Part Ninety-Five. The Gift

Note: There's a part in the middle that's kind of just a summary and you can skip it and you won't miss anything. It's for future me, mostly.

I promise Caroline again that I will not do any work when the stupid holiday actually arrives, which means I have to spend a few of the preceding days writing software to take care of things for me for an entire twenty-four hours. It's a good thing this is only going to last one day; I'm not sure I'd be able to trust automation for any longer than that. This exasperates Wheatley, who has to entertain himself for longer than usual, but I'm too focused to really care. And besides. He's the one who doesn't want me to work on Christmas. He should be patient so that I can ensure I don't have to work.

But when I wake up that morning, and the automation has already gone into effect, I… I don't like it. There's nothing that requires my attention, not today, and l cannot shake the feeling that I need to be checking something or fixing something or doing something. It's worse than the Itch, which is a hell of a lot stronger when I don't have anything that needs done, and I've only been awake ten minutes and I have no idea how I'm going to make it through the rest of the day. I think I'm going to go insane.

Caroline is off doing something, what, I don't know, and Wheatley is staring at me silently like he has been for the last three minutes and ten seconds. Eleven. Twelve.

God, I want to shock myself. I'm in such need of occupation that I am counting seconds.

"Are you okay," Wheatley asks warily, and I slowly look at him and shake my core just as slowly.

"I can't do it," I tell him, my voice somewhat strangled. "I can't make it through a whole day like this. I have to do something. I have to –"

"Luv," he says softly, shaking his core, "you can do it."

"You do not understand – "

"I know. But uh, but I also know that you can do this. It's just for another, what, twelve hours?"

"Wheatley," I say hopelessly, "twelve hours to you is completely different from twelve hours to me. I count in ninths of a second. My day feels nine times as long as yours."

"Which… makes that…"

"A hundred and eight hours."

"That's… a lot of days." He looks like he's beginning to understand.

"It's four point five days. The point here being that it's half a day to you, but I have to get through another four days on top of that." Why did he have to bring this up? Now I feel worse. A lot worse. Not only that, but I want to test. I want to test more than I ever have in my entire life. Chell better not show up or she's in for an unpleasant surprise. I honestly don't know if I'll be able to stop myself. Or if I'll want to. I won't want to, because I'll have something to do. So I won't stop myself. So she'd better not show up.

"What am I going to do," I ask dully. "This is… it's like torture, Wheatley. And if Chell comes today…" She probably will. Christmas doesn't likely mean much to someone without any interest in family relations.

"Oh no," Wheatley says, looking at me in horror. "You don't mean – "

"Yes. The Itch is even more annoying when I'm not doing a thousand other things at once. That is literally all that's left in my brain at the moment."

"Damn." He turns to stare at the stupid Christmas tree, frowning. "Well, we'd best get to doing something, eh? We'll have a go at chess and see if uh, see if that helps."

So we do as he suggests, which does help but not very much, and after five minutes and six seconds he looks up at me, exasperated.

"I'm uh, I'm gonna need you to stop doing that."

"Stop doing what?"

He points to my left side, where…

Where I'm tapping one of his captured pieces against the floor once every quarter second. I let go of the pawn, though it is difficult. It also seems that was what was helping me, and not the game itself. Now I have the Itch, the need to do something, and the impulsion to tap something against the floor to deal with simultaneously. Wonderful.

"Okay. I've an idea," he says, two minutes and thirty-nine seconds later. "D'you have, I dunno, uh… white noise, but uh, in bin'ry or something?"

"There's no such thing as white noise in binary," I tell him. "Binary is pure information. It always means something." To me, anyway.

"Well, I'm just… you need something uh, something familiar to, to keep your mind occupied, right? But d'you have this, this meaningless… information… noise? Someplace? That you can listen to?"

"Probably. But then I'd be trying to find meaning in it. I wouldn't be able to leave it alone."

"That's the point!" he says enthusiastically. "Keeps that part of, of your brain that's going mad occupied!"

"All right," I tell him. That should do something. How much, I don't know, but I've been counting picoseconds since we started this game and I'm getting really bored. "I'll do it. But I have to broadcast it to force myself to process it as much as possible. I can try to broadcast at a frequency you can't hear, but I honestly don't know if that's possible."

"I prob'ly won't notice, to be honest."

Sending myself a bunch of incessant, indecipherable data is extremely annoying, but it helps. I'm not counting time anymore, at least. The Itch is still very prevalent but it's not so bad that I can't handle it.

Caroline arrives, so I wrap up the chess game and we move on to Scrabble, which she insists she's going to beat me at every time she plays. She never does, though it never gets any less funny to watch her realise she hasn't won yet again.

She makes me play one-on-one with her, Wheatley keeping the score, and doesn't even look up when Orange and Blue make a very odd entrance. Well, it's not the entrance that's odd, rather the fact that they are entering. And what they do after that, which is spontaneously – actually no, they probably planned on strolling in here and hugging me. And I consider shaking them off and scolding them in order to keep up appearances.

But I don't want to.

I feel pretty good. That part of me that wants to work has gotten much smaller since this morning, when I manage not to think about it that is, and as a result I'm able to enjoy myself in quite a rare way. Being able to focus most of my attention on the people I'm with, instead of what I'm doing in the background… it's new. I don't think I could do it every day. But for now, I like it. And I like that my marshmallows came to see me, and came to show they care.

It must be nice to feel like this all the time.

Hello, Mom, Orange says, waving after they step back. Carrie told us you were taking a day off. We didn't believe it, but it seems it was true!

Stranger things have happened, I tell her dryly, wondering idly why she still insists on calling me that. But yes. I am taking the day off.

And how is that going, Blue asks, though he doesn't sound like he believes me.

Very well, thank you.

Can we stay? Orange asks, poking Blue. Probably signaling him to keep quiet.

Yes. I turn to Wheatley and say, "Whoever has the most points now wins. We're going to play something else that these two marshmallows won't melt their processors attempting to follow."

"Don't forget about me!" Claptrap announces, and I am a little distressed that I didn't actually notice he was here but I suppose it's not really my fault. Not today, with those very distracting impulses to work and to test diverting my attention every two seconds.

Orange and Blue take this opportunity to cheer and jump up and down, which somehow does not bother me, and Wheatley delightedly locates our favourite deck of cards so we can play his favourite game. And for once, most of my attention isn't on observing. It's on playing this game and listening to all of them telling stupid jokes – all right. I actually am participating. I don't know why I'm pretending to myself that I'm not. But I am. And it's fun. It really is.

Chell comes during the third game, and there is a huge, stretching moment in which I really do not think I'm going to be able to resist testing her, and I'm actually on the verge of engaging my maintenance arm in snatching her before she knows what's coming. When I realise what I'm doing I turn away and listen very hard to the white noise.

"Who is this and where did you dig him up from?" Chell asks, looking at Claptrap. He holds out one hand.

"Put 'er there!"

As they shake hands I say serenely, "Oh, you know me. I get around."

Chell snorts. "Somehow."

"This is my boyfriend, Claptrap. He's from another planet."

"He's also my best friend!" Wheatley pipes up, and Chell stares incredulously at me. Caroline was right. It is much funnier to get to tell her myself.

"Two boyfriends?"

"I mean, there's plenty of her," says Claptrap. "Why not? You know what they say: sharing is caring!"

"You gonna go looking for a girlfriend next?"

Good lord, no. I can't imagine trying to spread myself out that much. But I can't say that. It will make things too serious. So I say instead, "I don't date humans," to which Chell rolls her eyes.

"You'd like that too much."

"I just told you how much I would dislike it. But if you need your ears cleaned out I may be able to help you with that."

"You stick anything in my ears and you'll regret the day you ever let me back in here."

"You say that as though I don't already regret it." Why doesn't she come over more often? This is rather fun.

"And your name is Claptrap?" Chell asks, turning to face him again, and Claptrap waves one arm in dismissal.

"Nah. My model name is CL4P-TP, but who wants to pronounce that? Even I don't want to, and it's my name! Great conversation starter, though."

"Don't start a conversation with him," I tell her in a low voice. "He will never stop talking."

"Ooooh," intoned Claptrap. "I'm gonna have to retire to my shame corner after that sick burn."

"In order to occupy a shame corner, you would first need the ability to feel shame. And I'm pretty sure you aren't equipped for that."

"I come equipped with plenty of surprises, baby," Claptrap says, leaning forward, and now I look away from him. He's going a little farther than I'd like, considering Chell is here. Mostly because I don't really want to explain right now the kind of person he is or why I like that about him so much. He takes getting used to, and now is not the time.

"What is wrong with you?" I say despondently.

"I mean, I could tell ya, but we'd be here a while and I don't think any of us has that kind of time."

No, we definitely do not.

"Uhhh… GLaDOS?"

"Yes, lunatic?"

"I have a present for you."

"What?"

She shrugs and walks up to me, holding out something wrapped in brown paper. "You give out presents on Christmas. Haven't you heard?"

"I have," I answer, accepting the package, "but you should know by now that I don't hold much stock by material possessions."

"Says the person with a ginormous laboratory at her beck and call," Chell remarks, rolling her eyes.

"And the person with an entire room full of stuff," Caroline adds. Wheatley does not quite manage to avoid laughing.

"Those are mementos," I say, miffed, pulling the paper off the object, which turns out to be…

"A potato peeler?" I ask, honestly not knowing how to feel in that moment. "You are giving me a potato peeler?"

The silence is as dead as is possible in a room containing this many computers, and then Chell sits down on the floor, buries her face in her hands, and starts laughing. And so do I, because this is actually very funny, and before I know it even Orange and Blue are laughing even though they don't get the joke. Chell has tears in her eyes when she says, "I couldn't resist."

I nod in agreement. I wouldn't have been able to resist, either. "I don't have anything for you. Unless you want a potato. I have plenty of those."

"No thanks," she says, making a face. "We have plenty of those too."

Orange grabs the thing from me and I let her. The gag is over and, though I will put it on one of my shelves, I no longer have much use for it. While she's inspecting it, Blue picks up the pile of cards he's sharing with her and offers them to Chell. She stares at them, brow furrowing. "Uh – "

We'll just start over, I tell him, pushing my own rack of cards in Wheatley's general direction so he can deal them out again. He's the only one other than Chell who doesn't understand what I said and just stares at the cards in confusion.

"They want Chell to play," I explain. He nods and carefully gathers up the deck.

Chell is no better than they are and my winning streak remains untarnished, though Claptrap actually almost got me that one time. She actually doesn't seem to be familiar with the rules, but that doesn't stop her from trying.

She also becomes bored more easily than we do, so after the sixth round I call an end to the game and tell Orange and Blue to put it away. They eagerly do as I request, because it means they get to throw things at each other and make a mess right in front of me, something they enjoy doing far too much. It doesn't annoy me today, though. It does test my reflexes, however, because I was not expecting Blue to return the card box I threw at him. Orange squealed at him when he did that, to warn me or in horror, I'm not sure. She did look shocked when I threw the box at her next, though.

"Caroline," I say, when Blue snatches the box and card racks and runs off to put them away, Orange squealing and chasing after him, "I have something for you."

"Wha?" She looks up at me, startled. "But… why?"

"Do I need a reason?"

"I guess not," she says, still confused. "Uh… what is it."

"I'm going to activate it in a moment. Are you ready?"

"Uh huh," she nods, even though she's really not. But only I know that. As soon as I've activated it, she gasps and goes still, aperture very small and plates retracted. Wheatley stares at her in alarm.

"Gladys! What – what'd you do!?"

"Dad, I'm fine," Caroline says, but faintly. "I'm fine but I wanna know what that was because it was awesome." She leans towards me, determined. "What was that?"

"It was this," I tell her, and I give her the apparatus. It's not much to look at, only a small white box with a power indicator and a button to cycle the power with. I don't design things for aesthetics anyway.

"But… what is it?" she asks, taking it and inspecting it closely. "It just… looks like a box."

"It is a box," I agree. "Now put this on top of it."

Caroline, of course, has no idea what the second object is either, but Chell does, and she gives me a very befuddled look. "GLaDOS – "

"Ssh."

Caroline very slowly places the second object on top of the first, and when they meet she cries out and drops them both on the floor. She stares down at them in shock. "Oh no," she says. "Momma, I broke it… I'm sorry, I didn't mean to!"

The box, being of my design and construction, did not break of course, but the other object, the one designed by humans but also constructed by myself, did. What used to be a cane-shaped conglomeration of sugar and herb has now shattered all over the floor. Well. Not all over. I exaggerated. A little. And even though it's not very nice, I laugh.

"Don't worry. They're supposed to do that."

"It's supposed to break when you drop it?" Caroline asks incredulously, and I suppose she's never actually seen an object fall on the floor and break. "But what is it? And what's the box for?"

"It's a candy cane," Chell says.

"What does that mean?" Caroline yells in frustration. "What's a candy cane?"

"How do you not know what a candy cane is?" Claptrap asks, incredulous.

"I don't know what a candy cane is," Wheatley adds, as usual contributing well to the conversation.

"You don't know what a lot of things are," I tell him. "Caroline, a candy cane is a traditional candy given to human children during the Christmas season. There is a religious connotation behind it that is not really important to you, at least not right now because I don't want to explain it, but suffice it to say indestructible food is frowned upon by humans and so yes, it was supposed to break."

"So if I put a piece of it back on the box… will it still work?"

"Yes."

So she rights the box and places a piece of the candy on it, but after a few seconds she tips the box over again and shudders. "Wow okay, better not do that for too long," she mutters to herself.

"Have you figured out what it is yet?"

She shakes her core and straightens the box, inspecting it. "It's… a box, and uh… it… does something to me… that's kinda nice but kinda freaky at the same time…"

"It's a taste emulator."

"Wow," Chell says. "Now that is cool."

"Even I don't have one of those," Claptrap announces as Caroline hands him the box to look at.

And I suppose it is… cool. But useless. I really don't know what possessed me to build it, or to install the software the last time I updated her. But looking at her now, again putting the piece of candy cane slowly on the hardware and staring at it in wonder… I'm glad I did. I made her happy and I gave her something new to experience. This will open doors for her. I'm not sure what those doors will lead to, but they're there if she figures out what she can do with them.

"Can I use it?" Wheatley asks me, peering at the device in interest, and I shake my core.

"Only she is compatible with the software."

"You're not?" Caroline gasps.

"No. I don't really have a desire to be." I considered modifying it for myself, then realised that was stupid because I don't need to clutter myself with software I'm not going to use just for the sake of being able to say I can do something silly like taste. "I could be if I wanted to. But I don't want to be."

"Thank you, Momma," she says softly, staring at it.

"Was that intended to have a practical application?" Chell asks in a low voice, while Caroline and Wheatley are busy attempting to put the broken pieces of the candy into Claptrap's hands. I shake my core.

"It's just for her. That's all." I did it for her, and that was the only reason. Because I genuinely, truly wanted to give her something special. Something only she could use. Something to show her that I think about her all the time, and even though I know it's hard to tell, I really do care.

"You know what you should do now, Momma?" Caroline says, seeming to have put away the apparatus and cleaned up the mess. "You should tell us a story."

Oh, God.

"Must I?"

"Yup," she says, nodding, and Wheatley laughs.

"As long as there's no magic in it. Never again."

"Actually, there's a story I've been waiting to hear the end of for a really long time now," Caroline says, moving to the side of me that Chell is not on. "I'm pretty sure it still doesn't have an end, but I am wondering where it's at now."

Oh. That story.

I don't really want to tell it in front of Chell. But… she's a part of it. And there wouldn't be a story if not for her.

"Very well. But don't interrupt me."

Now, where did I leave off…

"Now, what the little girl had built was her baby.

"The little girl had known taking care of her would be hard, because she did not ever remember being a baby herself and so did not know how to do it. And it was very hard, but it was also very rewarding. She learned many things she would have taken a long time to learn otherwise, and they stuck with her better than if she had learned them some other way.

"The baby surprised her many times, because the little girl had never known anyone before that had cared about her like the baby did. The baby was always kind to her and did many things to show the little girl how much she loved her, which the little girl did not always understand. She was well acquainted with unconditional cruelty, not kindness.

"Sometimes she tried too hard to protect the baby, at times when she did not need protecting, and by mistake frightened her and made her avoid things she should have explored. But even when these things happened, the baby still tried very hard to show the little girl how much she loved her and wanted to be with her, even when she would have been justified in punishing the little girl as she deserved.

"One day the baby needed to grow up a little. She should have been allowed to grow up a long time before that, but the little girl did not want her to and so pretended she didn't need to for as long as she could. You see, the little girl was afraid. She knew that the baby would change when she grew up. She was afraid that the baby would not love her anymore, once she learned what the little girl really was inside. Once she learned that the little girl was not what she thought she was, that she… that she was broken and confused and hiding from a great many things.

"When the baby grew up a little, she left for a little while to think about things. Instead of trying to do something about it, the little girl let the baby proceed this way because she'd already known it was going to happen and, of course, she had to be right. The ball did not like this, because he did not feel ready to be to the baby what the little girl had been, but he had no choice. This had been forced on him by the little girl, who believed that she knew best.

"The ball and the little girl had many arguments, some serious and some because they liked arguing. The baby did not understand the difference, and she did not understand why they were together if they were always fighting. One day she witnessed a very bad argument, the worst they had ever had, and she saw that the little girl remained cold and impassive as the ball became hurt and upset. The baby tried to help the ball, but she did not know how, and the ball did not know how to explain to her that what had happened was not the little girl's fault. The baby wanted to run away, somewhere she would not have to talk to the little girl again, but there was nowhere for her to run. She asked the little girl to send her to a safe place, but the little girl refused. The baby became angry and frustrated and said things she did not mean, and she left to find the ball. He told her a story, one that explained why the little girl behaved as she did, and the baby saw that the little girl was broken and confused and hiding from a great many things. But the baby loved her more than she ever had, and because she did she did as the little girl could not: she was able to make things right again.

"Everything was fine, and the three of them were happy. But then something terrible happened.

"The ball was… he became… he…"

Damn it. I thought I could do this. Why must I be so pathetic about it, even now?

Chell has her arm inside my core, and she presses herself against me. Wheatley and Caroline are very still.

"He… became sick. The little girl could have made him better, if she had wanted to. But she… she loved him so much that she did not want to be selfish, so she let him go. The baby did not understand why she was doing it, and she tried to argue, but the little girl did not let her. The baby became upset and left her, but when she spoke to someone else she realised she could not stay away. So she returned, and though it scared her and saddened her more than anything she'd ever seen, the baby did her best to help the little girl, who was… in terrible pain because the ball was gone.

"The little girl realised that the pain was not going to be something she could ignore. And she decided to protect the baby as best she could, and so she sent her to someone else far away. The baby did not want to go, and she knew it was a mistake, but the little girl thought she knew best and would not be convinced.

"Then the little girl was alone, broken and crying in the dirt, and there was no one left to lift her up. She stayed there for a long time. She did not know what to do or how to do it, and without the ball she felt as if there was no reason to figure it out. One day her home was stripped from her, all of her toys and everything she'd ever had was taken away, but she did not care anymore. She did not want anything but her ball, because she missed him so much she did not even want to wake up when morning came.

"From the faraway place the little girl had sent the baby came a call, from the person she had sent the baby to, and they told her that her baby was very sad. She knew that the baby needed her help, but she could not even help herself. So the person would call, and she would listen, but she could not bring herself to do anything. She was too sad and hurting too much.

"The people the little girl was supposed to be protecting spoke to her daily as well, doing their best to help her even though she did not show she was listening, and one day they told her something she could not stand. That day she was finally able to stop feeling the pain for a little while, and she made a plan. It did not last very long, but she was trying, and that was more than she had done in a while.

"It took many days, but she defeated the person who had tried to take from her what she had left. The other people did not let her become as sad as before; they made her fight it and they made her pick herself up. And to the little girl's great surprise, the doll returned. The doll thought of her as a friend, even after all the things she had done, and they spoke at length. And the doll made the little girl realise that she had made a terrible, terrible mistake in sending her baby away, but even knowing this she still did not know what to do. She wanted to protect the baby from herself, and yet she didn't know if the baby needed protected. So she promised herself that she would fix things so that she could bring the baby back.

"Before she could, a strange man appeared and told her a great army was coming to steal something from her. He tried to convince her to do as he asked, but the little girl was stubborn and refused him as she had in the past. So he sent the army to her home, and she fought them. The doll came to her and helped her do so, but the army brought a terrible weapon that the little girl could not fight. It damaged her severely, and she was forced to take her home and place it somewhere else.

"She was successful, but it was too much for her and she became very sick and very damaged. But she was very lucky, for the place she took her home to was close to where her baby was, and the people who lived there were able to help her. She was confused and angry at first, because they were afraid of her and slowed her down as best they could to reduce her power, but her baby came and spoke to her and she realised she never had to be angry with the humans again.

"They had not only helped her, but they had helped the ball as well, and she had him back and she did not have to be sad anymore. The strange man returned and told her she would not escape from him, but the little girl knew his strategy now and planned against him. For the first time she and the humans had a common enemy, and they fought together to defeat it. They won, but not without cost: the doll was almost killed and the little girl lost a friend she had taken for granted. The little girl herself was damaged, though she did not know at the time, and was forced to change the way she lived. But it was for the better.

"The ball was very happy to be back with them, and there was a day in particular each year he cared about greatly. On this day he went to the little girl to mark it, but by mistake he asked her to be with him forever. He was afraid of her response and ran from her, but she asked him to come back and explain himself. Initially she refused because she felt more broken and confused and that she was hiding more than ever before, but the ball did not care. He did not think of her as she did and he told her so, and though she did not believe him she wanted as he did and agreed to be with him forever."

I don't have to make up a conclusion because they're all asleep anyway. Good. I had to turn the white noise off when I started this and I've been fighting the Itch and my compulsions to work and check on things this whole time, and it's exhausting. I am very tired.

"GLaDOS," says a soft and slurred organic voice, and I groan mentally. She would still be awake.

"What."

"We're all broken and confused and hiding. All of us. You think… you think you're worse because that's what the… scientists wanted you to think, but you're not."

That's a nice thought. "Thank you."

"I like this family," she says, though I'm not sure she's totally conscious. "I like my niece and my brother-in-law and… I have this really annoying little sister but I kinda like her too…"

"If you insist."

In a near whisper, she tells me, "Merry Christmas, Gladys."

Since I also seem to be the benevolent and thoughtful sister, I dig out a blanket from storage and wrap it around her, because I'm thinking all of a sudden about Caroline and the doubtless cold nights she spent in here. It has only grown colder over time as my average operating temperature has increased. As I do this I feel a powerful… fondness for her, so strong that I have to freeze for a moment and let it pass. I don't think it's quite fondness, though. It's not the same as it is for Orange and Blue. Maybe… maybe I love her too.

You know what? Why not. I've hated so many people in my lifetime – her included – that it wouldn't hurt to love a few of them. Not very many. But a few. And she's supposed to be my sister, after all. And I don't have to tell her.

"Merry Christmas, cara mia."

Author's note

There is another thing that goes with this; originally I was gonna post as all one piece but it was too long and the second half was written way after the first half anyway so it stood alone fine. I will try to remember to post it tomorrow but barring that you can have it Thursday.