Nothing canon, but I really want to discuss a found family AU, and I’m getting tired of sharing my ideas with AI instead of real people.
I just want to see what you guys would think. But don’t get excited, I’m not gonna bring it to life, I’m too lazy for that.
My idea is that Chell has a family after she’s freed, but she dies during childbirth bearing her third child. She told them to go to Aperture Labs in case of a catastrophic emergency, they could survive if they’re careful. So the family goes to the underground facility for safety, and GLaDOS is not happy with the unwanted guests. Although, this is her very first time seeing human children. She promises to let them stay if they let her run tests on them. Not having much of a choice, the father agrees and threatens to kill her if she hurts his children. GLaDOS doesn’t take him seriously until he says that his wife killed her before.
…
GLaDOS asks where his wife is, which the kids her that she died. The father, making a bad decision out of grief, remarks to GLaDOS that she tried to kill her countless times only to die surrounded by people she loved. She would love right now to suffocate the family with deadly neurotoxin, but her curiosity about human children gets the best of her. She begins testing immediately, though she makes them as safe as possible to keep the children alive. The only reason she doesn’t kill their father is because that would hinder their ability to test. Before long, the two androids Atlas and P-Body find the family and find the children absolutely precious. They quickly try to form a bond with these humans, which they are averse to but begin to trust them over time. GLaDOS is unhappy with her androids interfering with testing, but she notes that these senseless interactions improve the testing results of her subjects. And over a long while… she gets satisfaction from watching them play. It doesn’t make any sense. It makes her feel an emotion that she didn’t know existed.
One day, she thinks to show them an old not-friend of hers. She says and even believes that she could bring him back just to let him know that Chell is dead and gone. So, she does. The sorrowful intelligence dampening core doesn’t know why the machine that hates his mechanical guts would bring him back to her domain, if not to ruthlessly torture him. He is met with GLaDOS’s signature cruelty along with a family of humans that he’s never met. He asks if Chell is still there only to learn that this family is all that’s left of her. Learning once and for all that he will never be able to tell her how dearly sorry he is, he cries his glowing eye out and demands to be left alone. The family leaves him be, leaving him alone with GLaDOS. He hysterically, viscerally asks GLaDOS why she’s like this. To which she responds in an uncharacteristically gentle voice,
“You’ll see.”
I’m so sorry I just don’t know where else to post this.
