Eli has no quarrel with Snake's unsentimental attitude toward politically sanctioned villainy. The right to kill is historically exercised by the mighty hence his autonomy is an embarrassment to the nations; he does not work his deathly magic for them. The mercenary is immoral by virtue of independence.

Would she have done the same in his skin? A sociopath can thrive neath the clandestine wings of the secret services, and she can assail a stranger without remorse. She will seldom feel anything before and after the deed though she is loath to admit to it.

Pass, he says, like a fever or set unit of time. It is not so much that the sentiment is cliché to her ear as it is decisively pessimistic, yet can she rightfully argue that affection is not ephemeral when personal experience had taught her to expect, nay, foreknow the extinction of feeling? While men had sworn undying love for her before, Big Boss had discovered the girl alone.

"Noo," she intonates then rolls her lips shut, yet her gaze dances as though cruelly savoring his bemusement. Perhaps timelessness has rearranged her aesthetics but she isn't exaggerating one bit.

"All of you ... are infatuated with masculinity. They didn't say it, only thought it."

Eli lists as if depleted and lays her small cranium on his shoulder, a brief reprieve before her lips close over his ear and start to suckle softly on the cartilage. "But I mean it, through and through." The squelch of saliva is a little obscene, but so what.

She murmurs something indistinct to Venom under her breath, in Swedish.