#starts thinking about alyx too hard again.

[vv-ispy]

hi yes Alyx Vance is the coolest girl ever and she'd get into the school no problem but also

absolutely FACINATED at the idea of using Eli's death to prompt Alyx to murder. Would it work? Would it work ???? She's so kindhearted in hl2 as your companion, perky righteous encouraging Alyx Vance who's hard when she needs to be and takes no bs, but optimistic and rightous. The kind of girl who's surprised at the fact life on earth wasn't all that great before the combine, who'd aim to make earth better after the combine leaves, the same woman whose response to her dad's death included killing Mossman for being a spy, who's already killed combine with no stain on her concious, the same girl who five years earlier faced with the same situation all vague no details did what she was asked without a second thought. She's so level headed until she isn't (but really was she ever completely levelheaded? she's cautious and familiar with the dangers of her world, weighs the risks and the rewards, but still runs straight into fights, who regularly makes the trip between resistance bases on foot, whose dad is the most wanted man of the resistance and the apple doesn't fall far from the tree) She'd do it. Alyx would have no trouble killing someone. But she also maintained her kind heart in a heartless world, who puts her own life at risk to save others. What sort of prompting would she need to decide the life of 14 other people who're normal and talented people just like her, that she's okay with sacrificing for her own world? She's Vance Subprime, she's such a capable resistance fighter at 24 she's the second most wanted resistance member with her dad as the first, and yet she fights for a free world and for others to live. At what point would she decide that her dad's survival and her own is worth more than 14 other normal peoples and would she be able to live with that decision. bc this sounds like it isn't 'giving up herself' like hla or 'justified bc she was a spy and led to his death' like mossman, everyone else would be completely unrelated. but her dad is all she has left and the most important person in the resistance how could she not

[decks-writing-blog]

She's Gone

Summary: Isaac has a talk with Alyx about her mother.

[A/N] Here on Tumblr I saw a post talking about how Alyx and Gordon could potentially trade stories about their time as Kleiner's pupil. Gordon was canonically his student and thus since he has teaching experience it makes sense he might've taken on the responsibility of being a teacher for Alyx as she grew up. It was a fun idea and made me want to write Kleiner and Alyx having some kind of funny school room related interaction, weather I was going to bring it back around to a flash forward of her having shared this story with Gordon, I was going to decide when I got there. But alas, I am cursed with the inability to come up with funny ideas on command. So when I was thinking about it, I came up with this idea instead. It isn't funny in the least but I wrote it anyway because it struck a cord with me.

Content Warning for grief and talk of Azian's death. Since she disappeared, it's entirely possible Alyx didn't immediately know she was dead and thus had be told.

~

In some ways having only one student was easier than a full college classroom. The 1st grade curriculum was naturally simpler for sure, making the main challenge in teaching it be having to resist the urge to go into the more complex specifics. Having only one pupil to focus on made making sure the ‘whole class’ was following along and understood everything before moving on to the next thing easy.

It was harder in other ways though. The situation with the Combine made everything more difficult. Trying to start and keep a classroom and school schedule as close to normal seeming as possible in hopes of shielding Alyx from the worst of it was uniquely stressful. Nothing in Isaac’s teaching career had prepared him for that. It didn’t help that that was actually a full-time job. But having recently volunteered to be her teacher – though really, Eli taught her plenty too just in a less structured and scheduled manner – encouraged her to ask him questions about it specifically.

“What’s the Combine?” “Why are we moving so often?” “What happened?” “Why?” “How?” “What about [friend, neighbor, or just person she’d known before the Combine invasion]?”

Naturally they couldn’t keep the truth from her even if that had been Eli’s first instinct. This was the world she was growing up in, she had to know everything eventually. But Alyx had turned five a mere week before the resonance cascade. So while Isaac never lied to her, he withheld the grisly details. The Combine were alien invaders from space. [X person from before]’s fate was a mystery, the three of them had had to move a few times already after all, it was hard to keep track of people who probably also fled. They moved so often because they were hiding from the Combine; “Yes, kind of like hide and seek but bigger and more important because they’re bad guys.”

With all this Isaac should’ve expected the question to pop up eventually; it was basically inevitable. And yet somehow it still took him by surprise when at the end of a math lesson – usually her favorite subject but today she’d been distracted – she approached him and… “What about Mommy?”

Isaac flinched, almost dropping the chalk eraser he’d just picked up. Trying to hide it, he erased the board before turning to look down at her. “What about her?” As if he had to ask.

“Where is she? Daddy said she’s gone but didn’t say where she’s gone to and he got sad when I asked so I didn’t ask that and don’t wanna ask again ‘cause it’ll make him sad again, I think. But you know, right?”

The small room they’d set up to be a makeshift classroom suddenly felt even smaller and stuffier than it had before. It wasn’t Isaac’s place to say anything about Azian. If Eli wasn’t ready to talk about her with Alyx then doing so in his stead wouldn’t be right. But at the same time Alyx deserved to know that her mother wasn’t coming back. Eli had probably tried to convey that but five-year-olds, even ones as smart as Alyx, weren’t known for picking up on subtleties. While ‘she’s gone’ would convey to most that the ‘gone’ was permanent, to a small child it would seem the same as saying ‘she’s gone to the grocery store’ just without the detail on where. She still believed she’d potentially she her mother again one day.

He could send her to ask Eli again later at which point he’d know to give a more clear answer. Or he could bring the matter to Eli himself and make it clear that Alyx needed a clearer answer. But it had only been a handful of months since the resonance cascade. The wound of Azian’s loss was still fresh, especially Eli. Mitigating the pain the conversation would cause would surely be kind, right? Eli was busy trying to gather up the Black Mesa survivors after all. Isaac didn’t want to distract him from that by reminding him of his dead wife.

And so with a sigh, Isaac pulled out his desk chair and sat down again. “Sit.” He gestured to the spot across from him. Her being his only pupil and there not being room for much else in most of the places they ended up, most of the time they shared a desk for this ‘school’ thing they were doing.

Alyx obeyed, pulling out the chair and clambering back up into it. As proof of her seriousness she didn’t even spin around in it this time before pulling herself over to the desk.

Isaac waited until she was settled in before explaining anything. Before he could figure out how to begin though, she spoke up instead. “She’s not coming back, is she?” Well, it least it wasn’t a surprise.

“Correct. She’s not coming back.”

“Why not?”

Was it better to be up front and direct with the answer or be gentle with it? … Isaac wasn’t entirely sure how to be gentle with this kind of news, straightforward was probably easiest. “She’s dead.”

Alyx stared at him in silence for a few seconds as her eyes welled with tears. “Like… like when you step on bugs and they die and stop moving and get squished with their insides all outside?”

“Yes.” Wait! Not a good thing to say as when applied to a human, that was a horrifically gory description. Oops. “Sort of anyway.” Gosh, science was much easier to navigate and discuss than personal emotional things like talking about a friend's death to her five year old kid. He should’ve sent her to Eli or insisted they talk about it as a group. “Her death probably wasn’t that bad.” That could be a lie though as they didn’t know how she died. Technically, they didn’t even know for sure that she was dead. But it was likely enough that holding out hope and/or letting Alyx continue to do so wouldn’t be wise or kind.

Alyx was full on sobbing now. Isaac opened he desk’s drawer to pull out a box of tissue – something that was quickly proving to be a rare luxury – before standing and walking around to hand to her. He then put a hand on her shoulder, that’s what helped Eli most of the time. It seemed to calm her a little too so he kept her hand there, shifting it slightly to lightly rub her back. Other than that though, he let her cry. She had a right to cry about this for however long she needed to.

It was several minutes before her sobbing finally started to peter out. Finally, when she was done, she blew her nose and sniffled before before looking back up at him. “I should’ve figured that out before, huh?”

“No, I don’t believe so. A lot’s been happening and changing. It is entirely logical you were too caught up in it all to figure that out. Especially since one wouldn’t want to consider such a thing.” And he and Eli had been trying to keep her distracted and busy.

“Is it the Combine that killed her?”

“Possibly. We’re not sure.”

Alyx nodded as if that was the exact answer she’d expected. “I don’t like them.”

“Me neither. We’re going to fight them though and we’re going to win or at the very least try our best to.” The only thing Eli cared about more than his budding efforts to build a proper resistance against the Combine was Alyx. And when Eli got dead set on something like that, things always got done. Isaac was just here to help and to get done whatever science and study he could while doing so.

“I wanna help.”

“I’m sure you’ll be a great help one day.” They couldn’t exactly pretend that she wouldn’t be part of their resistance efforts once she was older. Every single person mattered when it came to fighting a conquering alien force. “For now though, how about we practice reading until your dad gets home, huh?” Which would hopefully be soon and would hopefully be him returning with the info he’d gone after. No use dwelling on anxiety about what would happen if he didn’t.

Alyx looked up at him and sniffled one last time into a tissue before tossing it into the trashcan and turning the chair so she could slide off it. “Okay.”

[pilot-boi]

Plotbunny AU 5 - WELCOME BACK TO BEACON, LOVEBIRDS

(And we're back to this nonsense. Let's go, this world ain't gonna fix itself)

Come the day of Beacon's semester starting, Jaune gets to work being everyone's brother figure, while Alyx decides to get to know Jaune's siblings, her rivals for his hugs, his crush, friends.

Between Jaune hugging everyone who stands still long enough, the entire student body cooing over Juniper, and Alyx making commentary it all goes pretty good..

Then she drags him up to Weiss and Pyrrha, and Jaune becomes a stuttering mess. Alyx decides to ask the redhead who she is, since her saying hello gave Jaune a coughing fit.

Weiss asks Alyx if she knows who Pyrrha is, and when he says no, looks like she's going to start a tirade ,but Jaune plays peacemaker.

He thought long and hard, staying up late into the night: could he pretend he never recognized her again? Try and be ensure he becomes her partner again? game the system like that?

Manipulate her with false information and half-truths like everyone else did?

(No, never. Not in a million years. Never, ever. He's not the Jaune that loved and lost, he's a shadow of that man, but he could never dream of giving her anything but choices and support)

"This is Pyrrha Nikos, Alyx. She won the tournament in Mistral four times.... oh! And she's also sponsored by my favorite cereal, where I got the sweater from!"

Let it be known that Alyx is a reformed hellion and will game the system for Jaune's sake.

"Ohhhh, sounds important. You should partner up with Jaune here, he's brave and loyal and strong, and he deserves the best partner cause he'll be their best partner in turn! Like a knight from a storybook. Team Jaune will be the place to be-"

Jaune ain't having it. He'll protect Pyrrha from everyone, even his own misplaced feelings if he needs to.

"She's also a person who deserves to have her boundaries respected and for no one to project their wants or feelings onto her, Alyx. Come on, sorry you two, please have a nice day...."

(And Jaune misses Pyrrha watching him walk away with a laser focus.)

Initiation comes. Jaune takes Juniper out of his pocket and she grows to regular size, and Jaune lands safely in the forest...

And has a panic attack

He's already changed things, he's changing things, what if he messes up? What if it all gets worse? What if- THUNK

"Hello Again! Are you okay?"

There's Pyrrha, having jumped on her spear and ridden it like a surfboard after using it's propellant features and semblance to guide it.

Because of course she makes it look effortless; riding the spear until it landed in that tree, looking down at him while he looks up.

Something clicks.

She jumps down, hair falling, and without thinking about it, he catches her in his arms, holding her there for an instant that lasts forever before setting her on her feet.

There a small smile on her face, and his helm is hiding the tears in his eyes.

She speaks to him, a beaming smile on her face:

"So, is there anymore room on Team Jaune?"

He takes off his helmet, smiling in-spite of his misgivings as something seems to align within him. And from her beaming face, he thinks he eels it, too.

"Hardy har....partner."

Eyes lidded, Pyrrha calls her spear to her hand without a thought, smiling back at him.

"Then let's get going, partner."

Jaune helps her onto Juniper, and they rush off towards the Relics.

Together.

(It all mostly works itself out, to Jaune's relief. They kill a Nevermore and a Deathstalker, with style even, and Juniper actually dropkicks an Ursa over the horizon) (When he emerges from the Forest with Pyrrha as his partner, Alyx is very smug, the little brat. Jaune hugs her anyways)

While Jaune goes to classes, Alyx doesn't spend all of her time taking care of Juniper she needs to do other things or she'll go stir crazy.

If she doesn't distract herself from the fact that everything she knew is gone, she'll go mad.

So she reads, and watches videos on her scroll, but eventually, after reading her brother's book for the sixth time, she asks Ozpin for his thoughts on it, as the resident 'Legend Expert'.

Ozpin has many thoughts, and delights at the chance to discuss Legends and the truths behind them.

(And listen, Alyx is taking everything he says with a grain of salt, she has heard many rants from the Rusted Knight about him and his habit of omitting details, but his passion for Fairy Tales seems genuine)

And one day Alyx decides she wants to be Better, yes, but to help more people be Better as well.

"How would you like to help me write a sequel to this story my brother wrote? So everyone knows the truth, even if they don't know it...."

(Playing on that Ozpin seems to be the incarnation most obsessed with mythology and researching and lecturing about them)

And so they write, weeks going on and continuing even as the semester starts and classes begin, sharing hot chocolate and occasionally taking breaks to walk Juniper and check in on Jaune, training in the forest nearby:

>The Origins of the Rusted Knight: A story of the only son with seven sisters running away from his family's farm to become a hero like his family ancestor.

>The Girl Who Wished To Become Real: A tragedy that serves as a Stealth Prequel to The Girl who Fell Through The World, and touches on What Makes A Person.

>The Boy Who Returned Home: A tribute to Lewis, and all he did for her and her apology note and goodbye letter and thank you all in one.

(Ozpin does hug her after they write that and have Glynda let Jaune off from classes that day, strangely fond of this girl who understands him more than anyone but also takes none of his crap)

>The Four Who Finally Arrived: The sequel to the Tale of the Rusted Knight, featuring him surviving the original story, his long vigil coming to an end, and him returning home hand in hand with his friends.

>The Four Daughters: Ozma's own apology and farewell, memorializing his failures and regrets.

(Alyx gives him the hug this time, with Juniper purring. Jaune joins in, it's kinda his thing.)

>The Paper Pleasers: A Lighthearted Tale of a kind people who only want to beautify the land....... featuring the Rusted Knight in a comedic role for a change.

>Tales of the Ever After: A series of shorts and bits, telling fantastic blurbs about fantasy characters.

>The Tree and the Blcksmith: A creation Mythos story, featuring the beginning of everything, she who remakes others again and again, and two figures that become surprisingly important.

As the semester goes on, Alyx and Jaune call his family more often, and Jaune cajoles everyone else into doing the same. They argue a little, but eventually give in. Stupid himbo and his "call your family guys, cherish them!"

Weiss calls Whitley and Winter. It goes.... awkwardly. But by the third week of sunday calls, she could almost swear Whitley was looking forward to them. Odd. Stupid eyes, stinging when she thinks about it. And Winter is so, so glad to hear Weiss gush for minutes on end about her dorm's pets and her new friends.

Tai is relieved to hear his daughters are doing well and making friends. He's not so pleased to hear that their Uncle is apparently hanging around between missions, and says he might be hanging around Vale more himself. Weird.

Blake.... okay, Blake chickens out twice in a row. But the third time, Alyx slips in and presses the button for her before slipping out with a "Hi Mrs and Mr Belladonna, we got your daughter to call, don't worry we're keeping an eye out for her stalker, have fun catching up, bye!"

Brat.

But an hour later, Blake has red rimmed eyes and gives Alyx a hug, so she's not too mad.

Pyrrha calls her mother and, fortified with Jaune's hugs and everyone's encouragement, speaks about stepping back form her sponsorship deals while she's at Beacon and opens up about wanting to be more, feeling lighter afterwards.

Ren and Nora are dragged into Jaune's calls several times, and also Pyrrha's once she starts gossiping with her mother over things after their first call, and both will admit it helps more than they would admit to feel like they belong with these people.

And that's the dose of fluff. Tune in next time for Alyx's prank war against Cardin and Roman's second defeat at Juniper's paws (And Cinder getting rekked again, of course)

God. All the stuff about the new stories got me

Alyx not being quite as good a writer as her brother but trying SO HARD and wanting her new brother’s story to be told. Wanting his suffering to be KNOWN and talked about so it’s not like OG Jaune suffered for nothing

You’re doing great Alyx, you’re getting better

The Arkos meeting? *chefs kiss* Not lying to her because she deserves better than that? Pyrrha still rescuing him, but this time from his own self doubt? Top notch, all of it

ALL THE FAMILY CALLS!!! Blake getting reassured that her parents love her (because they’re the best). Weiss reconciling with Whitley and showing Winter that she’s loved as a person, because fight me they both need a hug

Tai being rightly concerned about Qrow because of the plot stuff that the girls don’t know about, but also taking it as prompting to visit his daughters more often. Because god dammit visit your kids, you know where the school is

PYRRHA SETTING BOUNDARIES BECAUSE SHES FINALLY GETTING THE SUPPORT SHE DESERVES!!! YOU LOVE TO SEE IT!!!

Thank you for the dose of fluff. Can’t wait to see Cardin, Roman, and Cinder get wrecked

Also I can’t remember if the Blake Faunus reveal happened already, but if it hasn’t I can’t wait for that. Also can’t wait to see when/if Jaune’s whole deal is revealed

Because I know it’s not HIS trauma, but god damn with him going above and beyond looking out for everyone, I want him to have his break down and be supported by everyone he’s helped build up

[blue-starbursts]

So HL2VRAI is coming soon. Probably. So I feel like I wanna give some of my predictions. Nothing too crazy honestly, like I'm not gonna be discussing the bigger lore and plot that'll unravel, but just some minor things that may happen down the line.

Benry will make an appearance, but only as a cameo or gag. Hell, he's probably not even gonna make an on-screen appearance, just a mention from one of the characters maybe. Considering how RTVS has made Benry the butt of the joke for a few years now, I'm starting to doubt that he's gonna be a real meaningful part of the show.

Tommy probably isn't gonna show up much in the show either :( He's gonna be the new G-Man, and he doesn't show his face much in the base game. I also heard from the grape vine (random tumblr post) that Baaulp didn't rlly like playing Tommy apparently?? (please don't quote me on that, i need to do more research on that) so chances are he's only gonna have a few voice lines at most.

Alyx is gonna be a fucking badass, judging by the shot of her in the trailer, and she's probably gonna be voiced by Mira. Got no proof of that but it feels like that's gonna happen, which I'm excited about!!

Coomer is probably gonna harbor some bitter resentment towards Gordon considering how he basically abandoned his world after Tommy's birthday party. I feel like it won't last though considering Coomer's friendlier personality, and still respects Gordon above all else. That's how I feel, at least.

Speaking of Coomer, I think he's gonna appear on the train we spawn in in the beginning of the game. In the trailer, we see Coomer on a train of some kind, and I mean... What other train do we know of from HL2?

Now, it's a little hard to tell whether or not the "Kleiner" we see in the trailer is actually Kleiner or Bubby, but I feel like it's gonna go either two ways. Either A: It really is Bubby and he teams up with Coomer, Alyx and Gordon in place of Kleiner, or B: It really is just Kleiner, who uncannily resembles Bubby, and that fucks with Coomer and Gordon in a big way.

All in all I don't think the entire Science Team will team up again for HL2VRAI, as much as that would be really cool to see. Even in HL2, there's a bigger cast of characters to keep track of, and even Alyx is joining their party. And adding on the points I made earlier, RTVS is most likely gonna switch things up, which I'm looking forward to regardless of the fact that I'm already pretty attached to the OG cast :")

HL2VRAI is probably gonna be way more meta considering the self aware and more subtle meta elements in HLVRAI, and the extremely meta narratives in HLAG.

The gnome is definitely gonna get mentioned at least once. I know it.

Ok that's all lolllll. Thanks for reading :]

[bestworstcase]

man jaune is not a reliable source of information is he

“you’re the one who gives afterans to the tree” “i help them return to the ever after, yes”—this is not new information the cat literally told them exactly this like an hour ago. “i’m not taking you there to ascend, i’m taking you there because you all have such delightful information for me!”—which is what their entire plan was, feed the cat information in exchange for being led to the tree, because they decided they needed to get to the tree. “you pretended like you’d never heard of the story”—the cat didn’t know that alyx wrote a book but does know why ascension isn’t in the story; it’s still entirely unclear whether they understand that these two things are the same thing as far as the girls are concerned

“what happened when you took alyx and lewis to the tree” “i… i don’t know. she told me she would take me with her, through the door to remnant, but… she tricked me”—the cat says they didn’t share any of this because they never asked, and when ruby asks directly they give an honest answer. “just like all of you… you only want to use me in the same way i’ve only seen others as sources for knowledge and entertainment; well, at least now i know what not to do”—the cat isn’t angry or even particularly upset with them, and their acknowledgment of how the girls hurt them goes hand in hand with acknowledgment of how they hurt the girls, and then they just—not only leave but they take the crossroads with them. (“i thought there was more to the story,” they thought this storm was an opportunity to clear the air and get the whole story out there, but these three have already made up their minds, and the cat recognizes that they messed up, so they’re not going to leave the girls just stuck here if that’s not where they want to be)

“thank you for this lesson, ruby. rose, huntress. i’ll be on my way now.” <- truly insatiable hunger for knowledge, huh. but also grabs them by the scruff why did you phrase it like that what are your secrets

meanwhile yang and blake don’t have this particular baggage so they get split off from the rest and, with no real reason not to, figure out and then commit to playing by the ever after’s rules—okay, we make progress when we say stuff about each other that we’ve never said before, let’s be brave and completely honest with each other so we can get where we want to go���with the result that they solve the riddle and make it out of the storm on their own.

it’s interesting too that Yet Again ruby has been interrupted before she can answer one of the ever after’s challenges—the herbalist’s trial, the blacksmith’s offer, now this. (the cat was the one who interrupted, each time.) (and now the cat has left them.) and jaune + weiss + ruby are all given the same crossroads because they all have the same problem, which is festering guilt about the things they couldn’t save (penny for jaune, atlas for weiss) or couldn’t be (summer for ruby)

ruby did NOT want crescent rose back holy shit

neither jaune nor the cat knows what actually happened to lewis (and i mean. his name is lewis. so. question mark. if these kids were real which one of them really made it home to tell the story, and if these kids were fictional—stares hard at “like this whole world was simply make-believe and the rules didn’t apply to her” don’t think i missed THAT—then alyx/lewis being split halves of the singular character who made it into the book is really. hmmm. one is kind and clever and the other thinks the world is her personal fairytale, huh.) also “she lost all trust in us, started accusing us of things, the more i tried to get the story back on track the more she distrusted me” well yeah. funny how that happens when you treat someone like a storybook character you need to railroad into a specific path? jaune’s belief that that’s what the cat does is exactly why he hates the cat!

i want to know why jaune is so sure that alyx returned to remnant but lewis never made it home

[stampy-offical]

More of hells little darling!

Alyx is of course the one who first comes to come to grips with their feelings.

She finds this out through a talk with rosie.

It went like 'hey..Rosie?' "Yes sugar?" 'I was talking to friends about what kind of men or women we like...' "yes?" 'Well I was thinking a tall string caraing man..maybe even one who's good with kids and is a big softie..like he's a large teddy bear." 'Stampy.' "W-what?" 'You just told me you fell in love with stampy.' "...oh my lucifer." 'Don't worry honey. Girls get time to understand who they like before they become women. I wish you the best of luck!'

Stampy meanwhile Was oblivious and both him and husk were just laughing.

Husk:so...Alyx?

Stampy:huh?

Husk:come on you get a doopy smile chuckle a lot and you even get all stary eyed watching her fight.

Stampy:aye! She's just a very good and elegant dame. I like her cause she's smart hard working and a gentler soul. Simple. You however like angel.

Husk:huh? No I don't. I pity him.

Stampy:you make him special drinks save him from loan sharks shoot at any Vee employee who looks at him funny and baby his pet pig.

Husk:...he's good company and I like Nuggets..

Stampy:sure....

*five hours of drinks later.*

Stampy:*drubk as shit*..she doseny like me like that....I'm an old sun of a bitch...I'm a geezerr...she's a young strong lady...

Husk:*also drubk* im just...*hic* just sayikg..vall..Val dosent deserve angel I..I do I treat him roght.. I make him happy and all kinds of glad...I make him feel lovesd...

*both then pass out after another hour of drinks and pretentious finds them and while talking to them.*

Pretentious:I felt that way with Cherry bomb. Just be honest and hope for the best..

Husk:*Strugling to stand* i-ii I can do that..

Stampy:*grumbling about Later with his face on the counter.*

It took MONTHS of alastor and Dawn trying to get them together before they asked Nifty for help.

Nifty cracked her neck and grabbed Al's mic and yelled into it. "JUST KISS" "AND YOU GAYS NEED TO CONFESS! GET GOING!"

Charile then found out and started doing everything in her power to help while Vaggie and Rosie set up date ideas.

Rosie got stampy and alyx on a romantic walk in the most flowery part of cannibal town.

Vaggie meanwhile shoved Husk and angel into a restaurant the hotel denizens frequent.

After the dates they got congratulations and gifts from friends.

Lucifer of course got them ducks.

Alastor gave Stampy the talk. Alo stampy did was laugh and say if anyone's killing him it'd be Alyx or Dove. Not Him.

Husk meanwhile sent a pic of a sleeping angel dust with a note 'He's mine forever. FUCK YOU! The casino master PS your staff are banned from my business'

The Vees still keep hearing the bitch fests Valentino has about it.

Vellette tried to harass Stampy about his engagement in a overlord meeting only for stampy to snap back.

Vel:come on you geezer isn't she a little young for you?

Stampy:isn't this position of power too much responsibility for you?

Vel:listen here you old fossil!

Stampy:and last I checked your love life wasn't better. Why are you here again? Oh right! Murdering your Ex! Which one was he? 1st? 2nd?

Vel:*ashamed* 4th...

Stampy:1st ex left her for her mother. 2nd left you for the neighbor. 3rd ran away with your dad. And then there's the men who used you to get to your cousins. Or your friends.

Vel:*turning red* SHUT THE FUCK UP!

Stampy:what was that old phrase? Always a bridesmaid never a bride? Well yours is worse. Always the matchmaker never the partner. I might have never dated in my living life. But at least I'm doing better then you.

Alastor:*who saw everything with the other overlords* This is a productive meeting!

Zesteail:*Laughing at Vellette*

That little dig resulted in 5 non stop weeks of vee attacks. All the while husk and stampy have the time of their lives mocking them.

Alastor meanwhile is with dove just enjoying the good married life and spending time watching their daughter enjoy her afterlife.

[justmenoworries]

Yeah, okay, I'm officially annoyed at the direction this Volume took with Alyx.

RWDE and spoilers for V9E06 under the cut.

This whole "Alyx was actually evil" twist pisses me off for so many reasons.

One is that it just seems so... unnecessary? We don't know Alyx. If you didn't read the fairytale book (which the majority of people watching RWBY didn't) you'd have no idea who she is until maybe Volume 8 where Oscar and Ozpin briefly talk about the story she appears in. This feels like a twist for twist's sake and it rings hollow, because Alyx isn't a character anyone really cares about. We never spent time with her. All we have of her is her story, which is fed to us in snippets by the actual main characters. Additionally, Alyx was already hinted to not be an ideal heroine, being responsible for a war breaking out and stealing and cheating to get ahead. Making her a straight-up villain is not as shocking as the writers seem to think it is.

Second, it's very obviously just there to inflate Jaune's importance as the one who actually got to meet Alyx and saw her "true self". Jaune has no business being in this volume and the writers knew that. So they just stapled him to yet another way more interesting character so him once again stealing screentime from Team RWBY has the flimsiest of justifications. I dare you to tell me one good reason why Jaune should be in the Ever After that is not the Alyx-twist. Heck, even with the Alyx-twist, Jaune is still painfully superfluous. The Rusted Knight was already an established character in Alyx' story. He didn't need to be Jaune, he literally could have just been the Rusted Knight.

Thirdly, Alyx continues the trend of "every character that isn't one hundred percent good in the eyes of Team RWBY and their sycophants and hanger-ons will inevitably turn out evil". I have been waiting since Volume 5 for someone to tell Team RWBY to check themselves without getting villainized for it. The girls have been going 'My way or the highway' for far too long without being called out. So imagine my surprise when Volume 9 implied Team RWBY was gonna get called out, if indirectly. In episode 2, Yang starts to talk shit about Alyx, saying that she wasn't a good kid because she cheated and lied while travelling through the Ever After. To which Weiss counters that Alyx was a child in an unfamiliar environment, who most likely had to do all these things to survive and that the story is treating her situation in a way too black-and-white manner. The first time I saw this scene, I was immediately hooked. Critics have been pointing out Team RWBY's self-rightousness and unwillingness to see shades of gray ever since the whole Ironwood disaster. Was Rooster Teeth actually listening? Were the girls finally going to be confronted with the fact that they're not the last word on what is right or wrong? Haha, No. Turns out Yang was right. Alyx really was the worst. Just like Ironwood. No need for Team RWBY to take a hard look at their own morals and behavior.

Last but not least: With Alyx we have yet another character of color villainized. And the one to expose her was the blonde, blue-eyed white guy, whom she tricked and almost killed. And even before that, what little we got to know of her paints her as a violent, selfish thief. Thanks, I hate it.

EDITS:

Okay, I've just been informed that The Girl Who Fell Through the World (Alyx' story) apparently isn't in the fairytale book. It was literally added in in Volume 8. Making the Alyx "twist" even more fucking pointless.

Oh, and because I can't believe I forgot to talk about it before: Gotta love how the supposedly super-feminist show went "Yeah, the little black girl who's the heroine of one of our world's most beloved childrens' stories was actually an eeevil villain. The real heroes were her much smarter and much kinder older brother and the white guy who got his stupid ass self-inserted." Fucking yikes.

[deckof-dragons]

I finished my gnome run in Half-Life: Alyx last night. I'd been planning on coming on here afterwards saying that the warnings about losing the gnome and having to reload saves a lot weren't necessary because I was a good gnome carrier and knew where he was at all times, never lost him done a pit or anything. But then the strider encounter happened. That elevator at the start of it is cursed and haunted, it stole the gnome from me like four times; the elevator kept going up but the gnome and my hand/s holding it didn't (letting go did bring my hands back to me, not that that helped because the gnome was still gone). The time I tried to hold the gnome above me in both hands ended in me clipping through the floor too and dying.

Luckily putting him on the boxes in there got him up safely, though the elevator still tried to take him but the boxes apparently have some property about them that didn't let him clip through. And then the strider kept shooting him out of my hand. Sometimes it was fine and I could just grab him again but sometimes he was just gone and I died trying to find him or just knew that that was gonna happen and reloaded to save time.

Other than that though, I thought it was fun and pretty easy. Carrying a cute little guy around is enjoyable. Also I turned on dev commentary for it and a lot that was fascinating.

Also, I went ahead and tried to get all the achievements for that run. All pretty easy except for that Near Jeff Experience one. I swear I was up in his stink cloud more than 10 seconds multiple times and it never popped. He probably moved and broke it for like half a second before I got back in. So I might have to go back to chapter select and figure that out just because it's the one achievement I don't have.

But other than that... I think I'm done playing the Half-Life games? Which I'm having the post-big-thing sads about now. I don't wanna be done. I wish there was more to play. I guess maybe I could go through again in hard mode and/or getting all the achievements in those too. Maybe that'd be fun? I still wish Half-Life 3 was a thing. :(

[kitkatopinions]

New rwby ep dropped V9 ep6, my thoughts, praise, and criticisms (as well as obvious spoilers) beneath the keep reading.

Praise:

I'll give it to rwby, the twist that Alyx had a brother was not expected! I'm proud of them, actually, the two falling lights and the guy in the portrait, and even the footprints in the sand, that was all well done foreshadowing! Good on them.

The blink and you'll miss it reflection of Summer in the water is well done, not a lot of attention drawn to it.

Might hate that Jaune is here, but his line delivery of things like "I was the Rusted Knight" is well done too. Perfectly captures Jaune having wanted to be that, it captured his old feelings of pride that he must've felt, while obviously still bittersweet.

The thing is that I'm half-convinced that Jaune is going to be a secret accidental antagonist, and that his story about Alyx is him being an unreliable narrator, and if that's the case then to me the scene where he talks about Alyx seems - as of right now - pretty good!

The animators are once again knocking themselves out of the park on Blake's facial expressions.

I've already said it in another post, but it deserves repeating that after ten years, rwby confirmed main characters as queer. No matter how it's done (and I talk about my problems with it below) and how badly it's been handled before, it's a point blank period good thing and every bit of rep we see on screen helps normalize it and encourage it as expected for future media.

Again, I have very little praise.... Um, the sound effects remained good? That's all I've got tbh.

Criticism:

Me seeing even a moment of Jaune's POV going through a similar thing to Ruby in the beginning of ep1 was a curse. I am sincerely starting to hate him, and that's such a sad thing because I'm one of the few rwby critics who ever liked him at all (mostly as a concept, he's been used so badly,) but I just get so sick of seeing him and now me at Jaune is like:

Honestly they really just wanted Jaune to get a time-skip and be super old but needed an excuse for why the same thing didn't happen to Team RWBY so they went with special time fruit that he picked that sent Jaune back in time in the Ever After and created himself as the rusted knight he knew from the story in a time-loop worthy of Doctor Who. But I think it's stupid as hell. Sure Jaune jus yank a clock-fruit off of a clock-tree, that sounds like a good idea. /s Sure writers, just make a clock-tree that sends Jaune back in time, that sounds like a good idea. /s

Little is still an annoying intrusion.

Weiss being into Jaune is a bad choice.

I know it's hard for these writers because Jaune fans make up like fifty percent of their most loyal fans (the other fifty are bees shippers,) but if they could stop trying to convince us that Jaune is hot that would be great. Especially because let's not forget that Jaune was a total nice guy to Weiss, bothering her when she'd made it very clear she wasn't interested and I know 'times change' or whatever but it's a bad look to have her thirsting after him now and again it's just gonna feed the more misogynistic Jaune fans.

They cut away from Jaune actually telling Team RWBY what happened of course. Why would the audience want to see characters react to things when we can just understand they had emotions off screen? /s This is just like Yang's story about landing in the Ever After, we just brush it aside, but it makes the emotions so shallow and lacking.

Ruby: "We lost Atlas and the Relic." Blake: "But we got everyone out safely." NOOOoooooo babygirl, you did not do that. Not only were tons of soldiers sacrificed to try and hold her back, but Cinder attacked citizens on that bridge and apparently they were dead in the explosion, and also the Mantle and Atlas citizens were tossed into the middle of a sandstorm and got attacked by Grimm and that last one might not something the girls know, but they know the rest and nobody protests that Blake and Jaune both just think everyone is safe? This is especially weird to me considering that they don't know that Qrow, Robyn, Maria, and Pietro are safe (and they might not be!) And Penny is literally fucking dead. Like no, you guys are just delusional tbh and at this point I legit feel like the writers are trying to manipulate their fans into thinking that what they watched wasn't actually what they watched.

Ruby: "What good is saving anybody if Salem just destroys the world anyway?" Yang: "That's how Ironwood thought." So that's boiling down the volume 7 problem to being incredibly simplistic and tbh in not a very fair way (this is acting like Ironwood didn't want to save anyone in volume 7 and it's acting like Team RWBY had any real plan in volume 7 themselves,) but it's also.... Not wrong. If Salem gets all the Relics, the world could end and kill literally every person alive, Ruby is just saying 'we should've prioritized her not getting a doomsday key because not doing that could lead to Salem KILLING EVERYONE ALIVE ON THE PLANET. Yang is acting like being slightly realistic for two seconds is being on the path of villainy!

Blake's like "Hope the Cat is okay." I understand that the girls are processing a lot, but some of them didn't even think about the Cat risking itself, risking death, after having been freaked out by the Jabberwalker, and now the most they can muster when they remembered it existed at all is "yeah hope it's okay." Shouldn't they be slightly more worried about the life of an ally?

Jaune needs to take a million chill pills. Mr. Trauma he may be but if it's a choice between him or the Cat... I'm taking the cat. And he needs to not pull a "team RWBY" and draw his weapons on people. What was he gonna do, kill the cat? Nice thought, that Jaune might want to be a cold-blooded out-of-anger murderer as well as a it's-what-she-wanted out of kindness murderer.

Weiss: "We've been following this story the whole time and it's not even true?!" Okay, let's review. They arrived in the Ever After and a couple of things that happened to Alyx also happened to them so they assumed that they were going through the story in the same way as her - which is why they played the game with the Red Prince - but then when they beat the Prince's game same as Alyx, they got wildly off track without any of them mentioning it while none of them recognized the Cat right away and encountered a whole character who didn't exist in the book and then said they were off book, and then they went to a market to get a growgurt with none of them even sort of saying Alyx had done the same iirc, And now Weiss is insisting that they have been following the story? No, they stopped doing that like two episodes ago, right? The only thing they've been trying to do in the story is just go to the Tree, and they've been relying on the Cat for that since they ran from the Prince, not the book. So why is Weiss now acting like they've been following in Alyx's footsteps the whole time? They already know the Ever After contains lots of things that weren't in the original book - like the concept of Ascencion and the Caterpillar and other things they act like they don't know about like the loop, so why are they now acting like the story not containing everything in the Ever After is new?

So because of people being mad at the Cat, either the Cat or Ever After itself put everyone in a "punderstorm" (stupid name,) which is a "physical manifestation of a mental or emotional problem" (It's implied the Cat did it, but I'm unsure.) This is another thing that isn't in the Ever After book based on the reactions of the girls, and it immediately punishes Weiss for saying its the pits? Implying that the Ever After itself is an entity with enough consciousness to be offended? Also the gag where Weiss falls through the hole and then reappears falling on her back is very Marvel, very Spongebob. Oddly enough Weiss is just like "yep my bad lol" and doesn't say something like "omg did the Ever After itself just punish me for insulting it?!"

Jaune says the only way out is to fix the problem or 'wait for the storm to pass' before he directs them to keep moving before saying that Blake and Yang must've had 'something bigger' to work out. Here's the thing with that. Yeah, Blake and Yang did have their feelings to talk to each other about, but the Ever After forces them away from the others to talk about their emotional problem, and didn't like, force Jaune and Ruby into a place where he tells her he killed Penny? It doesn't force Ruby to stand across from her teammates and tell them she can't take everything anymore and it isn't fair that she's carrying them on her shoulders? The Ever After doesn't trap Weiss until she works out her clear emotional problems about losing Atlas? The Ever After doesn't put Jaune across from the Cat until they make up again over the situation with Alyx and Lewis? Why is it that Blake and Yang get singled out? Oh yeah, because the writers are singling them out. They might as well have had the RWBY writers appear on screen and shuffle Blake and Yang away from the others while breaking the fourth wall to tell the camera Office-style that they just can't write for characters to do things naturally so please stick with 'em for this brief intermission.

Blake and Yang need to get to the platform in the middle!

It's too bad that they aren't hunters who can launch themselves into the air or have weapons that help them with that!

Yang earlier: "Wasn't Alyx bad? She lied and cheated her way through the whole book." Jaune now: "She wasn't just a little petulant, or inconsiderate. She was selfish, cruel." Either Jaune misread Alyx in the book or Yang did, lol. 'A little petulant' is a minor character flaw (and every character ought to have at least one character flaw,) being a bad example for little kids on what not to do and a liar and a cheat through the whole story is something else entirely! This is hilarious, Jaune and Yang would've been out there accusing the other of being brainless antis who didn't read the same story. XD

So Alyx poisoned Jaune and he died? He says "I was dead" So... how did he come back to life? Is he alive?

Also it's worth noting that Blake and Yang don't even call for Weiss, Ruby, or Jaune and don't act worried about them at all despite the fact that "punderstorms" and their role is clearly also not part of the book. That's not helping the 'no they do care about other people' argument tbh.

Yang: "I like that you've never been intimidated by me." No lie, when I heard this, I burst out laughing. Blake has never been intimidated by Yang? She acted like Yang would hit her because Yang chose to go on a separate mission! Blake has been animated to make worried faces all season long while she tries to patiently coax Yang into not losing her temper like one would talk to a five year old. Blake has acted hesitant to express her worries with Yang - heck, throughout most of season six, Blake was acting like she was waiting for Yang to hit her, and their 'triumphant' moment in volume six was Blake sobbingly trying to assure Yang that she wouldn't ever leave her. Again, these characters are acting like they're delusional. Yang claiming that Blake has never been intimidated by her when Blake as recently as three in-universe days ago at least was ducking her head with a sad face and hunched shoulders while she waited for a scolding looking like she feared being hit because Yang had left her... It just makes Yang look like she doesn't pay any attention to Blake really, and during their love confession, that's a very bad look!

I would so much prefer a love confession where Blake and Yang naturally just told each other how they felt or kissed in the heat of a moment or something rather than having them forced into it, not only is it very fanfic in the worst way but it's also.... Cutting it kind of close to uncomfortable. If I was forced to confess my attraction to another girl, then no matter how sure I felt about my own feelings or how sure I felt that she felt the same way, I'd be pissed off. The fact that Blake and Yang are just like "aww I think we have to tell each other how we feel uwu" and not being like "god the Ever After doesn't even know if we're out and they're forcing this on us?" is weird lol.

Blake and Yang start telepathy communicating with each other?? I think??? And neither of them reacts to it????

Also here's the thing, being completely honest when I don't ship something, the attention and focus the ship gets and the shipping scenes are annoying to me. It's the same thing with Arthur and Gwen in Merlin, it's the same thing with having to watch Aragorn kiss Arwen. It's a complaint that I don't expect or even want to be adhered to because I'm not the only person in the world and I do think Blake and Yang needed the confirmation they got (though with most ships I don't ship my problems usually extend to not thinking they're super well done,) but it did lessen my personal enjoyment of the episode that such a large chunk of it was devoted to this ship that I honestly don't really like. This would be a skip on every watch through tbh.

Jaune: "Feels like I've been waiting forever for that." Buddy, when have you talked to Blake or Yang for more than a minute? Jaune is not only like twenty years removed from this situation but has very little established closeness between either girl involved. I feel like this would be like if I went back to my hometown in ten years and saw two friends of my sister kissing and I was like "I've been waiting forever for that!"

At first I thought I liked the Celtic Women style song that plays when Blake and Yang kiss, but on my second watch of this ep, I feel like I don't.

Anyway, those are my thoughts.... 2/10 episode. Pretty bad generally.

[noneuclideanwhimsy]

Gordon laid on his back, breathing in the cold night air, feeling the grass underneath him. He was back in his labcoat, but it felt so wrong. It felt like his first day was a lifetime ago. What happened at Black Mesa felt almost...fake now. He felt tears dripping down his face, and he reached up to wipe them off. The stars blurred, the bright pinpricks he had thought about so much now smudged and bright and far too close.

(What have I made?)

Of course there was no answer. He was alone. That just made him cry harder. He didn't want to be alone. He had fought so hard to keep everyone safe, he couldn't be alone now...

"Are you alright?"

Gordon wiped his eyes, realizing Alyx was standing over him. He nodded to beside him. She laid down next to him, and he rested his head on her shoulder. Her arms immediately went around him.

(No.)

"I don't blame you."

"There you two are!"

Gordon looked up at Barney, gesturing for him to lay down too. His old friend did, laying shoulder to shoulder with him. Gordon felt a bit better.

(Thank you.)

"Don't mention it."

Alyx gave him a squeeze in response. Gordon felt good but...he suddenly started crying again, guilt bubbling up in him. No one stopped him from crying, but he felt two strong pairs of arms around him and he wasn't sure how he felt.

(What have I done?)

Alyx sighed.

"You changed things."

(I made nothing. Am...am I just a killing machine?)

Barney pat his shoulder.

"If you were, you wouldn't be feeling bad about it, eh?"

Gordon nodded tiredly, but he still felt...bad. Not empty, but not...good either.

(I feel...like I don't deserve all this. I feel like I just hurt people, even if I don't mean to. It hurts.)

A hush fell over the group. Alyx found her voice first.

"You did what needed to be done."

She took a shaky breath in.

"We all did."

Barney nodded, not looking at either of them.

"We just...did what everyone was too scared to do."

The three fell silent again, unable to speak as each remember exactly 'what had to be done'.

(I didn't deserve forgiveness.)

"Some of those...things used to be human..."

"I had to hurt people, I could have avoided it..."

All three cried gently, quickly abandoning trying to hide it from each other as they all held each other and cried. They cried out all the emotions they kept locked inside so it wouldn't hinder them, all the emotions they thought would be a burden to deal with, all the tears they refused to cry over the years. They cried out all their guilt and all the things they refused to think about. They all cried until they couldn't.

Barney wiped his nose with his hand.

"That was long overdue, eh?"

Alyx and Gordon chuckled just a bit, the mood lightening just a bit. No one let go of each other, just finally relaxing after everything. It was nice to be able to just watch the stars go by.

YES YES OMG THIS IS PERFECT.

Permission to maintag this? The fandom deserves to see it.

[sdj-official-fictive]

They could prescribe you any illness you'd like

If you define the terms of your ailments

You could sing a pretty malady like a black canary

But a crow don't know the smell of carbon monoxide

^ Judith starting to lose faith in the resistance, and seeing everyone else's optimism ^

How many years have you been on that couch

They could've quilt'd you in the throws by now

You draw a line in the sand where it ends and you begin

But the tide rolls in, so who knows? Oh well

^ Talking to Breen, catching on to his problem with identity ^

And a little identity never hurt nobody

But lately you've been focusing too much on yourself

So how many milligrams of you are still left in there

^ Judith looking at herself, starting to get worried that by joining the Combine she's going to lose herself ^

Cause back in my day we didn't need no feel-good pills and no psychiatrists

No, we just drank ourselves to death, and god damn it, we liked it

^ Talking to Alyx, and getting very frustrated with her questions because like. Obviously she wants to know where Judith has been going. ^

Who makes the call? What's a symptom, what's a flaw

Can it be both? Well I suppose that's an answer

Would you give up your humanity for just a touch of sanity

Cause God knows it's not like it's cancer

^ Back to Breen, starting to get a bit sarcastic about his choice (and deflecting her own guilt onto pity for him) ^

And good news to the purists: they've discovered a cure

For the symptoms of being alive

It's a painless procedure with a low rate of failure

But very few patients survive

^ Hahn taking Judith to see the experiments, and Judith is trying so hard to feel something about it. ^

And a little conformity never hurt nobody

But lately I've been worried that you're losing yourself

So how many milligrams of you are still left in there

^ Back at Breen, still seeing his personal decay ^

Cause back in my day we didn't need no feel-good pills and no psychiatrists

No, we just bled out in our bath, and god damn it, we liked it

^ I dunno mate ^

Doctor, what's my prognosis if the studies show that

Disease is in the eye of the beholder

Tell me "so it goes"

We depress to impress, I guess

In layer after layer to get off our chests

It's cold out now, we can take it off later

Better safe than sorry, and we both know the danger

^ Judith at Eli, trying to connect to him again ^

So doctor, could you run another test

Got a feeling that this time I might just pass it

Well, if you raise the average

We'll all sing when the bell curve rings

In lyrics symptomatic of the way we think

If our harmonies don't sync, we can change our voices

A chorus on condition of our diagnosis

^ Thinking about her double crossing, starting to struggle with issues about herself and how she changes from place to place ^

Back in my day we didn't need no feel-good pills and no psychiatrists

What can I say, except don't heed no evil wills of moral nihilists

I said, "Back in the days of lobotomies and shock therapy and mad scientists

Oh don't you make me waste my breath. God damn it"

^ Judith during the office scene, finally snapping and jumping in to save Eli because she can't stand Breen anymore ^

Ain't your you-dentity at stake

Does aspirin kill you with the pain

You're not your thoughts, you're not your brain

You're just the character you've made

Up in your head, down in your heart

What seem like separate body parts

Come together to believe they're you

And not just chemistry

It's not the way that you were raised

Or what the advertisements say

Not what you pay for, what you pray for

What you want, or what you say

And I see your tendency to redefine disease by what you need

And I'm afraid I can't prescribe the diagnosis that you seek

And something tells me that you need

Forgive me now if I misspeak

But something tells me that you like

And something tells me

You prefer

To be sitting there flipping through those old issues of People

Well that's our time, see you next week

^ Judith at pretty much everyone, just...releasing all those emotions she kept under wraps to keep herself and the people she cares about safe. ^

OOOOOOOOOO YEAH!! I LOVE THIS

[nuclearnerves]

INCOMING VAMPIRE AU THOUGHTS

Don't mind me I'm finally getting the ideas I had on this shit out so I can actually go forward with developing it as an AU. It's my usual mixup of fps protags, Gordon Guy and John, but I'm starting with Gordon as the Vampire and Guy as the Vampire Hunter.

absolute beast of a wall of text under the cut

What If Being A Vampire Literally Sucks All The Time Forever like chronic pain sucks. like THAT level of sucks. Like Here's what I was thinking of. Being a vampire isn't just "being alive forever but you need to drink human blood" It's like Oh man I have some lore you look at vampires and their main thing is that they're blood suckers right so lets start with a corpse dead body. cadaver. no longer with us. just some rotting meat. The brain needs oxygen as fuel. The blood supplies the oxygen through blood. The blood is pumped through the heart. The blood is made by your bone marrow. You die. Your heart stops beating Blood stops pumping Brain no longer has oxygen to think marrow stops making blood thats standard! Now, becoming undead, as a vampire, is a little more complicated. The long and short of it is: your body is FIGHTING ACTIVELY to be alive against all odds and wins every time (immortality), but it hurts the whole way

I have the gist of it. It's like. Your heart stops. By all means, you should be dead. but the magic kicks in, and you're still thinking. Your brain is still sending signals to your muscles to move. But using what oxygen to move? whats burning in you? You don't know but you know it's just enough to get to your next meal. So you ferociously eat something, and then find you can't swallow. You can't make saliva. You barely have the energy to chew, and once you DO get something in your stomach, it immediately comes back up. Why can't you feel your pulse? What's going on? You're out of options so you figure you might as well just lie down and die. You're too tired to keep going anyway. So you do, you lie down, and you close your eyes, and you quietly hope that death is as peaceful as sleep. You realize you've actually been moving around without breathing, which makes sense because you can barely flex your diaphragm for more than a shaky wheeze. How are you thinking with such little oxygen? But as you fade from consciousness, you can feel something in you, and it's so upset, it's crying, it's filled with grief, and you instantly can tell it's your skeleton. It's your bones. You're distraught down to your marrow. You're dying. You're dying! Your heart stopped and you have no more blood! You need blood! You need blood to move! To breathe! To think! You try to breath deep again for the voices in your bones, trying to comfort them, to sooth them with the repetitive motion in your lungs, trying to fill yourself with anything but grief, but they keep wailing. We make the blood, our creation, our child, what we put all of our work into is gone! gone! gone! We need it back! Anything! All of it! Find it! Bring it back to us! We're hungry! WE'RE HUNGRY!

and once you find yourself too exhausted to listen, to think, how badly you wish just to die already to cease hearing this wailing, you find your body moving without you. And it's hungry and it's searching and it's crawling on all fours and it misses its beautiful red life that made it feel so full before and it needs it back, and the next thing you know you're desperately grabbing anything with blood in it and shoving it in your mouth in a desperate attempt to sooth this cry for life, you don't want to die, you don't want to die, you worked so hard to keep up this body and craft it and LIVE with it and you're not going to go, and even when you try, even when you try to lay down and die, your body refuses, it takes the reigns, and it keeps up the work itself with or without your help. And it's not until your stomach is full and your teeth are stained and you feel a pulsating burning in your bones that you snap back awake, completely conscious, just fine. You're lucid, you don't feel any more pain. Everything around you is dead and drained and messy and your heart still isn't beating. but you can breathe now and holy shit you guess you literally need to kill to survive and the less you eat and the more you starve yourself the worse it gets when your body finally decides to take recourse.

my idea was like. "the vampires curse is actually stored in the bones, thats why the teeth get so sharp and also theres a connection between blood and bones with the creation via bone marrow" its literally like i was sitting there thinking "no no no, whats it like to be a vampire. what neurosis would you develop. How would you panic? What are common mistakes beginner vampires make" which, by the way, gordon is a beginner vampire

so now you gotta factor, what blood lasts for how long? how long can you go between meals? not only that, but what creatures satisfy the urge? How long can you go avoiding human blood? Does it work like drugs where you develop a resistance to the high, or is it like food where it will keep you moving until you eat again? How the fuck are you gonna get your hands on blood? Can you just eat raw meat? Does that count? and thats where im at lol

OKAY now. now thoughts on beginning scenes of vampire au

So my idea was this Doomguy is a vampire hunter independent and one of his buds says that some freak scared and almost attacked his daughter when she got too close to his old abandoned laboratory up the hill and hes like “he might be… you know… a problem. if you needed a lead” and guys like yeah i fuckin hate the undead ill kill this dude so he busts into old lab space and sees so many dead animals its actually mostly Bones and pelt that hes seeing piles of feathers etc so hes like yeah this is all telltale signs of vampire uhhh hes introduced to gordon SOMEHOW im not totally sure of the details but the working idea i have is guy falls into a trap gordon devised that restrains him suspended in wire or something and gordon like. limps/stumbles into the room and this dude looks haggard he’s breathing heavy, his cheeks are hollow, he’s bug-eyed and shaking while looking at this massive wall of meat in his trap and he bares a bunch of hideous teeth and grits them and looks like hes really struggling with somethin... Like if these dudes don't know each other then Gordon might give in and try to drain Guy, and Guy would absolutely do anything in his power to turn this new vampire into ash, im thinking the inclusion if g-man as a coven leader can fix both issues.

i like the idea of guy falling into gordons trap and gordon thinking about what to do with him before gman shows up and whisks gordon away for a “meeting” while complimenting him on his good work catching the most feared vampire hunter in the country and gman just leaving guy suspended in wires that he has to fight his way out of. Instant situation defuser.

Guy ends up needing to take care of other monsters before going back to Gordon, and he DOES plan to go back to gordon, because no vampire is a good one, especially not one associated with the fucking head of a coven, but next time he sees Gordon, Gordon helps him out of a scrape by attacking and draining a combine who was going to take Guy out or something and escaping before Guy can catch him, or otherwise seeing Gordon do something good with his insane undead powers and like, the third time he meets up with him is when they can actually talk, and Gordons fuckin SO haggard, he’s not even fighting back and he’s even going as far as to say “just make sure theres nothing of me left when you’re done, I don’t want anyone else getting hurt”

Side Note: Guy has a bunch of scarring on his body from dealing with vampires, cops, ghosts, werewolves, anything violent that kills people. I'm playing with the inkling of an idea that he has Divine Blood in him, so that any time something undead bites him or tries to drink his blood, it burns. We'll see.

Side Note 2: now i really like the idea of the combine actually being an organized faction of vampire hunters that are WICKED crooked and exploit people for all their worth in exchange for their “safety” when they kill a vampire They’re essentially loansharks and Guy fucking hates them and hates the name theyve given to vampire hunting

Side Note 3: You've probably noticed that I haven't said anything about John yet! He's in this too. His species is a surprise but I need to get to him later I have an idea for where he came from (Cortana too)

I still need a good reason for Guy to not instantly kill this vampire, if not it's just gonna be "Gordon Freeman escapes the countrys best vampire hunter like a seventh time" every time they meet and they end up being rivals. And it gives Guy enough time to look past the whole "undead monster" thing and start looking at the "Oh this dude figured out how to fight his ridiculous craving for blood in a way more humane than most and is actually staying out of peoples way and keeping to himself. Guess he's not that big of a threat but I still need to keep an eye on him in case he loses it. Turns out he's got a family (Probably Alyx, Eli, Issac and Barney) who's been lookin for him and cares about him as well, don't wanna hurt them". I like the idea of them ending up needing to team up to take out undead together.

And that's what I got so far!!!

[decks-writing-blog]

What Happened in the Vault?

Summary: Alyx wakes up outside the Vault with almost no memory of what happened within it.

~

Somewhere close by but muffled by a wall or some other barrier or perhaps just the ringing in Alyx’s ears were voices. Not friendly voices but Combine soldiers. The helmets they always wore affected their speech, making them all sound basically the same, especially from a distance, and thus easy to identify even when one couldn’t understand their exact words.

Them being so close was bad. Alyx needed to move. Hide, run, find a weapon and fight, whatever it took to not fall into their hands. Far easier said than done though when her body felt almost as if it were magnetized to the cold concrete beneath her, making any movement a struggle. Her head, filled with fog and the start of what was likely to be a wicked headache, made the idea of just lying here and letting herself drift off again seem almost appealing. But she hadn’t made it this far just to be caught napping by the Combine.

Biting back a groan – any sound was potentially too loud if Combine were in the area – she forced herself to roll first onto her side. From there it was a bit easier to push herself up to his hands and knees, allowing her to sit up and look around.

It was dark and she was surrounded by rubble. Up above past the walls surrounding her was the sky, only a few stars visible through the perpetual smog of City 17. She was in a hole in the ground made of building rubble. How had she got here? …

The Vault! She’d gone into the Vault! And then… It was like remembering a dream, already fading from her mind. She grasped at it, closing her eyes, trying to remember. … Gravity had been weird. Furniture on the ceilings and walls or perhaps she’d been on the ceilings and walls. It was hard to remember the specifics. That wasn’t what was important though. She’d made it to the center. It hadn’t been Gordon Freeman inside but instead… but instead… She couldn’t remember. Her mind, the headache setting in, making her head feel like the fogginess had turned to acid, came up utterly blank.

More Combine soldier voices, though thankfully further away this time, had her flinching and scrambling to scoot back further into the shadows. Now clearly wasn’t a good time to sit and think. She needed to get in contact with Dad and Russell, they might know something. Reaching up… the headset was gone. A quick look around revealed it wasn’t laying anywhere close by either. Damn it.

Next she checked her guns. … All gone as well, no sign of them anywhere. Her multi-tool (or the Alyx if that was the name she wanted to go with) was also missing. She could make another one without too much effort, she had everything about it written down and backed up in every way that was possible after all, figuring out how to make it had been the hard part, but… it had been her first big solo project. The first major thing she’d made without help. Being able to keep her first working iteration would’ve been nice even if she planned to improve it in the future, making later versions hack faster, work on more stuff and all that. Losing it hurt more than she would’ve thought.

No time to dwell on that though or the fact that she was weaponless in a hole in the ground surrounding by Combine with no outside guidance. To top it all off her head hurt like hell. It could never be just one thing going wrong, could it?

She still had the Russells though, that was something. Pointing at a nearby small piece of broken off concrete, the mechanical parts of the glove vibrated slightly, indicating she had something in its sight. A quick flick of her wrist and the piece flew her way – good, they still worked, thus she did indeed still have something even if it wasn’t a lot – an easy catch after how much practice she had with these things. Hopefully she wouldn’t ever have to give them back. Maybe if she could make her way out of this and back to Russell’s lab, she’d have a case for having earned keeping them.

First step was getting out of this hole. On the surface easier said than done but upon closer inspection of the walls, there were plenty of irregularities in the rubble that could serve as hand and footholds. She just had to be careful to test them before trusting her weight on them. Falling would not only hurt but would also be loud. If she was caught in this hole she was good as dead already. No use dwelling on the danger though.

Taking a deep breath, she stood. Her legs wobbled a bit beneath her but nothing seemed to be broken or particularly injured. So she found what looked to be the easiest path up and started climbing. Alas there was no way to avoid the loose bit of rubble she inadvertently sent rolling down, making an uncomfortable amount of noise. Hopefully if anyone heard they’d mistake it for just normal rubble settling noises.

Near the top she stopped. Breathing as shallowly as she could, she strained her ears, listening for Combine chatter or boots. … Talking and heavy boots could definitely be heard now alongside the crackling of fire but nothing that sounded like it was immediately nearby. Before that could change she scrambled up, out and to the first bit of cover she spotted. Plenty of rubble meant there was lots of that around at least.

From her new hiding spot she could get a better look around. She was a couple dozen or so meters away from where the Vault had crashed to Earth. Still lit up in places and on fire in others, it was the strongest light source in the area, making it impossible to miss. It was crawling with Combine troops. Some going in, others standing guard or patrolling around it.

He’d no doubt intentionally dropped her far enough away from it and in a dark hole so she wouldn’t be in immediate danger of capture. Which was great but couldn’t he have dropped her in Russell’s lab instead or at least a little bit further away. … Wait, ‘he’? Yeah, that felt right. It had been a ‘he’ or what her mind wanted to interpret as a ‘he’ based off who even know what assumptions because she couldn’t remember a face or anything else. Just that she’d met and freed someone and it hadn’t been Gordon Freeman as she’d hoped and expected.

Shaking herself off mentally and physically, she got moving. She had a big advantage in that they’d expect to find her in the Vault and thus shouldn’t be looking for her out here for a while yet. They might even assume her dead or swept away by the being the Vault had been made to contain if they couldn’t find her thus freeing her of their attention. As long as she could manage to get out without getting spotted anyway.

The Vault being the center of attention made getting away from it top priority. So as much as the destroyed building she was in would allow, she headed in the opposite direction. She moved slower than she would’ve liked, especially as the last of the lethargy left her body, leaving her with a headache and adrenaline, urging to her to move quickly. But she couldn’t afford to risk running into a patrol meant to keep people away. So she had to pause and listen before turning any corner, ready to run and hide if she heard anything coming her way.

Just when she was thinking she might get away easy, heavy boots had her scrambling to hide behind a partially collapsed wall. She held her breath, palm pressed over her mouth as the boots came up to and paused right on the other side of it. Had they found her? Were they waiting for her to try to bolt or was she about to get dragged out and killed? Or worse brought to Nova Prospekt to be tortured and have her brain sucked? She’d kill herself before that happened.

Just when she was about to explode with tension, the boots finally moved again, blessedly going away in the direction she’d come from. Thank goodness. She waited until they were gone entirely before daring to move even an inch.

From there it wasn’t long before she was out of the building and on the streets of City 17 at last. It was way past curfew thus she was still in danger of being caught and found out. But this was far from the first time she had to move through the city past curfew. So basically she was home free. A huge relief.

Now all she had to do was find her way to Russell’s lab. Easier said than done when she’d never been to this part of the city before. But the Citadel, large and horrid as it was, should help her keep her bearings.

~

The sun was raising by the time she was stumbling into the yard behind Russel’s lab at last. Everything was exactly how she’d last seen it; a mess. The door was locked from this side of course, the windows bordered over to make the building look abandoned. She knocked a few times but… got not response.

She was tired enough that the dusty old couch in the corner with a funny little garden gnome sitting upon it looked inviting. Tired as she was though, she wasn’t quite that desperate yet. Instead she clambered up to the balcony. The window was locked too so she knocked on it.

No response.

Damn it. What if the Combine had found them? … But surely there’d be more signs of a struggle if they had. Unless they’d come in from the front and dragged them out the same way. Ugh.

She knocked again. “Russell, you there? Dad?” What was she going to do if…

“Alyx?” Oh thank goodness! A moment later Russell was opening the window, just a little at first for a peek before throwing it open. “Oh wow, it really is you.”

“Yep, sure is. Where’s Dad? Please tell me he’s still with you and didn’t do something stupid like run off to try to rescue me or something.”

“He’s still here. It took a bit of persuasion but I managed to convince him to stay and send a drone out to look for you this morning instead. Luckily we don’t gotta do that ‘cause here you are. Welcome back. He’s asleep on the couch. I was sleeping too before your banging woke me up.”

“Sorry ‘bout that. But uh… wake him up and then unlock the door so I can get in. And then we can talk about what happened in the Vault.” Because Dad’s last message as the beam took her indicated he might know something about the someone she’d freed and thus could perhaps jog her memory about him and hopefully what he’d done or said to her. “Also uh… before you do that, I didn’t die but I do still owe you a gun.”

“You broke it?”

“Worse, lost it. Presumably its floating around in the Vault somewhere along with the rest of the loose stuff I was carrying. Next time I go to a place with weird gravity I’ll be sure to secure my weaponry better. In the meantime though, I do still have my pack and in my pack I have…” As she spoke she pulled her backpack around to her front, allowing her to unzip it and pull out the bottle of vodka she’d barely managed to stuff in there alongside all her ammo. “… this!”

Russel perked up as he reached for it. Holding it by the neck, he turned it so he could examine the label. “Ooh, I’m not familiar with the brand personally but according to my old web archive, this is supposed to be pretty good.”

“Good enough to make up for the gun?” She did feel kind of bad about losing it even it had become more her gun than his. With the option to give it to Gordon Freeman gone she’d have returned it with the caveat that after how much she’d upgraded it, she was entitled to borrow it whenever she wanted.

He looked back up at her. “Uh… much as it pains me to say this, don’t worry ‘bout the gun. I’m just glad you’re all right. You are all right, right? What happened in the Vault? You said it had weird gravity. What kind of weird?”

“I’ll tell you same time I tell Dad.”

“Right, yeah of course. Let me just…” He started to duck back inside before popping back out. “Thanks for the vodka. I appreciate it. We can drink some of it later to celebrate your victory… I think it was a victory, right? Or at least we can celebrate you returning alive which is victory enough. Now, I’ll go wake your father and uh… open the door downstairs to let you in. See you in a bit.” He ducked back inside and closed the window once more.

After zipping closed her pack and swinging it back around onto her back, Alyx climbed down from the balcony. Tired as she was she did so a bit more carefully than she normally otherwise would’ve. The last thing she wanted was to have made it back safely only to rush and fall in her exhaustion causing her to break her neck or something.

Upon reaching the ground and heading to the door she only had to wait a few seconds before it opened and Dad stepped out. Despite having apparently just been doing so, he didn’t look like he’d slept. Likely he hadn’t for long as he’d probably stayed up worrying about her.

“Alyx! Thank god you’re okay.” He pulled her into a hug.

She clung to him harder than she’d expected herself too. Her eyes even misted up a little. But gosh it was a relief to see, hear, and feel him again. It felt like it had been… not a long time but… Well, last time she’d seen him, he’d barely survived her rescue attempt with the train. Yeah, that and the fact that she’d barely made it out of her own dangerous situation was why it was such a massive relief to see him alive and well again.

“You are okay, right honey?” Pulling back, Dad looked her up and down, checking for injuries.

“As okay as I can be.” Which wasn’t very but she was alive and so was he and that’s what mattered most, right?

She apparently didn’t do a good job of sounding nonchalant enough to brush off his worry as he was still visibly concerned. Before he could express that though, Russe.l leaned in. “Uh we, and by that I mean you two in particular, probably wanna lay extra low for a few weeks, wait for the heat to die down a bit, so probably best to hop inside.”

“Honestly, laying low for a while sounds nice.” Alyx led the way inside and Russel closed and locked the door behind them. As he turned from it, Alyx stepped towards him, opening her arms in offer of a hug because hugs were nice and she’d gladly take another one. He thought about it for a second or two before lightly shaking his head ‘no’ and lifting a hand in offer of a high-five instead. She accepted it, lightly slapping his hand with her own, careful of the Russells’ (gloves) fragility. “Thanks for helping me through all that. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“It was a pleasure. Or not a pleasure, it was actually quite stressful, but you know what I mean. Let’s go sit and talk. Tell us what you saw in the Vault.” Russel turned and headed further in, trusting them to follow.

“Unless you would rather rest first,” Dad said as they did indeed follow.

“Nah, talk first.” She needed to know who had been in that Vault. And she needed to share what little she remembered before she forgot it too.

Russel had to drag in a third chair from his messy storage area but once he pulled it in, they all had a place to sit around his little table. Alyx ended up sitting at the head of it, both of them looking at her.

Taking a deep breath, she rested her arms on the table. “I don’t remember much. I got pulled up by the tractor beam or whatever. And then I was in a room and had to go through like… a hotel or, I guess it was an apartment complex once upon a time, right? After that there was a big shape in an even bigger room that was making gravity weird… I think. Or maybe I saw that first and then went through the rooms because gravity was weird in them. Things were stuck to walls and ceilings or maybe that was me and it was just a perspective thing. I don’t remember and most of it probably isn’t important anyway. What is important is the person or thing I freed in the center. It wasn’t Gordon Freeman. I have absolutely no idea who he was only that I freed him and… and we talked about something. I think he’s why I don’t remember almost anything about what happened in there.”

Dad’s brow furrowed in worry as she spoke. He took a breath to speak but before he could, Russell beat him to it. “Yep, sounds like the G-man.”

With a different kind of frown, Dad switch his gaze to him. “‘G-man’?”

“Yeah, you know, thought I’d try giving him a name so we don’t gotta talk about what he looks like or whatever every time we mention him. And the way you described him made him sound like some sort of secret government agent type guy. Which obviously he isn’t or if he is, it isn’t a government we know. But that is what he looks like so it should do fine for a name, right?‘G’ for government and man because… he’s probably not a man actually, huh? Even if he does look like one. ‘G-person’, maybe.”

“Let’s go with G-man,” Alyx said. “Something tells me he doesn’t care how we refer to him and that’s the easiest to say. What can you tell me about him?” This she directed mostly at Dad because he was clearly the one who knew stuff.

He let out a heavy sigh. “Not much unfortunately. He was in that Vault though. And we believe he might’ve orchestrated the resonance cascade but we’re not sure.”

Alyx couldn’t help but gasp at that. The resonance cascade was second only to the Combine’s invasion in importance to Earth’s history. It’s the thing that had drawn their attention here in the first place. And she’d been in the same room – if it could even be called a room – with the guy who made it happen – or at least her Dad had enough reason to think he might’ve made it happen. She’d have killed him if she knew… or tried and probably failed. Or heck, maybe she had tried and just didn’t remember. … Probably not. She couldn’t remember anything about their meeting but that didn’t seem how things had gone down.

“I was also pretty sure he didn’t work for the Combine,” Dad continued. “This proves it. They wouldn’t have locked him up if he was their ally. What he wants though I don’t want to know. Freeing him is less than ideal but… I suppose its too late now. I’m glad you’re safe. When I found out he was in there when it was already too late to stop you going in I… I feared that he’d… I’m glad your safe.”

“Me too.” She was lucky to be.

“You sure you remember nothing about him? What he said or did? He wears a suit, carries a briefcase…”

“He has… blue eyes?” She interrupted.

“You remember?” Russell sounded almost excited but well, that was Russell.

“Sort of… maybe.” She closed her eyes and pressed her hands to the sides of her head. That description, though generic, was familiar. The eyes in particular had been piercing, inhuman. But the harder she tried to press into what little memory that image conjured, what he’d said to her, what he’d shown her, what he’d offered, all… just made her headache worse. It had faded to a dull ache on the way here but now it was like she’d just had a nail hammered into the top of her skull.

Eventually she had to give up and open her eyes as she looked back up at the two of them. The overhead light was too bright. “I don’t remember. I don’t think he wants me to. Sorry.”

Dad’s hand clenched into a fist on the table. He didn’t let that frustration show in his voice though. “You don’t need to be sorry, sweetie. Long as you’re okay, that’s what matters most.”

That… didn’t feel like what mattered most. Something important had happened in the Vault between her and the G-man. Whatever it was was going to come back into play eventually. Hopefully not anytime soon but who could say on that? Likely when the time came she’d remember. At which point it would be too late to do anything about it. For now though… “I’m tired. Maybe after a nap I’ll be able to remember more.” Probably not but it was worth a try and she was so tired she couldn’t keep going for much longer regardless.

Russell stood. “We could probably all do with going back to bed. None of us have got much sleep lately.”

Dad nodded as he stood as well. “Rest it is in. You’ve certainly earned it.”

[a-cluttered-gordon-freeman]

Unclouded Days, because I'm not an idiot and I definitely remembered this story exists, part 3.

Part 1 | Part 2

"If I wanted to have a family... I'd have it with Alyx... Or Barney... But for right now...."

Gordon looked up from his journal. Taking a glance at his clock, he noted the date and time. 6:37 a.m. on a cold Thursday, April 13.

It had been a whole 2 months since he last visited Alyx and Barney. Gordon could remember the chill of the incoming blizzard as he trudged through the snow, and he remembered the chill coming back home afterwards.

His cabin was a safe haven away from the chaos of the society he helped create. Gordon wanted nothing to do there. He wanted to be by himself, for all too long he had been surrounded by people and he couldn't stand it. He thoroughly enjoyed the moments spent being away from everyone, where he was on his own, doing whatever. Nobody would boss him about. He wouldn't have to fight.

Barney had brought up a good point, but by accident. Gordon had mocked Barney by making such claims as having a family. And with Barney asking if he had one, Gordon spent long nights thinking about it.

No, he didn't have one, but Gordon couldn't deny that he had thought about having one, and having some kids of his own. He was still young enough to, but with whom? Barney would say yes, he and Gordon were always intimate with each other and would be asked constantly at Black Mesa when they'd marry. But it'd rule out children, as niether of them could reproduce with each other. Alyx would be uncertain about getting married, probably, mostly because she didn't know to the fullest what it meant. And niether of them felt a strong attraction towards each other, so would it even be considered a real loving relationship?

Gordon took another look at the clock. 7:15 a.m.. Temperature dropped a few degrees in the cabin. He sighed.

Another night wasted.

Closing the journal, Gordon stood up and stretched before opening the window to let it the sun and some fresh air. He stared outside, some animals crossing in and out of his vision, the leaves from last fall stuck down under the remaining snow. It was cold out, but the kind of cold one craved for in the spring. A nice and peaceful morning with a slight chill, the forestry just now waking up with snow melting around, providing nutrients to the life nearby.

He felt tired. Not unusual, as he lost quite a bit of sleep since that week in February. But Gordon couldn't fall asleep.

It was the entire point of that journal. To write his thoughts until he felt as though he could sleep. Some nights he considered heading back over to Eli and Kliener, maybe chat a bit. But being 40-something miles away would mean he'd arrive there sometime by noon. Other nights he considered working on some projects he laid out. But that would mean Gordon would have to turn on the other lights- all that artificial light would keep him up more than the red-light alarm he used to write in his journal. More often than not Gordon would just sit at his desk, writing away from 8 in the evening to 7 in the morning. The rare nights were when he didn't write in his journal, but instead bathed in the pitch black darkness.

Writing in the journal helped though. Gordon wouldn't have to worry about making sense to anyone, as long as it made enough sense to him. No need to appropriate a sentence, give it structure. It was a place where he could write what he was feeling, with no worry of harming anyone else.

Though sometimes Gordon wished he could actually tell someone, get advice or some help. It would have been useful as hell for him.

To ask for help gave Gordon the feeling of uselessness, a feeling he had been trying to avoid hard. To be told to do a thing gave him a purpose. So he did things that made him feel useful- took care of alien enemies for those that couldn't, provided backup to those who could, saved humanity, rebuilt society. Gordon did it all. There was no way he was going to ask anyone for help. He'd feel guilty as hell.

Gordon decided that he was done thinking such thoughts. And he had also decided that he would relax with a nice, warm shower, taking some time to ease off some stress.

Silence had been filling the lab. It was as if quiet things could become quieter, if it didn't make sound then it would start making other things stop making sound.

Alyx and Barney found it uncomfortable. The silence was deafening, and they could hear their thoughts much too clearly. It also provided a sort of laziness, a feeling of boredom, to the lab. A place once bustling with life and loud noises now only inhabited by two people with nothing better to do that they hadn't done forty times before.

"What if we went out of town for a bit?" Barney broke the silence, startling Alyx, who had been slowly falling asleep.

"What do you mean? To where?" She stretched.

"To Gordon's."

"I don't know, would he even like visitors right now? We have no way of asking him."

"Surprise visit?"

"We can't ask him, Barney! We've got no way to talk to him." Alyx rested her head on the table, letting out a drowsy sigh.

"I know where he lives." Barney said, causing Alyx to look over at him. "He had told me an approximation, he lives east near the giant trees."

"In the shack?"

"Yeah."

"Barney, thats forty miles away. We'd have to start early morning to arrive at his house with some daylight left. And besides, there is no way we'd be able to spend the night there, it has four rooms- a bathroom, a tiny bedroom, a kitchen and a main room."

Silence filled the lab once more. Alyx had a point, it was already too small for one person, much more with three. And there would be no way of confirming with Gordon if they could even get there- if anyone else saw them leave, and it would be a given that many people would see them leave, then Gordon's privacy would be violated by everyone else knowing where he lived.

It'd be rude to arrive uninvited, and unpleasant if he wasn't there or was too busy to let them in.

"Can't you talk to him?" Barney stared at Alyx, who sat up with exhaustion.

"How do you think I would be capable of that?"

"With that weird vort-connection-thingy you two have."

She took a moment to think. "I'm... Not entirely sure. I don't think I can."

"Should we ask a vortigaunt?"

Gordon finished dressing and took a seat on his bed. He was disappointed. His bath hadn't helped to relieve any stress whatsoever, instead he was convinced it added more and made it worse.

Which... Isn't good when you are a sleep-deprived physicist who has just been to a version of hell and back at one moment and wiping the enemy off the face of the planet.

His clock now read 9:00 a.m. exact. He could take a walk around the forest, or maybe cook up something.

Or, instead, he could lay in bed, the window open, the covers over him. Which is what Gordon did.

It made the annoying sleeplessness much worse but one could not deny the relaxing comfort it brought. And slowly, just so slowly, Gordon began to drift off to sleep.

"You can communicate feelings and pain without words, but you cannot talk to the Freeman directly." The vorts had answered, causing a sigh from Alyx and Barney.

"Well, then, fuck how are we supposed to get him now?" Barney huffed.

"We wait until he decides to come over." Alyx replied, getting up to go back to the lab.

"Have either of you decides to meet the Freeman yourselves?" A vort inquired, walking up to Alyx and Barney.

"No." The both of them responded.

"It'd be rude to walk up to his house uninvited, seeing as others could follow us." Alyx look over at the vortigaunts, who gave the appearance of understanding.

The two left the vortigaunts and returned to their eerily quiet lab, where boredom struck again.

Gordon shot up, panting hard. Beads of sweat trailed down his face, his heart and mind racing. He glanced at the clock.

5:21 p.m. on a now warm April 13.

Gordon took a second to calm down. He couldn't remember what had caused him to be so hyped up. Was it a nightmare? Bad memory?

What ever it was, it was gone now. Gordon could be thankful for that at least.

Chest still pounding, Gordon took a second to gain his bearings and calm down. He found it extremely difficult to do such on his own. As a result, he went out on a walk. He found it best to take in the nature, listen to the trees and wildlife.

As much as Gordon would have liked to hunt, a gun would raise back past feelings of fear, anger and pain that the Resonance Cascade and the Uprising caused. He couldn't stand to hold such a weapon nowadays, the only reason he'd have one anymore is for safety purposes. But even then, Gordon would much rather fight with a knife.

Bored with his little house and, unfortunately, the forestry around him, Gordon set out to the lab. It was best for an escape, as he wasn't feeling all that great by himself.

It was daybreak by the time Gordon arrived at White Forest. He had taken some time to visit Eli and Kleiner, and had also gone for a bit of shopping in the main town. Once done with that,he made his way to the lab.

"Hey Barney."

Barney turned around and was greeted by Gordon.

"Gordon?"

"Yeah, I'd hope so. How have things been?"

Barney smiled. "Its been good. And you?"

"...not good." Gordon sighed and looked down a bit. "Haven't been getting good rest."

"Would you like to spend a few more nights here? At the lab with Alyx and I?"

"Yeah... I'd appreciate that thanks..."

Barney took Gordon's hand and led him to the lab, where Alyx greeted them both with an excited smile.

Gordon got set up in his old room again. Sitting upon his bed, he stared at the ceiling in silent contemplation. Closing his eyes, he began to silently cry, for no reason he could find.

When Alyx stepped into the room, she caught a glance of the tired and teary-eyed man. She took that as a moment to sit next to him and offer weak support.

Gordon glanced over to her and wiped off his eyes. "S-sorry..." he muttered weakly, his voice shaky as hell.

Alyx smiled. "No need to be sorry. Just let it all out."

END OF PART 3

---------

Heyo! Its yours true. I need help to try to make it towards the end by offerring your support for the story and reblogging/asking more about it/ messaging me! Rb>likes, and the reblogs offer me more motivation to continue writing the stories, and same would go for my ravenholm comics, that you can read at @returntoravenholm-awgag ! I'd appreciate all the support I can get from anyone! Thank you!

-marc

[kraviolis]

when alyx and gordon are fighting their way through hordes of enemies, gunpowder and blood so thick in the air they can taste it, gordon stops.

his arm drops, his crowbar dripping in blood. there’s a dead CP in front of him, blood circling their body and soaking into their clothing. alyx stops too, chest heaving from effort. she looks at gordon and waits, despite knowing they have to get moving, that there’ll be another wave of backup coming.

gordon keeps his eyes casted on the corpse, not blinking and vacant. alyx approaches him slowly, lays a hand on his arm, and goes “gordon?”

he drops the crowbar, the metal slipping from his hands. he looks at her, meets her eyes. his hands move up.

“i dont want to,” he signs, face vacant. “i dont want to kill him.”

alyx’s eyes drop to the dead CP. something in her chest twisting painfully. she knows exactly what he’s talking about.

“i know,” she says, voice breaking just a little. “but... gordon--”

“i cant.” he insists. “not him. not him.”

alyx doesnt know what to tell him. what-- that she’ll kill him? that she’ll step up and put the bullet between his eyes if gordon’s hands shake too much to do it? that she’ll kill her friend, her uncle, her family?

she’s known him longer than gordon has, goddamnit. he babysat her. he helped take care of her when she was sick. he helped her pick out her own name. she can’t ever kill him. not even if it was either her life or his.

she lets her hand fall off of gordon’s shoulder. “...maybe you wont have to.” she mutters. “we still might be able to get through to him.”

the look on gordon’s face tells her that he doesn’t quite believe that. “maybe,” he says anyways.

they stand there for a moment, both of them watching the body go cold. alyx takes gordon’s hand, not minding the blood, and feels him squeeze hers tightly. like he’s hanging on for dear life.

“gordon,” she starts again, voice quiet. “...if- if we have to-- if he wont listen...” she trails off. gordon’s hands are shaking.

“i can’t do it, either.” she admits, finally. “if he doesn’t listen, we might be screwed.”

gordon’s mouth quirks up mirthlessly. he lets his eyes close and his chin fall, squeezing alyx’s hand so hard it makes both of them ache.

they stay like this for a while, both of them taking time to accept the possible outcomes. the two of them either die together by his hand or all three of them leave together and fix what’s been broken.

when did he decide, she thinks, to destroy everything they’ve built? did he always plan to burn his bridges or was it a crime of passion? surely he has to understand he’s doing wrong.

it seems like just yesterday he was comforting her after a fight with her dad, or bringing home a box of clothes he scavenged up just for her when her boots got so small she was keeping them together with duct tape, or laughing when she choked on the burn of her first drink.

gordon gets her attention again by letting go of her hand. she watches as he leans down and picks up the crowbar again, grasping it firmly.

“lets go,” is all he signs before stepping over the body. alyx doesn’t follow at first, watching his back as he stumbles forward, and wonders when the world got so fucked.

[polymathemawrites]

Hungover in the City of Dust part 1

CW: injuries, ptsd, panic attacks, maths, drug use (via the hev suit)

Alyx is gone, Gordon is running on fumes, Barney picks up the pieces

The dark hits like a freight train, thick and deep. It pulls down, down, down unrelenting and eternal. There is nothing and then there is everything. The stop-start of His voice grates on the very edge of frayed nerves, unraveling them, he is a patient man but his patience is running out, and he has expended his usefulness to an entity incomprehensible. Everything goes from too slow to too fast and he gasps awake and alive, put back into a body he never left. Eli is standing in front of him and Alyx is standing nowhere, somewhere - somewhere they can't reach, they have work to do - the Combine are not defeated yet and there is a missing Vance to find. Free but for how long and at what cost? Gordon looks down at his hand in the reinforced leather gloves of the HEV suit and tightens his grip on the paint-chipping-gently-rusted-crowbar. A nod, of course, they have work to do, and he's the man to do it.

It is in this manner that Gordon Freeman has survived the past six days. Six. Six Days. Running, running, never stopping, and it is in this manner that Gordon is ready to continue, ready to go where Eli needs him to, to save the man's daughter and Gordon's new found friend. Or it would have been, would have been if someone didn't put their hand on Gordon's arm and still him.

"Eli, I don't mean to put a damper on the Save Alyx party, but your golden boy is bleeding through whatever shitty bandages he scrounged up." The southern drawl is familiar, it is maybe his recognition of this that keeps his overtaxed nervous system from ripping his arm away. When he turns to look at him, Barney is carefully not looking back, staring Eli down instead. 

The older man pauses, looks at Gordon, or maybe it's better to say he's looking at the HEV suit, at the huge chunk taken out of the side of it, the rend on the shoulder panel, the rust-red discoloration. Her voice had gone silent with the end of combat but the thrum of morphine still settled along the edge of his vision, a welcoming gossamer blanket that dulled the fact that he had bruised ribs and a dozen or so minor lacerations. A med-pack and a power bank and he'd be good to go, really. The suit though, she had some abuse left in her, but he couldn't deny that the past four days had been rough on the Mark V.

"We are going to need Izzy to take a look at that, maybe machine some new parts." Eli's smile is apologetic and Gordon could scream, how can he look like that, Gordon should be the one apologizing, if he'd been more careful, more prepared, then they wouldn't need this downtime.

He isn't thinking clearly, he knows this somewhat, without a clear objective he was left adrift, unfocused. It's worse than when He had dropped Gordon onto a train with no fucking hope of knowing what the hell was going on. Twenty years, twenty years, and if it hadn't of been for Barney he'd have ended up organic byproduct. 

Four days ago he had watched a Civil Protection officer remove his mask and found himself saved. Today, suddenly dead on his feet, he looks down at Barney and hopes that the imminent panic attack he feels encroaching upon him won't be too bad, even if it is four days late.

He is breathing too fast and his heartbeat is high enough that she's informing him about it, but the HEV suit is unfortunately out of the Make Feel Good Juice and Gordon is all out of helpful neurochemicals. Someone shouts something and Gordon knows it's not him because, well, he's mute. 

When the black comes this time it is not the thick ink of that cosmic stasis, it's all too human and humiliating.

In high school Gordon had two entire friends. One of them was the head of the computer club, which meant the paper-punch-machine club actually, and the other was a quiet kid whose entire personality seemed to be based on being in color guard for JROTC. One day during a pep rally he'd forgotten to keep his knees loose and locked them during the stand at attention part of the presentation, Gordon didn't know what any of these things were actually called, he just knew his friend wound up with a bloody nose when he passed out because of the hypotension. Yet still, five years later, Gordon himself passed out while waiting for a train in Boston.

His head hurt far less when he woke up this time, perhaps because Eli, Barney, and Dog had all been there to catch him instead of the metal post he crashed into in Boston. 

There are a number of hands on him, when he can focus and his flight or fight response isn't lashing out at these helping hands, he realizes he's managed to punch Barney in the jaw and kicked Dog off balance. 

Barney surges forward and pins him down, which is when Gordon goes completely limp anyway due to his relatively short spurt of adrenaline wearing off and the fact that it's Barney Calhoun he just punched and if this man wanted to throttle him he would let him, deserving of it even.  

Instead Barney just holds his chest down with one arm and gently grips Gordon's jaw with the other, forcing Gordon to look at him. This close and he can do nothing else. Barney's eyes have always been interesting but age has highlighted the color differences in his irises. Gordon's vision, while blurry around the edges thanks to the train-tunnel effects of his passing panic attack, is sharply focused on Barney, where Barney is keeping him. 

He was so bad at art growing up but one didn't need to be good at art to know the science behind color. Barney's eyes were both the clearest most summer-day-water blue-green and the deepest autumnal wood. Brown and teal, unreal and so very Barney. There is a word for this condition but Gordon's grasping at straws right now and can't remember it. They're just very unusual eyes and Gordon is quite helplessly falling into them.

"You with me Gordon?" Barney asks him and Gordon nods, or tries to, attempts to, kind of hard with the former guard turned resistance commander still gripping his face but the attempt is all that matters and Barney lets him go.

He's laying on the ground, one of Barney's legs is under him, Eli's hands are on Gordon's own legs. Dog is huge and hovering. Face red from embarrassment now, Gordon pushes up onto his elbows in a reclining position and Barney takes his leg back. 

He forms his hand into a fist and brings it to his chest, moving it in a tight circle around and around. 

"No Gordon, I'm sorry." Eli gently stops his hand, silences him. "We have work to do, but you won't be able to do anything until we get you cleared by a medic and get Izzy to take a look at that suit."

Together they help him up, the HEV suit's finally powered down, but she'd been running on fumes for hours now. Unfortunately this makes his already aching and fatigued muscles scream out from being overtaxed. 

"I've got him, Eli." 

They're in the hallway outside the large hangar that comprises Eli's lab by the time Gordon realizes that he hasn't seen Barney since the train station back in City 17. When had he gotten here? Had he seen Eli die and then Not die, had he seen Alyx just stop existing? Because Gordon fucking hadn't, he'd been blacked out - again.  Was Barney alright himself? Had he just arrived only to have to babysit him?

He spins his index finger around and around in front of himself, he feels drunk, his movements are slow and sluggish. 

Despite Barney actively corralling him down the hall, his eyes are riveted to Gordon's hands.

"When?" He nods and Barney seems to chew over what Gordon is asking, "Oh, just a few hours ago, I barely get settled in and hear about a ruckus, you're constantly causing trouble aren't you?" The tone is teasing, warm, Barney's voice is like a balm, pours right over him like the decadent kiss of morphine without the accompanying very hot sensation in his head. 

Six days, it's only been six days, but for Barney and Eli and -everyone- it's been twenty years. Without the pressing need to run, save Barney from sniper fire, or get shoved into another HEV suit, he is free to realize that an implied twenty year gap is doing absolutely nothing to curb the huge and inconvenient crush he has had on Barney for a year. A year for him at least. The streak of salt in his mostly pepper hair is also doing absolutely nothing to curb this crush either, in fact he would go so far as to consider it made it worse.

Unfortunately free of the effects of morphine, coming down off of a panic attack, and now feeling the full impact of his wounds, Gordon has to admit it's not a crush if you've been in love with someone for a year, that's just pathetic. 

Now a resonance cascade, eldritch abomination cosmic entities Lovecraft couldn't have dreamed up, and a full blown occupation of earth had put Gordon out of the picture for twenty years. It had also caused him to be a near messianic figure to a whole race of alien creatures and the remnants of humanity - something he really didn't want to think about. Luckily when Barney looked at him he seemed to be seeing Gordon in the exact same way he did twenty years ago if the soft smile and warm honey gaze was anything to go by. Bemused, that's what he'd call that particular expression on Barney's face. 

They stop suddenly, Barney bringing them to a halt, which is when Gordon finally looks away from him. They're in a quiet room, maybe a former storage room but now a private bunk. There is a cot up against the back wall, tucked between two mostly full shelving units. A heap of blankets has been dumped on the cot, as well as a number of packs placed on the shelves. There is a basin and a bucket of water for washing, and Gordon can spy some first aid packs and weapon caches amidst the cluttered shelves. 

"I'm going to get you out of this fucking thing and then I'm gonna get you a medic." Barney informs him but Gordon is looking past him to the basin and it's bucket of water.

He puts his hands together and brushes them against one another in a mimicry of washing his hands. Clean.

"I'm sure the medic will know what's best for that."

Gordon, standing still in the center of the room, attention riveted on the bucket of water like it's a lifeline, repeats himself until Barney has to catch his hands - again. 

"Okay!" But there isn't any hostility or exasperation in Barney's tone, no he's laughing instead.  

"Far be it for me to judge a man's aversion to getting seen by the medics when I avoid them myself. We'll get you clean and go from there, that good?"

Gordon nods, and even though he knows he won't make it without Barney's assistance, he heads toward the basin and bucket anyway, grateful when he finds Barney is right there next to him. 

Without the suit's charging station and hydraulic mechanism to quickly and mechanically free him, it is just the combined effort of their four hands and Barney's seemingly infinite patience to remove the thing. But even patience alone didn't account for how Barney seemed to know where the clasps and mechanisms were. Gordon is reminded that it was Barney who had gotten him 'into' the suit or showed him to it four days ago. These thoughts prove to be fruitless, without purpose, as the pieces of the very abused HEV suit are removed and the jumpsuit beneath them is revealed as are the injuries Gordon has sustained, the bandages he'd hastily applied in stolen moments of down time on his own or with Alyx's help. Barney pauses, the chest plate removed as well as the shoulder guards, and he seems to just stare at Gordon.

The last twenty years loom between them again, Gordon can't read his expression so carefully tooled to be neutral and blank, not the Barney whose emotions he wore plain for everyone to see unless it was poker night. There is a scar high on his left cheek, a number of smaller ones all over - and these are just the ones Gordon can see on his face.

"Oh Gordon, what happened to you?" There is such soft sorrow in Barney's words and when the man puts his hand to Gordon's cheek, he is helpless to keep himself from turning his face into the touch, closing his eyes and pressing his cheek and jaw into that gloved palm with all of his touch-starved needy heart. Barney's touch is no longer precise and perfunctory, it is gentle, when he draws his hand away Gordon almost chases it but manages to catch himself before he can further his own humiliation. Something has shifted between them and Barney won't let his slipping hands help anymore, just keeps batting them away, finally Barney grins up at him, "I've got you." He repeats what he told Eli but now it's completely different, personal and soft, just the two of them, "So stop makin' my job harder and just let me work."

Gordon lets him work, when he sways on his feet Barney steadies him. When he leans into him Barney catches him. The rest of the suit joins the other sections on the ground. When it's just the bloodied jumpsuit and Gordon's socked feet on the cold concrete, Barney's hands still.

A week ago and this fantasy would have played out differently, for one he wouldn't be riddled with defensive wounds and have obvious trauma, but also Barney wouldn't be looking at him with that mixture of soft worry and likely muted fury. He actually didn't know what Barney's aroused face looked like so his fantasies had always been a little body focused anyway but definitely no fury or worry in any of them. Barney's hand goes to his injured side, gentle against the tattered jumpsuit and the bandages. It's all dirty with blood and whatever else Gordon had been thrown into out there. 

"Darlin' I'm gonna have to get you out of this."

Gordon nods, dumbly, hung up on the first word. 

Barney's hands are so gentle and Gordon reels under their good works, he can't track where they are going only where they've been, the slow way they move, there is no predictive model here to tell him where to brace himself for kindness next. Actually seeing the mottled mess of his own skin  through the rends in the jumpsuit is an experience that knocks him right out of his body entirely. 

Where A and B are a pair of operators, with A representing speed and B representing placement - Gordon is a lone man set on a trajectory in the universe he has no hope of comprehending or tracking, the speed with which he has been traveling has slowed to a stop and yet he still feels as if he is going too fast. His body at stand still thrums with an energy he is powerless against and every time Barney's hands track against baring skin his pulse jumps. He cannot predict where he will be in a day, an hour, a minute, he is lost in this second, that drags and drags as Barney's eyes glance up to meet his face, undoing the line of velcro all the way down Gordon's chest and lower still. His head spins and he has to reach out to brace himself against Barney's firm padded shoulder, thick and strong.

He is adrift in a complex dimensional space that tracks over multiple planes of reality, his wavelength has resonated at a frequency that no one else on Earth has and yet he is still so uncertain of his place. Not too surprising when the equation clearly states that you might know how fast you're going but never where you are at the same time. Just usually it was on the quantum level, not one man against a time-space anomaly. His speed and location operators are held up between two brackets, and within those brackets are the estimated answers to his questions, yet if he's standing still how can he hope to theorize where he'll be next?

Where he'll be next is shivering in this bunk he's realizing is probably the one Barney claimed to stow his gear in, with the door shut and a man he has been attracted to for the longest time slowly undressing him. Logic states the probability that his next place will be embarrassing the ever loving shit out of himself but somehow, somehow he doesn't make a noise when Barney slides the jumpsuit down from his abused shoulders and down, down, till the man's hands are sliding over his hips and drawing the dirty green cloth past them. He doesn't move to grab onto him, to press his body into Barney's and just feel him, to test the strength hiding beneath the layers of his Civil Protection uniform. He does go very limp when Barney manhandles him to lean against the wall though. 

All predictive models and the familiar Robertson-Schrodinger equation fall to the wayside when Barney strips his thick gloves off. Gordon watches the man's steady movements, the slow curve of his familiar smile despite time and distance. He could never hope to apply the uncertainty equation when all higher functioning is gone. He is no longer out of his body, he is in it, very much in it. Barney's hands are warm from the confines of his gloves, gentle as they tackle the bandages scattered on Gordon's now scrawny form out of the bulk of the HEV suit's flattering lines. 

"You okay there, Gord? Look like you're about to be knocked over by a stiff wind." 

He gives Barney a thumbs up. 

Yeah, really okay, super duper okay. Barney's hands feel like fucking rapture. Warm and lightly callused, strong firm grip when they move Gordon's body every which way. Unwinding bandages that have clearly served their purpose, some of them stick and Barney apologizes under his breath, muttered words and quick movements. Gordon only vaguely registers the pain, it cannot hope to touch the surface of pleasure just having Barney's hands against him is causing.

He reaches out to brace himself against the basin's counter top, hip cocked under Barney's hand momentarily, Gordon tries to swallow around the thick lump in his throat. Warm hand skids up his side, bloody bandage that wraps across half his chest. Barney unravels it the same as he'd done the one on Gordon's right leg and his left arm, careful and quick. Dirty wounds and sepsis waiting to set in.

But despite the severity Barney doesn't dump him on the nearest medic, he holds to his word instead and brings the bucket of water up to the counter. A rag is fetched from somewhere and then Barney is cleaning him. Gordon would be more embarrassed about this if it were not for the fact that he only has one arm as the other is bracing him up to keep him from sliding to the floor as the HEV suit's power system isn't holding him up and pumping him with Go Juice. 

Barney gives him a little grin, holding Gordon's abused arm over the basin to catch the blood-grit water as it drips off of him, "You're in pretty good shape for a man of science."

Gordon snorts his bemusement and gives Barney a look over his glasses. Barney would fucking know, he'd helped Gordon train for the months of HEV suit preparation after all. He worries for a second then, has it been that long, has Barney forgotten that much in the years Gordon has been absent.

His fears are laid to rest instantly, "Remember when you couldn't even run a full mile?" 

Yeah, and look at him now. Well not right now, as he looks nothing like the implied messianic figure he's meant to be, but rather look at him a few hours ago. When Alyx was still there, making bad puns and cheering Gordon on, when she wasn't somewhere, in some place unknown and unfathomable and most of all not here. What would have been the next point of reference for them, where would they be right now if she'd remained? Did this count as time travel? 

I feel like all I have done is run for six days.

Barney pauses, while Gordon had managed to explain his ageless appearance to Alyx, the rest of his old friends and colleagues weren't as in the know. "Six days?" Barney marvels, hanging there like a DOS box trying it's best to load badly written code, "It's been twenty years, six days?" Barney's voice is husked and worn when he repeats himself and he lets Gordon's now clean arm drop gently back down.

Gordon nods, Stasis, no time passed for me mentally or physically between the Resonance Cascade and you intercepting me.

"Fuck Gordon." Barney reaches up, takes his face in the slightly damp palm of his hand, holds him there and really seems to look at him. "Kind of thought you just aged really damn well, it was hard enough to believe the 'gaunts when they went on about you saving them, didn't... I didn't realize, something like this could happen."

Gordon has nothing else of substance to offer Barney to explain it. It would take far more research and model running to even begin to formulate a working theory about what the fuck He was in his plain grey suit and stilted speech. He figured in the coming days he'd have time to do that, now that it was Alyx who had been taken. Now that there was someone on the outside who knew.

What took Alyx, is what took me.

Eli had some understanding of this entity, he didn't know how, but he was certain he'd find that out soon too, just as soon as his fragile worthless body would let him. 

Barney is still touching his face, still half holding him, when he finally notices he seems to come to his senses and applies himself back to the task of cleaning off dried blood and other muck. Gordon would miss the contact if it had not just moved onward to other parts of him. There are more cuts on him than there is water in the bucket but Barney focuses his attention on the worst of it. Barney's touch lingers on the surface of his skin even after he has moved his hand away, a burning path of warmth and water. Gordon realizes he doesn't want to go anywhere right now, he doesn't want to think of tomorrow or an hour away, he wants this moment to last. 

He can breathe, painful but he can breathe and he is finally still. The Combine awaits, there is no knowing where Alyx is, how much time they have, but right now in this moment he can push down the guilt and allow himself the desire to remain here in this place with Barney eternally. The stroke of a familiar hand, the warm presence of someone who cares about him, the gentle teal-brown heat of his friend's gaze. 

"You're back with us now and damned if I'll just sit around and let some kind of creature put you in a box for another twenty years. I've got you." 

Gordon wonders how badly he's going to end up hung up on Barney's new mantra of, 'I've got you.' Trick question, he's already hung up on everything Barney.