Prompt: Chell/ASHPD
"Companion cubes, cores, turrets...they all used to be humans.
The same is true of the portal gun.
And every time Chell shoots a portal, travels through them, or even just fingers the trigger, she feels it".
Rating: K+
Genre: Spiritual/Supernatural
I do not intend to take ownership of anything more than the story presented here. Portal belongs to Valve.
Panpsychism
Even with her logical mind, she had learned that in this place, things hardly ever made sense.
A trial that repeats itself over and over again, messages not written but whispered in the walls, metal beings that had long ago stopped being just things.
Cross the door and you will feel it, recycled air spiced up not only with adrenaline but with enthusiasm.
Shadows at the corner of the offices that plead to be recognized, codes of ID cards waiting to be scanned. Traces of faces without eyes or voice.
She knows it's not possible, but it's hard to ignore the presence. And while redirecting a laser beam with a cube that resembles a mirror, she tries to connect the pieces in her mind without making the entire puzzle fall apart.
Who were they?
She doesn't know, she has been hostage so long that the only color scale she knows is not much different from a doctor´s office, but the fact she has been alone so much time should scare her.
But to her, she has never been alone.
At least she has not yet considered the voice as one of her own. Somehow, she knows She is very different from herself, although exactly why is something she can´t explain.
One of her own, but not exactly a human. The poor girl scared herself to death when she saw her reflection in one of the portals, even touching her own cheek had been such an alien experience that she had started to avoid any solutions that may repeat the incident.
The faceless voices comfort her in the fact that she is not an anomaly. In fact, they were once like her.
The one-sided conversations take place in her head. Even there, she is not much of a talker, but she loves to listen.
One by one, the shadows take the podium and tune the microphone.
Tap tap tap
"My name was…"
The turrets, oval-shaped and white, tell her a story.
They have red eyes because they couldn't sleep, the groaning from the fabric above their heads kept them awake. White coats, white hair, even white complexion, they hadn't seen the light of day in so, so long… their glossy shells look so much nicer than paper-thin skin ever could.
She tried to touch one, but their counterpart answered with aggression.
I-it bit me!
They could not be trusted.
Step on the button, next puzzle, different guest.
Tap tap tap
"My name was…"
Cubes, and among them, the nicest creature of all.
She has been holding them since forever, but just now she can hear their side of the story. Most of them existed and did things above the surface, but they are secretive about what that business was about. That included good things, they reassure her.
Did you see the light, how did it feel?
The sound of a hundred panels clashing responds, voices competing in a race where just the winner can be heard.
Oh, I see, you don't remember.
They convince her that it's alright, she doesn't have to be sorry. Now they lay dormant, they don't need sunlight anymore.
In some way, they are at her service.
The prettiest of those voices calls for her in the middle of a test, the pink hearts giving her comfort she never knew she needed.
She promises to never leave it alone again, which makes the parting so much worse.
She doesn't know, she has been lonely for so long that she wouldn't be able to differentiate a cube from a living person if by some miracle she ever saw one, but it's a fact that she loved it.
The bitter tears reflecting the light of the incinerator only reassure her that she is nothing like Her. There might be an explanation, she tells them while the elevator closes, but they don't have anything to say.
The walls keep her concentrated in her journey, their silent voices are so powerful that she can´t hear them in her ears but feel them in her chest, like an embrace where you search for the heartbeat of the other. This time though, there is no story, just the comfortable truth that she is not, and will never, be alone.
Traveling through the maze of pipes after the foreseen betrayal of the passive voice, she feels them again.
Tap tap tap
"Your name is…Chell"
She stops dead in her tracks. For once, she doesn't hear them from everywhere around her, but the pull of something vaguely alien and homelike obliged her to redirect attention to her right arm.
"And my name is…"
She had never been alone.
The humming of the device when dormant was similar to the timber of a murmur, a melody enclosed by a throat that would never sing again. The blue light, incandescent in its intensity, carried the will of someone who had at some point, experienced the same things as her.
Shooting a portal, whether it be orange or blue, she could make outlines of dialogue through the sound of the pop.
She travels through the pipes again, this time the entire facility´s voice concentrates its volume into what she has become to call, her only friend.
Hallucinations perhaps, but the soft heat of an embrace and the sound of someone's heart grow wherever she doesn't find an exit. The ASHPD growls and encourages its user to keep going, to use that brilliant brain of hers to get herself out of there.
The girl makes her way through the cracks and openings, visions that she tries to ignore greet them with welcomes not aimed at her.
"Good morning!"
"Nice to see you!"
"How´s it going?"
"There you are!"
Her chamber is cold even with the incinerator close to her face. The tiles don't talk to her anymore, it feels like if they were dead. She had killed them.
Tap tap tap
"Our names were…"
The core's voices are jugged and dissipated, sometimes very quiet, others way too loud. They scream in agony, confused by their existence but in way too much pain to even consider understanding. Her mind crackles as they plead attention, what once was an organized forum now is destroyed with their chaotic presence.
A conviction coming from her gun that quickly transforms into her own cuts the dialogue, sharp scissors stopping the microphone from producing static.
"It burns, it burns!"
She doesn't know, even after hearing the stories the place has to tell she can't describe what feeling happy or sad is, but the fact that her irate scowl doesn't waver at the cores screams it's alarming.
The countdown drops to zero, blinding light emerges from the floor beneath her bare feet. The Facility urges her to run, but she doesn't know anywhere else to run to.
The explosion leaves her momentarily sensory-deprived, throwing away any stimulus for a couple of seconds, the poor girl can't even breathe.
So that's how it looks like
The Sun is so much better than she thought it would be. Warm that hugs instead of biting her skin, indulging her in the simple pleasure that it is knowing she is alive.
"You have assumed the Party Escort position"
She wants to take a piece of it to contemplate when she is down there again.
She panics when she feels her right hand contract and the trigger isn't there. As if she had been thrown into a pool of cold water, her body tenses in the search of her friend, tossing and screaming in the robot's metal claws.
I will go with you, just let me search! I can't leave without it, please!
She tries to reason with her captor, but she receives no answer from the other end, her unnatural ability does nothing against preprogrammed deafness.
No! No! NO!
She tugs uselessly at the cords, one palm trying to reach for someone she knows she will never see again. Still, she tries, after all, her tenacity is the one thing her friend admired most about her.
The coma-state does nothing to stop her wild mind from keeping her busy. It´s another dimension, completely unknown and confusing, even more than the Facility now that she has no one to guide her, to embrace her, to tell her everything is going to be okay.
Sometimes she runs from Her chamber, the Queen of Aperture now turned into an arachnid, the nightmares feeding off her natural fear of spiders. Her legs are never fast enough, no matter how hard she begs for them to work properly. The weeping voices from back then scream like the last time, demanding solace, pleading for help.
One nightmare just bleeds into the other, not even allowing her to find comfort when she wakes. The walls are now covered in hands, the maze that once helped now wanting her to become one of them, to mash into the other presences until her face is unrecognizable like their own.
She looks into her arm and finds that it's empty, the bandage turning into a white snake with red blood eyes and sharp fangs that inject purple thunders. She screams until her throat is hoarse, and can't help but lament the fact that here, is the only place where she has been able to hear it.
She finally wakes up, the horror of her dreams being replaced with the feeling that came over her when a presence, a soul, was nearby.
Tap tap tap
"H-hello? Anyone in there? Hello?"
This one is different from the others. Instead of feeling him, she pays attention, and she contemplates if he knows she is listening. She thinks her friend would like him, unlike the other cores, this one felt so much happier in her presence.
They travel together for some time, but her mind just has space for her mourning at the loss of her friends all those years ago.
Plants grow where they once hid, but instead of feeling like their spaces were violated, she grows peaceful at the fact that she can't hear them anymore.
You found peace
She thanks the scenery for putting flowers on their graves.
The bright blue optic looks down at her, and she can't decide if it's the fresh oxygen from the plants or real sunshine escaping from the cracks, but she breathes a little lighter.
"Hey hey, you made it! There should be a portal device in that podium over there- "
She doesn't stay to hear the rest.
Her heart is laced with adrenaline, the sensation that someone is in there, waiting for her, indulges her with familiarity and at last, hope.
She falls through a hole in the unstable floor and when she swims until the chamber opens, is welcomed with a breathtaking sight.
The light cascades through the roof like a slightly yellowed fountain, brown water and wheat adorns the edges of her vision, the smell of rusted metal and rain dances lightly against her nostrils as she takes the coulisse of weed apart. The chamber is guarded by the murals that once spoke to her, including the one with the big, beautiful lady in the orange suit.
The plates form an inelegant stairway to her objective, and seeing it again makes her legs go wobblily without the knee replacements to help her.
She goes up the ladder slowly, it feels like time freezes along with her steps. She arrives at the end of the cliff, hands shaking with disbelief.
Tap tap tap
Her friend doesn't have to greet her for her to know it's the same one she couldn't save in the explosion, but the device doesn't reapproach the incident with malice, only with care.
The hum of the portal gun connects with her own heartbeat, the embrace of someone's arms guarding her as she thanks through their special bond that they are finally, finally together again. She squeezes the gun close to her chest.
The white shell seems to shine under the light, the whole chamber coming to life once again to witness this moment between perfect soulmates.
She sobs as she feels a ghostly hand press a kiss on her forehead.
He promises she will never be alone again.
A/N: Sorry for the lack of uploads, I have been having a bit of trouble writing the endings of some fills, I don't know if that is normal in writers or I am just slow, but I will do my best to deliver more fills, I swear!
I always liked the atmosphere of Portal 1, the sense of being alone but not quite lonely, and I wanted to write something about Chell´s relationship with her environment in a non-hostile but still creepy-ethereal way for some time now, so this prompt suited just fine.
I am trying to make these notes shorter, but it's so hard to do when I think about people reading my stuff, seriously, thank you for reading!