Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

      “I have an… interesting, alternative offer to make you, Mr. Freeman.”

      Maybe he didn’t want an alternative offer, Gordon thinks. Maybe he did want to just go into that stupid portal to a stupid birthday party in a stupid ‘ entertainment center ’ so he could get this over with and finally get to go home. He can barely process why they were even having an argument right now - he’s still running high on adrenaline, a splash of morphine, and who the fuck knows what else that got into his bloodstream during all that time with who-the-fuck-even-knows-how-many open wounds, nevermind the stump from his missing fucking hand-

      He flexes the new prosthetic, silver-y gray and black fingers responding easily to his whims, just as simple as having the actual hand back would be. The gun being gone was as much of a relief as it was a sudden new source of anxiety, but it was dwarfed by the knowledge that he wasn’t… going to have a right hand, anymore. He could, ever so faintly, feel with the prosthetic - something to do with how G-man manufactured it - but it just wasn’t the same. He taps the metal fingers on the back of the tram’s seat, the distinctly inhuman, metallic noise reminding him more of a robot than a person .

      Skeptical and exhausted, he narrows his eyes warily at Mr. Coolatta. His shoulders have a lingering slump to them, the contrasting tension between his shoulderblades a sharp, aching promise to make his life hell later when he finally got out of his suit and laid down on his bed , on a mattress , with sheets and pillows and blankets and everything.

      “Yeah? Do you?” He can’t keep the strain of disbelief and exasperation out of his tone. God, he really can’t say that he’s a fan of Tommy’s dad, especially right now. Those two are nothing alike. How somebody so nice came from this dickwad was a miracle. “Does it involve me getting to go right home instead? Tommy’s great, don’t get me wrong, but holy fuck , man. Could’ve chosen a better time for a party. We just got out of a fucking- apocalypse-level disaster that we- that I barely got the fuck out of by the skin of my teeth. My arm is fucking gone . Sorry if I want to go home , or just- take a fucking minute to compose myself.”

      Mr. Coolatta doesn’t seem all that phased by his outbursts, even as he squares up to the other man, ignoring the cramp forming in his damn spine as he draws his shoulders up, juts out his chest, and generally makes himself look taller, broader. They’re both a similar height, but if Tommy and his dad shared anything, it was being tall - freakishly so. Gordon was big, yeah, but Christ . Those two were on another level.

      He’s not even sure what his end goal is for this. What would he do? Punch him? Push him? He’s- he’s not stupid , he knows that would be a bad idea, but he’s stressed out and he just wants to go home . If he isn’t mad enough to almost punch a fucking all-powerful being, consequences be damned, then he might just emotionally crash hard enough to start sobbing in a public, and honestly? Both sound equally terrible, actually. But he’s already committed to being mad, and it’s slightly less pathetic getting his ass handed to him than it is to just… break down, seemingly unprovoked.

      Besides, he was still running on the high of beating Benry. Benry was powerful enough to make the man in front of him squirm and run away in the middle of one of his monologues. Surely that had to mean something . He just killed Benry! Maybe he could get away with smacking around the other man, just a little. It certainly felt like he fucking deserved it right now, pulling this shit. Threatening him into going to a stupid fucking party when he should just be going home and recovering from all the new trauma he just received.

      “Going, home would certainly, be a part of it, yes,” he replied, cryptically, clearly still not giving a single fuck about how much Gordon invaded his personal space. He took a step back, turned, and walked around him, with a stride so casual as to feel mockingly purposeful. Fuck, it probably was . He couldn’t get much of a read on him right now, though, with the way he kept looking off to the side, like there was anything to see outside of the tram’s windows other than an inky black void and the smear of passing lights. “What if you, could… try again, Mr. Freeman?”

      The idea takes a minute to process, leaving Gordon’s mouth gaping as he stares at the other man… thing. He refused to believe that Mr. Coolatta was human.

      What the fuck did that mean, though? Try again ?

      “What, do I look like fucking- Bubby? I don’t want to perfect my run , or whatever. In fact, I don’t think I want to see Black Mesa ever again! Going back never would be too fucking soon,” he rambles, feeling like the fucking veins and arteries in his head are going to explode and give him a world-class aneurysm. “You-”

      “You, misunderstand me, Mr. Freeman.” Mr. Coolatta looks back at him, the expression on his face unreadable. There’s a slight strain to his expression, actually, but he can’t imagine that this weird time stopping asshole is worried about something - other than Benry, but Benry is gone now, thanks to none other than Gordon. He should get a fucking trophy. He’d ask, but…

      “What if you could… prevent, the cascade?”

      His eye twitches. The aggression broiling inside of him simmers. He finds his mouth opening before he can really think it through. “It already happened, man. What the fuck is the point of doing that if it’s already over? I closed the portal, Benry’s gone, we’re all fucking- fine and dandy. Minus the U.S. military, but they sucked, anyway.”

      He turns fully to face him, fidgeting with the wrist of the prosthetic with his flesh and blood hand, adjusting the tightness of the screws as his brain supplies the phantom sensasion of tightness and carpal tunnel in the false limb. Despite having feeling in the hand, he was struggling to adapt to the new appendage - and he needed somewhere to vent the energy, the need to move his hands, to do something .

      “I just want to go home . We got our good ending. Let me enjoy it.” He was loathe to admit that his voice or expression may be pleading, wringing his real and prosthetic hands together anxiously as he eyed the entity in front of him.

      G-man was unphased. He continued.

      “You are a… smart, man, Mr. Freeman. Think, about it. The cascade will, be felt by more than just, Black Mesa. There… is more, to come. Further tragedy that you, could prevent,” he reasons, with that odd, fucky way of speaking of his. His head tilts, urging him to really, actually think about it.

      To realize.

      Gordon’s blood pooled sickly in his stomach, retreating from his extremities and making him feel light-headed, his feet and hand tingling with numbness that reflects the dread dripping coldly down his back. His mouth is suddenly really dry.

      The man - entity, whatever - in front of him knew the future; he’d alluded to what was immediately going to happen to Gordon and been right enough times for him to know this. As much as the thing- man-thing pissed him off, especially right now, he was right about a lot of things. Why would he be wrong about the resonance cascade being more of a domino effect than an isolated incident? The very nature of it - a cascade - was going to… expand, possibly exponentially, even with how bad the Black Mesa incident had already been.

      The specific frequency given off by the event, for as long as it had gone on and the amount of rifts in reality, could have probably been detected quite easily by anyone or anything that knew how to look for it. They knew for certain that there was alien life. He doubted that it stopped at Xen… and if it didn’t stop at Xen, and wasn’t instigated by humanity… in an isolated area, like it had been in Black Mesa…

      Why- why hadn’t he thought about that? Too busy trying to live, he supposed, but- God, that made a horrifying amount of sense. He swallows thickly, feeling like he kneeled down in the New Mexico desert outside and started eating the sand. “ How ? How the fuck could I do that?”

      “You have… travelled time, before,” he pointed out, as though the answer were as clear as day. “The difference, is little. You need not, know the details. What matters, Mr. Freeman… is that my… employers have given me permission to, give you this option. Or you could, go to the party.”

      Gordon’s thoughts were still racing, running at a nice and calm rate of almost two hundred miles per hour, jumbling together several trains of thought at once and leaving him frazzled, grasping at straws of coherency as he tried to process so, so many thoughts at once. “Wait- wait, wait, wait- hold on, that hop ‘back in time’ was hardly back in time,” he rambled out in a breath. “Everything was all different- there wasn’t anyone there but Dr. Coomer and Benry, and that passport- would it be like that? How do I get back after? What changes ? Why didn’t you just stop it from happening before? I know you’ve been around this whole time, why do you just- suddenly give me the option now ?”

      Mr. Coolatta gave him a sigh reminiscent of a parent tired of explaining things to their child.

      “This is a different kind of time, travelling,” he explained, agonizingly slowly. “For one, Mr. Freeman… you, do not, come back.”

      The stunned, abject silence on Gordon’s end was tense enough to cut with a knife. His thoughts stopped for a moment, screeching to a sudden halt as he wrapped around that variable of the equation.

      “This was not… an option, before,” he continued, meandering back around Gordon and towards the portal at the exit of the tram, blocking off his path if he decided to suddenly change his mind and dive into the Chuck E. Cheese’s. “That… ‘Ben-rey’ made such alterations to the timeline, impossible. With it dead, we are far more, flexible in what we can accomplish. And the things we can accomplish, my friend… they are great things.”

      G-man actually smiled , albeit faintly. It only sent him further into his stupor.

      “A timeline without, the cascade, will be a much safer one for, Tommy.” He looked over his own shoulder, at the portal, before regarding Gordon again with a more familiar deadpan. “Should you accept the, job offer, it is… quite simple, Mr. Freeman. But you do have the right to… choose. A safer world, or the party…”

      His brain hurt.

      “Stop- stop talking for a minute.” He leaned heavily into the back of the front seat of the tram, knowing it was strong enough to withstand the weight of the H.E.V. suit as he regained his bearings and tried, again, to process. G-man apparently saw fit to humor him as he brought his left hand up to run through his messy, frizzy curls, giving his scalp a sharp tug. The pain helped to sharpen his focus, to help sort through his thoughts. Some, after all, were more important than others. “Are you saying that everything that just happened… will have never happened?”

      The ‘will I have my hand back’ was unspoken, but heavily implied with his tone - hope singed its edges for the first time in a while. He could still barely comprehend the idea of living with his hand for the rest of his life; that taunt of normalcy was just substantial enough to cling onto desperately, the flames stoked by the nod G-man gave him - then crushed when he spoke.

      “To everyone else, but you.”

      That nervous, hesitant smile on his face dropped. “What do you mean? Am I going to remember, or…”

      “You, as you are now, Mr. Freeman.” He gestured to his right hand for emphasis - then, towards his head. Gordon was blissfully unaware of the streak of gray along his temple that G-man was referring to; he assumed it just meant that he’d remember everything. “In a, timeline that never… had a, cascade. With a very, simple, job.”

      “Prevent the cascade,” he echoed, dully, before chewing on his bottom lip. “They won’t remember me, or- or what we did together? Is Black Mesa still going to exist?”

      Mr. Coolatta nodded once more. “With a small… task, on the side as well, Mr. Freeman.”

      “Oh, like having my friends forget me and having to go back to work like everything is normal isn’t enough torment,” he couldn’t help but snark, his lip curling. “Not having my hand, either- fine. What is it? What’s this side task other than stopping the God-damned resonance cascade ?”

      “You will have to, find another way to kill that… thing. Ben-rey. It is the, most efficient way to, secure the new timeline of events.”

      That felt like another punch to the gut, even with the growing numbness he’d been developing to all these damn emotional whiplashes. It was stark enough to still get through his growing mental fog, the blind acceptance of the insanity he’d had to take on as a coping mechanism. It was one thing to say ‘yeah, we’ll send you back in time, stop everything from happening, nobody but you will know and you’ll just deal with it like a handless freak with no explanation for why you’re so utterly fucked as a person now’, and it was another, entirely fucking different thing to say that he had to kill Benry again .

      Hell, that he had to deal with Benry again at all . He wanted fucking nothing to do with that guy. It was over, he was done , and good riddance. That inhuman fuck was nothing but trouble.

      There was this weird, twinging, twisting feeling in his chest that made his post-teleport headache throb a little harder. He resolutely ignored it, pushing down and swallowing that sick feeling. He could deal with it later when he wasn’t being given the choice to change the course of history and prevent a full-scale apocalypse version of the one he’d already just lived through.

      “I am not dealing with fucking… Benry,” he insisted. His left hand finally released the pull on his hair, the jerking movement freeing it all from the messy ponytail he’d wrangled it into earlier, the poor hair tie snapping; his unruly mane reached all the way down to his mid-back and cascaded along his shoulders, framing his face and making him look downright mad. “I am not dealing with that guy again, you hear me? I can do everything else. I’ll deal with the damn- hand thing. But I am not going to deal with Benry .”

      “You will,” G-man said with such cool confidence that it felt like his head was going to spin right off his damn shoulders from how taken aback he was. “And you will, kill him. Eventually.”

      He gripped onto the back of the tram seat so hard that the metal bent.

      “Choose.” He faced him fully, hands behind his back, looking - for all intents and purposes - casual and business-like. Insistent, in a detached way that Gordon could relate to. It didn’t feel like he was in his body right now, actually.

      This was too much, too fast.

      G-man knew something he didn’t, that was for sure. Somehow he already knew that Gordon, regardless of how muddled his feelings were about it, was going to say yes. Yes, he was going to accept this bat-shit crazy insane offer to go back in time, have his friends forget him, and go about life as if it’s normal with a side mission of killing an immortal eldritch dickhead. As tempted as he was to say that the future wasn’t his problem, that he just wanted to go home, maybe even go to that party actually to celebrate with his friends… he felt like he had a duty.

      Live for himself and camaraderie with the Science Team(™) for however long he’d have left before the end, or sacrifice the relationships he’s made and the chance to rest to prevent the end from coming at all. As insane as those guys were, they’d grown on him, and he didn’t want to just… start from scratch.

      But…. damn . Damn it all.

      “Will they even be friends with me, without the cascade?” He croaked out weakly, surprising himself with the vulnerability; he broke down faster than he thought, evidently, and cringed at himself. And the question was so- it was such a stupid one to break down over! He wasn’t that desperate for friendship, especially with the borderline inhuman freaks that made up the Science Team! It’s just that he didn’t really have any other friends, at the moment, and making friends was- it was hard, okay? It was hard before, and it would be even harder now. It was stupid. Stupid of him to care.

      Mr. Coolatta wasn’t going to be giving him any reassurances, he could tell that much - not that he needed them! He was a grown man, he didn’t need some entity telling him that he was totally cool and like-able and that he didn’t need an apocalypse to make people tolerate him. That stone-faced expression made him cringe even harder at himself, though, and he regretted talking at all. He was so stupid…

      No tears. No fucking tears. Not here, not now, not in the presence of Tommy’s dad. Again, he was a grown man. He’d deal.

      He did not just sniffle. He wasn’t on the verge of crying at the thought of losing the only people he could consider his friends right now. He wasn’t.

      “I’ll save the world, I guess.” He wiped at his slightly damp eyes, knocking the glasses up his face and watching the tram blur. He wanted to ask if he could go to the party first, to say goodbye, but he knew the answer already - a resounding ‘no’. “Do I get any tips on prevention, or am I on my own?”

      “You will, see. You picked the… wise choice, Mr. Freeman.”

      The inhumanly tall man stepped aside. Gordon ignored the shakiness to his legs as he hefted himself up from his position leaning against the tram seat, readjusting the glasses on his face and steeling himself. There was a shift to the portal, like a growing sunspot; changing his destination from the Chuck E. Cheese’s to somewhere, sometime, else.

      “You’ve got this, Gordon,” he mumbled to himself under his breath, letting out an explosive sigh before he stopped delaying the inevitable. He stepped through.

      The headache was unimaginable.

Chapter Text

      There are apparently several rules when it comes to time travel.

      Number one is as follows:

      Do what you fucking came here to do.

      At several points during his adventures with the Science Team, he’d become convinced that the chances of him going home at the end of it all was… slim. The chances of him reaching the end of it in the first place was slim. Gordon didn’t exactly have a history of good luck, or optimism. He was pretty convinced he was going to die there, especially when he lost his hand.

      Walking through the portal into his shitty apartment confirmed it - this was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his entire life.

      Even with the throbbing headache that made his vision black out, combined with nearly coughing up his stomach and lungs into his mouth and the way he stumbled and crumpled to his knees - he was home . His head was swimming and his insides wanted to become his outsides, but it didn’t matter. He never thought he’d see that ugly shade of beige carpet in his living room ever again, but here it was! Exactly as he’d left it. All gross and tacky under his fingers.

      The H.E.V. suit wasn’t on anymore, he noticed, which explained why he felt the grimy texture of it all. He was dressed in the clothes he’d put on to go to work that day, before the test; fairly normal officewear, sharp back slacks, button up, tie. His lab coat was kept in his locker, which had his name tag as well. Everything else about him was how it had been just before - grimy, dirty skin, frizzy hair, oils and grossness and blood, aches and pains. His missing arm and the prosthetic replacing it. His hair was still down, even though he usually put it up before putting on his tie.

      … Wait a minute. Was… was some of his hair white ?

      Gordon couldn’t hold back the incredulous, shocked little laugh as he hesitantly brought his hand up to hold the strand up to see and- yeah. Yeah, he was graying. He was getting stress grays. At twenty-seven. White marred the chestnut in a long streak down his curly locks, starting at his left temple and cascading down with the rest of it - and he could only imagine how exaggerated it was when he had his hair up. How everybody else but him could notice it, and probably did but just didn’t tell him, for some reason.

      How embarrassing would it be to go out and buy hair dye? Did he even have the time for that?

      A glance at the clock told him that he had about two and a half hours before he had to go to work. That was earlier than he’d woken up the actual day of; he’d woken up five minutes after he was supposed to have already left, which meant he was over an hour late when he actually arrived. Mr. Coolatta had given him enough time to get ready, but not quite enough to fix the whole- whole fucking hair situation. People were going to notice. Weren’t people going to notice ?

      His hand, too! People were going to notice that he suddenly had a fucking robot hand one day when he didn’t the day before. God, how the fuck was he supposed to explain that ?

      ‘Yeah, hey, howdy, I’m from an alternate future where I fucked up and caused the apocalypse, and started stress-graying while I got my arm cut off. Have this cool prosthetic to show for it, it’s magic and everything. Anyway, I’m here to not fuck up this time. How’s your morning?’

      He’d be sent to a fucking loony bin, locked in as they threw away the key. Gordon went crazy the day of the big test, is all, they’d say. Gnawed off his arm or something. Now that he’s gone, let’s cause a resonance cascade!

      Would ignoring it even be any better? He severely doubted it… but at least he wouldn’t be seen as insane when he explained it, if he just didn’t explain it at all. Let people come up with their own explanations that made sense to them. Let them think that he’s like- really cool and badass and stuff. Went through normal stuff that didn’t break reality itself. He could be the strong silent type, or something?

      But it was literally yesterday to them that he had his arm and normal hair.

      Regardless, he didn’t have time to the run to the store to get the hair dye. He technically did, but he wouldn’t actually have enough time to apply it, especially not properly. What he did have time for was pretty much everything else he needed to do, which would just have to be enough. He could do this.

      He’s totally got this.

      …

      Reality didn’t feel real anymore, actually.

      Going through the motions of brushing his teeth, flossing, and taking a shower were so… mundane and like every other morning getting ready, even when he hadn’t had the chance to keep up his hygiene in- however long the incident had lasted. It could’ve been a few days, a week, several weeks, a month or more - the time just kind of blended and mushed together in his head. One of his main methods of coping was imagining getting to go home and do this, what he was doing right now, but now that he was actually getting to do it? It felt both normal and completely alien. Jamais vu, or something like that.

      The fact that he only had faint feeling in his dominant hand and that the joints were stiff was probably a big factor in that feeling.

      The gore he had to wash out of his hair and off his skin was the another potent reminder of the fact that, no, this was not a normal morning before work. The metal, silicone, and plastic prosthetic that he had to take off and set aside to keep it out of the water, the compression sleeve he had to shed, those were a good reminder, too. He wasn’t sure if the prosthetic or the stump was worse when he looked down and was reminded of the fact that he lost his hand , and he was never getting it back. It was… it was just gone.

      When did his skin get all of these… scars, too? Nicks and scratches, scrapes that went deep enough to leave permanent marks, he knew that he didn’t have these before. The H.E.V. suit should have prevented him from scarring, or taking much damage at all, but… he had been through a lot. That suit had gone through the ringer with him inside of it. He supposed he should have expected this, but he still felt disconnected from himself when he saw how damaged his skin had become. Faint, lighter skin of the scars poked through the sea of freckles and body hair, either as long lines or grooves in the skin, dots of broken flesh.

      The near-boiling heat and humidity of the shower helped soothe his tense muscles and melted away some of the worst of the post-teleport sickness. With his hair plastered to his skin he felt a little like a wet cat, but not being covered in grime and filth was amazing . He showered for twice as long as he should have - staying in long after the red and brown water had become clear and his skin flushed such a dark red that he looked like a well-cooked gold lobster - before stepping out and drying off, getting redressed now that he felt properly clean and ready to face the day, at least relatively speaking.

      Then Gordon almost cried over breakfast.

      It was something so simple, something he’d started getting sick of - buttered toast with a couple eggs, generously sprinkled with pepper - but it tasted so fucking good that he nearly had a breakdown where he was hunched over the counter eating it.

      The food and water situation in Black Mesa had been really fucked up, especially by the end - he’d been surviving off of vending machine snacks and soda for way too long. Having real food again was another dose of wondering if this was really real, if he was himself, if he was really… home . He had passing thoughts of how this kind of time travel worked - was there a version of himself that he replaced to be here? If so, what happened to the other version? Was he dead or something?

      It wasn’t exactly a pleasant thought. Maybe don’t think about that, huh?

      His mind kept wandering, too, he noticed. That wasn’t unusual in of itself, but it was wandering more than was typical for him, even with his ADHD - which was really saying something, given how much trouble it gave him during college. If the fucking trauma he endured made his ADHD worse somehow, that was just- a really, really good fucking cherry on top, huh? He didn’t even know it could do that. Could it do that?

      Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he was expected to prevent an apocalypse in… roughly two hours. An hour until he had to actually get into his car and leave the safety of his home, and an hour after that when the test was expected to start going into motion. And he was expected to just… be normal, in his normal morning routine, before going out and doing that, without even knowing what he was supposed to be doing when he got there.

      ‘You will see’ wasn’t exactly a fantastic fucking clue. He was a little worried. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t have a second do-over; it felt like this first one was a fluke to begin with. It felt monumental and weird and wrong, like the universe wasn’t right anymore-

      But what fucking good would it do just standing in his kitchen crying into his toast? He had shit to do.

      So he got properly redressed in his work clothes, brushed through his hair and pinned it up in a tight bun, and went about rigorously making himself perfect before it was time to go. His glasses were spotless and he did his best not to tremble when he looked at the scars covering his skin in ruthless HD. He went over in his head how the procedures were supposed to go for the test as he recalibrated the joints in his prosthetic.

      Then it was time to go.

      Time travel rule number two follows succinctly:

      Don’t freak out when events didn’t happen like they did before.

      The first time he’d lived through today, he’d woken up late when his alarm didn’t go off - and then was made later by traffic. Gordon, admittedly, had a bit of a problem with road rage, and he remembered being particularly pissed off that morning and taking it out on the cars around him with a flurry of honks and obscenities, maybe a couple middle fingers for flavor.

      This time around there were barely any other cars. He barely hit any red lights, either. It was practically smooth sailing the whole way to Black Mesa. To anyone else that may have been relaxing, but already the differences between what was happening and what he had expected based on previous experience was grating on his nerves. Of course the drive was going to change if he arrived earlier - he left at the normal time he always did for work! The roads were going to be different if you left at a different time! But it was an almost suspiciously good drive.

      “You got this, Gordon,” he mumbled to himself in the parking lot, like a completely normal and mentally fine person. Luckily nobody was around to hear that - he always parked on the far side, since there was a tree that would give his poor car a bit of shade there. He didn’t mind a walk if it meant his steering wheel was a bit less ‘surface of the sun’ in temperature when his shift ended. Fucking New Mexico- but he was getting off track again.

       You have shit to do, Gordon, he thought to himself, trying to nudge himself along. He was not excited for the test, to say the least - but what choice did he even have? He had an apocalypse to prevent. Just your average Thursday.

      Yeah, no, he was maybe two steps away from having a full mental breakdown in the parking lot. It took almost all of his strength not to just curl up in a fetal position on the asphalt, and at the end of his mental argument, the winning line had been ‘but the asphalt is going to be scalding’. Not because breaking down in a public space was morbidly embarassing.

      The resonance cascade kind of fucked him up, huh? All the more reason to not do that shit twice.

      Deep breaths.

      He had a few minutes he could spare to do breathing exercises, so he did, leaning against his car - definitely not cowering behind it, no sir - and running his left hand through his hair, making sure his hair was up properly. He’d opted for a bun instead of ponytail today since it was better at keeping his hair in place, and who knows? Maybe that would do something. Maybe having a better hair day was all he needed to keep the universe from imploding and killing almost every single one of his coworkers and possibly the entire human population-

      “What the fuck,” he wheezed quietly to himself. He really couldn’t go five seconds without starting to spiral, could he? At least his breathing was calm at the moment, but his heart kept thudding and skipping beats and it was getting hard to feel his extremeties properly when his blood flowed inwards, reacting to the adrenaline in his system. Feeling his right hand prosthetic more than his actual flesh and blood left hand was. Horrifying. Next time he saw G-man he was gonna ask him to fix that shit, because he was going to lose it if the arm kept being weird. He could barely handle it in a base sense, nevermind all the weird- magic bullshit it was doing. Didn’t he already deal with enough magic bullshit for a lifetime? Was asking for no more too much? Was this just how his life was now? Dealing with weird, brain-hurting bullshit on the daily and having to just pretend like everything was normal and fine? Eldritch horrors beyond comprehension just became a part of his day, might as well put it on his planner. ‘Try to comprehend the horrors from 1pm-2pm. Allow for flexibility. Might extend to 3’.

      Then he nearly went into cardiac arrest when someone spoke up from nearby, peeking over the hood of his car. “Are you alright, Dr. Freeman?”

      It was one of the researchers, some guy with glasses - Walter, he thinks? Fuck, he doesn’t even remember the guy’s last name, and he isn’t even sure on his first name - he was never good with names when he had so many coworkers. This guy didn’t even work in the same department as him, he was pretty sure. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He was not ready for human interaction yet, nevermind one impeding on his designated ‘stress the fuck out’ time. He pressed his prosthetic against his chest and tried to calm his heart, forcibly deepening his breathing.

      “O-oh, yeah, I’m- fine,” he almost stammered out in response. Was he looking at his arm? The white streak in his hair? Did he notice and think something really fucked up was going on? Please don’t say anything please don’t say anything please don’t say anything-

      Possibly-Maybe-Walter offered him a bit of a sympathetic frown. “I think it’s a little… pressuring, to be doing such a large test after having a lab accident. I wouldn’t blame you for being apprehensive.”

      … What?

      He must have been making a face, since the man looked away and continued, looking almost… embarrassed? “I know they were trying to keep it down, but word gets around about accidents, you know? Especially when somebody loses a limb. It’s… nice to see that you’re alright, is all, after hearing all that gossip. They made it sound like you’d lost a lot more of your arm. I was a bit shocked to see that you were coming back today for such a big test - but I suppose you do have to get back to work at some point.”

      Okay, that was a lot to process, actually.

      “I’ll be fine,” he tried to wave him off a little, his heart finally calming down as it at least clicked in his head that G-man probably worked some of his weird magic on this timeline to better accommodate him, and it’d be best to just play along. “It’s uh- it’s nice of you to check on me, I guess?” Way too fucking obvious of a meltdown. Crouch lower behind your car next time, dumbass.

      Feasibly-Walter looked back at him with a nod. “Good luck today, Freeman,” he told him, before turning and heading for the building, ending their brief but potently stress-inducing chat. Thank God they’d be taking different trams once they actually got into the proper facility - completely different sectors, and all. The awkwardness of that interaction was going to fucking haunt him later, when he had more time to dwell on it. Right now he was more focused on the content of what he’d said, even as he offered a limp little “bye”, sinking back behind his car and trying to make sure he was a bit more hidden this time.

      Thank fuck Mr. Coolatta thought to give him a cover story for this timeline - probably made some widespread false memory, or something. Having to explain his stress grays and missing fucking hand would be way more than he was ready for, on top of everything else. The fact that he didn’t get the memo was such a kick in the nuts, though. Having to just play along with what anyone said about it was going to be a bit like walking a tightrope, but at least he got the gist. Some kind of lab accident that didn’t cause a resonance cascade - just took his arm and stressed him out so hard he went gray in the left temple. Today was apparently his first day back at work, he could assume. Something that could easily line up with being plausible, and something people might not eagerly bring up to him, but what if somebody got nosy and asked for details? He didn’t have details, because it didn’t actually happen, but did that mean he could make something up, or was there actually a detailed false event that people remembered that he had to account for? He couldn’t even think of what could have done it. Outside of the kind of tests he did that ended up in possible resonance cascades, he didn’t exactly do a lot of dangerous work all of the time. Was it some kind of freak accident? Something really unlikely that happened anyway during a generally non-dangerous task? How unexpected had it been? What if, in the fake story, he’d done something really stupid and sounded like he deserved it, or was a complete fucking idiot and was deemed incompetent from here on out?

      The fact that he was still in charge of doing the test was a good sign, but he was slightly reconsidering his career path, now. Maybe he should try his hand at being an office jockey. He’d had enough excitement for a lifetime, please and thank you… but he also had to consider the fact that maybe part of this deal was having to continuously prevent cascades. After all, they’d keep doing that damn test, even if he left Black Mesa, or switched departments. Who’s to say somebody else wouldn’t be the unfortunate motherfucker wheeling the cart in his stead? Only he really had the foresight about the very real possibility of a resonance cascade, now, other than G-man and whoever his ‘employers’ were.

      But fuck, that was a heavy weight on his shoulders. G-man could have explained shit to him a little more - it’d have made him feel better about it, instead of just blindly coming in and having to discover what he was supposed to do all on his own. At least this part of the puzzle - the lab accident story - wasn’t too bad. He could work with that.

      He clapped his hands together and stood up straight, practically jumping to his feet as he let out one final sigh. “You’ve got this. Let’s do this shit. Let’s do this shit,” he muttered under his breath, hyping himself up again as he rolled his shoulders and breathed deeply, finally coming out from behind his car and making the walk to the building, putting as much confidence and self-assuredness into his stride as was humanly possible for a man that’d been through as much as he had.

      Time to stop a fucking resonance cascade. Stop a fucking apocalypse. He’s got this.

----

      Today was emotional gut punch after gut punch, but he wasn’t really sure what else he expected.

      Some of what happened made sense, and he would’ve been more surprised if it didn’t happen that way - even if it would have been nice - like when Tommy and Bubby didn’t… really recognize him as a friend. Just… as the guy who was doing the big test today. Dr. Coomer he’d at least known before the resonance cascade, but it was in such a casual capacity that he might as well have been the same amount of friendship as he had with the guy who’s name was Probably Walter Something. He shared just a brief hello with the man and tried not to make it weird, but it was so fucking disorienting having none of them react to him in the ways he’d gotten used to.

      Those were to be expected, though. They didn’t have the memories he had, of the original timeline of events. He really was just somebody they barely knew, just somebody passing by them in the hall. At least this time around he was nicer to them - he didn’t call Tommy a freak, or insist that Bubby’s name was fake (even if that was after the resonance cascade, in the original timeline - Bubby didn’t even… introduce himself, this time).

      The reaction he didn’t expect was the one he got from Benry.

      Or, rather, the non-reaction he got from Benry.

      The entire walk through that hallway he’d been tense as a brick wall, hyperaware of the gangly-ass guard standing just around the bend before the door, staring off into space - urgently thinking about not making eye contact don’t make eye contact don’t even look at him pretend he’s not there - as he passed by, just the same way as before. The other guard ready to get the door for him as he tensed even more , ready for Benry to come up from behind and harass him for a passport he didn’t need-

      … Nobody followed from behind him. The door opened, and he could just walk through and get on with things without interruption.

       What the fuck?

      He was fucking certain that that had been Benry. That pale pallor to his skin, those beady, shadowed eyes, that sharp, angular, age-lined face - it was definitely Benry. And Benry never backed down on a chance to harass him. During his final boss sequence - which was insane, outside of the context of the insanity of the resonance cascade - he’d even said something about stopping him because of his… his dick being out, or something? Which was not real, it couldn’t be. He was in the same fucking outfit as before, no wardrobe malfunction, and Benry seemed completely disinterested in interacting with him at all, which was somehow the weirdest thing about this entire insane fucking situation.

      It completely threw him off his game. He’d instinctively paused right outside of the door, tensed like he was ready to get punched in the dick - and it was the confused look of the guard by the door that had spurred him on, leaving behind the spot where Benry should have bullied him and started to follow him throughout the day.

      Gordon shouldn’t have felt like it was a loss. This was a great thing. Fucking fantastic, even! Not having to deal with that needy, bullying bastard nipping at his heels while he was trying to prevent a disaster was the best possible scenario, the greatest timeline. So why did it feel like he was leaving an important team member behind? He’d spent the entire fucking resonance cascade trying to get rid of him - and did get rid of him - and now he was feeling bad when he got ignored? He should feel great . He decided that he did feel great, and his head just needed a moment to catch up with that. It’d click soon enough, he was certain. It was just that weird feeling of things not going how he expected them to, is all. He expected it go one way, it went another, and he felt weird. That’s all.

      Maybe it was the fact that, after the test, at some point he was going to have to seek Benry out by himself, to fulfill another part of G-man’s weird side quest - finding a way to kill Benry, to secure the timeline. How would he even… approach Benry? He didn’t have to worry about it right now, that was later down the line, but the idea of being the instigator was just so fucking weird. Benry was always the one to seek him out, to keep their interactions going, he was the one who kept them interacting - he wasn’t sure how he’d do it.

      But whatever! That wasn’t the point right now! That was not his focus! He was preventing an apocalypse and kicking ass at it, thank you! Most important man in the damn universe right now, and he was acing it. Didn’t have to think about that stupid alien dickhead if he didn’t feel like it, and he didn’t, so he wouldn’t.

      So there .

      And, to his almost disbelief (not that he’d ever doubted his capabilities, because clearly he was the best), the resonance cascade didn’t happen today. The test went normal, as was expected. Before, the machine had been a bit overclocked, but this time around it was set to a normal, safe level - and he brought in that sample so slowly and carefully that Bubby had yelled at him through the microphone to hurry up instead of slowing down. Different timeline, same Bubby, he supposed.

      The rest of the day just kind of… filtered in through a haze. This was a completely different branch of events from before, so everything was new - he went about the rest of his day like it was normal. Any day at work from before the res cas. He got an “Excellent work, Gordon!” from Dr. Coomer and a shy smile from Tommy - and a bit of snark from Bubby for going overly slow - before he had to just… walk away, to go get the H.E.V. suit taken off, and to write and file an after-test report before he did anything else, like everything was just… normal.

      But nothing was normal.

      Was the rest of his life going to feel like this? He almost felt like a spectator, with the way he drifted through the halls, the way his hands hovered over the keys when he dissociated and forgot what he was doing. He’d thought that maybe after the test reality would just sink in and he’d feel normal again. He did it - he’d fixed the timeline! He won! But it was a hollow victory when this didn’t feel right.

      The Science Team™ weren’t his friends anymore. They didn’t remember anything that they’d been through together, since only he had gone through it, now. Everything he remembered, all the trauma he’d endured, had been undone. It wasn’t real anymore, in a sense. This was reality now - even if he felt like he’d been left behind, stuck in a version, a timeline that hadn’t happened.

      … Should he have just… gone to the party?

      … Tommy’s birthday was soon, now that he thought about it. He needed to get an exact date for that and get him something for it. Should he get him a Beyblade? Dog toys? Some soda? Probably all three, maybe more - he had so much to repay him for, even if he… hadn’t done it, now. He still felt indebted. It might be weird, for a man Tommy didn’t know to get him such personal gifts about aspects of his life he really shouldn’t know about, but then again - the Science Team was pretty fucking weird. It’d probably fit in just fine. He could brush it off with some insane bullshit and they’d either eat it up or forget about it ten minutes later.

      Or bully him about it forever. But that was small price to pay, when this might be the way he befriends them again. He wasn’t even sure if Tommy was friends with anybody else in the team, outside of when they’d bonded during the res cas - Bubby and Dr. Coomer seemed to know each other, but he wasn’t sure about Tommy. He might have his work ahead of him, getting them together again, but he wasn’t sure what else to really do with himself. He craved their company and connection now. Maybe they’d make him feel normal again, since apparently they were his normal now. Whatever normal was, it didn’t feel like this .

      He left the facility feeling numb and distracted, simultaneously overwhelmed and underwhelmed by… everything.

      He went home.

      He took another shower. He ate dinner. He’d skipped lunch today - his stomach was upset - and ate more for dinner than he probably should have to make up for it. He vomited because of it.

      He looked up the prices of Beyblades. Simultaneously cheaper and more expensive than he was expecting, somehow. He ordered a pack of plenty of them for like, thirty bucks. They’d arrive before Tommy’s birthday, whenever it was. He’d try and find out his birthday tomorrow at work, because he had work tomorrow. And the rest of the week, because he was back to a normal human schedule, just like that.

      He laid in bed and stared at the ceiling for over an hour.

      …

      Shit. He was pretty sure the only person he knew Tommy knew was Benry, actually. He’d forgotten about that. How the fuck did they know each other? What the fuck?