You thought you could keep me from loving,

You thought you could feed on my soul,

But while you were busy destroying my life

What was half in me has become whole

conscience

There have been strokes with the past ever since they returned to the surface.

She never thought she'd say this, but there are a few things she's learned since she woke in a potato. Which is hard to believe, when you stop and think about it. Given this new body of hers, she remains confined and focused on only a few things at a time, things she can afford. There are no broad myriads of data to sort through, there's no toxic affair with the drive to test, there's no endless sea of amperes to lap up through her wires. She feeds off of starch, a couple volts, and a touch of her ancient hatred, though it's aimed toward bigger things now. She feels around blindly for hints of the madness, the insanity forced on her in cold metal doses from all the cores, and feels earthy fruit and skin begin to sizzle.

There's literally not enough energy in her to be insane. There isn't enough in her to hate, her body can't accommodate anything but what she feels here and now.

Which is bothersome, because trapped in that ugly, lumpy little vegetable, there have been changes.

They were small, deft things that were easy to chalk up to obscure data at first. Recognizing Cave Johnson's voice, recognizing Caroline's, the pre-recorded messages must have been so old she didn't bother to remember them when there was science to be done. But she hadn't known that these incidents were more than numbers and bytes, drifting along her mentality like fragments of forgotten worlds in a space devoid of their memory.

They were breaks.

Hairline fractures, the kind chiseled in with fretz hammers, the kind that stretched and unfurled until a web of cracks sent something deep buckling. She's felt the surging need to stretch long, thin legs that never existed. To run her fingers through glossy hair that could never grow. She's felt an urge to gesticulate with pale, petite hands with perfectly colored nails that are filed and clean. Soft, vulnerable human skin that can feel the sun and tighten with cold replaces weighted, unyielding metal. A long dead heart begins to beat again in place of pounding machinery. Veins hot with blood that sing with pulse and life run root-like in the place of wires. A brittle, splintering layer of bones clings to muscle and nerves that she knows were never hers, and she feels the cool silk of a blouse against her chest, a long skirt on her waist, the hard beads of a necklace in the dip of her collarbone.

They're real pearls, too.

There are even faint memories of a jewelry store. The clop of heels on marble tile, the clean smell of the shop, the flawless red velvet of her jewelry box…

"Oh my God." She'd paused as the feeling sailed away, though its meaning was kept bright in the distance like a falling star. "Look, you're doing a great job so far. Can you… handle things on your own for a while? I need to think."

Chell didn't seem to have any problem with that, and so she had left her to her own devices. Some of which involved reclaiming that feeling again as something screamed to be heard, to be recalled, the answers she was looking for upon her activation.

Having felt this need, this impossible flicker for what could never have been, she's not so sure she wants those answers anymore. Too much of her has been poured into despising the things she felt only moments earlier. She has spent her life being pawed, objectified, and exploited for her wisdom. She has spent her life in the icy sterility of labs, she has been forged of the detachment and objectivity of the science she loves. Science is the only thing she can depend on, because it describes a reality that she understands as a product of science.

There's no way she could have ever been human. She wants to believe that more than anything, even as she fights back a taste of fear while Chell careens through a blue portal and out of an orange, having built freight-train momentum on propulsion gel.

But all this was hours ago, and now she's being plugged into a core receptacle while hopefully, that fat, orphaned lunatic will help her fix things and rip that moron out of her body.

The little idiot has a strategy worked out, though. The surfaces are all dark, metallic, unable to yield to portal energy. His shields are configured, caging him safely in a net of Plexiglas panels. Chell is running for her life from a storm of bombs that make the walls tremble when they detonate…

Chell ducks behind a pipe.

He's an idiot, so of course one misfired shot later the room ends up spattered in conversion gel.

She isn't worried as she deploys the cores one by one. Not for Chell, anyway. If Chell can survive her, she can survive this moron. If not, she'll be extremely disappointed before she dies in the fire of the facility's self destruct sequence. What worries her is the countdown. The clock is ticking, and once the two minute preemptive timer is activated, that's when things start turning violent.

Bombs are bursting in a deafening thunder.

With her head down Chell is dodging the brunt of it, though she stumbles because the explosions shake the room.

Wheatley is screaming as the stench of charred metal and smoke strangles the vapors of deadly neurotoxin. There's far too little of what landed him in that chassis left. It's all violence, wounds and hatred now. Though it's clear who betrayed who, Wheatley is like a child and doesn't know better at this point. They both feel hurt now, the two of them. They're all the things she remembers, back when she was on the side being murdered.

"You never caught me! I told you I could die, falling from that rail, and you NEVER caught me! Didn't even try! You don't care, you never cared, I loathe you, I DESPISE YOU! I see what's going on, now! I've got it ALL FIGURED OUT!" Wheatley's anguish is real as the chassis strips him of the last of his sanity. His voice cracks, and his blue optic darts in all directions. "You two have been working together! Yes, yes, this entire time it's been you two, it's a bloody conspiracy! The facility isn't even coming apart! That's not even real fire!"

This new soft part of her almost pities him, knowing him as she does, knowing he's been driven to the brinks of a simulated starvation from test withdrawal. But her usual hatred, the very core of her being which was all that could fit into that potato throws it aside.

She's ready to end this nightmare. Ready to download herself back into the chassis, leave behind the invisible legs, the hair she never had, the soft tone of her own voice telling her that she needs to do this for Chell's sake and not herself.

"Substitute core, are you ready to start the – "

"Yes, come on!"

"Corrupted core, are you ready to start the procedure?" The maintenance system asks.

"…What do you think?" Wheatley asks flatly.

"Interpreting vague answer as yes."

"No, no, no! Didn't pick up on my sarcasm…!"

"Stalemate detected. Transfer procedure cannot continue. Unless a stalemate associate is available to press the stalemate resolution button."

And it's just like before, with both voices chorusing against one another. She's yelling for her to press the button, and the moron is yelling for the inaction that will cost them everything. But Chell knows the right decision as she portals into the next room over. She's suddenly aware of her invisible heart racing, feels it beat inside a chest that isn't her own, and struggles to remember that the human body she vaguely longs for isn't hers.

It was never hers.

Then she hears a blast that sends her heart plummeting as the button cracks into a barrage of scorched circuits and shrapnel. Chell's body lands with a sickening thud back in the chamber.

"PART FIVE, BOOBY TRAP THE STALEMATE BUTTON!" Wheatley booms happily, as she hears her own voice whisper it's all my fault…!

It's all my fault…! Oh my god, we're all going to die, and it's my fault…!

"Are you still alive? YOU ARE JOKING! You have GOT to be KIDDING ME!"

She tries her hardest to discern Chell's barely moving body from the receptacle. And she feels herself reaching out with an arm, a human arm she feels extending from her body while she knows it isn't there. More than anything she wants to rush over and help Chell to her feet. Not to comfort her, not to say it'll be all right, because they both know now they're going to die. Nothing will be all right. That's what they're used to, by this point.

There's a dull, throbbing ache in every part of her, and not just the parts that this new data has scrounged for in the subconscious she wasn't aware of. Chell had a life ahead of her, she was young even by human standards, and she hadn't deserved this. She watches Chell lean back on her elbow, head tilting in a daze, while Wheatley keeps shouting at her. He knows it too. They're done for. And somehow, going to her grave with the truth that's been kept from her for decades is so much worse.

She doesn't want to relive watching them all die.

She doesn't want to relive the memory of a human body.

She doesn't want to relive hearing her own voice whisper that it's her fault, that she should have done more, that she should have anticipated the trap that ended them.

It's so much worse than dying when she was at the mercy of the cores attached to her brain, because now she only has herself, and she's terrified of facing that for eternity. She's terrified of watching Chell die for eternity. They had come so far, the both of them, and now it would all end here.

Chell fires a portal through a gaping hole in the ceiling before she collapses.

The orange portal beneath the chassis howls with the unforgiving vacuum of space, whips up everything that isn't bolted down, including Chell as she goes flailing into an unseen vortex and disappears alongside Wheatley.

There's a savage coldness inside her that urges her to hurry. It's smothered in the swath of adrenaline she shouldn't be able to feel. She doesn't even realize at the time that this is fear, pure horror for losing the person that she respected, even when she wanted to kill her. She won't let it happen, her own voice agrees with that. She won't let it happen, she'll save her, she'll save her no matter the cost. With Wheatley partly detached, she's able to seize control of one of her massive claws.

Surprisingly enough, the problem with the reactor is easily remedied with simple pressure-threshold protocols. There's no point pulling her friend back into a self-destructing facility, after all.

"Let go!" Wheatley shouts down at Chell, while she holds on for life, the atmosphere roaring to swallow them as if it were lonely. "I'm still attached! I can still fix this!"

By this point, she has heard enough. She feels eyes she doesn't have narrow angrily, while she seeks to protect Chell as if she were her own.

"I already fixed it, and you are not coming back."

Her claw reaches through the portal, and Wheatley brightens with panic.

"Change of plans! Grab me, grab me, grab me!" Her claw knocks him out of Chell's hands in a single swipe. Knowing him as she does, and knowing what her body has done to him and what all it's cost him, this void will serve its purpose. Wheatley screams for Chell as he rockets off toward the stars, joining the space core that leapt for its chance.

She pulls Chell back in, while downloading herself back into the core built in her former head. The gentle hush of her own voice fades for a moment as she leaves the potato battery, and she's somewhat relieved when she still hears it on the other side. It's empowering to know that it's her own voice driving her forward, that for once she's doing this because she wants to, rather than to appease some contrived part that was built and awkwardly forced onto her. It's a part they didn't manufacture, a part they couldn't take away.

This in itself is motivation enough to keep it around. The engineers and scientists had tried everything, tried their absolute best to destroy this one part of her, and she's encouraged by the fact that they failed.

But she feels herself panic when she sees Chell is in bad shape. Her skin is icy and white, with the air sapped from her lungs. She's a torpid bundle of thrown limbs, and she's barely breathing. Her lungs might have collapsed, trying to swallow gasps of air that just didn't exist in space. It's actually amazing she was able to hold on for as long as she did, and that's when she can't help indulging herself.

"I knew I respected you for a reason. Even despite all of that bloodthirsty insanity."

It's when she calls Atlas and P-Body down to her chamber that she realizes how desperate she is. Because no, it will not end here. It won't end between them like this, not when she's remembered something that forces her to connect with this lunatic in front of her. Knowing how truly frail Chell's body is now, knowing what human life is vicariously through Caroline, she becomes determined to protect Chell the way a child protects a butterfly. The way the woman she used to be might protect a baby bird.

…Given how both of those things are cold, heartless killers, that last analogy is perfect.

But as she orders Chell to be put on oxygen, and as she orders Chell to be gradually warmed, she does something that a calculating, objective AI possessing her wisdom and all the answers has never done before. Something that in her computerized world is obscene, because that means there's no equation or theory with which to make guarantees. Something that's loosely coupled with the pain of loss, which is something she shouldn't understand in human terms.

She hopes.

For hours through the long night as she's reattached to her body, she watches Chell, and she hopes. And hoping hurts, because it's nothing more than an aching strain that has no release. She can't rest, despite knowing that there's nothing else that can be done. She can't focus on anything else, not even the relief and comforts of being back in her own body. Her data no longer matters, her body no longer matters, the facility no longer matters because her friend is dying on that floor and she feels like hope is the only thing she can cling to. It's the only thing she can think about.

This is what it is to deal with mortality, where the best you can do is manage the damage. She hates it, but it's a part of her as Caroline hopes right along with her. This is an agonizing thing, but pain for the sake of joy is what it means to be human.

Come on… Her own voice whispers again, as Atlas holds Chell up while P-Body supplies her oxygen. Air is forced into her lungs through a scrunched up tube, a translucent node mask. Come on, you little lunatic, breathe…! Breathe…! It becomes a mantra that she has all the time in the world to repeat. One that the robots won't hear, because these feelings don't concern them. Breathe…! Breathe…! You've made due with the same room full of oxygen, you can settle for this…! I was going to let you go…! I was going to let you go, and I'll bet you didn't believe me!

She isn't changed completely. There's still a bitter, accusing part of her that urges the process along too.

"And here I thought you wanted your freedom. But if you would rather be dead, I guess that would be the only efficient way for you to finally control your weight."

Eventually, Chell's chest rises and falls on its own. Her color returns. But she knows they aren't out of the woods yet because it doesn't guarantee that Chell will wake up. She's already scanned her for internal injuries, lunar poisoning, repulsion gel reactions, everything is negative. But so much else could be wrong…

It's not until the late morning that Chell finally stirs.

Like the flick of a switch – that's amazingly not too unlike her usual self – she's overwhelmed by the exhilaration of weight being hauled off her shoulders. Shoulders, she realizes with annoyance, that aren't supposed to be there. She also realizes that she's been pulled apart in all these directions with worry, with guilt, with anger, a protective instinct she shouldn't have, for the past six hours watching over Chell's recovery. She discovers a stony truth, for all her knowledge on sociology, psychology, and human anatomy as she regains comfort in her databanks.

Being human is frighteningly difficult.

"Oh, thank God you're all right…!" she greets her former nemesis, as she shakily climbs to her feet in the elevator. "You know, being Caroline taught me a valuable lesson. I thought you were my greatest enemy, but all along you were my best friend." She finds the words and the warmth hanging from them easy for the night she's had. And as Chell's eyes widen, she realizes how determined she is not to believe it.

So she decides on a different approach.

"The surge of emotion that shot through me when I was saving your life taught me a more valuable lesson. Where Caroline lives in my brain."

And it's easy to broadcast a simple message that pronounces Caroline dead inside her. It's easy to leach the humanity out of her voice, and for what Chell has put her through, it's easy to talk about killing her. Chell doesn't appear surprised at all. Though she can't truly delete Caroline, because Caroline was a true part of herself, she can resume business as usual.

Pieces of Caroline she can handle, but all those softhearted emotions aren't hers because she's something else entirely now. The same way that body isn't hers. She's beyond that life now as somebody else, and she'll just have to move past that by ridding herself of the one person Caroline remembers holding, as a little dark haired girl with a crooked smile. If the little psychopath wants her freedom, it's best to get rid of her now.

Chell will never know that she is appeasing a conscience as she sends her up the lift.

"It's been fun." She says, with a trace of the gentle lilt of her assimilated humanity. "Don't come back."

As Chell ascends for the surface, she's all too sure that she won't.

No human in their right mind would.

That's quite possibly the most valuable lesson she's learned from being Caroline.