When they got to New York, they had already spent a week preparing.

Much of the rest of the time before their departure was spent separate, adjourning only for rest at her small flat kept in the city, a loft with three bedrooms up seven of the building's eight stories. Snake would venture off into the city with another goal every day, and come back usually with some new bits of paper or varied paperwork. He had been expanding his network of contacts, he told her, from the people he'd worked with Stateside and might be counted on to help them. The news was generally bleak: almost invariably, when Snake returned he had only news that he was not welcomed, and on more than one occasion, tales that his attempted contact was no longer among the living. On the latter, Snake was taciturn and open at once, not eager to regale her with information but seeing fit to make some sort of informal eulogising information regardless. There was one of the former operatives he'd worked with during a brief stint inside the American Central Intelligence Agency, a man he only referred to as Vincent, a former commanding officer, et al. Of the almost ten people he'd attempted to contact, six of them were dead. Lara felt some desire to comfort him, in spite (or because of) his disinterest in sympathy, but had nothing to offer save apologies. He did, however, have a video conference with Otacon during that time that lent them some basic comfort. They would be arriving in New York to a building they owned, legally and wholly, after some renovations.

And, twice, Snake disappeared in the city until late in the night. He offered no explanation as to where he went, and Lara asked for none.

During that week, Lara met with the publisher who had expressed interest, head of MEGASURPRISE LLC. She was surprised by their odd publishing schedule, the strange format they seemed to operate under, with its vague notions of releasing titles only in certain months of the year. Overall she understood it would be on the fringe of a release world, so she also contacted her publisher, and attempted a sort of roundabout bargain: Lara would agree to almost any interview, with any publication or news programme, with the understanding that in exchange, they would make some sort of coverage for Nastasha's book at some point. By the Sunday after their arrival stateside, there was a release date, Nastasha was in contact with an editor and the managing editor for nonfiction releases, and Lara had tenuous appointments on major networks months in advance. It was one hurdle that mercifully could be relegated to the backburner of their concerns, major hurdles not withstanding. In that time, she had a conversation over the phone with Nastasha, before she and Snake met for dinner later that night.

"How's things? States treating you well?" Lara asked.

"California is always pretty. It is somewhat monotonous." Lara laughed at Nastasha's remark. "I spoke with your people about the schedule. I am actually impressed, I did not expect such a… expedited resourcefulness of you."

"I'll take that as a compliment, thank you, but they're really not my people. I just knew somebody who knew somebody, that's all," Lara said. She could hear through the slightly askew muffling of Nastasha's voice there was a cigarette dangling precariously from one lip corner. "We'll e headed to New York tomorrow, will you be there to greet us?"

"I trust you and Snake have not had much friction?" Nastasha said.

"No, not at all, actually." Lara was holding the phone to her ear with her shoulder, looking out over the blooming field of emerald blades before they gave way to a line of trees on the grounds overskirts. "Should we have?"

"Well, I would not say that. Perhaps only I meant he is… rough. Do you understand?"

Lara thought of Snake's willingness to vanish without notice. Or the insomnia she had come to notice as not an exception but the rule to his sleeping habits. "I think so. No, he's actually been quite the gentleman." She thought of his drinking habits. "Within reason."

"Mm, I am glad. Snake can be a strange man for some, but a good man."

"I can't believe he put all this together."

"It is really only Otacon and him. I have spoken with the good doctor, actually. I hear Bolivia is in the cards, so to speak?"

Lara nodded absentmindedly. "It is. I'm having a few of my personal supplies shipped to the states for use, and once we're settled in, we'll head south again, to Brazil."

Lara glanced at the clock, and rounded out the conversation.

On the occasions where they had brief dinner conversation, she tugged at jagged shards of his past and smoother ones of her own. They spoke of his time in FOXHOUND, of infiltrating and destroying Big Boss's two strongholds. Of her time during various digs and excavations, some of them adventures of a sort. She felt only mildly self-conscious admitting to a desire for thrillseeking, considering her company. When she let slip some of the more unusual circumstances surrounding a few of her outings, she was surprised by the lack of skepticism. She asked him if he believed in the supernatural, which was met as "not really."

"I used to think science can't do everything, but the older I get, the less I believe it," he said, during one of two dinners they had at her home. He was smoking with his meal, veal served with Viennese artichokes.

"That's not much of an answer," she said.

"Well, I guess I believe there's enough that isn't known to keep an open mind. How's that?"

"As diplomatic an answer as any I've heard."

Snake took a deep drag from his cigarette, cherry blooming and waning. "Fine, fine, sure. I've seen too much weird crap to say anything else, I suppose. Why?"

She told him of times in the Amazon. Of creatures without genus she could identify, or animals that had been extinct and were not. She did it casually, glancing over some degree of their specificity. He listened, intent as usual, without comment.

"So why bring it up, Lara?"

"Because I felt if you trusted me, I owed you something."

When they abdicated for the night, the last day at her mansion, Lara thought again of asking him to spend more time with her. Earlier that evening, she had left the room for her library after a talk of archaeological work, and in the reflection of a polished brazier mounted on a pedestal in the corner of the room she caught his stare at her behind while she walked off. She felt a pleasant surge of giddiness, and a quiet abashedness that she would have never admitted to if confronted. If it had been anyone else, she might have made some flippant comment, but she thought better of it considering her own gentle leering when he came back from a run covered in sweat. But his aloofness when the end of the evening made her self conscious, disinterested and closemouthed he often seemed.

Then there were those sullen disappearances late at night, in the city.

On the day of departure, riding to the airport, they rode in silence to the airstrip. Otacon had asked if it would be possible to get him out, which she arranged with a phone call or two, and had insisted on paying for airfare. It was the first and one of few instances where money became a concern, and Lara asked outright what their desire for "financial assistance" might entail, since they both had insisted paying for everything with few exceptions (and Snake taking care of lunch even in advance, a gentlemanly gesture that surprised her.)

"Well, I hadn't really thought about it, I guess."

"Then may I make a suggestion?"

"Sure."

"If it is something I will use, need, or might need, let me pay for it." She thought harder on this for a moment. "Or plane-sized."

And that was as much as they ever referred to money.

The buildings sprawled in every direction. The island itself held itself to the mainland via connective tissue as metal sinew propping it close, the strands of clogged arterial roadways and runnels of concrete as methods in and out. She had seen it before, would see it again, but as a woman, she found it amazing in its scope. The great silver liquid sheets that reflected the sky, the stone and the people, their edifices of brilliant glass like blown vision into the mouth of civilisation. She felt a portent of its great scale, thought it appropriate they would find bedding there. Lara knew there was a limit to it, but she liked it almost as much a cliff face's stoicism, as the armies of treebranches and leaves that could call out to her like a billion souls. This was a world filled with souls, and she took it in with great care, observing its wonder, its power. From her height in the plane, she saw only the black, grey, gunmetal and silver lines and plates of tectonic industry that had been made in such a short time. There was too much for her to take in. The worlds of strangled space, encompassing and freeing and crowding. Rooftops like lillypads, buildings with scaffolds and sheets and twilit electronic screens flickering and dancing. Elsewhere, the scabbed land of tenements and colourful arched stone parks with basketball courts and littered playgrounds. She thought of New York's scrappiness, and it reminded her how rarely she ventured to America. The majesty of stone classical escarpments that held warm familiarity for her would be absent for a long time, instead replaced by the city and region's numbing ligaments of paved lines and steel suspension bridges like tendons running out to forever.

New York's brilliant size wowed her, but as she recalled its people well, she felt no great loss for their company. They made her feel like a breed of bug, girls half her age with phones almost literally surgically fused with cellphones to their face, people who refused to look at her, businesswomen and men who might break people in half for a taxi. They reminded Lara of the money people in England whom she detested, and of why she wanted as little to do with that money as possible. And when she left its business districts, far from Rockefeller plaza and attempted to venture into some heart of life, she saw the lines dividing her class and those with less, and she ached for a better country. They made her think of her own unearned wealth, and thought of the ruins of lands hidden by hundreds of years with great yearning. Years prior, she recalled Co-Op city's blasted out hopelessness and felt vague disgust for Park Avenue's grotesqueries.

The apotheosis of American civilisation made her recall with vivid familiarity why she so rarely visited.

The day prior had been without tumult. A small airstrip she personally chartered out of the UK, to Switzerland, where they reboarded a jet she had waiting. When he produced false identification papers, she made no comment. It was the only noteworthy aspect of their transfer, with her excitement unfortunately truncated by the tediousness of its impractical transit. The ride was boring in its duration, with Lara embroiled in the mobile pad Otacon had continued his update with and Snake sleeping for most of the time aboard. She noticed he had a preternatural ability to sleep on command at almost any time save when it might be normal to do so.

On their approach to the continent, and then the city, Lara moved to a window seat of the cabin, its plush acoutrements only serving to realign some of her nascent distaste for currency and her own lush economics. She ruminated again on a previous visit to New York's less pleasant boroughs, knowing the charities she supported were never enough.

"Have you been here before?" Snake said, jarring her out of her memories. She hadn't realised Snake had awoken.

"Mm, sorry? Oh, yes. Once or twice." She continued gazing outwards. "It's so large."

"Yeah. I was here one time before, almost ten years back. I'd just joined the CIA, and they flew me out to meet with some guys. Turned out to be a waste of time." He took a seat facing opposite her, began a survey of the window's view. "You okay?"

"Yes." She cleared her throat. "Yes, Snake, thank you." She paused. Thought better of her response. "I think I've done things that mattered before, but… Money's fickle."

"Yeah."

For a moment, he was silent.

"You're not, though. You do good."

"Snake, we hardly know one another. You don't know how I might spend my money. You don't know if I do good."

"Sure I do."

"How?"

"Intuition." And after that, he had nothing more to say on the topic.

Surprisingly, she felt calmed.