Chapter Text
Snake Eyes
Snake Eyes had never considered himself a happy man. Calm was enough.
He may not have rejoiced when an injury or sickness or inconvenience kept him from completing a mission, but he never lost his head.
He focused on his breaths – even when his ribs were cracked and the back of his throat was like a bed of wood chips.
He never closed his eyes, either. Even his meditation was completed with his eyes trained on his surroundings. He wouldn’t allow himself to let down his guard. To leave himself vulnerable. To leave others vulnerable.
His back was always against a tree, his fingers only ever a twitch away from his sword, his body – from his steel toed boots to his gloves to his visor – covered. He did, regrettably, sleep – in quick, fitful bursts – as he was, equally regrettably, human. But he was working on fixing that.
He never spoke. He could not speak, but that had little to do with it most of the time. He tried his best to make no noise at all. To never sigh, never gasp, never grunt. Kick him in the stomach, elbow him in the face – it didn’t matter. He would take it all and do so without so much as a stray breath.
Yet this latest mission was getting to him. Perhaps it was because it had been years since a mission of his had gone so horribly wrong. Perhaps it was because he was once again facing the aftermath of such a disaster with someone he cared about beside him. It’d been even longer still since that’d been the case, and he was woefully underprepared as a result.
He’d already injured himself in more ways than he could count, and it’d only been a few hours. Beneath his suit, a bruise pulsed against the skin of his abdomen. One of his hands was raw from gripping the elevator cable during the harrowing escape from the Cobra plant.
The list of aches and pains went on, but there was no more use in trying to number them than in counting the ways he’d messed the mission up. What was done was eternal, unchanging. Its only use was whatever could be learned from it, and Snake Eyes had always thought of himself as too much of a fool to do much real learning.
“Snake Eyes,” Shana’s voice was raspy this late at night. Even more so than usual. The tone, leeched of emotion, had originally been meant to cover her once thick southern accent. Now, she just sounded tired. “Can you rub my leg? I don’t think the blood’s flowing right.”
They were on the floor in the back of the stolen Cobra truck. Leaning side by side against one of the benches, their limp bodies had finally found an ounce of rest, even in spite of the metal biting into their limbs. The leg she’d injured back at the testing facility was stretched out in front of her, stiff as a corpse.
Outside the small back windows, the sunset darkened into night. Inside, it was darker still. Shana’s skin was fair enough to reflect some light. If not for that, it would’ve been difficult to see the fine details of her expression.
He’d long harbored the strangest hint of nostalgia for southern summer nights he’d never lived through: grass he’d never heard blowing in the breeze, fireflies he’d never seen kissing in the dim fields between the trunks of pine forests, sweet tea he’d never tasted.
They were second-hand memories. Just as vibrant, if not more so, than the first-hand accounts Shana had confessed to him during late night stakeouts and days on the road.
He moved to sit at her feet and took up the offending appendage, though he doubted blood flow was the problem. She’d sprained it, and she wouldn’t admit it.
She never admitted anything she didn’t want to.
Nevertheless, he worked in silence, not even signing to her, his hands occupied with gently kneading her calf. That was where she’d complained of the most pain.
Though he hated to use the word ‘complained’. Shana never complained. She grunted at things if they were bad. She leaned on him if they were unbearable.
She’d let him help her walk out of the test facility earlier. That wasn’t a good sign.
He tapped her boot and glanced up at her for approval. At her nod, he removed it and continued to massage her now more accessible leg.
“Snake.”
His gaze flicked up invisibly behind his visor. But he knew that she knew it was on her – the familiar weight of his eyes.
When she didn’t continue, he briefly lifted a hand and signed her name.
Shana.
She watched him through hooded eyes like a dying person would watch a predatory animal creeping up. It was as if she acknowledged his every advantage over her with that look. And her every weakness.
He hated it.
Though even that was a difficult emotion to get out. He found it difficult to so much as dislike something even tangentially related to Shana.
Even suicide missions. Even endless stake outs. Even the mess they were in right now.
“I want you to go.”
His hands stilled. He breathed in, silently. After a moment the length of a few brutal heartbeats, his senses and signing ability returned to him in an all too pressing rush.
I made a promise-
“And I’m releasing you from it. All of it. This isn’t what you signed up for.”
I go where you go.
“You have other clients. I know you must have some way of making money. Hell, I don’t even pay you. You’ll be fine without me.”
Other clients? Was that what she thought he saw her as? As if their six years together had been nothing more than her paying for his services every couple of weeks. As if he’d ever demanded payment. As if he hadn’t slipped in through her apartment’s window on the weekends and let her show him her childhood cartoons and telenovelas.
As if he hadn’t brought her breakfast or lunch or dinner every time they’d met up for something, always choosing one of her favorite guilty pleasures – like milkshakes or greasy fried chicken – and eating too, even if his tender stomach had protested, because getting him to eat unhealthy food made Shana smile.
As if he hadn’t slept on the end of her bed one night when his injuries had kept him from standing. As if he hadn’t longed for her to curl up against his wounded torso and lend him her warmth, and more than her warmth.
As if she couldn’t tell how much she meant to him.
I can’t.
“Now isn’t the time for honor, Snake Eyes. I’ve led you into dangerous places before, but this – it’s suicide. In every sense of the word. I can’t drag you along with me.”
Yes. You can.
“Snake.”
We’ve faced worse than this.
“No we haven’t. Until a couple hours ago, Cobra didn’t even know my name. Now they’re assassinating my character on every major news channel. It’s nothing short of a miracle that they don’t have your face plastered up there with the rest of us. Don’t look at me like that, Snake Eyes. You know what I mean. It isn’t like your gear is subtle.”
I knew the risks when we started working together. I know them every time we go on a mission, and I never walk away.
“You know the only difference between steadfastness and foolishness is just semantics.”
The same applies to ‘fall’ and ‘fall’, but I don’t see you getting those confused.
“Don’t get smart with me, ninja.”
You. She tried to stand, but that wasn’t happening. He placed both hands firmly on her calves to keep her from hurting her foot even more and made certain that she’d begrudgingly agreed to stay seated before trying to sign again. You need to try not to panic. You. Are. Innocent. Abernathy will see that.
“Abernathy… didn’t even know who I was. That traitor the Baroness fried probably knew more about me than he did.”
He doesn’t have to know you to see that the facts are in your favor.
“And in the hands of people who have it in their best interest to slander me until they get off scot free. They could get me arrested for manslaughter the way they’re talking about Weems. And maybe they’re right.”
You didn’t kill him.
Her gaze left him and traveled up towards the ceiling of the truck. As close as he was to her legs, he could feel her tense up.
“If I’d just listened to you and gone in at night, just the two of us.”
He shifted so she’d be able to see his signs again.
Doing things by the book was why you joined the army. The two of us alone can’t bring down a titan like Cobra.
“Please – the book was the last thing I had in mind. I dragged those grunts in there with no regard for their safety or protocol. Sure, no one was supposed to get hurt. But now…”
There’s no way to protect everyone.
Her eyes locked on him then, and he almost flinched at the fire behind them.
“He’s dead, Snake. ”
She didn’t say her name with the inflection that would’ve made it an insult. But it occurred to him, somehow for the first time, that she easily could have.
He helped save your life. I’m grateful to him, but you can’t prevent what you can’t predict.
“Right, because a fight breaking out at an unsanctioned military inspection is so implausible that there’s no way I could’ve prepared for it.”
You didn’t know they were armed. You didn’t know they would fire on you that quickly.
“Like hell I didn’t,” she shook her head at the wall like she didn’t realize she was doing it. “I – more than anybody – know what Cobra is capable of. I knew that lab was down there and exactly what kind of sick, twisted things Cobra would brew up in its secret basement. And I didn’t warn them. I didn’t even think about warning them. Much less ask their permission to almost get them killed. ‘Don’t worry about Snake Eyes’ – what was I thinking? No offense. But what was I thinking?”
It took her a few seconds to drag her gaze back into a position where he could sign and she’d be able to see it.
What do you want me to say?
“I want you to tell me that I messed up,” she swallowed down what might have been tears and pulled herself back into her usual, militant posture. “I want you to tell me that I made a mistake and that there’s a way to fix it. All the others act like I killed him, and I think they’re right. But it’s not gonna get through my thick skull unless you say it. And I really, really need it to get through there.”
Assigning blame solves nothing. Cobra chose to hurt people. Weems died trying to stop it. He was a hero.
“Ripcord,” she whispered.
Ripcord, he spelled out.
“I haven’t cried, Snake. I haven’t even wanted to.”
A tear slipped down the edge of her cheek.
That isn’t what it looks like to me.
“This –” she gestured to her face. “This is just frustration and exhaustion. I just. I just want to have an actual emotion, Snake. Please, please tell me I’m not heartless. Please tell me I didn’t watch a man die and lose no sleep over it because I’m incapable of grief.”
Of course not. Lie down.
She obeyed, resting her body on the ground and her head on her own shoulder, though her gaze had fallen to the floor as her tone lost its ferocity. A balloon deflating.
“I don’t want that to be you someday,” she whispered. He tried to reach for her leg again, but she grabbed his wrist in trembling hands. “I can’t do this at any cost. I can’t be like them. You have to understand that.”
Gently, he removed her trembling hand from his wrist and rested it on her torso.
You aren’t them.
“I’m not so sure anymore.”
Her pupils shook like her hands, as if trying to decide which of his eyes to focus on, though she couldn’t have seen them through his visor.
No, enough. Rest. Sensei’s orders.
Shana
“You–” she let out a noise that might’ve been a sharp laugh or a strangled breath. She wasn’t even sure anymore. “You haven’t pulled the sensei card in a while.”
He lowered his head and went back to kneading her leg with fingers turned stiff. One hand slipped under her knee, in an attempt to get better access to the hurt muscle no doubt, and pressed the vein. An accident, but she couldn’t stop herself from wincing. Every sensation had the impact of a punch for some reason. His hand released her before the sound had ended.
Sorry.
“Snake.”
Shana? he cocked his head, very indignantly for a man with no facial expressions.
“Stop it,” she tried to huff at him, though it came out strained and gasping. She’d lost some of her lucidity for a minute there, but it was coming back to her now. And with it the claustrophobic knowledge of how much danger she was putting him in. “Stop it. I can’t look out for anybody but myself right now. Not even you. And if I can’t help you, then you shouldn’t help me. That isn’t how this partnership works.”
Not that she’d ever been very good about helping him. If there were competitions for who put more value into a relationship, he’d definitely have beaten her out in every category.
Snake Eyes paused his massaging.
But the… them. The others.
“I can’t help them. I wasn’t trained for group ops. I’ll leave in the morning and clear our names on my own.”
You can’t do this alone, he reiterated. And neither can any of them.
“I’ll have to make it work. I’ll tell the others to lie low. You should, too. Cobra might have found out about you, even if they didn’t give your picture to the news.”
No.
“They could,” she continued. Willfully misinterpreting his sign. “They could find out everything about everyone here. Those grunts don’t know what they’re getting into, Snake.”
I do.
“No. You don’t. You’re different, but you’re not that different. You’re still,” she almost didn’t keep going. She didn’t want to. But she couldn’t let him throw his life away for her, too. No matter how much she wanted to believe, to help him believe, that he was the strongest person she’d ever met. “You’re still just a man.”
Weak?
“No. Stop it. What are you even saying?” She winced again as she pushed herself back up into a sitting position and strained her leg in the process. Snake Eyes’ hands were back on her calf in an instant. Steady and soothing. He pulled her leg into his lap to get a better angle. When her voice returned, it was raspy again and feather soft. “I can’t repay you – for anything that you’ve done. I can’t even begin to thank you. I’m sorry for everything you’ve had to sacrifice for my sake. I’m sorry I’ve taken you for granted. That’s over now.”
Snake Eyes
He restrained himself from interrupting her, both because he needed to see to her leg muscles and because the longer she went on, the more and more tired she sounded. Hopefully, she’d rest once she’d gotten everything off her chest. Hopefully she wouldn’t really mean what she said in the meantime.
“You’ve never denied me anything… You’d take the shirt off your back for me. Hell, you’d starve for me… I just – I can’t wait for you to wake up someday and realize that you hate me, which you’d be completely entitled to do, by the way… I’d rather lose you. And I know that day will come. It comes for everyone eventually. And it’ll be even worse for you. Because you’ve given so much. Because you’ve always had the best intentions. Because sometimes…” she closed her eyes and swallowed. “Sometimes I wonder.”
He tried to keep his prodding and massaging soft, so he wouldn’t keep her from sleep. But if he’d had a voice, he’d have been so tempted to tell her to go on.
What did she wonder about him? Did she worry he’d give up too much? There was no such thing. Did she suspect his true motives? His even deeper ones? He didn’t know how he’d respond if she confronted him about either.
His secret history or his secret feelings, which was more dangerous? He couldn’t say.
How was he meant to respond to allegations that he’d sought her out because he was guilt-ridden over her father’s death? How was he supposed to explain that he cared more for her than he cared to breathe?
Or that it was a self-consuming kind of care? A terrifying kind. A risky kind. He didn’t take risks. Not for ninja work or personal gain. But he took every risk for her.
Now she rested her head against the bench’s lip. She leaned into his touch. Her consciousness drifting farther from him as her walls fell.
He pulled away once it was clear she was nearing sleep. Then, politely, he picked her up and laid her on the bench where she wouldn’t hurt her neck or her injured leg. It was a hard, metal thing, not nearly comparable to the bed in her apartment, but it was better than nothing. And she didn’t seem to mind.
Shana
She heard him lay down on the floor beside the bench. She recognized the scrape of his boots against the metal. Knew his knees were bent and at the ready in case of attack, even while he slept.
She was being silly. She couldn’t do this without him. He meant everything. He was everything. But that was exactly why she wanted him far away, safe.
She couldn’t help remembering every time he’d slipped or limped in secret since her vengeful, self-righteous mission had begun. Couldn’t help remembering the time he’d been discovered on a recon mission and half-mauled by a Cobra guard dog and its handler, not telling her until he’d collapsed on her bedroom floor a few hours later.
How she’d had to drag him – her gasping with the effort, him eerily quiet despite the many injuries she was undoubtedly man-handling – onto the end of her bed so she could check him for anything serious. How he hadn’t let her take his mask off even then.
How his skin had been purple and lumpy around his ribs. How she’d had to make him sleep there so she could monitor him. How she’d had to restrain herself from lying down beside him – half because it would’ve only made him worry for her instead of himself, half because there was a possibility that he didn’t want her that close yet would never tell her.
And that was his one destructive flaw. He was so unlikely to say what he felt. So self-sacrificing. In part, she wanted to tell herself that if he had a problem and didn’t come to her, then it was on him. That was the standard she had for herself, anyway.
Yet in many ways, she saw him as above the standard. Held to something higher. Something honorable and kind and unconditional.
And even if that wasn’t true, she worried that he held himself to that invisible, impossible standard. And in this line of work – the line of work she herself perpetuated – it would get him killed.
‘I want you to go’, she’d said to him earlier.
No. He would truly want her to go if their positions were switched. Because he was capital G Good.
But her? In her heart of hearts, she wasn’t that good. She was just grasping at straws trying to find the right thing to want, to feel.
How was it that she was always saying ‘go do this’ when what she really meant to say was ‘don’t leave me’. When what she really wanted him to sign in return was ‘never’.
With a family like hers – mother dead, father growing more distant by the day and then dead, too – she’d never believed in forever or never or always. But Snake Eyes made her want to be able to. Just for a second.
She fell asleep that night with a weight in her stomach and her head full of exhaustion-jumbled thoughts.
Snake Eyes
Snake Eyes had barely rested, but that was nothing new. Neither was his main reason.
It was a vicious habit – a brutal addiction – thinking of her when he should’ve been shutting his thoughts off entirely. To sleep, to fight, to attend to his mortal vessel.
It was only made worse by knowing that he cared about someone so much that he could easily smother her if he wasn’t careful. Knowing he cared so much that he’d let her go. Knowing he’d eventually do as she asked, no matter what it was, regardless of his own fickle emotions.
And because of his own fickle emotions.
Things always looked better after some rest – even subpar rest – and some food, some fresh air.
Shana was worried that the army men weren’t comfortable with him yet. So, he’d slipped out of the truck early, before any of them had worked up the courage to check on her in the back.
Despite trying to ease her new companions into the idea of having Snake Eyes around, however, she’d still wanted to sweep the area with him.
On their unsanctioned patrol that first morning on the run, she asked if he’d mind scouting out farther and looking out for Cobra activity. Her leg was still bothering her, and neither of them wanted her walking too far on it.
They paused by a tree to let her rest it soon thereafter, and she slid down the trunk to keep the pressure off the leg.
Emboldened by the niceness of the temperature, he asked her what she’d wondered about the night before. It seemed to take her a minute to recall what he was talking about. Not surprising, considering that he wasn’t sure she’d been entirely lucid for all of what she’d said. When she did remember, she leaned away from him as if not willing to look him in his unseen eyes.
“I’ve wondered if you’d even give up your mask for me. Sometimes. It’s a stupid thought. You’d never have to do that. Besides, without the mask you’d lose most of your mystique, right? We couldn’t have that.”
Several months later, while facing the mind-controlling twins, he would let her pull his visor off with little more than a simple block as his defense.
He would hate the way he felt his gaze soften when it met her empty eyes. Hate the way he could still feel her fingers against his temples later on the drive back to civilization. Hate that he knew she’d been right about one thing that night.
Not because he was selfless enough to give up anything for her. But because he wanted, more than anything, to have someone look at him. To have her look at him. Really see him, brutal scars and all. Selfish as it was.
He would hate himself for that weakness. For every weakness that beat him closer and closer to the status of pigs rather than the angels he’d have idolized if he thought of them often enough. But he’d never hate her. Just like he’d left or lost everyone he’d ever loved. But he wouldn’t let that happen to her.
No, never her.