plummeted right into your feet. How the hell are you going to get the cat out of the walls if it went in through the ceiling? Maybe you can call in the Boss and have him go in after -

- you can… call in the… Boss… but -

- in the memory, you lift your hands so that you can look at them. These are your hands, before you lost one to the helicopter crash. They’re both flesh, calloused, a scar runs down the center of the left palm from when your father accidentally slipped with the blade while you were building a barn togeth -

No, no, that’s not right.

“I don’t have a father, or a mother, not that I remember. I --- -- and then joined the military at age ---- I -”

“Hey, --------!” Commander Miller snaps you out of your reverie by calling your name. He makes the motion of pulling a headset over his ears. “Call Moth and tell him that we’re sending someone down to the Mess Hall for some fresh fish, huh?”

You nod numbly, but your hands are too heavy to move. When you look at them again, they’re covered in blood up to the elbows.

“I’ll go,” Paz volunteers. You look at her, you see her stumbling towards the open hatch of the Sick Bay and her sutures are leaking through her school uniform. The whole jacket is stained with blood the same colour as what’s on your hands. You reach out towards her, try to move your mouth but nothing comes out.

It’s okay, Paz, it’s okay, we got it out, you don’t have to -

- you wake up with a start on a balcony overlooking the Medical Platform, static loud in your ears. You blink back to consciousness gradually, taking in the dark, starless sky. Your iDroid is playing a blank tape. You listen until the end, until it clicks over and begins rewinding. When you take it out of cassette deck, the only thing written on it - written in your own, neat handwriting - is the name ‘Paz’.

You crack the tape in half and throw it into the ocean.

Later you’re in the helicopter with Pequod staring at the photographs on the wall as the sound of the chopper blades sluice your thoughts in half.

All you need to do is ask Pequod...

Your fingers brush over the wrinkled edges of a photo - the one of you, Kaz and Morpho from ‘75. Your eyes crawl up the wall the examine the bottom of your Walker Gear’s design specs. There’s an empty space beneath it. If you look closely, there’s a faded patch at the bottom corner of the document, like tape had been pulled off it recently.

You can’t ask Ocelot, not after the slip up with Paz. But you could ask Pequod. She spent hours in here with him. All you need to do is ask Pequod about Quiet. You just need to say her name.

“Miller is using you -”

“Kaz would do that. Kaz -”

WOULDN’T LIE TO ME.

You bite your tongue and turn your eyes toward the window, toward the endless haze of clouds splitting around the chopper’s sleek body. You’re not ready to find out either way: if Kaz is lying, if he’s telling the truth… both possibilities are equally abominable. And if you found out, you’d have to -

What would you have to do?

All you need to do is -

(The Afghan air is so dry and sand-drenched that it whips into you like a physical thing, snaps your head around like a backhand…. hunkered down in your temporary shelter, you adjust your scope and peer out into the distance... all you can see are vague shadows, blinkered lights; the sand whisks over the desert beneath you… and you’re alone with the wind and the rocks -)

- you tear your room apart searching for your cassettes. They’re in a bin behind your prosthetic maintenance kit. You dump them on the floor and paw through them desperately. Hours of mission briefings, all your favourite songs, the private conversations you and Kaz had when he was cooped up in the Med Bay… you find four more with Paz’s name on them and you destroy every single one, tearing the tape out with your bare fingers, ripping them apart like you’re eviscerating an animal.

(- a flash of light -- behind you, you brace your palm against the rock and whirl around in time to -- nail a soldier right between the eyes with your silenced pistol. He hits the ground and goes rolling down the side of the cliff, his limp body smashing against each outcropping until he disappears beneath the storm line.)

You can hear her humming at the back of your mind. You know the tune by heart. You didn’t invent that song, she gave it to you. The memory of it always steadies your hands when you hold a rifle. You hum it to yourself every-time you aim the sight between a man’s eyes.

(You’re standing in the center of three soldiers laid flat: two unconscious, the third with his own knife jammed into his eye. Kaz’s voice is in your ear, asking you what happened. You turn to smile at Quiet, to give her a thumbs up, but she’s disappeared into the storm like a ghost.)

- your hand falls on the cassette you were looking for. It’s short, unmarked. Sun-damaged and slightly warped by heat at the corner. You shed your glove and clutch it tightly in your flesh fingers, feel the mottled plastic dig into the calloused skin of your fingers. You make sure that it’s real.

But if it’s real… if you find out Kaz lied to you… you’ll have to…

What will you have to do?

You need to know for certain.

Kaz doesn’t answer when you knock.

But he has to eventually. You’re more patient that he is. Your patience for him is infinite.

You wait him out for nearly half an hour, knocking at intervals regular enough to be obnoxious, intervals that you learned in the interrogation room. When the door finally slams open, Kaz is visibly angry. He’s in only slacks and his dress-shirt, half untucked. His hair is askew on one side, flat on the other and his aviators have obviously been hastily applied. He’d been trying to sleep.

When he sees you, he tries to temper his expression into something less hostile. Still, his voice is chilly. “Boss. What do you want?”

You push him inside, then push past him. You stride into the center of his room and hold up the tape with Quiet’s confession on it.

“Come inside and close the door, Kaz,” you say.

He looks irritated, but he listens to you. What other choice does he have? Now that you’re already in here it’s not like he can force you to leave. He collapses bonelessly on the edge of the bed and tilts his head up. “Didn’t I tell you to rest for a week?”

“Do you recognize this tape?”

He gives you a withering look. “Am I supposed to?”

“When Quiet left -”

- and Kaz groans. “Not this again.”

“Listen to me.” The fury in your voice shuts him up. “She left this tape behind when she disappeared. It’s a confession. Her voice is on this tape.”

Kaz squares his jaw and stares at you, mouth twitching with swallowed criticism. You pop his cassette player open and slam the tape inside. “We’re going to listen to it together.”

“Boss,” he sighs.

You hit the rewind button. The squeaking sound of the tape slithering against itself fills the room. Kaz’s harsh expression has melted into something softer, almost sympathetic.

“Boss... are you sure that’s a good idea?”

The cassette stops. The clacking sound reverberates through the plastic spine of the tape-deck. You set your finger over the big, red button beneath the loading gears.

“If you do this,” Kaz warns, “you can’t take it back. And you might not like what you find out.”

You ignore him and press ‘play’. The cassette crackles to life. It was recorded outdoors, you remember this - that beneath her voice was the steady wash of noise made by a sandstorm. You hear that in the static. First comes a faint click. Footsteps. Your ears perk up when you hear them. They don’t sound organic. What you were expecting was the noise boot-leather makes when dampened in soft dirt. You hear ten footsteps cross a linoleum floor. You hear heavy breathing. Your own? There’s a radio playing in the distance, but not loud enough for you to hear what it says.

Panic begins to rise in your lungs. No, no - it’s not possible. You know this is the right cassette. It was the only one without a label. The only one that looked like it had spent time out in the desert, exposed to the blistering sun. You sorted every other tape you owned methodically just to make certain that this was the right one.

You’re hyperventilating before the tape ends. When you were a child, you had asthma briefly. You father made you run laps on Sundays until you knew how to steady your breathing, swallow down your pain, pretend that nothing was wrong -

“Boss -” Kaz is on his feet, leaning on his crutch for support as he comes to you. He touches your forearm and you snatch it away like his hand is scalding hot.

“You… Kaz… you -”

Your lungs feel like they’re going to burst. He’s using you. He lied to you. It’s… it’s not possible that he lied to you, he -

“Kaz,” you gasp, grabbing him, squeezing his arm so hard it elicits a pained hiss. “What did you do?”

Behind your eyes you see: Quiet, surrounded by a pile of broken bodies. You press your eyes shut and enter the memory. This time it’s you holding a bloody knife, holding it up so that the blood drips onto your face. Your horn is so elongated that you can see the sharp end of it from the upper periphery of your vision. You felt satisfied that they were dead. Ten lives… they can’t hurt anyone else. You are the man who takes both eyes. You see yourself standing over the Russian who tortured Kaz, gripping the revolver so tight that your arm shakes. His brains are spilt on the steel around his head like a halo, like Paz’s golden hair when she laid back in her sickbed -

“I didn’t do anything!” Kaz spits. You hold him tighter. “You’re losing it, Boss. I told you to take a fucking break. You need to -” your prosthetic hand climbs his shoulder. The thumb slides around his neck. You aren’t even thinking, you’re doing it automatically. “-- listen to me! You need to -” You thumb presses down on his jugular and he croaks. You press down until he stops talking.

He raises his crutch and takes a swing at you. You catch it with you bionic hand, twist it out of his grasp so hard his arm twists with it, draws a grunt of pain out of him. Something bright flashes behind your eyes and the next thing you know, you’ve got Kaz pinned against the wall with his own cane pressing down on his sternum. His breathing is ragged, gets shallow as you slowly roll the shaft of the cane higher.

“If that’s true,” he gasps. “Then use me,”

“What?”

“You said it. ‘You’re a tool Kaz,” his jaw lifts as the cane settles in the dip of his suprasternal notch. “If that’s… how you feel… then… do it. Use me.”

“I didn’t,” - you didn’t say anything, did you? “That’s not what I -” Those are Ocelot’s words, not yours.

Why don’t you just -

- a spike of pain blacks out out your vision, shakes down your arms, forces your to push harder on the cane. You hear Kaz gag and when your vision clears he’s fumbling for his pistol, fingers groping at the leather straps that cross over the holster. He gets it before you can grab his wrist, gets the safety off and everything. You turn his arm and the gun goes off as he drops it, filling the room with a thunderous explosion. You go deaf and -

- you’re hit with a wave of heat and debris. A thousand shards of metal and bone cut through your skin - so many points of sensation that you don’t actually feel anything at all. The last thing you see before it goes black is Commander Miller reaching for his arm-

- your fingers are in Kaz’s mouth, prying it open, forcing him to suck. You’re both on the floor: him pinned between your thighs and you with a hand around his neck. He bites down, hard enough to draw blood and you - on instinct, it’s instinct not desire, not lust, not malice, not anything - draw back your metal fingers and press down on the side of his neck so that the stun on your arm activates. He gags, gargles, his whole body convulses and arches into yours, the electric shock pulsing through him in waves. He goes flat again with a thump, his chin wet with your blood and his saliva. His breathing is erratic, pupils dilated and twitching, sclera bloodshot. He raises his arm and - weakly, defiantly - scratches at your eye. Can’t quite reach the good one and tears off your eyepatch instead. He’s still fighting you, so you shock him again. Not long enough to knock him out, but long enough that his limbs have begun to shudder and his pants are filling with warm liquid. You slide your flesh hand under his knee and pry his legs apart.

“Don’t…. You… fu… fucking…. dare -” Kaz rasps.

You -

- stand up and -

And you watch what happens with an odd, quivering sort of detachment.

The man looming over Kaz isn’t you, not quite. The wedge of metal in your head has never been so large, you’ve never been so covered in blood, you would never handle Kaz so roughly. The man who isn’t you whips Kaz’s belt off in a single motion, tears at his pants, leaves bloody marks along the outside of his thighs and deep, plum-coloured bruises on this inside. You watch Kaz struggle, watch him get his cheek slammed against the steel floor.

This is the man who can give Kaz what he wants. Who can -

- then use me!

The man who isn’t you drags his thumb over the dark circles beneath Kaz’s eyes, hums in pleasure at the sight of them. All this sleeplessness and pain and sorrow, it makes Kaz beautiful. A broken vase glued back together wrong, his cracked edges cut your hands every-time you try to touch him. The man who isn’t you can hold him in both palms without drawing blood. The blood on his hands isn’t yours: it belongs to every man and woman you’ve ever killed, that you’ve ever allowed to die. This blood is the price paid to mete out a warlord’s justice in a world where there is no truth. His hands leave bloody prints all over Kaz’s body: along his ribcage, at the base of his spine, around the circumference of his neck. Kaz’s throat is too damaged to make noise. He shoves his own hand in his mouth and bites down until he breaks the skin. You can’t watch, you can’t watch this. You shut your eyes and -

(“Oh the battlefield you can know who someone really is the first time you look at them.”

Big Boss’ voice is warm for once. Even when he explains how Kaz lied to him, how he tried to kill him, he sounds painfully fond.

“The first time Kaz and I’s eyes met, we were both holding a grenade.”

He laughs to himself, some inside joke you’ll never truly understand.

“You know what it feels like to hold a grenade, all that potential taut beneath the shell, ready to blow. A flick of your thumb is the only difference between an inert grenade, and an explosive force that can kill a man.”

You can hear him take a drag off his cigar. Can hear the sound his lips make when he puckers them open and lets the smoke go.

“That’s who Kaz is. You have to hold the pin in, or he’ll destroy himself. And he’ll try to take you with him.”)

- when you open them, one of your hands is flat on the floor beside Kaz’s head, the other is gripping his thigh. You drop his leg, slide out of him, cock still hard and throbbing. Kaz’s hand flops onto the floor, beside yours. He stares at the ceiling blankly as you try to… as you try to - dark burns branching through his capillary veins, the whole side of his face bruised, his neck black with wounds. What did you do?

All you can say is: “… were you going to shoot me?”

A sound bubbles up from his burnt throat. Laughter? His hand remains limp, but his fingers twitch almost imperceptibly, as if trying to form a fist. “No,” he whispers. “I just... wanted to see… what you… would do…”

You have to keep the pin in… or he’ll try to take you with him…

“Kaz…”

“Get the fuck off of me.”

You take the week off, like Kaz suggested.

When you meet with Ocelot after your medical assessment, he asks: “Speak with Miller recently?”

You don’t answer him. Can’t answer him. You avoid Kaz for another week after that. You go out on a recon mission on the other side of the Zaire border, one that has you dodging military columns and tracking missing rebel leaders through the dense jungle. It’s work so tiring and dangerous that it keeps you distracted. You spend ten days thinking about nothing at all except for how to keep you and your dog alive in the deep, dark heart of a blood-soaked warzone. You feel at home. The first thing you're presented with when you get back to Mother Base is a summons from ‘Commander Miller’.

When you step into his office, Kaz greets you with a weary but sincere smile. It stops you in your tracks, makes your heart worm its way into your throat and stay there. Your eyes immediately scan him for evidence of the wounds you inflicted, but the only thing you can see is his face. No bruises, his lip is healed. He looks fine, like nothing happened at all.

“Good work in Zaire,” he says, sliding a document over the desk as an invitation for you to sit. “We got paid double because you managed to keep out from under the eyes of Mobutu’s government.”

“Mmm.” You try to read the paper, but your eyes blur. The words run together.

“Might not be wise to take another job that side of the border, though,” Kaz muses. “The politics are too complicated. Don’t wanna step on any toes, or make it look like we’re taking sides.”

He’s looking at you over the rims of his aviators, searching for your opinion. All you can think about is when you grabbed his face and smashed it into the floor so hard it split open the skin above his eye. You take too long to answer and he frowns at you, worried.

“Boss? What’s wrong?”

“Kaz… about what happened. I -” your tongue rolls around the ‘o’ in sorry, but it sits heavy in the back of your throat because the look he’s giving you isn’t what you expected. His eyes flicker for a moment, but he catches himself. He stares at you steadily: calm, fond, a very small smile relaxing the lines of his face.

“It’s fine, Boss,” he says. “You’re right, I acted rashly with those two Russian prisoners, so I let the commander go. It’s just like what happened with the Quarantine. I’ll be more careful in the future. Thank you for being patient with me.”

“Kaz. That’s not what I’m talking about.”

He glances at you, eyebrows arched.

“Our fight, Kaz.”

“What fight?” Kaz wonders. “We haven’t fought in months, Boss. Not since Quiet left, at least.”

At the sound of her name, down you go. Down into a deep, dark hole, and suddenly all you can hear are the tinny echoes of your own thoughts.

“Wh-what -?”

“The last fight we had was about Quiet, don’t you remember? Two days after we exiled Huey. But I was wrong about her as well. I don’t know why you’re apologizing for it.”

“No, Kaz. We -”

“Boss, are you okay?”

That’s who Kaz is --- you know what it feels like to hold a grenade -

“I’m -” you lick your lips. They’re chapped ragged. “I’m fine.”

He looks unconvinced. “Y’know, Boss,” he chides, “you’re a terrible fucking liar.”

And you remember -

( - watching from a distance… it’s nine AM in the Sick Bay and the sun is streaming in through the port-hole window. You’re watching Kaz: slung casually over a rolling stool, drumming his fingers impatiently on the gurney’s metal support bars as he waits for you to leave.

No, you’re in this memory: you’re all patched up from a gunfight you should have been too smart to get into in the first place. You don’t like wasting resources, so you waved off the medic when he tried to give you morphine. Kaz waves the medic away too, asks him to go fetch something from the requisition officer. With that out of the way, he leans over you and leers, master plan revealed.

“Well,” he says, chuckling, “now that we’re alone -” and his hands slide up the Boss’ your thighs, your stomach, settle on your chest. He grins, tipping his head forward so that he can stare at you over the rims of his aviators. “If you’re so intent on refusing traditional medical care, I know a natural method of releasing endorphins.” He begins to crawl his fingers down, tugs your the Boss’ undershirt free from the waistband. When his thumb circles the belt button, the Boss you grab his wrist and twist.

“Kaz…”

Kaz grits through it, keeps smiling. “Hey - don’t make up your mind so quickly. This one’s a freebie.”

“How is it that you’re so cautious on paper, but like this you can never control yourself?”

“What? Oh, you mean… heh, don’t worry about that - I sent him on an errand that’ll take ‘im alllllllll the way to the other side of the base.”

“... you planned this?”

“C’mon, Boss, like you said: I’m cautious. And I can’t control mysel - augh!”

Kaz Miller gets his arm folded back for that. “Uh huh. I’ve actually been remarkably impressed with your self control recently. What do you want?”

The Commander’s bold smile gets a little frantic. “Boss,” he whispers. “You’ve been working yourself half to death since November and we both know why.”

“You’re… worried?” and you he says it like he can't conceive of it, like he doesn't believe...

“Yeah. Of course I am. The MSF is at a fragile stage of growth and you’re the keystone keeping the whole thing from crumbling down. If you break, the whole thing breaks.”

The Boss eases up his grip on Miller’s arm. “Hmph, always so business minded…”

“Snake, it’s not just that.”

The Boss looks away from him, towards the IC unit. You press against the wall, you’re terrified of his penetrating gaze falling over you. You can’t explain this away. You heard everything.

“Look,” Miller sighs. “You don’t want to talk about it, I get that but… let me do this for you. Let me take care of you.”

Big Boss snorts. “... hn. If you won’t be dissuaded, use your mouth. At least that way you won’t leave a mess.”

Miller, he -

- yanks his arm away with a haughty snort. “Shit, Snake, sometimes I just don’t believe you. Do you always have to act like this!?”

“Like what?”

“Like… this whole thing is just for my benefit?”

They stare at each other for a long moment and you remember feeling -

- heart pounding, sweat pooling in the palms of your hand. You can just walk away, you should just walk away, should have walked away the moment you saw the Commander dip forward in his seat, the moment you heard the way he lowered his voice. If you leave now they’ll hear because it’s so quiet between them, pin drop silent between them, the sun streaming in through the port-hole, both of them bathed in glittering-dust as The Boss slowly reaches out to pinch the bridge of the Commander’s sunglasses between thumb and forefinger, reaches out to pluck them right off Miller’s face.

If you’d just left you wouldn’t have had to see the look in Miller’s eyes, the way they light up when the Boss glides a finger over his lips. It’s not lust, that would be simple. And if it was just the Boss that’d be simple. Big Boss is inscrutable, but he’s… deep, like a black hole - full of infinite possibilities, infinite potential. From him, this kind of thing isn’t unexpected. It’s Commander Miller that you can’t stop looking at; seeing him so undone, unraveled, his trademark cool cracked down the center by aching adoration… it… it colours every interaction you have with him, until the very end, like you saw right to the center of him, and he doesn't even know. And he -

- closes his eyes and presses a kiss to the center of Big Boss’ palm before letting it go.

“I’m fine, Kaz,” you take a step back the Boss says.

Kaz laughs, quietly, you turn on your heel, inch through the door and replies: “you’re a terrible fucking liar.”

And you - scramble to retrace your steps silently, pose yourself in the hall so that you meet Commander Miller as he’s coming out the door. He grins at you and jerks a thumb back towards the sick bay, warns you that the Boss is being a “big baby” in there. You smile and nod. You say nothing. You pretend that you didn’t see a thing.)

“Kaz... I’m more worried about you.” You stand up and round the desk. Kaz spins his chair around to greet you, to keep an eye on you. You track the lines of his body as you go, observe how his breathing stutters for an unguarded half-second when he realizes you’re coming in close. He regains composure quickly, inclining his seat back with practiced nonchalance.

“Me?”

“Being out there on the battlefield? Getting shot at, sleeping in the mud… that’s the kind of thing I’m made for. But I can see how dark your eyes are even beneath your sunglasses. You’re still skipping sleep, skipping meals.” You kneel in front of him and take his hand in yours. He flinches at your touch. “Let me take care of you,” you murmur as you press a gentle, dry-mouthed kiss to the center of his palm.

He draws in a sharp breath, trembles, waits it out. You look up at him and he lets the breath go so that he can force a smile. He tugs his hand away and sets it on the crown of your head, hesitates just for a moment before stroking his fingers through your hair.

“I’m fine, Boss,” he says.

You lean your forehead against his knee, and reply: “I believe you.”

And if I can survive
I can keep you alive
I’m not above going through it again
I’m not above being cool for a while
If you’re cruel to me,
I understand

[OBTAINED TAPE - AN INNOCENT MAN]

[OBTAINED TAPE - GLORIA]
[OBTAINED TAPE - AFRICA]
[OBTAINED TAPE - CRUEL SUMMER]