For some reason Alyx couldn't sleep. It had been an exhausting day, too, with more zombie guts than she would have liked. She moved onto her back and stared at the foreboding concrete ceiling. The humming fluorescent lights of the White Forest laboratories could be heard all the way across the compound in the dormitories. It was always like that, since she was a kid. She attempted to distract herself by biting her nails.
Alyx didn't want to be awake. The nights always brought up memories of the past, digging deep like a grave. And memories could be fine for a while, until you get to the point to where they end. She drew her hand from her mouth and stared at her fingernails, already falling victim to another time passed.
"Do pink!"
"Aw, seriously?"
"Trust me, it will look adorable on you!"
Well, Rosie was always right.
Alyx watched as her friend delicately painted her outstretched fingertips. Despite her chubby fingers, and chubby everything, Rosie could have performed brain surgery with finesse. The medics would have a fine addition- that is if Alyx could get Rosie to study for once.
"You need to be more in touch with your feminine side," Rosie finally said, standing back from her finished work.
Alyx shifted her weight on the mattress and farted.
Rosie rolled her eyes, screwing the lid of the nail polish back on with short flicks of her wrist. Her bracelets chimed together from the motion.
"Hey," Rosie began. "All I'm saying is just because you're a tomboy doesn't mean you can't be both!"
"And just because you're a prissy miss doesn't mean you can't go exploring with me and Dog sometime."
"Ich, no thanks," Rosie said, wiping a corkscrew hair out of her face as she placed the nail polish back on the shelf Alyx had made just for her friend's cosmetics. "You know I hate barnacles."
Somewhere in White Forest a bang erupted and shook the concrete walls. This was normal, as long as Kleiner was in the base. No sooner than the tremor subsided a poster fell, sliding behind Rosie's bed.
"Ah, no you don't!" Rosie exclaimed, jumping out and landing on her belly to snatch it before it was completely submerged. "Alyx, hand me the roll of tape, will you?"
The poster was taken from the streets of City 17, unlike most of the pop culture magazine fold-outs currently stuck to the walls, salvaged from a time before the Seven Hour War. Upon it bespectacled, bearded man stood tall with a halo of orange rays shining out from his crown, matching the hazard suit Alyx was all too familiar with. Above him, bolded lettering declared the words: FREE MAN. A commandment. And also his name.
Once she taped it back up, Rosie sat back on her calves in admiration.
"God, he's a such hottie," she sighed. "I want him to rub his beard all over my body."
"Uhh, isn't he in his forties now?" Alyx reminded.
Rosie pouted her full lips. "No! He's only thirty-six. That's fine by me. And like literally every everyone else."
At this Alyx scoffed, blowing on her wet nails. "He's waaay too old for us."
"Hey, you know what? My mom absolutely loved George Clooney, even though he was like a dinosaur when she was alive."
"Somehow, I'm glad I don't know who that is," Alyx said.
"Girl, you don't know anything about pop culture, do you?" Rosie asked, gesturing to the faces of other celebrities that dotted the walls. "It's a part of human heritage! There's so many magazines about it."
"Oh, I know," Alyx said, grin playing across her face. "I use the pages make tarps when I work in the scrapyard."
The bracelets clack together again as Rosie waggles a finger at her. "Sassy little Alyx, how can you hope to get a date?"
"Maybe I'm not hoping," Alyx said as she watched the digit dance across her vision. "I don't have to go out with anyone."
This got an annoyed huff from her friend, but a sad understanding lied in her eyes. "Yeah, I get it," Rosie resigned. "Where are you going to go for a date, right, the Wasteland?"
Alyx chuckled a bit.
"Heck, Gordon can take me anywhere and it would still be magical."
"Oh, not this again," Alyx groaned, falling on her back.
"Ok, I gotta ask, What don't you like about him?"
"I don't hate him," Alyx said and punctuated with a open palm. "I just don't have some weird obsession with him like everyone else does. I knew him as a kid, in Black Mesa. He's just a normal guy."
Rosie smiled hugely, grasping a pillow close to her chest. "So, you think he's attractive, right? You never said anything against that."
Alyx turned red, her eyes wide and disapproving as she pursed her lips.
Rosie was always right.
Her friend squealed, burying her face in her pillow. Curly hair jumped about as if trying to escape from the smothering.
"He's too old for us, Rosie." The pillow thumped in Alyx's face in response.
"Just you wait, when he rises again-"
"You make it sound like he's Jesus," Alyx said as she chucked the pillow across the room.
"Hey, if he grew out his beard and hair, he might as well be," Rosie said, still playing with her own locks. "Maybe I can braid it!"
"Everyday I spend with you I become more and more sick of him."
"I'm going to laugh at you when the One Free Man returns and you'll be wetting your panties at the sheer sight of him."
"By the time he arrives, he's going to be a geezer," Alyx said. "So I seriously doubt that."
Suddenly, Rosie pulled Alyx upright and clutched her face, in fake seriousness.
"He's probably going to fall for you, you know," Rosie teased, mischievous smile wide on her face. "In the future you'll be the Woman of the Resistance, The Daughter of the Great Eli Vance, a Badass Bodacious Babe. It's only natural the two leaders of the Resistance to fall hopelessly in love, aww."
Alyx batted away the chubby hands. "Well, even then, I'm pretty sure The Opener of the Way won't have the time to sleep around."
"You mean the Opener of MY Way, hubba hubba!" Rosie moved over to the poster and kissed the crotch of the HEV suit.
"I've been in that thing you know," Alyx reminded.
"Your genitals have touched the same place between time and space; a true love story." Rosie shook her head dramatically, fanning her face as if brought to tears.
"Rosie, I swear to God."
"I bet it smells like him."
"It smells like shit."
"That is musk, my dear Alyx." Rosie said poignantly and grasped her friend by her shoulders as if she was a superior. "When you have lied with man you too shall know this potent aroma of love."
"I'm sure you're the expert on sleeping with people," Alyx said, knowing full well that they were virgin sixteen-year-olds fawning over impossible crushes. Not to mention living in a world that abhorred and numbed their desires.
"Oh, I've come close to reeling in someone." Rosie said with a smirk and a wink. "Ben Yannings? He was staring at me the other day, you know. What does a girl have to do to get a break around here?"
But Rosie never did find love. Rosie became a Stalker.
Alyx was awoken from her reverie by a murmur at her side. She glanced over to the young man, no older than her, lying beside her. Through the dark she could just make out the worried lines etched on his forehead as he slept. As she brought the back of her hand against his stubbly cheek, Gordon Freeman relaxed.
Alyx sighed.
Rosie was always right.