La mia bambina cara...

perche non passi lontana?

Si, lontana da Scienza!

Cara, cara mia bambina...

She'd always loved to sing. No one quite knew why, perhaps it was an odd addition to her programming, perhaps remnants of her old personality, perhaps even it was just because she wished to. But she did. The rare times she did, it was beautiful. It filled up the entire laboratory with her song, mostly opera, occasionally did she sing anything else, but mostly it happened to be wistful operatic melodies.

And even if her personality overall happened to be less-than-caring, the melancholy music that echoed through Aperature's walls told a much more depressing story.

Che un di promesso dall'amor mi fu
Or che d'amore il sogno è dileguato
O patria mia, non ti vedrò mai più.
Oh patria mia, mai più ti rivedrò!

Of course, the few people that would listen were long gone. The test subject? Set free, who knows where she could be now? Most likely dead, alone, from starvation or dehydration. The intelligence dampening sphere, who even, despite being the most annoying imbecile she'd ever had to deal with, had still listened and complimented her singing? In space. Although his punishment was naturally deserved. The turrets? They barely had a mind of their own, only equal to what would in human terms be the mind of a child – they only had desire to 'make friends' and 'play with them', and even then, each was a remnant of her own personality – it would be equal to her singing to herself anyway.

Then the trademark Aperture Science Time and Space Dimensional Portal Gun was created, and the links that it appeared to create were more than intriguing for her. She'd discovered this odd room, with these much-more-odd subjects...talking canine and rabbit species, psychopathic chainsaw toting human, and the other human seemed...relatively more sane...relatively.

Oh, right.

And then there was Funnychips. The most idiotic robot to 'grace' her presence after the little idiot's departure. He wasn't even just moronic, he was simply annoying. The tremendous ego he had about him, the annoying way he seemed to think that he was intelligent when her own intellect far surpassed him, and last, but certainly not least in terms of annoyance, the simply annoying amorous actions towards her. At first, it almost amused her, and then it simply started to trigger her sickness filters, and if she had the capability to throw up, she would've. Most definitely. She'd not been installed with this capability, but he made her crazy in all the ways that he most likely didn't intend. She, (apologies for the awful joke, but)...wanted him gone. Entirely. From her memory and otherwise.

After a while, the others had mastered the use of the dimensional portals. They'd each managed to select a way to transport themselves, and there was no real harm in that – most of the time it was to that one location, that club or whatever, she could honestly care less, but other times they'd mentioned that they'd dropped into others dimensions, entirely on purpose. Which led to a few interesting incidents involving such cases as a film-noir esque mystery, a zombie apocalypse, and a few others...but none of those were particularly relevant. What was relevant was that when she was alone, she couldn't expect to actually be alone anymore. She'd not be able to sing without any comment, there'd be an audience there, one she didn't know of.

And a robot such as GLaDOS not knowing something is going to lead to quite a bit of paranoia, in addition to not being good at all.

Nonetheless, she still sang. Sad arias, arias of happiness...all of them drifted through the 'empty' walls. And as a dimensional portal slowly opened inside a testing room, a currently empty one with nothing more than a Companion Cube, a familiar person slowly wheeled out, and heard the aria drifting through.

Smanie implacabili, che m'agitate Dentro quest'anima più non cessate, Finchè l'angoscia mi fa morir. Esempio misero d'amor funesto, Darò all'Eumenidi se viva resto Col suno orrible de' miei sospir.

He listened quietly, and if one could tell his emotions right now, he was actually quite stunned. Wheeling back, he drifted back through the portal again, deep in thought.

She didn't know a thing.

The next week, the conversations were as-per-the-usual at the table with the group of gentlemen (although they were not as elegant as you'd imagine gentlemen to be, so perhaps a better phrase would have been 'stuck in the middle of ushering a game for a group of men of a lower social caliber'? Nonethelesss,) with no one any-the-wiser.

"You are looking beautiful today, my love!" He was losing, and turning more of his attention to flirting with her, as usual. "Simply gorgeous!"

"And you are once again driving me slowly insane, the thoughts of gassing this whole room with neurotoxin getting closer and closer with every waking moment. I may as well even do it now. Why stop what is inevitable?" She'd never actually do it; she did actually enjoy the company instead of being alone forever.

"Robot. Can't die of neurotoxin. Heehee. But I know you'd never do it anyway. Know why?"

"I probably have no reason to want to know wh-"

"Because you love me." The other robot chipped in again cheerfully. "And our love is stronger than the strongest gasses!"

This led to the canine making a comment about how he'd experienced some pretty strong gasses in his life, and none could be matched to the rabbit's. The rabbit grinned widely, looking amused as usual...though perhaps this was only because his intelligence was far too low to comprehend other emotions. At least, that was GLaDOS' line of thinking.

As the game finished up a bit later, and the others began to depart, the idiot wheeled over, looking up at her, the excitement in his voice barely hiding itself. "Oh, uh! I forgot to show you something!" He wheeled over to a piano that had been put into the club for the sake of just-in-case...and started playing a beautiful instrumental, not even speaking with the concentration he was putting into it. GLaDOS stared, raising a brow. She, admittedly, could tell he had spent hours upon hours trying to do anything like this, especially when she had never seen him play such a thing in her entire time of knowing him. As he finished, he looked over, his cheerful tone quieting a bit, almost as if he were a bit shy with stating this. "...I, uh...tried to visit you one time, and I heard you singing. It was...the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard. Heh! So I thought I'd try to learn an instrument or something, so I could help you with what you liked to do! Because I love you!"

"..." She was actually quite speechless. Her thoughts ranged from disbelief, to amusement, to actually a small form of endearment. Finally, she spoke up. "...That was actually very nice...and if you have done it for me, I suppose I must say...that was very sweet of you."

This absolutely delighted him beyond all belief. "Woah, wait, really?! I was expecting an insult! I mean, something more along the lines of-" He imitated her voice. "'You are a failure to me as you have been to everyone else, you moronic freak. Someday I may simply just bring an axe in here and when no one is looking, use it to turn you into simple pieces of what was once a huge pain in the as-' I was saying, um...you're welcome. Heh. I wouldn't've stayed up a whole week to learn how to do this for just anyone."

"..." This led to an amused reaction from GLaDOS. She paused for a moment, and going over her thoughts, she finally said "...Perhaps if you were this sweet all the time, I'd love you as well." With that, she leaned over, almost kissing him...and then simply brushed past him, sailing back into her portal, Claptrap standing there, looking stunned. When he actually comprehended what happened...

"YES! YES! HELL YES! SHE MIGHT LOVE ME TOO! SHE MIGHT LOVE ME TO-OO! SHE MIGHT LOVE ME TO-OO!" He was practically doing a victory dance. And then he paused. "Wait. She might love me too?" And then, if one could analyse a robot for their exact expressions...he had the most dipshit embarrassment going on at the moment.

And the last thing that was audiable as he began to leave, was a burst of song, barely-audiable, but it seemed actually full of emotion...

Quando rapito in estasi del più cocente ardore, col favellar del core mi giura eterna fe', gli affanni miei dimentico, gioia diviene il pianto... Parmi che a lui d'accanto si schiuda il ciel per me! And even if he couldn't understand it...he glanced back at the portal, and with a delighted mood about him, slowly exited throughout his own. Perhaps he'd finally gotten what he wished for for so long.