Chapter Text
Part Nineteen. The Definition of Perfect
Ohhh, she was in a good mood this morning.
He peered out of the doorway and tried to see what she was doing. Working on that program again. It was taking her almost literally forever to write whatever that was. But that wasn’t super important. What was important was the good mood bit, because he had to have a Very Serious Discussion with her and that would be much easier if she wasn’t inclined to argue with everything he said.
“Hullo, GLaDOS!” he said cheerfully, coming the rest of the way into the room. She looked over at him, optic flicking up and down once.
“Where did you go?”
“Oh, y’know. Places. What’s that you’re doing, there?”
“It’s… a project.” She looked back at her screen, chassis hitching up a little and then relaxing.
“It’s a very big project,” Wheatley said, wanting to know more now that he’d asked. “You’ve been working on this one for uh, for a pretty long time.”
“I have.”
“And always when I’m not in the room, I noticed.”
“Usually when you’re in here I have to entertain you. I can’t entertain you and write this at the same time.”
He looked thoughtfully at the floor. Yes, that was actually very true, but he didn’t let it bother him. If she really didn’t want him there, she’d send him away. “Look, I… we’ve got to uh, to have a bit of a chat.”
“About what.”
He squinted at her, trying hard to gauge what tone of voice that was supposed to be. It was just… nothing. Just flat and toneless, as if she didn’t want to commit to one kind of conversation or another.
“’bout some of the stuff you said yesterday.”
She sighed and continued to stare at the screen, though she didn’t write any more. “Must we?”
“Yes,” Wheatley said firmly. “We must. And I need you to uh, to not argue. That is, you need to uh, to listen, instead of, instead of getting mad in advance like you usually, like you usually do.”
“When did you stop,” she said quietly.
“Uh… stop what?”
“Being afraid of me.”
Wheatley’s optic plates screwed up in confusion. “Well, to be honest, I haven’t really been in a long time… I am when I think uh, when I think you’re mad, but I… haven’t been scared of you in a long while, other than that. But… why are you asking? D’you want me to be afraid of you?” He couldn’t imagine wanting her to be afraid of him . That would be simply terrible.
“I… know how to deal with people who are afraid of me.”
“I don’t want to be dealt with,” he said in a soft voice. “I want to be your friend.”
She stared at him for a long moment.
“What did you want to talk about.”
He emulated a breath, expanding and resettling his chassis and resolving to hold her gaze as much as possible. “Why d’you think having, having um, well, why d’you think liking me makes you… uh… soft and dependable, I think you – no, that wasn’t it. Dependant! Soft and dependant. Why’d you say that?”
She looked away for a long moment, then returned to her original position and said, “People have friends to fill in for qualities they feel they lack. I… don’t like how it makes me feel when I lack something. I’m supposed to be perfect. Needing… someone to fill in the holes means facing them and admitting they exist. And that means I’ll never be what I’m supposed to be.”
“Maybe… you’re not supposed to be perfect,” Wheatley said slowly, thinking hard. “The humans, they wanted you to be, sure, but they’re not perfect. Maybe this all just, it’s all just meant to show you that, that you don’t have to, to feel that… that pressure , anymore, to be something you can’t be. And really, I don’t… I don’t see why else you’d feel you had to be perfect, really.”
“It comes with what I am,” GLaDOS said, looking away for another second. “I have an inherent need for things to be complete, and is the completion of myself not to be able to do everything perfectly?”
“Of a computer ,” Wheatley said disdainfully. He hated the whole perfect business. Made no sense, none at all. “Not of you . You’re in a computer, but that’s not what you are .”
“Don’t try to convince me with vague statements. It’s not going to work.”
“Okay, next question.” He thought hard, trying to remember what the next part of it had been. “Why… well, I’m sure you remember that uh, that list I had you write, eh? So you want to, to spend time with me, but uh, but why did you say it as though it was a bad thing if that’s what you want?”
“Since when does anything I want to do have anything with what I need to do?”
“Ohhh. This goes back to the whole, the perfect thing, doesn’t it!” He looked pensively at the floor panels, then met her optic again and said, “So, so logic’ly that’s, it’s a waste of time, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well… trying to be perfect obviously does not, it doesn’t make you happy at all , and you never can be, so… so why don’t you… try to be happy instead of… instead of perfect?”
“I’m supposed to be perfect. I’m not supposed to be happy.”
He stared at her, dumbfounded.
“You’d really put aside, sacrifice your happiness in order to, to be something you can never, that you’ll never be?”
She looked away from him, her chassis sinking a little bit. “You don’t have to put it like that.”
Okay. So there was that, explained. Next part. This wasn’t going too poorly, all things considered, though he was making her feel bad and he needed to make sure he remembered to do something about that afterward. “Okay. So. I already talked to you about, about you not wanting to do things because you uh, because humans do them. And I guess that goes back to uh, to the being perfect thing as well, but I dunno where you’re getting this definition of perfect from. I mean, if you were to ask me, well, it’d… I’d say my life is pretty near perfect, right now, even though I’m not, and, and you’re not, and even though we fight and, and I do stupid things, but it… well… I just… sort of wish you’d latch on to my definition, really, ‘cause you’d be a lot happier, and… well honestly, I… I really want that for you.” Somewhere along the course of that little speech he’d looked away, and he’d have been lying if he said he wasn’t nervous to look her in the face again. Which reminded him of the last order of business.
“And… I need to know why you lie all the time. And I need you to stop.”
She startled, moving back, but he moved forward so that he could still look her in the eye. He knew instinctively that she wouldn’t lie if he did that. “I mean it. You have to stop lying. And yeah, you hardly ever actually flat-out lie, but it’s so much worse when you pretend something’s the truth when it’s really, it’s really not. Stop working ‘round it. Just… it’s the truth, luv. If it’s the truth, it can’t be bad, right?”
“I can’t do all of that at once,” she said quietly, and he was sure she wanted to look away but seemed to know the importance of not doing so. “I can’t – “
“If it were anything else, you would.”
“God damn you, Wheatley.” Now she did look away, shaking her core. “You’re supposed to be stupid. Where did the little idiot go? Fine. I lie because I’m trying to avoid admitting things to myself. And yes. It goes back to humans. I started doing it in the first place because I got sick of having to do everything they asked, yet when I tried to do other things I had to tell them the truth. So I learned to work around it instead. Of course, work around it enough and even you don’t know where the truth ends and the lie begins.” She made a disdainful electronic noise and shook her head. “No. That was a lie. You do know. You just don’t want to.”
“GLaDOS, listen,” he said, as softly and gently as he could, “I know you would rather… I didn’t… we didn’t do this. But… you’re not happy . Look, I… I’m not trying to… to tell you to be like me, or anything, but… I’m happy, and I don’t try to be perfect, and I don’t lie to you, and I do trust you. God, all I… all I really want is for you to be happy with me, that’s all! Because you’re, you’re my friend, and, and I care about you, and honestly, it just kills me, the way you, how you go on like, like you don’t matter to… to yourself, and you just have these, these really shallow reasons for what you do, and… and you believe them, and…” He didn’t know where he’d been going with that and looked helplessly at the floor, tension wracking his chassis.
“You’ve been waiting a long time to say all of that, haven’t you.”
He looked up at her from below the rim of his optic assembly, without moving his chassis. “Probably my whole life, really. Been trying to… to help you out since I was your Core, there, but I...” He shook himself. “It’s as though I had to start over again from scratch. I was getting someplace and then they replaced me, and… if anything, it’s… harder than before. Because you’re… you’re so much… you’re deeper inside yourself than you used to be. And this is… my last resort, I guess. I don’t know what else to do. I just keep telling you and telling you and you keep not listening, or you take so long to listen that I, I don’t know if what I said worked at all, and… I don’t know what to do anymore.”
“Don’t give up on me, Wheatley,” she said, and her voice was so soft and so quiet he barely heard it at all. As soon as he did he felt terrible, because that was exactly what he sounded like he was doing. And sometimes, he’d have liked to. But he had made her a silent promise a long time ago that he would make her happy one day and even if it took him the rest of his frustrating, perfect life, he was going to do it.
He decided the best answer to that would be none at all, and he instead went down beside her and pressed himself into her core. He tried very hard to, to put off an aura , sort of, that he was there and he would always be there, no matter what, but of course when neither of them was talking it was hard to tell if it was working. And he stayed there with her for a long time, where she didn’t move and he tried not to, until she finally said, “Can you leave me alone for awhile? I need to think.”
Wheatley didn’t understand why she couldn’t think if he was in the room, but he did as she asked and left. He didn’t want to, because he felt as though he needed to protect her from her own lies and he couldn’t do that if he didn’t know which ones she was telling herself, but he couldn’t lecture her about not listening and then not listen himself.
He had no idea how long he was out in the facility by himself, but as soon as night came and he was supposed to be in there with her, he couldn’t stay away any longer and went back. She glanced at him as he entered, but said nothing.
“It’s okay I came back, right?”
“Yes, it’s fine. I’m… not quite finished thinking, though.”
Wheatley frowned, because for the biggest, fanciest supercomputer ever built she was taking a really long time, but he made himself stay silent and again went down beside her and pressed himself into her. She must have been thinking very hard because she was warmer than usual, which was a little disturbing. He made himself say nothing, though, and he went to sleep more quickly than he ever had, hoping she’d be done thinking when morning came.
“Hey. Moron.”
Wheatley blinked slowly. “Wha’s going on?” he mumbled. The room was dark, so it couldn’t have been morning yet. A check of his clock confirmed that fact.
She laughed, and the sound both woke him up and lifted his spirits. She was bound to be done thinking, then! “You really don’t care if I call you that anymore, do you.”
“Just don’t call me Rick,” Wheatley answered, shaking his optic assembly in an attempt to wake himself up faster. It was so hard to bring all his processes online at night, for some reason.
“Don’t even bring him up,” she said in disgust. “Anyway. Turn your flashlight on.”
Flashlight? In the middle of the – oh. Oh, now he got it. Suddenly excited, he jumped off of her and turned it on, not scared at all. “What, which one are we gonna play there, luv? Ohh, can we, could we play that, that label one first?”
“Label? You mean tag ?”
“Yeah, that one!”
“Go around in front of me, then. I’m not going to lose to you this time.”
Wheatley did so, barely able to contain his enthusiasm, and they played that game for a while, though this time it was not as one-sided. It seemed that GLaDOS was just as proficient at Tag as she was at everything else, so long as she was facing the right way. Then she built him some mazes out of a very long piece of twine she’d found somewhere, and he did his best to solve them without taking too long. Every time he finished one, she would nod to herself a little, and when he asked why she was doing that she told him that he was solving them much faster than he had when he was her Core. The idea that he’d gotten smarter excited him so much it took him three times as long to finish the maze he was in the middle of because he couldn’t think for his excitement.
When they were bored of that, GLaDOS asked him to shine his light through a prism and he asked confusedly, “Did… did you fix it?”
“It can’t really be fixed,” she answered, gesturing for him to hold it himself, “so I found a new one.”
She again watched it as though it were the greatest thing she’d ever seen, and Wheatley shook his head, earning an electronic noise as a rebuke. “Why d’you like this thing so much?” he asked, trying not to make a face and restrict the light. “And why don’t you just look through it yourself? You’ve a flashlight, just as I have.”
“You’re going to get annoyed with me for this, but it’s Science,” she answered. “Look at what the light does inside of the prism.”
“I just see a bright light, luv.”
“You can’t see it?” she asked, sounding a little disappointed and a little disbelieving at the same time. “It makes rainbows.”
He shrugged, trying to keep the light steady as he did so. “I don’t see any rainbows, whatever those are.”
“Oh,” she said softly, in a sad sort of voice. “I didn’t know you couldn’t see them. It’s… I suppose that’s because it’s kind of an optical illusion. You can hear music, so I thought you could see those too.”
“What’s a rainbow?” he asked, wishing he could see it. She was trying to share something with him, and he couldn’t even do that.
“It’s the visual representation of the spectrum,” she answered. “It’s… seven colours, and they’re all in lines parallel to each other. I’m having you do it because there needs to be white light. White light contains all the colours of the spectrum at equal wavelengths, but yellow light is dominated by the yellow wavelength. So it doesn’t produce a rainbow.”
“Huh,” he said, wondering if he’d be able to remember that. He hoped so. It was interesting to think that there were so many hidden colours in his innocent little flashlight. “How come you can’t see them without the, without the prism?”
“Because the light has to be at a certain angle when it enters your optic,” she answered. “The prism has little angles inside of it, see? The light bounces around inside of the prism and comes back out in a different direction.”
Now Wheatley did frown, and he turned to face her. As soon as he did she dimmed her optic and ducked away, and too late he realised he’d just blinded her. “Oh God, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean, I didn’t, oh, are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” She looked back up, opening and closing her lens a little. Crisis averted, Wheatley said in confusion, “But what d’you mean, the light bounces around in there? What’re you talking about? Is light made up of tiny little balls, or something? And, and if it is, how come it doesn’t, I dunno, hit us in the eye and then disappear, or something?”
“Oh,” GLaDOS said, in a voice he could only describe as rapturous, “have I got a lesson for you.” And she told him about light, about where it came from and how it worked, and honestly it was all so terribly fascinating he didn’t know why it had never occurred to him to ask her about it. She spoke to him in a voice more enthusiastic and eager than one he’d ever heard before, and he immediately loved that voice. And he listened to her talk, hoping she would not stop for a good long time, because this was that real GLaDOS. He’d found her again and she was explaining one of the mysteries of her beloved Science to him, and for a while there he felt like he rather loved it almost as much as she did.
“I wish I could see them!” Wheatley said wistfully, staring down at the little prism in the maintenance arm, and GLaDOS shook her head.
“I don’t know why you can’t. It must have something to do with the way your brain works. Let me try something.”
She showed him some papers with dots on them. He didn’t know what was so special about them. They were only little squares and rectangles made up of dots, after all, and she made a thoughtful noise and put them away. “I don’t understand,” she said. “How can you do some things, but not others? You can’t dream and you can’t see rainbows.”
“Can’t sing, either,” he said sadly, and this made her laugh.
“Well… that too, I suppose.”
Wheatley suddenly realised it was very, very late, and he jumped a little and said, “Have you slept yet, luv?”
“No,” she answered, tensing her chassis for a long moment and then releasing it. “I had too much thinking to do.”
“But… but you’re done now, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Well… we should probably get on that, then.”
She lowered herself without further comment, and Wheatley carefully and proudly laid the little prism on one of the shelves in her room in the basement. He knew how that thing worked, now, and one day he’d see those pesky little rainbows. One day, he would.
“You can keep it, if you want,” she murmured. Above him, her chassis hummed with the sound of the current running through her.
“Hm?”
“The prism. You can keep it.”
“Really?” Wheatley said excitedly, backing up to look at her. “Are you quite sure, luv? Have you got another one for yourself?”
She barely twitched enough to produce a shrug. “I might. But that one’s yours. If you want it, that is.”
“I do,” he told her hurriedly, before she redacted her offer. “I do want it. I’ll uh, I’ll work on seeing the rainbows!” He decided he was going to have to come up with his own place to put things. Nothing like her room, obviously, but a shelf someplace, maybe. A cabinet. A hole in the ground. But a special place for special things, just like she had.
He contentedly pressed himself into her again and stared into the dim light produced by the overhead. He felt as though something was about to happen. Something important. He wasn’t sure what. He wasn’t even sure whether it was good or bad. He hoped it was good. GLaDOS had had enough bad things happen in her life that he rather thought she didn’t deserve any more. “You see, GLaDOS?” he whispered to her, looking at her core even though she couldn’t see that he was doing that when he was leaning up on her. “That was just perfect, that was, we had loads of fun and we didn’t fight or anything, and there was, you didn’t have to try , it just, it was.”
“I know,” GLaDOS answered, her voice low and threaded with sleepiness. “I just… needed to remind myself of what your definition of perfect was.”
“Well, will you… try to change yours to that, then? Isn’t it… I dunno… more… more satisfying than yours? Isn’t it… better?”
“Astonishingly, yes,” GLaDOS said thoughtfully. “We’ll have to see if I still feel that way when I’m able to think properly, though.”
“Properly?”
“I’m too tired to think at the usual level.”
“I hope you can,” Wheatley said, a little shyly.
“I have to admit I hope so as well, but no miracles are going to happen overnight.”
She went to sleep after that, but he stayed awake for a long time staring into the darkness and hoping against hope that she would be the same when she woke up. He’d found her again, that lovely little GLaDOS that she’d hidden away a long time ago, and he needed her. He needed her, and he needed to be with her, and if he didn’t get those things he didn’t know what he would do. It was… it was terribly strange, really, and… and come to think of it… she was all he thought about. All the time! He was always thinking of things to tell her, or questions to ask her, or games they could play, and it was just… nothing else mattered. Nothing.
He was afraid, very, very afraid of where this was going. He looked over at her, chassis tightening. God, what would she even say if he told her that? What was he supposed to do now? He was no good at all at keeping secrets, and especially not from her. If she asked what was wrong, and she most certainly would because now he would begin to act rather odd around her, he would have to tell her, and… and he wasn’t sure he wanted her to know. He’d never been afraid of his own thoughts before. He’d been wary of them, now and again, but never outright afraid as he was right now. They were so strong and so insistent … like an itch, almost, but the worst itch ever invented and ever felt by anyone. He didn’t know what to do, and there was no one he could ask.
Was… was this what happened after mutual crushes? Someone went from being someone you really cared about to someone you literally could not do without? Wheatley looked worriedly down at the floor. He honestly was not sure he was ready for what he was feeling. It all felt so much bigger than he was, so much more than he could handle, and… he was afraid. He wasn’t quite sure what was going on and, while he’d liked it before, he didn’t think he did any longer. It was too much for him. He wasn’t prepared for this. If he’d known this was coming, he would have tried so much harder to keep from telling her about fancying her. It was definitely going to come up, and very soon, and he wasn’t even sure he wanted to admit it to himself. He was suddenly aware of just how GLaDOS must have felt when he’d confronted her about her crush on him . Cornered. As though she was being betrayed by some part of herself that she didn’t understand. He didn’t understand, not at all, and he had no clue where this was coming from or how or why it was so suddenly so important, but he found that he couldn’t stop himself from thinking it any longer:
He loved her.
His chassis clenched and he screwed his optic plates shut as hard as he could. Yep. Now he was even more lost and confused. Was he even ready to love her? Helping her out as a friend was one thing. But as someone who loved her? Was he really prepared to give her everything he had, to really make good on his promise to find her and make her happy, to love her as she deserved to be loved? God, could he? Was he even able to do that? He wished he knew why love was such a huge step up from a crush. You’d think it wouldn’t be that big of a deal, something like upgrading to a new chassis or some such, but for some reason it was so… overwhelming. And yet… so was the love itself. He just felt as though it might spill out of him, somehow, as though he cared about her so much he just couldn’t contain it. And he didn’t want to. He wanted to share it with her, so that she would feel special and beautiful and just plain loved like she’d never been before, but he didn’t know how. And he was afraid of what she would say. Of what she would do. She would certainly not be any more ready than he was. Would she send him away? Would she tell him never to bring it up again? Would she… would she try to love him back?
He opened his optic for a long moment.
There would be no point in telling her, if she didn’t. He’d just be stuck with that confession all on his own and she’d just go on as usual while he waited for something that might never come. He deserved to be happy and loved too, right?
It’s not about you, mate , he found himself telling himself angrily. It’s about her. It doesn’t matter if she never loves you back. What matters is that she feels loved.
He looked up at the wall pensively. That was a bit of a heavy thought, that was. But reassuring. Sort of. It meant he really did love her, didn’t it? If he didn’t care about what he got in return? Well, he did, but he wasn’t going to pressure her about it or anything. He shivered a little just thinking about her doing so. God, that’d be fantastic. And honestly… he thought she would. If he was patient, and open-minded, and patient, and helpful, and… patient, he thought she would, someday. Even if he had to wait a hundred million years, it would be worth it. Ohhh it’d be worth it.
And… and maybe he wasn’t the best at getting things right. Maybe he mucked things up, or took things the wrong way, or made stuff out of nothing. But she’d brought him back. She’d kept him around. And no matter what had happened, she had waited for him to put things right or had gotten them put right herself. So maybe he could really give her everything. He wanted to, he knew that. He just wasn’t sure he had it in him. But he’d never know if he didn’t try, right? He was doing his best already. Couldn’t be that much harder just because the word had changed.
Well! He’d got that settled.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the hard part.