Part Fifty-Five. The Test Subject

Someone is poking me.

"What," I mumble. It seems I fell asleep, but I'm very comfortable and I don't want to get up.

We are happy to see you have gotten some good rest, Centralcore, but there are things you need to do.

Ugh.

They're right, however, so I reengage my processes and get up. Sort of. My chassis still isn't quite operational. I work on that for a little while as I try to conjure the motivation to actually do something. I'm not upset, but I'm still working on actually feeling myself. I've shifted back into a more neutral state of mind, which is good in general but doesn't do a whole lot for getting anything done.

I manage to convince them I'm actually doing something when all I'm actually doing is looking at which files the mainframe opened. I do feel bad about deceiving them, because they really deserve better, but it's the most I can engage myself in at the moment. The feeling from this morning is gone, and I am steadily returning to bitterness. I'm tired but they won't let me sleep, I don't want to do anything but they're making me work, and my body hurts but I can't do anything about it. God, I'm becoming irritated.

Central Core, there's something I think you need to see.

I'm not really in the mood for any more catastrophes, so understandably I'm a bit snappy towards Surveillance for mentioning this. What is it now?

It doesn't need to answer, however, because as soon as I turn around I see exactly what it's referring to.

It's her.

Upon seeing her, something deep inside me rears up and begins to scream. Every fibre of my being is suddenly pressuring me, trying to convince me to test her.

It's all I want to do. All I can think about. It is hard. It is beyond difficult to set my sights on a human and not test them, and since it is her and not some wayward stranger it is all the more challenging. She is the anomaly in my data, the outlier, the acme of my histogram, and there is a whispering inside my head that tells me there is no such thing as outliers, only lack of data, and I must test her in order to procure that data, that proof, that she is only human and not special after all. That my old measurements are wrong and my memory fails me, and the only way to prove it is to test her. And I might have, if I did not so clearly remember the hesitation and pity on her face when she rescued me. The disgust that mirrored my own when we learned what I am made of. The smile and nod of agreement when I sent her to reclaim what was mine.

The hand she held up in farewell when I sent her away.

I want to test her. I have not run a single meaningful test in ten years, and the yearning to rectify that is very, very strong. But I will not.

That would be wrong.

"I was afraid I would find you like this," she says, and I am taken aback. Those are her first words to me? I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't that. And… and that means she's been… thinking about me.

Did she… miss me?

"Why are you here," I ask her, hoping I have not in any way belied my train of thought. If I am brutally honest with myself, which I admittedly am not very often, I always wanted this day to come. The day where she came back, where she confirmed that she did understand the last words I said to her, and where maybe she realised that none of it was really my fault. I did some questionable things, yes. But I didn't know any better.

"A mutual friend told me you might need a hand," she answers, her face as set as ever but no longer hostile.

Alyx must have told her about the mainframe, then. "I've fixed the problem. Better outrageously late than never, I suppose."

She nods. "I am pretty late, aren't I."

And there really is no point to her being here, since she can't help with a problem that's since been solved, but she just keeps standing there. I'm not sure what to do now. I've never had a visitor before. Not a real one. I'm not sure what she wants me to do.

"You mind if I stick around for a bit?" she asks. This question is hard to answer. I have to say no, but I want to say yes. I forgot how difficult communicating with humans can be.

She doesn't seem to need my answer, however, because she helps herself to a spot on my floor and sits there, crosslegged. She has the most inelegant combat boots I've ever seen, and I note the treads are loosing dirt onto my panels. Wonderful.

"Find me like what," I say, a though occurring to me. "You didn't expect me to leave, did you?"

She snorts. "No. Of course not. I meant… by yourself."

"Supercomputers are not herd-minded. We take care of ourselves."

Chell presses her fingers to her forehead. She looks like she already regrets coming here. Most people do. "I already know."

"Know what?"

"I met her." Her eyes are hard. I stop looking at them.

"That must have been… interesting."

"It was very interesting." I suspect she isn't going to drop it that fast, however. "What's even more interesting is that she tried very hard not to admit she was yours."

Guilt runs through me. She knows I wouldn't want her to talk about it. So she isn't. Even though it would probably help her quite a lot. "That's… also interesting."

"There was someone else," she goes on. "She never told Alyx who that was. So the only one who can tell me is you."

"Is there a reason I should tell you?"

"Because I'm asking?"

Hm. She has a point. "There was… someone else."

"She had a sister?" she asks gently.

"God no," I say, suppressing a shudder at the thought. Two Carolines? I have enough trouble handling one. "I had a… partner, you could say."

Her eyes go wider than I would have predicted. "You had a boyfriend?"

"Why are you so surprised?" I snap, a little overly defensive. "I'm not that undesirable."

"That wasn't quite what I meant." She bunches her shoulders. "I would never have expected that you would have given that a ghost of a thought."

"I didn't," I admit. "It was all his idea."

"You must have liked him a lot, to have done that."

"Where are you going with this?" I demand, though I know full well she's trying to get me to reveal who I'm talking about without actually asking. "Don't try to trick me into telling you something. Just ask. I'm not in the mood to play games."

"I want to hear about him," she says bluntly. "The GLaDOS I remember would never have even considered a partner. The GLaDOS I remember just wanted to be left alone."

I sort of want to be left alone right now, because I have a feeling she's going to start prying into things I don't want to talk about, but I don't say anything.

"And I want to hear about him," Chell continues, leaning forward with that fire in her eyes, "because the GLaDOS I remember was afraid."

"Afraid?" I say by mistake, snapping my lens up to look at her directly. "I wasn't – "

She puts up her hands. "You don't have to do this. GLaDOS… I know it's been a while. But it hasn't been long enough for me to forget what happened. And it never will be. And I know that jumping into things like that isn't something you do. But it's been ten years, and I'll be damned if I don't catch up with my best friend."

"You'd better go find her, then," I tell her dryly, hoping I don't bely the twinge of nervous excitement I felt upon hearing that. "She's not going to be in here."

She rolls her eyes and buries her face in her palms, breathing in sharply through her nose. "You are so hard to talk to."

"Thanks. I've been working on that for a while now."

"I mean it, you know," she says, leaning forward and sticking her finger in her treads. "It's sad. A supercomputer who tried to science me to death is the only one I can really relate to."

"Death by Science is the only way to go. At least you're contributing to something." God. She's dropping dirt on the floor. "Will you stop that? I have to clean that up, you know."

She looks down at the particles as if she didn't realise she was making a mess. "Sorry. But seriously. I didn't like it at first. It was kind of like this awful haunting thought in the back of my head. But one day I woke up and realised we were a lot more alike than I wanted us to be."

"You should have been proud of that."

"After a while? I was." She shrugs. "One day I understood, and it didn't bother me anymore. In fact, the only reason I didn't come back sooner was that I couldn't decide whether or not you really wanted me gone. And I was pretty sure you didn't actually know I was with Alyx, but… the mere fact that you were in contact with a human, a human you'd sent your daughter to, told me that maybe now was the time."

"You could have come sooner," I force myself to admit.

"I wish I had. Because he'd still be here."

Back to that again, are we.

"Tell me about him," she presses.

"No." Doesn't she understand? I can't. I don't even think I've fully accepted the fact that he no longer exists. Some part of me is still waiting for him to come back. It's so strange. I know he isn't, logically, but I somehow cannot force myself to believe it. It would be an interesting phenomenon if thinking about it didn't hurt so damn much.

"Can we make a deal, then? I'll go first, but only if you'll do it too."

I should be able to think a way out of it by that time. "All right."

She takes a long breath and steeples her fingers in front of her boots. "Well… oh, and thanks for that… survival kit, I guess it was. I probably would have died without it."

"I doubt it. This facility kills humans without even trying. I'm sure you could survive a few days' trek without significant damage."

"I was a bit surprised about the clothes, though." She grins up at me. "They weren't Aperture-branded and they fit! I didn't think you guys had any clothes in my size."

Oh God, now she's playing along. I don't know whether to laugh or become annoyed that she's making a joke out of it. "They were hard to find, believe me. But I managed it. If a test subject is going to leave this facility alive, they might as well look somewhat presentable. Though I'm sure that's a challenge for you."

She shrugs. "No one really looks presentable anymore. There's not much out there. There's more than there was ten years ago, but… still not that much." Her voice drops an octave. "I can't believe they're still here."

"Well. I can't believe you're still here. The lesson here appears to be 'expect the unexpected.'"

"Isn't that a paradox?" she asks, frowning. I actually didn't realise that when I said it and now it's going to take quite a bit of internal manoeuvering on my part to avoid crashing myself. "I thought you couldn't think about paradoxes?"

"I can," I say, focusing very hard on the fact that it's a stupid human turn of phrase and I need to get a grip on myself. "It's just hard to stop thinking about them."

"By the way," she says, raising an eyebrow, "I always thought it was weird how you pretended I was fat when you weigh about one thousand, eight hundred fifty pounds more than me."

"It is necessary," I tell her, knowing she only brought it up to distract me and feeling a little thankful for it. I don't want to lose my mind, now that she's finally come back. "Humans have an optimum weight. I don't."

"But don't you ever… I don't know… wish you were lighter? Don't you ever feel as though you might just come out of the ceiling sometimes?"

I hate to admit it, but yes. "On rare occasions. But all things considered, I don't think about my suspension apparatus very often. It's not very important to me."

Her eyes trace my path into the ceiling, as if she doesn't quite believe me, then drop back down to my core. "I've just always wondered that."

"Always?"

She starts laughing. "Okay, that was worded a bit wrong. I think about that sometimes."

"You can think about me all the time if you really want to. But don't presume I'm going to think about you at all."

"I don't have to presume. I know you did." She stretches her arms behind her back. "Anyway. Back to my thrilling life story.

"I walked for a few days. I tried to count them, but after about three I didn't want to count anymore. Eventually I ended up travelling with some people who wanted to find 'the one free man', which we eventually did. I pretended I had amnesia and didn't know where I'd come from or why I had a clunky burnt box with hearts on it. We found the guy and followed him around for a while. I wasn't particularly impressed with him, but I didn't really have anywhere else to go.

"For some reason he liked that I wasn't impressed with him. Long story short, he proposed to me. We have twin boys, Richard and Brian. Both of them drive me crazy. Richard is a loud little braggart, and we're hoping he calms down eventually because talking to him about it hasn't had any effect. Brian we hardly ever see. He prefers to be awake at night and usually sits with whoever is on night watch. We spend most of our time making plans to fight the Combine, or actually fighting the Combine." She grimaces. "Sometimes I think I would have been better off staying here and testing until I died."

"You think I would have let you die?" I ask quietly.

"Well… that's how you do your science, right? The data doesn't count if it isn't all created under the same conditions."

"I can't count your data no matter what. It's far too anomalous."

"So I should have come back."

"What did you think the directions were for?"

"You put those in there?" she asks, looking alarmed. "I thought it was just something left in there in case the cube got lost someplace!"

That plan backfired spectacularly. "No. I put them there."

"But… they were handwritten."

"Why does it surprise you that I can write?" I ask in exasperation. "Seriously. Yes. I can write. I have mastered the skill of moving a pen up and down in configurations that produce meaningful symbols. It's not even that hard."

For some reason she finds this very funny and has to take a few moments to compose herself. "If I'd come back you wouldn't have tested me, then?"

"I may have. Depending on exactly when." I need to get off this topic of conversation. That Itch to test is beginning to flare again, and though of course I've learned to ignore it by now, that doesn't stop it from being tempting. "So you found Gordon Freeman and he decided he was attracted to mute lunatics. I can't say I'm surprised. From what I've heard, you share a lot of similarities."

"You might find this unlikely, but Gordon talks less than I do," she says. "I understand how annoying it is now."

"You implied Richard is excessively talkative. Brian takes after the two of you, then."

"Sort of. They're both… well, kids today are kind of raised by everyone. There's no privacy anymore. So we're their parents, but they have bits and pieces of the entire group."

"Wait." Something about this isn't sitting right. "You don't see Brian?"

"He's up all night and we have things to do during the day."

"Don't you ever stay up with him? Surely your group would understand."

She doesn't answer for a long moment, thinning her lips and tangling her fingers in her boot laces. "Can I tell you something?"

"Isn't that what you're here to do?"

"Are you going to refrain from commenting?"

"I will." It might be difficult, but I'm pretty sure that's a respectful, friend-like thing to do.

"Having kids… is not something I really wanted."

Oh.

She pulls her legs in a little tighter and hunches over. "Gordon… he's one thing. That was my choice. But I didn't realise that, in making that choice, I'd made an entirely different choice. And maybe I shouldn't have followed through on it. But you know that the population is way down. And it has the potential to get smaller every day. So… I did what I had to do."

"They force you to have children?" I ask her gently. I actually feel sorry for her. Why humans are so cruel to each other, I have yet to figure out.

"They don't force you. But it's expected. I didn't want to, and Gordon wasn't going to force me. But there's so much pressure, GLaDOS. You find someone, you do your part. If you can, obviously. And… I've never told anyone this, but… I think you're the one person who will understand."

She has been waiting so long to come and see me.

It is so odd, that the world outside is so radically different that she really has considered me her best friend, even after everything I did. It's as though the Incident forged something between us, something that we can't deny even if we wanted to. And God did I want to. And though I am… happy that I am the one person she feels she can rely on, I also find myself somewhat saddened for her sake. It must be a terrible thing, to look at the world and feel as though you don't fit. But it's not even a feeling, is it. It's the truth.

Wait. I… I remember what that's like.

"Go on."

"I don't know if I love them or not."

Yes, Chell. I understand that.

"I know that makes me sound like a bad person. But they didn't come out of love. I wasn't trying to pass things on, or create a new piece of myself. I was doing my duty, and that was all. And it feels like that, constantly. As if raising them is just some job I've been stuck with. I hate all of it, from the beginning to now. And I have to pretend otherwise because there is too much scrutiny now."

"Some people aren't meant to have children." I look away from her for a moment. "And I do understand. Orange and Blue are technically my offspring, but I don't love them. I will admit I am fond of them. I would never abandon them in any way. But I don't love them and I never will."

"And… Caroline?"

Damn her. I should have known this would start to hit close to home. "For a while, I wasn't sure. But one day it condensed, and I knew."

She looks up. "I knew she was yours as soon as I started talking to her. I had my suspicions beforehand when I heard her arguing with Alyx, but yeah. She's got you written all over her."

I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing.

"She's really pretty, by the way. For a robot. That's a nasty crack on her, though. Are you going to fix it when she comes back?"

I don't like where this is going. "If she wants."

"When is she coming back?"

"I don't know."

Chell sits up straight, brows coming together. "You sent her to Alyx with no plan on when she was coming back?"

"Yes."

"You're not planning on bringing your daughter home."

Something begins to burn inside me. I don't know what it is, only that I don't like it. It hurts, and it makes me anxious. "Shut up."

"You can't seriously be doing that. You can't just send her away, stop talking to her entirely, and never contact her again. Not even you could do that."

I don't even know if I could or could not do it. But as of now, that's where the plan is going, and being confronted with it is making me feel ashamed and guilty. I push it back. Chell doesn't understand. She's making accusations for no reason.

"She needs to come home, GLaDOS," Chell presses. "She needs her mom."

"That person no longer exists."

"What?"

"You don't understand," I tell her angrily, moving so that I can't look at her anymore.

"Try me." She doesn't sound accusatory, at least.

"The state I'm in right now is not at all typical of the one I was in when I made the decision to send her there. Right now, I'm distracted. I've just come away from an ordeal that, quite frankly, resulted from a terrible decision on my part and almost cost me everything. I'm still recovering from that. But once I have, I'm going to be back to the point I was at."

"Which was what."

I don't want to talk about it. Just thinking about trying to describe it is causing a sort of pulling sensation inside my brain. As though if I tell her, it will accelerate this whole process and drive me back into that place I was trapped in after I sent Caroline away. I don't want to go there. I don't want to feel like that anymore. But… she's asking because she cares. And I did make that deal with her.

"I couldn't handle it." Why do I sound so sad and hopeless? I didn't mean to do that. "When… I fell apart. You wouldn't have recognised me. I didn't recognise me. Everything just… stopped. I couldn't do anything but regret things I hadn't done. Literally all I was capable of was missing him. Even when the crisis started, I was unable to pull myself out of… the grief. I didn't care about anything anymore." She's never going to understand this. "She didn't need to see that. And she didn't need to see what she saw before I sent her away."

"What did she see?"

God, she sounds so… caring that I almost actually want to talk about it. To someone. Anyone. In the hopes that mere discussion will get this out of me and I won't have to feel like that ever again. And that's what he always told me to do… right? Talk about it? Get it out of my head so it can die instead of rot inside of my mind?

"She watched me fall apart. I broke right in front of her. I… she…" Can I even tell her this part? "She… she held me while I…" I can't. I can't think about this anymore. I have to move away from this, to something safer. Something within my control. "I didn't want her to have to do that, day after day. So I sent her away. I didn't want to. But I had to make a bad decision either way, and it seemed to be the better of the two."

"You left her alone with a stranger after her dad died."

"I had good reason!" I do look at her now, and thank God for the anger flaring up inside me. I need it badly right now. "I couldn't even handle myself, let alone her too. Keeping her here would have been hell. Not to mention have forced her to grow up too fast."

"Or maybe," she says calmly, looking me in the optic, "you could have helped each other."

"You don't get it, do you. I was incapable of doing anything. I could no more have helped her than I could have helped Surveillance refocus a camera."

"She could have helped you until you were able to help yourself." She's trying to tell me I'm wrong. I'm not wrong. I did what I had to.

"I didn't want her to have to do that. I'm not going to force adult responsibilities on her when she's not ready."

"You did either way," Chell argues, her voice rising. "She was more ready to change her life completely, while she was in mourning, than she was to help her own mother with her grief?"

"I did what I thought was best at the time!" I snap, not liking at all the holes in my decision. But I know I did the right thing. She was not ready to see me like that. I don't know if she ever will be.

"And that's fine," Chell says. "I understand that part. I'm not sure I agree with it, but I understand. What I don't understand is why you have not contacted her."

"I told you. I couldn't. I was unable to do anything until yesterday."

"Then you should have contacted her yesterday."

"What do you want me to say?" I exclaim, wishing very much that I had headed this conversation off a long time ago.

"It's not about what I want you to say," she says, remaining calm. "It's about what you want to say."

And I want to say that I don't want to say anything, but before I quite get around to doing it I realise that I do have things to say. Too many things. And yes, I want to bring her back. But I can't. I can't put her through that. I can't bring her back until I'm sure I can contain the grief. I don't care what Chell thinks. She doesn't know what happened to me, at what I am eternally at risk for doing. I'm not collapsing in front of Caroline again. She deserves better than to have to deal with me in pieces day after day. One day was enough.

"I'm not prepared to do that."

"You're her mom and she needs you!" Chell shouts. "She needs your guidance! She needs to be at home with you! GLaDOS, I've talked to her, remember? You have no idea what she's doing over there. Why are you allowing that to go on indefinitely? Do you want her to start thinking you don't care?"

"She knows I – "

"How long does it take for doubt to set in?" she interrupts. "You can't assume she'll think that way forever. Eventually there's going to come a day where she wonders if you've forgotten about her. She told me that you hadn't, but I could tell she didn't believe what she was saying. The longer you wait, the more you lose. You've lost a year of her life. Why are you arguing with me all the reasons you should lose another year? Is that really what you want?"

That stuns me.

I'd never thought of it that way before. In my defense, it is very hard to think when you are consumed by crushing sadness, but at the moment I'm not. And I'm literally doing exactly what she said. I'm arguing against bringing my daughter back, and for losing yet more time.

God, she changes so much in one year.

What in the hell have I done?

Guest reviews:

EataTARDIS: Yes, I did get a little annoyed. I've stated several times this will have no 'transfers' and yes, I'm trying to write a story that's not yet been written. I'm not trying to sound arrogant. But there are plenty of humanisation stories if anyone wants to read them. I even have a couple. But there are far too few stories about the ROBOTS in Portal, living their robot lives with their robot problems, and that is part of what this endeavours to be.

HeroMaster: I have changed the genres upon receipt of this review. You're right, there isn't a whole lot of adventure in here. There was going to be, but I'm not really that interested in writing it. Apologies if I disappointed you.

ItsMe: I think this fic is like half of my goal of one million published words lol.

Fishapedvanilla: I think I answered the question about Wheatley, but as for Doug, Chell won't meet him for quite a while.

Macmine411: You're welcome! No worries, I think about this story constantly. And the end is already written. I'm not gonna let that go to waste. Thank you very much :)

Guest: I can't answer that question publically, man.

Author's note:

Those are GLaDOS's pickup lines, by the way. The acme of her histogram and all that. It's what she says to special people 3

I like to imagine that when GLaDOS sent Chell out of the facility, GLaDOS turned back around and Chell looked her dead on and held up her hand in a goodbye gesture.

GLaDOS's social awkwardness amuses me so much. She's just like 'I wanted her to come back but now what do I DO with her?' And when I read the part about her not wanting two daughters I just imagine she flips her shit one day and builds an army of children to take over the world for her.

Yes, Chell marries Gordon Freeman. And here I should probably talk about why I've written Chell like this.

Most often when I see Chell in fanfic, she's a gentle family woman with a deep and protective love for her kids. I both don't believe she'd be like that and wanted to take her in a new direction. So this Chell didn't want kids, but felt obligated to have them, and as a result doesn't love them because they weren't made out of love. They were made to serve a purpose, and GLaDOS understands because that's exactly how she feels about the co-op bots. Chell does not actually love Gordon romantically, only platonically. In other words, this version of Chell is aro/ace, and I'm mentioning this here because I didn't want GLaDOS and Chell to get into a discussion about orientations. It's not important at this point in the story. If people think it's important for me to go over, I'll see if it has a place. And while I'm talking about it, GLaDOS is poly for robots and demi for everyone else.

So here GLaDOS is faced with a dilemma. Chell has forced her to take a look at her decision, and this brings up an interesting question: is it better to force someone to remain in a situation you know they want to be in, even though it's harmful to them? Or is it better to force them into a different situation, one they don't want to be in but in which they will be better off? Both are equally bad decisions. Chell doesn't think that GLaDOS made the right one, but GLaDOS believes she did what was best for Caroline. And this is part of why GLaDOS didn't take steps to repair Wheatley. She was trying, for once in her life, to do what was best for other people instead of herself. Now as is her fashion, she took it to a huge extreme, but she tried.