Gordon blinked. His vision was foggy, but he could feel that his glasses remained on his face. His head throbbed; he could feel the burn of an open wound above his left ear.

"DAD! No! Dad… please, don't leave me." Alyx was shouting, but her voice sounded miles away.

Gordon could almost see her now; a blurry figure lay below her. Her whole body was shaking. Then the memory flooded back to him. Eli. Gordon's chest tightened and the throbbing in his head amplified. He frantically tried to lift his head to look at her; he lifted is arm up in weak protest.

"Oh my god, Dad…"

His vision started to fade. His arm flopped limply to his side.

"No…"

Everything went black.

"Dad…"

Suddenly, he saw light. It was red. It took him a second to release that he was seeing a bright light through his eyelids. Cautiously, he attempted to open them. His eyes stung from the sudden shock and he threw his arm over his face. His glasses were gone.

'I must be in the infirmary…' he thought. But the room was completely silent.

Shyly, he opened his eyes again and tried to look around. He was in a small, sparsely furnished room, and a beam of light was pouring in from what must have been a small window. He looked next to the bed and could see the faint outline of his black rimmed frames on a small bedside table. He grabbed them and quickly put them on, the room suddenly became clear. He quickly sat up on the small bed. A pulse of pain rushed to his left temple and he immediately fell back down with a groan. Then he heard footsteps softly coming down the hallway. There was a small knock on his door. Without waiting for him to respond his guest entered the room.

"Gordon! You're awake!" Dr. Kleiner exclaimed.

Gordon mumbled in recognition.

"Well thank god you're alright, we thought that head injury you got there could have had you knocked out for much longer than just 24 hours. Alyx will be so grateful that you're alright."

The memory came back to him again.

"Oh god…" he whispered, slowly coming up to rest on one of his elbows.

"Yes, indeed. You are very lucky to be alive. I wish I could say the same for poor Eli... My dear friend…" he sighed, "Well, Gordon, how are you feeling? The medics have been checking up on you every once in a while. But they have so many people bleeding out in the infirmary from yesterday's battle with the strider's that they had no choice but to move you here. They thought the best they could do was to wait and see how you were doing when you woke up. And luckily, you seem to be doing quite well! I'll let you be now, though, I'm sure you will want to rest for a bit longer. And I should really go tell Alyx you're alright. She's sleeping now. She had been sitting in here with you for hours. You're the only person she wanted to be with after what happened to poor Eli, conscious or not. Well, Gordon, I am pleased to see that you're alright." Dr. Kleiner nodded and him and then left the room.

As Kleiner left the room, Gordon sat up so he could take a better look at himself. He was wearing fresh clothes, a white shirt and some soft blue pants that looked like they could have been medical scrubs. His HEV suit was nowhere in sight. He slowly lifted his hand to his head. There was a large swatch of gauze across his forehead. He lightly felt over the spot where his head had made contact with the concrete the day before. The area seemed tender, but alright. He poked at the bandage, it was slightly damp. He looked at the blood on his fingers and rubbed it away with his thumb. Idly, he thought of how much blood he had lost. He imagined it must be a significant amount, but he didn't feel too light headed. His head hurt, but he only felt weak from sleep not from the loss of blood. He smiled to himself sheepishly; he had gotten a lot tougher since that first day he stepped off the train in City 17…

As he thought to himself, he heard an explosive pounding of feet running down the hallway. In only a few seconds the door flew open and Alyx was staring down at him.

"Gordon!" she exclaimed. She was still wearing the same clothes from the day before and there was some red residue on her sleeve. Gordon recognized that it much have been some of Eli's blood. He tried not to look at it as she walked into the room.

"Oh Gordon, your bandage needs to be changed." She hurried over to the bedside table and began looking for more gauze in its drawer. Gordon sat up and planted his feet on the ground as Alyx gingerly began to unwrap his head. Gordon looked up at her intently as she worked, but she silently refused to look at him.

"Well, It could be worse… let me just fix you up.", she spoke in a way that sounded like she was talking to herself out loud.

She continued to avoid his gaze as she carefully padded the wound and then securely wrapped a thin strip of gauze around his head. When she was done, she absentmindedly fluffed the hair poking out at strange angles near the wrapped gauze. She continued to avoid his eyes.

"There you are." Alyx whispered and she turned and tossed the old bandage into a trashcan near the door. She paused, her back was too him. She sighed.

"Gordon… I thought I had lost you, too." She cooed as she turned around and came to sit down next to him on the edge of the bed.

She smiled at him, but her eyes seemed to be somewhere else. She looked at the floor. Gordon reached out an arm, slowly, cautiously edging its way towards her sunken shoulders.

He had never been very good at comforting people. Usually he sort of faded away into the background whenever somebody became emotional. That's probably one of the reasons he had such a reputation of being stoic to the point of almost being cold. He was not free of empathy, but he had never had such a strong urge to reach out to another person as he did with Alyx. He longed to help her.

After what seemed to him like centuries, his hand finally rested lightly on her shoulder. Her breath choked up in her throat but he could see that she was trying to keep her composure. Unsure what to do next, he slowly brought his hand down from her shoulder to her mid back and then awkwardly brought it back up again. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply; he could see the area around her eyes was wet. She sighed and her eyes remained closed. His heart ached as he looked at her.

He ran his hand uneasily down her entire back this time and then back up again. She remained still. As he gained confidence in touching her, although it was not the first time it seemed that way to him, he obtained some sort of rhythm and began to stroke her back smoothly. After a minute or two, he could see her begin to loosen up a little. She became less stiff and let her head hang down weakly. She remained silent as Gordon watched the tears begin to fall down from her face and onto her jeans.

Gordon looked at the floor, his head was hurting again and his chest felt tight. Alyx was not the only one deeply affected by the loss of Eli. As he became lost in thought, he absentmindedly rested his hand on her waist.

"Gordon." She whispered.

He blinked, suddenly shaken out of his thoughts. He looked at her.

She was staring at him with red, puffy eyes. Her face was wet from her tears and her mouth was open as she let out a few small, ragged breaths.

Gordon brought a shaky hand up to her face and wiped some of the wetness away with his thumb. Alyx let out a strange noise, half laughter and half sob as she blinked back more tears. Gordon smiled at her timidly. In an instant, she toppled over on top of him. Gordon's eyes flew wide open as the tear soaked and salty mouth of Alyx Vance met his.

The shock wore off after only a few seconds as Alyx fiercely kissed him. Her kisses were hard against his lips and he could feel the hairs of his goatee scratching against her skin. Gordon could sense the desperation in her and tried to catch up, but his head was swimming. Alyx was kissing him. Alyx.

They had been companions for some time now, and everyone had assumed that they were together, but Gordon was always a little skeptical. Sure, everyone thought of him as a hero, The One Free Man. But he didn't feel that way. From his point of view he was just a man who had been extremely lucky and happened to be in the right place at the right time. Underneath his HEV suit, he was just a nerdy physicist. Surely, Alyx deserved a real hero, a real fighter for the resistance… Not him… Alyx was so fearless and determined…

'and pretty… sooo pretty…' he thought.

Gordon leaned back carefully, pulling Alyx towards him. She dug her fingers into his hair and pulled at it roughly while Gordon's hands fumbled clumsily around her waist. He slid his hands under her clothes and rubbed the skin on her back as she slipped her tongue inside his mouth. He could feel the slight indentations in her back from where she had been stabbed by the hunter as he moved his hands up to rest on her sides. She pulled back from him and tore off her jacket. Then she immediately grabbed his shirt and began trying to pull it off of him. Baffled by the speed at which this encounter was progressing, Gordon let her do it. Then she quickly unzipped her sweatshirt revealing just her bra underneath. Without so much as a pause or a word her mouth was on his again.

Gordon was reeling. All the bashful feelings that he had about himself and feeling like he did not deserve his hero status or the beautiful woman straddling his lap were slowly fading away. A fire was lit in him. He pushed her away from him just long enough to take his glasses off and then he leaned deeply into her.

Gordon brought his hands up to Alyx's face. He could feel the excitement building in his chest as he heard her breath become faster and blend with his own. He ran his fingers in her hair with one hand while the other moved downwards and began pulling the sleeve of her sweatshirt down. She slowed the movements of her mouth to match his and grinded up against his chest as he pulled the sweatshirt off her. She ran her hands over his shoulders and chest as he slowly moved his hands down to her hips. She moved her mouth to his neck. Gordon let out a small groan and squeezed her thighs.

He began to move his hands to work at the clasp of her jeans. When she felt his hand graze her stomach her hand flew like lightning to stop him. She pulled back and looked at him. Gordon looked back, confused at the sudden change in the mood, especially because Alyx had initiated the encounter.

"Ah…" she moaned in exasperation, "I can't do this!"

Gordon grabbed his glasses off the table and returned them to his face.

"Gordon! I-I can't. I don't know what to do," her voice cracked, "My father…".

Her face scrunched up into a painful grimace and she dropped herself down onto Gordon's chest. Gordon wrapped his arms around her instinctively and held her. He looked around the room. It must have been late afternoon when he woke up, perfect timing for the late day sun to shine through the narrow rectangular window. It had gotten darker now; the blinding light that he had woken up to had faded away. He rested his chin on the top of her head and closed his eyes, only hearing the staccato of Alyx's sobbing on chest as the room faded to blue.