A/N: One more chapter after this! Then we'll get on to the *fanfare* sequel! :D I know, why don't I just keep it all one fic? Because I like things to be neat as far as my writing, and I want pre-Caroline GLaDOS and post-Caroline GLaDOS in different fics. This one was simply her loss and rediscovery of Caroline. The next one expands much more on… er… something else. And yes, CavexCaroline oneshots will be present on my account, so don't forget to Author Alert me. :D Also, for those that haven't looked up the words in the turret opera, the title of the chapter comes from the lyrics of the turret opera. It translates, I believe, to My Beautiful Child, from everything I've read and heard. Beyond that, just read. Enjoy. And review! I love reviews!

Disclaimer: I don't own Portal. Or GLaDOS. Or Cave Johnson. You get the picture.

Chapter 14: Cara Mia Bella

As he had put it, he was bloody massive, and his insanity made him extremely intimidating. Chell hesitated on the platform of the core receptacle, but eventually moved off. I moved the receptacle under the floor to protect myself from whatever foolhardy plan he had to try to kill her. I worked quickly, first hacking my way into the video feed from all the cameras in the facility, including Wheatley's optic. He had no idea of course. I was a bit better at hacking than he was. From this vantage point, I could see the bombs he was throwing at Chell indiscriminately. Chell wasn't stupid, though; she moved behind a pipe that held conversion gel, and as he launched the next volley of bombs, they slammed into the pipe, spraying conversion gel all over the chamber. He was as good as dead now, as far as I was concerned. He still had the bomb proof shields, but they tended not to cover all of him. Finally, she managed to get a bomb to hit the chassis.

"Great!" I called over the freshly hacked speakers. "I'm delivering the first core up by the cat walk." I chose very carefully of the available cores; this one was obsessed with space, probably built back when Aperture was also competing in the space race. However, the poor thing had become corrupt and now spoke about things like 'space cops' as well. Chell snatched it just as the catwalk collapsed, breaking open a pipe of repulsion gel. She bounced up to the first core receptacle and planted the space core just as Wheatley came back on line. I ignored him as he yelled at Chell for putting cores on him as I searched for the next core. I heard the explosion that meant a bomb had found its mark and snatched up the next core, whom introduced himself to me as 'Rick the Adventure Core'.

"Good work, I'm delivering the next core," I called, dropping Rick into the chamber on a claw. His continuing movements caused the cord to swing back and forth, giving him the look of some misshapen lantern. Chell bounced off the repulsion gel through where the catwalk used to be, snatching Rick off the cord and rushing over to attach him to Wheatley. When Wheatley came back online this time, it was clear the cores were getting to him.

"I told you not to put these cores on me!" he snapped in fury. "Did She tell you to put them on me? It's just making me stronger, luv!" The last part was very obviously yelled to the room at large, meaning myself. I snickered to myself.

"Space? Wanna go to space?" Space Core asked cheerily. Wheatley looked like he was about to explode.

"NO ONE'S GOING TO SPACE, MATE!" he cried, throwing more bombs in his fury. Thanks to more well placed portals, another bomb went off on the chassis, knocking him offline. I started to snatch up the last core, a strange little core that spouted off 'facts' that more often turned out to be completely false, though he didn't seem to know that. I attached him to a claw and made to drop him in the same place as the other two, but something stopped me.

No you don't! Wheatley snarled somewhere inside the mainframe, where Chell couldn't hear. Sorry, luv, I just can't let you do that. I have this COMPLETELY. Under. Control.

Ha! Oh really? That's why the facility's going to self destruct in a couple of minutes if I don't get back in my body, right? I snapped at him, blocking him away from me with a few well programmed firewalls. I could hear his raging nearby as I dropped the fact core where Wheatley had stopped the claw, which was a little ways away under some propulsion gel. Using a pair of portals, Chell launched herself high enough with the propulsion gel to grab the Fact Core from the claw and stick it on the front of Wheatley's chassis. He came roaring back on line, almost literally.

"Core 100% corrupt. Initiating core transfer." That pleasant voice was my new best friend. It was so close I could taste it! "Replacement core, are you ready to begin the procedure?"

"Yes, come on!" I cried from the potato.

"Corrupted core, are you ready to begin the procedure?"

"What do you think?" Wheatley snapped, his impatience and irritation painfully obvious. Though apparently not to the announcer.

"Interpreting vague answer as 'yes'." It said cheerfully.

"Nonono! You didn't pick up on my sarcasm!" he corrected quickly. That's because you're terrible at it, I thought to myself.

"Stalemate detected. Procedure cannot continue." Dammit! For the love of Cave Johnson, I really HATED that stalemate thing. Wheatley let out a dark chuckle for reasons beyond me.

"Fire detected in the stalemate annex. Extinguishing." Wait, no! As the fire sprinklers went off, the gels that had painted the chamber washed away in all but two places; directly under the chassis and on the roof of the stalemate annex, which was safely behind an iron grate. I sighed in relief. That was all Chell needed.

"Quick, go press the button!" I cried from the potato.

"Do not press that button!" Wheatley snarled in warning.

"We're so close! Go press the button!" Chell had already placed a portal on the roof of the annex and was now racing back, shooting a portal under Wheatley. I could see from here that she had a couple of nasty burns and would probably be limping if weren't for all the adrenaline. She leapt through the portal, landing in front of the button. She reached for it, but the next part all seemed to happen in slow motion for me. A wall lowered behind the button, revealing a row of blinking bombs, no time for Chell to run or even breathe, the explosion broke open the steel mesh barrier that had kept Chell out and threw her out as though she weighed no more than my potato, flinging the portal gun from her hands as she landed hard. I couldn't speak through the surge of raw emotion and the sudden flood of memories that the explosion had brought on.

"PART FIVE! BOOBY TRAP THE STALEMATE BUTTON!"

The floodgate of my memories had fallen open at the raw terror I felt for Chell's life. My entire life as a human, as Caroline, was suddenly being laid bare before me, as though it were a video file I'd started to play, starting from my very earliest memories as a child, when I had been a strange science nerd that no one liked in a time period when women generally didn't do that kind of thing. The children had been horrible to me, but at least I had the satisfaction of knowing what I would become. It moved into the teen years; I had not dated much. My family had ostracized me when I announced I wanted to be a scientist. Then my adult life, which had been dominated thoroughly by Aperture Science and Cave Johnson. My job and my boss came before all others, especially my boss. From a quick glance, I could tell we had been a bit more than just boss and employee. And then I found what I'd been searching so hard for; the explanation as to why I cared about Chell.

The memory was a simple one, but powerful. I was looking down at a tiny baby held in my arms, and the emotion wasn't like anything I'd ever felt as a robot. I recognized it, though. I'd recognized it on Bring Your Daughter to Work day as parents tried desperately to save their children. As Caroline succeeded in the effort to save her child, whether I'd known it at the time or not. But the memory didn't end there.

Later that memory, I assumed it was night from how dark it was outside, I snuck out with the little bundle. From the look of it and what I knew about how human children developed, the baby couldn't have been more than a week or two old. Thanks to my knowledge of human laws, the next bit made sense to me; I came upon a large building labeled Fire Department. I hurried inside, a hood on my jacket carefully hiding my face. I handed the baby over to someone inside, an official, and I felt another powerful emotion I'd never before felt; heartbreak. A horrible pain in my chest like someone had literally ripped my heart out and tore it in two. I only said one thing before leaving.

"Her name is Chell."

So that was it then. Chell was Caroline's – my – daughter. I could see my motive for it. I hadn't wanted Chell to grow up around science. It was too dangerous, I didn't want her hurt. It was by stroke of bad luck that she had been adopted by a future Aperture employee. I was in complete and utter shock. It was utterly disorienting. In one way, now that I had reclaimed my lost memories, I was Caroline and there was no way to go back to how I was before. And yet, I was still completely me, still GLaDOS, still the robot I had been for 999999(however long that was supposed to be, my internal timepiece had malfunctioned sometime after I'd gone offline) ever since the scientists had brought me online. How could I be two consciousnesses?

Caroline felt like a thousand lifetimes ago, and yet the memories were perfectly preserved. GLaDOS was the here and now. I had to perform my duty as AI of Aperture Science and stop the moron from burning us up in a nuclear meltdown. I started to frantically hack myself back into the mainframe; since Chell had failed to hit the stalemate button, I was still stuck in the receptacle and Wheatley was still in charge. I was pleased to see that Chell had stirred from where she'd landed. She looked over at Wheatley with the same look she had given me just before defeating me. Defiance, determination, the will to live. She snatched up the gun and struggled to roll over, so she was half sitting, half leaning on her arm.

"-Had to bloody play cat and mouse, didn't you? Well now we're all gonna pay for it, cause we're ALL GONNA BLOODY DIE!" It was then that she seemed to get an idea. She was staring at the ceiling, through a hole in the roof, at the moon. Moon rock is an excellent portal conductor. The memory came back to me like an echo across a cave. I felt pure panic shoot through my circuits at the thought of the vacuum of space. Chell, don't! Too late. She'd already fired.

For a heart stopping moment, everything stood still. Then I knew the other portal had found its mark. Everything was suddenly being sucked out of the room. Part of the chassis detached, leaving Wheatley dangling near the portal, almost out of it, desperately trying to pull himself back in. Chell tried to brace herself with her legs, but even long fall boots could not fight the pull of a vacuum. She was sucked towards the portal; tossing the portal gun aside, her arms flailed, searching for something, anything, to hang onto. She found it in the handles above and below Wheatley's iris. They both were pulled out of the portal. Pure fear shot through my processes as I surged past the remaining firewalls, reclaiming control.

"Let go! I can pull myself in! I can still fix this!" I heard him cry. I could feel him trying to come back in. I accessed his optic and saw Chell clinging on for dear life. I snapped.

"I've already fixed it!" I snarled viciously, sensing all was returning to normal as my consciousness reclaimed control and started upkeep on functions I considered secondary that he had neglected. "And you are not coming back!" I started to reach through the portal with a robotic claw. I had to time it perfectly. He was crying for her to hold onto him tighter, but I could see her strength was ebbing. I slammed the claw into his casing, knocking him free of the chassis, and immediately reached out to snag Chell's arm before she could be sucked into the abyss of space. She watched him spiral into the stars before turning to the portal in disbelief. And I understood why. I would have expected me to let her fly into space as well, as punishment for killing me. But it was not GLaDOS that saved her life. It was Caroline.

Once the portal was closed, and I dropped her to the chamber floor, Chell stared at me in confusion for the briefest of moments before completely blacking out.