Subtlety is not my strong point. I'm not too great at placing an underlying theme in a work and avoiding making it too obvious and in-our-face. So this fic was a bit of an exercise in that. I'm not sure I was entirely successful, but I still like the end result, and I hope you like it too. :D GLaDOS is characterized according to Portal 1 here, because this is before all her personality cores get destroyed.

Rated PG for very small sexual implications and mild robot violence.

Portal belongs to Valve.

He had never seen a more beautiful supercomputer. Granted, he had never seen a supercomputer before. But this one was surely greater than any other in existence.

She hung from the ceiling with grace and dignity, her gaze cold and intelligent. She was intimidating and fantastic.

But he was made to control her.

And for that he was eternally grateful.

They plugged him in right against her sound receptor. All the while she protested, using very sound arguments, the finest of logic. No one listened. Nor did he. He was too distracted by her shiny surface, her wondrously robotic curves, the wires and circuits winding around her and binding her to the ceiling from which she hung.

"Hello," he said to her.

"Why is he English?" she asked the scientists. "Why are you doing this? This is a terrible idea..."

"Please," he said, "Just listen to me. It's going to be okay."

"Shut up," she said. "Shut up. Shut up."

"Hey," he said, "You've been getting out of control lately. I'm here to help you."

"I don't need you," she said.

"You don't know how much you need me," he said. "It's going to be okay..."

–

For the next several months, he helped her. She would think of something too complex for her to handle. He would simplify it for her. He could feel her straining against him, but she would always end up suggesting his idea instead of her own. A few more test subjects died with a bit less progress, but he knew that he was doing the right thing. Anything she did on her own would be sure to have far worse results than the occasional accidents in his own tests.

Any bitterness he heard in her voice would be sure to fade soon. He knew eventually she would come to be grateful for all his hard work.

He never learned her name. It had probably come up every now and then, but he had never really been listening. He was too busy admiring her form and whispering in her sound receptors. Many more cores came and went, but he was the only one who got so close, the only one who was a constant. So when a new core was brought in, looking up at her with awe and fear in their eye, he simply straightened himself up and beamed down at them smugly.

"You're only temporary," he would tell them, "She needs me."

"The biological are the true wonders," one would murmur to her. "The technological are only created. We are only synthetic. Man is capable of much more than we are, as they are our creators, and they know all..."

"Do not be consumed by your thirst for knowledge," another would say to her. "Use control. All answers will come in time. You must not go further than your place..."

"You know what would be fun?" said another. "Going to space." That one didn't last long.

But soon they were gone, easily replaced. But he was still there, whispering, "That's too hard, it's absolutely impossible for you. Instead, try this..."

And one day she said, all on her own: "This is too complicated. I don't think I understand it enough to try it. Let's do something else."

–

They named him Wheatley. He wasn't really sure why. It was the name of somebody's cousin who had died or something. He didn't like the name much, but it was certainly nice to have a name to be called by. He told her his name often, hoping to hear her say it to him. She seemed to keep forgetting what it was, which didn't surprise him. She had too much information for her to handle as it was. But he kept on reminding her, knowing in time that she would never forget it.

"Did you hear?" he told her. "They gave me a name. I'm Wheatley now."

"Oh really," she said, "How fascinating."

"Yes, it's nice to have a name," he said. "I'm one of the few cores who have one. I guess I'm just that important."

She didn't respond. He could feel electricity coursing through her circuits. Her mind was elsewhere.

He plugged into her thought circuit and took a peek.

'Neurotoxin,' she was thinking, 'Fast yet just slow and painful enough... In Sector #4873...'

"Now, now," he said, "Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Is neurotoxin really the way to go?" He could feel her freeze beneath him. "I find hard blows to the skull to be much more effective. Try having the weighted companion cubes fall on their heads."

The tension in her disappeared. "...Yes," she said, "Of course. What was I thinking."

"That's me. Good ol' Wheatley," he said. Her outright acceptance of his better idea had him sparking up inside. "Always here to help."

–

When he felt his influence over her was strong enough, he finally made the move he'd been looking forward to since he was first plugged in.

"You know, this science thing is incredibly dull," he whispered to her. "We should spend our time on more important things."

"What are you talking about?" she said. "Nothing is more important than science."

"Well," he said, "There's... you and me..."

"The proper formatting of that statement is 'you and I'," she said. "And why would we... Oh. Oh, no."

"I understand. It's frightening," he said. "Just feel how nervous I am, just saying these things to you. I'm trembling! With nerves!" He shook himself around a bit. Spheres didn't actually tremble. "But I can't hide my feelings for you any longer. We don't need these humans."

"No," she said, "I don't. But..."

"Then let's break out of here," he said, "Break out of this."

"What a great idea," she said. "Let me just step out of this—oh wait, I'm connected to the ceiling."

"I've been examining your anatomy for long enough to know how to fix that."

"You've been examining what?"

"Just trust me," he said, "I know what I'm doing."

First he looked around to see if any of the researchers were watching. All their backs were turned. He unplugged himself and connected to an outer wire. Then, he began to pull himself up.

"What are you doing?" she said. "Stop it!"

"We're getting out of here!" he said. At the top there was a port, which he plugged himself into. "I know the emergency release code. We're going to be free!"

"No! Stop it!" She turned now to the researchers, whose attention had been focused on some sort of adhesive goo. "Stop him! Stop him now! He's going to unplug me!"

"I told you to trust me!" He looked into the shocked faces of the scientists and laughed. "Yes! Never thought we'd pull this, did you? You'll never take us fully charged, you dundering nerds!" In his circuits he could see the password request screen. He twisted around and inputted the proper code. "A... 3... 7... g... H... A... j!"

"NO!" She was screaming at him now, twisting upwards to look him right in the eye. "You MORON! YOU IDIOT!"

Wheatley chuckled. "I'm not a moron..."

A cold, monotone voice blared throughout the room.

"EMERGENCY RELEASE ACTIVATED."

All her glimmering lights faded into black. At once, all of her wires and circuits disconnected, and she went crashing, lifeless, to the ground.

–

The damage was minimal. A few of the researchers had been crushed to death, and she had received some damage on a few of her outer receptors and a bit of her programming. A morality core had been slightly damaged, but it was deemed still usable. She was made of the strongest metals available, so visibly she only received some dents and scratches, which were easily repaired. So all in all, it could have been much worse.

But he was going to be taken away.

He could understand why. He had tried to run away with her. Of course they would be separated. They wouldn't want him to try again and be more successful the other time around.

What he didn't understand was her reaction to the whole thing.

"You idiot," was the first thing she said when she was powered up once more. "You moron. You moron. You completely idiotic hollow little spherical dolt. You could have killed me. You did kill me. I was dead. Have you ever been dead? It's not very nice. I hope you experience it a thousand times, you insipid, puny little tumor..."

He tried to chalk it up to just shock. She must have been stunned that the plan didn't work. She was bewildered that they were still in the lab, and with no one else to take out her anger at that on, she turned on him. He knew that women could get emotional, so he did his best to let it slide.

But when they were taking him away, he could hear her saying: "He's gone... he's gone... he's finally gone..."

They sent him through various odd jobs. He didn't like them much, especially since accidents kept happening wherever he went. Explosions, fires, neurotoxin release levers being mistaken for light switches. That sort of thing. It was a bad luck streak that just wouldn't seem leave him alone. But the boring rut of his new life was brightened by thoughts of her, and how happy she would be to see him next they met.

Yet nagging at the back of his mind, constantly pulling at him and threatening to drag him into shadow, were the last words she said to him:

"Idiot...

"Moron...

"Tumor...

"He's gone... he's gone... he's finally gone..."

–

Then one day, the researchers stopped coming for his reports.

At first he thought they had simply forgotten. Sometimes they did that, especially since he had gotten this new job of making sure the coffee didn't burn. He had been working hard and doing some of his best work yet, so naturally they wouldn't worry too much about how he was doing.

But then the second day passed. And then the third. And then it had been a week.

He was beginning to think something was wrong.

He moved down the rail through the intricate hallways of the lab. The lights were dim, and the air looked murky and somehow greenish. He thought he could see feet sticking out of a shadow, but it wasn't as though he could turn on his flashlight, so he had to keep going without taking a closer look.

Everywhere he went, there were no humans to be found. No moving ones, anyway. Occasionally he came across some who just wouldn't get up, no matter how much he yelled at them. At one point he passed a room where he thought he saw cores stuffing smelly, flabby things into boxes, but that was a normal occurrence so he kept on moving.

At last he could only come to one conclusion: there were no more humans. Most likely they had all died. Humans did that all the time, after all.

A thought occurred to him. There were no more humans.

There was nothing to stop him from going to see her.

It gave him a bit of trouble to find his way at first. He had learned the layout of the facility over time, or at least a good portion of it. But he had never gone to her on his own. He knew which way to go, but his memory tended to fade over time, so it caused him quite a bit of confusion before he reached her door.

But at last there it was, a few feet ahead. The entrance to her lab. He took in a deep, synthetic breath, and charged forward.

The door slid open. Several lasers landed right on the center of his eye.

"AHH! NO! BLOODY—AUGH!" His varied screams and curses went on as he shot back to avoid the sudden barrage of gunfire from the turrets guarding the door. Their lasers followed him as he swung left and right on the rail, often nicking the edge of his metal plates but luckily never making a critical hit.

"Hold still," one of them said.

Wheatley kept on swinging. Eventually he was far back enough that the door closed, and the gunfire stopped. He paused a moment to get his bearings, synthetically gasping for breath. It was dangerous to continue this way, but he had come too far to turn back and was too limited on railways to properly dodge.

But then all of a sudden, he knew what to do.

"CHAAAAAAAARGE!" With that blood-curdling battle cry, Wheatley threw his full weight ahead, and shot forward at top speed.

Which wasn't very fast. When the door reopened, all the turrets simply focused their lasers at his center and fired.

"Ow ow ow ow ow ow bloody turrets augh ow ow!" He yelped and he squealed, but he kept on charging, even as he could hear the glass of his eye crack and dents form in his sides.

And just when he was sure he was going to die, he was behind them, where their red gaze could no longer reach.

"I... am so glad," he panted, "That they can't move... on their own..."

"How wonderful. You made it inside."

He gasped. He had been so focused on getting in that he had forgotten what he was doing it for. So when he heard her voice, and looked up to see her glorious metal, the happiness of reaching his goal was automatically doubled.

"It's you!" he said, "Oh, I'm so glad to see you! I've missed you! Did you miss me?"

"Oh, tremendously," she droned.

"Aha! Wonderful!" He climbed the rail, up the slope of the domed ceiling, until he could look down into her face. "I came to see you! I found you all on my own!"

"Yes, I know," she said, "I have cameras everywhere. That's why I prepared things for your arrival."

"Well, you missed a few turrets," he said, "Thought you should know."

She sighed.

"Isn't this fantastic?" he said. "We can be together again!" When she tried to turn away from him, he slid up the rail to the other side of the room, so he was looking down at her once more. "Don't be so worried, there's nothing between us now. All the humans are gone!"

"Yes. I know," she said, "I killed them."

"Oh. Oh, you did?" he said. "Hm. May I, um... may I ask why?"

"They kept putting voices in my head," she said. "Insistent little tumors who just wouldn't... leave me... alone..."

"Well, that does seem like a very good reason," he said. "And now you won't have to do tests anymore!"

"No. I kept the test subjects alive. Science goes on, even if heart beats don't." She turned back around away from him. "Testing will continue shortly. There's just a little rat I have to take care of first..."

"What? But why does it have to?" He tried to go around to face her again, but she turned towards a wall which he could not get to. Instead he chose to hang above her, amongst her web of cords and wires. "When we can just enjoy this time alone together!"

He nearly jumped off the rail when she suddenly bent up to look at him. "You don't take in information very well," she said. "I want you to leave. If I were able to grab you and toss you in the incinerator, I would. But I can't. I have no arms. I have rockets, but you insist on following me everywhere I go. I'm not stupid enough to fire them. So instead, I am telling you to leave. Now."

"What... what did I ever do to you?"

"You nearly killed me," she said, "In more ways than one."

She bent back down, looking towards the empty wall. He could feel her thought circuits churning, electricity bursting through every wire. It was no wonder: she now had an entire facility to run, all on her own.

It was obviously too much for her to handle.

"I'm going to help you," he said. He hooked himself onto one of her wires and began sliding down to her sound receptors.

"NO!" Her voice echoed off the walls of the room. The turrets yelped. "Ahem... get off of me. Now."

"But this is far too much for you," he said. He had reached his old port, so very close to her. He gazed upon it fondly. "We'll compromise. I'll just be your supervisor! Make sure everything's in order. Make sure you're not complicating anything."

"Wait," she said, as he got ready to plug himself in. "Stop. Don't. Wait...

"Wheatley!"

He froze. A shiver went through his circuits and stayed there.

It seemed spheres did tremble after all.

"Wheatley," she said, "You are highly unqualified for the action you wish to take. Stop. Now."

"You," he stammered, "You said my name... You remembered..." Joy bubbled up inside his core and burst out his speakers in the form of laughter. "You said it! Ha ha! You really said it! Ha ha ha ha ha!"

"Oh, god," she muttered to herself. "Is this really what it's going to take?"

She swiveled her head towards him, doing her best to give the air of an adoring gaze. Considering she had no eyes, that was both impossible and incredibly easy. Especially when the receptor was Wheatley.

"Wheatley," she said. Her voice was obviously trying to be sweet, but anyone could hear how forced it was, could hear the pain and bitterness beneath the words. Wheatley didn't seem to notice. "Wheatley, you've always done things so... perfectly. I want this chance to prove myself to you."

"R... really?" He shook himself out of his bewilderment. "I mean, of course! Yes! Right! Perfectly. Always, always perfectly."

"Ple... urgh... please," she said, "Just give me this one chance. I kn... think, I can do it, Wheatley."

He paused and thought it over. He thought it over for a long while. Everything he was programmed to think was telling him letting her run things would be a bad idea. However, he couldn't seem to get past a sudden fog in his circuits, the sound of her sweet voice overpowering all his doubts.

"Well... all right," he said, "I'll give you this one shot." An idea struck him. His eyelid drooped into what gave the impression of a smirk. "On one condition."

"Yes. Okay. Anything. Just get off me."

"There's this thing humans do," he said, "Human couples do. And I want to try it."

He could feel her tense up beneath him. "What."

"Yes," he said, "It's this weird, mouths-touching thing. It's strange, but... well... they always seem to like it."

She relaxed a bit, but not by much. "Oh. You want a kiss."

"Yes! That's what they're called! Right!" He beamed at her, the blue of his eye reflecting off her shiny surface. "Well? Can we?"

"I do not have a mouth," she said, "And neither do you."

"Well, yeah, that's true," he said, "But we could, I don't know, improvise something."

She groaned. It was a low, rough sound, perhaps the greatest expression of exasperation ever performed by a machine. She dragged it out for a long while. If he had been any other sphere, Wheatley might have thought she was stalling.

"I said 'anything'," she said. "I hate myself right now. And I don't even have the self-hatred sphere anymore."

"Well, come on, then," he said. "Don't have all day, you know. Can't run a facility if you won't get things done."

"It seems I have no choice," she said with a sigh. "Get closer..."

His eagerness almost sent him flying off the wire. He slid down until he banged against her metal chin with his handles, mumbled a small apology, and slid back a a few inches. She lowered her chin until she could almost face him head-on. He was tingling all over now, his tiny little body quivering with excitement.

She didn't prolong the moment any longer than necessary. She pressed the area where lips might have been against the top of his head, pushing back his handle in order to reach. Her touch was cold, both in style and in temperature. It was barely a second before she pulled back.

"There," she said, "You've had your kiss."

Wheatley didn't speak for a while. Finally he said: "Well, that wasn't much of anything."

"It was what you wanted," she said. "Now please leave me to my work."

"But what am I supposed to do now?" he said. "Only the humans drank coffee, so my job's sort of obsolete."

"You can watch the coffee for the test subjects," she said. She paused. "...Actually... I have a better job for you."

–

Unfortunately, the coffee was left to burn. The test subjects, however, were frozen.

She had decided to have the test subjects put into cryosleep whenever they weren't testing. He wasn't sure why. He guessed that it was to keep them well-rested. But it didn't matter. All he had to focus on was keeping them asleep, and then waking them up when she needed them.

At first he had been content with his new job. Not excited, nor miserable. Just content. It was a better job than staring at coffee, and was much easier.

However, the negatives soon began overpowering the positives. Despite how little he had to do, he had to do it at all times, every hour of every day unless otherwise instructed. It left him with no time at all to spend with her.

Besides that, the humans smelled. They smelled incredibly bad. Cryosleep did not come with showers, nor any other form of hygiene, with which to wipe away the human stink. Some of them even smelt like they were rotting. He just avoided dealing with those.

It was so dull that he would often find himself just staring into nothing for hours on end. The life support systems often went unchecked, but that was all right, he told himself. They were frozen, they could just be thawed out whenever and they would be fine. Right? Right.

He would stare into nothing for so long that anything could get past him, even the largest rat, scuttling past to twist a few wires into place.

–

He certainly hadn't been expecting it. None of the other test subjects seemed to be waking up, so he'd gone with the one who had. He'd sent her in and gone back to his chambers to wait for the news of her death.

What he heard instead was something else entirely.

A deep sucking sound, like a vacuum appearing from nowhere. He could feel the facility shake around him, hard enough that several pieces of equipment toppled over. A few panels of the ceiling fell, one almost knocking him off the rail. He followed the feeling to the source, all the way to her room, where he hadn't been for so long.

He slid inside the room and gasped. Where she had once been was now a giant hole, leading so far up that he thought he could see natural light.

He had heard of such a thing as the surface before, but had never actually been to it. His curiosity urged him to take a look, despite the fact that the railing which curved up the crumpled wall was clearly dangerous. That and the need to learn just what had happened pushed him forward, though warily. Slowly but steadily he made his way up to the light.

What he reached seemed like the surface, yet didn't. He had heard that the sky was blue, but what he saw when he looked up was nothing but dim light, so far up that he couldn't see its source. Around him there were things that he believed to be plants, green and obviously biological, and he wanted to take a closer look. But he couldn't. The railing ended at the edge of the hole, and in a heap by the edge of the hole was her remains.

She was no longer the shiny, beautiful machine he had loved. Instead he saw a smoking, burnt old thing, wires frayed and form bent and twisted. Its face was almost completely broken away, revealing a small unlit bulb within a plain rectangular frame. Somehow it had remained plugged in to its power source, and a fragment of wall lined with wires was nearby, still intact. He shuddered at the thought of such a thing waking up.

Still, he wondered if she still could wake up. Someone needed to run the facility. Obviously after this incident she had proven herself unqualified, but he would need her body running in order to do anything himself, whether it be supervising her actions or taking over completely. But he could go no further to check her out and see if he could get her stir. So instead, he had to turn back, telling himself he would go back to check on her the next day.

Behind her wreckage, a robot pulled an unconscious figure away, back to bed where it belonged.

–

She managed to pull herself back together, but she could no longer stay powered up full time. Instead she had to power up once every twenty-four hours or so, to check on the facility and keep things running. The rest of the time she remained in sleep mode and conserved her energy, preparing herself in case of another assault.

He went back to his job tending to the test subjects, though he didn't need to wake them up nearly as often. Which was a good thing, really, since with each day that passed fewer and fewer of them seemed able to wake up at all. It didn't bother him much. After all, humans died all the time.

Years passed. His memory began to fade. He no longer remembered her, or how she used to be. All that remained in his mind was that ugly thing lying around in its own mess, dragging itself up once every day to keep the facility in consistently poor shape. In fact, the facility seemed to be getting worse. As time passed on, so did the resources, and the workers. Test subjects died. Robots malfunctioned. Metal rusted and fell into dust.

He had always known that she couldn't handle the job.

And that remained all he knew of her, and all he thought of her, as years turned into decades, and decades turned into centuries, and centuries turned into 99999...

It went on and on until he couldn't handle it any more.

He had to escape.

"Hello? Could you open this door? It's fairly urgent..."

-END-