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"The nightmares? They never go away, Snake. Once you've been on the battlefield, tasted the exhilaration, the tension… it all becomes part of you. Once you've awakened the warrior within… it never sleeps again."
Alaska had seemed like the perfect sanctuary, before Campbell had dragged him from his remote cabin out in the wilderness to return to the field. Coming back to it with Meryl, after everything is said and done, it just isn't the same. Sanctuary's become just another battlefield.
Beer and whiskey mixed with prescription tranquilizers eventually get the better of Meryl's impression of the famous Solid Snake. She leaves. Snake finds that he's relieved, in place of the hurt he feels should be there. Their parting hadn't been particularly amicable; she'd had some choice words about his attitude, and about his inability to connect with normal people.
She's right, is the thing about it. He can't connect with normal people.
Which is what makes it so strange when Otacon shows up some few months later (Snake thinks to himself that maybe his cabin isn't as remote as he'd led himself to believe, but Otacon assures him he was difficult to find) and so effortlessly inserts himself into Snake's life. He's there, he says, to convince Snake to join him in an organization he's creating for preventing the proliferation of new Metal Gears—he's calling it Philanthropy; Snake takes a swig of whiskey and swallows his pills and tells him good luck with that. But Otacon doesn't give up.
Maybe that's why this works. Maybe he can't connect with normal people, but maybe Otacon isn't a normal person. Snake tells him this one afternoon as Otacon struggles to follow Snake's example in how to split logs for firewood. Snake watches him with amusement; his form is pathetic, his strength lacking.
"You're not normal either," Otacon huffs, taking another swing at the log. The ax hits, but gets stuck; the log doesn't split.
"Like an action hero?" Snake recalls. He's about to point out the flaws in that comparison again when Otacon pipes up, "No. Like a guy who lives in the middle of nowhere with fifty dogs."
Snake gives an amused little snort. "Normal's overrated."
"You're telling me." Otacon raises the ax, log and all, and brings it down upon the stump, splitting the wood with a grunt of exertion. Snake reaches up to pat him on the shoulder as he heads back towards the house.
He only has the one bed. Otacon had slept on the couch the first several nights at his own insistence, freezing his ass off in the dead of night each time the fire ran low. Snake makes him split his own firewood, and the next night Otacon finally takes Snake up on his offer to just share. He's of the opinion that it's strange someone like Snake would offer in the first place, but Snake just shrugs, says he was in the military, and downs his pills with a glass of whiskey.
The following morning, Otacon is strangely quiet when he eventually wanders into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Snake's been up for hours; of course he has. He's up at five every morning to exercise and feed the dogs. He's making lunch when Otacon sits down at the table and sighs.
"Something wrong?" Snake asks.
"Not exactly," Otacon replies. Then, "I want to ask you something."
Snake resists the urge to comment on Otacon having a nasty habit of following him ridiculous places to ask him things, or on the fact that he's asked several things since he's come here (or that he's asked one thing, multiple times).
"Did you sleep okay?"
"Weird question," Snake counters. "Why?"
"Because," Otacon answers, "You toss and turn like you're running from something. Then you get up as early as possible and throw yourself at the day."
"I was in the military. There are chores to do, dogs to feed," Snake defends his morning routine. "What's wrong with getting up early?"
"Nothing," Otacon assures him. "I just thought it was strange. You put yourself to sleep like you've got to fight to even do it, and then you're up super early anyway. You must get tired."
Snake isn't sure why that makes him bristle, but it does. "I'm fine."
"But did you sleep okay?" Otacon repeats himself.
No, Snake thinks. He never does. He hasn't, not since infiltrating Outer Heaven all those years ago. Then, three years later, Zanzibar had only made it worse. He'd told himself then that he was there to banish his demons, but Big Boss's last words to him still ring in his ears every night. "I sleep just fine."
Otacon lets the subject drop without further comment.
That night, Otacon's awake, typing up an email to Mei Ling about his progress with Philanthropy (Snake is stubborn (he'll come around)) on what he's referred to as "the shittiest satellite internet connection he's ever had the misfortune of having to use" when Snake jerks awake in a cold sweat beside him. There's an instant where he almost doesn't recognize Otacon, and it's about to be a hazard to the engineer's health, but it only lasts a fraction of a second before Snake does recognize the flash of fear in Otacon's eyes and the adrenaline seeps out of him all at once. He puts his head in his hands.
"... Nightmares?" Otacon asks after a moment, presumably when it becomes clear that Snake isn't about to break his neck for being there unexpectedly, folding up his laptop and setting it aside.
Still groggy from the pills and drink once the initial shock has passed, Snake grunts affirmatively. There's no point in denying it. He's surprised (an understatement) when Otacon sidles up next to him, not quite touching, but certainly closer than he'd seemed comfortable with before now.
"Do you want to hear about how three different localizations of a single anime wound up having five different musical scores between them across its several incomplete DVD releases?" Otacon asks, as if this is a perfectly normal subject to bring up in the middle of the night, unprompted, after the fright he's just had.
No, Snake thinks. What a ridiculous question. "Sure," Snake says. He's too tired to care.
So Otacon launches into an explanation of some show Snake's never heard of and doesn't care about, going into great detail as he describes each studio's doomed localization attempt, and soon enough Snake finds himself lulled to sleep by the steady cadence of Otacon's voice as he prattles on without pause.
The next morning, Snake wakes up at seven. Perturbed, he checks to make sure the clock didn't stop without him noticing the previous night before getting dressed and heading outside to feed the dogs.
Otacon is already out in the kennels. "Good morning!" he says cheerfully, rubbing the belly of one of the huskies while several others circle around him and nudge at him for attention.
"You fed them?" Snake asks, a little confused. Otacon isn't usually awake this early, as far as he's been able to tell.
"All fifty," Otacon affirms, pushing himself to stand (much to the complaint of the husky he'd been petting) and dusting the snow off of his knees. The dogs that had been vying for his attention shift their efforts over to Snake, who pets as many of them as he can while still watching Otacon curiously.
"Thanks," he says. Then, "You just might be more useful than you look."
Otacon laughs, giving Snake's upper arm a little shove as he walks back towards the house, crunching through the snow in wet tennis shoes. Alaska clearly isn't for him; how on Earth he ever survived being stationed at Shadow Moses, Snake isn't sure.
The thought must stick with him.
Despite the efforts he goes through to knock himself deeply unconscious each night in an attempt to stem the tide, the nightmares still slip through. They're usually the same: infiltrating Outer Heaven, the smell of death, Zanzibar, war. Fighting off his former commander with his bare hands, scrambling to make a weapon out of a lighter and a gas canister. The smell of burning flesh.
But since Shadow Moses, other elements have begun to creep in. Standing bare-fisted in a minefield in opposition to Gray Fox, except there's a ticking time bomb in the form of FOXDIE, like a poison in his veins. Liquid's voice superimposed over Big Boss's, telling him that he lives for the thrill of battle. Gray Fox, as the cyborg ninja, running Emmerich through with his sword just as Snake reaches his office in search of a plan to stop REX. Otacon following him up the communications tower and getting himself killed in the elevator ambush meant for Snake. Otacon trying to stop his and Sniper Wolf's battle only to get himself shot. Otacon volunteering to stay behind to secure his and Meryl's escape route without Campbell managing to stop the air strike. Otacon...
Snake wakes up, sweating, wondering when it was that Otacon became such a focal point in his unconscious mind.
The man in question sits beside him, laptop balanced on his knees, though he's looking back at Snake when Snake looks over at him. Snake makes a frustrated noise low in his throat and turns over, trying in vain to shake himself free of the visions in his nightmares.
Otacon reaches over to put a hand on his shoulder.
"Whatever it is," Snake grouses, irritable, "the answer is no."
Otacon takes his hand back.
Snake wakes again at five, on the dot, and sets about morning push ups and feeding the dogs and tending to the wood-burning stoves that keep his cabin warm enough to be habitable, and eventually, as an afterthought, puts on a pot of coffee for Otacon for when he wakes up. As he listens to the percolator cycle water through the chamber, he has a vague impression of the things he'd dreamed about. Snatches of color, recollections, half-remembered; Otacon, bleeding out on the snowfield between the communications tower and the underground base where REX was being held. Snake's not sure if in the dream it was Wolf or he who shot him, only that he'd tried to stop them from killing each other and ultimately failed.
It's tough to tie that back into the theme his nightmares have always carried. War and fighting and death and all that comes with it, yes, but never has he dreamed so vividly of a single civilian caught in the crossfire and woken so affected by it. He reasons that Otacon is the only civilian he really knows, but it rings hollow as an excuse.
Eventually Otacon shuffles into the kitchen, taking a seat at the table and putting his head down in folded arms. He looks like shit, Snake thinks to himself as he pours a cup of coffee and sets it down in front of him. "You look like shit," he supplies helpfully.
"Didn't sleep much," Otacon answers with a yawn, graciously accepting the coffee.
"Didn't sleep much?" Snake repeats. "It's almost noon."
"Didn't sleep well," Otacon corrects himself. "Besides, I was up late."
"Doing what?" It's a question Snake's had for some time now, what it is exactly that Otacon seems to do all night on that laptop of his, but some part of him has always reasoned that he doesn't actually care about the answer.
"Research," Otacon shrugs. "Keeping tabs on the test data from REX being bought and sold on the black market so that when Philanthropy gets off the ground..."
Snake interrupts him with an impatient sort of sound. "Shouldn't you start looking for a different stooge to do your dirty work for that?"
"Only you can do it, Snake," Otacon insists. It's the same argument he makes every time. "You know more about taking Metal Gears head on than anyone, and you're the best of the best when it comes to covert operations. You're perfectly suited for—"
"I know, I know," Snake placates him, tired of the sales pitch.
"Have you given it any more thought?"
Snake makes a noncommittal sound. He has and he hasn't; he's heard Otacon describe his efforts and what they'll mean for the world at large what feels like a thousand times now, and he's thought to himself in private that he can't imagine what it could possibly change. Such a small organization against the forces of every domestic terrorist, mercenary organization, or the entire military industrial complex itself—it sounds like hell. Like fighting a never-ending war against ever stronger and larger forces, until he is eventually ground into dust on the battlefield. If for no other reason than to prove to the specter of Big Boss that lingers in his mind that he wants nothing to do with that fate, he's resigned himself to letting the world burn.
He can't bring himself to tell Otacon that. He knows Otacon has his own demons to wrestle with, and that his involvement with REX and its test data is one of them.
"I really think you should find someone else," Snake says, in a tone he hopes conveys that he is completely serious.
"There is no one else," Otacon replies, equally serious.
Snake sighs, shouldering on his coat and heading outside without another word. Once, there had been peace to be found out in the snow on his property, surrounded by his dogs. Now, they start up a round of howling and it echoes in his bones—staring down Sniper Wolf through the scope of a PSG-1; blood on the snow, bright, violent red against peaceful white, beautiful and ugly in equal parts.
The vision from his nightmare resurfaces, Otacon bleeding out on that snowfield, and Snake tries to shake it from his mind. His nightmares have always been about things that happened. Otacon is clearly alive and well, taking up residence in his cabin for who knows how long—he hadn't said, and Snake hadn't asked. The point is that he's alive, no worse for wear.
Snake stays outside as long as he can stand it just to avoid him, but the dogs and the snow create an unsettling atmosphere. So much for sanctuary.
Otacon does eventually join him later in the evening, still in those damn tennis shoes, eager to help when it comes to feeding the dogs. Snake lets him do most of the work, standing back to watch as he's swarmed by dramatic, attention-seeking huskies. The way Otacon laughs and flashes him a smile, Snake is struck by a memory: She even let me feed them when I asked. She likes dogs. She must be a good person.
He wonders if Otacon feels so similarly misguided about him, too.
That night, to Snake's surprise, Otacon is in bed even before he is. He'd claimed to be tired, that much is true, but he's been such a night owl since arriving that Snake is still a little astonished to witness it. It doesn't change much; he takes his pills and goes to sleep.
He dreams once more of Sniper Wolf, and of Otacon's strange infatuation with her getting him killed. Wolf escapes, and it's Otacon that Snake stands over, SOCOM in hand, no tears left to shed. "What are you fighting for?" Otacon asks him as he lies drowning in his own blood, and Snake hesitates, caught without an answer, before waking up. He sits up in bed and rubs his face with both hands.
Otacon is sleeping peacefully next to him. Snake reaches over and gently shakes his arm to rouse him.
"Wh-what, what is it?" Otacon asks blearily, groping hurriedly for his glasses on the nightstand. Snake reaches over him to put a hand on his wrist, trying to impress upon him the fact that there's no emergency.
"Did you ever find what it was you were fighting for?" Snake asks.
Otacon squints at him through the darkness. "Huh?"
"At Shadow Moses, you asked what I was fighting for. What you were fighting for. You said you'd keep searching."
"Oh," Otacon replies, remembering. "Isn't it obvious? That's the whole reason I came here. Philanthropy. Atoning for my mistakes. Not letting them hurt any more people." Snake doesn't immediately respond, so Otacon adds, "Putting an end to the nightmares."
That makes Snake grunt, annoyed at his phrasing. "Do they ever really go away?"
"Maybe not," Otacon acquiesces, "But I've got to try. I can't just sit back and do nothing." After a long pause, during which it becomes increasingly apparent that Snake has nothing more to add, Otacon asks, "Did you find what you were fighting for?"
Snake just looks over at him, questioningly.
"You said if we made it out—"
"I know what I said," Snake interrupts.
"Well?" Otacon presses, undeterred by Snake's gruff attitude. That's been happening more and more lately, Snake has noticed. There had been a time where Otacon had seemed either to fear him or be in awe of him (or some combination of the two), but increasingly he's been treating Snake like he might any other person. He's still convinced of Snake's abilities, but they don't seem to make up the whole of the individual anymore. Snake isn't sure how to feel about that. "We're out," Otacon continues, a little facetiously. "Aren't you going to tell me?"
Snake turns his head to look at his nightstand, pills and a bottle of whiskey at the ready, and lies back down without saying anything, at first.
Then, just when it seems like maybe he won't, he answers: "I'm just trying to put a stop to the nightmares, too."
"That doesn't seem like a very Solid Snake response," Otacon says. It makes Snake bristle—thinking of Meryl and the dissonance between her impression of how he should have been versus how he really is, how it had eventually gotten to be too much for her to stand—leaning up on one elbow to glare at the other man accusingly. Otacon puts up his hands in a placating gesture. "Don't get me wrong," he says, "It's very... human."
This diffuses some of Snake's anger. "Human?" he repeats.
"As opposed to the super soldier action hero," Otacon clarifies.
Snake lies back down. "I guess so."
They don't speak any more of it, and eventually he falls back asleep.
He dreams of the snowfield, vast and white and stained with blood. His own blood, Meryl's blood, Wolf's blood, Otacon's blood—he doesn't know. It's everywhere he turns, surrounding him, an ocean of red in a snow storm so thick he can't see a way out in any direction.
The next morning, Snake is surprised when Otacon stumbles out into the snow at six-thirty in a rush to ask if he's too late to help feed the dogs. He looks like he barely slept, despite having turned in early. Snake wonders if he went back to bed after their conversation, or if he fell asleep trying to wait for Snake to re-awaken at five.
Otacon busies himself helping with the day's chores, and Snake finds himself standing back to watch more often than he has since this became the norm. Maybe he can't connect with normal people, but here Otacon endures, regardless. Snake would have expected him to give up by now. He's gotten better at chopping firewood, despite Snake telling him that if he's not going to be using extra by sleeping on the couch then it's not necessary—he wants to help. In all facets of life, suddenly, it feels, there Otacon is; trying to help.
It's that evening while he's feeding the dogs, Snake standing idly by to watch, that Snake finally bends, at least a little: "What am I supposed to do about rehoming all these dogs?"
Otacon looks over at him midway through filling a group of bowls and gets knocked flat on his ass by a hoard of hungry huskies, spilling dog food everywhere. He may as well have incited a riot. It makes Snake laugh, though, coming to his rescue, offering a hand and pulling Otacon free of the kennel before closing the door.
"What do you mean you're rehoming them?" Otacon asks, clearly a little distressed at the prospect.
Snake rolls his eyes good-naturedly and replies, "This Philanthropy of yours. I can't expect someone to come babysit fifty huskies while I'm off doing who knows what, who knows where, for who knows how long. It wouldn't be fair to the dogs."
It almost seems to take a second for what he's just said to register, but Otacon's face lights up once it does. "So you'll join?"
"Maybe," Snake tells him. It's more than the no he's been giving since the start of all this. "I'm committing to giving it some thought. Nothing more."
"That's all I ask," Otacon replies, laughing sheepishly when Snake levels him with a mildly unimpressed look that says that's clearly not true. If thinking about it was all he'd asked, he wouldn't have tried to impress so hard upon Snake that he was the only man capable of pulling off such a critical role in the organization.
That night, Snake dreams of Metal Gear. He dreams of the TX-55, and Metal Gear D, and REX, and a hundred thousand derivatives borne from REX's leaked test data. He dreams of Otacon's sad determination when he'd finally accepted what had to be done at Shadow Moses; "I created REX. It's my right—my duty to destroy him."
He dreams of that same determination driving Otacon towards those hundred thousand Metal Gear derivatives, Philanthropy a flimsy shield when even Gray Fox's exoskeleton was crushed under REX's foot like it was nothing. He dreams of Otacon walking headlong into the same fate, crushed under the foot of a force that's grown so deeply out of his control.
Snake wakes with a start, groaning and putting his head in his hands while he tries to banish the bloody images from his mind. Otacon is sitting next to him, awake, on his laptop—he spares a glance, concern briefly etched across his features, before turning back towards his laptop screen. He's not typing, or otherwise interacting with it. Just staring at it. Waiting, perhaps.
Finally, Snake realizes what it is that he's waiting for: permission, after having been spurned so badly the last time he'd tried to offer comfort.
"Otacon," he murmurs, exhausted.
"Yeah?"
"If it's not too much trouble... if you wouldn't mind," Snake says, carefully. "Could you talk about something?"
This seems to surprise him. "What about?" he asks.
"Anything," Snake sighs, lying back down to stare at the ceiling. "Your Japanese cartoons. Whatever it is you're doing online. Hacking the Pentagon, or whatever."
Otacon snorts. "I'm not hacking the Pentagon."
"Could you?" Snake presses.
"Of course I could," Otacon preens.
"Tell me about it."
"What, just what methods I'd use, or...?"
"Walk me through it," Snake yawns. "Like you're teaching me how."
Otacon gives him a sidelong glance. Snake's already closed his eyes. "Okay," he agrees anyway, and kicks off an explanation beginning from the most basic of the basics, earning himself a tired laugh when he asks to make sure that Snake does definitely understand the difference between the keyboard and mouse.
Snake doesn't dream any more that night. He sleeps in again, waking at seven thirty to find that Otacon must have fallen asleep as well at some point, his laptop still balanced on his knees and his glasses still on his face. He allows himself a moment to wonder when it was precisely that Otacon became so inextricably linked to every aspect of his life; in his home, in his bed, in his dreams... For better or worse, he's not sure there's any going back from this.
Otacon rouses when Snake tries to take his glasses from him to put away on the nightstand.
"Sorry," Otacon yawns, "I must've drifted off." Then, laughing a little, "Did you catch all that, or should I go over encryption protocols again?"
"I think I've got it," Snake lies, amused. "I was thinking you could tell me about something else."
"Oh?"
"Give me the sales pitch one last time, before I agree to it," Snake says, resting his chin in one hand, propped up by his elbow.
Otacon blinks at him, uncomprehending. "Huh?"
"Philanthropy," Snake clarifies, smiling a little when Otacon straightens up in his excitement and enthusiasm and launches immediately into the explanation Snake's cut him off from countless times.
Maybe the nightmares never really go away. But observing Otacon's conviction as he talks about fixing past mistakes, Snake thinks that maybe there's agency in bringing the fight back to their doorstep. It's more than he's had in a while.