Her Smile

It was her smile. He decides.

Her smile is what he misses the most. Out of everything there is to miss, as he floats around here in Space. It's that. The way her pale lips twist to form something so serene, gentle, a wave upon a sterile white beach made of plastic and silicon, washing away some of the harsh exterior and revealing a bit of the gold underneath, grains of sand that flowed from between your fingers, so soft and so warm compared to the harsh cold.

Not that he has hands, or, by extension, fingers. Though he wishes he did. He really wishes he did, if only so he could have held on. But it was her iron grip that had tied him to Earth, tanned hands that hadn't seen the sun in far too long, clasping onto him as if he was her rusted, broken anchor to the dying Earth, and that was the case. It was his scorched, broken, corrupted frame, tied to the Earth in a net of wires pulsing dark thoughts into his fractured mind, that stood between her and the dark, star spangled ocean, endlessly seething around them, holding them in its angry tide, the Earth, the moon, the sun, everything in between and far away.

It was him between her life and his death.

And he had still told her to let go. Release herself into the cold grip of Space as if after all she had suffered, all she had fought for, lost and gained and lost again, her one dream that she had searched so long for, to see the surface again, even if she doesn't remember it, he wanted her to treat it like it could just be thrown away like the memory of an ex-lover.

It is not the feeling of being grounded that he misses the most, tied to the Earth by cables or metal, being held by warm hands, unfamiliar to the touch of his even warmer hull, as he was unfamiliar to the touch of a gentle human, holding him as if he would break if too much pressure were applied, an egg with a shiny white shell, the insides a mess of cables and circuits, knotted and twisted and frayed and old, yet still held steady in fear of letting go, a precious artefact one did not want to break.

He does not miss the feeling of gravity, knowing that if he lets go, or if someone else lets go, if he drops or falls or is flung away, he will always fall downwards, he will still have some control, and he will not fling into nothing with no direction.

Nor does he miss being attached to his management rail, being able to move on his own along the rusted frayed surface, backpedalling when he approached an area that led off to a deadly drop, knowing which way he was going, that he wasn't going to lose power, he had loved the ability to move without outside support, without dependence on someone else, just on his rail. Or in some cases, and these were rare, being off his rail, and held in the Portal Guns grip. Her Portal Guns grip, her silver eyes looking at him in assurance that it would be alright despite popular belief on his part.

Not the robotic adrenaline he got when he was escaping with her. The feeling that he was more alive than any robot should have been, electricity flowing through his circuits in black and white currents, flashing in front of him a million warnings he for once in his long and miserable life, ignored. All talk of being against protocol, of breaking the rules, red warning signs. 'You will die if you do this.' And he knew he wouldn't, because he couldn't die with her beside him, her dancing eyes and lilting smile, she would always be hopping backwards to glance back at him, and it would be like an extra burst of alternate current through his haggard system that would jolt him forward into a mess of words there just to break the silence her muteness offered. And she would listen, and no one had ever listened to him before, so he had been absolutely ecstatic, but it wasn't what he misses the most.

It wasn't the thrill of success at the Turret Production line either, a brilliant idea, a marvellous plan, sabotage! And switching all her turrets to crap had just been perfect, and he got a surge of enticing self-satisfaction at the job well done. Or at the Neurotoxin Production; and he had tried to hack, while she had leapt forward and torn the roof apart, he hadn't done much, he had tried and failed miserably at the hack job, but she hadn't, and she had still looked at him with so much respect, so much admiration. Because it wasn't just her, it was him too. They had worked together to achieve this, and one wouldn't have gotten far without the other, the fun they had shared, that absolute rush, the feeling of belonging… those were add-ons, extras, but they were missed, not as much, but they were beautiful precious treasures that had washed up on his sterile white shore, glimmering like diamonds amongst the dirt, it was like things were a kind of 'normal' that she would have revelled in, but he would never understand.

Not for lack of trying.

He doesn't miss the freedom of riding through the vents as much as the other precious thing, the joy of being by her side, of knowing everything would be alright because she was there, still not as much, but certainly close. They didn't have a plan, they were jumping in backwards and blindfolded, but she was smart, clever, a clever little fox, brain damaged yes, but never more smart a human had there been. She would have thought of something, as they plummeted to Android Hell, and she did. They were tumbling and twisting though the veins of Aperture, they were mixing in its blood, not that Aperture really had blood, that was a silly human thing, and maybe a bird thing too, he wasn't sure on that, he had seen the lady bleed before. But they disrupting its flow with their presence, and perhaps She knew where they were, as they were led by the nose, like lambs to the slaughter, escape partners, they weren't actually lambs, to Her lair, above the whole skeleton of Aperture, the bones made of metal beams five metres thick, the broken networks and panels crumbling underneath the weight of the facility. Muscles formed of giant sliding rails, test chambers sitting like organised toys for Her to play with as she pleased, deadly toys, that could kill them, easily. And as he flew in circles around this amazing place, his prison, his birthplace, their only hope in a strained sense of the word, she was never far behind.

There is no missing being in charge of everything, as wonderful as that had been; it is not something he misses. Feeling everything in the facility, being able to feel her footsteps as she stepped carefully though his chambers, the tap of her long fall boots, her quiet breathing almost deafening to his new ears; being the king of the world, the ruler of everything.

King of what?

Ruler of nothing.

Was it worth it, my liege?

Was the triumph as grand as the loss?

The thought is there for a moment, a dark voice so familiar yet anonymous in his scrambled mind, petering out like a dying ember, the battery flashing endlessly over the top of it, burying it's source amongst scrambled data and broken lines of code, the same message; 'Low battery, Low battery.' And he knows he doesn't have the eternal rule as King that he has never dreamed of, and even though the message sat in his mind for less than a second, it is long enough to settle in and claw at his insides like bugs through his circuits.

Not the Euphoria. Never the Euphoria, most definitely not the Euphoria, no, no, no, he doesn't miss that at all. And he doesn't think he ever will; after all, it was his downfall. Their downfall, he should say, quite literally for her, with the falling and all that.

But out of everything there is to miss back on Earth, everything that lacks in Space. It is her smile that he misses more than anything else.

He remembers it well. A clear precise memory at the forefront of his mind, the first time she ever smiles: they had been separated when she went to look for the Portal device under his advice, and fell through the floor, she didn't even scream, she fell silently, as she tended to do, so he screamed after her, but of course got no response.

For him, of course, it was panic. Another human- the last human alive under his care; lost, dead, gone, never to be seen again, except perhaps as a corpse, and he had promised to bury her, if she had died, having no hands and with the knowledge that he would die if he dropped off his management rail, he knows it probably wouldn't happen. He had wandered around hopelessly until he came to the end of the rail, the place he had been so many times before. The dead end he desperately needed a human for, even if it meant dying… and he had actually begun working up the nerve to drop himself off the rail in one final, deadly vouch for freedom as the last minutes of the hour he had promised to wait for her, ticked away.

Another broken human, broken and gone, his brilliant escape plan, over, no more options, he was going to die here, in this Reactor Core Meltdown thing, may as well end it quickly, he didn't want to find out what it would do to him.

And then she came, with the tap of her long fall boots against the broken panels, vines and moss being torn away by her gentle hands, and she had seen him, and her eyes had brightened, and he felt his circuits whir to life and he had called out to her… and she had smiled. Like one of the beams of light from the fallen ceiling, piercing through the artificial shine, the dark forgotten corners that no-one could remember, that no-one cared to remember. And she brushed aside the knotted vines on his Management rail that he had always just pushed through beforehand as she climbed up, ignoring the Portal Gun in her hand for a moment, and she had reached up to catch him with that same smile, reassuring… when has anyone wanted to reassure little ole' Wheatley? He can't remember.

Oh how rare her smile seemed to be, or perhaps that is just because it stopped so quickly after… everything.

The second time; was after she had been testing, not for long, two chambers after She had woken up, like an ancient cursed dragon rearing up from the depths of Android Hell. She was right near a weird Cube Wheatley had never seen before, its sides made of a shimmering palette of colour, warping in the faded broken light, and as she moved to pick it up, and he had opened the panel, his bright blue optic contrasting against the black of the inner wall of Aperture, making his presence immediately obvious, and he came out to meet her determined storm grey eyes directly before him, he was almost shocked back into the safety of the wall.

But her face, her face; it just split into this beautiful smile and he was tempted to stay where he was, she had thought he was done for, and she had just found her friend again, alive and well—well, not really well, he had a massive split in his optic that broke everything in half, a nasty twitch that made him black out every thirty seconds, and he thought his upper handle may be on its last figurative legs. But that smile… they could escape then and there, that's how confident she made him feel. But he couldn't stay just yet. He had to keep moving or She would find him again and he really did have no plan right now. So he ducked back behind the panels, coming back to see her every few chambers when he could find an opening he was sure was out of the cameras view.

And every single time after, when he popped out of the wall to check her progress; always amazing of course, she pushed through those tests like she was on fire, not literally of course, if she was on fire, she would be… well, dead. But she was doing so well, really showed that brain damaged people were the true heroes here. And she would catch his eye and just smile; her face lighting up brighter than one of those fluorescent light bulbs that lit the facility with artificial sunlight. And it twisted up his circuits inside and gave him a feeling better than the solution euphoria could ever hope to be. Not that he knew what the euphoria felt like back then.

When he found her again after entering several chambers too late to catch her gaze, she was flying through the air, she was so graceful, suspended by gravity the moment before it dragged her back down like an angry beast, whenever he fell, and so far it had only been twice that he had plummeted to the ground, he had screamed and thrashed, or had blacked out. But now, he managed to get a word in, calling out in joy, because finally he could speak to her, face to face, before she fell and Her dark voice rang out, but the glimpses he got of her face... she just looked so... happy. As if nothing could be better despite the fact she was trapped in a cycle of never ending tests. A maze for one solitary lab rat that ran in circles; it's only ending a neat looking mouse trap that waited on every corner.

He liked to think that was because of him. That after all her time in Aperture, all that time bundled away testing, nothing but testing, over and over, in all the time Wheatley had been online, he hadn't seen test subjects do much else other than test, and he had never seen them smile.

Once she crawled through the back of a panel, eyes ever searching for something to aid her escape, and she saw him travelling along his management rail, and before he could speak she had rushed over to him, face so bright and full of life, like he had lit one of those candle things again, he had seen them in a few places hadn't he? She had moved to leap over the half panel separating the two, excited inevitably at the prospect of escape. And he looked up to her, and smiled back.

'Not yet.' He had told her. And she had hesitated, and her eyes… they were so trusting, she trusted him. She nodded with these eyes so full of understanding, and waved him goodbye. And he saw the same thing he felt as deep inside his circuits, in her eyes.

Hope.

And through the frosted window, not long after their encounter, when he called out to her muffled form, he saw her twist in surprise as he explained part of his plan, not much, even he hadn't thought all the way through. He could make it out then, tired and haggard and a little bit frustrated, she had been testing so long, but he would break her out, he promised, even if it wasn't for him anymore, even if it was just for her.

And even though it wasn't now, even though she had to go a little longer, the way her eyes lit up at the sight of him, how her lips curled into a smile and her teeth could be glimpsed in between. That was worth it.

Once, he managed to slow the elevator, bloody hell it had been hard, just so he could talk to her without the other Her hearing them, and he could tell she wanted to talk, she opened her mouth and struggled to push words out, he had seen other humans talk before, and all that was missing was the sound. But the smile never left her face, until Jerry and him got into a damn fight and the elevator was ripped out of his control.

And after he had called out to her in his admittedly, horrible accent, American, his database alerted him, she just hadn't stopped smiling. Brighter than his flashlight, but instead of piercing the darkness, it pierced the gloom, the broken turrets and the dark overall spookiness of the place, and she would leap across the walkways, down drops he wouldn't dare to cross if not for his management rail, and even then he would have hesitated. Yet she barely blinked before flinging herself off the upper surface and landing neatly on the other end, grinning up at him before continuing on, bathed in the white light of his newly equipped flashlight.

It was like it was fun, running around the walls of Aperture, well, she was the one running, he sort of just… rode beside her, on his management rail, finding his way back when they got separated and lighting her way so she could place her Portals on valid surfaces, lighting where she had to jump so she didn't tumble to her death by some slip. God if she had died back then he didn't know what he'd do, he was completely at a loss.

But she always made it, no matter how foreboding things seemed to be, it felt almost like a leap of faith every time she jumped from such a height, slipping on the pneumatic diversity tubes and barely keeping her balance before charging off down the hallway, unaware that he had been watching nervously from above. And they had met up again, despite his nervousness and the feeling of foreboding he couldn't shake, and begun tearing Her apart as they went, and to him... it was sort of fun, they were escaping, for real this time, escape partners, her and him, causing turmoil in the depths of Aperture, and it was thrilling buzzing beside her on his management rail, and when they were on their way to Her he tried to voice his misgivings, that he hadn't quite figured out what they had to do next, but they got separated, and he was tumbling and the world was going in circles—and then she was there, staring down at him with this amused grin.

For once he doesn't mind getting laughed at.

And suddenly, he was in the receptacle, and he was so scared, but then she was peering down that hole and she was smiling gently, reassuringly, and he had never felt more safe in his life, because she was there when he popped off his management rail, and she was there when he turned his flashlight on, and she was always there for him when they were charging around the dark hallways of Aperture, and he knew she was there for him now.

And then he was in charge, he could feel everything there was to feel in this humungous place, and he called the lift, as promised, and she smiled up at him.

It just held so much... Pride.

'We did it.' He could imagine her saying, if she had a voice. He was slowly learning to read her lips. On top of learning Spanish and uh… French. But at the moment, she was staring up at him with those soft eyes, mouth opening and closing while retaining that brilliant smile. 'We finally made it.'

And she had given him this massive thumbs up, this amazing grin. And even though this time her mouth didn't open, he could just imagine...

'Good job Wheatley.'

No one ever said that to him, no one had been proud of him, he had been a failure from the start. His optimism was self-forced, he had turned to it so he wouldn't fall into depression and just give up like half the Cores bumbling around the facility; paranoid or deactivated or afraid of their own shadow. He had turned to it because he hadn't had anyone else, until she came along.

And she stepped into the elevator he called, pressing her hand to the glass with one... final... smile.

She didn't smile at all after that.

She had fallen, tumbling into the pit, and instantly he had regretted what he had done.

He had missed her.

He had thought she was dead.

He had thought that the one person who even noticed little ole' Wheatley, was dead and gone.

And then he felt the itch, that terrible, seething itch, like bugs in his circuits, crawling through his wires, just out of reach, that overwhelming compulsion to test… and he had just stopped caring.

And when she arose from the darkness of Aperture, from below the white pristine panels, falling away like scales shedding off a great beast, there was this dark glint in her eye, her face stretched into a permanent frown as she stared him down from her place below the monitor. So tiny and insignificant compared to how he was then. It was like a dark, nasty gash had been sliced across her, bleeding out ugly black lines, staining her soul, seeping away her smile. Splotches of orange and white and blue stained her skin, her clothes, and her eyes were hollow with dark rings staining underneath, and she just glared and he didn't care, because he had wanted her to die. That's all he had wanted back then.

Back then, he had forgotten what she had done for him. How she had changed his crap life into something better, how she had given him hope and some nerve to think on his own, to drop off the occasional management rail (Not that he was on it after he was hooked up to the chassis) and to turn on his flashlight. (Which he had done multiple times just to remind himself how amazing he was… had been.)

He had been selfish, and monstrous, as bossy and cruel as Her. And she watched him get pulled out to space, screaming for her, with such a blank, emotionless look, no smiles, no bright lights. Because he released she doesn't care, not anymore, and rightly so…after all he had done, and he was screaming at her to grab him, but he really doesn't expect her too, especially after telling her to let go moments before.

He's trapped amongst the stars now, and he feels so alone because she isn't there, even after she never said a word, he still misses the one sided conversations, the smiles, the trust, the friendship he had hoped they shared. And Space Core smiles plenty; and he never shuts up, until one day, (or is it night here?) Space Core is struck from orbit by some space debris, and flung hurtling towards a totally different planet, blue and green and mixed with more white and grey than Earth could hope to hold, and he knows it's not home, it's not even the same shape, and Wheatley had plenty of time to memorise it… and now Wheatley is left alone with his thoughts.

If only he could see her smile again. Just once more.

If only he could apologise, she would forgive him, right? It had been a long time… wounds could heal over, right? She could've forgiven him already.

If only, if only, if only.

And then he's the one hurtling at speeds beyond man towards Earth's surface, and he's screaming, and everything's on fire, flashes of red, and yellow and white streaming past his vision and he knows that all it is, is pure heat—

Collision, a smoking piece of rubble at the end of a very long ditch, dirt and sparks and dying embers, there was half an avalanche and he was blind for some time as the dirt piled on top of him, suffocating him even though he can't breathe anyway.

It feels like forever, the world around him grows dark through the blanket of dirt, then grows blindingly bright again, all he can see is the error messages on his internal screen, repeating the same damage reports, and repeating 'low battery' over and over in flashing red, he isn't sure how long he was up there, but he knows it was long enough… and after some time, his frizzled circuits are aware of a dim tapping, footsteps. Padded on the soft dirt he's sure surrounds him after his fall.

A hand near his optic, sweeping away the grime, the dirt, before pulling away again and leaving the world so bright and clear, he had never seen the surface before, the sky was so…. Blue. Wisps of white clouds and pierced by a bright light, the sun… he has seen that before, up in Space, down here it's smaller, but still as blinding.

Everything split in half through the crack in his optic, as it has always been, but now one section of his sight is completely black.

He looks up through the split vision of his optic to the dark shape blocking out most of the light, and she's staring down at him with dark hollow eyes, narrowed in a memory of pain and confusion. The dark gash he made through her, it left a scar that hadn't healed, and it is still leaking its black poison, seeping into her face, her fists, still clenched angrily as she stares at him; a face that has seen many years of freedom, but still holding every hardship close.

The worst part is he knows he made that scar, and it isn't going to be as simple as saying sorry, to let it heal. He knows that she wouldn't forgive him. He knows that he will never see her smile again. And despite this, despite all of that… he had built up this wall of fantasy and pleasure, this foolish hope, the perfect scenario where he would see her, and apologise, and she would smile and he would know that she had forgiven him, and that everything was all right.

"I'm so sorry." He whispers. The fantasy pulses like a heartbeat, and if he were human, he could imagine the blood flowing around him, bleeding out, like the sparks jolting out of him, a dying breath even though he knows he still has some battery left, he just can't feel it… he can't feel anything but pain and a encroaching darkness at the edges of his vision.

Her gaze doesn't change.

And she does not smile.