Wheatley never stopped talking.
There was always something new to see, something to comment on or something to ask about. He seemed to forget that she wasn't a computer like him and, as such, couldn't have a complete repository of random information at her disposal. No, she didn't know exactly how a paradox broke an AI. She hadn't memorized the side effects of neurotoxin. She didn't know every password in the building just because she had taken down GLaDOS before. Since Wheatley had been in the facility for longer (granted, hooked onto his Management Rail), she thought he would know where they were going. She didn't have enough fingers to count the number of times they had gotten lost and he had asked her for directions.
Chell wasn't familiar with the part of the facility they were in. Either GLaDOS was more advanced than either of them had thought and had rebuilt the facility in no time at all, or She had dropped Chell in a different section entirely. For all she knew, they could be miles away from where she had tested ages ago Every time he asked Chell where she was, she shrugged. Let him figure it out.
It was easy to tell when Wheatley became lost: he began reading signs aloud.
"'DO NOT PRESS THIS BUTTON. VERY URGENT. DANGER. DO NOT PRESS.'" He brushed his hand over the top of said button, and her heart leapt in her throat. She turned and batted his hand away.
Wheatley recoiled from her. "That's enough, you don't have to hit!"
She rolled her eyes and pointed to the sign again. He read it aloud again, slower this time, as if the words would change if he repeated himself.
"Why would they put a button there if they didn't want someone to press it? These scientists are mad. Like…did I ever tell you about my legs?"
Chell ignored him in favor of moving towards a small corner with a solitary light shining into it. Wheatley continued to babble; when she turned around to look at him, he had not moved from the button, and had even begun to touch it again while he stared up at the ceiling in thought.
She brushed the wall with one hand and peeked around the corner.
Chell had seen these strange alcoves over the course of her stay at Aperture. Whoever had created them had wanted so badly for the other test subjects to be safe. He was obsessed with the Companion Cube. He wrote equations and solved them. And, more than anything, he left clues as to what was to come.
He knew who Chell was, and drew her as an angel.
Chell walked to the wall in front of her.
With one finger, she traced the outline of a moon, and then the enormous F of an equation next to it. She pressed her hand flat against the round orb. In the lamplight her shadow completely engulfed the artwork.
Sometimes he left her food, and, were it not for him and the Aperture Science Water Reservoir built into her jumpsuit, she was sure she would have collapsed long ago. His dens made safe havens for sleeping; more than once she found herself waking up to the sight of drawn stars on the low ceiling above her.
"What's this?"
Wheatley's footsteps crunched on the newspapers by the entrance. She didn't turn around to meet him, instead tracing out the rest of the equation: a G, two m's, a line, an r. Several numbers.
He stood behind her and looked at the rest of the mural above the moon.
"This- this is rubbish! Absolute rubbish! Just look at this."
Chell looked. Whatever had been written there had been furiously scribbled out with the same black chalk it had been written in to the point of illegibility. It looked like the verses of some poem.
And Wheatley was currently scowling and pointing at it.
"I could write better than this! Just watch."
Wheatley got to his hands and knees and began to scrounge around the bottom of the den. In his way, he knocked down various cans of beans. She was quick enough to save one that had been half-eaten before Wheatley could spill it and waste the precious food. She found a spoon and settled down in the corner to eat.
"Here we are!" He held up an abandoned nub of black chalk. "Not really the instrument of the great writers, but good enough. Let's see. Oh! Mind."
He gently touched her right shoulder. She moved over, still munching on the beans, and watched Wheatley while he sat cross-legged next to her and began to write on the wall she was leaning on.
"Now, how should I start?" Wheatley rested his head on one hand. "'My lady.' Yes, I think that's a good beginning. 'My lady.'"
My lady,
You are the sunshine to my moonlight
The bottomless pit to my…mashy spike plate!
Chell choked on her spoon.
Wheatley leaned back and nodded at his scrawling handwriting. He drew two stick figures holding hands: one had glasses and short, messy hair, and the other had a ponytail and long-fall boots. Both were smiling.
"Yes, yes. That sounds very good, if I may say so." He turned to her and grinned. "Want me to keep going?"
She shook her head and swallowed another mouthful of beans, staring at the entrance to the den. After a long pause, he turned back to the wall.
"You don't like it?" he asked quietly.
Chell turned to look at him. She slowly set the beans and spoon down.
Wheatley looked completely defeated and was staring at his makeshift poetry as if willing it to disappear. She had never seen him look at anything with such hatred and hurt before. Chell was sure it was a trick of his programming, but there appeared to be tears welling in his eyes, which he began to wipe at with the back of his fist.
She pointed to the "lady" on the wall and looked to him.
"Well, that's…you, love. There aren't many other ladies in this place except for Her."
Wheatley slumped over and rested his cheek on his writing hand, in the process getting some of the black chalk dust on his pale cheek. He sighed. "I thought to myself, 'Well, I see this nice woman all the time,' and I just…" He waved at the crossed-out scribbles on the moon wall. "That's nothing, that's clearly written by an amateur. I thought I'd do him one better, and write about someone I see all the time. My partner. My friend."
Chell looked at Wheatley's poem again. Well, it wasn't too bad; after all, it was a gift to her, if an extremely bizarre, badly written gift. She had to admit, it was somewhat flattering that Wheatley thought to immortalize her in prose on Aperture Science's walls. Even if she was the only thing he saw day in and day out and thus the only thing he was able to write on, it was still…
Cute.
Chell leaned over and brushed the top of his head before running a thumb against his cheek in an imitation of wiping tears away, though none had really fallen. Wheatley raised his head to look at her.
She gave him a thumbs-up.
The smile slowly crept back onto Wheatley's face. "You like it? Really?"
Chell made an exaggeration of thinking long and hard. She looked up at the ceiling, looked back to the poem, read it while mouthing the words and underlining them with one finger. Then she looked back to him and shrugged before nodding again.
Before she knew it, Wheatley had crushed her in a clumsy hug.
"Oh, you're just the best, love! Here, let's keep on it." He released her and nodded enthusiastically. "I have been inspired!"
Chell stifled her laughter.
He continued to scribble on the walls, and, as time passed, he managed to cover the entire space around where she sat. When she leaned forward and looked over her shoulder, there was a distinctly Chell-shaped imprint created from his words curling around her body.
He was just finishing up his final verse when Chell, eyes closed, slumped against his shoulder.
Wheatley paused. "Oh, are you tired now? Is it the normal human time for sleeping, d'you think?"
Chell sighed and nodded.
There was the sound of scribbling against the wall. Wheatley mumbled to himself while he finished.
"Yes, one last metaphor there…a sweeping finish, and…bam. Perfect poetry. "
She heard a dull clanking as Wheatley set the chalk nub down in an empty beans can nearby.
He turned and nuzzled her head, and his voice was suddenly very soft. "You rest, love. I'll be right here, and so will your poem."
Just as she was slipping off, he said:
"Will you read it when you're done, love?"
She whacked his arm playfully.
"Point taken! All fine without the hitting, thank you very much.