A/N: Do I get an award for most boring title ever? Because I feel that I should.

2035.
Preparations.

The water was not hot, but Chell had never been so pleased to step into a bathtub in her life. It was not the most relaxing bath, as she was limited on the amount of water she could use while her stitches were still in place. Still, it was lukewarm and she had soap, which was all she needed. Trish had to come in and help her wash her hair, which was an arrangement Chell didn't much like, but the blonde woman seemed just as awkward, which strangely made the whole thing less awkward. They had to rinse both Chell and the tub several times, as she had left an unpleasant residue of dirt and Aperture gels. Trish seemed bemused and disgusted, but she never complained, for which Chell was grateful.

As she was carefully stepping out, she caught Trish's gaze flicking from wound to wound, her face betraying equal parts curiosity and sympathy. With a grimace, she turned away, helping Chell wrap a towel around herself.

"Can you get dressed on your own? I brought you some stuff to wear."

Chell nodded, sending her an appreciative smile. Once alone, she carefully pulled on the underwear and socks that Trish had brought, (thankful that they were old shop stock and not second-hand), and a faded pair of jeans. With a knock on the door, Trevor came in to help her with her more serious injuries, handing her a glass of water so she could take the painkillers he'd found. When they were clean and redressed with fresh bandages, he left her alone so she could finish up. With care, she slipped on the vest top and flannel shirt, taking time to appreciate the feeling of clean fabric against her skin. For her blistered feet, there was nothing to do but wait for them to heal. Trish had found her a sturdy pair of worn-in hiking books, which would prevent any further annoyances. Chell was more pleased to see those than any of the other items she'd been given.

When she was dressed, her wet hair hanging loose around her shoulders, she headed downstairs, aware that Doug was patiently waiting for the bathroom.

"Feel better?" he asked her when she entered the lounge.

She nodded, smiling, jerking her thumb in the direction of the stairs to indicate that he could go up.

She enjoyed a moment to herself while he was gone. Solitude had been hard to cope with in Aperture, but she had forgotten how tedious other people could be. Trevor, Trish and Brad had been hospitable and bearable so far, but the effort of making herself understood was draining. It was easier with Doug, as he had grown familiar with her facial expressions over the years of their friendship, but even still it was nice for her to simply sit and relax for a while. She had the room to herself, but she could hear Trevor talking quietly with Gerry in the kitchen, which let her know that she was not completely alone. All in all, it was a good balance.

Eventually, she ventured out to see if she could help with anything, feeling guilty that they were doing it all themselves. Gerry assigned her to vegetable-chopping duty, which she took up gladly. When Doug came downstairs, looking clean and fresh, dressed in jeans and a blue button-up shirt, they all sat around the table in the dining room. Brad and Trish had left while she'd been dressing, so it was just the four of them sitting down to roast chicken and steamed vegetables. Chell had gathered from Trevor and Gerry's talk that they were largely self-sufficient in Ishpeming, which didn't seem surprising after hearing about the Combine occupation.

Doug thanked their hosts for their kindness once more. Chell smiled for her contribution to the conversation. Ironically, she thought they'd probably have a harder time gaining people's trust in the next town they came to, as she was sure their bedraggled, bloody state had been the main reason why the two men had been so hospitable.

Once they had all finished their meal, Trevor continued the story he'd begun earlier. "I told you the Combine ruled for nineteen years," he said, pushing his plate away, "but I don't know much about what they were up to. They didn't bother us here. I guess we were too small, too in the middle of nowhere. Or maybe something in this Aperture of yours kept them away."

"Our news supply isn't great," Gerry put in. "We hear things weeks out of date, and in crap detail."

"It's getting better now we've got a working radio," Trevor added, "but at the time we were pretty cut off. Anyway, there was a resistance movement working against the Combine. After they acquired an important ally, they made huge progress in taking them down. They destroyed their centre of command, which was…I forget where. Somewhere in Eastern Europe, a place they renamed City 17."

"Who was this ally?" Doug asked curiously.

"Gordon Freeman!" said Gerry enthusiastically. "I had such a crush on him, but he shacked up with some woman from the resistance. Such a shame."

Trevor rolled his eyes good-naturedly.

"What?" Gerry laughed. "He wears the same kind of glasses as you, love."

"Of course," Trevor retorted dryly, smiling.

Chell was amused by their banter, but keen to hear more details of the Combine's defeat.

"Gordon Freeman is a bit of a shady character," Trevor went on. "His name was linked with the original Black Mesa incident, as well as his work with the resistance, yet he doesn't seem to age."

"That's not impossible, though," Doug pointed out. "Chell and I are proof of that."

"That's true," Trevor admitted. "I guess we'll never know for sure, but he was right in the thick of things at the end. The resistance brought down the reproduction suppression field, then they found some…weapon of vital importance that allowed them to send the Combine back to their own world."

"Sealed off the way forever," Gerry commented.

"What weapon?" Doug asked with a frown.

"I don't know any details, sorry," said Trevor. "Maybe someone else could tell you if you get nearer Wyoming. I hear they're pretty civilised down there these days." He took a sip from his glass of water before continuing. "So, that was all six years ago now. Humanity's starting to rebuild."

"There are a lot of six-year-old kids running around," Gerry said with a grin.

Chell gave a quiet huff of laughter at his expression, then clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a yawn. Suddenly, she felt exhausted, wiped out by a long day, painkillers, comfort and food, all coupled with her earlier outburst of grief.

"Sorry," she mouthed, lowering her hand.

"No need to apologise, hon," Gerry told her kindly. "You look dead on your feet."

She nodded, agreeing, although she'd been pleasantly surprised by the state of her reflection in the bathroom mirror.

"We'd better let you two get some sleep," Trevor announced, standing.

"Can we help you clean up, at least?" Doug offered.

"I wouldn't hear of it," Gerry declared. "We can handle a few plates. Go get some rest."

"Thank you."

Doug and Chell retreated to the lounge, where they would be sleeping. Trevor brought them some bedding, then left them alone. After a brief argument that she knew she'd have no chance of winning, Chell agreed to take the couch while Doug made up a bed for himself on the floor.

"You forget, I'm used to this," he reminded her, moving a pillow. "At least I have bedding, so it's already better than what I had in my dens."

She had to admit he had a point, and she was too weary to argue further. Curled up in a soft, knitted blanket, sleep claimed her within minutes.

Doug was mildly annoyed to have awoken in the early hours of the morning, but he'd slept well enough that it didn't bother him too much. Moving softly so as not to disturb Chell, he left his makeshift bed and retreated to an armchair. The room was lit with the first cold rays of daylight creeping through the pale-coloured curtains.

Everything was still. Neither the house nor the town was awake yet. Even his head was peaceful, free of voices, no shadows dancing in his peripheral vision. He'd gotten so used to ignoring it all, treating it almost like white noise, that it was strange to be without it. It was welcome, certainly, but strange.

His gaze fell on the cube, sitting silently by his bed like a blocky end table. His attachment to it had been based almost solely on its voice, the way it had helped him through the tough times, yet he still felt the need to keep it with him. Habit, he guessed. The sight of it was familiar and comforting still.

Chell stirred in her sleep, bringing one arm out from under her covers without waking. Her face was so serene, like the last painting he'd done of her. All her stress, sorrow and determination were gone, the burdens lifted from her as she rested.

Doug reflected on the previous day's conversation, the one he'd been dreading ever since he'd made her test subject number one. Revealing his betrayal had gone better than he could have hoped. She'd forgiven him for the choices he'd had to make, had listened with obvious sympathy as he explained it all to her. All the concealed truths he'd been carrying for years had been set loose, freeing him.

She knows everything now, he thought. All my secrets.

He reconsidered that as another truth clamoured for attention, one that he'd been doing his utmost to keep hidden.

All my secrets, he amended with a concerned frown …except one.

The amount of light in the room when she awoke told Chell that she'd slept in quite late, so she was not surprised to find herself alone but for the companion cube.

Pity you couldn't have returned my voice when you were finished with it, she thought flippantly, unable to help smiling at it as she swung her legs off the couch.

Stiff from her long sleep and her wounds, she clumsily got dressed in her new clothes before heading out and following the sound of voices to the kitchen. Trevor and Gerry greeted her brightly and offered her toast, which she accepted. They explained that Doug had ventured out to the town's only hairdresser, apparently fed up with his wild, untidy mop. Money had little value in Ishpeming, so Gerry had gifted Doug with a selection of garden vegetables to present to the hairdresser in exchange for her help in making him look less like a hobo.

"Gerry!" scolded Trevor.

"What? He said himself he looks like a hobo!"

Chell was too amused to protest, rather in agreement with the description anyway. She wasn't used to seeing her best friend looking like a throwback to the 1970s. While she finished up her breakfast, she listened to Trevor and Gerry's banter, enjoying hearing stories of their everyday life. It sounded very different from life as she had known it.

Trevor found her an old notepad so she could join in, and she scribbled a short explanation about where she'd once lived. Gerry looked at her with wide eyes, revealing that they'd once been neighbours. Chell barely remembered anyone in the area, especially as she'd spent so much time at Aperture, so she had to take his word for it. He didn't remember her either, which was not surprising seeing as he'd only been a teenager at the time. Still, it was a strange coincidence, one that seemed to highlight to them all that she was technically from a different time entirely.

Doug arrived back at the house as Chell was finishing up her toast, appearing in the doorway with a small, self-conscious smile. His hair had been cut into the tidy style he'd had before GLaDOS, and his beard was much shorter and neater, complimenting his face rather than hiding it.

Chell looked at him in surprise. It hadn't occurred to her that he would keep the beard, but she had to admit the tidier version suited him, somehow reducing his natural awkwardness. She appreciated being able to read his expressions more clearly, and to actually see when he was wearing the subtle, wry smile that always drew a similar smile from her.

"I, uh, kind of got used to it," he said, running a hand across his chin.

Gerry spoke up cheerfully, "I like it! Very handsome."

Doug smiled a little, as if he didn't completely believe him but appreciated the sentiment.

Chell nodded her own agreement, sending him a thumbs up and a warm look.

"Really?"

She nodded again, feeling, absurdly, like she was about to blush. In all their years of friendship, she couldn't recall a single incident of them commenting on each other's looks.

Looking rather adorably pleased, Doug joined them at the table, soon engaged in conversation with Trevor as they discussed what needed to be done with the generator. Chell studied him as he talked, deciding she liked the new look, but she wasn't fussy. She'd liked the way he looked before GLaDOS too. She dropped her gaze whenever he turned her way, not able to give an explanation for her scrutiny that wouldn't be awkward, but Gerry noticed and winked at her across the table.

He probably thinks we're together, she realised. Well, we did pretend for Brad and Trish. She wasn't about to correct him.

Doug and Trevor headed out shortly after that, so Doug could make good on his promise. Chell helped Gerry with a few household chores, but he didn't let her do anything too strenuous. After that, he went out to his garden, and Chell settled on the couch with her writing pad to scribble out an account of her trip through old Aperture. Reliving it was not fun, but she felt safe seated on the cushions, her feet warmed by the sunlight streaming through the window, so it was not too much of a trial.

When Doug returned, he seemed frazzled but pleased, his hair sticking up in odd angles. The sight was so familiar to her after so many years of watching him run his hands through it while stressed that she couldn't help smiling.

"I think I've fixed it," he announced, collapsing in the armchair.

She nodded. Well done.

"Not sure it really counts as science though."

Probably not.

"How are you doing?"

She lifted her hand, curling her fingers into the 'okay' symbol.

"Do you think you'll be up to leaving tomorrow?" he asked, looking a touch conflicted as he spoke. "Normally I'd say wait until you're healed, but…"

We're still so close to Aperture, she finished silently, nodding.

"I'm sorry, Chell, I just…think we need to be moving."

Although her wounds still hurt, she had to agree. There was a deeply-ingrained restlessness inside her that she knew was tied to Aperture. Only distance would cure it.

Flipping to a new page, she wrote, 'I'll manage. I'd rather be gone too.'

"Are you sure? We don't know how long it might take to find somewhere else to restock."

'I'm sure,' she added firmly, underlining the words.

Perhaps they were foolish to set out on foot into the unknown, but Chell knew they couldn't stay, however welcoming Trevor and Gerry had been. Ishpeming was just too close. She would have persuaded the entire population to move if she could have, but she doubted many of them would take her word for it. To leave their homes because of an unseen adversary's potential threat on the say-so of a couple of 'time travelling' strangers was madness. Even Chell could see that.

"I'll see what I can do to get us more supplies," Doug went on. "Maybe there are other people with broken generators."

Chell smiled a little at that, picturing him as some kind of one-man generator repair team.

"I went by the house this morning," he said with a sigh.

Chell raised her eyebrows. Oh?

"It was more or less the same as yours, only emptier. I guess it was a resource for someone else's house repairs."

She shot him a look of sympathy.

"I…I'm not really materialistic," he told her. "Especially not after Aperture, but…I can't help but feel bad about my books."

Chell knew all too well how easy it was to mourn seemingly trivial things. During her breakdown in front of her own former home, she'd spent quite a few tears on the mementoes she'd lost. The documents with her birth parents' names had been buried in the mess, the only link to them she had other than her exotic looks.

"I know they're just books," Doug went on, "but I built up my classics collection over my most difficult years of adjustment. They were…kind of a reminder of what I could survive."

She nodded understandingly. She knew how much the classics meant to him: so much that they had stayed with him even at his most wild. She'd found quotes and paraphrases scattered all over the walls behind the test chambers, and it was only down to his enthusiasm for the written word that she'd been able to recognise them at all. In hindsight, it should have been clear as day who'd written the graffiti, and she pondered why she hadn't let herself imagine that it was him. At the time, she'd been too afraid to get her hopes up, letting her stubborn mind convince her that the message-writer's identity was unknown.

Who knew that that gawky teenager I bumped into would end up convincing me to read Emily Dickinson? she thought fondly.

"But it's no use crying about it now," he said with a decisive shrug, breaking her out of her reminisces. "They're long gone."

And so should we be, Chell added silently.

"We need to focus on what we're going to need," he went on. "Do you think we can get maps?"

"We can get you a map," Trevor said, appearing in the doorway, "but Gerry and I have been thinking. We've got a truck we just use for long-distance trading. We're about due to go to St. Ignace. We can take you as far as there if it's a help."

"That would be a huge help, thank you," Doug told him earnestly, as Chell shot Trevor a smile.

"Fuel's in short supply around here, otherwise we'd try and get you a vehicle, but we figured getting you to the Straits would be helpful. At least you'd be starting your journey from the lower peninsula."

Chell had never seen the Straits of Mackinac in person, but she knew her geography well enough to know that it was the narrow band of water separating Michigan's upper and lower peninsulas. In her time it had been a busy shipping route, dominated by the Mackinac Bridge, but somehow she doubted that was the case now.

"Is the bridge still standing?" Doug asked.

"It's still standing," Trevor reported warily, "but I doubt it's safe to cross, even on foot. But I've heard that there's a guy who owns a boat who rows across all the time."

Chell scribbled a question on her notepad. 'What does he charge for that?'

Trevor leaned forward to read it, frowning. "Honestly, I don't know."

"That's okay," said Doug, his tone more calm than Chell would have expected considering the uncertainty of the situation. "I'm sure we can trade with someone in St. Ignace if need be."

"Probably," Trevor agreed, leaning on the doorframe. "Your journey's going to be tough, not gonna lie. There's not a whole lot between here and St. Ignace, just small communities like this one. Once you get to the other side of the Straits…no idea. We haven't travelled far since the occupation."

"I don't blame you," Doug said with sympathy. "The whole landscape must have changed."

"And then some," Trevor muttered quietly, sounding like a man looking far into the past.

It wasn't until they were all on the road the next day that Doug and Chell were able to truly appreciate just how altered things were. Entire sections of landscape were a wasteland, scorched sticks where trees had once stood, the earth dry and crumbling. Patchwork communities like Ishpeming were scattered across the state. They stopped at most on the way so that Trevor and Gerry could trade their fresh vegetables and dried fruit. Doug and Chell sought additional supplies for their journey.

"Whatever the Combine did," Gerry explained to Chell, "altered the soil quality in some places. So they can't grow what we can, and vice versa, so we trade every few weeks to mix things up a little."

It was a good system, based on trust and mutual agreement. Doug traded his engineering skills for a couple of large, sturdy backpacks and some warm blankets. Chell wondered how he was planning to carry a backpack and the companion cube, but she didn't ask. He'd find a way, she was sure. She was more concerned with making sure he let her help carry everything. She was healing, yes, but she didn't want to let it stop her. And she wasn't convinced that bringing up the cube in front of Trevor and Gerry was a good idea, both of whom had been too polite to ask about it so far. They hadn't commented on Doug's routine of pill-taking either.

Back on the road, they noticed the scenery starting to look a little more like they remembered it. Nowhere, it seemed, had escaped being war-torn, but the extent of repair and rebuilding differed depending on where they went. When they reached St. Ignace, they saw that it was in better condition than Ishpeming, although there seemed to be less land dedicated to farming.

Trevor and Gerry dropped them as close to the empty Mackinac Bridge as was convenient. Gerry hugged them both, while Trevor settled for a sedate handshake.

"Good luck," Trevor wished them, his tone severe but genuine.

"Thank you," Doug replied, as Chell nodded her response. "You too. Did you decide what to do?"

The bespectacled man nodded at once. "We did. We're staying."

"Ishpeming is our home," Gerry put in.

"But," said Trevor sternly, "we'll be vigilant. Just in case."

"Thank you so much for everything," Doug said sincerely. "We couldn't have gotten this far without you."

"We like to help where we can," Gerry answered them. "Now get going, you two. You have a family to find."

Smiling, Chell nodded to him and shouldered her backpack: the lighter of the two, but still full to bursting with all their supplies.

"I hope we meet again one day so we can repay you for your kindness," Doug told them both.

"We'll keep a look out," Trevor assured him with a brief smile.

Final parting words were exchanged, then Trevor and Gerry drove off, leaving just Doug, Chell, and the long road to Wyoming.