Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Freeman knows it’s Earth but can’t reconcile his memories with the present day, so he rolls with it as a parallel Earth in order to cope with both the time skip and how despite everything Earth still lost the war. In his mind, his own Earth is out there somewhere completely fine because he and the Lambda team saved it and the Combine never showed up.

Everyone knows he can use Combine power stations to recharge the HEV, but unmodified humans aren’t compatible with the Combine aid stations. He is compatible, thanks to being patched back together by the Gman’s minions after Black Mesa, and can use them but hides it so the other rebels don’t start to question what’s under the skin.

Alyx built the suit. Her dad said it was for “Freeman’s Return,” but in Alyx’s mind it belongs to her. Freeman’s only wearing it because he’s too valuable to loose to a stray bullet and can’t be trusted not to get himself in trouble.

When Freeman has nightmares about Ravenholm, he can’t separate those memories from memories of Black Mesa and isn’t totally sure if it happened before or after he got sent back.

He thoroughly enjoys driving the various vehicles because it’s the only time he doesn’t have to stop and deal with everything the slow way, bit by bit, bullet by bullet. He can just step on the gas and, for once in his life, literally outrun all his problems.

Nothing tastes the same. Vort spices, Xen meat, and Combine-tainted foodstuff is all the resistance has and after twenty years they don’t notice, but he keeps expecting things they give him to taste familiar and nothing ever does.

He checks a few Overwatch soldiers he kills to see if he’s still slaughtering humans and is relieved to find out they’re already modified.

Definitely took a nap in the farm house on the coast road, after clearing it. Guy’s been awake more than 24 hours and he’s not doing another 72-hour one-man war again. All these people have done fine without him for twenty years, they can take him being a couple hours late to the next checkpoint.

Nothing makes him angrier than finding Vort prisoners being used as living batteries, until he learns about stalkers.

Doesn’t mind working with Alyx but he’s most interested in her sonic screwdriver that can bust open Combine security. Unfortunately she never stops moving long enough for him to get a look at it, and they’re never in a spot safe enough for him to ask.

Ignored Mossman’s existence, tuned her out, relegated her to ‘slightly annoying background noise.’ He’s had a lot of experience just blocking out people he doesn’t want to acknowledge. This is why a lot of people think he’s deaf too.

Eli never told Alyx that Gordon is mute. She had to figure that out on her own, and then try to learn proper sign language on the fly, and then try to parse out when Gordon is ignoring her versus just completely distracted and not paying attention. This is why all her interactions come across as a little forceful but apologetic- if she’s not right in front of him telling him something, she’s never sure if he got the message or not.

Chapter Text

Alyx doesn’t remember life before Combine rule, so she’s one of the more well-adjusted members of the resistance. She isn’t constantly comparing between now and what we’ve lost, so she’s free to just work forward with what they do have.

She’s also one of the youngest members. Very few very young children survived the first five years of Combine rule. She’s never met someone younger than herself and, until she found old textbooks on the subject, didn’t have a concept of “where babies come from” because Eli never got around to The Talk in the midst of the end of the world.

She’s intuitive with programming and machines and can code in multiple programming languages, including what the Combine uses. The Combine stations in their area are riddled with her code, rendering them conveniently blind to certain faces, places and activities.

In contrast, she can follow directions precisely but can’t make food taste good. This is a point of contention between her and Calhoun, who can make the worst of bland Combine rations and expired canned food taste, comparatively, amazing.

Darkness doesn’t scare her but she’s very respectful of what it might conceal. She is an extremely cautious fighter, doesn’t take unnecessary risks, and doesn’t move quickly if she can’t see her way ahead. But give her time and she’ll get the job done with everyone still alive.

She’s been bitten, scratched, stabbed and shot by all manner of things in the present world, and she knows how fragile the human body is when pitted against ant-lions, venom-spiders, hunters and Overwatch bullets. Whenever she’s recovering from an injury, she builds D0G a little bigger and a little stronger to compensate.

Chapter Text

It takes a full year before Gordon stops sleeping with the crowbar beside the bed, but the Overwatch automatic and a lot of ammunition are stored in a biolocked gun safe that he can open with a touch. He never gets rid of it.

He runs. He runs a lot, with a weight vest to simulate the HEV. He rigs up and repairs his own treadmill because no one is permitted to see him running, and he uses it to work through the itchy restlessness that comes whenever he feels himself reaching for a gun and get off the chemical addiction the suit’s left him with. And because he can’t quite shake the feeling that it’ll all happen again, and he needs to be ready for another week-long city-wide battle.

Alyx repossesses the gravity gun. No one trusts Freeman not to experiment on it and they are correct.

Alyx builds Freeman his own small D0G, because living dogs are scarce and unreliable. She doesn’t tell him it’s in constant contact with her D0G and is keeping tabs on him as well as providing companionship, but he knows and is alright with it; this way, they can give him a little more space.

He sets up a solo lab and starts working with metamaterials the Combine has left behind. He develops six different resonant polymer crystals that allow the energy/sound teleportation he’d been working on at Black Mesa and successfully revolutionizes global communications, rendering undersea cables and satellite relays obsolete.

Because he missed twenty years of stress, violence, poor nutrition and little sleep, he watches his Black Mesa cohort age and die off much faster than they ought to. He stays close with Calhoun but they both know Freeman’s got about six decades left, more with Vort medicine & the G-man’s optimizations, to Calhoun’s three.

Never produces children. No desire to, paired with a distinct suspicion he’s either not human enough to be genetically compatible anymore, or worse, is compatible but sufficiently modified to make his progeny transhuman themselves.

Cannot tell Vorts apart, doesn’t care. He likes having them around because they give him a sense of familiarity without the social pressure of human interaction, and because they really don’t expect anything of him outside of his continued existence.

Chapter Text

Has zero “ten year plan,” became a security guard because the job opened up in a convenient location at a convenient time. Would just have easily been a grocery store clerk or a 6th grade science teacher.

Knows and remembers everyone’s dietary requirements and has the best variety of snacks at the guards’ Superbowl parties, but never directly refers to it.

Definitely believes in aliens, to the point where coworkers have filled the security office with tiny green men figurines and X-Files posters. Would love to meet an alien. Suspects multiple Black Mesa scientists are aliens in disguise.

Has amazing ideas for pranks, convinces other people to carry them out, gets all the enjoyment of watching the prank unfold, is never ever blamed. Lobbies for Black Mesa to get security dogs just so there can be dogs at work.

Takes the Cascade in fairly good stride, as in “alright this is life now we’ll roll with it,” until the familiar faces start dying off. That’s the shift from “oh hey Aliens” to Serious Business and Guns. Is very good with guns because until that moment guns were Fun and Games.

Finds Xen difficult to comprehend but is incredibly proud of getting there and back. The thought of I stood on an alien world and saw an alien sky gets Calhoun through a lot of post-fall Earth. Sees that moment as the one personal good thing to come from the Cascade and its aftermath.

Embeds with the Civil Protection to keep an eye on the flow of surviving humans. Makes an art form of delivering the most convincing beating with the least long-term damage. Has long involved conversations with the medics about how best to cause an appearance of trauma without doing actual lasting harm.

Doesn’t believe it’s really Freeman until Freeman signs I don’t want your cheap beer out of pure reflex in response to “About that beer I owed ya,” because if it’d been a clone or spy, the response would have been literally anything else.

Trusts Freeman to take care of himself. Has seen the Black Mesa tapes and knows what he’s capable of. Focuses instead on getting civilians and scientists out of the path of disaster, because like it or not Freeman’s a person-shaped wrecking ball.

Chapter Text

Calhoun is embedded with Civil Protection and must perform with his squad to maintain cover. Has to learn to give a beatdown without reducing his victim’s survival odds (aside from the fact that he’s still causing pain, and someone is still receiving pain, and there’s going to be unavoidable physical and psychological trauma on both sides from this).

There is no beating without the mask. The mask is the partition between Calhoun-the-easy-chill-rebel and Calhoun-the-CP-who-might-not-kill-you. He tries to be unrecognizable as a CP, so his necessary actions don’t bleed over into rebel life, but he finds it difficult to reach out to the people he’s hurt when they’re walking around base camp bandaged from his work.

He aims for ear tips, noses. Cartilage damage. Bleeds a ton, hurts to high heaven, doesn’t minimize chances of survival. No teeth. No mouth damage. There’s not much dentistry in the post-apocalypse, so avoids hurting the mouth and jaw as much as possible. Same with the eyes. Taps above the hairline to make a shallow head wound so the blood covers the lack of other facial injuries.

Aims for fatty tissue, not bone. Upper arms and thighs are prime targets for the zap stick and truncheon. They bruise nicely, color up quick and are unlikely to cause long-term muscle and bone damage. It’s a lot harder to accidentally break a femur than a tibia.

Manhandles a lot. Works from close quarters, because it’s easier to control force and to keep the other CPs from seeing what he’s doing. He can look like he’s kneeing someone’s guts out when he’s just rolling them over his leg and letting them fall. Can protect a neck or head while throwing someone around a room, make sure no one comes down too hard.

Not afraid to backhand, push and shove. Someone gets mouthy at a CP they’re asking for a truncheon to the teeth, but he’ll swat them with a gloved hand, leave a nice mark, split the lip, shove them over, but no bone damage. Gets a reputation as the CP that “likes using their hands” over weapons. “Likes getting in close.”

Takes the reputation off with the mask.

Can’t touch the people he’s beaten without feeling the guilt and weight of what he’s done to them. Has a hard time offering medical treatment, least they realize he already knows what hurts.

Chapter Text

-Poison headcrabs that don’t kill you but knock your HP down to 1: Fast-acting neurotoxin. Feels like an electric shock. Muscles convulse uncontrollably. You have no control, you will drop to the ground and lay there certain you’re dead for a hot minute until it wears off. Their teeth are narrow, long and needle sharp, and tend to break off. Long after the venom has worn off, you’ll be pulling poison crab teeth out of your skin. The wounds take forever to heal.

-Calhoun braiding Alyx’s hair. Eli is an incredible father, but he’s also very busy trying to invent the technology that’ll save the human race, so he co-parents with Calhoun and their band of misfit rebels. Calhoun takes on teaching her things Eli missed or just never knew, like braiding her hair in fancy zigzags and how to fill a handgun clip. The two are close friends independent of their relationship to Freeman.

-The bouncy mines: They are meant to immobilize, not kill, but don’t always get the charge right. Surround a rebel, attach to joints and deliver repeated shocks until the victim is down and compliant. They’re surprisingly effective against the HEV, and they get the better of Freeman on more than one occasion.

-Freeman trusts Alyx absolutely with his life by the time they get into chapter1/chapter2 plot, but when she’s got a sniper rifle and he sees the blue light his heart rate spikes and he dives for cover every. time. He’s dealt with too many snipers in city 17 and doesn’t really want to unlearn that reflex pattern. Alyx both feels bad and finds it kinda funny but doesn’t tease him with the scope.

-The vortessence entanglement to heal Alyx gives Freeman flashbacks to stasis. His Black Mesa damage was healed the same way.

-Alyx doesn’t get captured on the roof in HL2. Instead, they get separated and she heads for the next generator with a different group. She climbs up the Citadel from the outside and arrives at Breen’s office just in time for Mossman’s about-face and to help Freeman avert the meltdown.

-Freeman getting into the man-lift in the Citadel is a Big Deal. He’s got to convince himself it’s the only way, or be convinced into it by Mossman or the G-man or something. It’s an act of complete surrender by a guy who has been the primary mover and shaker for so long. He’s giving up all autonomy on the off-chance there’s a greater purpose or power at work that’ll get him where he wants to go, and not leave him a peeled stalker in a cell.

Chapter Text

-Headcrabs in HL are a wild-type spawned from the headcrab brood mother on Xen. All headcrabs are reproductive and reproduce mostly via parthenogenesis, with variety arising from random expression of mutations or deliberate genetic tampering. Brood mothers can devour smaller crabs and 'import' their genetic material for additional diversity, but there's no mechanism akin to sexual reproduction in their life history. They never stop growing if left to their own devices in a place with plenty of food, but they reproduce in proportion to their size and age. So a brood mother can spawn vast quantities of more crabs, while the little ones in the vents might only lay one or two eggs per host body.

-The lifecycle goes Crab hatching feeding on insects -> mature crab searching for host body -> finds live host body and latches onto cranium -> co-opts nervous system and uses body for defense and to acquire additional nutrients -> when a threshold of stored nutrition is reached, pilot the body to a sheltered location, lay eggs in body cavity and detach -> begin search for fresh host body. Once a certain physical size is attained, a brood mother no longer requires a host body and can both protect itself and devour nearby life forms to acquire nutrients.

-If no additional nutrition is available or there's a population threshold reached, crabs will go into a dormant phase and wait for either population drop or additional nutrition to become available (i.e. living bodies in proximity). They can access limited, primitive body functions of the host, so the quality, age and skillset of the host body can influence how successful the crab is at acquiring nutrition and reproducing. They demonstrate some selection based on host body fitness and defensive capabilities.

-Crabs with specific traits or mutations or crabs genetically engineered by the Combine for military purposes can use host bodies in different and often novel ways. They are highly adaptable but a body must have a base level of cognitive function to be co-opted successfully. A crab can take a human body and most primates, and would probably have success with dolphins and similar species if it could acquire them, but can't take anything smaller or of a lower cognitive level than a mid-size primate. That said, there are legends about head-crab wolves, lions and bears being encountered in particularly remote areas, where they have successfully adapted to a lack of their preferred human hosts.

-When Dr. Kleiner makes head-humping comments he’s being a physicist, not a biologist; Lamarr is actually trying to get a grip to pierce the skull and lay eggs. Not that that’s any better.

Chapter Text

-Headcrab is edible and a staple of post-fall Earth, but only before it’s found a host. After that, even detached, it’s considered too close to cannibalism.

-There are ant-lion farms in rural areas run by joint Human/Vort crews. Some people are deathly allergic to the pheromones used to control them.

-Everyone uses Combine tech, products, trash, clothing, etc. even while fighting against them. The other option is near-starvation, malnutrition and more or less death by exposure; the idea of ‘boycotting’ the Combine by refusing to use their products is laughable to rebels who have no margin to set up the infrastructure necessary to fill those needs themselves.

-There is a large underground printing circuit though, that prints and circulates newspapers, comics and other work. The Combine doesn’t produce any form of entertainment aside from Breen’s broadcasts, so human creativity is applied that direction instead.

Chapter Text

-The Combine has a one-size-fits-all methodology. One kind of strider. One kind of stalker. One flavor of protein powder. One size of CP jacket. They push replication over creativity and have the resource base to overwhelm with numbers rather than with technological advancement. They already have the highest order of technology in the universe, so why waste time in R&D when you can just keep manufacturing the same kind of bomb? It worked fine on the last dozen planets.

-Humanity’s flexibility gives them an edge over this. The Combine shuffles population like a deck of cards, constantly moving citizens around and forcing relocations, then weeding out anyone who shows resistance. Theoretically, this will give them a stable but docile population that can be trained to herd like sheep, but in reality, it selects for quick-thinking survivors who can adapt and thrive in an unfamiliar environment. The Combine thinks they’re making livestock but they keep ending up with trainloads of urban coyotes and raccoons.

-Human currency is in nonessential resources. Bullets are shared, never bought or sold or stolen. Same with essential clothing. Any shelter is everyone’s shelter. Currency is cultural artifacts, magazines, books, candy, frivolous cloths, home-brew alcohol, music. Games of chance are popular, as all other aspects of survival require attention and skill; using dice or bones to play for stacks of candy or canned fruit is a pleasant break from the demands of day-to-day survival.

-The Vorts view humanity as a mildly amusing sister species and, as they have a functional form of reincarnation, love hearing more about humanity’s own many religions and beliefs. They index human knowledge in the vortessence and safeguard it against destruction, promising that even if the last human dies out under Combine rule, humanity’s arts, cultures, languages and beliefs will live on forever.

Chapter Text

-City residents color-coordinate with the rebels. Noncombatants wear Combine-issue clothing, while active rebels wear old-world or handmade clothing. Self-defense during raids aside, no one wears “compliant civilian” garb while participating in any rebel activity. This permits rebels to flex in and out of the general population, going “active” and “inactive,” while also protecting people who have no ability or inclination towards their cause. CPs sift civilian populations to flush out rebels, but in general don’t use civilians for target practice the way they would a ‘uniformed’ rebel caught on the street.

-No one tells the Combine that people can change their physical appearance, so growing a beard, wearing a facial scarf or using makeup to alter skin color or add/subtract scars/tattoos works to fool scanners for years before the Combine catches up. Things like fingerprints and iris-scanning are beneath the Combine’s notice; they do not account for individual variation on so intimate a level.

-CPs and Overwatch soldiers are tracked and monitored via powered ID bracelets. As the trans-human modifications begin, those trackers go under the skin. Rebel movements are mapped using the flow of living and dead Combine soldiers, as rebels don’t take prisoners or leave survivors.

-Infiltrating Civil Protection is difficult, due to the tracking device; infiltrating Overwatch is impossible. CPs are seen as bastard traitors to their people and the human race, bullies at best and Combine apologists at worst, but Overwatch are seen as the physical embodiment of the Combine’s plan for all humanity, stripped of individuality, stamped into a violent mold and spat out to kill without thought or autonomy. They are expendable, irredeemable, and when dead, disarmed and unmasked, seen as a pathetic shadow of their former species. Leaving a stripped Overwatch body on public display is a common rebel tactic for discouraging defection; Civil Protection may seem like a step up from street-level civilian survival, but it’s a short road that ends in a nameless, voiceless death.

-Calhoun’s infiltration of Civil Protection isn’t the first, only or last attempt. His time with them starts by (messily) acquiring the tracker and uniform and assuming the place of a CP guard captured alive, then executed. He has to balance on a knife’s edge of expectation; be too good, and get railroaded into Overwatch. Be too ‘bad’ a CP, and get discarded as a stalker. Be suspected of being a spy, and the tracking bracelet detonates and kills. Be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and get shot in the back by his own people. He is able to hide Kleiner and Alyx within his ‘usual patrol circuit’ because that space will show up as “cleared” on the city maps. At least until Alyx starts killing CPs to save Gordon.

Chapter Text

-There were at least six different successful escape routes out of Black Mesa, including the teleport device used by Calhoun & co. Others included another forgotten tram line, a group who rafted down the dam spillway and into the river, commissary staff who bribed their way out with pizza in a delivery truck and a scientist with a jet pack.

-The US & Breen surrendered formally “for Earth” but its people did not, and several dozen independent militias sprang up and fought viciously in the first few years of Combine occupation. No First Nations surrendered. Any military personnel who followed orders and laid down arms were taken by the Combine and returned as the first generation of Civil Protection, well on their way to becoming trans-human super soldiers.

-South Africa aside, no African country ever officially surrendered. China did surrender, but only after three years of brutal conflict. Japan surrendered early, on paper, and immediately set about arranging for its peoples’ survival and cultural preservation. Great Britain was overrun within the first few hours. Switzerland cut all contact with the rest of the world and there’s a running joke that the “Combine hasn’t found it yet.” Coastal cities and cities near mineral wealth fared the worst, but small remote towns without centralized population lasted for years before the Combine got around to clearing them out.

-Immediately following Earth’s ‘surrender’, the remaining Black Mesa scientists scattered to other related institutions around the world. Redundant operations sprang up in Romania, Brazil, Japan, Antarctica, Australia and northern Canada. Unlike Black Mesa’s policy of intellectual segregation, White Forest, Black Mesa East and the others duplicated and shared data and stored copious backup copies in case the Combine destroyed one or more installations.

Chapter Text

-The Vortigaunts have a functional form of telepathy & reincarnation through the Vortessence. This species-specific ability overlaps with the GMan's ability to exist outside space/time. Most alien species have similar or psychic traits and abilities and humanity is considered an oddity in having (apparently) none at all. Experimentation with human consciousness and life-linking healing techniques suggests the latent potential is there but humans cannot tap into it without external assistance.

-This has led to the rise of Vort 'gurus' who are viewed as mystic/religious figures by small human religious sects, but who view themselves as school teachers trying to impart a new branch of the sciences on a group of amusingly dim but endearingly enthusiastic students.

-Out of respect for humanity's inability to reproduce during Combine rule, Vortigaunts refrain from 'reskinning' any of their people on earth. Instead, 'dead' vortigaunts remain as disembodied consciousness in the Vortessence and work to thwart other species' psychic machinations against humanity (probably bugging the crap out of the Gman in the process).

-Thousands of Vortigaunts 'died' by human hands in the first few months after Earth's fall. It wasn't until multiple Vortigaunts had proven their worth as allies that humans in general started accepting them. Luckily for humans, Vortigaunts don't hold grudges; they are functionally immortal and cannot be permanently killed by any weapons humans possess.

-Vortigaunts are seen as primitive backwater grunts by the Combine and its dominant species, but due to their fascination with the link between physical biology, bioelectricity and intelligence, their understanding of cross-species medicine, biophysics and biochemistry is unparalleled. The Nihilanth wasted their potential in making them brainwashed front-line grunts, with the collars, Controllers and its own psychic power cutting them off from the Vortessence, to minimize the very real possibility of their rebellion if permitted access to too much information or technology.

Chapter Text

-Mossman is a team player. So much so that most people don’t realize they’re on her ‘team.’ People who do realize call her manipulative and worse, but in her mind, everyone has their role and the thing they’re best at and they ought to go do it for the benefit of the group; if this means she’s survived twenty years without having dirtied her hands on a gun, then so much the better. Shooting things is messy and imprecise, not at all like nice clean numbers and theories. Loud messy people can go do the loud messy jobs while she saves the world in her nice clean tidy lab. She’ll never admit being terrified of gunfire. Or unable to handle the smell or sight of blood. She surrounds herself with her ‘team’ and prickles at accusations of manipulating other people into danger, but in a world where success is equated in terms of one’s skill and comfort with violence, she will not apologize for her survival technique. Or address the deep insecurities and trust issues that lead her to control, deceive and manipulate rather than just openly ask for assistance and protection.

-Kleiner has a vague idea which end of the shotgun ought to be pointed at the enemy. The one in his lab isn’t loaded; a knife taped to Lamarr would be safer than a firearm in Kleiner’s hands. His lab is deep in the heart of Combine territory but with Calhoun keeping an eye on him and ‘hiding’ him inside the Civil Protection patrol boundaries he’s safe from most threats. Unlike Mossman he has no pretense; he has no survival skill at all, and is utterly and unapologetically dependent on others for protection, food and basic care. His brilliance is bent towards perfecting safe teleportation, an outgrowth of his staunch avoidance of anything deemed ‘mathematically unpredictable.’ Quantum entanglement and molecular disintegration/reintegration is much safer, naturally, and more predictable than traveling by foot or (the horror) by combustion engine! He’s never quite sure where he is; his lab is mobile, and other rebels will pack it, and him, up at a moment’s notice, stuff them all in a boxcar and haul him away to wherever the Combine’s sending them next. He will unfold and set up and continue his work, and if asked, may be a few cities behind in his geography.

-Vance was one of the few Black Mesa originals who managed a healthy work/life balance back then, and that set him up for being a fairly well-centered academic in a crumbling world. He values his daughter’s life above all else. Sometimes that manifests in home-cooked dinners and projects together and old movies on an ancient television set, and sometimes it’s him locking himself in his lab for days so he can finish an invention that’ll keep her safe. His vision of seeing Alyx grow to adulthood in a good world led him to search for answers with the Vortigaunts and build their alliance, drawing on their body of knowledge to produce the gravity gun and countless other less-violence-inclined inventions. He’s one of the very few humans to have tapped into the Vortessence, which combined with his knowledge of the G-Man, has made him one of the Combine’s highest-priority targets. He’s one of the only humans whose intellect is considered of value by the Combine and whose technological development is seen as a real threat.

Chapter Text

-She’s competitive, very intelligent, and has become adept at playing into stereotypes about female academics and researchers. Personal appearance is important to her because it’s an asset and tool she can work with. Most men respond predictably to a certain physical construct; she can speak their language, if it means getting them to listen for once. She had to fight for her voice and space in a pre-Cascade world, lost the Black Mesa position to what she sees as an equal-if not inferior-male candidate, and then built a mental construct in which if she’d been there, maybe it wouldn’t have gone so disastrously.

-She abhors violence, has a deep-seated phobia of blood, tends to freeze up when confronted with immediate physical danger and has chronic trust issues stemming from a life of isolation almost on par with Freeman’s. She has no illusions about her chances of surviving an event like the Cascade. If she had been there, her personal plan would have been to acquire as many armed guards as possible, promise them whatever necessary to secure their cooperation, and seek the surface with their help. Once there, she’d have done the same with the military, leveraging the notion that most men in uniform would think twice before shooting a nicely-dressed compliant young woman.

-This methodology got her in trouble after the Combine’s arrival, where her policy of ‘if you can’t manipulate, comply with the nearest authority’ resulted in her working as a double-agent. Dr. Breen was familiar with her work and with her attitudes and set her up to be their eyes on the bigger target of Eli Vance. She values Vance’s intellect and body of work and has a huge respect for him, especially after he proved himself immune to her charms but still extended trust. To her, being valued and respected regardless of her scheming was an unexpected honor, and won him her undying loyalty. She continued ‘working for’ Dr. Breen, because keeping one foot on either side of the fence put her in a powerful, if precarious, position to barter for safety.

-Naturally, she tells no one this. She communicates on a professional level only and is as disconnected from her own true emotional state as Freeman, if not more so. Feigning emotion has become so habitual that true emotion never shows on her face or in her voice, and she herself would be hard put to name it. Betraying Breen is a very simple equation for her, as she never cared anything for him or his ideology. As soon as he was no longer an asset to protecting Eli she ended her facade of compliance at an opportune moment, affording her the greatest chance of success for the least personal expenditure. If no one else understands that, they just aren’t smart enough.

-If Freeman had died somewhere along the way, that also would have been an acceptable outcome. His presence is destabilizing and distracting and encourages undue risk-taking and threatens the safety of their laboratory and research networks. Her own jealousy and resentment is very deeply buried alongside the terror she felt in the first months of Combine rule. Consciously, he’s an unpredictable wild-card in her neatly stacked deck and she’d like him to be very far away, thanks. Subconsciously, it is all Freeman’s fault.

Chapter Text

-Civil Protection can leave after the Combine falls. Some whole squads go rogue together, others shed their masks and uniforms and rejoin the rebels. CPs who stay on after the rocket launch are derided as delusional 'true believers' but may also be unable to forgive themselves for what they've done to their fellow humanity. CPs who try to rejoin society have to find a way to deal with their own actions through forgiveness, atonement, denial, etc. It's different for each person and never easy.

-On the rebel/civilian side, due to the constant displacement of human populations and the fact that the Combine never used spies, if someone presents themselves as genuine they're taken at face value. There's too little continuity or stable population for anyone to be treated as "other;" if people suspect someone of having been a CP, it's treated as "in a past life" unless that person wants to bring it up or starts drifting back into violent behavior patterns.

-Overwatch soldiers are physically incapable of rebellion. Many go haywire as Combine broadcast towers start to fall and the orders stop coming; it's not unusual for rebels to find a knot of Overwatch soldiers huddled together in a closet, unable to speak or move, physically and psychologically 'off-line.' Unfortunately it's also not unusual for them to snap and shoot at anything that moves, including one another. It's considered most merciful to kill them when they're found, as there is no way to remove the Overwatch enhancements and return their humanity.

-Sometimes a rebel or civilian will become convinced they've found a loved one taken and converted into a soldier or stalker. They will care for and protect the modified body for as long as it lives, which isn't very long after contact with the Combine is severed. Neither soldiers nor stalkers can metabolize human foods. They will slowly deteriorate into a coma state, then die. While most surviving humans understand that soldiers and stalkers are anonymous and there's no way to prove who they were, if someone fixates on one, they also by common agreement will follow through with a respectful funeral to give closure. It may feel like a facade, but it's meaningful to the person who lost a loved one and is likely all they will ever have.

Chapter Text

Some favorite Alternate Freeman ideas seen floating around, plus a few...

- Freeman’s been stuck on Xen for twenty years, awake and aging the whole time, with zero human contact. <- I saw art of this floating around on Tumblr but now I can't find it again.

- Freeman got doused in the mutagen that turns Vorts into Grunts in the factory, and is partially mutated himself in HL2. <- Saw this one out there somewhere too and again, now can't find it. Holler and I'll link if that was you!

- The HL2 HEV is based on Overwatch tech, too much so, and Freeman starts picking up Advisor brainwashing throughout the game.

- Killing the Nihilanth resulted in a “you killed it you bought it” scenario; he’s not in stasis for 20 years, he’s the new Nihilanth and the Vort-Human alliance is because he’s turned their brainwashing from “Enemy” to “Friend.”

- The G-man has been managing Freeman’s “contracts” for twenty years and wiping his memory after each job; he’s fought on all sides of the war on a hundred planets, as much for the Combine as against it.

- The Vorts are locked in a psychic war with the G-man for control of Freeman; whoever wins gets control of the galaxy’s most effective living blunt object, and the Vorts have a hit-list of every species that has subjugated them.

- The Freeman sent back to earth is a clone. Every time Freeman dies in-game, that’s another clone body. The original is controlling them from stasis, experiencing every death, do-over and retry.

- The Combine got their genetic engineering from the Vorts; Vorts don’t reproduce biologically, they modify other species into their own kind and download Vort consciousness into them. The process has already been started on Freeman and now he’s hearing the consciousness of every Vort he killed in HL1.

- A rogue Combine Advisor picks an unknowing Freeman as their avatar while he’s in stasis, and is responsible for his immunity to Combine psychic attacks and successful infiltration of the Citadel; what that Advisor wants with humanity no one knows.

- Freeman's cannon backstory is his cover story. He's actually a corporate spy / Russian military contractor with a background in espionage and he's been sent to steal the plans for the Antimass Spectrometer and Xen crystal samples. The Cascade was still unplanned but he's trained for this; surviving the chaos is just Typical Paid Overtime.

- An off-world consortium of trade planets is tired of Earth not paying for the crystals. Definitely-not-human Freeman triggered the Cascade as part of the Plan; Nihilanth -and then the Combine- capitalizing on it to invade Earth was not planned. Freeman's off-world sponsors are not going to be pleased with this complication, and even less so with the G-man stealing their asset.

-A secret society of human researchers has been in contact with the Vortigaunts for years. Freeman, a long-standing member and Vort ally, has infiltrated Black Mesa for the express purpose of ending the Nihilanth's reign of terror over their species. The Vorts knew their overlord was a Combine client, but no one thought its overthrow would attract significant Combine notice and result in Earth's fall.

-The G-Man is a 'talent collector' and quite literal middle-man between multiple timelines and universes. He stages disaster events and snags 'high quality specimens' of humanity for his talent lineup. The Cascade was just another of these, and the Combine's arrival threw his plans for a loop.

-There is no Cascade. Freeman's been raised in stasis by the G-Man, implanted with false memories, and the entire HL1 game is an "entrance exam" and training module to see if he's fit for deployment. Earth has been owned by the Combine for generations and they're setting up for humanity's final extinction, and the G-man is training his chess-set of hand-picked opponents to end their rule.

Chapter Text

Half Life Worldbuilding Wednesday - Gman Edition

-The G-man is a fifth-dimensional being. He can control his placement in time and take himself out of it, but can only exist in one place at a time, and not twice at the same moment in time.

-He couldn’t get Calhoun because he existed somewhere else in the base during that time frame. His own range of effect is limited, so he has to prioritize tasks. If he’s “busy” in one location at 8:23 AM on Tuesday the 5th or whatever, he can’t go back later and use that same ‘time’ again in a different location.

-He’s not all-knowing. His knowledge is limited to what he can personally experience and learn, and while he can affect a mind he cannot read or control a mind. If he was trying to collect Calhoun he may have just misjudged their exit point and been on the other side of the base or something, then needed to go check on Freeman and reactivate the bomb. Opportunity lost.

-The ability to exist outside time has given him a completely different perspective on the lives of organisms that live within time. To him, picking up and rearranging other lifeforms to suit his designs is more akin to a biologist transporting tadpoles from one puddle to another. He doesn’t ascribe them the ability to care, or protest or have agency in the process, and if they get left on the shelf for awhile oh well, they’re fine, they’ll be dumped back in a puddle when he gets around to it.

-The problem with getting Boxed is that it immobilizes him within time. He’s lost all that time in all locations, and cannot revisit that time frame within reality. The most effective way to keep him from interfering with something is to keep him busy or draw his attention somewhere else. He can be distracted and he can make mistakes.

-He uses ‘time-bound’ organisms (i.e. Freeman) to get tasks done without limiting himself to physical presence. He’ll check in and guide progress, managing multiple projects on multiple worlds and times simultaneously.

-He is for hire, but not by anything on Earth. He’s an extra-dimensional problem-solver working on contract for various employers, and the currency he charges for his work isn’t anything that exists within our concept of reality.

Chapter Text

-Due to constant displacement and population shuffling, most civilians learn to speak, write or sign a trade language made up of the most common words and phrases needed to immediately survive in a new place. This way information about food, safety, shelter and danger can be immediately passed along. There are regional variations, dialects and the like, and there's a small international group of dedicated linguists and archivists who are documenting it and distributing printed language guides and pictorial dictionaries via the train lines.

-Early attempts to create a universal hieroglyphic language to meet the needs of the population shuffle is referenced in the graffiti seen around the Cities. Though the language has evolved past visual symbols, combining the original hieroglyphs into increasingly obtuse street art remains a common form of self-expression. Since the Combine has no context for 'art as act of rebellion,' street artists are not overly persecuted provided they're not breaking some other City rule.

-Ironically the higher up the ladder an Overwatch soldier gets, the less they care about passive and artistic rebellion. If a graffiti artist is caught by a common CP they'd better run; if they're spotted by Overwatch (and are also unarmed and not breaking curfew or something) they are ignored.

-English is considered the "standard earth language" by the Combine because it's what Breen negotiated Earth's "surrender" in; they establish all human-based communication in a simple English vocabulary with Latin alphabet and reprogram all Overwatch to communicate solely in English. While CPs are more likely to recognize non-English communication among civilians and rebels, Overwatch probably won't. An otherwise compliant population can speak freely in pretty much any language except English without risk of being overheard, but civilians can't negotiate, explain or verbally defend themselves to CPs/Overwatch in another language either.

-CPs understand culturally-human forms of expression and rebellion and will move to quash them with generally non-lethal physical violence or incarceration. They are better at spotting rebels, interrogating and investigating, so they are more likely to get involved but less likely to start the shooting. Overwatch is a Blunt Instrument used for lethal takedown of pre-identified targets. They are less likely to pick up on subtle rebel activity but more likely to just kill everyone in the area if they sense a threat. Rebels and civilians both have to consider their potential audience and weigh the risk.