It was almost over.
The Boss had retreated to her quarters one last time, to collect herself and to give her worn body a moment of respite as events hurdled towards their inevitable, preordained end. Entering, she had shed her poncho and pulled her suit-zipper down
When she'd come in she had taken a habitual look around, checked the unlit corners of the room; not just looking for general threats, but trying to see if she could catch a glimpse of an old friend, her old partner. Her old lover.
She knew Sorrow was nearby, even if she couldn't see him. While she had no paranormal powers of her own, she didn't need them, in the face of intuition that was nearly supernatural itself. Long enough she'd spent with him to know what his presence felt like, even when he was out of sight. She could feel his will here quite often, and he knew that full and well. She would have to wait a little longer to see him, but not long. It was nothing, next to the years spent apart, spent on opposite sides. Now they would be on the same side, on no side, together in the neutrality of death.
Her suit still unzipped, she sat down on her bed and tucked in her head against her chest, eyes closed, and trailed her hand up to brush the rippled scar that slithered over her chest and sternum. Slowly, she lapsed into a tenuous unconsciousness, counting her pulse as it throbbed under her fingers.
When she was asleep, Sorrow softly unfurled down from the shadowed corner where he had been hanging in midair, invisible, floating above the floor. Somewhere off in the distance, the spurs on Ocelot's boot rattled. He paused, listening, and smirked. Ocelot bore his father's quick wit and his mother's ability to plan everything down to the finest minutiae. He would go far, that boy.
Crouching in front of the Boss, he looked her up and down. He remembered when the angry scar that now permanently divided her flesh almost to her collarbone was a fresh wound, and then when it was a half-healed gash with pulled sutures because she couldn't sit still long enough to let it heal naturally, and remembered, further back yet, when their love was new, when the pale skin there had been unbroken and smooth.
He could remember even in death exactly how her skin had felt under his fingers - a secret she had shared with only him, as far as he knew, or cared to know. He remembered her quick heartbeat, and exactly the way she had smelled, sounded, looked. She looked so much older and so much more tired now than she'd looked at the climax of the Second World War, or nine months into a pregnancy that was in every way difficult. Older and tireder even than she had been on the sunny afternoon that she'd put the barrel of a gun to his head, buried the muzzle in his age-white hair, and pulled the trigger.
(How she had told him that she could not, and how he had insisted that she could. He had known that she could. And so had she, in the end. She loved her rifle more than him, and he had always known that. There was no misplaced jealousy or anger. Both of them were called soldiers, but for him, it had been a mere title, a veneer painted onto the man; for her, it had been her essence, her all).
She was still his Boss.
He had seen her at the depths of living misery, but times were different now, with a different kind of misery all their own. She bore the dead weight of finality on her shoulders, the agony of knowing her end was quite near, and knowing exactly how it would happen. The gravity of it had crushed all of her Joy.
He could remember lying beside her when she was still defined by that joy, watching her chest rise and fall. Both had lain alone, on most nights since, but soon she would draw a last breath, and she would fight beside him once more.
Soon.
The rest of the Cobra Unit had been defeated in sequence, like dominoes; The Pain, The Fear, The End, and, though she did not yet know it, The Fury. She would know soon, long before the reports came in from the everywhere-eyes; they were connected, all of them, their bonds running deep and transcending any outsider's understanding.
So, that left only one more. Only The Joy. The men needed their leader and their mother on the other side. They would have her. He knew through his keen foresight that she would fall to the blows of the hands of her last beloved son, and he knew that she was fully aware what the conclusion of that final battle would be. For the greater good, she would give her life, and let him keep his, as for the greater good Sorrow had let her take his.
(Sorrow knew, too, that she would take a part of that son with her when she left. She certainly had to know what would happen to him as well, but neither had any choice except to move towards their own foregone conclusions).
Rising up and flickering through the air again, Sorrow came to rest on his knees beside her on the bed, leaving the sheets undisturbed. He leaned forward to examine her profile, pulling back as she stirred slightly. When she became still once more, he motioned as though to touch her cheek tenderly, something he wouldn't have done in life, not while she was asleep, anyway, hands gesturing in mid-air without touching her skin. He took all of her in once more before falling back, nodding to himself. Satisfied.
He would walk behind her for a little longer before they could walk together as equals in death. Until then, he could and would remain only a deep but unconfirmed suspicion.
'See you soon, Boss,' he said, imperceptibly quiet, a smile on his lips, just like always, and then he was gone, flashing off like fog in the morning sun.
Outside, rain began to patter against the high windows, lightning crashing down off in the distance, and inside that cramped room in the great fortress of Groznyj Grad, The Boss opened her eyes, awake at once, pulling herself to her feet.
'Sorrow?' Her eyes narrowed in the gloom. She knew, like she always did. She knew she wasn't alone, or hadn't been. '… Where are you?' This, she said to dust and stale air. She didn't expect him to answer. He hadn't so far.
A flash of lightning outside the window nearly betrayed the man in her doorway, but when she looked closer, she saw nothing, only shadows without form. She was alone.