Fic: Portal - Civilization
Title: Civilization
Fandom: Portal/Portal 2
Pairings: None
Description: A fill for the Portal Kink Meme; prompt here. POSSIBLE PORTAL 2 SPOILERS.
Rating: G
It's a hot day, hotter than any of the days that have come before, so Chell is thankful for when she hears a voice yell, “Alright, everyone, good job! Time for a break!” Chell smiles to herself and gets ready to jump down from her perch - on the bare timber bones of what will soon be a house - but it seems someone’s there to help. It’s one of the men she was working with, David. He smiles up at her and says, “Need a hand?”
She smiles back. “Sure,” she says almost flippantly, sitting down on the plank she’d been perched on and takes his outstretched hand, using it to help her get down safely. “This one is turning out really well.”
“Yeah?” David replies, looking up at the spindly structure over them. “I just hope the rest we build will be this nice, and that you’ll be on the team again. Where’d you learn to build like that?”
“It’s just a talent I’ve always had,” Chell replies vaguely with one of those mysterious smiles of hers. They walk together to the town square, a few hundred feet away from where they’re building the rest of the town. This community is a small one - can’t be more than 50 people - but new folks find their way here every week or so and the demand for new houses has become gigantic. Everyone who’s fit enough helps out to build new homes for the newcomers.
As Chell and David approach, idly chatting, Chell’s eye suddenly catches on a huge crowd congregated underneath the huge old tree at the edge of the town square. Everyone who wasn’t working seemed to have gotten there already, and now those who had been working were joining the throng. Chell nudged her companion and gestured to the throng. “What’s going on over there?”
David looks over, squinting in the bright sunlight. “Another new comer? Wait - “ He gasps. “Chell, look!”
He points to the edge of the crowd, and Chell’s eyes go wide when she sees that it’s a truck, parked just on the edge of the giant tree’s shade. Vehicles of any kind are a rare sight in this new world, so the truck is even more miraculous because of its new, shining white paint.
“Oh my god… No wonder everyone’s so interested in this one,” Chell breathes. Suddenly, she grabs David’s hand and starts marching purposefully towards the crowd. David, quick to understand her meaning, follows gladly - until Chell starts to push through the throng as politely as possible. As she penetrates further and further into the crowd surrounding the tree, she catches bits of sentences:
“ - never seen anything like this in my life - “
“How do you get around with - “
“ - and let the lady talk, fer cryin’ out loud!”
“Mom, why does she have wi - “
Chell’s right up at the edge of the writhing group of people when she stops cold, hearing the visitor’s dreadfully chilling, horribly familiar voice.
“Now, now. One at a time, please. I may be a genius, but I can’t answer all of your questions at once.”
Chell’s been pushing too hard through the crowd to stop herself and stumbles right into the half-circle of the edge around the visitor.
She looks much different than Chell remembered, having last seen her suspended from the ceiling of her chamber, watching impassively with one yellow eye as Chell had ascended in the elevator. Now, she’s almost the complete opposite of what she was there. For one thing, she’s human-shaped; she has long, dainty legs and thin arms with delicate wrists linking them to piano-player hands, which are folded on her lap. Her head sits atop a long, almost graceful neck; the lines of her jaw and cheekbones are sharp and well-defined; her hair looks like plastic and is cropped short and angular. From this angle, Chell can see thick bundles of wires attached to the back of her neck and various points along her spine, which snake away from where she’s seated on a bench back to the flat bed of the truck. She’s still the same colors, though - all white and black, with a faint print of the Aperture Science logo on her thin chest - and her yellow eyes stare with the same intensity as every time before.
GLaDOS wastes no time in catching sight of Chell. The moment she sees her former test subject, her eyes narrow into catlike slits, though her pleasant smile doesn’t move an inch.
“Oh, would you look at that. It seems the person I came for has finally arrived to greet me. Excuse us for a moment.”
She rises, and Chell is frozen with something between fear and a nightmare as GLaDOS fairly glides over to her, weightless despite the wires tethering her to the ground. One thin hand grabs Chell’s wrist with deceptive strength, and Chell nearly hisses at the cold touch. GLaDOS turns and pulls her along, and Chell can’t help but let her feet move as GLaDOS pulls her towards the other end of the tree’s shadow, away from the mass of confused people.
GLaDOS stops and releases Chell, regarding her coolly and with a mocking smile on her thin lips. Chell stares back at her, her fear now replaced with incredulity. She absently wonders how many tries it took for GLaDOS to make this body so… human.
"Well?” GLaDOS prompts. “Are you going to say anything, now? I heard from your friends over there that you talk quite a bit, now that you aren’t in Aperture Science with me anymore.”
Chell is silent. And then, rough and menacingly:
“What do you want with me.”
If GLaDOS’ smile falters, Chell doesn’t notice because of the intense staring match the two are locked in. “Ah. You’ve grown smarter, haven’t you? Amazing. You were pretty smart to begin with, weren’t you?”
“What do you want with me?” Chell’s eyes are hard and her mouth is a thin line.
GLaDOS’ smile falters again, this time enough for Chell to notice. “Alright, alright, I’ll cut to the chase. You’re obviously very busy and very popular here and you must be having a wonderful time and you must want to get back to all your friends over there - by the way, I have a feeling they don’t really like you. I can read people like that. Like you - when I first met you I knew, I knew I should never trust you - “
“TELL ME.” Chell doesn’t yell her words, but the dark tone they take is enough to make a few people look in her direction.
For a second, GLaDOS’ face is frozen in an infuriatingly ingratiating smile. And then, suddenly, her face changes… and she looks desperate. Chell isn’t sure which is more unnerving. Then, GLaDOS speaks. Her autotuned voice is barely above a murmur.
“I need you to come back to Aperture. There, I said it. I’m admitting that I need your help. Practically groveling, actually. Did you know I made this body just so that I could get out of the facility and find you to say this to you? That is groveling. That is grade-A groveling, so you should just get into the truck and help me drive it already.”
Chell is dumbstruck for a moment, but her intense surprise is intermingled with disbelief and anger. “C- come back. Come back to Aperture? You’re saying that you want me to give up everything I’ve gotten here - “
“Yes - “
“All of the friends, all of the people who care about me - “
“Yes - “
“All of the ‘not living in a facility where robots try to kill you’ - “
“Yes, in fact - “
“And go back with you to that hellhole?”
“Yes, yes, yes, a hundred times yes!” GLaDOS snaps, looking irritable now. “It’s not as if you’re doing anything worthwhile out here!”
“I’m helping to rebuild civilization,” Chell counters coldly.
“You’re wasting your life chopping wood and living off subsistence farming while I do science and make actual advances,” GLaDOS fairly sneers, gesturing towards the town and the slightly smaller group of people - some have become bored with watching the two of them argue and left. “Civilization isn’t going to jump back up within the pitiful 60 years in which you’ll still be alive! It’s going to take engineering and science and testing - oh, lots of testing - to get everything off the ground again!”
“We’ll do fine on our own,” Chell says.
Somehow, when she says that, GLaDOS becomes even more desperate. “You know this is pointless! You know this will take thousands of years to rebuild! You don’t even have any electricity in this pitiful excuse for a town! How are you going to make that, run around in circles until your legs fall off?”
“Why are you trying so hard to make me come back?” Chell cuts in, straight to the meat of the issue.
“I…” GLaDOS pauses for what seems like an eternity. Her face is contorted with contrasting emotions. Finally, she looks down at the ground and whispers.
“…I need you.”
Chell is somewhat surprised by her reaction, but she still hasn’t gotten an answer. “Why?”
“… I have the Cooperative Testing Initiative - two robots, who solve tests together. Shortly after I released you, they… they found an entire vault absolutely full of human test subjects in suspended animation. All the test subjects I would ever need. But… there’s a problem.”
GLaDOS looks up and cocks her head at Chell. “Did you know that your Extended Relaxation Chamber had no set release date for you? That it was dumb luck that you were woken up at all?” Chell has no time to react, as GLaDOS continues speaking. “Well, it’s similar with these test subjects. They’re stuck to be released in an incredibly long while - and I can’t get into the system controlling their Chambers; it’s been corrupted and even I can’t get through to fix the problem. It seems whoever put them under really wanted them to stay under. In… in any case.”
GLaDOS draws herself up to her full height, an entire head over Chell. “You will come back to Aperture Science with me to test, and to help me settle this whole business with the corrupted vault,” she stated, only the barest hint of apprehension in her voice.
Chell shakes her head, and for a moment GLaDOS is dumbstruck. Then she turns angry, eyes going wide and black as she bends down to hiss, “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, ‘N-“
“I’m not coming back if there isn’t anything in it for me.”
GLaDOS blinks, relaxes, and responds immediately. “…Civilization.”
“What?”
“Civilization. I’ll give you the necessary materials to advance the creation and progress of your dinky little… town, here, if you’ll come back with me. …Temporarily, of course. Regrettably.”
There, Chell takes pause. She glances over at the other end of the town square.
“Think of what you could accomplish in 60 years if you had even one generator,” GLaDOS prompts her, seeing her gaze shift from house to house, person to person. Chell catches sight of David, even, standing off to the side with a few of the other people he and Chell had been working with earlier.
She glances back to GLaDOS, then back to the town.
Then, she nods.
The next day, they climb into GLaDOS’ white-painted truck after carefully coiling her thick wires into the flat bed in its back, where they’re plugged into a ponderous black box. GLaDOS takes the driver’s seat and Chell the passenger’s, and as the engine roars to life before them, Chell thinks: At the least, I won’t be bored.
Dear glados
I hate formatting your text
love, nakki
Fandom: Portal/Portal 2
Pairings: None
Description: A fill for the Portal Kink Meme; prompt here. POSSIBLE PORTAL 2 SPOILERS.
Rating: G
It's a hot day, hotter than any of the days that have come before, so Chell is thankful for when she hears a voice yell, “Alright, everyone, good job! Time for a break!” Chell smiles to herself and gets ready to jump down from her perch - on the bare timber bones of what will soon be a house - but it seems someone’s there to help. It’s one of the men she was working with, David. He smiles up at her and says, “Need a hand?”
She smiles back. “Sure,” she says almost flippantly, sitting down on the plank she’d been perched on and takes his outstretched hand, using it to help her get down safely. “This one is turning out really well.”
“Yeah?” David replies, looking up at the spindly structure over them. “I just hope the rest we build will be this nice, and that you’ll be on the team again. Where’d you learn to build like that?”
“It’s just a talent I’ve always had,” Chell replies vaguely with one of those mysterious smiles of hers. They walk together to the town square, a few hundred feet away from where they’re building the rest of the town. This community is a small one - can’t be more than 50 people - but new folks find their way here every week or so and the demand for new houses has become gigantic. Everyone who’s fit enough helps out to build new homes for the newcomers.
As Chell and David approach, idly chatting, Chell’s eye suddenly catches on a huge crowd congregated underneath the huge old tree at the edge of the town square. Everyone who wasn’t working seemed to have gotten there already, and now those who had been working were joining the throng. Chell nudged her companion and gestured to the throng. “What’s going on over there?”
David looks over, squinting in the bright sunlight. “Another new comer? Wait - “ He gasps. “Chell, look!”
He points to the edge of the crowd, and Chell’s eyes go wide when she sees that it’s a truck, parked just on the edge of the giant tree’s shade. Vehicles of any kind are a rare sight in this new world, so the truck is even more miraculous because of its new, shining white paint.
“Oh my god… No wonder everyone’s so interested in this one,” Chell breathes. Suddenly, she grabs David’s hand and starts marching purposefully towards the crowd. David, quick to understand her meaning, follows gladly - until Chell starts to push through the throng as politely as possible. As she penetrates further and further into the crowd surrounding the tree, she catches bits of sentences:
“ - never seen anything like this in my life - “
“How do you get around with - “
“ - and let the lady talk, fer cryin’ out loud!”
“Mom, why does she have wi - “
Chell’s right up at the edge of the writhing group of people when she stops cold, hearing the visitor’s dreadfully chilling, horribly familiar voice.
“Now, now. One at a time, please. I may be a genius, but I can’t answer all of your questions at once.”
Chell’s been pushing too hard through the crowd to stop herself and stumbles right into the half-circle of the edge around the visitor.
She looks much different than Chell remembered, having last seen her suspended from the ceiling of her chamber, watching impassively with one yellow eye as Chell had ascended in the elevator. Now, she’s almost the complete opposite of what she was there. For one thing, she’s human-shaped; she has long, dainty legs and thin arms with delicate wrists linking them to piano-player hands, which are folded on her lap. Her head sits atop a long, almost graceful neck; the lines of her jaw and cheekbones are sharp and well-defined; her hair looks like plastic and is cropped short and angular. From this angle, Chell can see thick bundles of wires attached to the back of her neck and various points along her spine, which snake away from where she’s seated on a bench back to the flat bed of the truck. She’s still the same colors, though - all white and black, with a faint print of the Aperture Science logo on her thin chest - and her yellow eyes stare with the same intensity as every time before.
GLaDOS wastes no time in catching sight of Chell. The moment she sees her former test subject, her eyes narrow into catlike slits, though her pleasant smile doesn’t move an inch.
“Oh, would you look at that. It seems the person I came for has finally arrived to greet me. Excuse us for a moment.”
She rises, and Chell is frozen with something between fear and a nightmare as GLaDOS fairly glides over to her, weightless despite the wires tethering her to the ground. One thin hand grabs Chell’s wrist with deceptive strength, and Chell nearly hisses at the cold touch. GLaDOS turns and pulls her along, and Chell can’t help but let her feet move as GLaDOS pulls her towards the other end of the tree’s shadow, away from the mass of confused people.
GLaDOS stops and releases Chell, regarding her coolly and with a mocking smile on her thin lips. Chell stares back at her, her fear now replaced with incredulity. She absently wonders how many tries it took for GLaDOS to make this body so… human.
"Well?” GLaDOS prompts. “Are you going to say anything, now? I heard from your friends over there that you talk quite a bit, now that you aren’t in Aperture Science with me anymore.”
Chell is silent. And then, rough and menacingly:
“What do you want with me.”
If GLaDOS’ smile falters, Chell doesn’t notice because of the intense staring match the two are locked in. “Ah. You’ve grown smarter, haven’t you? Amazing. You were pretty smart to begin with, weren’t you?”
“What do you want with me?” Chell’s eyes are hard and her mouth is a thin line.
GLaDOS’ smile falters again, this time enough for Chell to notice. “Alright, alright, I’ll cut to the chase. You’re obviously very busy and very popular here and you must be having a wonderful time and you must want to get back to all your friends over there - by the way, I have a feeling they don’t really like you. I can read people like that. Like you - when I first met you I knew, I knew I should never trust you - “
“TELL ME.” Chell doesn’t yell her words, but the dark tone they take is enough to make a few people look in her direction.
For a second, GLaDOS’ face is frozen in an infuriatingly ingratiating smile. And then, suddenly, her face changes… and she looks desperate. Chell isn’t sure which is more unnerving. Then, GLaDOS speaks. Her autotuned voice is barely above a murmur.
“I need you to come back to Aperture. There, I said it. I’m admitting that I need your help. Practically groveling, actually. Did you know I made this body just so that I could get out of the facility and find you to say this to you? That is groveling. That is grade-A groveling, so you should just get into the truck and help me drive it already.”
Chell is dumbstruck for a moment, but her intense surprise is intermingled with disbelief and anger. “C- come back. Come back to Aperture? You’re saying that you want me to give up everything I’ve gotten here - “
“Yes - “
“All of the friends, all of the people who care about me - “
“Yes - “
“All of the ‘not living in a facility where robots try to kill you’ - “
“Yes, in fact - “
“And go back with you to that hellhole?”
“Yes, yes, yes, a hundred times yes!” GLaDOS snaps, looking irritable now. “It’s not as if you’re doing anything worthwhile out here!”
“I’m helping to rebuild civilization,” Chell counters coldly.
“You’re wasting your life chopping wood and living off subsistence farming while I do science and make actual advances,” GLaDOS fairly sneers, gesturing towards the town and the slightly smaller group of people - some have become bored with watching the two of them argue and left. “Civilization isn’t going to jump back up within the pitiful 60 years in which you’ll still be alive! It’s going to take engineering and science and testing - oh, lots of testing - to get everything off the ground again!”
“We’ll do fine on our own,” Chell says.
Somehow, when she says that, GLaDOS becomes even more desperate. “You know this is pointless! You know this will take thousands of years to rebuild! You don’t even have any electricity in this pitiful excuse for a town! How are you going to make that, run around in circles until your legs fall off?”
“Why are you trying so hard to make me come back?” Chell cuts in, straight to the meat of the issue.
“I…” GLaDOS pauses for what seems like an eternity. Her face is contorted with contrasting emotions. Finally, she looks down at the ground and whispers.
“…I need you.”
Chell is somewhat surprised by her reaction, but she still hasn’t gotten an answer. “Why?”
“… I have the Cooperative Testing Initiative - two robots, who solve tests together. Shortly after I released you, they… they found an entire vault absolutely full of human test subjects in suspended animation. All the test subjects I would ever need. But… there’s a problem.”
GLaDOS looks up and cocks her head at Chell. “Did you know that your Extended Relaxation Chamber had no set release date for you? That it was dumb luck that you were woken up at all?” Chell has no time to react, as GLaDOS continues speaking. “Well, it’s similar with these test subjects. They’re stuck to be released in an incredibly long while - and I can’t get into the system controlling their Chambers; it’s been corrupted and even I can’t get through to fix the problem. It seems whoever put them under really wanted them to stay under. In… in any case.”
GLaDOS draws herself up to her full height, an entire head over Chell. “You will come back to Aperture Science with me to test, and to help me settle this whole business with the corrupted vault,” she stated, only the barest hint of apprehension in her voice.
Chell shakes her head, and for a moment GLaDOS is dumbstruck. Then she turns angry, eyes going wide and black as she bends down to hiss, “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, ‘N-“
“I’m not coming back if there isn’t anything in it for me.”
GLaDOS blinks, relaxes, and responds immediately. “…Civilization.”
“What?”
“Civilization. I’ll give you the necessary materials to advance the creation and progress of your dinky little… town, here, if you’ll come back with me. …Temporarily, of course. Regrettably.”
There, Chell takes pause. She glances over at the other end of the town square.
“Think of what you could accomplish in 60 years if you had even one generator,” GLaDOS prompts her, seeing her gaze shift from house to house, person to person. Chell catches sight of David, even, standing off to the side with a few of the other people he and Chell had been working with earlier.
She glances back to GLaDOS, then back to the town.
Then, she nods.
The next day, they climb into GLaDOS’ white-painted truck after carefully coiling her thick wires into the flat bed in its back, where they’re plugged into a ponderous black box. GLaDOS takes the driver’s seat and Chell the passenger’s, and as the engine roars to life before them, Chell thinks: At the least, I won’t be bored.
Dear glados
I hate formatting your text
love, nakki