Hal can sense Olivia before he hears or sees her. He hunches over the keyboard and leans in closer to the computer monitor to intensify his concentration on the program. For some reason, knowing she’s entering the room makes him want to soak in the program’s lesson that much more. She greets him with a smile like she normally would before taking a seat next to him to begin her work for the day. Hal can’t smile back, though. He’s trying to retrieve the little green triangle which will be a revolver bullet to him in a few days.
The program buzzes suddenly. “Damnit!” He feels Olivia’s hand lightly land on his shoulder but it offers little of the comfort it’s supposed to. “I can’t even save my virtual patient. How am I going to save you?”
“Hal, you know the point of the program isn’t to learn how to save me but to learn how to take out the bullet.”
Hal can’t even begin to understand why she’s so calm. He wants to reach out and shake her to transfer something—anything–to her that’ll make her remember that she’s going to die and that he’s going to be the one killing her.
“First Wolf, then Emma…now you. I can’t keep anyone alive. I’m so sorry, Olivia.”
She lifts up his head between both her hands. Her eyes are sympathetic but they still hold tomorrow’s goal in them. “Ready or not, we do this first thing tomorrow.”
***
Olivia takes a deep breath mostly for Hal since he looks as if he’s forgotten how to breathe at all. She doesn’t feel the scalpel go into her leg and is only made aware that anything is happening when her chest becomes too heavy to breathe normally anymore. She can see Hal’s eyes filling with concern and sadness and by the time he brings them to look at her, she looks away.
After the bullet is out, Hal holds it in his grip lost in the reality of seeing it out of her body.
“Go…now.” She pushes out on hard labored breaths. He steals a moment to apply a bandage before he gets up and leaves the room as he’s told. Alone with Snake, she finally allows the face and strength she was faking for Hal to break.
“Is there anything I can do?” He asks. It’s the most sincere he’s ever sounded with anything he’s said to her.
She smiles. “Yeah. You can stop asking questions and for once tell me what you’re thinking.” Snake’s face wrestles for focus in her sight and around the time he informs her that the serum isn’t working, he fades out of it completely…
When she comes to, he’s holding her like a caught object and she’s looking up at him through barely open eyes. She can feel his heavy breaths and still hear the last reverberation of his gruff calls of her name bounce off the walls of the Nomad.
“Who’s going to take your stitches out?”
“What?”
“The stitches in your arm.”
“Oh,” he says after a quick glance to his own arm. “I’ll manage.”
The response inspires a chuckle that without warning turns into sobbing. “I failed, Snake. I’m sorry.”
“What are you talking about?”
She uses her last breaths to tell Snake of her true intentions and purpose for him. He knows the exact blink that’s going to be her last one and when her eyes close their last time, he gently lays her body down as if the absence of life turned her into a precious porcelain.
He wants to apologize but apologizing to a dead body is just as good as crying over one to him: it doesn’t solve anything. Instead, he leaves the room. His energy will be better spent making Ocelot pay.
***
Hal feels like a mad man playing, stopping, rewinding, and then playing the video of Olivia’s torture over and over again. But something’s not right and hasn’t been since he’s held that bullet in his hand and he feels the answer is in that recording. On what he figures is his thousand play through, it snaps together in epiphanic clarity and viciousness and makes him feel as if his brain wasn’t working at all until that very moment.
“Oh God. No…”
Solid Snake – Kamran Nikhad
Olivia Steele – Zellie Berraine
Hal “Otacon” Emmerich – Sean Chiplock
Revolver Ocelot – Timothy Weaver
Female Computer Voice 3 - Illa Scriptor
Trivia
- I think what made Snake and Olivia’s chemistry work is the fact that they are complete polar opposites. Snake is very logical and does almost nothing from emotional attachment to something. I’m certainly not calling Snake emotionless—he’s not—but, over the years, he’s learned to not factor them into what he does. Olivia probably doesn’t have a logical bone in her body. She’s driven by emotions and I think it’s that that also makes her the bit of a bad ass she is as well.
- I know I didn’t spend a whole lot of time exploring the whole “Snake doesn’t trust Olivia” thing that came up but I like to think that her willing to risk her life was enough to gain back Snake’s trust.
- In the first part of this, when Olivia comes to talk to Hal while he’s working with the simulation, there was a LOT of sobbing from both of them originally but it felt like too much since they ultimately both get their chance to boo-hoo later too. I had to remember this wasn’t just my story anymore…I had actual actors who had to cry for 10 minutes straight and say their lines so I spared them.
- Olivia’s death speech was originally very different but after a chat with UltraNeko doing my other job, I rewrote the whole thing for Olivia to express her desire to be someone (besides Otacon, of course) who wanted to treat Snake like a human, especially after knowing his true origins and purpose of creation. In the story version Snake, in a sign of regained trust, tells her briefly about his relationship with Meryl which is a subject he blatantly avoided when he first met her. Olivia loosely predicts the events of MGS4 when she hopes for him to see her again in her final breaths. I liked the ending but after going over my and UltraNeko’s chat, I felt like this one worked on every level—especially emotionally–and was more in line with the Olivia character. So, I have to thank UltraNeko immensely for inspiring it.
- Zellie Berraine is one of the most talented actresses I know but like %99.9 of the population, she can’t die, cry, and speak French all at the same time. In one of her final lines, she was supposed to say, “Hal told me everything about the Les Enfants Terrible project…” but after a few retakes over Skype, we both realized that that sequence of words probably wasn’t happening. So, I did a quick rewrite and just made it, “the project”. I think Metal Gear fans know what she’s talking about and for those who don’t, wiki it!
- Every woman that Otacon has really cared about has not only died but has died in front of him. In my own personal quest to spare this poor yet fictional character, I had Olivia make him leave the room.
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