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Chapter Text

CHAPTER 1: WHEATLEY

                        Wheatley's 341st orbit around earth honestly hadn’t been that bad. The 342nd get a bit tedious. At orbit 343 he couldn’t take it anymore. Seven years passed as he grew bitter, angry at the lady for condemning him to this. It was all her fault. She’d used him, they both had. GLaDOS had turned the lady against him, they’d conspired behind his back to remove him from power. Yes, that was it. It couldn’t be his fault. Being in charge of Aperture felt so good , how could he have been wrong for doing what he did.

But he was. He knew he was. It might have taken seven years to figure out but… he was just deluding himself it he thought….

hey. hey space buddy. space buddy.

Wheatley sighed.

“Yes?”

space. stars. more stars. stars in space. moon. space moon. space. space. space. space. space. space

space. space. space. space. space. space.

space. space. space.

space. space. space.

space. space. space.

space. space. space.

space. space. space.

He slowly floated upside down, or he would have if direction had meaning in space. Would he be forgiven, hypothetically speaking? Space Core jabbered on.

space. space.

space.

space. space. space. space. space. space. space. space. space.

space.

space. space.

That was all he had been hearing for the past seven years. And it was beginning to get on his nerves. He needed a plan. It shouldn't be too hard. There had to be an Ace in the Hole. A card up his metaphorical sleeve. Another ill thought out poker metaphor. When he was finally back, the cloud of guilt and shame hanging over him, the years of resentment, would go away. He had to get back to earth.

And so Wheatley did what he did best.

Wheatley began to scheme.

____________

It took some work, almost a year if his internal calendar was still functioning, to reorganize his code, to  float by a usable satellite ( langue française nouvelles du monde de radiodiffusion ) so he could detect an usable core shell in the facility and finally put his plan into action. There were surprisingly few satellites, or he would have tried this sooner. What could go wrong?

space buddy’s leaving?

Wheatley swiveled his optic over to Space Core for the last time. Soon his body would be an empty metal shell.

“Yeah. It’ll be okay mate. Don’t worry. You’ll still have…”

He spun his eye around, gesturing to the vast expanse in which they were floating.

“Y’know, space .”

i’ll miss you.

He was shocked. That was the first normal sentence Space Core had ever said to him. Nothing about stars, or the moon, or planets. Just a simple sentiment. It was… nice.

“I’ll miss you too.”

But he couldn’t dwell on that. He had only a few hours to download his conscience into the empty core while the satellite was still in range.

The process was dizzying and almost painful, not exhilarating like when he had replaced GLaDOS as the central core. He felt stretched and disoriented at the halfway point, when the other core began to scream.

goodbye, space buddy.

He was so close. SO CLOSE.

93.9444% .

97.982%

The fight for control was much easier than when he’d been in the chassis. TOO easy, almost, to slide his consciousness into another form. His optic faded, his body shutting down for good.

99.979%

Are you sure you would like to complete this download?

“YES! no YES!”

99.998%

99.999%

TRANSFER COMPLETE

____________

As it turned out, he had downloaded himself into the “humor” core, nicknamed “Ed”. he was supposed to distract GLaDOS from her murderous urges with jokes and riddles, but thathad rather predictably backfired. It lasted five minutes before it was detached and decommissioned. It had been such a disaster, they hadn't even bothered to find another use for it, and it’s shell now hung on a management rail in an abandoned, crumbling part of the facility.

It took him a few hours to get used to his new body. He’d changed the eye from a pale green to his customary blue, that had been easy. He wouldn’t want to be mistaken for the humor core, that would have been degrading.

Ed was badly damaged, its optic stiff and almost shattered and it’s inner gyroscope sticky.

Wonderful. Bloody WONDERFUL. Just had to pick the worst core in the facility. I don’t like you, ED.

Ed didn’t answer. He was still a faint presence, no one could delete a personality completely, but Wheatley’s was by far the more dominant.

It had better stay that way, Ed.

He spent most of his time readjusting to movement on a rail and reacquainting himself with the facilities layout. Ideally, he could make his way to the top level and then…

Well, he’d burn that bridge when he came to it.

As he explored (had the facility always been such a horrid mess? He knew he hadn’t done this much damage) his sensors picked up some noises; mumbling, shuffling. It couldn’t be a human , could it?

Curiosity overtook him, and he zoomed towards the noise. Water dripped from a crack in the ceiling, splashing off his rail and hitting the catwalk below. He was so intrigued by the voice that he didn’t hear the dripping, didn’t see that the rail section ahead of him was a dark red, rusted through.

He didn’t see it until he found himself plummeting to the ground in a beautiful 90 degree arc.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER 2: DOUG

There was one human left alive in Aperture, if only barely. His stasis pod had been deactivated during an electrical storm who knows how long ago. It had preserved him, remarkably well for Aperture merchandise, which had a greater likelihood of malfunctioning and suffocating the occupant (or worse) than saving their lives. He was shocked to find himself still alive.

He had expected, when the lid of the pod closed on him, that he would find himself good and dead. He still wasn’t entirely sure whether or not to be disappointed at this development. But now that he had another chance to escape, he was going to take it.

He didn’t know exactly how long he had been asleep; time lost all meaning underground. Before stasis, he could at least vaguely measure the passing years with the growth of his hair and beard, but now, he could only wonder. The amount of decay the facility had undergone was extraordinary, he’d even seen birds . It was almost beautiful now, sometimes even small slivers of sunlight peeked through cracks in the roof, taunting him. He was so close to freedom, but it was always just out of his reach. He was reminded of that every time a jolt of pain shot through his leg. At least the pain kept him grounded. That was what Cube said. He thought Cube was wrong, but he didn’t say so, he wouldn’t want to make his friend mad, not after he’d thoughtlessly abandoned it before.

He only knew snippets of what had happened. GLaDOS had been somehow ejected from the chassis (and was unfortunately put back), and some of the cores had ended up orbiting the earth, Space and I.D.

But the only important thing was that Chell had made it out.

He’d painted her many, many times, never letting her feet touch the ground, because if they did she would be bound to this place forever like he seemed to be. There were still paint smears on the left side of him from when he had pressed against the mural in his last den, thinking it was dry. It had been of her, or it had been, lying serenely in a sea of the sky. He was furious at himself for ruining it, for smudging and defiling her perfect face. He had nearly broken his hand punching the wall in frustration.

It was only when the pain in his knuckles had receded to a dull throb that he realised it didn’t matter, the real Chell would never see, the real Chell was free, probably living happily on the surface with no idea he even existed.

____________

Doug had never gotten sick in Aperture before, injured, yes, but never sick . The cloying sterility had kept him healthy. Now, though, even with GLaDOS doing her best to reclaim her kingdom, behind the walls, away from Her prying eyes and tentacles, were in a spectacular state of disrepair; twisted, rusting metal and rotting vines choking the corridors. He’d had to remove a bullet from his leg, and despite his best efforts, he had been careful, he had tried so hard to be careful , it had gotten infected, and the infection had spread. Thanks to that, he was running a low fever, and lay perfectly still sprawled on the rusty floor. At the moment he didn’t feel like doing much of anything, even when Cube suggested that having a drink might help him feel better, he couldn't bring himself to open a water jug, only wanting to wallow in pessimism. It wasn’t the most productive state of mind, but at this point he no longer cared. If he was going to die, at least as it hadn’t been GLaDOS to kill him, at least not directly.

He felt like his head was being pushed underwater; every noise muffled and jumbled except the sound of his own breathing, the colors and shapes around him blurring together. Even the air, normally heavy with the tangy scent of dead, rotting plants and rust, felt stale and lifeless.

He found the state of numb suspension pleasant.

“Are you feeling okay?”

Cube spoke for the first time in hours.

“I’m fine.”

He still didn’t get up, but reached out to pat one of Cubes sides, giving it a small smile.

“You really should drink something.”

“I’m FINE.”

“ Doug. ”

He groaned and hoisted himself up so he was leaning against his friend, silently cursing at having to move. Movement was something the camera’s could detect, and even now he felt them, invisible pin pricks in the distance, always waiting for him to show himself. Cube would keep insisting until he complied, though. He hadn’t even realised how thirsty he was, draining most of the tank. It was lukewarm and murky and suspiciously gelatinous, but Cube had been right, it did help. In a lack of foresight, he dumped a good amount of what was left over his head. He shuddered as it dripped down his shoulders and back, beads of water sticking in his rat’s nest of hair. He shook his head like a dog, water flying everywhere.

“That wasn’t very smart, you know, that wasted a lot of water,” it chastised.

“I don’t care.”

He didn't. 12 ounces of water were worth the fleeting sense of relief. He even thought he felt the fever subsiding a little, but he was probably just imagining it. The staticy radio in the corner the looped the same few songs over and over and over played out its last notes before the batteries finally died. He didn’t mourn it’s loss.

“We should get going soon. We’ve already been here for too long.”

“In a minute.”

He rested his forehead against one of Cubes hearts. He was sorry, he thought, he didn’t want to carry cube around today, normally it would float at his back but lately it had been getting heavier and heavier..

A loud, vicious CLANG jolted him into alertness.

“Cube? Did you...”

“ Of course. I see and hear the same things that you do. ”

Doug frowned.

“But your perception is different. Better.”

“ Doug, I perceive only what you perceive, what you already know. I just... remind you. ”

He didn’t respond to that. He needed Cube, no matter what it told him.

“I’m sorry. You’re right, I’m sorry.”

“ It’s okay. I’m not mad. ”

“Thank you. I’m sorry.”

“ Don’t apologize, you need to go see what that noise was. ”

“Do I, really?”

“ Go on, I wouldn’t put you in danger. Just come back for me when you’re done? ”

He gave his friend a reassuring squeeze, reminding it that of course he would come back, he always has . Cautious, he left Cube’s side and crouched down to the den’s entrance, to see if anything was really there. He very rarely experienced visual hallucinations, thank god, but auditory ones were not uncommon and many times he had heard an imaginary threat, or ... worse ...

It would never hurt to be cautious though, not in Aperture.

Doug brushed back the still damp hair covering his face to see a smear of blue and gray on the catwalk. If he had to guess, he would say it was a core. Nevertheless, he was resistant to getting closer.

“What is it? Is something there?”

Hesitantly, he nodded. He held up a finger to let his friend know he’d only be gone a minute. A core, even if it wasn’t a hallucination, would not be a threat. Probably. When he got closer and saw what it was, through, his stomach dropped. The source of the noise was a core, about a foot and a half in diameter and probably much heavier than he appeared. It was banged up and scorched, it's lower handle had probably snapped off when it had fallen and it’s optic was cracked pretty badly. But what stood out was that it’s optic was blue . If he remembered correctly, only one first generation core had been given a blue light.

The Intelligence Dampening Core.

There was no way in hell.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER 3: WHEATLEY’S NEW HUMAN

When Wheatley saw the figure emerge from the shadows, his optic shook with excitement. He could hardly believe his luck. A human! A human who would blindly trust him and take him up to the surface! Brilliant! When he actually saw the human, however, his optic contracted in disappointment.

“HEY! It’s YOU! haha! Sorry, sorry, it’s just, WOW! Man alive, you look TERR… no, I mean, erm… just TERRIBLE! Can’t even sugarcoat it! Really let yourself go… um… oh, what was your name? Started with a “D”, didn’t it? No, wait, don’t tell me... Dog? Doog? Da-woog? That’s it, isn’t it? Da-woog?”

He rattled off a number of spectacularly incorrect guesses. Doug merely glared. Even if this core wasn’t allied with GLaDOS, it was still an Aperture construct, and his negative experiences with anything Aperture had to do with were innumerable. He ducked into his den to retrieve Cube and his coat. Poking his head out, he found core still trying to pronounce a fairly common four letter name. For christ's sake, there had been at least three other Doug’s working at Aperture before the incident, and at least seven test subjects; it was astonishing the core couldn’t figure it out. He scrawled a small X on the entrance panel with a dried up marker; this den was of no use to him anymore. He hoisted Cube up onto his back and limped away, preparing to leave Wheatley to rust away on the catwalk, or, he hoped, to fall through the floor.

“...Dorg, Doad… I think i’ll just stick with ‘rat man’ then, it suits you... WAIT WAITWAITWAIT DON’T LEAVE ME HERE! I-I mean please . Where are you going ?”

Doug couldn’t pretend he wasn’t, to some degree, grateful for Wheatley’s company. He’d read some studies in college about the effects of prolonged isolation and solitary confinement on the human brain.

“Up.”

Human company was missed, though missed less than almost anything else. He’d never exactly been a social butterfly, and could have happily gone days without speaking to anyone . Why bother longing for something like that when he had more urgent needs to be met? Cube had... helped.

“WOW! What a coincidence! I myself just happened to be going up there too! To the surface. Up, in that direction there...”

He tilted his optic to the ceiling.

Doug sat cross legged on the catwalk, listening to the core ramble on about it’s directional prowess, trying not to be amused. He remembered the day Henry had brought I.D. into his office, convinced that THIS was the one that could keep it in line, he was SURE of it this time .  

He remembered admiring Henry’s misguided optimism, then remembered that the little core had not only failed to placate GLaDOS, but had managed to enrage her even more.

It had developed an extremely strong personality, and was deemed no longer suitable as a method of restraint. They hadn’t wanted to have such an impressive machine to go to waste though, and put him to work in the facility. In true Aperture fashion, he was put to work “helping” some of the less ‘“cooperative” test subjects through the first few courses.

He named himself “Wheatley”, and the subjects were calmed by his humanlike behavior and harmless design, even though more than a few of them were killed by his incompetent guidance. Everyone in the facility LOVED the core, scientists, administration, and presumably the mantis men, as the genetics department noted the incomprehensible shrieks made upon contact with the bot were “overall neutral to positive”. Doug thought he was… dangerous.

When a test subject died because of him, Wheatley didn’t understand that he had done something wrong, or even worse, didn’t care, and several of the offhand comments he had made suggested that he… wasn’t the biggest fan of humans. Doug had known better than to bring this up around Henry, it would have just been written off as senseless paranoia, just like his fear of GLaDOS. He just took to avoiding the core whenever possible.

“...prefer to have someone with TWO working legs, but I suppose you’re better than nothing, eh?”

“What?”

Doug had completely tuned out the rambling Wheatley.

“You’re going to take me with you! I can't get very far on my management rail. Doesn't reach to any of the exits. Also, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m disconnected from the rail system. So, can’t exactly move. I suppose I could try and roll...”

He began gyrating wildly in a pathetic attempt to roll to freedom. Doug couldn’t understand it. The I.D. Core wanted to leave? Why the hell would it want to leave? It couldn’t even move off the management rail, and, unless things had drastically changed during the intervening years (which it might well have) there were none installed on the outside. He grabbed the core to stop him from rolling off the edge of the catwalk.

He knew he’d regret asking this, but,

“Why leave? You BELONG here.”

“That’s none of your business, Doog .”

Doug responded by holding Wheatley out over the edge of the pit, ready to let go at any second. Cube told him not to let go. Cube had always been a better person than Doug. Even if it wasn’t a person.

“NO! GAH! I’m SORRY! I’ll tell you! JUST PLEASE! DON’T! DROP ME!”

The cores optic shrunk in fear. He brought it slowly back over the rail.

“Alright, look…,” he paused for a moment before giving up on trying to remember Doug’s name.

I need to apologize to a different human - A lady human,” he clarified.

This gave Doug pause. The Core had to be lying. When had he met a human that might still be alive? Wheatley was a moron, but he knew humans weren't immortal (Doug hoped so, at least). How could he have met a human? Core’s weren’t allowed in test chambers, the only one to escape the testing tracks had been...

____________

“Chell?” he mumbled, looking at the core like he was seeing it for the first time.

“I dunno her name, she was just a test subject, no one important...”

Wheatley found himself dangling once again over the edge. He filed away in his memory that :subject[organic]-rat-man//doog?//;employee-id-unknown: was ‘testy’ and ‘unpleasant’.

“ Don’t talk about her like that! ”

He was hardly shouting, but it was the loudest he’d ever heard the rat man talk, even what he recalled from before the ‘incident’. His voice was gruff and scratchy and not very pleasant.

“Alright, ah, yes. I won’t. um… I don’t know if it was your ‘Chell’ ,” he said the name very carefully, and gave a short description of the woman from what he could remember.

“It might be.”

“Does that mean that we can… ‘help’ each other? You can carry me, and I can...”

He hadn’t considered what he would bring to the table. Naturally, his first thought was,

“I can be the brains of the operation! Know the facility inside and out, I do!”

The man looked about as enthusiastic with the half baked plan as Wheatley himself was.

“Well?”

After 20 seconds of no answer, he gave up.

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re a mute too!” Wheatley cried, completely ignoring the conversation he had just had. The man’s eyes flicked back to that hideous cube at his back a couple of times. It was like they were debating whether or not to take him. Clearly he had to sweeten the pot. But how ?

“Oh! OHO ! I just remembered. You won’t believe this: I can get us access to an elevator . eh? Without being detected by HER. Bet you hadn’t thought of that !

“ An elevator. ”

“Yes, an elevator! They can go up, and down, we won’t be going down, naturally...”

The human wisely stopped the tirade before it could get off the ground.

“I will carry you,” he began, shifting Wheatley into a more comfortable position in his arms and sounding very, very resigned.

“Brilliant! Let’s go! To the left, if you please.”

“I will carry you If you can try to stay quiet until I say you can talk. If GLaDOS’s sensors pick something up… I’m surprised she hasn’t already found you.”

The promise of GLaDOS was enough to scare Wheatley into behaving, for the moment, and he ‘nodded’ in agreement. Doug awkwardly cradled him in his arms and they set out to find an exit.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER 4: MISERY LOVES COMPANY

The human refused to follow Wheatley’s brilliant directions, and instead found another miniscule crack in the paneling. Wheatley did not like his new human very much. He talked more than the lady, but he only talked to his stupid cube, and his voice was annoying, and he kept dropping Wheatley and never apologized, and he insisted on humming bits of the same song over and over and it was never in tune…

Wheatley missed Chell.

To pass the time, he started rehearsing his apology, his processors whirring violently as he tried to piece together something, anything , that would express his regrets. His betrayal must have been… well he couldn’t be worse than GLaDOS, could he? Anyway, he had been practicing a variety of apology speeches for his last two years in space, and had composed quite a good one in his humble opinion, but would it be enough?

Dear lady Chell, I was wrong I was a moron and I’m sorry. I don’t know how to say it  how you could ever forgive me, what I did was…

Wait.

Something was wrong. He wasn’t moving. Had the human dropped him? No, he wasn’t touching the floor; it was more like he was he was suspended in midair. Was he? No, no, he was just wedged between the inner walls. This was fine, it was all fine.

Nothing but wires and rusted pipes and dust. Lovely .

“Do you think we’ll finally ‘bite the dust’ in here? Wait, what the bloody hell was that? Ed? Oh, shut up . I BROUGHT YOU BACK TO LIFE YOU UNGRATEFUL LITTLE...”

____________

Doug made no comment on Wheatley’s sudden will to make terrible puns, not his seeming hatred of the puns he made. He just rolled the core along, squinting in the unfamiliar brightness provided by Wheatley’s flashlight, opting instead to find his way as he normally did by feeling for the notches he made in the pipes.

He felt safe cocooned in the walls, or as safe as one could ever feel in Aperture.

His small frame was helpful for navigating the narrow passages, and Cube, a prototype and therefore much more compact than standard testing cubes, was able to fit, but Wheatley, being, essentially, a metal beach ball, was a good deal wider that he was, and several times he became wedged rather tightly between the walls. He didn’t bother trying to release him, his arms felt like rubber and sweat stung at his eyes. He and Cube curled up behind the core to rest. The core in question, stuck facing forward and unable to detect Doug’s presence outside of pressure sensors, panicked.

“Wait. wait, don’t go! Don’t leave me all alone in this tunnel of doom! How could you do this to me? I thought we were partners!”

Doug had for so long only interacted with Cube, who 99% of the time he was on the same page with, he had just assumed that Wheatley would know what he was doing. As a (ex)scientist, he was intrigued at the core’s behavior. Who had thought it would be a good idea to program him to be so needy and prone to panic?

Then, he remembered where he had worked.

He continued to ignore Wheatley, scratching meaningless loops and shapes into the dusty ground. The repetitive, tactile sensation was calming. In less than two hours the core had already begun to get on his nerves, and Cube was being especially unhelpful. Sometimes, not often but sometimes, it would do that; feeding him bad advice, reminding him that “ it was never about what was right, it was about your guilt, you’re lying to yourself if you think it’s about anything else”

“You’ll never get out of this place without my help! NEVER! hahahaha! Serves you right for leaving me here!”

hey

“You’re supposed to help...”

“You could always just stop. Nothing would change.”

doug

“Tennis has NOTHING to do with the situation, Ed! I swear, I will delete you! I’m, um, I’m pretty sure that’s a thing I can do.”

“do you think you don’t deserve to be here? good people don’t...”

“...your head with an ice pick! No, that doesn't sound too good. Um, okay, how’s this: I promise I won’t talk anymore! Really, I swear! I’ll stop talking right now in fact. See? Nononono I didn’t mean…. What can I do to make you take me back!”

Doug shoved Cube away, grabbed the cores handle and forcefully rotated it upside down so that they were facing each other.

“Lose some weight.”

____________

Wheatley narrowed his optic.

“Are you calling me fat?”

“No, you’re heavy and Cube is heavy and I can’t carry you both much further.”

“So you do think I’m fat.”

“Maybe.”

“You know what, your just a… um, give me a minute here… okay, I’ve got some good material to work with, how can it be this difficult to insult you?”

“Yes, in fact, I think I AM calling you fat. You’re so fat, I can barely stand to look at you.”

“If you’re so tired, maybe you should just drop the cube. I bet it’s twice as fat as I am!”

There was a dead silence. There was no more arguing, just the human looking straight ahead with a frightening expression. He had a very scary face.

He ignored Wheatley for what seemed like hours.

Wheatley didn’t understand it, but if he questioned the human, he might find himself plummeting down into the pits of android hell. He might have been a moron, but he had a sense of self preservation, and considered himself lucky that he was still being carried. Even so, it was hardly his fault that the first human he’d come across was so volatile.

Eventually, he was freed when the human rammed the cube against him without warning and he popped out the side of the wall, the human tumbling out after him, apologizing to the testing element instead of Wheatley, who responded in turn by wriggling so hard he was dropped onto the former scientists foot. It had earned him yet another terrifying expression, but the weird squeaking noise that the man made had been well worth it.

They walked for quite a while towards the elevator that he knew of without (much) incident, Ed’s calendar informing him that several 24 hour cycles had passed. They were making decent time, considering how difficult it was to traverse Aperture without the aid of a portal gun, but they had to keep stopping for rat man to do pointless human things , or just go into sleep mode for no reason. Wheatley hoped there was adrenal vapor on the outside, because without it humans were startlingly inefficient.

____________

Wheatley was dumped in the doorway of an office, and he was only calmed by the fact that the cube had been left outside too. The human wouldn’t just abandon his precious cube. He tried making conversation, but the damn thing predictably refused to answer. Ed had shut up again, so that was a good sign.

The human returned with a handful of batteries and an almost full jug of suspiciously opaque, coagulated water, which seemed to put him in a good mood, even if he still refused to talk to Wheatley. At least until they reached a crooked panel and Wheatley was shoved through the gap into pure darkness, landing on his side. He was terrified that the human had abandoned him, and was very relived when he felt a hand grasping his handle to lift him up off the floor.

“We should be safe here.”- a quiet mutter came from the darkness. Wheatley only then thought to turn on his flashlight.

He plopped Wheatley down in a corner, facing him outwards so he wasn’t stuck looking at the plain, grungy paneling. Wheatley noted with palpable irritation how much more gently the human treated the cube than him. He fussed over it and fondled it and lovingly set it down before he collapsed awkwardly between Wheatley and that stupid, inanimate box .

____________

The space was too dark and much too small to be comfortable. He wasn’t abnormally tall, but he still had to contort his gangly limbs in some odd ways to fit, and ended up zig zagged between Cube and Wheatley. He was still mad at the core, even though Cube said it had forgiven the core, Doug had not. Cube had few faults, but apparently being too forgiving was one of them. He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t grateful for the little terrors flashlight, though.  

What had happened to the core? Oh, right. He right there. Just ignore him, Doug.

Speaking of, the core had figured the best way to lighten the mood would be by humming, and, when that failed the get Doug’s attention, Singing.

“...take one down, pass it around, 93 bottles of beer on the wall! 93 bottles...”

“At least he picked a classic.” Cube deadpanned.

Cube was back to normal, at least. He laughed a little at its commentary, lazily scratching at his arms, constantly irritated by the grit and dust floating around in the maintenance areas.

Where the hell had he learned that song? Probably one of the (unpaid, of course) interns in AI.

“85 bottles of beer on the wall, 85 bottles of beer, take one down...”

It was never about saving anyone.

Because you could have.

“FOCUS, Doug.”

“You’re the one who...”

“ I’m not... ”

“I just… I need some time to think.”

“I’m sorry”

“I know. It’s not your fault.”

“2,010,890 bottles of beer on the wall! 5 bottles...” Wheatley had apparently messed up his counting and was now just warbling random numbers. Without warning, he plucked the core up and held him in his lap. At least he had stopped singing now.

“Go to sleep, or into sleep mode, or whatever it is you do.”

“Well you’re not very much fun at all, are you?”

“I think you’re fun.”

“You think a lot of things.”

“Who, me?”

“No, I would never accuse you of that.”

“Ha! I see you’re finally coming to your senses, rat man.”

“ Doug .”

“Whatever.”

“Did you know that I just can put you into sleep mode manually? There’s a switch...”

“Alright! Calm yourself, mate, I’m on it!”

Wheatley rolled his ‘eye’, but complied, his optic light slowly dimmed to a distant glow and his face plates slid shut, threatening to cleave several of Doug’s fingers.

“ Finally .”

He set the core down in the corner and opened up Cube. He had work to do

Chapter Text

Chapter 5: Confessions

Doug knelt to face the grey, sandpapery wall, chalk and charcoal and tubes and buckets of paint spread out across the floor. It was the first time he had needed to draw in weeks.

“No, you need to get some sleep,” Cube disagreed.

“The core said we were getting close and you need to keep your energy up”

He shook his head and gestured to cube to be quiet. He didn’t want Wheatley to wake up, and he definitely wasn’t comfortable with a GLaDOS core watching his mind unravel even further. He only trusted Cube to watch him, and even then it’s presence sometimes made him uneasy. He kept shaking his head as he reached for his tools.

Most of his brushes were in bad shape, countless had been snapped in half from his harsh grip, the bristles frazzled from being mashed and dragged angrily against the wall, barely usable anymore. When the one he held broke from being violently stabbed into the concrete, he used his hands to spread the color around, his movements erratic and wild as he tried, again and again, to push his life out onto the walls, all the anger and pain and fear. Whenever it came time to draw the girl though, he slowed down, taking great care with her face, the lines and colors delicate and soft and precise. In his own little world, if she wasn’t right, nothing would ever be right.

When he finished, the whole room was a mess. Paint was everywhere, even on Wheatley’s shell, his face was red and mottled and his hair mussed with sweat and something sticky and blue. His hands were bleeding again.

When had that happened?

“You needed red.”

“Oh. For her face, of course.”

He clutched at his shirt to wipe away some of the blood, leaving smears of scarlet and black, then unconsciously brought his hands up to his mouth.

“What does she look like? I can’t see anything.”

“She’s very pretty Doug. Now go to sleep.”

He nodded, his eyelids already heavy. Sleep sounded nice now. He suddenly felt out of breath and weak, and he rolled over onto his side. He knew he shouldn’t sleep on his injured leg, but there was no way in hell he’d sleep with his back to the entrance.

Doug had never worked directly on the core project, so he didn’t know that, unlike GLaDOS (who never used it regardless), they did not have a “sleep mode”, persay. In order to control Her, they were programmed to be active 24/7. Instead, they were able to conserve energy by shutting off non vital functions like their optic light and such, making them appear inactive.

This was what Wheatley had done, and when he was confident that the human’s back was turned he opened his “eye” to watch. It was to dark to really tell what was happening, and the fact that he couldn’t see past the human’s knees was a hinderance, but he hugged the wall and kept crouching down and once Wheatley heard a muffled yelp. When the human was on the floor again and not moving, he felt safe turning on his light to see what the human had been doing.

“It’s her! It’s her!”

Rat man’s eyes shot open and he prepared to bolt, grabbing cube and at a broken panel before Wheatley realized what was going on. It was pretty clear where the human’s priorities lay.

“Oi! Rat man! Get back here, it’s just me!”

He noticeably relaxed, turning around to make sure it was, in fact, Wheatley. Not that the core was ever particularly reassuring, but it could have been worse.

“So, you’re the one who did all the creepy paintings!”

Rat man glared at the colors on his hands like they had betrayed him.

“You are, right? Cause if you’re not, then someone invisible came in and did that. And I didn’t see anyone, I was watching the whole time...”

“You were watching?”

“um...”

His gaze flicked over to cube and he mumbled something under his breath. He exhaled slowly, rubbing his eyes and grumbling. It was apparently decided between him and his cube that this wasn’t something worth getting visibly upset over, and, as he rummaged through his bag for something, he asked a question

“Where did you learn that song, Wheatley?” The human asked as he peeled the lid off a can of Aperture science brand emergancy organic nutritional substitute (more concisely labeled “PEARS”)

Wheatleys face plates narrowed in concentration.

“What song?”

“The… um…”

“OH, that song! One of the young humans taught me… y’know, before they were all...”

To his credit, Wheatley was sensitive enough not to finish his sentence. He quickly started talking again, to fill the painful void of silence.

“Standard model, two eyes, two ears and the lot, kind of pudgy, long hair, face dots, shoes with wheels on the backs...”

“I think...Marcus, or... That was Marcus.”

“Yeah, that was his name! Him and his mate taught it to me.”

Wheatley didn’t know what to say next. At least the human was talking to him again.

“They were good humans. Very ample.”

Rat man gave him a look, but it seemed to be more amused than mad. He made a humming noise as he opened the can he had found amongst his things. Wheatley took this as a go ahead to keep talking.

“Rat man?”

“ Doug . My name is Doug.”

“Doug. Okay. Um, what are you going to do once you get to the surface?”

“I also need to apologize to her.”

“Her? Oh, right, the Lady! I mean, Chell. For what?”

He got a weird look on his face again. He seemed to have innumerable weird looks.

“I cast the angel into hell to save myself.”

Wheatley had no clue what he meant by that.

“That’s, um… that’s really biblical. Good for you, I suppose.”

“So,” he mumbled through a mouthful of “pears”,

“Why do you need to apologize? You couldn’t have done anything like… like I did.”

“Oh, well… I um… to be perfectly honest... I called her fat, a few times.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

Chapter Text

CHAPTER 6: GLADOS

They found a temporary rail for Wheatley, who seemed much happier not being dropped every few hours. Things were going suspiciously well, and soon enough, they were facing an elevator. There were no cameras, no turrets, just a big office room with some broken desks and rusted out filing cabinets. Doug looked up and could almost see the dim sunlight thousands of feet above him.

“This is it? She won’t be able to detect this?”

“Yep, just use your hand, just take it, that hand there, and reach it out and put some pressure down on the button.”

“I know how to call an elevator.” Doug snapped back.

“Brilliant! I’m in good hands. Speaking of, could you detach me when the lift comes?”

Doug nodded. He reached out and the button lit up with a blue glow. He really couldn’t believe it had been this easy.

“I don’t this this was a good idea…”

Then She made herself known.

Oh, hello. What a surprise. A rodent and the moron.

Of course.

______

Glados would never admit it, but she had a small, very small , place in her nonexistent heart in which she held a grudging respect for Chell. She was the best test subject GLaDOS had ever seen, and, more importantly, she had helped GLaDOS regain power after being usurped by a PERSONALITY CONSTRUCT. A core of all things. It had been humiliating , and Chell had been given every opportunity to gloat, but she hadn’t said a word or even so much as smirked at GLaDOS’s situation, she had just doubles down and got the job done. GLaDOS liked that about her. So, the murderous mute fat adopted lunatic was no longer on her short but carefully cultivated list of enemies. Now, there was only two.

In all honesty, she had better things to do than chase down a scruffy, useless, irritating but mostly harmless human. For every minute she spent looking for him in the creavases of her facility, she could have contributed 2% more to science. But that was a sacrifice she was willing to make. Science would have to wait until the rat that had tried to kill her was dead for sure. Instead of accepting a painless (all Aperture science toxins were guaranteed not to hurt longer than the five minutes it took to asphyxiate from them) death like his more well behaved colleagues, he had sent an assassin after her, stolen who knows how much Aperture property, and defiled her once pristine facility with pointless scribbles of blood and paint, among his numerous crimes. And even after all this, he had been bumped down to number two on the list.

The dishonor of being number 1 belonged to the moron sphere. the bad idea generator that had managed to usurp her throne and stuff her mind into a potato. She didn’t believe in fate, but if she did, she would have called it cruel.

Getting both of them at the same time was just the icing on the cake, as Ed might have said.

Oh, hello. What a surprise. A rodent and the moron.

“I thought you said she wouldn’t be able to detect us!”

“Okay, I might have stretched the truth a bit...”

“We are going to DIE!”

“Don’t be a drama queen, Doug, We’ll be fine . I just need to think of a Plan B. I can think of a plan for every letter of the alphabet if we need it! A, B, C, D, E, F, J...um, L, M, S… A again, probably...”

“Fuck!”

Language, Douglas. We wouldn’t want the moron repeating that in public.

“For your information, we weren’t talking to you ,” Wheatley spat back.

She responded by violently readjusting the floor under Doug’s feel, forcing him to jump out of the way.

Frankly, she wasn’t surprised that the moron had lied. She was surprised he had found a way back to earth, she was surprised the rat hadn’t offed himself or been downed by a turret, but she was not surprised the core had lied. He had lied to Chell, he would lie to anyone to get what he wanted.

I know you’re a moron, but consorting with vermin is low, even for you.

“For the LAST TIME! NOT! A! MORON! I put you in your place once, and I can bloody well do it again!”

Doug paused for just a second, almost tripping over one of the rippling panels. A filing cabinet nearly fell on his foot.

“Wait, what?”

She laughed, repeating a “ha” syllable over and over.

You know Doug, you might be sneaky, but you’re not very clever. Do you have any idea what the core want’s to apologize to the mute for? Yes, I heard your conversation. It was heartwarming , really. Now, let me tell you...

“NONONONONONONONONONO, PLEASE! DONT!”

Oh, but it’s quite a tale. Would YOU prefer to let him know how you…

“DON’T YOU DARE!”

Oh, it’s no trouble, really. You see, he told the mute that they would escape together. Then, do you know what he did? He took over MY facility and MY body. The first thing he did after that was throw your precious Chell down an elevator shaft. She only survived because of me; you’re welcome for that, by the way. I don’t doubt he planned to do the same to you. In a way, I saved your life by catching you. Again, you’re welcome.

A wall panel slammed into his back and the wind was knocked out of him as Wheatley zoomed away, back into the bowels of the facility.

Do you see? I was right. How predictable. He left you, just like everyone else.

He barely managed to regain his balance before thick metal chords came from the ceiling and wrapped around his arms and legs, little metal prongs jabbing into his skin. Cube had fallen out of it’s sling during the whole ordeal, tumbling out onto the ground.

Oh dear. Even inanimate objects don’t want to be around you. Not that I blame them.

“It’s not inanimate!” He wanted to scream at her but he was still struggling to breath, so it came out as a breathy whine.

Don’t strain your voice, I don’t want ANOTHER mute on my hands.

The chords tightened, threatening to draw blood.

Here, let me help you relax .

He was barely able to register the pain before he blacked out.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER 7: Wheatley’s Plan

He didn’t mean to run away, honestly he hadn’t. But as soon as her claws came in,

Wheatley remembered the pain. Cores weren’t supposed to be able to “feel” anything other than pressure, it just wasn’t a part of their programming. Then again, Aperture hadn’t anticipated that a core would ever get crushed by a massive claw .

It had been terrible, his gyroscope being snapped in half comparable to a human breaking their spine. He couldn’t move, couldn’t see thanks to GLaDOS’s claw piercing his optic.

He couldn’t remember how he’d been fixed. There’s been a… well he thought it was a human, but he wasn’t a human , exactly. Anyway, he’d gotten distracted when the bird came in, and he couldn’t really remember the rest all that accurately.

He doubted he’d be that lucky again.

Ed didn’t know what it was like. He made some soft beeps of displeasure at Wheatley's decision to flee, but was unable to do anything more. Once in relative safety, he took a moment to collect himself and go over his options. He could:

A: Stay in Aperture

B: Try to escape on his own

C: Wait for another human

D: See if Doug was still alive

Option A was definitely the least appealing, he was on GLaDOS’s radar now, and without a human to help him avoid security camera’s, he was bound to be spotted eventually. If Option B were viable, he would have left long, long ago, even before he found Chell. Option C… as far as he knew, everyone else was dead, had been for years, and if Doug was still alive, well then he was in GLaDOS’s clutches, and Wheatley wasn’t about to put himself directly in danger, so Option D was out of the question. He needed a fifth option, and quickly.

Backed into a dark corner and at the end of his management rail, Wheatley had to admit that he was out of options. And that wasn’t a metaphor, that was quite literally where he was, in a dark corner, at the end of his management rail.

“Any ideas, Ed?”

Silence. Wheatley rolled his eye.

“Fine. Fine . I’ll have to come up with a plan. Like always.”

The only way Doug would get a chance to escape was if she let him into the testing tracks, and that wasn’t about to happen. Her two testing bot’s were enough to sate her need to test.

Ed chimed in to provide Wheatley with a rather crude joke, something about GLaDOS’s testing euphoria and conversion gel.

“Oh, shut up. When I ask for your opinion you can’t seem to say anything but the moment I need to get some thinking done, oh, then you just go on and...”

He shook himself back and forth.

“You know, speaking of testing, it’s too bad she’s not using Doug to test. He’d have a chance to escape if he was testing. Those stupid bots ruined everything.”

He vividly remembered how GOOD it had felt to test Chell. Better than anything he’d ever felt. Certainly better than getting crushed. He just didn’t get how humans could dislike it so much. GLaDOS would test if she could feel that again, that was for sure. What was it called?

Euphoria.

“Actually...” Wheatley mused to himself,

“That’s not a bad idea. Brilliant, even. Well, naturally. But still...”

Just cut off her whole supply. She’d have to test Doug then. And there would be absolutely no negative repercussions. None. He was 99.99999% sure.

____________

When he woke up, the first thing he saw was Her soulless sun-yellow eye, inches away from his face, so close his breath was clouding her optic. She must have dragged him to her chamber. He wanted to scream, but… there was no hope of escape, no chance she would show mercy. The only thing he could do was refuse to give her the satisfaction of seeing his intense fear and pain till she killed him. The cores betrayal was hardly shocking. The more he thought about it, Wheatley wasn’t really a “moron”. In the end he’d just done what he was programmed to do: come up with bad ideas and do whatever it took to execute them. He hated himself for listening to the core, and so did Henry, but there was nothing he could do. He’d wanted to get out so badly, he’d actually trusted the thing.

Oh good, you’re awake. I hope you slept well. My studies show that 57 milliamps of electricity coursing through your veins is very relaxing .

She lowered him down, not releasing the clamps. His mouth was too dry to say anything, and his throat was still raw from screaming  but he managed to lift his arm enough to throw up his middle finger.

If you’re going to be vulgar, I could always just remove your arms. Actually, that’s not a bad idea. I’ll be sure to remind me. No, there’s no need, I don’t forget anything. Like all those times you tried to kill me. And failed.

He said nothing, biting his tongue so hard it started to bleed. She sent a minor shock through him and he glowered at her, baring his teeth.

You see, this is why you don’t have any friends. Other than your own delusions I mean. Speaking of, I’ve taken the liberty or getting rid of that hideous burden you insisted on lugging around with you everywhere.

“NO!”

He was horrified at his sudden outburst, at how soon his resolve could apparently be broken. She seemed pleased, or as pleased as she could ever get.

Please, no need to thank me, I did it for your own good.

She dropped him the last few feet to the floor, shocking him again before he could scramble away.

Maybe if you hadn’t been so selfish, you could have saved it. But that’s all in the past.

I’m sure the screams of agony it made in it’s final moments were it’s way of saying “I forgive you, you awful waste of resources.”

He didn’t hear a word she said. Cube was gone, Cube is gone, you killed it. He let himself float in shock for as long as GLaDOS found it amusing.

Do you know what’s funny?

No answer.

No, of course you don’t. Well, I’ll tell you. What’s funny is that you wandered into my trap all alone. I thought you were smarter than that, but I guess I gave you too much credit. Did you know that rats have a brain about the size of a penny? Do you know how small that is? I’ll tell you, that’s 2 grams.  

He ignored the attack on his intelligence because something else she’d said had caught his attention.

“Alone…?” He managed to cough out.

Yes alone . I thought you were paranoid, not hard of hearing.

“Wheatley? You s… I don…nnn” The cables were choking around him again, and he prepared himself for another unpleasant electric shock.

The ID core? For all I know, the moron’s still floating around in space.

“No..no no no no no no NO no ”

He couldn’t be that far gone, could he? He had felt Wheatley, to have such a vivid, tactile hallucination? Nothing like that had ever happened before, had it? Had he just hallucinated GLaDOS talking to Wheatley, too? It was possible, the core had been in space , and it’s story of how it got back was very… well, insane.

Yes, I’m afraid so. But everything’s going to be just fine, now. I’m not going to let you out of my sight. There’s a few experiments I need… “help” with.

“Testing?”

I have the robots to test, and I only NEED the robots to test. I’ve overcome my issues with the testing euphoria long ago. Besides, Unlike YOU, I learn from my mistakes. I’m not giving you any chances to escape.

He didn’t want to know what she had in mind regarding “experiments”.

Trust me. This will be fun. At least for the smarter one of both of us.  

Chapter Text

CHAPTER 8: The Talk

This was somewhat similar to taking out GLaDOS’s neurotoxin, Wheatley thought, except he didn’t have a human, or a portal gun, or a human with a portal gun, or any conveniently placed lasers. No, it was just him and his plan. Oh, and Ed. Not that lasers were needed any more. The source of the euphoria was an artificially created sensation, he had discovered that first hand. He just needed to expertly hack into the Aperture Science mainframe and change the amount of “euphoria” allotted for each additional test, and increase the euphoria desire. If he turned it off altogether than the need would go away too, and that wouldn’t fix anything.

Getting into the mainframe without GLaDOS noticing was nigh impossible. He’d have to be quick and sneaky about it. At the very least, searching for a place to plug himself in wasn’t quite so hard, and soon he was optic deep in numbers he barely understood.

“Ready, Ed?”

Ed said nothing.

“If you’re going to stay here you could at least be a little consistent, either talk or don’t talk, I mean it, it’s not that hard... alright, let's see what we have here...”

Wheatley had a better knowledge of the unseen working of Aperture than your average core, thanks to his stint in the chassis, but the majority of these files made little to no sense to him. There were files upon files, and it took hours for him to even get close to where he needed to be. By now, Doug was probably already dead, but he’d rather try something than nothing at all. Even a bad idea was still an idea, after all.

“You know, I wonder how she’ll like it? The itch, no way to stop it. She’ll probably explode!” He laughed, rocking his shell back and forth to simulate an “expression of great joy or pleasure”, as the engineers had put it. He stopped laughing when he realized that blowing up anything would be counterproductive to his plan. He could blow up plenty of things once they were safely on the surface.

___________

She could have let him go. Like the girl, he was much more trouble than he was worth. If you squashed the spider, it would leave a mark on your wall, it would be easier to just scoop it up with a tissue and toss it out your window. But this spider had been a particular nuisance. It would be extremely cathartic to pull the legs off one by one and watch it scream. Metaphorically, of course, she was saving dismemberment for a particularly slow day. It was very, very tempting to indulge in that right now, however. The nuisance was curled up on the floor with his hands over his ears, pretending to be asleep.

Wakey wakey. We’ve got a long, productive day ahead of us, and it’s in your best interest that you learn how to cooperate.

It took a bit more prodding, most of it physical, having orange nudge the stubborn human with their foot, before he finally relented and sat up. He looked even wilder than usual, sleep having produced a disgustingly large amount of drool from the human, his hair sticking straight up and his eyes puffy and red. He rubbed them as he sat up, wiping most of the spit out of his beard with his sleeve. Disgusting. He glared right into her optic, clearly too crazy at this point to feel any reasonable amount of fear.

Guess what we’re doing today?

He sighed, and mock propped his head up on his fist.

“Science?”

If you guessed science, you’d be wrong. You missed out on a lot while you were out of commision. I’m just going to fill you in.

She started at the VERY beginning, right when Chell reactivated her, but the story was punctuated fairly regularly with the kind of insults he’d mostly become numb to. Most of it as just the same things she’d said for years, bringing up things in his file, picking him apart from the inside out. He should have punched whoever came up with the Aperture Science Emotional Insecurities Detection Algorithm. Well, it was too late now.

Chell hates you, you know. She knows what you did to her, and she hates you for it. She told me so herself.

She was lying, that was what she did. She had to be lying.

We were the best of friends, Chell and I. We made a great team. She begged and pleaded to stay here and test for me. But I let her go because I knew what was best for her. And I know what’s best for you .

He had to dig his nails into his arm to keep him for rolling his eyes. She was definitely lying now. Chell would never want to stay in the facility, nobody would. She sure as hell wouldn’t want to keep testing.

Do you even know what’s happened up there? Things have changed, Doug. I’ll even show you on the screens, so you know how pointless this little quest of yours has been.

Screens folded out from the wall, showing Doug footage of nuclear explosions, floods, and other disasters. Again, he was tempted to roll his eyes, why would she have let the Chell she cared about so much out into a nuclear winter?

I would give it a week before someone gets fed up with your antics and inevitably shoots you in the face. I’m doing you a favor. By my estimations, I’ll have perfected reanimation technology within two years. So you can keep contributing to science forever .

Doug swallowed. He didn’t like where she was going with this. Oh, was she talking again?

Good job, you managed not to kill me for over twenty minutes. I hadn’t anticipated our talk would take less than twenty five, though, so I won’t give you too much credit.

“So what now?”

He felt oddly calm. Maybe in the face of death, it was his mind's last defense. He didn’t know.

On the bright side, now we have enough time to start our research. My records on the human body are surprisingly lacking, nabbing you was a lucky break.

More panels folded up to box him in, so he couldn’t run. That was when pure panic set back in.

The next time he opened his eyes, he was tied down again, on a pristinely sterile table in a room filled with cameras and screens.

I wouldn’t be doing this if you were more compliant, but you seem to prefer vandalism instead. Do you know what doesn’t rhyme with science? That’s right, vandalism. And now that I’m thinking of it, neither does anesthesia.

An assortment of surgical tools was lowered into the room from the ceiling.

“How is this...”

Yes, this IS an experiment. I’m trying to see how the how fast Aperture Science Calcium Disintegrator works on the fragile human skeletal structure. Oh, wait, that’s the next experiment. This is the pain threshold exam. I hope you studied.

Despite knowing that resisting would make everything worse, he squirmed and flailed as much as he could, much to the amusement of GLaDOS.

It could be worse you know, I could be using a spoon. Now, let’s get started. I’m sure you’re eager to contribute to science after stopping so much progress for so long.

Chapter Text

You failed the pain threshold exam. It’s not a surprise, given your impressive record of failures, but frankly, I’m disappointed. We may have to run this test again, just to see if results are consistent, but I’m afraid that will have to wait.

He struggled to sit up and wondered for the millionth time who the hell programmed this thing. He could see, at least, but it was all colors and shapes, like someone had dragged their hand over the world and turned everything into a too bright smear. He brought his hand up to where his eye had been, and felt gauze.

Stop touching your face, you’ll get dirt in the bandages. And as amusing as an infection would be, it would mess up my data.

The logical part of his knew that she was right. Someone or something screamed in the distance. This being Aperture, it was equally likely to be real, or just something he thought was real. It sounded very real, but then again they all did. He flopped back down on the ground.

The pain had dulled considerably, but he still felt sick. There had been blood, so much blood. GLaDOS had been careful not to get any on him, more for cleanliness purposes than to be considerate… he saw a lot, injuries were common, less so before she took over, but still common.  Normally, he didn’t mind it, he’d been pretty much forced to, even used it when he couldn’t find any paint or couldn’t be bothered to. And falling or getting shot… this was different. It had been so neat, and surgical, he almost would have prefered a spoon. She hadn’t been angry, despite what she told herself she sure as hell hadn’t done that for science.

He didn’t look at GLaDOS, not directly. He focussed on her massive, looming shadow, swaying over him.

------

Wheatley, meanwhile, was still filing through the facility operational code. It was very very boring and it would be terribly dull to read about, much less write down.

So… let’s just say he found what he was looking for.

“Aaand… go. Haha. YES!”

He paused, realising that now, he had to actually find Doug.

“Ah… um, okay. Well, let’s try… this way.”

“This way” led Wheatley to at least seven dead ends before he found the way up to the New Enrichment Center. He had to hide from the other cores, GLaDOS would have sent out a warning to all sentient constructs, so that meant that he had to be stealthy…

CRUNCH!

“What ‘da heck was that?”

“Well you are ze security core, you can go and see for yourself. Maybe zen you will see the tedium zat passes for existence.”

“What does that even mean?”

“You tell me. I am but a leaf in ze wind, my friend.”

Burt the Security Core slid along his management rail, swiveling his deep blue optic around, looking for what might have made that terrifying sound. His light landed right on the trembling Wheatley.

“What ‘ave you found back zere?”

Burt’s optic shutters narrowed.

“‘Ey Gaston, get over ‘ere. We got ourselves a wanted criminal.”

--------

“You want me to do what?”

You heard me, rat. Blue and Orange are clearly doing something wrong, and testing is behind by 43 percent. Get moving, you’ll find proper testing attire next to the elevator.

There was white, white, white, then something greyish, then blue. So much is aperture was the same color, which made it very difficult to see where the floor ended and the wall began. He had enough trouble with reality as it was, and the added layer of distortion caused by his missing eye made everything so much worse. He managed maneuver himself into the elevator room, GLaDOS taking great pleasure in taunting him whenever he took a wrong turn.

He fumbled about until he could grab a jumpsuit and ended up tripping over the long fall boots, both of which he begrudgingly changed into. As much as he wanted to stay in his old clothes, to spite her, he had to admit it was nice to wear something clean for a change, even though it was much too large. He kept his lab coat on over the lurid orange. He wasn’t a test subject, he was a scientist, and he wanted her to remember that. As long as there was still one left alive, she had failed in her efforts to kill them all.

Hurry up. She snapped. She was clearly getting desperate. He found the ASHPD, turned to what he, for once, hoped was a camera, and smirked.

“I thought you’d ‘overcome your issues with the testing euphoria long ago’. Why the rush?”

He remembered the others, the ones that built her talking about the euphoria when they were on break. Oh yeah, it would be HILARIOUS to simulate THAT. No one was laughing now, but he found the thought of GLaDOS squirming uncomfortably, desperate for him to complete the tests, funnier than he probably should have.

If you’re going to be smart, I’ll just start you out on the “advanced track”. You know, the one with the-”

She purposely garbled her speech.

Oh, I haven't told you what (more unintelligible words) are ? They’re new. And since you’re being so uncooperative, I WON'T tell you. Have fun figuring it out all by yourself.

He frowned and lugged the portal gun to the elevator as he pondered what could possibly be ahead for him. Everything in Aperture was already pretty lethal. Doug cautiously edged into the elevator and dropped to the floor. He was fairly strong from carrying around cube and climbing his way through Aperture, but the guns were heavy, designed to survive in the event that Aperture was purged by the FBI, OSHA, or the UN human rights council, and it was decided that having a black hole concealed in a cheap plastic case was “dangerous” or “treading on god’s domain”. The door shut and he was vacuumed down further into the facility. She let him out in front of a familiar staircase.

And try not to touch anything. If I wanted your grubby little fingers spreading human germs all over, I would have let you go scurrying back into the walls to watch paint dry, or whatever it is you waste your time doing. Good luck…

Chapter Text

“ID core?”

“Actually, you know that’s-that’s a bit insensitive, really, I prefer to go by ‘Wheatley’, which is, as I’m sure you know, my name...”

“No no no. ‘ow did you escape your exile to ze moon?”

“Well now, that’s actually a bit of a long story, I, um, if you just follow me into this ravine...”

“Alright, enough ‘a this.”

Burt slid neatly between Wheatley and Gaston.

“Look mister, you are in BIG TROUBLE with the central core. An’ that means, you’re in big trouble with me .”

“Big trouble, really, y’know, I never would’ve guessed, haha, d’you, d’you mind just moving aside so I can...”

“Not a chance ID Core. I ain’t blind, and I don’t have the mem files of the Goldfish Core.”

“There’s a Goldfish Core?”

“She’s new. Anyway, the point is, I was there when you took over. So was Gaston. So were half the Core’s in the Enrichment Center. And we haven't forgotten what you did.”

If Wheatley could have nervously swallowed, he would have.

“N-now let’s not be hasty here...”

“Oh no, let us be ‘asty.”

“We’ve got to take you up to GLaDOS, pal”

Wheatley had no choice. He rammed into the other cores, back and forth, until he heard a crack and could get away. He had no idea whether or not he’d hurt the other cores, and frankly, he didn’t care. He had to find Doug so they could get out of there.

Portal, portal, portal, cube. GLaDOS stocked the chambers with companion cubes, and liked to incinerate them before he got close enough to pick them up, replacing them with the standard testing cubes. He never got numb to that. Doug was not a good tester, he was good enough at finding solutions to the puzzles, but executing them… that was the hard part. He was uncoordinated and injured, and was still dealing with the limited depth perception on top of the more vivid auditory hallucinations that had returned in Cube’s absence. Ordinarily, he would have delighted in purposefully depriving her of her euphoria, but now… something was wrong. Something was very wrong. And for once, he wasn’t the only one who noticed it.

I don’t know what you’re doing, but whatever it is, stop doing it.

“I’m Not. Doing. Anything. But. Solving. Your. Tests.” He punctuated his sentence for emphasis.

No. You’re. Not. I’m not receiving any euphoria from test completion. If you don’t fix this soon, there will be tragic consequences. And not just for you. Believe it or not, your actions have consequences beyond yourself. But you wouldn’t know that, would you?

He stepped out of the excursion funnel and slammed the cube onto the button with far more force than was necessary.

“Believe it or not, I didn’t do anything. I just want to leave.”

Doug… Her tone dropped from mocking to sinister, and it sent shivers through his body.

Do you know what happens when euphoria is cut off?

He sat on the cube, looked up at the only camera he hadn’t yet portaled off the wall, only because it wasn’t on a portable surface, and shrugged.

I didn’t expect you to. They wouldn’t let someone so unstable work on their biggest project. What was it you did? Maintain a filing system . You weren't even real scientist.

“It was the imaging format ,” he sullenly corrected.

Mmm. Whatever you were wasting your life doing, it wasn’t science.

“Get to the point.”

A constant supply of euphoria allows me to focus my attentions on maintaining the enrichment center. Without it, it’s absence is all I can focus on, and things start to fall apart…

A ceiling tile fell and exploded into dust, as if to emphasise her point. He swallowed.

That’s right. We’re all going to die, because of you. That’s becoming a theme in your life, isn’t it?

“SHUT UP!” He shrieked, gripping the camera and glaring into it with all his might. He wasn’t strong enough to rip it off the wall, but he tried.

Please back away from the camera and finish the test, I have better things to do than stare at a rabid dog all day. Oh, wait, that’s just you. Ha. Ha. Ha... Okay, we’ve had our fun. Continue testing while I figure out how to rectify your mistakes.

--------

Wheatley could see Doug testing through a tiny gap in the floor, and wished he could just call out. He had tried, but had been ignored, and nobody could say Wheatley couldn’t project his voice. So he followed the man through the chambers, feeling an extraordinary sense of deja vu the whole way through. GLaDOS was getting nastier, and the tests were getting harder, lots of bottomless pits and spikey walls and the addition of fire as an obstacle. Doug began to mark his passage through the tests with blood, purposefully leaving his handprints as signatures.

I remind you once again , that vandalism of Enrichment Center property will reflect negatively on you in your file.

Wheatley watched with mixed delight and disgust as Doug smeared the nearest camera lense with repulsion gel in response.

He almost forgot what he was there for, until a very scared looking Doug encountered the turrets as an obstacle for, apparently, the first time.

Oh, I’ve been looking forward to using these. Maybe if you get shot in your other leg, your limp will even out. Or you’ll just have to crawl through the tests. Either way, it will be fun. For me.

Doug winced, but quickly portaled behind the turret to grab it, but as soon as he did a panel opened up from the other side of the chamber to reveal a veritable turret army.

And that was GLaDOS’s mistake.

Doug portaled through the miniscule crack in the wall, smacking stray turrets off the catwalk with the portal gun. The whole facility jumped, and the catwalk fell three stories, giving doug enough time to land in the proper position.

Wait, where are you going? Get back here!  

Wheatley caught up with him

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”

Doug was screaming now, and tried rather pathetically to jump up and pull Wheatley off of his management rail.

“What am I, what? I’m only saving you, and...”

“WHAT WERE YOU PLANNING TO DO WITH ME? YOU WERE JUST USING ME TO GET TO HER, WEREN'T YOU? IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED? TO BLOW UP THE FACILITY?”

“Oh, so this is how you thank me? Typical ungrateful human, you’re just like her- wait. Blow up the facility?”

Doug hadn’t stopped trying to grab at wheatley, but without the adrenal vapor that had kept him going in the test chambers, he was quickly running out of energy, and thankfully, could no longer yell in lieu of heavy breathing.

“What do you- get down, stop that- what do you mean, blow up the facility?”

“That… that was you, wasn’t it?” Doug wheezed, glaring up at Wheatley from his slumped position.

“You wanted me to distract her so you could mess with her euphoria.”

“Um… technically, no. Well, yes, I MAY have done… something… that blocked the euphoria, but...”

“You’re gonna kill us all!”

“Look, I only did it to help YOU escape, okay?”

Doug flopped down onto the ground, trying to adjust the unwieldy long fall boots into a comfortable position.

“Look, don’t explain it. I don’t want to know.”

Wheatley would take what he could get, and that was close enough to reaching an understanding.

“I can still get us out of here… probably...”

“How, another elevator ?”

“No, I was thinking something a little less high tech.”

“Why the hell should I listen to you?”

“I don’t mean to me rude, but you aren't exactly swimming in options, I mean, what else are you gonna do?”

“Stop the facility from blowing up . If I’m going to die down here, I’d rather not have it be because of you.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 11

GLaDOS needed Doug to test. She wasn’t going to kill him just yet, as the only human left in the entire facility, his testing provided her with more euphoria than blue and orange combined. If she could have changed that, she would have a long time ago, but the scientists had put a lock on her ability to interact with the euphoria program in any way. Perhaps… perhaps she had gone a little too far with her threats this time. That, or she needed to crush whatever ridiculous core was in charge of panel transportation, the fact that there were so many portable surfaces outside of regulated areas was unacceptable.

Oh well. Unlike Chell, Doug would be easy to tempt back into the testing track. If all he wanted was a cube, she could give that to him. She hadn't lied about incinerating his, why wouldn't she get rid of it? But it would be easy to just manufacture another one, she couldn't tell the difference between them, so how would he? Maybe they could work something out, she could give him a cube, and he could provide her with test euphoria until the end of time.

_____

“Wait wait wait no, we have to leave!”

“I’m not following you anywhere. For all I know you’re not even here right now!”

“What…?”

Doug covered his ears with his hands and hummed loudly as he stormed down the abandoned halls so he could find a computer, the heels of his springy long fall boots nearly getting caught in the perferted metal of the catwalk several times. Wheatley ignored his cues and followed Doug along the hall, filling him in on all that he's missed.

“Oh, um, might have forgotten to mention this, but security is on the lookout for me and I may or may not have slightly seriously damaged a core or two to get here.”

This kind of thing had ceased to be surprising anymore. He would have just kept walking, except...

I see you…

He hit the ground, and squinted down the corridor for the telltale red beam.

Nothing. Yet, anyways.

“Doug? You alright there?”

“M’fine”, came the mumbled reply from the floor. The facility creaked and groaned and moaned, like the entire place was an old, unstable bridge ready to collapse at any moment.

“Doug?”

“What.” His voice was flat.

“I… if we're going to… well, you should know that everything GLaDOS said was true.

“What part?”

“All of it. Well, maybe except for her saving Chell. But the rest of it…”

Doug said nothing for a long time. he was mad at the core, very mad, but he didn't have the authority to be mad on Chell's behalf. His hands pressed into the rough floor, leaving a red relief pattern of his palms. He also wasn't in any position to judge the core or condemned his actions, he wasn't exactly on the moral high ground. Still, he hadn’t punched Chell into a pit.

“You took over the facility?”

“...yes…”

“And you tried to kill Chell?”

“Well I- “

“Did you?”

“I… I did. I was really awful, I know, but you don't understand what it was-”

Wheatley had the foresight to cut himself off.

“So, partners? Again?”

The core seemed to move past things very quickly. Doug wasn’t quite as forgiving.

“You could have KILLED her! You WANTED TO KILL HER!”

“It wasn’t me, it was the testing! I-I’d never felt like that before, I-”

Not knowing what it would accomplish but wanting to do something other than just blindly follow the core’s orders, Doug lunged at Wheatley in a blind rage. He couldn’t jump as high as he needed to, so all that happened was an aggressive swipe at the air. He tried again. And again and again until he had to stop for fear of permanently crippling his leg, which had started to bleed through the garish orange of the jumpsuit. He gave up in a huff, dropping into a seated position, panting and coughing until he caught his breath. Dully, he watched the red drip down the cheap synthetic fabric of the jumpsuit. He liked to watch, it was like a painting, and he didn’t have to do anything. It changed and made itself. He watched for a while, forced himself to calm down. A piece of lab coat was torn off to be tied around his leg as a makeshift tourniquet. Long, bony fingers struggled to tie a proper knot. He grit his teeth against the pricking at the back of his neck. Was the core still here? Why? It had even stopped talking, not that Doug particularly noticed or cared. He was a dead man, he didn’t get to notice.

“Why do you want to leave Aperture, Wheatley?”

“To a-

“Not to apologize. What's there for you up there besides Chell?”

“Lots of things, lots of things, like… well there's the… the stock market, um… topsoil, very important for the… ecosystem…”

Wheatley had no idea. All he knew was that it HAD to be better than down here, where he’d be on the run until he broke down or simply rusted away.

“Well, it's not really important. you go and, if you want to, you go and distract her, I’ll stop the facility from blowing up, then we can work on getting out of here. Deal?”

“No.”

“No?”

“If I have to die down here, I’m not having it be because of your incompetence, or because she decided that I’m not testing fast enough, or..”

He gestured around.

“ANY of this. I’m going to go find a computer and see if I can fix this, and you can’t stop me.”

He wobbled a bit but managed to get back onto his feet. Wheatley, for his own inscrutable reasons, followed close behind. Doug hated the sound the core made on the management rail, tangible evidence that something was following him. He searched old office after old office for a working computer, until at last he managed to boot one up. He couldn’t help but grin, just a little, using Henry’s old access code to get into GLaDOS’s maintenance code, much quicker than Wheatley ever could have hacking in manually.

“Anything I can do to help?”

Doug whirled around, prepared to run until he realized who had been talking.

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

Things were quiet for a few minutes, until inevitably things went wrong. The room shook, the lights flickered, went out, and the computer's screen went black. Doug loudly swore, and when he looked up at Wheatley he could have sworn the core looked smug. After half an hour of fruitless searching for a working monitor, he had to give up. Wheatley, for all his faults, didn’t need to see a screen to use a computer.

It was agreed upon that Doug was to keep GLaDOS busy while Wheatley tried to undo his damage. Doug plugged the core into a port, easier than having him do it himself, and retraced his steps back to the testing track.

___

“COME BACK”, the monitor read, the panels reforming themselves into a heart shape.

Cute .

Doug sighed and threw up his hands.

“I'm right here GLaDOS!” He yelled to the empty corridor.

A panel slid open and, going against every instinct he had, he crawled through, plopping down in a small, relatively easy looking chamber.

Welcome back doctor. Since my truth enhancement processor is malfunctioning, I don't have to tell you that it's good to see you.

Doug shrunk back. GLaDOS hadn't called him “doctor” in a very long time.

Listen, neither one of us is happy about this. I would LOVE to kill you and get you out of me, permanently. But you’re barely adequate testing performance is able to keep my euphoria in check, and until I can get that fixed…

GLaDOS gritted her nonexistent teeth. She needed Doug, and she didn’t want him to revolt again.

I will not kill you. Intentionally. Come on in.