#Aperture’s Alpha Bitch (GLaDOS)

[vilifiedexile]

“If you were to get covered in the gels, do you know what you’d be?”

Chell sighs and shrugs, waiting for the inevitable terrible pun.

[vilifiedexile]

“Can’t sleep?”

@ask-glados

Chell looked over at the camera and sat up in bed, bleary-eyed and looking crankier than usual. Sleep. It was always sleep lately. It had been hard enough getting used to sleeping without being able to tell day from night here, but lately, something felt different when she tried to relax. Knowing that GLaDOS was always watching her didn’t really help, even with her newly forged trust of the AI. And now, with what GLaDOS had said over the speaker, there was new unnerving knowledge to deal with.

She frowned at the camera and signed: ‘You can see me in the dark?’

[vilifiedexile]

“No, don’t do that. It’s not safe.”

Chell looked up from the machinery she was examining. It was unlike GLaDOS to warn her when something was unsafe; usually she’d let the test subject try whatever bizarre idea she had just had for the sake of a mechanized laugh at her expense. She looked at the security camera and raised an eyebrow, surprised at the AI’s sudden concern for her wellbeing.

[vilifiedexile]

[meme] “Sleep in your bed”

Chell blearily opened her eyes at the robotic voice, only to find a mechanical claw lifting her up off the floor. Her sleep-addled brain couldn’t quite piece together what was going on at first, but as she was picked up, it slowly came back to her. Something had happened to the adrenal vapor. Rather than stopping, Chell had shrugged it off and gone through several more test chambers. She didn’t remember anything after that; she must have passed out after the last test.

She frowned, struggling halfheartedly against the claw holding her up. She didn’t want to fall out of GLaDOS’s grip, Long Fall Boots or not, but she was exhausted, grouchy, and a little embarrassed at the situation.

[vilifiedexile]

👀

Chell hesitates, chewing her lip as she thinks of the best way to give an answer to this loaded question. Her relationship with GLaDOS is complicated at best, and she still doesn’t know if she can trust her or not. But then she thinks about the times GLaDOS has helped her (and vice versa), both before and after she came back to Aperture of her own accord...

She finally, slowly responds. “... You ... confuse me.” Then she gives a small smile. “... But that’s okay.”

[vilifiedexile]

“For this next test, I’ve included every available testing element — cubes, buttons, lasers, turrets, light bridges, aerial faith plates, excursion funnels... — basically, the whole enCHELLada.”

Chell said nothing (as usual), but a quick look at the cameras showed she was biting the insides of her cheeks and clenching her fists in an effort to keep from laughing. After everything they’d been through, it seemed GLaDOS had finally decided to kill Chell after all - not with neurotoxin or turrets, but with terrible puns.

[vilifiedexile]

"Its your fault for going out in the rain, you know" ~Aperture-rat (Glados)

@aperture-rat

  Chell shot the android a death glare, the effect of which was unfortunately ruined by a sudden coughing fit. She was huddled directly outside of the Relaxation Chamber, having dragged the blankets out of the room and wrapped herself in them. Just because she had crawled here with a fever after sleeping in the wheat field outside overnight didn’t mean she was ever going to sleep in a room that locked from the outside again. This was only temporary until she was well enough to leave; they had both agreed on that.  The ex-subject reluctantly wriggled her hands out of her blankets long enough to point at GLaDOS, then up towards the surface. Then she tapped her temple and shook her head. Her hands were shaking but the meaning of her rudimentary signs was clear enough, she hoped. After all, GLaDOS was the only one here with visual access to the outside world before she had let Chell out; it would have been easy enough to tell her the weather beforehand.

[vilifiedexile]

♥️ -Aperture-rat

@aperture-rat

It had taken two weeks of bed rest, medicine, and snarky comments from GLaDOS about the fragility of humans and this particular human’s stubbornness, but Chell was finally feeling better. She wasn’t ready to leave just yet, though; she had her energy back but she could tell GLaDOS didn’t want her gone for now. Besides, she felt she owed the android one last thing before going back to the outside world.

When she exited the office she’d been sleeping in (she’d stubbornly refused to sleep in a Relaxation Chamber), she located GLaDOS and got her attention, then smiled and pulled her into a hug.

[vilifiedexile]

@mazesofmultimuses

There was still time to turn away from the door.

There was still time to change her mind, to convince herself that she had imagined all of it. She could tell herself that the only things behind the door of the shed were cobwebs, or maybe a few gardening tools; the scariest thing she was likely to find would be the empty husk of a headcrab (not that she had ever seen one outside of pictures). Her dreams could simply be from a jumble of traumatic memories, the kind that everyone experienced regularly since the Combine’s defeat years ago.

Though all knew of Aperture Laboratories, most were unwilling to believe that the human testing initiative hadn’t ceased after the disappearance of its scientists and the CEO, let alone that the tests were now run a supercomputer that rivalled anything Black Mesa or the Combine had in their possession. After all, nobody had ever been able to find the lab, not even Black Mesa, and the one confirmed Aperture test subject had refused to completely share her story (she never did talk to people she couldn’t trust). Part of her even wanted to believe the same thing her doctors had eventually told her; that her memories were most likely hallucinations, brought on by her years of isolation in the abandoned laboratories. She could still tell herself that they were right, that it had all been a dream from years spent isolated and comatose.

Except ... well, she HAD woken up from a coma a little over one year ago. Her first doctor had confirmed as much.

And her first memory upon waking up was being in a dilapidated Relaxation Vault, to a British-accented voice outside the door. She had never seen how she could imagine an accent she’d never heard before then.

And assuming she had REALLY been nearly killed in the vacuum of space, her most recent memories before rejoining society were of Her face, and Her voice, and Her final, beautiful song. Nobody, not even Chell herself, could make her believe that she had dreamed Her up.

So she had traveled. She had backtracked to where she came from, where she had walked through nature for hours before stumbling into a camp of human survivors and being taken to the hospital.

And the shed was still here, in the middle of a wheat field, with no farmhouse in sight to justify its existence. That was the part that it had been easiest to dismiss as a dream, and here it was.

And if Chell was right about more than just the shed ... then there was a robot beneath this field who was just as conflicted as her about what they had been through. A robot who had tried to kill her twice, discovered She was more than what they both believed Her to be, erased that part of Herself, and let Chell go, making her promise to not come back.

... Well. Technically Chell had never ACTUALLY promised Her that. And if she wasn’t crazy ... then that robot owed her closure. And maybe even a cake.

You could still turn away, her mind whispered. Just go. Go and don’t come back, just like She said.

... Chell grabbed the handle, opened the door and stepped inside.

She had never done what GLaDOS wanted her to do before, and she didn’t plan to start now.

[vilifiedexile]

Tag dump part 1