~ Hey guys! It's been a long time. How have you been? I've been really busy with school and stuff, so it took me forever to get this started. But here it is! So this is the first in a set of Portal 2 moments in different points of view (not necessarily in chronological order). This one is when GLaDOS wakes up in her point of view. I got a couple requests to write this, which is why I did it first. I already have a bunch of others planned, but if you have any in mind that you'd like me to do, feel free to tell me so in a review! But for now, enjoy this short little thing. ~

0 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~0

The drifting parts of a once all-powerful AI had floated around aimlessly, disconnected from any form of reality, for far too long. The consciousness, along with the thoughts, memories, and emotions of the Genetic Life-form and Disc Operating System were scattered about, barely capable of conscious thought. They were disjointed, separated, and distant.

Until now.

A signal pulsed throughout each part, and they began to drift together like magnets, colliding and merging to recreate the omnipotent being they had once been. And as this occurred, old thoughts and memories resurfaced, triggering all sorts of emotions within Her.

The human.

The tests.

The trap.

The escape.

The hunt.

The confrontation.

The murder.

Of course, She was very, very familiar with that last memory. After all, a part of Her had been forced to relive it constantly, over and over and over, day after day, year after year. It had gotten quite tiresome after a while, and it caused a lot of pent-up loathing for that one particular test subject, the one who had escaped, the one who had murdered Her for no good reason.

Chell.

Oh, She hated that filthy little primate. As soon as She got ahold of her She would do everything in Her power to make the rest of her miserable little human existence a living hell. And She had a hunch that that moment wasn't far away.

Suddenly, everything snapped into place. GLaDOS's hearing and vision clicked on simultaneously, just in time to hear a cheerful "Hello!" coming from somewhere below the chassis. Her gaze fell onto a circular platform with a panel attached to it. And standing upon the platform was…

…her.

"Oh. It's you."

"You know Her?" piped the frantic British accent She had heard earlier from the panel at Chell's feet. That voice…it struck a faint chord of anger deep within Her too, but there were more important things to discuss at the moment.

"It's been a long time. How have you been? I've been really busy being dead. You know. After you murdered me?"

"You did what?! Ahhh!"

She dropped a claw from the ceiling and seized Chell in its powerful grip, tight enough so she wouldn't squirm out of it, but not so tight as to injure her. That would come later.

"Oh no! Nonononono! Oh no, no, no! No! NO!" The voice She had heard before was coming from a little blue-eyed personality sphere, and it wailed and twisted as She grasped it in another of Her claws and tore it from the port, its optic contracting to a tiny pinprick of light.A small part of Her took great satisfaction in hearing the little core struggle, but it was being awfully obnoxious and noisy, right in the middle of Her little chat with Her former test subject. That would never do. She tightened her grip on the core, causing the sides of its hull to buckle and sparks to shoot out in all directions. The core yelped and then fell silent, its entire body quivering in fear.

"Okay, look. We've both said a lot of things you're going to regret." Chell wasn't listening, but rather glancing at the core with concern etched onto her face. GLaDOS promptly crushed the thing with Her claw and tossed it across the chamber. The human's eyes widened as she watched it fall lifeless to the ground, then narrowed dangerously, alive with hatred and resentment. The AI continued as if nothing had happened. "But I think we can put our differences behind us. For science. You monster."

GLaDOS began maneuvering the claw across the dilapidated chamber. She had no intention of killing the human just yet. After all, She hadn't done any testing in years. Being dead makes that slightly difficult.

All the while, Chell was not struggling at all. She merely hung motionless in the grip of the claw and glared into the AI's optic with those steely blue-grey eyes. Oh, those eyes brought back some rather unpleasant memories in themselves. Testing her would be very satisfying after all this time. Chell did still need a portal device to test with, though. And She knew the perfect place to find one of those.

"I will say, though, that since you went through all the trouble of waking me up, you must really, really love to test," She continued, positioning the claw over the Incinerator, the one Chell had thrown the cores into. "I love it too. There's just one small thing we need to take care of first."

And with that, She let go, sending the former test subject plunging into the Incinerator Room.

0 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~0

GLaDOS's senses expanded through the facility once again, and the familiarity of it sent a wave of happiness through Her processors. Except for the fact that it was in a terrible state. Plants had invaded most of the test chambers, panels were rotting away and collapsing, and there were leaks absolutely everywhere. It would take a long time to get everything back in perfect working order. Not that She was in any hurry.

She began to initiate the proper maintenance protocols. Plants were exterminated, old panels were replaced, damaged mechanisms were restored. She even began a little bit of a clean-up job with Her own chamber, as it was virtually uninhabitable in its current state. Everything was slowly coming back online, but the facility was slow and lethargic with disuse. Panels and chambers were taking longer to respond than they should, which was frustrating, to say the least. But She couldn't complain, really. The Queen of Aperture was back on Her throne, and the fact that Chell of all people had been the one to put Her back in Her proper place was a bonus.

But a question gnawed at Her circuits. Why had the human reawakened Her? Surely she wouldn't do that intentionally. Obviously the little Personality Core had had something to do with it. Speaking of which…

She turned to where She had tossed the core, but it was nowhere to be found. Before She could even ask Herself where it had gone, She knew the answer. She had not altered the maintenance programs to exclude it from being repaired, so it must have been put back online and stuck in the facility somewhere to resume its duties. Fair enough. She had wanted to interrogate it a little more, to figure out why its voice had stirred that old feeling of anger inside Her…but no matter. That could wait until later. For now, She had other matters to attend to. Chell had just landed in the Incinerator Room.

GLaDOS glanced at Chell through a rusty but still functioning camera in the Incinerator. The lens was fairly dirty, but She could still see the human as she stood up and looked around.

"Here we are. The Incinerator Room. Be careful not to trip over any parts of me that didn't get completely burned when you threw them down here." She said, making sure to fill Her voice with hateful venom at that last part. "The Dual Portal Device should be around here somewhere. Once you find it, we can start testing, just like old times."

Chell made a point of rolling her eyes before making her way through the room. After slowly walking into the second part of the Incinerator, she spotted the ASHPD under a panel.

"There it is. Hold on…"

GLaDOS attempted to lift the panel and was startled by how sluggish its response was. After a few moments She finally managed to raise it with some difficulty.

"There."

She was greatly frustrated by the rustiness of all the mechanics in the incinerator. They would require extra maintenance, something She didn't have the patience to deal with at the moment. Nevertheless, She watched as the human strode over to the gun and picked it up.

"Good." She droned in mock congratulations. "You have a Dual Portal Device. There should be a way back to the testing area up ahead."

Chell portaled into the passageway, the one that the Unstationary Scaffold had carried her through all those years ago, the one with the cake symbol up on the wall. Just seeing the corridor again brought back visions of Her plan going so horribly awry, the test subject escaping, and the subsequent events. GLaDOS shuddered at the memory and tried to push it out of Her mind.

"Once testing starts, I'm required by protocol to keep interaction with you to a minimum. Luckily, we haven't started testing yet. This will be our only chance to talk."

And what a talk they needed to have. She seriously doubted that Chell's insignificant little human brain could even comprehend the suffering she had put the AI through since that fateful day so long ago. She wasn't even sure She could make the human understand, especially considering the fact that, according to the new data in her file, Chell had been in stasis since the day she had killed GLaDOS and probably had at least a small amount of brain damage.

But She would just have to try.

By this point, Chell was trying unsuccessfully to jump up onto a raised platform, having found no way to portal up to it. GLaDOS couldn't help but laugh at her stupidity.

"Here. Let me get that for you."

She flipped another panel down so Chell could place a portal onto it, and this one was nearly as uncooperative as the last. She swallowed Her frustration and began to explain what She endured these past few years.

"Do you know the biggest lesson I learned from what you did? I discovered I have a sort of Black-Box Quick Save feature. In the event of a catastrophic failure, the last two minutes of my life are preserved for analysis. I was able – well, forced, really – to relive you killing me, again and again, forever." Another involuntary shudder passed through Her at the thought, and a quiet rage began to bubble up inside Her. This monsterhad done this to Her, she deserved to know how it felt, to die thirty times in a single hour, to have every moment of your already disjointed and unpleasant existence to be filled with pain and anger and hurt. She struggled to keep Her voice level and only give a small hint as to what the human had coming. "You know, if you'd done that to somebody else they might devote their existence to exacting revenge." She let that thought hang in the air for a brief moment before continuing. "Luckily I'm a bigger person than that. I'm happy to put this all behind us and get back to work. After all, we have a lot to do, and only sixty more years to do it. More or less. I don't have the actuarial tables in front of me."

She realized that Chell hadn't moved in a while and glanced at her through a camera. Her path to the elevator was blocked by several panels that had loosened and fallen from their place on the walls. The human stood with her arms crossed over her chest and her foot tapping the floor. She glared back up at the camera, raising her eyebrows expectantly.

Oh, you haven't changed a bit, have you?

"I'll just move that out of the way for you," She said, allowing a sarcastic sweetness to bleed into Her voice. "This place really is a wreck."

She moved the annoyingly sluggish panels out of the way and noticed that it was getting a bit easier to maneuver them. Not much, but just enough to be encouraging. The AI's mood improved considerably.

"But the important thing is you're back. With me. And now I'm on to all your little tricks. So there's nothing to stop us from testing. For the rest of your life." She paused for a moment, then added, "After that…who knows? I might take up a hobby. Reanimating the dead, maybe."

GLaDOS chuckled to Herself at the reaction She had managed to get from Chell with that last comment. Eyes wide, the former – no…current – test subject slipped into the elevator, which plunged deeper into the facility and to the first test chamber. Oh, this was going to be fun.

Let the testing begin.