A/N: Alrighty, spoilers if you haven't finished the game, though really you only need to have gotten to "The Fall" (chapter 6?) because this is set right at the beginning of it.
This was kind of spurred on of how I saw Chell and her reactions. I noticed a lot of people focused on the whole betrayal between Wheatley and Chell, but as I was playing I always thought it would happen, and I believe Chell would be clever/suspicious enough to think so too. So this is just Chell's thoughts right after that fiasco.
If you want to, you can read it as Chell/Wheatley but that's not really the point of it. Also, the parts with "quotes" from Wheatley are not directly from the game. I ad-libbed from memory, because direct quotes we've all heard before (possibly multiple times) get old fast.
I don't own Portal or its characters, but I do own the reaction.
It wasn't a bottomless pit.
Chell found that out after she started slamming into boards somewhere around 3200km that broke her fall (among other things, it felt like) until she slammed into the ground. It should've been lethal. Part of her wanted it to be lethal. But her long-fall boots were probably the only thing she could commend Aperture Science for. Even those, however, couldn't keep her from smacking into all those layers of cris-crossed boards.
Chell ended up still landing more or less on her feet, but the force sent her sprawling anyway. The wind completely knocked out of her, nerves wracked, and body aching from those damn boards, she tried to push herself up but her arms shook and she fell back into the dirt, exhausted.
Wait… dirt?
She lifted her head to rest on her right cheek. Yes, that was dirt. When was the last time she felt dirt? Earth: the original, living, organic material that was everything but the shiny, smooth, cold panels of Aperture. Around the rest of her were hunks of metal, skeletons of giant, old machines. Turning to rest on her left cheek, about the only amount of movement she could get out of her body right then, she saw fire. Shivering at the memories of the times she was cast into the incinerator, she quickly turned her attention to something else. A… bird? At thirty-something-hundred kilometers below ground? Well, it wasn't the first odd thing she'd seen here.
Oh, better. It was pecking at GLaDOS's poor potato body. It would've been pathetic if it wasn't so hilarious to the side of her that grinned in revenge.
But that set off a new trail of thoughts, and Chell's lips fell back into their normal grim line.
She wasn't surprised. She actually expected it. Wheatley was, whatever else he appeared to be, just another AI. Even worse, he was an underdog suddenly given immense power and control.
Chell had plugged him into the transfer unit without much hesitance – though the last time she had done something like that, he managed to awaken her, so in hindsight she probably should've been more concerned. But in the moments when the two AIs were screaming at her to push the button! she had her doubts. Even as she set up the portals to infiltrate GLaDOS's defense to get to the stalemate button, her mind started wracking through the possible turnouts. And as her hand hovered over the button, she had glanced at Wheatley, stuck in his little transfer unit, and thought as hard as she could, You'd better not screw this up. As if the intensity of her thoughts would create a psychic connection between her and that little-blue-optic-censored twerp.
Well it didn't work. Or, if it did, he simply ignored her. It had ended badly, just as she thought it might.
No, Chell wasn't surprised. But she wasn't happy about it either. Righteousness does little help when one's stuck thirty-something-hundred kilometers underground, beneath a facility filled with deadly and insane machines layered with acid pits, merciless turrets, and incinerators. Oh, and buttons. Lots and lots of buttons.
If she ever got out of here – when she got out – she vowed to never press another button ever again.
She curled her fingers against the dirt, trying to encourage her tired body up, as she thought about the first time the little blue ball bumbled into her "room." From first sight she was suspicious – but then again, she was suspicious of everything. One rigid rule she had made for herself during her time in captivity was don't trust anything. Early on she learned that GLaDOS lies, and since she controlled the rest of the facility, what would that make the rest of the lab any different? Wheatley most certainly was no exception to that rule. From the get go, he showed what a buffoon he was.
"Okay, good news. That wasn't a docking station. Glad we got that cleared up."
"Is the portal device down there? Uh- are you alive? That's kind of important, should've asked that first."
"Don't worry! I can fix this! Okay, password. AAAAA…A. No? Okay uhm, AAAAA…B. Erm, AAAAAA – did we already do that one? You should be writing these down."
"Okay, I'm going to hack this door…SMASH"
He was incompetent, granted always dependable on getting something done. Just not always the right thing, or in the right sequence. Like, taking over a lab and going nuts before letting her out.
Chell tried to quell the thoughts and instead take in her surroundings from her flat position, looking upwards at the hole she fell from, a sparking wire swinging back and forth, blinking. She remembered his optic sensors – god, she was starting to sound like them now – his eye flicking around, dilating big then small while talking to her, and how he hung off his guide rail the first time, braving a first jump to continue on with her. Part of her was darkly satisfied that she had missed as he fell down screaming "Catchmecatchmecatchme!" thinking it served the AI right. But she had been taking it out on the wrong robot at the time. Even if she still had yet to understand his motivations behind waking her up and trying to get her out (could he think this far ahead? Was it all some plot to get him the head of the facility?) at the time all he was doing was finding her, them, a way out.
Another part of her wished she had caught him.
And he'd been good company before. Well, better than turrets trying to draw her out to rip her apart with bullets, GLaDOS's insults and "surprises" and the companion's cube competitive silence. But, she had to admit; it had been nice having someone talking (rambling) to her without any threats or insults. Well, he did use insults, but at least apologized for them. And before now, he had only ever tried to help.
Lying in the dirt of the lowest floor of the laboratories, hardly able to move, at arguably her lowest point since being dragged back down from the surface, Chell realized something. She had begun to trust him. Even if she was suspicious of the idiotic, yet endearing sphere, and even if all his actions she could have plotted for someone long before they happened, even if she had acknowledged her lack of trust in anything but her, her portal gun, and her long-fall boots… some tiny part of her wanted to trust him, and some of her had.
And look what good that did her. It was only her. It was only ever herself she could trust. No one, nothing else. Because she would lie, and he would betray.
She had known this would happen, and she let him slam her literally into the ground. She wouldn't let him get away with it, couldn't, because he was still her ticket out of there, no matter how hopeless escaping seemed to be. She shut her eyes tight, ignoring the way the dirt turned to mud beneath her cheeks. There was just one thing left to do, as always.
As she started to get feeling back into her body (though a dull pain was the overall feeling) she focused her whirling thoughts on her current task. That's how she got through this every time: pushing away unnecessary thoughts. Thinking too far ahead, worries, fears… what'd she do if she never got out, what'd she do if she did get out. Too many useless things distracting her, and dwelling on anything was no good to her health, especially not with the constant insults from GLaDOS. (Being adopted was just fine, it meant she was loved even more than usual because strangers decided to take her in willingly, while other children may live with parents who never wanted them. So there.) She always had to push on, keep up a forward motion. Movement was life, and lying there in the dirt was getting her nowhere.
The bird pecking away at GLaDOS's potato seemed to think so too, because it abruptly grabbed the vegetable battery and took off, GLaDOS's dull yellow eye fading off into the darkness with an echoing flap of wings.
Taking that as her cue that the time to mope over being so close to freedom only to once more get it snatched from her fingertips all because of a power-hungry, back-stabbing, predictable underdog, she pushed up to her feet. She would find her way out of here, find Wheatley, think of some awful punishment for making her want to trust him and then throwing it back into her face, and finally get to the surface.
Picking up the portal gun that had skidded a few feet away, Chell straightened her back, glanced around the mysterious bottom layer of Aperture Science, and moved forward.