AN: Hello! :D I'm back! ... Finally. Had an awesome week at my dad's, a fairly ordinary one following that, and finally managed to overcome my writer's block and continue the story. Yay! :D Given that, for those who are following this, it's been almost twenty days (I think) since the last chapter, instead of my intended week, I'll add in my shouts at the bottom of the chapter. ;) Enjoy!

~!~

Chell yawned, wishing sleep would come. Her ears popped and she dragged the pillow off her head, squinting at the clock. Half past one. Another yawn forced her jaws wide and she stared blearily around the room until it subsided. A polished, white surface glinted tantalisingly from the depths of her wardrobe and she groaned quietly, burying her head under the pillow again.

'No. They're not sentient, they're not calling you, they're not-'

Thud. Why did she hear a thud?

Chell slowly withdrew her head from hiding and peered around, almost afraid of what she expected to see. But... the boots hadn't moved. What was the thudding? She sat up a little, ears straining, then she heard it again. In the hallway, someone stumbling about in their sleep, that was all.

She sighed contentedly and laid down again, relaxing.

Thud. Clumsy, whoever it was. Probably Josh. Lanky, clumsy, goofball. That was Josh in a nutshell.

Thud. Clatter.

Chell sat up fast, eyes snapping over to the other side of the room. That noise definitely belonged to the Long Fall Boots. The plastic/metallic clacking of knocking against each other... Her mouth turned dry and she choked down the urge to run across the room at them. They weren't talking, they weren't threatening to stab her, they weren't... They weren't... They weren't sticking out, plain as day, for a second night in a row for no reason.

'GLaDOS would tell me that paranoid delusions of sentient Long Fall Boots demanding my attention are simply a side-effect of not completing Aperture Science Approved Testing Courses, and that I should immediately put them on lest I be euthanised for failing to comply. Compliance rhymes with Science, after all. Neurotoxin doesn't.' Chell thought bemusedly, standing, her gaze locked on the boots. 'I know they're not sentient. I know they don't talk. The only thing they do is what they're built for.' She thought. Her smile widening, she crossed the room and knelt to touch the white-painted surface, as memories flickered through her mind.

Time and time again, until the sheer fact of it was all but seared into her mind, she recalled falling to her death only to have the Long Fall Boots effortlessly catching her weight. Until she had learned that gravity no longer posed a threat, it was of no concern to her. Because of the boots.

Without those boots on her feet, she was not whole. Without the ASHPD, too, she was not whole. These two things were as vital to her survival as oxygen. As vital as avoiding deadly neurotoxin and turrets and lasers. Even outside the Aperture facility, away from the life-threatening environment of Test Chambers and paranoid, slightly-delusional supercomputers , the boots had been a saving grace.

The memory jumped to life in her mind, overpowering all other thoughts, reinforcing the deep-seated conviction of trust in the boots.

~!~

Air hissed between her teeth while Chell rubbed her arms, shivering in the bitter cold. Days in the outdoors were fairly pleasant. Night, however, was freezing and horrible. Her only target was a smattering of artificial light on the horizon. She had no idea how far she'd walked, eyes glued to the black road surface underfoot, following the white line painted so neatly along its' edge. The sun had risen and set four times since she'd first set foot outside the facility, and Chell knew without a shadow of a doubt that she'd be lame by now if not for the cushioned boots easing every single step to a fraction of the strain her body would otherwise have experienced. The moon gleamed overhead, out from behind the thick, lonely cloud that had hidden it earlier. It was full, making the strain on her eyes significantly less when she squinted around herself.

Not that she tended to when the wind bit at her face and made her eyes water, every inch of exposed skin aching and becoming numb. Rolling her sleeves up would have been an option if there were any sleeves to be rolled up. She'd already rolled the pant legs down for warmth, which covered her Long Fall Boots to the ankle and muffled the artificial noise that the heelsprings made, but the upper portion of the jumpsuit was a lost cause, having been muddied and ripped in Old Aperture, and scorched by Wheatley's stupid bombs. The only whole piece, really, was the sleeve she'd torn off and used to bandage her hand.

Chell paused and looked back upon hearing the noise of an engine. She'd heard this sound before, though last time the vehicle she'd seen had whizzed past at stunning speed and she had barely registered any details. The driver certainly hadn't noticed her.

Fortunately the broad, open expanse surrounding the road left plenty of time to see the approaching vehicle. Chell jumped up and down, waving her arms wildly for attention and hoping that, in the darkened landscape, her white tank-top and orange pants would stand out. The headlights of the thing were certainly blinding her, so how could they miss seeing her there?

It went straight past, and Chell gaped at the glowing red tail-lights in disapointment, but then they lit up and the car came to a halt. Overjoyed, she sprinted after it, forcing her tired muscles into action and ignoring the stinging of blisters on her ankles and feet. She covered the hundred-odd meters in a few very short seconds and skidded to a halt beside the front of the thing, and the window slid down, a man's face looking out at her.

"The hell're ya doin' out here, kiddo?" The man asked her. He had a light, drawling voice.

Chell mimed putting something to her mouth and eating it, since she doubted getting so much as a croak out of her parched, disused vocal cords.

"What, you can't talk? Are you brain-damaged, girl?" The man asked. Chell blinked, then shook her head. She backed up quickly when the door clicked open, and the man got out. He was rather tall, and he beckoned. "C'mere, I can't see you in th' dark over there." The man said.

Uncertainly, Chell followed him to the front of the vehicle, making sure to keep a good distance between them. She guessed it was at least two or three meters. She examined him wearily, well aware of the poor state her body was in. He wore black pants with a smart crease down the fronts of the legs, shiny black shoes, light-blue shirt with more straight, smart-looking creases along the arms. The aparrent uniform included a thin black belt, and on the left breast of his shirt was a badge with a gold-colored shield on it. The lapels of his shirt, too, had tiny gold shield-shaped pins in them.

"C'mere, I ain't gonna hurt you. Seriously. Haven't you ever seen a cop before?"

Chell shook her head, edging into the light, giving herself a cursory glance as much as he was doing. Filthy jumpsuit, filthy tank-top, the toes of her Long Fall Boots just barely peeking out under the edge of her pant cuffs and the heelspring all but invisible in the shadow of her legs. She wondered if her appearance might make him a little sympathetic, and decided to try her plea again. This time she mouthed the word too. 'Food?'

"I'll be a monkey's uncle if you're only hungry, sweetheart." The 'cop' said. "You look like you been through hell. Did you run away from somewhere?"

Chell nodded, hanging her head.

"You got a name? Can you talk?"

A cross between a shake of the head and a shrug. Chell avoided meeting his gaze, and flinched when he huffed in frustration.

"How about this? I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. You've clearly been through some kinda hell, but it don't look like you're gonna talk about it anytime soon. If you don't want to, that's fine. It's your business." He said in a patient tone. "I don't know how you got to be way out here in the middle of nowhere, but I'd be goin' against my job if I just left you here. There's a women's shelter in the next town. I'll give you a lift there, and you can get somethin' to eat, and a bed for the night if they've got room. How 'bout it?" The cop said. Chell's jaw dropped, and she saw a smile cross his features. "C'mon. Jump in the back here." The cop said, nodding to the car.

He walked ahead of her and opened the back door, though Chell baulked when she saw the cage seperating the front section from the back. She met his gaze -he looked patient, but up close she could see that was a mask for something. Tiredness? Annoyance? So, hoping to convey the question easily enough, she reached slowly into the car and poked at the thin wire of the cage before whipping her hand back. He looked, then his face split into a weary grin.

"Don't worry, I ain't gonna chuck you in the lockup. It's just the law, I can't let you in the front wit' me." He explained. "I'll take you to that shelter I mentioned. My niece, Alexis, she works there. She's a good kid."

Chell relaxed marginally and climbed into the car, and she was immediately struck by the warmth. No blowing wind in here! And her poor feet... Her faithful boots had probably saved her from wearing the soles right off her feet, but Chell was still sure she'd burst a couple of those blisters with her little run just now.

"Here you go." The cop said, reaching into the front of the car and then coming back to her. He was holding a small bag of some sort, made from red material with a white symbol stamped on the front. Some sort of animal shape inside a circle. "I know it's not much, but you're hungrier than I am." The cop said. At the same time, he unzipped the top of the bag and pulled out a sandwich wrapped in clear plastic. "Ham, cheese, betroot. Go on."

Tentatively, Chell accepted the little parcel and picked at the plastic until she found an edge she could open it from. Meanwhile, the cop shut the door and got back in the front, and the car began moving again. Chell ignored the sparse bush zipping past outside, nibbling at the sandwich and rapidly discovering the nirvana of ham, cheese and beetroot.

~!~

Chell licked her lips. She could practically taste that sandwich again. She could certainly still remember the ache throughout her body from that long walk. Though she'd never pinpointed the location of that small tin shed on a map, she knew vaguely how far she'd walked. Five hundred kilometers. If anything, she thought it was a slight over-estimation, but then again she'd never disclosed anything about her former life to another living human. Unavoidably, Lexi knew she'd escaped from somewhere, and that she'd been picked up in the middle of nowhere with only a white tank top and filthy, fluorescent-orange pants to her name.

But the often-outspoken girl had never said a word of this to their housemates. The most Emma and Sarah knew was that Chell's past was something she got easily worked-up about. Early on they'd attempted to get information out of her. Lexi -dependable, brash, hard-headed Lexi- had defended her like an angry bull and rapidly put them in their place.

'Too bad there's literally a thousand years of extinction between us, or I'd swear we were related.' Chell thought absently, stroking the plastic-like surface of the boot in her hand. 'And a few millenia of humans crawling out of the mud all over again and becoming the dominant species of a nearly-exact replica of the Earth she and I came from. I wonder what GLaDOS would think of the similarities... If she knows... Just think of the Science she could do.'

A laugh bubbled from her throat, then Chell hissed a breath between her teeth and jumped up, stripping her pyjamas off, rapidly dressing in knee-length shorts that were comfortably loose around her muscular thighs, and a cropped sports top that hugged her skin so tightly that it left exactly nothing to the imagination, only bound her ample breasts securely to her chest, ensuring they wouldn't ache throughout the excercize Chell could already envision putting her body through.

Finally, she slipped her feet into the Long Fall Boots and grinned as they were latched in place. She got to her feet with ease, her body well remembering the motions. The boots were only as awkward as high-heeled shoes -that was probably the reason they'd gone unnoticed, really, with people thinking her posture was due to something they were familiar with and not even imagining the presence of her futuristic boots, let alone asking Chell to hitch up the leg of her pants and show them off.

Silently, Chell edged out of her room and down the hallway. With the no one else having made it to their own beds and, instead, fallen asleep in the living room, she was especially careful to tiptoe, avoiding even the faint, muffled noise of the heelsprings on the carpeted floor. A glint of light caught her eye and she paused. The 'fridge was open a little way.

'Josh helped himself, I see.' Chell thought, eyeing the dozing teenager and the crusts of bread on a plate sitting by his hand on the floor. She edged into the kitchen to shut the 'fridge, but froze when she saw the ham and lettuce left out on the bench. 'Sloppy! But...'

Chell grinned, the lure of food irresistable. Especially given her most recent memory still teasing her mouth with the taste of fresh salad and soft bread. And it would only take a minute. Two pieces of bread on the chopping board, butter on them. A few thin, curling pieces of juicy ham and then a large square of cheese on top, followed by several deep-scarlet discs of dripping beetroot. Chell sucked the excess juice from the edges of the slices before adding them to her snack, licking her pink-stained fingertips clean, and she topped the sandwich off with a large, crisp piece of iceberg lettuce that made a muffled crunching sound when she pressed the second piece of bread firmly on top of the lot.

"Whassat?" A sleepy voice interrupted as Chell was shutting the 'fridge door. Chell froze, eyes trailing slowly up to find the owner of the voice.

"Just me, Lexi." Chell breathed, terrified. The other girl blinked lazily.

"I heard somethin'." She mumbled.

"I'm making a sandwich."

"Oh. You're dressed." Lexi stated.

"I... I'm going for a walk. Can't sleep." Chell bit her tongue, hating that she lied to the other girl.

"Oh." Lexi blinked sleepily again.

And then Lexi let her head drop, a tiny snore escaping her. Chell remained frozen, fighting to breathe properly. How the hell...? How the hell hadn't Lexi seen the Long Fall Boots?

Then she saw it. Lexi was sitting on the far end of the couch, curled up in a ball under her dressing-gown with her body angled away from the kitchen. From there, the girl's own shoulder, the back of the couch and the cupboards in the kitchen blocked her view of anything below Chell's waist.

'That was too damn close. Josh must've woken her a bit, or she might not have noticed me.' Chell thought, grabbing her sandwich and tiptoeing even more quietly to the front door. Once outside, she jammed her sandwich in her mouth so she could use both hands to shut the door as quietly as possible, then she escaped the immediate area at a lope, picking her way across the grassy yardlets to avoid making too much noise.

~!~

AN: Hehehe... that was close, wasn't it? But, looking at what's coming up, I should probably make a point of mentioning that this story will have to move into the M rated catagory. Quite a bit more swearing and such, and definitely worse swearing at that. But necessary, I think, or this would be a bit of a snore.

Shouts! Big ones, first off, to Emerald Em and also exr, without whom this entire thing may have been an enormous flop three chapters ago. You guys have no idea how much the encouragement has kept the story going, and my will to keep writing it.

Also:

Pandora(dot)Writing: Cue evil smirk. Poor GLaDOS...

Erisna: Coo away, I'm not done yet! Hahaha! And we'll see CC soon enough... Yes, btw, I did get a little carried away with the tecnobabble... Oops!

DabblesInDrabbles: Really? I'd been awake about 28 hours when I was staring at my monitor and thoroughly lost for inspiration, alternately looking at pics on failbog andlistening to Jurassic Park in the background. Then my mum asked me where our old 'dinosaur' computer was and BANG! Inspiration struck... with a cricket bat.

Remember, the next update will put the story into the M catagory. Swearing. And... stuff. Yeah. I need sleep.