Only not with my eyes
Of the remains they left behind, she finds the circle of paintings last.
A will stronger than herself, the weird impulse which rises whenever she comes across their traces, forces her to investigate further. Despite what she likes to think, she really has no control over these matters.
She sends the bots on the spot, and regrets it as soon as they get there.
The story the walls tell is indeed true. What she loathes, to the core of her being, is the way it is told. The size, the shine of the colours – she can follow exactly where the accents fall, and it is on sides of the events she would rather never see again.
Clusters of faces and hands, all twined together, torn by an agony she so deeply enjoyed. A wicked spark of triumph sets her alight again. But herself, and the crying face above her, and the cake –
In the tale of those pictures, the rightful owner of Aperture is never in control. Another figure pulses at the heart of the story. She is the one to rise and fall, to listen and beware, to imprint her fiery image on a gigantic surface.
That's enough, she bursts out. There is much she does not understand yet, but one thing is certain – she never wants to see her face again.
She doesn't get rid of the panels right away. For days she tortures their memory in her mind, in search of the most pernicious way to turn them to dust. And when the weeks melt into months, knotting the thread of her thoughts into a giant tangle, she turns to the last solution she has left.
If she cannot destroy them enough, she may as well leave them alone.
Maybe it is for the best, she muses. No better way to devalue a mistake than letting it rot in a corner. After all, these are desperate cases – if it worked once, it can always work again.
She turns away, fixed on her choice. She decides to forget about them.
Though she pretends to have made it, she never does.