Chapter Text
In… out… in… out…
…keep…
In… out… in… out…
… keep … breathing…
… in…
… out…
… Phck this shit.
Gavin Reed tried.
He tried to breathe through the thick panic paralyzing him. He knew how a panic attack worked, having experienced many in his youth and even more later, when he had to learn to manage them on his own. Drinking, smoking, and cutting himself — his holy trilogy of destructive behavior— was the only way he could maintain control. But right now, there was no alcohol in sight, a lighter wasn't an option in his situation, and he didn't even have his rifle anymore.
But Gavin wasn't stupid, or at least not entirely, and much less so than he let on — it was better to be underestimated — and he tried.
However, following the advice his brain was needlessly providing would undoubtedly be much easier if that stupid voice, which was not his own but just as familiar, stopped pounding in his head with a deafening hammer.
Being locked in the cold storage room of a butcher shop didn't help either.
Had Gavin mentioned the gunshot wound to his abdomen?
Maybe he should have started there.
Having blood slowly trickling from your gaping abdomen, radiating an infernal heat, was generally no small detail. It certainly didn't help Gavin keep a cool head—no pun intended. His entire body was numb, from head to toe, making it difficult to think, let alone concentrate on a way out of here.
At least between his injury and being locked up, Gavin had two valid reasons to panic.
There were less urgent details, the kind Gavin should probably put aside to focus entirely on his survival, that obsessed him despite his brain working at a sluggish pace due to the cold, fatigue, and slow blood loss. For example, how he was going to make the asshole who betrayed him and threw him into this frozen hell pay, very slowly and very painfully. This was exactly why Gavin Reed did not work with others.
On the good side, he will now have a strong argument when Fowler tries to affiliate him with a partner.
On the very bad, very dangerous side, he had to get out of the giant fridge alive if he wanted to carry out his plans.
And yes, he was aware of the risks, both of giving his boss the middle finger and of sending another cop to the hospital, but for the moment, anger and resentment were his only lifeline in this icy hell. He had taken a course a long time ago on how to handle these kinds of messed-up situations, and sure, Gavin had spent more time laughing with Tina and Chris than listening, but he had grasped the essential point: falling asleep in a cold place meant you will never wake up. It was a simple, easily remembered warning.
He shouldn't fall asleep. Gavin understood the death and inevitability of falling asleep with either an injury or hypothermia, and he had both; today was apparently his lucky day. He should play the lottery when he gets out of there. The real question was for whom should he live? Well, he had his cats, and those little furballs were his whole life, but apart from them? He had no one. No one would mourn him, or at least not for long.
"Gavin Reed is dead, but life goes on," he quipped, with as much self-deprecation as he could muster at the moment. It wasn't much, because his laughter turned into a painful cough.
Unfortunately, thinking about the emptiness of his relationships only intensified his panic. So, Gavin returned to his main activity: imagining the death of his damn "teammate". The pcker was a deadman who still had the luck to breathe.
For once, his resentment was justified because his only support — his new and dear teammate, Damian Robert — was the one who had shot him and locked him in this freezing prison. It was therefore unlikely that Damian, a Red Ice salesman in his spare time, would regret his actions and appear out of the blue to save him. In fact, given the circumstances, it was more likely that Gavin would die surrounded by chunks of meat filled to the brim with Red Ice.
He couldn't say he had ever imagined this scenario the times he had pictured his own death: heroically during an investigation, a possible and tempting prospect, or, more likely, like an idiot after opening his big mouth. If he was truly honest, Gavin already knew how he was going to die, or how he should have died: with his own gun to his temple and his finger on the trigger. Gavin didn't consider himself suicidal. He wasn't going to throw himself in front of a bullet at work, not unless there was a compelling reason, like protecting an eight-year-old girl. Back then, his glorious act had earned him a serious reprimand from Hank.
Ah! The glorious days when Hank Anderson cared about the fate of Gavin, his young partner.
This glory era was long gone, for Hank's message had been crystal clear: he didn't care about anything, least of all Gavin, except for his precious surrogate son. So, no, Gavin wasn't suicidal; he simply knew when he wasn't wanted. The problem was, he wasn't wanted anywhere.
To put things in perspective, Gavin reminded himself that there was a longer list than his arm of people who wanted to kill him. He might not have known how to make friends, but he certainly had no trouble making enemies. Dying from a gunshot wound to the stomach was therefore quite predictable, even commonplace. No, the most unexpected thing was that it was Damian Robert who shot him. Gavin hadn't done anything, or at least not yet, to make Robert resent him.
The case itself was fairly basic: dismantling a small Red Ice network. It had initially belonged to Anderson and Connor until they realized humans were behind the Red Ice smuggling. Fowler then took the case away from them and offered it to Gavin, since a complex murder involving an android required Connor's assistance. As if his position wasn't already precarious, now Gavin was getting half-finished cases. Adding insult to injury, Fowler assigned Officer Damian Robert to his new case. Gavin had the distinct impression that he was being treated like an incompetent fool who wouldn't be able to finish a half-finished case on his own. He hadn't admitted it to Fowler, though, since Gavin knew he'd been on thin ice since his altercation with Connor a few months prior. So, he gritted his teeth and nodded before going outside for a smoke.
Gavin had even behaved during those past two days. Sort of. Gavin hadn't been friendly —that would have been too much to ask— and hadn't brought coffee or asked personal questions to foster a beautiful and lasting friendship. But he hadn't been hostile either.
At least now that he was locked in a cold storage room with a bullet still lodged in his stomach, Gavin finally understood why Damian had been so excited to work with him in particular and eager to learn as much as possible about the investigation. And it was also pretty easy to deduce where Damian had gotten his lead on the butcher shop, which was potentially serving as a decoy for the sale of Red Ice. The kid wasn't brilliant; he was just a jerk and a freaking traitor.
Damian had set a trap for Gavin, who had hastily thrown himself into the lion's den.
Five large, broad-shouldered men were waiting for them inside the butcher shop, one with a mallet and another with a broad knife. Gavin had ordered them to drop their weapons until he felt the cold metal of a gun press against the back of his head. He had then dropped his gun, but he had been too impulsive and desperate —stupid— to follow Damian's other orders to throw his badge and phone on the floor, and then to give his handcuffs to one of the butchers.
Thus, with a practiced, swift movement, Gavin whirled around and had pushed the gun away from his face. Damian, who wasn't joking, had pulled the trigger at the same time, but Gavin had been faster, and the bullet had hit a light fixture. The two DPD officers had then fought fiercely for control of the weapon as the five drug dealers were laughing. The winner's name didn't matter to them since they would either congratulate Damian or get rid of the annoying pig, until another shot was fired.
Disoriented by the ringing in his ears and the burning sensation in his hands, Gavin had staggered backward, away from Damian and the deadly weapon. He had continued to stare blankly at the pistol, from whose barrel a plume of smoke billowed. Oblivious to where he was going, Gavin had practically fallen into the arms of Joe Marshall, the butcher shop owner and head of the drug dealers. Marshall had then placed his two large hands on the detective's shoulders, who had been far too preoccupied by the pain at his side.
Gavin had slowly brought his trembling hands to his aching abdomen. The pain had been excruciating, both burning and electric. It started somewhere in his side and shot through his raw nerves to his toes. He had been startled when his fingers encountered a thick, warm dampness. He thus had lowered his head, and a gasp had escaped his lips as he noticed the spurts of blood flowing from his new gunshot wound. He had pressed his hands harder against the wound to stem the flow of blood, despite the increasing pain it caused.
With Gavin obsessed with his survival, Damian had taken the opportunity to steal his phone and badge. The rogue cop also took Gavin's handcuffs and used them against their owner. At least, Damian showed some decency, tying Gavin's hands in front of him. This had allowed Gavin to continue applying pressure to his wound. Or perhaps Damian had done him this "favor" to see the "known bastard of the DPD" struggle? In any case, Gavin had been unable to defend himself when Marshall had pushed him into the walk-in freezer.
Damian's sneaky face had been the last one Gavin saw before the steel door was shut closed.
Through the pain and paralyzing cold, the injured detective had barely managed to position himself against the back wall of the cold room before his strength abandoned him and he had collapsed onto the equally frozen floor.
At first, Gavin had completely panicked, so much so that he had practically fainted from hyperventilation. Not because his stomach was in agony and he was going to die, but because being locked in a cramped, cold room brought him back to a very distant and very traumatic time when he was just a defenseless child.
Young Gavin Reed had spent the first years of his life alone with his mother and her numerous boyfriends. All the boyfriends were different in height and width, skin color, and wealth. His mother was fairly lenient as long as three criteria were met: they consumed drugs, were sex addicts, and deeply hated Gavin. Because for his mother, the bane of her existence wasn't drugs, but her own son. It was Gavin's fault that his father, his mother's lover, had abandoned her to stay with his perfect little family. He wasn't smart enough, not interesting enough, not cute enough to make his dad stay. He just could never be enough. And she and her boyfriends often made it clear how Gavin was an unwelcome burden.
Gavin was an adult now, but he could never forget how small, helpless, and worthless she had made him feel. A mother was supposed to be the bulwark between the world's cruelty and the innocence of a kid. But his own mother was the definition of cruel: addicted to drugs and alcohol, violent, and words as sharp as a knife. She usually hid her nasty streak under a ton of cheap makeup. How could he ever forget all those times his mother, exasperated by his perfectly legitimate childhood tears or because she wanted to be alone with her boyfriend of the week, had locked him in the broken kitchen refrigerator?
The old, broken thing had been gathering dust in the kitchen for years because none of his mother's boyfriends had the motivation to throw it away. This lack of initiative perfectly reflected their true intentions toward his mother: none of them truly loved her, seeing her only as a means to indulge their vices, whether it be sex, drugs, or abusing a child. So, they didn't give her gifts, at least nothing expensive, and only if they wanted something in return. And they were certainly not going to make her life any easier by carrying something that weighed a ton down eight flights of stairs.
So, his mother had found the perfect use for it. Day after day, little Gavin had been forced into the refrigerator, which stank of mildew and mustiness. And no matter how much he cried, begged, or pounded his little fists against the thick walls, his mother rarely let him out. He still remembered the despair he felt each time, the loneliness, and the growing emptiness in his chest, coupled with the certainty that he would never be good enough. If he was locked in the freezer, then he hadn't been good. It was his fault, and he deserved to be punished.
Nearly three decades later, Gavin was still uncomfortable in dark or enclosed spaces. If the room wasn't completely dark, the steel door was hermetically sealed. Not to mention the irony that hadn't escaped his nervousness.
Gavin was no longer a helpless child but a detective who had witnessed countless atrocities in his career, and he had managed to regain his composure. His panic attack lasted for hours before his breathing returned to normal. Or at least, as normal as it could be under the circumstances. A wisp of breath escaped his lips with each breath. It was still a victory for Gavin.
The walk-in freezer, however, was colder and more deadly than the broken refrigerator. Hence why, three hours later, Gavin was forcing himself to take short, shallow breaths. He had stopped shivering a few minutes ago, and his fingers already had severe frostbite. The detective knew hypothermia was his worst enemy right now, but in his case, it was also an ally. The cold had slowed his heart rate, thus preventing him from bleeding to death.
Small victories.
Unless hypothermia killed him first…
Breathe…
… in....
…and out.
However, Gavin would have preferred not to have auditory hallucinations on top of all his other symptoms. Dying slowly was boring enough, in his humble opinion, and he really didn't need his brother's whiny voice in his ears. Even in death, his brother had to annoy him. A self-centered jerk through and through. Perhaps that was what Gavin deserved, although given the choice, he would have preferred Connor's gentle voice or Hank's sometimes fatherly one to the one of a guy he hadn't seen in over a decade and had been trying to forget for just as long.
The hallucinations worsened to the point where Gavin could no longer just hear his brother's cold, detached voice, but he could now see him too. Not his brother as he was now, a heartless, self-centered jerk, but his younger, kinder self. The one who wore glasses, a too-big sweatshirt of a band, and still had acne. The ghost of his younger brother stood between two pieces of meat, holding out his hand, the other tucked into his geeky hoodie. As if Gavin only had to reach out his own hand to return to a simpler, happier time.
Probably not a good idea.
Certainly.
He still needed to think about it.
Breathe…
… In….
"Get the phck out of here, dipshit…," he murmured weakly.
"Breathe, Gave."
"I'm trying."
"Don't try, succeed."
…Out…
He should try reversing it to spice things up.
Out…
….In…
Alright, bad idea…
In…
…out…
Forty-five minutes later, his brother's ghost was still waiting for him, his hand outstretched toward Gavin. The invitation was more than tempting now. Gavin was tired of being numb from the cold, of struggling to keep his eyes open when his hands had stopped cooperating hours ago, and of vainly hoping someone would come to save him.
No one would come to save him anyway, since no one was looking for him.
Damian must have covered his back by using Gavin's phone.
In any case, Gavin wasn't important enough for his disappearance to be noticed.
And if, by pure chance, someone were to find him, then they would probably already be too late.
Gavin then tried to get up to join his brother's ghost, but he no longer had the strength. His body hadn't responded to him for hours. His legs were useless, stretched out before him like two lifeless sticks. As for his hands, they had fallen limply onto his thighs.
The hallucination suddenly reached a fever pitch following his failed attempt.
The door burst open, half off its hinges, and the steel bent at an odd angle. Then, two blurry shapes rushed into his cold storage room. Were they looking for meat? Was he, technically, meat? He was just skin and bones, after all. Besides, at some point, he had formed a bond with the pieces of meat by giving them nicknames.
In any case, he hoped they wouldn't steal his cold storage room; it was his now. His name wasn't specifically written on a wall, but his blood was everywhere, so it should matter.
One of the shapes savagely passed through his brother's ghost, and that was enough to bring a smug smile to Gavin's face. At least the idiot had gotten what he deserved. Unfortunately, the ghost vanished for barely a second before reforming to taunt him. If he had the strength, Gavin would have raised his middle finger, but in his current state, he simply stared at his brother.
The shape must not have liked being ignored, for its terribly warm hand cradled the delirious man's face. Gavin frowned slightly when he encountered gray hair, blue eyes filled with worry, and a hideous shirt. He would recognize this bad taste anywhere: Anderson.
What was Anderson doing there? He couldn't be there. He shouldn't be there. Anderson should be home, warm and cozy with Connor to… to do what again? Oh, right, to help him where Gavin had failed. But in a way, Gavin understood. The android had been programmed to be perfect at everything he did, even helping a depressed, alcoholic old codger achieve redemption. What he didn't understand, however, was why CyberLife had made Connor so damn attractive. Was it some secret hostage-taking technique? In any case, it worked on Gavin, between Connor's fuzzy hair and his puppy dog expression.
Anyway, Hank should be home watching a match while drinking beer with his perfect new son and his monstrous dog. He wasn't bad enough to be locked in a freezer, too. Only Gavin wasn't enough and deserved to die here.
"...Reed? Reed! Gavin?! Fucking answer me, son!"
Ah, right. Anderson's hallucination was trying to establish contact with him. However, Gavin was so frozen that he could barely keep his eyes open, so answering a question was definitely asking too much. He still managed to weakly lock gaze with Anderson's blue eyes.
The hallucination was so convincing that even Anderson's voice had been perfectly imitated. Except for the worry. Anderson hadn't worried about him for a long time. "It's going to be okay, son, we'll get you out of here."
Knowing he had gone completely insane, Gavin stopped fighting and closed his eyes.