Work Text:
You know the place inside and out, but not from her eyes.
You are still far from your Aperture, caught in the middle of silence, when your conscience decides this thinking game is getting a little too heavy.
You cannot control your brain when, unsolicited, it claims a distraction. Unstable as it is, it moves on its own to seek relief.
It doesn’t even leave you any room for a few words – not even now, when talking to her has never been easier. You are so exhausted and weakened, you find nothing better than having a look around.
It is your biggest mistake yet. Wherever your gaze rests, the world is enormous.
Genuine fear and surprise flood your circuit, nearly knocking you out again. As your unfocused optic roams the landscape, you are forced to measure it without inputs or cameras, left with no other unit than your size. It might just be the low tension, but you are almost positive – the space you are crammed in has never felt this risible and small.
It is something you couldn’t have experienced before. The ocean of emptiness she crosses, in experienced and calculated flight, is made scarier by her harsh speed. While she cuts through the air like she always did, the weight of danger leaves its mark on you for the first time.
From the end of her portal device, you find out your thoughts are slowing down. A pale impression of the sense of touch you lack, built by the few calculations you can manage, is enough to make you dizzy with fear.
It only gets worse when she makes it back to your world. When the curtains of darkness open on the facility you recognize as your own creation, the sense of weakness increases tenfold.
It is not unnatural. You know the place inside and out, but not from her eyes.
You could not see it unfold like this, in whole geographies of pipes and concrete. You never smelt the rust as rotten iron crashed past your feet. You were not there when she crawled through tight spaces, choked by the stench of oil and abandonment.
She was the one to face pits and acid, to jump across depths without an end. She alone, small as she is, watched the mouths of the walls open on red and blue. She dared go where you never were yourself – and if every chance to fall could mean her death, now those threats mean just the same to you.
You have to admit it. It is terrifying.
From her perspective, Aperture must be a monster. You shiver at the thought, with each subtle shift in your balance. The fragility that marks her every step is overwhelming – it makes it harder to ignore her condition, to let the thoughts of your past slip back into focus.
You will never say it out loud, especially when it is all over. You couldn’t. But the awareness stays.
It is horrible, to understand what she has been through.