Chapter Text
Gordon came online as a sentinel when he was fifteen - a perfectly average age, especially given his family history. His mother’s line seemed to throw out a sentinel every other generation like clockwork, and Gordon was the lucky winner. He didn’t feel lucky at first - it took almost two years of work at his local Institute before he could keep his senses reliably under control and maintain a balance if he wanted to use one or more at a time. As a full five-sense sentinel, he was told that was a very impressive timeline. But it didn’t feel impressive - by the time he got back to school, his friends had moved on to new classes and new interests, and even though the Institute made sure he kept up with his schoolwork, they were still pretty old-fashioned and didn’t give much time for recreational media consumption. So Gordon was out of the loop on what was popular, and he didn’t get the new inside jokes - plus, he had the added joy of people worrying that he was always listening in on their conversations through walls or smelling them to see who they’d just spent ten minutes under the bleachers with. Nothing he could do or say would explain how little Gordon wanted to do either of those things - but he was the only five-sense sentinel at his high school, so there were bound to be problems. Even the other sentinels steered clear of him - it was traditional for high-powered sentinels to go into law enforcement or the military, and they were trying to distance themselves from him in advance. Again, Gordon couldn’t explain enough how much he did not want to do that.
Instead, he went to college, then grad school, then got a PhD in theoretical physics, and mostly tried to ignore his senses except when they were useful for his work. The military recruiters started to give up on him when he turned twenty-five, but they made no effort to hide the fact that they thought he was wasting his life.
Whatever. He thought the military was a waste of life in general.
Still, things had calmed down in the past few years. Gordon had control of his senses, but he wasn’t neglecting his exercises - he hadn’t even gotten close to a zone in at least five years, even though he’d been through some crazy times with his thesis and fending off job offers from various government agencies that just wanted to use him for his sentinel status. Then he’d been working at a lab in New Jersey, and then he’d been offered a job at some place called “Black Mesa” and he’d said yes before even checking the location, because anything would be better than New Jersey.
And in his defense, it had been better for a while - but now Black Mesa was inexplicably filled with alien creatures, and Gordon, as the only five-sense sentinel left standing, was the de facto leader of a ragtag bunch of absolute weirdos.
“Look, Gordon! Ropes! We can use these to - help me, Gordon!”
For what felt like the fifteenth time today, Gordon enhanced his vision and shot through the tongue or whatever it was that was dragging Dr. Coomer toward the ceiling. Dr. Coomer dropped to the ground with a crash and immediately sprinted off.
“Hurry up, Gordon!” he called back. “We don’t want to waste time!”
Gordon dialed his sight back down to normal with more effort than it usually took and jogged after Dr. Coomer, grumbling to himself under his breath. When he joined Black Mesa, he hadn’t signed up for the end of the world.
He was also grouchy because he could feel the flickers of his senses cycling, trying to push out from him and absorb as much information as they could at once. That would have been fine if he could have sat down on a high cliff like some stone age hunter and just taken everything in for a few hours, but unfortunately, they didn’t have that kind of time. Or that kind of society.
Instead, he dialed up his hearing and followed the thundering footsteps of the other scientists. There was a fifty-fifty chance Benrey was with them, and he would be useful right now. Gordon never could hear him if he didn’t want to be heard - and he might not be human, but he was the closest thing to an available guide that Gordon had. Tommy tried his best, but his empathy levels were so high that it was hard for him to focus when Gordon got worn thin and snappish, and Dr. Coomer had his hands full keeping track of Bubby and his artificially-enhanced senses, which occasionally went haywire for seemingly no reason.
So Gordon was left with Benrey, whatever the hell he was. He’d acted like it was a revelation to say “I’m not human” - as if Gordon hadn’t been able to tell in the first few seconds of meeting him. He might not have guessed “alien,” but he’d seen enough people like Bubby around Black Mesa to know that there was ‘more on heaven and earth, Horatio, then dreamt of in your theoretical physics.’ Or whatever Shakespeare said. Something like that.
Luckily, by the time Gordon lugged the oppressive, clanking weight of the HEV suit and himself to where the rest of the group was gathered, he was pleased to see they had apparently independently decided to settle down for a break as well.
Bubby looked up when he came through the door to the little control room they’d found. “Finally,” he griped. “I could hear you complaining a mile away.”
Dr. Coomer’s hand visibly tightened its grip on Bubby’s forearm as he smiled cheerfully up at Gordon. “Bubby said you sounded a bit fatigued, so I suggested we take a break!”
“Oh, uh, thanks, then,” Gordon said, startled by the forethought and nodding gratefully at both of them. Even though Bubby huffed and looked away, that was still one of the nicest things anyone had done for him in the last week.
“Mr. Freeman, do you want - um, I can try to help, with, um, with everything?” Tommy waggled his fingers near his own head.
“Thanks, Tommy, but I don’t want to strain you, and I think I need a little more - oh, Benrey, perfect.”
Benrey blinked, having just stepped through the wall, and seemed surprised when Gordon made a beeline for him immediately.
“Hey, I hate to ask, but can you do the - the blue bubbles again?” Benrey continued to just stare at him, so Gordon added, “You know, the fuckin’ - calm-down...thing -”
He staggered as his control slipped and his ears were abruptly bombarded with the sound of every tiny movement in the room, echoing and amplified by the close walls - the high-pitched rustle of shifting cloth, the droning buzz of machinery, the thudding heartbeats of his companions, the wet whoosh of air in their lungs -
Cobalt engulfed his vision like water and he dropped to one knee, then slouched over onto his hip, struggling to breathe evenly and reel back his sense of hearing. A moment later something firm and heavy settled on the back of his neck, and he felt the pulse of connection as if a soft layer of gauze dropped between him and the rest of the world.
“Fuck,” Gordon sighed, and relaxed as Benrey’s shields closed around them, leaving him floating in a cocoon of blue. “That’s so much better.”
He could hear Benrey swallow, and dialed his hearing back just a touch more. “Are you, uh… you good? D’you need more, or, uh, different -”
“Nah, man, this is fine,” Gordon said, raising his head to smile at Benrey, who was crouched over him with a worried look on his face. “You’re doing good, this is perfect.”
Benrey’s eyes flicked down and he muttered something about “harder to tell than with soldiers,” and that made Gordon perk up.
“Soldiers? What soldiers?”
The blue haze was fading around them, the cocoon dissolving as Gordon’s senses stabilized, and he could see the other scientists leaning in, too. Benrey shifted and sat down, pulling his hand away from the back of Gordon’s neck as he did. Gordon tamped down the urge to lean after it and forced himself to focus. Benrey hadn’t been very talkative about what he was - but whatever it was, it was helpful for Gordon, so he hadn’t pushed.
“S’just, uh, what they’re called. I’m a guard, n’the others are, uh, soldiers. It’s the closest…I dunno, words are hard.”
“Wait, so you’re a guard, instead of a guide?” Gordon asked. “And I’d be a soldier?”
Benrey nodded. “The words are different, but that’s...close enough.”
“So it’s like a translation thing,” Gordon said. “Is that why you’re in a security guard uniform?”
Benrey shook his head. “Nuh, that was, uh. Thought I had to be. We didn’t have a choice back, uh, back home.”
Tommy raised his hand like he was in class. Gordon stared at him for a moment, then nudged Benrey and pointed. Benrey blinked at Tommy, who remained silent, but bounced a little bit in his cross-legged position.
“You gotta call on him,” Gordon said, grinning.
“Whuh? Oh, uh, yeah Tommy?”
Tommy dropped his hand into his lap and asked, “What do you mean you didn’t have a choice? Were you forced into a certain job, or - or was that the only thing available?”
Benrey shrugged. “S’just...the way things were,” he said. “Soldiers fought and guards...guarded. We had to protect our, uh, our home base, and when it got bigger we had to protect more, so...lots of guarding. And when the soldiers got too, uh, strung out, they’d go to a guard and we’d calm ‘em down n’stuff.” He picked absently at a lint ball on his pants.
“We?” Gordon asked, his heart dropping for some reason he wasn’t going to think about. “You had a, uh, a soldier of your own?”
“Huh?” Benrey looked honestly bemused. “No? S’just whoever’s nearest or whatever.”
Gordon exchanged glances with Tommy, who looked as confused as he felt. Interchangeable guides and sentinels? A sentinel going to a guide other than their own for settling? A paired guide working with other sentinels? It wasn’t unheard of, but it was unusual outside of the rare tri- or quad-groups that sometimes formed. But even then, that was a set group, attached to each other and only working well with others in the group. A paired guide trying to settle some other guide’s sentinel was typically a recipe for disaster, and vice versa.
Dr. Coomer and Bubby shuffled closer to each other almost absentmindedly.
“You guided multiple sentinels?” Bubby asked distastefully. “Other than your own?”
“I don’t - whuh? We didn’t - we don’t pair off,” Benrey said, and gestured vaguely between Dr. Coomer and Bubby. “S’not efficient. What if one of you gets hurt, or dies or something, n’you don’t wanna work with anyone else?”
“It’s not about want,” Bubby snapped, suddenly tense, and Dr. Coomer laid one hand on his forearm and squeezed, the fabric of Bubby’s labcoat wrinkling under his fingers. “It’s - you don’t - ugh!”
“What about everyone else?” Tommy cut in gracelessly. “On Earth, sentinels and guides are only about half the population. What do you call the other people?”
Benrey looked at him blankly. “There, uh, isn’t anyone else,” he said.
Gordon felt his eyebrows raise in surprise. A whole society of just sentinels and guides? No wonder Benrey was so weird. Though, it would explain how he could survive for so long without going insane from the emotions of those around him - if he worked with multiple sentinels, he’d have multiple anchors to keep him from being overwhelmed.
“S’why I joined security,” Benrey continued. “I’m a guard, so… guarding. Didn’t know there were, uh, other kinds of people to be here until later.”
Tommy looked pensive. “Would - would you want to change jobs if, if you could?”
Benrey shook his head. “Nah. I can get into fun places like this.”
“What, like resonance cascades?” Gordon asked wryly. Benrey smirked at him and tilted sideways to bump his shoulder against Gordon’s. They were still sitting very close together, and Gordon could feel the weird pressure of Benrey’s body next to his. Most people exuded a faint heat, but not Benrey. He wasn’t cold, he was just - not hot. That weird anti-heat felt like a vacuum, an area of low pressure that Gordon wanted to fold himself up and hide in when things got to be too much. He wasn’t sure how that was supposed to work, but he was sure that Benrey’s presence was a comfort to him, a tonic in these trying times.
The others kept talking, trying to explain the way sentinels and guides bonded, sometimes temporarily, often permanently, and how they generally ended up taking certain jobs in society - military and law enforcement for the sentinels, doctors and paramedics for the guides. It wasn't a be-all end-all thing, obviously: Gordon was evidence of that. But even he had to admit that he still gravitated to leadership positions, whether he wanted to or not. Maybe that was his sentinel instincts, but maybe it was just him. Would he still be this way if he was a guide, or mundane? He'd never know for sure.
“Really?” Tommy’s voice sounded surprised, and it pulled Gordon out of the half-doze he’d been slipping into. “Not - not anyone?”
Benrey cleared his throat a little awkwardly. “I don’t - didn’t wanna draw attention, and then after it was pretty clear things were, uh, different here. There was a soldier, but he wasn’t even really a soldier - it was just his job. So that, uh, didn’t work.”
“Wait,” Bubby said slowly. “Was that why you disappeared earlier when we started fighting the military? Because you didn’t want to run into your, what, your ex?”
“Whuh? ‘X’? No, his name was Forzen,” Benrey said - and the room immediately erupted into a cacophony of gleeful jeering.