i. There is a boy on Mother Base.

There are many children here now thanks to Venom's uncommonly soft heart, but the boy stands out. His blond hair and fair skin is singular among the child soldiers, but even that isn't why he catches her eye.

He catches her eye because he is so often trying not to while watching her.

When she leaves her cage she finds the boy following doggedly at her heels, glancing at her around pipes or staring down at her from catwalks, and whenever she meets his gaze he's quick to run away. When she returns from a mission with Venom he's usually somewhere within eyeshot of the helipad, and the second she steps out he's turning tail and leaving before she can even fully register his presence. When she's in her cage, nearly alone, she'll spot a flash of gold or olive drab out of the corner of her eye before turning to see no one but her regular guard.

The boy is harsh, surly, and antisocial. She has no idea what he could want with her.

At least, she doesn't until she hears a voice teetering on the edge of puberty painted with a Central London accent ask, "Why don't you talk?"

Quiet turns around. Eli is leaning out from behind a large shipping container, poised to bolt at any second but fixing her with a serious, intense gaze. She imagines that look will be quite a bit more intimidating once he finally gets taller than her and grows into his father's rugged features. For now, it almost looks cute.

Quiet just cocks her head to the side, feigning like she doesn't understand the question, and he scowls back at her.

"I know you're not mute," he shoots back, "I've heard you hum before, you can make sounds. You understand what people say. So why don't you talk?"

Quiet narrows her eyes– the boy's not going to get anywhere with manners like that. So she just shrugs.

His jaw tenses, as does his grip on the side of the shipping container, but he shows a remarkable amount of restraint in only raising his voice slightly as he keeps questioning her; "If you aren't going to talk, why don't you use sign language? Or write? You're just making things harder like this."

Quiet almost smirks. Now this, at least, she can answer. She does so by holding out her gun with one hand and gesturing to herself– and how she can carry little else with her current 'uniform'– with the other. A flicker of recognition crosses Eli's face, along with a mottled flush as the preteen boy has to actually look at what she's wearing, before he darts back out of sight behind the shipping container.

She thinks nothing of it until later that day when Eli comes tromping down the stairs to her cage, avoiding her eyes as he walks right up to her and shoves a hand in through the bars. She inspects it– he's holding a notepad and pen.

"Here, take it," he mutters, stubbornly keeping his eyes focused anywhere but on her, "It won't help you out on the field but at least you can tell the jerks here if you want something."

This time Quiet doesn't fight the smile spreading across her face. Ocelot had tried to get her to write before and she'd refused, but evidently Eli knew nothing about that. She takes the pad and pen out of his hand, first scribbling to test how much ink is left, before writing a message down and turning the pad around for him to read.

Where did you get this?

He crosses his arms over his chest with an indignant huff, cheeks turning that same blotchy pink; "Does it matter?"

Around a soft breath of a laugh, Quiet writes, Stealing is wrong Eli.

He glares hard at the metal floor; "So's keeping a girl in a cage and only letting her out when they need her."

Quiet's smile is crinkling the corners of her eyes now. Evidently Eli also doesn't know she can get out of this cage whenever she wants. But she suspects it wouldn't matter either way– young boys are simple like that.

So she writes, Thank you, Eli. You're very sweet.

His eyes go wide and his blush reaches his ears; "N-no I'm not, I–! I just–! I didn't– I'm leaving!"

He stomps back up the stairs and Quiet laughs out loud for the first time in what feels like years.

ii. When she'd leapt into the chlorine gas Quiet had distantly suspected it would hurt. She hadn't expected it to hurt quite this much. As she's carried to the medical platform and they desperately try to fix her (despite her alien biology confounding even the most competent among them) she can only think back to crashing out the window, shame mingling with agony as she isn't sure what hurts more– her skin being burnt off or failing in the simple task of assassinating a man who'd been comatose for nine years.

At least now she has Venom's metal hand to grip as tight as she likes to help her through the worst of it.

Venom has to be physically removed from her bedside long after the medics have done all they can for her, with Ocelot telling him in that pantomime of gentle normality he puts on that there's nothing more they can do for her and he's got responsibilities. He makes sure to be at Venom's back as he leaves the room, just so he can shoot a glare over his shoulder at her. Quiet returns it.

One thing she cherishes about her silence is that she'll never be able to lie to Venom. That's more than Ocelot will ever be able to say.

She's not exactly alone in the medical bay, thanks to Miller she's never without at least three guards keeping watch at a safe distance, but it certainly feels that way as she stares at the ceiling and counts the tiles. She hopes the child was able to find where she'd dropped the necklace– it would be too sad if this was all for nothing. From down the hall she hears heavy, yet small, boots making their way towards the door. It slides open and Quiet uses what meager strength she has to turn towards the sound.

Eli is standing in the doorway, frozen, eyes darting around the room so they won't have to settle on her. Clenched in one of his trembling hands is her notepad and pen, flipped to a clean page. His mouth is pressed into a tight, quivering line, and he's standing up far too straight with his free hand ready to slam the door shut again.

Quiet tries to move, tries to put weight on her elbow so she can prop herself up, and Eli jumps at the sudden movement. He's across the room as quickly as his short legs allow. He drops the pen and paper near her shoulder and his eyes run up and down all the angry scarlet burns painting her skin.

His voice comes stumbling out in a mumble, shaking like shutters in the wind, "I'm sorry. You weren't supposed to get hurt, I just– I was just trying to– I'm sorry."

Quiet can only stare at him. It's so easy to forget that he's just a child.

Gingerly, she reaches for the pen and paper– Eli grabs them and hands them hastily to her. It takes her longer than she'd like to write down a simple sentence and the frustration makes her press harder than she should, but she finishes and turns it towards Eli.

I'm not the one you should be apologizing to.

He reads the sentence several times over, face twisting with a different emotion every time– shock, denial, anger, before settling on something Quiet could only call 'troubled'.

"I… I get so angry at them," he mutters, "At everyone and I… Sometimes I don't even know why, and I just– I was throwing that necklace down there before I knew I wanted to…"

This is going to require a longer statement. Quiet writes with meticulous care, taking it one letter at a time. Eli waits and watches.

She finally turns the paper around: I understand. I was like that too when I was your age. But if you want to be their leader or their friend they have to trust you. A leader who can admit he was wrong is a strong one that people will follow because it proves he sees his followers as people who deserve respect.

Eli takes even longer with this message. Quiet can see him turning it over and over in his head, taking it apart, examining every piece as thoroughly as possible.

Then he meets Quiet's eyes, thoughtful; "Is that why you follow my father?"

Quiet doesn't need the notepad for this. She just smiles as she nods.

Eli gives the notepad one last glance before he murmurs, "Feel better soon," and shuffles out of the room.

He's back the next morning, his visit coming in the middle of one of Venom's, trailing a few paces behind one of the other child soldiers. Eli nearly turns right around at the sight of his father, but the other child comes in without flinching and Eli's forced to follow. The younger boy is wearing Shabani's necklace proudly around his neck as he comes up to her, with Eli muttering around another blush that he's just here to translate.

The little boy's enthusiasm as he thanks her for getting the necklace back is hardly tempered by Eli's reticence– it's enough to even get Venom to smile. Her notepad and paper are stowed away where prying eyes can't see them so she smiles and nods and gently pats his head. He runs off without Eli, beaming bright, but Eli lingers for a moment.

"I told him I was sorry," he grumbles, actually looking at Quiet for once just so he won't have to look at Venom, "He wasn't mad at me… Don't know why."

Quiet carefully leans forward and reaches out to pat Eli on the head. She's barely touched his hair before his face turns bright scarlet and he sprints out of the room.

Venom looks between her and the door with a bemused smile before he says, "Please don't tell me he has a crush."

Quiet just hums to herself– After all, in her silence, she can't lie.

iii. Usually when Eli visits her it's just to either rant about Venom, ask her questions about what she was doing before she joined Diamond Dogs, or beg her to teach him some sharpshooting or hand to hand technique he'd seen her do. Today he's come bearing gifts.

He shoves a hand full of roughly-plucked pale blue flowers through the bars; "Here. Take them."

She does take them, looking them over carefully as she turns them over in her hands. These are Golden Crescents, she sees them out in the Afghanistan frontier all the time. And she knows exactly where Eli got them.

She writes with a wry smirk, I seem to remember telling you that stealing is wrong?

"Oh come on, this isn't stealing," he grouses, rolling his eyes, "They need the seed pods to make tranquilizers, and I made sure I didn't take enough for them to miss."

She laughs and his usual flush starts to creep up his neck; I'm not vouching for you if you get in trouble.

Eli scoffs, looking away; "Whatever, I don't want you protecting me anyway."

Despite her protests, Quiet can't deny that of all the plants Venom brings home these are her favorites. She sets all but the largest of the flowers on her cot and tucks it behind her ear, winding the stem into her hair so it stays put.

What do you think?

Eli stares, wide-eyed, face turning a frankly concerning shade of red.

He's just barely able to eke out, "You look okay."

Eli doesn't even protest as she tucks another one of his flowers in his jacket's front pocket and tells him that he looks dashing– if anything that makes it harder for him to talk. Quiet keeps the flower behind her ear until it wilts, wearing it around Mother Base and even out into the field. Venom has an idea of who gave it to her, but he doesn't say anything. Miller never cares.

The first time Ocelot sees it he fixes her with one of those deceptively blank looks as he wonders, "Now where did that come from?"

He's not getting anywhere with manners like that. She just shrugs around a coy smirk.

That pulls a glare out of him. Good. Let him squirm.

iv. The choice took seconds to come to, hours to actually follow through on.

Recognizing she was a safety risk and coming up with a solution was a simple matter of logic. Coming to terms with the fact that she was a liability to the only leader she'd ever trusted and leaving the closest thing she'd ever had to a home was something altogether different. But night falls, the moon rises, and she sneaks out of her cage with ease.

Sentimentality makes her head all the way to the Command platform to find a lifeboat, hidden from view by the grace of her parasites as she skirts around the sparse late night patrols. She doesn't even move at an urgent pace, strolling so she can take in as much of Mother Base as she possibly can. This will be the last time she sees it. It should count.

The lifeboats have perhaps less of a guard than they should, but thanks to Ocelot's gentle encouragement of any new recruits (her chest tingles where he'd shocked her and she swallows a scowl) deserters aren't a common problem in Diamond Dogs. It's a simple matter of making some distracting noises just past line of sight to empty the bay. It's dark and deserted, enough that Quiet thinks there's no harm in coming back into view as she starts to prep a boat…

"What are you doing?"

Quiet freezes. She swallows hard– of all the people on all the base to find her, she wishes beyond wishing it didn't have to be him.

She looks up, and Eli's looking back down at her from one of the beams just above the lifeboats. He clambers down it onto the walkway, brow furrowed, and closes the distance to look up at her in concern. The boy feels so intensely, and everything he feels shines like the sun from his face– A part of her wants to lie, just because she can't bear to see how he'll look if she tells him the truth.

But she takes out her pen and paper, meant only to be a keepsake when she'd taken it with her, and writes; I'm infected with an English strain of the Parasites. I don't want to cause another outbreak, even by accident.

Eli's eyes dart in a panic between her and the notepad; "So you're just going to leave? All by yourself?!"

Her throat aches; It's the safest option.

He balls his hands up into fists, eyes locked on her feet, as he mutters, "So… you wouldn't take me with you, then? Even if I asked? Even if I hate it here and you were the only one I… It'd be too dangerous, wouldn't it?"

She kneels down so she's at his eye level as she writes, and it takes her a while not just to put the words down but to get them in order in her head. Eli waits and watches.

She hands him the notepad when she's finally finished: I don't know where I'm going to go. I don't know where I can go. You deserve better than Diamond Dogs, you deserve a normal life and a normal childhood, but I can't give that to you. Your father isn't perfect, but he cares about you, and he's trying. Please give him one more chance.

He stares down at her words for a long time before he meets her eyes, his own glistening with unshed tears, and he sounds like the child he is as he whispers, "I'll miss you."

Quiet doesn't write out that she'll miss him, too. Instead, she takes his face in both hands and presses a kiss to his forehead. The second she lets him go he turns away from her, scrubbing furiously at his eyes, and she takes that as her cue. She finishes prepping the lifeboat and lowers it down, leaping down to land on its roof when it hits the water. She spares one last glance up at the boy, who stares down after her with her notepad clutched tight to his chest.

She waves once before disappearing inside the boat. She will never know that Eli stood there and watched her sail away until she disappeared over the horizon.

v. Ironically enough, they're on assignment in Afghanistan when Ocelot realizes exactly why Sniper Wolf gets under his skin.

She's scouting out the insertion point for the mission, looking for a good sniper's perch so she can wait there 'til nightfall, when Liquid's voice distracts the both of them; "Well now, I haven't seen these in years."

Ocelot glances over to the boy it's still so difficult to not think of as Eli, who's hunched over a few pale blue flowers. Golden Crescents, if Ocelot's not mistaken– he remembers telling Venom about them over the radio, remembers the hours spent allocating which parts of the crop would go to tranquilizer darts and which part would be made into pure opium to keep Diamond Dogs in the black, like it was yesterday instead of twenty years ago.

He's brought out of a reverie on just how goddamn old he is by Liquid plucking the flowers and strolling over to Wolf, holding one out to her; "Want one?"

She tries to make her fond smile look like a wry smirk and only partially succeeds; "And what am I supposed to do with it?"

Liquid just chuckles, "I see, once again I have to do everything around here. Hold still."

That's what Wolf's best at, and she stands as still as a statue as Liquid carefully tucks the flower behind her ear, twining the long stem through her hair so it will stay put. The last time Ocelot had seen a woman with a sniper rifle in hand and a Golden Crescent behind one ear flashes through his memory like a lightning strike.

He's honestly not sure what he wants to do more– laugh so hard he bruises a rib, or take that flower and crush it under his bootheel.

He settles for standing by as Liquid steps back and looks Wolf over with a disgustingly affectionate smile; "And there we are."

Wolf rolls her eyes, swallowing the color that's trying to come to her cheeks; "Thank you so much, now I look ridiculous."

"Not at all," Liquid replies, "It brings out your eyes. You look lovely."

Wolf looks away as she loses the battle against a flushed face; "We should get back to work."

She brushes past Liquid to start scouting out higher ground and he watches her go, looking at her like he's been lost at sea for months and she's the shore. It's sweet. It's sickening.

So Ocelot scoffs, "I can't fuckin' believe it."

Liquid glares over his shoulder at him; "And what can't you believe?"

Ocelot just grins and drawls, "That your type hasn't changed since you were twelve."

Liquid says nothing. He just makes sure to bump him with his shoulder as he walks back towards their APC, dropping the two other flowers he'd plucked as he passes by.

Ocelot crushes them under his boot. For old times' sake.