Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who. Or Half-Life, for that matter.
Limitless Potential
Amy strode after the Doctor with her usual confidence, leaving Rory to follow on, trying to peer around her head at what exactly the Time Lord was doing at the door. They had just been off to see some giant egg in a random corner of the universe that hatched and then closed again. The Doctor had said 'So really, the chicken and the egg were first!' and then got moody when no-one laughed. They hadn't even known it was a joke.
His mood had, predictably, improved when the TARDIS suddenly jolted from side to side, nearly throwing Amy off the balcony before Rory caught her. Without even saying anything, the Doctor had sprinted - properly sprinted, no weird quirks or anything - to the doors, and ripped them open, sticking his head out.
Amy put her hands on the Doctor's shoulders as she tried to look over his head. He whirled around on the spot and stood on tiptoes to block her view.
"No, none of that, not for you!" he announced, his tone reminding Rory of his dad trying to stop him looking at certain magazines when he was younger.
"What?" Amy scoffed, not used to the word 'no'. She moved up and down and to the sides to try and see outside, each time blocked by the Doctor's sizeable head. "Why?"
"It's not supposed to exist."
"…but is does exist. Because we're here."
"Yes, and," he said breathlessly, finally slamming the door shut with his leg, "that's why we need to go." The Doctor sped past them both and to the console. "Got here by accident, so now we should just apologise, tidy up, and-"
But Amy was gone.
Rory looked at the Doctor. "Yeah, never leave the door unlocked."
His eyes up so high they could have rolled up into his head, the Doctor sighed. "Yeah…"
Worried about Amy (and yeah, pretty excited too), Rory pointed a thumb towards the doors. "So we should, uh…"
"Yes, yes," the Doctor said resignedly, strolling over and walking through the doors with him. "But not too long, we're doing bad stuff to all of existence just by being here."
"Yeah, but Doctor…" Amy said from outside, her voice echoing. "There's nothing out here."
There really wasn't. It was just… blackness, everywhere. And yet they were standing, and the TARDIS was resting, on some kind of ground. Rory bent to the side and poked the floor. It felt solid, cool and smooth like glass, just without the resistance or the squeaky feeling. What was more, Rory could see Amy and the Doctor and TARDIS, and yet there was no light. Like they were paintings on a black canvas.
"Exactly," the Doctor said, wagging a finger at her as he walked over. "There's nothing. It's a no-place. Doesn't exist. And yet, it does. Impossible. I love it, it's great, but it's also very dangerous, so we should really go now."
"Hang on." Amy was frowning at something behind Rory and the TARDIS. "What's that?"
Leaving a frustrated Doctor tromping behind, Amy walked past Rory, who followed diligently. It would take a lot more than some impossible no-place to stop him following Amy now.
"Who… is that?" she asked, sounding impressed.
"Oh," the Doctor cooed, grinning and studying the man stood in front of them.
Rory sidestepped around the Doctor, leaving the Time Lord between himself and Amy. They were studying a man, frozen in place, like a toy soldier. He was about their age, maybe a little older. A weird space suit was wrapped around him, covered in orange armour plating and a Latin symbol plastered on the chest. He wore thick, black-rimmed glasses, at odds with the goatee. Rory stroked his chin contemplatively.
"Don't even think about it," Amy warned. "Already seen you with a ponytail, that's more than enough."
"You said you liked it in the end."
"Yeah, after you cut it off."
He gaped. Before he could think of any words to match his shock, the Doctor chuckled to himself, skipping around the man with glee. "Oh-ho-ho, this is brilliant! Look at him! He's here! Being all… here and full of… here-ness!"
Rory scratched his cheek. "Sorry, who is he?"
"Who is he?" the Doctor scolded, aghast. "Who is he? He is one of the most important events in the history of… life, the universe, and, and…"
"Everything?" Amy finished, smiling.
"But he's just a person," Rory said. "I mean, he's in a space suit, but…"
"It's not a space suit, it's a HEV suit," the Doctor said irritably.
Amy nudged him. "Yeah, a HEV suit, Rory. Obviously."
"And he's not just a person. He's the person. The One Free Man," the Doctor whispered, full of worship.
"Is he sleeping?" Rory asked, reaching over to take a pulse.
The Doctor slapped his hand away. "He's frozen in time, moving at a different rate than the rest of us. Touch him and you'll become part of his time stream."
"And that would be bad."
"That would be bad, yes."
"This is really weird," Amy said, smirking at the Doctor as Rory backed up to stand beside her.
"What is?" the Doctor said, eyes still on the man.
"You. You're all… nerdy. Like Rory when he met Derren Brown."
Rory felt his cheeks redden considerably, and shoved his hands in his pockets. "I just… like magicians."
"Oh, who doesn't?" the Doctor said absent-mindedly.
Amy rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Okay, so why is he so important?"
"This," the Doctor announced, like a museum tour guide, "is Doctor Gordon Freeman. Quite simply, he's an event in time and space. This man has realities created around him, just by being… him."
"So," Rory pointed a finger upwards, "Is this place one of those realities?"
"What?" he scowled, "No. This is a no-place. Doesn't exist, does exist, impossibly possible. We're in a moment between moments, suspended in time but stretching out to infinity…"
Amy and Rory looked at each other with mutual confusion. He decided it was best to speak up. "And… what does that mean, exactly?"
"Don't know." The Doctor grinned. "Sounded good, though."
"But if he's so important, how come I don't know who he is?" Amy sighed. "Is this because of that crack in my wall again?"
Frustrated, the Doctor waved his hands about. "No, no, no, nothing to do with that. Aren't you listening? He has realities created around him. He was part of our timeline, but at one specific moment, everything fractured, an event almost as powerful as the TARDIS explosion. Bang, brand new reality made just for him. Well, not for him specifically, but he's the focal point, the trigger, the ignition. But oh, the things he does! I can't believe I'm here looking at him!"
"Wait, hang on," Rory managed, struggling. "If he's in another reality, how do you know about him?"
He spotted something behind the Doctor as he spoke. A white doorway, opening up out of nothingness.
The Doctor didn't notice. "Ah, well, he's Gordon Freeman. He's a fact of the universe. You know, for example, there's gravity, light, time, the John Crichton apex principle, speed, cause and effect, wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey… and then there's Gordon Freeman. He really is remarkable. Impossibly average. Or averagely impossible, both sound good."
A man stepped out of the doorway, silhouetted by the intense white behind him. Then the light disappeared, slamming down to the ground like a door closing. It let out a deep metallic clang, and the Doctor whirled around.
Amy put a hand on Rory's arm as the new arrival slowly walked around Gordon Freeman to get a better look at them. He was an older man, black and grey hair with a blue business suit, not a crease out of place. He carried a blank briefcase in his pale hand, and Rory felt a little surge of fear every time he looked at it. But his face was the most haunting thing. Dark eyes, dark circles beneath them, like he hadn't slept in weeks… and yet he didn't look tired. Pretty much the opposite. He was acutely aware of everything, taking in all of them with a smirk that really made him wish he had his old Roman sword.
"Ah," the man croaked, his voice deep and velvety. "I thought I heard someone in here…"
"Yes," the Doctor said slowly. "Here we are."
The man's gaze whipped over to the Doctor's. "You have… changed…"
"Not in the ways that matter," the Doctor said, his own voice going lower, as though to match his opponent. "The ways that stopped you before."
"Woah, wait," Amy protested, pointing a gloved finger at the man. "You know him?" Suddenly, the icy blue gaze was upon them, and Amy retracted the finger. "Never mind."
"We had… much in common before…"
Rory frowned. Why was he talking like that? All that emphasis on the wrong syllables, and yet he was pronouncing everything well, so it wasn't a matter of misunderstanding the language.
The Doctor seemed used to it, however, and relaxed, smirking in the same way Rory had seen him when talking to the Atraxi, or to the assembled hordes of aliens above Stonehenge. "Yeah, well, times have changed, and so have I. Not so much for you though, it seems," he said, nodding to Freeman.
The man smiled. "These are extraordinary times, Doctor… the wrong man in the right place… can make all the difference in the world."
"…yes," the Doctor muttered, looking back at the two of them with a 'whatever the hell that means' look. "Very profound and poetic. Doesn't change the fact that what you did was ridiculously dangerous. Your little… stunt could have ended the universe. Past, present, and future."
"Mmm…" the man considered, looking rather amused by the comment. "Not completely different to yourself, hm? An apocalyptic cataclysm… commandeering humanity for your own purposes…"
His gaze drifted over to Amy and Rory, and they both took an instinctive step back. It was a rare experience, having Amy back away from something new with him. Usually he was trying to stop her from touching something or shouting at something that was clearly going to eat her or spit acid on her or… do general bad stuff.
Moving between them, the Doctor fixed him with a glare and tone of voice that always managed to unnerve Rory - really made him seem like the alien he was.
"You don't touch them. They're nothing to do with you. Neither was he, come to think of it," he added, jabbing a finger over at Gordon Freeman.
"Still," the man purred, "there is always room for more…"
The Doctor called over his shoulder. "Rory, Amy, back to the TARDIS, we're leaving."
Rory nodded his vehement agreement and started moving. Or tried to, anyway.
"Um, Doctor," Amy chimed in, doing a little wave. "Can't move."
"No, nor me," Rory added.
Rather than look back at them, the Doctor put up a silencing hand, his gaze locked on the man in the suit. "I know what you're doing, and you're going to stop."
The man's face wrinkled into a chilling smile. "You must have chosen them for a reason… imagine what they could accomplish… the services they could offer…"
Services? What kind of services? Rory frowned. Those words hadn't come out. His mouth hadn't even moved. Nothing was working.
"Yes," the Doctor said, slipping his hands into his pockets, "they are pretty special. They'd probably do more damage than even you could expect, and do you know why?"
The man's head tilted to the side, amused. "Enlighten me."
"Because you're right, I did choose them for a reason. Because your circus tricks don't work on me. And because no matter how you move them and where you send them, I will tear down your realities, your voids, your no-places, your very world to find them. All of it will come crashing down around your ears, and just because you wanted to prove how clever you are."
He moved in closer to the man. "Remember what happened last time, remember who I am. They had to build the strongest prison in the world to get rid of me, and that ended up causing the end of the universe. And then I got out anyway." His head tilted to the side, mimicking the man's earlier amused reaction. "Or did your 'employers' miss that?"
The man held his stare for the longest time, the smile frozen. Then, suddenly, Rory could move. So could Amy, though neither of them made a move one way or the other.
"Amy? Rory?" the Doctor called over his shoulder. "How are we doing?"
"Uh…" Amy hesitated, and Rory looked at her, concerned. She was shaking, and so was her voice. "Fine, yeah," she finished, though she was gripping Rory's hand like a vice.
"Good. Back to the TARDIS, spit-spot, chop-chop, and lots of other words that mean do it quickly, right now, straight away."
The Doctor backed up, keeping his eyes on the man until he was right in front of them, turning on the spot to usher them back into the TARDIS. They obeyed, though neither of them felt secure enough to take their eyes off the man until they were inside the TARDIS. Rory had never been so grateful to be bathed in the orange lights of the console room, surrounded by the low hum of the TARDIS engines.
"Nice to see you," the Doctor called out, sticking his head out of the doors of the TARDIS. "I'd shake your hand, but I think you've got something, might be catching."
"Perhaps we shall see each other again…"
"Yeah, hope not." He looked over in the direction the Gordon Freeman bloke had been standing. "Sorry to leave you," he muttered quietly. "See you earlier."
With that, he closed the door and ran for the console, twisting taps and pulling levers with a frantic energy beyond anything Rory had seen from him, at least within the TARDIS. The engine started, and both Rory and Amy slumped down into the chairs beside the console.
The Doctor, however, didn't stop his work, periodically checking the monitors and changing settings for a good five minutes before he finally stepped back, looking up at the column unsurely.
"Right, right… I think that's done it…"
Frowning, Amy leant forward. "Think it's done what?"
"We made a hole when we entered, and I had to seal it after we left, or… lots of stuff would have happened."
"What, like the universe never existing?"
"Worse. Bad things would have happened and the universe would have kept on going, suffering and fracturing and…" He blew out a breath, running his thumbs up and down his braces. "Yeah, bad stuff."
"So, sorry," Rory chimed in, "who was that?"
"Yeah," Amy agreed, before hitting his belly with the back of her hand. "Actually, yeah! Who was that?"
"Oh, just someone I know," he muttered dismissively with a wave of his hand.
"Yeah, but he was creepy, Doctor. Not just Weeping Angels creepy, he was…" Her words died as she scratched the back of her head, making a mess of her hair. "…well, yeah, he was creepier than that."
Feeling it was a good moment to do so, Rory put an arm around her and gently pulled her close. She rested her head on his shoulder, eyes closed.
"So probably best not to ask," the Doctor said definitively, giving them a look that ended the conversation. "The more you think about it, the worse he gets."
Rory frowned. "'It'? I thought he was a… 'he'?"
"Did I say it? I meant he. He, he, he. Like a little schoolgirl giggling. Onomatopoeia, that's what that's called. Woof, meow, moo, conflordlesploosh, that sort of thing."
Amy's head sprang up from his shoulder, incredulous. "Oh, come on. What kind of animal goes con… con…"
"Conflordlesploosh, glad you asked, I'll show you!"
And just like that, they were off again, tumbling through time and space and heading towards some other deadly threat and adventure. But for Rory, it didn't really matter how dangerous things became. He had Amy. And yes, he had the Doctor with him too.
With all of them together, that made all the difference in the world.
(A/N: Sorry to those of you who don't know the first thing about Half-Life, but I've had this ficlet buzzing away in the back of my mind since the Doctor was travelling with Martha. Three years it's taken me to type this one up!
Anyway, hopefully it wasn't too obscure for those of you who don't know Half-Life.
So, reviews, please!)