Only One of Each of Us, a Metal Gear Solid fanfic by *blinkblink*

In this galaxy, there's a mathematical probability of three million Earth-type planets. And in all of the universe, three million million galaxies like this. And in all of that, and perhaps more, only one of each of us. Dr. Leonard McCoy.

I

Jack’s rage had spilled out to fill the truck’s cab, thick and heavy as mist. He could feel it covering him, beading over his skin, raising the hairs on the back of his neck.

The air was cold, cold enough that the warmth of his breath when it came in short sharp bursts formed a visible cloud. Outside the truck gold and bronze leaves shifted in the gentle wind, edges turned crisp by frost. If he waited much longer an icy frieze would begin to paint itself across the windshield. In the passenger seat, his daughter sat with her hands jammed under her arms, back rigid, staring straight ahead. Her hair gleamed like spun gold in the pale autumn sunlight.

Jack was resolutely not looking at her. He was instead inspecting the windshield, noting every scratch, every scrape, every chip with the fierce concentration he usually applied to memorizing area maps in the flash of a second. The unfortunate thing about a soldier’s concentration is that it is trained to be divisible, and as such he was unable to ignore the faint clouds of breath filling the air beside him.

Mouth hard, he jerked the door open with a white-fingered hand and slipped out into the crisp air. The country lane was quiet, remaining leaves rustling on their branches, robins and blackbirds singing in the hedges. The damp smell of fallen leaves permeated the air, and fainter, the sweet scent of a bonfire. He slammed the door behind him, throwing his weight against the rusting hinges, lent back against the cold metal and dug a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. He stared at it for the better part of a minute, tracing the green-on-white writing with pale eyes before shaking one out of its cardboard box. He’d gotten it in his mouth before he realised he had no lighter. “Fuck it,” he hissed, and threw the cig into the thorny hedge opposite, pack following a second later.

It had been years since he’d been this furious, anger sinking into him like claws of mercury, piercing straight to the centre of his bones and flowing through them, thick and poisonous. He could remember the last time clear as the horizon on a sunny winter’s day, remembered tearing through an empty hovel of an apartment, cursing the mould and the grime and the dust. It had been Philanthropy then, too. It always was – after the Big Shell and the tangled knots he had cut through there, the only thing left that could rip this kind of rage out of him was those two men.

A door squealed open and then slammed shut, startling the birds into a moment of silence. The movements on the other side of the truck were quiet, but the soldier’s keen ears picked up the wet shuffle of feet across muddy ground and the occasional whisper of leaves without trouble. She rounded the back of the truck, a blur of white and black and flowing gold in his peripheral vision. He didn’t turn to watch as she strode closer to lean up against the truck beside him.

In the hedge across from them, a robin poked its head out, beady black eyes shining, and then withdrew.

“If you’re not going to say anything, at least drop me off in the city.” He didn’t have to be looking at her to know she was staring straight ahead, chin just a little too high, eyes just a little too hard. Her voice had the lilting tone used to turn a waver into easy-going assurance. He ignored her.

“The silent treatment stopped working on me years ago, dad.” A shake of her head, hair a bright halo. Rose always said she was lucky, had made the best of her mother’s unassuming chestnut and her father’s stand-out white-blond. Jack thought it was more likely to make her a target, but he kept such thoughts to himself. Whatever else it was, it was an effective disguise. With her pale skin and fair hair, she looked like a china doll, delicate and fragile – always had. But while she had only inherited a margin of her father’s hair colour, she had taken on all his steel, and some of her own as well.

“Look – I know, you’re angry. I get it, okay? But this isn’t about you – or me – it’s about him, and what we can do-”

“Not about me? You’re damn right it’s not. Not about you – I’m not so sure. You’d like it not to be. Wouldn’t that be easy? Just absolve yourself of all responsibility, right now. You had nothing to do with it. It’s not your fault things worked out like this. If they had been different, would you still say that?” His voice was a sharp and bitter sword, for once not blunted by parental love. For once sharpened by real anger. Jack was no stranger to fiery rage, had known it often enough that he had once felt the burns would never heal. But this was different; it was the frozen rage of an ice field, howling, bitter and impersonal. The kind of rage that sinks in marrow-deep and doesn’t melt.

“Of course I would. Science is impartial.”

“And this is science? Screwing with men’s lives, tinkering and fiddling and twisting until something snaps? Taking one of the men you were raised to admire, you were privileged enough to know, and doing this to him?”

“We did it for him! We were working to help-” her furious tone, full of glass and nails, was curtailed by Jack’s slap. His bare hand struck her hard across the cheek, turning her head towards the side of the truck. In the fresh November air, her pink cheek began to turn red.

“Don’t you dare say that. Never.” The birds had fallen silent, possibly sensing the rage pouring from him like fog from dry ice, so that the only sound on the lonely road was the whisper of the leaves in the wind. “How can you have learned nothing, even knowing all he’s been through?” Anger bled into distressed disappointment, into bitter failure.

“I was trying to help,” she hissed, steel bending, eyes brighter than before; shining with tears. “They had already – the project was going before – they said I could help,” she stuttered, defending herself badly.

“And that absolves you of responsibility?” he asked again, heart hard as a lump of ice in his chest, and just as frozen, scorching the flesh around it.

“What do you want me to say? No? To admit I was wrong? Okay, Dad, I admit it. I was wrong. They were wrong. We were all fucking wrong, and we screwed up, okay? Are you happy now?”

“This isn’t about me.”

“Christ,” she cursed between clenched teeth, looking away, crossing her arms tight over her chest. They were trembling. She turned her head with a flash of gold; it might otherwise have been haughty, but Jack recognized it for what it was. A screen for her tears. In the field behind the hedge, one solitary blackbird began to sing. Under the truck’s hood, the engine made a quiet plink, metal almost cool now. Jack closed his eyes and waited for his heart to begin to thaw, for the heat to fade from his hand.

“Alright,” she said, finally, still looking away. Her voice was harsh with tears, but the words were almost steady. “Alright. They were wrong to start it, and I was wrong to sign up. And what we’ve done … it’s monstrous. It’s unethical and immoral and … wrong. Even if it was done with the best of intentions,” she added with a tiny spark of her usual headstrongness.

“I know a nice bricklayer you can sell your intentions to,” said Jack dryly. His daughter stiffened slightly, but continued after a minute.

“It was wrong, okay?”

“You’ve said that already.”

“You asked me if I would have removed myself from responsibility if we had succeeded. Would you be standing here, ripping me apart like this, if we had?”

“Yes.” An immediate certainty, and this time she did flinch. “Because you could never have succeeded. And if you don’t know why, then you really have learned nothing.”

“Fine! Then say it! I’m a disappointment and a failure and a let down. I’ve disgraced you and your work, and them and theirs, and–”

“Disgrace?” Jack almost laughed, a jackal’s barking cry. “This isn’t about reputations, Elanor. This is a man’s life, maybe more than one man’s. No one gives a fuck about reputations. I don’t, and they sure as hell didn’t.”

“Then I’ve gone against everything you taught me, and everything I learned from them, and everything I knew was right.”

“You think –”

“Goddammit, Dad, just shut up and listen to me.” She swung around to face him. Her cheek was red, as were her eyes, tears still slipping out over her now-flushed skin. The wind was making a bird’s nest of her hair. Jack’s own eyes flashed, frame tensing, but she continued on before he could speak or act. “I get it. Nothing I can say will make it better, and nothing I can say will make you forgive me. Fine. You’ve made that really clear. But this isn’t about me, or you. It’s about him. However wrong they – we – were, the past is past and we have to deal with the consequences. Maybe you won’t believe me, but I want to help him. Do you know how? Can you help him?” She was almost shouting to get the words out through her blocked throat, and they were still thick and rounded.

Jack let out the breath he had taken in all at once, and turned back to stare out across the road hard enough to slam his elbows into the truck’s frame. It was several minutes before his heart had slowed to its usual pace, before the heat left him and he could feel his cheekbones beginning to tingle. Beside him his daughter was shifting in either apprehension or impatience; he couldn’t tell which without turning to look, and his eyes were focused firmly on the hedge. Overhead a sparrowhawk cried loud and lonesome, and there was a frantic rustling in the hedge of the smaller birds, eager to get out of sight.

“You want to help him?”

“I told you; that’s why I joined. They said with my help, with my training, maybe it would be enough to pull things together.”

“And you believed them? You thought a nationally funded research organisation needed the help of a Psych major with the crackle still in her diploma?”

“No, actually, I thought they needed the help of someone who actually knew the man. Or at least knew of him. Don’t talk to me like an idiot Dad, you know I’m not.”

Jack shrugged. It was true that she generally wasn’t a fool, but it took experience, not intellect, to know that anyone on the national scale would play any card they could get their hands on. He wasn’t sure whether or not to be glad his daughter had enough to be aware of it. “Accepting a job based on favouritism is at best dangerous, not to mention in this case pretty damn unethical,” he began. Noting her raising her head to speak, though, he continued on. “But I could spend all day standing here picking out mistakes you’ve admitted to, and it wouldn’t get us anywhere. Get in.” Jack turned and grabbed the door handle, metal sapping the heat from his skin. He had swung himself up into the cab and closed the door before his daughter could ask the obvious question. By the time she pulled herself into the passenger seat, he had the engine running. He slotted the heat up to full, waiting for the windshield to unfog before shifting out of park.

They were well off the back roads, tearing down the curved highway on muddy wheels, before she asked. “Where are we going?”

“To see the last person who could help him. God help you.”

II

The sun set behind them as they drove, the truck’s shadow lengthening gradually until it eventually blended into the gray dusk. They passed through a transitioning environment tinted orange by the fluorescent street lights, roadside scenery shifting from straggly deciduous trees and thick wild grass to pine trees and dense hardy underbrush. A move down the colour palette from ephemeral reds and golds to enduring green.

They turned off at an unmarked junction, side-road turning from asphalt to mud as soon as they were properly clear of the highway. Then it was bumping along a pair of uneven ruts in the darkness, the world only existing in the sweep of the headlights, trees and shrubs disappearing as soon as the light moved on.

It seemed to Elanor that they were alone in a sea of darkness, cut off from civilization and humanity, a single rowboat floating on a black sea. But that was the primate’s instinctive fear of night, and of separation from the group. She glanced at her father, who was ignoring her, making a right or a left every now and then at a juncture she didn’t notice until they were nearly past it, and had nothing to mark it as far as she could see. His expression was grim, but there was no fear in it. Her father had emotions like currents had rivers, and those around him learned to flow with them or drown, but she couldn’t remember a time when he had been afraid. Couldn’t remember a time when whatever he faced was fiercer than him. Could not, in fact, imagine it, even now that she had long outgrown a child’s simplistic idolisation of her parents.

The moon had risen, a sliver of shining silver in the deep blackness, the pinpricks of stars picked out here and there around it in the thin strip of sky visible directly overhead between the two tall rows of pines. When they finally arrived, Jack standing on the brakes and slamming into park before killing the engine without warning, she only had time to take in some kind of log cabin and a truck the colour of old blood before the headlights cut out. It was by moonlight that they made their way over the uneven mud, melted and refrozen who knew how many times already that fall. A very pale halo of light shone through one thickly curtained window, outlining the window frame and the rough logs around it. The door was outlined in another thin line of light. Somewhere in the distance behind the cabin a pair of dogs started to bark, volume and depth indicating a large breed. The air smelt of smoke and pine.

Even in the poor light Jack’s hair shone like white gold, and she knew her own would be catching the light as well. She watched him mount two invisible steps to the door and pause, turn to survey the land behind him, light eyes catching the moonlight. They passed right through her, and she flinched. God, Dad.

There was a flicker of bright hair, and then she heard the knock rolling quiet and deep as an old dog’s bark. It was almost a minute before it was answered.

She heard the lock turning before she saw any movement from the door, metal scraping in its frame, and she wondered why the hell anyone would bother to lock up out here in the middle of this pitch-black labyrinth. But the door was opened in a slow smooth swoop, no light shining through a peep-hole, no chain to slow its draw. As if locked out of habit, rather than any real fear for safety.

The man who opened the door was entirely back-lit, even the dim light of a pair of 50 watt side-table lights blindingly bright after the natural darkness outside. Elanor’s eyes adjusted quickly, though, until the man’s face was cast only slightly in shadow. He was, she judged, in his early seventies, slouched slightly with age. His light eyes, an odd grey colour lighter than her father’s, watched them dully from behind a pair of chipped glasses. His thin face was expressionless, framed by silver hair accented sparsely by darker grey strands. At the sight of her father he shrugged slightly and turned, padded into the house without a word. She had the sudden impression of glass; cold, transparent. Empty.

Curious, she glanced at her father. He was watching the hermit wander across the room with pained eyes. He didn't look at her, but followed him into the cabin. She followed her father, closed the door behind them, fingers ghosting over the lock before leaving it as it was. The man didn’t protest.

The entrance let into one room, both kitchen and living area. The kitchen on the left was tiny and meticulously neat, every item on the counter carefully squared to the walls and counter edges. In the middle of the small room was a table with two wooden chairs, table empty, chairs old and crooked. To the right one arm chair sat facing the window, looking out at the road. Below the window sat an old battered leather trunk with a dull brass lock. A stone fireplace was set into the right wall, inside dark and filled with ashes. A door behind the table presumably led to a bedroom and bathroom. There was nothing on the walls, nothing on the mantle above the fireplace or on the trunk. There were no books, no television, no computer. The house was completely bare, empty and featureless as a prairie winter. Sorrowful, lonely.

The old man had sat down in the armchair while she was looked around, and her father had taken a seat in one of the two chairs at the table. Nervously she walked across the wood floor, sat in the last chair which rocked slightly on uneven legs. The man was staring at the window, currently covered by featureless linen curtains. His face was still sharp, although his skin had loosened with age, high cheekbones and a narrow chin emphasizing his eyes. These were so dull as to give an impression of blindness, probably false since he must have recognized her dad to have let them in without questions. He made no move to speak, to indicate he hadn’t already forgotten them.

“This,” said her father at last in a pained tone, the kind he used when he came home limping after missions that had gone wrong, “is Hal Emmerich. Hal, Elanor. You've met before, although you probably don't remember,” he added in an aside to his daughter.

Hal Emmerich. Otacon. One half of the famous Philanthropy. Her eyes widened, and she looked at the old hermit with new respect. She had last met him when she was five, two years before Snake's death. Her only memory was a vague idea of glasses and dark hair. She knew him better from her father's stories. A brilliant engineer and hacker who had dedicated his life to preventing the proliferation of Metal Gears. To help his partner, Solid Snake, he had learned to pilot planes and helicopters, hacked into everything imaginable, built revolutionary stealth devices whose technology was at the base of all of current stealth equipment, and become the best solo-tech hand in the world, for a while, as his partner aged 5 years for every one. Dad never talked about the end. Everyone knew it had been bad, and that Otacon had taken it hard. She had never heard the details. Otacon had buried his partner, and then he had buried himself, dropping off the grid. He had reappeared for a while here and there, sent her a bear sometime vaguely close to her 10th birthday, a small golden flower pendant six months after her 21st. After each package Dad would disappear, and come back a week or two later, angry and disappointed. Obviously, Otacon had made a home for himself in the last few years, though, and told Dad if no one else.

“Hal, it's about Snake,” said Jack at last, in his mission-voice. The man didn't stir, and Elanor wondered if he had lost his hearing. Her father didn't repeat himself, though, just waited.

After several minutes, Elanor shifted, glanced at her father, waiting for him to repeat himself. At this movement Otacon turned slowly, focused his eyes on her. He seemed to stare without seeing, completely uninterested, eyes empty.

“I'm your godfather,” he said quietly at last. His voice was higher than she had imagined, soft and flat, and only slightly harshened with age.

“Yes, I know,” she said, surprised at the non-sequitur.

“Jack asked Snake, before you were born, but he refused. Didn't think he'd be the right kind of role model.” He watched her blankly, just watching. He didn't seem to want an answer. Elanor had, of course, heard this story.

“Then you were born. Rose had been planning for a boy. Jack called us out of the blue asking for names.” He spoke as though the man wasn't in the room. “Said he wanted something like Rose, but everything was too old-fashioned. I said ‘what about Elanor,’ and there you were. After, they figured I might as well be your godfather. For all the good it did.” He told the story with a sort of tired resignation.

“I never understood that,” said her father quietly.

Slowly, Otacon stood, Jack making to help him and then thinking better of it. He padded into his room without a word, door swinging closed behind him on softly creaking hinges. Elanor turned to her father.

“Is this really him? Was he always like this?” The man seemed hardly more than a shell. Thin and empty, light enough to be blown away by a gust of wind. Not held to the Earth by anything, anyone. Strings cut.

Her father took a minute to answer. “No,” he said slowly. “He's been like this since Snake died. It broke him. He almost died of hypothermia that winter. After that, he was never the same. More a ghost than a person. He still is, although he's a little better now.”
Elanor remembered that winter from a child’s mind, remembered visiting a grave out on the prairies and having to walk in her father’s footsteps through the snow, remembered the wet cold of snow down her back and feet frozen numb. Remembered her father being gone a long time, sitting at meals with an empty place setting, just her and Mom. Now she looked back on it with a new eye. Her imagination added in an unseen man, thin and dark and pale as moonlight, watching over a grave with dull eyes. She shivered.

“Is he-” she cut herself off as the door drifted open and Otacon slipped out carrying a dusty book. He handed it to her, and then returned to his chair without a word or a pause.

She glanced down at the title, dry paper cracked and stained under her hands. It was a vaguely familiar one, the third volume of The Lord of the Rings. She traced over the raised golden text on the title, The Return of the King. “Thank you,” she said uncertainly.

“372,” he said, staring out the window once more. She stared at him. Was his mind really broken? Had the death of his partner shattered him?

“It's a page number,” prompted her father, looking at her with approbation in his eyes.

“Hm? Oh,” she looked down at the book and flipped it open. It was well-thumbed, print blurred with slowly accumulated grease, pages gossamer-thin and yellowed with age. She turned to page 372, skimmed down, centering in when she saw her name.

“Well, Sam, what about elanor, the sun-star, you remember the little golden flower in the grass of Lothlorien?” she read. “Oh,” she said, and looked up at Otacon. He turned slowly, focused on her.

“You fit the name pretty well,” he said, quietly. “Might be the first time anything I named turned out well.” He sighed, a dry papery sound, leaned back to stare at the ceiling. “Wonder if he would have agreed. There was a time I would’ve known.” He glanced at her, chin still high. “You wouldn’t remember.”

“I… I want to.” Her throat closed, unable to continue. She heard her dad shift, chair creaking, held her breath. But he said nothing. Left it up to her. The only help he’d give would be for her to dig her own grave here, in this frozen ground. “That’s why… I…” she swallowed thickly, sound almost deafening in her own ears.

Otacon sat up, eyes sharpening, picking up at last on the mood or maybe just finally choosing to notice it. And looked to Jack.

“Elly can tell you. You won't like it. I swear, Hal, I didn't know."
Those grey eyes flashed to her. The fog had lifted, and there was steel in them that she hadn’t guessed. “Why are you here?” and then, worse, “What have you done?” His tone was a sharp slap in the face, gaze piercing and pinning her, and this was Philanthropy.

She gathered herself with a stern hand, and arranged her story. "Two year ago, I was hired by Thanheim Genetics. They're an institute with close affiliations to the high ranks of the military. I have a Master's in Psychology, specifically in inherited psychological traits. They wanted me to help with an old project of theirs."

“Was Naomi Hunter involved?” asked Otacon in an odd voice. The name, although not the person, was familiar to Elanor. “I don't think so...” she glanced at her father.

“Not to my knowledge,” confirmed Jack.

She waited for more questions, hoping for the procrastination, but none came and she continued slowly, with reluctance now. “The project I'm working on... Twenty odd years ago, they created a clone, a human clone.” she paused, but the small cabin was dead silent. Otacon was still as stone, eyes hard as granite. “They took genetic material from Solid Snake, tried to fix the flaws which caused his advanced aging in the laboratory. And then, using nanomachines in the blood samples they recovered, they tried to give him Snake's memories.” She took refuge in the emotionless chill of science. It left her feeling as though someone had poured liquid nitrogen into her gut. “He's twenty-one now, and the aging problem seems to be solved but mentally… the memory creation process has left him extremely unstable. Sometimes, he believes he is Solid Snake. Sometimes, he can remember his life only as a civilian. Sometimes... a lot of the time... he only has a killer’s instinct, and no mind to control it.”

There was a pause. The air in the cabin seemed to have become colder as she spoke. Abruptly, Otacon stood and turned in a quick, harsh movement, like a knife ripping through canvas. Resting his arms on the fireplace’s mantle, back straight and stiff, he began to speak in a horrible voice, sharp as shards of steel.

“You've come here to tell me that not only have you created another Snake, knowing how terrible that was, not only have you tried to trap him in that life again, but that you've done it all only to make him insane, and probably aware of the fact.”

He turned, now slow as a rusty weather-vane, and Elanor’s heart twisted tight and hard in her chest. There were tears in his eyes, beginning to run down the sharp lines of his face. “God damn you. God damn you. Will you fucking scientists never leave him alone? You just keep meddling and meddling, and now you've done this to him?!” He was shaking even as his words ripped into her, leaning on the mantle for support. She found herself trembling, white hands fisted so tight her nails drove into the skin of her palms.

He straightened, voice hardening. “Get out. Get the hell out, and don't you dare come back.”
“I'm sorry,” she said, forced out through chattering teeth. “Otacon – I'm sorry, but–”

“Get out,” he spat.

“You can help him!” she said, throat tight. “Please, you can help him. There's still a chance he could stabilize, if he could bring all the pieces together. You've known him longest...”

“You've come here to ask this? If I were Snake, I'd have thrown you out by now.”

“If you come with us, you can get him to,” she said desperately, scrambling to think of a way to convince him.

Otacon's eyes narrowed, and she knew she had said the wrong thing. “Snake,” he said in a soldier’s flat tone which she had never associated with the engineer, "is buried in a shallow grave three hundred miles west of here, because that was all I could fucking dig." He took off his glasses with a shaking hand, wiped his eyes. "And I wish to God I was buried in there with him."

“So why aren't you?” asked Elanor shrilly, unable to stop herself. She ignored her father's furious glare.

“I have no reason to tell you,” he said coldly, putting his glasses on again.

“I realise you probably hate me for this, hate everyone at the centre, hate what they've created. But there is a man there who doesn't know who he is, and if someone doesn't help him figure it out soon he never will, and may very well kill himself. You can help him. I don't know you, but I know Otacon. I know the stories. I know he volunteered to stay behind on a base sure to be bombed to the ground to ensure the safety of others. I know he piloted a Kasatka at almost twice the maximum weight limit to save a group of hostages. I know he valued the lives of others above his own life, never mind his emotions. I'm asking you to help me save a life.”

“Otacon is dead,” said Hal Emmerich coldly. “He died 17 years ago. And Hal Emmerich is a sad old man who’s waiting to follow him. Why should I go?”

“It's not Snake,” said Jack. Elanor, who had been focusing on Emmerich so hard she had forgotten him, started, and then glared at him. “But, he recognized me for a minute. Whoever he is, he has Snake's memories. He's thought his thoughts, felt his feelings. He thinks he's Snake. And he's waiting for you.” Her father's eyes were intense. Otacon met them steadily, one of the few people she had ever seen manage that. Finally, he nodded, eyes narrow.

“Fine. I'll come.” He padded into his room, pushing the door closed behind him again, this time with a bang.

Elanor turned to her father. “Why is he angry with you?”

Jack looked at her, and she saw that he was angry as well. With himself. “Because I played the one card he couldn't resist. And he won't forgive me for that.”

“Which card?”

“Haven't you figured it out yet? Snake and Otacon were lovers. That fool loved him more than anything, for eleven years.”

Elanor paused, and ran that sentence through again, paying more attention. “I…what?”

“You heard me,” he said, voice low and intense.

“But, they…” They were Snake, and Otacon. Or rather, Snake and Otacon. Together. Having never known either of the Philanthropists personally, it had never occurred to her that they might have be involved, probably because it had never been hinted at by any of those who had known them.

It was as if a puzzle piece that she hadn’t been aware of missing had suddenly slid into place, solving a problem she hadn’t realised was even there. Otacon’s horrible disconnection came into sharp focus. It wasn’t a result of being broken by his partner’s death, or at least not entirely. He was still mourning him, bereavement hanging over him like an icy cloak. She dropped her eyes to the floor. This didn’t change things. She wouldn’t let it. But she had never expected, never imagined…

“Well?” asked Jack harshly.

She turned to face him, own eyes flashing, jaw jutting out. “I won’t say I regret it,” she hissed, and waited for the rebuke without shaking.

It never came. Her father just shrugged, eyes cold. “What you’ll say doesn’t matter. You will.”

III

Hal sat in the front seat with his eyes closed, feigning sleep, Jack driving, his daughter in the back.

He had always expected this. Even when Dave had been alive they had been watching for it on the side as they investigated Metal Gears. After Dave died, he had kept watch for years as best he could in a time when getting out of bed in the morning was a struggle, when every knife was a way out, every car a quick end. But in the past few years, as he had fallen into a kind of apathetic melancholy waiting for age to do its job, nothing had mattered much, and he had stopped watching.

Memories, though, he had never expected that. He had imagined walking down a street of some large city and walking into a new Dave, wondered absently whether the complete lack of recognition would kill him right there on the pavement. This was worse. Even with Dave's skin and blood, even with his memories, it wasn't Dave. Dave's age-worn body lay in the ground, arms that had once held him just bones, strong hands eaten away by worms, green eyes long since dissolved. Dave was dead, and he would never, ever be able to forget that. So what was this child they had created to be him, who believed he was him? Any love he had left for science had turned to bitter, poisonous hate. God damn it. God damn them.

He rubbed at his eyes, tearing again. Still weak. Weak enough to wish the car would crash, would run out of gas, would spontaneously explode. Anything but arrive at its destination.

But it did. What the kid had called The Centre was a large white building, only two stories, surrounded by empty streets and more closely by a chain-link fence complete with guards. There was a dark sign by the entrance, showy and elaborate carved marble – Forum Genetics. It might as well have read L.E.T. Jack parked on the street and they got out, Elanor leading the way across the dark pavement. He was aware of Jack's eyes on him, but ignored them easily; they were no match for Dave's.

They had driven far enough to pass out of the mountains’ pine belt and into the open foothills and flatlands, wide and empty with their thin poplars and twisted oaks. The ground was covered with a loose blanket of leaves, air thick with the musty smell of fall.

At the door the kid showed her card to the guard, and they were admitted into the lobby. The building reeked of grant money, marble floors and frosted glass, a spartan and streamlined reception counter housing the newest identification and registry technology. It was supplied with computers he could not even recognize anymore, although guessing their function and workings was no difficulty. He wondered whether he could still slip into the system, run it like a puppet, like an extension of himself. Suspected not, and wondered if that was disappointment he felt.

The kid was forced to call for permission to see the clone. Pretty low on the food chain, obviously. And no wonder. No scientist would trust a psychologist, even less one whose father was Raiden.

He still forgot, sometimes, that Raiden and the rest of them had long ago gone public. That the world had moved on from the days of Philanthropy swimming under the surface and disarming threats silently, secretly. But Philanthropy had been dead and dust for years by the time secrecy had become more of a burden than a benefit. The world had taken a sharp right, and he had gone on straight as before, suddenly alone. Hadn’t noticed; hadn’t cared.

There was the sound of trotting footsteps and the swish of a long coat from the hall to the right. Obviously either the doctors lived in the facility or one was kept on duty 24/7 to look after the clone. A necessity of his instability?

The doctor, a middle-aged woman with bleach-blonde hair and a gathering of wrinkles around her eyes and mouth which suggested she frowned more than smiled, was dressed in the standard white lab coat and carried a clip-board. He wondered when he had last worn a lab coat – and hated the association it suddenly called to his mind, between himself and these people.

“Dr. Emmerich, we are extremely grateful that you would make the journey here to visit us,” said the doctor, Dr. Cathway, fishing with a blank face. Hal shrugged slightly.

“I'm not here for pleasure,” he said flatly. Her eyes narrowed slightly, but she nodded.

“Yes, you're here to see Dave, I'm sure. Today hasn't been his best day, but this evening he's...”

Hal stopped listening after “Dave,” hands fisting involuntarily, eyes narrowing as his heart clenched.

How dare they. How dare they? They had stripped away the last thing he had had as his own, the one secret he had always kept. Tricked or torn it out of him and spread it among these harpies. They had violated all ethics, and when that hadn’t been enough they had torn open his life under a microscope with a perverse curiosity and spread life-secrets like gossip. How could the world be this cruel? After all he had suffered, all Dave had suffered, how could it do this to him, to them? How dare they?

“...this way,” she finished without noticing his mood, turning primly to lead the way down the hall. Jack and Elanor began walking automatically, pausing when he didn't follow immediately. Seething, mind full of a black pulsing fury, he followed the woman. He noticed nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing but the white lab coat ahead of him wrapped around science. Once it had been the only thing he respected, the only perfect thing in a painful world.

Now it was simply everything he hated.

Eventually they came to their destination, a door with a thick glass window and a pair of attendants in heavy material. Difficult to tear. The light inside was on.

“I’ll go in alone,” he said quietly, leaving no room for questions. Saw the consideration which passed across Cathway’s face for less than a second before she nodded. Remembered the kid’s words, “if someone doesn’t help him figure it out soon…” and knew that they had already given up. This was no longer a viable project, was simply a waste of funds, of material, of time.

How disappointing for you.

“As I said, he can be violent, so if his mood changes, call the attendants immediately. I think it's best if you go in alone. The room is monitored by camera, and of course we will be right here.”

He shrugged, turned to the door. The doctor pulled out a key card and swiped it, the light by the door flashing green simultaneously with a click from the lock mechanism.

Hal set his jaw. Well, Hal, how strong are you? He stepped in.

Solid Snake – Dave – was sitting on a white padded bench in a white padded room, dressed in loose white scrubs. He watched as Hal entered with sharp eyes.

Not Dave, corrected Hal immediately as the door clicked behind him. But God, did he look identical. Oh, younger, younger even than he had been at Shadow Moses, but it was unmistakably his clone. His face, his cheekbones, his eyes. Hal's heart clenched tighter in his chest. The boy – the man – on the bench stood, strong face contracting in confusion. He took a step forward.

“Otacon?” he said quietly, uncertainly. His voice was the same deep hum, although it was smooth without the years of chain-smoking to act as a dull whetstone.

“I was, once,” said Hal, watching him with hooded eyes. The clone's eyes widened as he took in the man before him, and Hal knew he had changed, face closed, hair white, back bent from years at the computer, eyes dulled from years of searching for what wasn’t there. After a second though, the man's eyes softened and he plunged forward and pulled Hal into a tight hug. Hal held himself perfectly still, tense. The clone smelled different, at least, not of Dave's smoke and pine but of science – soap and cleaning products and new clothes.

“Hal,” said the clone. And then again, “Hal,” as if trying to draw comfort from the word. He pulled back, strong hands gripping Hal's wasted arms. “What's happened?” he asked, and Hal could see Snake's face overlaying the clone's, see his partner, his lover, there.

“Time,” he said gruffly, throat constricting. It wasn't him. It wasn't. But... God, why?

Why?

“I don't know what's happening anymore, Hal,” said the clone, expression uncertain, and Hal wasn't sure whether he had heard or not. “Something's wrong. Something's wrong with me. I'm loosing myself,” he said in a low whisper. “I don't know... I remember...” he closed his eyes, concentrating hard. “The harbour. It was so cold. I couldn't feel my hands, my legs... I remember you pulling me out... I... unpacking, you dropped a box of plates... Helping you fix the Kasatka, jury-rigging half the damn engine...” he looked down at Hal, and the engineer saw fear there. “I remember them all like they were yesterday. But I can't seem to put them together. I don't know how I got here. I don't know where here is,” he said with intensity.

His hands tightened on Hal's arms. “Hal,” he said again, desperately, latching onto the once-engineer. “I don't know what's wrong with me,” he said in a whisper, trying to disguise his fear. Hal said nothing.

“Hal,” he whispered into the silence, “I remember dying.”

And Hal couldn't say anything, throat so tight he could hardly breathe. What had they done? It was too cruel, impossibly cruel, soul-breaking. “I–” he choked out, “What do you mean?” he managed, voice cracking. The clone looked at him, with Snake's hard stare. Even after 17 years, it was more familiar than his own face.

“It was... somewhere in Iraq, a city” he said slowly, watching Hal calculatingly now. “Smelled of gunpowder and gasoline. I could hardly move. Everything ached. Breathing was the hardest thing I'd ever done. And I knew it wasn't going to get better. Maybe I could last a few months. I remember thinking, anything was better than that. And I had an M9. And you.”

“Yes,” said Hal quietly.

“I... took the M9, and –”

“Enough,” said Hal, trembling. He could see it even now, image burned onto the backs of his eyes. Dave struggling to put the gun in his mouth, scene blurry with tears, and then red with blood and Oh God, oh God, please no.

“Tell me what's going on Hal,” said the clone, and Hal knew he was watching with serious eyes, could picture every line on his face, the set of his eyebrows, the play of light of his eyes, but he couldn't see it because of the tears. “I did it, didn't I?” It wasn't a question.

“Yes,” said Hal, more a sob than a word. “Solid Snake killed himself 17 years ago, right in front of me.” He had to pant to breathe while he spoke.

“Then I'm not me – not him,” said the clone slowly, and if Hal hadn't known him – known Dave – as well as he did he wouldn't have heard the horror.
“No,” said Hal, and dear God it hurt. More than frostbite, more than a burn, more than a bullet to the chest.

“Another clone,” the man – the boy – said in a nearly flat voice.

Hal nodded.

“And the man you loved...”

“I buried 17 years ago. You're not him. You have his face, his hands, his memories, but...” Even his eyes, his sharp eyes, Dave's eyes, watching him now, as they used to. “God, I miss you,” he said, wrapping his arms around himself, imagined Dave's arms around him, and even in his mind they warped into a skeleton's, embrace cold and empty. He would never have that again. He shrunk inwards with sorrow, so long without anyone to take comfort from, head bowed and chin resting on his chest, shaking as he cried silently. After a minute, strong arms wrapped around him, pulled him into the embrace he had been longing for for 17 years. He wished he was strong enough to break away. It wasn’t right; wasn’t fair. This wasn't Dave. But he needed him so much.

“God, Hal,” whispered the man in his ear as he sobbed against his shoulder. It should have been different; the scent, the fabric, even the build, they should have made a difference. They didn’t.
“You have to leave,” the clone, Dave, said after a minute, hands tightening on his arms, and pushed him away. Hal pulled himself together, wiped his eyes.

“I can't leave you here. You aren't him, but you're what he was.” Dave had been let out into the world earlier, but he had once been in the same situation. He couldn't abandon him here. Couldn’t abandon anyone to this.

“No. You need to go. You're right. I'm not him. I... there's something wrong with me. They screwed up when they made me, worse than before,” he said, voice harsh. “They put me together wrong. I'm not always here... I black out, and they tell me I'm dangerous. They... they've split me in half. Half Dave, half Snake. And the half that's Snake knows nothing but how to kill. Wants to kill. That's what I think. He has no memories of how to control himself, doesn’t know friend from enemy and doesn’t care. They think they can fix it, but they're wrong.” There was fear there, more fear than he had ever seen in Dave, but there was the man’s extraordinary strength there as well, mastering it, controlling it.

“They're wrong, Hal. I can't get through to him. He's the perfect soldier, with perfect defences. They've finally succeeded in creating the perfect killer, and they weren't even trying to," he let out a gruff laugh. Hal felt as though he had been stabbed in the gut. Dave had always feared that, always feared someday his genes would out and he would go as Haven-crazy as Liquid, as Solidus, and lose any sense of friend or foe, kill anyone who was no longer useful. And now it had happened, and worse, he knew he was doing it. He knew he was doing this, becoming this, and couldn't stop it. Insanity would have been a kindness.

“I'm losing myself, Hal. You... you helped, but... I can't... He's too strong. Hal, you need to leave.” It was an order given in a voice he long ago learned to obey without question. But he was tired of listening to dead men’s voices, and acting on dead men’s thoughts.
17 years alone had taught him that he could be cruel as well.

He watched with dull horror – not for himself but for a boy who had been accidentally engineered to be a monster – as the clone’s eyes refocused. Sharp as broken glass, they snapped quick as a snake to the mouse locked in the cage with him. It was an expression he recognized from split-second sightings, each brief as a lightening flash, in Snake’s eyes. The killing instinct, always carefully controlled and buried by the soldier when his partner was nearby. But the clone’s memories had been severed from his training, the two locked in separate cells, and he no longer had that control.

“Snake,” he said quietly. The man made no sign of having heard, watching with a mind to which language meant nothing. Hal sighed quietly. "If you were here, you'd tell me I was an idiot. I think I've proved that already. I've spent 17 years missing you, and look what's come of it. I can't leave now; never could.” He stepped closer to the clone, relaxed.

"It's unfair, but this is the closest I’ll ever get to revenge." This will almost make up for your leaving. Will almost be enough; and if not this, what? He reached out to the other man, didn’t see the arm that snapped out to grab him and pull him close, didn’t even feel it until he was up against the boy again. He didn’t wince when the strong hands wrapped around his neck, fingers digging into his throat. His pulse pounded in his ears to the exclusion of all else, heart beat speeding as his air was cut off, mind beginning to blank. Waited for the snap, or the darkness, or both.

Dave.

And then the hands loosened, although they didn't drop away. They rested warm and smooth against his skin, supporting him as the world flooded back in. “Hal,” gritted Dave's voice in his ear, sounding as though he had run a marathon at a high altitude. “I'm sorry. You can hate me forever, forget anything – forget everything. So just get out of here. Please. I can't stop myself. I'm not me. I'm not anyone.” He broke off, drew in a gruff breath. “Hal,” he said, thick with emotion. He rested his chin on Hal's shoulder, for a second, whispered in his ear. “The only thing I know anymore is that I don't want you to see this again.”

There were voices squabbling behind the clone, the orderlies uncertain as to whether he needed help or not, the doctor hissing at Raiden. Hal drew away, ignored Cathway signalling urgently to him. Sweat was running down the clone’s face, tendrils of dark hair damp against his forehead. There was a muscle twitching in his temple, another in his jaw as he stood breathing heavily. Sea-green eyes wavering in and out of focus as he grit his teeth and stared at the once-engineer.

“I don't know why I listen to you,” choked out Hal, throat burning. Thirty years ago he wouldn't have. Twenty years ago he wouldn't have. But now... he understood now. Understood with years of experience he couldn’t erase. So he stepped back, then turned and walked to the door, hyper-aware of the emptiness in his pocket. Brushed past Cathway without answering her question, so tense he was nearly trembling.

He was just reaching for the handle when a choking noise came from behind him, accompanied by a curse from one of the orderlies and a shriek from the doctor. He turned as the door opened, heart in his throat. He watched stiffly as the attendants rushed over to the clone, already crumpling to the floor, Hal's keys buried in his jugular. The kid ran into the room, stopping with a gasp at the sight. Jack stepped in front of her.

Hal watched it all, heart already broken, and wondered how it was after all these years that it hadn't shattered until now. It hadn’t been Dave. He wasn't Dave. Dave is dead. He's dead. They're both dead, and there's no difference anymore. “Snake,” he said thickly, even now unable to call him by name around others, watched as those green eyes were closed a second time, and let out a low keening moan. Jack looked over at him, grabbed his arm and led him out of the room. He allowed himself to be led. The kid was somewhere in the background, crying.

“It wasn't him,” he whispered. But it might as well have been. Was there any difference now? Dave was gone. He had lost him again, even while he lay cold in the ground.

“No,” said Jack, watching him with dark eyes.

“But he thought... he knew. He was Snake, to himself.” Just not to Hal. And on the strength of that... Dave had been gone for a long time. And even now, he could feel the soldier's arms around him, breath on his cheek, hands on his skin. The clone had remembered it all, knew it all, with at least as much clarity as he himself. The clone hadn't been Dave to him, but he had been Hal to the clone. How could he draw such a clear line between true and false following sentiment alone?

How long had the clone been waiting for him? How many months, years? Waiting for a partner who didn’t know he existed. It would be another stone to add to the weight that had been crushing him for a long time, so long he couldn’t remember what it was like to stand unburdened.
Forget? Even if he could have, even if he had wanted to, it was Dave he remembered, and for all that man's DNA, blood, bones, memories, he wasn't Dave and had no right to offer what he had tried to give. He had said it already. Dave more than anyone had proved clones were not the same as their original. There was nothing else he could believe. It was when you forgot that that thoughtless cruelty like this project happened. He would never forget his lover, and he knew without a doubt where he lay. He wasn't in this room. It could never have been otherwise, no matter what anyone had thought. Believing that was the one thin string holding his sanity together.

Dave was gone, and the world was hollow again. Probably it always had been. He turned from Jack, watching him with dry eyes, to the soldier’s daughter. She was standing with her sleeve over her mouth, eyes wet but already sharpening. He caught them with his own.

“You said you knew Otacon.” He waited for her to nod, voice scratchy in his own ears. She didn’t, but her eyes widened slightly. “Well, he’s giving you a mission now. If you can’t do it, find someone who can.” He straightened slightly. Drew on the memory of years of briefings, years of missions, years of Philanthropy. Years of Otacon. Years of Snake.

“We never bothered passing anything on to the next generation. Snake didn’t think much of it, beyond what he gave your father.” He paused, waited for his voice to steady. “But… it looks like that’s what we’re going to have to rely on, after all.” He nudged his glasses up on his nose with his index and forefingers. “I’m charging you with seeing that this doesn’t happen again. Ever. Let him- let them, Big Boss, Liquid, Solidus, all of them- rest in peace. All of them.” He glanced back into the room, where the doctor was already writing on a chart, ignoring the corpse at her feet.

He closed his eyes and sighed. In a quieter tone, he said, “Bury them, and move on.”

He wished he could.

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