A Note:
Bloody damn thing took forever. Sorry, as always, it's late; no reason for excuses. Double Dutch Update tomorrow, because updating via Kinkos is hardly ideal.
After the conversation collapsed, limp as a corpse, Lara took her leave of him, and made her way back to the others. She found there to be a solace in a comfort of people who were not Snake. His presence was not one that indentured her sense of empathy, nor did she imagine he cared to have it. If there were any understanding between them about a mutual interest, she didn't know it; too much noise. There was the forest and the others and the crash and her own cobbled thoughts, thick as stones, planted firmly in the demands of her strange discontent. This new information didn't dissaude any regard for him, but it was not the time nor place. It shamed her somewhat to have to constantly remind herself that comfort was not an option, but the shame, a feeling that she had only briefly felt when she thought of those gone and lost, burrowed further down than that. It was the culminative vagaries of shame, guilt made into Ouroborous, and the anger that she might need comfort for once. It wasn't long before she had no choice but to let the thought of being manipulated to kill settle in her with waves of malicious nauseation. Moreover, she felt a wild, self-serving regret. Regret of coming with them, of agreeing, of thinking this would be perhaps a bit more loud version of her normal exploits, if they could be called that. The presumptiveness of her actions, and their summarily clear hindsight, did not please her. She was made of sterner stuff, certainly. But the environ fealt alien in its familiarity, and that sensation did not settle as she thought it would throughout the rest of the day. It compacted itself, like wet sand.
For a brief time, Lara caught herself watching Otacon. If he felt likewise. If he wondered how he had agreed to a pact made with a man who had killed and would kill again.
Each of Otacon's eyes were half lidded.
His shoulder lay slumped, mouth slackened the smallest bit, and his body covered in the same unweildy moisture they had all collected. Cut on his mouth from the crash still noticeable, bleeding again from having to chew.
She let his silence maintain itself, maddening it may have been.
When a time passed and they'd eaten, Snake had returned after a few minutes to himself, so Lara cleared her throat. Ellie's head raised, but no one else.
"Yes?" Ellie said. Then, after a moment, "Miss?"
Lara stifled a laugh, not because of the unusual word choice but that she knew the adrenaline was tapering off, that it was the hysteria of secret knowledge causing impromptu humour. It made her angry again at no one but herself, and she used the anger to smother any of the stresses barking internally.
"Malcolm Vines, is it?"
He looked up, hair covering his eyes a bit, and he had to push the oily strands out of his eyes to meet hers. "Right. Have you something?"
"I do, actually. I'd like to hire you."
For a moment, no one said anything.
"In case it is not abundantly apparent, we have planned our South American exploratory photography session remarkably poorly, and we are officially in a war zone. You seem to have a certain familiarity with the armed forces, undoubtedly from your time as a relief worker,-," and at this, Vines' looked surprised. Lara restrained any smugness. "- and my companion Mr. Plissken thinks you have fine credentials." She ignored the teeth-gritted glares she received from Snake. Otacon and Ellie, on the other hand, looked enrapt. "So I'd like to keep you on as a medic, of a sort. If Ellie should need an escort, I'd be happy to provide one. I'd love to have you both on as a sort of medical go-to, but-"
"You'd create too much of a profile out here." Ellie finished. Lara was immensely grateful she didn't have to lie any more than necessary.
"Exactly, thank you, Ellie. I don't like the idea of traveling without someone of medical training. And you know the terrain remarkably well, as I'm sure you both do, Mister Vines. Would you say that's accurate?"
"Of course."
"And what do you say, then?" Lara asked.
Lara hid all surprise.
"Sure," he said.
"Excellent, then it's settled. I'm going to take Hal with me, if he has no objections-"
"No, none." In his surprise, Otacon seemed to have livened somewhat.
"-So that we might go open those crates." She tried her best not to wince when she said his peusdonym again. "Plisskin will be more than happy to stay with you, I should think, in case anything happens."
Before there was any more chatter of it, Lara and Otacon had risen as Snake began a very truncated protest, and they were off in the bush again with a filthy crowbar.
The clawing inside her head was clearing, a rapidity she was hardly satisfied with but none the less grateful for, and the air cooling in spite of the heat. She thought she heard a thunderclap miles and miles off, but couldn't be sure. The sound was felt more than heard, in brief echoing reverberations in the earth and the shiver of leafy overgrowth. Lara thought of the balm the rain would bring, how it might feel against her bare skin if she had no one around, and let herself fantasise as little a chance as there was it would happen. Rain seemed like teasing without release, and she felt solace from humidity's frustration only by the dim hope it would pour.
"Wow. What was that about?" Otacon jarred her from the ephemeral idea that she'd concocted of a downpour, and was surprised by the vividness of it. Maybe she needed escape that much. It'd been a long time since there had been a scenario so draining in such a short time.
"I'm sorry, Hal, I didn't mean to jump to something without consulting either of you." She wasn't sorry, not in the least, but for now it would be enough to say so. She didn't need to do either, as it turned out.
"Actually, I don't mind. We're in this together or not at all, I guess. I didn't really examine it too closely, I mean." He pushed the glasses up his nose. Lara could hear the effort of every climb over hollowed, felled trees in his breathing. Little tufts of strain. "It just came out of nowhere. Any reason for it?"
"Yeah. Snake and Vines got into it, and they both let it slip about each other, although nothing I can make out. Thought you might have some insight?" Lara stepped over an errant bout of knotted roots.
"Sure, what'd they say?"
"Well, after they'd finished sabre-rattling, so-to-speak, Vines said something about a warlord?"
"Warlord?"
"Mn, if I remember right, I think so." Lara pointed to a thick, waist-high crate glimmering steel in the underbrush, and Otacon nodded as they began in its direction. "Aside from the soldierly connotations, it mean anything? Remarked there were rumours of a... Saladdin, if that makes any sense? I can't imagine we're talking the Muslim conqueror, here. Has Snake ever had that code-name?"
"No, not that I know of. I can't begin to imagine what it means. I know he infiltrated Iraq in the early nineties, but beyond that, I don't have the foggiest."
"Mm, right then. How about this: Snake mentioned something about- Hal, careful, there, bloody sneakers aren't meant for this part of the world-about the ADF."
"Oh, man, that one I know. The Australian Defense Force."
"That makes sense, given the accent. Prison colony jokes aside, do you know anything about them?"
"Aside from the emphasis on Defense, not terrible. The ADF are traditionally a supplementary force with the would-be allied powers. The US, UK, that sort of thing. They've been around a long time, but they serve sorta as Brazil's military, you know?"
"My, you're a wellspring of information, Hal. I'm impressed. Although you're starting to sound a bit like Snake, I must say." They'd come to one of the crates, and Otacon began leaning on it, having worked up a slight lather. "Let's rest a moment. Are you doing okay?"
Otacon leaned forward and mopped his forehead with the lower front of his t-shirt."Yeah, I just wasn't really ready for this much activity. I'll make it." He let out a short clip of laughter, and the sound was more clean than Snake's, more young. She imagined Snake sounded grizzled even had he been Otacon's age, and the thought was amusing in its gallows pleasance. "I never thought I'd learn so much about the world's military presence. It's sort of disarming. He's left some of that stuff he knows in me a little, you know?"
She did.
Otacon cast his eyes downward, past his feet, past grass and soil and earth.
"Lara," he said. "Did you see..."
"Hm? What is it, Hal?"
"Did you watch him do it? I mean, the person back there. The..."
She waited.
And waited.
"The man Snake killed. Did you see his eyes when he did it?"
"I'm...afraid I don't understand the question."
"I need to know. If Snake..."
Lara hesitated, tried to take his stare."Hal, I think I know what you're asking. And although I have an answer for myself, you'll have to make that decision on your own." She paused and let out a sigh. Lara was beginning to see the appeal of smoking. "But I suppose that's not very helpful, is it?"
He shook his head.
"Hal, for what it's worth, no. No, I don't think Snake enjoys killing. I don't think he ever will." She thought about adding that unfortunately, Snake would almost certainly always be good at it, but thought better of it. "He... he did what he had to. If Snake enjoyed killing, there are places he could do that. It certainly wouldn't be like this." Lara felt very ill for a brief time as to what she imagined was in the crate. She hoped it would instead be the jeep repair kit she'd heard Otacon mention while dozing in and out of sleep aboard the plane, but she doubted it. "Here, give me a hand with this."
Lara planted the lip of the crowbar firmly in the corner of one of the crate's edges and hoped it would hold. This would be somewhat less easy than the others, as they hadn't taken to bending in odd mishapen cubes. This on the other hand had caved in almost entirely on one side, giving it a trapezoidal profile that Lara didn't care for. She did her best not to worry as to its contents. She'd know soon enough.
Otacon planted himself opposite Lara and took steady hold of one side, so he could push while Lara pulled. She managed to steal his sightline, and tried to peer into him. It was a marked change from Snake: every ounce of exhaustion sat behind his spectacles like murky seas. "Hal? I want you to know I'm glad you two came to me. For this, for all of it."
"Huh? Why? After everything that's happened so far, we're not even sure what we can do, if anything. Or what there is to do, aside from, well, sabotage I guess."
"Because..." Lara bit her lip, burrowing into herself for a reason. She found one. "Because this is awful. I don't want to lie to you. This is... hard. One of the harder things I've had to do. But it's the right thing to do. Okay? I want you to know you've done well. Thank you." She forced a smile, and found it easier than she expected. Natural, even. "Let's get this thing open, right?"
When Otacon smiled back, she felt at ease.
It didn't last long; a bitter taste of the knowledge of what Snake told her swarmed in through ragged fissures.