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Liquid could still hear the sound of Ocelot’s spurs as he walked off the room. He hadn’t had to justify that request to him — bosses didn’t justify anything to anyone — yet his brain was racing to find a plausible reason even now that there was no one but his unconscious brother to tell it to. Maybe the reason was for himself. He shrugged the thought away.
Walking to his brother, Liquid’s head was straight. There was no one but his unconscious brother to show his walk to, yet he kept his posture rigid, prideful. His eyes off his brother’s body. That’s the way he always walked, eyes forward, head high, so that everyone would feel what Liquid always was, ready to kill to make his plans successful.
There was only a problem with this one. He hadn’t thought it out.
He didn’t want to kill Solid, not yet; he was too important to die, a fundamental piece a scheme that couldn’t go forward without him. He couldn’t wake him up, either, talk to him; Ocelot’s sedative were always strong, and even in a man like his brother it would still be a while before they could wear off.
When he reached his destination, Liquid found his head resting on his brother’s shoulder.
Maybe that was his plan.
He didn’t want to think about it, not anymore. His brother’s skin was warm, and as he closed his eyes he was suddenly floating in a smell he had long forgotten. He pressed his lips on the nape of his brother’s shoulder, tasted the salty smell of sweat on it. His hand moved to his cheek, brushed against the growing hair of the recently shaved beard. It pricked under his fingers, like sand, like the sand of the hot, salty, immense Afghanistan desert. A scorching pain rose from the pit of his stomach. Suddenly, he was angry.
His father never loved him. His brother never knew about him. At times, he had fantasized about meeting him, about meeting the men his father always compared to him to, that was everything he wasn’t and everything he would become. He had fantasized — hoped — that his brother would kill his father for him, free him, take him away; he had craved for his brother to give back the love his father had never taught him to receive, that he would split his father's love, given to him and only him, and return what he didn’t deserve. Because if his father loved his brother and his brother loved him, it was his right to then drink his father’s love out of his brother’s lips.
But when Solid had killed Big Boss, he had never come looking for his sibling. And so, he had found himself alone, robbed again of what was rightfully his, of a vengeance he had prepared his whole life, he had needed his whole life. And now — it was not yet the time, and yet his fingers where digging in his brother chest as if they could rip his heart out — now he was going to take what was his. Slowly, carefully. Because if his father was killed by his brother and his brother was killed by him, it was his right to then drink his father’s death out of his brother’s corpse.
He couldn’t wait for that moment to come.