Do you think love can bloom even on a battlefield?
Snake Journals
is a title for a series of writings taken from the point of view of Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid. I write fairly infrequently, so there aren't very many of them (yet), but I figured I wrote enough to merit a page here. If you'd like to see more of my Metal Gear Solid related artwork, feel free to check out my art tag here.
I remember my dogs. 50 pure sled-pulling huskies. Not all Siberians, mind you. If it was of northern breed and pulled my sled, that dog was a husky. I didn’t need all fifty of them all the time. Feeding that many dogs off of my food storage through winter would have been insane. I kept twelve or so of my dogs at my cabin and rotated them every so often from the kennel in Nondalton. Diz was my favorite. I know, it seems like picking a favorite child, but she was as smart as a whip, never stubborn, and a great team leader. Real pretty brown coat, too.
I never got to run the Iditarod like I wanted, but if I had, Diz would have been there with me. I’d take Rico and Stark too, but they were always jealous when Diz was leading and make a fuss in the traces. They switched out with her or the other of the two when I rotated the dogs.
The two folks who ran the kennel knew me and my dogs well, I wouldn’t trust anybody else with them. John and Tracy. They knew Buck was a picky eater but a strong wheeler. They could pick out Diz from Lady despite the only difference being their demeanors, different shades of brown in their eyes, and Diz being a little taller. They knew each and every one. I knew they’d keep good care of those dogs.
I don’t have the dogs anymore. We don’t have any need for them, running across the country in throwaway cars. We don’t have to mush forty, fifty miles to pick up supplies. The long asphalt roads are nothing like the hard packed snow. I could imagine them here with me now, but they wouldn’t be real. I wouldn’t be able to stand a fake of any of my dogs. They were the best sled team you could have. Each and every one of them was important.
Despite living alone for years up there, it wasn’t lonely. The dogs kept me from getting cabin fever. I swear, some of them could practically talk. People in books, too, kept it from feeling like isolation. Besides, you can read a book enough times you know what they’re going to say every time.
Live people are unpredictable. Lying, cheating, hurting, feeling. I’ve done my fair share of it, sure. It’s only human. When you learn to live in books, people are alien. Not being sure of what they’ll say next, if they’re telling the truth, it’s different. They don’t follow scripts. Probably why I’m a little stilted these days. Why I quip so much with unfamiliar people. Putting my introspection to words was never my strong suit.
He was the first person in a while to catch me off guard. His utter genuine nature, saying how he feels, and so inquisitive about everything. His damn laugh, its the best sound in the world. There’s nothing more genuine than his laugh. It was all pretty cute. Besides, the guy’s a twig and if he had a mean bone in his body I could break it pretty easily. [He laughs]
He loves dogs. I wish I could show him Diz. She would’ve be a pretty little girl for him. I’d teach her tricks just for him and let her sleep inside the cabin if he asked. Despite everything, he’s got me wrapped around his finger. I don’t really care, the reason he can get me wound around him is I know he’d never hurt me. He’s real. Honest, and good.
Anyway. The heat here is beating me to death with the humidity. I miss the cool days in Alaska. Up north it was a rarity when it hit the 80s and 90s. The night sky was so beautiful, too. We have less light pollution here on these slip roads than in the cities, but it still is nothing compared to Alaska’s sky.
I remember- this wasn’t too long ago- we stepped outside the car on a long ride because there was a meteor shower. Falling stars. We hopped up on some property’s fence and just took some time to watch them. We didn’t make any wishes, we were too busy taking it all in. But I know it pales in comparison to the showers up north. It’s so beautiful there, I wish I could show him the real deal.
We could take a night out into the woods of Twin Lakes, pretend to be hunters passing through, no one the wiser we were outlaws. I’d call the dogs up into a huddle, and we could lie down right in the middle, looking at the sky. I could point out stars, and he’d take them to heart. They’d keep us warm, and press their bodies against us. Their breath freezing in the air and collecting as frost on their bodies. The sky would be cloudless and breathtaking. He would be beautiful.
That first week in Twin Lakes after Shadow Moses. Everything changed. I already respected you. You’d offered up your life in exchange for mine, even though we had just met. I understood. I understood the kind of selflessness and drive it takes someone to do that. Or the lack of a drive to live. You had both.
Your life was in ruins, but it continues on.
I’m pretty sure you were in numb shock the entire time it took us to arrive back to my cabin. How could I blame you. I was a chronic apathetic. I no longer cared who lived or died. For me, it was just another assignment interrupting my life. It was almost routine at this point, the third time. For you, it was your entire life’s work not just crumbling before your eyes, but raising itself against the world.
But life continues, no matter what we do.
You gathered yourself together, after we stepped off the final air taxi. Enough to work around the cabin. I gave you plenty to do. I know what some men do when left to their own devices in that state. You were working something over in your head, like a machine humming back to life.
Whatever was on your mind was seldom left to sit for long. Thoughts seem to rush out of you before they were finished. Feelings said outright and upfront. Honest, bare. Your heart worn on your shoulder, beating strong and constant.
I’d known men before. Some died, in war or slowly of AIDS. I never knew them extremely well. Both guards never falling. Circling around the other, never truly coming close, but friendly.
In proximity, you learn about each other intimately. You were not a tough heart. Your ribs were often open for me to see. The vulnerability, the fragility, was something I had never experienced. Raw and uncaged. To circle you like the men I had known before would have been stalking an animal who trusted the hunter so much as to sleep in front of him, knowing he would not hurt it.
It was not one moment. It was a collection over time. There was something about you I couldn’t place.
I cared. I cared about you.
Nothing more in the world was more valuable. You, your bleeding heart.
Your blood flowed regularly, spilling into the open. So I bled too. You opened yourself up to me, and I to you. Our blood mixed in the snow, and it burned bright red.
Twin lakes, pools, meeting together. A promise.
That first week in Twin Lakes.
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