This chapter should clear up some things for the readers who were confused over the last chapter. Also, I know you guys wanted longer chapters...sorry that this one isn't too much longer than the last few chapters! I'll keep working on it.
It was the most fitting grave that she had seen for him. She had no idea if plugging the SLEEP wire back in would return him to his old self, or whether he would suffer permanent memory loss, or whether he would even wake up at all. He had been so damaged; it was hard to predict what would happen.
Chell pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, trying to stop the tears that were now beginning to trickle down her face. She had to think.
It was easiest to just leave him there, to not touch him, but he looked so profoundly inhuman, sprawled out on that chair; his limbs were going ways they weren't meant to go. She wanted to move him, but the thought of having to pick him up kept her where she was.
She heard Wheatley walk towards her.
Then she felt his hands on her wrists. He gently pulled her hands away so that he could see her.
Wheatley's face was strangely determined. It was hard to take Wheatley seriously when his features were set like that: he looked like a child, not a man. But his eyes were focused on hers, and she wasn't feeling well, so she let him speak to her.
"This is actually a great turn of events," he said, holding her wrists tightly. "We can actually focus on fixing him now. He's not going to struggle when we try. This is going to be easy." He gave her a frightened smile. "Alright? No need for the tears, love."
Chell stared at him and shook her head slowly.
"What do you mean, no?" Wheatley's smile disappeared. He let Chell pull her wrists out of his grip. His eyes were wide with disappointment. "Don't you want to see him fixed?"
She turned and looked at Space. Though the smaller core's mouth was gaping open, his eyes were still and peaceful underneath his closed lids.
It took a lot of strength, but after a few minutes of tense silence, Chell shook her head no.
Wheatley's voice held a note of frustration in it. "So you just want to leave him? Out here, where the birds can get him?" The frustration began to turn into a simmering anger. "This ship might explode or something. He might get burned to death. He could die!"
Suddenly Wheatley pushed past her to get to Space's body. Before Chell could stop him, he picked Space up and held him to his chest. Space's body, limp as a ragdoll, sagged in his arms, and his head lolled on Wheatley's shoulder, but Wheatley held him up as gracefully as he could.
He growled, "I can't let you leave him here, Lady. I don't know how much you know about robots, but I, being one, know more than you. And I say that I can still fix him!"
This was Space's resting place, Chell thought to herself. He had been happy here. It would be cruel to let Wheatley take him away.
An anger rose in her to match Wheatley's.
She imagined Space waking up, terrified out of his mind, wondering where on Earth he was. Assuming he didn't have memory damage, he could escape and try to go back to the ship. He could get lost: he wasn't the most focused core. He could get stuck in the wheat fields and never return.
He could wake up and not recognize Chell and Wheatley: he would only know that he was in a strange place (not Aperture) with strange people. It was questionable that Space would even remember what a human was.
The more she thought about what could happen, the more nightmarish the idea of waking up Space became. There was only a slim chance of Space turning back to normal: she didn't know enough about computers to fix the strange internal damage in his brain, and she didn't fully trust Wheatley to fix him. She didn't know, maybe Wheatley was excellent at fixing cores, but when she had met him, she had assumed Wheatley knew how Aperture, as one enormous organism, worked, and she had been wrong.
Chell backed up into the doorway and stayed there, fixing her gaze steadily on Wheatley.
Wheatley chuckled, but a flash of uncertainty appeared in his eyes. "You're not going to let me?"
Chell shook her head.
There were so many pieces of jagged metal sticking out of the walls. If she angled herself correctly…
Wheatley's grip on Space's body tightened. "Remember what I said to you the other day?" he said. "You're brain-damaged. I'll admit, the unplugging was a great move. Very smart. Couldn't have done better myself."
He stepped over the astronaut's skeleton in front of him and squared off a few feet from her. His eyes narrowed. "But you don't know what's best for him."
Chell moved quickly.
She shot out a hand to her right and grabbed a hold of one particularly sharp piece of the wall that was peeling off from the frame of the ship. It was still hot to the touch, and left her palm covered in a strange, black residue. She yanked, and the metal came off with a screech.
She turned to Wheatley and raised the shard of metal over her head, a warning in her eyes.
Perhaps if Wheatley had been connected to the chassis, he would have laughed and swatted the metal out of her hand.
But this was a Wheatley with no memory of the power he had had over Aperture. As she had predicted, he recoiled from her. One of his hands moved to cover the back of Space's head.
His eyes were wide, and when he next spoke, his voice was high-pitched with fear. "Now let's not…let's not get violent, now, no need!"
It was not Wheatley she wanted.
Chell raised the shard of metal higher. Wheatley cringed and gripped Space tighter.
"No, no, no!"
She knew him. She knew that, if it came down to it, he would preserve himself over Space. This was obscene, fighting over Space's body, but she had to try. If this worked, Space would get to be put to rest in the place where he deserved to be placed: in this ship.
She took slow steps towards Wheatley. He moved backwards, tripping slightly over the astronaut skeleton. "Let's make a compromise!" he said. "I get to fix this core, and you don't kill me! It's brilliant! If I were you, I wouldn't pass up such a great offer…"
Chell stopped a few feet from him and lowered the metal.
"That's it, love!" he squeaked. "I see you're taking my deal. Expert deal, if I may say so."
Chell reached out her free hand and pointed to Space.
Wheatley's eyes moved to the metal in her hand. "You're not hurting him," he said warily.
She shook her head. That wasn't a lie: she wasn't going to hurt Space.
She hoped.
Wheatley looked back to her and narrowed his eyes. "Put the metal down, if you're not going to hurt him, then."
She crouched down to the floor and dropped the metal before rising back up.
He nodded slowly. "Good, that's it."
She held out her hands.
Wheatley put Space in her arms. Chell cradled him against her chest. Neither of them had zipped his jumpsuit back up; the SLEEP wire dangled, alone, from the mess of cords on Space's back.
"Alright, now don't do a-"
She placed a few toes on the flatter part of her metal shard and slid it behind her, out of Wheatley's reach.
Wheatley didn't move until it was too late. Chell quickly but carefully crouched down, Space still in her arms, and picked up the shard again. When he lunged forward to grab Space, she brandished the shard again, making him retreat from her and fall to the ground.
"Don't hurt me!" he shouted, then: "Don't hurt him!"
She brought the metal to Space's spine and pressed it against the base of the SLEEP wire. Then, using a great amount of pressure, she sliced it off.
A shock ran through her arm, causing her to drop Space to the ground. His body gave a jolt as it hit the floor, then settled again, completely lifeless. She fell back and dropped the metal.
Chell had gotten hurt, but she had achieved her goal: now Space wouldn't wake up, even if Wheatley wanted him to.
Wheatley stared at Space's exposed back for a few tense minutes. The SLEEP wire was between them, lying on the ground, looking pathetic now that it didn't have a purpose.
He looked at her. His face held disgust, fear, anger…a strange mix of things she had never seen on him before.
"Monster," he whispered.
Chell bit her lip, not taking her eyes off him.
Slowly, as if in pain, he crawled forward, over the astronaut's skeleton (which crumbled under the weight of his hands and body) and towards Space. He paused before the body. He reached out and brushed his trembling fingers along the exposed skin of Space's back.
Then he zipped up Space's jumpsuit and flipped him over. Space's face had not changed; there was no indication that he had felt any pain when Chell had cut off the SLEEP wire. Wheatley picked him up and walked past where Chell was without looking at her.
The sun was beginning to set. The sky turned into a watercolor of blues, pinks, and oranges; the sun itself glowed yellow on the horizon.
By the time she had recovered and caught up with Wheatley, he had already laid Space down in the wheat and started a makeshift grave. He hadn't been able to get much of a hole out of kicking the dirt with the heel of his boot, but he stubbornly worked until a Space-sized patch had been worked out of the wheat. He then placed Space gingerly on the patch and sprinkled some of the dirt on top of the body. As an afterthought, he plucked some of the surrounding wheat stalks and threw those on top of Space's body to better conceal it.
He rose up and stared at his handiwork. Chell stood in the airlock of the space ship, hesitant to approach him. He clearly knew she was there.
Wheatley's fists tightened at his sides, and he looked out in the direction they had come from.
"I'm going back," he said, his voice quiet but firm.
She walked out into the wheat fields, but before she could move very far, he turned and walked up to her, stopping some ways away.
"I want nothing to do with you," he said. Chell could see artificial tears forming in his eyes. "You don't listen to me, and you kill robots. I wasn't kidding when I said that you were a monster. You've gone on about how I did something to you at some point, but now…"
He pointed a shaking finger towards her. "Maybe you'll do the same thing to me. Shut me down so you won't have to deal with me. Was that it? Did you get sick of him?"
He now pointed towards where Space's body lay.
"I'm not sticking around to see what you'll do," he spat. "I've had it. You're an awful woman. Anyone's better than you. Even She is better than you."
With that, he turned and headed off in the general direction of Aperture Science.
Chell watched him go in shock. Even though he had been angry with her for harming Space, it was her ability to kill robots that had shaken him more. Aperture, from the looks of it, had never programmed an "off" button for its cores, so the sight of a dead core was new to him. He hadn't known what the SLEEP wire did; seeing Space collapse had been terrifying.
He wasn't so much angry with her as scared of her.
She had half a mind to run after him. She wished, more than ever, that she could speak. She wanted to catch up to him, to explain what was going on…
She had, in the end, gotten what she had wanted. Space was dead, and Wheatley was leaving.
She was alone.