Work Text:
They haven't woken him up. It's too risky, says Aubrey.
Like she didn't spend four entire decades where she could've figured it out. He sighs, shaking his head as he makes his way to the cryo room.
He's been unfair, of course. But it doesn't stop the anger.
It doesn't stop him from feeling it growing warm inside his chest and spreading through his veins every time he asks and Aubrey sighs, not meeting his eye when she says "Not yet, Warren." He feels his skin bruising from how hard he clenches his fists. From how ungentle he is with himself when he removes the IV before Hester can even reach him.
The anger bubbling and immediately fading away when his tired bones force him to sleep. Or when the meds kick in.
He understands it's for a reason, they have to be sure he comes back. Make sure that when they open the steel casket they can pull him out alive. And for that, Warren is willing to wait, as long as it takes.
But the silence is slowly deteriorating him, maybe even more than hypersleeping ever did. Because every single time that he emerged, Gordon was there. And this time, as he woke up calling for him, all he received was a fucking Blue Sky unit mimicking his voice, telling him welcome to the future. Cold and flat, so much like Gordon never was.
Every room he steps in feels silent.
The sound of the world became a stranger to his ears for so long. There was a part of himself that only came alive when it was just the two of them.
How long ago did he stop belonging to the world? For how long was the only sound in his ears Gordon's voice?
Now Warren doesn't have it. He has Gord but he can't bring himself to hear it for too long. It makes him uneasy how much it sounds like him and how, at the same time, sounds so different.
So how does he cope?
Anger. Resentment. Guilt. Because it should be him, instead. The one who took the bullet. And everything else.
He steps inside another silent room, the only one that doesn't make his ears ring as much. He puts Waffles and the recorder on the ground as he sits down next to the pod. He runs a finger through the hard steel and sighs.
"We brought you a comic tonight. It's mostly pictures but I could describe them to you? I just thought you'd be sick of the same book over and over again and to be fair it's only so much entertainment to hear me go through every level of Sonic for the millionth time." He looks at the ceiling as he swallows the lump in his throat.
"Uhm, she told me to keep my hopes low. Aubrey's... I snapped at her a couple of times. I'm being unfair, I know she tries, I know she cares. She even–I don't think she knows but she helped you keep your promise. You were there when I woke up, you know, the Blue Sky unit. " He snorts. "You'd hate it so much. I can't–I don't talk to it much. It's weird." He presses his forehead to the steel of Gordon's pod, whispering his next words. "Yeah, you'd hate it."
He looks at the room around him, lit up in a yellow light that makes him nauseous. The machines make sounds periodically and every single time he has to suppress a shiver. It's cold and quiet and lonely.
The box with no windows makes him think of funerals, of death. Of how he refused to attend so many of those, including his bastard father's one. And it makes him think of how alone he is. Even when he thought his marriage was real, he could never erase the feeling.
Well, Gordon helped him soothe that feeling.
"You never told me how much this looks like a coffin from the outside. Especially if there's someone inside. The wait is so long. Inside time doesn't move at all, but out here? These weeks have felt like years."
He brings his arms around himself, sinking in the fabric of one of Gordon's cardigans. It's old and dusty and it probably stopped smelling like him decades ago, but he likes the feeling. It's comforting.
"I'm so scared, Gordon. Fucking terrified, to be honest. I–I spend entire nights hoping and fucking–praying that this awful place and your past was enough trauma to keep you alive." It makes him sick to think of that, to hope he had just the right amount of traumatic experiences so he can survive. But it plagues his mind day and night when he tries to keep his hope alive despite Aubrey's words. "How fucked up is that? I don't know much about your life but I hope–"
He stops himself, taking a breath before he completely falls apart. Before he breaks. "I hope your bloody amygdala is big enough, or whatever. I just want you to be okay, I need you to be okay. And I'm not going anywhere. I'll be here if–when. When you wake up. You'll want to see the end of this place. And uh, Waffles is waiting, you know? I don't think she likes me that much. She misses you."
"I miss you. I listened to your tapes. Not the memoir, you said it wasn't ready, after all. And you didn't look at the files to know why I ended up in prison, so I guess I owed you that much. But I listened to the rest, even the ones when I was uh, sleeping. I'm sorry for doubting you, for not trusting you. The tunnel and all that. I think it was hard for me to see that you cared. No one ever did and that messed me up but still, I'm sorry, Gordon." He doesn't stop the tear that rolls silently on his cheek. "But–thank you. For looking out for me. I should've... I don't know." His head hits the cold steel as he rests it on top of the pod and closes his eyes. "If I could go back I don't even know what I'd do differently. Never coming here, I guess. Or at least stay awake– But then... It doesn't matter. It's not like any of the time travel experiments worked, anyways."
"Sorry, I needed to… I don't know. I'm recording this, by the way." He taps the recorder. "In case you wanted to know what happened while you slept. In case you wanted to hear my nonsense. I hope you remember enough so you'll want to know. But I'll tell you all this as soon as you wake up. And sorry, by the way. For panicking so much when you got shot, I'm sorry that was your last memory of the world we knew." He clears his throat, shifting to a much more comfortable position. "I hope you can wake up to something better, even if it's different."
"Anyway, uh comics. Yay. These are classics, the '84 run of the West Coast Avengers…"