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Snake likes kids. Always liked kids. They’re simple and unassuming. Kids are not so different from dogs. Hard to raise, but loyal and easy to entertain.
He thought Otacon liked kids too, but right now he’s doing that anxious thing he does when he’s thinking too much, buried in his computer tightening their security, too busy to even notice their “guests”.
Admittedly, Raiden is passed out on the couch, his bizarre cyborg body whirring quietly as it doesn’t seem to want to let go of the quiet toddler in his arms.
Somebody’s gotta break the ice, and it’s gonna have to be him. He crouches in front of the kid, searching for her eyes.
“Hello there,” he says.
She looks up. Her eyes are huge and brown, serious and concerned.
“So what’s your name?”
Her lips part but she doesn’t make a sound, only a quiet exhale.
Snake hesitates. Is she mute? No matter.
“I’m Snake.”
She nods carefully.
“Are you hungry?”
Her eyes dart around, worried.
“It’s ok. I’m kinda hungry too. I was going to make a sandwich. Want to help me?”
She hesitates for a long time, and then finally nods, almost imperceptibly. She slides from under Raiden’s arm and onto the floor. She has that toddling stance that says she hasn’t been walking for long. Snake offers her his hand. It takes a moment, but she takes it and follows him into the kitchenette.
He’s not good at cooking, neither of them are, but he can make sandwiches. “Do you like ham and cheese?”
She nods, a little more sure now. She’s probably very hungry.
He picks her up, and regrets it instantly as she stiffens nervously in his hands. She’s so small and light. He plops her in a chair as quickly as he can. “Milk?”
She nods again.
He sniffs the carton before pouring her a mug. Thankfully it’s still good. She downs the mug immediately after it’s placed on the table. She must have been so thirsty, too. Snake fills her mug again. They can drink black coffee for a day.
He makes her sandwich with extra cheese. She looks up at him when it’s placed in front of her, and he nods. She nibbles at first, unsure, but soon she’s biting into it with real hunger and in a couple of minutes the sandwich is all gone.
“Good?” smiles Snake around his cup of coffee.
“T-thank you,” she stammers.
Snake’s eyebrows shoot up. She can speak, then. She seems surprised by her own voice, too. He takes the old chipped jar from the counter.
“You’re welcome. Cookie?”
That’s the first time Snake has seen her smile. And when she does, his heart skips a beat.
***
Their small apartment is not exactly the best for a small child, but it’s temporary, they tell themselves. As soon as they find a safe family, she’ll be gone to live her life. Growing up with terrorists isn’t that much better than growing up in the shadow of a global technoconspiracy.
But for now, she is stuck with them. She does not seem to mind, and she’s so quiet they often forget she’s even there. They imagine she needs time to recover, acclimate to the new environment, so they let her be.
That is until Snake catches her sitting completely immobile in the middle of her small camp bed, quietly mumbling to herself.
“What is she even doing?” he asks Otacon. “Is she okay?”
“Prime numbers,” says Otacon, his face unreadable. “She’s going through prime numbers.”
“That’s...not normal kid behavior.”
Otacon shakes his head, pushes his glasses up. “I don’t think she’s a normal kid, Snake.”
Snake is mad. He’s angrier than he’s been at the Patriots for a long time. Fucking with them, he can take. They’re adults, they have their share of blood on their hands. But she’s just a child. And they’ve programmed her to be a machine, made her into a weapon before she could even learn to speak.
A bit like they did with him, in a way.
He starts coaxing her out of the room in the morning, even though she looks awkward. Comes home from grocery trips with toys, real normal toys - stuffed animals and dolls and toy cars. Watches her quietly dismantle them on the worn out carpet, so focused nothing can distract her. Otacon comes through at last and joins her, explaining how things work. How a car’s engine will make the wheels spin. How the voicebox in her creepy talking teddy works as he helps her perform a grotesque autopsy on it.
He’s a little bit jealous that when she starts opening up, it’s with Otacon and not him.
But then again, Otacon brought out his humanity, too.
***
She doesn’t have a name. When asked, she unrolls a sterile sequence of letters and numbers. For a while, they make do with just calling her “sweetie” and “honey”. They can’t give her a name she’ll get used to before she gets adopted by somebody else.
They can’t go outside together much, but on a beautiful sunny summer day they dare taking her out, because she’s so pale and it can’t be healthy to always be cooped up in this musty old apartment. Snake tries to fit her in the carrier she came in, but two weeks of actual food instead of whatever they gave her has made it too small already.
He just carries her on his hip, and feels the back of his head a little warm from the tender looks he gets from Otacon.
By the way she reacts to the small anemic park a block from their place, one would think she’s never seen grass. The thought she might not have is infuriating. She spends a good amount of time just toddling around, trying to catch bugs, poking at dirt with sticks, and then her eyes go wide as he sees the dog park.
She’s never asked anything before, but now she’s quietly pulling at Snake’s pant leg.
“What’s up?”
“S-Snake....d...d-doggies....”
“Do you wanna go play with the dogs?”
Her eyes are huge as she nods. Snake picks her up and all three walk inside the small enclosed space. A cute puppy is playing fetch with its owner. A tiny Pomeranian is yapping and rolling around with a much bigger Jack Russell terrier. Two poodles chase a tennis ball as their owners flirt shamelessly.
For a while she just clings to Snake’s shirt, unsure of what to do. So Snake approaches the owner of the puppy. “Can she pet it?”
“Of course, dude!” laughs the young man, beckoning the puppy closer. “Is she afraid of dogs?”
She’s never seen one before, Snake doesn’t say as he sets her down. “Just a little.”
She startles when the puppy comes to her, sniffing her. She touches its head, her mouth popping open. “He-he’s soft!”
The puppy is wagging like crazy, licking her hands, completely overjoyed.
She laughs. It’s the first time she does. It’s the most beautiful sound Snake has ever heard, and from the way Otacon stopped in his tracks as he approached them, it’s the same for him.
“Wh-hat’s your...your n-name, pup-puppy?” she stammers.
“Spaghetti,” says its owner.
She laughs again, her nose crinkling. “That-that’s a food!”
“It is, but it’s also a good name for a dog,” he laughs. “What’s your name?”
“Sunny,” says Otacon before she can start her serial number. “Her name’s Sunny.”
The young dog owner does not miss a beat. “A cute name for a cute lady. You wanna throw him the stick?”
She’s beside herself with joy.
“Sunny?” asks Snake quietly back on the bench, as they look on the kid laughing and throwing the stick, calling out Spaghetti’s name with a voice like tiny silver bells.
“First thing I could think of.” He smiles a little, though his eyebrows are knitted together. “She is a bit like a sunny day when she laughs though, isn’t she?”
“Yeah,” says Snake, taking a drag off his cigarette.
That night, when she’s fallen asleep harder than ever in her bed, Otacon whispers in the hollow of his throat, “can we keep her?”
Snake’s hand tightens on his hip. “Are you sure?”
“No. It’s probably....selfish. We’re probably unfit to raise her. But....”
“Yeah,” he mumbles in his hair. “Me too.”
The next morning Snake codecs Nastasha while Otacon toasts pop-tarts for the three of them. Tells her to stop looking for an adoptive family.
“Are you sure? It’s...”
“She’ll be safer with us.”
“That’s true, but...are you sure it’s a healthy environment for a child?”
Snake watches her sit at the table, banging her plastic fork and knife like he taught her. “She’s a little broken, like we are. She’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.”
“Let me know if you change your mind....daddy.”
She cuts off the call before he can get an indignant grumble out.
“Sunny.” It takes her a second for her to catch on that she’s being called, but eventually she turns to Snake with a curious expression. “Do you want....” he trails off, realizing just how weird it is to ask a toddler if she wants to live with them forever. As if she has any experience of any other option besides two nerds and an empty room lined with computers. But he’s grown up in foster care, passed around like a particularly annoying hot potato. He knows he can do better than that, he’s sure they both can. “Do you want to go to the dog park again today?”
Her brilliant smile, and the tender hand Otacon runs on the back of his head as he serves breakfast is all the confirmation he’s ever needed to know he’s doing the right thing.
None of them have any idea what a family is anyway. They’ll figure it out, together.