milliways_bar | (no subject)

Gordon's been out by the lake since sundown, doing his best to walk or run himself into a state of exhaustion advanced enough to let him sleep for once. It didn't really take, so he's come inside, a bit damp from the usual Scottish weather. It's not all that different from the weather he used to slog through at home, a fact which may have inspired an idea or two. He migrates over to the Bar and says, "Excuse me. Do you have back issues of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in stock?"

A napkin materializes with one word on it: Yes.

"Good. May I please have an issue from..." He drums his fingers on the bartop a moment, thinking. "The first week of September. 1982. I- oh."

After riffling through the Local News section he adds, much more quietly, "Any chance of the WSU alumni newsletter and a pair of scissors?"

That, too, seems to have worked. He looks for a moment as if he might ask for something else; then he goes silent and heads in search of a place to sit. His guns can wait. For now, this is more important.

[Tinytag: Gordon Freeman, Wilbur Whateley, Alyx Vance. Open until it scrolls off the front page.]

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"Frankly? I think you'd have a better chance of getting a headcrab zombie back."

*He shakes his head slowly, not in response to that specific suggestion but in general reaction to the whole scenario.*

Bastards.

Gordon nods, once. After a while, a thought occurs to him.

"Question. It's been years since I last read Dune. Am I right in remembering 'Kwisatz Haderach' means 'opener of the way'? It's relevant."

Oh, um. Something like that? Not that exactly. Uhh --

*He taps a fidgety tattoo on the tabletop for a couple of seconds, and then abruptly snaps his fingers.*

The Shortening of the Way. It's from Arabic.

*Beat.*

Why?

"I seem to have acquired that particular designation in the years between Black Mesa and now," Gordon says dryly. "Opener of the Way, I mean. Not the other thing. Among others."

And frankly, it creeps him right the hell out.

*Blink.*

Wait, what?

Hand under glasses, fingers pinch bridge of nose, call up memory of Breen, count to five-

"I intercepted a transmission from the quisling human running the whole show for the Combine," he says. "In which he specifically said that people were giving me messianic titles such as 'the One Free Man' and 'the Opener of the Way'. I'm guessing the latter title is from the Vortigaunts. The first one's just human punning."

Yeah. Freeman.

*He's shaking his head a little.*

That's kind of bizarre. Are you sure ...

"Andrew, I'm a physicist and I've been an atheist for as long as I can remember. Even if I wasn't, there's no way in hell my mother was a virgin. I was a second child. There were no, I don't know, no six other sons born before me, no weird moon things or... or anything."

Gordon + religion = Gordon + occult knowledge = slightly less in the bucket than one would achieve by spitting into a fifty-five gallon drum, really. Sorry about that.

There doesn't have to be anything special about your birth for you to be a Chosen One. Most of the time in my world there isn't.

*Andrew works with Chosen Ones and Champions on a daily basis. It's not really something he thinks about in religious terms.*

Gordon's trying not to facepalm here. He really is.

"First the woman who thought I'd developed gun-related survival superpowers after the anti-mass spectrometer exploded, now this..."

*a bit defensively* I'm just saying it's possible. You wouldn't be the first Chosen One to not know it.

"How does that even work, anyway? I mean, is there somebody who does the actual choosing?"

Because if there is, Gordon knows who it is, and the next time he sees him he's going to punch him in the face.

*Andrew shrugs.* The Powers that Be. Or Destiny of the Endless, or ... whoever handles that in your world.

God, I guess, for some people. *He says it with a touch of discomfort.*

"Or a gaunt man with a grey suit and a briefcase and a way of talking that sounds like he never did get the hang of human speech to begin with?" Gordon wonders.

Please say no. Please, please, say no.

*Andrew's mental image there is unnervingly close to this guy.*

That's ... kind of an awfully specific for-instance there.

"That's who teleported me out of the dimension all the invaders came from in the first place," Gordon says. "He'd been watching me all through the incident- I saw him a couple of times, but I never managed to reach him. At the end, after I destroyed the Nihilanth- the giant floating fetus monster- he told me his employers were impressed enough to offer me a job..."

... yeah, 'cause that's not creepy at all.

Didn't happen to say anything about who his employers are, did he?

"Not a word. Just that my alternative was a battle I had no hope of winning."

Huh.

Okay, possibly not the most reassuring thing, but ... that sounds to me like he's probably not a Destiny kind of guy? Because usually the battle you've got no hope of winning, um ...

...isn't so much the alternative, in those cases.

"Well," says Gordon. "That's something."

"Now I've just got a planet full of oppressed humans relying on my return and successful acts of mayhem to such a degree that they put me in a church window, plus a whole species of hive-minded aliens who tell me I'm their token of victory and spiritual sibling, among other things to worry about."

*Andrew considers this.*

Are the hive-minded aliens likely to be any actual help?

"They've saved my skin a few times now," says Gordon. "There aren't many of them in City 17, from what I saw. I think most of them live with the humans who've escaped from the Combine cities. I know they taught me how to control the antlions- alien bugs the size of a pony, they look like they came from Klendathu..."

... dude. *Andrew's sitting up straight now, visibly impressed.* That's some definite help right there.

"I have to kill one of the bulls first," says Gordon. "Thirty feet of rage in a fifteen-foot-long carapace. Once I've done that there's scent glands inside I can use. I invaded what used to be a supermaximum security prison alone with a fleet of those things following me."

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stilljustandrew - 2008-09-24 03:42 (UTC) - Expand

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stilljustandrew - 2008-09-24 04:16 (UTC) - Expand

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