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The Resistance won. The Combine's control over the planet and the rest of the universe officially ended, but Gordon Freeman wasn't around to see it.
Alyx often saw her dad, in the brief moments of rest that could be found while those who remained rebuilt society, touch the center of his neck. The spot where the Advisor had aimed before Gordon wrestled free and shot its tongue.
Time had moved in slow motion as the other Advisor let go of Alyx and speared Gordon through his throat. She could still hear the sickening sound of flesh being punctured, the initial spray of blood splattering the floor and the second as the Advisor ripped its tongue back out. Gordon remained standing, blood pouring from his neck, face pale against the crimson all over him, long enough to make eye contact with Alyx.
And his eyes were wide with fear and pain. And he grimaced as if in apology before he fell.
Even as Alyx and her dad scrambled to stop the blood flow, they both knew there was no saving him from that wound.
Gordon Freeman was buried in the graveyard at Ravenholm, at Barney's insistence.
"We're not putting him in the town square!" he'd shouted, when someone proposed the idea to tear down the obelisk outside the station where Gordon had arrived and construct a memorial in its place. "Like he hasn't done enough already, you want him to keep being your figurehead even after he's— for god's sake, let him rest!"
But it didn't seem right to leave him in a ghost town. Alyx took a team to Ravenholm, untouched by the Citadel's collapse, to clear out the corpses and any remaining zombies. There weren't many, undoubtedly due to Gordon's passage through the town. One survivor called to them from the rooftops, and even helped the team take down the traps he'd set up all around the area. Offered to perform funeral rites, and understood when Alyx declined. She'd heard enough firsthand stories from Barney to know that Gordon wasn't a religious man.
The work was hard, but it only gave Alyx more time to think on what Barney had said. It had to have been only minutes between Gordon's awakening in City 17 and when they flung him into battle without a second thought. No "where have you been?" No "are you okay?" Not even a gun, and he was on his way. He'd silently endured gunfire and zombies, antlions and striders, and he hadn't complained or hesitated once.
And Gordon died as he lived. A martyr for a world he didn't even know.
"It's a goddamn cliche," Barney muttered into the first raindrops anyone had seen in years. "Rain at a funeral."
"The water's gonna help revitalize the dead land. A new start. Double cliche," Alyx replied.
"Selfish for me to think that maybe if I'd known this is what it would take for us to win, I'd have thought it wasn't worth it, huh?" he said. Alyx sighed and hooked her arm around Barney's, leaning into him in a futile attempt at providing comfort.
"I don't think so," she said. "But he finally gets to rest, doesn't he? Selfish for me to wish he didn't?"
"No."
They stayed there until the falling rain had long since soaked the ground beneath them, darkening the newly overturned soil more than enough to wash away the salt that was falling as well.