Aurochs and Angels

Disclaimer: This stuff belongs to Hideo Kojima. I'm only borrowing it.

Notes: For Sharky, because I like the cut of her jib, and she likes the cut of Nabokov's.

"When you look at me like that, I always wonder what you're thinking."

His eyes are half-closed. His gaze never leaves the dirty brown ceiling, crossed with cracks that intersect the dark waterstains like railroad lines on a map of the Old Country. He's concentrating hard, something he is unaccustomed to, trying to figure out why I'm here, lacing up my boots in the almost-dark and the not-quite-cold.

He ought to be wondering why he's here instead.

"Nothing in particular. Just that you remind me of your father."

"No, I don't."

Whether he says that because he understands, or because of some sudden flash of insight, or just to be self-deprecating, I don't know. He's never been very bright, but sometimes he manages to surprise me by figuring something out all on his own.

It's the way he looks. His blond hair and his dark skin; his nose, a little flat at the bridge, a little crooked from a bad break early in life; his hands, shaped by newer, better, deadlier guns. His eyes, which are never as blue as they are in my memories.

But it's not just the way he looks. Maybe it's actually a lot of things. Maybe it's only a few.

"You're a dirty old man," he says.

"Are you really surprised?"

He rolls his eyes. "Have you got a smoke? I'm in the mood for a slow death."

Who isn't?

He tilts his chin back and I reach down to slip a cigarette between his lips. I light it for him and the match throws strange, ghostly shadows over his face. It reminds me of something, that tableau of light and darkness, and I think that if I can remember what that is, then I'll finally understand everything.

He smokes slowly, thoughtfully, and then pushes the shrinking cigarette to the corner of his mouth.

"Do I really?" he asks. A few ashes fall from the end of his cigarette, into his hair. He ought to cut it; he'd cut it if he weren't so vain. If he weren't gazing endlessly at his reflection in a pool…

"What?"

"Remind you of… you know?"

"Of your father?" I say, and then, just because they're different things, "Of Big Boss?"

"Yeah," he says. It's dark, but I can imagine that he might be blushing. I don't, really, but I can imagine that I might pity him. "Yeah, that."

"Sometimes," I tell him. Only when I'm not looking for it. Only when I'm not looking at him, do I catch a glimpse of something familiar out of the corner of my eye, like a movie ghost lurking in the back of the frame.

I'm looking forward to the day that I am responsible for his death. He'll never be closer to his father than he is at the moment he realizes he's been betrayed.

It's what we both want. He just hasn't realized it yet.

He looks a little skeptical. "Sometimes," I say again. "Sometimes you remind me."

"But not now."

"No, not now."

His mouth twists into a pout, the ineffective affectation of someone who's not accustomed to getting what he wants. "Then why are you here?"

I shrug. "Because I'm just a dirty old man. A character from Nabokov. What about you?"

"Why not? I've been in worse places then this." He sounds like it doesn't bother him, and maybe it doesn't. But I wouldn't be surprised if it does.

"I've done worse shit than this," he says.

I know that this is the only immortality you and I can share.