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Kaz levels his hard, stern gaze with the pup, which doesn’t return the favor because it’s far too busy hiding behind Ocelot’s boots. Kaz watches as the pup peeks around, sees Kaz, and goes back to hiding. Ocelot tuts, folding his arms over his chest.
“Seems you don’t play well with other dogs, Miller.”
In an instant, Kaz turns his attention to his colleague, who stands in the middle of the command tower while he sits behind the control dashboard. “The hell is that supposed to mean?” he snaps, showing his teeth off in an almost-growl. That’s a very dog thing to do, he thinks; he returns to his now-trademarked frown, deeply set in his face.
The reaction, though, gets a smile out of Ocelot. He reaches down to pick up the pup, holding it in his arms and cooing.
What a weird thing to see. It almost churns Kaz’s stomach, to see Ocelot this relaxed and pleasant. When the chopper with the Fulton retrievals touched their airspace, Ocelot had practically bounded out of the room and went down to retrieve this dog. It weirded Kaz out. Just thinking of it even now weirds him out. He has half a mind to start getting paranoid Ocelot has been replaced with a perfect lookalike, but that’d be something out of the movies. Not real life.
“We don’t have the facilities to care for a dog, Ocelot,” he says, stern but still calm.
“He can just stay with you, can’t he, out in the doghouse?” teases the other man, stepping a few steps closer. The pup scrambles in his arms, scratching at the scarf and streaking long marks across what little skin of Ocelot’s is exposed. “Besides, Boss wanted him. We’ll just have to make the facilities.”
Kaz grumbles and grouses, shaking his head. “What good’s he gonna do anyway? Who’s gonna train him?”
“Don’t you know how good hounds are for huntin’? Especially one with wolf blood running through his veins.” Ocelot drops into the seat next to Kaz’s. He considers as he settles the pup down in his lap. “I’ll train him. It can’t be too hard, right?”
Kaz can’t help but to bark out a single, harsh laugh. “You? Training a wolfdog?” He watches Ocelot’s gloved fingers smooth the fur of the pup’s head down, in between his ears, which he then rubs. So gentle. Kaz’s frown deepens. He really does feel sick.
“Plenty of dogs can learn from even housecats,” posits Ocelot as if it’s the smartest thing he’s ever said. “Learning from a wild cat like me’ll be a luxury.”
Kaz fails to resist the urge to roll his eyes. He huffs. “Right. How could I forget.”
From Ocelot’s lap, with his two front paws over Ocelot’s forearm, the pup stares up at Kaz. Kaz stares back from behind his sunglasses. The pup whines, paws at Ocelot’s arm, and looks up at Ocelot, who uses his other hand to smooth the fur of his back. This seems to sate the pup, if the wag of his tail and relaxed panting was anything to go by.
Before he can stop himself, Kaz finds himself asking, “What are you going to name it?”
Ocelot doesn’t answer right away. He lifts the dog up, holding him under his two front legs, and twists and turns him in his inspection. “He’ll be our very own Diamond Dog. DD, for short.” Unceremoniously, and before Kaz can properly react, he leans over and plops the pup in Kaz’s lap instead.
Kaz tenses. Every single muscle in his already taut body tightens. He leans his chin away, only raising his arm instinctively to keep the dog from falling, for some reason. He’s sure the dog would be fine tumbling to the ground. He’s not sure why he’s worrying in the first place.
The newly christened DD looks up at him, almost pensive. Cautious. Ears twisted around to face Kaz, too, with wide, naive eyes. Their gazes lock with one another, neither willing to move first.
Until the dumb dog does, because he’s a dumb dog: DD leans up, putting his clawed paws on Kaz’s chest, and licks and nips at Kaz’s chin and cheeks. All that caution thrown to the wind in an instant. Kaz turns his head this way and that, hand pressing against DD’s chest, and his face reddens.
“Ocelot, get this thing off me already!”
That night, as has been happening everytime they go a few days without hearing from Boss, Kaz wakes several hours before dawn and is unable to get back to sleep. Unable to, and unwilling to, continue to stare at the bleached white ceiling of his room and twist in his blankets, he hoists himself out of the bed and starts his day early. He should prepare for Snake’s next call.
The humid air has him sweating as soon as it hits his face when he steps out of the building that houses the three commanding officer rooms. (He checked just in case—Snake’s was empty, still.) He glances at his watch, ignoring the itch that arises from where his moist skin touches the leather of its strap. 03:57. Earlier than he thought, but later than his usual bouts of sleeplessness. He adjusts his tie and coat, flicking the collar up to protect his face from the salty sea air, and begins the grueling walk to the command tower.
Said walk is not actually that far. Ten years ago, Kaz could have sprinted the distance in less than three minutes. He thinks this every time he traverses the path, now. His wounds are still fresh, though not really at risk of reopening, thankfully. That doesn’t stop the pain. Although he had insisted on getting the prosthetic leg right away, the medical staff had outright refused; it’s too early, they had said, so please make do for a few more weeks. Ocelot had sided with them, and Kaz still swears he was the one that told Boss, and after that, Kaz stopped asking.
Although the walk would still be arduous and more difficult than he’d like to admit with the fake leg, it would be loads better than the practical crawl he does now, using the crutch as a temporary leg, leaning on it so hard his wrist will bruise. He grits his teeth. One step at a time, smoke that wasn’t there filling his nostrils with each one. A reminder.
At around three quarters of the way there, Kaz relents to the pain. His chest heaves as he leans his good shoulder against a cool metallic wall. He isn’t even sure what building this is, so full of cotton is his head. As he tries to catch his breath as quietly as possible, he thanks whatever cruel higher power there is that it’s early enough not too many other soldiers will be walking around to see how weak of an XO he is.
Slowly, his ears stop ringing. The iron taste leaves his mouth. He presses his temple to the wall and shuts his eyes.
Bark!
Kaz nearly jumps out of his skin. The sound of a small dog barking pierced his skull, echoing off the bone and the metal buildings around him. He looks around frantically.
Bark, bark!
He grimaces, shuffles out of the little alley he’d pushed himself into, and regrets not just staying in bed.
A little bit aways, the pup’s claws clack against the flooring. He jumps and runs and plays. Kaz can faintly hear Ocelot’s voice, though the man has his back turned, looking over the railing at the ocean. “DD” circles his legs, barking a few more times.
Kaz emerges fully from the alley. His crutch dinks against the floor—purposeful in its sound. Kaz doesn’t want shot today. Ocelot’s back relaxes, and he crouches down next to the dog, who jumps at him and licks his face all over.
“Good boy, good boy,” Kaz hears Ocelot coo.
Tearing his eyes away from both cat and dog, Kaz begins the final stretch to the command tower. He stays far enough away from Ocelot to hopefully get the point across he doesn’t want bothered—
“You’re up early.”
Wishful thinking, Kaz supposes, never got him anywhere.
He turns to Ocelot, still with one knee on the ground and the dog trying to eat his face off. Kaz wishes the dog would actually do that. Ocelot lazily smiles at him, and Kaz stares for a few moments.
“I could say the same for you,” he mutters. “Dog wake you up? It seems to have a lot of…energy.”
Ocelot shakes his head. “Figured I’d start the training program as early as possible.” Then, to the dog, arm outstretched as he points to Kaz, “DD, attack!”
Kaz tenses again, but the pup simply tilts his head in curiosity at his ‘trainer’. He looks between him and Kaz, wagging his tail. Stupid dog.
“Looks like you’re doing a fine job,” Kaz quips and resumes walking. He can hear the clacking of claws against the floor behind him.
Boss requests a helicopter an hour later.
In the late afternoon, bordering on the evening, Kaz watches Ocelot show off “DD” to Snake as he disembarks from the chopper. The pup runs towards Boss, clawing at his legs and boots. Calmly, Kaz watches Boss pick “DD” up, watches as the dog laps at his face, irregardless of the blood and sweat that has buit up, watches as Boss holds “DD” aloft and the sun sifts through the grey fur.
Kaz turns back to the paperwork in front of him he had started earlier. He steadies his hand and keeps writing.
Boss departs back to the ACC the next morning, leaving with little fanfare. “DD” and Ocelot see him off, Kaz stuck in the command tower not wanting to make the trek down two flights of stairs.
Kaz can’t sleep again, a few days after Boss had left. He gets up just before dawn, skin under his eyes deep and dark, and puts his sunglasses on before making his way, once more, to the command tower.
A few other soldiers mill about. They salute him as he walks past, and he nods at them in brief but absent acknowledgment. He took some painkillers today, so the aches were nothing more than that: Dull aches.
Halfway through the walk, something grey darts past him. Kaz screws his eyebrows together, and a few moments later, something brown and red chases after the grey. He squints his eyes in the early morning light.
“DD!” Ocelot shouts after the dog, sounding none too pleased. “Get back here!”
That’s what you get, is Kaz’s immediate thought. He allows the corners of his lips to turn upwards. “DD” leads Ocelot in circles, even going so far as sometimes feinting him by staying in one place, butt raised and tail wagging so quick it shook his entire small body; when Ocelot would approach, he’d dart off in a different direction.
This goes on for a while. Relishing in a little bit of schadenfreude, Kaz allows himself a moment of rest to watch the antics.
Eventually, Ocelot dives for the dog and manages to scoop him up into his arms, holding tight as the dog, still clearly seeing this as playtime, wriggles about. His teeth sink into Ocelot’s godawful scarf and he tugs.
“DD, no! Bad dog!” The harsh words come out in between wheezes as Ocelot makes certain he’s not going to be choked. “DD” seems unperturbed; in fact, Ocelot’s reaction only stokes his playfulness, and he tugs harder.
“Good dog!” Kaz cups his hand around his mouth and shouts. “Go for his face next! Bite his nose off!”
At Kaz’s voice, “DD” whips his head around, ears pointed forwards. He drops the scarf and scrambles to get out of Ocelot’s grip even harder, more ferociously. He yips and barks, and he kicks his hind legs at Ocelot’s chest, and his neck, and when he kicks his jaw, his claws scraping against Ocelot’s cheeks, Ocelot finally lets go, mostly due to the surprise, if him stumbling backwards is anything to go by.
“DD” bounds towards Kaz. His nails scratch the metal, trying to get a good grip. He slides to a stop in front of Kaz, sitting politely with his stupid mouth hanging open and his dumb tongue lolling about. His tail wags as fast as the Blackfoot’s blades.
“Looks like he’s taken a shine to you,” Ocelot sneers in that fake accent. He rubs his jaw, frowning.
“I didn’t expect him to actually listen to me.” He pulls out a handkerchief and hands it over to Ocelot. When Ocelot looks puzzled, Kaz explains, “Your face. Bleeding.”
Ocelot grumbles and takes the offering, hesitant. He presses the cloth to his cheek, wincing. “At least he’s more well-behaved than you. Maybe I ought to re-train Diamond Dog’s other resident hound so he doesn’t learn from bad examples.”
“Or perhaps he just doesn’t like cats,” Kaz growls, low and throaty.
“DD” tilts his head, looking between the two men. His tail slows to a stop, ears drooping.
Ocelot sighs, leaning down to pat the pup on the head, scratching behind his ears. “You made him sad.”
“Let him sink his teeth into your nose,” Kaz snaps, turning abruptly and returning to his walk. “I know that’d cheer me up.”
The following days, Kaz rearranges his route from his room to the command tower in order to avoid the spot Ocelot has deemed perfect for training a wolfdog. Unfortunately, Ocelot picks up on this quickly, so Kaz gets exactly one day of peace (even if that new route had been substantially longer and less efficient).
The thing that frustrates Kaz the most is that Boss seems to love the dog. On his rare visits back to Mother Base, Snake seeks the dog out immediately, checking on his progress and trying to teach him tricks of his own, sometimes alongside Ocelot. He skips out on his report at the command tower until Kaz radios him and asks him to come up, and he always brings the dog at his heels, and he always claims to have lost track of time, and Ocelot is always shooting Kaz smug and knowing grins.
Kaz quietly seethes at Boss getting distracted again and again. But he says nothing. What could he even say?
At some point, Ocelot and the dog stop appearing on his morning walks to the command tower. Despite Kaz wanting this almost desperately for the last few weeks, their sudden absence forces him to go on high alert, suspicion settling into his gut. He wonders, suddenly, with the dog now free roaming the Base rather than always at Ocelot or Boss’s side, if the dog isn’t somehow secretly an agent of Cipher—conveniently planted in a spot where Boss would have found him, a microphone embedded in his skull.
He considers this thought seriously for some time before deciding, ultimately, he can’t be that crazy. The dog is just a dog.
Sometimes, though, he spots “DD” in the distance on his route. He’s grown a little, but isn’t quite grown. Much larger than the runt he’d been when he arrived. Kaz doesn’t actually know much about dogs, nor wolves, but he guesses “DD” is in that weird adolescent stage. Awkward size.
On the days where “DD” sits on his haunches just watching, Kaz has to wonder about his thoughts. The dog’s thoughts. Sometimes he follows after Kaz, but most times (if he’s even present in the first place), he simply observes Kaz as he puts one foot in front of a crutch on a walk that takes forever.
Stupid mutt.
The thing about storms in the middle of the ocean is this: They’re never kind, and they always hit hard. Raindrops pelt against the fixed up oil rig like tossed rocks, loud clangs ringing out and reverberating. During storms, Kaz almost never sleeps. The rain often sounds like the gunfire from nine years ago.
It’s exceptionally early—or very late, depending on how you look at it—when he decides to get up today. He doesn’t bother with an umbrella or anything. He has a spare set of clothes in the command tower, anyway.
The metallic flooring shimmers under what little floodlights they have on during the night. Kaz pauses, tucks his glasses in an inner coat pocket, and begins his long walk. On days that it rains, this walk takes twice as long. Kaz tries not to think about this too hard.
His layers of clothing nearly immediately begin to weigh him down. They soak through quickly, and a chill permeates his bones. But he persists. What if Snake needs help in the middle of the night, after all, and the staff on stand-by duty can’t handle it? This sense of responsibility pushes him onward.
He’s almost arrived to the tower when it happens.
The rain pools in certain parts of the platform, making these sections exceptionally difficult to navigate with only one leg. With sleep deprivation and terriblencold hanging over his head and his shoulders, Kaz makes a mistake. It’s too dark, what with it being the middle of the night in the middle of a horrible storm. One horrifying screech of rubber againet wet metal later, in an instant, the crutch plonks down several yards away, and Kaz is on the ground.
His shoulder—the bad one, which is what he had used to catch himself, forgetting he actually didn’t have his right hand anymore to do that—flares up with fiery pain. It throbs as he lies there in a heap. He had hit the ground hard. His breathing unsteady and ragged, Kaz clenches his eyes shut and wills it away. Unsuccessfully.
He slams his fist against the ground, and the shock travels up his arm, through his shoulders, and into the premature end of his right arm. He winces. Even if he’d later deny it, he did let slip an embarrassing little sound there, that sounded almost like a whimper.
Kaz looks around, tugging the drenched coat tighter around his chest. He’s pretty far from a guard tower. The dim glint of silver in the distance tells him he’d have to crawl quite a bit to retrieve the crutch and maybe have a chance of standing up.
He lets his forehead fall against the floor. He can only hope Boss isn’t the one to find his corpse in the morning, on the off chance he returns home before anyone else can find him. What a stupid way to go out.
Clack, clack, clack.
Kaz initially mistakes the sound as hail. Soon enough, the overwhelming, disgusting smell of wet dog presses itself in the form of a snout against his cheek. Kaz glares at the mostly-not-a-pup anymore. “DD” responds by licking his face. Which accomplishes nothing, seeing as how it’s still raining very heavily.
Waving a hand, Kaz shoos him away and tries to roll over on his side, away from the dog. Clackclackclack, as the dog trots away. He returns a moment later, deliberately standing in Kaz’s line of sight. In his mouth is the crutch. Kaz blinks the rain from his eyes, and DD deposits the crutch near his hand. Instinctually, Kaz grips it, stands it up, and tries to pull himself off the ground.
Unfortunately, the ground is too slick, too slippery; despite multiple attempts, Kaz drops to the floor each and every time, a new part of his body exploding with pain as it cushions his fall. DD watches him, alert, before going to his other side and shoving his nose under Kaz’s armpit, trying to help keep him steady enough to stand.
But Kaz only tips to the other side. DD tries in vain to bite at his coat, tugging, but like always, Kaz falls to the cold, metallic floor with a thud that makes him sick.
He lies there, focusing on his breathing and the way he can’t feel his fingers anymore. He swallows—physically (the spittle stuck in his throat) and metaphorically (his bruised pride and ego)—and looks to the dog.
“G-Go get Ocelot,” he says. The tremors in his voice shock him into realizing he’s been shivering, which probably hasn’t been helping him with standing. “Cl-Claw his eyes out,” it takes a great amount of effort for him to steady his voice, “if you have to.”
DD stares at him dumbly for a moment or two before licking his face again. His tongue is warm, and when DD takes off running, Kaz finds himself missing the touch. He rolls over onto his side again, too numb to feel the various pains now, and curls inwards, clutching the coat close.
He’s not sure how much time passes before he hears a bark or two, followed by the telltale sounds of spurs rapidly nearing. He’s vaguely aware of being lifted off the ground. A hand grabs his face, maneuvers him around.
“Jesus, Miller. You look like shit.”
Through the leather, Ocelot’s hands are hot against his cheeks. He goes limp before his eyes slip shut.
The temporary medbay at the bottom of the command platform didn’t have individual rooms, only curtains dividing the beds, so it’s actually the shared light seeping through his curtains irritating his eyes that wakes him. He stirs, covering his face with his arm, and groans.
Something else stirs in the bed beside him, dipping the shitty mattress down more. Kaz shoots up despite every part of his body protesting, including his eyes. He reaches for the gun holster that isn’t across his chest, because of course it isn’t, and neither is the knife hidden in his belt.
But it’s not an attacker or assailant. It’s not Cipher or XOF. It’s just the dumb dog, pressed up against his right thigh, just slightly too big to make either of their positions particularly comfortable. DD stares at him with a wide, attentive eye. Kaz’s shoulders slump, and he falls back into the bed, covering his eyes again.
The curtains pull back abruptly, and Kaz stifles a pained noise, turning away as much as possible. DD barks twice, almost a warning. Kaz hears spurs pace away, the lights dim considerably, and the spurs return to his side.
“Two peas in a pod, you are,” says Ocelot. “Don’t be so stupid again, Miller, though I know that’s hard for you.”
Kaz doesn’t even look at the other man. Instead, he looks to DD and says, “Forget his eyes. Chew his tongue out instead.”
DD hesitates before leaping off the bed, towards Ocelot, who makes such an embarrassing noise that Kaz really wishes he had a tape recorder going.