Chapter Text
If not for the deafening chopping noise of helicopter blades, the heavy, cold air around them would’ve been dead silent. There was nothing to say. Even if Gordon could speak—and by God he wanted to now, to say anything, just a single apology or condolence—words would have escaped him anyway. She was laser-focused on the piloting of this copter through what had started as light snow and progressed into a much thicker fall, trespassing dangerously close to blizzard territory. The bone-chilling winds seemed appropriate to the way both of them felt.
It had been one singular day since Eli Vance had been murdered by Combine right before their eyes. The smoking gun was an Advisor, no less, which landed them in an extremely difficult situation: they now had everything. Everything of the Resistance; Eli’s knowledge of each canal and tunnel through which they would bring evacuees, every bit of every equation used to make the teleports work, everything down to the last detail. That’s what Advisors did to you. They’d freeze you in midair and strip you of your dignity before revealing their great long tongues with which they pierced your spine and extracted your brain, and with it, what makes you, you. This happened to Eli while his daughter was forced to watch. Now, she was flying a helicopter into an arctic storm, with only coordinates from someone she hardly trusted to guide her. Gordon did what he did best in these times and sat next to her in silence, kicking himself for it.
Five days. That’s how long they had known each other by now. Five. A business week. In these five days he had explored more with her than he could manage to in five months with a friend in his past life. The first time he ever met her she saved him from being beaten senseless by civil protection officers when he barely had a clue of where he was. There was a near immediate sense of trust there, as if a part of him knew what was going to happen in the future and was ready to dive in. And a substantial amount certainly happened; Dr. Vance was taken the moment they were reunited after Gordon’s absence, a thing which he still did not quite understand, and sent first to one of the most horrific establishments that still roamed on the earth, then to the most horrific, the Citadel. Nova Prospekt paled in comparison to the sterile darkness of that terrible skyscraper which held the creatures unfortunate enough to be captured and mutated by the Combine. That building no longer existed, sacrificed along with all of the cybernetically-modified species inside. He supposed they were put out of their misery.
Together these two heroes—if he could be called a hero, which he doubted—had killed Dr. Breen and managed to usher dozens of rebels and innocent citizens to safety. No one had yet heard from Barney, and his stomach felt uneasy as he wondered of his fate. He hoped they had been long out of the city by the time the first portal storm had hit and wiped out the bridge from which Alyx and Gordon derailed. He could hardly bear imagining the scene of a horrible train accident, hundreds dead, including his old friend, and he physically shook his head to rattle the thought out of it. Instead his mind drifted to the antlion mines, where the woman next to him once lay unconscious, dying. It pulled his stomach further into upset. For whatever reason in this white wilderness over which they flew, he could only nurse thoughts that discomforted him. Perhaps it was a fear of the unknown beast they drifted towards now. He had never seen this much snow in his life, even in Boston. The HEV suit kept his core warm, though his nose and ears were red with complaint at the whipping chill coming through the sides of the chopper. Alyx, in her usual garb, though now with the sleeves of her sweatshirt rolled down to her wrists, visibly shivered.
If he got up now and tried to unfasten and retrieve one of the parkas from the back of the helicopter, he would most definitely fail to make it back to his seat. His vocal chords still failed him, so he was unable to ask her if she would like to land somewhere to gear up. Instead, all he could do was sit next to her and watch her tremble, her face and fingers growing pinker by the moment. He was about to reach out and touch her arm in concern when an alarm blared from within the cockpit. Alyx let out an irritated What the hell? and their eyes both turned to the radar, which showed another vehicle behind them in the sky.
“Combine! They followed—”
She only made it halfway through her sentence before they heard an explosion, and then the helicopter rocked tremendously under impact. The tail of the chopper had been completely blown apart by a rocket from the Combine aircraft. They were about to go down, hard.
“Brace yourself!” she shouted as she pulled up on the controls, sending them turning desperately through the air. Gordon did exactly as he was told and used his hands above his head to wedge himself against the ceiling of the cockpit, about all he could do. His gut turned with every spin as they cascaded downward. His only hope was that the snow would make for a soft landing.
Both of them grunted as the chassis came tumbling to the ground and lodged itself in about a foot of snow. The frozen dirt made for a harsh impact on their bones, but the snow saved them. However, poor Gordon, despite his efforts to keep himself as still as possible during their descent, had a hard collision with the controls that left his nose sore and bleeding from the nostril. It didn’t feel broken, but it sure as hell felt bad.
“Oh, God,” remarked Alyx, panicking to unbuckle herself from the pilot’s seat. “Are you okay?”
He tenderly wiped the blood off his nose and peered down at his stained glove before looking up at her and giving a less than enthusiastic thumbs-up. Okay? Yes. Having fun? The jury’s still out on that one.
The craft that had taken them out of the sky seemed to be satisfied with its work and turned a 90-degree angle away from the scene of their crash. Its actions seemed to say, we don’t need to waste ammo on killing you when there’s the cold to do it for us. Alyx rushed out of the cockpit and he quickly followed her. “We need to get the supplies we can carry and make a break for it. This thing could still explode.”
Without missing a beat, she hopped into the back and started pulling out crates of first-aid kits, healing vials, weapons, ammunition, spare clothing, packaged military meals, the works. God, those MREs were probably thirty years old by now, he begged whatever force was out there that he wouldn’t have to dare open one. She took his crowbar, latched in safely along with all of their other tools and weapons, and began to pry open the crates one by one, stuffing as much as she could into the two big camping packs she had put onboard in case of exactly this. She shivered audibly now, her hot breath crystalizing the moment it escaped her blueing lips. Gordon immediately hopped into the back of the helicopter and retrieved a parka which he quickly forced around her shoulders. She seemed taken aback by the action and her eyes darted to his as she hesitantly wormed her arms into the sleeves. “Th-thanks, Gordon,” she managed with a quick smile.
After putting an extra pair of thin gloves under those of the HEV suit to warm his numbing fingers and securing a stocking cap on his head, complete with a stenciled lambda, he awkwardly slung his own parka over his armor along with his respective backpack. Alyx zipped up her navy blue coat and threw the hood over her head, buckled the pack strap over her chest, and nodded at him. “Let’s go.”
So they went. Luckily they still knew which way they were supposed to be headed, and they both silently hoped there would be some kind of outpost or abandoned radio station from which they could contact Judith to get more specific directions to… wherever she was. She found it, the Borealis. That was the reason she had gone to work under Dr. Breen, seemingly abandoning the Resistance—she wasn’t double-crossing them, she was infiltrating the Combine to find the liner and all of the information they had on it. Dr. Mossman was an incredibly brave soul, Gordon thought as they trudged north. To put herself in such a dangerous position to gain intelligence, to make herself look like a traitor in an effort to get close to Breen, it was genius and terrifying. She was a much smarter person than she was given credit for being. He hoped that, even after Eli’s death, Alyx’s animosity for the pseudo-stepmother character in her life would continue to wane.
Gordon could not zip his parka all the way up over the chestplate of his suit, though he didn’t terribly mind, as his head and hands were now as toasty as they could get in these conditions under their fleece. Alyx, on the other hand, still looked extremely cold; her jeans looked wet from the snow melting against her warm skin, probably refreezing directly onto her knees and turning them painful and red under the denim. Even as someone who grew up in the kind of weather that turned all your extremities bright pink and sent you running inside after a few short minutes of winter fun, she seemed to be direly not enjoying herself right now. She remained strong, however, marching along with tall and wide steps through the dozen inches of snow on the ground, keeping her pace intact with his longer strides. He was incredibly grateful at this point to remember that, because it was the summer, the sun wouldn’t set all of the way in the Arctic Circle; instead it would sort of bounce along the horizon, pretending to sink under and then ping-ponging right back up into the sky again. It was around four in the afternoon right now—they had set off around midmorning—so they had enough time to spare, depending on whether or not they decided to freeze to death anyway.
Do you want my jacket? he really wanted to ask. I don’t really need it. Instead, he stopped to take off the backpack and then the parka, holding it out to offer it to her.
“No, I’m fine. Thanks,” she replied, looking at him a bit odd. Unconvinced, he put it back on and carried on walking. She looked so terribly cold, it was beginning to really worry him. What were the signs of hypothermia again? Slurred speech, suddenly stopping shivering, getting drowsy… but if you had any of those, it was basically too late for you. Oh God, now he was really terrified. They had to find something, anything, to get away from the cold, and they had to do it as soon as humanly possible.
They both hunched in on themselves with arms crossed around their chests as the wind really picked up and smashed against them. It burned his exposed skin and he couldn’t possibly imagine how bad it had to be for Alyx. He flipped his hood up over his head and pulled the strings taught, remarking to himself that he probably looked utterly ridiculous even though he certainly didn’t care that much right now. Snow was beginning to accumulate on his beard, eyebrows, and even his glasses, which he had to wipe off with his gloved fingers once every few minutes.
“J-Jesus,” shuddered Alyx, “it’s r-really cold out h-here.”
They had to have been walking for another forty-five minutes before Gordon started to get increasingly concerned about her condition. She seemed to be having difficulties concentrating on walking, a glazed-over expression that told him she was confused about where she was. When he realized how bad she was getting it sent a spark flying down his spine, and he realized how critical it was to find somewhere to take her before she got worse, because that was all she could do if he didn’t find a way to warm her up immediately.
Then, like a miracle, he saw through the falling snow an abandoned ranch. And in front of it, him. He adjusted his tie as he typically did and lingered only a moment before calmly rounding the corner of the barn and disappearing. Now he understood why it was too good to be true, it was the will of his mysterious employer. Even so, he was overjoyed to find the place and moved Alyx as quickly as he could into the quaint home next to the fenced-in barn. The door was frozen shut, something he had to remedy by standing her nearby and taking the crowbar from her pack before shoving it into the doorjamb and prying it free. It cracked open under the pressure of the tool and he kicked it open to bring her inside, first handing her back the crowbar and then motioning for her to give him her pistol; it would be too much effort to try and get one of the other guns out from his backpack when she had one on her hip. Blankly, she stared at him for a minute before something in her freezing brain clicked into place and she looked down to get it from her holster and hand it to him. He took the small thing in his larger hands and fiddled with it for a moment, having difficulty both from never having held it before and also having a second pair of gloves on. Holding it to the floor, he guided her inside with a hand around her shoulders and then stopped her just past the front door to close it behind them. He held up one hand to tell her to wait there; she nodded slowly and gazed around as he rounded the corner around the living room into the kitchen to check for zombies. Kitchen clear.
Rotting wooden stairs led up to the bedrooms and bathroom on the top floor of the tiny house. There were two bedrooms from what he could tell down a short, narrow hallway. He kicked in the first door on his left first—the bathroom. A combination shower and tub sat farthest from him, blocked by a toilet and finally, closest, a small vanity with an old, dirty sink. After he got Alyx warmed up again his next mission would be looking underneath for extra medical supplies. He crept closer to the bathtub and, after a few long moments of hesitation, ripped the shower curtain to the side to reveal a zombie sitting in the tub. Without any thought he shot it with several light-fast bullets out of her gun, but it didn’t move. Its corpse barely responded to the bullets at all. He realized then that it, along with the headcrab, had frozen to death. His blood ran cold.
Gordon backed all the way out of the bathroom until his shoulders hit the wall of the hallway. He would have to check the bedrooms now, though he felt considerably less nervous about finding anything living in this icy place. The first bedroom he infiltrated was completely empty upon inspection. The walls were painted a sort of banana-pudding color, with light blue curtains covering the window and various other shades of blue scattered throughout, a gray quilt rested softly on a twin-sized bed. This had to have been a little boy’s room at one point in time. He would be back for the quilt.
Next, the final bedroom, almost definitely the one belonging to the parents of that boy. He kicked it and immediately heard a crunching as it swung open only a few inches. After a couple of seconds he pushed it open further with his hand and felt the resistance behind the door. When he walked into the room he saw not one but two headcrab zombies’ bodies on the ground beside the door, as well as scratch marks on the inside. He paused in shock when he observed the size of one of the dead—it was the little boy, no older than ten. Gordon’s glove rose to cover his mouth out of complete horror for what he was seeing. He hadn’t seen a single child since he arrived here in this grim future, for there were none. To finally see one and for him to be dead by such a gruesome fate was almost too hard to bear, so much so that, for a moment, he almost forgot about Alyx downstairs.
He stomped, practically ran down the hallway and back down the stairs to find her, and at first he couldn’t see her as he rounded the corner. Shit. No.
“Alyx,” he breathed out, barely sounding like a name and more like a confused sigh. He had to find her. His stumbling feet took him to the entryway of the home and he peered out the frosted window, squinting to try and find her in the snow. Oh, God, no, she can’t be out there. She wouldn’t wander back outside. He pivoted quickly around to check the lower level of the house one last time before he saw her, curled into a fetal position on the living room sofa, asleep. No, she couldn’t go to sleep. “Alyx,” he huffed again as he rushed towards the couch to shake her awake. She jolted under his grip and looked around in a complete daze.
“Let me sleep, Gordon,” she slurred. “I’m so tired.”
Panic started setting in. He forced her upright and found anything he could put around her, first starting with his own parka. Next he sprinted back up the stairs, tripping when one of the rotten boards caved under his weight, and came back with the quilts and sheets from both beds. He wrapped all of these around her, creating several thick layers of heat that she curled right into. Now he would have to worry about warming the house around them. As soon as he knew she wasn’t going to try to fall asleep on him again, and that she would be relatively safe if she did try, he rose from his kneeling position by the small sofa and scanned the room for sources of warmth. He spotted a gas range.
Please still work, please still work, he chanted to himself over and over as he made his way over to it and pressed the knob inward. It did its typical click-click-click followed by the sound of fire starting as he turned it to high. When it succeeded to start his first instinct was to sigh in relief and thank the man—despite his unsureness of what exactly he really was. There were a handful of kitchen towels in one of the drawers; if he could boil some water on the stovetop he could create hot towels to drape over her and heat her up faster. He reached over to one of the sinks handled and turned it… and nothing came out except for a low drone of complaint as the frozen pipes refused to do what they were told. He sighed and turned the knob back into place to stop the noise. There were probably years worth of ice trapped in the pipes below the house and he had no way of setting it free. However, an epiphany struck him and he realized that they were surrounded by clean water in the form of snow.
A big stew pot that sat in one of the cabinets seemed to be the ideal vessel for carrying in the fluff to be boiled. He gave Alyx a quick look to make sure she was still on the couch and awake before opening the door and braving the cold wind again to scoop a potful of snow off the ground. The front door took some effort to close and stay closed again from the hard winds and his handiwork getting it open in the first place. He had a feeling they’d need to barricade it if they decided to open it too many more times after this. Perhaps it was better to keep it closed for the time being, and hopefully one pot of water would be all he needed to get her back to her normal self.
While the snow melted in the pot and slowly came to a bubble, he sat next to her. He wasn’t sure how comfortable she would normally be with him touching her, so he was cautious to do so, but he did put his arm around the heap of blankets that surrounded her form and rubbed to create more heat. She didn’t protest, and her eyes seemed to focus more than they did before, indicative of recovery.
“Did… what…” her brow furrowed as she tried to make sense of what had happened in the past fifteen or so minutes.
“It’s okay,” mouthed Gordon, shaking his head. You’re okay now. Thank God.
Her forehead stayed crinkled in thought as she stared at nothing in particular. Slowly, as he continued to create hot friction on the blankets with his hands, she leaned her double-hooded head onto his shoulder to rest there.
She spoke again, and a tinge of humor was apparent in her voice. “You saved me again.”
This made his stomach feel upset for whatever reason. It was a specific feeling he’d never experienced before and didn’t want to be experiencing. Alarmed, his eyes shuffled around the room for a few long seconds before he gently helped her back into an upright position and abruptly got up from the couch to check on the water. Tiny bubbles had begun to form on the bottom of the pot, shimmying their way up and out, and gloriously hot steam flew above the stove. He could’ve put his face right up to the water to warm up, let his glasses glaze over with fog, but he knew he had a job to do. Removing the now warmed water from the stove, but keeping it on to warm the room until he could figure out how else to, he carefully submerged the towels and wrung them out over the pot before bringing them to her in a stack. It was almost like a spa treatment, but instead of being relaxing for anyone involved it was completely necessary to avoid dying horribly.
He stripped the blankets and sheets off of her and helped her take off the parkas, her leather jacket, then her Black Mesa sweatshirt, to leave just a white undershirt and what he assumed was an old sports bra underneath. The unusual proximity to her body flustered him like it was something he wasn’t supposed to be seeing as he lay the towels over her, first the largest around her shoulders, a small one on each arm, and the remaining two on her thighs as she sat in a criss-cross position on the sofa. He put the parkas back around her without making her put the sleeves back on, adjusted the hoods, and wrapped her once again in her cocoon to leave her to heat up. That should help until the heat ran out from the cloths, which he’d have to watch very closely to make sure they didn’t simply make her cold again.
“Thank you,” she murmured, moving her head to look up at him for the first time since their arrival. “I was doing pretty bad, wasn’t I?”
He paused before nodding slowly, coming back over to sit next to her. His stomach panged again. Dammit, he wasn’t about to open one of those army meals anytime soon. Alyx let out a small laugh. “Serves me right for not taking your jacket.”
There was a long silence before she decided to speak again, curled up tight in the blankets and many layers of outerwear. “I’m feeling a lot better but I don’t think we should risk the cold again. Especially since there are Combine helicopters patrolling. We should stay here and rest.”
He could not protest her orders any less. Rest sounded amazing after their hour-long trek through the snow. His legs were completely exhausted from stomping around, and he was weary after the scare with Alyx’s temperature. She was speaking again now, though, and smiling, and that was an incredible sign. She was almost back to her regular self.
Gordon got up from the sofa again to go to where he had thrown down his knapsack. He produced a box of matches from the side pocket and proceeded to use it to try and light the fireplace, which was a fruitless effort due to the dampness of the wood. He decided to sacrifice one of the dining chairs in between the kitchen and living room to use as kindling. A second match, and with a whoosh, flickering orange and yellow burst to life before their eyes. Now they were in business, and he could turn off the stove.
“Good job, Gordon!” praised Alyx. “I can take these towels off now.” And she did exactly that, coming out of her cocoon and removing the towels one by one and placing them into a neat pile to dry by the fireplace. She lifted herself from the couch and maneuvered her blankets around the coffee table to sit on the floor in front of it. “Mmm,” she hummed happily as she closed her eyes and let the warm glow bathe her and dance on her olive skin.
He turned off the stove and let the pot of remaining water sit in case they needed it for drinking. “Hey, Gordon,” he heard from the living room, causing him to turn around. She had moved the coffee table out of the way and laid down all of the blankets on top of one another on the floor by the fireplace, creating a soft and warm place to sit. “I think we should sleep out here. I’ll flip you for the couch!” she quipped, pulling a quarter out of her pocket. Where she got this random change he didn’t have a clue, though he supposed it had to be useful for something to carry it around. He came around the couch and sat down next to her on the ground. “Heads, I get it, tails, you do.”
She flicked the coin up into the air and caught it, slapping it to the back of her other hand. “Tails. Damn. At least I get to be closer to the fire.”
She stood up and grabbed the end of one of the blankets, causing Gordon to realize what she was doing and scramble to his feet to let her. The top quilt folded in her arms and she threw it onto the couch for him before sitting back down. “There you go.”
He nodded a thank-you to her. She seemed… okay right now, as far as the events of yesterday were concerned. They buried Eli in a very rushed ceremony at her request so that they would be able to leave the next morning. Isaac tearfully shared a tribute to his lost friend and read from the old Bible Vance had kept in his office all these years. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul; he leadeth me in the path of righteousness for his name’s sake. Whether Gordon or any of Eli’s other friends and family members believed that was definitely debatable, but the thought of the existence of a heaven where he would be able to stay in peace soothed him, and he assumed it probably did for others, too, agnostic or otherwise.
Alyx looked very calm right now. No tears, no outbursts of anger or sorrow. Part of him was relieved to see her doing so well, however another part worried that she was internalizing her grief. Either way, he wouldn’t dare bring it up even if he could speak. He would let her deal with it the way she was going to deal with it.
“Are you hungry? I know I am.” She rose from the blankets and went over to her backpack to fine one of the MREs. Gordon cringed as he watched her hunched over it. “I know it’s not the best,” she remarked, smirking back at his expression, “but food is food. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. I know you haven’t been eating like this long.”
Her hand extended to hand him a box shrink-wrapped in dark green plastic. It had cryllic characters all over it, none of which he could read except for и, which didn’t exactly help him. He tore the plastic at its weak point and opened the bag to reveal the small, brown box that contained the food. Before he cast the packaging aside, though, a little label caught his eye, which seemed to contain the expiration date: 12.06.2004. These had to have been made a good twenty-five years ago, he realized, grimacing a little harder. But, what else was he going to eat? Definitely not headcrab stew. He wasn’t that desperate—yet.
The box opened and revealed a mess of small packages that he couldn’t decipher. Alyx picked up one of the three spoons inside and showed him the packets one-by-one. “Cахар, that’s sugar,” she began. “Cоль, salt, and перец, that’s pepper.” He was deeply impressed with her knowledge of Russian despite his understanding that it must have been a necessity for many Resistance members to learn in the early days of relocations. “Ooh, coffee!” she exclaimed with joy as she pulled it out of the box. “That’ll be perfect tomorrow morning.”
She ushered all of the bigger tin containers away to just in front of the fireplace and handed him a packet of crackers to open. “This is cheese,” she explained as she opened a smaller tin that contained a yellow substance, “and this is… it’s like a pâté thing. It’s not bad.”
Pâté. He wasn’t sure about that. He wasn’t sure about any of this, but he was hungry and was willing to be a good sport. She used one of the spoons to shovel a good amount of the paste onto a cracker. “Here. Try it.”
It tasted vaguely of chicken, though fattier and obviously a different texture entirely. She was right, actually, it wasn’t all that terrible. She seemed pleased when he made an expression of approval. “You’ll like the cheese, I think. It’s my favorite.” The spoon pulled out a good chunk of the cheese and she smiled as she ate the cracker which contained it. “Oh, man, I haven’t had one of these in forever. I think the last time I did it was when my dad and I…”
Oh, no. She froze, realizing. Gordon braced for impact.
She pursed down hard on her lips as they began to quiver, and her eyes threatened tears. “Sorry.” All he could think to do was to reach out and touch her, but she leaned away, putting a hand up to block him. “No,” she insisted with a short sniff. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”
Much less happily, existing somewhere else in her mind, she handed him one of the spoons and took the remaining of the first pack of crackers while sliding the second over to him. They ate in relative silence, only the sound of crinkling and crunching as well as the low popping of the fire remedying the room’s desperation for sound. He felt so horrible. There was simply nothing that he was capable of doing to make her feel better, and it frustrated him to no end.
“These should be warmer now,” said Alyx absently as she drug the larger tins over to where they sat and opened them up. “Meat and potatoes.”
He cut down the middle of each tin with his spoon to split the food evenly, and looked up at her with a sympathetic smile. She gazed tenderly at him for a moment before blinking back down to her dinner and beginning to eat it faster. Slightly offended, he continued to eat his at the same pace knowing she probably wanted to get the hell away from him.
“We can save the sweet stuff for breakfast tomorrow. Coffee, tea, apple jam, and energy bars.”
After finishing her share of the food, Gordon nearly done with his own, she got up from the blankets on the floor and grabbed a set of folded clothing from the sack. “I’m going to go change upstairs. You can change in here, I brought clothes for you, too.”
He watched her go up the rickety stairs, hoisting herself up over the broken one with ease, before putting his meal down on the ground and looking in the backpack for the clothes she spoke of. It looked like it was a City 17 uniform, a white button-down shirt along with dark blue jeans and a navy jacket to match, of course including underwear and a pair of wool socks. He was grateful for the opportunity to get out of the HEV suit, but he wasn’t sure he felt safe enough. He would probably keep it on, just for tonight, in case the Combine made a surprise visit to the house they were squatting in. After all, Overwatch seemed to always know where they were—whether the portal was open or closed.
His food was just about gone when he heard her coming back down the stairs, changed into a thick black sweater, probably also made of wool, and a new pair of thicker jeans, made for the occasion. “I know it’s only six or so but I’m completely exhausted.” She seemed not to want to acknowledge her break in mood, but she did pause when she noticed he hadn’t changed. “Oh, you’re going to keep the suit on?” He looked down at his chest and then nodded. “Okay. To each his own. Anyway, I’m going to sleep.”
Again, Gordon nodded, in agreement with her sentiment of complete fatigue. He could use some well-earned rest before they took off to continue their search for Borealis. He quickly cleaned up the remnants of their meal and folded the trash neatly together into the box before getting up to set it on the kitchen counter and retreat back to the couch. Pulling the quilt she had given him very awkwardly over his bulky armor, he lied down on his back and stared up at the ceiling.
“Goodnight.” Alyx nestled into a blanket-wrapped ball at the fireside, back turned away from him.
He just wished there was something he could do. All he wanted was the ability to say goodnight back to her, or to say I’m so sorry or just I’m here for you. But he couldn’t, because of his goddamned ridiculous ailment that he thought had long since left him alone well after childhood. He felt like a toddler standing behind his mother’s leg, unable to speak due to fear of the scary tall man standing before him. Instead, he was a grown adult who was too scared to talk while one of his only friends nearly froze to death next to him, not her first brush with death.
The thought reminded him of what the Vortigaunts had done with him in the mines. They weaved the two of them together somehow in a way neither understood, or may ever fully understand. His life is what saved hers. If she died, would he? If he died, would she? Could they feel it? Could she sense how deeply he wanted to do anything that could possibly help her? Is that why she was so good at translating his nonverbal cues?
There were too many questions about too many things for him to focus well enough. He hadn’t slept well the night before and didn’t expect to tonight, either. So, he stared at the ceiling for what felt like hours until unconsciousness decided to finally sweep over him in the sunlit house.