Resolution

Chapter Ten: Inside and Outside

GLaDOS wasn't sure what annoyed her more: the utter lack of Black-Mesa-scientist murdering over the past week, or the fact that the lunatic former test subject and her buddy the moron were currently sprawled on the floor of the Central AI Chamber, surrounded by sheets of paper covered with crude doodles of various things from both inside and outside the Enrichment Center. She nearly exploded the idiot for having the gall to draw a picture of her lording it over an army of lopsided, squashy turrets (and not to mention, GLaDOS looked absolutely fat in the picture, and she didn't know until then that her central core body could even look fat).

Even so, GLaDOS found herself slightly intrigued by their artistic endeavors—she was built to do science, not to make art, after all—and caught herself peering over Chell's shoulder several times while waiting for Blue and Orange to get reassembled from their latest failure. Chell was definitely the more skilled artist out of the two of them, and while she did have the distinct advantage of being humanoid longer than Wheatley, GLaDOS couldn't help but think that even the human Wheatley would have been terrible at drawing (and would have probably found a way to draw even stick figures incorrectly).

"You sure you don't want to give it a try, GLaDOS?" Chell asked, glancing at GLaDOS over her shoulder. "It's fun."

"You know what else is fun?" GLaDOS said, pulling her head back and tilting it to the side. "Killing Black Mesa scientists."

"I know, I know," said Chell in exasperation, turning back to her drawing of a deer. "They've been wandering around in the fields at the other side of town all week. I heard some people talking about them."

"My offer still stands. I'm sure I find a handgun or a functioning anti-antivenom gun somewhere for you to shoot them with," GLaDOS said, twitching her body back and forth in slight anticipation. "I should know better than anyone that you're good at shooting guns. And murdering things."

With a roll of her eyes, Chell gave a laugh. "The only thing I've ever murdered was you—unless turrets count too—and you're a bigger target than those scientists," she said as she drew trees around her picture of the deer. "Also, you don't move. They can run and hide."

A ripple of irritation passed through GLaDOS at her words: so it was easy to murder her just because she was large?

And after a moment, a wide grin slowly spread across Chell's face as she turned to GLaDOS, realization dawning on her.

"Sorry, GLaDOS," she said, visibly struggling to keep a straight face, "but it's true. You're easy to murder because of your unfortunate mechanical structure."

Clap.

Clap.

Clap.

Bravo, Chell.

Bra. Vo.

It all became too much for Chell to handle—she suddenly burst into raucous laughter, curling into a ball and clutching her stomach as her entire body quaked in her mirth. GLaDOS had heard Chell laugh before, but this—it was as though the floodgates had been opened, as though the kraken had been released, as though she had been bottling up all the laughter in her life until she was so full to bursting that her one little comment destroyed her pitiful little laugh-bottle. Even Wheatley, who often laughed along even when he hadn't any idea what was going on, looked utterly bewildered at Chell's mad laughter and, understandably, looked a little scared.

"If you injured yourself in that little episode, I won't be fixing you," GLaDOS said frostily, turning away from Chell as her laughter finally died down and she lay panting on the floor.

"Er…are you all right?" Wheatley asked gingerly, like she might suddenly explode into laughter again at the sound of his voice.

"I'm—I'm fine," she gasped, waving his concern away with a limp hand and a tiny laugh. "S-sorry, didn't—didn't mean—to laugh—so hard. Ohh, my stomach hurts…"

She spent a few moments lying in a pathetic heap on the floor before slowly getting to her feet and, to GLaDOS's dismay, proceeding to put a hand on her headpiece. "Looks like we're both fatties," she said brightly, a foolish grin on her face.

"The moron must be rubbing off on you," said GLaDOS, twitching her head in sullen disapproval but allowing Chell to keep her hand there nonetheless. "It's logically impossible for me to be fat, because I don't need to metabolize beef and leaves."

"You want to bring logic into this?" Chell said, arching an eyebrow. "Because listen to this: this statement is—"

There was a sharp feeling of betrayal as panic gripped her processors—immediately, GLaDOS began filling the chamber with loud "lalalalalala" sounds while desperately thinking about things like testing, killing the Black Mesa scientists, ways to torment Wheatley, warming up the neurotoxin emitters, and how this woman that she begrudgingly thought of as her friend was trying to kill her with a logical paradox which by the way she absolutely was not thinking about definitely not no paradoxes here only testing and morons and maybe she should have used the neurotoxin to kill Chell after all if she was just going to do this to her—

"—probably going to kill you, and I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you!"

The "lalala" sounds pouring out of the speakers immediately stopped at the sound of Chell's apology, and GLaDOS pulled herself out of the storm of anti-paradox thoughts to find Chell's arms wrapped around her headpiece and obscuring her camera. "You know, you tried to kill me three times now," GLaDOS said, trying to pull her head away but finding, to her dismay, that Chell was pulled along as well.

"I know," said Chell, clinging on tighter as GLaDOS irritably twitched her head in Chell's arms. "Probably shouldn't have said that. It's faster than neurotoxin so I really could have killed you. I'm sorry…"

An unfamiliar feeling stirred within GLaDOS.

It's faster than neurotoxin so I really could have killed you. I'm sorry…

It was related to her conscience, that much she knew. But it wasn't guilt that she felt this time; it was something else—something that she knew felt bad, but it wasn't quite the feeling of guilt or remorse that she sometimes found herself bogged down with after her escapade as a potato. No, this was something else. She looked to Chell, who had mercifully let go of her head and was giving her an apologetic smile, as though waiting for her to just forgive and forget and say something patently idiotic like "Oh yeah, we're the same, we're both unfortunately structured!"

This feeling.

For the first time, GLaDOS felt shame.

She was ashamed.

Her.

GLaDOS.

The highly advanced, sentient artificial personality construct that had absolutely no qualms condemning people and their innocent daughters to horrible deaths via neurotoxin or test chamber or incinerator (and still would have no qualms about it, conscience be damned), brought to feel shame by the one human who had somehow managed to wriggle her way into her friends database when all she had really wanted was to let the girl loose on the surface to wreak her havoc somewhere else…And now here she was. Ashamed. Ashamed that after all the (relatively) harmless threats to kill her friend with neurotoxin and whatever else, Chell had turned the tables for once and then apologized for it while GLaDOS sulked like a petulant child.

The feeling was irritating—even more so than the feeling of guilt. For a moment, the thought of exploding the entire facility in a sort of suicide maneuver crossed her mind—but it immediately fizzled out, because being dead was slightly worse than being ashamed, and if that black box was still working, she'd be reliving those moments of shame for the rest of eternity.

Was she going soft?

Because if that was the case, then she really wanted those Black Mesa morons to show up soon so that she'd have someone to kill. Exploding Blue or Orange or both just wouldn't cut it this time.

What was it that people did when they feel like they did something very wrong? Her initial thought was to immediately fill the room with neurotoxin, but neurotoxin wouldn't solve all her problems (even if it did solve many others) and killing Chell was the opposite of what she wanted at the moment. Besides, it didn't seem like an appropriate response to the situation; in fact, she had a sneaking suspicion that killing Chell right now would increase her feelings of shame.

Should she…apologize?

…

GLaDOS checked the feed from the security camera hidden outside the wheat field exit.

Nope, still no Black Mesa.

She turned her head back to Chell, who looked slightly perplexed by her silence, before lifting her head higher in preparation for what she was about to do. It would be a real one this time—no sarcasm, no spite—and hopefully it wouldn't kill her.

It had to be done.

Here goes.

Definitely.

Any minute now.

"Sorry."

She expected anything from Chell collapsing into another fit of uncontrollable laughter to a sudden death via complete genetic lifeform failure, but she didn't expect Chell to look pleasantly confused and give a small laugh.

"Sorry for what?" asked Chell. "I'm the one that tried to kill you."

GLaDOS looked from Chell's bemused face to Wheatley, who was sitting on the floor with a similarly confused expression on his face. What was it that she was sorry about, exactly? She couldn't pin down any one thing she was particularly sorry about—she wasn't sorry for putting Chell through testing, because that was what she'd been designed to do and Chell was simply the unfortunate victim of Aperture-related circumstance, and she wasn't sorry for the (relatively) harmless insults she directed at Chell and Wheatley all the time because frankly, they were easy targets (and the moron practically asked for it). So what was it?

Was she sorry that she was acting like a child? Because she wasn't ashamed enough to admit something like that to them—no shame was great enough to allow her to do that.

But seeing Chell's baffled face holding no accusation and no malice (not that Chell's face was particularly good at holding malice in the first place) sent unexpected relief flooding through GLaDOS, almost as though Chell had outright told her that she had nothing to be sorry for. And indeed, Chell simply reached up to pat her headpiece again before smiling and turning back to Wheatley to continue with their drawings. "Who's the lunatic now?" she said as she sat back down on the floor.

It wasn't often lately that GLaDOS felt any emotion from the pieces of Caroline still left in her, but at this moment, those fragments of Caroline still residing in her felt absolutely gleeful and almost…approving.

It really was a pity that she wouldn't stay deleted.

There was a solution to the fattening-via-cake that Chell feared whenever she felt the urge to bake for her Aperture friends. No longer would she risk cake poisoning out of guilt that it would be wasted. It had been an idea that came to her at work while she watched her boss's secretary change the coffee filter in the break room, and it had kept her awake with anticipation up to the end of her shift, whereupon she immediately left to buy what she needed from the grocery store.

Cupcakes.

Red velvet cupcakes to be exact. Little personal red velvet cupcakes that she wouldn't feel as guilty throwing out (or eating).

So one batch of red velvet mix with cream cheese frosting later, Chell stood in her little kitchen and surveyed her work. She'd been left with about twelve cupcakes after halving the original recipe, and they didn't look half bad considering her talent (or lack thereof) in anything remotely artistic, culinary or otherwise. They didn't look lopsided like all the normal cakes she tried to make, and it was much easier to just scoop frosting onto a cupcake than to ice an actual cake. With any luck, GLaDOS wouldn't label them as Lunatic Cupcakes (the same way she labeled the first cake Chell made, as well as all subsequent cakes), but Chell wasn't going to hold her breath on this one because it would likely result in horrible asphyxiation.

With three cupcakes safely tucked away in a plastic container nestled in her messenger bag, Chell cheerfully locked her front door and began making her way to the wheat field. She surreptitiously cast her eyes about as she walked—she'd been doing so ever since the Black Mesa scientists had appeared, just in case there were more of them slinking around the outskirts of the little town. Fortunately, it seemed that there were only the two scientists that she tailed two weeks back and it seemed that they were currently nowhere near the route wheat field. But, just to be sure, she decided to take a more roundabout path to the field than normal in case she was being followed.

It was true that she didn't want the two scientists to find the Enrichment Center, but she was ambivalent as far as why she didn't want them to find it. Part of her worried about what they might do to GLaDOS and Wheatley and all of Aperture's technology if they ever got in, and the other part of her worried what GLaDOS might do to the scientists once they got there. The first and second times that she had killed (or attempted to kill) GLaDOS, she'd been too busy worrying about securing her own life that she didn't think about what she was really doing, but now that her life was not currently endangered and she now knew that there was a sort of odd friendship to be had with GLaDOS and Wheatley, she was free to ponder the ramifications of the GLaDOS-killing (and Wheatley-killing) and the potential scientist-killing.

She had truly been horrified with herself when she nearly sprang that logical paradox on GLaDOS as part of a petty retaliation to GLaDOS's words—she really should've known better after GLaDOS nearly killed herself in her attempt to disable a power-mad Wheatley with the paradox. Chell was no murderer despite GLaDOS's insistence (really, by now it sounded like a term of endearment), and she truthfully did not want the blood (or semiconductors?) of anyone on her hands, human or AI alike—not even if that blood belonged to Black Mesa scientists that in all likelihood would treat GLaDOS and Wheatley with the same tact that the Aperture Scientists had.

Which is to say: with absolutely no tact at all.

And speaking of GLaDOS—it certainly had been odd that she'd suddenly apologized when it was Chell who had nearly killed her. It made her wonder if GLaDOS was having another crisis that was upsetting her...Was it something that Chell said? Well, obviously it was something that she'd said; she did say the first half of that logical paradox, after all, but her AI friend had fallen silent and seemed to sag in her body prior to her unexpected apology. It might be a good idea to ask her about it while Wheatley is off doing some work…

"Now, where are you off to, girlie?"

Chell jumped in surprise and wheeled around to find those two Black Mesa scientists that she had been expressly looking out for standing behind her. It seemed that they had been partially concealed by the pile of rubble she had just passed on her way to the wheat field, and she'd been so sure that she was all clear upon reaching the edge of town that she didn't even give a second glance at the pile of crumbling cinder blocks and asphalt. Despite their disheveled clothes and weary faces, the both of them looked exceedingly smug and it made Chell's skin crawl.

One was also holding a handgun, and it was pointed right at her.

It was amazing how quickly her old testing habits emerged; when faced with near-certain death, instinct told her to keep absolutely silent and not give them the satisfaction of a reaction. And indeed, it took her a moment to find her voice, almost as though it was leaving of its accord to wait while she handled the situation. "What do you want?" she said coldly, giving the gun-toting scientist an outright glare.

Talk about tempting fate.

"What could a pretty little thing like you be doing in a big old wheat field like this?" asked the scientist with the gun. He was a lanky man with pasty white skin and a square face that wouldn't have been unpleasant to look at if he didn't have such a self-satisfied expression on it. His back was slightly hunched—as though it had stuck that way after spending his days huddled over whatever science he worked on—and he held the gun in his hand with the air of a man who had never held a gun in his life. Chell was reasonably confident that she would be able to hold her own against him in a fist fight—but with a gun? Even a moron could pull a trigger, and despite this man's awkwardness, a gun was a gun no matter how awkward its gunner was. The other scientist was similarly awkward, but in an almost completely opposite way: his face and gut were much rounder, and though he wasn't hunched like his taller companion, he was awkward because of the timid way he held himself. Though if this guy attacked her, Chell was sure she'd be able to outrun him without a problem.

"I happen to like sitting out here," Chell retorted. "Is that a problem?"

"Oh, it's not a problem at all," said the thinner man. "We're just curious is all."

"So pointing a gun at me is being curious?" said Chell as coolly as she could while panic began welling up inside her. "I'd hate to see what you're like when you're more interested."

"Well, there's actually something about you that interested us," said the fatter man. He had a sort of vague and nasally New England accent that, combined with the smug expression on his and his friend's faces, made him sound like—well—an asshole. "See, we heard from someone in town that you showed up out of nowhere from this very wheat field, and we're very interested as to why you've been going back."

These two jerks sounded a little too big for their britches, especially considering that they hadn't been important enough for Black Mesa to give them any proper equipment to find Aperture Laboratories. It was making it more and more difficult for Chell to summon her voice to speak to them and their arrogant faces. "Why? It's just a wheat field," she finally managed to say once her brain remembered how to make sounds come out of her throat.

"Well, if it's just a wheat field, we can go with you, right?" said the gunman, twitching the gun slightly.

Chell narrowed her eyes at them, hoping that her silence while she tried to force her voice to work was taken as a dramatic silence that communicated to them how loathsome she found them to be. "I—take it—that's not a request," Chell said.

"She's a smart one, isn't she, Rob?" the fat one said.

Her mind was racing as she tried to think of a way to not lead them to the Enrichment Center while also not getting shot by these two men that looked like they'd be all too happy to do so if given a reason. She could lead them to some empty patch of field far away from the entrance, but they knew that she knew something and might shoot her if they realized she was giving them the runaround. But if that's what it took to keep GLaDOS and Wheatley out of their hands, Chell had no problems taking a few bullets for them. As far as she was concerned, she would be dead already if it hadn't been for those two (in so many more ways than one).

"I'm just—going to be sitting—in the middle—of the field—to watch the sun set," said Chell, inwardly grimacing at her quickly-retreating powers of speech. "If—that sounds interesting—to you—then be my guest."

"You know, I think it does. Let's go," said Rob, gesturing at the field with his gun.

So Chell found herself trying with all her might to look cool and collected while she led the pair into the wheat field, the scientists trailing along behind her with the gun pointed right at her back. There was a Discouragement Beam Array that GLaDOS had calibrated that would be far enough from the lift shed that the shed wouldn't be visible—with any luck, the sensors would pick up on movement and maybe GLaDOS could zap them before they shot her. It was just a matter of remembering where the array was located, so Chell deeply hoped that her gut instinct and her relatively dependable memory (both of which haven't failed her yet) were leading her in the right direction.

She finally picked an unassuming patch of wheat and sank down to the ground facing the slowly setting sun, thanking the stars or the gods or whoever might be in charge of the universe for giving her the urge to bring drawing supplies along with her, which she pulled out of her bag to nervously begin drawing a sketch of the wheat field sunset. The two scientists hadn't sat down with her, and she could feel their eyes boring into the back of her head while she did her best to look like an actual landscape artist and not just an idiot with the artistic skills of a child. Things weren't looking good for her, though; their patience was wearing thin if their irate whispering was anything to go by.

They knew. They knew she knew, and they were getting irritated that she was sitting there drawing pictures…

The tip of the gun pressed against the back of her head.

"No more games," Rob hissed. "Take us to the laboratory. That's where you came from, wasn't it?"

"I—don't know—what laboratory—"

Chell was cut off when Rob pushed harder with the gun, forcing her head forward. "You know exactly what we're talking about. Aperture Laboratories. Take us there or I'll blow your brains out."

Her voice wouldn't come out.

Was she going to die a mute (again) lunatic without even the satisfaction of telling Rob and his fat companion to go fuck themselves?

Suddenly, there was the muffled sound of something mechanical whirring into life underground. Rob pulled the gun away in surprise, and once he did so, Chell's instincts took over: she quickly rolled to the side and crouched low as Rob staggered away from the block of wheat rising out of the ground about twenty feet away from them. She saw her opening as Rob flailed about in shock—with a soundless grunt, she sprang up, grabbing Rob's hand and giving him a swift kick in the back of his knee as she frantically tried to wrestle the gun out of his grasp. Rob's companion cried out in pain as two Discouragement Beams went right into his chest, while Rob got a face full of laser beam himself.

He was stronger than he looked and held onto the gun for dear life even as the Discouragement Beam discouraged the side of his face, screaming in pain but clinging doggedly on even as he and Chell tumbled to ground. She desperately kicked and stomped at his face as she tried to pry the gun out of his vice-like grip while he writhed around in an attempt to escape the laser. But abruptly, he managed to jerk his head out of the way if even for an infinitesimal moment; the laser wasn't able to keep up with his sudden movement and Chell found herself arching her back in pain as the laser raked down her back and part of her leg—for a moment, her only thought was how much more powerful these lasers were compared to the ones in the testing chambers and that she really would have died during testing if GLaDOS used these lasers there instead.

Immediately the Discouragement Beam disappeared as Chell's grip on Rob's hand loosened—Rob took full advantage of this and wrenched his hand out of her grasp, scrambling to his feet and aiming the gun at her. But moving away from Chell was what doomed him: as soon as his limbs were no longer tangled with hers, three Discouragement Beams immediately tore into his face and chest while he howled in pain and fell to the ground.

But not before pulling the trigger of the gun.

There was a deafening BANG and a searing pain shot through Chell's back and chest. She found herself thrown forward into to the ground, either from the force of the bullet or the shock of actually getting shot. Panic gripped her heart as she lay on the ground trying to process what had just happened to her—it was getting difficult to draw breath and her vision began swimming while she felt something warm spreading out across her back. She was hardly aware of Rob's terrible screaming or of the horrible gurgling sound he made when the laser burned through his throat; instead she tried desperately to get back onto her feet, thinking only of somehow making it back to the lift so that she could warn her friends that Black Mesa knew more than she had initially reported—

She had to get back there before she died. Her only thought as she staggered through the wheat was how she had to get back—how she had to get back to them—

She had to get back home.

Chell collapsed, gasping for breath and trying to keep her eyes open in spite of all the wounds making her face contort in pain. She wanted to cry out, to be able to whimper in pain if only for the consolation of hearing her own voice before she died, but instead of sound coming out of her throat, the metallic taste of blood bubbled up into her mouth…

Her vision began fading as she lay gasping in the midst of the wheat, but she made one last effort to look toward the lift shed and thought she could make out two blurry figures running toward her before everything went dark.

A/N: Aaaahhhh, me GLaDOS voice is slipping! Anywho, sorry the update took so long. Last week was a bad week at work and I couldn't make any words come out. D: Also, the number of tabs I have open whenever I'm writing is…a lot. I had like 3 tabs about cake and icing open, 4 about gunshot wounds to various parts of the body (and how painful they are), 3 about gun silencers, a few about semiconductors and integrated circuits and I forgot why I even opened those, and I think I had about 3 tabs about apples open when I was writing the apple rant. I also spent like 10 minutes listening to videos of gun silencers and I didn't even use it…

Many thanks to Faux Promises. I had a vague idea as to where to take the chapter, but after we had a bunch of chat sessions about GLaDOS and other things, I took it this way. : D We also talked a bit about what would happen if we were test subjects…If I was a test subject, I'd be so badly Stockholmed for GLaDOS that by the end of it, I'm sure I'd be like, "GLaDOS, I'll be better than all your other test subjects! Please don't be disappointed with me!" And then when I fall into the incinerator, I'd be sad because I disappointed her so badly that she didn't want me anymore. : (

For reals this time: the story is almost over. Considering how this chapter went and where I cut it off, I might split the last chapter into two, BUT THAT'S IT. I think. Preeeetty sure. Fairly sure.

Anyone ever been to the Portal kink meme? Hahaha. I like going to see the hilarious things people ask for. I was drawing artfills for a bunch of prompts, but usually people write stories for 'em. And not all of it is dirty stuff—I drew a fill for one about cemeteries being peaceful and I thought it was really…touching? I dunno, not exactly touching, but not quite…anything else. Anywho, if you're into that kinda thing, take a look.