Prompt for this one comes from LJ's Portal kinkmeme:
"GLaDOS likes to break people's minds. She wears them down with insults, veiled or outright, implications of inferiority and sarcasm.
I want to see her on the receiving end.
I want Chell to snap. We've had her smashing GLaDOS with a lead pipe, I'd like to see the same thing with words. I want her to deliver one hell of a verbal beatdown. I want her to be absolutely cutting, calmly flaying GLaDOS with a sharp tongue. I want her to burn her even more than when she was literally in a fire.
And there's nothing GLaDOS can say, because it's all true."
Here's the first part of the fill. Some warnings for foul language and severe verbal pwnage. You can decide for yourself whether this is OOC for Chell. Personally, I think it's something she's always wanted to do.
CHAPTER ONE: Breaking the Barrier
"I have a surprise waiting for you after this next test. Telling you would spoil the surprise, so I'll just give you a hint: it involves meeting two people you haven't seen in a long time."
Of course Chell hadn't trusted the words then, and she didn't trust them now. This was GLaDOS, the queen of lies she was dealing with. The Aperture Science empress who kept her around only as a rat to run tests. She'd have to be an idiot to completely believe that GLaDOS was telling her the truth.
…Well, at least she was only partly an idiot.
A small part of her couldn't help but hope that maybe, just maybe, GLaDOS had really found her parents. They were probably dead by now, but even if the computer dumped two carcasses down the Aperture Science Vital Apparatus Vent, at least she'd know that GLaDOS had, for once, been telling the truth. Or she'd just kill her with neurotoxin in that room and end Chell once and for all. Either way, Chell wasn't about to show the machine that she was eager or scared about what was to come. So she did what she always did, and put her emotions into energy for testing.
She completed the test with ease, reaching the door, the Emancipation Grill, and another odd little video on the walls. GLaDOS spoke up again.
"I'll bet you think I forgot about your surprise. I didn't. In fact, we're headed to your surprise right now. After all these years…I'm getting choked up just thinking about it."
GLaDOS was sounding…unusually tender about this, for some reason. Of course it was possibly sarcasm, but what if it was mockery of the emotion Chell would be feeling? Or the hope she was feeling before getting disappointed or killed? The tenderer GLaDOS's voice sounded, the more Chell began to suspect that her surprise would be unpleasant. She got into the elevator nonetheless and let the AI take her further into the labs.
What they came upon was a dark, empty room, with a single spotlight. Subtle as a brick, she couldn't help thinking. Tentatively, she stepped into the spotlight, prepared to face anything…even the people she'd missed the most. GLaDOS's voice over the loudspeakers again nearly made her jump.
"Initiating surprise in three…two…one…"
The lights came up…
On an empty room.
"I made it all up."
The only thing that came out of the Vital Apparatus Vent was confetti, and the toot of a noisemaker.
"Surprise." The AI's voice barely contained her glee at her prank. All Chell could do was stand there, an odd, dangerous mix of emotions rising in her mind.
"Oh, come on. If it makes you feel any better, they abandoned you at birth, so I very seriously doubt they'd even want to see you."
She…
She had seriously…
She was honestly treating this like a joke…
At that moment, Chell felt something stirring in her, something that she would normally put into testing energy. But she knew it wouldn't work this time. The door opened at the other end of the room, inviting her to the next test chamber. But something had changed in Chell. At that moment, she never wanted to complete a test for GLaDOS again. She wasn't going to do anything else in this laboratory, not for that … that insufferable …
"Bitch."
The thought had been so intense, it had managed to worm its way to the long-unused path of Chell's vocal cords. Her lips moved almost involuntarily, and it took her a second or two to realize that she had just spoken for the first time in God knew how many years. She had broken her self-imposed vow of silence.
…And it felt good.