The last time I had looked at the clock, it had been midnight. I knew for sure that it wasn't anywhere near that time anymore.

I couldn't sleep and it hadn't been the first night that week. As a matter of fact, I had collectively averaged about nine hours of sleep in the past six nights. I turned on my back and hoped the hypnotic rotating of the ceiling fan would make my eye lids heavy, but I didn't have too much faith in this technique since I had tried it the nights before with no results. I decided then that I hated it and tried to imagine what a light fixture would look like in that spot.

My mind soon drifted to Snake and the inhibitor that I had injected him with. It hadn't had any unusual side effects and had actually been showing signs of working, which made Hal and I happy, but didn't make Snake out of the woods just yet. FoxDie was pretty unpredictable and it was certainly something we were keeping in mind even at the appearance of Snake improving. But I didn't spend too much time worrying about him. I kind of couldn't. He had told to me, in both subtle and not so subtle ways, that he was a big boy and didn't need my constant concern looming over him.

My relationship with Hal, thankfully, was much different. I trusted him which was more than I could say for some of the people I had known for years. Hal could quickly become a breath of fresh air after spending too much time in the gruff and jaded presence of Snake. He was genuinely pure and optimistic, but in no way naïve. He had his share of heartache with losing his sister, Emma and he didn't know but, it helped me to deal with Evan's death better when I talked to him. I could, however, tell there was something darker to him, something that went much deeper than the death of Emma. But, as long as he never brought it up, I was okay with never finding out.

I was abnormally unstressed, despite my unique situation, but I still laid there, unable to even pretend like the ceiling fan watching trick was actually going to work this night. And since it was mid November in New York, all it was doing was making me unnecessarily cold.

I was in the process of talking myself into getting up to turn it off when I heard a deep moan from the room right next to mine. Privacy was out of the question since the walls were paper thin and I had learned to ignore sounds that escaped their respective rooms at night but there was something troubling about that moan, which could only belong to Snake. I listened to him until they became too uncomfortable for me to bare from my side of the wall any longer.

Whatever Snake was dreaming about, it had caused him to break out into a cold sweat. His fists were clutched tightly to the sheets and his breathing was growing heavier. I could almost hear his heart beating double what it should.

I called to him once, but it did nothing to penetrate whatever that was haunting him.

"Wake up," I shook him lightly by his shoulder. I quickly forgot everything I had heard about not waking someone when they are having a nightmare when it seemed to be getting more intense. He violently jerked around like he was trying to leap out of his own skin.

"Snake, you're having a nightmare. Wake up!"

I shook him hard, with both hands now grasped around his shoulders.

His eyes snapped open almost the same time I saw the gun appear in the front of my face. His eyes struggled to adjust in the light in the room as his breathing began to regulate again. I backed off slowly, knowing there was a good chance he didn't keep an empty handgun next to him.

"Whoa! Snake...it's me," I said, my hands locked in a surrender.

"Olivia?" He lowered his gun. "What are you doing?"

"You were having some sort of a nightmare. It sounded pretty intense so, I came over to check on you." He took a deep breath and ran his hands over his face. "What was it about?"

"Huh?"

"Your nightmare."

"Oh. Don't remember."

"Do you have them often?"

"No."

"I really hope it's not the serum, then."

He shook his head.

"It's not that. I'm sorry about..."

"It's fine. You kinda owed me that, really. I remember not so long ago, it was the other way around." I put my hand on his shoulder. "You okay?"

"I'm fine."

"Good." I started towards the door, thinking about how I would just stare at the ceiling fan until dawn. When I looked back to Snake, his eyes shifted from my direction to the floor.

"Snake. I know I'm out of line in asking this but, do you think I could sleep in here? Just for tonight."

"What? Is something wrong?"

I knew how crazy it sounded and even if I hadn't, all I had to do was look at Snake's face. It was too late to back out, so, I continued.

"No, well, the truth is…I've averaged about nine hours of sleep in the past week or so and I don't know what else to do. I'm a walking zombie. I even tried the warm milk thing that my mom used to give me when I couldn't sleep as a child. I've read, completed a whole book of crossword puzzles...another week of this and I'll probably be forced to do something like... take up crocheting."

"I don't know how sleeping in here is going to help anything..."

"I'm desperate. I think the only thing I haven't tried is another bed."

I had already prepared myself for a "no" when I noticed Snake shift his body over, opening up enough space for me to slide into. Before I could think about how too easy that had been, I climbed in and quickly, as if it was a limited time offer.

We laid there on our backs with a slightly awkward foot of space between us.

"Thanks, Snake. I promise this will be the only night I cramp your space like this."

"I could think of worst things."

I looked over at him. Even in the almost no light of the room, I could clearly make out a smirk on his face.

"You don't have a ceiling fan," I said aloud when I noticed a light fixture in the place of where the fan was in my room. I had never actually noticed myself failing at an attempt to make small talk until that moment.

"Is that a bad thing?"

"No...oh God, that was really random, wasn't it? I'm sorry."

I placed my hands over my mouth as a physical reminder to stop talking.

"Is this uncomfortable to you?"

"Oh, heavens yes but, it's not you. I just realized that I haven't done this," I said gesturing from him to me, "sleep in the bed with another man, since Evan. That's really pathetic, I know..."

"Not at all."

"If I'm keeping you up, I can go back to my room and be an insomniac on my own. I don't want to drag you down with me."

"It's okay. Not much was coming out of sleep for me tonight, anyway."

"You know, nightmares can spring from a lot of different things, Snake. Stress, guilt, even unresolved issues."

He kept his gaze to the ceiling.

"I was back in Zanzibar Land. I haven't thought about that place in years."

"What happened to you there?"

"The kind of things that gives you nightmares."

"Have you ever thought about going to therapy?"

"If I tell you no, are you going to play psychiatrist with me," I could tell it was a thought he was not fond of.

"No, of course not. But, wouldn't it help to talk about these things with someone?"

"It's not anything I enjoy remembering especially in order to tell other people."

His hands moved to behind his head. It was the most relaxed he had ever appeared to me though I was sure his muscles were still tense and taunt, waiting to react to anything that might happen.

"I wish life would have been different for you. I wish you could have grown up in suburbia or something."

"You mean more like you?"

"Yeah, I guess so," I propped myself on my elbow to face him, "Don't you ever wonder what you're life could have been like, Snake?"

"I try not to spend too much time thinking about the stuff that I can't change."

I imagined Snake practiced a lot of this coolness on the battlefield as well. It was probably one of the reasons he was still alive.

"Well, I think you should have at least continued to race huskies."

He looked amused that I knew that.

"You're probably right but, how did you..."

"Hal told me."

"Hmm. Right."

My eyes rested on his arms again in the realization that it was the first time I had seen them uncovered. The scars on them looked like a map of his life. On impulse, I reached out and ran my hand lightly over his upper arm, where I had noticed them the most.

"There's so many of them..."

"Yeah. I've begun to forget how I got most of them."

"Well, this one", I pointed out the one that had caught my eye first, "was probably from a knife."

"How can you tell?"

"I've had a lot of practice. I've seen a lot of scars being a nurse. They tend to tell the truth more than some of the patients do," He let me run my fingers over it a few more times, as if it was a road I wanted to travel down as well. I met his intense blue gaze, which, for the first time he didn't hurry to reposition once being caught, "Do you remember which one hurt the most?"

Out of the darkness, I felt his hand reach up and caress the scar on the right side of my own face.

"This one."

I knew what was happening and all I could think about was how it shouldn't be. But, what I knew only made it as far as a thought and never actually developed into a verbal or physical attempt at restraint.

The moment our lips met, I came to conclusion that Snake was one of those things I never thought I desired until I had it. I felt his arms wrapping around my waist to pull me in closer to him, daring any space at all to come between us now. My hands moved wildly to adjust and finally settled right above his hips. My fingertips reached a scar that from touch, I figured to be an electric burn of some kind but didn't give more than half of a second's thought to. Suddenly, I felt him pull away.

"Snake?"

He looked at me as though I was a lamb he had just slaughtered and then quickly looked away.

"I'm sorry. I don't know what happened."

In a split second, Snake's whole demeanor resembled what it had ten months ago, distant and cold. I felt like we were sitting in two separate rooms.

"What are you sorry for? For allowing yourself to feel something?"

"It's more complicated than that."

"What's so complicated about it?"

I didn't mean to sound like I was challenging him, but I was immediately aware of it coming off that way. I knew he had his reasons and that they were probably damn good ones too, but something had awaken in me and I couldn't ignore it as easily as he had seemed to.

"Feelings aren't a part of what I do, Olivia. "

It was his tone that took me aback. For the first time, it made sense to me that maybe everything he had done had been a sacrifice and not some selfish lifestyle choice. I didn't know what to say or if I should even say anything at all.

"I understand," I assured him anyway.

Though the silence that settled was a quiet understanding of sorts, as I laid there, I couldn't think of one reason I should actually still be laying there. This was so far from my simple desire to get sleep and I couldn't even begin to link the conversations it had taken to get from one extreme to the next. "You're pretty incredible, Snake."

"What?"

"A lesser man who would have seen what you've seen, done what you've done...they would have cracked."

"Maybe I haven't cracked but, I'm certainly not whole."

"I don't think anyone is," I reminded him, "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"How old were you during your time on Shadow Moses Island?"

"Thirty-three, I think."

"Thirty-three? You were so young..."

"Not on the battlefield."

"So, that means you're...Forty-one now, right?"

"Yes. But, why does it matter?"

"It's just my attempt to try and understand Solid Snake better."

"You mean it's an attempt to try and figure out exactly when I became so screwed up."

I laughed quietly and shook my head. Snake's humor rarely got past me no matter how wrapped up in sarcasm or misplaced tones it was.

"So are you damaged goods, Snake? I wouldn't have ever known if you wouldn't have told me."

A flicker of sunlight on the wall next to me caught my eye.

"It's 5:40," he told me looking up from a clock he had sitting on the floor next to him.

"I doubt I'm going to be much good to Hal today. I should get back to my own bed, though."

Leaving turned out to be the most awkward part of it all despite some of the other things that had happened. I smoothed over my hair with my hands and then my pajamas as if we had done something regrettable but, looking at Snake light his first cigarette of the morning made me remember just how many different kinds of regrettable there actually are.

I knew it was too soon to wonder what could have been since we hadn't even almost had anything to begin with. But the idea of not even having the chance to wonder is what hung over me. Life had lead both of us on very different paths and our worlds had collided due to such a strange chain of events that it was almost necessary to think that maybe we had defied something much bigger than us for meeting at all. But even if we had, there wasn't a single part of me that regretted it.

I watched the rest of the sunrise dance across my own walls from my own bed. But the sounds of shuffling downstairs followed by the faint aroma of Hal-brewed coffee signified my day had begun. Whether I wanted it to or not.

Hal and Snake both looked back at me from the table when I entered the kitchen but Hal was the only one who spoke.

"You look like hell", he informed me of before I could mutter my first words. I hadn't looked in the mirror, but I knew then that whatever I looked like, it was a visual representation of how I felt.

The table was a jumble of folders and papers that looked as if they needed to be in some of those folders.

"What's all of this?"

I could see his eyes x-raying the folder my hand was reaching for.

"That one...is actually all yours today."

When I opened it and saw the word 'FoxDie' in the first line of text, I quickly closed the cover back. It was still way too early to look at that.

"Thanks."

"Don't sound like that, Olivia. Today will be a short day. I promise."

I was going to ask him to define his idea of a short day before I realized he had zipped out of the kitchen. This left Snake and I to be awkward with each other.

"About last night, Olivia..."

"I know, I know. It never happened. It's already forgotten, Snake."

He nodded as if it had been my idea to try and pretend like it never happened which only made me annoyed. I rolled my eyes—something I hadn't consciously remembered doing since I was sixteen–and shook my head.

"Wait! No, I don't mean that." However irritated I had become with him, he felt it ten fold against himself. He stared at a small area of square tile and walked over them to me. "Olivia, I don't think we'd ever work. But, I don't want you to think that I don't wish that it would."

"I don't think I've ever had someone break up with me before breakfast."

I'm sure he smiled, but I had already wrapped my arms around his neck. I felt his head bury into my shoulder as he embraced me back. Words would have ruined it, so we both didn't say anything. There was a perfect understanding of everything without them.

"Olivia," I heard Hal almost sing from another room, "I need your help with something."

"I think that's my cue," I said. I took a deep breath and without thinking about it too much, I let him go in every way that I needed to.

My brain shut off for the most part for the time I helped Hal. Lines of text, graphs, figures, medical documents, they call came through without leaving a single trace of ever having been there. But one single thought did seem to stick. That ceiling fan.

It would stay up.

I didn't hate it anymore.