There was quiet.

There was sunlight and endless blue, waving stalks of golden-yellow grain and air sans adrenal vapor.

There was too much emptiness.

There was a lack of mechanical whirring and digital voices. There were no panels, no faith plates and no personality cores. There was no murderous AI, no lovely-assistant-turned-conscience. There was no blathering British accent, no ultramarine and no long-needed apology.

But there was forgiveness.

There was understanding and freedom and the unrestrained possibility of bliss, a comfortable type of solitude that waited for her beyond the borders of the wheat fields, but Chell could not move.

Her feet were unrelenting, glued to the concrete beneath her, the rusted shed at her back, the scorched companion cube resting beside her.

She'd been released from hell, and all she could do was stand.

It seemed like eternity passed before she could put one foot in front of the other. The sun had begun to dance on the horizon line, a glittering mix of pastel pinks and blues (blue blue blue like his eyes would have been, like the vast nothingness he orbited), and Chell knew she didn't have much time.

She walked, companion cube in tow, until she came upon a dilapidated house at the edge of the wheat field. Its structure was primarily dark brown, aged and weatherworn - its inhabitants had left long ago. The windows were still fully intact, much to her surprise, and the foundation seemed secure. It was small, but quaint. The rooms were a good enough size, the kitchen appliances either worked or needed mild repairs - nothing that she couldn't fix on her own. The bedrooms upstairs were dusty and dark - tombs for the ghosts of lives long gone - but usable.

Walking back down the stairs, Chell set the companion cube down by the tattered green couch in the living room and made her way over to the kitchen. A good few minutes of scrounging in the cabinets produced a few tins of beans and an untainted jug of of water.

She sat in silence, ate and drank and breathed.

She stared at the sky for a long time.

There were arms, long and lean and loving, wrapped around her waist. Slender fingers traced the curves of her torso, lingering on her chest, finding their way to her neck, her face, her lips.

There were open-mouthed kisses and breathy sentiments and warm touches. There was the arching of her back and unabashed ecstasy.

There was love.

And there was blue.

Her slate grey eyes opened abruptly at the clap of thunder which shook the panes of glass attached to the window frames. Taking care not to trip over empty cans and useless plastic (he hated that word, she knew he never was or could be useless, she knew him), she made her way to the front door and out onto the covered porch at the front of the house.

The storm was loud and violent and horrible. Jagged edges of white-hot energy repeatedly lit up the sky, and at one point, Chell had to cover her ears because of the thunder-turned-freight-train.

She liked to think he would have liked the rain, despite his electric existence. In reality (what was that word? - imagining him as a human seemed as unreal as anything), he probably would have hated it, would have curled up like a cat in the corner of the sofa, terrified of a single droplet.

And she wouldn't have blamed him.

And she would have sat next to him, holding him, kissing every part of him she could reach. And he would have responded, would have been so gentle, so loving, so wonderful and their love would have been so pure - like the rain.

She was only partly aware of the sensation of mud on the soles of her bare feet as she moved from underneath the porch and out into the torrential sheets of rain. She sank to her knees, noting the flecks of dirt which were beginning to dot the fabric of her jumpsuit.

She noticed the orange.

But where was the blue?

Chell screamed, a raw and guttural noise that was drowned out by the rain. She screamed for Caroline and unrequited love. She screamed for Cave and the illusive nature of success. She screamed for GlaDOS and internal war. She screamed for heaps of lifeless personality cores, for decimated turrets and a fate which ended only in an abyss, for the sour smell of neurotoxin, for bullet wounds, for scars and shiny pink skin.

She screamed for Wheatley, for sweetness, for bumbling and for friendship. She screamed for a love that could never be and for every single shade of blue.

Chell screamed for Chell.

fin.

this started out not being chelley, but of course, i couldn't help myself.
i need to stop writing such depressing things.