I must admit that when I posted CDaSH a year ago, I secretly hoped it would generate enough interest to top over 100 follows. Hoped, but never believed it. BUT THEN IT DID. THANKS TO YOOOOUUUU.
(Grateful AN from me at the end.)
CHAPTER NINE:
THE PORTRAIT
"What are we looking for?" Chell asked when she and Wheatley re-appeared in their new location. They were still in Old Aperture, but in a section they had yet to reach – 1970s or 80s, if she remembered correctly.
"S'right down this way," Wheatley said distractedly, only half-answering her question. He hefted his ASHPD, fired a portal on the wall to their right, and then a second one just to their left, located on a higher level that Chell hadn't noticed on her first round through the test track.
How did I miss that? she wondered.
Wheatley grabbed her hand and took an immediate right to the office adjacent to them, startling out of her train of thought.
"Wheatley?"
He didn't answer, still towing her along at a breakneck pace. Ordinarily he adjusted his stride to hers (on the rare occasion she let him lead the way, anyway), but she was almost having to run to keep up with him.
"Here," he announced as soon as they crossed the threshold and into the office.
Chell skidded to a halt and looked around, baffled as to what had him so agitated. The room was completely nondescript – scratched linoleum tile, faux wood-paneled walls, ancient computer banks…nothing to differentiate it from the other offices they previously encountered.
"S'over here," Wheatley said when she did not immediately take notice of what he wanted her to see.
He tugged her over a large oil painting that hung on one wall and pointed to the woman in the portrait.
"Her," he said, looking over at Chell. "That's who I'm trying to remember."
The painting was of Cave Johnson and an unidentified woman. The former stared out at the viewer with his usual satisfied smirk, looking as though at any moment he might open his mouth and start ranting about combustible lemons. The latter appeared to be in her early forties, and stood behind Aperture's founder with both hands clasped on his shoulder. She wore an expression that could only be described as enigmatic. Chell couldn't decide if the woman looked proud, sorrowful, or simply indifferent.
"Who is she?" Chell asked, disliking the intensity with which Wheatley was staring at the woman's face.
He shook his head. "I don't know," he admitted. He seemed taken with the sight of the woman, and Chell suddenly came to the unpleasant realization that Wheatley may have personally known this individual. "I know her," he added, as if he'd just read Chell's mind. "Or, I did. Before."
She couldn't explain why his answer bothered her so much, but it did. Gritting her teeth, she attempted to maintain a neutral face and said, "Okay – do you remember from where?"
Wheatley shook his head again. "Not a bloody idea," he replied. "But she was important. Really, really important." He gave Chell a hopeful sidelong glance. "Do – do you know her?"
"No," Chell said, then grudgingly forced herself to add, "I recognize the portrait – half of it, anyway. It was in the front hallway of the elementary school, but she wasn't in it. Just Mr. Johnson."
"Oh, that's right," Wheatley murmured, squinting at the canvas. "Yeah. Now I remember. Next to the trophy case…" He lapsed back into silence.
"We should keep moving," Chell reminded him when he didn't speak.
This time her words registered, and he glanced her way.
"Hm? Oh! Right, yeah, absolutely. Sorry, sorry," he said, hastening towards the exit. "Kind of a pointless detour, really. 'Hey, come look at this painting with a lady I remember but can't actually remember.' Bit pointless, honestly."But," he continued, keeping up his stream-of-consciousness commentary as they walked back to the portal, "counter-point, here – it was a bit pointless for me to keep your nametag in my pocket, and look where that ended up taking me! Us. You. Erm. Anyway."
They had reached the portal. Wheatley huffed, ducking his head as he walked through, and then turned, holding his free hand out to Chell.
"I just wish I had some kind of hint," he explained, too preoccupied to feel affronted that Chell deliberately ignored his offered hand and stepped through the portal without his help.
"A hint?" she asked, straightening.
He nodded and began making his way to the life preserver.
"Yeah," he said. "Y'know – a clue, a hint, some kind of AUGH!"
Wheatley's startled yelp cut him off mid-sentence; he tripped and fell forward, landing in a heap of lanky arms and legs on the floor. Groaning, he maneuvered himself to a sitting position and immediately began to complain.
"What good are these bloody boots for if they don't stop you from falling?" he demanded. "Or maybe I need a different model – Short-Fall Boots. Yeah, thanks, Invisible God-face," he said, raising his voice and speaking to the ceiling as though he were addressing an omniscient being overhead, "would've been nice to have my choice of footwear –"
"Here," Chell interrupted. She bent down and handed him his glasses, which had tumbled off of his face in the fall.
Muttering, Wheatley shoved his glasses back on his nose and went to stand, but then froze, going wide-eyed and pastier-faced than usual.
Chell automatically turned and followed his gaze. A puzzled frown came across her face when she saw what had him so discombobulated:
Wheatley's old personality core. Innocuously resting on the floor in front of them, still dark and deactivated, with a blue-and-grey striped scarf knotted around the handle.
Where the hell did that come from? Chell wondered.
Behind her, Wheatley was wondering the same thing, but expressing his confusion in a more vocal manner.
"Oh," he breathed. "Ohh…right. Now I remember…And oh, God, I wish I didn't..."
Chell turned in time to see him sink forward and rest his head in both hands. "Are you okay?"
"Promise me something," he mumbled as she crouched down one knee beside him. "Promise me to never, ever, ever say the words 'clue' or 'hint' again. 'Coz then I remember things. Not-so-nice things."
"You mean the woman in the portrait?" Chell asked.
Wheatley nodded, head still clasped in his hands.
Sensing this was probably going to be a long conversation, she shifted, taking a seat and resting the ASHPD in her lap.
"Her name was Caroline," he said after a moment.
Chell felt an eerie sense of déjà vu, hearing this. She'd heard similar phrasing once before, when she was trying to find her way to the turret control center. I'm different, one of the turrets had piped up as she was making her way down the production line. Curious, she had picked it up and carried it with her, only half-listening as it made idle remarks about getting mad, and someone named Prometheus – and Caroline.
Her name is Caroline. Chell could hear the turret's voice in her mind, clear as a bell. Could she be the same person Cave Johnson often referred to in his announcements? Was she the woman in the painting? Wheatley's Caroline?
An unpleasant sensation surged in her chest as she thought these words – Wheatley's Caroline.
"The scarf," he mumbled beside her. He reached one hand out and made a limp wave in the direction of his former body. "It's the same as the one she was wearing the last time I saw her. She always wore a scarf, like in the picture…"
"Who was she?" Chell didn't really want to know, but the words escaped from her mouth before she realized it.
Wheatley let out a sigh and took off his glasses, squeezing his eyes shut and pinching the bridge of his nose with his left hand as if he had a headache. This was one of several other unconscious mannerisms seemed to be coming back to him the longer he spent in his human form. Pinching his nose, professor-like, when he was frustrated; quirking an eyebrow when he was confused; drumming his fingers against any available surface whenever he was impatiently waiting for her speak – all of them innocuous, inconsequential nonverbal cues that Chell found both annoying and endearing.
"I don't remember her official title," Wheatley answered, opening his eyes to peer at her. The defeat in his voice was almost palpable. "But she was there. The day they put me into that." Again, he motioned to the core, the sight of which now seemed to physically pain him.
"Cave Johnson mentioned someone named Caroline a lot," Chell remarked, treading with caution.
Wheatley didn't answer. He wasn't sure how to explain to what he was feeling at that moment, or why whatever he was feeling was making him uncharacteristically tongue-tied.
Fear, maybe. Fear was probably at the top of the list, seconded by anger. Confusion definitely ranked third – no, probably fourth, because the more he thought about it, the more 'relief' seemed to be vying for position number three. Because he was relieved – of a sort, anyway. Relieved to remember a bit more about his past, even if the bits he was remembering were mostly unpleasant.
Really shrewd career move, he mused. Yeah, right. More like really stupid life choice, signing away all rights to his person. In hindsight he should have run out of that office screaming and never looked back.
"The program is still in the early phases of R&D," the dark-haired woman seated on the opposite side of the desk had explained to him. She was older than how she appeared in the portrait, which had been painted almost a decade prior, but he would have recognized her anywhere, silk scarf around her neck or none.
"Er, don't – don't you mean D&D?" he had stammered in reply, regretting the words the instant they left his mouth. Somehow he couldn't see this woman knowing what to do with a ten-sided die except chuck it in the dustbin.
He remembered how the smile that came over her face didn't quite reach her eyes.
"Research and development," she corrected. "Have you ever played word association games, Wheatley?"
He blinked a few times, uncertain whether to lie and risk getting caught, or to tell the truth and risk getting sacked. Permanently. "Umm…I think we call it something different where I come from..."
Caroline reached into her desk drawer and removed a stack of laminated cards. Wheatley immediately straightened in his seat, smiling.
"Oh, I do know this!" he exclaimed. "Sight words, right?"
She quickly shuffled the cards and laid them in a tidy stack on the surface of the desk. "Not quite."
Wheatley slumped back in his chair again, disappointed.
"Each of these cards has a word on it," Caroline continued briskly. "When I show you the word, I want you to tell me the first thing that comes into your mind. Ready?"
"Um – yeah." His enthusiasm sounded a bit tepid, and he tried again. "I mean, absolutely! Never been more ready in my life."
Dark eyes pierced into his.
"It's important that you're honest with your responses," she advised him. "Don't say something because you think it's the answer I want to hear."
He nodded, clasping his white-knuckled hands between both knees. Satisfied, Caroline wordlessly flipped over the topmost card.
Faucet, Wheatley read. He bit his lip, hesitating. He knew the proper answer – water, or drip, or something aquatic, obviously – but none of those were the first ones that came to mind…
"Syrup," he answered with a sigh. It made perfect sense – in his head, anyway.
He waited for her to laugh or give him a strange look, but she merely recorded his response down on a yellow legal pad and then turned over the subsequent card: Marigold.
"Umm, perambulator?" Wheatley replied after a moment's thought. He'd squeezed one eye shut and was half-grimacing, braced for the inevitable mocking snort, but once again she simply wrote down his response and continued.
One-by-one, they went through the stack. She never laughed, and Wheatley's answers came more freely. Tea kettle? Lemmings. Stereo? Pollywog. Clock? Tissue box. Candle stick? Pony.
Fifteen minutes later, when they reached the last card, Wheatley remembered Caroline smiling – a real smile this time, not one that seemed forced, or shadowed by emotions that he couldn't explain or describe, except for the uneasy instinct in his gut that was telling him this woman was not to be trusted.
"How'd I do?" he asked curiously as she gathered up the cards.
"You passed with flying colours," she replied. She began writing on the yellow pad again, and Wheatley surreptitiously tilted his head to try and read her words upside-down.
Ideal…intelligence…dampening…candidate…
Well, that couldn't be right, he'd told himself at the time.
Except it was. (Right, that is.) Because after hearing Her shout, "You're the moron they built to make me an idiot!" and installing Her in a potato (and then smashing Her and Chell into a pit – bad move, that), he had gone and looked up his personnel file – something he certainly never had access to as a core – and then promptly deleted any memory he had of looking up his old personnel file because he was so distraught by what he found there.
His human brain, addled as it was, however, had no such delete function. And so as he sat beside Chell, trying not to remember, his brain recalled word-for-word what Caroline had written that day:
Ideal intelligence-dampening candidate. Previous tests indicate variable intelligence with relative strengths noted in verbal reasoning, and relative weaknesses noted in processing speed and working memory. Poor sustained attention to task. Performance on word association test confirms pervasive pattern of illogical thinking and nonlinear cognition. Recommendation: Immediate transfer into personality core followed by installation on GLaDOS chassis. Subject's cognitive deficits should neutralize G's erratic behaviour.
He might have been of 'variable intelligence,' Wheatley sadly reflected, but even he couldn't missed the underlying message in Caroline's coolly objective notes: He wasn't a moron that had been built. He was a moron who had always been a moron.
Orange stepped out of the reassembler and trotted over to where Blue was already bouncing on the aerial faith plate.
"Oh good," She observed from overhead. "I wasn't sure the reassembler would work. It looks like our mystery woman in the prototype chassis is sending us a message. She's not afraid of me. But don't worry, I've got a plan. Let's keep testing and show Her we're not afraid of her either. No matter how genuinely lethal these tests get for either of you."
Blue squawked in alarm at this last remark and looked to Orange for reassurance, but Orange was too busy investigating the light bridge that emanated from overhead to notice. As Blue watched, Orange fired a portal, changing the path of the light bridge, and then motioned for Blue to go over and fetch the discouragement redirection cube. Blue, grateful to have something to do other than dwell upon its very finite lifespan, went to get the cube.
Six minutes and thirteen seconds later, the test was solved.
"Mission accomplished," She announced as the bots jogged across the light bridge and through the exit, "Now She knows we're not afraid of Her either."
Orange and Blue headed for their respective reassemblers, paying only but so close attention. Who was this Her person, anyway? And why was she so important?
"That was just to get the scheming juices flowing," She continued. "Here's the real scheme: I'm going to turn YOU into killing machines. So you can murder her."
Both bots gaped at one another as the reassemble chute doors closed.
Murder…?
AN: Friends, Romans, Portal fans, lend me your ears, for I come to bury Cave Johnson, not to praise him.
Yeah, I'm in one of those moods. Anyway…
Good news (pretend you're hearing that in GLaDOS's voice)…Health stuff finally seems to have made a turnaround. I am no longer spending my days scheming of ways to tar and feather the soulless lackeys at Big Pharma. Cheese drawer now contains nothing but glorious cheese (still not allowed to drink beer, but soooo not complaining) and oh yeah, a bag of alcohol prep pads that I'm afraid to throw out just in case I jinx myself. Here's hoping blood work continues to come back gloriously normal.
Better news! A major factor in my feeling less craptastic over the last two months was the notes of support and encouragement from readers. *Thank you* From the bottom of my wacky, silly, lame-brained heart – thank you. Thank you for the reviews, the messages, the fanart (check out firiami on tumblr to see Morse Code Wheatley – HE BLINKS), and the follows/favourites. I haven't responded to the reviews yet, but I will.
Till next time! :-D