If there's one thing Chell has noticed about the Aperture Science Laboratories, it's how profoundly empty it is. The blank, sterile white walls, expanding out all around her. Test chamber after chamber after chamber. It's all the same, the dark, echoing halls, with only the few new additions to each new room. She has come to notice that everything in each chamber must serve some purpose, which is probably the reason for the sparsity of… anything, really.
Chell has also come to notice how terribly lonely it is. No matter how hard she tries, she cannot remember her life before somehow ending up here. She can't remember her parents, or her family, or her home, or how she even came to test at the Aperture Science Laboratories. It's not even like they are fuzzy memories—she literally has none.
She realizes that her lack of human interaction probably should mean that she is okay with being alone, that she has no reason to miss or care about anyone, because she can't even remember them. She can't even remember if she ever even cared about someone. But that only makes it worse.
Her only companion is the monotone, sarcastic robot guide, if she can even be considered a companion at that. Though Chell has found herself to be horribly annoyed by the AI, she has to admit that her voice is probably the only thing that has kept her from going insane in these lonely, empty halls.
She doesn't understand it. She doesn't understand anything. Why she's here. Why she's being forced through these tests. All she wants is to get out, and go somewhere. Anywhere but this hellish place.
She feels like she's going insane as she goes through test after test after test. It's probably caused by her lack of sleep or her malnourishment. The AI obviously doesn't seem to care about Chell's slowly deteriorating condition, both mentally and physically. But it's probably because Chell doesn't want it to show. She has come to the conclusion that her willingness to test could mean life or death for her, so for that reason she continues to plow through the tests, looking as strong as she can.
But that still does not hide the fact that Chell is horribly lonely, and it seems nothing in these laboratories can fix that.
A/N: Yay! My first Portal fic! It's awful, I know. This one gave me a lot of trouble, strangely. I usually can breeze through little drabbles like this, but I spent a lot of time pondering the sentence structure in this. It seems really awkward at some parts. But anyway, I hope you enjoy this! I love Chell so much, and GLaDOS, too, so I'm going to write a lot more with both of them.
I like to imagine that Chell faced these kind of struggles throughout the game, just like Doug did. I also have a headcanon that she faced some kind of PTSD after finally escaping from Aperture, considering the large of amount of time she spent there and the traumatizing events she went through.