Chapter Text
The walls of Black Mesa were still splattered with the blood of people Gordon had helped kill. It was as if the entirety of the facility had turned into a giant Rorschach inkblot test with gore as the paint. Even the ceiling had splatters, occasionally. The Resonance Cascade had taken care of a majority of all human life on this level. Human-shaped smeared dotted the entrance of the facility at about the right placement of human habitation. It reminded Gordon of those pictures of Hiroshima after the bombing, where individuals had been atomized into a forever reminder on the pavement.
Everything remained untouched. Abandoned desktops were left offline with hardly a rolling chair out of place. It’s as if the facility was paused at the last second Gordon had seen it. A disquieting thought reached him from behind his veneer of tourist-like interest: the bodies were missing. The cleanup of Black Mesa’s incident had already begun.
When his Black Mesa mandated therapist said that he was going to relive trauma, Gordon didn’t think he meant it literally. The nightmares had been expected, although an entirely unwelcomed element into Gordon’s insomniac sleep schedule. He couldn’t remember his hour commute to the Black Mesa compound from his rented house. Too many mornings blurred together to pull a clear image together for this particular instance. Repetitious familiarity pulled unrelated variables together to excuse the gaps. It explained away how he passed through the security checkpoint, if there was even one at all.
It finally all came rushing back to Gordon when he entered into the locker room. Somehow, he had managed to wander, wraithlike, through the entrance. He had moved with the kind of mindless surety born only through years’ worth of routine. His knees buckled underneath him and he stumbled over to the benches. Sweat and warmth were suddenly present on his mind. The HEV suit all too snug against his skin, baking him from the inside out. The almost dead battery blinked light against the floor. It was his suit exactly. The suit that had taken him through this damned facility. Where he had acquired the suit, much less had the time and ability to put it on pulled up blank in his mind. It was as if he had never left it in the first place.
He warbled a panicked “what the fuuuck”, triggering his breathing to spike. Hysterics claw at the corner of his mind and find purchase in the shadowy crevasses he had once thought he illuminated. He had to force himself to practice his therapist’s advice. His name was Gordon Freeman. He was 27—almost 28—and he was somehow inside of the Black Mesa facility with no memories of how he even got there. It didn’t calm him down, but practice made better. His eyes skimmed over the locker room again. Everything was exactly the way Gordon remembered it.
It had been a month since… Since Benry happened. A month since Gordon and the Science Team™ escaped out into the New Mexico wilderness a few miles out from the facility itself. All that time and Black Mesa had only bothered to remove the bodies. The nametag on the lockers were all the same still, a small detail that Gordon found inexplicably infuriating. Dr. Coomer’s, Dr. Bubby’s, and Tommy’s lockers stared back at Gordon. His own locker was still there, of course, although it was open from the process of destroying his Passport. The photo of Joshua was taped to the inside of the locker. A bit shit, he remembered Benry calling it.
With a moment’s hesitation Gordon pushed himself back up to his feet and moved over to his locker. It’s was a good photo of Joshua, despite what Benry had said. The picture had been put up years ago, when Gordon had first started working at the facility. He reached out with an unsteady hand and pulled it down. The action felt sacrilegious.
Gordon had been trying to move on from the events of Black Mesa since they were free, but when presented with a very physical manifestation of that progression he couldn’t seem to swallow the bitter pill. Nothing else in his locker had held much in the way of sentimental value. A copy of his high school diploma seemed a bit trite when he had the original at home. Nothing here was worth coming back for. Nothing except for the photo, maybe.
He took a step back and tried Dr. Bubby’s locker. Locked. As was Tommy’s and Dr. Coomer’s. An expected, but ultimately disappointing outcome.
Notes of a song had suddenly rose into the air. They were high pitched, melodic, and almost comforting. It pulled Gordon’s attention away from staring absently at the handle of Dr. Coomer’s locker. His adrenaline spiked and Gordon reached for a gun he didn’t have holstered anymore. He knew what it was, but logically he couldn’t process the idea of someone being in Black Mesa with the Sweet Voice. Movement in the corner of his eye was enough to convince Gordon to get the fuck out of here.
He sprinted full tilt back towards the entrance, breath coming in ragged pants within the first few seconds. The initial spook had done more to his heartrate than he had thought. A part of Gordon desperately wanted to look back. To see whatever it was fully. Somehow, though, he knew it’d shake his already tentative grip on reality. Whatever he would see would weaken the chains he was using to cling to normalcy.
Another burst of Sweet Voice reached his ears just as he crossed the threshold outside, and he risked a look back. A large risk for so little reward. Just a glimpse of dark navy blue against ghastly pale. Familiar. Haunting. Benry.
***
A week later Gordon woke up to Sunkist excitedly leaping off of the sofa and barking at the sliding glass doors of the back yard. It was starting to become an ingrained part of Gordon’s day, enough that his could set his clock by it. He couldn’t remember what he was dreaming about but with the amount of sweat gathered at the back of his neck he’s pretty sure he should be thankful for his routine. He looked over towards the source of Sunkist’s excitement and saw Tommy latch the gate behind himself, dressed in a lab coat and waving. Right on time.
A lazy wave was given back before he pushed himself up from the sofa, shuffling over to the sliding doors where Sunkist was excitedly sweeping the floor for him with his tail. Gordon unlocked it and pushed the door aside, almost being knocked off his feet as the dog turned into a projectile.
“Oh, Sunkist!”
Tommy’s voice rung out through the back yard, becoming muffled as he scooped up the giant golden lab. It was incredible to see the casual strength that Tommy possessed firsthand. Gordon had tried to pick up the dog a few times and nearly threw out his back. Sunkist had to weigh at least 150 pounds. “Thank you for watching Sunkist for me, Mr. Freeman. He doesn’t like to be left alone at home.”
It was hard to fight off the lazy smile that came to his face. Tommy was always a breath of fresh air. That constantly upbeat attitude and politeness never failed to smooth out some of Gordon’s rougher edges. He was the only one of the Science Team™ that Gordon could honestly say made him smile without any effort.
“No problem, Tommy. What have you and your dad been working on anyways?”
That was the wrong question to ask, apparently. Tommy’s eyes avoided his and he shifted his weight, letting the silence hang.
“Well we uh- uhm, we need to fix the server rooms for Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. It’s a lot, Mr. Freeman.”
Oh. So, Tommy was part of the team that was fixing Black Mesa. Gordon was sure that with the amount of deaths involved the whole thing would’ve been scrapped. Another facility abandoned for those urban explorer types to make their sweet, sweet YouTube money off of. That would be the much more preferable alternative, in Gordon’s opinion. Too many good people had died for no reason in that place. The entirety of the United States’ military as well, according to Dr. Coomer.
“Well, let me know if you want any help with that.”
It was an entirely disingenuous offer, but Gordon was otherwise lost for words. If he never saw Black Mesa again it’d be too soon. It showed up often enough in his nightmares anyway. He understood that Black Mesa was everything to Tommy, though. Wikipedia’s sever rooms were an important source of information and apparently Tommy had read all of it. Gordon couldn’t blame the other man for missing it. Sometimes he found himself wishing for the repetitive monochrome of his work life before the Cascade.
Tommy shifted his weight, adjusting Sunkist who seemed more than happy to be held like a literal baby. That was enough to break Gordon out of his awkward introspection.
“Okay, Mr. Freeman. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Gordon shadowed Tommy as he left, closing the gate behind him. His own inability to keep up a dialogue brought bile up in his throat. Tommy was the easiest to talk to and yet here he was, utterly incompetent. He rubbed his face with a hand, resolving to open up to his therapist more about this new development.
***
His breath fogged against the HEV suit’s glass visor, obscuring his vision. Every muscle in his body burned with exertion. The tension in his body made him feel taut like a bow string. It was a bone-deep exhaustion he had once gotten used to. He couldn’t remember what was running towards or running from, just that his legs needed to keep moving. That he needed to keep moving forward or he would die. The surroundings reminded him of Xen; greying alien landscapes and the expanse of space in the backdrop. Except there’s so much viscera. Pools of blood and gore sucked at his feet like quicksand and he was constantly pulling himself from near falls. The constant close encounters would have scraped his palms bloody if he wasn’t wearing the suit.
It was just another nightmare. Gordon knew that, somewhere in the back of his consciousness. The cloistering fear and rabbit-time thump of his heartbeat didn’t benefit from the knowledge, however. He figured the nightmares would be more manageable. That they would cut the same place over and over again until they lost their edge by dulling against bone. He had never been that lucky. It was never the same memory twice, if it was even a memory at all.
When he didn’t relive the twist of the knife severing tendons and exposing joints to the recycled air of the facility, his mind played tricks on him like this. When he wasn’t crushed into a corner by the Coomer clones as they clawed at the open spot in his suit, he ran through corridors of his own creations from monsters he made for himself.
Right now Gordon was viscerally aware of the fact that was being hunted. Toyed with. The lack of bullets peppering his HEV suit and the surrounding landscape led him towards an exasperating conclusion. This was another nightmare about Benry. Gordon’s consciousness, and apparent unconsciousness, couldn’t get enough of him. As if his sudden reappearance in real life wasn’t enough.
He wrestled just enough control over his legs to stop, stumbling to a graceless halt. Maintaining just enough control, Gordon whipped around to face the thing chasing him. Only to be greeted by empty air. His chest was heaving from the effort and his eyes darted around the confines of the room he was in. Cavernous walls of dubious structural integrity loomed over him. Benry rarely manifested in his dreams, just the consequences of his actions. It didn’t lessen the feeling of being watched.
“Benry!” Gordon’s voice echoed without a response. When it died down to nothing he tried again, undeterred. “Benry you motherfucker, I know you’re there. Come the fuck out!”
That seemed to do it. The world around him shook and began to crumble, falling into literal nothingness. Not even the star and nebula-speckled sky. Just inky void. Gordon took a hesitant step back; fear being replaced with confusion. Another step back and he had almost prepared to turn back around and run. Whatever the void encroaching on his dreams was, it couldn’t be good. Gordon felt icy cold hands on his shoulders, his plans to escape cut short. That was impossible. He was in the suit. He could feel the gloves against his palms. All thoughts were scattered to the wind when he heard that voice, monotone and smug.
“Looks like you’ve gotten yourself lost, haven’tcha’ Feetman?”
Gordon Freeman awoke in a cold sweat, the back of his neck plastered with a greasy mix of his own sweat and hair. His chest was heaving. The duvet was a comforting weight against him even if he couldn’t see his surroundings. He was home. He was safe. Neither of those ideas persuade him back to sleep.