Warning: This chapter contains some graphic violence. Reader discretion advised.
She tore her memories out of her mind and arranged them around herself, hanging them like stars in a galaxy. Even if her courtiers were only dolls, lifeless apparitions staring back at her with rictus painted grins and speaking in her own voice, they were present and could never abandon her. They would not die while she kept on living. They would suffer on her behalf and none of it would matter this time, because they were puppets. Nothing hurt puppets.
Yet the Witch hungered as all Witches do, feeling the void where there had once been something else. A mind? A name? A self? This was not enough. The dolls could not provide her company for long. She needed a Court, a legion of faces who would fear and respect her, who she could pretend loved her. Hadn't she once desired something like that?
So she reached down to the intruders, the insects that hadn't awakened yet, and called for them to change and join her. All they had to do was give into despair and they'd find happiness on the other end of it, happiness and liberation. She would break the shells of their eggs for them and they would gratefully join her, Witches upon Witches.
She reached hands outward to the ones whose souls were still edible, who could nourish her in her task, and said 'come.' Something, the other Thing inside of her, thrilled at the thought; It wanted to embrace them all. It urged her to embrace the entire world. Patience, she told It! Right now we are still too small.
She weaved her Labyrinth as an ever-changing thing, subject to her moods and her desires, prodding and testing the intruders until she could transform and save them. She could find a way. This was her laboratory, and she would Test them. (Test. It sounded good and right.) In all of the many days and nights her past self had endured there had only been two puzzles she could not solve. One no longer mattered, for it had no answer.
And Selene, the Witch of Trials, would solve that puzzle here.
Chapter 25: "Not Yet."
The Caroline puppet took on an all-too realistic face for a second, clasping her hands behind her back. She spoke with a voice that was distinctly not Caroline's.
"It's going to be alright," she told Chell. "I have to scare you into breaking so you can become part of me. I can't wait! You'll be frightened for a little bit, but then you'll be fine!" Before Chell could do anything else, 'Caroline' leaned forward and kissed Chell on the forehead.
The false room fell away and the puppets crumbled into dust. The hotel room scene around Chell tore away like paper in a harsh wind, revealing nothing but endless space full of shards of reality and warped, distant stars. Relentless cold and heat seared at Chell's skin, but it was easy to ignore compared to what she saw.
The mask loomed over her, a tower, light oozing out of its mouth and eyes. Behind it was a body that stretched across the Space Between Spaces itself, nothing but an endless cloud of darkness and light with tendrils curling towards Chell.
The shards were opaque, their worlds hidden in fog. She was trapped there, alone in the space between spaces, unable to open a portal out without a reference point to the 'outside.' There would be no fleeing the Not Goddess now.
Chell bit down on her tongue to stop a scream, hovering in front of the mouth of the thing as its great grasping hands reached for her. She opened a portal fast enough to dart back, forming her light gun and staring up at its unreachable eyes.
Her hands shook as she aimed the gun, firing right into the maw of the Not Goddess.
"Become part of her?" Kevin backed up against the two older Magi as the puppet swarm advanced towards them, limbs akimbo and painted faces grinning. "Do Witches talk?"
Wheatley took a deep breath to calm himself so he could actually speak clearly, though his words still came out in a nervous stream. "Kyubey said something about it toying with us. I guess the reason it can talk clearly is because it's so strong. It? She? Whichever! But if it's coming out, either it thinks we're a real threat now…"
Two dolls swung razor-sharp arms at Wheatley and he barely managed to deflect with a well-placed shield around the three of them. "Or she just intends to break her toys now that she's bored with them!"
"Sounds like Glados," Rita snorted. "But what was all that about the talking puppets about? Witches ain't usually mean, not in that way. Just hungry and weird. Unless she wanted us to get all down about ourselves and…"
Doll after doll threw their bodies against the domed shield, and Wheatley knew it wouldn't hold up for long. Great white jaws snapped open and shut, tinted blue by the crystal. At this rate either the shield would break or Wheatley's gem would darken too much from stress and overuse, and... the gems!
"She wants to turn us into Witches! That's what she meant by her 'Court.' Big bloody court of Witches running around having a fine time, I'll bet!" He shuddered. "Or gobble up our Witches and just get bigger. She was all about controlling people in life, and your Witch is some barmy Dali painting version of who you used to be!" He added a second layer of crystal, but it wasn't doing any good.
"Or have her familiars tear us up. The ones who survive would be the strongest Witches, I guess." Rita brandished her chain whip. "Sounds about like her kinda thing. Look, just let me at 'em and I'll take care of this whole mess for you."
"No you won't!" Wheatley gawked at Rita. "There's got to be millions! At least thousands!"
"Oh, suddenly you don't want people to risk their lives for you?" Rita's glare made Wheatley want to sink back into the sand, which wasn't helping his concentration.
"GUYS! Now is not the time, okay!?" Kevin's higher-pitched voice carried through the dome as he formed his wings. "We just have to fight through it and find Chell, right? I'll fly up there and clear an area so you have some breathing room."
"Wait, what? But-" Wheatley was sure he could think of a decent objection given more time. "You're...this is your first Witch, mate! You need to stick by us!"
"I will! Just let me do this first. Hold on!" Kevin glowed brilliant yellow as he flew upwards. Afraid that the boy would shatter the crystal and hurt himself, Wheatley briefly formed a hole in the dome to let him pass through. He replaced it as soon as possible, with the grinning face of a redheaded Magi-doll staring back at him.
"Oh god, oh god Kevin, I hope you know what you're-AAAGH!"
A shower of bright, explosive starbursts fell down around the dome, scorching the crystal and the land around Wheatley and Rita. When the light faded, there was a visible circle of broken and shattered dolls lying around the area. It wasn't much, but it would be room to run.
The shield had taken as much abuse as it could handle, and it shattered around them before crumbling into dust. The waves and waves of dolls advanced, with the strange one-eyed thing still looming from above.
"The moon opened up!" Kevin called down to the others from his hovering spot. "Do you think that's the Witch in there? But it wouldn't let me fly up before…"
"Then we'll make it come down!" Rita ran out into the swarm at full speed, snapping her whip to cut puppet strings by the dozen. "She wants to wear us down? Ha! That's hilarious! I dunno about you two, but I can go like this for a year."
Wheatley was finding it much harder to answer her, as he was immediately besieged again by those puppets. He was less confident that he'd last in this swarm. One of the dolls sunk her teeth deep into his arm and tried to pull it right off, nearly succeeding before he sliced its string with the edge of a shield. Did the Glados-Witch really intend to just burn them out? It seemed so much kinder than the manipulation puppets of Doug and the others, in a rather twisted way. Besides, Chell was still missing.
Chell.
"WAIT!" Wheatley tried to shout over the swarm, but soon found himself distracted with a puppet in a witch hat.
"Wait what?! I can't hear ya, Potter! You gotta-You think you can stop me, big guy!? Yeah, you!" Rita's voice was getting more and more distant as the puppets pulled at Wheatley and practically shoved him further into a sea of Familiars.
"Give a mate some space, will you?!" He sent blue crystal spikes splaying around him, spearing a few unconcerned dolls as he took the chance to look upwards again. The moon-serpent was still glaring down at them, Kevin nowhere to be seen.
Just bloody perfect, he thought. We're divided now. Meaning I'm on my own again. Not that I don't deserve it, but where are Rita and little Kevin!?
The puppets grabbed at his arms and neck and dragged him before a bigger one standing in the center of the circle, one he recognized all too well. In one moment the Familiar was a wooden toy with a fake beard; in another he was Doug, the adult-disguised Doug Wheatley had known, looking incredibly real and holding out a hand.
"It's alright, Wheatley. Your plan can still work. Let's become part of Selene and help turn her into a goddess."
It's fake, she told herself. None of this is real. Only a tiny bit of that Thing made it out. It's just reaching into my head and pulling out everything I don't want to think about right now. This is a nightmare, and I need to wake up.
Tendrils of shadow swirled around Chell like a horde of snakes, snapping at her and pulling at the ribbon in the back of her dress. She fired backwards to propel herself, the air around her thick and cold. It was like being in the void of space, though she could breathe.
The Thing didn't torment her the same way it had done when she'd faced the real thing. Presumably it couldn't; this was a tiny sliver of it, the only part that had made it into her world. Instead, it reached out its tendrils to try to pull her into pieces.
Voices came out from the bubbling void, echoing from every angle.
"Save us!"
"You know how to help us, right?"
"You stopped the Fire Witch! If anyone can break the system, it's you! What's taking you so long?!"
"...Fire Witch?" Chell frowned and shook it off, quite literally, by firing a quick shot at the tendril grasping for her leg. It was coming from the same direction as she'd heard that last plea. All of them were in voices she didn't remember, all young-sounding, some male and others female.\
It wasn't that she didn't want to save anyone. Was it so wrong to want to save herself, too? And to what end had it all been, anyway? She hadn't been able to save Caroline or Alice, and Kevin was just as doomed. Even Wheatley only wanted her for his own salvation.
Was that what she had to look forward to if she did win? A thousand pairs of eyes looking to her, begging her for something she couldn't deliver, never knowing if her friends were really her friends or just looking for impossible salvation?
"No. Stop," she told herself as she flew upwards, taking another series of shots at the mask. They seemed to have no effect, the face of the False Goddess just too huge to even notice. "This isn't me. It wants to break me. I can't break."
That was a lie. She knew full well she could break. If nothing else, she might be trapped in this oblivion until something within found a way to do it.
Tendrils formed into hands, two of them grabbing at her arms from opposite directions and pulling with terrific strength.
"You're always so cold!" one of them snapped, an unrecognized female voice. Chell struggled in her binds, taking deep breaths before pulling one arm away, leaving it bruised and heavily scratched; the tendril took bits of skin with it, droplets of Chell's blood hanging like red pearls in the air.
The other held her right arm so tightly she could feel it going numb at the wrist. It wasn't possible to use that gun of hers with just one hand, was it? Instead Chell did her best to pry off the vise-like fingers holding her arm at the elbow.
This time, the voice coming from the other end was all too familiar.
"It's funny how even people who think they know you well only want the useful bits of you," Glados said from somewhere. Her voice echoed and warbled. "The agreeable parts. They want a princess. Thankfully, becoming a princess is very easy. All you have to do is take the parts of yourself nobody likes…and cut them off."
A new arm sprouted from the darkness, this one holding a knife. The handle resembled the top of Glados's staff, with its concentric circles and spiral pattern.
Chell shoved against the hand with all her might, and shut her eyes so she wouldn't see what came next. She pulled away as fast as she could, but not before discovered what it felt like when blade sliced through bone.
Wheatley looked up at Not Doug, who gave him a sad, gentle smile. He grabbed Wheatley's hand and helped him to his feet, the other Familiars letting go.
"Is it better if I talk to you like this?" Not Doug tilted his head. "You probably feel pretty awful about what you did. Don't you, Wheatley?"
The Not Doug had a grip like iron, and Wheatley had to pull so hard to remove himself that he stumbled backwards into the now strangely still Familiars. "Don't you use his face and voice to talk. You have no right. No right!" He hugged his elbows. "You're not even Her. She at least knew him! You're a bad copy pretending to be another bad copy."
"I'm offering you a much nicer fate than what awaits you. You have defensive magic, making it difficult to reach your Gem. You heal quickly, so we'd have to tear you to pieces over and over in order to exhaust your capabilities. And you have great difficulty fighting on your own. You're going to die in my labyrinth." Not Doug sighed and shook his head. "I would have taken joy in that, but I hold within me part of the Witch of Compassion. She is why I can speak, and why I deign to offer you a kinder death in the arms of one who loved you."
Not Doug sounded too serene to be Doug, and had never given Wheatley a gentle, fatherly smile like that. He was holding his arms out as if offering a hug, all while the circle of Familiars gawked at him with hungry grins. There were too many of them for Wheatley to fight off on his own; true enough, he would be exhausted eventually without any progress against the Witch herself.
"Guilt will never stop gnawing at you, like an itch," Not Doug continued. "Let it take you and turn. You won't suffer anymore."
The smile on Not Doug's face was the worst part. It was the way Wheatley had wished Cave or Doug would look upon him, like parent to child.
"...Doug didn't love me, lady. I'm not deluded. He was nice to me and cared about my well-being, and really that was enough." Wheatley forced a little smile. "He saved me too, so I'd really be betraying him again if I gave in, yeah?" He held his hands upwards, ready to generate a shield.
"So, hard way I guess! I did my best. But you know, maybe you're supposed to feel guilt. You can't get any better without it. I'd hate to be so numb I didn't even know when I did wrong." He met Not Doug's empty gaze. "Is that what it feels like, being a Witch? You can talk and be in a thousand places at once but you forgot everyone around you's a person."
Not Doug was now quite obviously a larger wooden doll with a sloppy paint job on the face. His mouth was opened wide, bearing sharp teeth matched by the Familiars Wheatley knew would be upon him at any moment. And good bloody job egging it on, he scolded himself. But at least you'll last a while, like the Witch said. Maybe if you can see Chell one last time first…
He summoned the blue glow of his shield magic to surround him, only to be interrupted by a flash of green before the world around him sped into a complete blur.
"We ain't got time to waste on the Familiars, big guy!" Rita had grabbed Wheatley and was carrying him effortlessly in her arms despite their differences in height, speeding through the mass of Familiars and right past the monstrous mockery of Doug. Everything around her was bathed in green light, sparking with electricity.
"...Rita?!" Whealtey stared at her, as looking anywhere else made him feel a little nauseous. "But I thought…"
"That I'm mad at you? Yeah, I am! But I was in the Court, and...oh hell, Potter, just take the rescue!" Rita blew a strand of hair out of her face. "Besides, I always wanted to do the last second rescue 'n princess carry thing. Too bad there's nothing to swing from here!"
"Fair enough! I mean...thank you!" There was a certain euphoria he tried to disguise from his voice. "But where are we going? The Witch is up there at the top, and you can't fly."
"Where do you think we're going?!" A wild grin crossed Rita's face. "Kevin found Chell!"
Wheatley stared at her, trying to deal with the sudden flood of hope. "She's alive?!"
"Uh, we think? He's signaling me from above her. See?" Rita pointed ahead.
Wheatley squinted. "I see a blur."
"Oh, right. You ain't used to Rita Speed. Just trust me here!" She sped onwards towards the center of the Labyrinth, weaving in between Familiars towards a glowing yellow light.
Cave stood in front of Craig, who was taking deep breaths and trying to assess the situation. Calm down, Craig told himself. Don't speculate wildly and don't panic. Assess the facts.
"Kid," Craig said as he looked down at Cave. "You need to get out of here. This place is full of zombies. This ain't a place for teenagers!"
"Fact: I don't think it's a place for anyone. And I don't think they're zombies in the walking dead sense. They're in a trance. The Witch will try to draw them into her Labyrinth or otherwise kill them." Craig shivered, pulling his coat around him as snow blew past his face and dusted his eyelashes. "And at this rate, they'll freeze out here."
He fumbled with his cell, trying desperately to call his parents. He had to know they were still inside their home. They were too far from the park to be affected, right? This Witch couldn't be influencing the entire city. Even if it had no problem churning up a blizzard around it and burying the area in snowfall.
The snow might have been a blessing in disguise. It would be incredibly difficult for even entranced people who weren't in immediate range of the park to get through the streets. Most would shut their windows and stay indoors, especially at this late hour. Maybe that would be some protection.
His phone rang and rang before reaching his mother's voice mail. His stomach was tying itself in knots. Sure, it wasn't confirmation that anything bad was happening to them. They were probably fast asleep, thinking their sons were sleeping over a friend's house. But still…!
"Kid." Craig felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. "Listen. I know if any situation looks like it's worth panicking over, this is the one. This right here. But we still can't! Because panicking isn't productive. Got it? Life is handing us some ridiculous horse sh-...crap right now, and it wants us to crack. We're not gonna give it the satisfaction. Right?"
Craig merely stared up at Cave, praying for the big raving white man to hurry up and start making sense already.
"Take action!" Cave said, gesturing around at the vacant-eyed figures lurching towards them.
"They're in a trance, right? Help me snap them out of it!"
"But they'll ask questions! Wait, I mean, you're right. You're right." Craig took another deep breath. "I won't panic. Fact. I am not panicking." Kevin and the others needed him to be calm at a time like this. He needed to do what needed to be done, magic or not.
It was time to bring out the Student Council voice.
"HEY! Order! Bringing order here!" Craig cupped his hands over his mouth as he shouted, hoping it would carry over the roaring winds. "You're not yourselves right now! Whatever you're thinking, it's not real. You're in a…a..." He began to falter, unable to find a rational explanation for those who didn't believe in monster ghosts.
"ALIENS." Cave's voice boomed over Craig, filling the air as several figures turned to stare at him. Cave continued unabated, pointing at anyone who looked at him. "This is the result of an extraterrestrial event! Alien invasion. They get in your minds, citizens! Resist! Snap out of it and break free! You don't get brainwashed by aliens! That's not the American way!"
"A-aliens…" Technically that might be true, if the rumors Craig had read about Kyubey on that web board were true. "Mr. Johnson, I don't think that qualifies as a rational cover story…"
"Of course it's not. It's complete nonsense. Completely unbelievable. So people who wake up will think it had to be something more normal than that, and soon enough all the conspiracy sites will be booming while everyone else just comes up with some explanation about holiday-related stress or something. Whatever gets people back in their damn houses instead of outside in a snowstorm at 3 in the morning while your friends and my nephew fight a drug trip monster." Cave seemed to have full confidence in his theory, though Craig wasn't so sure.
Still, Cave was nothing if not loud. Several people seemed to snap to attention, looking around in confusion and then running for cover. Others collapsed where they stood, right into the snow.
"I'm going to call 9-1-1," Craig said, looking back at his phone. He had to set aside his worries to concentrate on the situation at hand. That had to have been what Cave meant, in his own 'The Johnson family is clearly very strange' way. "Say that there's people out here and they'll freeze otherwise. I mean, you can't sleep in snow!" He bit his lip. "Wait. What if they ask questions about us being here-oh, forget it!"
As he dialed, he made a mental note to call one more person afterwards. Never before in his life had Craig been so glad he'd asked for emergency contacts for his friends.
Rita came to a perfect stop in front of a flat, smooth surface jutting half a foot out of the sand. When she rubbed some of the sand away it revealed a vast glass circle, like an enormous Soul Gem embedded in the ground. Wheatley knelt next to it as Kevin landed next to him, and all three peered down into its depths.
There, through layers and layers of hard crystal, a figure hung suspended in a fetal position while her dress fluttered around her, held tight by tendrils binding her legs and back. She was facing away, but the ponytail and gown were unmistakable.
There was something off about one of her hands, but Wheatley couldn't make it out very well from that angle.
"What's she doing down there?" Kevin tapped on the glass. "Chell? Can you hear us? We're out here!"
There was no answer. Wheatley pressed his hand against the surface of the transparent jewel, staring down at her. Why was it doing this to her? What was it doing to her in there?
Rita whistled. "It's really cold, but it doesn't feel like ice."
"Uh, yeah." Wheatley couldn't tell, and didn't care. Chell was in there! He climbed onto the center, staring straight downwards at her and tapping harder. "Wake up in there! Please…!"
"Welp! Boys, I think our job is obvious here." Rita generated electricity into her hands and formed her whip, reeling it back. "Kevin, get those Explodey Stars ready. Wheatley, do that jabby crystal thing. We'll just pound this thing into glitter for Craig's art store. One, two, SON OF A…-!"
"Rita! Watch out!" Kevin swooped down to grab Rita just before enormous spikes of diamond shot out from the edges of the jewel, welling up like ocean waves and forming into a thick wall around Wheatley. Wheatley ran for the edge, but by the time he reached it the wall had cuved inward at an angle that made it impossible to scale. He got a brief glance of a panicked, worried Kevin holding a confused Rita as the razor-sharp walls bent into themselves, effectively forming a dome around the crystal and trapping Wheatley inside. It shimmered and turned opaque, enveloping Wheatley in darkness.
The only light came from the crystal surface, a soft white glow surrounding Chell. She wasn't reacting, and he was alone.
"...Kevin?" Wheatley looked around, desperate for any kind of crack or seam in the dark surface and finding none. "Rita? Where are you two? You're out there, right?"
He was answered with silence.
"Come back, won't you!? I mean, I guess you can't. But you should be here, not me! Kevin, you've got that innocent purity thing going on and that's got to be useful for magic-related things! Rita, I-I'm pretty sure she likes you…! Both of you are far more qualified to help here! Oh, oh no…"
Taking a deep breath, he hugged his chest. There was just enough room in the chamber for him to walk around the middle without him hitting his head, though that was small consolation. He had to calm himself down. Sure, he'd walked right into a trap and he had no idea if Rita and Kevin were okay out there. Apparently the surface he was standing on was very cold, though the only evidence he could find of that was the redness on the palm of his hands when he touched the gem. Did it intend to freeze him?
"So," he whispered. "I can do this. I can. Just break it open, like Rita said." He remembered the trick he'd used on Witches during his ill-fated solo hunts, forming a barrier of spiked, jagged crystal around him on the surface of the gem. With a clench of his hands, he sent those same blades downwards. They shattered immediately, leaving a spray of razor-sharp crystal that sliced fine cuts into his skin.
He stared downwards, seeing not so much as a tiny crack in the surface. He tried it again, this time setting his hand directly on the surface and spreading his attack outward. A flash of blue, a spray of crystal and his magic was pulverized against something that might well have been actual diamond for all he was able to do against it.
"Come on. Come on!" Wave after wave of crystal had no effect. His hands were cracking on the dry, cold surface and starting to bleed. "Bollocks! Come ON!" His voice broke as his barriers grew more irregular and cracked, the spikes less like fine needles and more like broken glass.
Back on his knees again, he stared down at the pristine surface of the gem. Rita could have flooded it with electricity. Kevin could have bombed it from above. Hell, if Craig still had his hammer he'd be golden here, Wheatley was sure.
Of course. That's why it trapped him here and not the others. The Witch knew. It knew exactly how to make him turn. Wheatley was right there, in front of his best friend who he'd wronged terribly, and unable to do a thing for her.
He couldn't help it. Exhausted and desperate, he collapsed against the jewel and sobbed into his arms. This was going to do it, he knew. There was nothing she could do to break out of that, and there was no way he could help. He wasn't strong enough. In the end, he really was all talk.
Talk.
He had to force himself to speak, as his instinct was once more to freeze up at the very thought of talking to her again lest he say one more terrible thing and regret it later. Peering down at her through tear-clouded eyes, he wet his lips with his tongue and took even breaths. It'll be easy, he told himself. You can do this. Just talk.
"Chell? Can you hear me?"
There was no answer besides the faint sounds of battle outside of the dome, rattling wood and explosive magic.
"Hey, well. Listen. I have to apologize again. I thought maybe I wouldn't have to if could get you out, but that's silly, right? That's just as selfish. Still all about me." He rested his chin on the back of his hand so he could keep staring down at her.
He thought he heard the impact of something against the crystal to his left, but when he looked over he saw nothing. It didn't matter to him if it was real or just his nerves.
"I can't, though." His voice was halting and shaking, and he still had to fight the urge to shut down entirely and go silent once more. "I'm not strong enough to break this thing. Can't even make a dent. God, it-it feels good to admit that, in an awful way. When I made that stupid bloody wish, I thought I'd end up some ridiculous superhero who would sweep in and help you. But you don't need that! You never did. I was the one who needed you, and I-...!"
Snap.
It didn't hurt, but he knew immediately he'd been stabbed in the shoulder. The pressure was there, and the sickening sense of a spike withdrawing from his flesh. When he looked up at the dome he saw it had sprouted spines on the inner surface, one of them dripping with blood. They waited there, hanging like rows of shark teeth.
Why had it only started doing that now, when he was talking?
Forcing himself to look away, he balled his hands into fists and got back onto his hands and knees, facing Chell again. This time he spoke just a little louder, hoping it could get through layers of jewel.
"I'm not sure how much time I have left here, so here goes. I'm sorry I lashed out at you." He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, and the words came faster. "I'm sorry I used you like Kyubey used us. Same deal, smaller scale." No reaction from Chell, which was somehow worse. At least if she'd turned at him to glare and reject his apology, he'd know she was alive.
"I mean, at least I know what I-" SNAP. He was cut short as another spike plunged through him, this time into his leg. How long until one managed to hit his Gem? Or worse, how much longer could he resist turning with a badly wounded body? "F-fine! Fine, I can endure it. It doesn't even hurt. Honest…"
Deep breaths. He could do this, He could last long enough to reach her. She deserved that much.
"I mean, at least I know what I am now. Support. Good at shields and defense and, um, talking. LIke I'm doing now. Talking…! That's it. That's why it's getting so mad at me now!" SNAP. He was able to ignore the jab into his foot and another against his ear, though the latter sent blood trickling down his face. "I...am support. So I'm going to talk to you. I'm going to talk louder than whatever you're hearing down there, and hopefully you'll be mad enough to break out. You want to, right?" He made himself smile, even though she couldn't see it.
"I think you can, though! Break out, I mean. You're...still dazzling. Not-not in a creepy way! I mean I still...forget it." He slumped against the surface again. "But it's not just that glamour you talked about, although really, is it so bad to inspire people? Give 'em someone to look up to? I mean sure, some of them turn out like me. But that was me! I did that to myself. And you know what you did?"
This time the smile was genuine. "You got Rita back on the right track even after all that garbage Glados put in her head. You helped Craig and Kevin, and even if it didn't turn out as we'd hoped, Craig's going to live a long life! A really long life. He made it out." He had to catch his breath; how had he ever managed to babble like a stream before? It used to seem so effortless, and now it was like learning how to ride a bike for the first time. "And we miss you. We were all starting to become friends, real friends before I mucked it up…!"
SNAP. That spike went through his stomach, hard enough to bounce off of the glass beneath him. A little closer and it would have hit his Gem on his hip. "And this is...definitely going to kill me. But hey! At least they retract. Maybe enough of these things will break it open and you can come on out. I really, honestly believe in you, even if there is no Goddess. Not just because I think you can save us. That's...unfair, demanding someone else save you. I was being unfair, on top of everything else. And if we do make it out somehow, all of us, I promise we'll never make a demand of you like that again."
Was it his mistake? Did she stir there? He thought he saw her wiggle a little in her prison.
"There! See, there you are!" He had to concentrate in order to shout. "I knew you're still in there! You're stronger than her. And whatever she's doing to make you turn, don't listen! I've been there." He wiped blood off off his mouth and chest. Even if it didn't hurt, he could feel his body weakening faster than his Gem could heal the wounds. "Close to despair and all. I didn't tell anyone because-I don't know, because I'm a moron and I wanted you to be impressed. It doesn't even feel bad, right? Sort of numb. But just fight through it this one time! Even if it's going to happen again someday, and even if we may not live to adulthood, at least the next time it happens you won't be alone. I won't be alone. None of us will be…!"
It was strange. The more he talked like this, the better he felt. It wasn't that the guilt was gone at all, but that strange, omnipresent weight that had been on his mind since Doug had found him in the rain was beginning to lift. He liked helping people. His gem wasn't darkening nearly as fast as he thought it was, despite the onslaught of attacks. What was so bad about being support, anyway?
A spike went through his chest, another through his legs. They made that clacking, snapping sound as they hit the glass. He tried to ignore any other sounds they made as they stabbed at him.
Glaring up at the ceiling, he slapped his own forehead. "What am I thinking?! I make barriers! I've got some magic left…!"
He shielded himself, watching the spikes pound against his barrier relentlessly as Chell started to stir again. Despite himself, he felt a grin spread across his face. "Oh, don't like this, do you? Can't isolate us forever." He had no idea where he'd gained this sudden flood of adrenaline, but it might well have been the last one he had, and he was going to shout at the top of his lungs if it meant Chell could hear him.
"You think you can shut me up!? When I'm talking to the only person on this planet who ever had faith in me?!" The spikes slammed against Wheatley's barrier in a wave, cracking it. Beneath him, Chell started to struggle in her sleep.
"You can cave me into pieces and I won't care! It doesn't hurt. I'm not human enough for that anymore, so I might as well take advantage. I'll stick on this thing like a bloody lamprey and I'll talk 'til you rip my throat out if it helps her break free! And she will, you know. She's stronger than you and you know that, don't you? That's why you're doing this to her. And you think I'm the weakling of the bunch whose buckets and buckets of issues will make for fine Witch food. And you know what?"
He wiped sweat off of his forehead. "You're right. But I'm Wheatley Elliot Johnson! And I never! Stop! Talking! The only one who can shut me up is me…!"
SNAP.
He felt it before he realized what had happened.
Just one long, thin spear had broken through the barrier, piercing right through his throat. It didn't feel like anything more than a pressure in his neck, and it made a soft glass-crack noise as it hit the floor. The spear disintegrated instantly, but the wound remained. A metallic taste filled Wheatley's mouth.
He turned to look back down at Chell, reminding himself that this wouldn't kill him, even if those spikes eventually would one way or another. When he opened his mouth to speak, nothing came out but blood. It dripped onto the glass, staining it red as deep cracks began to form.
The good news was, Chell still had most of a right hand.
Her middle, ring and pinky fingers had been swallowed by the darkness. Chell counted that as a small blessing, too. She didn't want to see the severed digits floating around anymore than she wanted to look at her bloodied hand.
Glados liked to initiate people into the Court by telling them about the true nature of the Soul Gem and seeing how they took the news. Chell had managed to hold off throwing up and crying until she'd arrived home, impressing the late White Queen with her collected response. She was good at keeping it inside.
Now Chell had trouble seeing it as anything more than one more tiny, awful blessing. If the Gem was severely blunting the pain burning through her hand, she didn't want to imagine the real thing.
There was no hiding a scream this time. She held her own wrist and pushed forward, a maniacal flight up the mask as if there would be any sort of exit on the other side. The droplets of blood trailed after her; she had no time to heal her wounds immediately, nor the magic to spare.
The mask towered over her at the same height no matter how far she flew, and the hands and tendrils behind her always kept pace. In desperation, she opened a portal at what looked to be the top, flying through another right in front of her; it deposited her in the same place, the wall of darkness advancing even faster.
And the voices didn't stop.
"You can't die! Promise you won't die. Promise you'll never become a Witch. PROMISE."
"Humans are illogical! Even you are. You always will be, no matter how hard you try to escape your own nature."
"You're not the Goddess. I'm sorry. There's nothing you can do to become like Her. Please don't look at me like that, Glados…!"
Those last two voices. Those were Kyubey and Doug, weren't they? This Witch wasn't talking to her.
It was just echoing things Glados had heard.
Then why did so much of it feel so familiar? That sense of defeatism and exhaustion, that belief that she'd never be free of this yoke she'd taken on, all of it was just like the voice which had whispered to her after the portal incident earlier that very night. The voice which had urged her to give up. Her own Witch.
It wasn't going away, was it? Those thoughts would be with her forever, no matter how long she managed to survive. It wasn't going to get any easier. Glados had lived on through centuries by preying off of others, and this went through her head.
And Chell knew, no matter how many years she survived, she was going to see this monster in her nightmares.
"There's no liberation." That was Glados again, voice flat and exhausted. "No one will save us. There is no Goddess unless I become one. Do you think I'm doing this for my own ego? You think I wanted to be this, Doug?"
Chell curled into a fetal position, tucking her head into her knees as the darkness overwhelmed her. The voices started shouting at high volume, becoming a cacophonous bubble of incomprehensible chatter, all of it pleading, scolding, or screaming in fear. She had to make it through this. She couldn't turn here, not without making Selene even more powerful . She wouldn't even keep on existing if she did; she'd just become part of Selene.
That shouldn't have sounded so tempting. What good was it to climb forever? She wasn't strong enough to keep living this way for a year, ten years, a hundred years. Eventually she would break. The pain in her hand was burning and distracting; as Selene, she wouldn't feel anything.
"...I'm sorry I…"
That voice sounded different, clear and piercing. The memory-voices sounded like poor-quality recordings by comparison. It came from everywhere at once, almost immediately drowned out again by the other voicesl. But the accent was unmistakable.
Wheatley?
"...Going to talk to you...louder than…"
Yes. Good. It was a voice. It wasn't the one she particularly wanted to hear at the moment, but Chell would grasp onto anything as a lifeline, anything she could use to drown out the darkness, pain and screams. He kept cutting in and out, scraps of his words slipping in through the thousand false voices.
Tendrils pulled at her arms, her hair, her feet. She remained curled up, listening.
"...not just the glamour...is it so bad to inspire people?"
Inspire people. Hadn't that been her wish? Chell had made it for a reason. She had to have. That was what she needed to do to keep going. Remember, remember…
She remembered Caroline, the Caroline she'd known who wore black with a red scarf and a veil, standing there over her with a kind, wise smile. The Caroline who had found Chell after she'd wandered into a Labyrinth, unable to take a second more of her parents arguing back home. The Caroline who had reached out with a black-gloved hand and pulled her out from the Witch's grasp. The Caroline who Glados resented, Chell had started to realize, for being the person Glados could have been.
Chell had known from the start she wanted to be like that Caroline, that image of her in her mind. No, she wanted to make other people feel that way. She wanted to inspire people because she'd been inspired.
She wanted to pull someone else out of an abyss and save as she'd been saved.
This time Wheatley's voice came in stronger, so strong it filled the area as the other voices dwindled to whispers.
"...I really, honestly believe in you even if there is no Goddess, and not just because I think you can save us. That's...unfair, demanding someone else save you. I was being unfair, on top of everything else. And if we do make it out somehow, all of us, I promise…"
And then it was gone again. Why were there tears in Chell's eyes? Was that the same boy who had betrayed her not hours ago, the one whose life she'd chosen to spare but whose face she couldn't bear to look upon? How was he speaking again with the same innocence he'd shown when they'd first met, when he'd looked upon her like-
Like she had looked upon Caroline.
And somehow she knew Glados must have looked to someone else like that, once upon a time. Chell wasn't sure how she could tell. Maybe it was just wishful thinking. She would never really know what kind of person Glados was under all of her spite and manipulation. Maybe they weren't very much alike at all.
Something in Chell's gem glowed a bright orange.
She burst forth from the swarm of darkness, emerging with a new strength. She understood now, or felt she did. She took off towards the mask. She didn't fire her gun. How could she, with missing fingers?
Instead, she extended the other hand. "Here."
The shadows pulled away, recoiling as if burnt.
"It's alright," Chell told the mask. "It's going to be fine."
When she looked at it again, it somehow didn't seem quite so huge. It wasn't that it was shrinking, merely that it just looked as if it hadn't been so big the whole time. She flew closer and closer, meeting resistance only from the pressure of the air. When she touched it, she found she could pass right through.
There was nothing on the other side but a white-haired girl, bound in dark tendrils.
Gold eyes opened slowly as she saw Chell, turning her head with a great deal of effort and glaring.
"What do you think you're doing? How did you get here?!"
"You let me here. You pulled me here." Chell floated in front of her, the pain in her hand nearly gone as the wounds dried up into nubs. "There had to be a reason."
"It was so I could kill you. You're even dumber than I thought." There was no fight left in Glados; her spite was laced with exhaustion. "Wait, what are you-what do you think you're doing?!"
Chell reached forward again with her good hand, wrapping it around Glados's shoulder and pulling her forward. The tendrils snapped away easily.
Glados shoved her back. "Stop it! This is ridiculous. I still hate you. I still hate you, you know! You think I liked living alongside the person I knew was going to kill me? Knowing you had to do it eventually, for the good of both of us?"
Chell just shook her head. "You're safe now. It's alright."
Glados pulled back again, though the tendrils didn't return. There was nothing else around them but the void; the mask was gone completely.
"I hope you hate it, too." Glados wrapped her arms around her midsection. "I hope you defeat Selene and save this stupid city over and over and over, and I hope you hate it too. I hope you make a thousand new disasters. I genuinely do…"
It didn't sound genuine at all.
"Come on." Chell reached for Glados's hand and started pulling her upwards. "They're waiting for us."
"They're waiting for you. I'm dead. I'm just memories. Like ghost data. I'm all that's left of...well. You wouldn't understand." Glados hung behind Chell, and when Chell looked behind her she saw sadness in those eyes.
"You know," Glados continued, "you're not the goddess."
"It's alright. She might be somewhere. She might not." Chell made herself smile even though she wanted to cry. "We have to go now…"
"...Not where I'm going." Glados's body started glowing brightly, her hand slipping right through Chell's as if made of smoke. "I'm going to make sure of that. Goodbye, Chell…"
The white light was blinding as it had been hours before, and Chell felt the world shatter around her.
A hand clasped around Chell's wrist, pulling her up through a wall of shattering glass.
As her vision cleared, she could make out her surroundings. She was back on the 'desert' level of the Labyrinth, though the tent-sky had given way to stars. Wheatley was crouching next to her, blood staining his blue tuxedo and dried on his lips. He had wounds he wasn't healing on his legs and chest, blood trickling from one ear. More alarming was the hole in his throat, no bigger around than a penny and glowing with the magic he had to be using just to stop the bleeding. He made a wordless sound when he saw her hand, moved as if he wanted to hug her, and then stopped.
Kevin landed right next to her, setting Rita down. "CHELL!" He spoke before anyone else, hugging her around the shoulders.
She gave him a weak smile. "I'm okay, really. Honest."
"What the hell happened down there?!" That was Rita, hands on hips. "You stay up here where we need you, alright?...Good goddamn, Wheatley, you get used as a dartboard or something?"
Wheatley shook his head, making what Chell assumed to be reassuring hand-gestures. Of course. A wound as serious as the one in his throat would take a lot of magic and some time to heal, and Wheatley probably couldn't spare it.
"Hey," she whispered as she set a hand on his shoulder. "I heard you in there. I don't know how, but...we're going to work this out."
His blue eyes widened and then filled with tears that started to wash away the dried blood on his face.
"Kevin," Chell commanded. "We need you to…"
She trailed off as she noticed the tendrils of white mist filling the Labyrinth, surrounding them all. It bore an unsettling resemblance to Glados's old poison attacks, but this felt reassuring, warm and gentle. An orange glow penetrated the haze; when Chell looked down, she saw her gem glowing at full power.
"I think-I think whatever that was just refilled us! I don't know how." Kevin, himself displaying a golden glow, immediately ran over to Wheatley and started using magic to close his wounds. It stopped the bleeding, but it wasn't enough to restore Wheatley's voice. He just thanked Kevin with a shy nod.
"That doesn't happen in a Labyrinth. Dang, Chell." Rita jerked back at the broken chamber. "What'd ya do to it in there?"
"...This isn't me." Somehow, Chell reasoned, Glados had lived up to her last promise.
Rita snorted. "Whatever. Glad you're back, you reckless jerk." Rita grinned and slapped Chell on the back. "Well, most of ya."
Chell looked back at her hand and grimaced; it had healed over, but the fingers were still missing. Presumably a Gem couldn't just regrow body parts, at least not that quickly. "I don't know how I'll be able to fire my gun like this…"
She stared up at Selene, the Witch hanging suspended from the split moon directly above them. Selene was a figure of a woman with long white hair sitting astride a white serpent with gold eyes, her face covered with that same mask from the voice.
She looked right back down at Chell, and the moon fell.
Chell had enough time to open two portals, and didn't need to order the others to follow. Rita shoved them all forward, giving them the boost they need to stumble out of the second portal a safe distance from where Selene crashed to the ground.
Selene was massive, towering over the three Magi. Her face beneath the mask was a void. She wore a dress like Glados's, but the wings reminded Chell all too well of the 'goddess' in Doug's mural.
"I think we made it mad." Kevin was shaking again, but he shook his head when Chell offered a reassuring shoulder-squeeze, taking off flying. "Do we just blast it into oblivion like a video game boss?"
"We kick its ass, obviously! And after the night I have had," Rita said with a feral grin, "I am really gonna enjoy kicking this thing's ass."
"No. Wait." Chell held her hands out. "I know what to do now." How had she never tried this before?
Discussing her plan would have to wait, as Selene's serpent vomited forth a cloud of noxious venom. Kevin flew upwards and Rita darted away; Wheatley managed to form a barrier around himself and Chell, though not before Chell got a lung-full of stinging toxin. She coughed and sputtered, wiping her mouth before turning to Wheatley.
"Wheatley. I need you for this plan. I need to know I can trust you. And after tonight, I'm not sure I can." She made sure he was looking her straight in the eyes, trapping him in what she hoped was a penetrating gaze. "Can I trust you? Can you use your spell to protect me this time?"
Wheatley stared at her as if she'd slapped him, terrified. He withdrew, his barrier fading as the poisons did.
"God dammit," Chell hissed. Voice or none, this was not the time for him to be waffling. She nearly summoned her gun before remembering she couldn't use it with one hand, instead grabbing Wheatley by the wrist and leaping away with him seconds before Selene's massive tail lashed out at them.
He grabbed her arm and squeezed it, taking a deep breath before nodding.
"Okay. That's a yes, right? Good. Rita!" She called out to the girl in green. "I need you to lure it over to where I need it. You'll know what I mean! Kevin, bombard it until it follows!"
"Lure it? I get to be bait?...Awesome!" Rita tossed a blast of lightning at Selene and took off running again. The electricity did virtually nothing against the powerful Witch, but it seemed to catch her attention.
Behind Selene, Kevin hovered in a circle, his little meteor attacks showering the Witch from above. They barely made so much as a dent.
"We're not strong enough to defeat it like this," Chell told Wheatley. "But there's something we can do. When I give the signal, put your shield around me. And keep it up there," she added. He winced and Chell almost felt guilty about it, but this was not the time for awkward conversations.
Chell turned towards the Witch, looking once more at her refreshed Gem. She had enough magic. She could do this.
As she spread her arms, a massive portal opened up behind her. It glittered like a huge mirror reflecting a sea of stars and elseworlds. She stood waiting for the Witch, daring it to go for her. Go on. You know you hate me. I'm the one who stole your heart.
Rita seemed to realize what she was doing right away. "Wait-wait. Chell, what the hey? You're not going back in there, are you!?" Panic was seeping into the girl's voice. "What nonsense did he talk you into now?!"
"It'll be fine," Chell called back to Rita. "I'm coming back. I promise."
She gave Wheatley a single nod.
Wheatley clasped his hands together and shut his eyes, the blue light of his perfect barrier spell blooming around Chell. It was stronger this time, somehow more solid and certain, even if its caster was trembling and facing away from her.
"I hope you know what you're doing…but here goes!" Rita wrapped her whip around the tail of the huge Witch, pulling with all her might and uttering a few choice oaths as she did. Blasts of stardust from behind shoved it forward, inch by explosive inch. It fought at every turn, lashing at Kevin and knocking him to the ground. It flung Rita away, snapping her chain. The woman atop the serpent was starting to panic, looking back and forth and throwing back her head in masked rage.
Even as it laid furious eyes on Chell, it didn't budge. Maybe it still had some of Glados's intelligence in there somewhere.
"Uh-uh." Rita climbed back up from a sand dune, bloodied and bruised. Her chain formed again in her arms, and this time she wrapped it around herself. "Not yet. Listen, bucko. I am never gonna have a chance to kick the Queen's ass for what she did to Alice. I'm never gonna know what she meant by all that knight business, either. She's always gonna be in my head somehow. But you, you ain't her. You…"
With a brilliant flash of green light, Rita channeled thunder through her own body. She screamed for a few awful seconds, and then threw herself against the Witch.
"You're fair game, asshole!"
The currents ran through the Witch's entire body, leaving her with a green glow and briefly paralyzing her. It took that and one last starry blast from Kevin to do the trick. The Witch screeched in rage, a sound like metal grinding against itself, and the snake dove forward in an attempt to swallow Chell.
Chell leaped once more into the space between worlds, and Selene plunged after. The snake snapped at Chell's leg, and it was pure inertia that kept her far enough from the Witch to spare her losing toes as well. Just as the Witch crossed through the Portal, Chell closed it behind her.
In a way, it was anticlimactic. Selene had been sliced clean in twain, leaving trails of glowing, tattered substance in her wake. The body started crumbling away, falling into itself and disintegrating into white and black dust. As the nebula of dust swirled around Chell, bouncing off of her barrier, she saw what remained of the Witch itself. There was half of the humanoid's mask, still moving.
There around Chell were the other timelines. They flickered and twinkled around her, ones where she was older and trapped in a steel labyrinth. One where she was in a rainy city that looked like it might have been London. Another where she stood in a field of wheat, beneath the gentle sky.
One where she walked alongside her friends, all of them happy and content as if they'd never seen combat at all. So even if a goddess didn't exist, a paradise did.
Even as she caught a glance of that strange paradise where the world seemed to glimmer and black feathers blew in the wind, a tendril of shadow reached out towards the timeline. That's right. She'd wanted to go in after it to make sure the job was done. She wanted to be sure it didn't escape to any of those other worlds glimmering around her. But without her gun…
It was just a weapon. What had Caroline told her about the Magi weapons? They were pulled from the essence of the soul. A weapon could change with the user's will. She held her good hand out, concentrated and imagined the maiden warrior Craig had told her about, the one who had fought a Fire Worm Witch and inspired thousands of Magi after her. The one who had, somewhere along the line, become something else.
White and orange metal burst fourth in her hand, sprouting in a long rod that bloomed at the top into a circular pattern. Where Glados's staff had a concentric spiral pattern, this one held two circles, like little portals. At the very center something black and violet flickered, a tiny bead of energy.
But what Chell used her staff to call forth was a burst of explosive light, a bomb. Poison gas would never be her style.
Rita would admit later, with much reluctance, that using herself as a battery might have been a bit overboard. As it was, she was sure that burnt smell was coming from her and there were bright spots in her vision.
With a bit of reluctance, she glanced over at her gem on her finger. The ring itself had melted into a shapeless blob of metal, but remained in place. The gem itself…
Well, it was just a scratch. She'd be fine. Rita could walk it off.
The air around them rippled and warped as a blast of cold hit like an ocean wave. It blew away the starry false sky, the scraps of the moon, the desert and the warped shaped. In its place was nothing but white, the hills of the park covered in a thick blanket of freshly-fallen snow. The sky was clear. In the distance she could see slumped forms, entirely too many humans lying in that snow, and the pit of her stomach churned. Were they too late?
Kevin landed next to her, frowning. "Are you okay? I think we did it! But...you shouldn't do reckless things like that!"
"You sound like your brother," Rita wheezed. "Oh my god, it's cold. Oh my god. This is not a winter outfit." She let her clothes revert back to jeans and a coat, which only helped a little. "God damn witches manifesting in the middle of winter. Damn. That fight was awesome."
She looked over to Wheatley, who was still so busy concentrating on his spell that he didn't seem to have realized what had happened. There was no portal at all behind him; Chell had closed it behind her.
"Oh...oh, don't tell me. She didn't…" Rita forced herself to stand up. "Come on, Chell! You're not supposed to be the one who sacrifices yourself! That ain't how it works. Not after all this…"
Wheatley opened his eyes, glancing over at her. He shook his head and held up one finger as if to say, 'wait.'
The air warped above them, and Chell drifted down from a portal, pale and visibly exhausted. Her eyes were glazed over as she landed, and she didn't seem to snap back into reality until Wheatley's shield dropped from her.
"Chell!" Kevin ran over and clung to her, and Rita didn't have the heart to point out that was the second time in about 20 minutes the kid had nearly strangled Chell with a hug. That seemed to be his style. As for her style, she planned to swagger over and give Chell a hell of a handshake, a commendation, maybe a kiss on the cheek for good measure. She'd earned all that.
Rita got two steps in before exhaustion and pain caught up with her right as she remembered how difficult it was to walk in fresh snow. She stumbled into a snowbank, turning red as Chell and Wheatley both helped her back up. "I'm fine," she mumbled. "I'm fine…"
"Kevin!" Craig trudged towards them from the bottom of the hill, the taller form of Cave right behind them. He wasn't alone, either; there was a woman standing next to him, her eyes swollen as if she'd been crying. Craig showed signs of recent tears, too; Cave was just staring wide-eyed. Almost as if he'd just seen a group of teenagers defeat an otherworldly menace.
Naturally Kevin got a hug from Craig first, before Craig started rambling at mach speed about something Rita was too exhausted to keep track of. Something about "blizzards" and "mass hypnosis" and "zombies."
"The people down there are asleep. I think they're already starting to wake up, which is good because falling asleep in snow is dangerous. There are ambulances coming anyway. Mom and Dad are okay," Craig added in the midst of his outburst. "They're not out here. I made sure they stayed inside. We're-um, we're going to have to explain everything later to them. No lying."
"Wait, explain to them?" Kevin frowned. "How are we gonna do that?"
"I don't know!" Craig laughed and hugged Kevin again. "I don't know. Fact: I don't care right now."
Cave placed a hand on Wheatley's shoulder, and then recoiled. "Sweet Jesus, kid, you look like Hell. You're going to a hospital. Wait, no?" Wheatley was shaking his head fervently. "Too awkward to explain to nurses? That sorta thing, huh? Well, the Wilson kid did say something about aliens. But look, I'm trying to do the responsible parent thing and you are basically a total mess. Hospital. I can get doctors who won't ask questions."
Wheatley didn't seem satisfied with this, blue eyes wide with alarm. He demonstrated self-healing by closing up a wound on his shoulder and another on his ear, finishing the job Kevin had started, before reverting to his street clothes.
"Well...I'll be damned. You're still coming straight home, though. We're gonna have a talk as soon as you're, uh, able to talk again." Setting his hands back on Wheatley's shoulders, Cave looked his nephew right in the eyes. "It's gonna be alright. I'm a businessman, remember? And we've got science on our side. What can aliens do against science?"
Wheatley didn't say anything; Rita wasn't sure he could, still. Instead he collapsed against Cave's chest, crying, leaving the older man looking a little awkward and unsure even as he supported Wheatley in his arms.
"Wow," Rita mumbled, "this is way too sappy. Just...not my style." She told herself she wasn't lonely; it didn't matter that her parents wouldn't be coming over that snowy hill. She was a lone wolf. She'd see them someday, after that one last adventure. Then that struck her as even sappier, so sappy it made tears of what were obviously disgust come to her eyes, and she made a second attempt to march over to Chell. "Hey, Chell. So-ohh."
The woman with Cave was Marie Vasques, and she had pulled Chell into a tight hug, kissing her forehead. Chell didn't fight it, nor did she crumble like Wheatley had; instead she just let it happen, neither mother nor daughter saying a word.
Until the mother reached over and pulled Rita into the hug.
"Uh…hey, hey. Remember what I said? Not my style?" But Rita didn't fight it, either.