Chell yawned. It had been a tiring week, almost nonstop with no sleep. Every minute of the day was spent tending to the half-demolished core. Something of his was always malfunctioning, even if had been fine thirty seconds ago. Voice chip, internal fan, you name it, it malfunctioned. Perhaps his body was just now adjusting to the shock – both physical and mental – of being back on Earth, but things were getting ridiculous now. She shook her head as she closed the tiny fuse box concealed under his left shoulder blade. It wasn't just that he'd blown a fuse. It was that he'd blown a fuse, she'd replaced it, and it shorted right out before she even had the chance to close him up. Four times. Consequently, they only had two fuses left – which she was sure they would be using sometime in the near future. She mumbled something about going out the next morning, as it was already ten fourteen at night and pitch black out.
Wheatley nodded, grateful for her patience. God knew he couldn't do half these repairs on his own. Provided if he could even open that hatch on his shoulder, or any of the others on his back, he couldn't exactly see what he was doing, couldn't just swivel his gaze one eighty like those older personality spheres could do. Shame, that. He needed her, and he realized this, especially as his body became more and more protestant to the sudden gravity bestowed upon it. Parts he didn't even know he had were malfunctioning, sparking and hurting and shorting his other systems out.
The core put the small box of fuses back in the cabinet, careful not to drop or crush them because he had a bad feeling that, at this rate, he'd need those last two before the night was out.
Chell sat on the edge of the small couch in the living room, grinding the base of her palms into her eyes. She didn't look up, but she felt the seat cushion next to her shift a bit as he sat down. "Thank you," he said.
She sighed in response and her lips stretched into a tired smile as she lifted her face to him. He was looking a thousand times better, just in the last month. He was no where near fully repaired, but at least most of the evidence of reentry had been cleaned away. His hair, however, still remained singed, dusted with a black that would never come off. She'd tried, multiple times over the last week, taking a damp cloth and giving his hair as much of a wash as his robotics would allow, but after somewhere around her sixteenth attempt, he'd asked her to just leave it. The cloth was beginning to grow more and more satiated with water every time they sat down to try to clean him up, and it had begun making him nervous. Chell had looked at the rag, noting that, while it wasn't remotely dripping, she hadn't squeezed as much of the water out of it as last time. With a huff, she surrendered. It was his head, not hers, and if the rag made him nervous, she would comply. It was only a minor detail, anyway.
"No, really," he said, interpreting her silent 'you're welcome.' "Thank you. I… I could've died, if it weren't for you." He moved to place a hand on her knee, a physical representation of the fact that he was talking to her. He didn't know why he stopped halfway. Normally, he loved physical contact, a grab of the wrist or a pat on the head. After all the time he spent alone, wandering the corridors of the Relaxation Annex, after two years of silent exile in space, it was so comforting to know that someone was finally there.
But the look on her face made him stop. She was a naturally quiet person. He rarely heard her utter more than a few words at a time, and that's when he's really prying. But this silence, the smile he'd received, wasn't an 'I'm-choosing-not-to-talk' smile. It was more of an 'I'm-not-really-listening-but-I'm-going-to-be-polite-and-pretend-like-I-was' smile. Yes, he was a bit put out by this. But she'd been up for bloody days.
She shifted her gaze from his face to his outstretched hand, hovering in mid air between them. She pointed. Quickly, he snatched his hand back. "Oh that? Nothing. Not important. Listen," he said to her. "I'm a handful, and you've done a truly brilliant job of fixing me up. Seriously. That cake stuff She went on and on about – if anyone deserves the imaginary cake, it's you." He grinned lopsidedly and his grin only widened when he was able to evoke a small one from her. "Good, we agree!" he clapped his hands together and stood. "Now, one more order of business: I think it might be time to recharge."
Chell twisted away from him and leaned over the arm of the couch, opening up a small drawer in the side table. He tapped the tip of his boot against the drawer, the sudden action jerking the handle out of her grip and slamming it shut.
"Not for me, luv." He said, lifting her off the couch.
The morning came, and Chell grabbed her coat and the axe that was nestled among the various umbrellas she'd found over time and set out the door with Wheatley in tow. She turned and gently pushed him back, off of the porch and closed the door behind her with a smile.
The android darted to the window and parted the curtain. He pressed his nose against the window pane, fogging up the glass with his artificial breath and watching her disappear long before she made it to the edge of the wheat. It was one of those days when the clouds couldn't decide if they wanted to be in the sky or on the ground or somewhere in between, making it bloody hard to see anything.
During these times, Chell would go out on her own, into that ridiculously vast world – not that he thought she couldn't take care of herself! Quite the contrary, he knew she was far more qualified for it than he was.
Nonetheless, every time she went out in conditions less than favorable for the android, he'd follow her right to the front door and watch her as she was engulfed by the wheat fields that had grown rampant around the house, fretting once she was out of sight, wringing his hands together and pacing the house, ALWAYS worried that something had happened, she'd just up and left – frankly he couldn't blame her, him just falling out of the sky onto her doorstep, who would want to put up with that? – because she'd been gone for far too long and he knew, he knew she wasn't coming back and he was ALONE.
He'd spent so long being alone that it shouldn't have been the frightening prospect it was. Maybe it was the thought of finally having someone who cared, who helped you, someone to talk to and acknowledge you who wasn't catatonic or dead.
He squinted at her form receding into the foggy darkness of four thirty in the morning. It did look cold out there, but it didn't seem anything like the intense cold that they'd experienced a few weeks earlier that almost froze his hydraulic fluids in their tracks, seizing up his joints, and had left that deadly white-frozen-water on the ground.
She'd disappeared completely. She really shouldn't be out there in those conditions; there was nothing but miles and miles of wheat between their house and the city where she scavenged. She could so easily get lost, and never return and he was there, stuck in the house and unable to help her in any way.
His processors began whirring faster, the robotic equivalent of a quickened pulse as he threw the door opened and ran out onto the porch. "Chell!" he called, blindly. "Chell!"
He groaned inwardly. The clouds were a lot denser than they seemed from inside. He ran forward, further from the house. She was lost in this. She had to be. He knew he would be if it weren't for—
He suddenly spun on the spot to face the house, which had disappeared like Chell into the murky depths of the fog. "No! No-no-no-no-no! Oh, where'd the house go?" A panic was rising fast in him, but he pushed it down and tried to stay calm for her; he turned back and swallowed hard. He had to find Chell. Things were bad now, but when he found her, everything would be okay – it always was.
"Chell." He choked out, his voice lost on the expanse of wheat field.
Chell had spent the better part of the morning scavenging in the evacuated city to the north of their home. With a new box of fuses tucked safely away in the breast pocket of her coat, her rusted shopping wagon bumped over a rock or two as she made the three hour trudge home through the dew-sticky grain. The fog hadn't lifted yet, as it was only nine AM, but the visibility had increased considerably, allowing a thirty foot radius.
"Ch-chell?" she heard, through the mist. Her gray eyes widened at the sound of his voice. "Ch-chell? Is… is that you? Is it? Chell?"
She spun around in the fog, trying to figure out where his voice was coming from.
Perhaps she was hearing things. It certainly seemed like there was no one out here. Besides, she thought, continuing on, Wheatley would have to be half mad or have found a sudden bravery to venture out of the house in this weather. He hardly liked it out when it was windy.
It came from behind.
A tangle of limbs wrapped around her, pinning her arms down so that her elbows dug into her sides. She gave in involuntary huff at the sudden impact, but he didn't seem to notice. "Oh, you're alive! Thought you'd gone and gotten yourself lost – this! All this white stuff, being a general nuisance, can't see anything! I-I can't even find the house anymore!" His shoulders heaved forward, relaxing a bit, though he was still tightly attached to her. "Now we can go home, right?" he laughed nervously. "Lead the way."
As he let go and grabbed her arm instead, Chell's expression softened, having gone from shocked to bewildered to bemused. She patted his arm consolingly and led them back to the house.