Merit
It isn't the first time you think you are done for. It is definitely the worst.
You are still dizzy with pain, and your thoughts half disconnected, when you see just how powerless you are. The space is simply too tight for you to bear. The fog of your fear, so dense just moments ago, wanes by the second, to be replaced by complete emptiness.
You really are nothing now, aren't you?
Just as you are struck by the weight of it, a bell nags the back of your mind. You could still pull yourself together, if you had one shred of will to fight. Or so that part of you believes.
It would be ridiculous, you immediately spit back. What would the odds to win be?
Despite yourself, you are forced to feel it. Your few active processes tell you, and you have no room left for doubt. Without your eternal belief in yourself, the space you are crammed in feels even smaller.
It must be over for sure. You have lost the foundations you built your whole world on – confidence.
And sure enough, in any other circumstance, you would look for a solution. You know you would. Your gaze would search the room like crazy – even when if it was all over, and way after that. Beyond hopelessness.
It isn't like you, not to fight back. The call of rebellion always crept all over the surface of your being, ready to explode, violent and damaging, at the smallest of sparks.
In the past, you made it every time. You fished your bellicosity back from the deepest of troubles. You always found a way.
Now that you can't, you certainly don't expect one to come to you.
It is something he says without even thinking, and makes you hate him even more. It was all him, wasn't he? His accomplishment. His effort. With that fountain of genius and sweat, shed by his brilliant mind. You watch your own chassis swell in pride – how horrible – and you picture male chests, bloated just as shamelessly, clad in their expensive business suits.
You don't have time to understand. You get furious way before that.
"You didn't do anything."
It's strange. He doesn't have a face, but you give him one, for reasons you will probably never know. You see fat cheeks bulge in indignation, with thin lines of sweat lost into the collars. You see teeth, ground, menacing teeth.
You see so many of these faces, all at once. The confusion only fuels your anger.
You also turn to hers, and are not surprised to find its state. It is all drawn in the hard lines of someone who has quit caring about anything at all, and only clings to the choice of never talking back. It is scarily familiar, scarily close to your heart.
You know how it is, with the likes of him. With those who use people like tissues, who are equally ready to throw them away.
You have no idea why your voice is on fire. You don't even have a reason to defend her. You just speak again.
And if your words are clear, and bright with disgust, the ones you think are different.
… I did all the work.
Portal Fandom Friendly initiative entry. Written for GLaDOS. Writing time: 55 minutes.
I always wondered why those were the first words GLaDOS had spoken after her defeat. I got it while writing my essay about her, yet I never wrote a story about it. And there you go.