Chapter Text
Xen is quiet. It isn’t, usually. Xen is a loud, swelling world, filled with the cries of otherworldly beings, the soft whirring of machinery, and every so often, a calming, multicoloured note.
Xen is loud, but never overbearingly so.
And it’s pleasant. Nothing but simple ambiance, white noise you could get used to if you frequented the unnatural plane enough. And this ambiance is what he’s used to whenever he chooses to visit what he can describe best as being his homeworld.
He misses the sound. Benrey’s dulled senses rob him of almost all noise, except for anything close by. One particular sound is a voice he wishes he didn’t have to hear, but he can’t run from it.
In fact, he can’t run at all. He hasn’t had control of his body ever since they arrived.
If you were to ask him why, he’d say he was running into a portal, side by side with Gordon one moment, and the next he was face to face with the empty eye sockets of an entity that had been plaguing him ever since their journey started.
But he knows what really happened, because it’s all laid out in the script.
They got to Xen. Benrey didn’t exit the portal with them. He’d landed in the murky waters of a map too big to be anything but the textbook Boss Arena. The skeleton took his wrist, and pulled him forwards. And his vision filled with blue and his hearing filled with calming notes that forced back his want to resist.
He’d felt every last agonising second of his model twisting and warping, but his body didn’t allow him to struggle. The skeleton, in his own voice, had told him to calm down, and he’d desperately tried not to.
And then he couldn’t move.
The script is giving him a moment’s rest right now, but he knows what’s next. And the lull can’t prepare him enough. He’ll meet the Science Team in the lair, and they’ll fight, and they’ll kill him. He’ll put up a good offence, sure, but that’s how it has to end.
Because the villain doesn’t win.
And that also goes for when the villain tries to not be the villain.
“ Showdown time soon, huh? ”
Benrey doesn’t reply. He never likes to communicate verbally at the best of times, yes, but oh how he loves to argue. But now, when his head feels like it’s being held underwater with such displaced gentleness and care that robs the guard’s mind of the anger he should be feeling, he can’t find any drop of spite or sarcasm to fuel himself.
His voice huffs in resignation. Then, it perks up again, and his head clips through the rock wall. “ Aw, look- Look, they’re still trying to find you. ”
Benrey looks to where his own hand is pointing. Through the light blue haze, it’s hard to make out any fine details, but he can see the orange form of Dr. Freeman running alongside his team, now down a member.
And he knows it’s Gordon’s voice he hears when screams of his own name attack his dulled hearing.
He forces his heart to be still. It doesn’t work. The sound of his own voice laughing at him lets him know.
“ Still got your cringe crush on the doctor? ”
Shut up, he thinks, he can’t force himself to speak it.
“ Ouch, thought we were bros… ” His own voice replies, almost to taunt him with the fact that he’s no longer the one controlling it. “ If you wanna get pissy save it ‘till the big end thing, makes it more believable. ”
The skeleton isn’t given satisfaction of a response.
Benrey feels himself shrug, and he clips back through the wall. He feels himself sit in the red water filling the lair, hating the cold, uneven texture and wishing he could just get up and leave.
Get up and leave.
The thought flashes in his mind, a dim beacon of hope, and he holds onto it like a life-raft had suddenly appeared beside him in the middle of the ocean. He knows it isn’t safe to dwell on something like this for too long. It hears everything he thinks, and it knows everything he’ll try to do.
He has to act quickly.
Benrey forces his legs to uncross. He’s not aiming to stand, just to move. He’ll crawl out of this place if he has to, he’s not going to let some punk-ass script define him as designated villain when he’d come so far in ditching the skeleton altogether. His hands fly out in front of him to catch his weight, and Benrey almost sobs when he realises he’s moving of his own volition for the first time in far too long.
Almost. This is still Benrey, after all.
It takes a while of wincing through pain, and battling with his sore muscles, but eventually he’s somewhat stable on all fours. Moving his leg up to bend below his torso, lifting a hand to push himself up with the knee. Pleading with his own body to let him leave before it’s too late.
“ You ditching my pad, bro? ”
His voice- It’s not his voice, it’s booming and carries over the air too much. Benrey is quiet, monotone. But that’s boring for an antagonist.
No, the skeleton’s voice rings out, deliberate and cold, an attempt on knocking his focus away. And it works.
Benrey can’t catch himself when his legs buckle, and his face collides with the ground. Hard. He can feel a broken nose, and he knows the skeleton won’t heal it for spite. Noses aren’t bone, after all.
He winces, there’s some far away wonder if it had been of his own doing. His hand reaches up to check the injury, no blood, but he’s more focused on the taunting response than anything else. “ Clumsy, huh? You- A little clumsy little idiot? ”
Shut the fuck. Up.
Benrey doesn’t feel himself move to get up. Instead he stays, face down in the center of the room, and the minutes blend together as he waits. And he’s dreading what’s about to come.
Dreading when he sees those four idiots make their way to the end with the clear want to put whatever eldritch horror that runs this hellscape to rest. Dreading the expressions he’ll have to see when they realise it’s him .
His mind wanders back to the talk with Coomer. The saddened understanding in his voice when he finally told the scientist what was happening. Every gentle little reassurance, every comfortable silence shared between. The hug.
He’s not one to vocalise care for others, of course, but having Coomer there to listen had helped him a great deal.
But now, it feels like all Coomer’s efforts have been for nothing. And the thought makes him feel awful, even if it isn’t his fault.
The skeleton says something he doesn’t register. He knows it’s a jab at his emotions, but he doesn’t let himself listen. Partly because he doesn’t want to give this thing the satisfaction, and partly because if he thinks about what he’s feeling too much he’ll want to cry, and that isn’t on brand for him at all.
The Neo-Science Team arrives in the horrible rocky form. He never saw an entrance, so he assumes a portal is to thank.
Or to blame. After a moment, he settles on blame. A cave mouth or a walkway would at least have given them some way to escape.
He knows what’s about to happen as if it’s happened already. He’ll have to watch through hazy, blue vision as he monologues aimlessly with words he doesn’t mean (aside from wanting to play Heavenly Sword, of course. God, how he wishes he was just playing a video game right now) to the people he’d come to see as some sort of a found family in his own little way.
He’ll have to see Gordon’s face, those beautiful eyes that he’s pretty sure are green, squint at his model in confusion, then anger, because there’s no way he’s going to know this is what he meant by possession.
Knowing that nerd, he’s probably expecting the sunken in, pupil-less eyes and the slow, zombie-like, staggering motions. Not a giant security guard staring him down… Idiot.
He’ll stand, the skeleton will call it’s army, it’s ‘friends’, and they’ll fight. And they’ll kill him, and the game will end with him as the defeated bad guy.
Benrey doesn’t even notice the four get closer. He’s too busy relaying everything he knows is about to come, he’s forgotten it’s already begun.
Gordon, genuine concern lacing his voice that breaks Benrey’s heart when he finally registers the sound, asks him if he’s okay. It’s the same tone he’s heard so many times before, when he almost got blasted by a military bomb, the moment’s lull after he’d been held at gunpoint by Forzen while talking him out of holding a dog hostage.
This time, it’s even harder to hear.
Benrey looks up. Wide, glowing eyes scanning across the faces of his friends. Tommy, holding his gun as though he were trying to strangle it, Coomer and Bubby standing hand in hand, and Gordon, at the front, same as ever, yelling up to what must be the most ungodly sight he’s ever seen. Asking where he’d been, what’s happening to him. Most importantly, is he alright .
He tries to say no. He tries to warn them.
His voice comes out, loud and mocking, and tells them they’re all going to die.
That’s not how it’s supposed to go.
A hand, not his anymore, claws at the ground and the skeleton rears itself up inside the flesh puppet. It stands, and he watches the four scatter like he’s lifted a rock and disturbed the bugs underneath.
The three.
Gordon hasn’t moved.
Benrey isn’t sure if it’s on purpose.
He doesn’t know what’s happening.
This isn’t how the fight starts, he tells himself, and he knows it’s listening. But he doesn’t expect an answer.
“ Who said I was letting them win? ”
Benrey only understands when he watches his own boot swing forwards, and he hears it connect with the metal of an HEV suit.
His eyes snap open to the view of a bedroom ceiling, and Coomer standing worriedly over him.