Chell remembers the day she returned to the wheat field.
She's been walking for miles. Gravel crunches under her boots as she wanders down the shoulder of the road. The asphalt is cracked and broken and weathered, alligatoring down the center, the surface a hide of crumbled cobble and greying tar. The dividing colors seem to have bled out long ago.
Outside the city limits, the erosion of civilization is painfully clear. She doesn't know whether she should feel depressed or afraid. She's missed so much. All she knows is what she's seen and read, and what she's managed to find smattered about in old newspaper clippings and various files back at the little insurance office.
No one talks about how humanity almost came to an end. They think and they remember and they lament, but if words are ever spoken, they're hushed and solemn from fear. Everyone has demons of their own, even an entire society that shares the same one. From what she's gathered, those events were all so long ago, but it's not her place to judge. She knows what it's like to want to hide and forget.
God, does she ever wish she could.
Chell can see the rolling waves in the distance, glinting gold under the ghosting touch of the midday sun. The field stretches beyond the old road, out into the horizon, rushing to clash against the impossible blue of the sky. It shouldn't, she knows, it really shouldn't, but the sight of it makes her heart ache with grief.
She steps off the gravel and follows the gentle slope off the road. Grass and wheat climb up her calves, whispering by, and she moves through the thick growth toward the place she thought she'd never see again.
It's not long before she can glimpse the grey body of the shed in the distance. It stands alone, a monolith of cracked concrete and rusted metal; a pillar of grief and bitterness and old scars and things she'd rather forget. And yet, in spite of it all, she's still here, stopped in the waving ocean of gold and grain, not quite far enough to feel safe.
She stares with her fists clenched, nails digging into the soft flesh of her palms. Her teeth sink into the pink of her tongue. It hurts—god, does it ever hurt—but it's better than the twisting wrench that's lancing through her chest.
That shed… that shed embodies everything. It's the past she's not quite been able to leave behind. It clings to her belly and beneath the casing of her skull, hanging on, close and intimate as a second skin. It leaves her wide-eyed at night, staring into ceilings as if she can see through to the stars and into the pale face of that gibbous moon. She can hear Her voice, cold and callous and alto, and she can hear his as well, a shaky and unsure tenor.
The tests, the turrets, the lasers, the vast chambers and yawning depths, and even them—all beneath the surface, beneath the eroding concrete and stretching roots of plants and miles of rocky earth.
Chell feels the wind as it dances over her shoulders and through her hair. Gooseflesh prickles along her arms, even beneath the warm sleeves of her jacket. Chills claim her bones, and all she can do is stare.
She's not sure what she meant to accomplish by coming here. All she knows is that she had to see this place. For one last time, perhaps. Or for closure. Or to remind her that her sleep is kept at bay by scarier things than nightmares.
It's times like this that she wishes she were stronger.
As the wind gusts into the curves of her back, the aurum and gray begins to blur and her eyes start to sting, and it's then that she realizes that she's been crying. Gritting her teeth, she rubs the wetness with the cuffs of her sleeves. She can't afford to do this now.
Chell breathes deeply, crisp air filling the spaces of her lungs. She ignores the cold that cuts down the still-damp trails on her cheeks and wades through the wheat, forcing her feet to move forward. Compulsion grips her at the strings of her heart, stretching and pulling them taut, and all she can see is the looming shape of the shed drawing forever closer. A beast, a monster; a memory given reality and metal flesh.
She's half a mile away, walking steady, composure barely held, and then she hears the unmistakable shuffling of movement. The glaring inconsistencies in sound suggest that it's not her. She knows what she sounds like, and it's definitely not this. This is from another body.
Fight or flight triggers in the back of her brain and her muscles tense, ready, waiting, her eyes darting across the flow of rippling gold. Wind whispers across her shoulders and past her ears. She strains to listen for the sounds, and when she finally catches a glimpse of an unnatural depression in the sea of stalks to her left, she whirls on her feet and rushes toward the threat, adrenaline pumping every step.
Lying in the wheat is a body. A man's body, to be precise. And he's alive.
His ribcage is heaving and his hands are clasped to his temples, his jaws clenched and his body curled. A swathe of Aperture orange envelops him from neck to toe. She seems to have startled him because he jerks at her feet and tries to roll away—only to end up on his belly, moaning pitifully.
He looks up at her, wetness in the crescents of his eyes, and that incredible blue pins her against the sky.
"Oh—oh, god." His voice.
His voice.
Alarmed, she backs away two steps, her brain thrusting her back there, back with the collapsing ceiling and the quaking floor and the moon and the portal and the gaping maw of blackness and bursting stars. Half of her thinks she's misheard, but the other half knows that voice is unmistakable. No one else has that lilt, that timbre; no one else has that shocked cadence.
God, his eyes. She's never seen them before in her life, but she knows them well. The color of his optic was no mistake.
The man presses his elbows into the ground and he tries to lift himself with his forearms, but it doesn't work. Instead, he collapses and a small noise wrenches out of him, whimpering and weak and afraid. His hair is a light brown, disheveled and windswept, and it sticks to his forehead and the back of his neck with perspiration and oil.
Filthy and dirt-smeared, he glances up at her again. His face seems gaunt and incredibly thin, matching the lanky jumble of muscle and limbs under the jumpsuit, and when he reaches out for her with shaking fingers, she can see the bones press up beneath the skin of his hand.
"It's… it's you." The man's mouth widens into a half smile, half grimace. "I never… I never thought… god, it's really you. I can't… do you remember? It's all right if you don't. I don't know how long it's been. I wouldn't expect you to. I just—I was—I was so—" And then with the shuddering exertion of another inhale, he seems to come apart. His entire frame convulses for a moment, and then tears are sliding down his face.
"Please." He's fallen onto the ground again, his cheek mashed against thick wheat stalks. "I don't—I don't know where I am. S-something's wrong. I shouldn't be like this. Please, I—" He makes an anguished moan and curls in on himself, his body shivering. "Hurt. Everything hurts. I don't know why. I've never felt like this."
Chell can only stare. She knows it shouldn't be possible, but somehow it is, it is, and he's in front of her in a pathetic patchwork of flesh and bone instead of metal and wires. Something inside of her twists, sharp and aching and painfully tight, and even though her mind is shouting at her to move, to get away and leave him stranded out here among the wheat and the October sky, she doesn't.
Aperture has come back to haunt her again. This time, it's regurgitated one of the very things that's kept her so sleepless at her own feet. She doesn't know why, she doesn't know how; all she can hear is his voice in the solemn darkness of her room, cold and ruthless and floating among the dust motes beneath the pale moonbeams:
I loathe you, you arrogant, smugly quiet, awful jumpsuited monster of a woman.
She stares at the feeble man curled among the wheat, breathing and reeling and trying so hard to keep herself in check, but she's failing miserably because she can feel her eyes stinging again and her fists have clenched so hard that her knuckles are pallid as smoke.
That blue. That bright, brilliant blue—
Everything whirls around her, spinning skies and swirling stalks, and then suddenly she's running as fast as she can—running from him, from his voice, from the brightness in his eyes and from the pain and the grief, from the memories and the nightmares and the restless nights and blank black ceilings.
She can hear him cry out. It's a desperate noise, keening and sharp. It punctures through, a harpoon between her ribs, spearing her lungs and heart in a single shot.
Looking over her shoulder, her feet slowing to a tentative halt, she sees him as he staggers to his feet. He can barely hold himself. Wobbling and unsteady, it seems as though he's going to topple over with the slightest breath of wind. One bony hand reaches out toward her, quivering, his sallow face an anguished conglomerate of shape and shadow in the distance.
She wishes she knew the reason why she let him run to her.
He crashes into her stomach, chasing the wind straight from her lungs. The weight of him knocks her equilibrium askew and they tumble into the wheat, a splash of orange and blue among shivering gold. His arms are latched around her, squeezing, desperate, his face buried into the front of her jacket. With shuddering shoulders and a heaving back, he mumbles endlessly, stringing half-sentences and strong words together in hopes of achieving sense.
"I-I don't—I'm—you're really—god, I j-just—I wish—I'm… I'm sorry." A sharp breath. His hands grip tighter, twisting into her coat, twisting into the knot of her heart. "I'm… sorry. I'm sorry. God, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I can't… can't even tell you. I'm just so sorry."
Another breath, shaky and overflowing from the back of his throat.
"I did so many things. Terrible things. I was a… a monster. You don't know what it was like. It was just creeping back there, constantly whispering. And it felt like—like I could only watch. Like I couldn't even take control. It was everywhere, talking and talking, and I couldn't do anything about it."
Chell is frozen in place, stunned and overwhelmed, her hands hovering in mid-air. She doesn't know what to do with them. Tears leave damp splotches on her jacket while the rest of his body is splayed awkwardly down her legs. He doesn't seem to notice her discomfort; he's too caught up in the apologies running down his tongue.
"And you're here," he murmurs on, pushing his face further into the folds of her coat. "God, you're here, you're here. I don't know why. After everything, I don't know why. Why did you come back? This place is… is poison. It does things. Horrible things. I did… horrible things." Yet another shudder, as if recalling the creeping itch. "I don't know why you're here and I think I'm still dreaming somehow but just… it's… it's good to see you. Really. Even if it is only your coat." He attempts a weak laugh, but it slowly dissolves into hiccupping sobs.
Chell discovers a use for her hands. Gently, she settles them onto the rigid planes of his shoulder blades, and she begins to knead. Her palms are resting flat as her thumbs weave soft, soothing circles. The muscle beneath her fingertips is tense, unyielding, and she works the strength of her arms into every motion.
She doesn't know why she's doing this. He's right: after everything that's happened, she shouldn't be here. She should still be running, flying, dashing through the wheat and grass, back toward the safety of the alligator road. She should be whipping past the crumbling ruins and haunting dreams, beyond the nightmare beneath that shed, using every heartbeat to push her back toward humanity, toward life.
But with this—this man, this human man, this somehow-human Wheatley crying in the shelter of her lap… It's strange. The idea of abandoning him sits sour in the pit of her stomach.
Gentle zephyrs stir the growth around her, fluttering through the thick mop of his hair. His head is a foreign weight cradled in the shelter of her lap, but it's a warm, pleasant pressure. After a minute or two of soft wind and rustling wheat, she hears the jagged hitching of his breath begin to slow. His back no longer heaves or shudders. His fists begin to loosen, and as she continues to work the tension out of his shoulders, she feels him draw in a deep breath and sigh.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, pressing his nose against her belly. "I know they're just words, I know they are, and I know I can't make you believe them, but they're the truth. They really are. And I'm—sorry. I never should have made you do any of… of what you did. I never should have—have—replaced Her. I just… I thought I could do some good, you know? I thought I could help. And I thought, well, if I got control of the facility, I could get us out. Pull down the lift and pop up to the surface. That's what I wanted, what I meant… but I… I couldn't. I couldn't handle it. I don't know what went wrong. I just—everything was so different."
He shifts, pulling back to glance up at her. His chin rests awkwardly on her legs as his eyes strain to meet her own. She never knew a color could be so bright, so alive. His teeth worry at his lower lip, chewing at the already chapped, broken skin.
"Maybe if you'd been the robot and I'd been the human," he says, brow beetled, "maybe then everything would've been all right." A shaky breath, quick and threadbare; a whisper of wind from fragile lungs. "You're strong, you know. You're… you're great. You'd have won. You would've. I know it. You're brilliant and strong, so strong. You would have done things right. You really would've."
Her hands are hovering on the crests of his shoulders, the orange fabric of his Aperture-orange jumpsuit kissing the lifelines crissing across the smoothing surface of her palms. All she can see is harsh, violent blue.
"I wish it all was different." Damp streaks have curved paths of smeared dirt down his gaunt cheeks. "I wish… I wish I hadn't… hadn't led us there. Maybe—maybe we could've found another way out. I mean, the place is so bloody huge, who knows, they're probably a thousand ways to the surface. You could've… well. Carried me. Management rails probably wouldn't have helped all that much, being off the beaten path and all."
He tries to move again, but a wince of pain contorts the sharp features of his face, and then he's buried against her belly again.
"I-I'm sorry. I'm—this hurts. This hurts a lot, actually. I don't really know what's going on, but I'm—oh, w-wow. You know what? I just realized, you probably think I'm mental, don't you?" He makes a choked laughing sound, muffled by the material of her jacket. "I didn't even think about it. Just, you know, some bloke in a field telling you all this rubbish about that place… sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Ridiculous! But you've probably guessed I'm not just some bloke by now. I mean, if you haven't, that's okay, because then maybe you don't remember everything that happened, and maybe then none of this would make any sense and I'm just this idiot saying he's sorry for god only knows what reason, and—"
Chell gives him a firm pat on the back, effectively bringing his sentence to a stop. She feels him shudder; another forced laugh.
"Sorry," he murmurs, his fingers digging fiercely into her coat once more. His voice is coming apart, splitting at the seams, cracking in trembling syllables. "I'm—I'm so s-sorry."
He continues to clutch at her, his grip achingly tight. She can only marvel at him in stunned stillness.
Allowing him to recover from his flood of inner tumult is easy. Helping him stand, however, is not so simple.
He's so incredibly thin. Protruding wrists, sharp knuckles, and sunken eyes make him seem half a corpse. Even though Aperture seems to take decent care of test subjects in suspended animation, his muscles seem to have suffered some degree of atrophy from lack of use. Honestly, it's a wonder he's even managed to crawl this far.
Chell coaxes him up, curling an arm about his waist and hauling him onto his feet. She can feel bones beneath as she keeps him close and tests his balance. It's an almost unsettling feeling. Noting his unsteady equilibrium and quivering legs, she can only assume that his body has been in stasis for an extended period of time. Years, she suspects. Many years at the very least. Walking will undoubtedly be a chore for a while.
Letting him lean his weight onto her shoulders, she takes a step forward. He follows. It's awkward at first because his steps are wobbly and mismatched and his legs are limp and buckling like noodles. He's frustrated, she knows; he's studying her feet with serious intent, glancing back to his own to ensure he's mimicking her placement. With teeth pressed into the flesh of his lip, he tenses up and makes an exasperated grunting noise as he brings another foot forward.
Eventually, after several tries and countless almost-falls, he manages to establish a proper walking pattern. Chell is proud.
The wheat climbs their calves and tickles their thighs as they gradually traverse the field. The sky is a gaping swallow of blue above, cirrus sailing across in delicate wisps. It's capturing, and it's not long before she realizes that Wheatley is very astounded with the world. Chell finds that she has to slow down every now and then because even though he's very much a slip of a man, he's a bit heavier than he seems, and when he wants to stop dead in his tracks, he does so with great purpose, much like an overly tall paperweight.
"It's… it's beautiful."
Wheatley brings her to another full stop, his eyes wide with wonderment. Blinking with the gusting wind, the open collar of his orange jumpsuit flutters against the pale column of his neck and he drinks in color and sight and the endless expanse of stretching horizon beyond.
Absently, Chell wonders what this must be like for him. She doesn't know how far his knowledge extends beyond Aperture's constricting walls and countless protocols. He's spent a great deal of time inhabiting the chassis of a personality core in a place with little to no access to the outside world, and now that she really thinks about it, she doesn't even know if he knows that this is what the surface is supposed to look like.
Chell looks up at him. He's shaking again, she notes. His spine is trembling beneath her arm.
"Never thought I'd see this, you know. After… after being down there." His mouth twists into a half smile as he gazes out into the world, seeming completely enraptured. Dampness is welling in the crescents of his eyes once more, glinting in sunbeams, and all she can see is that clear and incredible blue. "Well, really, I… I never thought I'd be like this, either. Fleshy, and… well. Human. Bit of a surprise, you know? Robot one day, this the next. Not something you'd expect."
She only nods.
"I…" Wheatley swallows, the tendons in his throat stretching with the motion. His hand tightens around her shoulder. "I… I just—" Leaving the words suspended, he makes a light grunt of displeasure and shakes his head. He can't seem to make his mouth form the words he wants. Setting his jaw, he glances down at her, and his entire body seems to succumb to a wracking shiver. "I… Thank you."
Chell nods. It's all she can do. She isn't sure why he felt the need to say it—she hasn't really done much—but if it makes him feel better, she supposes it's all right.
They resume their trek through the wheat, brushing between the thick stalks and staring into the swallowing sky. Wheatley stumbles awkwardly alongside her, leaning into the strength of her body to keep him steady. It's such a strange feeling, and it's even stranger because she doesn't even know what's going to happen when they reach the field's end. What is she supposed to do? Take him in? Care for him? Part ways and leave him to his own devices on the deserted highway?
Gazing ahead toward the cracked and broken road, Chell is tempted to glance over her shoulder. She knows that the shed is there, looming in the distance. The skulking chimera of discord and nightmares that has slept inside of her for so long is beckoning from beyond the spindly bodies of wheat stalks and grass seeds.
She resists.
Stepping forward, Chell moves ahead—with the shed at her back and Wheatley at her side.
As the door slams shut, she can still feel the chilled burst of wind from the field ghosting across her face. Cold air clings to her skin, prickling gooseflesh down her arms and quivers up her backbone. Moments pass before the heat of the flat enfolds her fully; raised hairs on her neck begin to smooth over, and then the clenching fear and uncertainty of the moment seep away into a gentle, comforting warmth.
It's jarring at first. Staring at the dark wood of the door with hands limp at her sides, she suddenly realizes that she's never put so much trust—so much of herself—into someone before. In the depths of Aperture, when Wheatley had broken into her chamber and freed her, she had no choice but to place her trust in him. He had been her only way out.
But now?
In that field, she could have left him to die. She could have run away and never looked back. She could have left him like she had left the shed: a shadow, a memory; a husk to be shoved down, swallowed, forgotten.
But she didn't. Instead, she brought him with her. Him, a creation of Aperture—one of the very things that had burrowed into the marrow of her body to resurface during the night. And while the decision she made on the cracked surface of that beaten, weathered highway made the horrific events of her past seem all the more real, it also brought her closer toward facing the demons that have been plaguing her night after night after insomnia-driven night.
It's… jarring. For the first time since the incidents of Aperture Science, she feels safe.
Chell places a hand onto the grooved wood of the flat's door. She can feel the cold bleed through and sink into the lifelines of her palm. Cool air creeping from threshold nips softly at her toes. As she chews on the inside of her lip, fingers drawing into a fist, she can't help but wonder why she had decided to trust Wheatley in spite of all he's done.
It hadn't been without risk. In that field, in that place between the wheat and the sky, the magnitude of his sincerity had pierced her open and exposed every churning gear. She knows that regardless of what happened, seeing him in such a vulnerable state had struck a chord. Empathy is something that seems to have rooted deep.
If he had been the malicious AI once powered by GLaDOS's chassis, he could have done anything. He could have brought her back into Aperture, directed other AI to retrieve her, or even sprung a trap to kill her.
But if he truly were as corrupted and power-mad as he had been, he wouldn't be… well, he wouldn't be Wheatley. He wouldn't be so lighthearted, so eager, so willing and helpful. He wouldn't be so charming or—or so comfortable.
Chell sighs, pulling her hand away from the door. His presence has really become that familiar, hasn't it? Honestly, she shouldn't be surprised. Her routine centers around being with him, around taking care of him and enculturating him on the ways of being a proper human. Whether she wants to acknowledge it or not, with all of the time and attention he requires on a daily basis, he's involved in her life; so much that it seems almost strange not to think about him.
Glancing toward the window behind the sofa, she can just glimpse Wheatley's lanky body as he stumbles out into the streets. His knit cap is fit snugly over his static-magnet mop of hair while the rest of him is bundled up in a thick coat and warmer clothes. She finds herself peering curiously from the glass, looking past her silent reflection as he nudges into the crowd and slowly disappears from sight.
Her situation is bizarre, she knows, but she can't help but crack a smile.
She might be able to get used to this after all.