Chapter 20: Just Go

“Dean!” Chell flipped the sofa cushion over, throwing it on the floor with the rest of the house “Dean… come out please!”

She had been searching for the better part of forever. Or at least it felt like forever. She couldn’t quite recall anymore. It didn’t matter. She would keep searching and she would find him eventually and then she could move on. That was all that mattered after all.

It was onto the stairs. Perhaps he had climbed up and slipped between fibers of carpeting. Chell inspected each and every inch of those twelve stairs, including the smooth railing that trailed all the way down. It should have been an annoying amount of work, but she was rather calm about the whole thing. There was a massive weight off her chest, covered only by a thin sleeveless shirt in creamy orange. A tattered pair of jean shorts came well short of her knees, gingerly rubbing against the polyester. It was so much lighter than… than…

He wasn’t anywhere on the stairs! He wasn’t on the railing or the tip of the second floor, under the wooden ledge. He wasn’t in the little cracks between creaky floor tiles or under her baby blue bedroom door, which would slam shut on especially windy days.

But what was this? A quiet rustling… perhaps from the oak tree which would poke at the window from time to time? No, it was coming from inside.

Wssssssss

Chell tiptoed over to her bed, the sheets decorated in that blue-grey pattern, the mattress still totally flat, the comforters riddled with holes that stuffing crawled out of. In the corner of her eye, she could have sworn she saw-

“Chell!” Mom’s voice slithered up from downstairs. “It’s time for dinner!”

She shook her head in disbelief… Mom? Chell had searched the kitchen at some point… she was sure of it. When she had searched the kitchen, Mom was nowhere to be found. It made sense that she was nowhere to be found:

“Mom, I'm like a thousand times older than you!” Chell hollered back down the stairs, “I can make my own dinner!”

… There it was again! Something dashed in and out of sight on the bed sheets. She hardly saw it - a stain on the bed sheet that might disappear when you go in for a closer look. But Chell had grown accustomed to spotting his little body, swinging vulnerably left and right from her jumpsuit sleev-

Sleeve? What was she on about?

Chell crept onto the mattress, balancing herself with her knees and elbows. It was a king-sized bed in a queen-sized house, eating up a bedroom that could’ve used a painting or a bigger dresser in its place. She took care with every movement, so that she wouldn’t blot him into a red mess under a misplaced thigh or shin. This way, she would be able to feel him squirming under her body, spreading out his insides under her weight, pretending not to realize for a moment or so before pulling him out. A weirdly specific thought…

He didn’t seem to be under the sheets. She couldn’t feel him in the worn-out comforters, though they were ripped to the extent that she would’ve been able to see him hiding there. He wasn’t curled up on the mattress, flat enough that Chell would have been able to feel the little dent he would have made on the surface.

Come to think of it, this whole scenario was beginning to seem a little strange. When was the last time she had seen… someone? Anyone? Mom was downstairs but she hadn’t… seen her? Dean was somewhere on her bed… from her childhood… that she had left behind thousands of years ago? Everything could be safely presupposed but also uncertain at the same time. But this didn’t make sens-

What? Sense? What did she know about sense? This was how things were. She had to power through it. She had always done just that.

Yes, she was getting closer. Chell knew he had to be here - in this room, on this bed, hiding from her. He was weak, terrified and unable to manage by himself. There was no room for him here… well theoretically there was plenty of room, but the point was, there was no room for his kind here or anywhere. 

The bedroom was relatively small but much larger than her, Chell reasoned. Was she scared of that? Was she scared of the machines and the massive testing chambers that made her feel so smal-

What? What were these memories in her head? They weren’t hers.

Was he a fraction of a fraction of her size? Perhaps. But she was able to cope with her scale in the context of everything around her. Chell was satisfied with being a pawn in a chess game that threw her onto the front lines, providing she could make it to the other side of the board. Dean would tip over as soon as he spotted the knights and the rooks and the queen coming for his throat. She had to get rid of him, or else he would keep coming back. She had to.

Chell could sense him. She could hear his tiny breaths, trying in vain to hide themselves. This place might have been strange, foggy and a little uncertain, but it was real. It felt real as anything else. Yes, when she pulled that pillow, the uncomfortable one in the wrinkly sheet which had been shrunken several sizes too small in the washing machine, Dean would be there.

She took a deep breath. Flat on her stomach, she extended her arm out and lifted the pillow up. And of course, there he was, just as she imagined he would be. Dean was curled up beside the window sill, beady little eyes poking out between his legs, exuding cowardice from every bone in his body. 

Chell had been ready to take care of things the moment she saw him. For so long, she had been plunging herself into that mental state where she could put him out of his misery without a second thought. But seeing him here now… seeing him hide himself like a mouse in the wall… seeing him on her bed… seeing him so pathetically and helplessly vulnerable… she had to make this last. She had to-

“Chell!” Mom shrieked again from downstairs. “Chell, did you hear me? Dinner is ready!”

“I told you, I don’t want dinner! Would you leave me alone?” 

Dean sat up straight, his cloak flowing down on the bed sheets, his eyes clear as water. He inched forward robotically, but when he spoke, his voice was anything but:

“Chell,” he said, “Please hear me out.”

His voice was smooth, but wracked with fear. His gaze was firm but uncertain. His entire presence seemed thin and undefined. But he was there. Chell was positive he was sitting there, in front of her, doing his best to imitate her composure but only revealing his lack of it in the process. 

Chell eased herself forward like a lioness, doing her best to hide her disdain:

“I understand Dean,” she murmured, crawling forward “I understand…”

Dean stood up, and approached her. Chell could feel every step he took, every movement he made, every twitch in his little body. She could feel everything he was feeling… and she empathized with it even less. He was staring up at her… hopefully perhaps? Terrified perhaps? She couldn’t tell, but she was sick of his little mind games.

“I understand.” She repeated, her breath blowing over him like a light breeze, “But you never HAVE!” 

She pounced on him, curling her arms and legs around as if she were a glass entrapping a fly in the house. Chell thought she had him for a moment, stuck under her shadow, peering up at her torso. Looking down, though, he had somehow evaded it all. He dashed forward with impossible speed, cutting through the inch of open space between her legs.

Chell locked her ankles together, Dean too speedy and agile to grab with her hands. She smiled down at him triumphantly, knowing he was caught:

“Where to now?” She taunted him.

He stopped up for just a moment, as if he were considering something carefully. Then, effortlessly, he resumed his little run, squeezing through her bare feet without a trace. It shouldn’t have been possible. There was no room for him to work with, and he had gone and done it anyway. Chell audibly snorted at how little sense this made - how impossible this should’ve been.

Dean threw himself onto the hard floor - the hard, smooth maple floor. He picked himself up as if he hadn’t just leapt off the equivalent of a three story house, scurrying into the distance like a rodent. He was tiny, but Chell could swear he was literally running on four legs. He reached the center of the room at a breathtaking pace, proceeding to disappear into the distance… except it wasn’t the distance. It was a few feet from Chell at the most.

She jumped up from her bed, knocking the sheets to the ground. On her knees, she searched around the floor frantically, praying that her eyes were playing tricks on her. She patted her arms and legs on the ground, desperate to find him… to feel him somewhere. He couldn’t have just disappeared. 

Dean had just disappeared.

Chell wasn’t about to play this insufferable game of hide-and-seek all over again. He couldn’t have gotten far, wherever he was. She looked around her little room, the walls painted so expertly. The furniture was placed so carefully, her grade school trophies shining so delicately, her clothes hanging in the closet so expectantly. She smiled at one specific thought…

Chell tackled her dresser as if she were wrestling a bull at a rodeo, heaving it onto the ground beneath her. The impact hurt a little, but not unbearably. He wasn’t there, but she hadn’t expected him to be. The trophies had tumbled to the floor, bright plastic junk commemorating long-forgotten science fairs and spelling bees. She lifted them up, about a half-dozen in total, breaking them against the ground furiously, part of her wondering how much fear she could build up in Dean’s little heart.

“So now you’re competent huh?” Chell kicked over the lamp by her bed, shattering the fluorescent bulb and lining the floor with sparkling glass, “Now you can manage?”

She stepped over it fearlessly, glass breaking skin and drawing red marks from her feet. It… hardly bothered her at all. She felt so entrenched in the situation - in the hunt, that pain was relative. If she didn’t want to feel it, she didn’t have to. Perhaps it had always been like this.

“I don’t buy it Dean. I should’ve known from the beginning!” She marched over to the desk she had never used, “You’re a wreck. Every time you did something not stupid… not cowardly, it was because of me! My essence!”

Chell placed her hands onto the desk drawers, lined up vertically in more rows than any young student would ever need. They were bolted in tight, but she simply wanted it more. It didn’t matter why she wanted it - she just did. She ripped the sliding drawers out from the desk, papers sprawling around the room, mopping up blood.

“The only mistake I made was sharing it with you - thinking you could be different. Tearing the ‘Dean’ out of you!” She spotted something strange in the papers and picked one up, “I should’ve known! What was I thinking? ‘Teamwork?’ ‘Love?’ ‘R-romance?’ she shuttered “With you?”

‘Chell Redacted’ was stamped in blood red at the top of the page, a stock photo of a scientific facility printed over where her portrait was clearly supposed to be. A graph marked her abnormality around the 100th percentile, Chell smiling at the further confirmation of it all:

‘'Test subject is abnormally stubborn. She never gives up. Ever.’ The message was hastily scrawled at the bottom of the page.

It looked familiar, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Wherever it was from, it was true. How ridiculous was it that Dean could hide from her? HER? How long could this possibly go on for? He was a speck of dust compared to Chell. He was a little doll afraid of his own shadow. A nervous little bat fleeing at the break of dawn. Artifact after artifact, evidence after evidence demonstrated how different she was. How special she was. How much stronger she was without him syphoning her strength away.

She didn’t need to play on his terms anymore. Whatever this was - wherever she was, it was her world. The next piece of furniture she displaced… he would be there. It didn’t matter if he had run as fast as he could. It didn’t matter if he had left the room. It didn’t matter if he were whizzing away at the speed of sound, wandering out of the neighborhood - the state - the country. He would be there, because she was strong enough to make it happen.

“Chell, is everything alright up there?” Mom was right beside the stairs now. “All this clanging around… I’m gonna come up to check on youuuuuuuuHuuuuuuuuu”

Her voice seemed to extend itself into a gruff shriek of dismay, like nothing Chell had heard before. Loud feet seemed to clop up the stairs, taking much longer than they should have. They sounded off for a full minute, and Mom still wasn’t up the stairs. Chalking it off to yet another unexplainable quality of this world, or rather, wanting to get on with her experiment, Chell shrugged and marched into the bathroom.

Dean wasn’t in here right now. She had to make it so that he would be. She focussed all her energy on this one specific desire - this one need, that he would be in the medicine cabinet when she opened it up. She stared into the mirror, reflecting back a sage but almost… translucent gaze. 

Chell pulled this energy within herself, and within the reflection. She drew it out to the forefront until she could practically glow in it. She relished the falseness of the reflection - how she had done this. How she was the only real person in this room, even when he would come to join her. 

Satisfied, she pulled the door open. Sure enough, lying against the ledge with an indecisive but bewildered look on his mug was Dean. Looking at him, Chell recalled something she had learned a long while ago, her father taking a rare opportunity to talk about nature and biology:

“The cheetah feasts on the gazelle,” he told her, “Just as the gazelle feasts on the grass. Really, we are all nuts and bolts in nature’s machine.”

She grabbed Dean from the drawer, wringing breaths out from his lungs. He was very present on one hand, but on the other, he wouldn’t meet her gaze. He couldn’t seem to look her in the eye.

“I don’t need your help. I never did!” Chell said “I don’t want you here with me!”

He shook back and forth, his body seeming lifeless but his pulse still very much there. 

“No! Incorrect… No...” He was rambling nonsense, “Needing… us… not… you…”

Orange water seeped out from the faucet, the drain in the sink falling down by itself. In just a moment, the water was flowing over the top, dripping on the floor and pattering on Chell’s feet.

“What are you even saying?” Chell shook him furiously, continuing to squeeze. He wouldn’t let go of his life. 

“Not… alone. Not… alone” Dean’s eyeballs fluttered to the edge of their sockets as he stopped and started like a dial tone.

How quickly this had all escalated… the papers, the water, the nonsensical word salad from Dean… it started to get to her. None of this was making sense. Why was… she back at home? How was Dean even here? How was Mom still alive? How she had escaped- escaped- she almost had it…

Aperture. Aperture! GLaDOS! She had put her in the machine. But... how had she gotten out? Why was she here of all places? What… what was she doing with Dean? The revelation of it all… the insane connections of half-truths dancing around in her mind. She looked out the bathroom door and saw her room lying dead in a heap, furniture strewn about, everything but the bed knocked over.

This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. Chell had been lying to herself, and she had carefully placed out failsafes to stop herself from realizing. This had to end. She had to get back to what was real - to her mission. How could she do it? How could she just make it all disappear?

She stepped back, the bathroom filling with the orange water, Dean’s little body warming in her hand:

“This isn’t real!” She declared, “This isn’t real, and I want to wake up. Please.”

Nothing.

“I know this isn’t real… I’m not afraid. I just don’t want to be stuck here... by myself.”

She could hear a ‘Ding’ in the distance. The bathroom door closed and the faucet kept dripping. The light at the top of the room seemed to dim, as the world around her began to peel away. Was this just a dream? Was there some sort of lesson she was supposed to take from this? It didn’t matter now. She would be out, and in a few minutes, this whole affair would span only a few seconds in her memory.

Chell could see herself drift from outside of her body, floating back into reality. She smiled at how worried she was for a moment - the idea that this was in any way real. Equally amusing was the thought that this was some kind of teachable moment. It was a dream - a slideshow of fumbling ideas and nothing mo-

BANG!

She fell out of the air like a missile, slingshotting back into her body… and further and further down. The bathroom door snapped open, as the orange water pooled up to her knees, warm and opaque. 

It winnied before Chell saw her body.

Blossom swung her hooves in the air, dark red fire springing from her mouth. She seemed to inhale and exhale the flames, the smell of burnt flesh pervading the air, dark smoke exiting her nostrils. She had seemed massive long ago when Chell was a little girl. Now she was even larger, the water hardly submerging her shoes. Her elegant brown mane had turned grizzled and grey, and her coat was ragged and tousled. 

The horse strutted forward, the damp room gradually warming as she approached Chell, who had no choice but to step backwards with every strut. The marks of wheels and lines, a few inches apart on Blossom’s body, made blood red gashes across her abdomen, sewn together but not by anything Chell could see. A blow from those hooves could knock her out without skipping a beat.

“I don’t want this…” Chell begged, “I don’t deserve this. What does this mean? Just tell me and I’ll understand!” 

The water rippled and she inched further backwards.  She could feel something in herself plummeting to the bottom of her stomach.. The room subsequently filled with that green mist, and Chell’s perspective was drawn deep within her body, a helpless speck of nothing peering out of her own body in horror once again.

“Do it.” Fire emerged from the horse’s mouth like moisture on a cold day, as it took on Mom’s voice.

Chell could feel her arms propping Dean in the air and slowly dragging him down into the water. A cold grin sprawled across her face as she dunked him in the underneath, his arms sprawling and stopping - sprawling and stopping. She thought about what she had said to him, perhaps the last words he would ever hear her say:

“Even if GLaDOS is lying - whether or not we’re stuck in a different millenium - when you die, no one will miss you either way”

He wasn’t able to put his fragilities aside and become something better. But Chell looked around her - here she was again, trapped inside her own body in a new mess she had concocted herself. If this was really happening, if she really was about to drown him and spend the rest of her life a prisoner to herself, would anyone give a damn about it? Would anyone even notice the difference?

And so, she fought it. Chell searched for that same love and passion that brought her back last time. She dug into the depths of her core to bring that same energy out. For a moment, against all odds, she powered through. She forced the vile presence from her mind and body, lifting Dean out from the water with all her strength.

Blossom had none of it. She lunged at Chell, kicking her into the water and laughing and neighing in a shivering cackle. Chell fell on the orange stuff, more viscous than it looked, holding her on her back. She sunk back into her chest and the other force took control again. In all the desperation, she felt a strange sense of enjoyment flowing through her, the other half of her taking pleasure in this odd game of seesaw. 

“It’s much too late for that,” Blossom said, “You’ve already lost that game.”

Chell had none of that passion left in her. All she could feel was as a distant drone, a mournful hum like that of the Aperture facility. She couldn’t control what her vessel did, and she began to realize she never really could. Whenever she surrendered herself to that persistence - to that stubbornness, she lost a part of herself. She was letting something else take control, and now she had lost all of it.

Powerlessly, she watched Dean plunge back into the water, which was gradually rising above her own mouth.

“This was what you wanted,” Blossom reassured her, Dean sailing out from her hand but sinking to the floor like a stone, “You can be alone… forever.”

The orange encompassed her and shot into her lungs