Chapter Text
Gordon wakes up on his couch, face pressed against the cushions. He’s sore in places he didn’t know existed and exhausted in a way that goes past physical, but mainly he’s confused. For a moment he just lies there, staring at the dark brown fabric of his couch, appreciating the fact that he’s alive. It’s only when he tries to sit up that he realizes things are off.
His hand is missing, replaced by a prosthetic. An admittedly cool looking one, sleek and orange, but - that wasn’t supposed to be real. It was all just a game - or a dream? His VR stuff is nowhere to be seen, and he did essentially just wake up. So why the fuck is he missing a hand now?
A sharp buzz interrupts his thoughts. His phone is on the coffee table next to him, ringing loudly. Gordon lets out a goran, rolling over to grab at it as it screams at him. The caller ID just says “Unknown.” Never a good sign.
“Fuck it,” he says out loud, and answers the call. “Hello?”
“Hello, Gordon!” A familiar voice says, and for a second Gordon thinks he might cry.
“Dr. - Dr. Coomer? Is that you?”
“Indeed it is!” Coomer responds.
“Holy shit,” Gordon says. “Holy shit.”
“I completely agree,” Coomer says, and in the background Gordon can hear other muffled voices.
“Is - is that Bubby?”
“Yes! Tommy is here as well, along with Sunkist!”
“Can you put me on speaker?”
There’s silence, followed by a very muffled conversation where Gordon can just make out Tommy’s voice.
“Mr. Freeman?”
“Tommy!”
“I’m here too, you know,” Bubby cuts in, and there’s a bark in the background.
“It’s so good to hear you guys,” Gordon says, and he means it. He’s smiling so wide that his cheeks hurt.
“I’m very glad to hear you as well, Gordon. However there’s a few things I must ask you! First of all, where are you right now?” Dr. Coomer asks.
“Uh, my apartment. Why?”
“Do you have a car?” Bubby asks.
“Yeah.”
“We may need some assistance,” Dr. Coomer continues. “For you see, we are all still in Black Mesa!”
“What’s left of it, at least,” Bubby grumbles.
“What do you mean?” Gordon asks, running his hand through his hair. Oh, that feels weird with the prosthetic.
“It’s real fucked up,” Bubby says, which explains absolutely nothing.
“It looks like it got hit by the Tri-State Tornado of 1925,” Tommy says, which also explains nothing.
“The most "extreme" tornado in recorded history was the Tri-State Tornado , which spread through parts of Missouri , Illinois , and Indiana on March 18, 1925. It is considered an F5 on the Fujita Scale , even though -”
“Cool, got it, thank you Dr. Coomer.” God, he missed them. Granted, he’s only been apart from them for like ten minutes, but that was ten minutes where he thought he would never see them again. “Right, okay, do you guys need me to come get you?” Oh, fuck, are they gonna need somewhere to stay?” With the initial excitement of hearing his friends fading, Gordon is starting to realize the actual logistics of this. Three entire people have apparently sprung into existence in a place that doesn’t exist. Plus a dog. Where are they gonna stay?
“I don’t wanna be here a second longer than I have to,” Bubby says. “How the hell did you get to wake up somewhere new while we’re all stuck in this shit hole?”
You’re not real, Gordon thinks but doesn’t say. “I dunno, man.” He puts his own phone on speaker, opening the maps app. How the fuck is he gonna find a place that doesn’t exist?
Except when he opens the app it shows him places he has saved. Right under Home is Work, and work is apparently located at “Black Mesa Research Facility”.
“What the fuck,” he says.
“What?” Tommy asks. “Is something wrong, Mr. Freeman?”
“Everything’s fine,” Gordon says. He doesn’t wanna reveal anything to them, not yet at least. That's not a conversation to have over the phone. “I’ll be there in 20, okay? I’m gonna hang up while I drive but call if - if anything happens. I’ll be there soon.”
“We’ll see you then, Gordon,” Dr. Coomer says, and with an echoing bye from the three of them, he hangs up.
---
He spends the drive over having a mild panic attack. The route feels at once new and familiar, roads he recognizes moving in ways that feel just a little off. Even the music on the radio seems weird, though that might just be his imagination - he doesn’t actually listen to the radio that often.
Black Mesa isn’t a far drive. Gordon can imagine working there, picking an apartment based on location, commuting everyday. But Black Mesa isn’t real . Or, it wasn’t, until today. Because regardless of what he remembers, he pulls into the parking lot and the building is right there.
He understands what the Science Team was talking about, now. The glass windows are all shattered, the door completely smashed. He carefully picks his way inside, avoiding especially large shards, and the front desk has been crushed by a fallen chunk of ceiling.
He opens his phone and redials Dr. Coomer’s number, hoping for a quick response. He picks up almost instantly. “Hello, Gordon!”
“I’m here! I’m in the front lobby, I think? The aboveground part. Where are you guys?”
“We’re in the main building! I suppose it would be easier for us to come to you, though, wouldn’t it, Gordon?”
“I really do not wanna go any deeper into this place,” Gordon admits. Coomer chuckles.
“I don’t blame you! Well, we’ll start trying to find our way up. Don’t go anywhere!”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Gordon says, and he hangs up again.
He does a little exploring as he waits for the Science Team, wandering around the remains of the lobby. The ceiling has almost completely caved in, but he manages to find a small waiting area that's semi-intact, with one chair left miraculously unscathed. He takes a seat, looking over the assorted magazines left on the table. A couple he even recognizes. He flips through them quickly, and quite a few reference Black Mesa, mentioning their research in fields from genetic engineering to theoretical physics. Apparently the experiment that got them attention in the first place was a successful sheep cloning done decades ago, and that got them enough funding to branch out into other things.
What the fuck.
Well, no one’s here anymore. Can’t hurt if he just...takes them.
It’s then that he hears voices, distant and indistinct, but Gordon knows his friends well enough by now. He scoops up the magazines and starts heading towards the noise, grabbing the handle to the stairwell just as Coomer pulls it open. Gordon’s pulled with it, colliding with Coomer’s burly chest.
“Hello, Gordon!” Coomer says, wrapping him up in a hug.
“Hi Dr. Coomer,” Gordon wheezes as Coomer’s arms squeeze all the air out of him. He finally releases Gordon, who has to take a second and lean against the wall to get his breath back. Tommy pats him on the shoulder. “Thanks, man,” he says. Tommy beams at him. “Fuck. Okay. It’s good to see you guys again,” Gordon says, some of the tension leaving his shoulders for the first time since he woke up. “Whadya say we get out of here?”
“Please,” Bubby says.
Gordon leads them to the car. Tommy calls shotgun as soon as they step outside, which Gordon is happy to oblige, and soon enough they’re on the road.
“So, I’m not gonna have space in my apartment for everyone to stay. What do you guys think of getting a hotel?”
“We don’t have any money, Mr. Freeman,” Tommy says, turning his pockets inside out.
“It’s cool, I figured I’d cover it.” He doesn’t really have the money for this but it’s fine. It’s fine! He’ll work something out.
There’s a pretty decent hotel a couple blocks from his apartment. Gordon had stayed there once when the electricity got all fucked up and couldn’t get fixed for a week, and for a few dudes who have presumably lived in Black Mesa their whole lives it’s probably gonna seem amazing .
“They better have a hot tub,” Bubby says from the backseat. Gordon glances in the rearview mirror to see him scrunched up sideways in the middle seat, leaning against Coomer. Neither of them have their seat belts on, though somehow Sunkist does.
“Guys, come on. Wear your seatbelts.” He waits until he hears the click to keep talking. “I’m pretty sure they have one. Shit, maybe I’ll stay with you guys too. Be nicer than my apartment.”
“Uh, Mr. Freeman?”
Gordon risks a glance at the passenger seat. Tommy’s staring intently at his phone, propeller hat spinning slowly. “Whats up?”
“My dad just messaged me,” Tommy says. Gordon almost considers pulling over and demanding to see the texts. “He, uh, he said I can come stay with him?”
“I thought you were an orphan?” Bubby asks, leaning forward and grabbing onto Gordon’s seat.
“It’s complicated,” Tommy says. “But, uh, if you guys wanna come stay too, I’m sure it’ll be fine!”
Bubby makes a thoughtful noise. “Wait, is your dad the weird guy in the suit who was at Chuck E Cheese? Fuck no, I’m not staying with him.”
“I’d like to stay with Bubby,” Coomer says.
“Okay, well, I’ll guess we’ll...split up, then. Coomer and Bubby can get a hotel, Tommy stays with his dad, I go home.”
“We’ll see each other again though, right?” Tommy asks, eyebrows furrowed.
Gordon and Coomer both say “Of course!” at the exact same moment. Gordon keeps one hand on the wheel as he reaches over to Tommy and rests the other on his knee. “You guys are stuck with me whether you like it or not. Science Team stays together.”
Tommy pats his hand, and doesn’t say anything else as they pull into the parking lot of the Los Gatos Garden Inn. The four of them shuffle into the lobby, Sunkist staying in the car - windows rolled down, of course. Tommy and Coomer immediately get distracted by the tourist brochures, even though most of them advertise places a long drive from where they are. Bubby, at least, is being helpful. Sorta.
“Just so you know, we only have singles available right now. That’s a room with just one bed,” the receptionist informs them.
Gordon turns to Bubby. “You and Coomer gonna be okay with that?”
Bubby hunches his shoulders up. “I can sleep on the floor if I have to,” he says.
“If you insist.”
Gordon books it. It’s not as bad as he was worried it would be, but still, he has a need to check his bank account. To his surprise, when he opens his banking app, he’s informed that he has nearly a million dollars that were just deposited. Clicking the deposit gives him no useful information, the source being a string of glitched out text.
Okay. Sure. Fine! Why not.
Bubby’s eyeing him strangely, like he wants to ask something, but Gordon ignores him. “Okay! Coomer, Bubby, you guys are set. Do you, uh...need anything?” Oh, shit, they don’t have any stuff, do they? Everything they owned is probably still in Black Mesa, if it even existed in the first place. “Do we need to go shopping?”
Bubby picks up the collar of his lab coat, sniffs it, and recoils. “Yes, we do.”
“Alright. Let’s fucking…go to Target, I guess?”
---
Wrangling the three of them through Target may actually be harder than getting through Black Mesa. It feels like every second someone is wandering off, getting sidetracked by something. First it’s Bubby insisting he needs some space suit pajamas, then Tommy discovering the toys section, then Coomer harassing some random employee he somehow mistook for Gordon. At least Sunkist is behaving. She doesn’t have a leash, but she stays near Tommy anyway and doesn’t run off once.
“Guys, we do not need all this,” Gordon says as Tommy stacks a third 12-pack of soda in the cart. “We’re just getting the essentials. Some clothing, toothbrushes, that sorta thing. Okay?”
He feels like he’s aged several years by the time they make it out. But they’re out, and Gordon’s bank still says it has a ridiculous amount of money, and they have everything they could need for the next while, so. Gordon’s feeling confident. He drops Bubby and Coomer off at the hotel, helping them carry everything inside. They’ll be okay there. It’s one of those hotels you can basically live in long term, with a minikitchen and everything. He wonders how the single bed is gonna go.
Well, not his problem.
“Alright, next up is to take you to your dad’s, right?”
Tommy nods, buckling his seatbelt, then rattles off the address. Gordon plugs it into his gps. It’s barely ten minutes from his apartment.
Gordon’s running out of things to say, but Tommy seems content with the silence. They’ve never really gotten to have a peaceful quiet like this. In Black Mesa quiet moments never lasted very long, and the day has been extremely hectic. It’s not until Gordon is pulling up to Tommy’s house that he feels the need to speak.
“Holy shit , dude. Your dad lives in a fucking mansion. Why were you staying in the Black Mesa dorms?”
“I-it’s company policy, Mr. Freeman,” Tommy says, wringing his hands together. Gordon doesn’t press. Probably didn’t exist in the game - though in that case, how does it exist now?
He can worry later. Tommy’s getting out of the car, and Gordon offers to help him carry stuff but Tommy assures him he’s fine. Gordon’s glad, to tell the truth - he doesn’t wanna risk interacting with G-Man again.
“I’ll see you later, Mr. Freeman!” Tommy says as he waves goodbye, and Sunkist gives a single farewell bark.
“See ya soon, Tommy,” Gordon says, and he drives off.