Chapter Text
Part Forty. The Change
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Caroline stuck pretty close to GLaDOS for the first few days, extremely anxious and full of questions, though it seemed she couldn’t tell how annoying GLaDOS found this. He knew she was trying, but come evening her responses were often curt and pointed. After Caroline finally decided she was ready to face things she left for the greenhouse, and immediately after she was no longer in the room GLaDOS threw her screwdriver across the room. It bounced off one of the wall panels on the opposite side and rolled across the floor for a couple of metres. Wheatley eyed her apprehensively.
“Are you… are you okay?”
She retrieved the screwdriver and put it down next to the modem. “She has been asking me questions for three days straight. I am going out of my mind.”
“That was a lot of questions,” Wheatley admitted. “Least she’s done now, right?”
“With my luck, she’ll be back in ten minutes and stay another three days.”
“Well… the important thing is um, is that she… that she’s comfortable enough with you to um, to ask all those questions, right? She’s not… done accepting your judgement, and that can only be a good thing.”
“I didn’t expect you to remember that,” GLaDOS said, looking over at him.
“I try to remember everything about being a good dad, love.”
She looked away, back to the case of the modem, which she slowly placed overtop the internals. “You are, you know,” she said, her voice and posture both softening a little. “You’re not going to screw anything up this time. Probably.”
Wheatley felt pretty good about that, so he closed the gap between them and gave her a shove. “Careful. You almost um, almost gave me a compliment, that time.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll try harder to keep those things to myself.”
And Wheatley knew he should let her get on with what she was doing, especially since she had three days’ worth of work to do now, but he couldn’t help himself. “I don’t suppose um… don’t suppose you’d be able to uh… to spend some time with me , would you?”
She looked up, shifting so she’d be able to see him, and he instantly felt bad for asking. It was inconsiderate. “Y’know what, um, I’ll just uh –“
“I would love to,” she interrupted, very softly. “And I really do want to start right now, but unfortunately I must go back to that… thing I was working on.”
“That?” Wheatley asked, waving his handle at the modem. Whatever she was doing with it, it shouldn’t take too long.
“No. The other thing. The one I can’t talk about.”
Wheatley grunted and looked away, frowning. He tried to be patient and accepting about that little project, but he couldn’t push back the resentment. He wanted her to tell him everything .
“Come back in four hours,” she went on, removing the modem from the room. “After that I’ll never have to look at it again. Hopefully.”
“After four hours you’ll be… you’ll be done with it. Forever.”
“That should be enough time, yes. When you come back, we can play cards, if you want.”
“Poker this time?” Wheatley asked excitedly, having since learned that aces of fours did not exist but full houses did. “Oh, c’mon, love, I can handle it, I can, I can do it, I –“
“All right,” she said, poking at him with the maintenance arm. “The sooner you leave, the sooner you can come back.”
He snuck in a nuzzle before turning and heading out.
//
He spent the time reading very carefully about poker in the database. He’d done this before, many times in fact, but he wanted to make things as easy as possible. He also wanted to be able to know which hand he had without having to figure out how to trick GLaDOS into telling him. He felt he had a pretty good grasp on things now, though, and he felt quite optimistic on the trip back. And even if he was terrible at poker, it didn’t matter, because now she’d be done that damn whatever it was and he wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore.
She didn’t look like she was working on it, though; she was lying down and not a monitor in sight. Wheatley frowned, feeling a little hurt. She hadn’t lied to get him out of the room… right? She wouldn’t do that, would she?
“Gladys?” he called out. “What’re you uh… what’re you doing?”
She snapped upwards, optic flashing as she focused on him. “I know how this looks,” she said, a little urgently. “But I… needed a minute to myself. I needed to focus on my own thoughts . I really did think finishing up that project would take four hours. I’ve only been done for about ten minutes. I was just taking a moment’s peace, Wheatley.”
That made sense. Honestly he didn’t care, now that he knew she hadn’t lied. “D’you need more time, love?” he asked softly, so that she would know he wasn’t upset. She shook her core.
“I’m fine for now.”
The last time they’d played cards, the backs had been adorned with little red diamonds. These carried the Aperture logo and the same types of numbers used in the test chambers, and instead of red and black they were orange and blue. They were quite spiffy, and Wheatley told her so admiringly.
“Aren’t they,” GLaDOS said, obviously pleased with herself, and she thoughtfully inspected the one she was holding. “I haven’t used these ones in a while. Well. Their virtual counterparts, anyway.”
“Hm?” Wheatley asked vaguely, wondering if that was the start of a full house. He wouldn’t really get that lucky on the first deal, would he?
“For all the decks I have, I have a virtual deck to go along with it. Sometimes I play solitaire with this deck.”
“Solitaire?” He looked up from his card rack. “What’s… what’s that?”
“As the name implies, it’s a game you play by yourself,” GLaDOS answered, giving him a pile of chips. “You lay the cards out in a certain configuration, and the goal is to sort the cards according to suit. However, while you’re attempting to do that you must also sort the cards in descending order.” She straightened the top of her own stack of chips. “I don’t play very often. It’s honestly more effort to set the game up than it is to play it. Sometimes I still do, but then I remember how boring it is almost immediately after. Are you betting?”
He decided to match her blind and moved the appropriate amount of chips between them, and when he’d moved the maintenance arm out of the way she dealt the flop. “Sounds like the sort of game you should’ve shown me by now,” he said, disappointed to see that he did not, in fact, have a full house. “Y’know. To keep me occupied and um, and out of your way.”
“I’m keeping it in reserve,” she answered. She raised, forcing Wheatley to match her bet or fold, which he didn’t want to do on the very first round . He didn’t really have anything, but then again she didn’t know that.
GLaDOS did have a full house after she’d dealt the river, to Wheatley’s dismay, and it must have been the look on his face that made her laugh. “I knew you wouldn’t like that,” she said, without a trace of sympathy. “Better luck next time.”
Wheatley stopped talking for a few turns so he could concentrate, which didn’t really help because GLaDOS started staring at him again. She always did that when they were playing games, but for some reason watching Wheatley play cards held her attention like nothing else. He didn’t have to remind her to take her turn or continue to deal, at least. But after he’d managed to win a round, he carefully gathered the chips so they were grouped with the rest and asked, “Why d’you do that, anyway?”
“Do what?”
Ooh, excellent, a pair of aces. “Every time we play a game and it’s um, it’s my turn, you stare at me.”
“Oh,” GLaDOS said, calling his blind. “That.”
“Yes, that . Why d’you do that?”
“I’m supposed to. It’s poker. I’m supposed to attempt to – “
“Aaah,” Wheatley interrupted, looking up at her with his upper handle raised. “So… is there a Monopoly face too? That you’re s’posed to be looking out for?”
She suddenly became very interested in organising her already meticulously sorted stacks of chips. “There could be.”
“Or is there,” Wheatley continued in as dark a voice he could manage, leaning forward and looking at her sideways, “a diff’rent reason?”
“That’s an… interesting question.”
“Here’s another one for you, then.” He wasn’t quite sure how to word it. Too direct and she’d change the subject, but too vague and he wouldn’t get a real answer. “Couldn’t be because you like the way I look, could it?”
“Absolutely not. That’s just ridiculous.”
He’d gone a bit too far, but he thought he could still salvage it. “Oh c’mon, Gladys. You don’t have to pretend anymore. You can say it if you want and I won’t even mention – well, okay, I will mention it a few times. But not a lot. But y’know, if you think I’m, y’know, sort of, hm, sort of handsome , or, or dashing maybe, or at least that I don’t hurt your optic to look at anymore, y’know, you could say so. Wouldn’t hurt. It’d probably feel nice to say, as well. You could give it a go. You could be all like, ‘Hey, moron, you’re sort of cute when you’re not being a total idiot’, and I’d be all like, ‘Thanks, love, you’re pretty cute yourself, you know!’ and then that’d be it! See how easy that was? Didn’t even hurt. It was lovely. Even though it didn’t… didn’t actually happen.”
“I am not cute,” GLaDOS said firmly.
“Yes, you are,” Wheatley said, grinning at her. This was the fun part where he flustered her beyond speech.
“I am not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I am not.”
“Yes, you are. And d’you know what’s, what one of the really cute things about you is?”
“Since there isn’t anything, I can’t possibly guess.”
“The way you uh, the way you stare at me while we’re playing games and then you um, then you try to pretend you’re not, or that you have an actual reason other than the um, the fact that you like me, when really your reason is that you like looking at me and you uh, you just don’t want to admit it. It’s cute. Truly adorable.”
That got her fans going, and Wheatley tried very hard not to laugh. Aha! He’d figured it out. He hadn’t quite gotten her to say it, but he had confirmation, at least.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” But the crooked way she dealt the flop told him otherwise, so he just kept smiling at her.
Oh! And look at that! Two more aces. Excellent! He had – well, he sort of had an ace of fours. Four aces, ace of fours, what did it matter! He couldn’t wait to go all in and –
GLaDOS folded.
“What?” Wheatley squawked, his optic plates retracting. “Why – what’re you – you’re gonna fold? You can’t fold .”
“I don’t see why I wouldn’t, since you have four aces.”
“How did you know I had four aces!?”
“Your poker face is terrible,” she answered with a good measure of amusement. “But… it is kind of… cute.”
Wheatley flipped over his card rack in excitement, scattering his chips everywhere. “Kind of?” he pressed hopefully.
“A little more than kind of.”
“How much more?”
“Some.”
“ Considerably more?”
“Maybe.”
“At the rate you’re going we’re going to make it all the way to incredibly cute,” Wheatley said, nothing short of thrilled.
“Suppose we did,” GLaDOS said in a disinterested sort of way, but her fans were still going at it, which told Wheatley she was not quite as detached from this line of thought as she would have him believe. “Then what.”
“Then this might happen,” Wheatley said, and he got up to give her a firm nuzzling. She didn’t really do anything, other than give him a rough shove when he was finished, but he didn’t care because he really had been making her quite uncomfortable. They played a couple of rounds quietly, and then GLaDOS said, “Wheatley.”
“Yeah?” He was trying to decide whether to fold; he didn’t want to, but he didn’t think he could make anything out of a seven, a three, and a nine.
“I don’t always mean to talk like that. But sometimes I can’t help it.”
He pushed his cards into the centre and looked up at her. “I don’t mind. Doing that’s quite fun, actually. I mean, if you’d be direct about it uh, now and again, that’d be great too, but um, I don’t mind cornering you into saying stuff.”
She gathered up the chips. “I don’t know how you do that.”
“I know when I’m getting to you,” he said, trying not to laugh. It was also cute how she still didn’t realise he knew how to read her operations by now.
“But how? I don’t say anything.”
“No, but your fans do. And your hard drive.”
“ That’s what tells you?” She leaned in closer. “Are you serious ?”
“Yup,” Wheatley nodded, smiling at her. “C’mon, love, you should be happy about that! ‘cause it means I’ve been paying attention!”
She moved back and looked up thoughtfully. “You know… it actually is sort of… flattering.” She returned her attention to dealing. “Just… don’t take it too far.”
“Gladys,” he said seriously, not even looking at his hole cards, “just because you, because I’ve told you how I know does not mean I’m going to uh, to change anything.”
She nodded. “Good point.”
Eventually GLaDOS won all the chips, ending the game, but she only put the chips away and left the cards where they were. She shuffled them in an impressively dextrous way with a pair of maintenance arms and then dealt about half of them into a row of seven. Wheatley stared at her in confusion.
“This is solitaire,” she said. “I’m going to show you how to play.”
She had a special claw with a weak magnet inside of it, and apparently the cards had traces of metal in them. This resulted in the claw being able to pick up one card at a time when the magnet was turned on. After a little bit of practise, Wheatley was able to pick up the cards without making a mess, and she guided him through the game. They didn’t win, but it was fun all the same.
//
Wheatley was a little regretful that Carrie had decided she didn’t want to sleep with them anymore – an idea she’d gotten from one of those books she’d suddenly become so enthralled with in the last few weeks, no doubt – but he had to admit it was pretty fantastic to be able to clear off GLaDOS’s chassis again. And fun. Among other things. The afternoon was very nice, as it usually was after he’d helped her out with maintenance, but the evening was not so pleasant. Carrie was apparently not done being a grown-up, or whatever the heck she thought she was doing; Wheatley hadn’t seen her in days, and the panels refused to tell him. When she returns, and if she wants you to know, she will tell you.
I just want to know where she’s been, all this time! he protested.
She is not in danger. That is all you need to know.
“You’re suddenly in a terrible mood,” GLaDOS remarked over their Monopoly session. “What’s wrong now?”
“Panels won’t tell me where Carrie is,” he grumbled, pressing his little dog into the board rather harder than he should have.
“ I know where she is,” GLaDOS told him, a little teasingly, pressing the button on the randomiser and moving her ship eight spaces.
“They told you?” he asked indignantly, looking at her.
“No. Surveillance did. The panels didn’t want to tell me, either, and I didn’t want to make them. Surveillance, however, has no such qualms. I understand. She wants her privacy. But you don’t just disappear and expect me to let that pass me by. I can’t.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s at your hole. Surveillance tells me she just sits there, all day, until she decides to go to sleep. Then she waits for you to leave the next morning and goes back.”
“Should… should I try to… talk to her?” Wheatley asked, a little miffed that she was using his present from GLaDOS.
“No. She doesn’t want us to know where she is, remember? So just keep pretending you don’t know.”
They played quietly for a while, Wheatley for once not feeling like talking. Unfortunately, that meant he had to sit there and think about the fact that Carrie was being… weird, and secretive, and… he just felt like everything had gone a bit sideways, now that she’d been put into the new chassis. And he hated just having to sit on the outside and watch it happen. Who knew what all those words were telling her about mums? He didn’t remember a lot about the stories they’d once read to her, but he did recall quite a few evil step-mums. Perhaps there were loads of them about evil regular mums!
“Wheatley.”
“Yeah?”
“Stop worrying. It’s not like you.”
“I just want ev’rything to go back to the way it was,” he said helplessly, looking at his cards without really seeing them. “Where Carrie was, y’know, normal , and…”
“She is normal,” GLaDOS told him. “She has to figure out what she wants in her life. She’s just not doing it in a way you’re comfortable with.”
“Can we put this away for now?” he asked, gesturing at the board. “I’m… not really into this right now.”
“All right,” she answered. “Are you… tired, or can I open the ceiling for a bit?”
Wheatley became inexplicably happier, and he smiled. “’course you can.”
After she’d put the board away she did just that, and Wheatley leaned up against her, feeling more content. They sat in silence and just looked out of the hole, and this time the moon was not overhead, so all they could see was the vast sprinkling of stars up above them. It was quite pretty, as if the night sky had been painted with a glittery, transparent gel, and as he was staring at them Wheatley suddenly got an idea. “Oi, Gladys. There’re, there’re uh, sort of pictures up there, right? I can’t… can’t quite remember what the Space Sphere called them.”
“Constellations?”
“Yeah, that’s the word! Is there… d’you know which ones are up there?”
“Yes, but I can’t see them. It requires too much imagination.” She sounded a bit sad, Wheatley thought. Well, he could fix that, but he didn’t think she’d quite like the idea.
“Well… if… you could tell me uh, the ones that’re up there, right now, and… if you let me see through uh, through your optic, I could point them out to you.”
“All right,” she said. “Do you know how?”
“To what?”
“To look through my optic.”
“You… you’re going to let me?” he asked, baffled.
“I want to see them.”
Wheatley blinked several times, and he had to admit that he did not. She gave him the relevant permissions, and pretty soon he was looking out of her lens instead of his own. He frowned. “Oi. You should let me clean this, sometime.”
“It is pretty bad,” she agreed, “but if you smudge it, it’s only going to get worse.”
“I know how to do it by now.” He was a little insulted.
“Fine. But not when I’m on. Anyway. Are you going to find them yourself, or do you want me to tell you which ones are supposed to be there?”
“Tell me, and I’ll find them.”
So she told him about one that contained the brightest star, and that there were really two constellations that went along with it, a giant ladle and a giant bear. Wheatley carefully scanned the sky above them for the bear or the ladle, and after a few seconds he picked out both. With a maintenance arm, he carefully traced out their paths to her, and she made a wondrous noise and straightened a little. “I can see them,” she said, sounding overjoyed. “Show me another.”
And he did, soon able to pick them out on his own without her telling him what they were, and after a while he told her a story about the figures in the sky. It was a silly story, about bears chasing snakes and hunters with soup spoons and getting laughed at by random strangers passing them by on the street, but it made her laugh. It was the dumbest, most exaggerated story he’d ever told, but she thought it was very funny, and he felt a lot better. So what if things were getting a bit confusing. She was still the same Gladys he’d known all his life. The same Gladys that he loved with all his heart.
“You see, Wheatley?” she asked, sounding a bit sleepy. “Nothing’s really changed. We’ve built on top of what we were, but we’re still the same, underneath.”
“Fine. You were right. Again. Hurrah.” He said it teasingly and accompanied it with a shove, so she’d know he was kidding, and she laughed.
“Always. I have my reputation to think of.”
Wheatley decided to suggest that they lie down, seeing as she did sound tired, and she did so without comment. He disengaged from her optic, honestly having forgotten he’d been looking through hers instead of his despite the horrific amount of dirt on her lens, and he stared into the glowing darkness below him. He didn’t know how long it’d been, but it’d been a while, and he jumped a little when GLaDOS said, in a surprisingly hesitant voice, “Wheatley?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want you to worry. Everything is going to be fine.”
“You’re worth worrying about,” he whispered, and she laughed a little helplessly and shoved him.
“I don’t know where you come up with these things.”
“My head!” he said proudly, smiling triumphantly. “Thought it up myself, I did.”
“Well… stop.”
“Why?” It was an odd request for her to be making, seeing as she usually seemed fairly pleased when he said things like that.
“Because… it makes me feel… I don’t know. Soft. Organic. Mushy .”
“Maybe I like melting your insides,” he said suggestively, wiggling his handles. He really liked hearing that he made her feel the way she made him feel, sometimes. When she said something surprisingly tender, or touched him in just the right way.
“Please don’t. I can’t think straight when you do that, and we all know the kinds of disasters that befall this place when I’m not thinking straight.”
“Sometimes,” he said quietly. “And sometimes you just relax, which is good for ev’ryone. ‘specially yourself.”
“I’m working on it,” she said, just as quietly.
She pressed on him for a long moment. After a few more minutes her hard drive wound down, though it really hadn’t been all that active the last little while, come to think of it. He was glad of that, happy that he’d gotten her to relax for an entire day ! and told himself to work on not being so worried about things he couldn’t change that she had to spend all her time distracting him. Though he might bug her to work a bit less, if he could. Which would be great because then she would have to spend more time with him.
He decided to work on that.