Portal: Love as a Construct

Part Sixty-Five.  The Lunatic

 

Chell was a little jealous.

After a few more predictably difficult but necessary conversations with GLaDOS, they had gotten started on training the citizens, both with GLaDOS’s weapons and those they already had, depending on how much the individual liked the supercomputer.  Even though she’d said using these tracks held no value for her, Chell could see that wasn’t entirely true.  It both pained her and excited her to be doing so, and this made Chell a little anxious that she might accidentally slip into her old protocols and ruin everything.  Accidentally meaning on purpose, of course.  Chell hadn’t yet fulfilled her end of the deal, but it was really because she didn’t have the time.  At the moment, all of them were held up in one of the endless organisation meetings, where she usually stood off to the side and watched GLaDOS talk passive-aggressively to people she didn’t like.   Even more interesting than that, however, was watching Wheatley’s subtle interactions with her.

To Chell, at least, it was obvious that the two of them had some special connection, one she’d never seen the likes of before.  Her time both in Aperture and in the last part of the war had taught her to be observant and alert for detail, and she wondered if someone with a similar mindset would see these sorts of things between her and Gordon.  She didn’t think so; Gordon rarely appeared in public, if possible, and when he did he tended to keep a low profile, which was easier to do when he was alone.  Chell understood that, though she didn’t always like it. 

They had a bit of an odd relationship, not that Chell had ever hoped for a normal one after Aperture.  It had been odd since the outset, and probably would never stop being that way, unless they got divorced and Gordon married Alyx.  People simply refused to let up about that.

Chell had stayed with the first group she’d met upon her release from Aperture for no particular reason other than the fact that she didn’t want to walk anymore.  In a twist of fate, however, she had ended up with one that was determined to follow someone known as ‘the one free man’ everywhere he went.  Chell hadn’t really wanted to fight another war, but she’d known that she really had no choice.  She took to regular guns just as quickly as the Portal Device, though she liked them far less.  Her time at Aperture had left her with lightning reflexes and almost unfailing aim, and after one particularly harrowing battle she’d been sitting outside.  She spent as much time as possible outside, often volunteering as a night sentry, and she would catch herself staring at the moon for long periods of time, remembering.  She harboured no ill will towards either of them.  At first she had, waking up from twisted red nightmares, filled with anger and drenched in sweat, but one night she had had the most confusing dream of all.  She did not remember what it was about.  All she remembered were the tears in Wheatley’s voice and the echo of GLaDOS’s scream.  She had lain awake and stared at the dim, battered ceiling for a long time, for the first time thinking about that day as if she were an impartial observer, and at the end of it all she realised that she was not the first person Aperture had damaged.  And she shuddered to think of the damage that had been dealt to them, raised from inception in a twisted, nightmarish laboratory, and she found she could no longer be angry or resentful.  She was glad she had not spoken to them.  On the surface, their actions begged reprimand, but it was so much different when she understood where they were coming from.  And she had been in fact thinking of her night of revelation when he had come and sat on the roof next to her.  He was not required to do sentry duty, nor did he ever volunteer.  Chell actually saw nothing remarkable about the man.  Everyone held him in very high regard, because he had apparently done a whole bunch of impossible things, but on the rare occasions that she asked what they were people would look at her sideways and laugh.  As if she could be in this part of the world and not have heard of him.  As far as she could tell he did as he was told and nothing else.  He was unusually skilled at doing it, but he merely followed orders nonetheless.