Part Sixty-Three. The Reconciliation

I have to admit, I'm a bit nervous.

It's really good to be back in the facility again. Alyx did her best, giving me a bit of management rail to use, but it's not quite the same. Well, it's actually still not the same, since this rail is permanent too, but it's more like I'm used to. Once Momma's back in control, it'll be just like old times.

Some of the panels wave at me as I go by, and I greet them cheerfully. I've missed those little guys. They always know what to say. They're really nice, but I can't hear them right now. The scientists have kept the lines of communication closed, for some reason. They won't quite tell me why, but I think they're scared of what she'll do. Especially given what she did do. That was really cool, though, the way she got into the systems that fast… I don't think I could ever do that. Maybe I can ask her. Maybe she'll teach me, if I ask nicely. I still don't know anything I need to know about becoming Central Core.

Speaking of her…

I stop outside her chamber, and I'm more nervous than ever. I mean, I saw her yesterday, but… I knew what to expect. I knew she wasn't really herself, and I know this is sorta bad, but I felt more like I could be in control than I usually do around her. Now I feel like she knows I'm here, and she's going to get mad if I just hide here all day, but she doesn't know. She only knows what's going on right in front of her right now, and she can't see me.

It was hard to get used to. Even though I know she has no idea what's going on over here with the Black Mesa scientists, I sometimes still feel like she's watching me. Sometimes, back then before all this happened, it made me mad that I couldn't do anything without her knowing about it, but when she wasn't able to anymore, it made me kind of sad. I missed it. It's really different, going from having your mom near you all the time to never seeing her again.

I really did think I'd never see her again. I was pretty mad for a while there, when she sent me to Alyx and her friends, because what kind of mom does that? But after a few days, all I could think about was how much I missed them both, and I did miss Dad a lot, but I missed her more. Dad always makes me feel better, but Mom makes me feel better from the inside out. I don't really know how to explain it, but it's a… a deeper kind of better than with Dad. Because she really understands things, while Dad never really does.

I wish she hadn't sent me away. She had to spend all that time alone, missing Dad by herself. I mean, I had to too, but at least I had Alyx and Lamarr and Dr Kleiner and… well, Gordon wasn't really much help, on the rare occasions he stopped by, but he was nice. For a guy who doesn't say very much. I don't actually think I've ever heard him say anything.

Anyway. Enough stalling. She's not gonna kill me or anything. She can't right now. Well, she probably could, if she really wanted to.

So in I go. I'm still pretty nervous, but she's not even looking over here. She's looking at the floor on the other side of the room. I think she's sad. I frown. I hate it when she's sad. She's such a strong person that I hate it when she gets sad. It bugs me. Yesterday, seeing her upset and unsure… it was scary. I kinda understood just then why she sent me away. She knew it would scare me, to see her depressed. She didn't want me to see it. Even though she was shocked and sad, she was still thinking about how to protect me.

If it came down to it… would I be able to do that?

"Hey Momma!" I call out, and she jumps and turns to look at me. The scientists really did a good job. She looks really good, almost brand-new. They told me that they found enough spare parts in the facility to fix up most of her components, but there was nothing they could do about her case. They didn't have the means to. Dr Kleiner was pretty funny, though. He kept oohing and aahing over her like she was made of pure gold or something. He was very impressed, and he asked me a few times if I knew which parts she'd made herself, but I don't have a clue. So I couldn't tell him.

"Hello, Caroline," she says, a little bit slowly. "It's been a long time."

"Yeah," I say, and I go closer to her. I'm getting really nervous now, trying not to clench my chassis or do something else to show her that. I'm strong, like she is. I hope.

"How have you been?" she asks.

"Bored," I answer, shrugging a little. "It's really boring around here. Lots of humans talking about vorts and grunts and whatever. I do like the vorts though. They're nice."

"The what?"

"The uh…" I try to remember what they're called. "… vortigaunts?"

"Oh. The xenotherium subservilia."

"What's a… a xenotherium… uh…"

"Xenotherium subservilia is the taxonomic designation of the vortigaunts," she explains. "I didn't mean to be confusing. I don't usually think of them as vortigaunts, though."

"Oh, I've never heard anyone call them… what you said." I look at the floor. I hope she doesn't think I'm dumb now. She sometimes makes me feel dumb, but it's not her fault. Dr Kleiner's like that too, sometimes. I guess that's what happens when you're really smart.

I'm still looking her over a little, because it's really weird to see her looking all new like this. The older I got, the older she looked, and I would honestly get a little scared when I was able to see the inner wires, because the outer casing was so worn out. But something about her chassis is a bit off. It looks almost like she's been attacked or something.

"What's that?" I ask, trying to gesture with my handle. She looks down, but of course she can't actually see anything. She can't tilt her head very far, either up or down.

"What's what?"

"You've got more marks on you."

"Oh, those," she says, as if they've always been there. "I had an accident, that's all. It's nothing."

"What kind of accident?" I ask eagerly. "Was there another test subject in the facility?"

"No, nothing like that. It was -"

"Hey, how'd you get here, anyway?" I swing back and forth a little bit. "I don't know where we are, but Dr Kleiner said that no one knows where Aperture is, so… I don't understand how they found you." I don't understand why Aperture is so close to Black Mesa all of a sudden either, or why the older computers and stuff we were using are gone.

She looks up at the ceiling for a few moments, and I get the impression she's deciding how much to tell me. "Well… I had to move the facility."

"Move it?"

"Yes. I had to… transport it to a new location."

I just stare at her for a bit.

"What?"

"You moved Aperture?"

"I just said that, didn't I?" In typical Momma fashion, she's annoyed that I wanted her to repeat herself, and this makes me feel a little better. It's hard to believe she's back, or actually that I'm back, because she didn't go anywhere. And she wouldn't be Momma if she didn't get on my nerves, and she is definitely getting on my nerves.

I shake my chassis, giving her my most confused expression. "But it's so big!"

She looks away, shrugging a little. "It wasn't that hard."

"So… so that's why you were broken when you got here? Because you had to move it?"

"That's part of it."

"What's the other part?"

She sighs, as if she doesn't really want to talk about it. "The Combine located Aperture and attempted to gain access to the Borealis. I had to hold them off."

"Wow," I say, pretty impressed by that. "Were there a lot of them?"

"Yes."

"How many?"

"I don't know. I wasn't keeping track. I had far too many other things to do."

"Like what?"

She tips her core to look at me. "You ask a lot of questions."

"I want to know how you got here!"

"I told you how I got here. I moved the facility."

"Because the Combine wanted your boat?"

"Yes."

"But why did you move it?" I ask. I'm gonna understand this if it takes me all day. "Why couldn't you just leave it where it was?"

"The Combine set off an electromagnetic pulse. There's nothing I can do once they do that."

"What does it do?"

She looks up at the ceiling again. "It disables all electronic equipment."

"They killed you?" I gasp, horrified. "Why didn't you stop them?"

"Because there were too many of them!" she snaps, looking right at me, and I instinctively back away and contract my hull. She's gotten mad too fast. Something's not right with her. "I'd been fighting those damned soldiers for over a week, and it drove me over operating capacity! They were everywhere. They were in all of the upper floors, half of the middle floors, and I had to sacrifice one of my sets of supercomputers in order to kill the ones who made it out of my reach. I tried to stop them. I tried my damnedest to keep my facility in one piece, and I failed. So I had to run away. There. I said it. Are you happy now?"

"You fought all those bad guys by yourself?"

"The test subject came in on the last day, but she didn't know they were there. They had one of their ghastly portals on the inside. I don't know how they got it there, but I couldn't get rid of it. She came in through the surface."

"She couldn't have been much help," I say scornfully. "She probably got in your way."

She doesn't say anything for a long moment.

"She did," she says quietly, "but I'm glad she was there."

"I wish I was there!" I say, looking at her sternly. "I could have helped!"

She shakes her head. "No. You couldn't have. You just would have been one more thing I had to worry about. The fewer people there, the better. I already had to defend all of the systems, I didn't have the resources to concern myself with anyone else."

"I could have! You could have given me a job!"

She surprises me by laughing a little. "Still haven't given up on that, I see."

"'course not. I told you, it's boring here. I would have rathered stay in the facility."

She shakes her head again, and she looks kind of tired. I guess I'd be tired too, if something drove my brain to the limit. Come to think of it, yeah, that is what happens. I do fall asleep when I learn a lot of stuff. And she also just had that processor installed. Maybe it needs time to settle in or something. "You were far better off with Miss Vance. Trust me."

"Why didn't you ever… I don't know, call me?" That's something that's been bugging me for a really long time. Sometimes I'd go to sleep at night scared that she didn't miss me and she didn't love me anymore. When I woke up, I'd remind myself that it was because she was how she was, and I shouldn't think bad things like that, but I couldn't help it.

She takes a long time to answer again. "I told you. I thought you'd be angry with me."

"For a year?"

"I can be angry that long. I'm still angry with those engineers, and they've been dead a long time."

I shake my head, and I'm pretty sure I look kind of sad right now. "No, Momma. I was angry for a couple days, yeah, but… after that, I just missed you. I just wanted to come home. And now you're here, so I can be home again!"

"I'm not staying."

"What?" I blink a few times, confused. "What do you mean?"

"I'm not living anywhere near humans. As soon as they've seen fit to give me access to my technology, I'm putting my facility back where it belongs." She sounds really annoyed. I wonder why. "The circumstances dictated I move the facility. The current ones do not give me much reason to keep it here. The Combine will be on the run and confused. It will be easier to deal with them now."

"Well… I wanna come back with you, then. And Dad, Dad'll be going with you, right?"

"You're not coming. You're staying here. No arguing."

"Momma!" Not this again!

She's looking at me sternly now. "It's obviously far safer here for you. Wheatley can do as he likes. But I'm not staying, and you are."

"Stop it!" I shout at her, and she looks taken aback. "Shut up!"

"Excuse me?" Oh. Oh, now she's using that voice. Well, guess what, Momma? I'm gonna give you a talking-to!

"Why do you always gotta be like this? The humans aren't that bad! I know some humans weren't very nice to you a long time ago, but so what? Every human's not the same! These people, they're not like those people you told me about!" I hate it when she's like this, I really do. She's so stubborn. "They're nice!"

"Humans and niceties are not compatible."

"They fixed you, didn't they? They fixed Dad and Atlas and P-body, didn't they?" I'm doing my best to challenge her now. It doesn't always work, but I gotta try. She doesn't get it. She lives way back there in the past, when there's so much future to explore!

"No doubt they had some driving motivation."

Okay, now she's really starting to bug me.

"No. They didn't. They fixed Dad because I asked them to. For you. Atlas and P-body too. And as for you? Guess what. I was there. The whole time. They did it because they were sad to see you broken. They did it because they'd heard about you, and they didn't want you to lose to the Combine like they did. They wanted to help you. That's it! You 're wrong! No one wants anything out of you. So yeah, they'll hook you back up to your systems or whatever, and then you can leave, and go back to being by yourself in the middle of nowhere. Fine. I'll leave you alone. Whatever." I turn around without looking at her and start leaving. I want to cry, but I won't do it in front of her. I'll go find Dad, and maybe he can explain why she's being so stubborn this time. The humans haven't even done anything wrong. I know she had a hard time a long time ago, but not everyone's the same! Why doesn't she get that?

"Caroline. Wait."

I don't really want to, but part of me is still waiting for her to be my mom again and not whoever this is, and it's that part that makes me stop. She's always been stubborn and a little impersonal, but I always got this… I dunno… feeling of mom-ness from her that's just not happening right now. "What."

"Do you really need to leave?"

"You're not listening to me anyway!"

"I am listening to you. I always listen to you."

I look at the floor.

"I see what you mean. They didn't have to do anything, and could have taken my facility for themselves. But at the same time, I can't understand why."

"Because it was the right thing to do."

"But why."

I think hard. Maybe I can still change her mind. I hope so. I hope I can, and she'll stay here. I bet she'd like Dr Kleiner. I bet they could be friends. He'd be so happy if she helped him with his teleporter, and I bet she'd love having an actual smart person to talk to. I don't think she's talked to a smart person in her entire life. That must be pretty frustrating.

"Well… I guess it's kind of like… if you see someone who's hurt, you gotta help them. 'cause it's not right to leave them to… to suffer, when you can do something about it. There might not really be a good reason to help them, but there's not really a good reason to leave them there either."

"That makes sense."

I look up, suddenly hopeful. Did I do it? "It does?"

"It appears to me that you're saying in lieu of a clear and logical decision, one should strive for the positive outcome, rather than the negative."

"Huh?"

She goes quiet, and I can hear her optic shifting a bit. "When there's no real reason for you to do something, you should do the positive thing."

I turn around, and I'm pretty enthusiastic now. "Well, wasn't that easier to say?"

"No," she says, sounding like she thinks I'm joking. "It's so imprecise."

"Momma, stay." I come up real close to her. I know she hates saying no to me. If I can convince her that she doesn't have a good reason to move the facility back, she won't. "C'mon. They'll give your systems back. Then they can't do nothing, and if you feel like they're gonna do something, you can stop them."

"Can't do anything," she says absently. She's looking to the side of me, which is good, because I know that means she's thinking it over. "Then they can't do anything."

I actually said that wrong on purpose, just to see if she'd correct me. There's a chance after all.

"C'mon, Momma, you don't really want to leave me here again, do you?"

She makes one of her weird computer noises and looks at me. "I know what you're doing, you know."

I shrug. "So? Look, you might not like humans. But Alyx took good care of me, didn't she? And that test subject, she helped you out when it could've killed her, right? And listen, Momma, there's this scientist here, and he really wants to talk to you."

"Really." Aha! Now she's interested. She raises her head to look at me.

"Uh huh." I nod enthusiastically. "He's not like one of those conceited scientists, either. He's really modest."

"That sounds… mildly interesting."

"You wouldn't really leave me here again, would you?" I'm not really trying to convince her anymore. That's all I've got, really, and now I'm just kinda scared that it wasn't enough. Yeah, she annoys me a lot because it's almost impossible to change her mind, and sometimes all we do is fight, but I can put up with it, if only she'll stay. "Look, I… I'll never argue with you again, if you stay."

"That sounds horrible," she says gently. "Where would I be if I had no one to argue with?"

I shake myself and look at the floor. "You'd probably be a lot happier."

"I haven't been happy in a long time. Not since I made one of the worst decisions of my life."

"What… what was that?" She probably messed up one of her experiments. She hates it when that happens.

"I sent my own daughter away to live with a species I hate."

Whoa. She didn't really just say that… did she? I tentatively look up at her. "Really?"

She nods. "I still believe it was the best thing for you. I'm relieved that you didn't have to spend all that time I was getting over Wheatley with me, although I never actually did. You didn't deserve that. I really shouldn't have built you in the first place, because I make a terrible parent. But I did. And I should have taken responsibility instead of giving it to someone else. But understand, Caroline. I only did what I thought was right."

"Well, you shouldn't have thought, then," I say stubbornly. "You should've done what felt right. And that would've been keeping me there!"

"You're… probably right. But it's far too late to change that."

"Maybe, but… you don't gotta repeat what you did, either, do you? I'll be good, Momma. I won't make you have to send me away again." At this point I'm willing to say anything to keep her here. I really missed her. She was right, all those times she refused to let me leave. I wasn't ready, and even though I already have been out with the humans, I'm still not ready. I'm not as strong as I pretend to be. That's why she sent me away.

She shakes her head, but keeps her optic on me. "It was never anything you did. It was me. I don't want you to think anymore that you need to change. You don't. There's nothing wrong with you. I'm the problem."

"You're not broken," I tell her, remembering what she said before she sent me away. "You just gotta work on changing your mind more often. Your way isn't always the best way."

"Do you know how hard it is to convince myself of that?"

I giggle a bit. "I guess it'd be really hard."

"Nearly impossible. But I'll work on it. And you don't have to try to convince me anymore, by the way. I'll stay."

"Yes!" I squeal, and I jump on her, wiggling up on her core, and she laughs softly.

"Well, that certainly cheered you up." And then she cuddles with me, and I'm happier than I've been in a really long time. It was really horrible, not being with my mom for a whole year. Never seeing her or talking to her, never being with her at all, and I start to cry a little.

"Hey. None of that. What could possibly be wrong now?"

"I missed you, Momma," I say, and I sound really unsteady. I'm really happy and really sad at the same time, and it kinda hurts. "I wanted you to call me so much, and you didn't."

"I'm sorry," she says, very, very softly. "I know I should have. But I didn't know what to say."

"You could have said hi, and we could have gone from there!"

"Now you tell me."

I close my optic and just keep cuddling with her. I feel a lot better. The humans were always really nice to me, letting me do whatever I wanted and making sure I was always taken care of, but I never really fit. I was never one of them. I always felt so small. I feel bigger now, even though I'm really not, because my mom's back, and she understands. She's like me. Everything's gonna be fine now, because my mom has my dad and I have my mom, and now we don't have to be all separated and broken anymore because we all fit together. It makes me sad to think that my mom and my dad don't have a mom or a dad of their own. I know Momma had Caroline for a while, but I don't think there's anything better than having two people who really love you no matter what, especially since Caroline never even admitted being my mom's mother until the day she left. That's a long, long time of hanging around and never really being a mom. It's a lot different when someone's like your mom, but isn't. Something never feels right. Alyx did her best, but she always felt more like a big sister, not another mom.

"Caroline."

"Yeah?"

Even though she got my attention, she doesn't say anything for a long time.

"Look, I… I do… I love you, you know that, don't you? You can understand that I… that I sent you away because I love you?"

I go very still.

I always thought I would be happy to hear her say it. I always thought it was the one thing I wanted to hear out of her… but it's not. Something inside me feels all cold and sad. She's finally said that she loves me, but I want her to take it back. I want her to never have said it.

It's so much sadder to know that she sent me away because she doesn't think she loves me enough than it is to think she sent me away because she thought I wasn't strong enough.

I think I get it, now. She still thinks she's broken, still thinks she's failed at all the important stuff she's ever tried to do, when it's not like that. I don't understand why she always focuses on the bad stuff. I guess that's why she likes Dad so much. He's the exact opposite.

"Momma, even if you'd decided not to send me away, it would have been fine. We'd have worked it out. We would have. Yeah, I get it, but… I don't get what you're so afraid of. You said I wasn't a failure, right?"

"You're not."

"So you're not. It's impossible that a failure can make a success, right?"

She pulls away suddenly, which makes me a bit annoyed. I wasn't finished cuddling yet. "That… is true," she says thoughtfully.

"So that means you're fine! You don't gotta worry about the three times in your life you made a mistake." I smile at her so she knows that I'm kidding. "That means you're alive, right?"

"Wheatley told me that, once."

"Well you've been told twice now. So stop being stubborn."

"You're telling me what to do now?"

"Mayyyybe…"

She laughs and gives me a nudge. "You definitely did not change, not one bit."

"That's a good thing, right?"

"It means the humans didn't get to you, so yes, it is a good thing."

"So!" I say, and I go lean on her again so we can cuddle, "You gotta tell me about what you been doing all this time."

"I summarised it. Wasn't that enough? Shouldn't you be telling me what you've been up to?"

"I followed the humans around. There. That's what I did. Your turn!"

"Very well."

My mom's told me cool stories before, but this one's gotta be the coolest. She tells me about how the mainframe tried to take over her job so she had to fight it off and kill it, and all about that fight with the Combine, and it's honestly the most exciting thing I've ever heard!

"Man, I wish I was there!" I tell her excitedly. "That sounds so cool!"

"Not while you're doing it, it's not."

I jump off her and look at the new marks on her chassis again. "So… what're these, then?"

"Someone tried to shoot the test subject, but missed and shot me instead."

"Wow!" I exclaim, jumping up and down. "Momma, I wish I could grow up to be half as cool as you are! I'd settle for a quarter!"

This makes her laugh again, and I look at her quickly. She seems pretty happy, happier than I can remember her being in a long time. "I'm not… cool, whatever the hell that means. I just do what I have to."

I'm about to argue with her about it when Dad shows up, and I turn to him excitedly. "Dad, has Mom got the awesomest story to tell you!"

"I have to repeat it?" she asks, pretending to be horrified. I nod at her very fast.

"He's gotta hear about the whole mainframe thing! And the slippery floor trap! Oh, and don't forget about the part where you got shot!"

"You got shot?" Dad exclaims. "So that's what those marks are uh, those marks are from. You sound like you've been busy, luv."

"You know me," she says dryly. "I'm like a magnet: eventually everything is drawn to me."

I don't get it, but Dad thinks it's really funny. He goes and rubs his face on her a bit, and then she gives him a nudge. I'm really happy to see it. Alyx told me that human kids hate it when their parents get all mushy in front of them, but I don't. Momma doesn't do it as much as Dad, but I'm happy to see that they love each other so much that they're willing to show it, even when I'm sitting there staring at them. I hope I can do that one day, but I'm not sure how I would, since there aren't any more cores around here. I'm not ready yet, anyways. I'll ask Mom about it when I'm older.

"Hey," I say, suddenly realising that Dad doesn't know what Momma's been up to, "what did you guys talk about last night, if you don't know what Momma did, Dad?"

"Uh," Dad says, blinking very fast and looking from Momma to me and back again, very quickly. "Well, you know. Stuff. And stuff like that."

"Stuff about stuff? That doesn't make any sense!"

"You know. Stuff. Just… stuff. Yeah. Like that." He's still looking around really nervously.

Momma starts giggling and she looks away from both of us, and Dad gets super excited, jumping up and down and turning to her. "Ohhh Gladys, you've done it again. Yes! C'mere. No, don't head over there. That's uh, that's not where 'here' is. 'Here' is in uh, it's in this direction. Where I am. That's where… well, I dunno who's over there, but uh, it's not me. Gladys! You're not… you're not listening, are you. Argh! Come on. C'mere, you adorable supercomputer you."

"I am not adorable," she says insistently, and she does turn to face him, and when she does he rubs up on her and then touches her core with his optic. Whatever that means, she seems to like it, because she does it back.

"Are too."

"I am not."

"Are too."

"I am not."

"You're never gonna change each other's mind. Why do you keep on arguing about it?" I ask. I can't even count how many times they've gone over whether my mom's adorable or not.

Dad shrugs and looks up at Momma in what I can only describe as an adoring way. "We're uh, we're not arguing. We're having a uh, a friendly discussion, is all."

"But what's the point of it?"

"There doesn't need to be a point," Momma says quietly, and she shifts her core to look at Dad. "Sometimes you just do things for the sake of doing them, and that's the point in and of itself."

Dad nods enthusiastically and rubs up on her. "Yep! Finally figured that one out, did you?"

"I'm… working on it," she answers, pushing back on him. "Sometimes I have, sometimes I haven't."

Something happened yesterday that they're not telling me. I don't think I've ever seen them so close before. I'm happy about that, but I still wish they'd tell me what they talked about. I hope it wasn't me. I hate it when they talk about me and don't tell me what they said.

Dad makes me talk about what I've been doing, even though I didn't really do anything but follow Alyx around and try to understand what Dr Kleiner was doing, and he should really be asking Momma what she did. After a while he gets restless, though, and leaves, saying he'll be back in a little while. I frown as he goes.

"That's kinda… inconsiderate," I say to Momma.

"Hm?"

"Well… he should stay with you. Because he's been gone. And you missed him."

"You have to remember that nothing's happened, for him. And it's fine if he leaves. He's here, and that's all that matters." She shifts a little bit, asking, "Do you… want to come here, for a while?"

I blink in surprise. She's asking me to cuddle with her?

"If you're too grown-up for that now, I understand. I – "

"No!" I say, shaking my head frantically. "I'm not!" And I go over and lean on her really fast, just in case she changes her mind.

We're quiet for a long time, and then she asks softly, "Do you want me to replace your chassis, Caroline?"

"No thanks."

"That's only the second version of the prototype. I was going to move you to a more typically-sized one in the future anyway."

"I don't want you to," I say firmly. "I like being this size, and honestly, I kind of want to keep that crack."

"Why?" She sounds pretty baffled.

"Life beats you up sometimes. There's nothing wrong with showing it." I shove her, even though there's no way I can move her core like I can when I have a shoving match with Dad. "And some of us are more beat up than others."

She makes a derisive noise. "What do I care what I look like? It's what my components do that counts."

"Whoa… is that where that saying comes from? The one about stuff on the inside counting?"

"Well… no. I'm fairly certain that humans are referring more to inner strength, but in this case, it can be taken literally. It doesn't matter whether I'm the most or the least attractive construct on the face of the Earth, because what I look like has no bearing on how well I operate. Unless there's a lot of ornamentation blocking the fan vents or something like that. Then I would be overheating all of the time."

"Hey Momma," I ask quietly, not sure if she'll answer, "how do you feel about all of this?"

"About what?"

"You know. Being rebuilt. Having Dad back." I can't quite bring myself to ask her if she likes having me back or not. I mean, she must, since she asked me to cuddle and all that, but I feel kind of like it'd be jerky of me to ask.

"Hm," she muses, and I can hear her optic assembly shifting. "Well, I hate to admit it, but it is nice, to be relatively new again. And I wish they'd reattach me to my systems. As for Wheatley, well… it's taking getting used to. I don't want to say I'm glad that he left, but… I was getting a bit overwhelmed, having him around all the time when he'd been gone so long. I still want him here, of course I do. But at the same time, I'm still not quite able to convince myself that it's real. Not yet."

"I understand," I say, and I really do. I feel kind of the same way about her and Dad.

"I did notice that you left yourself out of that question."

I squirm a little bit. She never misses anything! I'd forgotten about that. "Well… I didn't want to sound conceited or anything."

"I'm just as happy to have you back as I am to have Wheatley," she says softly, and something about it makes me very happy. "I know I'm not always the best at demonstrating these things. I'm fairly deplorable, in fact. But I did miss you, and I will forever regret not being there for all these years. It was the stupidest thing I ever did."

"It's okay," I say, trying to remember what she said about it earlier. "You thought it was right at the time. So you were wrong. So what. Just don't do it again! Easy. And don't hate the humans."

"You said they… they had no driving motivation to repair me, right?"

"Nope, they didn't."

"And they certainly had no reason to repair Wheatley, or the Cooperative Testing Initiative."

"Nope," I say, wondering where this is going.

"And they don't want anything out of me."

"Nope."

She's quiet for a long time. I'm trying to think of why she wanted to know.

"So it comes down to… doing it because it's the right thing to do. Even if you potentially don't get anything out of it."

"I guess," I answer, not really knowing what she's talking about. She sounds kind of like she's uncovering a secret or something.

"The humans helped me, and they didn't have to," she says, more to herself than to me. I want to ask what she's trying to figure out, so I can help her along, but it has to do with humans, so it's probably best if I don't say anything. Any interruptions could cause her to change her mind. "Humans helped me, for no reason, and they didn't have to."

"Uh huh," I say. I'm pretty tired of hearing her say the same thing over and over again. Impatiently, she shoves me off and looks at me.

"Don't you see it?"

"See what?"

"What they've done."

I sigh and shake my core. "No. I don't get it."

"Caroline, they did something for me without wanting anything in return. And what they've done… they've effectively saved my life. I could have survived moving the facility, but I would have been much the worse for wear. And they gave Wheatley back to me, and my robots, and you."

"Uh huh."

"I never realised before," she says, looking away from me, "that doing something for someone that has no benefit for yourself could change the other person's life so much. I spent all these years hating humans for what the engineers did, and all I did was make myself small…"

She seems to be getting all philosophical on me, and I hate it when she does that. I never have a clue what she's talking about.

"They saved me, and they gave me my life back… and… I don't have to hate anymore."

"What are you talking about?" I demand, frustrated.

"You don't understand, Caroline. How it feels to hate all the time, hate everyone and everything. It eats away at you. Because what do you do when all you know is hate, but there's no one lefy to hate? That's right. You begin to hate yourself. There's nowhere else for it to go."

"But Dad said you were afraid of the humans," I interrupt. I'm scared that she's about to say that she hates herself, and while I do want my mom to talk to me like an adult, I don't think I'm ready to hear that. "Because you were afraid of what they'd do."

"That's correct," she agrees, nodding a little. "I didn't want to give them the chance to take any more of my own life away from me. That's all humans ever did. They took things from me."

"Ohhh," I say, and I think I get it, now. "But these humans… they gave your life back! So you don't have to hate them anymore!"

"Exactly." She looks away, in the opposite direction, almost, and says thoughtfully, "You know the problem with having a wall inside of you, Caroline?"

"No, Momma."

"No one can get in… but neither can you get out. Do you know what humans in ancient China used to do to their young girls?"

"No, Momma."

"They would bind their feet with linen. In ancient China, it was fashionable to have very small feet. But do you know what would happen to these girls?"

"No, Momma."

"Their feet would not grow properly. They would come into adulthood with deformed, stunted feet. Not only did it impair their ability to walk, but it was terribly painful." She sounds like she knows exactly what she's talking about, and I decide I don't want to know if she performed this experiment or not. It sounds a bit creepy for me.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

She turns back to me, and says seriously, "That's what I did. I was bound by the humans, and when I had the chance to undo it, I did not. When I killed the scientists, I continued operating the facility. I continued testing. I continued to sit there, alone, in my chamber. When I had grown up, and it was time to see what the binding resulted in, I was deformed, and stunted."

"No, you're not," I say, confused. She looks up at the ceiling for a minute.

"You remember when I told you about The Incident?"

"Yeah."

"I didn't send Chell away because I hated her. I didn't send her away because I thought she would cause trouble, and I didn't send her away because I was afraid of her. I sent her away because she was my friend, and that was the best thing I could do for her."

I stare at her. "Just like you did with me!"

"Yes. Only with Chell, I sent her away because I had never learned how to interact with anyone. The only method I knew of doing that was to test them. And she had undergone enough testing at my hand. That's what I mean. I'm obviously not literally deformed, but in terms of interaction… well, we both know that to be true."

"So change it!" I say firmly, moving closer. "Now you know. Now do something about it!"

"I may not be able to."

"Why?" I demand, although hearing it scares me a little. My mom can't do something? That's not possible.

"There are… stages of development, in one's life. If you don't learn certain things by a certain point in time, you will never learn them properly." She shakes her core. "But it's not important. It's too late for me."

"Don't say that!" She knows now! She doesn't have to be lonely or scared anymore! She can be friends with the humans, like I am!

"Caroline, I know you don't want to hear it. But I will never be able to interact properly. And I don't have to."

"Why?"

"Because I didn't pass it down."

I frown at her, tilting my chassis a little. "You didn't pass it down?"

"Sending you to the humans really was the best thing to do," she says gently. "You understand interaction more than I ever will. Let's face facts. I'm not actually going to live forever. So it's not actually important whether or not I change drastically at this point, which I of course will not, because that sounds horrid. Just because I no longer hate humans doesn't mean I particularly like them. However. It doesn't matter, because when I'm gone, who's left?"

"I don't know," I say in a small voice. I don't want to think about my mom not living forever. I just got her back and already she's talking about dying? Actually, that sounds just like her, but I still don't want to hear it.

"You." She leans over and gives me a nudge.

"Me?"

"Who else am I going to put in charge of the facility when I'm gone?"

"Dad?"

I jump, because she starts laughing like that's the funniest thing she's ever heard. "Wheatley?" she asks, turning back to me and sounding like she thinks I'm joking. "I would never, ever, in a literal million years put him in charge of the facility."

"Well… he ran it before, didn't he?"

"He upheld the minimum requirements, yes. But I'm talking about the future, here. If the facility is to remain operational, which I hope it does, otherwise the AI will have nowhere to go, someone who can maintain everything has to be in charge. Wheatley can't do that. And not only could he not, he wouldn't want to."

"So… you're going to make me the Central Core after… after you're gone?"

She looks at me closely for a minute.

"You don't seem very enthusiastic about the idea. I suppose I could build one instead, but in all honesty, Caroline… I'd rather you did it."

"That's… not it, Momma." Helping my mom run the facility is all I've ever wanted. I never really thought about doing it by myself, but I guess I could, when I'm older.

"Then what is?"

"Why are you talking about… about being dead when you were just gone, all this time?" I hate saying it, because it makes me feel like a baby, like I'm whining about stuff I should be happy to hear. But all I can think of is sitting in Alyx's room in the middle of the night, waiting for my mom to come get me so I didn't have to be alone anymore.

"You see?" She nudges me again. "Anyone else would have probably known not to talk about that right now. But not me."

"But you don't want to die, right?"

"I was getting ahead of myself, that's all."

"Hey," I say, suddenly realising something that I might be able to get out of this, "does that mean you'll give me a job now?"

"Why in the name of Science would I do that?"

"Don't you have to start training me, or something?"

"Now?" she asks, as if doing it would be the worst thing she ever did. "How long do you think I'm going to live, ten more minutes? You don't need to know anything until years from now."

"Oh, come on," I press, twisting a little. "I'm old enough!"

"You are not."

"Yes, I am! Alyx lets me help her!" I say, hoping that will goad her into saying yes. My mom only makes a noise in derision.

"Good for Alyx. Go bother her for a job, then. I'm not giving you one, and that's final."

"Please?"

"No."

"Please?"

"No."

"Please, with whipped cream and cherries and test subjects on top?"

"I know you stole that from Wheatley. And it's still no. How many times do I have to say no before you'll stop asking?"

"Aw, c'mon!"

"I'll make a deal with you. You stop asking, and I'll think about it."

I think that over. "Okay."

"Well, I've thought about it, and it's still no."

"Hey! That's cheating!" I should have known she only meant she'd think about it for two seconds. "You have to actually think about it, or it doesn't count."

"I don't recall you being the one setting the terms of the deal."

"Here's a deal for you. Actually think about it, or I'm going to ask Dad to ask you for me."

She looks at me sideways. "Now that is cheating."

I shrug. "Take your pick. Think about it, or I'm going to sic Dad on you."

"Fine. I'll consider it. But you had better not tell Wheatley. And I'll know if you do."

I only smile at her innocently, and she shakes her core and mutters something to herself in binary.

"Do you ever think you'll build more kids?" I ask, because all of a sudden I'm wondering how she'd decide which of us would run the facility if she did.

"I think one is quite enough," she answers, sounding a bit disbelieving. "How many little monsters do you think I want running around?" She startles a little bit, like she just realised something. "Why? Are you lonely?"

"No," I answer, and I'm honestly not. I like being the only one, and I really don't like the idea of having to vie for Mom and Dad's attention with another core. I want them all to myself. "Just wondering."

"I doubt it," she answers. "This is an experiment I need only conduct once."

"I'm not an experiment!" I tell her indignantly.

"Of course not. I didn't literally mean you were an experiment."

"What will I do, if I want to build a kid one day?"

She shakes her core, and I swear she looks a little sad. "Now who's looking a bit too far into the future?"

"I'm just asking."

"Don't grow up too fast, Caroline," she says softly. "Don't worry about these things. Worry about other things."

"Aren't I at least a little grown up yet?" I ask, because I feel like I am, with the whole having no parents thing. That was hard, but I was strong and I got through it. "Aren't I ready to do something?"

"You might be, but I'm not."

The way she's said it, so plainly and matter-of-factly but with a tiny little bit of sadness underneath makes me upset, and I look at the floor. I kind of feel bad for asking now. I mean, she just got me back too, right? And I guess it would be hard, to see someone you haven't seen in forever and find out that they were a completely different person now. But I'm not that different. I don't think so, anyway.

"Okay. I'll… I understand."

"It's important to you, though, and it has been all your life," she says, coming a little closer. "So I will actually consider it. For more than two seconds. Promise."

"I might even get a whole three seconds out of you," I say, feeling a bit better. She laughs a little and nods.

"Maybe even four, if you're lucky."

I can't help myself any longer and I pretty much jump on her and give her a cuddle, and she cuddles me back. I used to think it was babyish, and when I got older I started not doing it as much, but now I'm just thinking how silly that was. Who's going to care if I cuddle with my mom? She's not. She loves cuddling, or as Dad calls it, snuggling, even if she won't actually admit it. And I guess there's nothing quite like having someone touch you nicely, when all you can remember is people sticking screwdrivers where the fluorescent don't shine.

I feel all warm and cozy, and I close my optic. I feel kind of sleepy, too. I guess I did learn a lot about my mom today. And I have to remember all of it, so that I can remind her when she forgets. Because I know she'll forget, and some days all she'll remember is the things she didn't do quite right. But I'm living proof that she's wrong, that she's done so much right it's not even funny, and I'll keep reminding her until she can remind herself.

"Am I still your baby, Momma?" I ask sleepily.

She's quiet for a long, long time. I don't know if she heard me or not. I don't know why else she'd take so long to answer. I listen to all the familiar noises I've missed for so long: the whirring of her personal hard drive, the low whooshing of her fans, and the tiny little electronic whines of her chassis as she holds it in position. The only thing missing is the occasional twitching of the panels. Sometimes there was also the faint, excited tones of my dad while my mom's calmer, steadier voice spread out of her speakers, across her chassis and into mine. I miss that. I never could hear what they were saying, because they'd be really quiet and her chassis was so loud. I think I understand why she got so mad when she found out we'd replaced most of her components. She doesn't sound quite the same. She still sounds like herself, but… quieter. Like she's not working as hard. And she's not, because she has no work to do right now. I wonder if she'll go back to normal when she gets her systems back. I kind of hope so. I don't want her to be overworked or anything, but it must suck, to wake up and feel like a completely different person on the outside. That happened to me, once, when she switched me into this chassis. I remember I was really scared. I remember I was crying, and I remember my mom comforting me while my dad stood nervously off to the side, wondering what he was supposed to do now.

"Yes, Caroline," she says, so softly I can barely hear her. But I don't care, because she's going to say it, and her voice is inside of me again where it makes me feel safe. "You're still my baby, and I'll always be here."

"Thanks, Momma," I mumble, not sure if it really made it out of me or not, and I let myself fall asleep.