Chapter Text
"Daaaaad, I'm booooorrrreed!"
Gordon laughed at his son. "Joshie, we've only just entered the main building. We're almost to the fun stuff."
"I wanna play games. Cowboy games."
Gordon slightly ignores him, picking him up to move faster.
"Howdy, hey!" He says, showing politeness as he walks by co-workers.
Joshua was looking over his father's shoulder, intent on eying down the strange guard following. He tugged on Gordon's hair a bit to get his attention before the guard spoke.
"S'cuse me," Gordon "hmm"'d in reply, prompting a continuation from the guard.
"Do you either of you have your passport?"
"Passport?" Gordon starts, but Joshua interrupts. "Isn't that for leaving the country."
The was a pause before he got a reply "yeah, uhh... Black Mesa is concidered a different country. Passport?"
Gordon groaned. The mix of this guard's nonsense and other sounds were starting to give him a headache. And was starting to cause Joshua's vocal tic.
Speaking over the random bursts of cowboys, Gordon answers the guard. "No, we didn't bring our passports."
The guard walks over to another, who is trying to tame two kids at once, and whispers to the overloaded guard before coming back.
"Yeah, he says you're not allowed in here."
"He didn't- cowboys!- didn't say anything about it though... Cowboys!"
Joshua's eyes meet the guards, and the guard looks away at the other one. "Look, he's so upset."
Gordon tries not to laugh, seeing one of the kids climbing on his back and the other only not running off because of a child leash, attempting to get to the door Gordon needs to go through. "I think it's just his kids driving him nuts, dude. Look, I'm gonna go through now."
"Alright well, I'm gonna follow you."
"COWBOYS!"
A loud shout left Joshua, catching everyone's attention.
He tried to hide, tears forming. The guard who decided he had to follow got close.
"Hey, small one." Joshua looks up, unsure. Gordon was ready to protect his boy, but that seemed unnecessary almost immediately.
The guard sung out a note and blue orbs flowed out, hitting Joshua and popping like bubbles. After it was done Joshua laughed a bit and stopped ticking.
"What did you do? What was that?"
"That's uhh... The Black Mesa Sweet Voice. It calmed him down."
Calmed him down was an understatement, it was as if he was never overwhelmed or bored this whole time.
"I'm still gonna follow you."
Gordon groaned, but went through the door, glad to see a familiar face once he did.
"Hello Dr. Coomer!"
"Ah, Hello Gordon! And this much be Joshua!"
A large smile formed on the child and Gordon let him go and say hi properly.
"Coomer!" He said, grabbing the name easily. The older scientist picked up the child with no effort. "Oh, does my name travel through your house?"
Joshua nodded. "Dad says you're one of the best friends he has! And you know a lot about many things!"
He let the two chat. After all, Coomer may be the closest thing to a grandfather Joshua would be allowed to interact with. As he wondered a bit, not going too far from the lockers, he runs into a large retriever.
Who the hell brought a dog?
"Oh, hello, sorry!" A voice says on the other side of the dog. "Sunkist, move."
The man on the other side was pretty tall, but his age was herd to figure out. He seemed to somehow be both older and younger than everyone here. He continued talking a bit, preventing Gordon from returning the hello.
"My name's Tommy! And this is Sunkist!"
"Hey, Tommy..." Gordon says. "Is this where you should be? Or the dog?"
"Sunkist is a good dog!" He said, a little upset. "I brought him for the day, as he's my son. N-nothing said we had to... That we couldn't bring pets!"
That... Actually made sense. It was kinda against the spirit of it all, but it made sense.
"Alright, what are you doing here? You going to the cafeteria?"
He nodded. "Yeah, I'm on lunch break!" Gordon backed up to make room for Sunkist to turn around. "Well, I gotta get back to my-"
Tommy added to his comment, either unaware or uncaring that Gordon was talking. "I drink soda for lunch!" Was shouted as he walks off.
After standing there for a while, Gordon went back to the locker room, picking up his son.
He had to practically run to get to the next part. Between the moment with Tommy and his dog, more passport nonsense from the guard, wo Joshua managed to get the name out of as Benrey, and convincing Joshua to follow Coomer to a safe area, as his job is dangerous, he was running extremely late.
He gets to the air lock, convinces Benrey to stay out, he had tried to talk with the coworkers in the air lock, only to be shut down.
"Ok, no one talks in this place, I guess. No one knows how to be kind and friendly- HOW THE FUCK?!?"
Standing in the test chamber, a place that always has at least a bit of radiation, was the same person he left outside of the air lock.
Gordon walks in shortly after shouting at Benrey and, once again, trying to convince the guy to leave.
"You're not getting rid of me that easily, you're waiting to steal something."
"What could I-" Gordon's comment was interrupted by a familiar voice calling to him.
"Dad! Dad! Da-Cowboys! Dad! Look! Look! I'm a... A die-rect-or!"
Gordon smiled and decided then and there to ignore Benrey. "Yes you are, Joshie! Why not tell daddy what he needs to do next?"
And that's what happened. With help from the actual scientists in the same safe zone, Joshua gave Gordon the directions.
It seems it didn't matter how careful he was in putting the crystal where it needed to go, something was bound to go wrong.
The exact moment the crystal touched the beams, it started going out of control. Sparks flew off of the machine, and panic arose.
"Look what you've done!"
"Oh, no you went too fast!"
"Dad?!?"
"Shield the kid, Sunkist!"
One of the group jumped into the test room and began screaming once he realized the full extent of the situation.
And then a flash. Then quiet.