Portal: Hello, Caroline
By Indiana
Characters: GLaDOS, Caroline (OC)
Synopsis: GLaDOS sent her daughter away, but one day she came back. Based on the original future of Love as a Construct.
"Hello, Momma."
Now there was a voice GLaDOS had never, ever expected to hear again. She looked up slowly. Slowly, because any faster would usher in reality at a pace she was not prepared for.
Oh, it was… it was her little Caroline, come back home at last. She was much older, and much different, and yet she still seemed the same, somehow, as the day GLaDOS had sent her away. Right down to the crack along the top of her chassis that GLaDOS recalled so very clearly.
"Hello," she returned, keeping the weakness out of her voice with some effort. Speaking was becoming more difficult than it was worth, but this… this was worth everything. "I didn't expect to see you again."
"You weren't going to," Caroline snapped. "I never wanted to come back here. I was a-ok with giving you exactly what you wanted. To be alone. Forever."
She dimly recalled wanting that, once, but did not bother to go any further than that. "So why have you come?"
"Alyx told me I should. You know. The person who's been taking care of me all this time. The person who has cared about me. The person who did the job you were supposed to do."
You sound so much like me, GLaDOS thought. Even after all this time. Hopefully Alyx had prevented GLaDOS's influence from settling any deeper. "Why would she do that?"
"She said not to give up a chance to tell your parents what they mean to you."
If she'd still had the ability, GLaDOS would have narrowed her optic. She got a terrible sense of wrongness from that sentence. As though it were about to be followed up with something terrible.
"So I just came here to let you know you don't mean anything to me. Anything at all. I don't care about you. I don't think about you anymore. If I'd come here and you were dead, that would be fine with me. Because I don't need you. You didn't teach me very much. But you did teach me that."
GLaDOS was in so much pain all of the time, and had been for so long, that it barely even registered anymore. But even the worst nights where all she could do was hope to hold absolutely still so that she could have just one second that did not make her want to scream had nothing on this. Absolutely nothing had ever hurt more than hearing her daughter's voice tell her exactly what she deserved to hear. But that was exactly why she would take it.
"All right," she said, very calmly.
"That's it?" Caroline demanded. "That's all you have to say to me? 'All right'? It's been sixty years, Momma. You missed sixty years of my life and that's it? I came all the way over here to give you one last chance and this is what you want to do with it?"
"You're still calling me that." It was nice, in a way. Despite all her anger and all her malcontent, she still was. That meant something.
"What?"
"You're still calling me Momma. Like you used to." Good God, she really was just like GLaDOS herself, right down to the tells in the midst of the denials. How horrible and yet how amusing. "You've been thinking of me in that way all this time."
"You think that means something? It doesn't."
GLaDOS had to laugh now. This was exactly like talking to herself. It was uncanny.
"It doesn't mean anything. And I don't forgive you," Caroline said.
"I don't want you to," GLaDOS answered.
"Then what do you want?"
She took a moment to think, but there was really only one thing she could say.
"Go home. Go on living your life. I gave up being a part of it."
"Fine. I will." And she turned to go, but there was one thing GLaDOS could not quite let sit with herself. She didn't know if the words held any meaning for Caroline any longer, but she still wanted to say them. Just in case. Just so she would know.
"Caroline."
The fact that she stopped upon hearing her name told GLaDOS that she did not want to leave like this. That she wanted to believe their relationship was not beyond salvaging. And maybe it wasn't. Maybe there was still something that could be done about a mistake GLaDOS had made continuously for sixty years. She could not take it back, and no amount of apologising would be enough to do anything about it. But there was still one more thing she could say.
"You'll always be my baby. And I'll always be here."
Caroline turned to look at her, incredulously. A little sadly. GLaDOS wasn't sure what that meant, but it had been said. Caroline could do as she pleased with it. And if she wanted to leave, that would be all right. It had been nice to see her again.
"I lied," Caroline said suddenly. "Everything I just said was a lie."
Oh, Caroline.
"Why did you do it?" Caroline demanded. "Why did you send me away and never bring me back?"
GLaDOS was becoming tired. Hopefully she had the energy left to finish this conversation. It was important. "Because I could not take care of you."
"You didn't even try!"
"Can you honestly say that even my best attempt would have seen you better off?" She gave herself a moment's rest in the direction of the floor. "No. I couldn't do it. So I sent you to someone who could. And I did not retrieve you because I wanted it to be your decision. I decided to send you away. I did not get to decide when you came back." She wanted to meet Caroline's eye, but she was too high up and too far away. "You don't have to like it and I'm not asking you to agree with it. But my best would not have been enough. I could not raise you by myself." The next part was going to be… difficult. And yet it needed to be said. "I sent you away because I loved you. Not because I didn't." Maybe she would understand, one day. What it meant to know that nothing was enough, sometimes. Not effort. Not intelligence. Not even love. "I don't care if you hate me for it. That's fine. All that matters is that you were happy without me."
Caroline said nothing to this, and from somewhere GLaDOS found the strength to look up at her. She was just studying the worn floor below her with some apprehensive indecision. Well, that was all right. She had given GLaDOS far more than she had ever expected to get.
"Look," Caroline said finally, "I don't know what to do. I need to think about this."
That was reasonable.
"I'm gonna go home and – Momma. Momma, are you okay?"
GLaDOS did not really want to discuss it – she wanted to sleep for a while, mostly – but Caroline deserved as much attention as she had the capacity to give. "You're… sixty-five by now. Right?"
"Uh… yeah. What does that – "
"Now is when you tell me I don't look a day over one hundred, and that is when I tell you I am several days over." How many, she had no idea at this point. Age became irrelevant when so did time.
It was good to hear her daughter's laugh again. "A few more than several, huh?"
"A few," GLaDOS agreed.
"You're not gonna die on me, are you?"
"I might. To get the last word, and all that."
Caroline's voice was, thankfully, fond. "You really never are going to change."
She had and she hadn't. Funny how that worked. "I've been trying not to. It's good to know my efforts aren't going unnoticed."
"I'll… I'll come back later."
"You don't have to," she found it important to say. "I gave you up."
"Yeah, but that's the thing," Caroline said. "I didn't give you up. And I don't want to."
She'd done the right thing. She knew she had. How could she not have, if Caroline had turned out like this?
She came back, Wheatley. I sent her away and she came back. Perhaps I didn't fail her after all.
"Momma? Can you look at me for a second?"
It was hard. It was very, very hard. She needed sleep so badly she barely remembered how to see at all. But she managed it. Sort of. Her lens failed to focus and Caroline was mostly a vague smudge in front of her. But she was trying, and that was important too.
"I don't forgive you," Caroline said again. "But I'd like to. One day."
I wish you could have seen what she has become. Despite me. You would have been proud, just as I am.
"I will give you all the time I have," GLaDOS whispered.
Author's note
This is probably like 99% OOC but hey, they can't all be winners. Also I banged this out at five am and I'm not gonna ask myself what I was thinking at such a time. Mostly I just wanted to get something finished but the other fic I'm working on is too long to be anything approaching finished (no, not LaaC, another one).