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There’s very little that prepares you for a situation like this.
Even the most vigorous training will not completely prepare anyone for the battlefield. There’s so little of the actual world in a simulated environment that the shock of seeing something new can initiate a panic response. Perhaps there is such a thing as too much preparation, if only because there are only so many things one can truly prepare for.
You can prepare to hold on to your gun in a warzone.
You can prepare to fire at an enemy.
You can prepare to injure something.
You cannot ever really prepare to kill.
Killing is not something done lightly. Killing is robbing someone else of their family. Killing is robbing someone else of life. Killing is staining yourself irrevocably with blood that will never wash away.
Perhaps death is too morbid for this moment. But there is very little left that Gordon Freeman must do to prepare, and she finds herself-
Adrift in thought.
Their head is still spinning when the door opens behind them.
He feels naked without his arms. They had been a firm constant on his back ever since he made them. Being without them now is…disorienting. No one can prepare for the intricacies of their wedding day.
For a moment, when she looks up in the mirror to see who came in behind her, she’s almost expecting it to be her proverbial groom. It’s bad luck, yes, but seeing zem might have put him at ease a little. Instead, it’s-
Well, it’s just her father! Nothing to be concerned about.
Gordon heaves a deep breath, and Harold laughs.
“Nervous, my boy?” he jokes, taking a few steps forward to put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t be! We’re all here to cheer you on!”
“Thanks,” Gordon says, and he does mean it. It’s nice to have the Mad Science Team here, even if-
-they didn’t always find Gordon’s relationship with his groom-to-be very good for him. She knew that they would come around in the end, though. Even if it had taken some less than dignified groveling from someone who always puts in the effort to be dignified.
It was a little funny.
Not that Gordon would ever tell zem that to zer face, though.
“Don’t lose yourself in your head again, Gordon!” Harold says, patting them firmly on the shoulder. “It’s so full up there, we’d never find you again!”
“Sorry, Doc,” Gordon says, laughing faintly. The title feels strange in his mouth. But it leaves his mouth easier than “Dad”. “I just…suppose I have a lot to think about!”
“A lot to consider, I should think!”
Gordon turns to look at him then, and-
-it’s just Harold staring back at him. They shake off the shiver that ran down their spine.
Then she blinks and wonders where the sensation even came from.
“Well, we’re just about to start. Come along, Gordon!”
She lets herself be pulled along.
~~~~
Each step feels less real than the last.
They might be floating, and if they were, it would be a strange property of the goop that their family would want to know about!
Even still, the music hushes, and the door opens.
Everything is
perfect.
He’s standing at the end of the hall. Ze offers a faint grin as Gordon shakes and steps forward.
“Just in line with me,” Harold says at his shoulder. “You have it, my boy.”
Gordon has the sudden urge to scream as she stares down the aisle. Something is wrong. Something terrible is happening, he can’t-
“Breathe,” Harold says next to her. An anchor. He loves them. He loves them and they love him and
they’re all still alive
.
The music hasn’t stopped. It keeps blaring.
His groom is staring at him. Gordon can’t make out their face.
“It’s nice of you to put me in a purple suit,” ze says, running the fabric of zer lapels between zer fingers. “Didn’t think you could resist putting me in your colours. Cool that you proved me wrong. I thought I’d get you in purple, but…”
Gordon is standing on the altar. A bouquet of flowers is being crushed in her hands and she doesn’t remember picking them up but she must have. Everyone has flowers at a
funeral
wedding.
“What do you mean?” Gordon chuckles weakly. “You picked that out yourself, dear!”
His groom says nothing.
“Are we all ready?” the officiator asks. There is a wide smile on his face. Something about him makes Gordon nervous. But they can’t put their finger on it-
-it’s probably nothing.
“Ready,” Gordon says.
The groom grins, eyes thinned into a cold expression. “All ready.”
The officiant begins to speak, but Gordon’s eyes are drawn away. There are people in the audience, more than they expected, but their eyes are pulled toward the back of the crowd.
There is a man sitting in the back of the church.
His arm is slung over the back of his chair, his eyes are a blistering pink that almost seem to pierce through Gordon, and he’s wearing an HEV Suit. Something about him makes Gordon’s heart beat faster.
There are others next to him.
There is a man in an orange jacket. There is a man in a security guard uniform. There is a man in a suit. There is another man in an HEV Suit without pink eyes.
All of them are looking at her.
“Hey, eyes on me, dude.”
Gordon looks.
Forzen looks back at him.
“Eyes on me,” Forzen repeats. “Jeez. You expect me to save your ass all the time, even in a place like this? You really are crazy.”
“Does anyone object to this union?” the officiator asks, and the drawl is familiar. The shadow falls across the entire church.
The man with the pink eyes raises his hand.
“Yeah? I fuckin’ object.”
Gordon looks over at him, and Forzen makes a frustrated noise. “Dude. I’m trying to get you the hell out of here. Stop getting distracted!”
The man in the crowd continues like Forzen hadn’t spoken. “They killed us for a bunch of dead people!”
Gordon feels a cold rush of familiarity.
He looks around, desperate for his family, but she-
-can’t see them. They’re not here. There’s nobody here. Nobody except them. Gordon, Forzen, and-
“Well?” the officiator grins down at him. “What do you have to say to that?”
“I- I didn’t- they were-” Gordon can’t move. “I just wanted my family back,” she rasps. “I wanted them back! They were just a means to the end, I-”
She grasps forward for Forzen, but there’s-
-no one there. It’s just him and-
the Boogeyman.
“Are you enjoying your reward?” the man says. His coat is long, and Gordon’s dress billows around her as she falls to her knees.
“This isn’t right,” he rasps. “Give them back to me!”
“Oh, my dear little fly…you have them, don’t you? This is what you wanted. Your dream come true.”
Gordon’s hands fall to the floor of a blackened, burned, and empty church.
The man disappears.
And Gordon is alone.
In the hope that Forzen will return, she lifts her head. She could never have prepared for this but maybe-
Maybe, she calls into the void.
But only silence reigns.