Work Text:
You could say one thing about the Athenaeum. It certainly was a prison.
Aiden had to hand it to whoever built the place. It was fancier than Nova Prospekt - at least, the non-Combine sections were. But the functional bits remained fundamentally the same. Countless identical cells. Long corridors, most of the lighting having faded probably centuries ago. Interrogation rooms, the floors still stained with blood. And more fucking antlions, because for all their interdimensional power the Combine were apparently incapable of building prisons not full of antlions. Really that should have been his first clue he was on the wrong side.
At least he had Wilson. He actually could imagine what it would be like to go through all this without a companion to talk to, he’d done it in City 10 (well, the original Aiden Walker had, but his clones all had the memories) and he could say with absolute confidence that Stalkers did not make good partners when traveling through pitch-dark, zombie-filled hellholes. Couldn’t even keep the damn flashlight steady.
Yeah, he’d have been completely lost, or more importantly lost his mind, without someone who had an actual plan guiding him out of here. Even then… he wasn’t doing so great.
After who knew how many hours’ worth of fighting and puzzle solving, the two of them had come to a lull in the fighting and an area that didn’t look like it was built exclusively to contain human suffering: some sort of bunkroom, probably for the guards who worked here. No equipment seemed to have been left behind, so nothing useful in here. Aiden continued through towards the exit.
As he approached, the door at the other end of the room slid shut, a multitude of alien mechanisms shifting into place as the green indicator light flicked to red. Locked.
“Wilson, can you get this door open?”
“Boss, I’ve been thinkin’... When was the last time you got some sleep?”
The question took Aiden by surprise. It was easy to lose track of time in the Athenaeum, and before that, it wasn’t like he’d been stopping to enjoy the break rooms while gunning his way through Arbeit. The CEO’s cabin had been besieged before he’d really had a chance to put his feet up, and he’d had to leave before getting a chance to enjoy the beautiful renovations he’d made.
Frankly, Aiden didn’t want to think about it. “Wilson. We don’t have time for this.”
“I’m serious! You’ve been fighting through this place for hours. When was the last time you actually rested?”
“Uhhh. Earlier. On the floor. When that section of the facility collapsed.”
On the display screen in the corner, Wilson’s red optic narrowed in suspicion. “Boss, blunt force trauma doesn’t count as rest.”
“Before that, then. Before you found me.”
“Being repeatedly tortured into unconsciousness doesn’t count as rest either!”
Aiden straightened up indignantly, tightening his grip on his gun and trying to regain both his composure and the bearing of a proud transhuman cyborg soldier. “Listen. Do you know how many goddamn cybernetic and biological implants the Combine crams into its regular soldiers? How much crap do you think they put into an Elite like me? By the time they made him into a clone template, my host didn’t have a single organ that hadn’t been fucked with somehow. I’ve got thirty computer chips in places you don’t wanna know - I don’t even think my blood is organic anymore. My clone lobotomized himself, survived, and then ran on algae and, I dunno, time juice ! I’m the product of the full engineering power of an alien empire hellbent on keeping its puppets going indefinitely. I don’t. Need. Rest.”
Aiden didn’t believe what he was saying any more than Wilson did. He did, in fact, feel like shit, and the aforementioned blunt force trauma and weeks of torture didn’t help. The stupid alien beds actually looked really comfortable, a hell of a lot more comfortable than anything else he’d seen in this place. But that was just it. He needed to get out of this place. No distractions, no detours, just whatever it took to not be here any more. He could figure out the rest later.
“Yeah, you’ve got implants, but… How much of that stuff is still running, boss? I mean, Aperture tech lasts forever, of course, that’s why I’m still here. But you’d been running around getting shot at for days, and who knows what they ripped out of you when…”
Wilson paused, his optic skirting the edges of the screen, as though he’d be wringing his hands if he still had them. When he continued, his voice was softer, more apprehensive. The last time he sounded like that , thought Aiden, he was dying .
“After you and the Borealis got sucked into that portal, it took me weeks to find you. Do you know how many Combine transmissions I had to sift through just to find out if you were still alive? And then to find out that you were here, and where here was, and if this place even existed? It technically doesn’t, by the way.” His voice rose as he spoke, cracking a bit. “Point is, I almost didn’t find you in time. I almost didn’t find you at all! And it’d be a real shame if all that was for nothing. Y’know?”
Stupid concerned friends , a part of Aiden grumbled, but a much larger part of him was awash in a warm glow he didn’t know he could still feel. He thought of the genuine panic he’d felt when he saw Wilson hurt after the battle in the core. He thought of how hard he’d fought to suppress it, to the point of almost wasting his last moments with his friend on anger and denial. The tightness in his chest and the ache behind his eye as he’d watched the little light go out, cradling the empty turret shell, kneeling on a platform traveling through dimensions, just sitting there like an idiot who had nothing, nothing and no one left in the world.
And he thought of work, although he almost scoffed at the idea of still calling it that. With his one single colleague that didn’t explicitly want him dead. 2810 was a good guy (wonder what he was up to?), he and Aiden had gotten along, but at the end of the day he was just a fellow cop who knew that teamwork was a part of the job. Would he have come back for Aiden the same way that Wilson did?
He thought of Wilson’s work, too. He’d clearly been a scientist at some point. Whatever the hell those freaks at Aperture (present company excluded) were up to before the world died, they definitely weren’t around any more. But even before that, Aiden got the feeling that Wilson, who was really an acquired taste, hadn’t been the most popular among his colleagues. Hell, they’d stuck him in a turret body and left him to rot alone in a basement. Doomed him to some kind of hellish, immobile immortality, at least until the power ran out. If Aiden hadn’t decided to lug him along… well, things would have been a lot worse for the both of them, really.
The two of them had nothing left but each other.
“Uh, boss? You’ve been standing there kind of a long time. You uh, fall asleep standing up? Look, forget about it, I’ll open the door now.”
Not one to give in to vulnerability without snark, Aiden did not respond without an unnecessary and slightly overdramatic sigh. “No.”
“No?”
“No, don’t open the door. I’ll… I’ll get some sleep. But two hours, max. Shorter than that if there’s any trouble. Got it?”
Wilson’s optic twirled around the screen cheerfully. “Sure thing! But don’t worry, I’ll make sure there won’t be any trouble.” His iris rotated briefly, loading, and after a moment a shimmering green field faded into view over the already-locked doors.
“Check it out! I got control of the energy shields in here! I guess they really didn’t want anything escaping and slaughtering all the guards while they slept helplessly.” Reassuring as ever.
“Thanks,” Aiden said as he settled into one of the beds in the most defensible-looking corner he could find. He spoke curtly, but he meant it.
“Boss?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you still dream?”
Aiden thought about little hands, reaching up to tug at his shirtsleeves, attached to no face. A sham trial, the vitriolic faces sometimes those of a long-dead jury, sometimes those of the many, many rebels he had killed. A sunless, airless cell - out in space? the bottom of the ocean? did it even matter? - getting colder with each breath. Endless tunnels beneath City 10. The burning world he’d helped sell. Aiden very strongly considered lying. But he didn’t. Not to Wilson.
“Yeah. Wish I didn’t.”
“O-oh. Me too, actually. Funny how that works.”
“Yeah... wait - you sleep?”
“Good night, boss.”
Sigh. “Good night, Wilson.”