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“Uh... Boss?” Kaz’s voice interrupts the cassette playing on the iDroid. He sounds hesitant. “Can you return to Mother Base? If you have the time, of course.”
Big Boss straightens up from his crouched position, holding the black carrot he just picked up in his bionic hand while the other presses against his ear. Old habits die hard, after all. Deciding his personal mission to collect all kinds of edible plants can wait, Snake types a command to Pequod into the device and makes his way through the Afghan desert on quiet feet.
His voice is muffled by the scarf wrapped around his mouth when he gives the call back: “En route to Mother Base.”
On the horizon, the helicopter emblazoned with the Diamond Dogs logo flies towards him.
*
Big Boss doesn’t know what to expect when he hops off the chopper, patting the remaining dust off his camo while the soldiers stand at attention with their usual saluting position. Between their cheery cries of “Welcome back, Boss!” the distinct barking of Outer Heaven’s resident puppy can be heard loud and clear.
Only moments later the small dog emerges between the soldier's legs and makes his way to his owner. His gait is unusually fast, a desperate run even. Snake furrows his brow and picks up DD carefully – he still doesn't fully trust his mechanical arm with an animal so delicate. He chuckles when the dog wags his tail so furiously he almost wiggles out of his grip. Soon, a tiny wet tongue licks the dirt off his beard and cheeks, whiny noises of relief and happiness coming out of the grey ball of fluff in his hands.
“Welcome home, Boss. Thanks for coming so fast.”
Snake looks up from DD and sees himself reflected in Kaz’s aviators, before he catches the warm gaze behind them. The tension inside him dissipates at the relaxed posture of his X.O. Nothing serious, then. Ocelot approaches behind him with spur-clicking steps, his usual cocky half-smile gracing his features, further proving the point.
“So, what’s going on?” Boss asks them both, all the while petting the puppy in his arms to calm him down.
Kaz sighs, looking like he wants to rub his neck in embarrassment if he could, while Ocelot seems quietly amused. With a point of his crutch, Kaz signals both of them to follow. They slowly make their way to the private quarters, DD leading with eager steps after Snake puts him back on the floor.
“There has been a... situation with him. DD, that is. More than once, to be exact–” Kaz says, but the Boss’s snort interrupts him.
“Don’t tell me a wild dog puppy is proving to be too much for you to handle?” He’s in the rare mood to tease, feeling at ease after the warm (if wet) welcome of said animal.
“Well–“
“What Miller wants to say is that the dog trashed your quarters. Again.” Ocelot emphasizes this with an unnecessary gesture towards their destination. He’s barely hiding his schadenfreude at Kaz’s display of discomfort now, the fake Texan accent he picked up in the last 20 years more pronounced than ever.
They arrive there a moment later. The opening door reveals the utter chaos only a puppy can unleash if left unattended for long enough: Torn pages and chewed up clothes cover the floor and the walls bear scratch marks. The culprit rushes in and jumps gleefully on the bed, pushing the ripped covers into position before sitting down on them like a king sits on his golden throne.
“Oh.” The Boss is dumbfounded for a moment, then turns around to his officers with a raised eyebrow. “I flew all the way from Afghanistan for this?”
Kaz frees his hand from the crutch to make a pacifying gesture, suddenly agitated. “Okay, listen – DD is unbearable when you’re not here. The whining is driving everyone insane, and the only thing that seems to help is your presence!”
“Must be some kind of separation anxiety”, Ocelot supplies thoughtfully. “We’re having a hard time keeping the soldiers on their posts, Boss. All they want is to help ‘the poor puppy’ instead of doing the jobs I persuaded them to do.” Despite his serious expression, the mischievous glint in his eyes remains.
Snake steps into his quarters, taking stock of the destruction before shrugging and sitting down on the ruined bed sheets beside DD. He pets him absentmindedly. “I can’t stay here at Mother Base, though, and he’s too small to be of any use in the field yet...”
They quiet down for a few seconds, thinking. Kaz makes a pensive noise, his eyes fixed on the dent in Boss’s pillow, the only object in the room that’s fairly undamaged. “You know, Nuke used to do that, too – sleeping on your pillow when you weren’t there. She liked the scent, I think. Maybe that will help?”
Ocelot comments... something on that, but Snake is not listening anymore. My scent, huh? If that’s what DD needs, it’s no wonder he’s unhappy – this place barely smells like him, since he’s out on missions almost constantly. No, he needs something I use frequently...
He stands up when the idea strikes him, patting down his camo pants in search for the one item that solves most problems. “Thought of something?” says Ocelot beside him, undeterred by the fact that the Boss ignored him just moments before.
“Don’t tell me–“ Kaz groans in recognition when Snake pulls a folded-up cardboard box out of his pocket, setting it up in mere seconds. He crouches in front of the puppy, offering him the box. DD sniffs at it in suspicion, then jumps bravely into it with a small yelp. Dull steps sound from the inside of the box; the dog completes his inspection of the object with a wagging tail and a happy bark.
"Good boy”, praises Snake quietly, a gentle smile playing around his scarred lips as he puts the box with its new inhabitant beside the bed. After a moments thought, he picks up his pillow and unwraps the scarf from his neck, placing both inside as well.
“Mission complete”, quips Ocelot from behind him, the sound of spurs marking his departure soon after.
Kaz stays a while longer, fond exasperation in his voice when he states: “This Diamond Dog better be worth it.”
“He will.”
*
Icy blue eyes fill his vision. The face of The Boss is utterly blank.
The cold sting of metal touches his cheek. The tip of the knife is pointed at his eye. The hand holding it is perfectly calm. He can’t help but tremble in fear–
There’s nothing more important to a soldier than his eyes, hisses a disembodied voice behind him.
The Boss doesn’t hesitate.
It takes a moment for the pain to register. He feels blood dripping down his face. A scream rips out of his throat, the agony unbearable–
A warm wet tongue moves across his face in one long lick. Venom’s eye snaps open, shoving the heavy weight off his chest in a purely instinctive reaction. He has his knife drawn and poised to strike when the gears click into place.
Ah. He stabs the knife into the dirt beside him and tries to catch his breath, pressing a hand against the rapid-fire beating of his heart in his chest. Another nightmare. A loud sniffing noise near his ear makes him reach out blindly, his flesh hand finding soft fur. DD licks his arm comfortingly, pressing himself back into his side now that Venom is awake.
A few minutes pass, nothing but the sounds of their breathing breaking the silence. Venom stares blankly at the starry night sky above him, his mind buzzing like white noise.
He can barely make out stray thoughts in the jumbled mess. That’s not what happened closely followed by How can you tell? You’re not the ‘real’ Big Boss and I don’t know who I am anymore. His blinded eye hurts in phantom pain, his mind remembering an event his body never experienced. It’s those memories – Big Boss’s memories, fake memories – that weigh heavily on him, a burden he was never meant to carry.
Venom doesn’t know if he resents Snake for what he did to him. The moment he broke out of that hypnotically imprinted identity, he could have raged and made promises of revenge like Kaz did. But he didn’t – instead, he threw himself into his work, taking one assignment after another if it meant escaping the aching void of his lost self a moment longer.
He had been ready to give his life for Big Boss, unknowing how completely the man would own it in the end. Now, he can’t even recall what kind of person he was before the first Mother Base fell.
Shaking his head, he returns to the present moment. A quick look at his iDroid tells him he still has a few hours till sunrise. His current target will return then, opening the time window he’s waiting for to eliminate them.
A quiet whine alerts him to the fact that he has stopped petting DD. The dog is looking at him with a soulful eye that glints in the moonlight. With a defeated sigh, Venom pats his chest, giving him permission to come closer. DD crawls on top of him, nuzzling his neck affectionately and licking his beard the same way he used to do as a puppy.
Despite the heavy thoughts on his mind, Venom chuckles at his cuddly companion. For him, nothing has changed – as long as he could follow his owner everywhere he goes, the dog is content. DD doesn’t have expectations of him, except maybe a few loving pats and a treat here and there.
But it isn’t only that: DD may be the only thing in Venom’s life that’s completely his. With him, he doesn’t have to ask himself if it’s a real bond connecting them – not like the soldiers or Ocelot or even Kaz, who only see Big Boss in him even if they know better. The dog imprinted himself on Venom the moment he found him, growing to love him for who he is instead of who he's supposed to be.
It’s more calming than he’s ready to admit.
“Who’s a good boy, hmm?” he murmurs into DD’s fluffy ear, smiling at the tail hitting against his legs in response. A real diamond in the rough, he remembers Ocelot say. Venom gives the dog a few more moments to cuddle, then orders him back to his side before making himself as comfortable as he can on the hard stony ground.
Reassured by the steady presence at his back, Venom is fast asleep only a few minutes later, dreaming of a small puppy in a cardboard box.