His fame precedes him across geography and language and yet is the prestige his to reap? His hounds are convinced, while his duality is but an incipient theory in her mind. His capabilities are the genuine article, likewise are the looks she had praised, so where does Naked Snake terminate and true individuality begin? Surely he and Venom deviate in thought as they cannot see eye to eye indefinitely. Had she been privy to his condition she might broach the matter, not for want of determining a flaw but to, if only temporarily, alleviate his pain. She wants to help him.

Granted she makes a peculiar companion and yet he too is an anomaly in almost every sense. He posits that his (alleged) moral defects are an incentive to keep one's distance when in truth Eli identifies with those very transgressions. The boy relates to the blood on his mentor's hands.

She seems to smile in turn, that slightest waver of the lip when she feels patronized, although she hears no real derision in his laughter.

"You could have punished me."

He is reluctant to tear down on his subordinates. His punishment is self-inflicted, it seems.

Eli inhales the copper in his hair. The smell only taunts her chronic thirst. "I'm ... suffocating. When we are together, I breathe again. You hear me when I speak, while others hear nothing."

She lays her temple on his shoulder. He can see her dark eyes, oft mistaken for "Gypsy features", watching him from his peripheral vision.

"I care for you. Even if I'm ... unrequited."