Author's Note: The previous chapter has been edited for small continuity errors, with some minor material added.

When Lara went home, noon had come and gone, and she had spent most of the afternoon reading the manuscript left to her from her two dining companions. She hadn't expected Nastasha had written it entirely on her own, or in the first person, but there was a frankness to its style Lara liked, at least in as much as she could like a nonfiction account. It had started innocuously, with a dedication to Nastasha's former husband. They had agreed it'd be best to reapproach the subject after she had ingested the events authored and then reached a conclusion afterwards. She spent hours after drifting in and out of the narrative, being jarred away by intrusive foot traffic or local colour before resigning herself for home.

Once back at the estate, she neglected food and inquiry in its favour, transfixed by Nastasha's account. terms became the dominant thought process. Liquid Snake Revolver Ocelot WMD's patricide REX nuclear surface-piercing Otacon death FOXHOUND launch Shadow Moses. It enthralled and horrified her. Hours evaporated.

When daylight had collapsed into nightfall, Lara turned the publication away in its last stretches for a stiff drink, an increasing rarity. Most often she found liquor to be all very similar. At this moment she did not feel particular about its flavour, and made herself a tall dry bourbon. She ruminated on Hal, or Otacon's, role in the events.

Lara took the drink out to her bedroom's balcony, decended the stone steps in bare feet, and let the cold wash over her. The sky was clear with vivid cerulean, stars like lit holes in a sheet of dark blue. Rains had floated in like waves over the past week. The weather only reminded her of the estrangement from herself, of Francis, and this was the first instance she felt that was preferable to ruminating on the manuscript. There was too much to take in. There was too little to grasp it with.

Once, along the Nile Delta and a few hours south of Cairo, she had been on an expedition with a friend, an archaeologist from the states of somewhat more traditional methods. It was winter, and the expedition was searching for artifacts from which deductions could be made. When the sun disappeared over the horizon, the weather was transformed and transformative, violent in its stoic cold. Lara spent most of her evenings giving acid baths to very fragile relics, but once had gotten lost and stranded just twenty minutes from their camp. She had been in a cavern since the early morning in what was otherwise a wasteland of sand, and spent the night desperately trying to keep alight a flame that kept her from freezing to death. She had felt desperate, and alone. Confidence that usually sustained her had been eroded by such a simple mistake as becoming turned around in an alien environment, and the night was long with doubt.

Until now, Lara had not felt merely solitary, which could be liberating, but isolated.

She thought too of this man, Snake, Nastasha detailed. He came off as icy, and sad, and imminently strong. Lara thought of the men in suits and embroiled in institutional dogma that surrounded institutions of higher learning and felt a pang of regret that everything seemed more mild.

Bubbling somewhere underneath a melancholy unlike her was also an excitement, and an anticipation radiating outwards.

When she returned inside and to the manuscript, she had finished her bourbon and felt significantly more lightheaded for it. It was another hour before she finished it, and she put the stack of paper down for only a minute before crossing the room to her phone. Lara dialed the number Otacon had scribbled on the last page. She watched wall-mounted candles flicker in her bedroom while waiting for the line to pick up. Lara got the machine instead.

"Hi, if you've got this number, I'll call you back when I get the chance. I'm probably not in the hotel right now, but I shouldn't be long. Thanks."

"Hal, it's Lara. I just finished "In the Darkness."" She paused, not sure where else to go from there. "I don't know what to think. It's... big. I have a hard time believing some of it, but-"

The other end of the line clicked. "Lara?"

"I wasn't sure I'd get you so late. How's things?"

"I'm fine, I can't sleep anyway. I'm still on US time and it's got me all-"

"Right, look, listen, I want in." Pregnant silence. "Hal?" When there was no reply: "Attendant?"

"No, I'm here. I'm, uh, just a little surprised."

"It's true. I can't believe something like this would have happened. Or that it has a precedent."

"Yeah, I guess Snake was involved in stuff like this twice before. I'm not real clear on the details, and-"

"I want to meet him."

"Uh, come again?"

"I want to meet him. This, mm, Solid Snake? He seems an odd bloke, but I want to meet him." And then, on the heels of that. "I have to."

"Well, sure. I figured."

"Tomorrow."

There was shuffling on the other side of the line, and a sound like knocking something to the floor. A click, more shuffling. "Lara, I'm really overjoyed that you're on board, but I don't know how we can do that. Nastasha had to fly back to California today, then she'll be in New York. I've got to be to New York by Monday, I couldn't get Snake here any sooner than the day I leave. You're going to have to be patient."

"Hal, patience I'm afraid is not a strong suit of mine, but if you insist. Is there any chance I can convince you to stay? I could cover airfare, if that's a concern."

Otacon laughed. "No, that's not it. We're going to be looking at headquarters in the city, and I have to draft a proposal to the United Nations and start building partnerships, get us on the books. We're officially a nuclear disarmament committee, so I have to be on-site for the application." He paused,

seeming to consider. "I suppose I can put it off a day or two. Snake has to come back with me anyway."

"Is that really what you call him?"

"Huh? Oh, Snake? Yeah. I guess I could call him by his real name, but it sounds weird. We tried Hal and Dave for a few phonecalls, but it didn't last long."

"And you, Mr. Danziger?"

Otacon laughed. "Oh, right. Sorry about that. We weren't sure what sort of person you were, so I thought that before we gave you "In the Darkness," I'd use my stepmom's maiden name. But you checked out, so I guess it's a moot point."

"'Checked out'?"

"Yeah. I...uh, sort of had you investigated."

"Well, I'm not fond of it, but I guess I expected it. I should say I think Hal Emmerich sounds much nicer than that, or Otacon even."

"Heh, thanks. I should get going, though, I've got some arrangements to make."

"Sure." Lara hesitated. "I'd like to meet this Meryl woman, too. You're all so young. She must be, what, twenty two now?"

"Huh? Oh. Meryl's, ah, not actually part of Philanthropy. She and Snake... It's a sore subject for him. You might want to wait."

"Oh, I didn't know. Hal, I'm terribly sorry."

Lara could practically hear Otacon blushing. "No, really, there's no trouble, it's just... she refused. Snake knows more about it than I do, though."

"No doubt." She looked at the clock. It was nearing midnight. "Hal, can I ask you something? One last thing?" On the wall, a candle dripped wax to the floor. "What's he like?" His name tasted strange spoken aloud. "Snake, I mean."

"He's... complicated? I don't know. Good at listening." Otacon thought for a moment. The light in Lara's room shimmered. "Snake's a good guy. I don't know if anybody else would have thought of all of this without him. When I saw him for the first time after Shadow Moses, he said the idea wasn't his, and I'm not sure I get it. He said it was his friend's."

"His friend?"

"Yeah. Someone named Frank. I don't really understand, but that's what he says. Why, are you nervous?"

"Mm? No, no, not at all." Lara bit her lip. "He just seems..."

"Big, somehow?"

"Yeah."

They said their goodbyes shortly after that, and Otacon had a final comment on the matter before bidding her goodnight.

"You get used to him."

Lara thought that very, very unlikely.

And she was right.