She was furious with him.
Chell slammed her open palm against the kitchen counter and bit her lip to keep from crying.
"Oh, are you bringing out the tears? You know that won't work!" Wheatley's voice, despite his anger, was shaky. "Y-You're doing that to make me break. It's not working, love! It's not!"
He was pressed against the wall near the door, screaming at her. He wasn't within touching distance of her; he never got that close when he was angry with her.
Chell shook her head and darted towards the doorway. He reached out an arm and caught her, keeping his grip firm on her shoulders.
"You're not letting me do anything!" he cried. "I can hardly touch you! Have the nightmares come back? Is that it?"
Chell shook her head and, trembling, pushed his hands away. He let go of her with no resistance.
"What are you so frightened of, then? You're hurting me, Chell!"
She took her coat off of the back of the sofa and threw it on. She took her knife off the desk. She pulled the hood of her coat over her head, put her knife in her pocket, and braced herself.
"Where are you going? No!"
She wrenched the front door open and flew across the porch and down the front steps.
"Chell!"
She stopped in the middle of the street. It was a clear night, but the early spring air was biting, and she wasn't wearing much. The breeze gusted over her bare toes, and she shivered.
She looked towards the house. Wheatley was in the doorway, his hands pressed against the doorframe. His back was slumped over; he looked beaten up.
"I'm not through with you!" he shouted, even as his own eyes brimmed with tears. "Where are you going?"
She shook her head and backed away.
"Are you leaving me? You can't leave!" He lurched towards her, and she took a few more steps back. "You can't…leave me…alone…"
She bit her lip and shook her head again.
Then she turned and fled down the dusty road.
"Chell!" he called after her, over and over again. "Chell!"
Eventually the wind swallowed up his voice.
She paced the streets for the rest of the night. As the sun was rising, she collapsed in the empty doorway of a store.
Chell squeezed her eyes shut and bared her teeth.
She didn't know what had overcome her back at the house; perhaps it was the overwhelming feeling of being safe, the predictable routine, how he was genuinely happy to see her open her eyes every morning.
Maybe she was looking for more trouble. Her days in Aperture had been difficult, but at least she had been engaged in doing something. She had spent so much of her life constantly feeling like she was going to get killed that spending an entire day gazing out a window with someone's arms around her felt alien and so very wrong.
But that didn't mean she was justified in pushing him away.
He fed her, talked to her, explored with her. At night, he held her to him and kissed her and explored the planes of her body with wonder. He let her touch him, ruffle his hair, hold his hand; she let him chase after her and catch her and spin her around with a giddy laugh.
And early the other morning, she had woken up in a cold sweat and looked at him paging through a book next to her and felt a weight in her stomach, and after that it had all gone to hell.
She sniffled and wiped a few tears away. She looked behind her through the shop's glass door.
If she was going to run away, she might as well feed herself first.
A small, rusted bell jingled as she opened the door and tiptoed in. There was broken glass everywhere from the shattered front window, and she kept an eye on her feet as she moved through the destroyed store. It had been a bakery at one point, and though bread could only sustain her for so long, it would suffice until she could find something better.
Finding bread that wasn't molded over was a challenge. She sat down behind the counter and picked through the display case, discarding pastries and loaves that were inedible.
As she sifted through the ruined food, she cursed herself for being picky. Some of this she would have eaten before she had gone back to Aperture so many months ago and found Wheatley and the Space Core. She had been spoiled since. She had gone soft, just as she had feared.
Maybe, she thought, examining a loaf of bread that was half-preserved, half-black and blue, she could leave this town and keep wandering through the wheat fields. See if she couldn't get away for a while. She didn't want to leave him, but on the other hand, the safety was grating on her.
She threw the loaf to the floor and looked up.
The bakery was several stories high. Crates loomed in jagged towers towards the high vaulted ceiling. The entire store looked as if it had been a chapel once before getting converted.
On top of one stack of crates was a pile of bread that was vacuum-sealed. It could still be fresh enough to eat.
Chell rose from her sitting position and stared up at the bread. The only ladder in the entire bakery was rotted beyond belief; it wouldn't support her weight. The crates, however, provided some handholds, and looked heavy enough to support her.
She could climb her way up.
She set her knife down on the counter and walked over to the crates. She took a hold of one corner, placed her foot on the side of the crate below it and hefted herself up.
Chell began to climb.
Handholds, as it turned out, were few, despite her initial examination of the stack. She took her time scaling the crates, looking down at her feet every so often to check her grip. Every time she looked up to gauge her progress, it seemed as if the stack had gotten bigger when she hadn't been looking.
She grit her teeth and pressed on.
When she neared the top, she stopped a crate away and reached for the bread.
The crate her feet were on groaned.
Chell stretched as far as she could go.
Then the crate slipped.
Chell found herself in the air, spiraling towards the concrete ground at an alarmingly fast rate. She twisted and writhed frantically as the crates from the stack fell around her.
The concrete floor rose up to meet her, and as she hit the ground, she heard a sickening crack, followed by the wooden thump-thump-thump of the crates hitting the ground after her.
A searing pain shot through her body, and she opened her mouth wide in a silent scream of agony, tears already prickling at the corners of her eyes.
She laid against the ground, panting, waiting for the pain to calm down. It never did.
Chell struggled to sit up and cross her legs. When she moved her left leg, however, the pain shot through her again, stronger than ever, and she grunted and fell back to the floor.
Her leg was twisted at an unnatural angle. Her foot, completely lifeless, didn't respond to her attempts to move it, and every other attempted movement of her leg resulted in more pain.
Her leg was broken.
Chell gritted her teeth and tried to straighten herself out as best she could. Eventually she gave up and, lying against the concrete floor, struggled to re-focus her thoughts.
Now she could never go home.
Wheatley was going to worry himself sick.
She closed her eyes and gave a halting sigh: a sob.
That had been stupid of her, running away from him. He didn't know this town as well as she did; he couldn't go out in the snow or rain, so he hadn't seen as much of the streets as she had. What was he doing, alone in that house?
Did he miss her?
She pressed her palms against her eyes and sniffled.
She had to figure out a way to get out.