She does aim to appeal to his emotions and while her background is a serviceable vehicle to reach him the vampire child mysteriously sidesteps the pathos of her childhood. Indeed, her recollections are clinical or anecdotal in their disassociated delivery and she does not anticipate some emotive cascade from the old soldier. The past is colorless but if she yields to feeling, goes on, these monochrome scenes will awash with red wine. There are things that turn everybody silent, and eventually oneself.

The consequence of her self-distancing is that the girl is nonplussed by his emphatic spirit (she is looking at Snake with concerned brows). Her former accomplices had certain emotional deficits that aided her darker purpose at the cost of a mutually destructive relationship between guardian and child. She had never met his like.

He trails off in a manner that Eli recognizes in herself. Should she encourage him to remember if the knowledge is unavailable to him, and if a person is their memories who is he — Big Boss? Now it is she who frets over his psyche. A man built for war yet gentle as a shepherd with his flock.

Her nails fork under his eyepatch and draw the curtain from his damaged eye. She lays the eyepatch aside. She tucks his aspen hair behind his ear. She strokes his head. Even his substitute limb feels organic about her frame.

"I'm going to make it better." Help him regain his shattered self. "I don't know how, but I'll try. I promise.
"Will you let me ... try?"