Archive of Our Own

When Snake returns from the graveyard, Otacon is stunned to see him, and cautiously asks why he’s returned. Snake tells him the truth, and Otacon is thrilled; he doesn’t say it, but Snake gets the sense that he was lamenting never getting the chance to properly say goodbye. They have a long talk wherein Otacon promises to stay by Snake’s side, to witness him in his final moments, and they agree to tell Sunny the truth as well to at least cushion the blow for when Snake inevitably passes. There is time, now. Not much, but time nonetheless.

For a handful of months, they travel the globe, visiting places they’ve been and places Snake has always sort of wanted to go. They see old friends. Otacon is brave, and Snake feels like he will surely move on well.

As the months wear on, however, as Snake’s age continues to advance, he begins to lose his ability to do a lot of things. Walking gets harder to do for rapidly decreasing periods of time. He can’t chew things as well, despite being lucky enough to retain all his teeth. He begins to lose muscle mass, more than he already had; the possibility of a fall that results in a severe break becomes more likely. Snake is dying, and the further it progresses, the more visibly it presents itself... the more Otacon’s resolve begins to falter. He gradually loses his brave face, bit by bit, becoming increasingly stricken with grief.

Snake can’t really blame him. It’s a little disheartening, sure, to know that he will be leaving this world while Otacon is actively falling apart about it, but it’s not like that’s unique to them. People die all the time. People constantly leave behind friends and family and lovers, sometimes in seconds and sometimes over months, like this. Is the advanced aging, woven into Snake’s genes, really so different from a sudden and aggressive cancer? At least they have warning; at least they can prepare. Otacon is traumatized from Naomi’s sudden and unforeseen death, but this isn’t that.

He doesn’t say this to Otacon. He doesn’t know what to say. He’s never been good at comfort, and “everyone dies eventually” is hardly the sort of thing that will ground someone who is struggling not to cry nearly every time Snake walks into the room. Truth be told, though, this is only the newest entry in a long line of things Snake’s never said to Otacon.

The most pressing is one he’s reluctant to even say to himself.

If you asked him, he’d tell you he didn’t know when it began. It wasn’t an “at first sight” sort of thing, but after that? Who’s to say. If he had to guess, Snake might place the catalyst somewhere in the roots of Philanthropy, in the days when he and Otacon were an unstoppable team. In the days before this looming specter of death started hanging over their heads. Of course, he didn’t realize it at the time, and wouldn’t until he came directly face-to-face with his own mortality... and with leaving Otacon behind.

Snake always thought he’d die on the battlefield, and there was almost something romantic about that. Would that have been easier? Better, perhaps, than watching Otacon’s mental health decline in a slope directly congruent to his own physical state? There are no battlefields anymore. The only place to die now is at home.

As Snake grows more feeble, Otacon makes the executive decision that the Nomad is no longer a suitable place for him to spend his retirement. Unfortunately, neither is Alaska; it’s far too cold, not only for Snake but Sunny as well. In the end, he opts for an apartment in Manhattan, and it’s so blatantly obvious that he is looking for ways to make this as painless as possible that Snake decides not to argue.

“As long as it’s on the ground floor,” he says. “I can’t do stairs.”

Otacon just offers him a strained smile.

The apartment is spacious enough, but Snake finds it harder and harder to get around, so he spends a lot of time in bed anyway. Sunny thrives with access to a local grocery store (and a cookbook, gifted to her by Meryl and Johnny for a recent birthday), and the variety of food is at least an upgrade from the constant slew of eggs. She doesn’t even seem too torn up about having to rehome the chickens, but Otacon assures her that they’re going to a real farm, where they’ll be happy.

Watching them interact, Snake thinks they’ll be okay. Otacon seems to be growing more and more into his caretaker role, and Sunny is flourishing in an actual home environment. They’ll survive this. Then Otacon meets his eyes, and the forlorn grief behind his glasses is so visceral that Snake has to look away.

Why is this so hard?

It’s not even the fear of dying—he doesn’t really have that. He walked into potential death every day for years on end as a soldier. It’s just the guilt, the knowledge that he is leaving behind someone who will not handle it well. Someone he cares for deeply. Someone he wishes he had more time with, or had maybe ever told the truth about his feelings. It’s far too late now; it’d only hurt Otacon more.

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Otacon is still grieving Naomi anyway, and isn’t that proof enough that Snake never had a chance? No matter how he feels, that was never going to work. Maybe it’s better to take it to his grave.

He has a room to himself in the apartment, his own little retirement home. The bed is comfortable enough, and there’s a TV, which he never used to care for but finds himself increasingly reliant on as he is bedridden more and more. He mostly watches the news, which Otacon heartily disapproves of; he will usually try to change the channel when he comes in the room. Something about how it’s only going to bring Snake down.

Snake is watching the news when Otacon bursts into his room suddenly, without warning. Part of him thinks for a fraction of a second that Otacon is here to change the channel again. Except he looks frantic, his eyes wide and grip so tight on the doorknob that it creaks. Something must have happened.

“Sunny found something,” Otacon says, voice wavering.

Unsure of what to make of that, heart still beating a little hard from the sudden entrance, Snake sits up a little. “What did she find?” he asks, hoarse and quiet.

Releasing the doorknob, Otacon steps closer, fidgeting restlessly with his hands. “Gene therapy,” he replies.

Oh no.

“It's experimental,” he explains, “a-and they’ve only tested it on animals. They’re hoping to... use nanomachine technology to combat genetic disorders, potentially ensure healthy children without resorting to eugenics, and...”

Snake waits, and Otacon casts his gaze away.

“Anti-aging,” he mutters. “They say they can reverse the effects of aging.”

Snake sighs, long and suffering, and Otacon holds his hands up. “Hear me out, Snake! Your accelerated aging is a genetic issue, but they also have experience reversing the effects of normal aging... They have the best chance of—”

“Otacon—”

“David,” Otacon insists, and Snake’s mouth snaps shut. They haven’t called each other by their real names since shortly after Shadow Moses, when Snake revealed what his actually was. They’ve never needed to, otherwise; their codenames encompass as much of who they are as anything else.

(A memory, fuzzy around the edges: lonely after Meryl left, Snake leapt to his feet when there was a knock at his door. It wasn’t Meryl. It was Otacon, looking underdressed for the cold, asking if he could come in.)

“Please,” Otacon says, his voice strained. “Please, Dave, can we just try?”

Easing himself back down onto the pillows, Snake sighs again, softer this time—more resigned. Otacon wanders over, sitting down on the edge of the bed, and for a moment they are quiet.

For about a month or so, Snake has been convinced this was where he’d die, in this very bed. He’s had dreams about it, those kinds where you can’t do anything but watch; Otacon would enter the room as silently as possible, sitting down in that very spot he’s in now. Sometimes he would cry. Because he couldn’t move (to reach for Otacon), or speak (to reassure him), Snake assumed he was already dead. Now, watching Otacon’s posture perfectly mirror the look he had in those dreams, Snake wonders if they were dreams at all.

“I just... don’t think there’s a point,” Snake confesses.

“There is a point,” Otacon insists, not looking over. “I...” He trails off, then tries again, with more vigor: “Sunny needs you.”

Snake furrows his brow. “No she doesn’t,” he objects. “She has you. You’ve been more family to her than I ever have.”

“She loves you!” Otacon cries, finally turning to look at Snake. His eyes are wet. “When you came back, after... after I thought you wouldn’t, and you weren’t better... She’s been trying to figure out how to fix it.”

“Why did she ever think I’d get better?” Snake asks.

“She doesn’t want you to die,” Otacon presses on, and Snake doesn’t think that’s an answer. “She’s been searching government and medical databases all over the globe trying to find something to help you.” He turns his whole body, lifting one leg up onto the bed, and puts a hand on Snake’s closer arm. “She found something. Please...”

“What if it doesn’t even work? What then?”

Something about that seems to break the proverbial dam, because now Otacon is crying. He sinks down in Snake’s direction, hanging his head, one hand grasping the covers over Snake’s body. They haven’t gotten very close in a while; Snake can’t imagine he smells good, or that Otacon wants to worry about being delicate with someone so frail.

“Please,” Otacon repeats in a wavering whisper, twisting the blanket in his fingers. “S-Sunny... loves you so much. She doesn’t know what she'd do without you.” He takes a shuddering breath. “She needs you.”

Slowly, the gears turn, pieces of some scattered puzzle slotting into place: this isn’t about Sunny. It was never about Sunny.

In another life, maybe Snake would reach up and comb his fingers through Otacon’s dark hair. He’d trail his hand down Otacon’s jaw and lift his face by the chin so they were eye-to-eye, and tell him the truth. It doesn’t need to be about Sunny. It can be about them.

Instead, he simply swallows down his feelings, his heart a lead weight in his chest.

“...Alright,” Snake manages after a moment of watching Otacon break down in front of him. “Alright, Otacon. We can try it.”

“Really?” Otacon asks, looking up at Snake again. “Oh, thank you, Snake! I-I’ll take care of everything, don’t worry!” His eyes are red and his face is tear-tracked and he’s even got a bit of a runny nose, but he looks genuinely relieved, so maybe it’s alright. He also looks like he might want to hug Snake, but he doesn’t.

That’s probably for the best.

The next few days are spent in preparation. Otacon has taken it upon himself to contact the gene therapists, re-acquire the Nomad for ease of travel, procure a wheelchair for Snake (ouch), and other miscellaneous tasks that will make the experience go as smoothly as possible. Sunny helps where she can, equally excited because she was able to find a solution to the problem her guardians were having.

Snake hears Otacon on a video call with the organization out in the living room fairly soon after they’ve started getting everything underway. He does not skimp on the details, though Snake does hear him use the name David again, most likely to avoid revealing Snake’s rather infamous identity. His hearing is no longer very good, but he can make out bits and pieces: Genetically-modified to age rapidly, and government experiment, and only forty-two.

In turn, the woman on the other end of the call (her accent is distinctly Japanese) asks some clarifying questions, sounding intrigued by the situation. She seems to be aware of some of the genetic experimentation that’s gone on in the West, and sounds enthusiastic about being able to put her work to real use. At the same time, she makes sure Otacon knows it may not work, and that it is not officially government-sanctioned. There have been no human trials and she cannot offer any compensation if things go poorly.

“What have we got to lose, right?” Snake hears Otacon say.

The Nomad is being kept in a private hangar owned by Roy Campbell. The least he could do, he had said, after everything. Otacon calls him up, and after explaining the situation, Campbell agrees to have the Nomad sent out to a hangar in New York. He does ask why Otacon isn’t just opting for a regular plane trip, to which Otacon replies that he wants to make absolutely sure that Snake is comfortable on the ride. What he doesn’t say, but what Snake knows him too well to not suspect, is that he is terrified of something going wrong while the situation is out of their control. On the Nomad, they can move freely, and he knows where the medical supplies are. On a commercial plane, they would be at the mercy of the other passengers and the flight crew.

A wheelchair is delivered to their unit the next day, folded up inside a box. Otacon wheels it proudly into the room, then pouts when Snake isn’t impressed. He only perks up again when Snake agrees to “try it out”, since he needs to go take a bath anyway. Otacon lingers very close as Snake tries to get from his bed to the chair, but he does not reach for Snake without being asked. That’s been a mild point of contention between them as Snake has gotten physically weaker.

He knows he needs the support. He knows how fragile his body is. All the same, can he not have a little dignity before he dies? Independence is one of the only things he has left.

To that end, Otacon very gently offers to help with the bath, to which Snake declines, as he always does. Otacon blessedly does not press the issue. He wheels Snake out to the bathroom, which is too small for the chair, but Snake insists he can make it the rest of the way. Glancing at Otacon as he laboriously brings himself to his feet, he sees that sort of tell me I did good look in his eyes.

“Chair’s comfortable, at least,” Snake acquiesces, and Otacon brightens up considerably.

Bathing is a long and slow process, which is part of why Snake has cut down on how often he does it. Letting Otacon help would surely speed things up, but the idea of letting him see the full map of Snake’s feeble body is terrifying. The sheer amount of pity it would inspire might slay him on the spot. He hates being pitied as it is, but seeing it from Otacon is worse than anything else.

Around when the aging began to become apparent, Snake got the distinct sense that Otacon was pitying him. A few “early” gray hairs quickly morphed into an entire head of gray, and the wrinkles and aches started, and Snake became more and more convinced that Otacon was looking at him like one might look at a horse with a broken leg. Going to different doctors, trying to find an answer, even the whole stupid final mission—was it all, in some way, to get Otacon to look at him like he used to? Like Snake was an amazing hero, a god of the battlefield? He’d never appreciated being put on a pedestal, but that was infinitely preferable to this. To pity.

If he is honest about it, though, Snake knows that Otacon’s “pity” manifests in wildly different ways from that of Campbell or Naomi. It’s just that it also hits the hardest, imagined or not.

A little while after Snake has sunk down into the water and started to wash, there’s a gentle knock on the door. “Snake? I brought you some clothes,” comes Otacon’s voice.

Shit. He forgot to get any. Grabbing the edge of the shower curtain, Snake pulls it over until he is completely hidden, then says, “You can come in.”

The door creaks open, and Otacon steps inside, bare feet not especially audible on the tile. “We’re almost ready to go,” he says cheerfully. “Maybe tomorrow, or the day after. The trip will be a little long, but Campbell is sending some really good pilots along with us. We’re gonna bring some proper cooking ingredients along too, since we won’t be in the air for longer than it would take for any of them to go bad...”

As he prattles on about their plans, Snake wonders what exactly will happen once they’ve arrived in Japan. How long will the procedure take? What all will it entail? When will they know if it worked or not? He’s not sure if Otacon knows the answer to any of those things. Or maybe he does, and hasn’t seen a reason to explain. Snake wants to know, but at the same time, he doesn’t.

“How long will we be there?” he settles on asking.

“Dr. Yamano didn’t really have an estimate,” Otacon replies, sounding apologetic. “You’ll have to be examined first, to determine the full extent of your condition and the state of your existing nanomachines.”

Snake grunts, annoyed with the idea. “Like that exam Naomi did?”

Otacon goes quiet.

Mentally, Snake kicks himself for being so insensitive. Outside of his head, he goes still, afraid that if he is moving around in the water it will seem as though he doesn’t realize the weight of what he’s just said. He resents Naomi, in some ways, but that doesn’t mean Otacon needs to bear the brunt of it. She was a hero in the end anyway, wasn’t she?

He almost thinks Otacon will simply leave, but he doesn’t. In fact, Snake hears him sit down on the lid of the toilet.

“You hate her, don’t you?” Otacon asks.

Was the vitriol in the way he said her name really so evident? Sighing, Snake continues cleaning himself up as best he can. It’s not Naomi’s fault that he’s old, and FOXDIE is no longer a significant threat. She ended the Patriots’ reign. She’s more a hero now than he’s ever been.

(He thinks again of a scant few days ago: Sunny loves you so much. Did “Sunny” not love Naomi even more?)

“I don’t hate her,” Snake clarifies. As he gently scrubs one arm, he watches the way his wrinkled skin moves under his hand, covered in liver spots and faded scars. He looks terrible, he thinks, especially if he’s to compare himself to someone young and pretty like Naomi. Why would Otacon not go for her, even if there was maybe something between them?

He’s not even sure if there was, or is—maybe he’s misinterpreted Otacon’s grief.

“You don’t like her, though,” Otacon says softly.

“She tried to kill me,” Snake replies.

He thinks maybe Otacon will say something like she made up for it, didn’t she?, but he doesn’t. Snake continues his task, so aware of how close Otacon is, how if he were more nosy he could easily pull the curtain back and see... Would he cry, like Naomi did?

“Do you hate me?” Otacon asks in a murmur.

“What?” Did he hear that right? “Why on Earth would I hate you?”

“She used me,” Otacon sighs. “I... I didn’t see through it, because I was so...” He pauses. “...She could have been the most obvious double agent in the world, and I think I still would have fallen for it.”

“She still seemed to like you,” Snake counters gruffly, thinking of the dramatic way she died, and the video that played when they destroyed the System. “I’m... sorry you were hurt, Otacon. I don’t hate you for it.”

“You don’t need to comfort me,” Otacon says with a dry laugh. “I don’t think I deserve it.”

Snake isn’t sure what to say to that.

The tub is distinctly uncomfortable, the water already lukewarm, but this is what he gets for insisting on doing everything himself. Most everything has at least been scrubbed with some amount of soap, but Snake tends to leave his hair for last, mostly because it’s difficult to raise his arms up for that long. He’s dreading it; he always does.

“...Otacon?”

“Mm?”

Snake has to fight to get the words out: “I... might... need some help, here.”

“Really?” Otacon sounds like he’s just been asked to do something fun, or like Snake just suggested he wants to learn how to code.

“It’s just my hair,” Snake grumbles, very obviously uncomfortable. “It’s... hard, to wash it... and the water’s gonna be cold soon.” He hears Otacon shift on top of the toilet, and immediately panic mounts in his chest; “Not from there, alright? You should... get on the floor, maybe... I really don’t—”

“You’re afraid I’ll look at you,” Otacon says gently. “It’s okay, I won’t. I’ll take my glasses off, even.”

Snake hears him do just that, folding them up and setting them on the counter by the sink. Then he gets up, clothes shuffling and shifting as he kneels down by the tub instead. Every sound is so amplified in the bathroom. Otacon probably closed the door when he came in, too.

Somehow, the idea of having Otacon pull back the curtain feels perilous, so Snake does it himself. Otacon is busy rolling up his sleeves, and smiles pleasantly at Snake when their eyes meet. Can he see the fear on Snake’s face? The guilt? The shame?

The shelf with the All-In-One Shampoo and Conditioner on it is against the wall. Otacon realizes this and begins to lift himself up to grab it, then sinks back down. “I won't look,” he promises, and Snake gives him a hesitant nod.

True to his word, Otacon does not look. Snake wonders if he fully grasps why he’s not supposed to. It isn’t the nudity; it’s the age. The deterioration of a form Snake knew Otacon once admired, in some fashion. The way Naomi cried when she saw. The way everyone has reacted to him in general. Even Otacon, watching it happen over time, was aghast and afraid. It feels like a shameful thing, a burden he must bear in silence.

Back in a kneeling position, Otacon squeezes out a small amount of the All-In-One concoction into his hand, then sets the bottle aside and gets to work. His touch is gentle, a little cautious; he is careful to not pull or snag, though Snake knows his hair is so brittle now that there won’t be much to snag.

It feels nice. It also makes Snake feel emotional in a way he wasn’t expecting.

How long has it been since anyone has touched him in a way that felt genuine and affectionate? As he’s aged, it has seemingly erected a solid barrier around him, warding off anyone who would try. He's never been a touchy-feely sort, so he never really invited it, but that makes its absence all the more stark. People don’t avoid touching him now because they fear he’ll bite their heads off; they avoid it because he’s old and frail and gross.

That’s how it feels, isn’t it? To be stuck in this body? He feels like everyone is repulsed by his sorry state. If not that, then they are endeared to him the way someone might be to a small child or a puppy. He is no longer Solid Snake, the war hero. He is instead Old Snake, the genetic dead end.

Otacon slicks his hair back in gentle strokes, and Snake wonders how much of this act is done out of pity. Why does Otacon want to help him do things like this, anyway?

“You seemed really gung-ho about this,” Snake mutters.

“I just want to help you,” Otacon replies easily. “...I like being useful. You should know that by now.”

Huffing a short, hollow laugh, Snake says, “You’ve been more help than anyone ever has been, Otacon. You should know that.” His mirth fades quickly, never really there at all. “You don’t need to demean yourself by being my nanny.”

Otacon’s hands go still, and Snake wonders if he’s confused. Snake asked him to do this, after all; why complain about it?

“It’s not, though,” Otacon says gently. “Snake... Taking care of you is not demeaning.” His hands move again, gentle still, before he pulls away to grab a cup left on the sill of the tub. His fingers are sudsy, leaving bubbles and foam on the cup before he dunks it into the bathwater. It almost hides how his hands are shaking. “Do you feel demeaned?”

“I feel like a burden, is what I feel like,” Snake admits plainly.

“Well, you’re not,” Otacon insists, guiding Snake to tip his head back so he can rinse his hair. It all strikes as being the process of bathing a child. “I volunteered to be here with you. I want to be here with you.”

“Why, though?”

“Because I—” Otacon sighs through his nose, slowly emptying the cup over Snake’s hair, making sure to get as much of the soap as he can before he dips the cup back into the water. “I care about you, Snake.”

When Snake does not immediately reply, Otacon goes on, softer: “I don’t want to fix this because you’re a burden. I want to fix it because it’s not fair, Snake. You’re only forty-two. You shouldn’t have to die now just because the government was afraid of your father.”

The water runs over Snake’s hair again, Otacon’s other hand gently supporting his skull so it doesn’t hurt his neck as much to hold his head at this angle. Is this an act of pity? Or is it an act of care?

“I don’t want to lose you,” Otacon murmurs. “I want you to be your real age. I want you to live a full life, with me. A-and Sunny. I... I want to grow old with you, I want you to be there when I’m like this. When I need help washing my hair.”

It’s the strangest thing; Snake’s eyes feel hot. “I won’t be able to help you,” he murmurs back. “I won’t be able to wash my hair either. I’m eight years older than you.”

“But you’ll be with me,” Otacon insists, his voice thick and watery. “We can commiserate, you know? We’ll both get it. It won’t be shameful, there won’t be this, this imbalance between us, we’ll just be two old men living out our final days...”

He rinses Snake’s hair again, hands trembling, then sets the cup down too hard. Snake watches his hand, the way it’s gripping the cup, the tension in his arm leading up to it. His skin is smooth and fair and young, and Snake wonders, for perhaps the first time, what it will look like when it’s old.

...He wants to live to see it.

“Well, Sunny will probably have the foresight to put us in a home,” Snake says. Before Otacon can react, he goes on, “But that’s okay. We’ll just have to make it everyone else’s problem. Right, Otacon?”

“Snake...”

“We’ll steal the staff’s walkies,” Snake continues, “and relive our glory days. Regale the other inmates with a re-telling of the Big Shell Incident.”

Otacon sniffles. “Who would play Raiden?”

“We’ll find some new guy and tell him his codename, and his role,” Snake enthuses. “Rescue the president, of course.”

“Of course,” Otacon agrees warmly.

Snake finally looks at him again. Otacon is once more tear-tracked, but he’s smiling, too. He wipes his eyes on the back of one hand, then grabs the edge of the shower curtain. “Your hair’s clean,” he says softly. “I’ll leave you to it, if you’re good.”

“...Well, not really,” Snake confesses. “Let me... drain the tub, and then you can give me the towel so I can be decent. Then maybe I could use your help getting out of here without slipping.”

Otacon agrees.

In truth, Snake could greatly use the help getting on his feet at all, but he’s still terrified of Otacon seeing him like this. It might break this gentle moment into a thousand pieces. Naomi knew Snake was old, after all, but only cried when she saw all of him. So he tries to stand as the water drains, but it’s difficult. He feels ashamed of his fragility.

...Otacon wants to help, though.

So Snake asks for his arm—just around the curtain, please, no peeking—and Otacon gives it to him, and with the curtain between them Otacon drags Snake to his feet. Once Snake confirms that he’s stable, Otacon pulls back, then returns his arm holding a large, fluffy towel.

Snake wraps it around his body, under his armpits, like a woman might. (More shame, but he tries to choke it down; there’s nothing wrong with doing things like a woman would, is there?) Once the towel is secure, he pulls the curtain back, and Otacon helps him out onto the bathmat before fretting over how he’s still dripping and of course he would slip, he should dry off in the tub...

Snake admits that drying is difficult, too. So Otacon helps.

He is gentle, and doesn’t touch anything in a way that would dislodge the towel. He grabs a second towel, even, to carefully dry Snake’s hair while he sits on the toilet lid. With all that done, all that’s left is for him to leave so Snake can get dressed. He aids Snake in standing again, says he’ll be right outside with the chair, and then does something Snake probably should have seen coming, but didn’t: he hugs Snake.

It seems like an impulsive decision, something he might have considered more carefully in another circumstance. It is not like the hugs they have done before, when Snake was younger. It is both arms fully around his middle, face resting on his collar, a little bit of a squeeze. A real hug. Surely, Otacon must feel every ridge and bump under the towel, the sheer fragility of Snake’s body. The squeeze is light, but surely it is enough to make the extent of Snake’s loss of mass clear.

(A memory, indistinct and blurry: Meryl hugging him after Shadow Moses. She says she loves him. Snake doesn’t feel like he can say it back.)

Otacon apologizes when he pulls back, but Snake doesn’t think he’s really sorry. He doesn’t need to be, either, regardless of how worried Snake was about Otacon feeling his bony frame. There are a thousand unsaid words fluttering under the surface of this interaction, aching to be set free; Snake chokes out a weak Thank you and doesn’t manage anything else. Otacon seems pleased nonetheless.

Snake gets dressed slowly, carefully. The idea of slipping and cracking his head open before Otacon can even attempt to fix everything feels especially cruel. As he pulls a freshly-laundered sweater on, he catches his own gaze in the mirror.

He looks haggard and exhausted and old. His skin sags and folds in unsightly places on his face and neck, and surely everywhere else as well. The burn scars are a little faded, but not as much as he’d have hoped. In the back of his mind, Snake remembers Zero, the old man Big Boss killed before his own death. Will he look like that, if this progresses further? Will he be as much of a shell as Zero seemed to be, unaware of the world around him?

In the sunken pits of his eyes, there is still a flicker of life. Or at least that’s what he tells himself, what he believes he sees. They are a deep blue that seem to defy the age the rest of him has become. When Otacon looks at him, is that what he sees? What he still admires? These brilliant blue eyes, defiant even now?

...Or does he admire it all? The sags, the wrinkles, the liver spots, the prominent veins, the burn scars—does Otacon see all of that and still see the man underneath? Or does he take it as some parts of a whole? Snake cannot imagine anyone being interested in any of this. Even so, Otacon just hugged him, seemingly with no issue at all. He has cried so much these past few months, but maybe it’s not about how Snake looks. Maybe it genuinely is about the imminent death, far too soon, and nothing more.

If Snake survives, and he and Otacon live to be old together, will Otacon admire him then?

He imagines, for a moment, Otacon being old. Small and hunched and wrinkled. Likely in a wheelchair. Glasses as thick as they come. Maybe he will have dentures, or maybe no teeth at all. Maybe he will not hear very well. Would Snake feel about him then as he does about him now?

The answer is a resounding yes, no questions asked. So then is it so impossible for Otacon to feel that way about Snake right now?

Conflicted, Snake shelves the thought, finishing up his dressing before leaving the room.

They are able to wrap up their preparations by the next day. Otacon usually takes public transit, and Snake never leaves the apartment, so it’s never been an issue before; however, Otacon doesn’t want to make Snake deal with that, so he rents an SUV to get the three of them to the hangar Campbell had the Nomad sent to. Sunny is excited to see the plane again, though she laments the fact that the chickens won’t be there with them. Otacon reminds her that they’re likely much happier now.

He is so gentle and domestic with her. He’s never wanted to be a father—Snake suspects the idea freaks him out—but Otacon loves Sunny dearly, and it’s evident in the way they interact. Snake has never been good with children, but he does recall things being a little easier, before. Sunny used to be a fussy toddler who did not expect complex social interactions. He was alright with her then.

When the aging became apparent, Snake started to shut everyone out, Sunny and Otacon included. He suspects she is smart enough to recognize it. Even so, she is friendly with him, and seems to care about his health—despite doubting the story that she is the one who cannot live without him, Snake does believe that she’s the one who found this gene therapy foundation.

They meet the new pilots at the hangar, two men who salute Snake despite the fact that he is a shriveled old man in a wheelchair. He suspects Campbell told them to. They make sure Snake and Sunny and Otacon make it onto the Nomad, then enter the cockpit and announce imminent takeoff. There are no other planes on the runway, and the weather is fair.

Snake is terrified.

Not because of the Nomad, no. The Nomad is a home-away-from-home, a former home in its own right, and it’s survived foul weather and enemy pursuers before. No, this is about what lies at the end of this trip, and every moment in between now and then. Snake wonders if he will simply die before they arrive. Maybe he will die during the procedure. Maybe he will die after, when it doesn’t work. This entire time he has faced his oncoming death with as much bravery as he could, but now...

Well, it’s not just about him anymore, is it? Otacon smiles at him once he’s gotten Snake situated on the couch, and Snake wonders if his death, should it happen soon, would utterly snap Otacon in two like some cartoon rendition of a broken heart. How would it feel, to come so far and have it all be for nothing? Snake will die and be free of his earthly worries, but he will leave behind a man who cares so much more for him than he ever realized.

The flight will take somewhere between fifteen and twenty hours, weather permitting. It feels both too long and too short, like Snake could die at any moment during it, but how could Japan not be farther away? The anxiety will only make it more likely that he keels over of a heart attack on the way. How is he supposed to calm down, though?

Sunny makes food once they’ve reached a stable altitude. It is a far cry from the eggs of old; it is sausage and bacon and hashbrowns, and it smells good. Snake eats what he can, and thanks her for it, and she looks so happy she could burst. She is so much like Otacon, sometimes; a little praise goes such a long way.

He didn’t realize before. He wasn’t paying attention before. How much has he missed? How much will he never experience, with either of them, if this all falls through?

Otacon sits next to him. “How are you holding up?” he asks.

Snake doesn’t want to be honest about that, so he changes the subject to something else that’s been on his mind: “Do you think I deserve this? To survive, when everyone else from the Patriots and Les Enfants Terribles is dead?”

“...You’re more than that, you know,” Otacon objects, clearly a little taken off guard by the sudden weight of the topic.

“All I’ve ever been is a soldier,” Snake sighs. “A product of Big Boss and the Patriots.”

“You were a dog musher when I found you after Shadow Moses,” Otacon reminds him. When Snake draws his mouth into a thin line, but otherwise does not immediately respond, Otacon adds: “You don’t have to be Solid Snake anymore.”

Snake glances at him.

Adjusting his glasses, Otacon explains: “You can just be David.”

...Is that even an option? Sunny calls for him from up the steps and Otacon excuses himself before getting up to go meet her. Snake watches him go, wondering what that would even entail. He doesn’t remember ever “just being David”. His legal, birth-given name has been such a miniscule part of his life that sometimes he feels like it isn’t his name at all.

Is it possible to “just be David”? Is that what he wants?

Thinking back, remembering Otacon crying about how he needed to try, remembering the use of his name then, Snake knows he feels a certain way about it. It is almost a forbidden identity. Something he has sought, in the past, but never been able to quite grasp; the legacy of Solid Snake has always caught up to him, in the end. Would it be possible to finally shed that proverbial snakeskin? To let the legacy die while surviving as somebody new?

It is, if nothing else, something to think about for the next fifteen hours.

When they arrive in Japan, it will be the afternoon, but back in New York it will be the middle of the night. Snake knows he won’t make it without sleeping again; he’s crossed multiple timezones before, but being at such an advanced age means he’s tired more often than not as it is. He does his best to sleep on the couch after several hours have passed, but it’s less comfortable than he remembers, and he’s too wound up.

Otacon notices, eventually, and does not take no for an answer on the topic of Snake sleeping in an actual bed. There is only a single bedroom, and before, Snake had always insisted Sunny and Otacon take the beds therein. (He also avoided telling Otacon about the back pain the couch was giving him.) Now, though, there’s no avoiding the fact that he needs something more comfortable. He allows Otacon to guide him to the bedroom, lays down on Otacon’s old bed, and tries to relax as he is left alone.

It’s fainter now than it would have been before, but the bed still smells like Otacon. It’s comforting in a way Snake wouldn’t have anticipated. He does eventually manage to fall asleep, and is blessed by minimal dreams, though the ones that get through are anxiety-inducing in their own right.

When Otacon gently rouses him from sleep, Snake sees Sunny waking up in the opposite bed as well. That means Otacon either took the couch, or hasn’t slept at all. He says they’ll be landing soon and that they need to get ready. The fear comes crashing back in, anxiety twisting up in Snake’s gut like his namesake, and when he meets Otacon’s eyes he can see that feeling reflected back at him.

The end of this adventure is so close, whether for better or for worse. Snake is crawling on his belly through a chamber filled with microwaves, burning alive, the tendons of his sneaking suit snapping apart; Otacon is at his side, so close and yet so far away, unaffected by the immediate threat but even more likely to be saddled with the burden of failure in the event that Snake can’t make it.

He told himself for so long that Otacon could and would move on without him. As the months wore on, as he began to fall apart, Otacon’s resolve faded with him. He will stay alive for Sunny, certainly, but will he continue his work? Will he maintain his friendships?

Will he love again?

Snake allows Otacon to help him out of bed and into the wheelchair. Sunny offers to make food and Otacon gently turns her down; he doesn’t want to wait any longer, but that isn’t what he says. He says they’re in Japan, so they may as well take advantage of the local delicacies, right? Maybe Sunny will learn a thing or two, he adds, and she seems pleased with the idea.

A car is waiting for them outside the hangar; Otacon paid an extra fee to have it delivered to their immediate location. (Snake asks where he even got all this money, to which Otacon replies a bit distantly, “Don’t worry about it.”) Upon seeing the vehicle, another SUV, Otacon seems to balk a little at the steering wheel being on the right side.

“Something wrong, Dr. Emmerich?” asks one of the pilots, breaking away from his companion to approach them.

“I... didn’t even think about how I was going to drive while we were here,” Otacon replies nervously.

“Most people in Tokyo don’t drive,” the pilot says with a chuckle. “I get it though, with the wheelchair...” He pushes up the sleeve of his jacket to check his watch. “Rush hour shouldn’t be too bad, but I wouldn’t risk it if you’re not used to driving here. I can take you; I have an international driving permit.”

“You’ve been to Japan?” Otacon asks, surprised.

“A few times,” the pilot replies with a nod. “And I’ve driven in Europe a lot. Don’t worry, I can handle it. Although...” He rubs the back of his neck. “I can read Japanese, but I’m afraid I’m no good at speaking it.”

Looking somewhat relieved, Otacon waves a hand. “Don’t worry about that, you don’t need to be a tour guide. Here, let me pull up the address...”

Sunny, standing at Snake’s side, puts her hands on the arm of his chair. “You know Japanese, d-don’t you, Snake?” she asks.

“Among other things,” Snake replies. “I’ve never actually been here, though.”

The pilot adds the location’s address to his phone, then hops in the driver’s seat while Otacon helps Snake into the back. Once the chair is folded up and stowed away, Otacon loads a single suitcase of clothes into the back with the chair, then hesitates on the passenger’s side of the car. Sunny, wearing a laptop bag that looks far too large for her, stops next to him.

“Why don’t you ride up front, Sunny?” Otacon suggests. “Tokyo is amazing, I’m sure you’ll see lots of cool things.”

Sunny agrees and climbs up front as Otacon slides into the back next to Snake. So begins their trip to the facility, and to Snake, it feels like a death march. The hangar isn’t in Tokyo, but it is close; once they actually reach the city, it becomes extremely apparent. The facility is clear on the other side, according to the map on the pilot’s phone, which feels even more anxiety-inducing on top of everything else. They have to make it through the entire city?

As they drive slowly down winding streets, Snake chances a look around, idly reading the signs, trying to get his mind off of things even as panic and fear mount in his chest with each passing mile. There are so many shops, so many people, so many silly mascots...

It clicks, then. Where they are, and the significance of such.

He turns to Otacon, who is staring ahead, tight-lipped. “Otacon?” he asks. “How are you... holding up?”

“Mm.”

“This must be a big moment for you,” Snake presses.

Otacon finally looks at him, then smiles, though it’s very strained. Setting a hand on Snake’s knee, he says, “I’m honestly way more concerned with you, right now.”

“Are you sure?” Snake asks, more insistent. “I thought this was your purpose in life, or something.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Otacon mutters, looking a little embarrassed.

“Your name stands for Otaku Convention,” Snake helpfully reminds him.

Face blossoming into red, Otacon seems both surprised and humiliated all at once. “Snake,” he hisses, “just call me Hal, would you?”

“You still call me Snake, don’t you?” Snake points out. “I’ve always called you Otacon. Why wouldn’t I—”

“Do not call me Otacon in front of these people,” Otacon whines, both deathly serious and looking like Snake’s just put the fear of God into him.

Snake surprises all of them, even himself, by laughing.

It is raspy and wheezy and makes him cough, but he laughs through it regardless. When he catches Otacon’s eyes again, as he wipes a tear from one eye with trembling fingers, Snake sees a look on his friend’s face that he’s not sure he’s seen in a long time: awe, giving way into utter adoration. Snake doesn’t think his amusement is worth that reaction, but if it gives Otacon a moment of respite, maybe it’s worth it.

In a lot of ways, all of this has always been for him, anyway.

There is some amount of levity for the remainder of the trip, but the closer they get to their destination, the more tense the air feels—especially in the backseat, between Snake and Otacon. They are both the most aware of what is coming, and the most affected by it. Through battlefields and intense fights, sneaking through vents and under surveillance cameras, Snake cannot recall ever being as nervous as he is now. The worst outcome, in his mind, is that he does survive, and they get to go home, but the procedure fails. Wasting away after being so close to something tangible, knowing Otacon will never forgive himself...

The pilot rolls the car up against the curb in front of a moderately sized building somewhere on the far edge of the city. The sign, in Japanese, reads GeneX Research Laboratories. The pilot asks if he should wait for them outside, and Otacon replies that he doesn’t fully know how long this will take, and he’ll come back to the car to let him know as soon as possible. Snake wonders how much he knows at all. He and the head doctor at the facility have spoken, but how much? Snake only really knows about the first video call.

The pilot fetches the wheelchair while Otacon helps Snake out of the car. Once he’s seated in the chair, the pilot salutes him again.

“You really don’t have to do that,” Snake sighs.

The pilot falters slightly. “Sorry, sir, it’s just...” Snake thinks he’s going to reveal his orders from Campbell to do so, but instead he says, “You’re just a big hero of mine, is all.”

“...Really?” Snake asks, somewhat skeptical.

“You’re a legend,” the pilot insists, and Snake distantly recalls the things Meryl said to him when they met at Shadow Moses. He recalls the things he told her in response, and almost repeats them, but the pilot continues: “I mean, both of you, honestly.”

“Huh?” Otacon pipes up from behind the chair.

“Philanthropy was incredible,” the pilot gushes. “The things you two achieved on your own? Rebelling against a world that wanted you dead? It’s like something out of a movie!”

“We had help,” Otacon chuckles awkwardly. “We weren’t the only members...”

“You guys were the driving force, though!” the pilot enthuses, clearly excited; Snake wonders if he’s been holding this in since New York. “You’re the classic brains and brawn, you’re—you’re genuinely such an inspiration. You’ve given a lot of people hope that if they want to, they can incite change.”

Snake is doubtful of the full scope of their influence, but he also knows Otacon never gets recognized for anything, so he chooses not to challenge the notion. “Well... thanks, kid,” he says instead.

“Thank you,” the pilot responds happily. “And good luck in there, sir. I’m rooting for you.”

Otacon wheels Snake into the facility, Sunny waving to the pilot before they vanish inside. It is a distinctly clinical place; very white and sterile, even just in the lobby. There are hallways branching off in opposing directions, labeled Research and Medical, with the Research side seeming to take up far more of the available space. They’ve never worked on humans before, so Snake supposes that makes sense.

At the front counter, the receptionist looks at them briefly, then asks (in Japanese) why they’re there. Otacon flounders, so Snake speaks up; “We have an appointment with your head doctor.”

“Name?” the receptionist asks.

Aware of Otacon looking at him like he’s the most incredible person in the entire world, Snake answers, “It’s probably under ‘Emmerich.’” He imagines other appointments are likely the business kind; investors and suppliers and such, and also likely with Japanese names.

“David Emmerich?” the receptionist clarifies, and Snake’s heart just about seizes up in his chest.

“That’s right,” he replies.

“Dr. Yamano will be out to see you shortly,” the receptionist says, and Snake nods before relaying the information to Otacon, who silently wheels him over the waiting area, lining him up beside the chairs before sitting down in one. Now able to see him again, Snake can tell Otacon is flustered.

“I... I don’t know your last name,” he mutters, clearly embarrassed.

“It’s fine... Hal,” Snake assures him. “I don’t have one, anyway.”

As Sunny parks herself in front of a window to watch the city outside, Snake ponders that name, David Emmerich. If he really did move on, decided to ‘just be David’, would that be a possibility? In another life, maybe he and Otacon would be married already. In another life, they could be here on vacation, not to decide Snake’s fate.

In another life, Snake says: David Emmerich—it has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? In this life, he stays quiet, afraid to give either of them the hope that such a thing could ever come to pass. Otacon probably has no idea how he feels to begin with. How could he? Snake has done everything in his power to hide it. After a lifetime of watching people he loves die, Otacon doesn’t need to be told that he could have it all, only for it to be snatched away again.

(Of course, this is all assuming Otacon feels the same way; he’s not hiding it well, but Snake still wonders if he could be misinterpreting things in his old age.)

“If this is going to take a while, you should take Sunny out on the town,” Snake suggests. “Who knows how long just the exam will be...”

“I’m not leaving you,” Otacon insists firmly. “I’m staying here. When this is all over, we can all enjoy the city.”

“Or you and Sunny can take a vacation when I die,” Snake says, not thinking it through especially hard before it’s already out there.

There are immediately tears in Otacon’s eyes. Snake kicks himself for being so flippant, and opens his mouth to apologize, but Otacon cuts him off: “Don’t say things like that in front of Sunny...”

Sunny is across the room, watching cars go by. Snake doesn’t think this is about her. “Sorry,” he mutters.

After a few minutes, a short, fairly young-looking woman emerges from the Medical side of the building, holding some clipboards. Her hair is tied up in a tight bun, her outfit smart and business-like with a white lab coat over the top. Otacon sits up straighter as she approaches them, but Snake watches her warily.

“Dr. Emmerich,” she greets Otacon. “And you must be David.” She does not sound patronizing or pitying, nor does she sound particularly cold; her tone lies somewhere far more neutral.

“It’s nice to finally meet you in person, Dr. Yamano,” Otacon says in turn. Snake can see that he’s gripping his knees especially tight. “So... where do we begin?”

“There are some forms I need you both to sign for me,” the doctor replies, “and I can explain what we’re going to do in the meantime. Don’t worry—I printed off an English translation.” She hands them each a clipboard, upon which are some attached papers and pens with which to sign. “These are waivers and confidentiality agreements,” she explains. “By signing, you agree that we are not liable for anything that might go wrong during the procedure, on account of the fact that we have not been cleared for human trials. In addition, your personal information will be kept confidential, but any data we glean during your stay here will be used to further our research.”

“Is that why you agreed to this?” Snake asks. “For your research?”

“Not entirely,” Dr. Yamano says. “While that is part of our interest in you, the truth is that this research was always supposed to benefit mankind. Your situation is unique, and it sounds like you’ve exhausted all other avenues.”

“We have,” Otacon sighs, scribbling his signature on one of the pages.

“We want to help,” Dr. Yamano clarifies, giving Snake a small but sincere smile. He’s not sure if he believes it, but it’s as Otacon said before: what have they got to lose?

“Will you get in trouble for this?” Snake asks as he tries to steady his hand enough to sign. Otacon isn’t his legal representative or anything, so he can’t do this on Snake’s behalf. (He probably only got papers to sign as well because he’s the one paying for all this.) “If you’re not cleared for human trials, I mean.”

“The waiver you’re signing is necessary for us to move forward with as few legal risks as possible,” Dr. Yamano explains. “There could also be public backlash, if this case gets out in any way.”

“Well,” says Snake, turning to the next page to sign it as well, “let’s hope this works, for both our sakes.”

Dr. Yamano takes the clipboards when they’re finished and walks to the front desk to hand them to her receptionist before returning. “We’re going to start with a comprehensive exam, to assess your physical state and the condition of your nanomachines. Then we can move forward with a plan for how we want to tackle the issue. Nanomachine technology has opened a lot of doors in this field, and we’ve had great success with our lab animals.”

“Mine are first gen, if that means anything,” Snake offers. “Will that make things harder?”

“Third generation nanomachines are actually the most complex,” Dr. Yamano replies. “First generation might be easier to work around. Do you want Dr. Emmerich to come with us?”

Snake is genuinely surprised that she asked him instead of asking Otacon, but it does make him feel at least a little respected. “...No, he should stay out here with our...” He glances at Sunny, who’s since wandered closer to the conversation. “Stay here with Sunny,” he opts to say to Otacon directly. “Or maybe you can go get some food.”

“I don’t want to leave,” Otacon says, helplessly.

“I’m h-hungry, Uncle Hal,” Sunny protests.

“Well, maybe that pilot can take her,” Snake suggests. When Otacon looks mildly alarmed by the idea, Snake says, “Campbell clearly trusts the kid. I’m sure she’d be safe.”

Otacon still looks uncomfortable. “I don’t think...”

“His name is D-Daniel,” Sunny helpfully supplies.

“You guys can figure it out together,” Snake asserts. “C’mon, doctor, I want to get this over with.”

Dr. Yamano wheels him into the Medical wing, and Snake is certain Otacon watches them go like a sad dog. It’s fine (it has to be), he’s going to survive a simple exam (hopefully). They go into a large room outfitted with various medical machines, and Dr. Yamano leaves Snake by an exam table as she starts to prepare a few of them for use. “Why don’t you tell me a little about your condition, David?” she asks.

“Alright,” Snake sighs. “I don’t know what all is relevant...”

“Just tell me whatever you think could be important,” she coaxes.

“...I used to be in the military,” Snake begins gravely. “In 2005 I was sent on a top-secret mission that required a lot of intense preparation, including being injected with the newly developed nanomachines. When I was injected, I was also unknowingly infected with an artificially engineered virus that was going to kill specific people I ran into on the mission, using me as a vector.”

Finishing up with the machines, Dr. Yamano sits down on a wheeled stool and rolls over in front of Snake. “Go on,” she urges.

“The... coding, I guess, of the virus would only target people with very specific genetics,” Snake continues. “The doctor who administered the injection of the nanomachines and the virus had it out for me, though, and she’d set the virus to eventually kill me, too.” He takes a moment to breathe. “When I started aging, that was what we thought was happening. The virus worked by giving the victims heart attacks, but I had such a wild card version of it that we had no idea how to account for what it might be doing.”

“I see,” Dr. Yamano acknowledges.

“I was able to track down the doctor who infected me in the first place, and she did her own exam... that was a few months ago. She said I had about thirty percent of my nanomachines left, and that the virus had mutated in a significantly dangerous way, but it wasn’t causing the aging.” Snake shifts a little in his seat, remembering the whole ordeal. “She... revealed that the advanced aging was written into my genes. I was part of a project to breed the perfect super soldier, but the government didn’t want another actual copy of my... father... running around, and basically programmed me to be sterile and die young.”

“And the virus? How had it mutated?”

“It was going to turn me into a walking bioweapon,” Snake grunts. “Attacking random people, and not just the ones originally coded into it. But I ended up being injected with a new version of the virus, unknowingly, again. The new version is suppressing the old one, but if I live longer than a few more months, it’s probably going to mutate just like the old one did.”

“If it’s a virus, I imagine there are ways to control it,” Dr. Yamano suggests thoughtfully. “Did no one try because of your supposedly doomed lifespan?”

“Maybe for the new one,” Snake half-agrees, “but the old one? I think the technology just wasn’t there yet. Maybe it still isn’t. The virus is attached to my DNA, I think.”

“Nanomachine technology has come a long way, and we’re making new strides daily,” Dr. Yamano explains. “I think if we could engineer nanomachines to extract the cells of the disease, we could potentially wipe it out of you. Or we could attempt to suppress its effects in some way. Then all we have to worry about is reverting you to your real age.”

“Do you think you can?” Snake hesitantly asks.

“The entire process may take multiple sessions,” Dr. Yamano says, “and the nanomachines may need to be replenished every few years. That said... I think we’ve got a chance, David. Maybe even a good one.”

She wheels her stool away, back towards a desk with a computer, and wakes the computer up to open some program and start typing into it. “Now, I’m not here to do a full physical on you, but I’d like to get at least some idea of the state of your body. I’m going to need you to disrobe for me. Do you think you can?”

“...I can try,” Snake replies, dread heavy in his chest. Naomi had sobbed. How will Dr. Yamano respond to him? Disgust? Will she see him and say there’s no way they can reverse this, that it’s too advanced?

“Do you need help standing?” Dr. Yamano asks as she stands up herself, heading to a cabinet nearby to grab something from inside. She returns to him with one of those flimsy medical gowns.

“No, I... I can do it for short periods,” Snake tells her, taking the gown. Otacon showed him how to lock the chair’s wheels, so he does so before bringing himself up to his feet. He’s taller than Dr. Yamano, but he imagines the hunched way he’s taken to standing is detracting from his full height. He’s probably shrunk a bit, too. Can she fix that?

“Do you want some privacy?” Dr. Yamano asks.

“...Honestly, you may as well stay,” Snake sighs. “If I fall, or something...”

“Alright. I’ll go work on your file while you undress. Let me know when you’re ready.” She returns to her computer, and Snake sets the gown on the exam table nearby before starting to disrobe.

He’s done this plenty of times to bathe, but each time he does it, it feels like it gets a little harder. Will there be a time when he can’t do it at all, should this fail? Will Otacon have to help him? Snake tries to abandon those thoughts as he carefully peels off his clothes, setting them on the exam table article by article, shoes kicked off next to his chair. Finally, he puts on the medical gown, though he’s unable to tie it in the back and gives up trying.

“...I’m ready,” he says, reluctantly.

Dr. Yamano turns back around, standing up from her stool again to approach him. If she has any particular thoughts about Snake’s state, negative or otherwise, she doesn’t show them. “You can sit back down for now,” she says, “since the exam table is a little high up.”

Snake does so, and Dr. Yamano begins doing some very basic medical checks; she takes his pulse, she listens to his heart and lungs, she passes her hands very briefly over a few parts of him. “You’re very tense,” she notes.

“...My last exam didn’t go well,” Snake admits. “The doctor—the one who infected me with the virus—she cried, when she saw how bad it had gotten. And it’s gotten worse since then.”

Dr. Yamano steps back, slinging her stethoscope around the back of her neck. “The only bad thing about it is that it’s happening far too quickly,” she says, her tone strictly matter-of-fact. “I’m not sure where that doctor is from, but around here, we respect the elderly. Growing old isn’t shameful, it’s a fact of life.”

Snake makes a weak sound of acknowledgement. Knowing that, on some level, and actually hearing it are such wildly different things. “Maybe if I had time to adjust, it wouldn’t feel like such a tragedy,” he muses.

“I’m going to do everything I can to give you your time back, David,” Dr. Yamano says resolutely. “Your physical state lines up with someone in their nineties or so. Dr. Emmerich said you’re forty-two?”

“That’s right,” Snake confirms.

“Alright. I’m going to draw some blood, and while that’s processing, I’m going to run a few scans on your body to determine the state of your nanomachines and internal systems,” the doctor explains. “Once all of that has been examined and verified, we should know where we can go next.”

Snake is genuinely surprised with the sheer number of things Dr. Yamano seems equipped to do, because she doesn’t call anyone in to draw his blood in her stead. Naomi could also do a lot of these things, though, so maybe some scientists really are just jack-of-all-trades types. She is very careful and precise, and though it does hurt, Snake’s certainly experienced far worse in his lifetime and is able to withstand it just fine.

The MRI-like machine she has him get into next seems all too familiar. As it runs, Snake can only wonder how bad the state of him will be, if any of this will prove to be far too much for Dr. Yamano or her foundation to tackle. Through the next few tests, she doesn’t really say anything, and Snake is alone with his thoughts.

He’s back in the chair waiting for her to finish typing on her computer when there’s a knock on the door. Dr. Yamano tells them to come in, speaking in Japanese; in comes another young woman, brandishing some papers. The blood panel is in, she says, as she hands them to Dr. Yamano.

“Already?” Snake observes, surprised.

Dr. Yamano looks over at him curiously. “...you know what this is?” she asks.

“Well, she said it’s the blood results, didn’t she?” Snake asks back. “...No one told you I’m fluent, did they.”

“It hasn’t come up, no,” Dr. Yamano says, amused. “Did you learn that in the military?”

“Sort of,” Snake replies, with no intentions to explain more than that. “How is everything looking?”

“About as I expected, and it all lines up with what you’ve told me.” She takes the papers back to her computer, and the other woman leaves. As Dr. Yamano fills in more of Snake’s information, she says, “We’re just about ready to start formulating a game plan. I’m going to return you to Dr. Emmerich for a bit while I consult with my team, and then we can discuss what we’re doing from here on out.”

She sounds so confident, like this is absolutely something she can fix. Snake isn’t so sure. He’s still terrified, and he can only imagine how Otacon is feeling out in the lobby.

She wheels Snake back out to where Otacon is parked in front of the same window Sunny was looking out before. Sunny herself is nowhere in sight. When Otacon turns to see Snake, it is suddenly painfully obvious that he did not sleep on the Nomad; he looks utterly exhausted. “How’d it go?” he asks.

“We’re going to discuss our options and meet back with you in a few minutes,” Dr. Yamano explains. She leaves Snake by the window, walking briskly back where they had come from. He watches her go, then turns to Otacon.

“Did you let the pilot take Sunny to eat?”

“They’re right across the street,” Otacon replies, pointing to a ramen place visible through the window.

“...I’m sure he loved being told to stay in your line of sight,” Snake teases.

“I just told him to stay close, that’s all,” Otacon sighs. “Can anyone really blame me? I don’t know him, why should I trust him with Sunny?”

You trusted Naomi with Sunny, Snake thinks, but he does not say it.

“So... did she say there’s something to be done?” Otacon asks warily, like he’s afraid of the answer. His arms are folded over his chest, posture tense and uncomfortable, and Snake feels for him.

“She said there’s a chance it’ll work,” Snake tells him. “Maybe even a good one.”

A man crosses from the Research side of the building over to the Medical side with such purpose that Snake assumes he is part of the team Dr. Yamano is consulting. Otacon watches him too, clearly fretting about that, and about everything else.

“...How much is all this gonna cost, anyway?” Snake asks, the concept dawning on him suddenly.

“I can afford it,” Otacon replies, which doesn’t answer the question. “Don’t worry about it.” His eyes are firmly on the Medical door.

“You’ve been affording a lot of things lately,” Snake notes.

“Because I can,” Otacon insists more firmly, looking down at Snake. “Don’t worry about it, I mean it. It’s not something I want you being concerned about...”

“I’m just worried you’re doing something illegal,” Snake says, hoping the fact that he’s not serious is obvious. “I feel like there’s a lot of powerful people you have the ammo to blackmail.”

Otacon huffs a short little laugh and returns his gaze to the door. “Please. There are better ways to get money out of politicians.”

Snake isn’t sure what to make of that.

Some time later, Dr. Yamano emerges from the Medical wing with the man from before at her side. They’re discussing something in Japanese; once they’re close enough, Snake is able to make out their conversation.

“A vaccine for this virus will take time to make,” the man says. “Even with our current technology, this bug seems especially resilient.”

“The virus will hopefully not be an immediate threat,” Dr. Yamano replies. “Supposedly, there is some time before it mutates to threaten more people. We should have time. For now, we focus on the age.”

As they come to a stop in front of Snake and Otacon, Snake speaks up before they can start talking in English: “As long as your vaccine doesn’t take months on end to develop, I’ll probably be fine.”

The man looks surprised, but Dr. Yamano mostly seems bemused. (His accent must be terrible.) “It should only take a few weeks,” the man explains. “Probably less time than the actual procedures will take...”

Snake nods, then finally realizes that Otacon is wringing his hands and looking absolutely pallid next to him. He has no idea what they’re saying; he’s terrified.

“Hal, it’s fine,” Snake says. “They just need time to fix the—the uh, you know. The virus. It probably won’t take longer than a few weeks.”

“Oh,” Otacon says, not really looking relieved. “And the... aging?”

“That’s what we’re going to discuss now,” Dr. Yamano assures him. She nods to the man, who turns and heads back towards the Research wing. “Our tests on animals have concluded that it is both possible to halt and reverse the effects of aging. Things like weakened immune systems, brittle bones, mental deterioration—all of these can be paused or even walked back with the right treatments.”

“And the catch is...?” Otacon prompts nervously.

“It all relies heavily on nanomachines,” Dr. Yamano explains. “Research into the reversal of aging was generally inconclusive until their creation. We could identify bits and pieces of genetic code that affected the progression of age, but there was little we could actually do; all anti-aging treatments being attempted would not be permanent, if they took at all. Then nanomachines started being manufactured and utilized by various governments, and the more widespread they became, the more the scientific community was able to trial them in various different fields.”

Otacon nervously adjusts his glasses. “And they’ve helped you here?”

Dr. Yamano nods. “Immensely. With nanomachines, we can perpetually repair the body, combatting the effects of not only aging, but a variety of diseases as well. Even cancer can be held at bay with nanomachine treatment.”

Snake glances at Otacon, but he doesn’t seem to respond in any particular way to what is assuredly a reminder of Naomi.

“What this means for gene therapy is that we can more precisely and permanently alter genetic codes,” Dr. Yamano continues. “Now, I would still recommend getting them reviewed and replenished every few years, just to make sure everything is as it should be—but my goal is to use nanomachine technology to alter the genetic code that’s advancing your age, repair the things that aging has done to you, and hopefully send you home with a lifetime left to do as you please.”

“And you’re sure that’s possible?” Snake asks.

“As sure as I’m able to be, considering how little data exists on anti-aging in humans as it is,” Dr. Yamano says. “Not to mention how completely unique your situation is. But don’t worry too much; we’re going to do everything we can.”

Otacon lets out a shaky little sigh. “So what happens next?”

“Our engineers are going to start working on the nanomachines we’re going to be using right away,” Dr. Yamano explains. “Unlike the vaccine, these ones have a basis in the system we’ve already been using, and won’t take long at all. In just a few days, I’m going to have you come back, and we’re going to try and flush the existing nanomachines out of you to make absolutely sure that there won’t be any conflicts. Once that’s done, we’ll inject the new ones, which should immediately start repairing your body. Now, because we don’t know for certain how this will go, we’re only going to inject you with half of them at first. After two weeks, we’ll inject you with the other half, assuming all is progressing well.”

“Two weeks,” Otacon groans.

“How long will it take after the second half?” Snake asks. “To see results, I mean. Will we need to stay longer?”

“I’m going to ask that you remain here for about a week after that, so we can monitor your condition and make sure things are going the way they should. That should also give us enough time to finish the vaccine.” Dr. Yamano offers them both a smile. “Then you’ll be allowed to go. At that point in the process, we can assume the procedure was a success.”

Snake sits back in his chair. Three weeks, and his life might be his again? It feels like so long, but also not long at all. It’s hard to even envision getting his vitality back. What if he dies in those three weeks? Or what if the procedure fails? What if this was all for nothing?

“Alright,” he agrees. “Sounds like a plan. I guess we’ll be back in a few days?”

“I’ll call Dr. Emmerich when we’re ready,” Dr. Yamano says. “Do you have a place to stay?”

“Yeah,” Otacon says distantly. “I rented a hotel room for us.”

That’s a surprise; Snake had expected they’d just return to the Nomad. A hotel would be easier, though, considering the distance they had to drive just to get here from the hangar. It also explains why Otacon put that suitcase in the car before they ventured into the city.

They bid farewell to Dr. Yamano for the time being, then head across the street to meet up with Sunny and the pilot. Snake realizes he’s hungry, so they sit down to eat, but Otacon barely touches his food and doesn’t even seem particularly jazzed about the fact that it’s authentic Japanese ramen. Sunny and the pilot are very animated, but Snake feels like nothing has been concluded yet, and he can tell Otacon is just as worried about what the future holds. Dr. Yamano seems convinced that they’ve got a fighting chance, but everything still seems so uncertain...

The pilot reveals that Campbell has covered the cost of he and the other pilot’s stay in Japan while Otacon and Snake are here, so he can continue ferrying them around. The original plan was to stay in a hotel closer to the hangar, but he wants to make himself useful and elects to use some of the money Campbell paid him to rent a room at the same hotel Otacon did. The other pilot, he says, already texted him about staying at the other hotel, and otherwise seems to be excited to visit the city. Snake can tell Otacon wants to fret about the whole situation, about keeping the pilots grounded and not even engaging with one of them, but he looks painfully tired and doesn’t really speak up.

They drive to the hotel, which is close by; Snake starts to wonder what the room will be like. Will they be sleeping on futons? He doesn’t know if he could manage that.

The receptionist at the front desk speaks English, but only just. The pilot is able to get himself a room, and then Otacon checks them in. Their room is on a higher floor, but there are elevators, so the wheelchair shouldn’t be an issue. The pilot handles their luggage for them, at least until his stop on a lower floor; Sunny laments the loss and says she’s excited to see him again later as Otacon tries to figure out how to wheel a suitcase and a chair at the same time.

Snake catches his reflection in a strip of metal decorating the inside of the elevator. Dr. Yamano said he’s biologically in his nineties; Otacon would lose his mind if he knew. There really isn’t much time left.

The room, as it turns out, is “Western style”, fit with a small couch and two beds that appear to be twin-sized. Snake wonders if Otacon specifically requested this kind of room, if he wanted to make sure Snake wouldn’t be sleeping on the floor. That sounds like something he’d do.

“I’ll take the couch,” Otacon says with a yawn.

Turning in his chair to look at Otacon in mild annoyance, Snake says, “No, you’re not. You didn’t even sleep on the Nomad. You’re taking the bed.”

Otacon looks back at him in disbelief. “What? No! You’re not taking the couch! You need the bed more than I do.”

“You’re dead on your feet, you should get some actual sleep,” Snake counters.

“I can do that on the couch,” Otacon shoots back.

“I could t-take the couch,” Sunny suggests, taking a step back when both her guardians say “No!” at the same time. She can probably tell they both immediately regret raising their voices at her; she doesn’t seem worse for wear, and says, “I’m th-the smallest, I can p-probably fit.”

“Sunny, you need a good night’s rest too,” Otacon protests helplessly as she circles around them to get to the couch. Once she’s there, however, it becomes more readily apparent that it’s genuinely too small for comfort, even for her.

“...M-Maybe we’ll just h-have to share,” she suggests instead.

Snake doesn’t know anything about little girls beyond what he’s learned from raising Sunny. He doesn’t think he wants to share a bed with her, for a variety of reasons; a glance at Otacon confirms that he seems to feel the same. Neither of them voice it, unsure of how to actually do so.

Sunny gets the message easily enough, and sighs dramatically. “F-fine, you guys share then!”

Otacon leaves the wheelchair, walking past it to go examine the furthest bed. “It’s such a small bed,” he says uneasily.

“Why did you get a room with such small beds, anyway?” Snake asks. “Were there any rooms with bigger beds?”

“I... I don’t know,” Otacon mutters, not looking at him. “The site was in Japanese... I had to use some web translator to talk to an agent.”

Were Snake capable of moving the chair on his own, maybe he’d wheel it closer to Otacon. Instead, he stays where he is, debating whether he should try to stand up. “I could have handled the booking,” he says as an afterthought. “You knew I was fluent.”

Otacon surprises him by exclaiming, in a very watery voice, “I said I’d handle everything!”

Snake glances at Sunny, who has already clambered up onto the other bed with her laptop. She seems just as surprised by the outburst as he feels. Otacon removes his glasses, wiping his eyes with his other hand, and Snake feels guilty.

“You didn’t even want to agree to this,” Otacon agonizes. “I thought... I thought if I handled everything, then you’d be more willing...”

That makes the guilt ten times worse. Snake didn’t agree to come here because Otacon said he’d take care of everything—he agreed to come here because Otacon had all but confessed to loving him. He agreed to come here because thinking Otacon might feel that way gave him the desire to actually try to survive. Selfish, he knows.

“Hal,” Snake says softly. “It’s fine. Really.”

Otacon sniffles wetly and wipes his face on his sleeve, still not looking over. “You can call me Otacon when we’re alone... I don’t care,” he says, and Snake gets the distinct impression that he cares very much. He suggested Snake ‘just be David’; does he want to ‘just be Hal’?

“Hal,” Snake repeats, more insistently. “Look at me.”

Otacon finally does, looking over his shoulder rather than fully turning around, but it’s something.

“You’re doing a great job,” Snake assures him. “I might have a chance because of you. Thank you.”

Otacon sniffles again, his eyes big and wet, like a sad puppy. “S-Sunny found the foundation,” he reminds Snake, like that’s even the point of what’s being said right now.

“Sunny did good too,” Snake agrees. Then he actually looks at Sunny, who seems more concerned with Otacon’s state than her due share of the credit. “Thank you, Sunny,” Snake says.

“...I j-just don’t want you guys being s-sad anymore,” Sunny says emphatically.

Snake and Otacon share a look, the heavy burden of guilt now both of theirs to bear.

They finally agree to share the second bed. It’s not especially late, but they’re both tired; Sunny seems content to use her laptop for entertainment, in the meantime. Otacon and Snake take turns in the bathroom getting into some nightclothes, and Otacon hovers close by the bed as Snake gets on first, putting his back against the wall.

As Otacon gets in bed as well, Snake thinks to himself that if the situation were different, this would be exciting. Sharing a bed with Otacon? They haven’t done that since the days of Philanthropy's infancy. It was different then, the bed bigger, the feelings small and unrealized. It was such a non-issue. Now, knowing everything, these words unsaid between them...

It’s not exciting now. Snake is more aware than ever of the space he occupies, so much less than he used to; he’s lost almost all of his mass. He probably smells, if not bad then just old, and this close surely Otacon will be able to see every frightening feature of his face even without his glasses, wrinkles and burn scars and everything else.

Otacon falls asleep almost immediately.

Snake hesitates for a moment before cautiously allowing himself to relax. In the light of the bedside lamp Sunny has on, he can make out various features of Otacon’s face that he usually doesn’t really get a chance to look at. The length of his lashes, the curve of his nose, the way he’s developing frown lines at thirty-four. Snake was able to glean that the time Otacon spent without his glasses on was because of something Naomi said; he doesn’t think they detract from Otacon’s looks at all, but like this he's certainly a beautiful sight.

...It makes Snake’s heart ache. He knows without a shadow of a doubt how he feels, now, and has for some time. To be so close and yet so far... It’s like the microwave chamber again. Otacon is right next to him, but also impossibly far away. They’re both suffering, but they can’t reach each other. Before, when Snake thought Otacon would move on without him, he wasn’t seeing the full picture. Otacon is like the Mk. III, and the Mk. II before it—he needs help. He can’t go forward on his own. He needs Snake here, to lift him, to guide him.

Reluctantly, Snake allows himself to drift into sleep. He’s tired, and he’s sad, and he’d rather not think for a while.

When he wakes up again, it’s not daytime. Far from it; the room is pitch black, the only light a sliver from the moon coming in through the window. Unsure why he woke up, Snake waits a moment for his eyes to adjust—in the crack of moonlight cast over the bed, he can just barely see the shine of Otacon’s eyes.

“Sorry,” Otacon whispers, “did I wake you?”

“...what, by staring at me?” Snake asks. “It’s fine, I just... I just wake up sometimes.” The uneasy feeling of being perceived is back; Otacon’s eyes may have adjusted to the darkness already, meaning he can see Snake just fine. “How long have you been awake?”

“A little bit,” Otacon replies. “Bad dreams.”

The room is quiet, Sunny most assuredly asleep on the other bed. Outside there is the dim sound of cars, distant and muffled. There are a few inches of space between Snake and Otacon; they’re both reedy and thin, now, and on their sides they have just enough room to both be here. Snake wishes they could be closer. He also wishes he were anywhere else.

“Sorry the couch couldn’t work,” he sighs. “You probably don't want to be here.”

Otacon shifts slightly, the covers rustling. “Of course I want to be here,” he says softly. “I figured you didn’t want to be here.”

“Only because I’m afraid of what you must think of me,” Snake admits, against his better judgment.

“What—what are you talking about?”

It’s out there now; there’s no real turning back. “You used to think I was so cool,” he explains, sounding almost amused. “And we were so close. Do you remember?”

Otacon doesn’t respond.

“That stupid handshake we had,” Snake murmurs. “The way we actually hugged, sometimes, when we needed it. There was nothing I didn’t trust you with; I don’t think I kept anything from you at all. And you were impressed with the things I could do. You admired me.”

“...I never stopped admiring you,” Otacon says, sounding confused. “Why would I?”

“Because I’m frail and broken and dying,” Snake replies gravely. “...Because I shut you out.”

He hears the slightest hitch in Otacon’s breathing, and wonders if he’s gone too far, if Otacon is going to start crying again. When he speaks again, however, his voice is shockingly even. “You never stopped being the guy you were,” he whispers insistently. “Maybe you can’t take out a Hind-D or a tank with your bare hands anymore, but you’re still the guy who did those things.”

“What happened to ‘just be David’?” Snake counters, only half-serious.

“David did those things too,” Otacon replies.

That throws Snake for a bit of a loop. He didn’t feel like David when he did those things. He didn’t feel like David when he crawled through the microwave chamber, either. He doesn’t even really feel like David now.

“You’re not just one or the other,” Otacon says, his voice more gentle now. “Solid Snake isn’t a personality, it’s just part of your past. ‘Just be David’ doesn’t mean you’re a different person, it doesn’t mean ‘erase everything you’ve done’. It means ‘let Solid Snake rest’. It means ‘your life is yours now, free of war and battle’.” Otacon shifts again, maybe moving just a hair closer. “‘Just be David’ doesn’t mean the past didn’t happen. It means you can forge your own future.”

His own future...? That is the point of all this, in the end, he supposes. Snake recalls his thoughts back in New York; he thinks about Otacon getting old, and what it might be like to be right next to him when it happens. That’s the future he wants. Can he actually obtain it?

“We should try to get some more sleep,” Otacon suggests. “Sunny will want breakfast, I’m sure, so maybe we’ll go find something in the morning. She only really ate on the Nomad, and at the ramen place...” In response to Snake’s silence, Otacon has elected to move on from the heavy topic. Snake can’t blame him.

“Alright,” he agrees. “I think I can manage more sleep.” He pauses, then says, very quietly: “Good night, Hal.”

Not being able to see Otacon’s face in the dark makes discerning his emotions difficult, but his voice is warm when he replies, “Good night, Dave.”

Most of the night is dreamless, at least for Snake. He does get the impression, briefly, of Shadow Moses; nothing particular about it except for how frigid it was, but it’s there all the same. When he does wake up, however, he’s warm and comfortable, and in the fuzzy moments before he’s fully alert, he feels safe.

Then awareness dawns on him. He is wrapped securely in Otacon’s arms, nestled up against his chest.

Immediately Snake is in something of a panic. If Otacon wakes up, what will he think? This is unlike the hug from before, it is unlike helping Snake in and out of his wheelchair; his fragile body, tucked so snugly in Otacon’s embrace, will surely inspire revulsion and pity and a fresh wave of fear that none of this will work.

Extracting himself as carefully and as non-disruptively as he can, Snake drags himself into a sitting position, looking helplessly past Otacon. There’s no way he can actually get out of bed without bothering him. The sun is streaming in through the window, but Otacon needs sleep, he didn’t sleep at all the day before.

The worrying ends up being for naught; Otacon wakes up on his own, stretching languidly before looking up at Snake. “Morning,” he mumbles, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “...is something wrong?”

He’s really too perceptive, sometimes. “No, I’m fine,” Snake says, which he supposes isn’t entirely a lie.

Otacon doesn’t seem convinced. After a moment something seems to dawn on him, and Snake is baffled by the guilt that crosses his face. “Oh,” Otacon says, like he’s just remembered something awful. “I’m sorry, was I still holding you?”

Snake stares at him. “...What?”

“You fell asleep, and... and I was trying to sleep too, and then you started shivering,” Otacon explains, sounding like he’s been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to. “So I... I just... held you. You stopped shaking, and I guess I fell asleep like that.”

Otacon is not the one who needs to feel guilty, Snake thinks miserably. At every turn, he has doubted Otacon’s intentions and thoughts; he has always assumed the worst of every interaction. It’s just an extension of pushing Otacon away, isn’t it? If he cannot trust the most important person in his life to care about him, who can he trust?

“That... that was really nice of you, Hal,” Snake says gently. “I guess I just thought I did it on my own.”

“It... wouldn’t be a bad thing if you did,” Otacon murmurs. “I didn’t mind.”

It’s hard to fathom that; hard to imagine Otacon feeling the ridges of Snake’s spine, the lack of padding over his ribs, and not being revolted. Yet if he reverses the situation... if he imagines he is young and healthy, and Otacon is not—that Otacon is, in fact, as brittle and weak as Snake is now—he knows he wouldn’t be revolted, either. He would not see Otacon as some disgusting wretch, but as a fragile little bird cupped in his hands.

They rouse Sunny, collectively get dressed, and contact the pilot to discuss breakfast. He says he knows a nice place from his last visit here, but it’s been a while, so he’ll have to make sure it’s still around. They meet him in the lobby of the hotel, where he informs them that the restaurant he was thinking of is in fact still in service. On the drive there, it is mostly him and Sunny talking; the guy is great with kids, Snake observes. Does he have any of his own? Are they waiting for their father to come home?

They have rice and miso soup and fish, and Sunny is enthralled with the variety of flavors on display. If she misses a diet of eggs and nothing else, she certainly isn’t showing it (but Snake highly doubts she is—he doesn’t think any of them miss it). The pilot asks if she likes to cook, which leads to a very long conversation that he seems more than happy to listen to.

When they’re done eating, Sunny wants to go out on the town, but Otacon is visibly uncomfortable with the idea as soon as it’s posited. He wants to sit in the hotel and wait for Dr. Yamano’s call, and Snake doesn’t think he’s the only one who can tell as much. The pilot offers to show Sunny around, and Otacon doesn’t look happy about that, either.

“I get it,” the pilot chuckles sheepishly. “The 90s, right? Stranger danger? I wouldn’t let someone I didn’t know take my kids out either.”

Snake doesn’t know if Otacon, a teenager in the 90s, was heavily affected by the ‘stranger danger’ panic or not. From what little he's said over the years, Snake had gotten the impression that if he'd up and vanished, Otacon's father would have just cut his losses. Still, Otacon does seem to relax a little when the pilot brings it up, and asks about his children.

He has two of them, a boy and a girl. He shows pictures (they both look younger than Sunny). Seemingly assured, Otacon asks Snake what he thinks; Snake admittedly doesn’t think they’ve got much to worry about. Sunny will be fine—and if she’s not, there is no force in heaven nor hell that could protect the pilot from what will happen next. He takes the threat in stride, at least; does he know it’s about Otacon, and not Snake?

The pilot drives them back to the hotel, promising to stay in contact via text. Snake wonders if Otacon is going to panic every time his phone goes off. Dr. Yamano will most assuredly call, not text, but Otacon is absolutely on edge and will be watching his phone like a hawk. They head back up to the room in silence; once they’ve arrived, Otacon asks if Snake wants to lay down. He helps him out of the chair and onto the bed, then sits on Sunny’s bed and... waits.

The quiet of the room is deafening. Snake doesn’t think he wants to sleep, and he doesn’t particularly want to watch Japanese television, either. He was half hoping Otacon would get on his own laptop (also in Sunny’s bag), but he’s just sitting there, staring into space, occasionally glancing at his phone.

“Dr. Yamano said it would be a few days,” Snake reminds him.

“I know,” Otacon sighs. “I just...” He trails off, and Snake doesn’t think he’s going to finish that thought.

“You sure you don’t want to go out?” Snake presses. “See the town? This is your dream.”

“I have a lot of dreams,” Otacon mutters, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “Japan’s not going anywhere...”

But I might be, Snake finishes in his mind. He’s not going to be able to get Otacon to budge. “Let’s do something here, then,” he suggests.

“There’s not much to do here,” Otacon points out. “You could go out on the town... I’m sure Daniel would be happy to take you.”

“I’m not experiencing Japan without you,” Snake scoffs, with a finality that suggests he’s not going to budge, either. “What about anime? You have a bunch on your laptop, don’t you?”

Otacon gives him a cautious look. “...You’ve always found some excuse or another to not watch any with me,” he says. He hasn’t even asked in somewhere around five years. That’s more guilt to be added to the pile, but Snake shoves it aside for now.

“Well, I’m out of excuses,” he says firmly. He can tell Otacon is intrigued, even if only a little; that means this is the best shot he’s got at cheering him up. “Come over here. Let’s watch something.”

Snake props himself up on the pillows as Otacon goes about plugging his laptop into the wall. They can both fit on the bed on their backs, but it’s a bit of a tight squeeze; in another life, Snake might wrap an arm around Otacon, or have Otacon do the same to him. In this one, he folds his hands over his stomach while Otacon navigates through his files.

Snake doesn’t know anything about computers, and has never maintained a personal one. Even so, he recognizes how meticulously organized Otacon’s files are, everything clearly labeled and categorized by a variety of different details. He clicks into a folder called ‘Neon Genesis Evangelion (Series)’, and Snake thinks he’s probably said that name before.

“Neon Genesis Evan... what?” he inquires.

“Ev-an-gel-i-on,” Otacon enunciates for him. “It started airing in Japan in 1995. It was released in the west ten years later, but I’ve always defaulted to the sub, so.” He hovers the pointer over ‘Ep. 1: Angel Attack’. “Normally I wouldn’t start with something so... severe, but...”

Snake grunts in acknowledgement. “Is this one your favorite?”

“It is,” Otacon sighs wistfully. “I was fifteen or sixteen when I started watching it... There were message boards for otakus to find genuine Japanese shows, since everything that came to the west was filtered like crazy. The fansubs were fine, but the show does make more sense with proper translations, obviously.”

Snake doesn’t know what half of that means, but he nods along anyway. This is better than catatonic Otacon, sitting on the edge of the other bed waiting for something that isn’t going to happen.

When Sunny was little, they did entertain her with brightly-colored cartoons, largely of the western variety. That’s the closest Snake has really come to this before now, outside of catching Otacon wearing shirts with anime characters on them, or seeing his computer wallpaper. Neon Genesis Evangelion is not like those bright cartoons, in any case. If Snake were to describe it, he might call it ‘washed-out’ in appearance, except for the occasional shots of bright liquids or explosions.

They watch the first two episodes largely in silence; Otacon is still in his depressed state, his ‘waiting mode’ before the call. Snake takes note of several things in those two episodes: to start, the bouts of bright hope present in the narrative or dialogue are often immediately juxtaposed with depressing or nerve-wracking things. (He really thought it might be some cutesy show at first, but he’s very quickly proven wrong.) Next, Shinji’s relationship with his cold and distant father, who appears to be renowned in his field, mirrors Otacon’s relationship with his own father, insofar as Snake has heard about it. (How did that affect a teenage Otacon?)

The third thing he observes, halfway through the second episode, is that EVA 01 roars just like REX did. There’s something about the comparison that unsettles him. Otacon modeling his beloved creation after his favorite anime isn’t surprising, but the added context—Shinji’s predicament, his relationship with his father, the fact that the EVA units appear to be mankind’s last hope against an existential threat—makes Snake both uncomfortable and profoundly sad on Otacon’s behalf.

“...are you sure this is what you want to be watching?” he asks after the second episode ends. “It’s so... bleak.” It must make you even more depressed, he thinks.

“Oh, it gets worse,” Otacon says, like it’s no big deal, as if the emotional weight of the episodes watched thus far isn’t getting to him at all. “Do you want to stop?”

“No,” Snake says quickly. He doesn’t want Otacon to get the idea that this needs to end, that he needs to go back to moping. “What happens to Shinji next? Does he have to fight more of those Angels?”

“Oh, like you wouldn’t believe,” Otacon tells him, sounding at least somewhat enthusiastic. It’s better than nothing.

Snake finds out that Otacon has watched this series dozens of times before, and as they progress through the episodes, he gets more comfortable talking about the scenes and characters, answering any questions Snake may have (unless they’ll be directly answered in the show later). In turn, Snake offers up direct translations; most of the dialogue is pretty one-to-one with the subtitles, but there are occasionally creative interpretations of the words that sort of surprise him. He says, offhand, that it’s a lot better than he thought it would be. Otacon seems proud of the fact that it’s good, proud to be a fan of a show even Snake can agree on the quality of.

For a few blissful hours, the tension between them seems to dissipate. It’s almost as though they’re back in the early days of Philanthropy, and instead of making excuses, Snake has sat down to watch one of Otacon’s favorite shows. They are young, relatively healthy, and on top of their game; they have a whole lifetime of moments like this ahead of them.

When the pilot brings Sunny back, they’ve watched nine episodes. Snake remembers most of the characters’ names, and has absorbed the general plot of the show. He actually feels a little sad that they have to stop. Maybe not entirely because of how interesting the anime is (though that is a factor), but because of the connection he feels to Otacon—nothing between them has felt this easy in so long.

Closing his laptop, Otacon gets up and asks Sunny how the day went. She eagerly gushes about everything they did: Daniel showed her lots of cool things, took her to interesting places, and even got her a little stuffed animal of some mascot. Otacon seems genuinely surprised by that. Snake thinks the pilot probably misses his own kids like crazy, and is latching onto Sunny as a result. It’s not a bad thing, though; they both seem to be having fun.

The day continues on with no call. The pilot takes them out to lunch, and eventually dinner. Otacon insists on paying both times. Snake also catches him checking his phone every time there’s a lull in the conversation. Tomorrow, he eventually suggests, maybe Sunny can pick up a hotplate and some basic ingredients, so they can eat her cooking while they’re here. She seems extremely excited by the idea.

At night, watching Otacon pull off his glasses before laying down, Snake thinks about how old he is. He wonders if he’d have lived to ninety and beyond if he’d aged normally. How is he even still here? Naomi said it was sheer force of will, which Snake had assumed was due to the fact that Liquid, through Ocelot, was still out there; that he still had a mission to complete. Otacon falls asleep and Snake thinks maybe it’s actually because he’s so afraid to leave his friend behind. He thinks about brushing a strand of hair from Otacon’s face, but his fingers are shaking when they enter his field of view, and he simply puts his hand back down.

Just a few days. Then they can start. Then they’ll know.

Snake wakes up in Otacon’s arms again. He doesn’t know which of them did it, and for a moment, he allows himself to not care. He breathes in the scent of Otacon’s nightshirt, feels the beat of his heart, and wishes he didn’t feel so much shame about this. He extracts himself before Otacon wakes up.

There is a small tub in the bathroom, and Snake cautiously asks Otacon to help him again. Otacon mentions the onsen, says maybe a hot spring would be more relaxing, but drops it when Snake hints at the idea that he is not comfortable being naked in a space with other people.

The bath goes smoothly, at least, and gives Otacon something to do besides worry. He takes a shower after, then suggests they all enjoy the hotel’s breakfast this time. Snake assumes it’s so they don’t have to leave, so Otacon can be right here if he gets that call. Sunny agrees nevertheless, as does the pilot; when they’re all done eating, the two of them go out again, ostensibly for ingredients and cookware, but Otacon suggests they do more sightseeing too.

Back in the room, Otacon is moping again. Snake asks if they can watch more Evangelion, which at least perks him up; they watch six more episodes. Snake really doesn’t want to stop this time, but Otacon insists that he doesn’t want Sunny seeing Neon Genesis Evangelion until she’s older. (It’s charming, the way he says it; like there’s no question that she will see it. Snake thinks, briefly, of the purpose of life supposedly being to pass things on to the next generation. Is this Otacon’s way of doing so?)

Sunny returns to the room with ramen ingredients, eggs included. Snake jokes that if he never sees another egg, it’ll be too soon. Otacon shoots him a look, but thankfully, Sunny laughs. The air is lighter. The food comes out good. Otacon checks his phone, over and over again.

Snake tries to redirect him. He tries to keep him occupied. Otacon has been so strong for so long; Snake owes him this effort. If he dies soon, will Otacon remember him trying? Or will he only remember being shut out and pushed away?

Snake asks him about Evangelion again. He asks about the end of the fifteenth episode, about Adam. Otacon smiles at him, soft and subdued but still present, and says everything will be explained when they watch the rest. Snake has the bizarre thought that if nothing else, he needs to survive to see the end.

The day passes. They go to bed. Sometime in the middle of the night, Snake is just conscious enough to register Otacon pulling him close. Is he shivering? He’s not sure. He relaxes, breathes deep, and falls back asleep. He dreams about being young. He dreams about Shadow Moses, and Philanthropy, and the Big Shell. He does not dream about FOXHOUND, or Big Boss; those things were before he met Otacon, and while he sleeps, they don’t matter at all.

At some point he dreams about piloting REX to fight Ocelot, except he’s in EVA 01 instead, and instead of RAY, Ocelot is piloting an Angel. Or maybe he is the Angel.

Snake wakes up alone, curled under the blankets. Otacon is hastily pulling on a pair of jeans with his phone held between his ear and his shoulder. “We’ll be right there,” he says in a rush, and Snake realizes it’s time.

The pilot drops them off at the GeneX facility, assuring them that he’s just a text or call away if they need him to return. He wishes them luck. Sunny, for the first time in the last few days, looks concerned. If she had gotten out of the car with them, Snake thinks she might have tried to hug him, but she didn’t and she doesn’t. Otacon tries to reassure her; he sounds more stressed than anyone else. The car leaves and Otacon wheels Snake inside.

Dr. Yamano meets them quickly, which at least leaves little room for fretting.

“Nanomachines are a little touchy sometimes,” she explains out in the lobby. “We absolutely want to avoid any chance of them conflicting with the new ones. The process to flush them out is a bit intensive, but I genuinely think it’s necessary.”

“What is that process?” Snake asks.

“It’s basically dialysis,” Dr. Yamano says, and immediately his mind is on Raiden. (Or is he just Jack now?) “We will filter your blood through a machine that will be able to extract the nanomachines still inside of you. If any linger when the process is over, the new ones should be able to overpower them; what we want to avoid is higher concentrations of them.”

“And... you’ll inject the first half of the new ones when it’s over?” Otacon asks warily.

“That’s right,” Dr. Yamano confirms. “Then we’ll have to wait two weeks to see if anything changes. You may notice things before then, but I want to be absolutely sure it’s wise to move forward.”

Before she takes Snake back, she tells them both that the procedure is going to take several hours. Otacon says he’ll be right there, in the lobby, and Snake knows no amount of coaxing him to do something else will work. Dr. Yamano seems to realize the same thing and lets it go.

Some part of Snake feels like this could be goodbye. He’s so frail; what if this is too much? He wants to say so many things. He says none of them, and doesn’t look back as he’s taken to the Medical wing.

As Dr. Yamano starts getting the machine ready, she strikes up a conversation that Snake is wholly unprepared for.

“Have you and Dr. Emmerich known each other long?” she asks.

“...Yeah,” Snake says carefully. “We met about... nine years ago?”

“While you were in the military?”

That seems like an odd question. “Uh, yeah,” Snake replies. “During that mission where I got injected with that virus, actually.”

“FOXDIE, right?” Dr. Yamano asks, like it’s a very normal question, and Snake feels like a black hole opens up in his gut. He doesn’t respond. Looking anywhere but at her, he sees a very familiar book on her desk, its cover white with a splash of red. In The Darkness Of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth, even in Japanese, is extremely recognizable.

“For a man who has officially died twice, you’re quite resilient, David,” Dr. Yamano says, and despite how threatening that sounds to Snake, her tone is actually quite friendly.

He waits for her to laugh and reveal her master plan to him, something about harvesting his nanomachines or... something. He doesn’t know. There can’t be anything left to do but kill him, but he’s dying anyway, so why bother?

She does not reveal a master plan. Ocelot does not jump out from behind the nanomachine-dialysis device. She finishes preparing it and starts readying the needle she’s going to use, and eventually, Snake sighs in defeat. Or is it relief?

“Most people who have said things like that to me immediately tried to rectify the situation,” he grunts.

“That wouldn’t be very beneficial to my research,” Dr. Yamano half-jokes. “I’m here to save your life, remember? I just thought it was interesting, that’s all.” She approaches him to start the procedure; Snake can tell already that it's not going to be pleasant.

She explains to him that a dialysis regime for a normal condition, like renal failure, requires a minor surgery to make repeated procedures go well. However, because they’re only doing this once, she’s just going to use a temporary catheter. It hurts. A lot, in fact. Snake’s been through worse, he’ll survive—at least for now. He might even get through it without complaining.

It does hurt, though.

When the actual procedure begins, it starts making him dizzy in record time. It feels like losing way too much blood way too fast, even though it’s being funneled back into him just as quickly. Dr. Yamano watches him and his vitals carefully, and he knows he’s in good hands (or hopes he is, anyway), but there is a note of fear to the whole thing. Anything could happen.

He decides to talk. He’s decent at that, dizzy or otherwise. He’s got a lot on his mind anyway.

“On the way here... on the plane,” Snake starts, trying to focus, “Hal said I could stop being Solid Snake. That I could... just be David.” He takes a slow breath. “I’ve been Snake for... a long time. And if I’m even recognizable like this, old and dying...”

“I didn’t know much about you before now,” Dr. Yamano says gently. “I looked into it because of Dr. Emmerich, not because of you. I was curious about his credentials.”

Snake huffs a quiet almost-laugh. “He really should have used a fake name,” he muses.

“He was never declared dead, but he does have an extensive list of anti-government activities,” Dr. Yamano continues, amused. “Most of it seems alleged.”

“He’s good at covering his tracks,” Snake mutters.

“So are you. I genuinely wasn’t sure if you were Solid Snake,” she explains. “A lot of your military history is obscured or even expunged. Your connections to FOXDIE are explicit, though, and you already told me about it. So I connected the dots.”

That would explain it. “My mistake,” he sighs. “I guess I’ve been a little complacent.”

Dr. Yamano doesn’t respond right away. Snake closes his eyes. He’s not going to be able to sleep like this, nor does he want to, but maybe if he can’t see the room it will stop spinning.

“Being recognized as Solid Snake doesn’t preclude just being David, I don’t think,” Dr. Yamano says. “You can’t just pretend Solid Snake never existed, but you don’t have to live that life anymore.”

“Hal said something like that,” Snake replies, opening his eyes. Bad idea. The room is still spinning.

Dr. Yamano smiles at him, before he shuts his eyes again. “He cares about you a lot,” she notes.

“The feeling’s mutual, believe it or not,” Snake says. He feels like he’s slurring. He doesn’t feel drunk, but he does feel very bad. He cracks an eye open to check Dr. Yamano; if anything is worrying about his vitals, she’s not showing it. This is probably normal for what’s happening.

“Does he know that?” she asks.

What a strange question, Snake thinks. She’s a doctor, not a therapist—she doesn’t need to know what’s going on between him and Otacon.

“...I don’t think he does,” he responds anyway.

“You should tell him,” Dr. Yamano says simply, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. “A long life isn’t worth living without someone by your side.”

He wouldn’t leave my side even if I told him to, Snake thinks, but he doesn’t say that. Instead, he says, “Yeah, maybe.”

The procedure takes somewhere around four hours. Dr. Yamano continues engaging him in conversation, which is appreciated; it helps him soldier through the discomfort. She asks him about all sorts of things—things about Shadow Moses, about Philanthropy, about Otacon. She asks about his childhood and schooling. She asks about Sunny.

Snake answers her, perhaps in more detail than he might have otherwise. He tries to trust that she’s not going to use any of this information for nefarious purposes. He’s not even sure what she could do with any of it, but the trauma of everything is still in him, and he can’t escape his worries completely.

When it ends, Dr. Yamano removes the catheter and bandages the spot she used. Then she readies a syringe—the nanomachines.

“Great,” Snake quips, “more needles.”

Dr. Yamano chuckles and apologizes. Snake can’t really find it in himself to care much; he feels like shit and wants to lie down. The injection is nothing compared to the dialysis, anyway.

Otacon is sitting on the sill of the window when Dr. Yamano returns Snake to him. He really did wait out here for four hours, not a computer or book in sight. Did he even play around on his phone? Somehow, Snake doubts it.

Dr. Yamano briefs them both on what to expect in the coming days. She explains the possible side effects, and things to look out for, both good and bad; the changes will likely start in Snake’s face, she says. His complexion should improve as the nanomachines start repairing his genes, and slowly he will notice more signs that the treatment is working.

“And if it doesn’t work?” Otacon asks. Snake can hear the handles of the wheelchair creaking in his grip.

“Then there will be no changes for the duration of the two weeks,” Dr. Yamano says. “We will reevaluate the situation at that time to see if we can come up with a new plan.”

If Snake even survives that long. No one says it, but he’s sure they’re all thinking it.

The pilot picks them up, offering to take them out to eat—Snake objects immediately. He needs to lie down. Otacon asks if he can just bring some food back to the room, then apologizes for being demanding and says he can pay the man for his trouble. That seems to surprise the pilot; he says he’s already been paid, and besides, he wants to help them. He doesn’t mind getting them some food.

Sunny goes with the pilot once again as Otacon takes Snake back up to their room. Snake thinks she might want to be with them instead, but Otacon gently insists she help the pilot because she knows what they like. He gives her the spare room key; Snake wonders if he thinks he’ll be too occupied to let her in.

In their room, once he’s lying down, Snake can tell how rattled Otacon is. There is no phone call to wait for, now; they have to hold out for two weeks. Perhaps more pressing than that, Snake feels like absolute garbage, and it’s obvious. Otacon must be absolutely terrified. Snake might be too, if he wasn’t preoccupied with not throwing up.

“Let’s watch Evangelion,” he murmurs, because Otacon looks like he’s going to utterly break down. He also wants to know what happens next, but between the dizziness and the nausea, it’s hard to think about Shinji and his friends.

The sixteenth episode’s full title is ‘The sickness unto death, and then...’ It feels like an ill omen. Neither of them say anything about it.

Snake tries very hard to focus. He wants to know what’s going on, and he doesn’t want Otacon to worry. Unfortunately Otacon is checking up on him more than he’s watching the screen, and they haven’t even made it through the opening song before he pauses the video. Everything is still spinning, and Snake wishes it would stop.

“Maybe you should just rest,” Otacon suggests, voice watery.

“Yeah,” Snake whispers, “maybe.”

Otacon closes his laptop and sets it aside. Snake wonders what he’s even going to do now. He realizes, in thinking about it, that he wants Otacon right here; he needs him right now, like a rock in choppy waters. A port in the storm. (A little boat weaving through the wreckage of the tanker, trembling arms hauling Snake out of the Hudson.)

“Can you—” Snake cuts himself off. Too embarrassing, he thinks.

“What?” Otacon asks. “I’ll do anything.”

Of course he will. He always will. You should tell him, Dr. Yamano says in Snake’s head.

“Can you just... hold me, for a bit?” Snake asks. He wants to justify it somehow, but he can’t, and he knows Otacon doesn’t need him to.

“Of course,” says Otacon, without missing a beat.

He lays down a little more, making himself as ideal a resting place as he can before he gathers Snake up in his arms. Snake finds it difficult to think about how frail he is, how weak and vulnerable, how his body must feel; instead, he thinks about how Otacon smells, how warm he is. He buries his face in Otacon’s chest and counts the beats of his heart: too fast, too hard, but gradually slowing to a steadier rhythm.

Slowly, like some awful carnival ride winding down to a halt, everything stops spinning.

The pilot brings Sunny back to their room and then heads back to his own. Otacon probably would have invited him in, were he not busy. Sunny asks if they want to eat; she doesn’t acknowledge their position, Snake curled up against Otacon like a child. Does she know? Has she always known? She’s young, but she’s far from stupid. Snake’s the stupid one, he thinks, for not figuring this out sooner.

You should tell him.

Snake declines food on account of the persisting nausea. Otacon eats one-handed, surprisingly deft with chopsticks—or maybe it’s not surprising at all. He’s an otaku, after all. Or was. He seems like he wants to move away from it all, but he is still hopelessly in love with anime. Does that mean he’s an otaku whether he wants to be or not? (That’s kind of like still being Solid Snake well after retirement, isn’t it?) Snake wonders if he should try to think of him as Hal more often, but after nine years, it’s a hard habit to break. Calling him Hal out loud is about as much as he can compromise right now.

He drifts in and out of sleep, catching bits and pieces of conversations Otacon has with Sunny. She’s talking about the pilot, mostly. She likes him a lot. At some point, Otacon whispers to him that he’ll be right back, he needs to go to the bathroom; Snake grunts in acknowledgement and says nothing else.

Sunny asks him how he’s feeling while Otacon’s gone. “Bad,” Snake groans. “Really bad.”

“You’ll b-be okay, Snake,” she says, with all the confidence of a child who has unwavering faith in her guardians.

“I hope so,” Snake mutters back.

“You will,” Sunny asserts. “You h-have to be.”

Otacon returns and gets back into position, and Snake gratefully clings to him as soon as he’s lying down. He feels Otacon drag his sleeve across his forehead; “You’re sweating,” he says, deeply concerned.

“I feel like I’m gonna be sick,” Snake replies, holding on a little tighter.

Otacon asks Sunny to get some water, and Snake feels like he should be insulted by Otacon holding the bottle for him, but he isn’t. There will be time to be upset about being treated like an infant later. (Hopefully.)

He drifts, in and out and back and forth. He has dreams about Shadow Moses and EVA 01, about Gray Fox but he’s Rei Ayanami. He dreams about Otacon, about telling him everything. He dreams about losing so much blood that it makes him feel like he’s not even a person anymore.

At some point, Otacon suggests getting Snake into his nightclothes. Snake is at least conscious enough to reject the idea—it would require Otacon doing it for him, and that’s not happening.

“At least let me take your pants off,” Otacon insists.

My legs are also old and gross and awful, Snake thinks, but he agrees anyway. It ends up making the eventual trip to the bathroom easier in any case. (He thinks he’s going to throw up, but nothing happens on that front.)

He sleeps. He dreams. Otacon holds him, secure as a lifeline.

The next day, Snake feels marginally better, but there are no immediate changes. He knew there wouldn’t be—they both knew—but the anxiety about Snake’s future isn’t going to go away until something positive happens. It’s hard to believe they’ve come this far, and hard to believe it still isn’t far enough.

Otacon offers to bathe him again. Snake wonders aloud if making the water hot enough will fix everything. Otacon smiles, but does not laugh.

His hands are so gentle. He was the one who used to bathe Sunny, Snake remembers. She was only two when Otacon became her legal guardian; Snake thinks, or knows maybe, that Otacon was just as gentle with her. He worries a little less about whether or not Otacon can see his body. In another life, maybe they’d bathe together.

The process of getting undressed and redressed is a struggle, but Snake manages. Maybe that’s a good sign. He’s been managing for months, though.

While Otacon showers, Snake lies in bed, staring up at the ceiling. He thinks about Shinji saying he doesn’t know the ceiling he’s under. Have they been here long enough for Snake to know this ceiling? Honestly, he’s not sure he’s even really looked at it before now. Sunny types away on her laptop on the other bed. She takes a shower after Otacon; it’s strange, isn’t it, that she can handle bathing herself but Snake cannot.

They eat the hotel’s food for breakfast, and Sunny makes lunch. Because she doesn’t leave at any point, Snake doesn’t ask if they can watch Evangelion. He’s not sure he’d be able to handle much of it anyway.

The pilot texts Otacon to ask how Snake’s doing; Otacon tells him about it, presumably to make a point of how he’s not alone in this. Snake says, “Tell him I’m still alive.” Otacon doesn’t smile.

When it’s time to sleep, Otacon pulls him into his arms without asking, and Snake relaxes into the embrace. If he dies, will Otacon remember this? Does he know how much it means?

You should tell him.

The days blend together, for a little bit. Sunny eventually goes out with the pilot again. How many things are there to do in Tokyo, Snake wonders? Otacon tells him they could probably spend an entire day at Akihabara, if they wanted. Sunny would certainly be enraptured.

“Akihabara?” Snake echoes.

“It’s basically a massive shopping center,” Otacon explains. “Mostly electronics.”

Snake wonders if Otacon wants to go there, but doesn’t actually ask him. The answer is almost certainly yes, with the caveat that he won’t be willing to do so until Snake can go with him. They have some time now to do anything they want, but Snake knows he’s in no condition to go anywhere. Is Akihabara even wheelchair accessible? He doesn't ask that, either.

They watch two episodes of Evangelion. Otacon is the one to decide they stop after episode seventeen for the day; Snake catches the title of the next one in his files before he shuts his laptop. ‘Life and Death Decisions’, it says. Snake wonders if the weight of the show is getting to Otacon now.

In the middle of the night, curled up in Otacon’s arms, Snake wakes up with an intense need to go to the bathroom. The last thing he wants is to wake Otacon up and be escorted there; too tired to really think about it, he extracts himself from Otacon’s arms and carefully climbs over him.

The bathroom light is blinding. Snake squints through it as he takes care of his business, then washes his hands. He’s thinking about getting back in bed, about how he’s going to worm his way into Otacon’s arms without waking him. He looks into the mirror and makes eye contact with himself—blue, intense, just like always.

...Wait.

As he’s artificially aged, Snake has lost his grip on a lot of memories. If there’s one thing he remembers for sure, though, it’s how bad he looks. He knows the face he is looking at right now is not the same as the one he has been seeing in his reflection for months. His eyes are less sunken, and the roughness of his complexion has smoothed out, just a bit. To a bystander maybe the differences wouldn’t be obvious. To Snake, grappling with his own mortality every time he sees himself in the mirror, the change is plain as day.

“Ota—HAL!” he shouts.

Otacon is there in seconds, throwing the door open like he’s fearing the worst. He is disheveled from sleep and without his glasses and looks like he’s full to bursting with adrenaline. Snake turns to him. They make eye contact.

“How did you—” Otacon is breathless. “You—you got out of bed on your own?”

Snake steps closer and takes Otacon’s face in his trembling hands, still wet from the sink. “Look at me,” he says, with conviction.

Otacon’s eyes flick back and forth across Snake’s features. His breath hitches. “Your skin—”

“Hal—”

They laugh at the same time, in disbelief, in elation; it builds from weak chuckles to outright joyous cackling, and then Otacon is sobbing as he throws his arms around Snake and holds him as tight as he dares. For the first time in what feels like an impossibly long time, Snake hugs him back.

Sunny, rubbing her eyes in the doorway of the bathroom, asks what’s going on.

“It’s working,” Otacon tells her, voice thick with the myriad of emotions he’s experiencing all at once.

“Snake’s g-gonna be okay?” she asks, in awe.

“We're not out of the woods yet,” Snake cautions, but it’s difficult to hide his own immense relief.

“But we can see daylight,” Otacon insists.

(A memory, distant and smudged: Daylight, Meryl says, before Liquid swerves his Jeep in front of theirs and they crash spectacularly. Liquid dies in agony, the most recent victim to FOXDIE; Snake will spend the better part of the next decade in the shadow of a specter who is never actually there. On a snowmobile, leaving Shadow Moses for what he assumes will be the final time, he talks about future and hope. Meryl leaves him months later. Alone and drunk in the space between her departure and Otacon’s arrival, Snake fears every passing moment will be his last. Naomi told him to live, but sooner or later, FOXDIE will come for him too. It was always meant to kill him. It was a fluke that it didn’t.)

Well, that’s sobering.

Otacon notices the way Snake tenses up, the way he’s not smiling anymore. Of course he does; even without his glasses, he’s not blind.

“Dave?”

“Just... tired,” Snake lies. He doesn’t know if he can even get back to sleep after this. He’s going to have to try, in any case; he’s still old, and he’s not going to survive an all-nighter.

Otacon is in no way convinced, but doesn’t pester him about it for now. They all return to bed. Sunny seems to get back to sleep easily enough, but even in the quiet dark, neither Snake nor Otacon is calm enough for it. They’re apart again, laying across from one another; Snake hates it, more than he’d have thought. Has he really gotten so used to being held at night?

I’m not better yet, he thinks bitterly. If he ever even will be. So many things can still go wrong, can’t they? Everything improving only to get ten times worse?

Maybe Otacon can sense the waves of discontent coming off of Snake. “Do you want me to...?” he asks, trailing off at the end like he’s afraid to actually acknowledge what it is he’s offering. Maybe he’s worried Snake will be embarrassed about it.

“Yeah,” Snake mutters. “I do.”

Back in Otacon’s arms, Snake finds it a little harder to be pessimistic. Otacon’s heart is pounding, and he’s moving more than usual; rubbing Snake’s back, resting his chin briefly on Snake’s head before thinking better of it, then doing it again a minute later when his attention lapses.

Snake tries to sleep. They both do.

The next day, Otacon seems... brighter. More at ease. There were good moments along the most recent mission, and while they traveled, times in between the sadness and strife; it’s kind of like that, now. Otacon seems just a little less saddled by grief.

Before Sunny leaves to go out with the pilot, Otacon asks, “Have you been to Akihabara yet?”

“What’s that?” Sunny asks in return.

From his place on the bed, Snake can’t really see Otacon’s face while it’s turned towards the door, but there’s a smile in his voice when he says, “Ask Daniel about it. You'll love it.”

He wants to bottle this moment up, wear it around his neck like a good luck charm. It’s so mundane—Otacon cross-legged on the bed, tapping away on his laptop, his closer knee resting on Snake. There’s just something about it... Otacon hasn’t willingly used his laptop on his own since they got here. He’s just been moping and waiting and worrying. To see him like this, almost like his old self? It’s transcendent.

Snake checks his reflection every time he’s in the bathroom. (He might be in the bathroom more than he actually needs to be, just to check.) The changes are gradual, like trying to measure the movement of the hour hand on a clock. The less he checks, the more changes, but he’s compelled to check as often as possible.

The things he does notice are as subtle as they were the night before. His complexion is improving, bit by bit. His eyes look less sunken. He feels less weak—he’s still frail, muscles having wasted away some time ago, but Snake knows his body. He knows how bad it’s been, and how it’s improved now. Otacon asked him breathlessly the night before about getting out of bed on his own; it wasn’t like it was easy, but he did do it, and hopefully things will only get better.

Hopefully.

Snake looks in the mirror and wonders if this is what Liquid would have looked like. Would they have gone gray the same way? Before he’d jumped inside REX, Liquid told Snake that he wasn’t worried about FOXDIE, because Snake wasn’t dead. It had killed him later that same day. What was it like to be so certain of success, only for everything to go wrong? What was the moment between the heart attack and his death like? Was he scared?

For so long, Snake had resented Liquid, especially when Ocelot had claimed to be channeling him. Finding out that it was all a lie, that Ocelot had reprogrammed his own brain—it de-fanged Liquid. No longer was he a vengeful spirit, haunting Snake from beyond the grave; he was just a young man who’d done terrible things and subsequently died. He was the body Snake and Otacon had stolen to fake Snake’s death, missing an arm that had been wrongfully taken from him.

Had Snake known how short his life would be, would he have looked at the dead face of his brother differently? Would he have seen his own reflection?

He leaves the bathroom feeling distinctly unsettled. “Do you want to watch Evangelion?” he asks, leaning against the doorframe.

Otacon looks over at him and frowns, eyebrows twisted in concern. “...you don’t really look like you’re up for Eva,” he says gently. “We could watch something else.”

“I want to know what happens to Shinji,” Snake insists.

“Okay...” Otacon pushes his glasses up. (Gendo does it the same way. Is that where Otacon got the gesture from?) “It’s not... great,” he warns.

“Don’t tell me,” Snake huffs, pushing away from the bathroom door to join Otacon on the bed. “I want to see it.”

They watch four episodes. The plot has been steadily ramping up in intensity; Snake finds himself constantly thinking about Otacon, as a teenager, engaging with this show for the very first time. Did it speak to him? Does it still? How did it affect his outlook, his personality? Did he see himself in Shinji? Would he still today?

Halfway through the opening song of the twenty-second episode, Snake’s stomach growls. Otacon barks out a laugh, pausing the video and asking, “Do you want to eat? Geez, Dave, you don’t need to wait so long...”

“I was enjoying the show!” Snake says defensively. “I don’t want to stop now.”

“Now’s as good a place as any,” Otacon counters. “At least we didn’t get into the actual episode.”

“Maybe we would have, if you would just skip the intro,” Snake grumbles.

“And miss The Cruel Angel’s Thesis? No way!”

Snake wishes he could indulge more in this moment. He wishes he were less afraid. All it would take is one wrong thing to start a domino effect of wrong things, cascading into his death. Would it hurt more now that it had seemed like it was going to work?

He is able to get into the chair on his own, at least. He feels a little less small in it, a little less curled in on himself. They head down to eat some of the hotel’s breakfast offerings, which are scarce for the time of day, but at least still available. Otacon tells him that Evangelion actually has two different endings; there’s the original episodes twenty-five and twenty-six, and then two episodes released (originally as a movie) the next year, also ostensibly twenty-five and twenty-six. Snake asks him which they should watch.

“We can start with the original ending,” Otacon says, “even though I think the alternate one is better. You may as well know what was changed.” He brings some rice to his mouth with his chopsticks and chews thoughtfully. “The... opening of the alternate twenty-fifth episode is, uh.” He looks a little... flushed? “It’s... well, let’s just say they really don’t beat around the bush on the fact that Shinji is a teenage boy.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Snake replies. His hands are steadier than they have been since they arrived; he maneuvers the chopsticks easier, loses less food per attempt than he had before.

The pilot texts to ask if they want to go out for lunch. Otacon says they just ate, but he’s free to take Sunny somewhere. Snake is certain he offers to pay, but he only knows what Otacon tells him of the interaction, and it would be like him to leave that detail out. They return to the room, and Otacon manages to get absorbed in something online, so Snake turns on the TV.

“The news?” Otacon asks, wrinkling his nose. “Really?”

“You don’t have to watch it,” Snake grunts. “You can’t understand it anyway.”

Otacon looks downright indignant. “I can see what’s happening on the screen!” he exclaims, but there is a note of playfulness to his voice that tells Snake he’s not actually upset.

“Does any of it make sense without subtitles, though?” Snake teases.

“You’re a jerk,” Otacon snorts, focusing his attention back on his laptop. He’s smiling.

When Sunny returns, she is bursting at the seams to tell them about Akihabara. Snake doesn’t understand half of what she’s saying, but she seems thrilled about it, and he supposes that’s the important part. She’s returned from her excursions with trinkets and other small gifts a few times now, so Otacon asks her why she didn’t come back with anything.

“Y-you want to go too, d-don’t you Uncle Hal?” she asks. “We can g-get stuff together!”

Otacon hesitates just long enough on an answer that Snake replies instead: “It’ll be easier to buy things when I’m there, anyway. Not all the cashiers are gonna know English.”

Otacon and Sunny both beam at him, and Snake wonders if that’s a promise he’s never going to be able to keep. Will these small moments of happiness be worth it if the payoff is that being reminded of them only hurts?

They go out to dinner with the pilot. Even he seems to notice a change, but it could just as easily be about Snake’s demeanor, maybe. Outside the restaurant they choose, Otacon leaves Snake by the car as he jogs over to the door to peer inside and see how busy it is. By the time Sunny and the pilot have gotten out, Snake is no longer by the car.

Otacon turns around in surprise when Snake asks him how it looks. Snake is still in the wheelchair, but he is several feet from where he was left.

“How did you—?” Otacon asks, breathless.

“My arms,” Snake pants, “are on fire.”

The praise he receives is embarrassing, but there’s also something reassuring about it. The pilot and Otacon do not sound patronizing; they sound excited. Otacon is teary-eyed and looks like he wants to hug Snake, but he doesn’t, at least for now. It all feels very silly, being congratulated on rolling a chair a few feet, but he’d be lying if he said it didn’t make him feel a little more confident.

If he is to survive, and get better, he will need to work at it slowly and steadily. Regaining the muscles he lost will be arduous and difficult. With Otacon looking at him like he’s just climbed a mountain, though, Snake thinks maybe he can do it.

In the coming days, they finish Evangelion. It is a lot to take in; the differences between the original finale episodes and the alternate ones are stark, and Otacon says there was a pretty significant budget discrepancy between the two endings. He asks which one Snake liked better. Snake suggests that maybe they’re both good, in different ways; he is drawn to the idea of them both existing, parallel, never touching but linked in some way.

They are two different lifetimes, he says. Then, unsettled by his own introspection, he adds, “I think the second one is a little better, though.”

Otacon says there’s more in the series, technically, but he’s only really interested in what they’ve just finished. Snake decides to trust his judgment. Otacon asks if Snake wants to watch something else next, and starts combing through his files.

Snake hums in thought. “Do you want to celebrate?”

“Huh?”

“We finished your favorite anime,” Snake says. “Or, well—I finally watched it with you. It was good, I liked it.”

“You want to celebrate that?” Otacon asks, the corner of his mouth quirked up in a little smile.

I’m getting better, Snake thinks. I could also still die. I want to see you happy, in case something happens. Or even if it doesn’t. You deserve to feel good.

“Yeah,” he says simply. “Why not?”

“Okay... should we order takeout, or something?” Otacon navigates to his search engine of choice, maybe to look up local restaurants.

“No,” Snake replies. “Let’s go out.”

Otacon glances over at Snake again. “Sunny and Daniel didn’t watch Eva,” he says. “I doubt they’d be as interested in celebrating it.”

“Just you and me,” Snake clarifies.

“Just...” Otacon leans away from his laptop and gives Snake his full attention. “Just us?”

“We could get sake, if you want,” Snake says with a hint of a smirk. “Have you ever had it?”

“I...” Otacon swallows thickly, his throat bobbing. “Do you really want to...?” He sounds cautiously optimistic.

“Yeah,” Snake assures him. “We’ve been eating a lot of rice and soup. You wanna go for sushi?”

Otacon talks to the pilot on the phone about watching Sunny for a few more hours than usual while Snake gets dressed in the bathroom. He doesn’t have any super nice clothes, but he has some passable ones, and he’s not too worried about looking classy.

“No,” he hears Otacon say through the door, sounding like he’s just been caught in a lie. “It’s not a...” He trails off, then laughs nervously.

A date? Snake wonders. Did the pilot ask if it was a date?

He looks in the mirror. His hair is still gray, and he’s still wrinkled, but maybe he doesn’t look like he’s in his late nineties anymore. More like eighties, maybe even early. He has walked back and away from death’s doorstep; maybe only a few feet, but he is on more solid ground. In his eyes—blue and sharp, looking far less sunken on his face—he sees hope. It’s so foreign, now.

The night is young, the air cool and comfortable. There is a sushi place just close enough to get to without having the pilot drop them off like teenagers to prom. Snake can’t push himself there, he’s not strong enough yet, but he is strong enough to gripe about it. Otacon says he probably wouldn’t make it walking, either, at least not yet. Maybe soon. It is a few days until the next appointment; who knows what will happen then.

They sit outside, because the outdoor tables are more accommodating to the chair, but it’s nice enough out that they don’t mind. The place is on some backstreets, far enough from the main road for the cars to not be overwhelming. They get big heaping platters of sushi, and for the first time in what feels like far too long, Snake is genuinely enthusiastic about eating.

“So?” he prompts, swallowing down a tuna roll. “How are you enjoying the authentic Tokyo experience, Hal?”

Otacon pauses, halfway into lifting a roll up in his chopsticks. “It’s good,” he says with a little laugh, but there is a certain quality to his voice that Snake is all too familiar with.

“There’s a ‘but’ coming, isn’t there?” he asks.

Immediately Otacon looks guilty. He drops the roll back down onto his platter, looking away.

“Talk to me, Hal.”

“It’s just—” Otacon sighs, setting his chopsticks down on the edge of the platter as well. “I’m... afraid,” he admits, sounding ashamed of himself for it. “Like if I relax, everything will come crumbling down. I’ve been holding my breath for years... I feel like if I stop, I’ll drown.”

Snake feels the same way, and has this entire time, but he doesn’t say that. Instead, he waits for Otacon to continue.

“...Ever since you started deteriorating,” Otacon says shakily, “I’ve felt like something was wrong. Before this year, even—when we didn’t know what it was. When we were just trying to raise Sunny, but your hair was starting to go gray. When we thought maybe it might be FOXDIE.”

“I started shutting you out,” Snake recalls somberly.

“You did,” Otacon confirms. He reaches up, pushing his glasses up with one hand to wipe his eyes with the other. Once his glasses are settled back where they belong, he takes a slow, deep breath. Then: “But it made me realize something.”

Snake makes a soft sound in his throat. “That I’m an asshole?” he suggests, and it’s not entirely a joke.

“No, no...” Otacon pauses. “Well. You are,” he says, with a sort of half-levity that belies the fact that he has an entirely different point to make. “That’s not it, though.” He meets Snake’s eyes, and there is a resolve there that gives Snake an inkling towards the fact that this conversation is not going to go how he thought it might. “It made me realize what I’m fighting for.”

Snake raises an eyebrow, inquisitive; Go on.

“Before... way before, you know, it... it was so hard to know. Nothing was right. I was proud of my work on REX, but ArmsTech was just using me. I didn’t have any family left. Hell, I didn’t even have any friends. I wanted to prevent nuclear armageddon, of course, but that felt like it was so far away from my immediate life.” Otacon clasps his hands together on the table, looking down at them. “All I really had was the desire to do the right thing, and this... desperate need for somebody, anybody to care about me.”

“Hal...”

“When Sniper Wolf died, it felt like I lost everything,” Otacon says, sounding more introspective than sad about it, but Snake feels a little guilty nonetheless. “I didn’t, of course—she barely even knew me, in the end... Hell, I barely even knew her. I wanted it to be true love, more than anything else in the world, but it wasn't.” He briefly meets Snake’s eyes again, and looks away just as quickly. “It’s just... when you’re lost, it helps to have some kind of lifeline. She died, and I felt like I’d lost my purpose. If I wanted to survive, I needed a new one. I...” He meets Snake’s eyes again, a little more steadily. “I wanted to help you.”

“You helped me a lot,” Snake says softly. He doesn’t think Otacon is looking for reassurance, but it’s the truth, so he says it anyway.

“It didn’t feel like I did,” Otacon sighs. “After you and Meryl rode off into the sunset, I felt empty again. The military came and got me out, and they told me I was very much the only survivor. On that entire base! Of course, I was worried about you and Meryl, but it wasn’t hard to find out that your deaths had been fabricated.”

Snake smiles faintly. That’s so Otacon, to just obtain that extremely classified information on his own. Did he gain access to Mei Ling’s hard copy of the Codec data, including the call with Campbell about how the deaths of Snake and Meryl were made official? He’s not going to ask, but it seems likely.

“Naturally I knew it wasn’t just you two, either. There was one other person I was pretty sure had made it out,” Otacon continues. “Ocelot, of course. When I discovered that REX’s test data was getting around, that other people were using that to make more, it wasn’t hard to figure out who was probably behind it. So that seemed like a promising reason to fight, right? I had to right my wrongs, I had to fix this mistake I’d made. I knew I couldn’t do it on my own, though. I knew I needed you.”

Snake doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing to say; he can’t contest thoughts Otacon had nine years ago. They both know what happened next: Snake, drunk and disheveled, had to practically be begged before he agreed to help. Otacon’s faith in him seemed misguided, at the time, but here they are now, so maybe he was right.

Otacon shrugs. “And we’ve been together ever since,” he says plainly. Eyes cast down at the table once more, he draws his lips into a tight line. With more feeling he goes on: “My life had a clear-cut purpose again. There was always something to do. You and me, driving a modified surveillance van around North America, really putting a tack under the feet of those REX copies and their owners... It’s strange, but it was the happiest I’d ever been. Even after the Big Shell, dissolving Philanthropy and adopting Sunny... things were good. And then...” He trails off, and Snake knows exactly where they are in the story. He knows what comes next. “You started aging,” Otacon says, with a sort of melancholy acceptance. “You started pushing me away.”

He meets Snake’s eyes again, holding the contact. His eyes are blue, too, but not usually as intense. Right now, Snake thinks they could give his own a run for their money in that department.

“And it all just... fell into focus,” Otacon says, calm despite the static electricity in the air between them.

Snake feels like his heart is beating in his throat. “What did?” he asks.

“It was never about Metal Gear,” Otacon says intently. “It was never even about saving the world. It was... about being good enough. I was fighting for what I believed in, but the thing I believe in more than anything else is you.”

His gaze is boring into Snake’s soul, or at least that’s how it feels. Then it softens into something else, something open and adoring.

“You’re what I’m fighting for,” Otacon admits, his voice gentle, filled with a tender sort of love Snake’s never actually heard directed at himself before. “You’re my purpose. You’re the reason all of this has been worth it—the death, the lies, the grief.” He takes a steadying breath. “It’s always been you, Dave.”

Snake’s eyes feel like they’re burning out of his skull. He holds it in, an ancient habit, formed through years of loneliness and brutal training. “...is this your idea of a confession?” he asks, and the force of his own voice manages to break the seal just enough for a few tears to slip free. He wipes his eyes, feeling the difference in the skin under each one; one scarred, one not.

He’s smiling, though. More than he has in a while.

Otacon laughs, soft and sweet. “Yeah,” he says, “I suppose it is.”

Snake wipes at his eyes until they’re dry again, but he feels on the precipice of something bigger than he knows how to deal with. He thinks maybe he won’t be able to hold it back next time. Will there be a next time?

You should tell him, Dr. Yamano had said. Like it was the easiest thing in the world.

“I’m not as eloquent as you, you know,” Snake says with a small chuckle.

Otacon huffs a short laugh of his own, folding his arms on the table in front of his food. “Yeah you are,” he objects. “You’ve given plenty of poignant speeches.”

“Do you want a poignant speech?” Snake asks. His feet are on the edge of a great wide chasm, stretching down into something unknown and terrifying.

“...No,” Otacon replies, looking a little more serious. Is he on the other side of the chasm? Or has he already thrown himself in? “No, just... tell me the truth.”

“Okay,” Snake says, and jumps in. “I love you.”

Otacon sits up a little straighter. His mouth falls open, just slightly, lips parting but only just. Snake’s vision has improved, bit by bit, over the past week and a half; in the glow of the lights surrounding the little sushi place nestled in the Tokyo backstreets, he sees the tears well up over Otacon’s lower eyelids, bigger and bigger until they are fit to burst.

“Hal,” Snake whispers, feeling his own eyes start to sting again. “It’s okay.”

Otacon’s face crumples, big fat tears spilling down his cheeks as his lips tremble with the effort it takes to not start bawling. Snake gets out of his wheelchair, circling the table to pull Otacon up against him. He can’t really bend over yet, but Otacon doesn’t seem to mind burying his face in Snake’s sternum and clinging to him as tight as he dares. It’s tighter than last time.

They are free-falling into the unknown, and Snake is so painfully aware that it could still be for nothing. What will happen? He’ll die, and Otacon will fall forever? He wants to believe that they are in the clear, but they’re not. He’s not. Even so, he reaches for Otacon’s hands in the dark. His chest aches, the weight of words finally said bearing down on him; for better or for worse, here they are.

“I—” Otacon hiccups and trembles, losing the battle he’s waging with himself to not break down in public. “I f-feel the... the same way,” he blubbers.

“I know, Hal,” Snake soothes. He’s known for a while.

“I l-love you,” Otacon insists.

“I know.” Snake brings a hand up—they barely tremor anymore, and his skin is a little more lively, a little less fragile—and cards his fingers through Otacon’s hair. He’s always wanted to do it, and now seems as good a time as any.

If anyone sees them, Snake is oblivious to it, and to any of the rest of the world. There is only this, here, now; Otacon hiccups into his shirt, breathing hard and fast, but gradually it begins to slow. He takes deep, gulping breaths and hiccups less frequently. The shaking subsides. He nuzzles into Snake’s sternum and heaves a long sigh.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, finally.

“Don’t be,” Snake assures him, gently rubbing his head. This is okay now, isn’t it? The barriers have broken down. The wall Snake built up between them has crumbled to dust.

Otacon finally pulls away, and Snake stifles a laugh. “Aw, Hal,” he says. “Your glasses...”

Sniffling, Otacon takes them off. They are smudged beyond what his sweater will be able to fix, but he makes a cursory attempt anyway; that seems to only make it worse. Snake holds a hand out, and Otacon wordlessly passes them to him. His shirt is a better material. (He’s never worn glasses in his life, but knowing how to clean them is something he’s picked up over time, like when he used to take care of it for Otacon while he was driving.)

When they seem as clean as they’re going to get, Snake hands them back. “Better?” he asks as Otacon puts them back on.

“...Do you think I look better with them off?” Otacon asks. This question comes from the same well as Snake’s perpetual fear of being seen naked in his elderly state.

“I don’t think they change much, honestly,” Snake easily replies. “I think you can make anything look good.”

Otacon smiles up at him, wavering but genuine all the same.

They eat what they can, and Snake gently redirects Otacon to getting some water instead of the earlier-suggested sake. His eyes are still red from what crying he did manage, in the midst of trying to hold it back. They wrap up what they can’t finish, Otacon tips way more than he needs to, and they head back to the hotel.

The pilot brings Sunny back to them in short order, having simply had her in his room for a while due to the late hour. She is sleepy, but seems content with having extra time to spend with him. (Snake wonders where he lives—can they get him to babysit?) Before he leaves, he asks how it went.

Otacon sounds like he’s on top of the world when he says, “You were right—it was a date.”

When they get ready for bed, Snake thinks to himself that he sort of wants to be the one doing the holding. He’s still likely to get cold in the middle of the night, though, and there is something special about the vulnerability of allowing Otacon to take care of him. Someday, he hopes, he will be strong again, and Otacon will feel safe and secure in his arms. Until then...

Curled up against Otacon’s chest, the room dark and quiet, Snake thinks he feels a kiss pressed to the top of his head. He wonders when or if he might feel confident enough to actually kiss Otacon; surely it will happen, assuming they are together now and assuming he survives, but the idea of it right now while his self esteem is in the gutter feels... not ideal.

As he drifts to sleep, Snake realizes he’s actually starting to look forward to the future.

The next day, Otacon tries to suggest a few different animes they can watch; Snake considers the premise of each, then asks if there’s more. Otacon gets through about ten before Snake says Evangelion was just so good that it’s hard for him to want to watch anything else.

Otacon laughs. “That’s normal. Do you want to watch Eva again?”

“Maybe some other time,” Snake chuckles back. “What’s your second favorite?”

Otacon thinks about that for a bit, rattling off a few names and vague plots before setting on one called ‘Fullmetal Alchemist.’ It’s somewhat newer, and has nearly twice as many episodes as Evangelion, and is set in a very different world from Evangelion’s post-apocalyptic Tokyo. He seems almost unsure of himself, choosing that one—he mentions different ones called ‘Mobile Suit Gundam’ and ‘Gurren Lagann’. They have mechs, he says.

“But... I really like FMA,” he admits sheepishly.

So they watch Fullmetal Alchemist. The opening of the first episode almost makes Snake ask if Otacon watches anything more optimistic, but as the show gets going it becomes more apparent that it does have a sense of humor. (Otacon glances at him whenever there’s a joke, to see if he responds.)

They sit closer than they had before, and Otacon slings an arm around Snake’s shoulders at some point. This is good. Things might be okay. Snake is still scared to commit to optimism, but he feels better than he has in a long time.

Outside of watching anime, they start going out with Sunny and the pilot more. No Akihabara yet, but they visit places other than restaurants, which is a start; Otacon starts openly gushing about the scenery, like in parks and central streets. He’s feeling better too, Snake knows. That’s worth everything.

At night, Snake takes to walking in the hall outside, just to get his legs working again. It gets easier the more he does it; he’s somewhere around where he was for that last mission sans sneaking suit, in terms of athleticism, but gradually getting even better than that. His body hurts less. His skin looks better. Is this really happening? Is it safe to be excited?

When they head back to the GeneX facility, Otacon insists upon the wheelchair, if only because Snake still has trouble with long distances. He doesn’t need to show off for the doctor; she’ll be able to tell how much better he’s gotten, he says. That assessment ends up being extremely correct—Dr. Yamano lights up when she sees them in the lobby.

“Look at you!” she exclaims. “You’re looking so much better—and happier. How do you feel, David?”

“Better than I did,” Snake says genuinely. “A lot better.” Otacon puts a hand on his shoulder, and without missing a beat, Snake puts one of his own over it, rubbing Otacon’s knuckles. “Do you think we’re good to go for the second batch?”

“Let’s do a small exam, and we’ll know for sure,” Dr. Yamano says, sounding very hopeful for how that will go. Otacon takes a step back, and she moves to grab the chair, but then Snake asks, “Can Hal come with us?”

That surprises them both. “Of course,” Dr. Yamano replies, and Snake hopes she can tell that he took her advice to heart.

In the room with all the medical machines, Otacon talks a lot more than Snake has previously. He asks about the various devices and machines, and makes idle comments about Snake’s improving condition. Dr. Yamano doesn’t ask Snake to undress; she does more basic tests, like for his reflexes, and listens to his heart and lungs, and generally seems happy to answer Otacon’s questions.

Eventually, Otacon falls silent, and upon peering around Dr. Yamano, Snake can see he’s staring at the Japanese copy of In The Darkness Of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth, right where Snake saw it last time. (It’s hard to believe it hasn’t moved at all. Did Dr. Yamano leave it there to trip up Otacon the same way she got Snake before?)

“It’s okay, Hal,” Snake chuckles when Otacon glances back at him in terror. “She’s not an enemy.”

Dr. Yamano turns around to see what they’re talking about, then laughs when she sees the book. “You didn’t tell him?” she asks.

“I... told him other things,” Snake admits. “Not that, no.”

So she explains to Otacon what she explained to Snake last time: that she was curious about his credentials, and it only took a little digging to link him to Philanthropy and, from there, Solid Snake. Putting together things Snake had told her with this account of Shadow Moses, she was able to figure out who they were.

“Oh my god,” Otacon mutters, a hand over his mouth. “I’m such an idiot...”

“You have nothing to fear here, Dr. Emmerich,” Dr. Yamano assures him as she takes note of Snake’s blood pressure. “I think you should live however you want to. Those days are long past.”

“We might still have enemies,” Otacon protests weakly. “I could have gotten Dave killed...!”

“You’re the reason he’s going to survive,” Dr. Yamano insists, which seems to quiet him.

She checks a few more things before reaching a conclusion: “You’ve definitely regained some of your vitality. I think I’m comfortable stating that the first round of nanomachines have done their job.”

That particular statement seems to wash most of Otacon’s worries away entirely. He wanders back over, settling a hand on Snake’s shoulder again as Dr. Yamano prepares the second, and final, batch of nanomachines. “One more week,” she says as she injects Snake with them. “We’ll vaccinate you for FOXDIE by the end of it and assess your state. Then...”

“Then we can go home?” Otacon asks in a small, hopeful voice.

“Then you can go home,” Dr. Yamano confirms with a smile.

She briefs them on what to expect, just like last time: potential negative side effects, the possibility of nothing changing, and most importantly, what will happen if it works. The second batch, she explains, will do most of the heavy lifting now that the first has laid the foundation; the changes will happen faster, and across more of his body. She recommends Snake start getting active, to build up the muscles he’s lost; she assures him it will get easier, over time.

Waiting for the pilot outside the facility, Snake elects to get up out of his chair and walk back and forth along the sidewalk. No time like the present, he says, and though it does make his legs burn, it feels like a good thing.

Returning to the chair and Otacon, Snake is about to ask if the pilot said how long it’d take him to arrive when Otacon surprises him by pulling him into a hug. Snake hugs him back, cautiously at first, before allowing himself to sink more into it. He knows what this is about; Otacon doesn’t need to tell him.

He does anyway.

“I almost can’t believe it,” he says, voice tight. “When Sunny found out about GeneX... I thought it was a one-in-a-million shot. Better to try and fail than not try at all, but... I was so sure...”

Admittedly, Snake had thought Otacon was far more optimistic about their odds. He’d seemed worried, yes, aware that things could fall through, but to be convinced... His thoughts had been in exactly the same places Snake's had been. Maybe that wasn’t actually a surprise.

“...but look at you,” Otacon goes on, pulling back to actually look at Snake’s face. “It’s... it’s working. We’re actually going to make it.” Smiling, eyes teary, he puts a hand on Snake’s face. The burned side, even; Snake doesn’t know if that’s intentional. He doesn’t even know if Otacon really notices it anymore, amid everything else.

Snake still has his fears, his doubts; Dr. Yamano was clear that they were still in a somewhat precarious position. Looking at Otacon, though, into his eyes, Snake feels like maybe they can indulge in this joy, if only for a moment. Maybe it’s okay to let themselves really feel like they’re in the clear, before the weight of reality potentially crashes back down.

He slides a hand over the one of his cheek, smiling fondly at his companion. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you,” he says gently.

Otacon looks a little sheepish about that. “Sunny—”

“Sunny could not have called the facility, contacted Roy Campbell to arrange for the Nomad to be piloted to Japan, rented us a hotel room to stay in for multiple weeks, or even paid for a fraction of what you have,” Snake insists. Then, softer, “Sunny couldn’t have convinced me to agree to this.”

Having trouble maintaining eye contact, Otacon looks away, the tears in his eyes threatening to spill over. “I... I’m not the one who...”

“You saved my life, Hal.”

Otacon’s breath hitches, and then he buries his face in Snake’s neck before he can actually be observed crying again. Snake holds him tight, worried, for a moment, that these words will serve as a painful memory if he dies anyway—but he knows thinking like that has prevented him from reassuring Otacon so many times now. If they can’t have tomorrow, then at least they can have today.

The pilot drives up to the curb, leaning out the window to call to them: “Alright, lovebirds, let’s go,” he teases, and Otacon laughs.

They do go out to eat this time, and Snake insists they leave the chair in the car, electing instead to walk into the restaurant and sit down in a normal chair. Over rice and tempura, the pilot finally asks them about the procedure.

“It’s just—you seem like everything is going a lot better,” he admits with a little laugh. “I didn’t want to bring it up before.”

So Otacon explains, not only the nature of the procedure itself but also what exactly is happening to Snake to warrant it. Snake chimes in where he can; Sunny does too, from time to time.

By the end of it, the pilot seems to have gained a newfound respect for them both—which is saying a lot, based on his extremely friendly conduct thus far. “It’s so messed up, what all the Patriots did,” he says, and to this day it surprises Snake when other people don’t say la-li-lu-le-lo. “I can’t believe how in the dark we all were... It’s part of why I quit the airforce.”

“You were airforce?” Snake asks, intrigued.

“Yeah,” says the pilot (Daniel, Snake reminds himself; his name is Daniel), clasping his hands under his chin. “I believed in our country. That’s what they wanted, though, wasn’t it? Mindless drones, a country exploitable down to every individual body.” He shrugs. “When the Patriots fell, it all came out. I mean, it had been leaking out for a while, but only through small political rebellions like your Philanthropy.”

“Is that when you quit?” Otacon asks.

“I’d been thinking about it for a while,” Daniel says with a nod. “I thought I could make a difference, I guess. Some of the other guys in my group said the military needed guys like me to rebuild. But... I was tired. I couldn’t really put my faith in the United States government anymore, even if they tried to rebuild. Who’s to say it won’t be just as bad as before?”

“Smart,” Snake grunts. “Politicians will never have the well-being of the common man in their sights.”

“That’s the thing,” Daniel goes on. “They don’t care about me, or my husband, or my kids. In fact—”

Otacon tries to interrupt: “Your—?”

Daniel doesn’t seem to notice. “Do you have any idea how bad Don't Ask, Don’t Tell was? Before 2010, me and Travis were afraid to get married, let alone adopt—He’s a graphic designer, so I can’t really say his income alone would support us if I was discharged for being found out.” He huffs, clearly frustrated thinking about it. “After it was repealed, we moved forward with our life together. We got married, and we adopted our kids. We stopped hiding. I couldn’t be discharged for it anymore—at least, not officially—but the way a lot of the other guys looked at me changed. I couldn’t even fully blame them; it was a systematic issue. They’d been taught to be that way.”

Snake glances across the table to see Sunny having abandoned her food to watch Daniel with rapt attention. She’s not alone; Otacon is hanging off of his every word, too.

“It left a bad taste in my mouth,” Daniel sighs. “After the fall of the Patriots, and the reveal of all they’d been doing... I guess it was the last straw. I quit, and started doing work as a... freelance pilot, basically. I love flying. It’s what I’m best at, I think. That’s pretty much how I met Roy.”

“Roy Campbell?” Snake clarifies.

“Yeah,” Daniel confirms. “He was impressed with my military history. Eventually... inevitably, I guess, you came up,” he says, looking at Snake with a small smile. “I only knew what there was to know; you’re the talk of the town on a lot of bases, even now. I’d also read that book about Shadow Moses. So I told Roy I admired you a lot, and he pretty much lamented that I’d never get to meet you, the way things had gone the last time he saw you. Until earlier this month—he called me up and said, You’re not gonna believe this, but Snake and Dr. Emmerich need a pilot.”

Seeming to finally recognize that he is being watched intently by everyone else at the table, Daniel laughs nervously, then sets a hand on Sunny’s shoulder. “He didn’t even tell me you guys had a daughter! I’m so glad you’ve let me hang out with her—she’s great. Makes me feel a little less sad about being so far from home.”

Sunny giggles, clearly delighted. “I th-think you’re great too, D-Daniel!”

Electing to not directly address the daughter comment, Snake decides to finally bite the bullet: “So where do you live, anyway? If we ever need a babysitter...”

Daniel and Sunny both immediately perk up. “Oh, well, Massachusetts,” Daniel responds in a rush, “but I am a pilot. If you give me a little heads up, I can go to New York whenever you need me.”

“That’s very generous of you,” Otacon says warmly, though Snake can tell before he says it that he intends to try and turn Daniel down. “But I don’t think—”

“Hal,” Snake interrupts him, putting a hand on his arm. “He wants to.”

“...But that’s such a long trip,” Otacon objects weakly. “And his family...”

Daniel snorts. “Are you kidding? New York’s like an hour by plane. I could bring my family. Or take Sunny back to my place. Or whatever you’re comfortable with, honestly.”

Otacon looks down at the table. “Ah... I think I might have confused Massachusetts with Missouri,” he chuckles awkwardly. “If it’s that close, then I guess I don’t see why not.” He hesitates; Snake is sure both he and Daniel know what’s coming. Hell, Sunny probably does too. “...How much do you—”

They all speak up at the same time: “Hal,” “Dr. Emmerich,” and “Uncle Hal” all descending down upon Otacon hard enough to make him flinch back in surprise. Then they all laugh; Otacon seems to relax slightly, though still seems unsure of why it happened in the first place.

“I don’t want your money, Dr. Emmerich,” Daniel chuckles. “I like your family. I’d like to have you guys in my life, even after this. You can pay me back by flying up to Massachusetts sometime—all of you. We can have dinner.”

Your family, Snake thinks, looking at Otacon. Even after this, he’s sure Otacon is thinking in turn. When they’d arrived in Japan, everything had been dreary and splintered apart... they’d all been scared, and sad, and distant. They didn’t know if Snake would survive; they had no plans to fix what had broken between them. And now—

Otacon takes Snake’s hand under the table, smiling softly at him, an expression so serene it looks almost out of place on his face. “That sounds great, Daniel,” he agrees, looking back over at the pilot. “And please, call me Hal.”

Back at the hotel, Snake resumes walking the hall until he physically can’t anymore, whereupon he collapses into bed and is pulled into Otacon’s embrace not long after. It’s almost funny, he thinks, how easy it’s become; the first time it had happened, he’d been ashamed. Now, he spends every night like this. He wants to keep doing it well after they’ve returned home. They can turn his retirement home room into storage, or something. Or an office. Or whatever.

It’s later that night, after Otacon and Sunny have fallen asleep and the room is dark, that the reality of the situation dawns on Snake. Not even the fact that he may very well survive, or the fact that he and Otacon have finally mended the gap between them, but something far more precious:

He is loved.

He’s known, of course, over the course of his life, that he was loved by some people; certainly not by any of his foster families, or even by Big Boss, or Frank, or anyone else in FOXHOUND, but... Meryl, yes. She was the first. Or at least the first where it felt so complete; certainly Campbell and Miller had great affection for him, but it wasn’t so deeply real the way Meryl’s had felt. Meryl’s love for him had driven him to extremes he might not have considered otherwise, and in the end, they got their happily ever after—

Except they didn’t. Meryl loved him as a hero, as a soldier, as an icon; the scared, drunk man hiding away in a cabin in Alaska as he waited for an unavoidable death was none of those things. So she had left.

After that...? Well, he supposed the next one was Sunny. Quite a while later, yes, but as a toddler she could do nothing but love him, and it was just as real as anything else. In the moments between Raiden handing her to them (Just until we find her a real family, they’d said) and Snake’s genetic curse catching up to him, things had been good. He had loved Sunny, too. He still does.

...But he’s never told her that. She certainly does still love him, in her own way, but she has long since learned to temper her expectations, to direct her attention and desire for reciprocation of such to Otacon.

After that... Well, Eva. Big Mama. Despite barely knowing her, despite not even fully trusting her, Snake knew she loved him. He’d felt it every moment after they'd met, all the way up until her death (his fault). Her love was unconditional, not unlike Sunny’s—the love of a mother for her son.

...But that was all it was. She did not know him; she would never get a chance to. She, like Meryl, had loved the idea of him. Her son, her only surviving son, the spitting image of the man she’d loved and lost. In the end, it was more love for Big Boss than anyone else, really.

Yet... through all of those experiences, those relationships, the many lifetimes Snake has lived, one thing has remained true—Otacon has been there. Snake doesn’t think Otacon loved him when Meryl loved him, but after...? When Otacon sought him out in Alaska? When he remained there until Snake agreed to join Philanthropy? And every moment since... he has been there. Every single step of the way, time and time again, through everything life could throw their way.

Snake is not just loved: he has been loved. For far longer, and far more deeply, than he has ever realized.

Overwhelmed, he whispers, “Otacon?” Then, when that garners no response, he corrects himself with a little more volume: “Hal?”

Eyes already adjusted from the time he’s spent just staring at his companion’s face, Snake sees Otacon’s eyes flutter open, shining in the darkness. “...Something wrong?” he yawns.

Realizing he didn’t actually think this far ahead, Snake falters slightly. “I...” Maybe it’s as easy as sticking to the facts. “I love you,” he says, for the second time.

He hears Otacon snort. “...’Love you too,” he murmurs, sounding amused. “Was that all you wanted to say...?”

“...I’ve always loved you,” Snake ventures.

Otacon does not snort again. If anything, Snake thinks he becomes more alert. “Huh?”

As if mid-mission, thinking on his feet, Snake begins to talk about things he didn’t even realize he’d already come to terms with. “Back in Alaska,” he says insistently, putting a hand on Otacon’s chest, “when you were drowning in my clothes because yours weren’t thick enough—playing with my dogs—burning your attempts at breakfast—I loved you.”

“That’s—” Otacon tries to cut in, sounding shocked.

“When we were traveling across North America—you wouldn’t let me drive, because I’m bad at it,” Snake continues, determined. “So I would clean your glasses and read maps and put your takeout coffees back in the cup holder for you when the light turned green before you were ready.” He lets out a sharp exhale. “I loved you.”

“Snake—” Otacon tries again, clearly tripped up enough to slip back into old habits (as if Snake can blame him).

“You stole a boat—you hotwired it! And drove it, effortlessly, because you can drive anything—and you hauled my drowned ass out of the Hudson by yourself.” Otacon’s heart is hammering under Snake’s hand. “You helped me steal my dead brother’s body, and fake my own death, and followed me into hiding despite the fact that you didn’t need to—”

“Dave,” Otacon gasps, “I don’t—”

“And I loved you, during every moment, and everything that came after, I loved you.” Snake takes a breath, then plows on before Otacon can make another attempt: “Do you know how happy I was, when we were raising Sunny? Before—before I ruined everything. When she was small and we were tired but we loved her, when we weren’t wanted fugitives anymore, just a little family—”

Otacon puts a hand over his mouth, and Snake fumbles for it in the darkness, holding it tight in both of his own. “I loved you, Hal. During every second.”

They both know what comes next. Finally, Otacon does not try to interrupt.

“...When I started pushing you away,” Snake says, slower now, “it wasn’t your fault. It was mine. I was scared—of how you saw me, of what I was becoming, of the death I knew was finally catching up to me. I didn’t want you to watch me die. I loved you too much.”

He pulls Otacon’s hand in, coaxing it up against his own chest. “But you didn’t look away. You wouldn’t let me go, no matter how many times I tried. And as much as I was frustrated—as much as I wanted you to just leave me be—I loved you for it.”

He can tell Otacon is crying.

“I loved you,” Snake whispers, “and I still do. Not just for who you are to me, but who you are in general. I love everything about you—your looks, your laugh, your brains, your kindness, your...” Here he huffs a small laugh. “...character flaws, and everything else. You are everything to me.”

Otacon finally attempts to get a word in edgewise again. “Why...?”

“Because,” Snake says, holding Otacon’s hand against his own beating heart, “You have loved me. All this time. I didn’t notice—and when I did, I thought it was too little, too late. I was wrong. If it weren’t for you, I would have died in Alaska, alone. No one else has ever loved me the way you do. No one else... has looked at me, all of me, and come away from that appreciating every last inch of it. I’m not... I’ve never been just an idea to you. I’ve been me. And you’ve loved me anyway.”

Rather than attempt to respond—to confirm or deny anything Snake has said—Otacon surges forward, trying to close the distance between them with an embrace. Snake intercepts him, hand on his chest again to stop him, then pushes it up, taking Otacon’s chin and tilting his head so they are more directly facing one another.

Snake feels Otacon’s breath stutter on his lips, and then there is no more room between them.

He has been so afraid. Terrified Otacon would be repulsed by him—or scared of his own feelings about his body, about inflicting them on someone else. He takes the plunge because he has to trust that Otacon loves him anyway, and Otacon returns the gesture tenfold, kissing him back like he is not Old Snake—like he is not even Solid Snake—like he is David, a young man expelled from the foster system with nothing to his name but the body he was born with.

When they part, Otacon lets out a weak little sob, then does finally manage to hug Snake like his life depends on it. “Is—” He laughs, soft, strained; “—is this your idea of a confession?”

“Yeah,” Snake murmurs, “I suppose it is.”

Things seem to start falling into place after that.

Dragging himself over Otacon in the morning, Snake goes to the bathroom and finds, upon looking at himself in the mirror, that he is starting to look a lot younger than in his eighties. His hair is still gray, his muscles still largely gone, but his wrinkles are receding, his skin getting smoother, bit by bit.

In between episodes of Full Metal Alchemist, Snake walks the halls, or in their room, or does push ups against the wall—only a few at a time, but progressively more with each attempt.

The next day, his roots are very faintly going brown. He pushes his body as far as it will go, then collapses once more in Otacon’s arms, exhausted but satisfied. They invite Daniel into their room; he calls his family, introducing them over video to the Emmerichs.

On the third day, Otacon finally mentions (teasingly, but only just) that he sort of hates the mustache, and misses when Snake stuck to stubble, or at the very least a full beard. They have a good laugh about it, and Snake promises, when his hair is brown again, that he’ll shave it. Then he kisses Otacon for good measure.

That night, Sunny expresses how happy she is that he really, genuinely seems to be getting better, and in a moment not unlike the one where he realized the depths of Otacon’s feelings, Snake realizes hers, as well. He finally works up the courage to tell her, in no uncertain terms, that he loves her; surprised, she goes quiet, but hugs his legs tightly.

When Sunny makes them breakfast the next morning, she cautiously calls Snake Dave instead. He doesn’t want to overwhelm her, so he responds warmly, but not excitedly. She beams at him in response; so does Otacon.

They walk, with Daniel, from the hotel to the sushi place where Snake and Otacon had worked out their feelings. Snake feels like he might die by the time they get there, but in a good way—in a my body is getting stronger way. As he catches his breath in one of the chairs, Otacon orders them all some sushi, and Daniel regales them with the story of how he met his husband.

It feels dreamlike, surreal. Every moment that passes is like winding back the hands of a clock Snake has never had control over before.

On the fifth day, they go to Akihabara, despite Otacon’s concerns over leaving the wheelchair behind. Snake takes several breaks, but is supported the whole way. Every time he converses with a cashier in flawless (if heavily accented) Japanese, he can feel Otacon’s pride and adoration radiating through the space between them.

When the excursion is over, Daniel sheepishly asks if they can take a picture that he can take home to his family. He’s not even halfway through acknowledging that Snake might not want to when Snake urges him to get in position so they can do it.

He is still old. Frail, in a lot of ways. Yet the man he sees in the photo and the man he was when they arrived seem not even remotely the same. He looks younger than Big Boss did, when they met for the very last time.

On the sixth day, as they near the final appointment at the GeneX facility, they watch Full Metal Alchemist some more as Sunny once again goes out with Daniel. Feeling some of the old fear creep back in, as if something could go wrong at any moment, Snake wonders aloud if he is rebelling against nature itself by going through with this.

Otacon tells him, with a firm resolve that puts Snake’s own determination to shame, that he is doing anything but. The Patriots were the ones who twisted the laws of nature to make him nothing more than an expendable soldier. His defiance of that is not only what makes him human, but what returns him to the state he was always meant to be in.

Snake loves him. He tells Otacon as much, earning him a hug and several kisses.

It’s getting easier. It’s getting better. After a lifetime of disappointment and grief and loneliness, it seems foolish to hope... Yet all the same, hope is exactly what got them this far.

On the seventh day, there is a festival happening; Snake knows Otacon wants to go, in spite of his attempts to pretend he doesn’t. So they go. Daniel and Otacon know more about Japanese festivals than Snake does, but they all still flounder a bit, sad little tourists out of their depth.

It’s wonderful, even so. Memories stacked upon memories, making up for lost time as Snake’s own time is very literally given back to him in spades.

The day after that, they return to Dr. Yamano. She beams when they walk into the facility together, not a wheelchair in sight.

A brief exam confirms their collective suspicions: Snake is younger. By quite a bit, even; low sixties, maybe, and decreasing by the day.

“You shouldn’t overshoot your actual age,” Dr. Yamano chuckles as one of her coworkers prepares the FOXDIE vaccine. “And if you do, not by much. I am, at the very least, confident in saying this entire experiment has been a massive success.”

Experiment. Such a funny word; Snake might have personally gone with miracle, belief in such things notwithstanding.

Dr. Yamano asks them to return in a few hours, so they can check Snake’s blood for FOXDIE. The vaccine should be fast-acting, she says. Nanomachines, she says. It’s always fucking nanomachines, Snake thinks, but for once he is grateful.

They go to the ramen place across the street with Sunny and Daniel. The atmosphere is a little tense; this is the final leg of the journey, after all. The FOXDIE vaccine is the final piece. Funny, isn’t it, Snake posits, that no one in or from America could give him something like this.

“They didn’t want to,” Daniel says. “How many people in your life could have done such a thing while also not being under the Patriots’ control?”

Naomi, Snake thinks, but her investment in his life had never been particularly great, anyway.

They go back to GeneX, and after the blood draw, are left waiting for some long minutes. Dr. Yamano returns to inform them that the FOXDIE in Snake’s system is, in fact, dying off, bit by bit. By the time it would have been a threat, would have turned him into a bioweapon, it will be long gone.

“But if you have concerns,” Dr. Yamano tells them, “You can contact me. We can make sure you’re in the clear. At the very least, I can walk an American doctor through what to look for.”

Otacon hugs her. No preamble, no warning; he seems unable to stop himself. Snake worries, for a half second, that this social faux pas will leave them on the wrong foot with the woman who helped to save his life. Hugging isn’t exactly a thing strangers do in Japan; he knows that much, if nothing else.

To his great relief, however, Dr. Yamano laughs, and pats Otacon on the back.

As Otacon wanders away to wipe his eyes, Snake bows to Dr. Yamano. “Thank you so much,” he says, his gratefulness outweighing any feelings of embarrassment over being so genuine.

“It was my pleasure, David,” she says warmly. “You’ve helped more people this month than you realize. With the data we’ve gathered from you, an extreme case of the sorts of things we intend to treat... We’ll be able to change lives.”

“You’ve changed mine, I’ll say that much,” Snake huffs. Looking across the lobby to where Otacon is trying to maintain his composure, he smiles. “...We’ll have more time, now.”

Dr. Yamano follows his gaze, then gives Snake a knowing look. “Does he know how much that means to you?” she asks.

Snake’s smile broadens. “He knows.”

In the mid-morning sun, the apartment is quiet, or at least more so than usual; for all the hectic preparation of the last few days, there are still moments of calm, where even the dust motes floating in the sunlight are undisturbed. If Sunny is observing any of this as she creeps over the carpet towards the kitchen, she isn’t showing any signs of it in the seconds before Dave swoops in and grabs her under the arms, lifting her, giggling, over his head.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asks her, mock-accusing. “You have a flight to be preparing for, young lady!”

Kicking her legs, Sunny cries gleefully, “D-Daniel won’t be here until tomorrow!”

“That’s no excuse!” Dave teases, giving her the lightest jostle. “Is this any way to prepare for heading into the unknown? You don’t know what you could run into—what if you’re ambushed by a Hind-D? A vampire? A Metal Gear?!”

“It’s just—” Giggling too hard to get the words out, Sunny stops trying momentarily. Her speech therapist has been telling her to try and take things slow. “It’s just M-Massachusetts,” she finally manages.

“Oh,” Dave says, like he hadn’t considered that possibility. He sets her back down on her feet. “Well, never mind then,” he says flippantly. “I could take Massachusetts. You’ll be fine, probably.”

“Da-ave,” Sunny whines playfully, swatting his leg. She still hasn’t called him Dad to his face, but Hal tells him she’s just working up the nerve. After so long of only calling him Snake—

Dave ruffles her hair as she continues into the kitchen, watching her fondly before realizing that he’s actually also being watched. Turning his head, he spots Hal looking at him from the doorway of their bedroom, leaned up against the frame like he feels faint. With an amused snort, Dave heads over to him.

As he nears, Hal pushes away from the doorframe, reaching; Dave gathers him up in his arms, peppering his face with kisses as Hal passively allows it.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, softly, when he’s had his fill.

“... It’s just...” Hal looks down, then lifts his hands to place them on Dave’s upper arms, following the lines of his muscles under his shirt sleeves. “... It still... doesn’t feel real,” he admits. “Seeing you... like this, you know, so... young, and healthy, and... happy...”

“It’s been six months,” Dave reminds him gently, but that doesn’t seem to help. So instead, “Anyway, is this young to you? I’d hate to know what your idea of old is if you think salt-and-pepper streaks are youthful.” That doesn’t seem to help either; maybe Dave should have expected as much. He knows, after all, what “old” looks like, not just to Hal but to himself.

So he drops the humor. “Talk to me, Hal.”

“...It’s been over a year,” Hal says, very quietly. “I wasn’t thinking about it. I was trying not to, even on Meryl and Johnny’s anniversary. Something about... I don’t know. The leaves changing color, I guess. It just reminds me... When you...”

“The graveyard,” Dave acknowledges, and Hal nods.

There isn’t much that can be said about it that hasn’t been already. Dave kisses Hal’s forehead, instead.

“... I was so sure it was over,” Hal says, barely a whisper, as he draws his hands back in to rest on Dave’s chest. “All those years of... of pain. Of feeling helpless, knowing there was nothing I could do...” He trails off, then sighs. “I’m sorry. It is over now. I should—”

“Hal,” Dave says, kind but firm. “Talk to me.”

Hal meets his eyes. He has to know he won’t be judged—all the same, with the life he’s lived, Dave can’t say he blames him. Hell, even just the past decade, Hal’s had trouble voicing concerns and having them be heard.

“...I’m so happy we made it,” he says quietly, looking down again. “Every day, I feel like I must be the luckiest man in the world. But...”

“But?” Dave prompts, rubbing Hal’s back.

“But sometimes it’s hard not to remember how bad it was,” Hal admits with a wince. “I never... I never really addressed it, I don’t think. You did—back in Japan, you brought it up several times.” He clenches his fists loosely on Dave’s chest. “I don’t know why I didn’t say anything...”

“Because you couldn’t,” Dave offers, earning a curious look. “Hal, you’ve been holding yourself together with duct tape since I started going gray. Someone had to be strong. For Sunny, for me... for yourself, even.” Smiling a little, he pulls his arms back so he can cup Hal’s face in his hands. “Why do you think I enjoy making you cry so much?” he teases.

That results in a smile, at least. “Because you’re a jerk?”

“Because I don’t want you to hold back anymore,” Dave corrects. “...and a little bit because I’m a jerk.”

Hal laughs, soft, and tips his face into one of Dave’s hands. “...Sometimes I worry that none of it is real,” he sighs, after a moment. “That I lost you a year ago. That every moment since then has just been what happens when you lose your soulmate.”

“Soulmate?” Dave snorts reflexively.

Hal shoots him a look that isn’t actually very critical, then moves on without comment: “When you shut me out, I thought that was that,” he says. “Our life together was over before I’d even really gotten to enjoy it. I was... I don’t know. Afraid, I guess, to try and fix it. I knew you wouldn’t want to. But when Sunny found GeneX...”

“Do you remember how you convinced me to go?” Dave asks with a smile, lowering his hands to Hal’s waist.

“By begging?” Hal returns, raising an eyebrow.

Dave shakes his head. “You told me Sunny couldn’t live without me. That she needed me.”

Hal shifts in his grip, suddenly nervous. “...I mean, that was true—”

“We both know you weren’t actually talking about Sunny, Hal.”

Flushed now, Hal ducks his head, once again clenching his hands against Dave’s chest. “You... you knew?”

“You’re not very subtle,” Dave offers fondly. When Hal doesn’t defend himself, Dave leans in to kiss the bridge of his nose. “... I knew by then how far I’d pushed you away. And I knew I’d give anything to see you happy again. Realizing that... if I wasn’t reading you wrong, that you loved me—It made everything too clear. Sharp. That I had shut out a man who cared about me in ways I didn’t even understand. A man I knew I felt the same way about.”

“... It hurt,” Hal whispers after a moment where Dave waits for him to work up the nerve for what he clearly wants to say. “To be shut out. To feel like you didn’t want me. To feel like nothing I did could repair our relationship before you... died.” He says the word like it’s a curse; like saying it will make it happen. “I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you. It felt like it meant nothing.”

“It meant everything,” Dave assures. When Hal doesn’t immediately respond, he reevaluates his approach, then lifts a hand to take Hal’s chin and tip his head up so their eyes can meet. “I’m so sorry I hurt you, Hal,” he says, as genuine as he can possibly be. “For the rest of both of our lives, I’m going to try and make it up to you.”

He sees Hal’s eyes go wide, the dawning realization of that statement too big to ignore. Even so, Dave presses on: “We made it, Hal. I—we, we’re going to be okay.”

Hal’s eyes fill with tears, and then he laughs, slinging his arms around Dave’s neck hard enough to surprise him. Dave hugs back tightly, as tight as he dares; he is no longer the more fragile body between them, and has not been for some time. In fact, after a moment of listening to Hal sniffle against his shoulder, Dave holds him just a fraction tighter to lift him up off of his feet.

“Dave!” Hal yelps before laughing again, tears at the corners of his eyes but not tracking down his face. Dave smiles up at him, adoring, in love, before adjusting his hold to coax Hal into a deep and passionate kiss.

He has only just introduced his tongue when Sunny calls from the kitchen, “Are you guys d-done yet? Breakfast’s gonna be ready soon!” Breaking the kiss, Dave smiles pleasantly over at her as Hal squirms in his grip, embarrassed to have been caught making out like teenagers by their daughter.

“Be right there,” Dave assures, chuckling at her mock-indignation as she rolls her eyes and slips back into the kitchen. He sets Hal down a moment later, laughing outright when he is lightly thumped on the chest.

“We will have all the time in the world for that,” Hal says, looking away pointedly as his cheeks and ears burn, “while Sunny is in Massachusetts. Keep it in your pants until then.”

“Nothing has escaped the confines of my pants,” Dave teases. “I can wait. Can you?”

“Bastard,” Hal grouses, but he’s smiling. He turns to walk away, but Dave grabs his wrist at the last second, causing Hal to meet his eyes again.

“I love you,” Dave says, with all the conviction of a man who has stared death in the face and walked away knowing what really matters in his life.

Hal’s smile turns warm, adoring, loving; he briefly clasps Dave’s hand in his. “I know,” he says, a half-tease, a whole promise.

Dave lets him go, watching him vanish into the kitchen.

In another life, he would be long dead by now, if not from advanced age then by his own hand to prevent the deaths of Hal and Sunny were he to turn into a bioweapon. In another life, he succeeded in shooting himself at the graveyard, leaving Hal forever wondering what he could have done differently. In another life, Dave has not, and will not, ever make it this far.

In this life... he is here. Not only alive, but whole in a way he has never been before. He loves and is loved in turn, surrounded by friends and family who, in his absence, may have never turned to one another at all. He is not the only one who survived; of all the casualties that could have resulted from all of this, those he finds most important have remained.

They made it. He made it. No matter what other lives exist out there, parallel with this one or crossing through it or in opposition to it, Dave has this one: the one where everything went right.

Smiling to himself, he lets out a slow exhale, more grateful for the way things have shaken out than he thinks he will ever know how to fully express. All he can do is move forward, really.

So he does.