"Your World Is Ending"
Fandom: Portal
Pairing: Cave/Caroline
Rating: T
Notes: This piece and the others in the series were written for personal catharsis. I don't really care if they're any good. I don't know why they're all in second-person present tense.
Disclaimer: Portal and all associated characters belong to Valve. I just borrow them for my own sick pleasure.
Your name is Caroline, and your world is ending.
Things have been bad for a long time. In ‘67 you celebrated twenty years of progress and science. You were on top of the world. You thought ‘68 was just a rough patch when it came-but ‘69 was worse, and the '70s after that. It’ll get better, you kept saying. It has to get better. It didn’t.
All your hard work slowed your descent, but didn’t stop it. It wasn’t enough. You failed your company, and now you have to watch it nosedive into oblivion. You failed it.
You failed him.
Even with all your struggles, the next fifteen years weren’t so bad because he was beside you. He gave you hope and strength, courage to carry on-the others thought him delusional, but you thought him inspiring. Together you could do anything.
But then he got sick, and everything changed.
The last few years have been agony. You’ve had to watch him decline as the poison gets to him-as his handsome features grow hollow, and the muscle wastes from his once strong frame. His hair greys and thins, his voice weakens, and that damn coughing-you can’t stand that coughing. The voice of a leader that once boomed like a lion’s roar should not be marred by coughing. Every time he asks for his pain pills, it cuts you to the core.
He’s the most amazing person you’ve ever known. He’s the center of your world. And he’s slowly but steadily fading away.
It’s like watching the death of the sun.
You know you’ll never be able to continue without him. He expects you to, and you’ll try-for the good of the company-but it’ll only be delaying the inevitable. He is the fire in Aperture’s belly. Without him it’ll only be you dragging along an empty shell.
You’ll try, but you know it’ll kill you too.
Your name is Caroline, and your world is ending.
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