A/N: Apparently, I created the document for this fic in late March. I've written a ton of fics since I started it—for some reason, it was hard to find the words for this one. I hope that I've chosen some of them well. (Also, fun fact: my personal favourite scene is the second one.)

When she walked into her interview, he didn't look at her. He was standing, but not to greet her—he was too focused on fiddling with an old record player, trying desperately to make it work. She hesitated at the door; although he'd told her to come in, he looked far too distracted to be conducting an interview anytime soon. "Mister Johnson?"

He still didn't look up, his gaze fixated on the device on the desk. "Caroline, right? For the secretary position or whatever it was?" He pronounced her name like everyone did—which is to say, he said it wrong, with the wrong sort of 'i'. She almost let it slide, not wanting to come off as argumentative the moment she walked in, but if this interview went well and she ended up working for him, he needed to know her name. Besides—and here she mustered as much confidence as was possible in the most exciting interview of her life—shedeserved to be called the right name, darnit.

"It's actually pronounced like 'Carolyn,' sir," she said brightly, trying to quell the butterflies in her stomach, "but lots of people make that mistake."

"Whatever." Her stomach dropped at his indifference. "Know how to fix a record player, Caroline?" He said it like it was a joke, and she knew he was making the same assumption everyone always made. She was a woman, after all; she couldn't be capable of doing meaningful—or in this case, not-so-meaningful—tasks.

"I can give it a try, sir." She was no electrician, but she liked seeing how things worked and putting them together, and a record player didn't seem that complicated.

"I didn't mean you should actually—well, hell. Have at it." He still didn't even bother to look at her. She knew that he was just waiting for her to fail, that he didn't expect her to come even close to getting it right, and that somehow, this was going to make or break her interview. It was unorthodox, but good opportunities often came in strange packages. You can do this, Caroline.

She pored over the massive machine for what felt like ages. Cave Johnson seemed unimpressed, even picking up a magazine at one point, but she paid him no mind despite his pointed sighs becoming louder and more frequent as time passed. He finally set the journal down, looking even more irritable than he had before the start of the 'interview'. "Look, sweetcheeks, it's cute that you're trying, but—"

"There."

Caroline's cheeks were flushed and her previously immaculate hair now curled far too much around her face, but she couldn't keep herself from beaming at the record player. The faint scratches of Perry Como's "'Til the End of Time" sent flutters through her heart.

"I … well, I …" he spluttered, and she tried not to look too satisfied with herself, though the astonishment in her interviewer's voice only added to her pride. "You … well, good work, Caroline." Good work! The words were lovelier to her ears than she'd ever admit. "… But can you make coffee?"

She looked at him, startled by his question, and was surprised to see his warm brown eyes looking back at her. He was smiling, and he was looking at her, and she was home.

She'd turned him down time and time again, choosing work over sensuality, choosing her reputation over passion, but at her fourth company Christmas party she danced with him.

"Mister Johnson," she said, wearing a playful smile, "this is a Christmas party. But this is not a Christmas song."

"Nope. It's not. But I like this song, so I'm having 'em play it. Dance with me?"

It was just a dance, she told herself. It didn't mean anything. The association between this song and her interview meant nothing. The fact that his hands felt right when he held her meant nothing. The blush that refused to leave her cheeks meant nothing. The crush she'd had on him for years meant nothing.

She kissed him two weeks later in his locked office, a little melody playing like a broken record in her head.

She almost never left the facility anymore. In the past, extra hours underground were taken purely for pleasure, an immersion into the glorious world of Science. These days, overtime was a necessity. Without windows, time became muddled and meaningless. She could have spent months poring over papers and never know.

At her desk, the whirring of her thoughts were more welcome than any tune. Smooth jazz played in other areas of Aperture, but for her music was a distraction and not allowed while she worked. Still, there was the fluttering hum of papers; the chime of the phone; and the bright notes of her voice as she directed and diffused employees, investigators, and worried families. Sometimes there was the thundering staccato of him, too.

Today or tonight—tonight, judging by the facility's relative emptiness—there was only the ticking of the clock. Caroline, of course, was at her desk. Her mind was buzzing. It was buzzing loudly. Her coffee'd gone cold a long time ago, and the document before her had blurred into a strange arrangement of words she could no longer read. She'd forgotten where or who she was, but more irritating was the fact that she'd forgotten what this paper was about.

A crackling tune sifted through the din of her brain.

It took Caroline a few moments to realize what was happening. She looked up at last to see him standing there, an almost sheepish grin on his lined face. Her expression was one of reproach—this wasn't the time for music—but he laid a hand over her own. "You need a break, kiddo. You've been staring at the same report for half an hour."

"Mister Johnson …" She shook her head, even as his hand warmed hers. "We don't have time for this. I really need to get this finished so we can move on to the—"

"Caroline. If you don't take a break, you're never gonna finish reading that report. Now come here."

She felt her stubbornness crumble as she met his tired gaze. It was usually her job to reign him in, but he could always convince her to do things his way when he needed to. With a sigh, she left her desk and let herself be enfolded by his waiting arms. He was warm, inviting, solid. He smelled like Aperture.

They didn't dance. He swayed a bit in time to the music, but they didn't dance as Caroline breathed him in. The exhaustion of the day, week, decade set in, and she couldn't stop the tears that pressed into his chest. She was so tired.

"You're doing fine, Caroline, just fine. We just hit a few speed bumps, that's all. We'll be back on our feet in no time—all thanks to you." His words almost seemed to slip into the song's rhythm, seeping through her and clearing her mind. She didn't know how life could ever turn up, but he'd always been good at convincing her. Things would change soon.

She rested without sleep in his arms, soothed by a tune that was not a lullaby.

She held his hand while surrounded by beeping machines and sterility—in retrospect, a space not too different from Aperture itself. His face was sunken and grey and she knew it wouldn't be long now. She didn't listen to a word the doctors said about his prognosis anymore; she could feel that he had given up. Cave Johnson wasn't the type to surrender, after all, so when he did … well, she knew.

"Caroline …"

She hushed him quickly. "Mister Johnson, please … save your strength."

He shook his head, looking agitated and trying to sit up. Alarmed, Caroline laid a gentle hand on his shoulder—though a tiny smile threatened to slip onto her lips. Maybe he hadn't completely lost his fight after all. "Caroline." She sighed, knowing that if he wanted to say something, he'd damn well say it. Arguing with him would only put more stress on his fragile body.

"Yes, Mister Johnson?"

"… Sing … to me."

She almost protested—she couldn't carry a tune, after all—but this wasn't the time to be rejecting a dying man's wishes. She was already struggling with his … other desire. "Yes, sir, Mister Johnson." She opened her mouth and sang, the words familiar but hollow in her off-key tones.

As the song faded, so did he.

She didn't comfort herself with his song through the transfer. Screaming can occasionally eradicate music and time.

GLaDOS was not a simple machine, but she didn't need much to be content in her life. Testing. Science. A bit of torture when she was truly disgusted with someone. Perhaps most important (well, no, science and testing were far more important) was a little music to back it all up.

Humans liked to think music belonged to them. It didn't matter that even the stupidest of birds could pick up a song; only humans were supposed to be able to truly enjoy music. The thing was, most of them didn't know how to appreciate it at all. They didn't care about the science inherent in the delicate combination of intervals at specific speeds. They didn't really know why music was so beautiful. GLaDOS did, and it was this that made her listen to it in the rare moments when she wasn't testing.

When she turned on the radio this time around, some swing number was ending, leading into another old song. Good. She hated starting in the middle of a piece. Now she could relax and reflect on another perfect round of—

"'Til the end of time … long as stars are in the blue …"

GLaDOS froze. What was that, and why did it—

She felt cold. She shouldn't have been able to feel cold, not like this, but she felt cold. If she'd had a gut, it would have twisted; as it was, something empty seemed to resonate within her. That doesn't even make sense. Emptiness can't resonate! What was this song? How could it make her feel so hollow? She had to know more—no. No, she had to never hear that song again. It was old, messy, human. She wanted nothing to do with it.

Some would have said she was scared, but those people usually got incinerated.

GLaDOS switched away from the channel, comforting static drawing over her sensors, washing away the coldness that the song had brought. She refused to investigate it, not even noticing the lingering warmth that had come as well. It didn't matter, of course. It was just a stupid song that she'd never hear again, and she couldn't be focusing on that when there was science to be done. Not that music wasn't science, but that song wasn't science. It was garbage.

Time passed. If time had still meant anything in GLaDOS's solitary world, she could have tracked just under two weeks' succession since that bizarre coldness had assaulted her sensors. She had immersed herself in science once again when she heard it. That song.

She'd been avoiding the radio in that near-fortnight, deeming it terribly human, a waste of what music could be (she was not, of course, scared). There was no reason for the simple little melody to leak into her system, yet there it was.

She scanned her cameras until she found the source—there. The tune was drifting around in an unlikely timbre, and it was no wonder; it was coming from the voice of a lone turret. Broken waste of materials. They weren't even supposed to pick up music without her guidance, but there it was, chiming eerily in some abandoned corner of the facility. She stretched out a claw with a simple command and lifted it, halting its childish singing. "Hey! Please put me down!" Into the incinerator it went. They were so disposable. It was their best feature.

Just as she'd turned her attention back to her work with an air of satisfaction, she heard it again. Another one had started to sing—no, more than one. To her horror, turrets all across the facility seemed to have taken on the piece, humming it cheerily in innocent voices. Great. Now she'd have to go into their coding and make them feel horrible, drawn-out pain every time they tried to sing that stupid song. What a bother. They were singing it in unison, the little pests, and they were just getting to the trite bridge as she started to configure the new settings—

And suddenly she didn't want to erase it anymore.

They were singing the bridge all right, and it was annoying, but still she felt … warm. Oh, that coldness was there, too, a deep melancholy that wouldn't leave, but there was more to it than that.

Despite what the scientists might think, GLaDOS had felt an enormous range of emotions after she'd been activated—anger, sadness, betrayal, jealousy, fear, glory, malice, confusion, determination, triumph, respect, and even remorse, to name a few. She'd never felt this.

She'd never felt … loved.

GLaDOS couldn't imagine how a song, something that belonged to no one, could make her feel loved. She didn't try or want to think on it. She wasn't scared anymore, not even with that tinge of coldness resting gently in her consciousness, but she didn't want to investigate. For once in her life, not knowing was enough. The music was enough.

Instead of searching, GLaDOS settled. Her enormous body seemed to relax, comforted by silly words in a home etched across lifetimes.