Chapter 42, everybody! In which I entertain the idea of switching this one to every other week so I can ensure the story is all tidy, catch up on my buffer, and give myself some time to do this and college…it will get finished eventually, though, as I don't like abandoned stories any more than the next person. ;)

We also reference the fanfic The Human Vault by Michaela-Le-Mongoola, which is very good, by the by, so go check it out. :)

Don't Starve © 2013 Klei Entertainment

Portal © 2007 Valve

She couldn't leave him there.

But her attempts to contact him had gone nowhere, and she was forced to come to grips with the thought that he was out of her life forever.

But about a year later, she ran into him on the street, him as surprised to see her as she was. Seeking to capitalize on this, they went to lunch.

But of course, he wanted to talk about his job, how he was surprisingly being given more responsibilities in addition to an apartment in the complex, how Cave Johnson had gotten coated in the conversion gel saving his kid and that was why that round of tests had come through, how they were talking about artificial intelligence….

But finally, he said what she had been waiting for.

"I missed you."

She smiled sadly. "I missed you too."

He sighed, clutching his head as he stared at the table. "I…you….I don't like the person I am without you."

"Let me guess: grumpy, irritable, and mean? And cigar smoking, I notice."

"Yes, and how?"

"You smell."

"Cheers. And how have you been? Have you uh, been getting my letters?"

And the money in them—like money could buy happiness. "Yes I did. I especially liked…thirty-seven, was it? The one that didn't sound remotely like you."

"They made a core that's supposed to quantify emotion—I was hoping it'd do a better job than I seem to be doing."

"Not really."

Silence.

"I missed you too," she said finally. "There's not a day goes by that I don't miss you."

She stood to leave—

He was standing too, holding her. "Please, Charlie—give me another chance. I can't—I can't live without you."

"You seem to be doing a good job of it."

Sort of a half-smile—he didn't smile as much now, she noted. "Th-there's a difference between living and surviving. I get that now."

There—right there. That was her Max.

She hugged him as tightly as she could, pleased to note that after a stunned moment he did the same.

"Well," he said finally as they let go. "I suppose we could go home now, if it weren't for the fact that I still have a year left on my contract."

Oh yes, that…."Remember what I said about that."

"Yeah….You didn't move too much furniture, did you?"

"Every stick of it."

He looked down, and she could see that he'd see the whole debacle through to the end—he was like that. And if he did, she'd lose him.

She put her hands on his face to get him to look at her.

"I think I could swallow my pride enough to go back with you and finish the year out," she said. "But I'm not staying there."

He smiled slowly—there it was. "Well," he said, putting his hand on hers. "You know how we are—working together again will make that year fly by, won't it?"

It would.

They said their goodbyes, him walking away with a spring in his step, her more slowly.

Why hadn't she told him?

"I will," she said to herself. "As soon as this is all over, I will."

And she'd have a camera ready for his expression, too.

She should have left him there.

That thought crossed her mind with alarming regularity as Willow navigated through the ruined tracks with Maxwell in tow.

"Come on, already," she chided over her shoulder, relishing the opportunity to throw his own words back at him. "I had to re-read the test-subject handbook to remember how you move this slow."

"Ha ha," he noised flatly—without the facility to power him, he looked and sounded and moved like a tired old man. "I'll have you know I didn't have the luxury of long-fall boots—and most of the juice I have left went towards getting operable again."

"Mmm, see, you told me that like I care."

She bounded ahead to where one test track had fallen and butted into another one, navigating the broken areas and cheering slightly when she heard one of the older Max and Charlie tapes.

Maxwell, meanwhile, scowled at the ceiling. "Who is this yutz?"

"You be quiet," Willow shot back. "I like this guy a lot more than I like you—he's nice."

"Nice gets you nowhere."

She tipped her nose up in the air and ignored him, instead hopping the rest of the way into the next room and loitering under one of the speakers as Maxwell struggled to follow. Here, in the tapes from the past, were two normal and nice people who actually cared whether or not the test subject was doing all right, who knew that the test subjects were actual human people too.

Oh right. Yes, don't land and break your legs—that makes for extra paperwork.

She frowned at that memory. Maybe she was right in her supposition that the facility itself was corruptive, and that anyone who spent too much time here was doomed as well.

She heard Maxwell make the last few feet, half-turned to see him collapse on the floor on her level—

"Come on then," she said, flouncing off. "We've only got a few hours left, right? Somehow, I don't think I'm the one holding us up."

She could actually feel Maxwell glaring at her. "Where do you even get this energy?" he snarled, with added elaboration.

She stuck her head back through the door.

"It's the joy of seeing you," she said, beaming. "Getting your just desserts. Now come on, quit dragging your feet."

She should probably feel bad about pushing him like this, she decided as she watched him struggle to his feet. Without all those cables, his movements were jerky and exhausted.

But this was the thing that had made her life miserable, had tortured her and Wilson and tried to kill them on multiple occasions.

Her empathy module simply wasn't responding.