AN: This story takes place after Chell has escaped from Aperture. She's ready to move on and start a new life, but she will soon find that the past cannot easily be deleted.
VALVe owns everything, I own nothing. I'm simply a highly devoted fan.
The sound of the chirping turret orchestra did not waver as the elevator shot up through the belly of Aperture. Chell leaned back against the wall, pulling her ponytail tighter. The elevator gave another lurch and she gripped the handrails tightly to stay upright as she came closer to the surface. Closing her eyes for a moment or two, she took a deep breath. She didn't dare believe it. She felt as though any minute the elevator would stop and she would emerge into yet another test chamber. Almost unconsciously, she picked up the Portal gun and slipped her hand inside as she felt the elevator begin to slow.
Exhaling heavily, she tried to mentally prepare herself for what came next. A heavy feeling set in her abdominal regions, her stomach gurgled in a nervous wave of nausea. Any minute now the elevator would rise up into another chamber of lasers, bottomless pits, turrets; death around every corner, fatigue tearing her apart from the inside. She rubbed her right arm subconsciously, still aching from endless hours, days, weeks, maybe, of holding the Portal gun. Even with the cloth wrapped around her wrist, the white shell of the gun had still managed to rub her wrist raw.
The doors slid open, metal clanked together and groaned as it opened. With a deep breath, her fingers curled into position over the triggers inside the Portal gun. Chell opened her eyes cautiously, expecting a bright lightboard with 1/19 scrawled across it, the hum of lasers. Instead, a warm, yellow light flowed in. She listened hard for the small, child-like "Deploying" of the turrets waiting to fill her with bullets. Instead, she heard the small, distant chirping of birds flying overhead. Her vision adjusted, and she inhaled sharply as her vision was met with a clear, vibrant blue of the midday sky.
She stepped out of the elevator slowly, in a daze. She carefully placed one foot on the concrete outside the door, looking around her in wonder. She did it. She had gotten out. Moving off the concrete square surrounding the door, she inhaled as the heel of her long fall boot dipped ever so slightly into the soft dirt underneath. She looked across the large expansive wheat field spread out like a golden sea before her, running a finger lightly over a stalk, feeling the coarse texture gliding underneath her blistered fingertips.
A door slammed behind her and she whipped around, seeing a run-down old shack. It must have been where she came from. Seconds later, it flung open again, chucking out a large object and slamming closed. Once Chell got her heart to slow to a normal speed, she approached the object, kneeling beside it. Holding her breath, she ran a hand around the circle on the side with the little pink heart in the middle. Her precious companion cube was back.
Chell bit her lip, grinning as a small tear rolled down her cheek. Her most faithful friend, perhaps her only. With a hard swallow, Chell fought back the surge of tears that came not from getting her precious cube back, but from painful memories of betrayal from someone she once called friend, their scars residing only mere miles under her feet. Focusing her attention back on the cube, she forced herself to go back into her usual determined mindset.
She tried to brush off the scorched parts from where it had been roasted in that dreadful incinerator. A pang of guilt hit her in the chest as she tried to rub away the damage she had caused to her only friend. After a few minutes she stopped, huffing in annoyance at the blackened scorch marks that still covered the pink and gray box.
She would have to find water to clean it off.
Water.
Chell licked her lips, which burned slightly from chapping. A dull, tingling sensation she'd only just noticed. Swallowing, her throat ached with the same dull burn. Water. She needed water. Standing, she untied the Aperture Science Official Test Subject jumpsuit sleeves from her waist and tucked the Portal Gun into them, retying them tightly so it wouldn't fall. she grabbed up the companion cube and made it so it's heavy weight sat as comfortably as possible in her arms. Satisfied with her arrangement, she set off through the seemingly endless sea of wheat.
She walked endlessly, moving straight, always, for hours. She knew she would have to rest at some point, but her insane determination kept pushing her forward. The sun beat down on her, a feeling Chell had enjoyed at first, real daylight instead of the artificial light she'd been living with for god knows how long. She thought she would love the sun, but now it was just making her miserable. After an hour, a pain had developed behind her eyes, blurring her vision and making the sunlight unbearable. Still, she pushed on. Her legs were dragging and she panted in exhaustion, stopping once again to adjust the companion cube underneath her arm. A tight pain twisted in her side, slowing her pace.
She periodically glanced around for any sign of civilization. Aside from a rusted, ancient tractor hubcap, she found nothing. But that meant that someone, something, had to be close. Farm equipment meant farmers, right? With this new mindset, she perked up slightly, the exhaustion from the blazing sun seemed lesser now, and she marched onwards, carrying the cube on the head for a while to give her left arm a rest from holding it.
She trudged onwards for what felt like hours. She had to stop every few minutes to untangle the scraggly underbrush of the wheat stalks from the extruding heel of her longfall boots, or to readjust the Companion cube to a different side of her body, her arms falling numb. Even so, the minor, dull tingling in her arms and legs was nothing compared to the feeling of your limbs threatening to give out from pure exhaustion. A feeling she knew all too well.
After an hour or so, she stopped again, setting the cube on the ground and collapsing on top of it. Her arms fell heavily onto her legs and her head fell forward. She swallowed, wincing at the feeling of nothing but hot air slipping down her throat. She looked around again, surely this damn field ended at some point? There had to be a farmhouse or something around here, it was a farm field after all. She learned that from the old hubcap, which she had strapped onto her jumpsuit, threading the sleeve through it so it hung by the Portal gun. Huffing, she forced herself up onto the cube, wincing at the sharp pain above her right hip. She covered her eyes from the sun and turned a full circle.
Wheat, Wheat, more Wheat, taller wheat. She huffed and looked around again, slowly. This time, a little to her right, her eyes caught a small patch of green. A large tree. Chell smiled. That must be the end of the wheat field! Maybe there was a house there, with food, water, maybe even people. But she knew the chances of that were thin. Right now, her priorities were water and rest.
She looked at the companion cube, for a moment it looked as though it was drooping in the sunlight. The pink circle on all of its sides were glowing a little fainter then they had been before. Worried about her faithful cube, Chell scooped it up and set off at a determined pace. The tight stitch in her side worsened, making her limp slightly. The tingling picked up in her arms again and she winced with every readjustment of the cube. Just as she was about to set the cube down again and take a break, a strong breeze blew past her, in the direction of the metal shack she had emerged from. She turned into the wind. Her eyes fluttered close, her breath froze in her throat and she tilted her head up, letting the wind wash over her. Wash away all the bad she had experienced. Wash away testing, Aperture, GLaDos, Wheatley. She thought she felt something new fill her.
Eventually, she reached the tall tree. It stood at about 90 feet tall, and, although Chell didn't know it, was an oak tree that had been planted by the farmer decades and decades ago, before everything Ended. It's trunk was surrounded by the wheat, tangling and twisting around the bark. She brushed her hand over the wood on the trunk, a small shiver running through her at the sensation. She moved on past the tree, walking about 60 feet or so until she found a small farmhouse. One of the outer walls had collapsed on the small building.
Setting her companion cube down, she moved to the pile of rubble. She searched around it, looking for a door or a gap. Searching for about 10 minutes, she gave up and sat down on the ground. She looked into a gap a little to her left, only seeing a concrete wall through it. She couldn't fit through it, she knew that. She sat back on her elbows, the Portal gun digging into her side. That's it! She quickly untied the gun from her waist and retied the sleeves, leaving the hubcap attached.
Kneeling, she put her hand into the gun and pulled the top trigger, praying she could portal onto the concrete. A blue oval appeared on the wall through the gap. Success. She stood and found a concrete wall that was intact enough to place an orange portal on. She stepped through the glowing orange circle and into the room. Looking around, she saw a small, curtained off bed in once of the corners. A few scattered chairs lay around the rest of the room. She moved to the bed, coughing slightly at the smell of decay. She kicked the mattress and jumped back as two small mice came running out of it and through a hole in the wall.
Wide-eyed, she watched them run. She couldn't remember ever seeing those in her life except for in cages, for testing. She moved away from the decayed, rotting bed, keeping turned to it to watch for any other creatures. Further investigation showed the chairs in the same state. Crinkling her nose she moved through a small doorway into what she assumed to be the kitchen.
The state of the room was horrible. All the doors had been ripped off cabinets, the fridge appeared to be infested with roaches, a swarm of which ran out at Chell and caused her to slam into the wall behind her. After making sure the fridge was tightly shut she moved to cabinets, searching each. The fruits of her search resulted in 7 cans of food, (4 cans of peaches, 2 of canned soup and 1 of baked beans,) and 3 large gallon sized jugs with the word Bleach scrawled on the side. Chell set on investigating these first. She opened the bottle after struggling with the child proof lid and peered inside.
Her heart leapt at the sight of the clear liquid filling the bottle to the brim. Although every bone in her body was telling her to chug the entire thing down, she took a cautious sniff first. The smell of the bleach once in the container was very, very faint. She tipped the bottle up and took a small sip. she tasted nothing. With a sigh of happiness, she took a large drink from the bottle, rejoicing at the feeling of the cool liquid against her parched throat. When her thirst was satisfied she capped the bottle, grabbed both them and the cans up and walked back through the blue portal, emerging outside the house.
The sun had nearly set in the distance, leaving the ground bathed in a dim orange. Chell set the bottles and cans down by the house and scooped up the cube, hugging it gently. She walked back to the tree and set the cube down, sitting on the ground next to it. Leaning on the bark of the tree, she watched the sun set. In the back of her mind, the yellow-orange reminded her of GLaDOS's optic lens. She thought about Aperture, about GLaDOS and Wheatley and the tests she had to do. The misery and grief she went through to get where she is now. A soft breeze rolled through the wheat and she inhaled deeply. She labeled the smell of the wheat and the dirt as the smell of freedom.
She let her eyes drift close, resting them but staying awake. She thought about what her life before Aperture must have been like, and what it would be like after. She thought of a house and a bed and a family. Although, she didn't know if she would ever have a family, or even a friend. Every time she had trusted someone they turned on her. Her mind drifted back to the first day a little metal ball with a blue optic had come into her room, saying they would escape together.
She placed all her trust in him, and he turned on her. Yet even when Wheatley was a corrupted homicidal douche, she couldn't help but feel sorry for him. She knew he wasn't like that, not at first. but any feelings of pity for him were easily crushed by stabbing feelings of betrayal and hatred. She opened her eyes, seeing that the sun had set and the sky was now filled with millions and millions of little glowing dots. Her breath caught in her throat as she stared up at the soft collage of white lights. Wheatley was up there somewhere, with the space core. Floating around for eternity. Chell sighed heavily and looked down as, she realized that the pity and the hatred were both outnumbered by her loneliness.
With a pang in her chest, she realized that the little metal ball had been her only real friend. She thought the companion cube was, but that was at it was, a companion. Couldn't talk, speak, it couldn't make sure she was able to pass a certain obstacle, it couldn't comfort her when she felt like all was lost with little quips and rambles.
Chell couldn't bring herself to admit it, but she missed him. Maybe, just maybe, a teeny tiny little minuscule part of her wanted him back.