Fortunate son

[nagaya-zmeika.livejournal.com]

The thing you had to do was you always kept the mission objective at the forefront. Let everything else slide away like swampwater off a crocodile's back. If he failed, everything else was moot anyway.

It was getting harder and harder to pretend that was still true.

He'd countermanded orders. Worse. He'd abandoned them. They needed Sokolov out of there, and they needed him out of there now. But it hadn't happened.

The world kept spinning. Nobody dropped dead.

In fact, that was another thing.

Snake had gotten into the habit of keeping his eyes open and his mouth shut. At first he'd tried to play that it was reconnaisance, but that was just a fancy word for watching.

He definitely wasn't keeping an eye out for that kid. The one with the habit of running around half dressed and a whole lot of secrets.

Sometimes Snake caught himself passing some soldier in the hall and thinking about how, if things had gone a little bit differently, he might have been slitting his throat.

People were people anywhere. They had to piss and sneeze and sleep. It was something he'd taken advantage of more than once. Usually, there was so little time, he hardly had to make an effort to keep from thinking about it too much.

That, Snake thought wryly, might be one thing the partner The Boss had assigned him might be uniquely suited to help with.

Sokolov. Right. That was the mission. Find out where he was, make sure he was alive. Worry later about what came next.

Snake eased the laboratory door open, checked for flames or errant projectiles, and carefully stuck his head in.

"Fury? You here?"