AN: One of my first Portal fics, a oneshot about Rattmann and just one of his psychotic episodes. If you're the type who likes to listen to music with their fics, I'd recommend 'Ghost of Rattmann' from the Portal 2 soundtrack. It can be found easily enough on Youtube.
So this was how he was going to die.
Not by a Sentry Turret, not by (thank god) Her doing. Instead he would die in the bowels of a test chamber, quaking and cowering, his clothes sullied with dried gel and dirt. Like an animal.
The man's hands quivered as he strained his arms out. Too weak to take a proper hold of the Cube, he pressed his fingertips down in one of the grooved surfaces and dragged it closer. It took several minutes, minutes full of pain coursing his body and pounding assaulting his ears, to bring it close enough to hoist onto his lap. His scrawny limbs curled around it. Doug pressed his ear against the top of the Cube, letting free a sigh of relief. His only friend. The Cube was his saviour, his angel, his whole reason of being on some days. Without the Cube, Doug may just have given up on his quest by now. He was all that stood between GLaDOS and even more slaughter. Him, a pathetic, psychosis-riddled man whose plans centred around a hunch. Was that hunch misjudged? He thought not. Test Subject #1498… Chell… she would surely be the one to deactivate Her. But then, could he even trust his own judgement these days?
Another bolt of pain shot through his body. The man flinched as his arms and legs twitched, but kept hold, around his friend. If this was how he was supposed to die, he wanted to hear the Cube first. She sang so sweetly to him sometimes. She would sing him to sleep with the same song his mother had used to sing. He wanted that voice to soothe him.
"Speak to me…" His voice cracked. The Cube was hugged closer to him. "My friend…" Hushed voices swirled around him. An eddy of whispers, with him at the apex. The walls were sprawling upward, towering before slowly tipping. As he was becoming enclosed within the white panels, his grimy fingers dug into the Cube's sides. "I want to hear you sing before I go." A minute of nothing. The whispers grew louder, the walls crept closer. Doug's shaking became more pronounced until he suddenly cried out and threw the Cube away from him. She'd stopped talking to him! That traitorous Cube, deserting him in his hour of need! He wouldn't beg for his life; all he had wanted was to hear that voice one last time. Seemingly the only voice that he couldn't hear now. The whispers had become mocking, sneering, laughter mixed up in that cacophony of sound.
Oh god. What had he done? He pulled the Cube back and cradled it in his arms. The gentle but insistent heartbeat that he could usually feel from it was no more. She was already dead. Had she gone before the voices had started? Or had he just, in his rage, murdered his angel? He couldn't remember. Could he feel her heart earlier? There was no telling. The tears were falling onto his companion, the plink of each droplet amplified by his mind as they spattered on the plastic surface. Those voices still jeered, every one of them accusing him.
You killed her… Monster…
He threw his head back and howled. That inhuman sound, filled with all the grief that the man's life had ever held, echoed through the test chamber even as it closed in on him. He was a pitiful creature, having cast aside his humanity the moment he cast aside the Cube. The walls were finally sealing him away, the dizzying swirl of gleaming white panels and long shadows finally giving way to black. Truly, he was going to die as an animal.