Wheatley took another sip of the hot, sweet, and frothy chocolaty goodness and let out another long sigh of contentment. It had been long, far too long, since he had had a good mug of hot chocolate. He licked the whipped cream from his upper lip, and then plunged his face back in for another sip. Sip, sigh, lick…sip, sigh lick…over and over again, until all that was left was moist chocolaty bits at the bottom of the mug.
"Oh, blimey!" he thought to himself happily. "That hits the spot. I could definitely get used to this!"
He swirled the remains of the chocolate around the bottom of the mug, and his happiness suddenly came to have a twinge of melancholy as he thought.
Perhaps he had been used to it already before, once upon a time, but when your mind makes at least four different body changes, certain bits of memory don't quite make it through the exchange. He had been human once before now…until Aperture had happened…until Science had happened. It was hard to believe that it was only that summer, only a few months before now, that he had remembered any of that. He didn't remember much – only bits about the office, of bagels…of Chell…of his last moments in his original human body as his mind blacked out in a cloud of unconsciousness and blue light and the deadly sweet smell of almonds – but it was enough to confirm to him the truth.
It was a hard truth to grasp at first. Goodness knows, it would cause any AI to have the greatest identity crisis ever known in the history of both human and artificial kind! He remembered how badly he had wanted those memories erased; to be deleted from his hard drive. But now, as much as those memories still hurt at times, he wouldn't give them up for anything in the world. Especially the ones with her in them -
"Well, you've gone quiet all of a sudden," said a smiling voice behind him. "I'd have thought that all that sugar would have sent you off the walls by now. What's on your mind?"
Wheatley, shaking himself from his reflections, turned to see Chell's happy face, with that lovely expression that was his alone. He felt a dopey smile spread across his face as he replied back.
"Ah- yeah, sorry. No, I really did it enjoy it. Blimey! That was good stuff that was. It's just…it seems like such an…ordinary thing for humans to have. I just wondered if…if I'd ever- ever had it before. But…I can't remember…not that far back anyway."
Chell took the empty mug from his hand and rinsed it out in the sink. "I know the feeling," she said matter-of-factly. That was another reason why Wheatley liked Chell's company so much, why it was his lifeline. She seemed to understand everything about him, even if she didn't say so. She wasn't much for talking anyway, but even just the way she would look at him would fill in all the gaps the lack of words would otherwise leave someone else. And of course they had their shared experiences in that Place…with Her…that no one else living in the world had gone through. Even though they had both for the most part recovered from having gone through so much in that horrid labyrinth, they would still carry scars from it for the rest of their lives; both visible and non-visible. Wheatley thought it was the non-visible ones that hurt the most. But Chell had helped make them bearable. Or even caused some to disappear or nearly disappear all together. If there was one thing she had taught him, it was that it was never too late to have a new start.
He brightened as he thought of this, and he also became rather excited as he thought about how, in a way, this would be his first Christmas! The holiday songs that Foxglove had been broadcasting to the town of Eaden that whole month of December did ring some bells in the back of his memory, so like hot chocolate, he knew that there was definitely the possibility he must have been familiar with them before Aperture, but he couldn't for the life of him remember where he had heard them before or how he knew them. But that didn't seem to matter. The fact was that he knew them (or, at least sort of), and would learn even more of them, and that was what mattered.
"So," he finally said, after a moment of silence as Chell wiped her hands on a towel by the sink. "Wh-what do humans usually do for-for Christmas then? I mean, we've had the songs and decorations and the whole lot going throughout the month, but Christmas Eve is supposed to be uh-particularly special somehow, right? What do you do on a day like today?" Even though Wheatley was once again physically human, having recovered his old body as a 'surprise' from Caroline, and having regained some human 'protocols' in the process, there were still some missing pieces that he would have to relearn. He felt a bit like a child in that so many seemingly elementary things would have to be 're-downloaded' into him. But then again, also like a child, he felt a sort of excitement at the prospect of rediscovering the wonderful 'why-nots?' that came with being human again. Why not go and have a holiday? Why not drink hot chocolate? Why not have bagels with jam in the morning? Why not go sledding on the hill near Otten's Field? (He hadn't actually done that yet, but he promised Ellie that he would give it a try that day.)
Chell hung up the towel, and strode across the room, grabbed his coat off the hook near the door and flung it at him. He fumbled about as he just managed to catch it with his long, clumsy flailing arms, a smile spreading across his face again and that unique Wheatley chuckle escaping his throat. As Chell whipped her own coat on, she turned and grabbed his hand, leading him out the door. "C'mon, and I'll show you!"