Courage
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Snake could still feel it. Even after all these months, he could still feel the soft grass beneath his knees, the cool breeze blowing through his hair, the sharp, burning sting on the side of his face, and the cold harsh steel of the gun in his mouth.
Two months had gone by. Two long months, and he still got chills when he thought about that day. He had wanted to end it so badly, to be done with the fighting and the killing and the pain that had been such a prominent part of his life. In his mind, he was a weapon, a tool of war that had been broken beyond repair. What use was a broken weapon to the world? What did he have left to offer?
Some days, Snake wondered why he had ever thought of doing a thing as cowardly as offing himself in self-pity. Some days, he wondered why he hadn't possessed the courage to go through with it. Hadn't he killed hundreds of men in the same fashion? He was a soldier after all. What had made him hesitate?
But Snake knew. He had always known why it had been so hard, why his hands had shook in fear as he held the trembling gun in his mouth. It was because by pulling that trigger, he was giving in. After countless years of hard work and suffering, pulling that trigger meant he was giving in to defeat.
That was something he hadn't been ready to accept. Solid Snake did not give in to fear. He saw every mission through to the end, and this one would be no different. If nature hadn't decided to take him yet, then there was still something he had left to complete. And he would be damned if he let that slip by him.
Snake's train of thought was interrupted when he heard the soft squeaking of his partner's swivel chair turn to face away from one of their many computers. Shortly after his ears detected the quiet noise of sneakers trekking their way over to where he was seated in the hanger . Those sounds had become so familiar to him that it was almost comforting to hear the soft sound of those white shoes scurrying around the metal floor of the Nomad.
Two arms gently encircled his neck from behind, and Dave could feel the soft breath of the other lightly blowing against his cheek. It was, in Dave's opinion, one of the best feelings in the world. He leaned his head to the right, just enough so he and his partner's heads where touching ever so slightly. Somehow, Hal just always knew when Dave needed him the most.
The arms around his neck tightened a little, and Dave felt more than heard Hal softly whisper "I love you, Dave" into his ear.
He craned his neck over his shoulder and caught the engineer's lips with his own in a gentle kiss. "Same here, Hal."
Even though Dave couldn't actually see it, he knew Hal was smiling. He'd lived with the scientist long enough to have practically memorized each of the man's individual habits, and know when each of them surfaced.
Hal released Dave's neck from his embrace and continued on his way to the kitchen, most likely to make coffee in preparation for the long night ahead of him. Dave had once joked that he should just inject the stuff intravenously, since it seemed to run through him like blood anyway. Hal had laughed, and then proceeded to explain to him exactly why it was physically impossible for any living creature to replace their blood with such a substance, but Dave had tuned him out as usual.
The sound of Hal's shoes met his ears again, and Dave felt instantly at ease. When he thought about it, there was more to his hesitation that day at the cemetery then such ideas as honor and dignity. His life didn't just belong to him; it belonged to Hal as well. The two men practically depended on each other to live. By killing himself, he would be inadvertently killing half of his partner in the process. The thought sickened the man more than he could ever say, and made all doubt fly swiftly out of his mind.
The smell of coffee floated into Dave's nostrils, and he inhaled it like it was the very oxygen he needed to breathe. When he compared ending his life by shamefully plugging himself in the mouth in the middle of a lonely cemetery, and ending it here, next to the only person on this earth who saw him as a pure human being, he couldn't think of a more honorable and dignified way to end his legacy. There wasn't much, in his mind, that could compare to being where he was right now.
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AN: Alrighty, this particular drabblette was inspired by an interview with David Hayter, where he stated that he had practically begged the producers of MGS4 not to put the scene in where Snake almost commits suicide, because he saw it as a sign of weakness on Snake's part that he couldn't go through with killing himself. Needless to say, I don't agree.
Also, as far as the time line goes, because there is no specific explanation on when exactly Snake, you know, coughdiescough, I took some artistic license and placed this fic two months later. Minor detail, but I'm super attentive to that kind of stuff. Feel free to correct me. I mean, I spent three days on just the sound Hal's shoes make on the floor of the Nomad. Most edited paragraph of the whole fic. I should be ashamed.