damned_institute | Day 43: Courtyard, Third Shift

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Day 43: Courtyard, Third Shift

Once again, Endrance's nurse interfered with his plans. He had been planning to look around the Game Room, but the moment he began to move towards the Sun Room, she had taken him by the arm. "Your family has asked that we make sure you get as much fresh air and sunshine has possible, and you won't get that by staying inside playing video games all day."

He had thought for a moment about protesting, but decided against it. After all, if what had happened to Haseo was punishment for having spoken too strongly the day before, he didn't want to make that worse somehow. So, when given the choice of going out to the recreational field or the courtyard, he chose the latter.

There were a few reasons behind the decision, the most salient being that he wanted to see what the area looked like for a second time - this time without the threat of a brainwashed patient surprising him. The second reason was just as strong as the first, and it had to do with the presence of a second former Demon Palace Emperor. As energetic as she was normally in The World, he couldn't imagine Alkaid not wanting to spend some time outside.

Just as before, he sat down under a tree by the side of the pond, keeping one eye on the door.

[closed to Alkaid]

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Even though he'd eaten recently, Otacon's stomach still felt unsettled. It wasn't the zombies anymore — as horrifying as that had been, being back here, in the pristine oblivious halls of the institute, had a way of making those hours seem hazier, as if they'd occurred weeks ago instead of just last night.

And it wasn't what had happened to Snake either. If anything, Big Boss' appearance was an almost welcome distraction.

Once outside, he spotted Snake within seconds, and made his way toward the pond. "Snake." Otacon crouched down beside him instinctively, one hand on his arm as he tried to get a better look at the extent of his injuries. "You look awful," he sighed, but at least he'd confirmed that Snake wasn't dying. He held out several paper napkins he'd picked up in the cafeteria. "Here."

Snake looked at the napkins, back up at Otacon's face, and found himself unable to avoid the expression of warmth. It stirred some part of him enough that he froze, looking back in faint amazement, before he suddenly remembered himself, brushed Otacon's hand away from his arm gently, and took the napkins.

Peeling the gauze to the side to dab at his nose, he sighed, "I'm fine. I can still fight - " he punctuated his speech with a whip-quick left-hand strike to an invisible target in front of him, to demonstrate - "and that's all I really need."

A sudden sense of shame came across him as he spoke, and he ran the palm of his left hand over his swollen shoulder before looking away in despair.

Otacon gazed at Snake a moment longer, then shook his head and settled on the grass beside him without comment. He knew when pressing the issue (Snake would've called it "nagging") wouldn't change anything. Although there had been a time he would've done it anyway, in the belief that Snake still listened, no matter how brusque he acted.

But this wasn't the same man. Not yet.

"Hopefully it shouldn't hinder you for long. I've heard that injuries heal up faster than normal here. By all accounts, yesterday wasn't typical either, so if you just try to avoid engaging with any enemies at night..."

He should probably be grateful that Snake hadn't met his father after dark. Maybe the only good thing about being here was that a staff dedicated to perpetuating the illusion of a hospital. At night, without any nurses or access to proper medical supplies, things could have gone a lot worse. Otacon vaguely remembered someone mentioning a first aid kit. Where did they get that?

As he pondered, he noticed a tall older man walking on the other side of the courtyard. He wasn't close enough for Otacon see the resemblance, but even from here, his eyepatch was unmistakable. And the arms. He recalled Snake's improbable description on the bulletin board.

"Is that him?"

"Yeah," Snake said, voice husky and biting as a Zanzibar breeze rattling through a chain fence. "That's him. You can tell by the way he walks. How he makes you feel, even sitting here. The whole of my unit was under his spell when he betrayed us." His hand clenched. "In the three weeks after N313, sixteen of them took their own lives - even though the grave they followed him into turned out to be empty." He stopped, and fell silent. That was too personal, and not his story to tell.

"On paper, and in person, he seems like a philanthropist," he explained, instead. "That's why he's so hard to get rid of once he gets under your skin. There's strong ideals deep inside him, ideals that lure people in. But outside of those ideals, there's just a madman left. He's the real 'Heavy Walker'; these days he's little more than a walking nuke. That's why he's so dangerous - he can strike from anywhere."

Between the pain, the drugs and the knowledge he was near Big Boss, a sudden insane question occurred to him and he blurted it out to Otacon without thinking.

"Otacon," he said, "who are you? What was your life like?" He immediately felt blood draining from his face upon realising what he'd just asked, and snarled, "I'm not asking because I'm interested in you as a person; don't get any stupid ideas. I don't care about anyone's personal life, and you're no exception! I just want to know if there's any connection between the kind of things you did that meant you ended up in this place, and that's all."

Otacon looked back at him, briefly torn between bemusement at Snake's obvious defensiveness or trepidation over answering that question. Hadn't he wondered about that before on his first day here? If it wasn't just a game — if there was a method to why people were brought here, then it put into rather ominous perspective their choice of three of the best soldiers in FOXHOUND, and a weapons engineer. Federal training. Could the theories really be right? Were they all trapped inside some kind of Force XXI nightmare?

"Maybe there is a connection," Otacon said quietly. He paused, gathering his thoughts despite already knowing where to start. "My grandfather was part of the Manhattan Project, and my father was born on the day of the Hiroshima bombing. And I... created Metal Gear REX, the first Metal Gear capable of launching an undetectable and untraceable nuke. At the time, I believed we were developing a mobile TMD, thanks to a combination of bureaucracy, divided labour and my own naivety and... and arrogance. I should have asked more questions, but I didn't. I learned too late what I'd done."

Two fingertips nudged his glasses back into place, and Otacon lifted his chin again. By now, he was used to bearing the burden of REX.

"You were the one who told me, actually. It was how we first met."

An undetectable, untraceable nuke?

Snake stared in fear, defensiveness forgotten. How was that even possible? With the missile defence programmes recieving greater international attention, there was always going to be someone looking for a work-around, but -

"So that was how we first met?" Snake said, quietly. "Doesn't sound like we met in the best of circumstances." He considered this, looking up at Otacon, trying to imagine him building something that terrible. "But how did the Metal Gear concept data get leaked? And why would anything like that need to be built in the new Millenium, after the peace talks and the UN's disposal project?"

Edited 2009-08-23 12:28 (UTC)

"I thought you didn't want to know about the future." Otacon managed a little smile despite himself, and continued: "The threat of a nuclear attack didn't end with the Cold War. If anything, it only freed up tons of nuclear material to be sold on the black market, along with the Soviet engineers to hire. None of the major powers were going to be first to completely disarm if any small country could develop their own nukes. At the time, I hadn't even known what 'Metal Gear' signified. My employers did, but to them, Metal Gear was just a way to stay in business. I don't know if they thought as far as to realize that, with a weapon like REX, the concept of mutually-assured destruction would become obsolete."

He exhaled, slowly. Much of this he learned later by hacking what information he could still retrieve on Shadow Moses from Armstech and DARPA, after the glow of his new lease on life had faded, and he'd realized that it wouldn't be so simple to move on from what he'd done. It was almost strange to be discussing nuclear war and Metal Gear again. Nostalgic, even.

"After that, I dedicated my life to stopping Metal Gear. The war grew to be a little more complicated than bipedal tanks and nuclear missiles, but it was an old war, rooted in events that happened long before either of us were born."

He looked out at the rest of the courtyard, and found his gaze hooked by Big Boss again. Otacon wondered if he'd had any idea how things would spiral out of control after his death.

"Still," he murmured, "we ended it. Before I woke up here, I thought the fight was over."

"I'm starting to wish I'd never asked," Snake said, dryly, to hide how sick he looked. Nuclear proliferation becoming so widespread... it didn't even bear thinking about. And at the centre wasn't some Soviet imperialist mad scientist high on his own power-trip, or an anarchist despot trying to plunge the world into endless chaos, but -

- but a normal, well-intentioned man, who'd made a stupid, mercenary mistake.

Trying to lean back so that Otacon, distracted by Big Boss, wouldn't notice, he studied the line of Otacon's jaw, the set of his mouth, the shape of his eyes, and found him looking weathered, and gentle, and sad - not like a black-hearted arms dealer or maniacal warlord, but like the kind of person he'd trust with his name.

Maybe in the twenty-first century, his fans would finally understand what he'd been telling them about heroes.

"And you and I were working together?" he eventually said. "I can't say I imagined anyone else being involved, but the rest sounds about how I'm starting to expect. An old me, fighting somebody else's old war." He leaned back, half-smiling with his bruised lips. It wasn't a happy smile.

Otacon tore his gaze away from Big Boss and back to the young man who was his clone. They didn't look so alike — more father and son than the same person at different ages — and he wondered if that could all be attributed to Snake's shortened telomeres, or something else. Other subtle genetic modifications, or environmental effects while growing up, or just... different men, with different reasons to feel resigned.

"You were a lot more than just an old soldier," Otacon answered, his voice soft. "At least to me." He looked at Snake (bruised, battered, too familiar) a second longer, then raised a hand again to fiddle with his glasses, half-obscuring his face. He thought of the last time they'd spoken — before Landel's, before Meryl and Johnny's wedding — a conversation of mostly awkward stilted comments, simultaneously trying to acknowledge what Snake was about to do and completely avoid talking about it, ending with a handshake and a hug. There hadn't really been a need for words. Snake had already known how important he was to Otacon, just as Otacon had already known the depth of his friend's trust in him. Even so... he wished he'd said something more.

Otacon shook his head. "I keep forgetting how strange this must be for you," he muttered, and smiled self-consciously. "With me coming out of nowhere and claiming to be your friend, not mention all these other... reunions. At least from where I was pulled from, I already know who these people are, even if I've never properly met them."

"It does feel strange," Snake agreed, "but maybe that's a good thing. Perhaps this is what I needed. I don't know what this means, but - " his eyes clouded - "I like it here. Almost. I don't need to be told how sick it is that I feel this way. But here, I have a job to do. I have things, not people, to fight. My best friend is here. And then there's people like you, who I don't know, but who know me. I don't expect you to understand why I feel this way, or to forgive me for it."

And then he saw what Big Boss and Fox were doing. His stomach churned at the image of them holding each other like old friends, and he shot a look of disgust at them before standing up and trying to pretend he hadn't seen it.

He couldn't even pretend he had any reason for wanting to do this besides jealousy, but nonetheless he took Otacon's upper arm gently with his left hand, and then, rather stiffly, hugged him with his one working arm, his broken one hanging limply by his side in its sling.

"I'm going to see Big Boss again tonight," he reminded Otacon, speaking in Otacon's ear. "Don't stay in the neighbourhood, and especially don't think about engaging him yourself. Go somewhere else and keep safe. Got it?"

Edited 2009-08-29 15:59 (UTC)

Otacon's eyes widened behind his glasses when Snake came close, and for a few thudding heartbeats, he froze, too surprised by the sudden gesture to react. This Snake was different, but then also wasn't, and Otacon's arms raised tentatively, feeling their way past the fresh injuries as they came around Snake's waist.

"You're crazy," Otacon muttered, with somewhat less force than he would've normally used when Snake got like this. Had he always been so... so...? Otacon didn't want to think the word suicidal, but it popped into his head anyway, and he had to wonder if was going to drive himself insane by the cyclical way his thoughts tended to run now. His hands clenched for a second in the thin material of Snake's gray shirt, and then he stepped back, out of Snake's hold.

Otacon met that steady gaze. "No," he said decisively. He knew Snake had a point — whatever he was planning, Otacon would only slow him down, and likely couldn't contribute much anyway. Going somewhere else and keeping safe would hardly be a change from his M.O. "I'm not aiding and abetting in this. Look at what he did to you! I know you've beaten him twice before, and I know you feel like your father owes you some answers, but you can't—" His voice faltered. "—can't take much more of this."

He sighed.

"Unfortunately, I also know I can't talk you out of it either. So just... be careful, Snake. Like you said, you have a job to do. It can't end here."

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Day 43: Courtyard, Third Shift

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