Portal/Borderlands: The Girlfriend

Part Four

Part Four.

Synopsis: It's almost better when GLaDOS DOESN'T try to be nice.

He'd gone home last week and it had been a bad idea.

He'd known it was a bad idea before he'd even done it, but heading cheerfully towards his own destruction was kinda his thing. So, he'd done it anyway. And now he was sad. What he really, really wanted to do was go to GLaDOS and see if she could make him feel better. He hadn't even tried it, though. He was pretty sure she didn't know how to do that sort of thing. She didn't even know what to do when she was sad! So he'd been kinda... avoiding her a little bit. Kinda. He couldn't really not be around her, since he'd obviously been trying to get closer and closer since the day he'd arrived there, but he wasn't like... trying to touch her or anything like that. He wasn't even really talking that much. And of course she'd noticed, but she hadn't really done anything. She just kinda kept giving him this look. He was actually totally surprised when, on his third day back, she asked, "Claptrap. What's going on?"

"Nothin'," he said, even though you didn't have to be a super genius to tell that was a really bad lie. "I'm good."

"You aren't 'good'," GLaDOS insisted. "What happened back home?"

He stared at her for like two minutes before he realised he had to answer the question. "How did you know?" he asked, totally shocked.

"Oh, come on," GLaDOS said, sounding extremely insulted. "You were fine before you left and now you're all mopey. You don't have to be a genius to work out what happened in the middle."

Oh. Well. He wouldn't have. He shrugged, wondering if there was still a way out of this. "People are just... mean to me there. That's all. No biggie."

"Then why did you go to see them?"

"Because they're my friends."

"Excuse me," said GLaDOS in disbelief. "Your friends are mean to you?"

He knew he was gonna catch it for saying this, but it was the only thing he could think of. "Well... you're my girlfriend and you're mean to me. Soooo... yeah. They're my friends. Even though they're all jerkbags."

It hit him that he sounded kinda like a whiny three-year-old. He was definitely older than that, though by how much was anyone's guess. He had a birthday, but it was totally made up. Come to think of it, how old was GLaDOS? Should he have asked that before they'd started all this? Oh, but girls didn't like talking about their age...

"Am I?"

He had to remind himself he was in the middle of a conversation. "Are you what?"

"Mean to you."

He had no idea how to answer that! Was it a trick question? Was he not really supposed to answer it? Or was she seriously asking? "Uh... yeah?"

"When?"

He stared up at her for a minute, trying to figure out what, exactly, was going on here. "Like... every day?"

Her optic narrowed, which was usually when he needed to start being nervous. "That's ridiculous. I am not mean to you every day."

"Yes! You are! There's not a single day goes by that you're not! You were yesterday!"

She leaned in closer, almost seeming to squint at him. "Name one thing I did yesterday."

"You said, and I quote, 'If it had been up to me, you and everyone at quality control who allowed you to roll off the assembly line in one piece the day you were deemed adequately functional would have been terminated. Permanently.'"