♛:: @triumphantmuses wrote, Even with his mind in pieces, Rattmann recognized his daughter. With the two of them wandering the facility, it was only a matter of time before they ran into each other. Only, he'd hoped that she wouldn't find him like this, in the corner of one of his dens, whispering to his companion cube, and scribbling away at the walls. He only hoped she would recognize him, not run - though if she did, he wouldn't blame her.
Recognition did not come immediately. First came surprise, almost shock at seeing another living human down here, when she’d been led to believe that they were all gone, either died to the facility or left on their own. Aperture often seemed to her to be a place where human beings should never exist, but at the same time it was a monument to human arrogance, with so many winding, labyrinthine halls she could picture having teemed with life once. Paradoxical, like most things about the facility.
Now here was this man, with his long, wild hair, like he’d have been perfectly at home in the overgrowth that had consumed the facility while she & GLaDOS slept. She didn’t even realize quite at first that he was the one who had written on the walls, but there he was in the act this very moment.
It was a jolt like being thrown into cold water. He was the one who painted the walls. Who depicted her struggle against GLaDOS across broken panels where there had once been a test chamber. Who guided her, unseen, left her signals, warnings. Arrows that showed the way. X — marks to indicate where to drop storage cubes to knock over turrets. The hum of the radio like a half — remembered lullaby. The phrases & symbols she could never quite make sense of.
It delayed true recognition, which made her feel all the more uneasy. Like as long as she was in his presence, the world was tilted at an axis at which she couldn’t quite keep her balance, even with the Long Fall Boots on her legs. She knew him. She knew him, who was he ? The gaunt man with his paints, how did she know him ? He wasn’t just her guide.
She drew closer, because she had to know. This wasn’t science, wasn’t curiosity. This was a draw like a dog finding its way home from a hundred miles away, guided by instinct. Instinct said to go to him. She needed to see him better so she could know. He was someone so important that Chell would give anything just to touch him. He could be the man she had been looking for, had wanted so much to find again that she would do anything just to see him.
She signed at him as she approached, a quick shake of the finger just in front of her frowning mouth, the hand moving out toward him before down empty. Both it and its twin, encased in the Portal Gun, shaking upward as if in frustration. It was at the tip of her tongue like a word she just couldn’t recall to mind.
「 Who are you ? 」
