"Woah! Nice work! Look, look, I'm in charge of the entire facility now!" He laughed, a sound not unlike a child in a candy store who's just been told everything is free. "Check that–I am the bloody facility now! This is incredible, absolutely incredible! You should see how tiny everything seems right now, huge difference from what it was before, absolutely massive! It's, it's just bloody amazing, really."
He stopped trying to look in every direction at once to give her a stunning, thousand-watt grin. "So, what'll it be today, luv? First-class, straight to the surface?" A couple of panels shifted as the familiar glass elevator pushed up from below them. "Ding! Already here! Off you go, stay safe, hope to see you soon!"
She laughed (well, as best she could) and clapped her hands, her own smile only a hair slimmer than his. Two golden-brown arms threw themselves around his neck, crushing the bot in an excited hug. Her eyes were dancing as she pulled back and jogged over to the elevator, circling it once or twice as though to confirm that it really was there.
She swung open the door and turned, waiting.
His smile dimmed a bit.
"You go on ahead, I'm fine with holding down the fort for a while. Really looking forward to exploring some of these subroutes in here, should just eat away the time. Go on." His hands fluttered, shooing her towards freedom.
Her face fell.
"Oh, don't be like that, luv! It'll be fine! I'll join you up there eventually, just need to sort out this chassis first, figure out a safe way to disengage, shouldn't take too long. I know you've been waiting God knows how long, so here you go. Don't let tiny little Wheatley slow you down." He chuckled at his own joke, wiggling a panel several miles away just to make a point. No one saw it, but still: it moved.
She stepped away from the elevator and walked over, palms on her hips. The woman paused, grey eyes sweeping over him, up, down, up again, before reaching out and grabbing his hands. She tugged him towards her escape.
"I…I just can't, luv. Not right now, anyways, sorta stuck in this thing for now. I'll go through the files, find a way to get out without blowing this place up, and meet you up there, okay?"
She shook her head, tugging on his hands again.
"Very nice of you, really is, but that's your escape. Called it up just for you. Go on."
The girl shook her head, ponytail whipping over her shoulders.
"Well why not, luv?"
She paused, trying to think of the best way to communicate her thoughts. After a few seconds (during which, he refrained from speaking, for fear of missing her message) she pressed her hand firmly over her heart. The other one she placed over the thrumming pump in his chest that served much the same purpose. She held them there for a moment, before pulling back and interweaving her fingers.
He was confused, quickly falling back into the old game of charades. "You and me and…um…a rock? Not a rock, sorry, I know it's not a rock, but I can't quite figure out what it is right now…"
She paused again. This time, she took his hand back and gave it a firm shake.
"…Yes, hallo luv."
A head shake.
"Not hallo? Congratulations, maybe?"
Head shake.
"No. Okay. What else does a handshake mean? Good game? Good-bye? Hallo, congratulations, already said those. Deal?"
A hesitant nod.
"Deal, then. You, me, and a deal…" His eyes lit up in realization. "Is it the deal we made to escape?"
She nodded happily.
"Well, we're going to, luv! Just a little bit apart, you know. You've been waiting so long for this and I still need to get back out of this thing once you're out so…"
She shook her head and tangled her fingers together.
Oh.
"Together? It's because we made a deal to escape together?"
The smile returned, though not quite as bright as before. He felt his own lips curve in response.
"I'm not going back on the deal or anything, luv, I promise. Just figured you wouldn't want to wait up for me is all. These data banks are rather massive and it'll take a while for me to go through them, so…"
She grasped his hand, wrapping her fingers into the spaces between his. The other hand scissored through the air between them.
Together. Or not at all.
He nodded, a small, fuzzy warmth blossoming in his chest. The nerve-wracking images of her leaving him to rot that had wormed away in the back of his mind since he'd decided to wake up a human (though, admittedly, back then it hadn't been her in his mind. Not yet) fizzled out.
She trusted him.
And he could trust her.
Deep in the chassis, a surfacing program stopped, coming up against a will as strong as Hers with none of the same drives. The last holes in the wall had been fixed.
When I first played through this part, I was surprised that we were just getting in the elevator and leaving our friendly little robot behind. I thought: Wait, I thought we agreed to escape together? Aren't you coming? And then, well...
I still find it hard to believe Chell would do that; she's already lost one friend (assuming she did feel that way about the Cube) why would she abandon another? Based on Wheatley's rants, he was really scared that Chell was just using him, and was going to leave him on the floor, or something, the moment she found a way out. Since that's one of the first ways he lashes out, it would suggest that that's how the corruption get into his head in the first place.
*shakes head* It seems like such an easy fix. But we can't go against the plot...except in fanfiction. So I "fixed" it. Happy 2:30 after Valentine's Day, everybody.