The sky was beautiful out here.

I'd forgotten about what a luxury the sky was. It was always shifting, changing, free. It could tell you what the weather was like, and there were too many shapes in the clouds to count.

I hated it. It symbolized freedom from my own personal Hell, but all I saw when I looked at it I saw him. Especially at nighttime. When the stars twinkled bright and I could see past the thin veil of the blue stratosphere, blue like- nodon'tgothereyou'llgethurt- out into space itself. And the moon, a perfect sphere tonight. Because I could almost imagine, zooming around the moon, orbiting it, a tiny, Aperture regulation gray metal talking eyeball. A stupid, selfish, monstrous, power-mad, British talking eyeball.

I bet he wasn't even sorry. I bet he was sitting out in space, fuming at me, for not letting him pull himself back in. For not sacrificing everything for him, like I had been doing ever since I met him. One last sacrifice. A body in between him and his troubles.

I tried not to look at the sky.

There were plenty of other things to look at out here anyway. Deer, rabbits, the occasional dead head crab. The more occasional live headcrab.

And every night I heard his voice in my dreams.

And every day his noholdoncatchmecatchmecatchm eeee- faithplating around my brain at ridiculous speeds, distracting me, stopping me from getting kill, food I needed to survive. Even out in space, he was still a horrible nuisance and I missed him. I missed his stupid accented prattle so much it hurt. Loneliness is processed in the same brain zone that processes physical pain. And I could feel the want, the longing for company, even stupid, horrible, mean, selfish eyeball company. It was someone taking a chisel and hammering tiny needles of ice into my heart.

A tiny crunching noise sounded from outside. I snapped out of my stupor, stiffening and spinning to face the noise dead-on. The companion cube quietly chirruped at me. I peered through the grimy window pane, around the red flannel makeshift patch over a hole the size of my fist. The ferns outside the window rustled in the breeze. My muscles relaxed, and one hand idly stroked its battered surface before I collapsed at the table. I sat in the splintering chair, staring across from me at the empty one on the other side of the table. I imagined him propped up across from me, handles idly flexing as he talked about one thing or another. His stratosphere-blue optic spun, glanced off me and twirled again, flicking around the room in it's usual panicked hyperactive state. But in the second he was looking at me, I swore his face moved a little, enough to maybe express the hint of a smile-

God, I was pathetic. Fantasizing about a stupid robot who tried to murder me was perfectly healthy. My laugh rang out like a harsh bark. I stared at the camping cot set up in the corner for a moment. I didn't want to sleep. But I had to if I wanted to wake with the dawn and patch up the hole in the roof before the rainy season. The last rain had been a downpour, drenching a corner of the rundown cabin. If I could only get up there somehow…

I found myself in bed. I supposed I had blacked out and my body had carried me there. It was nice to know someone was looking out for my tired, harassed and scrambled brain. I could hear crickets chirp around me, the companion cube was humming to itself, and the whole cabin creaked in the slight earth tremors from down below. The peaceful silence was shattered by a loud boom, and a crack. I rolled out of bed, hitting the floor full on with my knees slamming into the wood. I scrambled up, ignoring my joints complaints and peered through the film of grime on the window facing the wheat field. Facing Aperture. Flames licked at the sky for a second. Oily smoke slashed a dark gray ribbon across the pristine violet sky. It looked filthy and ugly, blotting out the starlight. The flames died down.

I don't know how long I sat there, looking for an indication, something, anything that might explain why, all of a sudden, Aperture was active again. Eventually I crawled into bed and pulled the sheets up tight to my chin, trying to forget.

For the next two days nothing happened. No robots descended from the wheat fields just down the hill, no Combine attacked, no more explosions rumbled and shook the ground. The world was eerily silent, like it was holding its breath, waiting for something, anything to happen.

The storm hit on the first night. The wind howled and lashed at the shack's thin walls with all its elemental fury, snarled like wolves around the corners, threatening to rip this shaky building into toothpicks. In from the hole in the roof poured a deluge, soaking the floor of the tiny cabin, making my feet sodden when I stepped on it and most undoubtedly rotting the wood through. I lay in my bed, afraid that suddenly the hut would stop sheltering me and I would be whisked away into the sky, ripped away from my bed and my home and my life…

The next morning everything froze over. The world was an ice slick, a shining layer of slippery white covered everything. Huge icicles hung from the hole in the ceiling.

They had all melted by the time evening came.

The weather was unpredictable and volatile after what we had done to this planet. Everything was off-kilter, not enough to shut off but enough to be shaky and scary and insane. We were lucky to all have our lives. I wasn't the only survivor, but I was the most physically healthy one. I had spent my life sheltered in a facility whered all I was doing was exercise all day, running and jumping and spinning, like a pet on a hamster wheel, and so I was physically fit to live out here, but mentally I was a train wreck.

When I first left Aperture I wandered for days. Past the wheat fields, up this hill, past the shack and straight into a settlement. It was just a small trading outpost, fifty people at most lived in the little ramshackle runs of a town, but they were kind and helped me get supplies.

I had to leave the cube outside of town, though. When I first came into town carrying it, everyone screamed and hid and refused to go near me. Technology had been their downfall. They hated it. They only agreed to help me if it wasn't in their line of sight.

Long story short, I had worked for a few weeks to earn clothes and a gun. Another few days for firing lessons. Another few for supplies to help me survive out in the backwoods. And then I said goodbye to the kind people of Houghton, heaved the cube back up onto my back and hiked back to the cabin. I lived there for the next four months, and in all that time there had never been a storm this bad.

It made me wonder where it came from.

As I tossed and turned in bed that night, twisted in the sweaty sheets, a dark, filthy figure stumbled through the woods, struggling to keep up a pace. Its long limbs reached for the trees around it, scrambling for footholds with its feet, stumbling and cursing and basically waking up every nocturnal creature in the area. Its eyes swiveled around the forest, trying to peer through shattered glasses. In one hand it clutched a tiny gray box. The other was pressed to its stomach, trying to hold in the flow of blood from a gash on its side. Tiny little huffs of pain escaped its lips, and a torrent of tears wet its face and stained its shirt and showed no sign of stopping. Eventually its shaky legs gave up on it and it finally fell, limbs bumping together as it collapsed on my doorstep.

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I woke.

I don't know what caused it. One moment I was asleep, in oblivion, finally devoid of the dreams that plagued my nights. And then my eyes snapped open like they did back There. One second asleep, the next awake. A snap transition, like swinging the gun around and hearing the spine-grating, unnatural bloop noise of an opening portal. Lately I'd taken to getting out of bed slowly, relishing the slowness and laziness of it, the ability to stretch my muscles and blink groggily before getting up and cutting myself a misshapen slice of my lumpy bread for breakfast.

But today was different. I was on edge again. Balanced on the tip of a knife. I whipped up. My feet clomped onto the floor. I grabbed my boots and threw them on. Something was grating at the edge of my hearing, something was off. Like the sharp hint of ozone in the air, almost intangible, but still there. I sensed a presence. I could almost hear somebody's slow, measured breathing-

A tiny snore slid through the heavy door. I stiffened. The small noise jangled on my tense nerves, and I nearly cried out in surprise. My fingers fumbled for the doorknob. I heard something outside, something scrambling on the planks, heavy breathing, hands scrambling for my handle. I yanked it open first.

A tall body slammed into me. I closed my eyes upon impact as I was thrown to the floor, something heavy on top of me. I was down, smothered by a flurry of long limbs and heavy gasps. And then two large hands clamped themselves on either side of my face. My eyes snapped open, and I responded immediately, yanking the hands off, sliding out from under them, and scuttling away, backwards on my hands and knees. There was a gasp. Two round blue eyes opened, almost perfect circles in a face almost completely smeared with dirt, except for two wet tear tracks falling from each eye. The eyes were blue-crayon blue, opening portal blue, stratosphere-

And in that second, even before he opened his mouth, I knew who he was.

No, no, no. This wasn't right. He was gone. I tried to keep my heart from leaping out of my chest with joy. He was alive, he was okay- But how? The only person with the ablity and the processing power to contact him and possibly get him back was GLaDOS, but what did she want with him? HE shouldn't be here.

He was fast, scrambling forward and grabbing my face again. His features crumpled into a fist, a ball of muscle, and emotion flickered across its surface so fast I couldn't recognize it.

"You." He whispered. I tensed for an attack.

"You're alive…" We said at the same time. Before I could even process the information, He snatched me up and pulled me to his chest. His entire body shook. Twitched, even. A hand stroked my hair. All I could do was sit there.

"She told me you were dead…" He whispered. And then I felt a drop of moisture on my cheek. He was crying. All I could think to do was wrap my arms around his neck and hug back. I was in comfort mode. I wasn't thinking about Back There and what he did. I was thinking about how happy I was to see him alive. And… Human?

And I buried my face in his chest and cried too. I hadn't cried in That Place. I couldn't. I couldn't show weakness to the monstrous cameras around every turn, even if I wanted to. I had wanted to cry when he betrayed me. I had wanted to when he was ripped away from me and the only sentient thing in There had disappeared into the void. Even if he had taken every chance to hurt me. He was the only one who had cared. For a while, at least

It took me a while to realize he was talking. Blathering, really, nothing much more than incoherent nonsense.

"Sorry. Sorry. I am so, so sorry. I really am." His voice was rough and gravelly. His long, thin fingers continued to idly stroke my hair. I didn't look at him. I couldn't look at him.

"I'm an idiot, I'm stupid, and I'm so sorry. Really, truly am." My fingers dug into his back. He though apologies could fix things. Nothing could fix this.

"H-hey? Uh, lady? Funny, your name never came up- Are you okay? Talk to me."

I shook my head. I didn't want to. I didn't want to even be near this horrible monster-

What was I doing?

I wrenched myself out of his grip, shivering. The sudden lack of body heat was surprising, and the chilly air swirled around my skin.

"Lady? You all right?" He looked at me like I had just stepped on a puppy.

Didn't he understand? A little sorry was like a band-aid. Fine for a scratch or a bump, but it wasn't going to fix the fact that my heart had been ripped into pieces and spat on.

Of course he didn't understand. He was a robot. The world revolved around him. Didn't he see his actions had consequences?

Six months after Aperture, I was horrible, bloody mangled mess of a person and had just begun to put myself back together, without his stupid band-aid. With stitches made of confidence and strength and a lot of shutting up and sticking it out when all I wanted to die was curl up and die. I could be fine without him barging back here and thinking his apology did something.

He clasped his hands, looking for all the world that he was praying to a god, and a torrent of words gushed from his mouth yet again, taking everything I had done in stride, still trying to convince me.

"I'll do anything. I won't be a nuisance. I just want to be here, okay? I can help you out. Ah, I can… well, I can hack, that's something, do you need anything hacked? And I can… Provide moral support! It must be awfully lonely out here with nothing to do, I mean I know if I was out here I'd be lonely, wouldn't you like some company?" I looked at him. He inched forward and his hand slid over mine.

"I'll do anything, okay? Please. You're all I could think about in space." I could feel my resolve crumble. And he stared at me, his stupid, unrealistically blue eyes piercing into my soul, and I stood up.

I opened the windows to let the fresh air in. Gently, knowing he was breakable, I lifted him up and helped him walk over to the table. I sat him in the chair. The Chair. The seat that I never sat in. Because every time I sat down at that table, he was sitting across from me, in that very seat, chuckling and prattling, his banter echoing in my very bones. And finally, he was occupying it, staring at me like I was insane and I probably was. But I really didn't think he wanted to hurt me.

He gasped and winced as I sat him down, and I noticed there was a huge gash down his side, a barely healed, bloody chasm of a thing that made me wonder why he hadn't passed out from blood loss.

"oh, yeah. That thing? It hurts- not really quite sure what's going on there to be honest, ah-" I reached under the sink, grabbing a bottle of disinfectant from the medical kit neatly taped down to the bottom of the cabinet.

I turned back to him, grabbing the zipper of his Aperture-regulation orange jumpsuit. He stared at me. I yanked the shirt part off and stared at the cut. It was red and swollen and the skin around it was shiny. I put one hand on his shoulder to brace him and started methodically swabbing at it with disinfectant on a cotton ball.

His scream hit a couple octaves only bats could hear. One of his big hands jerked up, pushing mine away.

"What'd you do that for? That hurt!" I glared up at him and went back to swabbing at it. He hissed in pain but kept his mouth shut. I smiled quietly to myself. I suppose you could think of it as payback.

I tried to think of all the ways he could be useful. He was tall, he could probably help fix the roof. That was something.

I found myself considering his words. Moral support. His voice had kept me sane in those long, dark, twisted hallways and during those long, dark, twisted times. and here was another time I needed support. It was a coincidence. Almost too good to be true. But I shoved that thought to the back of my mind.

I hated to say godsend, but that was really what he was.