The impact of the the cell's concrete floor to Hal's body hurt way more than it should have. The two men hadn't thrown him on to it very hard but the preexisting bruises and injuries from the beatings made him feel like he had gone through it. Hal lifted himself up as high as his shaking arms would let him but kept his head down.

"You know, Dr. Emmerich, Lash and I have been very gracious bringing you food everyday. And for you to decide to not answer a simple question we asked you, well...that kind of hurts our feelings."

"That's right, Lucas," Lash said. "We've been nicer to you than we ever had to be so, we think you owe us an apology for being so damn ungrateful."

Hal felt his insides rearrange when Lash sent a hard kick into his ribs. He wrapped his arms around them and desperately suppressed back any sound of agony that wanted to escape. He didn't want to give them the satisfaction of hearing him in pain.

"You see, that's the kind of treatment we're talking about," Lash pressed his foot down on the spot on Hal's stomach he had had driven the blunt end of a baseball bat into moments earlier. "Let's try this again, Dr. Emmerich. The question was 'How do you think that little girl of yours would taste?'"

"GO TO HELL!"

Lucas took his turn and re-engulfed Hal's insides with a kick that lit fires to every nerve ending in his body.

"That's enough, you two. We're not trying to kill the poor bastard." Lash and Lucas turned to face Trevor at the same time as he walked over to Hal. He made a face at him and sighed in irritation. "Do you two nitwits listen to anything? Look at him. He's a mess. What are Uri and Marshall supposed to do with him now?"

Even at seventeen and almost a foot under Lucas and Lash, he carried the authority of his father, Rhino, in the way he walked and talked. The two visibly scrambled a bit in his presence for words and Trevor held up his hand when he saw Lucas about to talk. "I don't want to know. Just don't let this happen again. From now on, you guys are to bring him food and that's it. Leave everything else to Marshall, Sophia, and Uri."

"Whatcha got there?" Lash asked.

Trevor patted the black, canvas satchel on his hip in poisoned affection. "It's a greeting gift for our friend, Dr. Emmerich, since this is our first meeting."

"Do you need us for anything?"

Trevor rolled his eyes. "No, Lash, I don't need you for anything. I'd like it if the both of you got out of my sight at once."

They both nodded and quickly exited the cell. Hal looked up as Trevor walked a circle around him. He couldn't hold down the cough trying to escape from his aching body any longer and he let it go. His lungs felt as if they had wrapped around his spinal cord and that each hack that came from out of him was their attempt to free themselves. When his body calmed, he noticed a few small specks of blood had settled on the ground next to him and he wiped the excess from around his mouth. Trevor's face had changed from when he was talking to Lash and Lucas into a softened look of concern. He knelt next to him.

"Dr. Emmerich?"

"What are you going to do to me?" Hal grimaced sharply at the pain that erupted in his chest when he talked.

"Take it easy, Dr. Emmerich. I'm not going to hurt you." Trevor sat the bag down in front of him and took out a roll of elastic bandage. "I'm afraid this is all I can do for the injuries at the moment...this should keep the swelling down around your ribs if anything is fractured. You didn't cough up too much blood so, I think your lungs should be okay. I can't put this on while you're lying down, though. Think you can sit up?"

Confused, Hal shook his head.

"It's okay. I'm going to get you up. I'll do it as gently as I can." True to his word, Trevor put Hal's arm around his neck and carefully raised him to his feet. Everything in his midsection throbbed or stabbed at him with hot knives of pain but he could tell it would be a lot worst without Trevor baring the weight on his left side. He eased him down onto the bed.

"Who are you?" Hal grimaced again but decided it was worth it to find out who the young man was.

"My name is Trevor."

"Rhino's son...?"

"Yeah. That's not exactly something I like to be reminded of these days. Now, raise your arms." Hal did so and Trevor slipped his shirt off over his head. "God...I didn't know they had this. That bandage is going to do less than I thought but, it'll have to do for right now."

Hal took a few breaths when the bandage was applied and noticed an immediate difference and made it easier for him to breathe. Trevor was young but definitely knew his way around first aid treatment.

"I'm sorry I couldn't do anything for you sooner." Trevor said instructing Hal to lift up his arms again so he could put his shirt back on. "They've been bored for the past few weeks so they've been using you for entertainment purposes. I've been watching them but, I just earned enough of my father's trust to gain access to your cell."

"Weeks? How long have I been here?"

"About a month...give or take a few days. I'm still trying to get used to the time change."

"Time change? Where are we?"

"Wow...you really have no idea, do you? We're in a small secluded area of the Snowdon mountain range in Wales."

"The U.K. I don't remember anything after being on the plane."

"It's because you were injected with a heavy dose of a very strong muscle relaxant. It knocked you out the whole flight and half of the first day you were here."

"Why are you helping me like this?" Hal finally asked.

"Because I'm nothing like them. I don't share those dreams of revenge but I guess it's maybe because I don't share their trauma. I think The United States is a better place without GW and The Patriots. We can start over and rebuild the country that we screwed up. You, Dr. Hunter, and Solid Snake made that possible. Plus, I know you have someone waiting for you at home. A little girl."

Hal's heart nearly fell out of his chest at the mention of her. "Sunny! Is she okay?"

"She's safe."

"And Snake?"

"As far as I know, he is too."

Hal shook his head to himself. "I should have let her keep the laptop."

"What?"

"Sunny. She didn't want me to leave so, she hid my laptop hoping I'd give up trying to find it and stay. I should have taken that as a sign. If I would have, maybe I wouldn't have gotten myself into this hell."

Trevor stood sharply upright when he heard a hard knocking at the cell's door. It soon opened and a man with a medium build and silver eye brow ring stepped inside.

"Are you done with him yet, Trevor?" Hal placed his accent as Russian.

"Be patient, Uri. I had to bandage what's left of him up so that you and Marshall could have something to play with. Those two meatheads damn there killed him."

"Well, I guess that would have been a shame if we wouldn't have had our turn with him. If what Sophia said about him is true, I know we're going to have fun with him just like she did."

Hal shuddered at the memory.

"I need to finish up some patch work on him. Alone." Trevor added and the man disappeared again. He turned back to Hal. "I have to go now. I'll see you next week some time. I can't make too many trips down here or they'll figure out something's up. Stay alive until then, Dr. Emmerich."

"Call me Hal, Trevor." He told him. He hated it and he didn't know why, but he trusted the young man.

Trevor nodded. "I'm going to make sure you see your little girl again, Hal."

The fuzziness from Sunny's sudden awakening ripped off of her once she heard the horrid heaving and coughing echoing off the walls of the bathroom. When she reached the door at the end of hallway, she didn't waste too much time panicking over the locked door and instead used her franticness to propel her self to the kitchen for a butter knife. It was an automatic response considering how much she had seen her Uncle Hal use one to open the doors Snake had locked in the house. She clawed and jabbed at the mechanism in the space between the door and frame for several seconds until she felt the knob rotate in her hand. As soon as she saw Snake, she wet two cloths and draped one on his neck and held the other in place on his forehead, just like Hal had told her to do. There was nothing in him left to vomit into the toilet, but his body continued to go through the motions in the form of painful gagging and retching that greatly burned his chest.

When his body finally calmed, Sunny pulled him back to her and let his body fall into her hold. He was too exhausted to remove himself from the little girl's care like he had been for the past few days. He had lost most of his strength due to his body's refusal to keep anything down and Sunny had naturally been worried but had respected his wishes to be in isolation with his deteriorating state. But her heart had lost the ability to stand by and watch this time and as she looked down and his colorless complexion and fatigued body, she knew it hadn't been a moment too soon.

Sunny felt Mei Ling's presence enter the bathroom from behind her. She stooped down in front of him and held his head up as she bought a glass to his lips.

"Drink this." He groaned in a barely conscious daze and turned his head from her. "It's water, Snake. You're dehydrated. You need to drink this," He continued to block her attempts until Mei Ling huffed in frustration. "Stop being difficult!"

"Snake...I know you don't want us in here," Sunny added coax to her words by stroking his hair as she talked, "and I know you're mad but, we just want to help you. Don't give up on us."

Mei Ling lifted the glass again Snake slowly drank the contents. When everything in the glass was gone, she left the room and returned with it refilled.

"That's it, Snake," She said as she watched the water disappear from the glass into his body, "You're going to be alright."

A few moments later, Snake's eyes opened and as soon as he became conscious enough to remember the owner of the grip holding tightly around him, he looked up.

"Sunny..."

"Snake," Mei Ling brought his attention back to her, "I need you to listen to me for a moment, okay? I know you're exhausted and out of it but, we want to get you back to the living room. But since it's just me and Sunny, we can't lift you and we're going to need you to help us out. Can you do that?"

He nodded.

"Good. This should help." Mei Ling produced a thin syringe from her pocket and pulled off the cap on it.

"What's that you're giving him?" Sunny asked, subconsciously gripping him closer to her at the sight of the needle going into his arm.

"It's a Vitamin B12 shot. It won't take the place of food and water, of course, but it should replace a little bit of what his body's been losing in the past few days."

"How do you feel, Snake?" Sunny asked.

"Like shit."

"That sounds about right," Mei Ling said, "But you're going to be fine."

"Sunny," he looked back at her again, "I'm sorry I ruined it."

She shook her head, a smile lightly resting in her lips and speech. "You didn't ruin anything, Snake. I just want you to be okay."

After he felt the shot kick in, he reluctantly took Mei Ling's and Sunny's help to get him to the sofa in the living room and as soon as he laid down, he felt his energy zap the movement out of his body again and relax it greatly. Once he had drifted to sleep, Mei Ling got Sunny to help her stuff a line of pillows behind him.

"You were incredible tonight, Sunny. I don't think I could have handled Snake like that by myself." She told her as made the final adjustments to the pillows.

"I'm not incredible," She corrected her, "I've done this before."

"What?"

"Uncle Hal once told me that Snake's just like a child sometimes and has to be persuaded to do the things that are good for him. Three months ago, he was sick just like this and he gave up when he thought he was going to die. He stopped eating, he locked us out of rooms to keep us from checking on him, he told us to leave him, he even asked Uncle Hal to kill him one time. We never gave up though and we took care of him until he started to get better."

"It almost sounds like you and Hal willed him to want to live again."

"I don't know why Snake got better," she said, "But I'm just happy he did. Mei Ling...why did we put the pillows behind him?"

"Well, I'm a little worried about him sleeping on his back tonight. It could be very bad if he gets sick while he's lying like that. I'm hoping the pillows will keep him on his side."

"I can watch him for the rest of the night and make sure he's okay."

"Honey, I can't ask you to do that. You're a child...this isn't your responsibility. You should go back to bed. I'll be able to hear him from my room."

"I want to stay with him." Watching Sunny pull the blanket draped over Snake up to his shoulders, Mei Ling knew the little girl's mind had been made up even before she had even brought up the suggestion.

-BREAK-

He saw it again. Hal's body, cold and stiff in the abandonment of a ditch. It had been even more vivid than before. Upon awakening, Snake felt his self breathing hard and his chest aching in remembrance of the events from last night. Looking over, he saw another worn out soldier from the battle.

"You had a rough night." Snake sat himself up enough to look over the back of the sofa at Mei Ling. "She stayed with you the whole time." He turned his body to look back at Sunny who was adjusting herself in the awkwardness of the chair she was lying across and hanging off of. Mei Ling ran her hand over her forehead and pushed back into place a few stay pieces of hair.

"She can be stubborn sometimes."

"Especially when she cares so much about the person she's watching. I think you have yourself your very own guardian angel, Snake. I'm going to put her in bed...I know she can't be comfortable in this chair."

"I can do it."

Mei Ling felt a bit of a motherly instinct run through her when the little girl wrapped her arms around her neck and rested her head on her shoulder. She brought her voice to a whisper almost automatically. "I've got her. You're probably still a little woozy. You just don't feel it yet because you haven't stood up. Snake, I wanted to ask you something. About last night. You apologized to her for ruining something. What were you apologizing for?"

Snake looked at Sunny as he spoke, "Yesterday was her birthday and she spent the whole day worrying about me."

"She didn't even say anything about it."

"I know."

Mei Ling laid the little girl down gently onto her bed and tucked all of her limbs under the covers. Still heavy in sleep, Sunny mumbled, "Is Snake..."

"Yes, Snake is fine. You did really good looking after him." She assured her. "And happy birthday, sweetheart. Maybe next year you can have a real one."

I think this is my favorite chapter...mostly because it's the introduction of Trevor McCulloch who I think I designed from what I would want my dream boyfriend to be like. Spicy when he had to be and sweet when he wanted to. Too bad he's technically slightly jailbait for me at this point. Anyway, hope you guys are enjoying the story! Reviews are awesome, but if you're just passing through and still loving what you're reading, thanks for taking the time! --Andi