Unbetaed and I'm pretty sure my editing skills suck so there are some mistakes here and there, forgive me for that. It's my first try at writing fanfictions about MGS, I had to force this out because I had a huge writer's block for the other fanfics I'm writing and it was either writing this or stop writing for good until the block was gone.

I doubt this story will be updated on regular basis but I'll try to push a chapter each month.

Hope you'll like this, and for the rest... well, I'll be just stoked if this story gets a review or two. And if they're positive, I'm going to open the good wine.


Everything started out with the very basics of human relationships.

He hadn't killed her.

Despite her repeated attempt at killing him, Big Boss had spared her life. He had her at his mercy, exhausted and wounded from their fight at the Aabe Shifap Ruins, and yet he hadn't pulled the trigger.

His men hadn't been happy to see her, but with a deadly glare he had put them back in their ranks when they were about to shoot her, under Miller's command. After that, he had personally escorted her in a special cell on the medical platform, made sure she had room, water and air, then he had headed out. To take a shower, perhaps, she had no idea, but he was covered in dirt and mud, she doubted he'd head out to another mission in those conditions.

She didn't see him for two weeks after she arrived on Mother Base, and those weeks were filled with interrogations, an extensive array of medical exams, more interrogations and more tests. She complied, letting the medical staff poke and prod her any way they pleased. Though diffident, the doctors that examinated her were kind enough to not make her feel like a guinea pig and it was a nice diversion from the constant insults that her guards threw at her.

Not that the insults bothered her, but they were becoming a little stale and boring. Once the novelty of a sniper assassin that could phase through the bars of her cells at will wore off, even inventive insults started to be lacking and the amusement she could get from them disappeared.

There was music at least, all day long, it helped keeping her some company, and yet after two months, she was bored to death. Even if she could have escaped her cell with a snap of her fingers, she had decided to be as cooperative as she could be. She remained in her cell, day and night, unless someone took her out for more tests.

Along with insults, spits and deadly glares from her guards, boredom became her companion.

Until the other blond guy, the Russian dressed as a cowboy from the movies everyone called Ocelot, dragged Big Boss down to her cell and explained how her physiology worked. He praised her abilities and kept speaking about how good she could be on the battlefield and such.

Big Boss, though he went by the name of Snake or simply Boss, seemed impressed but reluctant when Ocelot proposed him to take her on the battlefield. Not that she could blame him, she had tried to kill him twice, technically was still part of XOF and answered to Cypher and she was their prisoner, but she saw something, a glint in his blue eye. A flick of light that instilled a drop of hope that one day or another she'd manage to complete her mission and kill Big Boss.

But mostly it offered her a chance to escape boredom.

It took some more time but finally, Snake decided she could be useful on the field and took her with him in Africa.

And for her, things radically changed.

The moment she set foot on the chopper, the pilot, codename Pequod, turned towards her and pulled the darkened visor on his helmet and greeted her with a bright smile. "Quiet right?" he asked, extending his hand to her. Taken aback by how friendly the pilot seemed to be, she awkwardly shook it. "Welcome on board. Now, relax and enjoy the flight, it's going to take a long while to reach Africa." He turned towards the command console again and pushed some buttons so the helicopter rose from the helipad. "Gaining altitude!" He announced.

A thick silence fell in the cabin, filled only by the constant rumble of the rotors. Quiet felt a little odd, sitting on the bench doing nothing for no one knows how long was weird for her. Her fingers itched for activity, after so long trapped in the brig she needed some action. Commute time wasn't exactly what she wanted in that moment.

She dared to look at her right, on the larger bench where Snake sat. He was fiddling around with his iDroid, a cutting edge piece of tech she had never seen but that apparently allowed him to do a bunch of stuff, both on the field and Mother Base.

Before deployment, Ocelot had given her something similar, a lot less complicated and that could communicate univocally with Snake's iDroid. Given her refusal to speak, it would be a good way to inform him of what she had found as she scouted the area ahead. She had gotten familiar with it soon after Ocelot had given it to her, and found it a decent way to communicate with him. They had the radio too, if she ever needed to inform him of the presence of an enemy, the iDroid was great for that.

After a while though, she found herself fiddling with her gloves just to have something to do.

Suddenly, in her far field of view, a battered copy of 1984 made its appearance, along with a red prosthetic hand. Big Boss was handing her the book, taken from God knows where on the helicopter.

She warily took the book from him and inspected it. The cover was frayed, the edges were rough and the paper was thick and yellowed. That book had seen better days, but the spine still held the pages together.

"Deployment can be boring," he stated, sitting back on his bench and focusing on the matters he needed to take care of through the iDroid.

Those were first words he had spoken ever since they had set foot on the helicopter. It almost felt eerie to hear him talk, his low gravelly voice had a inflection that to her sounded like a sense of defeat that was uncharacteristic for a man like Big Boss. Or at least from the image her colleagues at XOF had painted of him. They were told her he was the greatest soldier that had ever walked on Earth, back in the day, but what she had found lacked that aura of a legend that seemed to irradiate from Big Boss.

At the hospital… before the other man had burned her to a crisp, he had looked like a lost man, someone that didn't even know who he was. But after nine years in a coma, she had thought it was quite normal. Now, after months, despite having bulked up and gotten back into shape, his alert blue eye still showed some of that desperation she had seen as she had tried to kill him. The shadow of sadness you'd see in the eyes of a lost puppy that had been separated from his mother.

Big Boss looked unhappy.

She took a deep, useless breath and opened the book. She had read it already, but she needed a distraction, otherwise she'd keep brooding over the man sitting beside her and how he had betrayed all her expectations.

Hours later, she had nearly finished her reading when Pequod announced they had still an hour before arrival. As if spring loaded, Snake startled up right in his seat and grabbed his iDroid. He opened the holographic map.

"Quiet, come here."

She raised her eyes from the book and looked at the map Snake was showing her. "Here. The mission is to destroy the Walker Gears the PF has acquired. They occupied an abandoned village and hold it as a stronghold so they have the higher ground." He pointed out the LZ, about a kilometer south of the village. "We will land here and I'll do some recon from a distance. Now, can you do some scouting ahead of me? You're way faster than me and you can reach the village sooner. I've studied the area and I saw a couple of good sniping points, here and here. You're free to choose the one that suits you best, or pick another you like more. You alright with that?"

She never heard him speak for so long, form so many sentences all in one single time. What marvelled her, was the fact that he was actually asking her if she found the strategy right or if she didn't agree with what he had planned.

Quiet was used to obey orders and stop. Receive instructions, carry on the objective, and stop. No one had ever asked her what she thought about those instructions.

The plan seemed solid enough, the distance between the LZ and the objective gave her enough time to scout ahead while he reached the place. And the sniping points he had highlighted seemed adapt to her tactical necessities.

She sighed, or mimicked a sigh with her burnt lungs, as she nodded.

"Good. Now…" Snake put the device down and pulled a thin black nylon bag from the wall beside him. He tugged the zip open and pulled her rifle out. "I took the liberty to perform some standard maintenance on it, cleaned and oiled it. Nice gun, you personalized it, right?" He asked as he handed her the rifle, along with ammo and a silencer, still in its cardboard box. "Nice modifications, by the way."

On a quick and cursory inspection, her beloved friend looked exactly as it did when she had let go of it at the Ruins, only it was clean and not covered in dust like the last time she had seen it. She checked the slide of the bolt and it seamlessly moved, making the extraction of the shell and the loading of another bullet faster. The scope was perfectly aligned and the trigger required just the right strength applied to it to fire, not excessively resistant but not too weak too, so the chance of it shooting at the slightest pressure applied to it.

She gave him another stiff nod, acknowledging his work.

When she had finished checking and loading the gun Pequod started the descent, and Snake moved to open the door of the helicopter. He sat on the floor, legs dangling outside and only a short belt keeping him from falling off, in case he slipped. Quiet watched him as he took in the landscape and the setting sun, his eye fixed on the horizon. He seemed so concentrated, but also so relaxed, at ease even if he knew perfectly well that the mission he was about to being was extremely dangerous.

The PF that had taken residence in the African village was known to have access to top of the line armaments and weapons, the intel file on her own i-Droid mentioned heavy machineguns and anti-aircraft cannons. The job was extremely dangerous, no matter which way you thought about it.

And yet, he seemed at peace, even if bullets were ready to fly around him, meant for his head.

Suddenly she felt a surge of admiration for Snake.

Maybe I won't kill you right away. She thought. I'll let you do this mission. Then we'll see.

When the chopper had moved away from the landing zone, Snake turned towards her. "Look, I don't like killing people if I can avoid it, odd as it sounds. As you can see, I'm armed with non-lethal weapons. I asked the R&D guys to prepare a non lethal rifle for you too, based on the same specs of this one, but they weren't ready yet. The one I have isn't nearly enough powerful to propel the bullet to useful distances and give it adequate stopping power, considering how far away you usually choose your sniping points. For this time, I'll ask you to shoot only if someone threatens to give the alarm. Before you kill someone that spotted me, if someone spots me…"

Cocky bastard… she thought, after that.

"...wait, give me a second to deal with it. I might be able to get behind cover or get rid of them myself. Alright?"

She gave him a curt nod.

"Great. Now, go ahead. I'll take the long route and try to sneak in the camp from the left side and do my thing."

Watching him do his thing, as he had called it,was the best show in the world, even through the minuscule point of view of a scope. Gone were the slumped shoulders, the defeated look and the shadowed eye, Snake was all focus and no shit. Despite the heavy gear and boots, he moved as silent as a bird flying high in the sky, unnoticed by the guards he passed by. And he passed by a good deal of guards as he reached the objectives.

Snake slowly made his way through a less guarded side of the village, from a steep climb. On her scouting venture, she had noticed that there was a sort of corridor on that side and had signalled him through the iDroid, and he exploited the lack of security to avoid being detected. A couple of times he had preferred to be overly safe and crawled his way through a patch of high grass. That allowed him to avoid the inquisitive look of a guard that had noticed some movements in the dark.

Her rifle was trained on the back of his head, but Snake had already moved from the spot the guard was searching. No need to kill anyone.

For now.

She saw Snake planting C4 charges on the four Walker Gears less than two hours from the start of the mission.

"You know…" she heard him mutter in the radio, the first words he had spoken since they had separated, at the landing zone. "I wish I could take these away. They could be useful."

She mumbled an affirmative sound over the open microphone.

"What if I used the Fulton…" He paused for a moment, then through the scope she saw him shake his head vigorously. "No, the Fulton isn't strong enough to raise it. Too heavy."

Snake was on his way back when he stopped in his tracks, his head turned towards a tent. "Quiet…" he called. "Someone's calling for help, from that tent."

What the… she thought. Prisoners?

He took a peek inside one of the tent and came back in her view with an emaciated man hanging from his shoulders. He wore a blue tattered allover and seemed lifeless. "Quiet, there's a prisoner, can't leave him here, I need to extract him but the Fulton will make too much noise. Is the way clear?"

She checked and wished she could talk. She mumbled something that to her sounded like a no. But there was something she could do. Create a diversion.

There was a generator running, decently far from his position but close enough that the guards on his way would move away from him, she had seen it on her recon. If she shot it and made it stop working, all the lights in the camp would turn off, giving him more space to move around and maybe allowing him a quick dash away from the guards' field of view so he could extract the prisoner.

The only problem was that she had to shot said generator through a tent.

Well, let's hope no one's in there. She thought before she pulled the trigger.

A spark a low pop later, the lights went down. Only the moon and the stars lit the area, and the guards weren't ready for it.

"Good thinking," said Snake while he moved away from the area to a secluded place, away from the PF soldiers. They were mostly gathered around the downed generator, wondering what the hell had happened and trying to start it again. He exploited that distraction to attach the prisoner to the Fulton system and fire it up. The poor man shot up in the dark sky with a scream and before he knew it, the support helicopter had snatched him to safety.

"Did you see any other prisoner?" He asked.

Quiet sighed and mumbled a negative reply. There were a number of tents and run down houses though, good places to keep a prisoner well hidden from enemy eyes. She had carefully looked for people outside those places, not inside.

Good for the next time.

"I'm taking a look around, keep your eyes open. And about the generator… good thinking, it was a great idea."

He found another prisoner in a run down house, proceeded to knock down a couple of guards so he'd have it easier to move around with the poor guy on his shoulders and, once at a reasonable distance from the encampment, extracted him via Fulton.

With that done, he reached her position on a hill and lay beside her. "And now, some fireworks."

Snake pushed the button of the detonators and four C4 charges went off at the same time. Four short lived balls of fire lit the dark village and scared to death the CFA soldiers. Their screams could be heard even from their position, so far away from them.

In the dim light of the moon, Quiest saw a smirk from on his face, like the stub of a smile. His eye sparkled. He looked happy.

It didn't last much though, the half smile disappeared from his face as quick as it had come and yet it seemed like a great feat for him.

He dug his fingers in a pouch and extracted a metallic cylinder that looked like a cigar. "You mind?"

She shook her head and he lit it, sort of, using his iDroid. Now that was something she didn't really understand, but she didn't care much. And she had to admit that the herbal scent it let out, a mix of mint and something that reminded her of good quality absinthe she had once when she was in France, wasn't half bad at all.

She wondered if Snake smoked even real cigars and not only fake ones.

"Let's go back to the LZ," he mumbled, cigar bobbling from his lips as he spoke. "Pequod will be here shortly."

With once last glance and the now panicking camp behind them, they headed back to the rendezvous point with the helicopter. Snake had both his hands planted in his pockets and kept his eyes pointed to the ground. Around them, the savannah was calm and silent, except for the far noises coming from the airport and some animal in the far distance.

The warm breeze around them brought different scents with it, from dust to gasoline, in a peculiar mix that Quiet had never experienced despite her short but intense career as a XOF operative. The tangy smell of a swamp, dung of various animals, woodsmoke and something spicy in the back, like the smell of someone cooking dinner over an open fire, somewhere.

Snake kicked a rock out of his way. "We did good, don't you think?"

Quiet looked up at him and shrugged her shoulders. Kinda.

"I usually work alone, I brought DD with me on occasion but I have to say, the thought he might get hurt makes me want to lock him on the animal conservation platform so I'm sure he'll be safe and sound."

She smiled at the sudden display of humanity from the legendary soldier. She had seen DD and their interactions during the long flight from Afghanistan to Mother Base two months ago, while she was cloaked and even later, after she had blown the brains of that pilot out. The dog hung around the cockpit of the helicopter happily, sometimes looking for a scratch behind the ears and sometimes for a treat. She thought he was cute, with the eyepatch that matched his master's.

"This was an easy one though. I'm not sure what will come ahead for us, so I'm going to ask you now. Do you wish to come on missions with me, or you prefer your status as prisoner?"

He was asking her if she wanted to do more missions.

That had never happened. Well, yes, it had happened before, Snake had asked her what she thought of the plan, back on the helo. Still, it caught her off guard a little.

Quiet was used to orders. She was expected to execute them with deadly precision, not to answer questions like that. Did she want to help him? No! Did she want out of the cell? Desperately.

And she had to admit that the fact he took care of extracting prisoners of war from the PF made him look less an enemy and more a possible ally. After all, XOF hadn't made a move to rescue her from the enemy hands - not that she expected them to, Plan B saw her infiltrating Mother Base and kill everyone with the parasites - and despite the insults and the not so veiled threats, Diamond Dogs had treated her with respect. Big Boss above all.

And he was asking her if she wanted to help.

Despite her better judgement, she nodded.

"Good. Unfortunately, things on Mother Base are quite…" he scratched the back of his head as if prodding the right words to describe what he meant. "They are tense about you. Sometimes I think only Ocelot and I see something human in you, a person that can turn resource even, though Ocelot had to poke me for a while to make me realize that you could be helpful. Anyway… I can't let you out of the cell, for your own protection."

She could picture her own eyebrow shooting up in a questioning look.

He seemed to take the hint and managed to amend his words right away. "I know you can handle any of them without a sweat, it's just that I don't want you to have to actually defend yourself from them. We need to keep up appearances, even if you become an asset for Diamond Dogs. They don't trust you right now, and I don't really want a riot to start. I'll try to make things more comfortable for you though. You alright with that?"

She nodded again.

"I'll have a shower curtain installed tomorrow."