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Although Kazuhira Miller’s death certificate listed February 25th, he was long dead before his heart stopped beating.
For most soldiers, death was a barrage of bullets on the battlefield. It was a blaze of glory, a mere few minutes expanded into an infinity of glory. It was quick, meaningless to a world that paid for their funeral before the plane tickets back home. Any extended death was an abnormality, a gamble for survival, for a true heroic story of overcoming the odds. Kazuhira gambled those odds with the frenzy of an addict with only a few coins to lose and a world to gain. But, Kazuhira had run out of coins long ago.
In the end, it didn’t matter; Death followed Kazuhira home. When he left his family behind, it became his roommate. It haunted his dreams with the fervor of a scorned lover, followed him as closely as a shadow. Kazuhira learned to live with death.
Kazuhira Miller wasn’t made for this slow death. He occupied his time as he waited for his inevitability, playing his role of both corpse and gravekeeper. He tidied their home and the offerings he left for himself decades ago. He cared for his keepsakes, the funerary objects for a dead man walking. His home was a crypt that was hardly visited, marked by evidence that Kazuhira had been loved enough to be showered with gifts, but his loved ones had moved on enough to leave his final resting place alone. There must have been a time when Kazuhira’s house was for the living rather than the dead, but that was long ago enough that his life bled together; tying his memories together into glimpses of something larger.
He wouldn’t have written February 25th specifically as the day. Kazuhira’s predictions of the future were more educated guesses, instincts he honed on the battlefield and the days after, drunk on hindsight and regret. His fears and paranoia became the self-fulfilling prophecies of a Cassandra who silenced herself.
And so, Kazuhira retained his routine. He woke with the sun, granting himself time to bask in it before returning to his morning. He did his workouts, had his breakfast, and cleaned, preparing for the arrival of his grim reaper. There was no significance to this day, at least none that he was aware of. Still, there was a knock on the door and it could be no one but that man, a grim reaper donned with spurs and a revolver substituting his scythe. The knock was only for show, followed up with the click of his lock being broken and the rhythmic sounds of those boots against the floor and the whirls of the spurs.
Kazuhira Miller grew up on stories of America. Not from his mother, a woman who was marked by a death she actively resisted. She had little time for stories when she had a child to care for, when she had to make up for the absence left behind by his father. Kazuhira’s father was blessed in that absence, in the space he left for Kazuhira to fill in however he pleased. His mother worked to be his hero, but his father was heroic in the ways he couldn’t contradict. His mother was his hero, admirable and brave in a world that saw her as incomplete from the moment she was born, but she was his god as well, his creator. She never asked for worship nor offerings. She worked tirelessly, motivated by the death that all women feared, instilled not by nature but by the men who claimed they needed their protection and played the wolves they often fantasized about fighting back.
Kazuhira tried not to be a wolf. He worshipped his father in his absence and cursed him for his abandonment as if that contradiction would save him from following in his footsteps. Kazuhira’s mother must have been another woman to his father when she was Kazuhira’s everything.
(And thus, Kazuhira saw those traits in every woman. He loved women as death loved him, blind to any interpretation beyond the one he gave as a hopeless romantic rather than a womanizer.)
No one liked Americans, yet their stories still spread. He grew up with a fabled America, one defined by cruelty and wonder. He heard of cowboys and delinquents, a teenaged nation with nothing to lose and a world to gain; one that was still aging, only just reaching the age where excuses of ignorance and growing pains lost their footing and where childhood innocence was cast away. The freedom of not knowing any better existed in the peripheral, in regrets of remembering what you could have gotten away with. The west was always dying but never dead. The gangsters were cruel with hearts of gold and crimes too vague to avoid the reality of what men could do with that much power and no restrictions.
Kazuhira could only assume Revolver Ocelot grew up with those stories. When he left for America, he found the West was long dead and that these wolves had no golden hearts. But, Ocelot carried the west with him like a cowboy out of time. He was obviously Russian despite his costume and fake accent. No one truly knew Revolver Ocelot, not in the way Big Boss did. Kazuhira and Ocelot were allies, though he never made an effort to learn what existed before the cowboy. Perhaps part of him recognized the grim reaper in Ocelot, but such ideas only existed in that hindsight-drunken faze with a quiet “Oh, of course” muttered. Everyone knew Ocelot was dangerous, but he was no more dangerous than any other soldier who stood so closely to the Legend. That Revolver Ocelot existed only in an absence, in not a Legend, but a sub-plot to Big Boss’ legend. He was a willing addendum, an afterthought to a greater story. It was a space Kazuhira existed in too, enough so that despite how little Kazuhira knew the other, he grew to know him too well.
“I knew it’d be you.” Kazuhira said.
“I keep my promises.”
He could think of countless times Ocelot contradicted that, to a degree in which Kazuhira struggled to suppress a snort and a quiet “That’s funny.”
Their promise was a gamble and Ocelot was a fellow gambler, but he was counting cards when Kazuhira was courting Lady Luck. Ocelot was never truly the House, not when he switched between card games and slot machines so quickly. Kazuhira sacrificed years of life whereas Ocelot sacrificed parts of himself, offering bloody bits of himself to the highest bidder. He lied and cheated through every game. When he lost, it was only for a greater win, for a higher payout. He intended to drain the House for all its worth.
Revolver Ocelot was a greedy man. Not for himself, but for the Legend they both fell for years ago. It was a selfishness dressed as selfless, a worship that centered himself as the highest apostle within his willingness to forfeit everything with just a breath from Big Boss.
When Ocelot approached him, he took his time. He made a show of looking at Kazuhira’s decorations, his photographs and medals. He worked with Ocelot long enough to pick up on his methods, on the ways he set the scene. A slow approach to intimidate his target, a purposeful search for something to use against them whether it be bribe or threat. Kazuhira never dug into Ocelot’s past, but he never offered his own up in return. They learned of each other in the absence of context and stories that would turn each other into real people rather than whatever series of archetypes they ascribed to each other to explain the unexplainable. Revolver Ocelot was his other, a twisted mirror image reflected on Big Boss’ other arm. It was only inevitable that Ocelot would learn the truth of Kazuhira Miller just as he would take his life.
“I’ve never been assassinated before,” Kazuhira broke the silence, “I’m not sure if I should offer you a drink or run.”
“It sounds like you’ve given up already.” Ocelot replied.
Kazuhira laughed, “Were you expecting a fight?”
“You’re Kazuhira Miller, aren’t you?”
Kazuhira Miller took his father’s name when he moved to America. In the spot where a hero should have stood was merely a man, broken down with grief. There had been another woman at some point, one who only existed in an absence next to a half-brother. In some other life, they could have existed together, but that imagined reality brought no true grief to Kazuhira. His half-brother lived and died in one of those many absences, distant enough that Kazuhira could only focus on the space he could grow into. He made a gamble coming to America, one that paid off with his college degree, but the payout wasn’t enough to stay; not when he was becoming an absence himself, following in the footsteps of the man who should have been his hero.
Returning home was a course-correction, a reminder that he was his mother’s son before anything else. His father was an honored soldier, but his mother was a true fighter. She was hungry and fierce, dedicated to a fault. She never had the luxury of existing outside of Kazuhira’s sole provider, living just on the edges of her societal role as both mother and father. She was the walking contradiction of what a woman should be, both the Madonna and the Whore. It took seeing her debilitated to find that his instinct came from her rather than the soldier he was supposed to admire.
(And thus, the protector became the protected. Her fight would never be honored as his father’s had been, but Kazuhira could repay her valor with medals and he could lay her to rest as a soldier for a never-ending war the world would never respect.)
Kazuhira was his mother’s son. He fought to the bitter end and back like a vengeful spirit, unable to find his final resting place. There was no one thing to fight for, no single person nor ideal that drove Kazuhira’s fists. If Ocelot was truly a cowboy, then Kazuhira was a ronin. His only master was his thirst for battle and the battlefield became the only home he yearned to return to. And, when there were no enemies left to fight, Kazuhira would turn on himself. That rush of adrenaline was too addictive to let go. War was addictive and Kazuhira never had an intention of quitting. Not when he sacrificed so much, went so far that he no longer could find excuses for what he had done.
Until he grew old.
“You aged well.” Ocelot circled around him like a shark. “Handsome. And, after all these years, you’re still wearing them.” He gestured to the sunglasses Kazuhira left on the table. He fought the urge to put them on as if they could protect him.
Kazuhira rolled his eyes, “You’re not here to flirt with me, are you? I would’ve prepared dinner for you.”
“You should have. Every condemned man gets a final meal.”
“Sure. Let me turn the grill on. You haven’t tasted my perfected burgers.” He must have patties somewhere. His meals had become rudimentary, rituals to survive rather than the passion he felt all those years ago when he grilled his first good patty. Even now, he could think through all the steps though his grill had been untouched for a while. Dead men don’t eat hamburgers.
Ocelot stopped in front of him, “I’m afraid I don’t have time for dinner. I wish it didn’t have to come to this.”
“That’s a damn lie.”
“You’re right.” Ocelot reached for his gun and it was as if a lightswitch flipped in his brain.
Kazuhira grabbed his wrist, maneuvering around to flip him. Ocelot grunted with surprise, yet he held firm with narrowed eyes. This wasn’t their first tango. Big Boss could do little to stop them from trading blows. They learned each other's bodies that way, the way Kazuhira would shift before a punch, the way Ocelot always gave himself a step back before his shot. Some lonely nights, when Big Boss was away, they’d do anything to get their hands on each other as if they could pretend the other was him. Some nights, under the watch of the Legend, they’d dance as though they were performing for him. Maybe they were.
They danced to the beat of their hearts and, for a moment, Kazuhira was young again. The bruises they’d give would heal within days and their scratches would fade. Their bones hardly hurt and they could do this dance for hours before fatigue hit. The memory must have faded with his youth, soured by Big Boss’ betrayal and the realization that he spent all his life on nothing.
When Kazuhira Miller loved, he loved with all his heart. He still was his father’s son, of course, and he fell into the arms of more women than he’d admit, but for that night they’d spend together, they’d be the only woman in the world. He loved and moved on with only an itching thought that he was becoming an absence in someone’s life. And so, he loved for a night because a night was all he could give. When you dedicate your life to war, your tomorrow is never guaranteed. Kazuhira lived as though every night as his last and he loved the same.
Loving Big Boss was different.
Big Boss didn’t love. Years ago, when Kazuhira still saw a man in his monstrosity, he was privy to the human behind the legend. He felt Big Boss’ love, tasted it. And, Big Boss loved like he killed. It was passionate in its calculation, terrifying and overwhelming. He never hesitated, never pulled his punches. There must have been signs from the start yet Kazuhira’s heart only let himself see the Legend and eventually the man even as the monster was starting to take form. If there was ever true humanity in Big Boss, it must have disappeared years before they met. Or, this was true humanity. Less of the higher being that humans ascribed themselves and more like the beasts they turned their back on. Kazuhira fell for the Snake, took the apple with no hesitation. It tasted so damn good, it was only natural the blood on his hands looked like its juices.
That’s what he told himself, at least.
Ocelot’s love was different. His words were sweet and empty. He had countless ways of saying nothing at all. He filled his conversations with 5 blanks and a single truth. Every interaction was a game where no one won. A wiser man would have kept his distance, but Kazuhira was a gambling addict and Russian Roulette was the ultimate gamble. In the end, it didn’t matter when Ocelot’s truths and lies blended together to the point where the man himself couldn’t tell the difference. Big Boss loved like he killed, but Ocelot loved like he lied. At some point, Ocelot must have believed his own lies.
Kazuhira and Ocelot’s strength had always been equal. They danced their tango often, but it had been years since Kazuhira last shared the floor with Ocelot. Everything already hurt before his back slammed on the ground and Ocelot found his seat on Kazuhira’s waist, straddling him. At least he was just as breathless as Kazuhira was with that manic look in his eyes from all those years ago. His gun had been cast aside at some point yet Ocelot made no effort to go for it. Not when his prey was under him, not when he worked so hard to get where he is.
“What are you waiting for?” Kazuhira spit at him. “You did it. You won. I’m your prize, aren’t I? So why not take the kill now?”
Ocelot leaned towards him and pressed his tongue against Kazuhira’s cheek, dragging it against him. “I wanted to remember what you tasted like,” he said as if that would explain everything.
Kazuhira opened his mouth as an invitation and Ocelot didn’t hold back. He kissed just as he did all those years ago when they were younger and hungry. Back then, Ocelot lived true to his name when he consumed Kazuhira as an apple, holding nothing back. He drank in all of Kazuhira, not with love but the desperation of a starved man. They were means to each other's ends, outlets for anger and adrenaline when the battlefield just wasn’t enough. Kazuhira took Ocelot’s hands to press against his throat as if they needed to remember that they could never be lovers. Another Kazuhira and Ocelot, perhaps; ones untouched by Big Boss’ corruption who lived in a kinder world where they made homes instead of bases, friends instead of armies.
“Did you miss me?” Kazuhira asked through their kiss. He meant to bite with those words, but his teeth didn’t snag.
Ocelot fell silent as he pulled away from Kazuhira. His hands lingered on him and Kazuhira’s body begged for him to follow. Their dance ended too fast, too soon.
“Did you?” Ocelot shot back instead.
Kazuhira found no words. Not as fast as he’d like with an obvious answering being “of course not.” Obvious and dishonest. That was more Ocelot’s style; A born and bred liar mirrored by the man who wore his heart on his sleeve and his gun always loaded. Ocelot was his enemy. Even when they shared a bed together, it was violent and hateful, but it was theirs.
“We had some good days, didn’t we?”
A slow, simple life would never have been enough for Kazuhira Miller. He was born from two soldiers of very different wars, enlisted and sent to the frontlines of his mother’s shop before he ever held a gun. She spoke little of the life before his birth when she fought only for herself. Kazuhira gathered pieces of her past life like a detective investigating a crime. He gathered evidence in stowed-away photographs and confessions pulled from the end of late-night smoke breaks. Kazuhira’s mother looked beautiful illuminated against its fire. Her stress had aged her, but there was always a ferocity in her eyes and her smile. When Kazuhira would ask to try, she would shake her head with a laugh and a reminder to not pick up the poor habits of his mother. But, his mother was beautiful and strong; she was his hero.
It wasn’t until her sickness started to take her that Kazuhira tasted his first cigarette.
In the end, Kazuhira would always be his mother’s son. She lived with nothing, passed on only her fears and regrets. He learned to run a business before he learned to read, found himself haggling prices before learning how to flirt with girls. Joining the army meant joining the world of his father, one ruled by false honor and delusion. It was men who were desperate for better lives and men who despised the comfort their bloodline brought them. He fought like his mother in his father’s world, desperate and scrappy, with nothing to lose and a world to gain. He hungered yet never begged; triumphed yet never profited. What he did earn was sent to his protector-turned-protected, his god and hero. Kazuhira’s mother might have lived with nothing, but he would be damned if she would die with nothing too.
In the end, it was never enough. He would be held back, restricted even in his prodigy. Kazuhira had to break free from his father’s world. He could create his own world, one where he didn’t have to be his father’s son. A place for soldiers, Big Boss had promised him, one where they would always have a place. Their own Garden of Eden where their Snake and their god were one in the same, where the apples were bountiful and crisp. It was the natural progression of the hunger his mother instilled in him, a place where he could inherit her fight and her business. He couldn’t resist the call of battle nor the prospect of profit, to escape the world he was born into. Kazuhira Miller became addicted and Big Boss was his worst enabler.
And so, when Big Boss spoke more and more of the battlefield and less and less of the life beyond it, Kazuhira should have seen the downward spiral. It should have been obvious through fresh eyes rather than ones drunk on regret and hindsight, saying “Of course, of course, of course” as if that’d make a difference.
Their conversation devolved from there. Threats gave way to idle conversation. Two soldiers became two old friends reunited.
“Did you remember when…?”
“Of course. Of course I did. And when…?”
“How could I forget?”
How could they? Their lives were intertwined, united by a single man who forsake his humanity for godhood, inseparable in their devotion to him. They were the Legend, the Spy, and the Devoted Soldier. Kazuhira couldn’t avoid Ocelot even if he wanted to. Their conversations were built on arguments and deceptions, a game of chess between a chessmaster and a man who had no problem flipping the board over. His betrayal should have meant all those years were wasted yet Kazuhira could remember every moment, every smile. His nostalgia for worse times aged him more than time, weakened him more than any disease could.
(Diseased like his mother, a soldier with an infected wound, ignored by the battlefield medics until she was already decaying. Cursed, they’d say, carrying sins from wolves who blamed her for their lust.)
“What do you think he’d think of us now?” Kazuhira asked, comfortable on the floor beneath Ocelot. They made no move from each other as if they had just made love instead of fought. Between the two of them, there was hardly a difference.
Ocelot traced his finger along Kazuhira’s collarbone, “He’d find you pathetic. He’d think all of this was hot, I’m sure, but he would’ve hated how easily you gave up.”
Kazuhira couldn’t find the words to argue that. He averted his gaze as if he could escape the bullet from their Russian Roulette conversation. “He’d find you desperate,” Kazuhira replied. “Still pining over him years after his death. The loyal soldier with no one to guide him.”
“And you’re the dutiful step-father, aren’t you? Caring for the son he never cared for.” Ocelot smiled at him.
“You have the other one. It looks like we’re both raising his legacies.”
Leaving Big Boss might have been his choice, but the other had become one of the many absences in Kazuhira Miller’s life. It was a bitter separation, a heartbreak decades in the making. He followed in his mother’s lonely footsteps as the survivor, the one who lived on. Kazuhira created a life for himself, crafted a family as if he hadn’t cast himself from the Garden of Eden. He loved his family, but it was never the same. Big Boss gave him a taste of living as a legend. Everything past that was an aftertaste, a quiet yearn to live only for himself and his lover-turned-god. Nothing could quite compare.
He continued to dutifully follow in his mother’s footsteps when he found Big Boss’ legacy.
Kazuhira could recognize the fight in Solid Snake’s eyes. David was a soldier, born and bred, tossed aside in favor of shinier weapons. He grew up in a world that rejected him before he had a chance, floated between loving families who weren’t prepared to welcome a wolf in their sheep pens. David was built in Big Boss’ image, but he could have been Kazuhira’s son. Kazuhira’s mother was long gone by that point, long enough that Kazuhira could only dream of how she would love David if he was his son. Another life, a kinder world where Kazuhira opened his door to a child looking for a home rather than a boy looking for a purpose. He’d raise him alongside Catherine, take them both to see the true soldier that raised Kazuhira. She could pass her lessons onto them, war stories of triumph over the impossible rather than suffering at the hands of those who saw her as a service instead of a human.
Life could never be that kind for soldiers. David learned how to fight years before Kazuhira could teach him to be a proper soldier. He deluded himself into being older as if he could skip the painful transition between adolescence and adulthood. Kazuhira was a ronin and David was still only a boy who dreamed of being a samurai. He was the child born on the eve of the Wild West’s final breath, too late to take advantage and too early to learn the tropes and cliches of a new world.
Ocelot had the other one, the angry boy they met years ago with nothing but anger in his heart. He raged against the world that hated him before he learned what love was. Eli wore his heart on his tattered sleeves, baring his fangs against imagined foes. He was a stark contrast to David’s love and the quiet fire in his eyes. Eli would not be so easily integrated into the Miller home; he’d snap at poor Catherine and bite David. He’d thrash in the arms of anyone who held him, but Kazuhira’s mother could tame his spirit. She’d catch his mischief as it conceptualized and send him a gentle smile, a silent reminder to remember where his true battles lay. They could talk easily of a world that consumed them entirely instead and cast them away once they’ve gotten their worth. One day, Eli could learn to love alongside his hate as Kazuhira had done many years ago.
At some point, Ocelot must have noticed the similarities. Kazuhira did and, on some level, he saw his mother in himself, who wanted to raise a child instead of a soldier.
“Do you have anything to drink here?” Ocelot asked instead, rolling off of Kazuhira. When he grabbed his gun, he spun it once before putting it away.
Whatever performance Ocelot started earlier must have concluded. Or, perhaps, that was only act one and intermission had passed in their reminiscence. The show must go on and there was still an assassination planned. Running was pointless. Wherever Kazuhira would go, Ocelot would find him. He would give up this mausoleum for something worse, something colder and his family's offerings would go to waste. Instead, Kazuhira pulled himself from the floor to dig up some alcohol. He rinsed the dust from the first glass cups he could find and took a sniff of the whisky to make sure it was still worth serving.
He’d hate to die with the taste of awful whisky still in his mouth.
Ocelot made a show of sniffing as well when Kazuhira passed his glass. When he reached into his pocket, Kazuhira looked away. He looked at his home, his final resting place, the knicknacks and memories. He thought of nights long ago when his kitchen was a place he created instead of simply sustaining himself. His bedroom was one to share instead of isolate, his living room was full of the living instead of memories of the dead. At some point, Kazuhira had started haunting instead of living. His lover and enemy, John’s greatest apostle, became his priest instead. He prayed for Kazuhira’s soul with his words and blessed his glass with his unholy water.
What would John think of them then? Not the Big Boss they grew to worship but the man who died to become the Legend. John was Big Boss’ first kill, years ago when he was still innocent. Sometimes, Kazuhira could still see John. He lingered around Big Boss like a ghost, like he was kicked from his body by something sinister. They loved each other as humans did instead of as soldiers, creating semblances of a life in between their battles.
When Kazuhira took his drink, he felt the poison before it reached his veins. He tasted it on his tongue, intermixed with the alcohol, as warm and dangerous as Ocelot’s kisses.
He heard often of having your life flash before your eyes when you died. He experienced it vaguely years ago when death was a threat to his tomorrows and not an inevitability he would wait for. Back then, his life memories were regrets of the ways he couldn’t save his mother and one-night stands that deluded himself about being a lover instead of a killer. He was an action hero at the climax of the movie to be watched in-between fingers with long-forgotten popcorn.
Ocelot watched him take his drink. “I love you.” He said as he raised his own glass, taking a sip on his own. This was Ocelot’s love, after all.
“I hate you.” And, that was Kazuhira’s love.
He watched another Kazuhira Miller’s life flash before his eyes. He saw John, freed from the clutches of Big Boss. It was a prison of his own making, yet Kazuhira still yearned for John’s freedom. He saw Adam, not Revolver Ocelot, a man who could live a single truth rather than many lies. He saw that woman John spoke of late at night, another regret for a man who had started to forget what regret felt like. He saw Quiet, the woman who had his mother’s eyes, the one he disregarded so quickly, cast away from his mind to avoid his regret. The love between Kazuhira, John, and Adam would not be accepted back then, but they could still create their Garden of Eden. Their Garden could hold no guns, house no soldiers. Apples could be mere fruits and snakes could represent beauty instead.
John told him a story once of the time before Big Boss. He told him of the absence where his mother was and the woman who filled it. When he spoke of a Legend and a mother to all, he painted a picture of a god instead of a woman. She had a dream, John told him, of a world where soldiers would always have a place. And, he had a duty to bring that place into fruition.
But, this woman was no god. Neither was John, nor was Kazuhira’s mother. They were humans in a world that cursed and worshipped humanity in the same breath. John spoke of his God’s words, but the meaning had shifted at some point. That world where soldiers always had a place became a world that created more soldiers, created more pain and hatred to justify the weapons it crafted. She could have a place in their Garden of Eden. Perhaps she would have gotten along with Kazuhira’s mother, two women united in their duty. She was John’s god, but she was also someone’s friend, someone’s lover just as his mother had been years ago when she first gave her life as she gave birth to Kazuhira.
It wouldn’t be a world where soldiers could always fight, but rather a world where soldiers didn’t have to fight at all. That must have been her Will. John did tend to forget the little details, placing his own will in the absence of context. Oh, he should’ve seen it earlier.
Of course, of course, of course.