Alone
Her trip to space lasted thirty seconds. It was there, on the edge of the void, that you lived the most important twelve seconds of your life.
It happened in a haze, somewhere in between the return of your conscience and the claw that darted back to life. You understood what to do before you even knew you were awake – it was an instinct, human and foreign, to find her hand and hold on to it.
You barely had to focus on your moves. Squeeze tight, tighter, pull. All the room for thought you had left was spent thinking.
That the emotion did not belong to you was the first thing you noticed. It was unprecedented, as far back in time as your mind could go. For someone who had known terror and helplessness for such a short time span – while you were conscious, at least – it felt impossible, illogical, to worry about anyone other than yourself.
But you were scared, certainly. You felt the raw fear to lose something. And only then, as you dragged a limp sack of flesh to safety, you realized just how terrible everything had been.
They were on the doors of the infinite. Framed by a portal, they touched the place where everything lasts too long for human eyes to follow. And there, threatened to be crushed by the eternity of space, the subject and the moron had the same thing in mind – to survive, at any cost.
No matter who and what to sacrifice, as long as they could be saved.
Mors tua, vita mea. That was an old saying – but maybe, like the stars, it would live on a little longer than most human things. And they were holding on to each other, with the strength of desperation, each of them clinging to life and dragging the other to death.
It was ironical, if not cruel, to have someone else as a lifeline and still be alone like that.
The full meaning of what you had done hit you hard later, when the unconscious human body on the ground made you feel dizzy and filled the whole chamber with its presence.
It hurt to realize that, at least once in your existence, you had been the only one around to care for someone else.
In any case, you knew yourself. You could find relief, only just by remembering where and who you were. There was no chance it would never happen again.
Aperture had always been a place where everything and everyone stayed on their own forever. Their whole story equaled a mistake, an aberration from the truth.
Still, you had been born to correct errors. You knew exactly what to do, and whether it hurt or not did not matter in the slightest.
It was only natural to go separate ways.
Between one-shots, drabbles and collections, this is my 100th piece of Portal fiction. It's been a long three years and I am so glad to have had you all by my side. I send a tight hug to everyone — Silver, Jen, Ember, Indy, BC, Alavesa, Keroa, Cara, Fuchsia, kojum, shapeform, firiami… there are so many of you and you all are special to me. To my readers, followers, followed blog, favourite artists: thank you, once more, for being there.