Chapter Text
It felt like the camp was on autopilot. Light up the campfire, spread tarps and bedrolls around it. Hand out rations (one bar, broken in its packaging), chew them in silence with the rest of the convoy, not making eye contact. Set up water quality tests to run overnight, jury-rigged machinery running off a truck battery. Lay down under scratchy, patched sheets and try to pull them tight enough to keep out the cold. Wait for the adrenaline crash and sleep.
Around him, the Vortigaunts and humans slowly crept into their own bedrolls, their movements slow and heavy with exhaustion. Shaking shoulders and clenched fists finally stilled and relaxed as the moon crept higher in the sky, shimmering a brilliant white on the sea.
Gordon couldn't sleep, no matter how long he shut his eyes and paced his breathing. It’d be easier to face this alert and awake, but his aching, hungry body stubbornly refused rest. His mind was racing, and the note he had written was burning a hole in his pocket.
He groaned and sat up, kicking off his blanket and turning to face the water. It was still and black, fading seamlessly into the night sky. No wind pushed waves across it, no fish, native or alien, disturbed the surface. Its still, black waters faded seamlessly into the night sky, offering no comfort.
Gordon ran his hand through the black sand, idly tracing shapes into the dirt. An antlion, thorax raised in a threat display. A crude sketch of the radio towers over White Forest. The dome at MIT. The porch of his childhood home, the Space Needle rising in the distance. The black ash painted his hands dark, the dust collecting in his calluses. He frowned and wiped them on his pants.
Maybe it wasn’t soot. Volcanic or something. Black sand like the shores of Hawaii. He’d always wanted to visit, but instead he’d thrown himself into work, never taking a vacation until he was retching into a toilet.
Someone nudged his shoulder and he glanced up from the squiggles in the sand to see Barney take a seat next to him. He scooted over to give him more of the blankets and Barney’s lips quirked up in a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You avoiding me too?”
Gordon shook his head. “Are you? Missed you last night.”
Barney shifted uncomfortably, fiddling with the seams on his gloves. “‘Course not. I was out hunting with the rest of the convoy. You know how rations are getting.”
“Bad?”
He nodded and continued, signs slowly becoming less sharp and sure. “And I figured you needed a full belly more than me mother henning. Me and Alyx were just stressin’ you out.”
Gordon shook his head. “The Vorts are nice, but they’re not the same. Rather would have had you there.”
Barney fixed him with a long, intense look, like he was trying to solve an especially homicidal rubix cube.
Gordon met his gaze and held it, unwilling to back down. “Why did you go? I was worried.”
Barney fidgeted in place. “Well, you know how Alyx gets when she’s pissed.”
“Today too?”
He shrugged. “She’s still pissed. I’m gonna respect that.”
“Not at you. Mostly.” Gordon frowned. “We’re the only people she can talk to about this, at least while we’re out here. We have to be there for her.”
Barney grimaced and raked a hand through his greasy hair. The grey was coming in thick and fast at his temples, and the two day stubble on his jaw was already silver. Gordon watched patiently as he raised his hands to speak, but they only balled into fists and fell to his sides. Barney pulled his legs against his chest and buried his face in his knees. His lips moved, but Gordon couldn’t read them.
He reached out and shook Barney’s shoulder. “Barney?”
He said something else.
Gordon huffed and jostled his shoulder again. “Sign. Please.”
Barney wiped his eyes, squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. “Gordon, I don’t know how much longer I can do this. If I can keep doing this.”
Something twisted in Gordon’s chest. “Doing what?”
“All of this.” Barney stared out over the dead waters, refusing to meet his eyes. “Keep an eye on White Forest, make sure Kleiner’s eating, help Eli strategize, play mole, protect the convoy, protect you, protect Alyx.” His lips twisted bitterly. “Been doing a great job lately, huh?”
“We’re not dead,” Gordon said, for lack of anything else. “You got people out of City 17 before the reactor blew. We made it out of the Outlands. Alyx and Eli and Kleiner and I are still alive. You’re doing fine.”
“I’m fucking not. This famine’s going to roll in, this—" He waved his hands at the camp, the sleeping rebels, the dying fire—“Is all gonna go to hell, and something will snap and I’ll do something I wish I’ll regret but won’t.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I can,” Barney said. “I’m fucked up, Gordon. This is just how it always goes.”
“Barney.” Gordon bit his cheek, anxiety bubbling up under his skin. “You’re not.”
“Black Mesa,” Barney slashed his index finger across his brow and sliced a box in the air, moving with a suredness and anger that startled Gordon. “Gordon, do you know what I did during the Resonance Cascade?”
“You got out with Kleiner, Eli and Alyx,” Gordon signed slowly. “Ended up in the same transport.”
“No. During the Cascade, Gordon.”
He shook his head.
“After the elevator went, I was walking through Sector G on foot, shooting crabs, running out of bullets,” Barney smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You remember those dweeby little bullet proof vests? Turns out that they don’t last more than a few hits. I realize that when one of the Vorts throws me off a goddamn balcony.”
Gordon winced.
“But lucky me, there’s half a palette of medkits and the guy who was trying to use them. Guard. Not my shift, but I knew his face.” Barney’s hands shook and he squeezed them tight, trying to hold off the tremors. “He’s dead, pelvis crushed by something, and all I can think is ‘Thank God the gun’s alright, I can reload. Thank God the latches on the vest aren’t stuck, I don’t gotta cut it off him.’” He took another deep breath, forcing it down like a bellow. “Then I get up and I keep going.”
Gordon reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “Barney, I did the same thing. I was looting—" he slipped into the pidgin for it, an ugly slur of the signs for death and persist—“too. It’s okay.”
“I’m betting you didn’t start hoping for it,” Barney snapped. “I’m sitting in the shadows in a dead guy’s gear, watching some marine gun down another guard, and all I can think is ‘Great! Glad he didn’t go for a headshot, I need a new helmet. Hope there isn’t too much lung on the vest.’”
Barney’s fingers flew out cheerfully, but his face was a death mask as he continued. “Then Eli asks me to go undercover and I start getting used to it. Couldn’t keep my squadmates off that guy, oh well! Hope he was at least carrying something good. Raid a tower block? It’s fine, I’m just doing my job. Behind on my beating quota?” He spread his hands wide like a carnival barker. “Citizens of train station 17, step right up and see who gets to save my hide! And then—"
Barney blinked hard, remembering, and his hands finally stilled.
“You were a mole in a warzone. You did what you had to do,” Gordon said.
“Gordon, how fucking many times can you ‘do what you need to do’ before it stops being desperation and just starts being who you are?” Barney asked. “Black Mesa wasn’t my career plan. I wanted to join the academy, back before I nearly flunked outta Martinson, go play cops and robbers with other people’s lives. I was always like this. A goddamn Metrocop, through and through.”
Barney’s hands flew out, ready for a new tirade, but Gordon grabbed him before he could go on, pinning his arms against his sides in a crushing hug.
Barney’s breath was hot and halting on the back of his neck. He twisted in Gordon’s grip, trying to shove him back, but gave in and stopped struggling. His hands were moving behind Gordon’s back, out of sight. There was no way to talk, but maybe that was for the best. Gordon had never been one for words.
If someone could forgive Barney, if anyone could, and take the weight of decades off his shoulders, it wasn’t Gordon. He had missed too much, had too much blood on his own, unfeeling hands. Still, even if he couldn’t give him absolution, maybe he could give him this, if only for a moment.
Gordon held him for a minute longer, until Barney’s breathing slowed and he couldn’t feel his heart hammering through the heavy armored chestpiece. Barney was solid as ever, but Gordon couldn’t help but imagine him slipping through his fingers like smoke, the wind stealing him away someplace he could not follow.
Finally, Barney pulled away and Gordon reluctantly let him. He ran a hand down his face, wiping at his red eyes. “I can’t play Alyx’s uncle, her mole, her lieutenant. Not with this—" He pulled at the fabric of his uniform—“underneath it.”
“Alyx doesn’t need that,” Gordon said sharply. “She’s family, not an audience. Quit trying to play a role. All she really wants is you to be there, as yourself.”
Barney sighed, raking a hand through his hair. “Gordon, how the hell am I supposed to be someone I don’t know?”
Gordon shrugged and grabbed his hand. He worked his fingers under the heavy rubber prised the glove off. “You’re not going to figure that out in this thing.”
The ridges of Barney’s tattoo slid beneath his fingers as he went for the other glove, Barney watching him with silent fascination as he peeled it off. Gordon balled up the gloves and resisted chucking them into the water, instead going for the zipper tab on Barney’s jacket. Barney’s eyebrows shot towards his hairline and he grabbed Gordon’s wrist.
Gordon let go. “What?”
“Don’t you that’s pushing it a bit?” Barney laughed, not quite meeting his eyes. “I mean—"
“You don’t want to be a Combine?”
“Gordon—"
“Yes or no?”
Slowly, Barney nodded.
“Then quit dressing like one. You’re not undercover. We’re not in a fight. It's not going to fix what you did.” Gordon grabbed one of the belts and unlatched it, throwing it onto the dirt. “It’s just making you feel like shit.”
Barney didn’t meet his eyes. Gordon leaned forward and yanked the zipper open, peeling the heavy padded coat off him and tossing it onto his bedroll.
He had a white tee on underneath the jacket, ragged at the edges and spotted with the faint brown stains of washed out blood. The collar had been shredded, a rip going from just below the band down to beneath his collar bone. Gordon was suddenly well aware of how much broader Barney was than him, the muscle jumping in his arms when he tensed.
He frowned, planning the next attack. The jackboots were also probably a good idea to ditch. Living life at 5’6” built character.
“Christ, Doc, I can do that myself,” Barney grumbled and waved Gordon off his boot. His calves and feet were bundled in gauze underneath, padding to keep off blisters and chilblains. “What, you’re going for my fly next?”
“Don’t tempt me,” Gordon bit back before he could think about it and froze. “I mean—"
Barney was giving him a long, considering look, one Gordon had to struggle not to turn away from. He ought to deny it, pass it off as a joke, but…
They said things were different now. Safe enough to let lie.
He shook his head and sighed. “I know it’s been twenty years,” Gordon said, leaning forwards on his elbows. “I know things have changed. I’m different, you’re different, but I still know you.”
Barney froze, the boot still dangling in his hands.
“A lot of shit happened. Bad shit we’re both responsible for. But you’re still my best friend, even under all of this.” He waved a hand at the pile of clothes. “Whoever that is, you’re not going to find him hiding behind Alyx. It’s not going to help either of you.”
Barney said nothing for a long minute, letting out a long breath. He reached down to quickly squeeze Gordon’s hand. “Thank you. For… knowing me. Keeping your head through all this. Being, well, normal. Even when things aren’t.” He smiled and tapped his knuckles together. Physics with a G. “Just Gordon, after everything.”
Gordon nodded, picking at the calluses on his thumb. If he didn’t tell him now, no one would know. Gordon Freeman would live in and die in the past, known only to a contractor in an expensive suit.
Gordon lifted his hands, and for the first time in ages, signed his own name, the same crisp motion he’d been given so many years ago by a teacher.
Barney blinked. “Doc, I don’t know that one.”
“It’s my name,” Gordon signed slowly. “My Deaf name.”
“You never told me.”
“It didn’t matter then,” Gordon said. “But you’re the only one who knows it now.”
“Only one—" Barney blanched as he mulled it over, what must be left of MIT and Seattle, his teacher and his college friends. He shook his head and repeated the motions over and over, until Gordon’s name rolled off his fingertips as easily as breathing. “Do you want me to call you that instead?”
Gordon shrugged. “If you want. But I like your nickname too.”
“I guess we’ll figure it out.” Barney rubbed his eyes, yawning. “Christ, it’s late. I’m not looking forward to dealing with tomorrow, but it’s not gonna get easier with less sleep.”
“Stay?”
It was selfish, but Gordon couldn’t help himself. Wordlessly, he lifted up the edge of the sleeping bag and watched, slightly amazed, as Barney nodded and shuffled in. He set the edge of it back down so Barney was covered, and wriggled over so he’d have more room. It was a narrow bedroll, but there was just enough space for two if Barney lay on his side.
The wind was coming off the water again, blowing sparks and smoke from the smoldering fire pit into the sky. Gordon watched them fade upwards, knowing he’d be joining them soon.
“We get to choose what we do now,” Gordon said. “We get to pick what we are.”
Barney nodded, accepting the lie, as Gordon lay down next to him on the bedroll. He shut his eyes and pressed his cheek into the pillow and waited, soaking up Barney’s warmth where they touched. Barney’s breathing eventually slowed and his hand relaxed where it had come to rest on Gordon’s wrist, and Gordon knew he was truly asleep.
He slowly pulled away, gently sliding out of his grip and worming his way out of the bedroll, only pausing for a moment to study Barney’s sleeping face. His face was unlined, relaxed for the first time in what felt like years, and his bangs flopped into his eyes.
Gordon grimaced and tugged the blanket higher on Barney’s shoulders. It was hard to leave him, but harder to think what was to come. Easier to just get it over with and make his choice. Forget sleeping, if he waited another minute, he knew he’d never go.
He brushed Barney’s hair behind his ear and tucked a note he’d never be able to remember under his hand. He shot a glance over his shoulder, but the camp was fast asleep.
Carefully, he leaned in and pressed a kiss to Barney’s temple, right over the scar on his hairline. His skin was warm and desperately alive, gritty with a week’s worth of grime and tasting faintly of salt and sweat. Gordon’s pulse thudded in his ears. Crossing no man’s land, wading through nuclear waste, it had all been easier, safer, than this.
He stood, looking over the sleeping forms of the convoy. The Vortigaunts, huddled in a warm pile, Noriko curled near the embers of the fire pit. He took a deep breath, taking in the ratty polyester fashion and painted hoppers and crumbling eighteen wheelers and hunger pang faces and everything else that made the Resistance so human, and committed it to memory. No going back.
He circled the camp, tracing his fingers over the still metal of the trucks, until he finally found the tarp spread out in the shadow of Arlene’s eighteen wheeler. Alyx had left her toolbox and spare resin behind, stacked neatly next to the carapace of the HEV suit.
It was still obviously broken. The gash in the side had been cleaned and the melted plastic sheared away, but the damaged plating and surgical tubing were still gone. Gordon pulled on the layers in silence, struggling with the zippers and clasps. It was a trial without Barney or Alyx to help heave the heavy plating on, but eventually he managed to get the armor over his shoulders. The HUD blinked in front of him, flashing a diagnostics list.
Gordon closed it. Wherever he went after this, the HEV suit would be in sparkling condition. Ruins and rubble would align themselves in careful paths for him to traverse. There would be a grenade cache before every gunship and chopper, and medkits and power cells after every blowout firefight. A paradise for the violent. His contractor had never been chintzy when it came to Gordon’s tools.
He snapped his fingers, the thick material of the gloves scraping together. One more thing. Couldn’t forget the most important part.
He clicked open the old red toolbox, sifting through it by the glow of the HEV’s flashlight. In the bottom, under piles of screws, wrenches and tools Gordon had never seen before 2020, Alyx had stashed a Colt Magnum. Gordon checked the chamber and slid it into the holster at his waist.
He sighed and turned to the black water, boots sinking deep into the dark sand.
It was waiting for him: the tram floated inches above the glassy surface of the sea, reflected moonlight shimmering on its underside. It was as crisp and untarnished as the day it had first been installed on the monorail, the polished aluminum glittering in the night. Gordon wondered if it was a construct, a trick of the senses, or if his employer had stolen it from Black Mesa like he had Alyx. Like he had him.
He stepped out into the dead sea. The muddy water swirled in eddies around his knees and as it began to creep up to his thighs, the sand rose up in front of him, forming a long, narrow sand bar just beneath the surface of the water. Silt billowed behind him as Gordon followed the path home.
Gordon considered himself an expert on many things. The Oregon trail, elevator shafts, murder, maybe even Barney Calhoun, but above all, he knew when to quit. It was something born of constant struggle, constant refusal to die. After what felt like a life of looking down the barrel of Marine guns and Combine rifles, he knew when to fold.
When the HECU had bashed him over the head with his own crowbar and dragged him off to die, he hadn’t struggled. When a strange man in a strange mask in a strange land had shoved a crackling stun baton in his face and demanded he pick up litter, he had acquiesced. When his employer had dragged him from the shallow confines of space and time and offered him a deal, he had bowed his head and stepped off the tram.
This was no different. Whatever pain the future brought, Barney and Alyx didn’t need him to fight it. They didn’t need another mouth to feed when the Combine’s rations ran out and famine came to White Forest, didn’t need him eating up resources when morphine withdrawal finally set in and they didn’t need a killer, now that the world’s greatest evil was once again resource management. Gordon’s sword would never be beaten into plowshares, no matter how hard he tried.
He had reached it. Gordon watched his reflection waver in the windows as the iris scanner blinked green and the door slid open. He glanced back at the shore, but the camp had been swallowed by the darkness. He took a deep breath and stepped inside.
The tram was just as he remembered it. The blue pleather seats smelled faintly chemical, the fans pumped the musty Black Mesa air in from the tunnels, and the entire tram buzzed with the faint vibrations of the motors. The fluorescent light flickered softly, casting odd shadows across the car. They striped down the seats and twisted away from their sources at strange angles, pooling at the glossy loafers of the man in the suit.
“Gordon Freeman,” the man signed, holding his name in cold, lifeless hands. “While I was aware of your, ah, habitual lateness when I hired you, I had hoped you would not let that particular habit continue.”
Gordon bowed his head and circled a fist over his chest. “I’m sorry. I reconsidered.”
The man watched Gordon sit opposite him with glassy eyes. “It’s fortunate that you are a hard man to replace. None of your alternatives had the temperament for this line... of work.”
Gordon winced and fell onto a seat as pain cracked across his temples. Something churned in the back of his mind: a breaching ship, a pair of gauntlets, an incomprehensibly huge sphere of latticed metal orbiting a star. The images were gone the moment he tried to parse the details, like trying to catch water in a sieve.
The man didn’t react, but Gordon swore he saw something flare in the hollow pits of his eyes. The tram shuddered to life, and Gordon watched the shore slide further and further away as the car trundled out to sea, following some invisible rail. Soon there was no way to tell exactly where the water ended and land and sky began, only the bright glitter of the moon on the water, the glow of the tram’s headlights and the distant stars.
The man stiffly leaned back in his seat, a poor mockery of human comfort. “While I commend your dedication—" the man paused halfway through the gesture to suck in air—“to the Earth Resistance, our contract with them is long past due. I am sure that you would like to avoid them accruing any, ah… unnecessary debt.” He stilled for a moment, smacking his lips. “There is nothing more you can do for them.”
Gordon nodded and shifted uncomfortably, making the seat groan under the weight of the suit. “What’s the next contract? Where am I going next?”
The man sniffed. “I am, you are aware, not at liberty to discuss the specifics with you. While there have been several… interesting offers from the Universal Union, and the creature formerly known as Wallace Breen—"
Gordon bolted to his feet, heart jackhammering in his chest as he reached for his holster. The man waved a hand and his legs locked, sending him stumbling back onto the cheap pleather seats, clutching at the frozen muscle. The man stared at him for a long moment, assessing him like a bug skewered on a pin.
Gordon swallowed the fear and held still. Right. He was here for a reason.
“Let me finish, Dr. Freeman,” the man chided, giving him a look that might have been indulgent, were it on a face capable of indulging anything. “There have been offers, but thanks to Ms. Vance and you, my superiors consider them… hm. Below our paygrade.” The man’s eyes flashed a brilliant blue and Gordon inexplicably tasted copper. “Lucky you.”
Gordon grimaced. “Lucky me.”
The man flicked a spidery hand out, and the air turned to plasma as a portal cut a hole into existence, bobbing at chest height in front of the door. “I believe this is your stop, Dr. Freeman. I look… forward to observing your next assignment.”
Gordon didn’t move. The man frowned, skin and fat creasing in all the wrong places.
“Earlier, you said we were renegotiating a contract. I want payment,” Gordon said, flicking his fingers out sharply. “White Forest lives through the winter. The famine doesn’t get them.”
The man in the suit narrowed his eyes until they were nothing but two luminous blue slits in the mask. “You assume…” Pause. Spasm of the fingers, jitter of the head. “That this is a deal.”
“Last time it was my life. This time it’s White Forest.”
“You were an investment. There are other outposts far more capable of advancing my Employer’s plans.” The portal burned brighter, sparking orange and green as it burrowed into reality like a taproot. Outside, the moon shattered and swept across the void, breaking apart until the pieces were nothing but thin lines, spiking across the black. “You are in no place to barter, Doctor.”
Contracts could be negotiated. There was always something to give up, something left to lose. “If you don’t, you give up an asset. Firefight, bottomless pit, alien wildlife. Doesn’t matter.”
The man tilted his head and raised a thinning eyebrow. “You expect me to believe you would simply… roll over and die? After Xen, the Citadel? You underestimate yourself.”
He took a deep breath. Pain was never a worry. Death was inevitable. Loss was a horrible, aching constant.
Gordon calmly pulled the Magnum from the holster at his waist. He opened the chamber with steady, practiced motions and held it up for the man to see. Six bullets, each strong enough to kill a Vort in a single spray of viscera. He clicked the cylinder back in place and shoved the muzzle into the gap between his helmet and the neck guard.
The man stared him down, entirely and unnaturally still. His chest never rose. The slight draft weaving through the tram never stirred his hair or collar.
Gordon held firm. His hands had never wavered with a gun in them, and they did not shake now.
He wasn’t sure how long they stood there, locked in stalemate as the car hurtled through the space between the stars, between life and death. The distant points of light flickered out, until the only thing left outside was a darkness deeper than Gordon had ever known. Finally, the man sighed and raised his hands. “Decisive as ever, Dr. Freeman. Your… associates live.”
He waved a spidery hand and the air shifted, the very threads of spacetime rippling and buckling. Gordon shivered as the chords reordered themselves, writing new terms. It no longer hurt, not now that he was willing. There were no other ties to get in the way.
“I have been patient with you, Freeman. Far more patient than my colleagues and superiors have considered wise.” The man’s eyes flashed bright enough to leave spots in Gordon’s vision and the taste of metal filled his mouth. “Consider this your final warning. Any failure, any hesitation, and your,” the thing’s lips twisted in a crude, papery approximation of smile, “deal is null. I need not tell you the consequences.”
Gordon bowed his head and stepped forward. What did it matter? Feast or famine, Earth or Xen, he had always been trapped in a box, a briefcase, owned body and soul by circumstance and survival. This was only a trade in masters.
The portal grew brighter, pulsing stygian blue and hyperbolic orange. Gordon reached for it. Experience told him it would be more sudden and painless than falling asleep. Another death, to match the bowels of Black Mesa and the peak of the Citadel.
The portal sputtered like a flame in the wind, and all at once the tram was thrown by some enormous outside force, sending him stumbling across the car. Everything from the bulbs in the ceiling to the screws holding the seats in place rattled, and in the corner of his eye, the man turned to the tram door, lip curling back in disgust. Gordon froze and followed his gaze, watching as the door buckled in, the metal shearing and stretching like taffy. Blackness crept in where the metal split open, oozing into the tram like a flood.
His employer locked eyes with him, and Gordon felt a surge of panic at the blame in his eyes. Another blow shook the tram, sending it toppling end over end. Gordon scrambled for the handrail, clinging to it as the tram flew into a full on roll, tossing his gun across the car.
The man stood at the center of it all, moored to something deeper than the matter of the train. He regarded the tram with cool disdain as they spun, Gordon and the Magnum orbiting him like a black hole.
Desperate, Gordon reached for him, trying to cling to the weight of their contract, the constant of a weapon in his hand and a corpse at his feet.
The windows of the tram exploded inwards before the man could react. Shattered glass sparkled under the fluorescent lights and the car was lost in the sudden, familiar rush of void.
When Gordon opened his eyes (if he opened his eyes), there was nothing but cool darkness, pressing in on all sides. He raised a hand to feel through the void, but his limbs felt heavy and slow, as if the air had turned to honey. It was familiar, not for the memory of it, but the absence of feeling. There was a twenty year gap of nothing but hazy blackness and crushing tired, remembered only on the edge of sleep.
Stasis.
It made sense, he supposed. He was a trophy, just like the tram car. It figured that the rest of the man’s collection would be kept near by, as far as near meant anything here. One way or another, he had reached his goal.
His eyelids drooped lower as the chill worked its way into his bones. It wouldn’t be long now. He’d be pulled out someday, somewhere far from White Forest and the dead Earth. He wouldn’t have to worry anymore. All he’d have to do was survive. He’d feel better then, less hollow with a gun in his hands and an endless parade of battles to distract him from the thought of Alyx and Barney, of White Forest.
Pain shot through him. Something clawed in his chest, sinking teeth deep into his ribs, his lungs, his beating heart. Gordon pulled in on himself, the heavy plating of the HEV scraping together as he curled in around the wrenching ache in his chest. Broken chords yanked and tore at what was left of their anchors. They pulled him in like a fish snagged on a line, awkward and helpless to take out the hooks.
Something grabbed his hand, holding tight enough to crush bone even through the HEV’s padded gloves. A second hand braced itself on his wrist, straining against the stasis. Panic surged through him. Alyx.
How could she be here? After everything, she had followed him into the monster's jaws. Gordon couldn’t protect her from Earth’s problems, let alone a capitalist god.
Alyx worked her way up his arm, hand over hand, like if she let go for a second she would lose him. For the first time in his life, Gordon wished he could speak, could scream for her to run and escape. She could still live, survive on what little the Combine had left of their world.
Her hands reached his shoulders, digging in to the seams of the armor as she grappled with the dark. They hooked under the edge of the chest piece and with an all mighty heave, she pulled him into her arms, crushing his head against her chest. Gordon couldn’t see her, couldn’t feel her through the HEV suit, but she was unmistakable. They were two sides of the same coin, two halves of a soul, the ends of the same chord.
Gordon shut his eyes and dug his fingers into her jacket as reality popped and roiled around them, until time existed again and they were kneeling on the sandbar, water up to their ribs.
There was a thin briefcase floating on the water behind her, silver handle glinting in the moonlight. Its interior was completely black. Alyx’s ribs vibrated under his palms as she screamed, the captions on his HUD scrolling wildly. [DON’T YOU DARE TAKE HIM I’LL KILL YOU]
Gordon pulled back as far as he could with Alyx still clutching him, just enough to see her face. Her lips were pulled into a snarl and fat tears rolled down her cheeks. Her eyes were fever-bright with panic.
Gordon didn’t let go. He hadn’t seen her like this since the Advisor had come to White Forest, had…
He shook his head, memories slipping away like water through cupped hands, and let her cling to the HEV’s armor, until the captions stopped scrolling and her breathing had slowed and the briefcase had sunk back into the dark water.
A pale hand reached down and shook his shoulder, and Alyx finally let go. Gordon looked up to see Barney, still half-dressed and shaking like a leaf in the cold. Every Vortigaunt in the Convoy was clustered behind him, bright red eyes glowing in the night.
“What was that?” Barney signed. His eyes were unfocused as he stared at the place where the tram had been. “You were leaving... but how...” He rubbed his eyes, blinking frantically in the moonlight. “Why can’t I remember?”
“It’s gone now. We’re safe,” Alyx said and slowly stood. She caught Gordon’s eye, and in that moment he knew that she had seen him too, and always had. Bright blue eyes telling you to run across no man’s land, to ramp a car off a cliff, to step into the Citadel’s coffin. The pale, cold hand of the void, always beckoning. “It only takes the willing.” She stared down at Gordon, the moon at her back, waiting for him to admit it.
Gordon dug his fingers into the sand, but he had as much of a grip on the silt as he did on the panic bubbling in his throat.
“Gordon?” Alyx frowned and nudged his shoulder. “Hey, say something, please—"
“I broke the contract,” Gordon said, water dripping off his fingers. “That was my last chance.”
Barney looked frantically between him and the Vortigaunts as they began to vibrate, gnashing their teeth and flexing their claws as they spoke to each other in Vortigese. Alyx’s eyes had gone wide enough that Gordon could see the whites the whole way round, and the color had drained out of her face.
“No, no, no, no, no.” Alyx paced back and forth through the water, tapping her fingers together over and over. “Gordon, what did you do? What did you give that thing?”
“Nothing it didn’t have already,” Gordon said and pulled himself to his feet, wincing as the world tilted around him. He squinted at the moon. It was at its zenith now, a far cry from its post at the horizon when he had left. How long had he been gone?
“What does that mean? What were the terms?” Alyx rounded on him, fingers sharp and pointed. “Gordon—"
He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “My life for White Forest.”
Alyx stared at him, incredulous. “White Forest!? White Forest is fine, why would you do that?”
“The famine is coming,” Gordon said. “He told me you’d make it through the winter.”
“There’s a famine every year,” Alyx signed, like it was normal, like it was fine. “You don’t think I can manage a few lean months?”
“You didn’t have hundreds of refugees at White Forest before.” Gordon’s hands flew out, unexpectedly desperate. “The Combine isn’t sending supply lines into a crater. Any of the rations left in the city are practically glowing.”
They were staring at him. Four human eyes and two dozen red ones looked him up and down like he was speaking gibberish.
“Where are we going to find enough food to feed hundreds of people? There’s nothing bigger than a squirrel in those woods.” His breath was coming faster. Why were they looking at him like that?
“Do you need me to bomb a supply train? Raid an outpost? Liberate a city? Just tell me who to shoot and I’ll do it. But if you can’t, then this is all I have!” He scratched frantically at his palms, trying to reach the skin through the thick gloves. They itched for his crowbar, the Magnum, something to-
He shook his head. “Please. I have to go back. I can’t kill a famine. I can’t watch you starve.”
“Gordon, do you really think that’s what I—what we—want from you?” Alyx asked, sign slow, controlled. “To go out, gun someone down, rinse and repeat?”
“If it’s not, then what am I here for?” Gordon sliced his hands through the air. “I can’t do anything in the lab—none of the papers make sense anymore. Heavy lifting? I know how much it takes to keep the HEV running. Sit pretty and be a symbol? Good luck trying to manage my morphine addiction when the drugs run out.”
“You’re my partner!” Alyx’s fists slammed down into the water. “I don’t need you to kill fascists or steal supplies, I need you to have my back! To stay!”
She wiped her eyes, smearing saltwater and tears across her face. “Do you think we wouldn’t keep you safe? We wouldn’t help you? That we’d let the whole base just starve?”
He dug his fingers into the elbow of the HEV suit, gripping the thin padding as tight as he could, until skin and fat caught in the joints of his glove. It hurt. That was good. Pain was easy, grounding.
A pair of green hands reached up and pulled his wrist away. When he stopped struggling, the Vortigaunt let go.
“Gordon.” It took him a minute to recognize it, how the Vortigaunt’s claws hooked in a rough imitation of Barney’s nickname. Their sign was slow and halting, barely intelligible with only three fingers. “There is no heroism in pointless sacrifice. Nothing could indebt us to you more. There is nothing to prove.”
The Vortigaunts stepped closer, swarming around him. “Sib, a blow to you is one to all of us, no matter the source. Have we not hurt enough?”
Gordon looked up into patient red eyes, and felt a choked sob work its way up his throat. He stumbled, looking for a foothold on the shifting sand beneath his feet, and fell to his knees, desperately trying to scrub at his eyes through the visor of his helmet.
It didn’t make sense. He wasn’t hurt, the man hadn’t come back yet, nobody was dead yet, but the tears wouldn’t stop coming.
The vortigaunts buzzed and hummed around him, awkwardly patting him on the head and scraping their claws against the HEV’s plating. However distressed they looked, it was nothing compared to Alyx. She had gone pale, looking down at him like she didn’t know what she was seeing, like Gordon Freeman crying was a violation of everything she knew.
“Gordon?” She stepped forward, then pulled back, eyes darting everywhere like she was hunting for a cue. “Talk to me, please.”
Gordon didn’t know what to say, how to fix this when everything was crumbling apart. He threw his fist against his chest, tracing a circle over and over, apologizing for something he didn’t even understand.
“Sorry, I just—I can’t deal with this. I just can’t.” Alyx scrubbed furiously at her eyes, her chest rising in short, shallow gasps. “I can’t do this—"
Alyx turned and, for the first time he could remember, ran away.
Gordon watched her go, paralyzed. She had faced down striders and stalkers with nothing more than a pistol and her EMP tool. She had overcome death itself, had stood in the face of insurmountable odds so many times. The thought of something scaring her like this seemed impossible, but here he was, watching her retreating back.
The Vortigaunts buzzed next to him, wringing their hands.
[HEY I’LL LOOK AFTER HIM] Barney said, wading over to him. [KEEP AN EYE ON ALYX FOR ME]
They thrummed, the water rippling around them.
[HE WON’T GO ANYWHERE] Barney put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. [PROMISE]
Slowly, reluctantly, the Vortigaunts nodded and rose. One gently brushed a claw across the visor of Gordon’s helmet, tracing a hairline fracture in the glass. They nodded to him and turned towards the shore. In moments, they were too far from his flashlight to see, vanishing into the dark like a funeral procession.
After a long minute, Barney let go of his shoulder. “Look, I don’t know what you did. I can’t—" Barney’s brow furrowed, eyes going blank as he struggled for the memories. He shook his head. “Fuck it, I don’t need to. But it was bad. For you. For all of us.”
He reached into the water and scooped out the Magnum. With a flick of his wrist, the chamber popped open: six bullets glinting in the beam of Gordon’s light, safety off. Barney gave Gordon a long, desperate look and emptied the rounds into the sea. He shoved the barrel back in place, clicked the safety on, and shoved it into the waistband of his pants. “I don’t know what you were going to do, but I sure hope it wasn’t that.”
Gordon wanted to deny it, to rattle off more excuses, but none came. He ran his fingers across the neck seal of the suit, where he had pressed the muzzle into his windpipe. It had been so easy then. It had felt so simple, a clean end to a long and messy story.
“Gordon, you know there’s one thing I can’t deal with.” Barney’s sign was slow, careful. He reached around to the back of the helmet, undid the latch, and carefully eased it off of Gordon’s head. He set it under his arm, where the water couldn’t reach the delicate circuitry.
“Hey, look at me.” Barney’s hand, warm and calloused, cupped his jaw, tilting it up. His touch was gentle, like he was handling something both precious and fragile. “I can’t lose you again. I just can’t.”
“I can’t either.” Gordon fought the tears, blinking hard, and lost. Something wretched worked his way up his throat and he wailed, screaming for Seattle and his childhood home, for MIT and Innsbruck, for the bodies buried under the rubble of Black Mesa, all the people he’d never see again, the foods he’d never taste, the world he’d left behind. For the first time since he stared up at the broken anti-mass spectrometer, he wept. Hot tears rolled down his cheeks, sticking in his beard and catching in the crease between his neck and HEV suit. Barney reached out and Gordon seized his wrist with both hands, holding onto him like a lifeline.
It was gone. It was all gone.
“Please,” Barney said, enunciating so Gordon could read his lips and didn’t have to let go. “I know that everything,” Barney paused and took a deep breath, “ Everything is worse now. I know it feels like there’s nothing left, and maybe there isn’t but… Please. Just stay. Promise me you’ll stay.”
Gordon nodded and consigned himself to the present, clinging to Barney and trying to weather that burning in his chest, an old familiar ache that even the end of the world had not changed. Maybe it had always churned in him, a quiet, implicit threat of something worse to come, something breaking the fragile bubble they lived in.
Walking home from a friend’s apartment on the bad side of Boston, scared of missing a cop he couldn’t hear. Reading about the endless bloodshed in the Middle East as America killed for oil. Al Gore pleading with the nation as summers grew hotter and hotter and billionaires covered their ears.
Nothing could compare to the utter desolation of the Combine, but maybe the world had always been ending and Gordon had always known it, long before he had ever held a gun or shot someone. Maybe, for all its coveted mundanity, the past had been as burnt out as the future, but the apocalypse had been quieter, easier to shove to the back of his mind.
He glanced down at his hands, desperately clutching Barney’s wrist. He’d laid his other hand over them and was slowly brushing his thumb over the orange plating. It was a pointless gesture. Gordon couldn’t feel anything through the thick gloves, let alone Barney’s touch, but it still made his heart stick in his throat.
They could have never had this back in Black Mesa. Anything close to it and Gordon lost his nerve, flitted away and blamed it on alcohol or stress. He buried it, tried to pretend he was only an outsider on one axis, that there wasn’t anything to the rumors. Easier, safer never to admit it, to put it in a box and never confront it.
It would have been the same for Griggs and Sheckley. Maybe they would have been braver than Gordon, found each other despite everything, but they would have had to deal with the bitter looks, the implicit threats, the scales always stacked against them.
The Vortigaunts, too. Gordon hadn’t been ready for them in 2000. They had attacked first, and he had accepted that as the start and end of their being. Everyone in Black Mesa had, from the marines topside to the biologists in the dissection labs deep below the surface. Their alliance, their forgiveness, wasn’t something they could have earned then.
The world had been dying, then and now. War and famine, conquest and pollution, the great universal constants. At least here and now, they were struggling together. For all its scarcities, the future was kinder. People were better.
Maybe if the world had always been over, then it could always be starting.
For the second time that night, Gordon leaned in and kissed Barney. It went a little wide, bumping against the corner of his eye rather than his cheek, but he had done it. No turning back. No regrets.
“Gordon—" Barney looked vaguely concussed, pawing at the line of his cheekbone, like he couldn’t believe what had just happened. “I. What?”
“Sorry. Been thinking about that for ages. Don’t know how long. Repressed it.” Gordon could feel his pulse in his ears, knew he was signing too quick for Barney’s rusty ASL, could barely care. “Talk later. Need to apologize to Alyx.”
“I—what?” Barney blinked at him as he stood, water falling off the armor in waves. “Wait, where are you—"
Gordon was already running, waves splashing against his side as he tore towards shore. His feet sunk deep into the sand, crunching on dead shells and rocks and sending seafoam scattering in front of him. His chest heaved, sucking in the cold, salty air.
It felt like it took longer to reach camp than it had to leave, but Gordon couldn’t tell if that was the man in the suit or his own racing mind. His boots hit dry sand, and he paused, chest heaving. Half the camp was up, hugging their knees and talking quietly between themselves in the light of the fire.
Arlene looked up from where she was talking with two Vorts, a flickering flashlight looped around her wrist. She was still in her sleep-clothes, an armored jacket hastily pulled over her shoulders. “Freeman?”
“Where’s Alyx?”
“I saw her go that way.” She pointed down the beach, past the trucks and bedrolls. “What’s this about? Are you okay? The Vorts were freaking out, she woke up half the camp—"
“I’m fine, don’t worry,” he signed. “Sorry, gotta go.”
He was off before she could say another word, sprinting across the black, glittering sand. The moonlight cast long shadows across the shore, turning the driftwood and detritus into strange, twisted things in the dark.
He spotted her as he clambered over an old jetty, the treads of his boots skidding on the wet stone. Alyx sat at the edge of the water, seafoam sweeping over her bare feet as she watched the tide press in and out.
She didn’t look up as he crept over and sat down next to her. “You were right. I was too proud to admit it.”
He frowned. “What?”
“About the famine,” Alyx said, pressing her lips into a thin, flat line. “Supplies are running low, there’s only so many other outposts that can take more people, and I honestly don’t know if we’re going to make it.”
She sighed. “It was a lot easier to play leader when it was just patrolling White Forest and scouting Crater 17. But everything’s dying, everywhere, and I think of you leaving and having to do this alone and I just—" She shook her head, knocking a few strands of hair loose from her headband.
“Is it selfish for me to want you to stay?” she asked, her sign small. “Even if you have to starve with the rest of us? Am I a bad person for wanting that, my own slice of normal, of 2000?”
Alyx took a deep breath, hands trembling like dead leaves. “Because I want it. I know that this planet is goddamn dead. I’m never going to go to a mall and buy stupid shoes or wake up to birds singing or see real ocean, ever. It’s never going to be like that, be good, again. But I still want it.”
“Alyx,” he signed. “Earth, in my time, it wasn’t good. I don’t think it was ever good. Police killed people for no reason, even before they started wearing masks. The ocean was dying and the atmosphere was full of chemicals and the people in power didn’t care before the Combine came.”
Something in Alyx’s expression cracked. “So it’s never going to get better? It was always wrong?”
He shook his head. “Things did get better. Never fast enough, but people did get better.” He dug his heels into the sand, thinking. “I wasn’t there, but I know things were bad after I—after the Resonance Cascade. You had to grow up with that. I’m sorry.”
Alyx stared at him, the seawind whipping through her dark hair.
“But you’re one of the most incredible people I’ve ever met. If someone as good as you could come out of something so horrible, I think we’ll be okay.” He frowned and tapped his knuckles together, looking for the words. “And for what it’s worth, if you had to starve, I’d want to be with you. No matter what.”
Alyx scrubbed furiously at her eyes and Gordon laid a heavy arm over her shaking shoulders.
“It’s sad, isn’t it?” she said, blinking hard against the spray of the waves. “We keep running around in circles, just trying to keep our heads above water. Something’s going to get us eventually, and then we’ll just be gone.”
Gordon ran a hand through the black grains and watched the seafoam swirl in and take the trench, leaving only a flat, glittering pane of sand in its wake. He frowned.
“Even if we don’t make it,” he said slowly, pausing to shake the black silt from his gloves, “this still mattered. We’re not the only ones out there, trying to survive.”
Gordon didn’t have use for legends or folklore. Point A to point B didn’t ask for aspirations or dreams of a better future. But Alyx wasn’t like him. She was better.
“Even if we don’t make it, we still freed City 17. We killed Breen. That meant something to us, to White Forest. Someone out there will remember us,” he said, hands sweeping out wider, louder. “You remembered the old world. You remembered me.”
" Ten, twenty years from now, people are going to know you, no matter what. They’re going to write poems about you, ballads. You’ll have a dozen names and when people need courage, they’ll talk about your story. And they’ll know Eli as Vance’s Dad.” That got a laugh out of her, and Gordon pressed on. “This is your future Alyx. You can’t waste it.”
“And you?” Alyx asked. “Is there room in the future for Gordon Freeman?”
Gordon sighed, pressing a hand to the front panel of the HEV suit, over his aching chest. His throat still felt raw from sobbing, the wind sharp on his cried-out eyes. The adrenaline was fading, leaving him hollow, sore and with a pit he wasn’t sure could be filled. Too many dead. Too much lost.
He ran a hand down his face, feeling the salt crunch in his beard, and shook his head. “I don’t know. But I guess there has to be. I’m still here, aren’t I?”
“There will be. If it’s really my future, I’ll make a space for you. I promise.”
She pulled him into a hug, crushing her face against the plating of the HEV and looping her strong arms around his chest, and after a moment, he returned it and didn’t let go. They held each other, two people lost after the end of the world, and the waves rolled in and out and the campfire glowed in the distance and somewhere a man in a suit watched and waited, but for now they were here, steady under the light of the full moon.
Barney found them like that, panting from chasing Gordon through the surf and across the beach. Alyx wordlessly grabbed him by the wrist and tugged him down onto the cold sand. He slung an arm over each of their shoulders and leaned in, his stubble scratching against Gordon’s cheek, clutching each of them tight.
Eventually, Alyx wriggled free of their huddle and flopped back on the sand. She wiped at her eyes, sand tangling in her hair. “Are we really going to be okay? Any of us?”
Barney glanced between her and Gordon, frowning, and scooted closer to her, settling by her legs. “I think so. I know you can get us there.”
Her eyes flicked from his sopping T-shirt down to his bare feet, like she was noticing his outfit for the first time. “You ditched the uniform.”
Barney scratched the back of his neck, suddenly sheepish. “It seemed a bit fucked to be sleeping in the damn thing. That’s not who I want to be anymore.”
He sighed. “I’m sorry, for earlier. And yesterday. I know you have to do things, things that I don’t want you to have to do to yourself. And it’s… selfish of me to try to stop you, but I don’t know how to support you when it means tearing yourself apart.”
Alyx rolled her mother’s necklace between her fingers. “Then you know how I feel when I see you throwing yourself on every sword you can find.”
“It’s just-” Barney raked a hand through his hair and shook his head. “You were a kid when we blew up the world, Alyx. You shouldn’t have to put it back together. If something happened to you while you were trying to fix our problems, I don’t know how I’d live with myself.”
“Barney, since when has anything been fair? Besides,” Alyx raised an eyebrow, “you’re barely living with yourself now.”
“Yeah.” Barney’s face fell and he stared out at the water, his face a brilliant white in the moonlight. He rubbed the inside of his wrist, his calloused palm scraping over the tattoo. “It’s gotten out of hand.”
She sighed. “Look, let’s make a deal. I’ll do my best to stay out of trouble and you don’t go looking for it. I mean, as much as we can.” Alyx set her jaw. “It’s not worth fighting for this if we’re not together. I need you and Gordon to have my back. I need you here.”
“Just be careful, okay?” Barney asked. “No more risk taking. Talk to me. I want to be your second, but I can’t do that if you don’t let me help.”
Alyx nodded and Barney took her hand, gripping her tight.
She then heaved and brought him down onto the dirt for the second time that night. Barney clawed at the shoulder of HEV suit like a wet cat, bringing Gordon crashing to the ground hard enough to make the driftwood bounce.
Gordon grabbed the two of them by the scruffs of their dirty, soaked shirts and yanked them apart before Alyx dragged him into a wrestling match, pulling them down on either side of him and only letting go when he was sure they’d stay.
There was an odd wind blowing off the water. It tasted like salt and sand and cold desert nights, as crisp and clear as Gordon’s memories of sitting out on the roof of Black Mesa or the MIT Dome or the front stoop of his parents' house. Alyx inched closer, warming her hands on the heat vents of the HEV, and Barney let his cheek rest on the front console. Gordon struggled to stay awake, bracketed by a terrifying future and a past nearly too terrible to name.
That was where the convoy found them, sprawled in the sand and watching the sun creep over the horizon and stain the water pink, until morning was upon them and there were no shadows left for them to hide in.
The sun gleamed on the dead waters of the Black Sea, glinting off of beds of algae and the backs of tiny minnows flitting through the shallows. A crisp, salty breeze blew in off the waterfront, occasionally tossing black sand into the air and catching the hem of Gordon’s sweater.
Alyx was doing rounds, nagging Mary to double check the pH and oxygen tests just to make sure. The results that morning had been better than anyone expected after their first impression of the coast, but she had never been one for half measures. Gordon and Barney watched her from their perch on the hood of Griggs and Sheckley’s truck as she chased Noriko with a clipboard.
“She’s really putting the fear of God in them, huh?” Barney groused, resting his cheek on Gordon’s shoulder. He signed something else, but Gordon was too distracted by the salt-and-pepper hair brushing his jaw and the warmth where their knees knocked together to see.
Barney waved his hand in front of Gordon’s nose. “Hey. You still with me?”
“Last night,” Gordon signed. “I kissed you.”
Barney paused, hands hanging in the air. Gordon watched him school his face into careful neutrality. “Do you regret it?”
Gordon shook his head. “Only that I didn’t do it sooner. I was scared.”
Barney sighed, his breath fluttering against Gordon’s collar bone. “Me too. We uh, didn’t talk that much about that sort of thing back then, did we?”
Gordon tilted his fist in agreement. “Wasted a lot of time.”
Barney laughed, teeth flashing in the sun. “Christ, you had no idea how much I ran myself in circles, trying to remember if you ever cussed Ellen out or something. Way to make me feel like a highschooler again, Gordon.”
He settled his head back against Gordon’s shoulder and the two of them watched Alyx struggle with a crate full of incensed bullsquid, trying to get it to chew on some offal long enough to stop drooling acid everywhere.
“We can take it slow, if you want,” Barney said. “I don’t mind. It’s not like the world’s ending.”
Gordon nodded and leaned his cheek against Barney’s head. “I’d like that.”
Later, as Alyx cracked open cages and the first pack of Houndeyes scampered across the beach, their markings glowing as they sniffed the unfamiliar ocean air, Gordon traced his fingers down the old scars of Barney’s tattoo and slotted their hands together. Barney squeezed back, and together they watched the raggedy foxes, the wide-eyed hares, the pigeon flocks, the lightning dogs and snark colonies, all the animals the convoy had taken, blink at a strange landscape and run towards it full throttle.
Later, as the convoy pulled back onto the road and began its slow march home to hungry White Forest, Barney grabbed him by the shoulders of the HEV suit and pulled him in for a real kiss, lips mashing awkwardly together as the semi-trailer bumped and jostled beneath them. Alyx cheered and signed several things in pidgin that Barney refused to translate, and as the sun sunk low in the sky, nobody mentioned the flash of grey wool and gleaming blue eyes leering from the woods.
Later, the three of them would come home to Eli and Kleiner and their tiny dorm at White Forest, would scour the old Soviet ghost towns with D0G for non perishables, and maybe, if luck allowed, would even be alright in the strange world they called the present.