Hiya folks! Here's another one-shot. I got the idea after finishing Portal 2 yet again and talking with my friend Silverstreams (who also beta-read this). I've already uploaded it to a couple places, but didn't upload it here because it didn't have a cover. Now it does, so! Enjoy!

Did you know that people with guilty consciences are easily startled by loud noi—

The roar of wind nearly deafened her reactivated aural sensors, much more sensitive than the one in the tiny form she'd been in. Immediately she turned them down so she could focus on the situation at hand. Her consciousness was still working its way through the facility as blood pumping through numb veins, until finally she was able to feel the reactor core on the verge of exploding.

With a single command, the facility vented its fumes into the atmosphere, and she knew she was safe.

But she wasn't.

Though her view from the floor showed little, GLaDOS could, through the eyes of the half-dead panels, see the chassis's strained cable, the core connected to it, and the human gripping onto his handles for dear life. Her expression was that of sheer terror and agony, enough to mask the unnatural determination usually seen in those eyes.

Days ago, she would have loved to see such an expression on the test subject's face. In fact, she'd tried to elicit it many times.

Oh. Did I accidentally fizzle that before you could complete the test? I'm sorry.

The core's hoarse, frantic voice shattered through her thoughts, and every intact panel rippled and shuddered. Ignoring his screams of protest, she finally gained control of her gigantic claw, and reached out to strike him—

And for several agonizing milliseconds, she nearly missed her as the strike jarred her body and the vacuum yanked at it, nearly throwing her out into space with the moron, and that portal gun was going to get hit by the debris and cancel the portals any second now—grab her, grab her—

Its song was cut short as it hit the laser, and she frantically reached for the cube as it dissolved beneath her fingers—

With a weighty thud, she hit the ground just after the portal disappeared. Her ragged breathing was deafening in the suddenly quiet room.

GLaDOS could see her through her own optic now—the stripes on her back from where she'd hit the grate, the blood staining pink on her jumpsuit as it mingled with the conversion gel… the burns on her fingertips…

Reaching out, the AI grabbed her own head, dragging it by the half-conscious human as her optic darted around, getting a closer look at her injuries. Many of them were not from the past, hellish few minutes.

She was in pain.

It bothered GLaDOS more than it should have, which only bothered her more. She didn't want to be concerned with this human—she couldn't be, not when she had to repair her own chassis, piece her fragmented chamber back together, repair the facility.

But she was in pain.

The party escort bot could be there in a few minutes to treat her, but if a few milliseconds could be agony, a few minutes would be absolute hell. She needed to do something to get human's mind off of her pain—so—so that she could focus on what she needed to and get her mind off of this human.

She'd tried to smuggle it out of the chamber, and its humming was cut off by a shriek of dying mechanics and fizzling matter.

I think that one was about to say, 'I love you.'

The simplistic data was easy to gain access to, and before a second had passed, the speakers that normally projected her voice all around the chamber began to hum a soft, gentle tune—the song of the companion cubes.

Her breathing was still ragged, but her agony-twisted face slowly began to soften after the first few notes.

GLaDOS watched her as she dragged herself back to her own chassis, never sure whether the human was still awake or had finally fallen unconscious. Either way, the song seemed to relax her injured body, and its effect seemed to grow as the tune went on.

It wasn't until the clanking stomps of the party escort bot reached her aural receptors that she realized the song had long since ended, and she herself had been singing in its absence.