Who says that in every movie or story the hero walks away into the sunset with his lady? It's nice yes, because the evil has been destroyed and it seems right for the ending to be all smiles. But that's really old hat and in my opinion, it's rather clichéd, though I do enjoy happy endings as much as the next person does. But I do find that the films, books and games which, I have found memorable, have had lots of action and happy occasions in the main part and end in tragedy.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a miserable person! I suppose one way to explain this fic and my previous one, is to explore the themes in them, and examine my views on them, in a creative way.
Anyway, this fanfic is considerably shorter than my last one, so I hope you enjoy it. I'm just nervous about whether I've made as good a job of it as my last one!
Disclaimer: the characters and such in this fanfic are not mine, and are the property of Konami and their creator, Mr.Kojima.
Love Never Dies.
"This time I hope he's finished... for good." Snake thought to himself with a sigh of relief. He stood there for a moment or two, bent over in exhaustion; beat up from the last couple of fights with his brother, and his equal, with his hands on his knees. Snake shook his head to get rid of the dizzy feeling from Liquid's punches and get over the bizarre situation he'd been in. Fighting somebody who is like a negative copy of yourself doesn't happen every day. He looked up. One thought occupied his mind, blotting out the aches and the stinging from his cuts and bruises.
"Meryl..." he thought. "Gotta see if she's okay..." Snake stood up tall and wiped the sweat off of his face with his forearm, only for it to return just as quickly. He climbed down to where Meryl lay and jogged over to her, as quickly as his battered body would allow him.
"Meryl?" Called Snake. He quickly knelt down next to her and began to untie the bindings around her wrists. Snake rolled her onto her back and slipped his arms underneath her to lift her up and lean her against his knee.
"What a mess." Snake thought looking at the reddened bandages wrapped round her gunshot wounds, a reminder to Snake of how he'd first lost her. Snake couldn't begin to imagine what that bastard Ocelot had done to her while she was captured; he didn't really want to either.
He brushed her red hair out of her eyes affectionately. Snake remembered how her pretty eyes had given away her identity when he first called her on the Codec.
"C'mon, wake up Meryl. This should be easy compared to all of the other things you've been through." Snake said in his head, waiting expectantly for her to come round. He gently shook her.
Meryl's head rolled limply over to one side. Snake stopped, not believing what he had just seen, noticing now that she was cold and completely motionless in his arms.
...Meryl?" Snake called again. The hope in his voice had faded away. He could feel the heavy, hollow feeling deep inside of him grow and his throat tied itself in a knot. Snake couldn't feel anything. His mind was blank. Cold and hot anger rose up in a tide all over him.
"This isn't... It can't be... No!!" Snake thought over the chaos of a million thoughts and feelings flying around randomly in his head. "I never fail!! Never!!" he thought angrily. The leaden feeling grew.
Empty.
Snake could feel his heart sink down. The wave of anger returned again, much stronger and violent. Snake didn't want to accept it, he couldn't. He didn't know what else to do. What could he do? The training and all of the fighting he'd seen as a young soldier hadn't prepared him for this kind of death. Snake held Meryl closer to him.
"MERYYYYYYYLLLL!!" Snake yelled out loud, throwing his head back.
His cry echoed in the empty arena, well after he had stopped. To begin with he felt better, but now guilt came crashing down on him. Snake felt his throat tighten up again. He couldn't say anything; the words stuck and wouldn't come out. The deep void reached down into the pit of his stomach, the realisation of her death made him feel queasy, and his head spun, still full of jumbled words, pictures and moods. Snake put Meryl down gently, and let his head fall back down. He looked down at her and closed his eyes.
"Why?" he thought. "Why does it always happen to me? What have I done?! " Snake carried on, turning it over and over in his mind.
He remembered; back to when he'd been captured. All of the pain... he'd given up to Ocelot's torture...
"I failed... It was my fault." Snake thought reluctantly. Once again his mind was vacant. Snake could only remember those words Ocelot had said to him before letting him be dragged back to the cell;
"I hope you can still look at yourself in the mirror my friend."
Even if Snake tried right now, he imagined that the mirror would be in pieces, out of disgrace at him.
He opened his eyes and saw Meryl again.
"Meryl died because of me..." he thought pathetically. Snake mustered up the strength to say what he wanted out loud.
"...Forgive me." Snake gently said in a low voice. It wasn't good enough though. Saying that he was sorry wouldn't let the anguish or the resentment go away, it wouldn't bring her back. The familiar feeling of rage came back with force. Snake couldn't keep it hoarded up simmering away inside of him. He raised his fist and brought it crashing down onto the metal underneath him with a loud metallic clash.
"Damn!"
Snake hung his head away from Meryl, rested his other arm on his knee and supported himself on his right arm where he'd hit REX. His hand throbbed from hitting the cold metal. Snake shuddered in bitterness.
"I gave into my fear!" he began in a rough voice, trying to make sense of everything that buzzed inside his head. He couldn't bring himself to look at her. Snake didn't want her to see him feeling so miserable and looking so broken. He paused, trying to search for the words and pick them out from the rest, all vying for his attention.
"I gave into my pain!" Snake said his voice louder this time. "I sold your life to save my own..." he growled. Snake continued to put himself through this ordeal, blaming himself solely for Meryl's death.
"I promised that I'd protect you!" he thought and then said out loud as an afterthought. "I'm a loser."
Snake remembered how Meryl had described him as a hero. Otacon, even Sniper Wolf, they'd all compared him to heroes. He didn't feel like one right now. Snake might have saved the world and completed the mission he'd been sent on, but he had failed in his own one. This was the reality of it and not like on films where the hero always rescues the girl and they go off into the sunset to whatever happy life that followed.
"I'm not the hero you thought I was!" Snake shouted out, his voice beginning to go as he choked back his heartache. He threw his head back again.
"...I'm nothing!!!" Snake roared trying to dispel all of the legends that there were about him. Right now Snake didn't feel like the man who made the impossible possible; a phrase used so much to describe his incredible feats. Snake could defeat such petrifying killing machines like Metal Gear REX and had done so twice before, but he couldn't save the woman he loved.
"If I ever meet the guy who said that love conquers all... " Snake thought bitterly.
He tried to calm down and let his hazy mind clear. But one thing that wasn't going to clear for years was his conscience. He'd suffered enough after he'd killed Grey Fox, in Zanzibar and the revelation that Big Boss had presented him with.
"Maybe Raven was right... I might never find any peace." Snake thought wretchedly. He looked at Meryl. She'd tried so hard to be something that she just wasn't destined for, and even though she knew that it wasn't her, she'd carried on with a brave face, to be like her father and the heroes she admired.
"I'm not one of them, that's for sure. How can I be anyone's hero if I fail myself, let alone all of the people I've made promises to?" Snake thought. He knew that there was no one there to answer the question, and could only say the same phrase he'd heard himself using a thousand times in the entire mission.
"Meryl, I'm sorry! Forgive me!" he implored and lowered his head down again. It was as if those words were magic, and Snake heard the familiar sound of stealth camouflage being deactivated. He didn't look round, guessing that it was Otacon.
"Meryl can't forgive anyone anymore." Otacon said calmly, an edge of sympathy in his voice. Snake looked up and round at him out of the corner of his eye. He was surprised that Otacon had appeared; at least there was someone left he could trust.
"Otacon?" Snake said weakly before looking away again. He closed his eyes so Otacon couldn't see the kind of pain he was in. But, Snake knew that from where Hal stood, the way he was slumped down on his knees battered and bruised at Meryl's side said it all.
"She's gone, Snake..." Otacon said gently trying not to cause an unexpected reaction in Snake.
"...Because of me..." Snake said his voice a little stronger; trying to disguise what was going on inside his mind. But it was still clear from those words that Snake was being really harsh on himself and suffering for it. Snake wouldn't have been surprised if he'd been there watching as the whole scene unfolded.
Otacon, being scientifically minded, tried to put an explanation on why Snake was behaving the way he was. Snake wasn't sure why he was plaguing himself over her death, he didn't really care.
"Look, Meryl died, and it was all my fault. There's nothing more that needs to be explained!" Snake thought.
"I guess blaming yourself makes it easier, huh." Otacon began. "If you do that, you can keep the pain at a nice safe distance..." he continued. Snake knew that there was an element of truth in his words, and it was a pretty accurate summary, but Snake didn't really feel ready to admit it. Out of the serenity he'd fought to piece together, Snake felt ire beginning to bubble up again. Snake's head snapped up and round to look at Otacon.
"What the hell do you know!?" he blurted furiously. "Meryl's dead!..." Snake said before looking away. "I lost!" he ended, his voice now barely there. Snake could see that Hal was unshaken by his outburst and returned back to pine over his self-pity.
"Why don't you get it?" Snake thought angrily. "Maybe I should have let Ocelot kill me..." Snake thought piteously. "taken the pain for her instead..."
"So..." Otacon began slowly. "are you gonna stay here and die...Along with her?" he said pausing to let Snake reflect on his words. There was a brief silence before Otacon began again trying to persuade Snake to start thinking reasonably again and untangle the shambles that was going on in his mind.
"Snake... people die. But death is not defeat. That's what Hemingway said." Otacon said carefully trying to get on the same wavelength as Snake. Snake could see where this was going. He was after all, a soldier, in his genes and from his training. He was used to making sure that he achieved the objective and not ever failing. It seemed that Otacon understood Snake more than he had thought.
Otacon took a breath and began to continue.
"I lost Wolf too. But that wasn't defeat." He said finally. "She and I will be together forever." Otacon said with a ray of brightness in that last sentence. Snake felt a little embarrassed for accusing him of not knowing what it was like to lose someone you loved, but could see the sense in his words. Meryl might have left this world, and who knows, maybe now she was in a better place, but it didn't mean that her memory should have to fade or be looked back on with regret and sadness. Snake played some of Meryl's words back in his mind;
"Don't forget me!"
Snake looked up. "Together forever?" he said softly looking at Meryl lying down before him. It was then that Snake could see a little hope in the midst of all of the gloom.
"It's true Wolf is dead. But our love didn't die along with her. We didn't loose anything." Otacon concluded. It was true; right up to the end Sniper Wolf had cared and loved Hal. The same for Otacon; he really didn't want them to fight and had tried a much as he could to make them stop fighting, because he loved her. Snake still looked at Meryl lying there in front of him.
"Whatever you went through, I just hope that you remembered me." Snake thought in his head. It still worried him if her memories of him were good. He felt guilty for abandoning her when she got shot, but he couldn't have helped her; they might have both died. Snake shut his eyes and could see Meryl there. Maybe things weren't so bad.
Snake was brought back to the present when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Otacon stood next to him.
"Let's live Snake." He said gently. "There's a parking garage right next door. We can get to the surface from there. I've released all the security locks."
Snake didn't move, didn't even blink. Otacon tried again to get through to him.
" We can escape... It'll be okay. C'mon." Otacon continued offering Snake another shred of hope. "You have my word on it." He finished firmly. Snake was surprised at the evolution he'd witnessed in Otacon. He was no longer the scared, reclusive person who was frightened of his own shadow. Otacon had dealt with the death of the woman he loved, he watched her live her last few moments and be granted release and had finally come to be at peace with it. He was a much stronger person now, sure of himself in the world. In a way Snake admired him for that, for bringing him back to something which was more normal.
"Otacon... you've changed." Snake said slowly.
"I'm through regretting the past. Life isn't about loss you know." Otacon said strongly, reinforcing that he was indeed a new man. Even Otacon had his demons; Snake remembered Otacon telling him about his own family heritage and how his grandfather had been in the Manhattan Project to develop the first ever nuclear weapon. He and Snake were no different from each other in that respect. Both were not proud of their ancestry.
They both stood there in quiet contemplation. Otacon was the only one to react when distant booms echoed in the distance. Snake continued to bury himself in his thoughts.
"It's started..." Otacon announced. "Those guys, it seems that they only hurry when they're destroying things." He said sadly.
"Good." Hal said defiantly. "Let 'em destroy it. But they can't destroy the human spirit."
Snake had finally come to a decision. He wasn't going to stay here and dwell on the past.
"I've done enough. The last time I spent six years alone in Alaska over something which couldn't be changed." He thought.
"Okay." Snake said strongly. He got up and stood tall, beginning to return to his usual self. "Let's go."
Snake looked back to Meryl. This time he wasn't filled up completely with guilt and regret when he saw her face.
"Meryl... I hope you're till watching me..." Snake said softly. "Maybe I can prove myself to you after all..."
Snake looked up and began to make the decent down the fallen metal behemoth that had been Metal Gear REX. Snake still ached all over, his limbs stiff and painful from the fight with his shadow. All the time the booming noise got louder and closer to the point where the ground was shaking. Snake waited impatiently for his less agile friend to climb down.
"C'mon, hustle!" he said loudly, wanting to get away as quickly as possible before they were bombed. Metal Gear REX was precariously leaned against the wall, and if it got any worse, there was a real danger of it falling on top of them.
"Snake it's cold outside. You'll freeze like that." Otacon said. Snake had completely forgotten that it was bitterly cold outside and he was stripped to the waist. He looked around and spotted his sneaking suit lying further away below REX.
"My sneaking suit!" he exclaimed and began running towards where he could see it and crawled under the metal legs of REX.
"You'd better hurry!" Otacon called, his voice sounding distant.
Snake retrieved his sneaking suit and pulled it on, zipping it up to his neck before dashing off back to where Otacon stood.
"Hurry!" called Otacon getting increasingly concerned with the explosions that rang out far above them.
"Now you look more like yourself again." Hal said when Snake had returned and turned to run into the garage. Snake watched him go and turned around to look back to where Meryl lay on top of REX. He just wanted to look at her one last time, before abandoning her once again.
Snake stood there and it seemed as if the world had been brought to a standstill for a moment. Her name was on his lips.
"...Meryl..." Snake said softly.
He waited, listening as it echoed in the room.
Snake lowered his head, a faint smile on his face. Those words Meryl had said to him when she lay there bleeding after being shot, were brought back again;
"Don't forget me!"
He turned around slowly. Snake didn't want to go but he had to; dying here would only be accepting defeat. He began to run after Otacon, before falling concrete sealed it off to the world.
Snake kept on running, not turning back.
He had another mission to do; keep a promise he pledged that he would never break.
• Silver Wolf •
What am I trying to say with this fanfic? I suppose in this one, it got me thinking about what I would do if I were in Snake's position. The answer to that is I still don't know. It's one of those things I think you can't put any definite answer on until you are there and then you do something, which you would have never imagined. I like to think that when you die, you go somewhere else and see all the people you love and I guess that's a universal idea for all people, no matter what your religion. As a final note, I was going to leave this untitled, but I have to call it something. Even at the end I still find it hard to find a good title to sum up the story. Also in the original copy, I did do an illustration to it, but I didn't think it would be allowed here, so you can find the original on my homepage.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a miserable person! I suppose one way to explain this fic and my previous one, is to explore the themes in them, and examine my views on them, in a creative way.
Anyway, this fanfic is considerably shorter than my last one, so I hope you enjoy it. I'm just nervous about whether I've made as good a job of it as my last one!
Disclaimer: the characters and such in this fanfic are not mine, and are the property of Konami and their creator, Mr.Kojima.
Love Never Dies.
"This time I hope he's finished... for good." Snake thought to himself with a sigh of relief. He stood there for a moment or two, bent over in exhaustion; beat up from the last couple of fights with his brother, and his equal, with his hands on his knees. Snake shook his head to get rid of the dizzy feeling from Liquid's punches and get over the bizarre situation he'd been in. Fighting somebody who is like a negative copy of yourself doesn't happen every day. He looked up. One thought occupied his mind, blotting out the aches and the stinging from his cuts and bruises.
"Meryl..." he thought. "Gotta see if she's okay..." Snake stood up tall and wiped the sweat off of his face with his forearm, only for it to return just as quickly. He climbed down to where Meryl lay and jogged over to her, as quickly as his battered body would allow him.
"Meryl?" Called Snake. He quickly knelt down next to her and began to untie the bindings around her wrists. Snake rolled her onto her back and slipped his arms underneath her to lift her up and lean her against his knee.
"What a mess." Snake thought looking at the reddened bandages wrapped round her gunshot wounds, a reminder to Snake of how he'd first lost her. Snake couldn't begin to imagine what that bastard Ocelot had done to her while she was captured; he didn't really want to either.
He brushed her red hair out of her eyes affectionately. Snake remembered how her pretty eyes had given away her identity when he first called her on the Codec.
"C'mon, wake up Meryl. This should be easy compared to all of the other things you've been through." Snake said in his head, waiting expectantly for her to come round. He gently shook her.
Meryl's head rolled limply over to one side. Snake stopped, not believing what he had just seen, noticing now that she was cold and completely motionless in his arms.
...Meryl?" Snake called again. The hope in his voice had faded away. He could feel the heavy, hollow feeling deep inside of him grow and his throat tied itself in a knot. Snake couldn't feel anything. His mind was blank. Cold and hot anger rose up in a tide all over him.
"This isn't... It can't be... No!!" Snake thought over the chaos of a million thoughts and feelings flying around randomly in his head. "I never fail!! Never!!" he thought angrily. The leaden feeling grew.
Empty.
Snake could feel his heart sink down. The wave of anger returned again, much stronger and violent. Snake didn't want to accept it, he couldn't. He didn't know what else to do. What could he do? The training and all of the fighting he'd seen as a young soldier hadn't prepared him for this kind of death. Snake held Meryl closer to him.
"MERYYYYYYYLLLL!!" Snake yelled out loud, throwing his head back.
His cry echoed in the empty arena, well after he had stopped. To begin with he felt better, but now guilt came crashing down on him. Snake felt his throat tighten up again. He couldn't say anything; the words stuck and wouldn't come out. The deep void reached down into the pit of his stomach, the realisation of her death made him feel queasy, and his head spun, still full of jumbled words, pictures and moods. Snake put Meryl down gently, and let his head fall back down. He looked down at her and closed his eyes.
"Why?" he thought. "Why does it always happen to me? What have I done?! " Snake carried on, turning it over and over in his mind.
He remembered; back to when he'd been captured. All of the pain... he'd given up to Ocelot's torture...
"I failed... It was my fault." Snake thought reluctantly. Once again his mind was vacant. Snake could only remember those words Ocelot had said to him before letting him be dragged back to the cell;
"I hope you can still look at yourself in the mirror my friend."
Even if Snake tried right now, he imagined that the mirror would be in pieces, out of disgrace at him.
He opened his eyes and saw Meryl again.
"Meryl died because of me..." he thought pathetically. Snake mustered up the strength to say what he wanted out loud.
"...Forgive me." Snake gently said in a low voice. It wasn't good enough though. Saying that he was sorry wouldn't let the anguish or the resentment go away, it wouldn't bring her back. The familiar feeling of rage came back with force. Snake couldn't keep it hoarded up simmering away inside of him. He raised his fist and brought it crashing down onto the metal underneath him with a loud metallic clash.
"Damn!"
Snake hung his head away from Meryl, rested his other arm on his knee and supported himself on his right arm where he'd hit REX. His hand throbbed from hitting the cold metal. Snake shuddered in bitterness.
"I gave into my fear!" he began in a rough voice, trying to make sense of everything that buzzed inside his head. He couldn't bring himself to look at her. Snake didn't want her to see him feeling so miserable and looking so broken. He paused, trying to search for the words and pick them out from the rest, all vying for his attention.
"I gave into my pain!" Snake said his voice louder this time. "I sold your life to save my own..." he growled. Snake continued to put himself through this ordeal, blaming himself solely for Meryl's death.
"I promised that I'd protect you!" he thought and then said out loud as an afterthought. "I'm a loser."
Snake remembered how Meryl had described him as a hero. Otacon, even Sniper Wolf, they'd all compared him to heroes. He didn't feel like one right now. Snake might have saved the world and completed the mission he'd been sent on, but he had failed in his own one. This was the reality of it and not like on films where the hero always rescues the girl and they go off into the sunset to whatever happy life that followed.
"I'm not the hero you thought I was!" Snake shouted out, his voice beginning to go as he choked back his heartache. He threw his head back again.
"...I'm nothing!!!" Snake roared trying to dispel all of the legends that there were about him. Right now Snake didn't feel like the man who made the impossible possible; a phrase used so much to describe his incredible feats. Snake could defeat such petrifying killing machines like Metal Gear REX and had done so twice before, but he couldn't save the woman he loved.
"If I ever meet the guy who said that love conquers all... " Snake thought bitterly.
He tried to calm down and let his hazy mind clear. But one thing that wasn't going to clear for years was his conscience. He'd suffered enough after he'd killed Grey Fox, in Zanzibar and the revelation that Big Boss had presented him with.
"Maybe Raven was right... I might never find any peace." Snake thought wretchedly. He looked at Meryl. She'd tried so hard to be something that she just wasn't destined for, and even though she knew that it wasn't her, she'd carried on with a brave face, to be like her father and the heroes she admired.
"I'm not one of them, that's for sure. How can I be anyone's hero if I fail myself, let alone all of the people I've made promises to?" Snake thought. He knew that there was no one there to answer the question, and could only say the same phrase he'd heard himself using a thousand times in the entire mission.
"Meryl, I'm sorry! Forgive me!" he implored and lowered his head down again. It was as if those words were magic, and Snake heard the familiar sound of stealth camouflage being deactivated. He didn't look round, guessing that it was Otacon.
"Meryl can't forgive anyone anymore." Otacon said calmly, an edge of sympathy in his voice. Snake looked up and round at him out of the corner of his eye. He was surprised that Otacon had appeared; at least there was someone left he could trust.
"Otacon?" Snake said weakly before looking away again. He closed his eyes so Otacon couldn't see the kind of pain he was in. But, Snake knew that from where Hal stood, the way he was slumped down on his knees battered and bruised at Meryl's side said it all.
"She's gone, Snake..." Otacon said gently trying not to cause an unexpected reaction in Snake.
"...Because of me..." Snake said his voice a little stronger; trying to disguise what was going on inside his mind. But it was still clear from those words that Snake was being really harsh on himself and suffering for it. Snake wouldn't have been surprised if he'd been there watching as the whole scene unfolded.
Otacon, being scientifically minded, tried to put an explanation on why Snake was behaving the way he was. Snake wasn't sure why he was plaguing himself over her death, he didn't really care.
"Look, Meryl died, and it was all my fault. There's nothing more that needs to be explained!" Snake thought.
"I guess blaming yourself makes it easier, huh." Otacon began. "If you do that, you can keep the pain at a nice safe distance..." he continued. Snake knew that there was an element of truth in his words, and it was a pretty accurate summary, but Snake didn't really feel ready to admit it. Out of the serenity he'd fought to piece together, Snake felt ire beginning to bubble up again. Snake's head snapped up and round to look at Otacon.
"What the hell do you know!?" he blurted furiously. "Meryl's dead!..." Snake said before looking away. "I lost!" he ended, his voice now barely there. Snake could see that Hal was unshaken by his outburst and returned back to pine over his self-pity.
"Why don't you get it?" Snake thought angrily. "Maybe I should have let Ocelot kill me..." Snake thought piteously. "taken the pain for her instead..."
"So..." Otacon began slowly. "are you gonna stay here and die...Along with her?" he said pausing to let Snake reflect on his words. There was a brief silence before Otacon began again trying to persuade Snake to start thinking reasonably again and untangle the shambles that was going on in his mind.
"Snake... people die. But death is not defeat. That's what Hemingway said." Otacon said carefully trying to get on the same wavelength as Snake. Snake could see where this was going. He was after all, a soldier, in his genes and from his training. He was used to making sure that he achieved the objective and not ever failing. It seemed that Otacon understood Snake more than he had thought.
Otacon took a breath and began to continue.
"I lost Wolf too. But that wasn't defeat." He said finally. "She and I will be together forever." Otacon said with a ray of brightness in that last sentence. Snake felt a little embarrassed for accusing him of not knowing what it was like to lose someone you loved, but could see the sense in his words. Meryl might have left this world, and who knows, maybe now she was in a better place, but it didn't mean that her memory should have to fade or be looked back on with regret and sadness. Snake played some of Meryl's words back in his mind;
"Don't forget me!"
Snake looked up. "Together forever?" he said softly looking at Meryl lying down before him. It was then that Snake could see a little hope in the midst of all of the gloom.
"It's true Wolf is dead. But our love didn't die along with her. We didn't loose anything." Otacon concluded. It was true; right up to the end Sniper Wolf had cared and loved Hal. The same for Otacon; he really didn't want them to fight and had tried a much as he could to make them stop fighting, because he loved her. Snake still looked at Meryl lying there in front of him.
"Whatever you went through, I just hope that you remembered me." Snake thought in his head. It still worried him if her memories of him were good. He felt guilty for abandoning her when she got shot, but he couldn't have helped her; they might have both died. Snake shut his eyes and could see Meryl there. Maybe things weren't so bad.
Snake was brought back to the present when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Otacon stood next to him.
"Let's live Snake." He said gently. "There's a parking garage right next door. We can get to the surface from there. I've released all the security locks."
Snake didn't move, didn't even blink. Otacon tried again to get through to him.
" We can escape... It'll be okay. C'mon." Otacon continued offering Snake another shred of hope. "You have my word on it." He finished firmly. Snake was surprised at the evolution he'd witnessed in Otacon. He was no longer the scared, reclusive person who was frightened of his own shadow. Otacon had dealt with the death of the woman he loved, he watched her live her last few moments and be granted release and had finally come to be at peace with it. He was a much stronger person now, sure of himself in the world. In a way Snake admired him for that, for bringing him back to something which was more normal.
"Otacon... you've changed." Snake said slowly.
"I'm through regretting the past. Life isn't about loss you know." Otacon said strongly, reinforcing that he was indeed a new man. Even Otacon had his demons; Snake remembered Otacon telling him about his own family heritage and how his grandfather had been in the Manhattan Project to develop the first ever nuclear weapon. He and Snake were no different from each other in that respect. Both were not proud of their ancestry.
They both stood there in quiet contemplation. Otacon was the only one to react when distant booms echoed in the distance. Snake continued to bury himself in his thoughts.
"It's started..." Otacon announced. "Those guys, it seems that they only hurry when they're destroying things." He said sadly.
"Good." Hal said defiantly. "Let 'em destroy it. But they can't destroy the human spirit."
Snake had finally come to a decision. He wasn't going to stay here and dwell on the past.
"I've done enough. The last time I spent six years alone in Alaska over something which couldn't be changed." He thought.
"Okay." Snake said strongly. He got up and stood tall, beginning to return to his usual self. "Let's go."
Snake looked back to Meryl. This time he wasn't filled up completely with guilt and regret when he saw her face.
"Meryl... I hope you're till watching me..." Snake said softly. "Maybe I can prove myself to you after all..."
Snake looked up and began to make the decent down the fallen metal behemoth that had been Metal Gear REX. Snake still ached all over, his limbs stiff and painful from the fight with his shadow. All the time the booming noise got louder and closer to the point where the ground was shaking. Snake waited impatiently for his less agile friend to climb down.
"C'mon, hustle!" he said loudly, wanting to get away as quickly as possible before they were bombed. Metal Gear REX was precariously leaned against the wall, and if it got any worse, there was a real danger of it falling on top of them.
"Snake it's cold outside. You'll freeze like that." Otacon said. Snake had completely forgotten that it was bitterly cold outside and he was stripped to the waist. He looked around and spotted his sneaking suit lying further away below REX.
"My sneaking suit!" he exclaimed and began running towards where he could see it and crawled under the metal legs of REX.
"You'd better hurry!" Otacon called, his voice sounding distant.
Snake retrieved his sneaking suit and pulled it on, zipping it up to his neck before dashing off back to where Otacon stood.
"Hurry!" called Otacon getting increasingly concerned with the explosions that rang out far above them.
"Now you look more like yourself again." Hal said when Snake had returned and turned to run into the garage. Snake watched him go and turned around to look back to where Meryl lay on top of REX. He just wanted to look at her one last time, before abandoning her once again.
Snake stood there and it seemed as if the world had been brought to a standstill for a moment. Her name was on his lips.
"...Meryl..." Snake said softly.
He waited, listening as it echoed in the room.
Snake lowered his head, a faint smile on his face. Those words Meryl had said to him when she lay there bleeding after being shot, were brought back again;
"Don't forget me!"
He turned around slowly. Snake didn't want to go but he had to; dying here would only be accepting defeat. He began to run after Otacon, before falling concrete sealed it off to the world.
Snake kept on running, not turning back.
He had another mission to do; keep a promise he pledged that he would never break.
• Silver Wolf •
What am I trying to say with this fanfic? I suppose in this one, it got me thinking about what I would do if I were in Snake's position. The answer to that is I still don't know. It's one of those things I think you can't put any definite answer on until you are there and then you do something, which you would have never imagined. I like to think that when you die, you go somewhere else and see all the people you love and I guess that's a universal idea for all people, no matter what your religion. As a final note, I was going to leave this untitled, but I have to call it something. Even at the end I still find it hard to find a good title to sum up the story. Also in the original copy, I did do an illustration to it, but I didn't think it would be allowed here, so you can find the original on my homepage.