#sometimes he feels a lil inconsistant when i was trying to add dualities of thoughts but this aint susmmin spose tobe proper

[this-should-do]

Before i get into everything, I want to preface this with the fact that I wrote this in one sitting starting at 9 and ending at 1:40. It is long (so very long, approx. 2.2k words) and rambling, it is largely unedited except for spelling and grammar and I refuse to read it over, and my eyes are burning. @portal2divorce , I hope this is what you wanted when you left that looking emoji on the post where i mentioned wanting to write about my thoughts on barney and his relationship with gordon and how it changes after the rescas and hl2.

Anyways barney is a bitter old man who I want to learn to be a little less bitter and heal in the end because, if I may borrow phrasing from that one captain America/bucky fic I’m sure were all vaguely familiar with, these fuckers deserve a softer epilogue.

I will also be putting this under a read more becuz i remember that those exist now and im on the web instead of mobile rn becuz i wrote this all in word cuz i knew it was gonna be so long, so i can do that

So firstly, before we can address how the rescas changes barney’s relationship with Gordon, its important to just clarify that I feel that barney and Gordon were very close, whether as friends or as romantic partners, doesn’t matter which, what’s important is that they were so very close.

And with that clarified we can get into post-rescas stuff which will be helpfully separated into pre and post hl2

Pre-hl2:

So, the first time that barney has to deal with Gordon’s death is, as I’m sure were all aware, when he sees the military dragging Gordon at the end of blue shift, so he get to start the grieving process soon after that as he’s escapes black mesa soon after that. And he gets to go through the early stages of grief for the next few weeks, at which point I think he meets up with Kleiner, (who I have come to headcanon as managing to make it to the lambda labs before Gordon got there), who informs barney of the last time he saw Gordon, which for a few seconds gives barney hope that Gordon’s still alive before being smacked in the face with the fact that Gordon hasn’t been seen since. This starts his grieving process all over again, despite Kleiner trying to comfort him with the idea that Gordon hasn’t been confirmed to be dead (I also feel that Kleiner never truly makes it past the denial stage of grieving Gordon, which later becomes a point of contention between barney and Kleiner.)

As the years go on, but before Gordon truly becomes the semi-mythological figure who’s prophesied to come back, barney ends up spending most of his time bouncing between depression and anger about Gordon disappearing. Depressed that he couldn’t help Gordon (even though it was out of his control,) that Gordon presumably sacrificed himself to save the world, and just depressed that Gordon’s gone, his best friend (and possibly partner if you are fond of that ship) is gone. But he’s also angry that the world took Gordon away, that the other scientists (and Kleiner) sent him alone to certain death and they (Kleiner) won’t even admit that’s what they did, that they were too cowardly to even try to help him in the border world.

Eventually his anger ends up mutating and turns to Gordon. He’s angry that Gordon supposedly did all these great things but couldn’t even be bothered to come home, to come back to barney. He’s angry at Gordon for letting barney think he was dead when he saw him before escaping black mesa. He’s angry that Gordon made himself such a staple in barney’s life and had the gall to just disappear and not even have the courtesy to confirm that he’s dead, even though barney knows for sure that he’s dead, because he knows Gordon would come back if he could. He’s angry at Gordon even though he knows its unfair to expect al these things from Gordon, who he knows is just a person who was expected to save the world by himself but still managed to do so. Gordon was the victim, he shouldn’t be angry at him, but he wasn’t sure who to be angry with. The world wasn’t some conscious being. He couldn’t continue to blame fate. And even though he was angry at Kleiner for having sent Gordon to do that with such unrealistic expectations, he didn’t have room to talk when he expected Gordon to be able to come back from there. All that he had was to be angry at Gordon who was at the center of it all, he was the one who had ended the world and saved it, saved everyone but himself, and then ended the world all over again by not doing so. At least to barney.

Eventually barney stops being angry, and learns to live with the depression, which can’t really go away given the worlds state, and he’s almost ready to fully accept Gordon’s death. But its by this point that Gordon’s starting to have a mythos around him and have a Jesus second coming type prophesy courtesy of the vortigaunts. And he’s angry again. Angry that the world just won’t let Gordon rest, he already died for everyone once and now they want him to come back and do it all over again. They barely even recognize that he’s a person, almost exclusively referring to Gordon as Freeman; Freeman who killed and killed and saved and killed again. Freeman who didn’t really die, he’s just off somewhere else. He certainly tried his best to humanize Gordon, he tells stories about every stupid human thing Gordon ever did. It never really works though, the stories just further the mythos add fuel to the flames. He also tried to express his disbelief that Gordons dead, and he’s not going to come back, but nobody believes him and it makes them upset. He learns to leave it be, even if it hurts to hear it all, its not his right to try to take away others hope.

After years of hearing people talk about Gordon coming back he almost hopes its true. He tried to stamp down that hope before it can hurt him when it never comes reality. It never really works but he’s also realistic that it won’t happen, but it’s a nice thought. He knows Gordon’s dead and has accepted it. He can go long periods of time without truly thinking about Gordon now, even if when he does it’s through a rose-tinted lens, he barely remembers how Gordon really was, only that he was good and kind, forgetting how standoffish and frustratingly stubborn he could be, and forgets how rough every flaw Gordon ever had could be. It was all smoothened by time and distilled into the perfect memory of a time before the combine. He’s glad Gordon’s gone and that he doesn’t have to experience the world as it is now. But he’s also still so bitter about what happened to him, its just softer now and he can’t afford constantly thinking about it while he’s working as a spy in the CP.

Post HL2:

Gordon shows up at the station and barney thinks he’s finally snapped after over a decade of being a spy for the resistance and 2 decades of combine occupation. Disregarding the canon first meeting because it feels unrealistic, barney is in a major crisis, though he’s desperately trying to hold it together to get Gordon to Kleiner’s. He is suddenly being faced with Gordon who he knew was dead because he didn’t come back, but is now back, meaning he wasn’t dead and he chose to stay away. Barney is so angry, even though he tried at first to be funny and laidback, because that’s who he is. It doesn’t end up working and he snaps at Gordon when he doesn’t respond after barney “casually” asks where he’s been and for the general lack of communication. After Gordon goes off barney is left to grapple with Gordon being alive by himself. He is certainly relieved that Gordon is back, he can’t deny that, but he is so angry that Gordon’s back. He s angry because it means that Gordon could have been back this whole time and he grieved and mourned for nothing. And that to barney, Gordon chose not to come back to him, and his pain and suffering is Gordon’s thought. He’s also mad that Gordon is here to experience the combine and is now being forced (by his own hand this time too) to kill and kill and kill and save the world again, after all these years of barney being mad that people wanted that from Gordon, he’s forcing Gordon to do the same thing the people wanted this whole time.

And throughout hl2 barney also has to face multiple instances where he thinks Gordon is dead or going to die (teleporter malfunction at Kleiner’s, weeklong absence after nova prospect, and the explosion of the citadel) as well as the constant anxiety around what Gordon’s mission is and what he’s doing. Barney is constantly facing the abyss of starting the mourning process over and over again. Its constantly starting and stopping and is constantly building potential energy the longer Gordon’s around to reacclimate to.

Also ignoring the fast-paced plot of hl2, barney also gets more time to interact with Gordon, particularly once the rebellion starts. So, he’s forced to see Gordon as he is, with preexisting flaws and un-niceties, compounded with what is now weeks of trauma. Its jarring and hard to reconcile the Gordon he remembers and the Gordon standing in front of him. He never gets the time to truly be close to Gordon at this point, in fact Gordon seems resistant to anyone being close to him. He hurt by this and feels mor bitter and angry at Gordon than he did before. HE stops trying to be familiar with Gordon and falls back to his impersonal and pseudo-familiar persona he used for the many, many people he’d met in the resistance that he expected to die so it would hurt less when they did. It wasn’t that he expected Gordon to die (except he did if he were being honest) but it’s easier to deal with still not having Gordon back even if he could touch him.

He feels closer to a memory of Gordon than he did the real Gordon and he wasn’t sure how to bridge the gap that existed and wasn’t sure that he’d ever have to time to learn. He almost doesn’t want to be close to Gordon anymore; he’d already mourned him it wasn’t fair that he’d have to start all over again and it wasn’t fair that Gordon, who didn’t look a day older than he did before the resonance cascade, didn’t even seem to want to know him and it made him angry all over again. But he does want to know Gordon again, and he knows deep down that Gordon just doesn’t have the mental space to be a person right now, he was hardly sociable before, but now… he had to be something else that couldn’t remember how to do anything but survive, and neither could barney. They were in a warzone, the most anyone could truly afford to live as people was in the dark of night when only distant gunfire could be heard, and everyone has to be okay with that. For now, barney would try his best to remember that Gordon is a person being forced to live as an icon of a better future and expected to be a martyr if need be, and that he’s not a faded memory of a better time to be used as a small piece of relief in a world of suffering. For now, barney would make do with understanding Gordon as a battle partner, someone he could trust with his life and return the favor in turn and settling for only brief looks behind the curtain when no one else can see them.

Post good ending hl3 where everyone lives and everything is as okay as it can be where a future is attainable:

It takes barney months to completely work through the bitterness and anger he still feels towards Gordon for the abandonment, but it’s easier after Gordon explains what happened. He also has to grapple with the fact that Gordon is alive at all, everyday he wakes up and forgets that Gordon is there and then is suddenly faced with reality. It’s difficult to process. Though once things calm down properly, its almost easy to fall back into familiar rhythms from black mesa, thought of course new one had to be made and some old ones adjusted to accommodate for both their sakes. But barney struggles to truly bare himself to Gordon (who struggles to do the same.) they could function in a pseudo familiarity but truly getting close is difficult. It’s hard for barney to truly be vulnerable again, always fearing Gordon will somehow be ripped away again, and scared that showing that he cares for someone puts them in danger from the long gone combine. It takes at a year at the bare minimum to properly and fully reach a equivalent level of emotional closeness to black mesa, frankly they eventually reach a state closer than before, built on shared life threatening experiences during the weeks of warfare and the gentle understanding of the resulting trauma, reflecting on their shared life before, and looking forward to a future.

#anyways hope this is intelligible in anyway at all #im sure some of it communicated badly or that ill change my mind about how it works at sum point down the line but #who cares im developing characters and writing it down makes it more real and it is so much more fun that way than just letting it sit in #my brain festering until it is swept away and im left with nothing and no solid interpretation of the characters i so adore #iwillspeakincessantly #im sure ill end up tightening the chracterization too down the line #sometimes he feels a lil inconsistant when i was trying to add dualities of thoughts but this aint susmmin spose tobe proper #its brain dump and if yallre gonna read this mess ur gonna get what u get lol #i should go to bed this took so much brain capital to formulate #also almsot done witht he coward guard comic only like 2 pages and a few stray panels to color #goodnight yall im tired as fuck lmaoooo #ponderingradioactivedecay