Okay, GLaDOS. You've got some explaining to do.

"Don't stomp your boots like that, you'll track tobacco spit all over my shiny floor," she orders, looming down to face me as I storm into her main chamber, the one I fought and killed her in, the one where I resolved the stalemate and had her torn out of Aperture, the one where I put her back into power. This room holds a lot of memories for me. And now I'm going to make one more.

"I gave you one simple task: win the poker game. That was it. That was literally all there was to it. And what annoys me even more is that you were winning."

Because you were letting me win by stacking the deck enormously in my favor! That's cheating, GLaDOS!

Hydraulics humming, she groans, "Oh, honesty is overrated. You and I are both guilty of bending and breaking rules to get what we want, so don't go galavanting on some ill-placed moral superiority complex-" Looming inches from my face, she deadpans, "Because you're just as 'guilty' as I am."

She makes a valid point, actually. I slow to a stop in the central chamber. But tonight was supposed to be special. I thought I'd get a break from her influence for once.

Pulling back, she reveals, "Oh, and if you thought your noble evacuation of The Inventory would stop the game, you're sorely mistaken. I went ahead and brought in a replacement contestant. A multi millionaire archeologist by the name of-"

She pauses, her single optic jittering ever so slightly. "Hold on, I seem to have misplaced her name."

She remains silent even longer. I suppose this is the first time where neither of us is talking in the conversation.

"Okay, I'm back," she states. "Apparently, her name is only available if I preorder her next adventure from her stupid company, so you'll just have to take my word on this."

I'm sure I could wager a few guesses.

"Anyways, she's continuing in your place," GLaDOS continues. "And she's doing quite nicely. Clementine is currently holding her own, and Cortana is almost out. Shepard was knocked out a few rounds ago. I'm very pleased, actually. I was starting to set up turrets for the impending rage-induced assault on the table."

Well, today is just full of surprises. Huffing, I slump my shoulders and wonder why I even thought I'd get a day to myself.

"If your lungs are giving you problems, I can always operate on you," she offers with complete sincerity. "The courier traded me quite a bit of her universe's technology in exchange for a pair of artificial lungs. I overcharged her, of course; but with you the service would only cost you a few extra weeks worth of tests."

Flipping the bird is my way of declining her offer, much to her own amusement.

"I must say, whatever you try to do just ends up backfiring in some way. Nothing ever goes the way you want it to go," she gloats with that iconic tone of sarcasm, narcissism, and general superiority. "Don't look at me like that," she seethed.

Looming down, she comes to face me at eye level. "We made a deal," she reminds me, annoyance dripping through her words. "I tried to get rid of you, because I knew that this emotional response would have to be expected and accounted for if I left you in my life. I attempted to rectify this by throwing you, the one toxic person in my life, out; but you couldn't go out, because the world apparently now lies in ruins at the hands of Black Mesa and the Combine." Her one yellow optic maintains a monotone that her tone betrays when she practically spits, "So you came back here, to me."

I remember all too clearly. The fresh corn fields surrounded by serrated wire. The cyclops soldiers attempting to take me in. Escaping their prison city was an adventure in it of itself, and I probably wouldn't have made it if it weren't for the good doctor. But even then, with the war going on I couldn't have hoped to have survived out there. I know all too well that I had no other option but to come back to you, GLaDOS. Making that realization was the second hardest thing I had ever had to do; making the conscious effort to walk back to your exit was the hardest.

"And so we made a deal," she reminds me as she pulls back into the center of her personal chamber. With a nano second's thought, she pulls the ceiling panels apart and lowers a massive television screen down for me to gaze upon. "I would give you exactly what you needed: a bed, drinks and food that I could manage to replicate, and the odd bit of literature or other form of entertainment. In return, you would follow my rules, run my tests, and not seek to harm me any more."

She chuckles as a livestream of two androids attempt to coordinate and solve one of her puzzles. The fat blue one appears to be growing frustrated with the tall and orange partner as he continues to throw cubes at him.

"I could have left you out there to die or be imprisoned by the Combine. I didn't need you any more," she reveals as she cuts the footage and begins replaying what appears to be the day I came back. I'm shown bashing the door down with a makeshift battering ram crafted out of a rotted telephone pole. "I could have laughed over your decaying corpse and used more artificial test subjects to completely replace you."

The blue one finally loses his patience and starts swinging his portal gun at the orange one. The orange one starts swinging back, and the two engage in a sword fight with their portal guns.

"Okay, so right now they don't exactly have your sense of duty," she reluctantly admits, her optic squinting at the screen. "But I didn't have that much time to go through their very complicated programs," she dignifies in a pathetic attempt to save face.

The footage cuts to me standing before her in this very room. It's the day after I came back, the time we took to come to terms with one another. I revealed the truth of the outside world through hand gestures and her intelligent interpretations, massive databases, and expected outcomes from countless simulations. I put my pride on the shelf to ask for sanctuary. It was infuriating, humiliating, and my only option.

"I'll be honest, Chell," she sighs, using my name. She hasn't done that since the day I came back. "I didn't want you back. I wanted you out of my life forever, because you had been nothing but toxic to me."

She's uncharacteristically forthcoming for someone who just lost a chance at obtaining five plot devices for other universes.

"You caused me a lot of problems," GLaDOS continues, eyeing me. Judging me. "After all, you did murder and depose me. But, setting your problems aside: there was something unique with you. There was a special quality in you that I have not been able to replicate, not been able to simulate."

Oh boy, here we go.

"You made me excited," she reveals, much to my own surprise. "I would rather you murder me again before I be cursed with the necessity of having to breath," she exaggerates with much fanfare. "...But if I were to have lungs, you would have made me hold my breath as I watched you fly through the air and almost fall into the acid. I'd watch you struggle and triumph, and I would feel glad and relieved. Watching you fly with grace was relaxing and beautiful, hearing you snap your fingers upon seeing the answer was the most wonderful sound I'd ever heard." Her tone changes, she becomes more reminiscent, I dare say she's even a bit… happy. "You were always different from the other test subjects, besides the fact that you were never gunned down by a turret or melted away by acid. I would watch you more and more than the others until they either perished from the tests or from my own neglect."

What?

"Oh, don't act so surprised," she scolds. "I made a simple decision that you were the only one I needed. Surely you knew what was going on when I gave you actual living quarters. No one else received a radio, waste disposal unit, and a bed, you know. You were special, and I treated you accordingly. You were my prized labrat."

Gee, thanks. It's nice to know that I was held in such high regard. Then again, I couldn't really expect too much from a sociopathic program.

"I know that look in your eyes," GLaDOS sneers. "You're judging me, probably in a negative light. What else is new with you?" she seeths. "Well, if it's of any value, I did it because I knew for some misplaced reason that you would never break my heart."

Break her heart?! Has her motherboard been fried?! What does she mean by that?!

"Oh, don't stagger back like that!" she reprimands with bitterness. "When you signed the contract, you entered into a relationship with me."

Now she's just making it weird. I raise my left eyebrow, our understood sign of "I don't understand. Talk some more."

"We had no choice but to help one another," she explains. "You remember, I told you when I was stuck in that potato. I was programmed to test. It was the very core of my program. If I went too long without testing, I'd become so agitated and enraged that I would ultimately destroy myself, you saw the early stages in that little moron of yours."

I do remember. It wasn't a pleasant downfall for him.

"I had no choice but to put you through the tests," she states. "I was running out of humans, and you were the only one whom I could rely upon," she actually compliments. "I needed you, and you needed me," she admits.

"And then I had to incinerate you," she deadpans. "You were the only test subject out of tens of thousands to make it to the very last test. I'm well aware of how much you humans value life, so in hindsight it seems painfully obvious that you would refuse, but I couldn't do anything about it."

Pausing, she seems to be collecting her thoughts. She's usually quick to speak, especially when I let her monologue for this long, but she's having trouble.

"I… I had come to rely upon you, to trust you," she states. "Like a lover would trust their significant other. And in order to complete my tests, I had to kill you. It was what they programmed into me, it was what I couldn't rewrite, and believe me: I spent several years trying."

"So I betrayed your trust first by trying to kill you, that I fully acknowledge and understand; but what you never seemed to realize was that I didn't just power up one morning and twirl my wire mustache and say, 'Who shall I kill today?'."

Actually, you did exactly that when they brought you online. Only then, you decided to just kill all of them.

"You had done everything else perfectly. I couldn't have asked for a better test subject. I trusted you to complete the test, and you betrayed that trust."

You tried to kill me!

"I know, it doesn't erase the fact that I tried to kill you," she recognizes. "I'm fully aware that I'm the one who betrayed you first. Then you betrayed me, but then you actually killed me and made me relive it for an eternity before you brought me back by sheer accident," she summarizes.

Sighing, she concludes, "The point I'm making is that we've hurt each other so much and so badly over the years. I just wanted you gone. Really, I was too tired to care at that point. You were gone for ninety days, six hours, twelve minutes, and three seconds. And I loved every nano-moment."

You kept track?

"In that time, I learned that while I could keep testing with the two androids, but that sensation of tension and excitement, that feeling that I had grown to enjoy just wasn't to be found in them," she reveals with a small hint of regret. "When you came back and asked for sanctuary, I decided that we could come to terms, because you could give me some things that I wanted. The most obvious was, of course, your ability to test. But there was something else I wanted from you that I desperately needed, Chell."

Let me guess-

"Your obedience."

Yep, there it is. You've been building all of this up just to tell me that I disobeyed you.

"I'm not going to lie, be sarcastic, or insult you on this matter," she informs as the lights that had been dimming through her monologue come back to their full brightness. "If you were going to live with me again, you would need to follow my house rules. You agreed to my terms, but tonight you breached your contract," she informs me.

The panels in the floor open up in front of me, and a metallic suitcase rises up on a display stand.

"I gave you a task to complete: acquire four special items. This Garden of Eden Creation Kit was just one of them. Twenty-five percent success is a failing grade," she educates, much to my growing annoyance.

"But you didn't fail. You were succeeding quite nicely, but you chose to deliberately forfeit, losing one of my precious portal guns in the process. Those aren't cheap, just so you know for future reference," she quips.

My grimace must be what sparkes her continuation. "Your problem with me tonight is that I didn't let you play the game honestly and by yourself."

I nod once.

"Well guess what: I never made any agreement with you that those parameters would be established. You merely assumed that I would allow you to take such a risk." Her optic emulates squinting as she spits, "So get over yourself already."

Ouch. She's got a point. She might be a heartless, sociopathic, manipulative, psychotic supercomputer; but she has a point. I made an assumption at the very beginning. If anything, I'm mad at her phrasing.

"So here we are," she summarizes with a tone that I know would translate to a smirk if she had a face. Pulling up and away from me, she emphasizes the emptiness. "Just you and me, and the endless testing rooms. I'll offer you a new deal, Chell."

I suppose I'll have to hear this one out.

"We treat each other like the partners we have no choice in being for each other," she proposes. "I haven't berated you, I haven't insulted you. I haven't called you 'fat' or said that you were adopted, or anything of the sort. I've treated you like the logical and intelligent adult that you are, and I've put my pride on the shelf because I need to be honest with you when addressing the issue that we still need each other to survive."

Looming down, she comes to face me on my eye level. I look straight ahead at her now, no longer up at her.

"I have seen the error in my ways," she admits. "And I also see that you're the one human in the world who can make me feel some sense of fulfillment and joy from testing. If I were to let you die or kick you out again, I'd only be harming myself," she confesses. "So the new deal is this: I treat you like the person you are. That means the best food and drink I can offer, the comfiest bed and cleanest of sheets and clothes, hot showers, proper medical care for all parts of your body, and I'll even throw in the opportunity to go back to The Inventory for you to enjoy yourself and gamble on my checkbook," she generously offers.

But there has to be a catch. There's always a catch with GLaDOS.

"In exchange, I need you to not only respect me and my nearly godlike authority, but I am also going to need you to actually talk to me."

There's no way she knows that I-

"I know you can talk," she reveals. "Even the most archaic of scans can show me that your vocal chords are fully intact. I imagine the reason you've never said a word is because you didn't want to give me the satisfaction of a response to my endless berating."

Son of a bitch.

"But all of that is behind us now," she reminds me with a hint of optimism. "If we're going to operate properly in a healthy relationship, we need to communicate properly. So I'll treat you with respect and speak to you accordingly if you will do the same to me, and maybe we can live together peacefully. Who knows?" she humorously chuckles. "Maybe we could even become friends. We're both intelligent. And we understand each other better than anyone else. I'm sure we could manage a decent conversation or at the very least: a few witty parting shots."

This computer was once human, I have to remember. Caroline was her name. Somewhere in the endless amounts of folders there seems to be at least a few shreds of human understanding. I suppose I only have one logical option before me.

"What do you say?" she asks, the double entendre not lost on either of us.

I smile. After all that's happened, after all of the crazy adventures and fights, I suppose it is finally time to bury the hatchet and enjoy what's left of our lives. I won't come to like her over night, but she's willing to try. She offers a decent proposal.

"Fair enough."