They made their way down the fissure with a minimum of talk. Each felt too hot, too nauseated for much chatter, and Snake's fever was a baking question mark between the two of them. He stood okay; he had insisted an unsafe amount of painkillers to keep the pain at bay so he might make the trek reasonably, and they had washed his pants when the knife had entered his thigh. But the agony was unfathomable for Lara. She could see it in the glints of squinted eyes, or when they moved beyond clay and rock, forcing maneuvers that were cumbersome at the best of times over terrain that was precarious and dangerous over the best of circumstances. At these points, Snake made the most concerted effort she'd ever seen to obscure the pain he was in, but spotting it was still child's play. His lips turned into a grimace. The line of teeth were bared by the awful curl of his thin lips peeling back to reveal the fullness of it. She spotted the limp periodically, when he thought no one could be looking. Lara did not offer him succor, knowing the answer before any question could be asked. Instead, the two of them just walked and observed Snake's pain in his leg like a worsening beacon of poor omen.

When they'd passed a rough approximation of the halfway mark of the cliffside, Snake broke the silence. She wasn't sure if it was for their benefit or his.

"He's tough, you know. Tougher than you'd expect," Snake said.

"Is he?" Malcolm asked. The condescension in his voice could have been accident or carelessness. Lara didn't care. She knew his temperament had seen better days, as had hers. Commentary had no place.

"Yeah," Snake said. "There was a woman a long time ago. She died on him, but he kept going even though no one asked him to. Saved my life, and the lives of who knows how many others in the process. He's…" Snake stopped, found it hard to light a cigarette while still keeping purchase on the thin trail that the cliffside offered. Solid Snake was at the rear, with Malcolm Vines at point. Lara took Vines' lighter and provided the cigarette with its ember, without comment. Snake nodded her thanks. "Dunno. I just have faith in him."

"He could sell you, and me, and her—"

"I am present for this conversation, thank you," Lara said to Vines.

"Down the river," Vines finished.

Snake inhaled into his lungs the flurry of distraction that waited for him at the end his cigarette. "I know," he said. "But he won't."

They walked in silence, further into the deep ravine cutting open their path.

After Snake's leg had been patched, a brief discussion between Lara and Vines took place. Lara had taken a look around, with the prints of Merlose's men's exodus leading only to the conclusion of which direction they'd escaped to. Initially, Vines had proposed the ziplines, but attempting to move the weight of a horse on such a precarious engineering plane would have been impossible, and with only a minor bit of persuasion, Lara had convinced both men of her plan.

"And what if it's a trick," Snake said. He had taken a light dose of a handful of pills Vines had provided to keep him lucid. His brow was sweaty with feverish pain from his leg.

"Then I'm wrong, and we deal with it. But it's the shortest route down, and whatever they want with Hal isn't good news. We need to get him back now—"

"I know," Snake said.

"—And if we don't, it's more than just his life. These tracks," she said, pointing to the hoofprints leading out into the jungle and, a good hundred metres out, crossing the breach the natural divide had created, "lead into wherever they're going."

"I don't understand," Vines said. "Why didn't they bother to cover their tracks like when they attacked us?"

Lara looked, and subsequently pointed, at the substantial pool of blood where Snake had been laying. It drained out into tendrils in the sand. Vines said nothing.

"Lara," Snake said. "There's a chance we're not making it out of this. I need a favour."

Lara looked at Vines, then back to Snake. "Are you sure this is really the place for—"

"Yeah," he said. "I'm not sure we had enough prep to make this work out. This op, New York, the rest of it. We might not come back from this." He took a breath, and the world waited. "If things go sour—"

"They won't," Vines said. His jaw set like steel, and Lara felt the decision they'd made as to his allegiance justify itself.

Snake looked to Vines. "Whatever," Snake said. "look. I want you to take care of Otacon, okay? He's not like the three of us. He doesn't deserve this."

"Some faith in us you have," Vines said. He looked stern, but she caught the trace of smile at the corners of his mouth, and found herself drawn into the familiar ideal of it. She elbowed him in the ribs, and he laughed like a younger man.

Snake smiled. "Yeah, yeah. But I mean it." Snake looked out, beyond the valley the ravine had created, beyond the soil and the green and the world. "He wants to change the world. Make sure he gets the chance, okay?" Snake gestured to his leg. "Probably better for it, anyway."

"Sure," Lara said.

The two of them made eye contact. Lara held it, wondering if this was his Endgame. She thought of where she had seen that blue before, why it felt threatening and familiar at once.

"On one condition," she said.

Snake held the stare, without mirth nor apathy. "Name it," he said.

"You two are on either side of me, keeping the same promise. Okay?"

Snake held her stare for a long time, with Vines gazing out into the infinite forest. Then he took a palm, calloused and warm, and placed it on her shoulder.

"Okay. We'll keep it together, or not at all," Snake said.

Lara watched his face change. His voice dropped a register, his brow steeled itself. Each strand of stubble was razorwire. His voice was the lure of hell's mouth waiting for prey.

Worst of all, she saw a light in his eyes dim.

"Okay," he said. "Let's go.