Portal 2 - Belongings

The way it had begun was almost stupid.

The job interview at Aperture had been her idea. Still, Clark was behind it, as it usually happened. She had gone out one morning, wrapped by her most elegant suit, and hazily come back home with a job she thought she'd never get.

She had been convinced by the tone of his voice, maybe, or by the patronizing hand in her hair. He laughed whenever she claimed she could aspire to a better paid job. Wait and see, she replied defiantly.

It had been a challenge, in a way. No one could guess how lightly Caroline had taken it. She did not know yet, but she would – just by proving a point to her brother, she had changed her whole destiny.

For a long time, she believed to have been angry at her brother. But they were always smiling, and she had forgotten fast. Clark had never doubted her once – his tone spoke volumes, whether she could hear him or not.

In retrospect, he probably loved her much more than she realized.

Caroline knew she should have been able to tell from the missed calls. There were many of them, at least in the first years. How fast they turned into routine, and how she stopped apologizing for calling back with such delay, she had not noticed for a long time.

She had merely sunk deep in her occupation, and let her working years bring along numerous voices – the voices of strangers who had grown to be her everything, and those of a family that had gradually faded to an echo.

There were also different tones, many and varied, that people directed to her. And while very few of them were kind and understanding, she had been led to sacrificing the ones that counted the most.

Even her mother ended up arguing with her regularly. She burnt away hours on the phone, yelling to whoever would listen that her daughter took her job too seriously and sacrificed her freedom for nothing.

By the time Caroline had considered believing she was right, they talked once in three years, and her voice always sounded tearful.

But that was her choice, she bitterly reminded herself. It had always been. A mother crying in secret could not change it.

The companions of her studies, the only friends she had ever shared anything with, had soon joined the others and grown farther. Their calls had stopped much faster than she had expected. Then again, she observed, at the time she barely paid attention to anything outside her job.

They were just like her, chasing their lives and their dreams. As always, she was the fastest runner. She had to leave them behind.

It was true – in her later years, she had often needed to break that shield of solitude. She had never found the heart to do so, in any case. The people and the chances she had let go of rose in her memory one by one, tinged in solitude and resentment, every time she touched the phone horn.

She suffered with the same force she had once devoted to her job. Still, Aperture never let people wallow in their regrets for long.

Every time they mentioned the project, they offered to take her as painlessly as possible. They guaranteed her a serene passing, and assured that her sacrifice wouldn't go to waste.

Caroline had tried her very best to run away. She could not doubt it, even in her last moments. But when she had to go, trapped by the one compromise she could not get around to, she understood there had never been any point in trying.

She had given herself away with such ease. Just like that, because of her careless dedication, the rest of her life had all become their property.

It was way too late to deny them her death.