Chapter Text
Part Sixty-Five. The Lunatic
Chell was a little jealous.
After a few more predictably difficult but necessary conversations with GLaDOS, they had gotten started on training the citizens, both with GLaDOS’s weapons and those they already had, depending on how much the individual liked the supercomputer. Even though she’d said using these tracks held no value for her, Chell could see that wasn’t entirely true. It both pained her and excited her to be doing so, and this made Chell a little anxious that she might accidentally slip into her old protocols and ruin everything. Accidentally meaning on purpose, of course. Chell hadn’t yet fulfilled her end of the deal, but it was really because she didn’t have the time. At the moment, all of them were held up in one of the endless organisation meetings, where she usually stood off to the side and watched GLaDOS talk passive-aggressively to people she didn’t like. Even more interesting than that, however, was watching Wheatley’s subtle interactions with her.
To Chell, at least, it was obvious that the two of them had some special connection, one she’d never seen the likes of before. Her time both in Aperture and in the last part of the war had taught her to be observant and alert for detail, and she wondered if someone with a similar mindset would see these sorts of things between her and Gordon. She didn’t think so; Gordon rarely appeared in public, if possible, and when he did he tended to keep a low profile, which was easier to do when he was alone. Chell understood that, though she didn’t always like it.
They had a bit of an odd relationship, not that Chell had ever hoped for a normal one after Aperture. It had been odd since the outset, and probably would never stop being that way, unless they got divorced and Gordon married Alyx. People simply refused to let up about that.
Chell had stayed with the first group she’d met upon her release from Aperture for no particular reason other than the fact that she didn’t want to walk anymore. In a twist of fate, however, she had ended up with one that was determined to follow someone known as ‘the one free man’ everywhere he went. Chell hadn’t really wanted to fight another war, but she’d known that she really had no choice. She took to regular guns just as quickly as the Portal Device, though she liked them far less. Her time at Aperture had left her with lightning reflexes and almost unfailing aim, and after one particularly harrowing battle she’d been sitting outside. She spent as much time as possible outside, often volunteering as a night sentry, and she would catch herself staring at the moon for long periods of time, remembering. She harboured no ill will towards either of them. At first she had, waking up from twisted red nightmares, filled with anger and drenched in sweat, but one night she had had the most confusing dream of all. She did not remember what it was about. All she remembered were the tears in Wheatley’s voice and the echo of GLaDOS’s scream. She had lain awake and stared at the dim, battered ceiling for a long time, for the first time thinking about that day as if she were an impartial observer, and at the end of it all she realised that she was not the first person Aperture had damaged. And she shuddered to think of the damage that had been dealt to them, raised from inception in a twisted, nightmarish laboratory, and she found she could no longer be angry or resentful. She was glad she had not spoken to them. On the surface, their actions begged reprimand, but it was so much different when she understood where they were coming from. And she had been in fact thinking of her night of revelation when he had come and sat on the roof next to her. He was not required to do sentry duty, nor did he ever volunteer. Chell actually saw nothing remarkable about the man. Everyone held him in very high regard, because he had apparently done a whole bunch of impossible things, but on the rare occasions that she asked what they were people would look at her sideways and laugh. As if she could be in this part of the world and not have heard of him. As far as she could tell he did as he was told and nothing else. He was unusually skilled at doing it, but he merely followed orders nonetheless.
He said nothing and moved little, and Chell made no effort to engage him. This went on for some amount of time, which Chell had once known but forgotten, with Chell refusing to acknowledge him out of stubbornness and he refusing out of… whatever it was that kept him so quiet. Eventually, during one overcast night, he had pushed his glasses up his nose and said, “Hello.”
Chell had burst out laughing.
He had smiled a little and folded his arms together. When she’d stopped, she’d asked, “You’ve been waiting all this time to say that?”
“I wasn’t waiting for anything,” he’d answered. “It’s just nice to be around someone who’s completely unimpressed by me.”
“They tell me they have reason to be.”
“They don’t know the whole story. But I’ll trade it for yours.”
“Mine?” Chell had asked, startled. She’d assumed her claimed amnesia would take care of her origins.
“You don’t have amnesia,” he’d told her. “You only volunteer for night duty when the moon is full. Your mouth quirks in dissatisfaction whenever you have to reload a gun. And you stay out of every room with technology in it.”
Chell’s eyebrows had twitched. “Stalking me?”
“Just curious.”
She had pursed her lips and stared down at the ground for a long moment. “You won’t believe it.”
“I will if you will.”
And so they had traded stories, though Chell was even more unimpressed when she heard his. He really was a world-class pawn. When he heard hers, he’d nodded thoughtfully at the end of it.
“What?”
“She told me about you.”
“What did you think of her?” Chell had asked quietly.
He had been silent for a few minutes. “She’s missing something.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The things she said imply that she has an overwhelming need for control. Which means she feels her life is out of control, and occupies herself accordingly so she doesn’t have to think about why.”
Chell had nodded slowly.
“You look like you want to do something about it.”
Chell smiled shortly. This man was a lot more intelligent than his sheeplike nature implied. “Maybe.”
He had stood up and brushed the wrinkles out of his pants. “Still not impressed?” he’d asked.
“No,” she had snorted.
“Good,” he had answered, and gone on his way.
From then on he always joined her on night watch, and many nights went by without either of them speaking. Whenever they did speak Chell was always surprised by an insightful comment or observation, which did in fact impress her, though she would never admit it. She knew full well he probably knew anyway.
She could not have been more surprised when he’d asked her to marry him some months later.
“Aren’t you and that girl Alyx a thing?” she’d asked, desperately trying to think.
“No,” he’d answered. “She may have designs, but I have no interest in entertaining them. She carries a lot but deals with it poorly, and one day she will break and I will not be equipped to repair her. I much prefer your company.”
“That’s a bit callous, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps. But it’s also smart. Think about it.”
A few days later she had given him her answer, and the group they were travelling with instantly gotten angry. Alyx belonged with Gordon, they said. Chell didn’t deserve him. She was a little nobody from nowhere. But thanks to GLaDOS, Chell was fully able to ignore them and even laugh about it later. Alyx had congratulated Chell with no enthusiasm and no light in her eyes, and she had almost apologised. But she hadn’t known what to say, and before she had figured it out the moment had passed and Alyx was gone.
Nothing much changed between Gordon and Chell, except that he took to pulling her very close, which Chell genuinely enjoyed and allowed him to do. Chell had not enjoyed being pressured into having children, and had enjoyed it even less when she had delivered twins, but it was something she had to do. Especially since people believed Gordon’s progeny would be every bit as impressive as they thought he was. That was yet to be seen, but Chell had her doubts.
This thought made Chell look for Caroline. On the one occasion Chell had spoken to her, she had gotten the distinct impression she was trying very hard to be her mother, but unsure if she was succeeding. Caroline was someplace else, apparently; Chell didn’t see her anywhere. Chell was still having trouble reconciling the GLaDOS she remembered with the GLaDOS of right now. The supercomputer had aged considerably in more ways than one. Any insults she dealt now were not childish, and when she asserted her authority it was obvious she had good reason to be doing so. But the most striking change was that connection between her and Wheatley. It was as if it allowed them to temper each other: it seemed to take the edge of GLaDOS’s irascibility, and Wheatley neither talked nor moved as much as Chell remembered. He wanted to, Chell could tell, but he would only blink rapidly and stay quiet. When he did speak, GLaDOS would tilt her core upwards slightly as if only he deserved some special measure of attention, and when he finished he would move back and glance at her in such a way that Chell thought he was looking for her approval.
“But he should not be here,” Dr Magnusson was saying, gesturing at Wheatley. “The fewer people who know about these things, the better.”
“You can leave, then,” GLaDOS answered. “He stays.”
“I understand he’s a friend of yours, but what benefit could his presence possibly have? He’s contributed nothing to this discussion beyond the scope of any of us.” Chell felt a bit bad for Wheatley at this point, especially when his chassis loosened a little and he looked down at the floor apprehensively. She knew he tried, but it was going to be a hard sell to Magnusson.
“His unconventional point of view has proven indispensable to me on more than one occasion,” GLaDOS said, clearly not about to take no for an answer. “We have to listen to your empty comments, so I see no reason why you don’t have to listen to his.”
Chell tried not to laugh.
“I’ll have you know I was the sole reason we were able to close the portal between our world and theirs!” Magnusson declared, stepping forward. Barney buried his face in his hands.
“Here he goes again.”
“Ah, yes,” GLaDOS said, uncurling towards Magnusson in a decidedly predatory way. “Your sticky bombs.”
“My Magnuss –“
“What does the name matter? They‘re still one of the more useless things ever conceived. They require specialised generators, do not combust upon contact, do combust when colliding with anything other than the designated target, and have a designated target. Seriously. I thought the major problem during that attack was the hunters. Three to a strider, wasn’t it? I would think it would have been more useful to design those things to take out hunters, seeing as striders are so large and slow. It must be much easier to aim rockets at them. Oh. I see. You’ve never aimed a rocket, have you.”
“It was my rocket that closed the superportal!” Magnusson declared hotly.
“Launched it all by yourself, did you?”
“I was the major – “
“My God, you are a tiresome man,” GLaDOS said boredly. “The whole rocket thing was a complete coincidence. And in fact if your blatantly disregarded ‘underlings’ had not cleared out that silo, closed the breach, and taken out a dozen striders and three dozen hunters without your assistance, unstable sticky bombs notwithstanding, you would have failed. And before you say you’d like to see me do better, I actually can launch a rocket on my own. And protect it. For a week.”
“But you would not have the foresight to have secluded one in the first place!”
“Why would I bother? I can build one in forty-eight hours if I want to.”
“Oh really,” Magnusson sneered, leaning forward. “You can build a rocket just like that, but you can’t repair yourself sufficiently to keep on fighting?”
GLaDOS’s optic flared, and Chell suddenly wondered just what GLaDOS looked like when she lost her temper. “That’s right,” GLaDOS went on in a colder voice. “But let’s look at why I ended up in that position in the first place. Who brought the Combine here at all? Oh yes. You. Why did they suddenly decide to give up looking for Dr Freeman and track me down? Because your database was so insecure they stole all of your data. And,” she said, Chell getting the impression she was going to enjoy her next statement, “who lost the Borealis?”
“You lost it,” Magnusson spat. “Remember? Disappeared into the stuff of legend?”
“And then you found it. And then it disappeared on you one day. Didn’t it. Right out from under both your and the Combine’s noses. A bit odd, isn’t it, that it disappears just when you’ve found it?”
“And I suppose you know where it is?”
“Of course I do,” GLaDOS answered nonchalantly. “It’s in the drydock.”
Barney burst out laughing, and Chell noticed that Dr Kleiner’s eyebrows rose a few inches. As if he needed to be any more impressed by her. “Remarkable,” he murmured, pushing his glasses up his nose.
“The drydock,” Magnusson repeated.
“I could have put it in the lake, I suppose, but then I couldn’t have affected repairs on it. She wasn’t quite ready for her maiden voyage, so to speak. So yes. I saved your war. Because if they’d gotten their hands on it, which they would have since even Dr Freeman was not carrying enough explosives to destroy it, the war would have tipped in their favour right then and there. So. If you’d like to stop trying to best me, which you can’t, we can return to the matter at hand. The one you were going to address after your attempt to send Wheatley out of here, which is not going to happen.”
“I simply can’t fathom his contribution!” Magnusson pressed. “He is the Intelligence Dampening Sphere, is he not?”
“Some of us are programmed to be idiots,” GLaDOS answered serenely, “and some of us choose to be. No prizes for guessing who I respect less. Isaac. What is the next order of business?”
Chell missed whatever it was he said, because she was far too busy watching Wheatley. He had appeared to be keeping an eye on GLaDOS to keep her from getting out of hand, again shrinking into himself when Magnusson had brought up his former position, but after hearing GLaDOS’s defense he’d turned to look at her with a very grateful expression in his optic.
GLaDOS refused to talk to Magnusson for the rest of the meeting, though he tried several times to engage her, and when it ended Chell hung back a little, just outside the doorway. Wheatley hadn’t moved, and she was curious as to what he was going to do.
“I don’t sound like that, do I?” GLaDOS asked as Wheatley came around in front of her.
“No,” Wheatley answered, shaking his head. “Didn’t cross my mind. At all. ‘sides. You uh, you’ve a good reason to, when you do. Can you really build a rocket in two days?”
“If I want to,” GLaDOS answered. “But I don’t want to. So I won’t be.”
“But, but Gladys,” he went on, looking at the floor and resettling his chassis, “maybe… well, maybe I really don’t have anything to –“
“You do,” GLaDOS said firmly. “Not only that, but there are an overwhelming number of human representatives on the planning committee, so to speak. I of course have our best interests in mind, but with you there it evens the odds a little.”
“Well, Carrie could –“
“She’s staying as far away from this whole thing as I can get her. Which is not likely to be very far. I swear, Caroline cursed me…”
Wheatley laughed and looked up at her. “She’s not quite as stubborn as you, luv.”
“To me, she’s not. Probably a hell of a lot more with other people.”
“One day, maybe,” Wheatley said thoughtfully, “but not yet. I should go find her. See how she’s doing.”
GLaDOS nodded. “All right. If that man attempts to accost you, don’t listen to him. Remember what happened when you saved my life.”
“That was an accident,” he said shyly.
GLaDOS laughed. “Everything you do is an accident.”
Wheatley moved towards her core and nuzzled her tenderly, and Chell was touched by the amount of happiness in his face. She was a little surprised when GLaDOS returned it, but happy for her as well. Wheatley had obviously helped her change a lot. She was still bitter, but she no longer allowed it to define her. She wondered if she’d ever have the opportunity to see GLaDOS alone with Caroline. She would have liked to see that.
Wheatley left without further comment, and Chell carefully followed him some ways through the facility. When they were about five minutes out she called, “Wheatley.”
Wheatley froze, and when he turned his frown flashed quickly into a look of horror. “Oh… ‘allo, uh… Chell, is it?”
“That’s right,” she answered. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Well, I… I have to go… go check on someone,” he stammered, backing away a little.
“Come back when you’re done,” Chell suggested.
“Uh… I dunno how long it’ll take. Could take hours! Or days. Could take days.”
“Come on,” Chell urged him. “I’m not mad at you. I just want to talk.”
“Oh. Well, I… I guess that’d be… I’ll… be right back.” And he sped off.
Chell waited patiently, and he returned about five minutes later. “Okay, so, so… what’d you… you want to talk to me about?” he asked hesitantly.
“What’s it like?” she asked quietly, leaning back against the wall.
“What’s what like?” he asked, confusion in his optic.
“Being in love with her.”
“Oh,” he said, a gasp of surprise. “It’s… just the best thing, really. Wouldn’t trade it for anything. She’s just… she’s amazing. Not at all like she was, uh, before.”
“I noticed,” Chell said, smiling. “You’ve both changed a lot.”
He shrugged. “That’s what good friends do. They compromise. I didn’t really… mean to… to fall in love with her, but I just… one day it just hit me, that, that I was in love with her. She was all I thought about. Still is, mostly, ‘cept when I think about Carrie.”
“She’s a lot like GLaDOS.”
“She wants to be her when she grows up,” Wheatley said, a little nostalgically. “And she will be. Gladys, uh, Gladys already told Carrie she’ll be Central Core when she’s gone.”
“If she doesn’t live forever,” Chell told him, a little jokingly.
Wheatley shook his head. “The both of us’ve… we’ve… we know. There is no forever. Not even for us.”
“She said you saved her life.”
“Yeah, but that… that was an accident. I didn’t mean it. Well, what I was doing at the time, that I uh, that I meant, but um, the whole, the waking her back up thing, well, that was an accident. And it was… it was my fault in the first place.”
“Tell me about it,” Chell suggested gently.
He hesitated, but after a few moments he did just that, though according to him he had to start at the very beginning, and Chell sat down on the floor and he came down lower, and she listened. The more she heard, the more clear it became to her that GLaDOS and Wheatley had fought long and hard to get to the point they were at. The road had not been easy, not at all. And she did not miss the little things he did, like downplay things he’d done in favour of highlighting things she’d done, or how he described what he thought were her accomplishments, or his slightly disbelieving smiles when he remembered something that meant a bit more to him than other things. It took him a very long time to get through the story, but never once did Chell want to leave.
“And… and there you go,” he said finally, shrugging. “I… that went uh, went a bit longer than I wanted it to, but uh, yeah, that’s… it.”
“That’s quite the story,” Chell remarked.
“Hasn’t ended yet, either.”
“Do you ever think you’ll have more kids?” Chell asked. It was plain that he loved Caroline almost as much as he loved GLaDOS.
“Dunno,” he shrugged. “Honestly, we’re… both kinda… waiting to see if Carrie’s okay. I don’t think Gladys wants to build any more, and that’s, that’s fine, honestly. But she doesn’t really… she thinks she’s a terrible mum, so I doubt it. An’ I guess… maybe I could see why people’d not understand why she sent Carrie away. But it was the best thing she, she could’ve done, really. Things would… would not’ve gone well.”
“How do you know?”
Wheatley looked at the ground for a long moment.
“Neither of them will tell me, but… I know she has something to do with that crack on Carrie’s chassis. Something happened before she sent Carrie away, she, she lost her temper or something. And if, if she’d gotten angry enough to, to try an’ crush her, or something, well… Carrie’s chassis can’t stand that. And they obviously want to keep it between them, so, so I haven’t asked about it, but I can’t be mad about what she did. She did what she had to do. She recognised that she wouldn’t be able to handle… handle my being gone, not without, without taking out the pain on Carrie, and of course Carrie pushed a little too far and that caused the… the accident, and sending Carrie over here was the best thing she could’ve done. She regrets it, but… if she’d’ve kept Carrie with her, she’d regret that even more.”
“It doesn’t bother you that they’re keeping it from you?”
He shrugged. “It was an accident. There’s, there’s nothing to worry about. She didn’t mean it.”
“I’m happy for you guys,” Chell said softly. “You never thought this would happen to you, did you.”
He smiled and laughed nervously, shaking his head. “Still can’t believe it, sometimes, but… it’s not always smooth sailin’, but… wouldn’t want anything else.” He jolted suddenly, looking back up. “Oi, what’d, what’d you want to talk to me about? That was uh, a really long tangent, y’know, you could’ve stopped me at any time.”
“That is what I wanted to talk to you about,” Chell answered. “I asked her about it a little while ago. I wanted to know how you saw things.”
“D’you have a, a partner?” he asked, a little shyly. Chell smiled.
“I have a husband, and we have two sons.”
“Who’s your husband?”
“Gordon Freeman. You may have seen him around.”
“That quiet guy with the glasses?”
“That’s him.”
“Carrie said he was nice, for a guy who doesn’t talk,” Wheatley mused. “Well, he must be, must be a good person, else you wouldn’t’ve married him.”
“Are you guys married?” Chell asked on the spur of the moment, wondering if GLaDOS had changed her mind at all. Wheatley laughed.
“’course not. ‘magine what she’d say if I asked her that. No thanks.”
“I think,” Chell said slowly, “that she’d like it. She’d pretend she didn’t. But I think it would make her very happy, even if she never agreed to it.”
“Really?” This news seemed to excite him a little. “Maybe I’ll uh, I’ll think that over, then. Hey – Chell, uh…”
“What?” Chell asked, confused.
“I just… just wanted… well… I’m sorry for, for… what I did,” he said, seeming as though he didn’t want to look at her while he was saying it but forcing himself to do so. “It was… the wrong thing to do. And I just… I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” Chell told him. He frowned.
“You didn’t do anything.”
“I didn’t catch you,” Chell said, smiling so he’d know she was joking, and he laughed and shrugged.
“That was… I don’t blame you. Anymore. Didn’t realise I was near two stone.”
“In all seriousness,” Chell went on, “I understand why you guys did what you did. You had… a harsh upbringing. You did what you could to survive, and though you took it to an extreme, Aperture was a place of extremes. So I’m over it.”
“We know all ‘bout morals now,” Wheatley told her, swinging back and forth a little. “Didn’t before. But when you’re uh, you’re dealing with someone all the time, well, you kind of figure out what stuff is, is okay and what stuff is not. Though we… honestly still don’t like humans much.”
“I thought she was going to send Magnusson out to one of the old testing tracks,” Chell grinned, and Wheatley laughed.
“Bet she wanted to! Wouldn’t last in there, not at all. Knock himself silly with a Cube or some such. She likes that, that balding guy, though,” he finished, frowning a little.
“I noticed she called him by his first name.”
“They’re always, uh, always discussing some thing of science or another. Fawning over each other’s projects.” He sounded extremely resentful, and Chell tried not to laugh.
“You don’t need to be jealous of him.”
“I know. But I am anyways. Which she thinks is simply hilarious, of course. Teases me about it. All the time. ‘So, I talked to Isaac this morning…’”
Chell did laugh now, and Wheatley shrugged. “But she did pick me, so there’s that. Anyway. I really have got to be going. This was a lovely chat, it really was.”
“I’ll see you later, then,” Chell said, leaning forward, and he moved back, looking slightly horrified.
“What’re you doing?”
“I was just going to give you a hug,” Chell answered, pausing.
“Uh, no thanks,” Wheatley said, eyeing her hands apprehensively. “No offense, but you’re… you’re kind of disgusting, you know. All soft and squishy. I don’t… that… uh…” He shuddered. “We can shake hands, if you like, but um, no hugs.”
Chell shook his proffered lower handle and frowned. “GLaDOS didn’t mind when I hugged her.”
“She’s also five metres long. For me it’s uh, it’s a lot like being smothered.”
“Oh,” Chell said in recognition. “I gotcha.”
“Well, I’m off. Come and, come and visit, sometime,” he said, moving back up to the ceiling, and Chell stood.
“I will,” Chell nodded, and Wheatley waved his lower handle at her and went on his way.
When Chell returned to the outpost, Gordon was already sitting in bed, squinting over a pile of papers, and when Chell sat down beside him she could see they were the blueprints for the Borealis. “Where’d you get those?”
“GLaDOS gave them to me,” he answered absently, pushing on the bridge of his glasses with one finger.
“When did you get them from her?” she asked, confused.
“This evening. I went to see her. Ever since she moved the Borealis, I’ve wanted to meet her.” He flipped one of the pages beneath the pile. “Reminds me of you. Though she obviously harbours resentment towards humans. Which you don’t.”
Chell snorted. “Observations like that get you a doctorate?”
He shrugged. “Depends on the school you go to.”
She scanned the document and was surprised to see GLaDOS’s name on the lower right corner. “Why is her name on there?”
“She helped the scientists at Aperture refine their technology. This was part of the plan for her debut. Not only did they have local teleportation developed, but they had also built a sentient supercomputer. It would have been quite a spectacular comeback. The world would have been theirs. However. Upon activation, the GLaDOS aboard the Borealis panicked and moved the ship unintentionally. When Alyx and I reactivated her, she had to contact the GLaDOS back at Aperture, who promptly killed her. Then GLaDOS sent us away and took her ship back.”
“And you didn’t tell me this before why?”
He shrugged again. “You didn’t ask.”
“I shouldn’t have to.”
He looked over at her, a faint grin on his face. “You’re right.” He wrapped his left arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, kissing her on top of the head. “I forget these things.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be some sort of super genius?”
“Supposed to be. I don’t know if I ever want to have a technical conversation with her ever again, though. Doctorate in theoretical physics notwithstanding, I had no idea what she was saying.”
“So you have no idea what you’re looking at.”
“Not a clue.”
They looked over the plans for a long time, and eventually Gordon stuffed them into a drawer and lay down, taking off his glasses. Chell pulled the blanket up as he turned off the lamp, and allowed him to drape his right arm over her.
“She respects you a lot, you know,” he said out of the blue.
“I know.”
“A privilege she reserves for few.”
“Definitely not for Magnusson.”
“You. The little metal robot. Dr Kleiner, almost. And something like it for the little white robot.”
“That’s her daughter.”
Gordon said nothing to that, falling asleep soon after, but Chell lay awake for a long time yet again thinking of Aperture’s past. She was confident that GLaDOS had some master plan for securing its future, and Chell had to decide if she was going to be part of it.
Why not, she thought to herself, rolling onto her left side. GLaDOS was her best friend, after all.