Work Text:
The G-Man is never more trouble than he’s worth.
There’s strength found in knowing your value as an employee. It allows you to figure out what actions will result in a simple slap on the wrist, how spaced out those actions need to be to not be too frequent, and how long he needs to be on good behavior if he wants to directly interfere with an order.
It’s not that the G-Man is a troublemaker, of course not. For most of his existence, he hadn’t done much outside of what his employers wanted, only straying when he had taken pity on a few humans (despite how it may seem, even the G-Man had heartstrings that can be tugged on). Even now, he will rarely interfere. Most of his infractions are for minor things, such as the last time when he picked up a- what was it again? A “Megatron”?- and stored it in his briefcase. He had been scolded for interference, but there was no major reprimanding. After all, he had done his job in the end. They just dislike when he strays from the written path.
He looks at the assignment that he has just been given. At this point, it feels like they’re just giving him work for the sake of work. Not that it matters. After all, what harm does busy work do to a timeless being?
The assignment is simple. Oversee a demonstration in Waste Disposal and make sure it goes wrong. Not difficult. A few whispers of misinformation in the right person’s ear can go very far.
He looks at the two people slated to die (Yes, his employers are that particular).
He frowns.
A young couple, married less than a year ago. Their anniversary is actually a month from today. One’s supposed to die in the explosion, the other is supposed to succumb to radiation poisoning after failing to resuscitate him.
And he knows them.
Not all that well, granted, but he knows them nonetheless.
The first one, the one who’s supposed to die first, he had first met a few years back. Awfully cheerful, didn’t seem to understand the general rule of keeping to yourself at Black Mesa. He’d always greet him whenever they passed each other in the hallways (If G-Man didn’t know any better, he’d think that he was purposefully seeking him out. He can’t remember seeing any other researcher this frequently). He even asked him about his son, who G-Man had offhandedly mentioned once before. It was strange, having people remember details about you when you’re supposed to be nothing more than a nameless, ghostly figure used to scare green employees into following safety regulations. Not that that would do anything to prevent the inevitable if he really was there to make sure an experiment goes wrong, but he supposes it doesn’t hurt to make them check again when he’s simply there to supervise. What did his son call him again- “the ghOSHA of OSHA”?
He feels foolish, for allowing something as simple as being remembered to get in the way of his job. He shouldn’t need that human connection to make him feel content. He shouldn’t need to feel content to begin with. He’s not supposed to waste time on sentimentality.
Then again, he has gotten a lot more sentimental in the past few years, hasn’t he?
The other one, the one who’s meant to die right by his husband’s side, holds even more of a personal connection. There was a time, when he was newly employed, barely older than his species’ equivalent of 20, when he met him. He was still unaccustomed to the intricacies of Black Mesa and what exactly they were hiding under all those layers of concrete.
It was why he was surprised to find a man who looked barely any younger than him floating in a glowing blue liquid.
He still isn’t sure whether it was curiosity or shock that caused him to stick around long enough for the man to wake up and notice him. They ended up striking up a friendly, if not tense at the beginning, conversation. A conversation so engaging, in fact, that G-Man found himself at the exact same place the next day, and then the next, and then the next, and so on, until it had been over a month. Eventually, he had gotten too bold and tried to visit while he was on an assignment in the same department. His employers had shut that down quickly. It had become too risky to visit him, so he ceased all contact. He initially didn’t feel too bad about it. After all, it wasn’t anything personal, it was just work-related. His species isn’t supposed to have “friends”. They exist to do a job, and to do it well.
But he’s been thinking about his regrets more and more as of late. Again with that sentimentality.
He pictures what the two men’s deaths would look like. He can hear the sobs of the surviving spouse blaring in his ear.
He’d rather not leave himself with the regret of not saying goodbye for the rest of his unnaturally long lifespan, he decides.
Sometimes, it’s remarkably easy, saving someone’s life. For some, all it can take is accidentally bumping into someone while holding coffee, so instead of showing up to his husband’s demonstration in Waste Disposal, he’s on the other side of the complex getting a change of clothes from his dormitory.
Other times, it’s a bit more difficult. Especially when you have to be more subtle. The other one is in charge of the demonstration, so there’s not much G-Man could do to simply get him away from the epicenter. It would just postpone the whole thing, resulting in both a reprimanding from his employers, as well as the two dying on a later date.
G-Man’s taking a risk as it is, he’s well aware of that. He prefers to have his acts of disobedience spaced out much wider than this. Why did they have to be the ones destined to die today, of all people?
Not to mention there’s the risk in assuming that this’ll work. He can’t remember if he’s ever disobeyed his employers by saving a life. For all he knows, this isn’t even an order from his employers themselves, rather the universe simply determining this is when these two men die. He’s never really believed in any kind of fate beyond his employers, but he can’t help but think about every possible way this could go wrong. What if the two simply die in another way a few days from now, again making all of his work to keep them alive pointless?
If you had asked him 7 years ago to disobey his employers on nothing more than a hunch, he would’ve scoffed at the very notion.
He supposes there is some truth to the slippery slope fallacy, after all.
He walks through the testing chamber, everything silent while the whole world stops spinning. Just how he likes it. It’s much easier to think that way, without every little noise worming its way into his ear and distracting him.
Grievous bodily harm is better than death, he thinks to himself.
It’s not ideal, no, but beggars can’t be choosers, and G-Man finds himself on the begging side of the aisle.
A pen moved slightly to the left, a few papers shuffled out of order, and one switch flipped ahead of time, and that’s all it takes for the death of one Doctor Harold P. Coomer to turn into a 3 month long hospital stay, plus several years of physical therapy. He’ll need multiple prosthetics, but Black Mesa is the epicenter of scientific progress. Not to mention, the next time the doctor check his bank account, he’ll find that an unknown benefactor has deposited several hundred thousand dollars into his bank account, more than enough for the prosthetics and physical therapy. Though, that’ll have to be when he’s not working. Too direct of an intervention for his employers to not take notice.
He allows the world to resume to normal as he exits the chamber, giving a courteous nod to Dr. Coomer as he passes. Even if the doctor survives, he’d rather not have to watch him suffer. He’s cold, but he’s not completely detached from all of his emotions, much to the chagrin of his employers. If he was, he wouldn’t be sticking his neck out for two practical strangers in the first place. He prefers to leave just as an event he set in motion starts anyway. Even when he’s indifferent towards a person’s death, he takes no pleasure in their pain.
There’s something that eats at him as the testing chamber gets further and further away. He assumes it’s guilt. A foreign, unpleasant feeling that he struggles to understand. He’s saving his life, why must G-Man take the mental responsibility for the injuries he’s going to possess?
The distant sound of an explosion tells him that his job is done for the day. He knows he’ll be reprimanded for his blatant disobedience the next day, but he’d do it again in a heart beat.
It’s funny, how fatherhood softens you.
As soon as the sound of the explosion makes it to his ears, he makes sure he’s out of view before ripping a hole in time and space, which he steps through and disappears into just as quickly as it appeared.
Finally, home.
Out of the watchful eyes of his employers, exists a pocket dimension he had been crafting for what felt like centuries from his perspective. Up until recently, all his focus on had been reinforcing it from his employers and other members of his species. It had remained a blank void for all that time.
Now, it’s the location of a Victorian style house, with its own lawn and porch. It still had Halloween decorations up, even though it was the second week of November. Not that G-Man really cared, of course.
He’s barely even entered the home before he hears footsteps quickly get louder and louder until his son appears at the end of the hallway. The 7 year old runs and jumps into his arms, and G-Man picks him up with ease.
G-Man smiles as Tommy goes on about his day, going into detail about what happened on TV, as well as whatever story he concocted with his toys. G-Man listens intently to every detail, making sure to commit it to memory. He has yet to find a greater source of joy than the reaction Tommy has whenever G-Man remembers a small detail about his toys, and frankly, he doubts he’ll ever find one.
That reminds G-Man to set Tommy down and dig through his briefcase. Once a neatly organized mini-pocket dimension, it’s become a lot more chaotic in recent years, with him throwing anything he thinks will catch Tommy’s eye in there. After a minute of shuffling things around, he finds the “Megatron” toy he found on the ground. He wipes a spec of dirt off of it with his tie and hands it to Tommy.
His eyes glow a bright yellow with excitement. He nearly drops it from how excitedly his hands are flapping, which tells G-Man all he needs to know. Tommy immediately starts going in detail about the backstory of this specific Megatron, apparently it was an original toy, that had been banned in the United States due to toy gun safety laws. And, lucky for them, they’re not in the United States.
Tommy gives his father as big of a hug as his small arms can manage, and runs off to his room to play with his new toy. G-Man sighs contently and sits down on the couch, allowing himself to enjoy one of his few moments of relaxation.
His employers often ask him, rhetorically, when he’ll learn from his mistakes and stop disobeying them.
They’ll probably ask him that tomorrow, while G-Man will apologize and assure them that this won’t happen again.
It will be a lie.
He would go through every reprimanding he’s ever faced every time he disobeyed, just to see Tommy’s eyes sparkle with joy at the end of the day.
Maybe one day this’ll all catch up to him. Maybe one day his luck will run out and he’ll have to face consequences for trying to outsmart omnipotent beings.
But for now, he will simply relax in knowing that the most precious thing in the world to him is upstairs, safe and protected, and blissfully unaware of the life his father leads. That’s all he could ever ask for.