Archive of Our Own

The snow had started as a soft, gentle drifting early in the morning. The weather forecasts in the newspaper and around town were calling for at least a few feet before the next day was over. With the time that he had, Kaz decided that it would be best for him to go grocery shopping before the storm. He didn’t have much left in the way of groceries, and D.D. was running low on dog food. Plus, it would do Kaz some good to buy pre-cut firewood. He would barely have enough time to drive home, let alone cut enough firewood to make it through the storm.

Kaz passed over money when he finished with his shopping, his arms loaded with brown paper bags. He set the groceries in the back of his truck and hauled the firewood and huge bag of dog food into the open trunk. Kaz flexed the fingers of his prosthetic, hidden under a thick layer of leather and wool. He had never been more grateful for his prosthetics than when he was living alone. Kaz frowned to himself. There had once been a time when he would have kept his old prosthetics until death. At least these hurt less, and they proved to be far more useful.

Kazuhira took the drive home slowly, allowing himself to enjoy the scenery covered in snow. It was nothing new to him; he had been in Alaska for a while now. But every time it snowed, Kaz found himself awash in old memories of winters in Japan. The snow there had never been as intense as it was in Alaska, but the nostalgia was there all the same.

Kaz woke up that morning with a terrible feeling of dread. He wasn’t sure if it was because he had to spend more than six hours away from D.D., a dog that was aging more and more each day, or if it was because of something else. Kaz shrugged and brushed it off as being worried about D.D. Worst came to worst, D.D. would have an accident inside of the house because he couldn’t quite make it outside in time. Kaz could never blame him, that dog had seen enough in his lifetime to make up for three of them. Kaz had to commend him, that dog was hanging on until the very last seconds of his life, whenever those might be.

Pulling leisurely into his rustic driveway three hours later, Kaz threw his truck into park and bundled up all of his groceries in his arms. He set those down on the porch, and then returned to his truck for the firewood and the dog food. He brought those around the back and left them on the deck in the backyard. The snow was much thicker out here than it was in town. It brushed the tops of Kaz’s mid-calf boots and left a heavy blanket of it on his shoulders and the top of his head.

As Kaz walked back to the front yard, he didn’t think twice about not hearing D.D.’s aged bark from inside the house. As he approached the front door, Kaz hesitated. The snow was lighter in certain areas leading up to the porch, and it seemed to him that the light patches were in the pattern of human strides. Kaz peered around the quiet forest. There was nobody that he could see. He picked up his mail, whatever little he had, in town, and there was no reason for anybody to try and visit him unless they were lost.

Or unless they knew him.

Kaz’s decent mood soured almost immediately. He walked up the steps to his front door, gathering the grocery bags in his arms once more. Keys in his left hand, his now-dominant hand, Kaz began undoing the several locks on his door. After they’d all clicked into place, Kaz shoved open the door to his small, remote home.
He was certain that D.D. was going to barrel him to the ground, but there was no such greeting. Kaz knew it right away; someone was in his home. Kaz wasn’t quite sure who it was, but he had a fairly good idea. Kaz pushed through the door and kicked it shut behind himself. It slammed with an air of finality. Kaz took the few moments of peace that he had to glance around the open room. His furniture, his sparse pictures and things hanging on the walls, his kitchen that he had stocked so well with booze that it would be impossible to run out unless he drank himself to death. While he’d considered it before, Kaz knew that he would regret it. There was too much for him to do to drink himself into a coma.

Kaz tromped into his kitchen, kicking snow off his heavy boots as he went. The weather was still fairly tame at the moment, but that wouldn’t stop it from unleashing a blizzard within a few minutes. Kaz set his bags of food on the marble countertop. He took a moment to touch the counters with his real hand, admiring how soft and smooth they were. He’d paid a fortune for them, and even more to have them brought up to his cabin and installed. Kaz had become a man of few luxuries—if you didn’t count the expensive liquor—but marble countertops just seemed like such an American thing to do, how could he say no?

Kaz didn’t bother with unpacking his groceries. There would be no point in it. Knowing him, and the other man in the room, he wouldn’t even be able to get a bite out of an apple before he was dead.

Rather than bother with something pointless, Kaz fished out two of his cleanest cups from his cupboards, and his best bottle of whiskey. Kaz lovingly read the label. Glenfiddich Janet Sheed Roberts Reserve. A gift; one that he’d never been able to crack open the entire ten years he’d had it. Kaz supposed if he were going to die tonight, it would be a good time to break into it. Kaz tore away the foil on the outside of the cap, and then screwed it open.

He dared to spend a few seconds just smelling it. The smell was strong, but not overbearing. Smoky, with a hint of what could have been ginger. Kaz would never know. He wasn’t going to spend the time to find out, and he doubted that Big Boss would have the knowledge stored away somewhere.

Thinking about Big Boss made Kaz’s blood boil. Either he was sitting there, in Kaz’s favorite chair, smirking away as he let the tension build, or he was thousands of miles away, and some assassin was here in his place. Kaz poured two glasses of the whiskey, not caring about the volume. If he died without feeling it because he was too drunk on good whiskey, who was he to complain? Kaz let himself snort, Big Boss was not the type of man to let Kaz slip away quietly and painlessly.

Kaz, glasses in each hand, approached his living space. It was dark, the sun was going down, but he could see the outline of his dog, stretched out on the floor. Kaz couldn’t quite tell if he was sleeping or dead. The thought made bile churn in Kaz’s stomach. That dog was the only thing he had left of him, and if someone killed him before he could die like a normal, old dog in his sleep, Kaz was going to have a few strong words to say. Kaz set the two whiskey glasses down on the glass and wooden coffee table. One in front of a high-backed, comfortable reclining chair, and one in front of himself.

Kaz lowered himself into his seat as gracefully as one could when faced with certain death. Kaz waited until his guest picked up their glass. As much as Kaz hoped that Big Boss had enough of a heart to spare for Kaz in his final moments, he couldn’t be sure until he heard his voice. Even then, Kaz needed to see his face.

“This is the most expensive drink I own,” Kaz said. It was conversational, light. Kaz wasn’t scared. He’d known that this day was going to happen for a very long time. “I haven’t had a sip of it since it was given to me.” Kaz sighed. He picked up his glass and took a luxurious sniff of the liquor once more. It smelled like heaven. Kaz’s guest lifted the glass to his lips and took a quiet sip. Kaz did the same, although he took a much larger gulp of it.

“It’s good, Kaz,” Big Boss praised.

Part of Kaz wanted to throw a tantrum. There was a muscle in the back of his neck that was pulsing with restraint. No matter what, Kaz refused to think about the burn in the backs of his eyes. He’d been waiting how long to see Big Boss again? Not his phantom, not just a brief passing, but to see him. To be near him again, like he mattered. Kaz’s hand clenched around his glass, and he was grateful that it wasn’t in his prosthetic grip. Had he ever actually mattered to Big Boss? Kaz knew the answer, but he couldn’t bring himself to admit it. It hurt too much.

“I know it is,” Kaz grumbled. He took another gulp. The liquor burned through his mouth, all the way down his throat and into his stomach. He worked his jaw back and forth, letting the taste linger on his tongue. His eyes trained on D.D. There was no way to know if he had shifted at all during his time on the couch. D.D. didn’t move much at all anymore, but this was heart-wrenching. “Did you kill him?” he asked. If someone held a gun to his head and demanded the answer, Kaz would never say that his voice was more strained than he could ever imagine.

“Are you hoping that I did, Kaz?” Big Boss replied. “Would you use it as a way to get whatever payback you can, while you can?”

Kaz’s blood was boiling with rage. He’d always been right under Big Boss’s thumb; right where he belonged. He was no better than a dog himself. “I just want a yes or a no answer,” Kaz ground out.

“No.”

“Is he dead?”

Big Boss nudged D.D. with the toe of his boot. The dog’s ears flickered, he looked up at the man he thought he knew, and whined at him petulantly. Big Boss leaned down and scratched between his huge ears. D.D. closed his eyes and went back to quietly dozing.

“He’s well-trained, isn’t he?” Big Boss mused.

“Yeah, he is.”

“Loyal, too.”

Kaz’s voice was soft, barely more than a whisper. “Yeah. He is.”

Big Boss finally turned to face Kaz. A whirlwind of emotions rushed through him. He wanted to strangle Big Boss, and kiss him, and punch his stupid broken nose in, and run his fingers through his shaggy beard all at once. Kaz didn’t know what to do, so he sat as still as a statue.

Big Boss chuckled.

The noise set Kaz’s anger off. He lurched forward, startling D.D. out of his peaceful nap. No sooner had Kaz wrapped his hand in the collar of Big Boss’s shirt, and reeled his prosthetic back to punch him square in his cocky smirk, that Big Boss had the barrel of a gun nuzzled under Kaz’s jaw, in the soft squishy part of his neck. Kaz’s chest was heaving with the effort to keep breathing, but Big Boss looked unperturbed. His expression was blank as if facing down some rookie that didn’t know what they were doing. That stung.

Kaz bit down hard on his lower lip to keep from screaming at Big Boss. Who did he think Kaz was? Did their time together mean nothing to him?

“There was once a time when I’d have used those words to describe you, too, Kazuhira,” Big Boss whispered. His voice was low, demanding all of Kaz’s attention. That bastard knew exactly what he was doing. There was a reason he made such a good leader.

“You’d consider me well-trained?” Kaz snapped. Compared to Big Boss, it seemed like he was screaming at the tops of his lungs. “I’m not a pet, you know,” he snarled.

Big Boss raised an eyebrow.

Kaz wanted to scream at him and rip into his ugly, handsome mug.

“There was once a time when you wouldn’t pull a gun on me. Are you getting scared, old man? Afraid I’ll kick your ass?” Kaz snipped. He was going for the low-blows. Anything to hurt Big Boss’s pride and knock him off his A-game.

Big Boss huffed in disdain. “You’re no longer as obedient as you used to be, Kaz. And if I’m correct, you’re stupider now, too.”

Kazuhira seethed at his words.

“If you’re smart, you’ll sit the fuck back down, and listen to what I have to say to you.”

Kaz was still breathing hard, but he knew when he was beaten. There would be no point in dying like this; he needed to get in at least one good hit before he suffered in Hell for the rest of his afterlife. Still clutching onto Big Boss’s collar like his life depended on it, Kaz lowered back into his seat. He only released Big Boss once he was comfortable, but now the gun was a permanent player. Big Boss seemed more relaxed with it, but he knew better than to fall into a false sense of security.

“Go on then,” Kaz snapped. He groped blindly for his whiskey glass, before realizing that he must have hurled it across the room.

Big Boss had a smirk from ear to ear. Kaz resisted the urge to try and punch him again, knowing that it wouldn’t end well.

“It’s simple, Kaz,” he began. “You can stay here and rot in Alaska, or you can come with me, where your talents are most useful. You could be a C.O. again. We both know you’re good at it. You command respect, and you can keep troops in order.”

“You want me to do what you’re too lazy to do,” Kaz grumbled. “I’m not an idiot Boss; I know you don’t want me alive unless I’m easy to check on. You’re also too lazy to find someone else to do the job.”

Big Boss had the gall to look hurt. Kaz physically trembled, a growl ripping out of him.

“You should consider this for more than half a second, Kazuhira Miller.”

“What are you going to do, put me in timeout?” Kaz snapped. “Don’t go using my full name like it means something to you.” Kaz frowned, looking Big Boss over. He still had that ridiculous hurt expression on. Whatever. “How long do I have to think about it?”

“A few minutes,” Big Boss answered. “I’m not giving you enough time to run away to Canada and find an even more remote location. Knowing you, you’d probably go all the way to Greenland if you could.”

“If it would give me a few more years away from you, you know that I would,” Kaz agreed. “Although, Greenland is a little obvious. I’d prefer Antarctica. I’m sure I could survive on penguins.”

Big Boss laughed at that. The kind when they were younger. A belly laugh that had him throw his head back with the strength of his cackles. Kaz didn’t let a smile nudge its way onto his lips. It was all just some ploy to get him buttered up. Kaz wasn’t twenty anymore, and he wasn’t going to fall for it. He knew all the cards that Big Boss had to play when it came to him.

“You’re smart, Kaz. I’m sure that you could do it.” Big Boss lowered the gun onto his lap, removing both hands from anywhere near it. “But why move to Antarctica, when you could come back with me?” his voice was soft and velvety, like the best kind of cake. Rich and dark, topped with something that was somewhere between sweet and sour. He looked up at Kaz, that one bright blue eye standing out against the darkness of the room. The sun was below the horizon now, only the barest hints of light were left around them.

Big Boss moved forward like a prowling animal. He had grown, too. He no longer struck as quick as a cobra. Rather, he moved slowly in an attempt to lure in his prey before he strangled it to death. His gloved hand reached up, meeting Kaz’s scarred cheek with the crinkly, but warm material. It didn’t feel human against Kaz’s skin, but it felt very Big Boss.

Big Boss’s lips were next, as chapped and as rough as Kaz’s lips were. It wasn’t quite as pleasant as Kaz remembered it being, but the emotions that stirred deep within his chest were exact replicas of twenty years ago. The taste of the whiskey was strong on Big Boss’s tongue, and Kaz was positive that he could become intoxicated just from their mouths meeting. He’d nearly dived head first into Big Boss’s big, safe, dangerous arms before an alarm went off in the back of his head. Kaz put a hand on Big Boss’s chest and pushed him just an inch away. He could still smell the alcohol on his breath, and the genuine leather that made up his jacket and gloves. He smelled like blood and poison, too. No matter what he wanted Kaz to think, Big Boss was not a man that he could trust. Not anymore.

“Because I don’t feel that way about you anymore,” Kaz whispered.

Big Boss smirked. Kaz could feel it against his mouth and hear it in his voice.

“You’re lying, Kaz.” There was a sharp edge to his voice. The cold metal of that gun was pressed against Kaz again, this time at his temple. Big Boss was doing something that he’d only done for Kaz. Give him a second chance. Although, this was more like Kaz’s third chance of the night.

“Maybe I’m lying, Boss, but I don’t want to. I can’t be with the man who treated me like a dog, who still thinks of me as one. I’m not something there for you to push around and play with when you—“

Big Boss pulled the trigger.

Being in Colombia was possibly one of the better things that had happened in Kaz’s life. He hadn’t been alive for long, but it felt better than he could imagine climbing the ranks so quickly. He didn’t need the JSDF, not when he could pry and push all day long and get nowhere.

Here? The story was different. Here, the people were desperate. Their lives were in danger every day. It didn’t matter if it was three in the morning, or two in the afternoon. Something could happen that could snuff their life in an instant.

Even better, when Kaz first showed up, they were disorganized. With a few smiles—Kaz learned early on that a smile could get him just about anything he wanted—he wormed his way in with the rebels, and he intended to stay. They were the kind of men he wanted to work with, and giving them instruction to fight was thrilling.

Though, as their leader, Kaz never stepped onto the battlefield with them. He was too important to risk losing. Kaz didn’t mind. His job, and his life were secure.

Kaz tipped his head back to stare at the sky as the sun rose through the blue. For a few days, they marched with little to no pauses. They made their way out of the jungle and into the flatlands before the mountains. The shrubs were rough and uncomfortable to sleep on, and there was a whole new set of dangers that came with being out in the open, but they had left the military far behind them after their last attack. They ransacked supplies, killed men, and burned whatever was left. It would take a long time for a full recovery from the attack.

It was like playing chess, only Kaz’s opponent knew the bare bones basics. Kaz ate it up. Feeling powerful was the best feeling in the world. He’d never been powerful in Japan, or around his mother, or in American schools. This place fit Kaz like a glove.

Men shuffled about around the camp, guns strapped to their backs and hips. Kaz had a weapon of his own, but it was more for show than anything else. If it ever came down to it, he might pull it out to make a point. Nothing ever came down to it, though.

In the distance, Kaz could hear a few different birds as they hopped along the ground or took short flights from one sparse tree to another. Kaz much preferred the jungle. Sure, there were mosquitos and caiman and snakes to worry about, but there was more life to be seen. There was always a new plant to see or a bug that Kaz wasn’t familiar with. He may have been the best businessman out there, but he had a few moments to spare for the little things.

A flock of the birds took off all at once from the grass, flying first toward the South, and then making a quick turnaround to the North. Kaz watched them fly past, chirping frantically to each other. Kaz furrowed his eyebrows. He didn’t know what predators were in the area, but they must have been startled by something.

“Tú,” Kaz ordered, pointing at a nearby guerrilla.

The man snapped to attention, waiting for his order.

“Investigar allá,” Kaz said.

The soldier nodded and followed Kaz’s dismissive wave from where the birds had flown. He took off at a light jog, slowing down as he traveled further from the camp. Kazuhira watched him for a while, hand perched above his head to block out the glare from the sun. The man browsed the tall grasses, parting them here and there for anything.

“¡Comandante!”

Kaz turned when he was called, greeting a different soldier as he ran over to Kaz. He furrowed his eyebrows at the man. He was wheezing for breath, and upon coughing to clear his throat, he splattered blood everywhere. Kaz took a shocked step back.

After recovering from the initial shock, Kaz reached forward to grab the man’s shoulders. He heard the bullet long before it hit its target. Kaz hadn’t come close to touching the man before his head exploded into a million pieces. Blood and gray matter sprayed in all different directions, and something hit Kaz in his right shoulder. The blow spun him on his heel, and he fell to the ground.

All at once, there was sound and movement all around. Kaz didn’t have enough time to properly orient himself before he flipped onto his hands and knees, giving a brief yell at the pain that snapped through his right arm. Kaz crawled to a nearby boulder and sprawled out behind it. The thing was barely big enough to keep his head covered as he pawed for the gun at his side.

Two other soldiers found Kaz, taking shelter with him. They were practically on top of each other, but none of them had time to waste thinking about personal space. The two soldiers attempted to return the fire as bullets rained down on them from seemingly every direction.

“Master Miller, what do we do?” one man yelled over the inescapable noise of guns. His Spanish was garbled. He swirled something in his mouth before spitting out a mixed wad of half-chewed tobacco and a few teeth.

Kaz peeked over the top of their shelter. He had his gun drawn, pressed close to his chest as he looked around. There were men everywhere. Most were from the army, boxing the rebels in until it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

Fear made Kaz’s mind move slower than he was used to. To the left, a jeep with a metal cover and thick glass windows. To the right, military men closing in by the second.

“You,” Kaz said, grabbing the front of the second man’s jacket. “Come with me,” he said. “Run on the outside, you’re the better shot,” he explained, desperately fighting to keep his languages straight. The man looked like he understood, Kaz hoped he was still speaking Spanish.

“What about me, Master Miller?” the other asked. He was on his belly, gun perched on the boulder as he fired blindly.

The screams of his men were starting to get to Kaz in ways that he couldn’t imagine. Ten minutes ago, and he could have picked out each of their voices from a crowded room. Now, he couldn’t name the two that were next to him, covering his body with their own.

“You go the opposite way,” Kaz said.

The man looked to the right, and then back at Kaz, his eyes so wide they were bulging out of his head.

“You’re using me as bait!” he accused.

“I’m not!” Kaz insisted. There wasn’t an ounce of his soul that felt guilty for what he was doing. If it was a choice between himself and someone else, he was going to pick himself every time. It was the obvious answer. “I want you to run for cover to the right; see that other boulder? We’ll get in the Jeep and drive around to get you. I’ll block the fire with the car, and then you can get in.”

What he said must have sounded good. Kaz didn’t know how. To his own ears, it sounded like a filthy lie.

“On my count; one, two, three!”

They all stood. The second soldier ran to the right. He was gunned down immediately. Kaz could hear him screaming as the bullets didn’t quite kill him. Kaz and the other soldier managed to get a few steps, Kaz hiding behind the man’s larger frame, until he was gunned down, too.

The man tumbled to the ground.

That’s when Kaz heard it.

Click, click, click.

Kaz didn’t have enough time to get away. The blast knocked him off his feet. He was propelled away from the bomb, landing hard on his side. His face smacked against the ground, and blood spilled from his nose.

“Bombs?!” Kaz sneered.

The pain in his shoulder was miraculously gone. Kaz shoved himself up, wiped the blood from his nose, and took off in the opposite direction. There were bullets everywhere. Two inches behind his ankle, one inch in front of his nose. Kaz was fuming. When had the army gotten time to plant bombs? How could they have known about the rebels’ movements? There must have been a spy.

A bullet scorched through Kaz’s thigh.

He rolled forward, unable to stop his legs in time after the shot. Kaz slumped onto the ground, groaning and clasping his leg. The entrance wound on the outside of his leg wasn’t bad, but the inside was torn asunder. Blood gushed from the wound.

Click, click, click.

Kaz gasped in disbelief. He didn’t have a second longer to process it before being launched across the battlefield.
In the throes of the Colombian military, a man raised his hand. The soldiers stopped.

Kaz was desperate. He took in everything around him, stopping on a dead soldier’s face. He was mid-scream, with a hole under his left eye. In his clenched fingers, he held a grenade. Under the cover of the dust that his body kicked up, Kaz snatched the grenade. He shoved his hand under his back, making sure that it was his right.

A man began giving orders, shouting at the remaining few of Kaz’s men. They all dutifully dropped everything they had on them, from switchblades to hand grenades. Kaz’s fingers tightened around his secret weapon. The man, who had scruffy brown hair, conversed quietly with another soldier, before walking in Kaz’s direction.

He had strength in the way he walked. He wasn’t afraid of anything. He looked as if he were taking a leisurely stroll through camp. If it weren’t for the blood and dirt, Kaz wouldn’t have guessed he had just come out of a battle.

As he approached, Kaz began to wheeze for good measure.

“You heard me,” the man growled. “Put your hands where I can see them.”

Kaz didn’t miss the way the man didn’t bother with Spanish if he knew any at all. Kaz didn’t look like anyone else here.

Kaz groaned in the way that his mother used to when she was sick. It was pathetic, but it wasn’t far off from how he felt. Kaz was starting to fade in and out as the blood rushed from his leg and shoulder, and whatever other wounds he had sustained.

“Afraid I… I can’t move my arms,” Kaz whispered.

“Don’t be stupid, commander,” the man said. He didn’t say it like an insult, simply the best advice that he could give a fellow soldier. “Your men are all dead. The ones that aren’t have surrendered. Give up now, and you might make it out of this with your life. Looks like your leg needs some attention.”

Anger boiled under Kaz’s skin. Being reminded of his failure stung. He could see it all around, and smell it, too. This man just had to rub it in, didn’t he?

“I came here from Japan.”

“What?” The man leaned in as if he hadn’t properly heard Kaz.

“I chose to come here!” Kaz snapped. He spat at the man for good measure, but it didn’t get very far.

The man rolled his eye. “All right. Now let me see your hands, I know you can still move them. You didn’t sustain any injuries to your spine.”

Kaz breathed in hard through his nose. This man wasn’t going to waltz into a trap so easily. He wasn’t as guarded as he could have been, but Kaz also knew that he wasn’t an idiot. He wracked his brain for ideas, anything that could give him the edge up.

“Be my kaishaku,” Kaz whispered.

The man looked puzzled. He tilted his head in the way that a dog would when they didn’t understand. “Your what?”

“My kaishaku,” Kaz repeated. He forced an ounce more of strength into his voice. “I’m a samurai. When we are defeated, we disembowel ourselves—seppuku. When I do, someone cuts off my head. That’s a kaishaku.” Kaz trailed off, groaning again for added effect. He needed to get this over with. He was fighting each second to stay conscious. If he didn’t do this soon, he would never get a second chance. “Think you’re up to it?”

The man’s nostrils flared. He looked at Kaz from top to bottom as he lay in a growing pool of his blood. He held out his hand.

“Give me a machete,” he ordered.

“Boss!” a soldier responded, grabbing the machete on his hip from its hilt. He took it by the blade and offered it to his boss.

The man grabbed his own machete, setting it next to Kaz.

“Do you need help to sit up?” he asked.

Kaz almost wanted to commend the man for his courtesy. There he was, on the battlefield with someone he didn’t know, ready to let them go through with an ancient tradition.

Kaz nodded. He was starting to feel clammy all over, and his whole body was stricken with shivers. The man grabbed Kaz by his left elbow, and Kaz latched onto the man’s sleeve. There was a half second of thought there, as he furrowed his bushy brows.

Kaz whipped his right hand out from underneath his body, bringing it to his left and ripping the pin from its socket.

“Grenade!” one of the man’s soldiers screamed. All of them jumped away and curled in on themselves, but the man stayed.

Kaz snarled at him. The man was nearly crushing his hand, forcing his fingers to stay wrapped around the trigger. Kaz was seething.

“Let go!” he demanded.

“Can’t set it off with your finger on the lever,” the man countered.

Kaz worked up another bloody glob of spit and spat at the man. This time he hit his mark. Stringy blood oozed down the man’s face, but he didn’t flinch. His hand tightened down on Kaz’s even more. There was a beat as his soldiers found themselves unharmed, and began to rise once more.

“Boss!”

That was all it took. With the last of his energy, Kaz yelled as he rolled himself and the man with him. He struggled and bucked wildly, all finesse gone from his actions. His only goal was to slip his hand away and to let the grenade fall between them. If he could send them both sky high, he would never be happier.

The man grunted as they tussled, both struggling for dominance. As much as Kaz was restricted, he was, too. His hand was trapped, pressing down on Kaz’s bones until he was certain they would break. After what felt like hours, but was certainly less than a few minutes, the man managed to pin Kaz. He wrenched Kaz’s arm back, and Kaz screamed. The pain from the first bullet was renewed, and now his entire shoulder was being tugged out of place.

Kaz wormed his body back and forth, trying to shake the man. But his hand around Kaz’s was unrelenting. Kaz was just as stubborn. Then the man got a dirty idea. As Kaz shook his head back and forth, he saw it form in the man’s brain with a crease of lines around his mouth as he frowned. He shoved his boot into Kaz’s thigh that was split open and bleeding freshly once more.

Kaz screamed again, but his whole body contracted, and then released. The man took his chance. He wrenched the grenade away from Kaz, pulling a few fingers from their respective joints as he did so, and hurled it across the battlefield.

Without the energy to fight anymore, Kaz let death sweep over him like a warm blanket.

Someone threw themselves down onto Kaz’s makeshift bed, startling him awake.

Kaz’s eyes locked onto the man from the battlefield. It took Kaz a moment to realize where he was. A medical bay of some sort, strapped into at least a dozen IVs from what he could tell and swaddled in gauze and stitches.

“Where am I?” Kaz asked. His voice caught in his throat, sore from screaming.

“Army encampment,” the man responded. He pulled a cigar and lighter from the breast pocket of his fatigues and lit the end of the cigar.

“You’re in a hospital,” Kaz sneered.

“You’re the only one here.”

Kaz harrumphed. “You’re on my bed.”

“You’re my prisoner.”

“Oh, I’m your prisoner?” Kaz laughed. “I could get out of here with my hands tied behind my back.”

“Do you want to try?” the man asked. He looked dead serious. Kaz broke his stare before it became too uncomfortable. “You might want to start thinking of ways out of here, though. You won’t be my prisoner for very long.”

“What do you mean?” Kaz asked.

“My contract with the government ends tomorrow.”

“You’re just a mercenary?”

“My contract ends tomorrow, meaning your custody is handed over to the Colombian government. And from what I’ve heard about the infamous Kazuhira Miller, there’s a lot that they would like to learn from you.”

“You know who I am?” Kaz asked.

“Everyone in this country knows who you are. And don’t get cocky—it’s not a good thing. You’re a tyrant that helps the rebels destroy their homeland. You’re an important man with information on where the rebels might be going and who their leaders are. I’ve also heard rumors that you might be a spy for the Colombian army that infiltrated the rebels.”

“That’s not true!”

“It’s just what I’ve heard,” the man said. He raised his hands in a show of peace. Without removing his cigar from his mouth, he managed to pour out a lungful and a half of acrid smoke. Kaz would rather choke to death than smell that crap.

Kaz was working against his brain to keep a lid on his temper. For all he knew, this man was tricking him to get information out of him the easy way. Well, Kaz wasn’t going to roll over that easily.

“You’ll have to torture me if you want information,” Kaz hissed. He glowered at the man, who was as peachy as he was when their conversation started. Kaz wondered if anything could get under the man’s skin.

“Are you sure you want to say things like that?” he asked Kaz. Kaz’s eyes darted away from the man’s single eye. His stare was intense and unnerving. “Because the interrogators around here are very good. I should know. I trained them.”

“I’m not scared of you,” Kaz snapped like a petulant child.

The man raised a thick eyebrow. “Maybe you should be,” he mumbled.

The man plucked his cigar from his mouth and stubbed out the glowing end on the palm of his thick leather glove. That action alone nearly made Kaz recoil. Didn’t that hurt?
He leaned in close to Kaz, taking up as much of Kaz’s space as he could.

“The best part about pain is that it won’t kill a man,” he stated as if it were a normal conversation starter. “And the best way to cause pain is to go after the things that nobody thinks about. You can prepare yourself for your eyes to be gouged, or your cheeks and chest stripped of fat. No one prepares their nails.” His hand snatched Kaz’s before Kaz could react. He clamped his thumb and forefinger around one of Kaz’s nails.

“Some use a needle,” he continued. “I think these men prefer bamboo or wood splinters. He nudged Kaz’s nail upward with his own, using just enough pressure to make it uncomfortable.

Kaz could feel sweat pooling at the small of his back and pouring down his shoulders and neck. This man was insane. Kaz was horrified.

“They wedge the splinter under your nail, separating the nail bed from the fingertip, and then push down. It rips the nail from the skin. It’s incredibly painful. I’ve seen men shit themselves from it. And the best part about it? You’ve got ten finger nails and ten toe nails. Each is more painful than the last.”

Kaz did his best to hold back the shuddering in each of his exhales. He gulped loudly.

“What about your teeth?” the man asked. He went for Kaz’s jaw next, applying pressure on either side until it was a sharp pain in Kaz’s cheeks. He opened his mouth for the man, who inspected him like he was a horse being traded. “Do you still have your wisdom teeth?”

Kaz smacked the man’s hand away from his jaw. He was panting and staring at him wide-eyed.

“What do you want?” Kaz gasped.

“I want you to join me.”

Kaz curled his lip in disdain. “I would never be your lap dog.”

“I didn’t ask you to be my lap dog. I asked you to join me.”

“It sounds the same to me.”

“You might want to think about this for more than half a second, Kazuhira Miller. I especially recommend considering my offer if you like your nails and your teeth. After that, who knows where they’ll go. Rumor has it that you’re promiscuous. No one around here likes that, and it’s something that can easily be solved.”

Kaz felt every single drop of blood leave his face and neck.

“My contract ends soon. It’s your life, and you can do with it what you will. A smart businessman would keep himself out of as much unnecessary pain as possible.”

The man shoved himself up, shaking Kaz’s rickety hospital bed as he did so. He tromped away with his heavy boots and whisked aside the tent flap.

“Wait!” Kaz called.

It took a second, but the man came back. “What?”

“What do I call you?”

“You can call me Boss.”

Kaz scoffed. “I’m not calling you Boss. I’m not working for you; not in your wildest dreams.”

“The name is Snake, is that any better for you?”

“Snake sounds just as bad as Boss, in my opinion. Don’t you have a real name?”

“When you’re a soldier like me, your real name doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters is fighting, and keeping yourself alive.”

Snake vanished from the medical tent once more. Kaz wanted to say that he was angry, but he was more confused than anything. He worked his fingers in the sheets, curling and uncurling. He spent the better portion of an hour memorizing how his nails felt on the tops of his fingers, weighing his options.

The heat was searing Kaz’s chest, and the strong sunlight that filtered through the open window burned his arms. Kaz could feel each blister as it crawled its way under his skin and emerged on the surface. The longer they sat in the sun, the more painful they became. Kaz could barely keep track of which arm was his left and which was his right. At least his captors had let Kaz keep his clothes. His back burned under the dark green material of his shirt, but he didn’t have to worry about a sunburn there. His hair, long and untidy, kept his scalp and the back of his neck covered. Although, his face was the least of his worries. For a long time now, Kazuhira had a sack pulled over his head.

Day and night, Kaz was forced to breathe in the scent of his disgusting breath. At least it covered up the scent of blood as it oozed from the lacerations all over his face. Kaz shifted his right leg, nudging his knees together. For insolent behavior on his first day, the men took away Kaz’s foot. Then for each time he misbehaved, they removed more and more of his leg until there was nothing below his knee.

It must have been the middle of the day because the heat was starting to become unbearable. Kaz wasn’t sure that his body had the capability to sweat anymore. The searing air made him tired; made him want to fall asleep and never wake up again. But Kaz couldn’t do that. He had too many men that were counting on him back at Mother Base. If he gave up now, he would be setting a bad example for the rest of them.

Kaz’s chest was shuddering with each inhale and exhale. What he wouldn’t give to have the water in his body to start crying all over himself. At this point, he didn’t care that it wasn’t dignified. He’d pissed and shit all over himself so many times that what were a few tears going to do? Kaz barely had the mental capacity to realize that he’d been fed so little and given only the spare drops of water that he hadn’t gone through any normal bodily functions in well over four days.

There was too much hurt for Kaz to focus on the normal things. His wrists hurt, his shoulders hurt, his face hurt, his stomach hurt, his legs hurt, everything hurt. Even his heart hurt. What was John doing? Where was he? Probably still somewhere far away. Had Ocelot even told John what was happening to him? Kaz knew that Ocelot knew where John was, but he refused to tell Kaz. Apparently, his emotions burned far too bright and could be a danger to John.

Another shudder wracked through Kaz’s chest. How could he be a danger to John? He… Well… Kaz couldn’t put a word to what he felt for John. Either way, it was certainly very strong. Kaz tugged at his wrists in another futile attempt at escape. Maybe, if he pulled often and hard enough, he could yank the chains free from where they were attached to the wall.

There was shouting outside of his cell. Kaz couldn’t be sure if it were truly a cell that he was in, or if they had trapped him in a room designed to be as uncomfortable as possible. All that Kaz knew was that there was a bed, but he wasn’t allowed anywhere near it. A man, screaming in a foreign language, perhaps it was English, but Kaz was too far gone to know, stomped into the room. For his trouble, he smacked Kaz with his gun. Kaz immediately passed out; he couldn’t even pretend to have the strength to sustain a blow like that. In his unconsciousness, Kaz drooled what little he had left in his mouth all over himself, and the last drops of urine that his body had stored soaked his pants.

Kaz came to, wanting nothing more than to cry. He was confused, and hurting and scared. At first, he’d tried to be strong. Ocelot could withstand torture, John surely could too, so Kaz had tried his best. The beatings weren’t horrible, the starvation could have been worse, but that was only in the first few days. Even the loss of his leg, no matter how agonizing each inch was to lose, was nothing compared to the emotional strain that made him feel like Atlas holding up the world. Kaz didn’t know how many days had passed at this point, but it felt like an entire year. Even if there wasn’t a bag over his head, Kaz’s eyes were so swollen and filled with blood and pus that he wouldn’t have been able to see time passing.

Kaz smacked his lips together, trying to wet them with the tiniest amount of saliva, but nothing worked. He jangled his restraints again, hoping that his guard would come back. Perhaps if Kaz pleaded enough, he could be given one drop of water.

The man came back, screaming and shouting at Kaz in his foreign language. Kaz could hear the clanking of his gun as he adjusted it, preparing for another blow.

“Water,” Kaz croaked before anything else could happen. “Mizu,” he tried, because at this point, why the fuck not? Kaz tasted blood immediately after he spoke. The delicate, dried skin around his mouth and on his lips must have split open again. Desperately, Kaz lapped at the thick blood on his lips. Not even the taste of old pennies could keep Kaz from trying to replace water.

His guard seemed to pause. There was no clanking of his gun for a few brief moments. Kaz prayed for the man’s mercy, even if he knew that it wasn’t coming. Kaz heaved a few tremoring breaths. He heard the pop of a cork of some sort. Kaz prayed to every single god that he could think of.

The man sneered something unintelligible. There was a second voice with his. Kaz didn’t even know that he had a second guard. At least they put some priority on his captivity. No doubt if John came to get him, one guard would never be enough to stop him. Kaz hoped that ten thousand guards wouldn’t be enough to stop him.

The bag over Kaz’s head was shoved up from around his neck, just barely covering his eyes at this point. One of the guards grabbed onto the back of Kaz’s head, using his unkempt and greasy hair to pull his head back. Kaz groaned weakly as every bone in his neck protested at being thrown around so violently. A drop of blissfully cold water fell into Kaz’s open mouth. If it weren’t for the pain coursing through him, Kaz could have moaned. Water had never tasted so delicious in his entire life. He never wanted to go so long without it again.

His guards snickered to each other. Kaz’s head was forced further back, stretching his neck at an extremely painful angle. At least Kaz could look forward to his first drink since who knew when.

When the mouth of the—bottle? Flask?—pressed against his nose, Kaz had only half a second to start panicking before water was forced down his nose. In his slice of panic, Kaz took a heavy gasp through his nose. Unimaginable pain shocked through Kaz’s entire body. His head was on fire, and he already felt like he was drowning. Kaz squirmed and tried to shout, but he didn’t have the strength to vocalize how painful it was. He splurted as much water as he could out of his mouth, but most of it went straight down, choking him.

Kaz’s guards fell into uncontrollable laughter as water spewed out of Kaz’s nose, and nothing but acrid bile came out of his mouth. Kaz tried to roll his head forward to spit out the bile, but it was all he could do to keep from choking on that, too. The taste left him feeling sicker than ever. As the guards laughed, one of them pulled the burlap sack back over his face. Kaz couldn’t stop coughing up bile and water; it wasn’t long before the front of the sack reeked of stomach acid. Before long, Kaz passed out again.

Breathing became harder and harder after that. Kaz could feel each muscle in his neck and chest straining to fill his lungs properly with oxygen. It didn’t help that he barely wanted to breathe in the stench of his bile. Despite the heat, Kaz began to shiver. His blisters no longer felt quite so bad, compared to the water sloshing around in his lungs. There was a part of Kaz that hoped he’d inhaled enough water to kill him, no matter how slow the death might be.
The lapses of consciousness and unconsciousness were unknown to him. It was just one more thing that he couldn’t keep track of. At this point, Kaz wasn’t sure what he was waiting for.

Sometime in his internment, Kaz began a broken hum of a song that he barely knew. He couldn’t place it. It was foreign to him, but also he knew it so well. Something about a little girl, and being with John on the beach. He wasn’t sure if they were memories or fantasies as his brain soothed him into the welcome embrace of death.

His disjointed humming must have angered his guards. This one had a different voice than the two that tried to drown him, and he had far less patience with Kaz than the other two. Kaz had heard the distinct sound of a shotgun cocking before he was screaming uncontrollably. Kaz wasn’t even sure why he was screaming, but his entire body was in pain. He was on fire. His whole right arm was searing with the heat of an open flame. Certainly, his clothes were going to catch, and he was going to burn alive. Kaz gasped for air, knowing that it would be better for him to breathe in as much smoke as he could than to suffer the burning for one moment longer. The water in his lungs made it hard to do anything but gasp softly, but at least it would take less smoke to kill him when they were already half-full of water.

When Kaz woke up again, he felt heavy. He felt like he was a sprawling metal structure that was sinking to the bottom of the ocean. Kaz wasn’t sure where the image came from, or what it meant, but it made him break out into horrific, pained sobs. He was positive that he had lost his voice completely. It had to have been beyond repair at this point. Kaz had screamed and cried so much that he had nothing left to wheeze out.

He tried to jangle his wrists, to get the attention of his guards, but he found that he could only move one of them. If he concentrated, he could wiggle the fingers of his right arm, but it hurt to think so hard about moving his limb. Despite the noise of his rattling chains, no guard came to hit Kaz or set him on fire again. Left without a voice, Kaz sobbed and gasped his way into fainting.

Something metal and cold was pressed against Kaz’s lips. When he didn’t respond, his jaw was yanked open, and the metal was shoved in. Water splashed forward. It took Kaz a long time of swallowing reflexively before he realized what was happening. Greedily, Kaz gulped down as much water as he could until it hurt his stomach and he was sure that he could feel the water sloshing around in his gut. The metal was yanked away from Kaz’s mouth knocking into his teeth that were trying to keep the metal in place. He nearly whined for more water, but he couldn’t give in. If he could still drink, then he had to be still alive.

There was much discussion, but Kaz couldn’t tell how many voices were surrounding him. They sounded panicked. The voices were hushed, and hands were all over Kaz’s body. They patted him down, brushed over his right arm—that was strange, why did he feel the hands against his armpit, but not against his bicep?—and smacked him around a few times for good measure. After that, the voices left. There were footsteps all over, running about and shuffling around quietly. Somewhere far away, Kaz could hear gunshots, but it was nothing strange to him. Every day, these men shot people and made examples out of them. What were a few more?

Kaz cleared his throat, nearly whimpering as he did so. His throat was scraped raw from screaming and dehydration, but at least he still had one. Kaz let his head fall back against the stone of the wall behind him. He wasn’t sure if his eyes were open or shut, there was darkness all around. Quietly, sadly, Kaz began to hum again. The water soothed some of the pain in his throat and brought what little voice he had left back to him.

The gun fire was becoming closer and closer. When there was no gunfire, Kaz heard the sound of bodies hitting the floor, but there was no way to be certain where they were or if it was happening in real life. For all Kaz knew, it was his own body hitting the ground as he died over and over again in Hell for all the terrible things he had done to John.

Kaz was in the middle of a beautiful nap when he heard it.

“Kaz?”

Kaz furrowed his eyebrows. Had he given his name to his guards? Or had they heard it from him while he was muttering to himself? The sack was yanked up over Kaz’s face, blinding him. The light was far too bright in his eyes, forcing him to screw his eyes shut even when they were already swollen and sore.

Despite having only half of his voice, and even less of his courage, Kaz couldn’t help himself. “No more use for me, huh?” he groaned, hardly ashamed of the way his voice broke.

“Kaz, it’s me. I’m here to get you out.”

Kaz felt like his entire world was collapsing around him. The hand on his cheek was cold, but at the same time searing into his sensitive skin. He shifted his head away from the grip, and both hands fell from his cheeks. “Snake…” he whispered, restraining himself from showing weakness in front of his Boss.

John was moving back and forth, his eye roaming over Kaz from head to toe. He looked like he was in pain, but Kaz couldn’t imagine why. Kaz tried to reach out and touch him with his free arm, but it wouldn’t respond. They must have damaged his nerves or muscles to make it immobile. John was a blur behind Kaz’s swollen eyes, and being exposed to bright daylight after days—weeks? Months?—without it didn’t help at all.

Kaz squinted at John, trying to turn his head away from the light on the other side of the window. He wanted to see John, to look at him and know that he was there. His touch certainly felt real enough, but Kaz wanted to see his face. Kaz’s chest shuddered when he realized that he could barely see an inch in front of his nose.

“They do something to your eyes?” John asked. His voice sounded so much different, so much older than the last time Kaz had heard it. He didn’t sound like John. Nine years must have taken its toll on his body.

Kaz furrowed his brows, trying desperately to keep his emotions in check. “No, it’s… It’s just bright is all.” Kaz wished he were dead.

Kaz stretched his arms above his head, twisting his torso from left to right until his spine popped in a series of satisfying cracks. He was stiff from being stuck in the same spot, but it could have been much worse. Snake was across from him, nursing the same bottle of beer that he had ordered much earlier in the night. Now it was nearing one a.m., and they had yet to see the man who was going to provide them with some desperately-needed weaponry. There was only so much they could do, and only so many jobs they could take when they barely had enough weapons to keep Snake stocked.

Kazuhira leaned forward, propping his elbow on the table and his chin in his hand. Snake looked overall, incredibly uncomfortable. He rarely moved and was tense from the top of his forehead to the tips of his toes.

Despite being much quieter than earlier in the night, the bar around them was still bustling. Men came and went just to get their drinks, and a few girls sat in groups as they chatted and eyed up the guys around them. More than once, Kaz caught their attention. He would have winked at them, but he’d been wearing his sunglasses, even indoors at night. Instead, he settled for charming, blinding-white grins that left them in giggles and hushed, fervent whispers. Each time Snake caught him doing it, he frowned.

Kazuhira didn’t let it discourage him. If they were going to be stuck at a seedy bar all night long, he might as well have a little bit of fun. Kaz would have given anything to take one of those girls into the back, just to kill a few minutes. Hell, he wouldn’t mind getting some time with each of them. They were all very pretty.

Across the way, Kaz caught the eyes of a few men who were staring at him. He couldn’t quite tell what their intentions were, but he smiled with effortless charm anyway. A few of them turned away immediately, while others continued to stare at him. Snake turned to glare at them, and they were quick enough to turn away after that.

Kaz groaned and collapsed backward in his seat. He pushed himself back with his legs, keeping only the back two legs of the chair on the ground.

“You’re chasing everybody away, Boss,” Kaz groaned. He raked a hand through his styled hair, pushing a few missing strands back into place. He had a nasty habit of fiddling with it when he was bored, but he was sure that he still looked good.

“You don’t have the luxury of flirting right now, Kaz,” Snake grumbled. He sipped at his beer and made a face.

Kaz rolled his eyes at Snake. “I’m starting to wonder if your face is permanently set in a scowl, Boss,” Kaz teased. He was slightly tipsier than Snake, and it led to him saying things he normally would have held back. “Besides, if you’re jealous because I’m getting all of the attention, I can teach you a few tricks,” Kaz said. “You’d be good at it; you’re attractive.”
Kaz nearly choked on his spit, eyes widening behind his shades as he realized what he’d just said. Trying to play it off as intentional, Kaz took a huge gulp of his drink, letting it scorch his throat.

Snake didn’t react at first. He just frowned, deepening the lines on his forehead and around his crooked nose. Kaz tugged at his yellow scarf, refraining himself from commenting on how hot it was at the bar. That was a surefire way to let Snake know that he was feeling nervous about what he said.

Kaz mentally reprimanded himself. There was no need to be nervous. If after all of the tricks Kaz tried to pull with Snake, and he didn’t react, it was clear that he wasn’t into guys. For all Kaz knew, he had some pretty girl waiting for him on the mainland. Kazuhira wouldn’t put it past Snake; leaving some hottie at home so he could play at war games.
When Snake began drumming his fingers on the scratched wooden table, thumb to pinky and pinky to thumb, Kaz knew he was more agitated than he was letting on.

“You should relax, Boss. He’ll show up when he shows up; if you look so scared, then he’s won this whole thing,” Kaz advised. Snake furrowed his thick, bushy eyebrows at Kaz. “You need to make him feel like we don’t care that he’s late.”

“Is that a business strategy they taught you in school?” Snake asked. He scanned Kaz’s face. He drummed his fingers for a while longer before leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. “I do care,” Snake grumbled. He worked his jaw back and forth, grinding his teeth in an old habit. “It’s been six hours, Kaz.”

“Unprofessional, I know,” Kaz agreed, waving his hand. Even the other patrons in the bar were beginning to clear out, paying their tabs and stumbling away like the drunkards that they were. Kaz scoffed at them.

“What’s wrong with you?” Snake muttered.

“Drunks,” Kaz answered.

“You’re drunk more than anyone else at camp. And you get drunker than anyone else, too. One of these days, the medic is going to have to pump your stomach,” Snake scolded.

“I know how to get drunk and have a good time,” Kaz corrected. He held up his glass to Snake before taking a leisurely sip. “They’re drinking to forget the things that scare them.”

“What scares you?”

Kaz spat out his drink, making sure to aim the spray away from Snake’s face. “Excuse me?” Kaz spluttered. He looked up at Snake, but he was deadly serious. His blue eye, normally the color of the sky on a perfect day, was stormy with a slew of emotions Kaz could never hope to understand.

Kazuhira leaned back in his chair. He tried to wipe his mouth on the back of his sleeve in a nonchalant way, but Snake’s eye tracked his every movement. Kaz sucked in a deep breath through his nose, and let it out in a slow sigh.

“What scares me?” he repeated. Kaz frowned. “I don’t like the idea of dying.”

“Everyone is scared of dying,” Snake said. He tilted his head at Kaz, like a predator sizing up something it wasn’t familiar with. Snake’s eye roamed over Kaz.

Despite being well-dressed, even in the Costa Rican summer heat wave, Kaz felt like he was completely exposed in front of Snake. It was as if his entire life was spread out before him on hundreds of pages, and he couldn’t get enough of what he read. It made Kaz want to squirm in his seat, but he stubbornly remained still.

They hadn’t been working together for very long, but Kaz got the feeling that Snake knew more about his soldiers than he ever let on. Sure, there were the ones that trusted him so far as to tell him every detail of their lives, but Kaz wasn’t quite sure that he was ready to hand that information over to Snake. Hell, Kazuhira could barely think about his life when he was alone. Having someone else know such intimate details about him made him feel sick to his stomach.

Eventually, Snake must have found what he was looking for in Kaz because his blue eye turned away and began to search the crowd again.

Kaz slumped in his seat, still holding his glass. He rubbed at the condensation, struggling for anything to do to make himself appear calmer than he felt. Kaz glanced around the bar, but the women and men that had been eyeing him up earlier were gone. He let out another soft sigh. There went his chances of having some fun while they were stuck at the bar. Although, maybe Snake wouldn’t mind if Kaz tried something under the table. There wasn’t much cover where they were at, but they could move to a corner of the bar. After all, under the table, he wasn’t that much different than a girl.

Kaz tried to ignore the way he felt his neck and cheeks heat up. He glanced at Snake, but he was busy sizing up everybody in the bar. He was bored, too. But he was in the mood for a fight more than anything else. Kaz could see it in the way he sat, one hand on his hip where his pistol was concealed, the other hand clenched into a tight fist on the top of the table. Kaz finished off his glass and left the table to get both him and Snake more drinks.

It wasn’t long after that that Kaz began to ignore his own advice. He was just drunk enough to start getting stupid ideas. He couldn’t decide if he wanted his left leg crossed over his right, or his right leg crossed over his left. No matter what he did, he couldn’t get comfortable. Snake seemed to notice, but he didn’t comment.

“Maybe I gave him the wrong day,” Kaz mumbled after another hour had passed.

There were only a few other people left in the bar, and none of them looked like arms dealers. The bartender continuously shot him and Snake dirty looks, all but begging them to get out of his bar already.

Snake harrumphed. Every fiber of him was screaming displeasure, but somehow he was managing to keep his cool better than Kaz ever could.

“Do we really need this guy’s shit?” Kaz asked. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed at his temples. “We can always find another supplier, Boss. One that won’t keep us on the edge of our seats for an entire day.”

Snake’s eye drifted over to Kaz. Kaz wanted nothing more than to push his sunglasses up and see how truly blue his eye was. Too bad there were still so many people around. Just thinking about revealing that part of himself made Kaz nervous. Snake knew already, but it didn’t make Kaz any more comfortable with it.

“Why should we wait for someone to give us what we want?” Kaz continued. “They should be the ones waiting for us, scared senseless about what we could do to them if they betrayed us.” Kaz paused, not sure if Snake was liking what he was saying or not. “Right?”

Snake pushed a heavy sigh out of his nose. He stood up silently and left a few crumpled bills on the table. Kaz’s heart nearly leaped out of his throat. He grinned but resisted the urge to cheer that they were finally leaving. He wasn’t looking forward to sleeping on a makeshift, uncomfortable cot in the jungle, but it would be better than staying up all night waiting for the dealer.

To help with his part of the tab, Kaz left whatever money he had in his pockets next to Snake’s money. Snake left the bar, with Kaz following at his heels. Kaz made sure to stay a respectful distance away, but also close enough to try and leech the aura that Snake radiated. Kaz wanted some of that strength for himself. He couldn’t imagine being such an imposing figure like Snake. When he entered a room, everyone was quiet. When Kaz entered a room, they usually pulled him into their joking and laughing. Kaz frowned. Snake had scolded him about that once or twice. He was the C.O. of their ragtag group of soldiers; he needed to act like it.

Kaz found himself following Snake without knowing where they were going. It wasn’t until he didn’t see their vehicle anywhere nearby that he realized he had no idea where they were. There were a few tall buildings, all nicely lit up in the front, with darkened upstairs.

Snake stopped outside of one of the buildings, scanning down the streets that surrounded it.

Before Kaz knew what was happening, Snake was halfway up the building.

“Boss!” Kaz snapped, although he kept his voice down.

Snake easily found himself on the third floor of the squat building. He peered inside of the open window, behind the curtains, and then vanished. Kaz was left in the middle of the street, staring up at the window that Snake climbed through. Kaz gaped up at the window, dumbstruck. What in the world was Snake thinking?

“Boss?” Kaz called again.

At first, there was nothing, and then Snake’s head popped out from behind the curtains. He waved his hand at Kaz, motioning for him to do the same. If Kaz could, he would have shot himself in the foot to keep from looking like an imbecile.

“Can’t believe it,” Kaz grumbled, despite the spark of excitement that was coursing through his veins.

He was more than a little drunk now that the alcohol had a chance to get through all of his body, and climbing up a building to break in with Boss seemed like a great idea. Kaz looked around the building, checking for any cops before he began to scale the building. He lost his footing more than once, but it wasn’t as difficult as he had thought it would be. Granted, it wasn’t as easy as Snake made it seem.

By the time Kaz made it to the window and hauled himself inside, he was gasping for breath and dizzy like he’d never been before. Kaz collapsed on the other side of the window sill, face-down in the rough carpet that smelled like puke and piss. Kaz ran his fingers through the shag carpeting, letting it bring him back into reality.
When Kaz finally had the strength back in his jelly-like limbs, he sat up. He shoved his sunglasses onto the top of his head, peering around the room. There was a bed in the center, opposite a small bathroom and a smaller closet.

“We… broke into a hotel?” Kaz asked.

Snake nodded. He was perched in an old, frayed armchair. He had a cigar in his mouth, clicking at his lighter until the flame caught. He puffed on his cigar before it finally lit. In no time at all, the room smelled more like Snake and the run-down shack they shared than the escapades of previous tenants.

“Why?”

“Because it saves money,” Snake answered. “Isn’t that what you’re always concerned with, Kaz? Saving money?”

“Well, yeah, Boss,” Kaz said with a roll of his eyes. “We need all the money we can get. What I meant was; why did we break into a hotel? We could have slept in the car, or made the drive back to base.”

Snake held his cigar between two fingers, letting the smoke curl up and flood the room. Kaz couldn’t help himself; he took a long sniff of the acrid smoke. When he first met Snake, Kaz hated the smell of cigar smoke. It made him sick to his stomach to get even a lingering sniff of it. Now, it smelled like safety. That smoke smelled like somewhere Kaz might belong.

“Do you want to take a four-hour drive back into the jungle?” Snake asked. “Or sleep on leather seats?”

Kaz made a face. Snake was right. Both of those options sounded terrible. He was drunk and sore, and he wanted nothing more than to sleep. Kaz shifted himself slightly and began to unlace his boots. He tossed them across the room, careful about not hitting the walls with them. Kaz stood and entered the bathroom, relieving himself and then sticking his head under the sink to wash out the gummy hair gel that had been on his scalp for far too long.

Kaz padded back into the room and found Snake in the same position. If it weren’t for the cigar held precisely between his teeth, Kaz would have thought that he was sleep. With a towel around his shoulders to soak up any water that fell from his hair, Kaz seated himself on the edge of the bed.

“You can relax, Boss,” he said. “You need sleep, too. Besides, what’s going to happen? Afraid that someone will break into the window while we’re both asleep?”
Snake shrugged.

Kaz rolled his eyes. He should have known. Of course, Snake was preparing for something ridiculous like that happening. Kaz undid the buttons of his olive-green coat, folding it up and setting it at the end of the bed. His belt was next, and Kaz was more than relieved to have the pressure off his hips. He stretched out on his back, feet dangling a few inches off the floor.

For a while, they were both silent. Kaz closed his eyes, relaxing into the mattress that felt like the softest thing in the world. He knew that it wasn’t the best quality—it was no five-star hotel—but compared to sleeping on wooden cots and sometimes directly on the jungle floor, it was heaven. He was halfway between sleep and wakefulness when Snake spoke up.

“You said that you could teach me a few tricks,” he muttered.

Kaz wasn’t sure if he’d actually heard Snake speak or if it was just in his imagination. Kazuhira hummed quietly, hoping that it sounded like a question.
“In the bar,” Snake practically growled. “Are you that drunk that you can’t remember what happened a few hours ago?”

Kaz knew it would be suicide to say ‘yes.' Instead, he spent the silence recounting the night. He had said that, hadn’t he? That he could teach Snake tricks to pick up chicks. And then after that… Well, Snake knew that he was fairly open about his sexuality. His trysts were more than enough to go by.

“No, I remember,” Kaz said. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, watching Snake from across the dark room. “If you want me to, I could teach you. But it would be easier to follow by example,” Kaz said. He sat up all the way, pushing his damp hair out of his face. “If that’s what you want, we could always head back out.”

Snake shook his head. “I’m more interested in what you said after that.”

Kaz was sure that his entire chest was going to explode. He looked away from Snake, positive that Snake was going to scold him for being so friendly. After all, the man was his Boss. He didn’t have any place to go around flirting with him. Besides, what about the hottie that was waiting for him to come back from being a soldier?

“Listen, Boss,” Kaz sighed. “I was drunk, and I wasn’t watching my mouth. I’ll keep that kind of thing to myself if it bothers you that much.”

“That’s not what I said, Kazuhira. I said that I was interested.”

Kaz nearly jumped out of bed and threw himself at Snake’s feet. His drunk brain was running at a million miles a second. Kaz was certain that his heart was going to explode from overworking. What did that mean exactly? Snake was interested in him? Snake was interested in guys?

“Okay,” Kaz said. He inwardly groaned. Was that all he had to say at this moment? Okay? Kaz toed at the floor, hands nervously—confidently—wringing the thick, dirty blanket beneath him. “You’re interested.” Kaz looked over Snake. “What do you want me to do about it?” Kaz wanted to kick himself. That came out snarkier than he wanted it to.

“I want you to get over here,” Snake replied.

Kaz nodded in a way that he certainly wouldn’t call desperately, but others might. He stood on shaky, drunken legs, and made his way over to Snake. Kaz stood in front of him, only able to see the barest features on his face from the lit end of his cigar. The smoke that trailed up smelled heavenly, but now Kaz was stumped.

Should he sit in Snake’s lap? That was probably pushing it too far. Did Snake even want what Kaz was thinking of, or was he thinking of something else entirely? If Snake was thinking on the same terms as Kaz, what did he want out of it? Was Snake experienced with guys at all?

Snake’s hand was around Kaz’s elbow before he knew what was happening. Snake pulled at Kaz’s arm, and Kaz obediently sank to the position that Snake wanted him. Kaz sat on his knees between Snake’s open legs, doing his best not to let his desire show so openly on his face. Kaz’s tongue slipped out of his mouth, wetting his lips. How long had he been thinking about this sort of thing happening with Snake?

Snake took a long drag of his cigar, and then plucked it from his lips. Kaz watched in rapt fascination as Snake leaned forward, one hand reaching up to cup Kaz’s jaw. He pressed against the hinges of Kaz’s jaw, one notch shy of causing Kaz pain. Kaz opened his mouth willingly, his heart hammering against his chest as Snake leaned in so close that their noses were a hair apart. When Snake’s mouth parted, pouring smoke into Kaz’s eager lips, Kaz had to physically restrain himself from whimpering. He tried to dart forward and seal their mouths together, but Snake was faster than he was.

In no time at all, Snake was back to a reclining in the arm chair. Kaz couldn’t decide if he wanted to punch Snake for being such a tease, or scramble into his lap and kiss him senseless. Before Kaz could make up his mind, Snake was undoing the fastening on his belt, and loosening it from around his hips.

“You’re the experienced one, aren’t you?” Snake teased.

Kaz still had no idea what to make of his emotions. He placed his hands on Snake’s knees. He dug in with his nails, hoping to see some sort of reaction, but Snake gave him nothing. Despite being in a whirlwind of thoughts, Kaz scooted forward until Snake’s thighs were pressed against his shoulders. If this was how Snake wanted to play, then Kaz would go along with him.

Glancing up at Snake, Kaz undid the button of his pants. There was some hardness beneath Kaz’s fingers, but Kaz wasn’t entirely certain that Snake was genuinely excited about this. Kaz liked to consider himself good at reading people, but Snake was an enigma.

Kaz inched closer, hands going to undo the zipper of Snake’s pants. Before he could, Snake had his free hand around Kaz’s throat. Kaz froze up immediately, feeling the pressure against both sides of his neck. He tried to breathe calmly, but his body was begging him to retaliate against the attack.

“Boss?” Kaz whispered.

He still had his hands on Snake’s pants. He knew that if he needed to, he was near a vulnerable area. He might be able to buy himself a few seconds if Snake planned on killing him. Although, there was a part of Kaz that hoped that they’d been through too much for Snake to kill him in such a demeaning way.

Snake squeezed a little tighter. Kaz was starting to see a few black dots at the edges of his vision.

“Would you let me? Without question?” Snake asked. His voice was deeper than usual. There was an edge to his words, one that Kaz had never heard before.

Kaz raised an eyebrow. Snake was putting on just enough pressure to scare him, but not enough to make Kaz seriously worry. So Snake was into that, was he? Kaz nodded.

Too quickly for Kaz to process, Snake had him pinned to the floor. Kaz’s head cracked against the rough carpet, and he winced. Snake had both of his legs between Kaz’s, keeping his knees as far apart as he could to keep Kaz from struggling. He planted one hand to the left of Kaz’s head, the other wrapping tighter around his throat.
For a split second, Kaz was horrified that Snake really was going to kill him.

Then Snake’s free hand was gone, pressing between Kaz’s legs. Kaz was nearly ashamed to think about how amazing Snake’s rough touch felt against the tenting in his pants, but he also knew that he was more excited than he’d been in a long time. Sure, picking up girls was fun, but none had ever thrown him around so roughly. If anything, it was starting to make Kaz feel more alive.

Kaz reached up, tangling his fingers in Snake’s messy brown hair. He pulled Snake down forcefully, crushing their mouths together. Snake was tight-lipped at first, though he didn’t hold out for long. Kaz’s lips were forced open by Snake’s tongue, demanding and insistent.

Kazuhira allowed himself to moan, wrapping his fingers tightly in Snake’s hair. It was as good as a dream. The more he thought about it, the less certain he became about the reality of the situation.

Snake’s hand vanished from Kaz’s crotch, instead undoing his own pants and shoving them down around his thighs. He broke the kiss, leaving Kaz in a gasping, panting mess. For a few moments, he let go of Kaz’s throat, giving him just enough time to recover. With Kaz’s arms slack above his head, Snake shifted to sit over him.

Kaz couldn’t lie, he’d never been harder in his life. Snake was rough and knew what he wanted, and it was excellent. Kaz was starting to have doubts that he was the slightly awkward, prudish man that he came across as.

Snake cupped the back of Kaz’s head and dug his fingers through Kaz’s damp hair. His nails raked across Kaz’s scalp, forcing him to sit up at an uncomfortable angle. Kaz struggled to get his elbows under him for some leverage, but Snake didn’t give him the privilege.

Kaz didn’t know when it happened, but Snake was holding the back of his head, and holding his jaw open, and pressing his hard cock into Kaz’s mouth all at once. Kaz moaned when Snake pressed so far into Kaz’s waiting mouth that his nose brushed the coarse hairs at the base of Snake’s member.

Without realizing it, Kaz’s hands snapped to Snake’s hips. He was holding on for dear life as Snake slowly withdrew, and even more languidly pushed back in. His breathing was labored, and his eye was screwed shut as he let Kaz hollow his cheeks, sucking at Snake. Snake pulled almost all the way out of Kaz’s mouth, letting him spare a few moments for the head of Snake’s cock. Kaz alternated between sucking and licking, pressing his tongue flat against the tip of Snake’s cock.

Snake pressed back in, forcing Kaz’s tongue down and giving him barely enough time to cover his teeth to keep from scraping Snake. Kaz wondered briefly if Snake was into that, too, but figured he could bring it up some other time. The thought of some other time made the white-hot coils in Kaz’s lower belly twist and bundle tighter. He would give the world to have a moment like this every single day with Snake.

Snake waited for half a second with his cock in just far enough to keep Kaz from choking, and then gripped his fingers hard in Kaz’s hair. He twisted the blond locks around his fingers and set his pace. Kaz was left with his meandering thoughts in the dust as Snake pounded into his mouth as if his life depended on it.

Kaz laved his tongue against the underside of Snake’s length, desperately trying to regain some control of the situation. Both of Snake’s hands were at the back of Kaz’s head, anchoring him in place. He didn’t give Kaz an inch of control, deciding to set the pace. Not that Kaz wasn’t into it. He could feel a wetness on the front of his briefs and his pants, and the warmth that pooled in his groin was all too familiar.

Kaz tried to buck his hips up, frantic for any friction, but Snake wouldn’t even give him that. The man was focused on nothing other than driving his hips against Kaz’s face, fucking his mouth in earnest. Kaz moaned around Snake’s cock, rewarded with a soft grunt. Kaz was half upset that that was all that Snake gave him. He preferred his partners to be loud, and Snake was anything but.

Pathetically, Kaz moved his arm to try and reach down. Just a hand to rub against would be more than enough to get him off at this point. He was so hard that it was nearly painful. Every nerve in his body was tingling and sparking in viciously pleasurable ways. When he noticed Kaz’s arm move, Snake was quick to press his knee against Kaz’s armpit to keep him where he was.

Resigned to being left hanging until Snake finished, Kaz focused on the task in front of him.

At some point, one of Snake’s hands dropped from the back of Kaz’s head. His palm pressed against Kaz’s windpipe, pressing down just slightly.

Snake’s cock was pressing further into Kaz’s throat with each thrust. Kaz furrowed his eyebrows together, attempting to relax his muscles to allow Snake what he wanted. The weight on his throat was making it hard to do so, but Snake already told Kaz—in a very roundabout, unclear way—that he was into it. Who was Kaz to deny, when this was one of the greatest moments of his life? Kaz was on cloud nine, even as the back of his throat began to hurt from the punishing thrusts.

Without warning, Snake’s hand closed around Kaz’s throat slowly but surely, like a python squeezing around a rat. Snake squeezed and squeezed until Kaz was sure that he was going to break through the skin and touch his spine.

Kaz’s head was starting to pound as everything was cut off. It was gradual at first, but now the pounding was insistent. The blood racing around his head seemed oddly timed with Snake’s movements. Kaz whimpered, his thoughts scrambling for something coherent to latch onto.

Kaz wasn’t sure when Snake’s hips started to stutter, the weight of his cock seemingly growing on his tongue. If Kaz wasn’t mistaken, his tongue was starting to go numb. Somehow, he felt like the rest of his face was, too. Black dots began to swim at the edges of Kaz’s vision. Above him, Snake was biting down hard on his lower lip. The black dots were replaced by waves that rushed by Kaz’s eyes. Kaz had less than a moment to enjoy the sight of Snake losing himself, pulling out of Kaz’s mouth at the last second before his eyes rolled back in his head.

Waking up was harder than Kaz could have ever imagined. He felt like he was wading through mud that was up to his armpits. It was hard to open his eyes, and even harder to swallow the thick spit that was gathering in his mouth. Opting out of causing himself unnecessary pain, Kaz rolled onto his side and spat out a mouthful of stringy, foamy saliva. For good measure, he gathered up another mouthful and spat that out, too.

When he had the energy to sit up, Kaz was convinced that all his muscles were made out of jelly. His arms and chest were the worse, threatening to give way under the weight of his body. Kaz sat on the uncomfortable floor, hunched over and sore. Whatever excitement and lust had been in his body was gone now. He was too drained to even think about getting off.

Kaz went to wipe his face and push back his hair, but stopped halfway when his fingers touched something sticky on his cheek. He furrowed his eyebrows, taking much longer than usual to figure out just what was on his face. Kaz curled his nose. He looked around the room for the source, spotting Snake on the bed.

Snake had his pants undone, but he looked otherwise very put-together. His eye met Kaz’s when he realized Kaz was awake.

“What the hell?” Kaz croaked. He tried to muster a glare to throw in Snake’s direction, but there was no fire in his body, just weariness.

“There’s no lasting damage,” was Snake’s response. He chewed at his thumbnail, only setting his hand down when Kaz stared at the action unblinkingly.

“You could have killed me, Boss,” Kaz retorted. It hurt to breathe, let alone speak. No lasting damage? Kaz wasn’t sure he believed that.

“It takes much longer than that to strangle a man to death,” Snake argued.

“You would know,” Kaz scoffed. He brought a shaky hand up to touch his throat, feeling the tender, pulsing skin. He pressed down and hissed at the pain. He was certain that Snake bruised him. No doubt those bruises would last for a very long time.

“Besides, if I wanted you dead, I think I’d shoot you.”

“Is that something you think about a lot? How you want to kill me?”

Snake didn’t answer Kaz’s question. He stretched out on the bed, claiming it as his own for the night. Kaz certainly did not peg Snake as a cuddler. Resigned to his fate on the floor, Kaz lied back down. He rolled onto his shoulder, ignoring the way the hard floor dug into each and every bone. It wasn’t the only thing he had to ignore. His mind was alight with thoughts. Despite being terrifying, it was probably one of the best moments of Kaz’s life. If not the best, then the most exciting.

David had been gone for a long time.

Kazuhira knew that the mission was going to take a long time, but the longer he waited, the more anxious he got. The longer he had to wait to hear the confirmation from David, Mission accomplished, unforeseen non-target elimination, the longer Kaz had to think about the list of things that could go wrong. Things never went wrong with David, but there were always exceptions. A simple slip in a puddle could mean the end of his life. A reaction that was a hair too late could mean the loss of his arm or his head.

Thinking about it made Kaz’s breathing stutter.

A few days earlier, Big Boss had paid Kaz a brief visit. He didn’t let Kaz in on any of his plans exactly, but Kaz knew that Venom was lingering somewhere in the background. Big Boss wasn’t the type of man to have such a useful toy and then throw it away without using it to its fullest.

Kaz choked back a stuttered breath of panic. He ripped his glasses off and threw them across the room without a care in the world. They could protect him from other people seeing through his façade, but they would never be able to protect him from himself no matter how hard he pretended.

He pressed his palm against one eye, and then the other as if he were capable of shoving the tears away from his eyes. Kaz hated how weak humans were, and how weak he had become as an older man. He knew that his emotions always simmered at the top of the pot, but since leaving Venom and then rolling over for Big Boss, it had become even worse. It didn’t help that David reminded him of all the things that Kaz used to be, and all the things he would never be.

Kaz pinched the bridge of his nose. He breathed in deeply through his nose, and out slowly through his mouth. It was a useful trick that the medic had taught him long ago. There was a nerve, or something, in the back of the throat that helped to relieve anxiety. Kaz didn’t know if it was true or not, but it seemed to help him when he needed it most.

And right now, Kaz desperately needed it. Just a passing thought of the medic at MSF made his entire soul and body wrack with hurt. Kaz could have done so much more to stop all this from happening. He had failed at… At something, at everything, and now Solid Snake was left to clean up the mess Kaz left behind.

Kaz swallowed thickly. Another two minutes had gone by, but it felt more like two hours. He was on the edge of his seat, silently begging that David would check in soon. If it wasn’t David’s voice that came through the radio, Kaz didn’t know what he would do. Maybe kill himself. After all, what would be left for him if David died? His only option would be to crawl to Big Boss, and he didn’t want to think about that.

Scrounging for nothing in particular, Kaz found a bottle of vodka in the bottom drawer of his desk, shoved all the way in the back. Kaz scooped it up and eyed the label. It was cheap, and missing a quarter of the liquid. Kaz couldn’t remember if he was the one who bought it. His tastes were much more refined, and he didn’t have much care for vodka in the first place. Perhaps he had apprehended it from a recruit who had no business drinking on the job.

Kaz, while he still had no business drinking on the job, was no longer a recruit. There was no one above him—at least not anymore—and he could do what he wanted. The only person who would scold him for drinking while he was at work was long gone. The other was going to be dead soon. Kazuhira didn’t dare delve deeper into that thought. He wasn’t sure if he meant Venom or David was going to die, and he didn’t want to know anyway.

Kaz unscrewed the cheap plastic top. He bypassed a glass or a mixer, opting instead to drink straight from the bottle. Kaz took a huge gulp, and then nearly retched afterward at the strong taste. He curled his nose and eyed the bottle again. He didn’t know if it was worth it for him to keep drinking. It certainly didn’t feel like it was.

To his left, Kaz’s radio blinked to life.

“Master Miller, come in.”

It was David’s voice, but he no longer sounded like a young boy. He had killed before, but Kaz knew that it was nothing like this. Either way, relief flooded Kaz’s chest. It made his entire body feel warm and fuzzy, knowing that one of the only good things left in his world was still alive.

Kaz scrambled over himself to answer David’s message. He cleared his throat before turning the microphone of his radio on.

“Master Miller. Continue, Solid Snake.”

“Target lost.”

Kaz balked. He hadn’t been expecting that at all. David failed in his mission? Kaz’s blood suddenly ran cold. What if David’s voice was different for an entirely different reason? Kaz wouldn’t put it past Big Boss to try and convince Solid Snake to join him.

“Unforeseen non-target elimination,” David whispered.

Kaz could hear every drop of betrayal and hurt in David’s voice. He breathed in slowly. Kaz had to keep a lid on his emotions. The conversations were recorded, and he had to be the mentor figure for David, especially when David needed him most.

“Is your location compromised?” Kaz asked.

“No, sir. Evacuating to helicopter now.”

“Good. Check in soon, Snake.”

“I will. Solid Snake out.”

Kaz was positive that there were worms crawling up and down his entire body. If he wasn’t wrong, he could feel the foreign tingling in his prosthetics, too. He felt so strange. Their conversation was detached, and nothing like Kaz was used to. He wanted to erase it from his memories. He wanted to hold David and make him believe that what he’d done was some fever dream.

Despite what he wanted, Kaz knew that it was something that could never happen. David would never be okay, not after a night like this.

Kaz pushed his chair away from his radio and snatched up the bottle of vodka once more. He took another painful gulp, wincing and cringing. It was disgusting, but he didn’t have the effort in his body to leave and find something else. Even a short interaction with a checkout clerk seemed miserable.

Kaz leaned back in the chair, kicking his feet up onto his desk as he did so. He cradled the bottle close as he frowned at his boots. If Venom ever saw him sitting like that, he’d scowl and hold back a comment about tracking dirt. Although, Kaz wouldn’t have been able to manage something like kicking his feet up anyway. He didn’t have the strength—or the leg—to manage it.

Kaz felt something tug at his gut and heart simultaneously. It made him feel disgustingly bittersweet. The sweet part of it made everything ten times worse.

Venom.

Kaz didn’t realize until he was away from it, how many things he missed about being on Mother Base with Venom and, begrudgingly, Ocelot.

The way Venom greeted the soldiers after getting back from a mission was the best. Kaz refused to smile as he thought of it. He’d tackle one to the ground, pseudo-strangle another, and then hug the last. The last was always the one that would look the most fearful, unsure if they were going to be hit with a tranquilizer dart or fultoned up into the sky just to be brought right back down.

Kaz took a drink.

He didn’t know how Venom did it. Somehow, he could be so rough, but also so tender and caring for all of his soldiers. He knew each by name, what they had gone through, what their family was like, and what their plans were after being a soldier if they had any. Venom was the person who took the time to memorize things like that. It was second nature to him; caring for others was what he did best.

Another drink.

Big Boss had a very different charm. He was powerful and almost scary at times, but he was the legend that everyone wanted to see. To spar with him was a true honor that few were given. Kaz once boasted that he and Boss scrapped a lot. Now, it just made Kaz sick. If he had known back then what was going to happen twenty years later, he might have punched Big Boss’s face until his skull caved in.

Another.

Kaz thoughts drifted to the first time he met Venom. He was so desperate to die, but Snake made everything better. He was a ray of hope that blinded Kaz to the point of tears. Of course, he never told Venom that, but Kaz was positive that he knew.

Kaz couldn’t help but hate himself a little bit. Venom had been the most devoted person that Kaz knew; he was a thousand times more dedicated than Big Boss. Yet Kaz had been so full of anger and hatred that he didn’t know how to get rid of. The best choice was the one standing right in front of him, someone that turned more often than not to somebody else but still cared deeply for Kaz.

Kaz clenched his fist tightly around the neck of the bottle. The glass groaned against the pressure of metal fingers coiling around it.

He’d left without saying goodbye. At the time, it had seemed like the right thing to do. Kaz was angry. He was in a rage. It may have been Big Boss’s fault, but Big Boss wasn’t there to blame. So he blamed Venom. Kaz didn’t even get to see Venom again after finding out; he was so desperate to leave and instead ruin David’s life.

Kaz lifted the bottle to his lips and gulped down as much as he could until he felt like it might make him vomit. He held back from rushing to the bathroom connected to his office, instead letting himself feel out the roiling in his stomach.

It still wasn’t enough to make him feel better.

Kaz stood from his chair, his legs turning to jelly under him. He slammed his free hand down on the desk to keep himself upright, staring at a stack of papers in determination. Black swam at the edges of his vision, but it was a different feeling than being strangled. No, Kaz was drunk. He glanced at the bottle, still clutched in his metal fingers. He hadn’t had all that much.

“It’s going to take less to get you drunk,” Venom scolded. His voice was so clear that Kaz had to do a double-take and make sure that he wasn’t in the doorway to his office. Maybe in some mix-up, David had killed Big Boss instead of Venom. No such luck. Kaz was alone.

Kaz stumbled over to his jacket hung on the back of the door. His legs were heavy, and he didn’t have the best control of his feet when he was drunk. Kaz shuffled through his pockets, eventually finding something that rattled.

The orange bottle of pills was for when his old aches and pains flared up. More often than not, Kaz refused to take the pills. He just kept them around, although he wasn’t sure why. Now seemed like a good time for them. Kaz’s entire body was in pain. He was hurting so much that it felt like his heart was being crushed.

Kaz struggled to open the lid. When he finally got it open, he tipped the bottle back, rather than count out how many he was meant to take. Some spilled onto his shoulders and then clicked down to the hard floor. Kaz swallowed the ones that he could, and then crunched on a few of the others. Those he spat out, disliking the taste.

Wobblier than before, Kaz retreated to the couch pressed into the corner of his office. He tripped over his ankle and fell face-first into the cushions. They greeted him like somewhat scratchy clouds. Kaz rubbed at the material with his fingers, trying to remember if it felt anything like the way Snake’s beard felt.
He closed his eyes for a few seconds.

“Miller!”

Kaz didn’t know why he was so cold. Had he fallen asleep wet again? Or had the rain leaked through the tarp above him?

“Kaz, c’mon, get up,” Snake urged.

Kaz could feel Snake trying to pull him, a hand under each armpit. He spluttered some thick spit, unable to get anything out of his mouth that resembled words.

“Damn it, Kaz!” Snake snapped.

Kaz aimed for a chuckle, but it came out as a pathetic whine. Snake only used that tone of voice with him when he was really upset.

His head rolled toward one shoulder, resting against Snake’s strong forearm. The ground was moving away from him in an alarming way but felt he wasn’t as concerned about it as he should have been.

Snake heaved at Kaz again and then wrenched his mouth open. Kaz tried to struggle away; he wasn’t in the mood for this kind of thing. He just wanted to sleep, and maybe warm up a little bit. Certainly, if Snake joined him, then he wouldn’t have to worry about being cold.

Snake stuck something down Kaz’s throat, and it hurt. Kaz’s brain, although sleep addled, made a desperate attempt to struggle away from him. What the fuck was he thinking? What had Kaz done to deserve such rough treatment? Kaz nearly laughed. What hadn’t he done to deserve such rough treatment?

Kaz coughed a few times before he was vomiting. Snake pressed his head forward. Kaz could only hope that he wasn’t puking on himself as he felt his entire body contract with the strength of his retching. Some came out of Kaz’s nose, and it burned like hell the whole way. Horrible memories flooded Kaz. The last time something had traveled so violently through his nose was before Venom had found him.

Panic surged through Kaz. He wasn’t with Snake at all! Kaz squirmed and squirmed to try and get away from his captors. Their hands were tight on his body, refusing to let him go anywhere. Kaz wiggled until his head smacked against something, and it all went away.

When Kaz woke up, he felt like Hell. David was there, sitting in Kaz’s chair and staring at him with those bright blue eyes. Kaz’s throat burned with a scoff. Kaz was at the point in his life where seeing those blue eyes might make him sick.

His entire body was sore. Kaz wasn’t certain that he hadn’t been taken captive and tortured again because he certainly felt just as bad as he did then.

“What were you thinking?” David hissed.

He scrounged in his pockets, searching for a pack of cigarettes. His hands were shaking as he tapped it, but found no cigarette. David threw the empty pack to the ground, growling in frustration.

“Did you think I wasn’t going to need you?” David asked. “That you could just clock out before your job was done?”

“Kid, I don’t have a job anymore,” Kazuhira wheezed. “You’ve done all that you can do, and I’ve done all that I can do for you.”

“Fuck you,” David sneered.

Kaz was startled. He turned to stare at David, a reprimand hot on his tongue. The look that David gave him silenced it. He looked angry, sure, but he also looked scared.
He had to remind himself that it wasn’t all about him. David had been through a lot.

Kaz looked away from David and stared at the ceiling. David was like every soldier that was under Big Boss. It wasn’t romantic, but it was love. Adoration was a better word for it, perhaps. David had had his heart ripped out at the same time that Kaz did, even if it was different.

“No one is going to take this well,” Kaz said. He refused to apologize. Admitting that he was wrong would be showing weakness. Hell Master Miller wasn’t weak, and he didn’t make mistakes. “I couldn’t have predicted what you were going to run into, David.” A lie. “No one could have.”

Kaz didn’t attempt to sit up. He knew that he wouldn’t make it. Every muscle in his body was tingling in a terribly painful way from being awake at all.

“I didn’t try and kill myself,” David retorted.

“Others handle things differently,” Kaz replied. “David, I was working with Big Boss a lot longer than you can imagine. Longer than you worked with him.”

“He trained me personally,” David quipped. “He gave me my name. He’s part of the reason I am who I am today.”

Kaz smirked. Big Boss was all of those things for Kaz, too.

“What do you want me to say, David?”

David worked his boot side to side over the empty carton of cigarettes at his feet. “Just tell me what to do now.”

Kaz sighed. What instruction could he give a soldier that just killed the legendary Big Boss? He was as high as he would ever go. Kaz turned to David again and took him in. He had deep, purple bags under his eyes. The whites of his eyes were bright red with blood vessels. His arms were still shaking. Kaz did not doubt that the adrenaline would stay with him for a very long time after doing what he did.

“Leave. That’s what I’ve always done.”

“I’m looking for a man named John,” Kaz said. He tapped his fingers on the polished counter top. Pinky to thumb and thumb to pinky.

“John who?” the receptionist asked.

Kaz could see that the paper on her clipboard was certainly not any patient registry for the hospital.

“John Doe; I don’t know. He wouldn’t have any ID on him. He’s shorter than me but bigger. Brown hair, eyepatch.”

The receptionist hummed. She pretended to read something in front of her, but she wasn’t very good at pretending. After about ten seconds, she looked at Kaz again and shrugged.

“We don’t have any John Doe’s at this hospital,” she said. “I can give you the information of other hospitals; they might have the John Doe that you are looking for.”

If it weren’t for how aggravating the situation was, Kaz might have thought that her accent was kind of cute.

“God damn it!” Kaz hollered. He slammed both fists down on the marble countertop. The ladies working the front desk of the hospital jumped.

Across the way, a security guard was too stunned to do anything about Kaz’s outburst.

“We went down in the same chopper crash! There were a few men, and the bloody pieces of a little fucking girl!” he screamed. Kaz could feel the stitches in his stomach straining against being overworked. “John Doe! Shorter than me, but bigger, he’s got brown hair, blue eyes, a beard, and an eyepatch! Big fucking ‘S’ carved into his chest. Sound familiar?”

The receptionist took a long time to recover. She looked down at her clipboard again. This time, she pretended to read it for a little longer.

“We do have a couple of John Does, but they are not from the helicopter crash. Perhaps the other men with you were taken to a different hospital?”

“And why would that happen?” Kaz snarled.

Across the way, the security guard was finally making his move.

“Sir, sometimes these things do happen. It can be because of a surplus of patients, or because the vehicles were dispatched from different locations,” she said, her voice turning mousier by the second. “All I know is that we do not have any John Does like the one you described.”

Kaz snarled. He was beyond frustrated; he was ready to tear his damn hair out. It was bothering him anyway. The nurses and doctors had cleaned the blood and dirt out of it, but now it was becoming greasy and too long for his liking.

The security guard pushed his way between Kaz and the receptionist. Kaz’s nostrils flared as he held back a punch. This man was bigger than him. There was a part of Kaz that knew he could take the man, but not while multiple parts of his body were being held together with thread.

“Sir, if you do not need a doctor, then I have to ask you to leave.”

Kaz clenched his jaw. He didn’t need a doctor. He’d been discharged that day. It was like the entire hospital was out to get him and keep him away from Snake. Kaz knew that Snake was there. It would be stupid to send victims of the same crash away from each other. They could be vital in identifying each other.

Kaz’s stitches screamed at him to sit down and rest. He may not need a doctor’s attention, but he was only human. There was only so much that his body could take before it decided to give up on him.

A horrible idea snuck into Kaz’s head. He stared at the security guard, their eyes level. He could see the way the guard hesitated. Kaz was a big man in his own right, and there weren’t many people with blue eyes in this area of the world.

With no care in the world, Kaz tore the plain white shirt over his head. He thought of Snake as his muscles screamed in protest. Kaz ripped away the gauze that was taped to the side of his belly where part of the wreckage had cut into him, clearing his vital organs by mere millimeters. The sharp sting hurt, but Kaz reminded himself of how much more it hurt to get punched in the nose by Snake.

If Snake can do this, so can I. If Snake can do this, so can I.

The security guard barely got a hand up before Kaz dug his finger under the first stitch in his side. He grunted as he pulled at it. A little blood trickled from the wound. Kaz wrapped the loose string around the tip of his finger. He felt like time was moving slower than usual. He could feel a drop of sweat on his nose fall, tickling the tip of his nose as he tugged at the string.

Kaz wasn’t the only one to scream as he forcefully ripped the suture out of his side. The ladies behind the counter scrambled to do something as the man in front of Kaz stared at him. Kaz continued to wail as he pressed a palm over the wound. Blood gushed from the new openings.

His chest shivered as Kaz held the wound closed, trying to keep his blood loss to a minimum while he waited for someone to get him and take him to the emergency room. Kaz sneered at the guard, feeling a lot cooler than he looked as he smirked.

His legs were wobbly with pain and shock, but he held his ground the best he could. Blood leaked from between his fingers, despite how tightly he pressed down. The dirt on his hands stung in the fresh wound.

“I need a doctor,” Kaz hissed.

He was carted off, stitched up, and put under a very rigorous watch. Kaz had a guard now at almost all times. If anything, it confirmed his suspicions that Snake was in the hospital with him. For a few days, Kaz sat and waited and allowed them to drug him up.

On the fourth day, Kaz removed his IV. He pulled the blanket up to his chin and pretended to be asleep while the doctor administered the next dose of morphine. Kaz’s body was upset at the lack of painkillers, but it was going to be worth it.

At ten minutes past one a.m., Kaz’s guard left for a bathroom break. Kaz slipped out of bed and walked as quickly as he could through the hall. He didn’t think them stupid enough to keep Snake on the same floor as him. Kaz started on the one above.

As he searched the rooms, Kaz wracked his brain for any answers. He couldn’t put it together. None of it made sense to him. He was Snake’s second in command. Kaz liked to think of himself as one of the more important people in his life, and he hoped that Snake agreed with him. So why were they keeping them apart?

What if Snake was dead?

The thought made Kaz stagger. He’d been walking for a while, and his new stitches were pulling uncomfortably. The doctor had doubled up on these stitches, making sure that Kaz would be less likely to rip them open again. It wasn’t as though Kaz had done it when he was running or stretching. If he wanted to, he could probably get through two layers of stitches as easily as one layer of stitches.

After taking a few moments to breathe, Kaz continued.

None of the rooms he passed by seemed to have anyone that looked like Snake.

Kaz reached a room at the very end of the hall of the fifth floor. There were two beds, separated by a curtain. One had something poking through his head. His hair was shaved back, and there were patches of cloth pressed all over his head and face. The other patient looked serene as if he was dreaming. His hair was thicker. There was an amalgamation of scars around the right side of his face. Kaz squinted at that patient in particular. His face looked—

“You’re Kazuhira Miller?”

Before Kaz got a good look, there was a man blocking his way. The man shut the door to the room behind himself.

Kaz backed up a step. “What’s it to you?”

“I heard you’re the crazy man that ripped out his stitches. You’ve been looking for somebody.” He had a particular drawl to his voice. It reminded Kaz of old movies that he used to watch to practice his English when he was a child.

Kaz didn’t know who the man was, but he stuck out just as much as Kaz did in this place. He had light hair and eyes. He looked just a little bit older than Kaz was.

Kaz hesitated as he scrutinized the man, and the man scrutinized him.

“Do you know who I’m looking for?” Kaz asked.

“I do,” he answered.

Kaz’s heart leaped into his throat. “Where is he?” he demanded.

The man made the tiniest gesture of his head. He nodded to the room behind him. Kaz’s heart soared. He knew that Snake was in the hospital. He found that, suddenly, he didn’t care about who the other man in the room was, he just wanted to know which one was Snake.

Kaz barely opened his mouth, at this point he would be willing to beg to see Snake, when something jabbed into his side, straight into his tender sutures. Kaz crumpled, groaning as his knees gave out from the pain. His nerves went crazy around the wound, and every other nerve in his body seemed to follow suit.

Gasping for breath, Kaz looked up at the man. He was talking to a doctor.

“Take him back to his room and sedate him. We’re moving tonight, and he can’t know anything about it.”

Kaz’s spine curled forward until his forehead was touching the floor.

For the second time in a week, Kaz found himself at the front desk of the hospital. This time he was more restrained. He was still annoyed, but he didn’t know that his body could take the same abuse twice. He didn’t want to put it to the test and find out. Better safe than sorry.

The security guard kept an eagle eye on Kaz as he filled out the last of his papers, and turned to leave.

Outside the hospital, the man with pale hair was waiting for Kaz. He leaned against one of the pillars casually, watching Kaz as he limped out of the hospital.

“What you did hurt,” Kaz grumbled.

“It was meant to.”

Kaz shot him a nasty glare, holding the man’s pale eyes until he was the one to break eye contact. It gave Kaz a petty satisfaction to know that he had been the one to win.

“I heard what you said,” Kaz said. “About moving him.”

“That’s correct. We moved him to a more secure location, far away from here. He was vulnerable here. Even you easily found him, and you were injured. Imagine what could happen if a mobile force was sent to find him.”

“Where was he moved?” Kaz asked. He curled his fingers so tightly that his nails dug into his palms. They were untrimmed, and it began to sting very quickly.

“I can’t tell you that.”

“And why not?!” Kaz snapped. He bolted to the man and grabbed him by the collar of his jacket. Kaz slammed him against the pillar. The man didn’t look even slightly phased.

“Because you could pose a danger to him. I was told to keep this information away from you.”

“Snake wouldn’t want that!” Kaz argued. “He would never say that about me!” Kaz couldn’t help but feel like he was being scorned, left in the dust for someone new that Kaz didn’t know.

“It isn’t about what John wants right now,” the man replied. He grabbed Kaz’s wrists and applied pressure to a spot that had Kaz twisting to get away from him.

More than Kaz’s wrists hurt. Who was this man, calling him John so casually? “If you know Snake, then you know he won’t stay in that hospital, or wherever, for long. He’s a soldier, through and through. There’s no way he’ll stay put like a dog.”

“John won’t be leaving anytime soon.”

“And why not?” Kaz sneered again. He didn’t have the time to spare for being scared on Snake’s behalf. The man was a legend. He was immortal. Nothing bad could happen to him.

“He’s in a coma.”

That knocked the breath out of Kaz. He put a hand on his side, making sure that the man hadn’t hit him where he was hurt. Kaz nearly collapsed again, feet trying in vain to regain his balance.

“A coma?” he whispered. Kaz looked up at the man. He didn’t like him, and he didn’t want to trust him, either. “You’re lying. That wouldn’t happen to Snake. The medic he… He would know what to do.”

“Your medic is dead,” the man said.

Before Kaz had enough breath to sustain himself again, it was stolen once more. He stumbled back until his back hit a pillar on the opposite side of the entryway. It was the man’s time to approach Kaz. He stayed far enough back, but he reminded Kaz of Snake. He had an intimidating presence that made Kaz feel significantly boxed in.

“Is Snake going to wake up?” Kaz asked. He couldn’t look away from his boots. He’d heard of people going into comas that never woke up as if their brains gave up, but their bodies continued.

The man shifted his feet to a more relaxed position. Only then did Kaz notice that he was wearing gleaming, silver spurs on his boots.

“I don’t know.”

A shudder ripped through Kaz. He screwed his eyes as tightly shut as he could manage. He wanted to believe that Snake would wake up. He wouldn’t let something as silly as a coma keep him out of commission. Snake wasn’t that type of man.

The larger, traitorous part of Kaz was trying to process that Snake might never wake up. The last Kaz ever saw of Snake was him from far away, lying on a hospital bed. Kaz could barely remember the helicopter crash. It all happened too fast. One moment, Paz was on the table, the medic doing everything that he could to save her, and the next Kaz was washed up on the beach, covered in blood and surrounded by other bodies.

Kaz had a horrific, fearful moment that he couldn’t remember what Snake looked like.

“Who are you?” Kaz asked. Sweat was beading in his hairline, making him feel more disgusting than he could imagine. He was dirty, and scared, and sick like he couldn’t believe. It was worse than being in the jungle with the guerillas. At least he had the rain to wash everything away. Here, the heat was intense and unrelenting.

“Revolver Ocelot,” he said. He didn’t extend his hand for Kaz to shake; Kaz didn’t want it anyway.

Kaz tried to sort through his thoughts. Had there been a Revolver Ocelot in MSF? No, he would have remembered a name like that.

“I know John. I’m not surprised that he didn’t mention me.”

“But he mentioned me to you?” Kaz asked.

Ocelot shook his head. “No. I know about you through other means. I know about MSF, too. We can rebuild that, you know.”

Kaz held in a needling comment. How dare Ocelot throw around MSF so lightly, as if he had experienced everything? He wasn’t the one who saw his entire life and dream sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

Instead, Kaz turned to his more rational side. A good businessman always had a partner. That’s why he had Snake. But while Snake was out of commission, a temporary partner would have to do.

“Snake is going to need a place to come back to when he wakes up,” Kaz agreed, though bitterly.

Ocelot smirked at that. “I knew you were a smart man, Miller.”

Kazuhira’s mother groaned.

Kaz froze.

The room was darker than it was outside. Outside, the sun was shining, and there were children playing in the street. Inside, it was almost as quiet as a church. The only sound was Kaz’s mother shifting and coughing occasionally. Sometimes, she didn’t have the strength to cough. All that came out of her was a whisper of weakened breath.

Kaz waited until she was silent, aside from her continuous wheezing. When he was sure that she was sleeping, he tiptoed further into her room. Unlike other people, he’d learned long ago that his mother’s disease could not be spread by sharing the air with her. She'd done it to herself, drinking away what little money she had and sleeping around to get more, just to spend it all on more alcohol. He was not afraid of her. He hated her.

Maybe when he was much younger, but now it made little to no difference to him. She was weak, and he was not.

That didn’t stop Kaz from moving silently through her room and to the dresser where she kept her clothing. Kaz inched open the second drawer as far as it could go before it began squeaking. He’d been practicing this for a long time. He simply told himself each time that he wasn’t quite ready yet. There was something else he needed to do. There was one last thing that always kept him. This time, Kaz was positive.

He was ready.

Kaz shoved his arm to the back of the dresser and grabbed a small wooden box at the back of it. He pulled it forward agonizingly slow, knowing that if it bumped the sides of the drawer and made a loud noise, he’d be done for. His mother would never sleep after that, and Kaz would never get a second chance. If he stayed around until she died, then someone would come to take him.

Kazuhira couldn’t bring himself to think that he was scared. He wasn’t scared. Being scared wasn’t in his vocabulary.

Prize in his hands, Kaz squatted in front of the dresser and flipped the small metal clasp on the front of the box. He shuffled through a few things. Old photos, a pack of cigarettes. Kaz thought twice about the cigarettes before taking them and stuffing them into the waistband of his shorts. Kaz set aside a few shells and stones, stupid things he’d gathered when he was little and his mother kept for no reason, until he found what he was looking for.

At the bottom of the box was a wad of bills. Some of it was paper yen, and some of it was American paper money. Kaz snatched both types of money in his fist. They would both be useful for him, in the end.

“Kazuhira?” his mother croaked.

Kaz froze like a deer in the headlights. He hid his hand behind his back, keeping the money out of sight. If she knew that he was stealing from him, she would never forgive him. She was sick, but she could probably still give him a fierce smack.

Kaz’s heart was racing all around his body. He didn’t know that he was ever more terrified in his life. His freedom was in his hand.

“How are you, mother?” Kaz asked. He cursed the trembling in his voice that betrayed him.

His mother coughed loudly over his words. Kaz held back a sigh of relief. She wouldn’t have heard him anyway.

“Come here,” she ordered, though weakly.

Holding his breath, Kaz slowly moved over to his mother. He kneeled beside her, making sure to keep his hand out of her sight.

“Do you need something?” Kaz asked.

She shook her head. Her short black hair was stuck to her sickly pale face everywhere. The rest was splayed beneath her on the pillow, spread out like a squashed spider.

Unable to lift her hand to her son’s face, her hand drifted to Kaz’s ankle, which was much closer to her.

“I love you, Kazuhira,” she whispered. Her black eyes shook every which way as she forced them to meet Kaz’s unearthly blue ones. “You know that, don’t you?”

A fresh sheen of sweat broke out all over her face from the effort. Kaz eyed the towel next to her head, but he couldn’t move and risk giving himself away.

“I know that,” Kaz agreed. He was tentative. She never meant it when she said things like this. She only said these things because she was dying, and she was scared of it. Kaz wanted to scoff. She was stupid for being scared of dying.

“And… I would be sad if you left me,” she continued. Her fingers tightened by the tiniest fraction around Kaz’s ankle. “Because then you wouldn’t be around for me to say goodbye.”

Kaz gulped around the lump in his throat. “Why would I leave?” he asked. “I don’t have any money.”

Kaz wasn’t positive if he saw a flash of a smile on her slightly blue lips or not.

“Of course not,” she acquiesced.

There was a long time of her breathing slowly. Eventually, with Kaz silently perched next to her, her grip on his ankle faded to nothing. Kaz backed away inch by inch. Even as he descended the stairs into the first floor of the house, he was silent.

Kaz slipped on his shoes, stuffed the money into his unused school backpack—he stopped going when his mother was too sick to make him go—and eased open the modernized wooden door. He slipped it shut behind him, and then took off at a run down the street.

Kazuhira was viciously aware of the way his hobbling steps sounded. As he crossed the metal platforms of Mother Base, his prosthetic thumped down harder than his real foot, and even when he tried to place his weight lightly on his crutch, it didn’t help. There was no fixing a metal crutch against the hollow metal of Mother Base.

Kaz nodded to soldiers as he passed them. They saluted. Only when he was long gone did they think to stare after him. Big Boss wasn’t due to return for a few days, and it was very early in the morning. He wasn’t the type of man to be known for going for midnight strolls. Everyone knew that it hurt him just to walk to the mess hall.

Carefully, Kaz picked his way around each corner of Mother Base as he headed toward the helicopter pad.

Kaz was halfway there. He could already see Pequod inside, flipping switches as he brought the great beast to life. Kaz hadn’t been in a helicopter in a while. They made him feel nauseous and uneasy on his feet. Foot. Kaz snarled.

He knew it was a danger to have Pequod be his pilot on this journey, but Kaz knew that he could trust Pequod to get him there safely. The only downside was that he was sure to tell Venom as soon as they met up again.

As Kaz walked, he heard the very distinct sound of spurs walking alongside him.

Kaz rolled his eyes. He stopped walking and waited for Ocelot to take a step in front of him so they could talk.

“You’re leaving?” Ocelot asked. “Don’t you think that’s dangerous?”

“Not particularly, no,” Kaz quipped. He tilted his head at Ocelot and gave him the most condescending smile he could muster. “I’ve been told before that I’m too valuable to kill.”

“There are ways to keep you here forever that don’t include death,” Ocelot warned.

“Maybe so, but you’re not going to do anything without his permission.”

“You think you know him so well, don’t you, Miller?” Ocelot drawled.

“I do know him,” Kaz snapped. “I know that man better than you could ever understand. I’ve known two versions of him, and that’s even worse. I’ve got to keep in mind which one I’m dealing with at all times. Right now, I’m dealing with both. Somehow, I find that I don’t care. Venom will stay here and do what he’s told. He’s not going to disobey Big Boss’s orders and go out looking for me. Boss might come for me, but as I said, he won’t kill me.”

“Ready for take-off!” Pequod called.

Ocelot planted his hands on his hips as he stared at Kazuhira. “You think you’ve got it all figured out? That you’re going to be the one with the last move?”

“I doubt that I’ll be the one with the last move, but I know that the last move won’t be his.”

Ocelot seemed to ponder this for a moment before shrugging. He stepped away from the landing pad, back behind the yellow line as Kaz approached the helicopter. With a little bit of difficulty, Kaz hauled himself into the helicopter. He buckled himself in, and then leaned back. He could sense the question on the tip of Pequod’s tongue, but he was smart enough to keep it to himself for the time being.

As the helicopter lifted off and began to gain altitude, Kaz looked back at the flashing red lights of Mother Base. Venom had decided to paint it a garish orange, and it looked hideous. Big Boss would never have done something so frivolous, but that’s what made Venom different than him. Somewhere within him, Venom was still the human being that Big Boss could never manage to be. That didn’t matter. Venom was still him in some way, and that made him just as terrible.

Somewhere deep down, Kaz knew that he was trying to erase the guilt that was chewing at him.

The helicopter flew fast away from Mother Base. Before long, it was a few gleaming spots of flashing red in the distance. Kaz could time each flash. Four seconds for the main helicopter bay, six seconds for the medical helicopter bay, and nine seconds for every other light on Mother Base.

Kaz turned away from the window, already feeling guilt gnawing like an insistent termite. He opted to look at Venom’s pictures. They were pasted all over the walls of the helicopter. There were so many that they were starting to crawl up the sides and almost onto the roof of the helicopter. Kaz smiled sadly. He was glad that, even through Venom’s realization, he had kept his pictures up. Kaz didn’t know how long it would last. He hoped that they would stay up until the chopper burned to pieces.

Kaz could easily spot the arrangement of importance for Venom. They were all important, of course, but the ones that meant the most were right at his eye level. Kaz knew that he hunched over when he sat, so he imitated that posture.

There were pictures of DD, D-Horse, and other animals that Venom had become attached to. Around those pictures, were pictures of the soldiers together. Some for monthly birthday celebrations, others as they stood to salute him. The individual pictures were pasted all around the helicopter walls, a name scribbled in terrible doctor’s handwriting. Closer to Venom’s eye-level when he sat back in the chair, were pictures of Quiet and Ocelot.

Kaz had to begrudgingly admit that Quiet looked beautiful in every single picture. There was a look in her eyes, one that made it clear she knew Venom was taking a picture, but she looked away to make him happy and think he caught a candid moment. The pictures of Ocelot were different. Some were silly, him in the middle of shouting commands or eating, or after he stumbled when hit with a tranq dart.

Then there were the pictures of Kaz. Venom had less of them since Kaz had no patience for his picture being taken. It wasn’t as though Venom could keep a picture of Kaz covering his face or turning away at the last second. Although, Kaz didn’t doubt that he had those somewhere, too.

The picture in the very center of the mosaic hurt.

It was a picture of him, Snake, Venom, and Pequod. Although at the time, Venom hadn’t been Venom. Kaz snatched the picture from the wall. His arm was tossed so casually around Snake’s shoulders. It hurt Kaz just to look at it. How could he have fallen for someone like Snake? The man was a menace. Looking at him, even in a photo, made Kaz’s heart sear. He couldn’t tell if it was pain or longing, but he knew that it was negative. Whatever feeling it was had to be gotten rid of.

Kaz took the photo between his finger and thumb and his teeth. He reared back to rip it in half but stopped before he could do more than a teeny bit of damage.

His anger deflated like a balloon that popped from being overfilled.

Kaz brought the picture away from his mouth. It made him angry, but it wasn’t his to destroy. How Venom decided to move on from this point was his choice. Or at least, that’s what Kaz wanted to believe.

Delicately, Kaz stuck the picture to the rolled up tape where it had been before.

He leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes.

He had a long way to go.