Belongings
The way it had begun was almost stupid.
The job interview at Aperture had been her idea. Still, Clark was behind it, as he usually was. She had gone out one morning, wrapped by her most elegant suit, and come back home with a job and her sharpest disbelief.
It had been a challenge, in a way. No one could guess how lightly Caroline had taken it. She did not know yet, but she would – just by proving a point to her brother, she had changed her whole destiny.
It had been the tone of his voice, maybe, or the patronizing hand in her hair. He laughed whenever she claimed she could aspire to a better paid job. Wait and see, she always replied.
For a long time, she believed to have been angry. But they were both smiling, and she had forgotten that fast. Clark had never doubted her once – his tone spoke volumes, whether she could hear him or not.
In retrospect, he probably loved her much more than she realized.
Caroline should have been able to tell from the missed calls. There were many of them, at least in the first years. She still remembers how fast they turned into routine, and how she stopped apologizing for calling back with such delay. It surprises her, and it hurts.
There were numerous voices, in her working years. Voices of strangers that grew to be her everything, and those of a family that gradually faded to an echo.
There were also different tones, many and varied, that people directed to her. And while very few of them were kind and understanding, she couldn't help sacrificing the ones that counted the most.
Even her mother ended up arguing with her. She burnt away hours on the phone, to yell to whoever would listen that her daughter took her job too seriously and sacrificed her freedom for nothing.
By the time Caroline considered the chance she may be right, they talked once in three years, and her voice always sounded tearful.
But that was her choice. A mother crying in secret could not change it.
The companions of her studies, the only friends she had ever shared anything with, soon joined the others and grew farther. The moment their calls disappeared arrived much faster than she had expected. Then again, she tells herself, she barely paid attention to the passing of time.
They were just like her, chasing their lives and their dreams. As always, she was the fastest runner. She had to leave them behind.
It is true – in her later years, she had often needed to break that shield of solitude. She had never found the heart to do so, in any case. The people and the chances she had let go of rose in her memory, tinged in solitude and resentment, every time she touched the phone horn.
She suffered with the same force she had once devoted to her job. Still, Aperture never lets people wallow in their regrets for long.
Every time they mentioned the project, they offered to take her as painlessly as possible. They guaranteed her a serene passing, and assured that her sacrifice wouldn't go to waste.
Caroline has tried her very best to run away. She cannot doubt it, even in her last moments. But now that she waits to go, trapped by the one compromise she could not get around to, she understands there was never any point in trying.
She has given herself away with such ease. Just like that, because of her careless dedication, the rest of her life has all become their property.
It is way too late to deny them her death.