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“I think, even at the time, I’d thought something was off.”
Hal turns slightly in his chair, the light squeak from the wheels too loud in the small apartment. He focuses on Dave’s face but doesn’t say anything. When Dave feels like talking, Hal tries not to interrupt. As it’s infrequent and usually slightly forced. Even now.
“The time?” He prompts, gently, admiring how Sunny looks swaddled up in her pink carrier against Dave’s chest. She’d be transferred to her cradle soon, but she always fell asleep much faster against Dave’s strong, warm chest and heartbeat.
He could relate.
Dave carefully set the gun he’d been cleaning back to the coffee table. “Not…” He purses his lips, mindful of Sunny’s tiny head, hand ghosting just so over her hair. Soft, silvery. Still not fully grown in. Tufted like a baby bird’s growing feathers. “Between the adrenaline and the confusion, I think I was so focused on what I’d seen that I didn’t.”
He’s paused again, grunting, fixated on the table. “In hindsight, the shrapnel should’ve been the giveaway.”
“You didn’t know any better.” Hal says, screen flickering in his peripheral, not asking what could’ve brought the sudden thoughts on. He’ll get like this if they’ve been idle too long. Lost in thought, and Hal tries to encourage his thoughts whenever they do occur.
They knew now, of course. Knew exactly who the first man had been, and when Hal’d tried to prompt him, Dave told him to take what information they had gathered and do ‘whatever nerd shit it is you do on that thing’ and left it at that.
For years, the topic had been off-limits. Either forgotten under the onslaught of things to be done or what else, Dave was reluctant to entertain the information.
~~
Early on in Philanthropy, early enough that the year had not turned, and they still resided in Alaska, Dave had made a request. A request that found them knee-deep in snow so far out into the woods Hal was certain they’d never come out of it alive.
“Calm down.” Dave said, gruff but not unkind, sled moving steadily. “It’s not as intimidating as it looks.”
Hal stared up at the seemingly all-reaching trees to the bright, blue sky and debated that, shifting against Dave’s back more. “We’re very tiny, like this. Universal specks. Invisible.” Hal had no idea how Dave would even find what he was searching for. Direction meant nothing to Hal in this never-ending wilderness, but he and the dogs pressed on with a confidence that soothed him all the same.
Finally, when Hal’s sure his fingers will never again feel a thing, Dave slows the sled, encouraging Hal to dismount with him, before pawing at the ground.
“What are you doing?” Hal asks, bewildered. But Dave just grunts and finally, somehow, impossibly, something gives beneath his hands. A door, a trapdoor leading to a ladder, and further below that Hal can’t discern.
“Come on, you first," Dave says, “I need to secure the dogs.” He had a little tent for them with heated bottles of water, and food. They’d be back and the dogs knew how to find them.
He holds the light steady above Hal’s head, who gives him a look of pure dismay, “We don’t know what’s down here!”
“I know where we are, both hands on the ladder, mind your footing.”
“You’re lucky I trust you.” Hal mumbles, resigned to his fate and slowly beginning to climb. It’s not any warmer in the tunnel-and it is a tunnel. But the descent is relatively short, and there’s a battery-operated light on the side that he is able to flick on.
When Dave joins him a few moments later, he takes the lead, “Stay behind me, be careful.”
“What is this?” Hal asks, doing as he’s told. Ever pleased to have Dave’s radiating reassurance and confidence as a guide.
“A back entrance. Was mostly used for storage-and protection." Dave frowns, pressing on.
Hal blinks, taking the chance to remove his gloves, rub at his fingers, “Protection?”
But Dave just grunts again, focused, before hitting another ladder, “Stay put, the door should be locked from here. Give me a second to get it loose. Good thing I kept the key, you miserable old bastard.”
There’s a fondness to that statement Hal can’t place, and he watches in mild awe as Dave climbs the ladder and works on the door yet again before it all comes loose. From above, he bends down and coaxes Hal to come back up, and Hal finds himself in darkness again for a moment.
Still, it’s a house of some sort, a cabin probably. If a well done one, they’ve ended up in a closet, and Dave gets that open as well, the key giving quickly.
“Master never had just one entrance to this place.” Dave comments, feet steady and sure against the floor, knowing exactly where to go. It’s dark inside-but that’s to be expected, Hal recalls something else David had said, and stops him with a sudden hand to his wrist.
"Wait! Didn’t..wasn’t it gas?” He asks, “Should we be in here without something on our faces?”
Dave pauses, but then rubs a hand against one of the closed windows, “Just..trust me on this one, okay?”
Hal has nothing to say to that, so he doesn’t. Dave leads them to the kitchen, where there’s impressions in the floor. Round circles, as if there had been something on it once. Four of them, Hal can see. Almost like.
“Dogs?”
“Dog dishes.” Dave grunts, affirmative, “And if I’m right…”
The cupboards are caked in dust, food either expired or on its way to that. Neither of them even attempts to get to the fridge. Instead, Dave notes an empty spot at the bottom of the pantry, “Dog food used to be there.” He comments, “Why take the food and the dishes if they killed the dogs?”
“Maybe..” Hal blinks, thinking, “He had a daughter, right? Maybe she came..after?” It sounds ridiculous even when he says it.
“She’s like 14.” Or something, Dave never could keep track of that one. “And why would she take dead dogs?”
Right.
“Come on. Kitchen ain’t gonna tell us anymore shit.” Dave mumbles, moving through the cabin with ease. As they do, it strikes Hal as odd how everything is in place. There’s a hulking faded white desktop computer in the corner of the living area, sat against a massive oak entertainment system with a bulky TV. An old rug that might’ve once been hand made beneath a ratty yellow loveseat, no dining room table (there isn’t room) coffee table.
The bedroom and bathroom are the only two other rooms, a fireplace dominates the opposite wall of the living room, stone and wood and looking oh so inviting as Dave pokes through the bedroom. Clothes in a closet, bed made but now dusty (it’s only a twin bed, did the man have something against comfort?), medicine in the bathroom, first aid kit, cleaning equipment.
Dave hums to himself, clicking his tongue in thought before he takes a hold of the mirror in the bathroom with both hands, the entire medicine cabinet disengaging from the wall.
Hal yelps, surprised, “The hell-!?”
He gets an over the shoulder grin that’s bizarrely a little feral, “Thought you were the genius here, Hal.” Pushing at a compartment within the wall that had been behind the medicine cabinet, the soft click revealing a safe. Within the safe is two handguns, a case for a disassembled assault rifle, a knife belt, and ammunition, “Surely you should be catching on.”
“That..your Master was well-prepared?”
“And paranoid, very, very paranoid.”
Didn’t seem to do the man much good, “If he was so paranoid that his cabin’s the equivalent of a den, then how...?”
At that, Dave gets quiet again. Hal can’t shake the feeling that Dave’s working on an instinct or belief he has, but isn’t quite willing to share.
He won’t press, not yet. Beginning to learn that patience pays off well with him.
“Is there anything missing then? From the safe?”
Dave shakes his head but does take the weapons. Hal wonders if it’s polite to rob the dead, then shakes the feeling away. Figuring if Dave’s got enough knowledge of the cabin to know exactly where everything is, then he is confident enough to know if he can take these.
“Believe me.” Dave says, as if reading Hal’s mind, “He’d have done the same.” That smile again, that sensation that has Dave chuckling seemingly at some private joke, “Can hear the old crank in my head, "Dead ain’t gonna do shit with it, Snake! OSP isn’t for the buried.” Snickering to himself.
Hal doesn’t know exactly what to say to that, but feels a chuckle come forth regardless. “Strange man,”
“Fuck, you have no idea.” An implication that one day, when Dave was ready, he might get an idea.
Safe emptied, Hal checks over the medicine cabinet. First aid kit, useful-this he hands over, expired pills, pain killers, a small, zippered bag with…
“Syringes” Hal says, curious but not questioning. “More pain meds?”
“And other shit.” Dave notes, “Take that too. Pills aren’t even all expired yet.”
Bathroom finished; they head back towards the bedroom. Hal is barely surprised this time when Dave motions for him to stay still, grabbing the bed and shoving it with two hands up against the wall, kicking aside the rug beneath and kneeling.
Hal expects the trapdoor this time, flat and coffin like, nearly as long as Dave is tall.
Instead of a tunnel like Hal nearly expects, they reveal a pit, with boxes of personal affects about a foot deep in the ground. “Help me out.” Dave instructs, pulling one of the boxes up.
Getting on hand and knees, Hal’s beginning to feel warm in his parka, reaching down to pull up a longer box than the one Dave has, grunting with surprise at how heavy it is.
It’s black, almost like a case for an instrument would be, and he flicks the gold snaps open, blinking in confusion at what’s inside.
“What’s up?” Dave asks, noting his face, pausing to set his currently un-opened box aside.
“Uhm, Its.” Hal squints, “An arm. Metal. Like a bionic.”
“Oh yeah, he had his right arm replaced, prosthetic, thought I mentioned that?”
“No Dave, this ones red..and it’s for the left.”
At his side, Dave goes a little tense, peering to look. “..Just, close that, will ya?” A little strained, Hal does as he asks, and takes care to note the paling in Dave’s cheeks. They were working up a sweat with all the movement in their winter clothes, but that’s faded from Dave, who’s already turning away.
Right. One of those ‘for later’ things then, maybe.
"Dave” He tries, hoping to get the man’s mind back on task. Odd ache filling his chest, “What exactly are we looking for?”
Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t get much of an answer, Dave’s riffling through that larger box. Papers, Hal can see. And some assorted items that don’t make much sense to him. Polaroids with burnt edges. Like someone had tried to set them on fire, only to change their mind at the last moment.
Cigarettes.
Completely dried up marijuana.
Clothes. Glasses cleaner. More papers. What Hal thinks might be another gun.
Dog collar.
Watch.
Something extremely tiny and flashy, diamond..diamonds?
CD’s that Dave makes the most curious sound for, Hal can see that they’re..train stations? The hell.
A strange man indeed.
“I only..” Dave’s sounding far away now, putting that box aside to reach for another. There’s not too much left to go in the storage pit. “Master’d said something odd to me once, and when all that crap after Shadow Moses came out, and they said it was gas.” He’s scoffing now, “I had to see. I just. Had to see. That’s all.”
‘See what’? Hal desperately wants to ask but wonders if he’d understand even if he got a response, “It is a little odd that nobody hid their trail though. None of his things were taken, nothings broken, nothings out of place at all really.’
“Course not,” Dave’s voice is strange. Strained, a bit confused himself. “That’d just be sloppy of him.”
Him?
Who?
Hal isn’t naïve enough to think that this would be the kind of thing the police would’ve investigated. But it still feels odd, as if the people involved somehow knew Dave might find his way here, and deliberately left things for him. All of it sounds crazy and makes a muddled heaviness settle in his brain. There’s a general reluctance to Dave’s movements now, and he grabs a duffel bag from the closet, like he’s trying to think and not think at the same time.
“The guns, the papers, the..” He makes a dismissive gesture “If it’s not food or clothes, we’re taking it. See if you can pop his hard drive too. Alright?”
Hal knows better than to question that get-shit-done tone, sounding more like Snake than Dave again. “And then what?”
“I’m setting the place on fire.”
Hal doesn’t make any argument to that.
~~
Of course, when all that had been said, done and the cabin was a flaming speck in the distance, Hal had been left with the hard drive and papers, and Dave so firmly closed off that he never even attempted to poke that bear.
Hacking the hard drive had been a non-issue, and between that, photographs, and paperwork, more and more truth had come to light. What Hal did come to discover was such a whirlwind that he’d found himself taking breaks to let his head digest, clear, and focus again.
Angry old ghosts indeed. Truths that Hal hadn’t expected. Truths that left Hal nauseated.
At times, he sometimes has to ask whether he was happier not knowing his mother’s name, or that that THING. That mechanical coffin person-encoded death trap that.
No.
Not going there.
Suffice was to say that the digging had left both himself and Dave with many a drunken night, or two.
Dave’s sober tonight though, as is Hal. Both of them conscious of Sunny dozing against his chest, soothing the tide of angry emotions and conflicting old ghosts. Even as Dave comes to seat himself against the desk, Hal’s hands careful to not wake Sunny as he works open the little carrier.
Dave’s hands look so large when he holds her, cooing softly to set her down in the cradle. She stirs only to flex her fingers in sleep, content and still when the soft fuzzy white blanket is pulled over her body.
She’ll want to eat again soon. Hal sends a glance towards her bottle. Reassuring himself for the hundredth time that they were well stocked.
“I want a smoke.” He says, Hal nodding and getting up from the computer, swiping the pack up as he does. “Don’t close the door behind us.” Their apartments fourth floor with a balcony, but they want to keep the screen clear to hear Sunny. Though Hal is convinced Dave's bat ears could hear through walls, it doesn’t ease the anxiety.
Outside, Dave turns his head, taking the cigarette with an expectant look in his eye that Hal can’t help but fondly eye roll at. Flicking the lighter as Dave leans in, both breathing inward, inhaling acrid smoke before parting. Hal long stopped questioning how it was so soothing, Dave’s hand steady on his lower back when they look out to the road below.
“It was how he’d talked. Like he was reading a script someone wrote him long ago. I couldn’t register how it was different, how he sounded different. I was so..” He grunts, “So goddamned tired. Felt like every bone was screaming and the pain wasn’t able to keep the dizziness at bay. And then just..”
“Master was an angry shit. And I don’t even mean that in like..he had this real sour anger, like a toxin. Man could be fine but then he’d just..stare off into space, suddenly he’s screaming at you so loud your ears ring. I used to ask myself how anyone could be that mad, and at what? Anyone sober too. But I was a dumbass. Typical. I guess.”
“Lots of us are dumb when we’re young,” Hal tries, keeping the levity in his voice, weary of the territory but willing.
He gets a grunt in response, “That day, night, whatever time it was. I think even through the haze, I knew. I understood. I felt..if I can even think of how I felt looking back, the betrayal, the hurt. It hurt so much to imagine being fucked around like that. Jerked around. I could hear a thumping sound in my ears, I thought it was the gunfire til he opened his mouth, heard him speak, and I realized it was my own heartbeat.”
Killer instinct, or however Liquid had put it to him later. Hotly denied but never not true. Programmed in, nature vs nurture. Satisfaction. Bred for the death and bred for the pain. Bred to make sure that nobody who crossed him would live to report back.
Hal leans in closer, presses against the hand that had never left his back, “It almost makes you wonder why he’d not tried to get out. Go..somewhere else.”
Hal couldn’t imagine being in that position. Being molded into another person, without your consent. Lied to, and then told the truth because your creator demands it. Demands your sacrifice at his altar of bloodshed.
“Dunno what else he would’ve done.” Dave says, taking another long drag, “With that face, that mindset. Not like he could’ve known any different, by then.”
It’s true, but it makes Hal’s stomach twist all the same. Ache like a reflux in his throat, knowing it’s reflected in Dave in the barely-there shudder against his side.
~~
In the period of hiding after the Tanker, they had long periods of downtime. Daytime traveling was risky, so they kept secure at ‘base’ (apartments, motels, backseats), and waited for darkness before moving again. Barely listening to the shitty cable TV that runs its never-ending parade of commercials, waiting for America’s Most Wanted to turn on and provide any updates.
There’s discarded beer cans beneath their feet, nestled on the floor because the couch of the motel room makes so much racket neither of them can stand it, and the bed is piled high with laundry neither of them feel like folding yet.
Doesn’t stop Dave though, who is doing push ups and trying not to laugh as Hal sits on his back, studying the beer can in hand and wondering if he’s drunk yet before deciding drunk people can’t read labels that well but also thinking that isn’t a thing sober people say either.
And then Dave laughs and Hal leaves the meandering thoughts to the wind, putting as serious an expression as he can on and noting a flash of gold at Dave’s wrist.
“Hey.” He leans over, picking up Dave’s hand, getting a huff in response. He could carry on with one-hand, and he does. “You’re wearing it again.”
He liked to sometimes, but Dave flushes all the same, ears pink in an adorable way maybe drunk maybe not drunk Hal wants to kiss, and does, trying to stifle the giggles when Dave makes a noise at him that’s half inquiring, half content.
There’s a physicality to Dave Hal hadn’t been fully prepared for but welcomed eagerly once he got over (most) of his own insecurities. If he wants Hal to move, he moves him. If he wants him in his lap, instead of asking, he marches over and picks Hal up, seating him where he wants him to be and leaving little room for argument. A shoulder squeeze, a hand tap. He dressed and undressed in frightening seconds that had made Hal blink in confusion. Utterly practical about it in a way that Hal was still getting comfortable with himself.
He supposed it was the practicality a man who spent most of his time in barracks understood. The same way he couldn’t separate the idea of his body being little more than something useful, vaguely aware of his attractiveness but outright confused when Hal mumbled about his abs and wondered how he looked so good at six am when Hal was just starting to doze off.
“Well.” Dave coughs, a little squirmy. “You’d gone to all that trouble, after all..”
The watch had been dead on arrival when they’d sorted through Miller’s things. Hal had extracted it from the pile and tucked it away when Dave made a strange face at it. Later, he’d wrapped it back up and carefully pushed it across their current dinner table (a pizza box on Dave’s lap).
There’d been a long period of silence, where Dave stared at the newly ticking watch with something Hal couldn’t read. “You fixed it.” His voice a little distant.
“Took it apart, wired a new battery. Can’t make it waterproof though.” He tried to tease, noting the glassiness that had started in Dave’s eyes. Until the pizza box ended up on the floor and the arms that crushed Hal to his chest were so tight Hal could scarcely breathe.
He’d simply accepted the inevitable, hands flat against his back, “You’re welcome.” Not making him speak.
Not like he’d needed to.
“It suits you.” Hal smiled; aware Dave didn’t wear it all the time. It’s such a hefty thing, utterly impractical, and gaudy as all get out. But in downtime, it’s safe to bring the old thing out.
The crashing intro of America’s Most Wanted breaks the stalemate, Dave tucking Hal’s hand beneath his own to settle on what crimes they were guilty of that week.
Last week they’d committed a double homicide in Denver. Supposedly. Despite both being pretty sure they were in Seattle.
~~
Tonight, it’s safe in the box in their room.
“Do you think he meant it?” He asks, watching Dave’s profile as the cigarette burns between his fingers, “The thing’s he’d said to you?”
“I don’t know. I think, that to some degree he did. Because he’d been told to, because it’s what they wanted. But maybe another part of him was convincing himself that if he said it, he could make it be true.”
“Or.”
Steady silence. Hal didn’t have to ask. They knew. People had told Dave later that they didn’t expect him to survive, but who was to say that he, that Venom had expected too either? Hal can’t even imagine how tired he must’ve been. In his sixties, long since stripped of his own identity, and fighting. Still fighting.
~~
“Try to explain it to me.” Hal asked, carefully dabbing at the slash in Dave’s brow. Chain link fence, he’d been evading a search dog and caught himself when it snagged his ankle. “How it.”
How you can do this. How it makes you feel alive. I’ll never have a soldier’s brain, or mindset but how do you keep going?
Hal didn’t want to give himself over to doubts, but they’d only been doing this together for a few months and his never-ending barrage of insecurities continued to rear its ugly head. He’d not caught the dog on his radar, and he felt guilty. Despite Dave telling him repeatedly that it was fine. It was a scratch, he didn’t mind.
Oh, to have that effortless confidence. Hal can’t help but envy him in these times. Even when he knows Dave has plenty of insecurities of his own.
Snake just doesn’t share them.
“You just do.” Dave says, ‘’It’s not so much an explanation, or even a mindset. You tune your body to adapt, to do what you want it to do.”
Because it’s all you know. Because it’s hard coded within you. Because your comrades don’t know any other way.
Because there’s a perverse pleasure in the uncertainty. Because gunpowder starts to smell almost soothing when it’s hot enough. Because in those brief moments all the power in the world is in your hands.
Because you don’t have to think. You act. You move. You go.
Because that roaring in your ears is as normal to you as breathing. Because putting your body to it’s limits releases every chemical in that moment and you have never, ever felt more alive.
All this, in bits, pieces and new words. Dave tells him in time. In that moment, he only says.
“Because I can. Because I must. And because someone has to.”
~~
There’s no way Venom hadn’t been the same.
“Would he want you to regret it?”
“No, if he could hear me now, see me. I think he’d be disappointed I’m bothering to dwell at all.” The last of the cigarette smoke fades, Dave drops the butt over the railing, watching its descent until it fades from view. Hal’s arm secure about his waist, head tucked into his shoulder.
Inside, Sunny’s stirring. Both their backs straighten and head back in, Hal’s careful, so careful, when he lifts her up, Dave securing the balcony door and moving towards her formula. With the little bundle in the present, the old ghosts need to be tucked away.
Somehow, Hal thinks they’ll understand.