Chapter 6: Silver

They were soldiers and diplomacy simply wasn't their dish. Every phrase they uttered turned into a painful ordeal that they were forced to confront bitterly; words and wit eluding them both. Snake and Meryl had keen intellects but intelligence and impulse as they knew often didn't marry well. Meryl slouched into the cloth like upholstery in the cab, like a child she scarcely held in her disgruntlement, wearing a prominent grimace and stabbing Snake with incensed russet eyes. She was overtly furious at her loss of words. She wasn't a wordsmith; the study of the English language always bored her to tears. She had little love for dolling up sentences with elaborate words and pretty sounding phrases; always preferring the ruggedness of simple American speak but even this faithful system of blatant and honest language was forgotten in moments like this. This was a moment where she wished she had the ability to say something that might confound Snake. But she had forgotten that hardly anything confounded him, at least not anymore.

Snake darted over her figure with his eyes; an earthy American color that they were, faintly reminding Meryl of the discolored summer jade that covered most people's lawns, simple, understated and small. However they grew grey with weariness and the untold tales of an endless battlefield. Meryl began to notice how badly Snake had aged since she had last laid eyes on him. The corners of his unsmiling eyes began to crease sending three minute lines shooting from them. While wrinkles were yet to appear something even whose had happened to him, the luster of his skin was all but gone, he looked like he had taken a swift beating, regularly. She saw his face and thought of the person she met on Shadow Moses. He was beyond her expectations as far as physicality went. The man she saw in her mind looked somewhat like the man who was now seated beside her, rugged as the Alaskan wilderness, whiskers teasing around his jaw. When she laid eyes on him on Shadow Moses his was a vigorous, seemingly young, svelte man with grainy brown hair and disarming emerald eyes. More classically handsome than the legends portrayed him but perhaps she didn't prefer him that way, now that she thought about it, she felt in love with a man in the legend; the aging, whisker faced, man.

After about a good fifteen minutes of uncomfortable silence Meryl's mind was filled once again with an observation. "Snake," with a soft annoyance in her voice she ensued, "I shouldn't be here and you know this. Listen, I think you should just let me off."

Snake sat up a little more erectly brushing his gloved hand against her chin, as lovingly as a father would to a child and replied, "No, I don't think so," Snake pulled at her chin a little more firmly bringing her nearer to his face, "You're in my hands now. So I suggest you sit still, like a good girl."

"Don't treat me like a child…and get your hands off me." Meryl offered him another cool gaze.

"How long are you planning to go on like this, it's getting old…real quick." He rasped, caressing her chin once more before releasing her.

"You're right, this is a little tiring. I can't even have a conversation with you."

"I think we've about wasted all the conversations we're ever going to have but nevertheless you want to be here."

Meryl couldn't deny that even with every inch of fight that she had in her body she couldn't quite escape Snake's allure and in part that was why she chose to follow him. He after all was once an important person to her and despite that rift which left any remnant of a relationship in absolute ruin she always would come back to him. There was a danger to him that held her motionless. He was so complete. A quality that she always lacked; there was never a sense of completeness within her. She always felt like she was being hounded by the legacy of her father…although she betrayed that at an attempt for individuality only to find herself, once again, compromised by a dream that wasn't really hers.

"I've got something for you." Snake pulled out a chain with silver, dot-like links and in the front of that chain two dog tags clinked against one another.

"What's this?" She asked while Snake placed it within her gloved hand, gently wrapping her fist around it. He looked at her devotedly as if he had fulfilled some sort of obligation to her. Her warm brown eyes burned in question as she glimpsed at the dog tags, reading the inscription. "These are mine." She stated, her eyes going to Snake. "You kept them."

"Yeah, you forgot to take them back from me when you left." Snake's voice had a pleading quality to it as he spoke to her, almost as if he really did want her to return to him. "They aren't of very much use to me now."

Meryl glimpsed at them coolly as if they were alien to her. She hardly recognized the name, Meryl Silverburgh. She was becoming reacquainted with it. She felt almost sorry for Snake. He lit another cigarette, that faraway look made his eyes a misty grey. It was that same dewy gaze that haunted her in childhood memories of her father. He was reminiscing, looking back on a distant time. Then she pitied herself because she was doing the same, she thought of the day that changed her life…when she met Solid Snake. After a pause Meryl began to speak but the words didn't materialize quickly enough.

Snake remained in a stupor, watching the swirling clouds of smoke dance within the enclosed space. A concealed pistol was revealed, a dessert eagle, her gun. Snake aimed it at her with not the slightest hesitation; he was going to kill her.

"You pathetic fuck." She said sternly but without any overwhelming emotion.

"Yeah, I am. I'm pathetic because I trusted you once. But then again I'm not the one staring down the barrel of my own gun."

"Give me a reason why I deserve to die and you don't."

"Nobody deserves a premature death."

"I'm not following…"

"You're boss is an amazing woman. How does it feel to be betrayed by her?"

"You're a liar."

"You don't believe me?"

"No. It's impossible, she sent me after Olga Gurlukovich. If she was aligned with you she wouldn't bother."

"A diversion, she arranged our meeting."

"No. Too many variables, she couldn't have calculated the precise moment of our encounter."

"I was looking for you."

"Why where you so astonished to see me?"

"I'm a good actor."

"You're much to blunt."

"You're right; I'm blunt, all the more reason for you to believe me. I'm supposed to kill you."

"Supposed? You aren't going to? Why back down."

"I wasn't planning to. I'm going to kill you after I'm done with you."

"Done with me?" Her thoughts darted riotously catching up with the fear she not held present in her heart, and then something caught her eye…the glint from the dog tags which read "Meryl Silverburg".