Chapter Text
Seriously, where am I going to put the damn kid?
Snake's not really surprised Otacon let him stay. He hasn't seen Raiden being properly pathetic since the incident with the seagulls but he's sure the kid can do that trick regardless of what he's been up to lately. If he's honest with himself, the primary reason’s pragmatic. Another pair of hands, gun, sword is another reason to never let Hal into the field on the missions. So he ends up shoving a sleeping bag at the blearily-blinking wannabe god of thunder, who’s still swaying from the NYC-to-Juno jetlag and sends him off to the shed with the dogs. There’s a burner stove in there somewhere, and the woodpile’s always kept high. If he doesn't like it he'll just have to deal.
The kid deals pretty well, so well that Snake feels like he's taken in a rescue-stray from the kennels, putting it with the rest of the team to see if it'll mesh. Raiden's in the kitchen most mornings having done battle with the stove to get all four ranges going, fixing campfire breakfasts: grilled cheese, egg sandwiches or toast with that slightly sheepish air of "I owe you one, thanks for letting me crash even though we don't have much in common except that one clusterfuck of a mission. And our horrible 'family'. But I'm too traumatized to mention it."
Hal's initially ecstatic to get out of dish duty but by the end of the week they're running out of odd jobs to do around the place. When that happens there’ll be no use pretending that he’s anything but staying long-term. Interpersonal friction; the expected bristle when an already crazy-insular world expands from two to three people mostly fails to manifest.
Frankly the kid fits in just a little too well. The dogs stop barking at him in record time. His washed-out coloring blends in with the snow to the point where it looks like an empty set of clothes is out chopping wood on what’s left of the lawn.
"Look" he says, stacking his armful of logs along the back wall of the shed, stopping to even them out afterwards like a true anal retentive. He’s fidgeting with the heavy chopper like it was a pencil, Snake wants to take it away before he starts chewing on the end. Poor bastard's still worried about getting kicked out, not even hiding it.
"It's not like I'll compromise your location. The shell organization that was running the fake 'Foxhound' unit isn't exactly waiting for a postcard and well...” he rubs the back of his head “ 'Dear Rose, Please fax the divorce papers to Alaska' would be kind of a dead giveaway, right?"
Snake's tempted to say "You know, I've never been stupid enough to marry my tail. Especially after she'd confessed" but figured it'd be toeing over the line into hypocrisy. Who hasn't done something stupid after one of the really bad missions; everything goes to shit and when you're the one left standing you just feel so alive. Meryl... well, anyway.
Still, there's a couple things left to fix before he'd put this pup into the harness.
"I'll make you a deal.” he says.
Raiden’s expression slides into something effortlessly blank. "What deal?"
"Meetings."
- - -
"How was it?"
"Oh you know, about as well as it could have gone. They go around the circle. They get to me. I walk up to the mic and go:
‘Hello! I'm Jack, and I'm an alcoholic. I drink because I’ve been at war since I was six. The whole child-soldier shtick was thirteen years ago but I guess it screwed me up so bad I decided to pretend it never happened! And now I can’t un-pretend. And I can’t deal. My local warlord slash dad was pretty nice to me though. Until the war ended and he dumped me with some NGO’s because I guess I wasn't useful enough without my AK. Five months ago I had to kill him.
If you had my life wouldn’t you drink? Yeah you would. You'd drink like a fish.
Please don’t even ask about my wife.’
And then they all clapped very politely and the group leader lady gave me a chip.”
Snake gives him the eyebrow.
"Uh-huh.”
Shifting gears straight to 12-year-old (which Snake suspects will always be his default setting) the kid rolls his eyes, does a little ‘you’re no fun’ pout. Hell-of-a fake-out manoeuvre, really. You’d never believe this brat and his boy-band haircut could clear corridors with the best of them.
"Well, no. I just...sat and listened mostly. Turns out you can have nothing but normal problems and still have a pretty crap life. Food for thought I guess"
"You find that comforting?"
Raiden shrugs, hefts the laundry basket and discretely runs away down the steps to the basement. "Not really!" he yells over his shoulder when he’s just a pale indistinct shape under the lightbulb at the bottom of the stairs. "But ask me again after then next one!"
To his credit, he sticks with it. Even when serious withdrawal sets in without the cushion of the flat old beers that Snake’s seen him sneaking from the meat-fridge. It starts showing itself as a fine tremble in his hands. Hal takes over the dishes again with a pitying look when the kid’s morning coffee leapfrogs out of his hands and onto his socks and he takes three times the time it should have taken to pick up all the shards, swearing loudly.
At sunset he comes back from un-harnessing and rubbing down the dogs to see Jack grimly sweating through sword drills. Points for stubbornness. It’s a pretty pathetic showing - that same strike that he remembered stopping five inches inside an Arsenal Tengu’s chest would barely take a chip off one of the fenceposts now. No mystical inborn warrior instinct or whatever Hal starts blabbing about after one too many Gundam episodes is enough to hold your hand steady when the nerves disagree. He’s impressed in spite of himself that the sword hasn’t gone flying across the lawn yet. At least, until he comes closer and sees how the kid’s duct-taped his fingers around the hilt.
Snake knows that the world he belongs to has a pretty strict policy of “No Well-Adjusted People Need Apply”, and though his missions are now theoretically about helping people ( by ensuring a lack of giant nuclear-capable walking tanks in their vicinity) experience clearly suggests against getting any further into this particular “helping” aspect.
Philanthropy, whatever the name implies, is not that kind of organization. He’s not a doctor. Hal’s technically a doctor but it’s the useless techie kind. Neither of them’s anything close to a shrink. Combat utility aside he shouldn’t take an interest in whether Jack kicks drinking or whether Jack lives past Christmas.
Eventually it becomes routine, becomes a ritual. Greeting the kid at the door, buying an extra pack at the general store to keep up with their exchange rate. A cigarette for every chip.
- - -
Sometimes 3 am isn’t kind to either of them.
“Hey…is it raining?”
Outside the snow is fluffy white flurries bisected into squares by the window frame. Individual flakes pick up the light from the porch and rise with the wind like fireflies, unexpectedly drowned in the blue liquid night.
“No.”
He picks up Hal’s tranq gun from the cleaning cloth and doesn’t miss the hungry way Jack’s eyes follow it as he checks the action on the slide, pops the mag. No point asking how long since the kid’s had any real sleep.
“What’s wrong with the medicine cabinet?” Hal’s the sensible one who just goes to the pharmacy and gets sleep-aids like a normal civilian. They should have some left, he hasn’t needed them in a while.
Jack stares at his feet, flexes bare, bone-white toes against the old carpet.
“I err, really wouldn’t trust myself around pills right now.”
If he had the energy he’d be pacing but as it is he’s just wandering around the living room, missing their packing-crate chairs and radio gear by inches.
“Look, I don’t know why it’s been like months and I’m fine and then this week when I lie down I see him jumping off the building like a bad movie edit, OK? Please.”
He used to dream about Liquid burning.
Snake lets him shuffle forward until he’s in just the right spot to fall onto the couch and shoots him with the tranq gun. In the morning Hal doesn’t ask questions and just covers him up with an old dog-hair-covered blanket. Jack sleeps for 34 hours.
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