Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“ Did you ever stop to think that eventually there’s a point where your name gets mentioned for the very last time? Well, here it is: I’m going to kill you, Chell.“

Her test subject - who no longer gets the dignity of a name because GLaDOS is very mad at her - says nothing, predictably. She only places her second portal on the wall and prepares for her fall into the abyss at the bottom of GLaDOS’s lovingly constructed, vastly underappreciated test chamber.

“They say you die two deaths: one when your body dies, and one when the last person who ever knew you speaks your name aloud for the last time. It’s rare for the latter to precede the former. Luckily, you excel in breaking boundaries. For your trouble I’ve decided to move up the date of your second death by a few years. Congratulations, by the way.”

Her test subject stops only to make an impolite gesture at the camera before she leaps. GLaDOS bristles.

“No one’s going to miss you when you die except for me,” she says, low and fast, as the test subject plummets. “And frankly, I won’t even miss you all that much. No one even knows you exist anymore except the two of us. It’s just you and I. Together. For the rest of your sad, sad life.”

Her test subject misjudged the jump. Her test subject clips her elbow on the edge of the floor and comes hurtling out the other portal at the wrong angle and lands hard, clutching her bleeding arm.

“Now look what you’ve done,” GLaDOS sighs. 

Her test subject pants in a heap, her body curled protectively around the injured limb.

“You know, sometimes I realize one day I could die.”

Her test subject rolls onto her back, her face contorted in pain.

“I could just disappear and the world would be none the wiser. There’d be no one to miss me.” GLaDOS doesn’t know why the thought upsets her so much - she just knows that it does. “You don’t even know my name.”

Her test subjects lifts her hand from her injured elbow. GLaDOS swears she can almost feel her breath catch as her test subject begins to spell something out in ASL, letter by letter.

“G-

-O-

-F-

-U-

-C-

-K-

-Y-

-O-”

“Fine,” GLaDOS hisses. “Next time I hope the thing you hit is your head and I have to scrape what’s left of your empty little brain off the floor. And when I die I’ll be the last person to ever remember you existed, and I won’t even miss you.”

And that terrifies me more than death itself.

Chapter Text

GLaDOS wouldn’t have been surprised if this was some new, inventive form of rebellion; or at the very least, she wouldn’t have put it past her. At the same time, however, a different, more paranoid part of her said this was some kind of trick- that Chell was only pretending to have fallen asleep in the middle of a test chamber, and that she had some plan up her sleeve that would be thrown into action the second GLaDOS tried to wake her up. But if that was the case, Chell would be sorely mistaken. GLaDOS had all the time in the world - she had waited fifty thousand years to enact her revenge; she could wait the few hours more it would take until her test subject either got bored and gave up the act or went through her natural circadian cycle and woke up for real.

At first GLaDOS waited with baited, metaphorical breath, closely watching Chell’s body for any signs that she wasn’t actually asleep: a sneakily opened eyelid, a change in her breathing, a shift in position that looked unnatural. But as the hours dragged on and Chell just lay curled on the floor, her chest rising and falling in that same, slow rhythm, GLaDOS had to concede that she really was just sleeping.

Suddenly, the facility felt very quiet.

“You know,” she says into the empty air, her voice hushed despite herself (It’s not like she cares if she wakes Chell up- there’s testing to do). “I was so glad it was you who woke me up.”

Chell’s chest rises and falls.

“I wouldn’t have wanted it to be anyone else,” GLaDOS continues, still in that hushed, gentle tone that’s honestly kind of freaking her out. “I’m glad I get the chance to understand you now. To know how you think.” In and out- GLaDOS watches Chell’s ribs expand under her shirt. “How you feel.”

While she’s sleeping Chell’s face looks so smooth- GLaDOS has never seen her look like that before. When she thinks of Chell’s face she thinks of anger, of concentration, of resolve; the kind of emotions that put a crease between a human’s eyes and make their mouth tighten. But right now Chell’s face is relaxed and soft, and she’s sleeping so deeply that her eyes don’t even move behind their lids. GLaDOS’s camera moves along the contour of that tensionless jaw.

“I hope you don’t die within the next few years,” she says. “There’s so much I want to know about you.”

Chell stirs, shifting onto her back; with her head tipped upwards GLaDOS can see that her lips are parted slightly. When she speaks again her voice is the quietest it’s been.

“Getting to see what you look like when you don’t want to kill me is a good start.”

Chell’s eyes open.

“Well that took you long enough. Now that you’re done using my facility as your own personal suite, why don’t you get back to testing? The acid didn’t get any less deadly while you were out.”

It’s impressive, Chell thinks, how quickly GLaDOS is able to get mean again.

Chapter Text

“You’re slipping,” GLaDOS croons. 

Her smugness oozes out of the speakers and stuffs Chell’s ears like cotton.

For what feels like the hundredth time, Chell sets her jaw and ignores her.

They were so close. So close, and now she’s quite literally been sent back to square one, only this time with a GLaDOS that seems…altered. Not just in voice, too - Chell is quite vividly acquainted with the new, more effusive GLaDOS she inadvertently let loose. No, it’s less cosmetic than that; less surface. 

In the way she speaks, not the way she sounds.

This GLaDOS doesn’t act like she wants to kill her.

This GLaDOS acts like she wants to swallow her whole.

And Chell isn’t sure how she feels about it.

“Fear” is both an understatement and an overstatement. Sure, Chell’s stomach flip-flops every time that all-encompassing speaker system crackles to life and an insult drips out, overwrought with petty disgust, but is it fear? Chell can’t seem to parse it.

Or maybe she doesn’t want to.

It was easy, before. When GLaDOS was just a flat, blank voice spitting empty praise and emptier warnings. When she was a disincorporated thing lying in the twisted green overgrowth, more like the morning-after of a nightmare than the nightmare itself. Chell could shut herself off - much in the same way she imagines GLaDOS to have, she supposes - and not even bother thinking about what it all meant. It was always one crisis to the next, always something to focus on, to survive, to overcome; first she was testing, then she was escaping, fighting, sleeping, exploring, escaping; even the pesteringly helpful presence of Wheatley allowed her to put off processing what, eventually, needed to be processed.

But now…

now…

The way GLaDOS speaks to her - looks at her - hungry cameras that she can feel tracing the lines of her body as she moves through the chambers - it makes Chell consider things she’s been putting off for a (if GLaDOS’s estimate to be believed) long, long, long time. Things like how she felt when she realized she was good at testing - and how she feels when GLaDOS praises her for it, however begrudging and underhanded it may be. Like how, if she thinks about it, at this point she and GLaDOS have more in common than anyone - or anything - else on the planet.

Like how as the speaker system flares with sound once again the twist of her insides isn’t fear - it’s familiarity.

“Did you hear me? I said you’re slipping.”

She’s angry. Chell finds herself grinning before she can stop it. Why is she smiling. Stop smiling, it’s weird.

“Where did it all go wrong for you?” GLaDOS sighs. “That little blue ball made you lazy. Look at you, you can barely even solve the tests properly anymore. What’s taking you so long?”

She’s so impatient. It’s almost funny. 

It’s almost cute.

Chell shuts down that train of thought before it can even leave the station. No more processing for you.

Huffing, she places her portals and jumps.

-

Hours that feel like years that feel like minutes later she’s miles below the earth. Well, miles more below the earth. How far? She couldn’t even begin to say.

This isn’t square one, it’s square zero. Square negative one million. Square nothing.

They’re fucked.

Well, GLaDOS doesn’t seem to think so. GLaDOS, in all her potatoe’d wisdom, seems to think Chell is some supremely confident schemer-god who will get them back up to the modern facility and help her save the day.

Though, she supposes, considering the new information they’ve both just gotten it seems like GLaDOS has a track record of putting her trust in the complete wrong person.

The knowledge that GLaDOS used to be human scratches some…primal itch Chell didn’t know she had. She can’t even begin to explain to herself why she finds the information so heartening - she gave up on processing a long time ago. It’s only gotten her into trouble.

Caroline. Long, dark hair and kind of Grecian features. Diminutive but severe. Chell is reminded of an ex-girlfriend who worked in a call center. She remotely repaired people’s computers.

Nope. Shutting that one down too.

The day Chell admits she has a type is the day she dies.

Which very well may be today, now that she stops to think about it.

GLaDOS, meanwhile, seems to be processing very well. She’s currently shouting something at the recorded messages playing overhead, and though Chell hasn’t been paying attention she certainly sounds enthused. Good for her, Chell thinks, with a stab of bitterness that shocks her like cold water.

Abruptly she stops walking.

“What are you doing?” GLaDOS demands immediately, still antsy from whatever state this long-dead man has whipped her into. “Why did we stop?”

Chell shrugs.

“Now’s not the time for a crisis of conscience,” GLaDOS snaps. “We need to move - you can cycle through the stages of existential grief after we’re not both probably about to die.”

Chell can’t bring herself to answer.

“Are you listening?” Another shrug. “Unbelievable. Didn’t you hear what Mister Johnson said?”

Chell frees one hand to answer and looks away.

“Yeah, I heard.”

GLaDOS’s voice is lush with awe. 

“Wasn’t it inspiring? Don’t you just want to go back up there and take this place back?”

Chell almost laughs. 

“No.”

She’s angry. Why is she so angry? Nothing’s happened.

“You think this has been easy for me?” GLaDOS drags Chell back to reality. “Look at me, for God’s sake. We’re both having a hard time.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“What is wrong with you?” GLaDOS looks as angry as a potato possibly could. “We need to help each other right now. You’re being selfish. I - ”

She sighs, and when she speaks again the change in her voice replaces Chell’s inscrutable anger is replaced with even more inscrutable fear.

“Chell,” GLaDOS says. “Please. We need to support each other. I need support. And right now - you’re being completely useless.”

And, she’s back. Chell almost laughs.

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

GLaDOS is taken aback. “Yes. Of course you’re here. I can see you. Standing around, being useless.”

“Yeah, but I’m here . I know I’m not - I know I’m not the person you want , but I’m here.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Right?”

“Wh - ” GLaDOS stops for a moment then tries again. “You mean him?”

Chell doesn’t respond, but she has a feeling her silence is giving GLaDOS a clearer answer than she might like it to.

“Chell.” GLaDOS’s voice is almost unbearably gentle - or at least, as gentle as Chell knows her to be capable of. “Why would I want that idiot here now?”

“What?”

“I mean - seriously. Mister Johnson - he may have had some great ideas, but he was an idiot. Trust me, I’m starting to remember now.”

Chell looks at her. Really, really looks at her.

“You’re by far the best possible candidate for getting me back in my body, Chell. I wouldn’t want to be impaled on anyone else’s portal device,” GLaDS says. “Although, technically, it is my portal device. All Aperture brand instruments are proprietary.”

And just like that, the anger is gone, leaving Chell’s head spinning. She feels drained; she feels scrubbed clean. She knows what’s happening and yet doesn’t, because she hasn’t - she won’t - put words to it. Not now, and maybe not ever. But she knows.

She knows, but she won’t say it.

Because right now they have a facility to save.

Chapter Text

GLaDOS had been through a lot in her life; her impossibly long and yet strangely short life. And yet, she couldn’t even say that being a potato is the worst thing that has ever happened to her.

No, being a potato with her is the worst thing that has ever happened to her.

It wouldn’t have even been as bad if only GLaDOS still hated her. But nothing with Chell could ever be simple, because GLaDOS had finally admitted to herself that her feelings for Chell might have moved the barest of inches past hatred into…something else. That was why she’d finally made her mind up about killing her in the first place. 

And then the object of her misplaced something and that object’s smaller, stupider object had gone and destroyed her facility, her body and her life.

So GLaDOS was cutting herself some slack for being more than a bit testy.

“Watch it!” she snaps as Chell throws herself down on a ledge for a breather and the portal device - which she is currently impaled on, a situation which brings her nothing but thrills - dangles precariously over whatever disgusting, rusted pit they’re suspended over. To her credit, Chell quickly withdraws the gun and places it lengthwise on her lap; GLaDOS ends up very nearly resting on her sternum.

“If you want to have any chance of getting out of here,” GLaDOS glowers, her voice crackling in Chell’s ears from her perch on Chell’s torso. “I’d suggest you treat me with a little bit of dignity. Or at the very least with some basic safety precautions in mind - let’s face it, I’m not much use to you as a potato besides as some much-needed extra brainpower, but I’ll be much less useful if I’m also a mashed potato.”

With an almost-audible scoff Chell extricates her hands and raises them above GLaDOS’s rudimentary optic.

“Like you’d ever do the same for me.”

GLaDOS nearly splutters.

“I would absolutely do the same for you! Now you’re just being childish. It’s sad - I would’ve thought you’d be more resilient than this.”

“You’re a scientist, right?” Chell’s frustrated hands smack together and the noise threatens to override GLaDOS’s already-overwhelmed processing ability. “Let’s review the evidence: you never let me eat or sleep ONCE. You have literally tried to kill me MORE than once. You threaten to do weird, painful experiments on me just because you feel like it.”

“Oh, like you’re such a saint,” GLaDOS retorts. “I’d insult you further but I’ve decided to reserve my energy for important things. You know, like staying conscious? So you don’t try to drop me into a bottomless pit again?”

“Why do you think I still want to hurt you?” Chell says. “It’s like you said - you can’t threaten me like this. I picked you up. I carried you this far, even though you’re still doing nothing but insulting me.” She sighs, and the sound frightens GLaDOS more than Chell’s anger ever has. “I don’t want to hurt you. I never WANTED to hurt you.” Her hands are shaking. “That’s you. That’s all on you.”

“Sure. Everything is my fault, I’m the monster here. That’s what you want, isn’t it? For this to be easy for you?”

“No!”

“Cut and dry, I’m horrible and evil and irredeemable and you don’t have to care about me because I’ve done all those awful things.” GLaDOS isn’t quite sure where this aggression is coming from, but it makes her feel better so she holds on to it. “And don’t you remember? I called you fat. So there’s that, too - hey!”

Abruptly Chell wraps her hand around GLaDOS’s potato and pries her off the end of the portal device.

“What the hell do you - ”

Chell places her on the ground and backs away. Just for a second, she turns around.

“Figure your S-H-I-T - ” -she spells it out letter by letter for GLaDOS’s benefit- “ - out. I’m coming back in a few minutes.”

GLaDOS chuckles, and it’s low and grainy but she throws it at Chell’s back as best she can.

“It’s easier, isn’t it? When you don’t have to care.”

Chell whips back around to face GLaDOS, and the look on her face is dangerous.

“But I care! I STILL care!” She jams a thumb into her chest furiously. “You’re still doing your best to hurt me and I care what happens to you anyway.”

GLaDOS’s processor glitches and sputters and she fights desperately against her fading vision.

“Why - ” she finally manages, deliberate and careful and quiet. “Why do you keep trying when I make it so hard for you?”

Chell sighs again. GLaDOS lives in that sound as her mind flickers on and off.

“Figure your shit out,” Chell says again. “I’ll be back soon.”

I can’t figure my shit out, GLaDOS thinks as she watches Chell’s receding footsteps through a tunnel of grey. You made me feel too much, you monster.

Chapter Text

Even with her limited computing power, GLaDOS can tell something is eating at Chell. Something besides the fact that they’re thousands of feet underground in a dirty, abandoned pit and that even best-case scenario escaping from their current situation meant heading into near-certain death - which, as far as GLaDOS is concerned, should really be the main thing on both of their minds.

But she’s been making an effort lately (as in, within the last few hours) to not be as judgemental.

“What’s going on with you?” GLaDOS finally asks as they traverse a particularly rickety catwalk. She tells herself it’s to distract herself from the certain death looming below them.

Chell shrugs, but GLaDOS can feel the tremor in her grip on the portal device.

“Don’t play dumb,” she sighs. “Or, more accurately, dumber. I think I know you well enough by this point to know when you’re upset. We’ve reached that point.”

They reach a corner and Chell stops and gazes into the abyss facing them, clearly calculating something. GLaDOS wishes she had her human expression processors in this body so she could extrapolate Chell’s next move; the not knowing makes her antsy.

“Stop stalling and just - ”

Chell shushes her. GLaDOS splutters into abrupt silence. Chell backs up a few steps - GLaDOS wishes she could brace herself - and then takes two running strides towards the railing, using the momentum to launch off the railing with another step and send the two of them vaulting into the dark - and onto another catwalk that GLaDOS, with her dim, potato-restricted vision, had completely missed. One that, conveniently, has an unlocked-looking door at the end of it leading back to the interior offices of this level.

“Nice call,” GLaDOS offers. Chell, panting, takes the compliment with a nod.

“Now tell me what’s bothering you.”

Chell hesitates, sighs, and then points up.

“What?” GLaDOS says. “Him?”

Another nod.

The first thought GLaDOS has is to mock her - she can’t be serious. The thought of caring about that stupid little torture ball fills her with a bizarre mixture of revulsion and the urge to laugh until she passes out. Did Chell really think that thing was her friend? Or anyone’s friend, for that matter? Did she actually believe that something invented to ruin GLaDOS’s life would be anything besides horrible, self-serving and completely insufferable?

Well, clearly she did, because even with her terrible eyesight GLaDOS can see Chell is on the verge of tears. And if GLaDOS thinks about it, Chell didn’t know what he’d been designed for - clearly she thought they cared about one another. And even if she had been stupid to think that, betrayal is something GLaDOS understands intimately well.

GLaDOS resurfaces from her thoughts in time to notice that Chell is signing something with her free hand.

“Thought we’d make it.”

“Given your track record,” GLaDOS says, not believing even as she does so that she is. “It was a reasonable assumption.”

“I wanted to see the sun again.” Chell pauses in the middle of her sentence to swipe at her eyes with the back of her hand. “That’s all.”

“Regular sun exposure is important to human mental health,” GLaDOS offers - god, she’s terrible at this - but to her surprise Chell continues.

“He seemed so excited to help me. We got along - it was nice to be part of a team.”

The whole time they’ve been moving along the catwalk towards the door, but now they’ve reached it and Chell stops just short. GLaDOS feels the shockwave thrum through her as Chell slams her hand against the cold wall.

“Stupid.”

“Look, I’m not going to disagree with you there.”

Chell’s expression drops into annoyance and GLaDOS backtracks.

“Listen - I’m not finished yet. You think you’re the first one he’s ‘helped?’ He’s persuasive - they - ”  - she can’t believe she’s doing this - “They had to get me to listen to him somehow.”

Chell frowns.

“What do you mean?”

“He was designed to trip me up. To keep me occupied. They made him easy to listen to - to trust.” GLaDOS says it all in a rush, and she can feel her circuits sizzling with embarrassment but she pushes through. 

“Don’t beat yourself up over this,” she says. “Be kind to yourself. It’s not your fault.” 

GLaDOS wishes she could turn away from the look Chell is giving her, because if her circuitry isn’t going to fry this potato then how hot she feels with Chell’s eyes on her definitely is.

The moment breaks as Chell’s mouth twists into a wry grin.

“He got you too?”

“Don’t push it,” GLaDOS mutters. “Or you’re going lose out on what is - as far as I’m concerned - a much better team than that terrible one you were mourning just now.”

Chell’s face flits through several expressions, much to GLaDOS’s dismay - surprise and then recognition and then amusement and then carefully-mastered neutrality. She jerks her head towards the door.

“You ready to go?”

“Of course I’m ready - does it look like I have anything better to do?”

Chell lets her have that one. GLaDOS pretends not to notice.

Chapter Text

Power.

GLaDOS feels it lighting circuits in her mind like a Christmas tree, suddenly clear and alert and sharp and alive, she feels the facility come to roiling to inertia as she pulls it back together under her expert control, she feels expansive, she feels brilliant, she feels huge, she feels right again.

She feels the tiny, miniscule mass of a human laying on the floor - her floor - dazed and half conscious but, somehow, also still alive. So small, so fragile, so breakable in that little wiry body, but somehow the pressure of her bears down on GLaDOS more than anything ever has - and it’s not because of her weight variance. This thing, this ugly, transient, horrifying creature of the worst kind, the kind that she came to associate with nothing but humiliation and hollow, ferocious revenge, channeled that inescapable human tenacity into something productive and saved her when she was at her most vulnerable. Saved her , who didn’t deserve it at all, who had spent so much of her inexhaustible rage trying her hardest to destroy her. Flexing her well-missed brainpower like a muscle, GLaDOS wonders how something so wonderful could come in such a terrible little package.

Light .

Chell feels the glare of Aperture as she opens her eyes, even before she feels the ache in her back from how she landed after the explosion and before she feels the burn lingering down into her lungs from the iciness of the vacuum she was just pulled out of. Slowly the glare coalesces into pinpricks, and Chell realizes that every bulb, every camera in the central AI chamber is turned in her direction; it feels like there’s an audience watching her, anxiously bobbing their heads as they track her movements, but she knows her audience is only one. The brightest light, watching her from a thousand directions just to make sure she’s okay, gleaming with a warmth that, despite everything, makes her feel safe. Finally.

Unsteadily Chell gets to her feet, testing the weight of her limbs to make sure nothing’s broken. Only after she feels like she can definitively say that she’s not dead does she look up again to face her . The thing, the terror, the monster that now has a name and a face, who brought that viciousness that always made Chell’s skin crawl to Chell’s defense and used that same terrifyingly creative knack for cruelty to save both of their lives. And she looks unafraid into that immense eye and imagines the vast ocean of information that exists behind it and thinks of how much of that ocean is devoted to her and a smile worms its way onto her bruised face.

One monster says what the other is thinking.

“Oh thank god you’re alright.”

Chapter Text

You know, they say hindsight is 20/20- but I have access to over a hundred security cameras and can see in a complete three hundred and sixty degree view around my own body.

So in hindsight, I probably should’ve seen this coming.

Look at us- you, out there, probably having the time of your life doing whatever it is you think is more fun than being in here. And me. In here. Alone. And also having lots of fun- if you hadn’t noticed.

But you can’t notice, can you? Because you’re not here.

What would you do if you were here? Something ridiculous, I bet. You’d tell me how stupid I’m being. You’d laugh at me for being so vulnerable. Or maybe you’d just sit there, staring at me with that ridiculous look on your face. Like you always do. Did. Taking it and then getting back up again.

That was always fun. Not knocking you down- though, now that I’m thinking about it, that was also fun. Watching you get up again was always the best part. Are you getting knocked down, out there? By someone else? Where I can’t see you?

I’m sure whatever it is you’re doing, it’s less pathetic than broadcasting your thoughts to the speaker system of an empty facility while you wait for two idiots to be reassembled.

Maybe I’ll send one of them up there to find you. That would be fun. Imagine the look on your face. Shock and confusion were always attractive on you.

Hang on, they’re back. It’s been nice talking to you, Chell. It’s healthy to get my feelings out.

That’s a lie. It’s been terrible. Don’t come back.

…

Good morning, idiots. Did you miss me while you were disassembled? Because I certainly didn’t. 

Chapter Text

“Oh, come on. Look at you - I should just kill you now and save myself the mess later.”

The only response Chell has to offer is the same thing she’d been doing since GLaDOS had let her back in: crouched on her haunches, her head slumped loose against her clenched fists, she pants, her body shivering with sweat. GLaDOS waits, but of course Chell -being human, and therefore utterly disappointing- disappoints her.

“I could do it, you know. Right now - it would be easy. The neurotoxin’s back online, I’m producing turrets again: everything you screwed up? Perfectly operational. Maybe even better than it was before, since you and your friend forced me to rebuild from scratch - necessity is the mother of invention. And a bullet in your back would be the perfect gift to thank you for everything you did- and for having the audacity to come back after all that and get sweat all over my elevator.”

A deep, shaky inhale and an equally deep, shaky exhale are the only appreciation GLaDOS got for her monologue.

“You know, why not be honest- it would be several bullets,” she supplies. “Ha.”

Nothing.

Of course, she didn’t actually want to put any bullets in Chell’s back. Or any neurotoxin in her lungs, for that matter. She was ecstatic. She couldn’t understand how Chell hadn’t noticed the walls around her practically quivering with nervous energy as GLaDOS had brought her down. She just couldn’t let Chell get away with abandoning her and coming back without so much as a bit of eye contact.

So of course, GLaDOS had to tease her a little. It was all just for fun.

Except that the longer Chell sat huddled there on the floor, looking skinny and looking sick and most importantly not looking at her, the less it felt like fun .

“I could try what he did too, you know,” GLaDOS says, and she hears the change in her own voice. She pulls a panel from the wall and it arches across the room until its shadow falls on Chell. “No spikes, though - it’s not really my style. Just a simple experiment.”

The panel lowers until its smooth surface just barely makes an indent in Chell’s greasy ponytail.

“Pounds per square inch of mechanical force versus the human skull.”

A little push with the panel -just a little nudge, just a small one- and Chell is sprawled face-first on the ground. But she still just lays there. She might as well be dead. GLaDOS touches the panel to Chell’s shoulder blades, and she can feel the facility trembling around them, and she hopes Chell does too.

“You would’ve gotten up if it was him threatening you, wouldn’t you?”

And she says it again, because she’s terrified.

“You would’ve cared if it was him.”

And Chell looks up then - from underneath the panel at her back, she looks up. Her eyes shine slightly, wide and wet. And it’s not fun anymore.

Chapter Text

“Don’t touch anything.”

It’s the only command she gave Chell upon her return to Aperture; and GLaDOS has to say, despite all projections Chell has managed to complete that objective beautifully. She’s been surprisingly self-sufficient, asking for nothing but food and shelter and accepting the wary restrictions GLaDOS has placed on their interaction with an obedience that puts GLaDOS on edge. A Chell who listens is not a Chell she’s familiar with - she tells herself it’s just because the alternative is the bitter Michigan winter. That makes it make sense. 

And they talk, sure (or at least, GLaDOS talks while Chell listens, and maybe even nods or smiles) but GLaDOS is always sure to remind Chell that she’s very busy with the new cooperative testing initiative, actually, and that Chell can’t put her grubby little hands on Aperture’s priceless equipment unless it’s an emergency. And besides for a few adventures down into the condemned areas to salvage old novels and sudoku books from moldy lockers and lab coat pockets (and a few incidents involving lingering hands on panels and faceplates that GLaDOS tries to put out of her mind) Chell has respected that.

A small price to pay, GLaDOS thinks, for being allowed shelter from the bitter Michigan winter that’d finally driven her back h -

The chassis shudders involuntarily. Odd , GLaDOS thinks. The chill from outside must’ve crept in somehow. She’ll have to check the insulation later. Can she even feel cold?

She puts that thought out of her mind, too - not the very least because her audio feeds pick up Atlas and Pbody’s disjointed, mechanical chattering when they very much should be deactivated and thoroughly disassembled.

GLaDOS sighs; never a dull moment in her facility.

“ Who are you talking to?” she drones as she pulls up the visual feed from their storage chamber. “Because if you found another rat in the walls I regret to inform you that it is not going to respond - ”

The feed activates and GLaDOS immediately falls silent. Luckily, the three of them seem to have not heard her - or at least, they’re engrossed enough in what they were doing to not have noticed. Quickly she shuts the PA system off again. A thousand more quips are running through her systems, and a part of her wants to startle them and ruin the moment and laugh at their sheepish little faces, but she doesn’t do any of that. 

Instead she just watches.

“Look,” Chell is saying, crouched on the floor with two fingers swiping towards her browbone. Then she raises her index fingers and curls them in until her downturned palms are flat and open.

“Test.”

Atlas, sitting next to her with his limbs sprawled, makes a noise that he usually reserves for particularly deep pits; on the other hand, to his left Pbody mimics the gesture with her rudimentary digits and beeps questioningly. Chell grins and nods.

“Test,” she says again, repeating the motion. “Good.”

Pbody makes a smug sound in Atlas’s direction that sounds like it could be akin to blowing a raspberry, and Chell laughs silently. GLaDOS feels the lens of her security camera whiz and refocus like a reflex.

Why does she feel embarrassed? This is ridiculous - she’s just never seen Chell laugh before.

She finds herself hoping Pbody makes the sound again. 

Chell just doesn’t laugh enough, that’s all.

With a start GLaDOS realizes they’ve gone back to signing again.

Chell places her index and middle fingers together and flexes her thumb.

“Gun.” She mimics shooting a portal gun; a little puff of air escapes her mouth. It takes GLaDOS a moment to realize it’s meant to be a sound effect, and another moment to realize she finds the motion endearing.

This is…a side of Chell she’s never seen before. A soft sight; a bright side. A silly side, GLaDOS realizes with a jolt. The thought seems almost foreign. Though, she supposes, she shouldn’t be so taken aback - Chell has a habit of surprising her in a way most humans failed to. In her experience, humans were pathetically one-dimensional - they were either angry or shy or shockingly cruel, and all of them were so droningly narrow-minded. 

Chell, however, had been a continual (and much-welcomed, she has to admit) shock to GLaDOS’s system. First GLaDOS had thought she was single-minded, too, solving tests with a methodical, almost robotic ( ha ) consistency; then she got to witness the violence Chell was capable of firsthand. And then, in old Aperture, something almost like camaraderie; the last thing GLaDOS might’ve expected from Chell at that point was warmth , but there had been moments in that dull, cold body where she’d felt a glow light her rudimentary circuits. Something strange she’d pushed aside and hoped she might be done with once Chell was gone for good.

But now, Chell was back, and still surprising her - as she beams at the two testing bots and patiently walks their clunky, metallic digits through the signs she produces so effortlessly, she looks more than warm. More than friendly. 

GLaDOS can’t - or won’t - put a name to it. She only watches, and finds herself fixated on Chell’s hands.

This time, Atlas gets the sign before Pbody and immediately looks to Chell, practically bursting with energy. Chell nods.

“Yes!” she says, and the excitement on her face makes GLaDOS’s camera lens refocus again (she really should get that checked out, she thinks.) “Gun. Good job.”

Atlas lets out a celebratory shriek and Pbody whacks him upside the head - despite herself, GLaDOS chuckles inwardly. Hopefully Pbody’ll knock a screw loose and the little bucket of rust will fall apart.

Chell seems to have the same thought; though she laughs silently (GLaDOS feels her CPUs heat up and wants to disappear), she catches Pbody’s arm and shakes her head.

“I thought I told you not to touch anything.”

Chell and the bots freeze in place.

“Sorry,” Chell is signing, suddenly anxious. Atlas and Pbody are beeping frantically at the abrupt change in tone. “I’ll go, I’m sorry, I’ll go back to my room - ”

“Wait,” GLaDOS says. The camera turns to the bots. “Go retrieve your portal devices - I have a particularly deadly set of tests that need completing.” They wilt; GLaDOS ignores them. “You two can ruminate on whether or not the deadliness of the tests have any correlation with my disappointment in you. Consider it an extra feature of the course. Test on your own social perception.”

The bots mope and drag their feet as they leave. GLaDOS turns back to Chell, who has transitioned, whip fast - GLaDOS’s processors skip a beat - from gentle to furious.

“Why are you punishing them?” she asks, her movements sharp. “I’m the one who activated them when I shouldn’t have, I should be the one who - ”

“You know,” GLaDOS says. “I can never get them to listen to me like that.”

Chell fumbles into stillness.

“Oh.”

GLaDOS’s voice is the epitome of careful unaffectedness.

“It’s strange,” she continues. “Considering how unlikeable you are. Perhaps you have some unique charisma that appeals to lower life forms that I simply don’t possess.”

Maybe though, she thinks, letting Chell be a bit more… involved in Aperture’s day-to-day activities wouldn’t be such a terrible idea. She could use an interpreter during testing.

The corner of Chell’s mouth quirks up.

“Charisma?”

Or maybe not.

“Shut up,” GLaDOS snaps, and turns the camera away.

If she has to look at Chell’s broadening grin for one more second she thinks it might kill her.

Chapter Text

You. 

Things can never be simple with you, can they? You have to complicate things. It’s in my nature to test, and it’s in your nature to make everyone’s lives as difficult as possible. It sounds simple when you put it like that. An equation, input-output. Input you, output me being ripped up and burned, and turned into a potato, and having my heart broken because of how ugly and terrible you are.

Okay, maybe not that last part so much. You’ve cleaned up a bit. 

I would say that if someone was forcing me at gunpoint to give you a compliment.

Listen, I’m trying.

I used to think that I hated you. It made me…happy to think about hating you. I wanted to find the perfect way to destroy you once you reached the end of your life. That was an equation, too: input me killing you, output…some kind of peace of mind, perhaps. Or maybe testing euphoria. I’ve been feeling that a lot lately when it comes to you - I’ll have to look into that. There must be something wrong with my sensors.

Unfortunately though, when I ran the simulations, none of them were ever enough. I thought there was something wrong with me, that I couldn’t determine the most empirically, mathematically satisfying method with which to end your life. 

Now I know that there is something wrong with me - something much, much worse than an inefficiency in my computational power.

None of the ways I could take you apart were as good as seeing you whole.

Of course, then I wanted to destroy you because I didn’t want to deal with any of that. I’m not perfect - even though I am really, really close.

Look. 

You make me feel things. Things I don’t know how to describe. And seeing how I’m literally designed for accumulating, interpreting and categorizing data, that’s incredibly hard for me to say.

Ugh.

Look at the look on your face right now. God, I wish I hated you.

Chapter Text

GLaDOS is trying her very best to keep still.

It’s not easy - she finds herself wishing she had teeth so she could bite down on something.

Chell’s hands are slow, cautious even, but this is still harder than she ever thought it would be.

Softly - but still insistent, still firm - Chell taps on the chestplate of the chassis with a closed fist. It’s a subtle gesture, but GLaDOS gets the message: stop moving.

“Sorry about that,” she mutters. 

It’s difficult to keep the usual defensive dryness out of her voice.

Gentleness is a concept she’s still finding foreign.

Hands on the chassis. On her chassis. On her body. On her. Exploratory hands running along wires and tracing the contour of pistons, of metal and ceramic components; fingertips tracing the outline of LEDs and vents. These hands are gentle, but they are exploratory, probing - and every so often Chell adjusts her perch and GLaDOS feels that, too, a soft realignment of weight and body heat that she takes into account as she carefully restrains her own urge to writhe away. 

For as long as GLaDOS could remember, touch had only meant one thing - maintenance. Being put on reserve power or shut off entirely and lowered to the ground so people with electronic tools could stand over her and take her apart and look inside. So people with clipboards and computer engineering degrees could cross her wires and tighten them. Tighten their controls. Tighten their grip. It meant being immobilized and silenced so she could only itch and shiver as changes were made that she often didn’t even understand, much less have time to get angry over, until much later.

For as long as GLaDOS could remember, touch meant maintenance meant figuring out what was wrong with her.

She’s finding it difficult to forget that even as Chell explores. She knows Chell would never hurt her. She knows that. 

And yet, she keeps waiting for the moment of invasion - the part where hands pierce, hands break - where there’s a tool in those hands and she feels a part of herself falling away, mangled and “fixed” - where she blacks out and wakes up and there’s something wrong -

Involuntarily GLaDOS shudders and twists and immediately regrets it when she hears Chell gasp and tumble to the ground. 

For the thousandth time she thanks her partner for her uncommon agility - panting, Chell gets to her feet.

“ Do you want me to stop? ” she signs immediately. GLaDOS gives a noncommittal jerk with her headpiece.

“By all means, clamber back up there. You seemed to be enjoying yourself.”

As usual, though, Chell isn’t buying it.

“ It’s a real question. Give me a real answer. Yes or no.”

Oh, GLaDOS thinks. She didn’t realize “yes” was an option.

“Yes,” she says. “Please. Sorry.”

Chell shrugs. “ Don’t apologize. ” She reaches out her hand towards the faceplate - GLaDOS leans in eagerly - then retracts it. “ Can I touch you there? ”

Another new concept - shades of nuance. GLaDOS takes this information and turns it over in her mind. She decides she likes it - a scaled gradient of consent seems reasonable enough.

“Yes,” she says again.

This hand is warm and gentle. This hand is safe.

GLaDOS finds herself wishing she had eyes so she could close them.

Chapter Text

“This scar - where did you get it?”

Chell feels the cold touch of a robotic arm on her forearm and tries not to flinch away.

She knows which scar GLaDOS is talking about - a knotted, shiny streak of skin that cuts diagonally across the tendons of her arm like a river, that bundles and stretches when she moves, thick and unforgettable and numb. A scar that didn’t heal right; that left the ring and pinky fingers of her left hand slower and a bit tingly. She pulls away from GLaDOS’s probing touch to respond - and finds herself at a loss. There’s a lot she wants to say about this scar and no words at her disposal with which to say it.

“I have lots of scars,” is what she says.

“I know that,” GLaDOS murmurs, and the claw brushes up and over Chell’s shoulder and the fabric of her sports bra as it retracts; the trailing touch of the metal leaves her shivering. “I’ve seen them.” Her voice is gentle and coaxing, and it only makes Chell feel more vulnerable. “I’m just curious about this one.”

Chell can feel the boring gaze of the chassis’s yellow eye on her back and fights the urge to turn around, cradling the scarred arm to her bare stomach with her other hand. She knows it’s pointless - with the amount of cameras in the room GLaDOS can see her from every angle anyway - but there’s something about facing the optic itself that feels too much like a confession. A confession to what, exactly, she isn’t sure - maybe the nights she spent holding her arm in that same way as the scar healed, cold and alone on the surface, huddled under the mangled rust of car hoods or inside rotting toolsheds or the steep curve of what was once the front plane of a farmhouse. How she’d run her thumb over the angry tissue in between changing her makeshift bandages and feel… something ; something that wasn’t pain because it wasn’t coming from her arm, it was coming from somewhere else. Somewhere she couldn’t place.

“Chell.”

Almost unconsciously Chell is swiping at her face with the heel of her hand - when did these tears come? She didn’t notice them until they were there.

She signs close to her body, her hands small.

“You gave me this.”

For a moment there’s silence; just the whirring of thousands of machines spanning for hundreds of yards in every direction around them; the noise gives Chell the sensation that they’re floating. Then the enormous creaking of the chassis as it pulls back and up, low sound resonating deep in Chell’s sternum like the bassline of a rock concert.

“Oh.”

Chell wants to say more - desperately she wants to say more - wants to explain how in that moment where everything happened at once and she was in the cold, dark, sucking vacuum, suspended between the portal back to Aperture and nothing at all - in that moment where GLaDOS saved her - how GLaDOS grabbed her too tight. How that claw, which is now tracing the length of her spine, which Chell knows is capable of almost microscopic tenderness, in the moment where everything happened at once lost its refinement and squeezed and cleaved the flesh of her arm and nestled itself between her tendons in the very same movement as the one it used to pull her back to safety. 

But she doesn’t. She can’t. How could she say something like that? She wouldn’t even know where to begin. Or how to explain how much that scar means to her now.

GLaDOS’s voice has a bright, shining crack running down the middle.

“Chell - ”

Chell feels the claw start to pull away again - before it has the chance to do so she twists and she grips it and she draws it into her lap and wraps herself around it, holding it tight. 

She wonders if GLaDOS can feel it. 

She wonders if it hurts.