The slightly battered companion cube sat in the corner of Chell's studio apartment, humming softly. Sometimes, when she was so tired that even cleaning up seemed a chore, the cube would end up as a makeshift table, accumulating junk mail and empty cups and other such things.
The cube was the only physical reminder left of Chell's time at Aperture, other than a few scars she had from the turrets. Sometimes she considered destroying it, or throwing it away, but she was afraid that if she did, she would forget that the nightmare had been real, and forgetting meant losing a part of herself. Besides, she was rather attached to it.
Chell had hiked for days after her expulsion from Aperture, carrying the companion cube and a jug of water. Her first night outdoors was both exhilarating and terrifying. The constant chirrup of crickets and the starry void of the night sky over the wheatfields made Chell supremely nervous after being trapped underground for so long. She had forgotten how vast the sky could be. The absence of the portal gun felt like the loss of a limb; Chell found herself reaching for the phantom device on more than one occasion, only to realize with a start that she had left the real one at Aperture, and that it would do her little to no good in the outside world.
Finally, on the fifth day, she had found a small town, just dirt roads with bars and gas stations. There she had found food and a bath courtesy of the church. She hadn't spoken at all then, not even to the sisters who helped her. She wasn't even sure that she still could speak, not after how long she had gone without doing so. Chell had pressed on until she found a city, a maze of streets and buildings big enough to lose herself in.
That had been a year ago. Chell had lived on the streets for awhile, scrounging food from dumpsters and sleeping under cardboard boxes. Through sheer determination, she had managed to secure a job at a coffee shop and rented a shabby but cheap apartment. She kept it clean enough, and she hadn't seen a cockroach in months.
Thankfully her job had provided her uniform – a white polo and khaki pants, with a dark green apron and visor. She had few other clothes, all scrounged from thrift stores on her meager paycheck. Chell wasn't terribly picky about what she wore outside of work, but she delighted in the great power she had over her wardrobe. She could wear anything: any color, any style, anything that caught her fancy. But the one color that had not made it to her closet was orange. Just thinking about it made her shudder.
The filthy, Aperture standard-issue orange jumpsuit she wore after her flight from Aperture had been the first thing to go. She had worn it long enough, and burned it in a trash-can fire so common among the homeless her first winter in the city. It was a silent affair, without ceremony, but Chell had felt much better as she watched the synthetic fabric curl up and fall into ash. It was a cleansing feeling, as though she herself had been set aflame and risen from the ashes like a phoenix.
Now, Chell readied herself for work, looking in the mirror as she straightened the green visor worn over her dark ponytail, tucking the white polo's hem into the slim waistband of her khakis and tying her green apron on.
It was a short walk to work, and she relished the feeling of the crisp autumn breeze on her face and the din of city life. Sometimes she was overcome with a crushing loneliness, but living here helped. How could one feel alone surrounded by so many other people? After all, Chell thought, she had been alone at Aperture for far too long, with only the company of an AI that was trying to kill her. People, however aloof and self-absorbed, were a welcome change. Chell felt connected to each and every one of them, all of them strangers to each other but fundamentally the same. On her worst days, she felt disconnected from everyone, for who else could even begin to understand the horrors she had seen without having experienced them? Chell shook her head to clear her heavy thoughts. She tried not to dwell on it.
The door of the coffee shop in which she worked jingled merrily as Chell stepped inside. It was a Monday morning, undoubtedly the busiest time of the week, and she quickly punched in and stepped up to the counter.
"Welcome to Starstruck Coffee, can I take your order, please?" she said with a smile. Chell had found that the harder she tried to seem cheerful, the more cheerful she became.
"I'd like a medium mocha latte, two percent milk, with an extra shot of espresso," said her first customer, a tall blonde woman in a dark suit.
"Would you like to add a muffin or a slice of cake for only $1.99?" she asked automatically, writing the order in shorthand on the side of a cup. It had taken several months before the thought of cake did not bring back overwhelming memories of GLaDOS, but now Chell barely felt a twinge.
"The cake is a lie," the woman said, and Chell dropped her wax pencil.
"Excuse me?" she asked, her mouth dry.
"I said, the cake goes straight to my thighs," the woman laughed, looking puzzled. "What, not so for you? You're lucky, then." She swept her curtain of platinum hair back and pulled her wallet from her purse. "What do I owe you?"
"Oh, right," Chell said, flustered. "That will be $3.75."
It was times like these Chell realized just how much of her life GLaDOS had taken from her. She knew she couldn't hide from her memories forever, and for this reason she had months ago made up her mind to challenge her fears as best she could. Chell had always been a survivor. She was tenacious to a fault; it was the defining reason she had been originally rejected as an Aperture test subject. It was this, her indomitable spirit, that had gotten her through the test chambers and led her to defeat both GLaDOS and Wheatley single-handedly. It had gotten her across wheatfields and forests with little more than the clothes on her back, and through months in a city where she knew no one and no one cared. Now she had a life, a real, honest life, because she had been unwilling to give up her dream of normalcy. Chell, the tough, stubborn girl that still lived inside of her, refused to be a slave to fear.
Her next customer was a brunette around her own age, wearing jeans and a fashionable sweater in a rusty orange. The woman's brown eyes were untouched by sorrow and as carefree as the wind.
"Hello, can I take your order please?" Chell asked. She swallowed hard, eyeing the sweater. So distracted was she that she missed the customer's order and, blushing furiously, had to ask her to repeat it.
As she wrote down the woman's order, she asked in a would-be casual voice, "I love your sweater. Where did you get it?"
The woman glanced down at herself, plucking at the garment in question. "Oh, this? I found it at that little clothing boutique on 2nd and Halcyon. On sale too! Go figure, huh? I just adore the color orange."
"Oh yes," Chell lied, smiling. "Me too."