"This… was indeed unforeseen." Gordon froze, caught on the hop, hovering vulnerably between his usual plane of existence and the heightened purple-Vortigaunt state of being. Not that it really made any difference, he reminded himself; he was always vulnerable to the Grey Man, even when he was feeling confident, tooled up with a fully charged suit; which tended to be the exact occasions the Man made one of his blink-and-you'll-miss-him appearances, as if to remind Gordon that his life wasn't quite his own. This, however, felt like it was going to be one of his direct interventions, up close and personal. The world faded to blackness around Gordon and he became rooted to the spot. Tears of fear and anger stung his eyes, but he was unable even to lift a hand and rub them away. As the Man spoke, scenes appeared that were torn directly from Gordon's thoughts and memories in a way that felt like a violation, disparate images forced together to illustrate his words. Gordon could feel sweat pouring down his back, and his tense, twanging muscles screamed to be able to shift.
"Conformity and oppression… it strengthens their hand in the short term, yet in time, their reduced capacity for abstract thought may prove their downfall. Their failure to acquire the technology they sought will have far greater…" Here he interrupted himself with a sound of suppressed amusement, his lips twisting cynically.
"…but what concern could these higher matters possibly hold for you, Mister Freeman, given your more pressing concerns? You have fulfilled my employers' basic requirements, yet I had rather higher hopes, given your previous destructive tendencies… in short, Mister Freeman, you're not supposed to be here. Yet. However, with certain restrictions still in place…" he glanced here in what Gordon assumed was the direction of the Vortigaunts "…I am forced to pursue a policy of watchful waiting." He straightened his tie. "I want you to return to White Forest, to continue to protect my investment." At that point an image of Alyx appeared, beautiful and cherished, and Gordon gave an internal groan of frustration. Was it really necessary for the Man to hijack his attention in this highly disconcerting manner, if the only purpose was to impart such unnecessary instructions? The very idea that he might have hesitated in the slightest to escort the injured Alyx to White Forest, or to return to her now, was further proof, as if any were needed, that Gordon's employer wasn't human. But the Grey Man went on regardless. "And she will require your protection; homogeneity may sometimes have its… advantages." He stepped into a door that suddenly appeared, the bright white outline of a door. "Watchful waiting, Mister Freeman, watchful… waiting." The door closed, leaving Gordon alone and terrified in the dark. Please, no, he thought, oh please please please…
And he opened his eyes and found himself sitting on the ground, with his legs stretched out ahead of him and his back propped haphazardly against the wall of one of the ruined houses of the village. The air was crisp and clear, and he could smell smoke from the fire and hear people murmuring as they began to go about their days. Gordon got gingerly to his feet and stretched, realizing with something approaching shock that he felt good. Not just good, but amazing; mentally sharp and fully rested. He checked his stats and found that he was back at 100%; and the Vorts had even given his suit a quick power-up. Looking up, he saw one of them ambling by. It seemed somewhat taller than the norm, and he thought it might have been among the rescue party that had found Barney and himself the night before. It gestured for him to follow with a claw.
"To the south, the Barney Calhoun." As they walked through the village together, Gordon was aware of small groups of people watching him, and he heard his name muttered with the mixture of excitement and disbelief that he'd come to loathe. He glanced at the Vortigaunt, and it shook its head in that way they had, like a dog trying to shake off water, and Gordon thought it might be trying to distract him as it continued. "As well as an honoured companion of the Freeman, the Barney is a great teller of stories, a position of great importance to Vortikind. We have obtained much new information on the life of the Freeman."
Gordon picked up his pace slightly, dreading to think exactly what that might involve. He found Barney along with two other Resistance members, crouching over a map. Barney was nodding and listening intently to his companion as the man pointed to the landscape spread before them. He caught sight of Gordon out of the corner of his eye, and straightened with a grin on his face.
"We're on the home stretch now, Gordon! And check this out." He walked a couple of paces back and forth. "They fixed me up pretty good." The villager beside him straightened up also, and placed his hand on Barney's shoulder.
"You've got our frequencies; send word when you make it back to base. Then we'll know that the route between here and White Forest is passable. Not that I expect you'll have any problems," he continued as he turned to Gordon with a big keen smile. "It's an honour to meet you, Dr Freeman!" Gordon couldn't help wincing and scanning the sky as he shook the proffered hand. Hadn't these people learned by now that every time they talked about how awesome it was that he'd shown up, and how much better things were going to be now that he was around, it was the cue for a gunship or a squad of Combine to attack?
Barney seemed to sense his eagerness to get going, as he fastened his pack and slung it onto his shoulder.
"C'mon, Gordon. I want to see if Alyx kisses you or kicks your ass." Gordon raised an eyebrow at that, but couldn't help smiling as he fell into step with Barney as they passed through the village's southern gates.
"Make haste, Freeman, and return to the Alyx Vance! Without her, we cannot persevere," a Vortigaunt called after them.
"Yeah, like you needed telling," Barney muttered to Gordon. "Anyway. Southeast of here there's a railway line. If we follow that we should intersect with the logging tracks at White Forest."
After they had been walking for a little while, Barney turned to Gordon, a curious expression on his face. "Were you asleep back there?"
Gordon wasn't sure himself. It shouldn't have been possible while he was wearing the HEV suit; something to do with hormones and circadian rhythms. And he hadn't been asleep, not for most of the night anyway. But he didn't feel able to put into words what had happened with the Vortigaunts, and as for the Grey Man… Barney had alluded to him earlier, how he had seen him at Black Mesa; yet he had only done so at death's door. Suddenly Gordon wondered if Barney too had fallen under the Man's control, tasked with assisting Gordon in the same way he himself was tasked, and as unable and unwilling to talk about it as he was. He thought he saw tension in his friend's eyes, and checked himself. What could they both do about it now, or even at all? Gordon resolved not to raise the subject with Barney until they were both safely back at White Forest, preferably a little drunk.
"No, I was just… resting my eyes."
Barney looked doubtful, but as he was about to respond, he stopped suddenly and tilted his head.
"Can you smell that?" He broke off to one side, moving deeper into the trees and forcing his way through a hedge. Gordon followed him cautiously, and came to a halt in front of a clump of trees, heavily laden with green and golden fruit. Barney breathed deeply and grinned at Gordon. Gordon could smell them too, now, and the sweet fresh smell combined with the slightly tangy odour from the fermented windfalls made his mouth water. Barney was in among the branches, grabbing all the apples he could reach and dropping it into his rucksack, one already in his mouth. The delight with which he reacted to the fresh fruit made it all too clear what a rare occurrence this was, and that in turn gave Gordon an idea. He scanned the trees, stepping round them slowly until he saw the best apple, small and red and shiny. He plucked it and polished it carefully with his fingers. "What're you doing?" Barney called. "You know you can't eat it."
Gordon stammered a little. "I'm… saving it. You know, for later. When I can eat it."
Oh, I get it." Gordon didn't like the knowing smile on Barney's face. He could feel his ears glowing, which was usually a sign his cheeks were too. After a few steps though, he was forced to stop and turn back. His HEV suit, eminently practical, was equipped with clips, straps and ammo pouches galore, but there was nowhere to store anything small and fragile, such as the gift he was holding now.
"Er… can I put this in your pack?"
The grin on Barney's face broadened. "Some men give flowers, some men give champagne… an apple? Seriously, Gordon, that's your secret?" He grumbled, but unfastened his pack, even showing Gordon how he wrapped the apple in his hat to protect it. "Don't worry, she'll love it. When you find an old farmhouse and the crops have survived… it's like buried treasure, you know? Fresh fruit and vegetables are so good… except pumpkins. Man am I sick of pumpkin. And don't get me started on watermelon…" They continued along the path, Barney's stream of invective punctuated occasionally by a crunching bite.
Eventually, they reached the train track. A razor train stood off to one side, its shape blunt and ominous against the grey sky. Barney lead the way towards it. As they reached the back of the train, a familiar sobbing moan broke out, accompanied by a rattling sound. They moved closer cautiously. Half a zombie was pulling its way towards them from under the train, tattered entrails the same colour as the ragged edge of its shirt, its claws scrabbling through the stones that were laid between the sleepers.
"Damn necrotics!" Barney exclaimed. Noticing Gordon's slightly raised eyebrow, a look of embarrassment spread across his face. "Sorry, force of habit." He raised his rifle and raked the pitiful creature with fire, putting its muscle fibres beyond use. The headcrab immediately leapt from its previous hosts shoulders, with such an air of ingratitude that Gordon took great pleasure in swinging his crowbar and crushing it against the side of the train.
"Well that was a textbook Calhoun-Freeman play," Barney declared, and held his fist out. Gordon bumped it absently, lost for a moment in the memory of the Calhoun-Freeman play (or Freeman-Calhoun maneuver, as he preferred to call it). Then he shook his head and climbed after Barney into the cab.
"Hope you don't mind if I drive this time," Barney said, as he drew a Combine disruptor from his pocket and began entering his codes to start up the train. Gordon gave a thumbs up and then let himself slide to the floor of the narrow cab, as the train lurchingly began to move. Barney settled beside him, but then grumbled with frustration as a loud, irregular banging broke out behind the door to the next compartment. "I suppose we'd better check that out..." Gordon nodded, and followed Barney as he got to his feet.
They slid the door open cautiously. This carriage was colder; a ventilation panel in the ceiling was missing, allowing the outside air in. It contained racks of the lozenge shaped metal containers used to transport prisoners, the kind that Gordon had hitched a ride on in the Citadel, and nearly every one contained a zombie. The howling and rattling they produced as they reached desperately for the two men was almost unbearable as it echoed around the confined space. Barney raised his rifle, and Gordon swung the machine gun he'd taken from the Combine troops into his hands. The shared a grim look, then went to work. Half way down the corridor, a previously unsuspected fast zombie burst between the racks and swung for Gordon. He hissed as the claws raked through his shoulder, noting with satisfaction that it had become stuck, allowing him to place the barrel of his rifle right up against the horrible leering skull and fire.
When the transport compartment was clear they returned to the front and slumped once more against the walls. Gordon felt exhausted, his head was spinning, and the smell of cordite and decaying flesh lingered in his nostrils. Barney leaned in, his voice concerned.
"You ok, Gordon? Your eyes… they're tiny."
"It's just the morphine, it'll wear off. Barney, why would the Combine be transporting zombies?"
Barney's voice could be oddly gentle when he wanted to be. "I don't think they were transporting zombies. Not at first."
Gordon groaned as the implication sank in, hugged his knees into his chest, and let his face sink forwards. His shoulder ached, and he felt sick. After a while he felt Barney touching his other shoulder, alternately squeezing it and thumping it lightly. He raised his head blearily and looked across at his friend.
"This is why we're fighting 'em, Gordon, so that shit like this stops. And hell, you've done a lot. Took down the Citadel, launched the satellite… whatever it was you did on the Borealis, that too. Now lighten up; I hear there's a hot chick waiting on you to bring her an apple." Gordon nodded, and Barney nodded back, holding Gordon's eyes for a moment before his eyes twitched, and his whole face lit up with an expression Gordon had come to dread.
"I tell you what, Gordon, I am sick. I am sick of these…"
"No, oh no…"
"… so sick of these motherfie-ing zombies on this motherfie-ing train!"
Barney's jokes had a tendency to make him laugh in inverse proportion to their quality, and now Gordon laughed so hard tears came, helpless with relief as the combat tension left his body. He glanced across at his friend, who was looking smugly pleased with himself, and smiled. After the adulation of some of the Resistance, and the mysticism of the Vortigaunts, Barney's ability to make him feel like an ordinary guy again was wonderful. After all, he was an ordinary guy. He had been chosen for the programme at Black Mesa, it was true, but only in the sense that he was highly qualified, young and healthy enough to wear the HEV suit, and a single man with no dependents; the kind of man who tended to get chosen for such things. There was nothing supernatural about it.
He recognized that Black Mesa had set him up, to a certain extent. There had been no real need for him to push the cart; the whole process could have probably been automated for the price of a couple of months' worth of his salary. But it gave his line managers deniability. If something went wrong (something relatively minor, obviously, not something on the scale of what actually had gone wrong), they would be able to say to the inevitable enquiry, "We expressed our concerns, your Honour, but Doctor Freeman was alone in the chamber and the decision to proceed was ultimately his." It also made him complicit, so that it would become harder and harder to voice his doubts, and he suspected that before long, he would have been part of the "survey teams", like the poor souls whose bodies he had encountered on his way to fight the Nihalanth.
Gordon felt slightly bitter about this, but his acknowledgement that he hadn't exactly made it difficult for them tempered the bitterness. His experiences since then had forced him to change; his decision about the portal guns proved that. He was aware that he was probably still being manipulated in some way, and part of him ached, or itched, with the knowledge that he might never understand exactly what had happened to him. But was what he was being asked to do, namely fight an oppressive occupying force that had unleashed horrors on his family and friends, not something he might have chosen to do anyway? And as for protecting and escorting Alyx… Gordon thought he could probably do that for the rest of his life. Like Barney, she had that ability to make him feel resolutely normal, and simultaneously as if he could achieve any of the difficult, dangerous things he set his mind to, not because he was the One Free Man, but because he was hers. But unlike Barney she also had deep golden brown eyes, a loving face, and a soft yet surprisingly strong body with curves in all the right places… he couldn't wait to get back to her. Gordon raised his head and stared out of the window as the landscape flashed past and the train carried him back towards the life he'd chosen.
The train emerged from a tunnel and brought them out into a familiar landscape of tall trees and sandy creeks. Barney slowed the train to a halt with a minimum of destruction, and they leapt down from the cab, stretching and breathing the pine scented air with appreciation after their confined journey. They set off down the path towards the base, each edging ahead of the other as they gradually began to walk faster and faster, until with a laugh they broke into a run and dashed for the fence, vaulting tree trunks and Strider legs in their path.
The man in the guard tower didn't notice them straight away; his attention appeared to be distracted by something happening in the compound beneath him. "Hey!" Barney called, a tone of irritation underlying the laughter in his voice. "Let us in! Didn't you see us coming?" To his credit, the man looked embarrassed, and hurried to operate the controls. Passing through the gate, Gordon noticed something odd. The rebels were separated into two groups, standing at opposite ends of the courtyard. There was enough movement of people eddying between the peripheries of the two groups for the separation to appear informal, but it was definitely there. One of the groups appeared pleased about something, while the others seemed almost angry. It was curious, but Gordon definitely had other priorities at that moment.
He wasn't the only one. There was the sound of heavy bounding footsteps, and the whine of servomotors, and then Gordon was grabbed around the waist and lifted from his feet. Twisting his head, he realised it was D0g, carrying him the way a running back carried a football. D0g rushed up the slope towards the building, and thrust Gordon towards a window. He raised his hands to shield his eyes as the pane shattered around him and he landed on the floor with a thump. Looking up cautiously, he saw Alyx. She was curled into the corner of the bed they had shared, and the shadows under her eyes were piteously deep and dark; but her grip on the gun she held aimed towards him was rock steady.
Gordon reached out and gently moved the barrel of the gun so it was pointing away from his face. Alyx's eyes never left his. The pink rims of her eyes and the hunched, cautious posture with which she held herself made his heart break, and he yearned to comfort her. He moved forward slowly and cautiously, but she gasped abruptly and then flew towards him, her arms tight around his waist, her face pressed into his breastplate in a way he was sure couldn't be comfortable for her. He encircled her gently; conscious of how soft and vulnerable she was, while he was all sharp angles and hard edges. But then she pushed away, and looked up at him in a way that was almost irritable.
"Come on Gordon, if you're gonna hug me, do it properly." She pulled his arms tightly around her, and he squeezed her against him, hard, like he'd always wanted to. He heard her groan, and he was worried he'd hurt her, but when he peeked down at her, she was smiling. "I imagined you coming back so many times… had to be sure it was really you." She sighed, and stepped back to examine him. He gazed back at her, anxious, intent; and she laughed. "Yep, definitely Gordon. Remember when we first met?" she continued. "The whole way there, I was telling myself I was just going to stay calm, you know, be skeptical, play it cool." She met his eyes with hers, and he was relieved to see that the golden sparks were beginning to return to her eyes. "Guess how long that lasted."
Gordon remembered back to the first time he saw her. His head had been throbbing, his chest tight with fear and confusion; but when he'd opened his eyes there had been no trash compactor, no hideously unfamiliar landscape, just her face, uniquely beautiful against the bleak urban backdrop. It had almost made the previous suffering seem worth it.
It occurred to him that this was probably the sort of thing women loved to hear, so he took a breath and went for it. "When we first met, I just thought it was worth getting hit in the head, if it meant I could see something like you every time I woke up."
"That could be arranged." She reached out and swatted him on the side of the head. He gave a yelp of protest and raised his hand to ward off further blows. "You used it, didn't you? On the Borealis?" He opened his mouth to explain himself, but she was distracted, staring at her fingers as she rubbed them together delicately. "What's this stuff in your hair?"
"Uh, I think it's Advisor juice."
The light was definitely back in her eyes then, as she pulled him to her and kissed him deeply. He relished the sweet softness of her lips, while making a mental note of the fact that lines like "hey baby, I just killed a giant alien slug" seemed to be much more to Alyx's taste. She was stroking the back of his neck, the most vulnerable part of his body while he was wearing the HEV suit, and the place only she was allowed to touch. He shivered with delight and deepened the kiss…
"Could you two possibly engage your higher cortical functions for five minutes? Only a rather critical situation has been developing here, and we need to resolve it!" They turned to find that they were no longer alone. Dr Magnusson and Dr Kleiner were in the doorway staring at them, contemptuous and astonished respectively; with Barney bringing up the rear.
"He's right, Gordon." Alyx kept her hands on his chest, but her face was serious once more. "It's bad."
A/N: thanks once again to my amazing beta KRSONMar, for some really interesting conversations that really helped me clarify some stuff.
Inspiration for the title comes from a great post on the forum, about the role of trains as a metaphor in fiction.
Flipping heck, my first ever chapter over 4000 words! :D Thanks to all my reviewers, please continue to leave your thoughts.