Hiya folks! BabyCharmander here with another Portal fic. This fic was originally going to be a one-shot, but it wound up… a bit longer.
This was written for a prompt asking for blind!Wheatley and mute!Chell. So I know Chell is not truly mute in canon; it's just for the purposes of the prompt here.
And before we begin, I would like to give a huge thanks to my sister and Jaywings for beta-reading this for me! You guys are awesome.
Not much else I would like to say, so, on with the fic!
CRUNCH.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHH OW OW OW OW OW BLOODY HECK THAT HURTS—wait—wait—I'm… I'm not dead? Or in space? H… h-ha! Hahahahahahahaha oh she's going to kill me isn't she."
"It's certainly tempting."
Wheatley wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry.
On one hand, he had survived being forcibly ripped from his chassis, briefly sucked out into space, and violently flung across the room after being yanked back in.
On the other hand, he had been forcibly ripped from his chassis, briefly sucked out into space, and violently flung across the room after being yanked back in.
Oh, and he was also in the same room as an omnipotent AI and the woman that had been, for the past few hours, trying to kill him.
Brilliant.
Scraaaape… Whir, whir… Scraaaape…
"Wh-what's that?" He tried to open his optic, only to jerk back in surprise when he discovered his metal eyelids were already fully open. He strained his optic instead, trying to narrow his eyelids, only to give a yelp at the feeling of broken glass jabbing at the edges of the eyelids and into his optic. "O-ow…!"
Scraaape… whirrrrrrr—clank, clank, clank, whiirrrr…
"There we are."
"Wh-what's going on, what…" He tried to blink, and twitched when he felt the piece of glass fall out of his eye. "Ow—! Oh, wait, that's better, got that b-bloody thing out—wait, wait, what if I needed that? I think… maybe I needed that… D-dropped it on the floor, I think, could you—URK!" Something grabbed him by the sides, hoisting him into the air, and he began to struggle, flailing his handles about. "Ah—no—I-I meant pick up th-the part of m-me that fell, there, n-not me—AAGH!" The pincers shook him, and he felt a mounting panic as more things fell out of his optic—things he was starting to suspect were fragments of a broken lens.
"Shut up and look around you, moron. I have more important things to deal with than picking up whatever might be falling out of your worthless core."
"I-I… I'd, er, love to," he stammered, his glitching vocal processor simulating a higher pitch than normal, "but, th-the thing is, see… er, I don't see. Th-there's, um, a s-sort of blinding pain in my optic—literal blinding pain, because, um, I-I'm sort-of, well—my optic's not… g-giving me visual input, so to speak, and—and that's just—just a bit of a requirement for, um, looking around, which I would love to do, really, and—uh—wh-what I'm trying t-to say… i-is—!"
"Oh. How… interesting."
Given the sheer volume of the voice and the quiet whirring sounds nearby, he was pretty sure he was being held fairly close to her head, which she must have re-attached to his body—her body.
And the fact that he couldn't see any of this made it about ten times more terrifying. For all he knew, she could be aiming one of those mashy spike plates in his direction, or moving him over the incinerator, or just staring at him intently with one of her frightening glares, or, or…
"…do whatever you want with me just please fix my optic I can't see I can't see I can't see I can't see—"
"Oh, I'll certainly be doing whatever I want. But that does not include anything that concerns you."
The pincers opened, and he dropped to the floor, landing on his already-damaged optic. Flailing his handles against the ground, he simulated a choked sob as he felt smaller fragments of his optic lens crumble away. With some work and a few nasty crunches, he managed to shut his optic.
Not that it made much of a difference.
He could hear sounds all around him: her voice booming commands at a few constructs; things scraping against the ground, possibly moving away debris; clanking and tapping noises as the little robots he'd found before—notso little now, compared to his current state—marched into the room; and somewhere, beyond all that, the sound of heavy, unsteady breathing—
With a jolt of clarity that shattered through the murky darkness of his vision, he realized what had happened: He'd taken control of the facility, and then suddenly those little things he'd been feeling—his insecurity, his not-quite-trust of the lady, his frustration at forever being belittled and cast to the side—had been yanked to the forefront of his mind, seeming twenty times bigger since he had so much more room to think about them and suddenly it seemed like she'd been against him, she'd been using him—but… no, it hadn't been true. His mind had been exaggerating everything, once he'd been attached to the chassis…
But he'd become so powerful and he could do whatever he wanted and he wanted to shut up that stupid potato and shut her up—even though she'd never spoken, she would have made fun of him if she ever did, he had been sure of it—and he punched them down the pit… and… then there had been that overwhelming desire to test, and when he'd complied with it, it brought him that wonderful feeling, and then she'd come back… and… and he would test her, and… then he wasn't getting that feeling anymore, so he'd tested her more but it wasn't coming back, so he would just have to get rid of her…
…get… rid…
He'd… he'd tried to kill her. He'd tried to kill the only person—the only human that had ever actually bothered to work with him, to help him, to listen to him…
And now she was lying on the floor somewhere in the room, possibly dying from the injuries he'd inflicted on her—but where in the room was she? He couldn't see her; he couldn't even look to see if her wounds weren't fatal…
"She will live."
He opened his optic with a nasty grinding noise, and tried to turn it in the direction of the voice.
"However, I can't say the same for you."
"…oh…"
The first thing Chell became aware of was the dull pounding in her head, which was followed by an awareness of a number of bruises, cuts, and burns all around her body. This was in turn very slowly followed by a procession of vague images passing through her mind: the stalemate resolution button, an explosion, that voice, the moon, the earth, the moon—
She'd been sucked out into space.
Too shocked to realize that the fact she was still alive meant that she probably wasn't still in space, she forced herself out of her daze, trying to wake up, to ready herself to fight for her life for the thousandth time. She pushed herself up to her feet, ignoring the pain in her arms, and automatically stood in her usual pose: one leg forward, one leg back, one hand gripping the portal device, the other supporting—where was the portal device.
With another jolt of shock, she began to look around for that one vital piece of equipment, the thing that had gotten her out of more messes than she'd ever thought she could get into—
"Oh, thank God you're all right."
Chell looked up at the enormous machine that had swung around to meet her, glaring into the yellow optic. She was vaguely aware of two other optics—completely unfamiliar ones—watching her curiously from either side, but she ignored them in favor of the AI in front of her. In spite of what that AI had said days ago—how she would let her go if she put her back in the chassis—she didn't trust her to keep her word.
"You know, being Caroline taught me a valuable lesson…"
GLaDOS learning a lesson? That would be the day.
"I thought you were my greatest enemy, when all along you were my best friend."
Best friend? Chell grit her teeth—GLaDOS was definitely lying at this point. It made her nervous, though—what was the AI planning?
The massive robot turned, her yellow optic glancing aside. "The surge of emotion that shot through me when I saved your life taught me an even more valuable lesson…" And she turned back, a smile lighting up her near-featureless face. "Where Caroline lives in my brain."
"Caroline deleted."
Wait, what—?!
"Goodbye, Caroline."
Chell jumped back, her eyes wide. It shouldn't have shocked her as much as it did, but the fact that GLaDOS had just killed the very human that had been used to make her—how—how was that even possible?
And if GLaDOS had just killed Caroline, what was she going to do to her?
"Oh, don't look so shocked," GLaDOS said, dropping her false smile as her faceplate fell downward, simulating a scowl. The lights in the room faded with it, leaving the chamber feeling empty and dark. "I've killed thousands of other worthless humans before. What's one more? Surely it's a feeling you can relate to."
So was she going to try to use this to accuse her of murder again? Was she going to use it as an excuse to kill her? Chell swallowed the lump in her throat, looking around the room for something—anything she could use to get out of here. Something…
She blinked, noticing a claw hovering just behind GLaDOS. It held a tiny, shivering form between its pincers, and slowly dragged it forward.
"After all, you've killed thousands of helpless robots—myself included." The AI loomed closer, tilting her head and giving a challenging look. "What's one more?"
The claw suddenly flung the object in Chell's direction, and she had to jump up against the wall—where was she, in a lift?—to avoid being hit.
"AAAGH—! W-watch it there, mate! J-just because I'm already damaged doesn't mean it's okay to let me get even more banged up!"
She stared down at the core, whose optic was shut tight as he sat on the floor, shivering. Slowly she felt a burning sensation bubble up within her, making her face heat up in anger—this was the core that betrayed her.
"Ah, um, wh-where am I, right—right now? A-am I actually, uh, sitting by the lady? Lady, are you there?"
Chell twitched in another bolt of anger. After what he'd done, he had the nerve to just talk to her like this?
"Oh, good, I can see you hate him just as much as I do."
Immediately she looked back up—she'd briefly forgotten the larger robot was even there.
"Hate? N-now that's a strong word there, luv. Wouldn't say 'hate'—more, um, 'strongly dislike,' or—or maybe 'not my kind of chap,' or—oh, even better! 'Not my kind of fellow, but, still a pretty nice guy.' Yeah, that sounds g—"
His voice broke off into a yelp when she pressed the toe of her boot into his side, and he went back to shivering quietly again. Or as quietly as a chatterbox like him could, anyway.
"L-l-look, um, lady, right? Th-that's—that's who I'm talking to, I hope? Ah—look, about… well… everything I did back there—I-I really didn't mean it—"
"Yes he did. You know he meant everything." GLaDOS brought herself even closer, her head situated just in front of the human and the core, her optic looking between them. "So why would you let him get away with that? You remember what I said before—revenge. We never did finish all that, did we?"
"R-r-r-revenge?" Wheatley stammered, his voice glitching up into several octaves higher than it should have been. "N-no, I do not like the sound of that. I-I mean, you know what they say: 'Revenge is in the eye of the beh'—wait, no, that's not it. Um—um—wait, I think I've got it, it's, um… 'Revenge is swee'—no, no, not what I want to say, either, it's… it's… ah… oh! This—this is it! 'Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says—'"
"The central core of Aperture Science," GLaDOS finished, her optic narrowing. "You are speaking to the god of this place, moron, so I would watch your vocal processor if I were you. Though, even if you took that statement literally, you lack a functioning eye to watch anything with."
Chell looked up at the AI, her brow furrowing in confusion. A functioning eye? She knew Wheatley's optic was cracked, but surely it could function just—
Wheatley cracked open his eyelids, and Chell jumped back in horror.
There was no gentle blue glow emanating from his optic—instead, there was a dead black socket.
"You see then, lunatic? You can go ahead and exact whatever painful, excruciating revenge you deem necessary on this little moron. He won't even see it coming." A dark chuckle filled the room as the central AI turned to stare at Wheatley again.
Chell stared down at Wheatley as he slowly widened his eyelids, enabling her to see even more of his damaged face. Even though he wasn't human, it was still painful to look at—his optic had gone completely black, and the glass lens that normally covered his eye had been shattered, a few stubborn, jagged fragments still sticking to the rim. Apparently his aperture could still contract, but even that function seemed broken—several pieces of the aperture were missing.
"Revenge" had sounded a bit less appetizing after she heard the word come out of GLaDOS's vocal processor, but now it sounded downright disgusting. How was she supposed to get a satisfying revenge out of hurting an already-damaged core?
Slowly Chell bent down, picking up the blinded core by his handles. He gasped and began to struggle. "Ah! No, no, no, let me go! D-don't kill me, please! I-I swear I didn't mean—d-didn't mean anything I did! P-please, you've got to believe me—let me go, let me go, let me—agh!" CLUNK. "Oooh..."
Chell complied with his request not because she believed him, but because his struggling was hurting her hands.
"That was weak. I've seen humans in their sixties do more damage than you just did."
Chell shot a glare at GLaDOS, frowning. She was sick of listening to the AI's insults and doing just whatever the AI felt like telling her to do, and she wasn't going to do this again. Immediately she sat on the ground, grabbing Wheatley and holding him close.
Whether or not she actually wanted revenge, she decided that she wasn't going to do it now, just to spite the AI.
"What…?"
"What are you doing?" GLaDOS shouted, her optic widening. "That moron tried to kill both me and you several times over. Surely he deserves something, don't you agree?"
She nodded.
"So why don't you do something?"
She forced herself to grin, as much as it clashed with her current feelings.
"Oh—you really are a lunatic, aren't you?" GLaDOS growled, raising herself higher and glaring down at the human.
"What—wha'd she do?" Wheatley stammered, swiveling around in his casing in some vain attempt to see what was going on. "It—it feels like… a-are you carrying me? You're—you're protecting me, aren't you?"
No, she wasn't. She was just trying to tick GLaDOS off—to not give her the satisfaction of seeing her hurt Wheatley.
"You know what? I have a better idea. Revenge is good and all, but it seems the best solution to a problem is the easiest one. And killing you—or getting you to kill him—is hard. So you know what? You win."
Clunk.
You win?
"OWW—oh, don't drop me like that, please! J-just… only a blind core, here, j-just a core that can't see…"
"Just go."
The mechanical doors to the lift closed with a quiet hiss.
"Wh-what was…?"
The lift began to rise.
"It's been fun." GLaDOS turned away, forcing a laugh. "Don't come back."
Chell stood up, mouth hanging ajar as she stared down at the giant computer that was slowly disappearing beneath her. Had… had GLaDOS just sent her to the surface?
"Wh-what's all that about?" Wheatley asked, his blank optic swiveling in its socket. "I-I can't tell—just—what's going on out there?"
Ignoring the core, Chell pressed her hand against the cool glass, watching as the facility began to disappear beneath her feet. Floor after floor passed by her, some showing turrets, some showing companion cubes, some showing Science experiments she hadn't seen before—but all of them fascinating.
"H-hey, don't… don't ignore me…"
The lift rose, faster and faster as she drew closer to the surface she had fought so long to reach. She looked upward, waiting for the lift to reach its final destination and hoping this wasn't another one of GLaDOS's lies.
"I-I can't… can't see what's going on, you know, um… s-so if you could, ah, just—tell me something? Throw me a bone, o-or a stick, or—well, d-don't throw anything at me, but…"
The lift began to slow as it reached the higher floors, and she would have been standing on her toes in anticipation if she hadn't been doing so already.
"P-please, lady… I'm sorry about—about everything, and…"
Finally the lift stopped, the doors opening to reveal a darkened shed. Not exactly what she was expecting, but then the door to the shed swung open, and she jumped back, squinting her eyes against the bright blue sky and golden field of wheat.
Out.
She was finally out.
"Lady—! Don't… don't…!"
Her entire body trembled as she took a few steps forward, closer and closer to the freedom she had fought so hard for. She was finally free—free from that dark facility, and out in the real world. She was breathing in real air instead of adrenal vapor, seeing true sunlight rather than simulated sunlight and hard light bridges, feeling actual soil beneath her feet rather than panels, and—
"LADY!"
With a jolt of surprise, she winced and turned around—the cry was so full of desperation and sadness that she could no longer ignore it. She looked back into the elevator shaft to find a pathetic-looking lump of metal staring up at her—or trying to. The core was tipped on his side, his shattered optic turning this way and that as he tried in vain to figure out where she was.
"Please lady don't leave me here she's going to kill me if you leave me here don't leave me I can't even see I'm so sorry please don't leave me please…"
So easily she could imagine a man on his hands and knees, his face twisted and ugly and dripping with tears and mucus as he begged for her help. It was a pathetic image, and an equally pathetic sound. But then, this was the AI who, just hours earlier, had been trying to kill her with bombs, mashers, and neurotoxin. Why did he deserve any sympathy from her?
"A-are you even still there?" he whimpered, his optic swiveling around all the more desperately. "O-oh please don't tell me you've gone already, I think I'm s-still in the—in the lift, sh-she could bring me down any second please get me out of here…!"
What a sniveling idiot. Getting blinded was nothing compared to what he deserved—which probably involved something along the lines of being beat against a brick wall until his casing shattered. But then, she was pretty sure that would be something GLaDOS would like to do, and the thought of that AI having her way was not an idea Chell was fond of.
Wheatley may have been a moron, but he was probably right about one thing: if Chell left him behind, GLaDOS was going to pull him back into the facility and pulverize him.
Heaving a sigh, she marched back into the shed and crouched in the doorway. Keeping one foot outside to block the door in case it swung closed, she strained to reach forward into the lift, and finally grabbed the core's upper handle.
"AH—! Wh-who's there?!" he cried, flailing around for a moment and nearly causing her to drop him. "What's—oh. Ooooh, you've—you came back, didn't you? I-I honestly didn't…" His movements calmed as his blank optic swiveled around pointlessly, as though searching for her face. But his lower lid pulled upward, simulating a faint smile. "Thanks."
Chell frowned—not that he could see it. Don't thank me yet, she thought sourly before yanking him out of the lift and quickly crawling backward, out into the open.
"Thank you thank you thank you I thought I was going to be left down there with her a-and who knows what she would do to me! …W-well actually I have a pretty good idea—heard of a few cores that've been tossed into the incinerator, which… doesn't really kill you, but, not pleasant… and—wait, wait, a-are we still in the facility?" Once again, his optic began swiveling around as though moving his mechanics enough would magically fix his vision. "W-we are, aren't we? Just on another floor? Oh, she's tricked us, hasn't she? Oh no nonononono…"
No, you idiot, we're on the surface. She stood up, surveying the field and the blue sky once again. It was beautiful out here, but that beauty now seemed marred by the chatty, broken device she was carrying.
"L-look could you, uh, give me an idea for the layout of the room? I might be able to tell where we are, um, possibly, though I—I can't see it either way. Oh, this is difficult… There has to be something! You at least have your portal device, don't you? If you do, we might stand a chance of getting out of here."
With a scowl, she rapped her knuckles a few times against his casing.
"AH—! What was—was that you? What was that for? Are you—ooooh, are you trying to tell me something?" He tilted in his casing. "Well, uh, I-I know you're usually the silent type, lady, but it might help if you could, er, speak up now, s-since I can't see you—can't see your face or your motions or anything, so I uh, don't have a whole lot to work with here. So now would be a great time to voice—er—well, anything."
…Did he really think she was capable of speech at this point? It was true that even if she could talk, she wouldn't let GLaDOS hear a fragment of a word. But here they were out of GLaDOS's hearing, and if she could have talked, she would have by this point. Surely he would realize that—
SLAM!
"AAAAAH! What was that?! Sh-she's after us, isn't she?!" He began squirming again, his blind optic swinging this way and that. "R-run for it, mate, get us out of here!"
Chell wrapped her other hand around his lower handle in an attempt to get a better grip on him, but it was so hard when he was squirming and panicking like this, and darn it, it hurt. GLaDOS must have done something to help her because she was surely worse than this before she'd blacked out, but even so, she still wasn't in the greatest shape at the moment, and if he kept struggling like this, he was going to wind up breaking one of her fingers or something.
"Wh-why aren't you running? Can't feel you doing that, no, can't hear your feet poundin' against the catwalk—since that makes a lot of noise and all, and there's not a lot of noise now, so that's definitely not what you're doing—what, do you want us to get captured by her all over again?! C'mon, lady, get out of—"
His sentence broke off into a yelp when she finally let go of one of his handles and struck him across the casing. She was rewarded with sharp stinging feeling in her palm, but it was worth it to finally get him to shut up and stop squirming.
At least for a few seconds.
"…Oh," he said in a much quieter voice. He suddenly felt a little heavier as he slumped in his casing, and she grabbed his other handle again. "All right, then, I-I'm sure you know what's best… I-I was just trying to make sure we wouldn't get captured, again, is all. Sort-of hard to do when you're j-just a blind core, but I tried. Just… be careful, all right…?"
Somewhere within her chest she felt a pang of sympathy for him, but, darn it, he should have been able to tell that they were outside and not in some other part of the facility… shouldn't he?
Chell walked back to the edge of the wheat field again, looking it over. On a sudden impulse, she walked into the plants and stooped down, moving Wheatley around through the stalks.
"Ah! What's that?" he cried, swiveling his optic around uselessly until a blade of wheat got stuck in it. "Ow! That hurts—!"
Frowning, she pushed the stalk out of the way and continued to move him around as he blinked, apparently trying to figure out just what she was doing.
"Th-this stuff is a bit—ticklish, isn't it? It's not wires, though, but what…?" It took him a few moments, but slowly his optic widened. "This is—this is a sort of plant, isn't it? But I thought those were gone from the facility!"
She heaved a sigh of relief, and pulled him away again as she continued walking through the wheat field.
"But if there aren't plants in the facility anymore, then… are we…?"
About time.
And once again, the core went quiet for a while, and Chell tried to forget the fact that she was carrying him as she took in the fresh smell of the plants, the sunlight warming her skin…
But that peace would only last for so long with someone like Wheatley around. "Well… I-I just wanted to say, lady, that… I'm sorry. Sincerely sorry—i-it was rather terrible, what I did back there…"
She switched him to one hand again as she used her other to rub her forehead. Not this again. He was only saying this because he had nothing anymore—he was completely under her control, so of course he'd want to get on her good side again so she wouldn't try to get revenge or something. So she ignored him as he continued going on and on about how sorry he was, how he was wrong, she was right, he would never do it again—how would that even be possible, anyway?—and how it would be nice if she could forgive him…
By the time they finally crossed the wheat field and he still hadn't shut up, she decided she'd had about enough of this.
"…a-and that testing, yeah, you have to understand that there was this Itch and it wouldn't go away, and I—I didn't really mean to boss you around, and—what?"
She placed her hand over the lower part of his faceplate, and held it there.
"Wh-what is it? Do you see something? Well, no, of course you see something—always seeing things, with those two working eyes… Or… is there something on my face? Is… wait—this is where you humans usually have your mouths, isn't it? I haven't got one, though; got a vocal processor, with some speakers, inside my—well, the point is I don't have a mouth, so there's nothing to cov—oh. …Oh." He blinked slowly, then kept his eye shields narrow in an expression that looked like a mix between sorrow, embarrassment, and disappointment. "O-okay, then. I guess… I guess I'll keep quiet."
Chell breathed out a sigh, nodding, and continued on her way. Maybe now she would get some peace and quiet.
Of course, it was only a matter of time before he started up again.
"I-I really was serious about that, though, being sorry and all…"
This was going to be a long trip.