Summary: In the wake of the July incident, Meryl and Wolfwood take stock of things.

She asks Snake to set her free, and he shots her right through her heart. And she feels like she has died, she really feels life seeping out of her chest, so much slower than the instant ending she used to deliver with the girth of her ammo. 

She wakes up, though. Surrounded by her wolves, the head of her pack licking at her chest wound. And everything still kind of hurts but-- this, this was unexpected. 

It’s not until later, when Wolf sees her reflection in an icy pool, that she notices the black markings around her eyes. 

And so she wanders, because everyone at Shadow Moses is either evacuated or dead, realizing the cold won’t kill her, and neither will hunger. And why is she still alive, she had nothing to live for, no pride and no will. But her pack keeps on protecting her. Immersed in the silence of tundra and the warmth of her wolves, she slowly starts healing.

Sometimes her pack will wander on the outskirts of a town. And, Sniper Wolf was never much for human company, but after a few times, she starts going in there to get some necessities. Warm meals. Showers. Bullets.

If she won’t die, then no use in making her time miserable either. Even if the last part comes as an overdue realization of sorts.

Her forays back onto civilization are kept short, but they do become more frequent as the weeks keep piling on.

Six months later, ice is finally starting to thaw in a belated spring, and she comes across a familiar redhead at Anchorage, puffy eyes and her expression the angriest she has ever seen, killing time at the gun store before boarding her plane back to mainland.

Wolf doesn’t decide to go with her immediately, but oh, they talk.

They speak about what went down in Shadow Moses, and what had happened after, and what had become of themselves. It would’ve been hard not to, even if neither of them were that much of the talking type. They had been on opposite sides, but never enemies, and being the sole survivors of something like what had happened at the Fox Archipelago had a tendency to foster camaraderie. To bring people together.

Who else could understand? Who else was going to believe them?

Meryl slips her an address scrawled on a receipt before she goes.

----

(She is with Meryl when they get word of the birth of Philanthropy. Back at Quantico, Meryl is reluctant to join the CID now her dirtbag of a father has confessed the truth, and it’s the conversations between the both of them what prompts them to join in the NGO instead of staying to work for the Feds.)