Work Text:
I know someday the moon will blow away
And all flesh will decay
Everything will change
But we will still remain
And outlast the pyramids
The Silence - Halestorm
As Warren steps out to the cold, the first thing he notices is how he's no longer annoyed by it. He feels it pin-pricking at his skin, and – it used to bother him. He remembers the goosebumps on his arms every time the slightest breeze hit his skin. Or at least it's what he thinks he remembers.
His brain is fucked, he can't be sure of these things, and he can't bring himself to care anymore, either.
His sweatshirt with a faded Overhead logo hangs loosely on his shoulders where the bones are showing more than he remembers them. His body still feels weak and so, so cold. It's hard not to get quickly tired and the nosebleeds haven't stopped, though they've gotten better. They're mostly red now, so it's a good sign. Considering.
He stepped out of a cryo pod a month and a half ago, and now he stands in the snow. He thought he'd be sick of it by now, but every part of him… yearns for the cold. As senseless as it sounds, it feels like the only thing he knows, the one thing he still recognizes. The one thing he knows that is akin to a home.
Not that he ever had one of those. But now he has—
He reaches where Gordon is sitting, holding an old notebook in his hands. Warren puts a hand on his shoulder before sitting next to him.
"What've you got there?"
"Just an old thing, I used to write some stuff when I couldn't record, I have drafts and ideas for my memoir, stupid things. Remember when we first got here?" Gordon's voice sounds rough from the lack of use. He only stepped out of cryo three weeks ago. Took him longer to wake up and a couple of terrifying days to get his memories back.
"God, it feels like ages ago. I mean, it was but - not really. For us, at least."
"Yeah. There's less snow, don't you think?" Gordon is looking ahead at the mountains and there's an expression on his face that Warren can't quite pinpoint, but at the same time, it makes his stomach sink with the familiarity. He's seen it, he remembers at night taking a look in the mirror and finding that exact look on his own tired eyes.
"How do you mean?" He picks up a small flower from the plant next to him, turning it around in his fingers and playing with it. He looks right at the sky and the sun rising far behind the mountains. "Do you know what this is?"
"Lily of the Valley." He answers, taking the flower from him and tossing it to the ground. "It's poisonous if you eat it."
"Well I wasn't going to eat it, Gordon. It was pretty." He laughs, looking at Gordon who only smiles in return.
"So, what were you saying?"
"You know, sometimes I look at everything around us and nature is the only thing that hasn't changed ever since we arrived. But even the snow… It's less. Don't you remember the mountain? It used to look whiter. The world got hotter and is probably dying faster than it was four decades ago."
He hums and drops his head on Gordon's shoulder. "We haven't changed much either. I mean, awake it's been like what, a year?"
"Nine months." Gordon rests his head on top of Warren's and he can't help but smile, even with the realization of how much of his life was taken from him. Small victories and all that.
"Fuck."
"We have changed, though."
"I found trauma tends to do that, change people." Gordon laughs, but it lacks the usual brightness to his voice. It's odd, Warren was always the pessimist between the two. "Are you okay?"
How many times did Gordon ask Warren that exact question? He never knew how to answer, he felt like a puppet for so long that he shut down the part of him that knew could refuse to go on with the fucking experiments.
He only considered having a way out after talking to Gordon that one night when he couldn't sleep.
Only then he felt human. Alive.
Until Bryony—
Now it was Warren's turn to ask.
"Honestly, Warren? I don't know. I think there's a lot that we know now and it all feels too big. Cryo was big enough but this? I–I didn't even think of the possibility of ending up in one of those pods. And now, the end of Red Valley? What the fuck does that even mean?"
"Aubrey's been extremely cryptic about that, I gave up asking two weeks ago." He moves to the side, laying down, resting his head on Gordon's lap. "I think there was a part of us that knew that coming here was some kind of turning point. We accepted that it was supposed to change us."
He hums and stays quiet for a while, running his fingers through Warren's hair.
"We have this, at least." He says gesturing vaguely at their surroundings. "One of the only things that remains the same. I know, logically, it's not. Most of these flowers and grass are probably new but–but it's still the same, in a way. We're not those two guys who walked in here in the golden bullet curious about cryonic preservation and this big conspiracy with Overhead. Out here it looks almost like it did before."
"It feels like we lived all those 44 fucking years with all the shit we went through. I feel old." He laughs, causing Warren to smile, looking up at him. He knows how much they changed, how much they took from them. But in moments like this? Looking at Gordon, spending entire nights talking and playing, walking Waffles, complaining about the food? It can feel like they're not carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders, even if it's for a short time.
"You know," Warren says after a while, he isn't exactly one for this kind of speech, but he tries anyway. "I like to think that, in here…" He says placing a finger on Gordon's chest, right where his heart beats, alive. "In here we're pretty much the same. Even if this machine pumps more of that fucking blue liquid than blood. And I still kick your ass at Mario Kart so there's that."
"Remind me who won the last time we played?"
"That is beside the point, you cheated!"
They laugh and Gordon looks at him with a genuine smile placed neatly on his lips. "Thank you."
Warren searches for Gordon's hand, now as cold as his, and interlocks their fingers.
"Oh, and you forgot to mention Waffles."
"Ah, what can I say? She'll outlive us all." Gordon says and for now, it feels like there might be a future where they can start living, leaving behind the constant struggle to just survive.
The sun is now burning bright above their heads, and it feels like it has a reason for it. And, for the first time in so long, he feels…
Hope.
Well. If it kills him then so be it.
"Yeah, that sounds about right."