Part Eleven. The Anniversary

Wheatley wondered if it had been real or if he was having a memory problem of some kind. That wouldn't've been completely out of the ordinary, to be honest, but this struck him as a little strange for him to have imagined.

He could have sworn he'd heard GLaDOS singing last night.

That was… well, bloody well impossible. Hm… unless he hadn't been quite off yet when she'd started. Maybe she had, then.

Why would she never do it so he could hear? You'd think she was shy, or something.

Wheatley frowned down at the telephone he'd been inspecting. He didn't how punching a bunch of little buttons let humans speak through wires to each other, but he thought GLaDOS might know. All right, she would definitely know. But hold on there, Wheatley, he told himself. You were thinking about whether she'd sung or not.

If she had… that meant something was bothering her. He knew that one hundred ten percent. Only time she ever sang. Ever. So… the only thing to do was to decide whether he'd imagined it or not. It never boded well if someone accused GLaDOS of doing something they weren't sure she did. And the less certain he was, the easier it would be for her to… well… to lie, to put it bluntly. He'd meant to talk to her about that, the whole lying thing. She had a lot of different names for what she did, but Wheatley knew by now that she just knew a lot of fancy ways to pretend she wasn't lying. Even though she was.

So! Now he had to figure that out… he moved along the rail some more, trying to think and stay on topic at the same time. Oi. That was difficult. Hmmm…

Well. Nothing so far. He decided to go back to her and see if she'd teach him another game. Maybe he'd find a way to bring up whether she'd sung or not in casual conversation. Yes, that sounded like a plan.

When he re-entered her chamber, though, he immediately knew that it was not a good plan at all. She was programming, the little blinking cursor spitting out numbers and letters in large chunks and then pausing as she looked over what she'd written.

"Oh, are you busy?" he asked, immediately wanting to shock himself. No, Wheatley, she is not busy, he berated himself. She's just casually writing a program that… that is for entertainment. Yes. Of course. She always writes programs for fun. Fun? Ha! As if she knows the definition of fun. Good one, Wheatley, good one.

"It can wait," she answered, looking over at him. He didn't know why she set all the monitors to display orange text on top of an orange background. Honestly it made it very hard for him to read. Not that he could read it anyway.

"Well… d'you want it to wait, I guess is the uh, the real question," Wheatley mumbled, looking at the floor.

"The sooner I get this done, the better," GLaDOS admitted, "but there is a very long game I can show you that I can play while I'm doing this."

"Good idea!" he said excitedly, and he came to the end of the rail as she brought out a different monitor and put the other one away.

The game, he discovered, was called 'Monopoly', and it seemed to be a kind of ruling the world game. Whoever ruled the world won, and not only that but they also became very, very rich because in order to lose the other person had to give up everything they had. He resolved to do his best and selected the little dog character, while GLaDOS picked up the boat, leaving the rest of the pieces in the box. They played it for a little while with GLaDOS explaining things every now and again, but honestly it wasn't much fun at all. Wheatley looked down at his little cards telling him which of the little rectangles on the board were his and decided not to take his turn, putting the maintenance arm back in the dock instead of pressing the button on the randomiser. It was definitely not as enjoyable when GLaDOS wasn't paying attention. And she had been different yesterday. He wasn't sure how, but he knew that she had been really happy, for once. He wanted to make her really happy again, because it made him really happy and made things loads more fun, but he wasn't sure how to go about it. "GLaDOS, um… if I ask you a question, will you answer honestly? Like, just give me the straight answer and uh, and not a… a work-around one?"

She glanced over at him, not even seeming to notice that he'd put the arm away. "That depends on the question."

He frowned. "That's the whole point! I know it depends on the question. But it shouldn't. I'm your friend. You can trust me, can't you?"

She stopped writing for a long moment in the middle of a string of code, staring at the little blinking line. Finally she said, "All right. What's your question."

"Were you singing last night?"

Her core snapped around to look at him, and she backed away a little, and he knew without a doubt that he was right. Hm. He hadn't even needed to ask her to be totally honest; he would have known if she'd tried to lie.

"How did you know that?"

"I heard you, sort of," he answered, shrugging. "I didn't really hear what it was, or anything, but I heard it." He wondered if her agreement to be honest was still in effect. "Something bothering you?"

"I don't want to talk about it," she snapped, returning her attention to her screen. Wheatley sank in disappointment. She was taking that route, then.

"Why not? If it bothered you that much, it must be terribly important."

"Shut up."

"Oh, come on," he pleaded, raising himself on the control arm so he could get as close as he dared. "Tell me. Won't, won't hurt you."

"You know what? Leave me alone," she said in a flat, no-nonsense voice. "Go bother someone else. I changed my mind. I am busy."

Wheatley sighed and looked at the floor panels, then did as he was asked. He wanted to stay and press, but when she started to use the flat voices that meant she was getting angry. And if she got angry, he'd never get the truth out of her. The only thing worse than an indifferent GLaDOS was an angry one.

For the next little while, GLaDOS was plagued by nightmares.

She didn't tell him this, and when he finally realised it he felt bad for not noticing sooner, but he didn't know what to do about it. But he kept waking up repeatedly during the night without knowing why, and this was rather confusing because it had never happened before. He had kept mum, not wanting to wake her as he struggled to figure out what was going on. Until he'd woken for the fourth time and realised that he had just heard GLaDOS's hard drive go quiet. That was when he knew he was waking up with her instead of on his own. And then he felt bad because she wasn't even trying to comfort herself anymore, and that was probably because Wheatley had called her out on singing before this had all started. But how to help her? Wheatley had never had a nightmare in his life and he had no idea how a person dealt with them. But wait! He had an inkling of an idea and he squinted at the darkened floor, trying to extract it. Ahhhh… hang on. Hm. He had seen her dream, once. Maybe if he gave it a go, he could see her…

Wheatley went still.

Did he want to?

Whatever it was, if it was enough to bother GLaDOS it would certainly be terrifying. Something that Wheatley didn't want to know, or see, or be anywhere near. So he resolved to stay quiet and wait until she had decided to ask for his help. Yes. Much better plan, right there.

At least, it was until she woke up again. He hadn't quite been able to put himself back to sleep, and this time he saw the dull amber glow of her optic illuminate the bit of floor he'd been staring at for who knew how long. She sighed a little and shifted her chassis, the sound of electronics in motion very loud in the heavy silence, and after a few seconds shut herself off again.

Okay, Wheatley, he told himself. You can't lecture a construct on being nice and then not do something she badly needs you to do. You think she likes all this, mate? No. And you know how she is, all stubborn and strong and determined to do everything on her own in her own way. The only way to help her is to force her to accept your help, and you can't do that if you haven't got all the facts!

So Wheatley took a breath, settled his chassis determinedly, and focused his thoughts on once again securing a wireless connection with her and seeing whatever it was she was seeing. It sort of worked, because the next time she woke up he had some sort of vague impression of being desperate, though he had no idea what that meant. It was a start, though! He'd keep at it and see how that went.

During the day, he left her alone as much as possible. He didn't want her to get angry with him because then he would never be able to help her, and there would be no way to force her to accept his help if she wouldn't let him in the room. Not unless he did something terribly drastic, like… like find that Rattmann guy and… he shuddered. Ohh no, he was not doing all of that again.

He didn't know how long it'd been going on for or how long it was going to continue, but he kept on trying to dream with her and the more he did it, the better he got at it. He never saw the whole thing, only bits and pieces and a feeling here and there, but what he did see was confusing. They all seemed to be about humans. One night he almost jumped out of his chassis, holding himself back at the last second when he heard her say, "Shut up."

He looked frantically from side to side, his optic more resembling a speck than anything else. Did she know he was awake? He knew she wouldn't like his plan, oh no, not at all. She would get angry and make him leave. But then she said, "This is different. Yes it is! No, you don't know what you're talking about. Shut. Up."

She must have been arguing with Caroline. Wheatley always got a little sad when he thought of Caroline. He thought it must be simply terrible, living with someone in your head, and a human at that! Especially if they sat around arguing with you all the time. Wheatley did know how that felt, seeing as he'd had those cores on him for a bit there, but it would honestly have driven him batty after about an hour. It was simply awful, hearing someone else talk and talk and not quiet down when you asked them to. GLaDOS must be bloody upset, he thought sadly, if she was actually arguing out loud instead of inside of her head. She shut off soon after that, and Wheatley looked at the floor, trying to think. He had to figure out some way of helping her! She needed him and, as a friend, he was failing miserably. Friends were there when you needed them, and Wheatley'd just been sitting there doing nothing all this time.

Even if he hadn't already noticed, it soon became obvious that she wasn't doing well at all. She stopped talking to him, stopped even acknowledging whether he was there or not, and he spent a long time just watching her helplessly, trying to come up with even the bones of a plan. She began to sleep through her timer, and would just remain in the default position for a long time after she did wake up, as if she were trying to decide if actually getting up was worth it or not. Her movements were slow and ponderous, and Wheatley got the impression she was really feeling the weight of her chassis. It was pretty heavy, he remembered that. And he'd had the stripped-down version. GLaDOS required a whole separate assembly to move her core, and that had been removed from the chassis when he'd been installed.

He had no idea what she was doing all day, if she was doing anything at all, and on the very rare occasions that he tried to engage her, she would snap at him with such venom in her voice that he backed away and vowed to keep quiet for the rest of his life. This vow lasted about two minutes, maximum.

One morning he went to talk to Atlas and P-body to see if they had any ideas. He figured they knew her the best, if she could be known that was, but when he tried to talk to them they only shook their cores and turned back to their testing track. This stumped him, so he watched them test for a while. At one point P-body made a very stupid mistake, one even Wheatley knew was extremely avoidable, and both robots froze, staring at each other. Wheatley could feel their fear from across the room, and he listened in shock as GLaDOS gave them the most scathing, venomous rebuke he'd ever heard. Atlas and P-body shuttered their optics tightly, each reaching for the other's hand, and she made an angry electronic noise that scared Wheatley so badly he closed his optic too. He heard her explode them and mutter to herself about how disappointing they were, and when he was finally able to open his optic again he saw that she had not even bothered to pick them up. And when GLaDOS was willing to leave a mess, something was very, very wrong.

He was taking far too long to think of something.

Through all of this, he continued to return to her chamber each night to sleep with her, though he got more and more apprehensive of doing it as time went on. He was afraid that one day she was going to become angry with him for going near her, but he was just as afraid that she would be angry if he disrupted her routine. Today, he was more afraid than ever, but she said and did nothing. It was only when he woke up the first time that night that he realised what was going on.

GLaDOS was afraid, and she was trying to get rid of her fear by scaring everyone else.

Okay. Well. Now he knew that, but didn't know what to do with the knowledge. He tried desperately to think, but he couldn't come up with a plan. Why was this so hard? He should have thought of something by now! He was the bloody ideas Sphere, for God's sake, you'd've thought he'd've been able to do the one thing he was designed to do! And he resolved to do it this time, resolved to think of something.

Even though he wasn't asleep he'd somehow maintained the wireless connection, and whatever she was dreaming of was very strong this time. He still didn't know quite what all the humans were doing, but he could almost hear them talking. He struggled to make it out for a bit, but then he froze, his thoughts and his chassis both.

GLaDOS had started to shake.

His optic twitched frantically. Now the dream was so bad that she was actually shaking. He was taking too long. He had to do something now. There was no more time for tact, or plans, or subtlety. This was it, and if he didn't manage to even start to fix this now, he was probably the worst person the word 'friend' had ever been applied to.

She woke up with a desperate, plaintive noise that sent a strange bolt of pain through his body, and he made his thoughts go blank and said the first thing that came to mind after he'd done so.

"What's wrong, Gladys?"

"Nothing," she said, but it sounded automatic and forced. "Nothing. I'm fine."

"You're lying," he told her flatly. No… no, that was probably not the best way to go about it. Sure enough, she shoved him away and muttered something to herself in binary.

Wheatley threw caution to the wind and pushed her back.

She threw him off of her again, and she raised her core and brought it closer to his chassis. "What in the hell do you think you're doing?"

Wheatley retracted the control arm so that she couldn't look down on him anymore and backed away just enough that she couldn't reach him. "What in the bloody hell do you think you're doing?" he demanded.

"I –"

"That wasn't a serious question," he interrupted. "Because you don't know what you're doing, do you?"

She stared at him coldly, but did not deny it.

"Look. This is the end, luv. You've gotta tell me what it is that's bothering you, because none of us can go on like this any longer. I dunno why, uh, why you're not telling me, since even a brick wall could tell by now that you're having awful nightmares and they're scaring the hell out of you. And I might not be a genius, but I am actually smarter than a uh, than a, than a brick wall. And before you say you're not, I've seen bits of them. I know you're dreaming of humans every night. And I know you're uh, you're trying to spread all of the bad feelings inside of you around by taking it out on us, but it's not working."

"No," GLaDOS said faintly. "It only makes it worse."

Oh. Look at that. He was getting through to her! Not only that, but his plan of not having a plan had turned out to be the best plan of all! Encouraged, Wheatley came level with her and moved in close. "So try something else. Like… talking to me about it."

"I don't want to talk about it," she said in an almost petulant voice, not looking at him. "I want it to go away."

"But it's not. So you've got to try something else."

"You want me to tell you about my dreams."

"Yes."

He watched her closely, trying to be calm and open-minded and… and… whatever else he had to be to get her to talk to him. "You used to tell me about them. I'm still the same guy, GLaDOS. I didn't change."

"I did."

He looked at the dark floor for a long time. That was true. It was as though… as though all of the darkness inside of her that he remembered from back then had gotten much, much darker. He remembered that in himself as well, and all of the things it had led him to do when he'd had the chance, and he fought back a shudder. He honestly didn't know how he'd have dealt with it if that darkness had been very much stronger, and though she was not doing a particularly good job of it GLaDOS was dealing with it. She hadn't quite given into it.

"Please, luv," he whispered, and he came down beside her and pressed his chassis into her core. "Please let me help you."

She sighed, very softly, and slowly lowered herself back into the default position. He followed her, and when he was down there too he kept on holding himself against her.

"I'm so tired, Wheatley," she told him finally. "I just want this to go away so I can sleep."

"Then give it to me," he said quietly, not quite knowing what he was saying but knowing that it was the right thing to say at the same time. "Give it to me, and I'll take it on for you."

"You don't want it," she said bitterly.

"GLaDOS, you're my friend. If it makes you feel better, then yes, I want it." When she stayed silent, he pressed, "I can't sit here and watch this hurt you any longer! You have to tell me."

Her chassis shifted, her core pushing against his for a second. He tried very hard to… to put off an aura, sort of, that he could take on whatever was bothering her and deal with it properly.

"It's the humans," she said. "I feel terrible for killing them."

Wheatley's insides went very cold, and he wasn't sure if he could speak or not, or whether he should.

"My engineers, and the ones who built the Behavioural Cores, not so much. But they weren't the only ones I killed. No, I killed everyone. Even people I didn't know, and who didn't know me. And I tested them, but…"

He waited patiently, trying to come to terms with her confession. She felt bad for killing the humans? She felt bad for doing the one thing that had set her free? Wheatley was suddenly grateful he'd never managed to kill the test subject. He never would have guessed that successfully doing it would haunt him for the rest of his life.

"Well. If I'm honest, the testing was really just an excuse to go on killing them. I kept putting them through the tests, making them deadly even when they didn't need to be, and I used that as an excuse to kill the rest of them."

"I thought the tests were deadly even before you built them?" Wheatley asked, in the hopes of making her feel a bit better about the whole thing. "Wasn't… wasn't the humans dying part of the um, of the… didn't it have to happen for the test to count?"

"Don't you see?" she asked tiredly. "It's just like what you said about being nice. I only was only nice to you when it benefitted me; I only listened to the humans when it benefitted me. Even when it was wrong. Yes, I continued making the tests deadly. Yes, Aperture has been making the tests deadly since it was founded. And killing the engineers was justified. But let's face it. The Dual Portal Device has been tested ad nauseam. The data has already been satisfactorily collected. But I keep convincing myself to run them when I have the chance anyway."

Wheatley had gone even colder, if possible, because it was his fault that she was feeling this way. She had taken what he had said to heart far more than he'd ever thought he would and now she was tortured by it. He struggled to come up with something to change her mind. "They… they would have come after you anyway. They wouldn't have simply, have simply gone off if you'd let them go."

"There are many, many things I could have done other than kill them. And don't try to convince me otherwise. I've been spending a considerable amount of time thinking about it."

Wheatley supposed that was true, but he still didn't like it. Humans only helped computers when they needed something out of them. Even that test subject had only taken Wheatley with her because she'd've been stuck without him. "You don't need to feel bad about that. You can't change what you did. It's done."

"I just keep seeing them, over and over again," she went on. "I just keep watching them die, and they don't understand why they're dying, and… and I'm so damn happy about it. I had no reason to kill them but I made up an excuse to allow me to apply the actions of one group to an entire species, and then I killed them and took pleasure in it."

He didn't know what to do. She was right. He didn't want this, not at all. He wanted to turn back time to when this night had started and forget about ever asking her. Let her deal with this. She could deal with things on her own. She was a supercomputer, after all, and he was only a Sphere, not even a Core like her. He'd unleashed something he couldn't handle and now he had to sit here and listen to her try to explain the horror inside of her head. The horror he didn't want to know about and didn't know how to handle. What an idiot he was. As if he could ever help her with her problems. Ha! He was going to need help with her problems after this. He imagined asking GLaDOS to help him help her with her problems and almost laughed at the ridiculousness of it.

She moved her chassis so that he couldn't reach her anymore, because the rail didn't go far enough, and he blinked rapidly. He was kind of relieved because that likely meant this was all over and he could run someplace far away, Old Aperture if possible because she couldn't really see him down there, but there was still some tiny part of him that wanted to help her and it made him ask, "What are you doing?"

"I know you didn't want to hear that. I know you regret asking. You can leave. I'm not going to do anything. I wouldn't blame you if you did." Her next words were so bitter and cold that they gave him pause, because he was indeed about to leave and find someplace else to go. Somewhere very far away from here. The surface, hopefully. "I'd expect it if you did."

Suddenly Wheatley had an idea, and it was so out of the box and strange that he wondered if he dared voice it. But the only way to get through to GLaDOS was to do the exact opposite of what she expected, so he said, "D'you think maybe… I dunno… you look for reasons to be angry?"

"What?"

"Well… you're trying to get mad at me right now, for uh, for leaving, and I haven't even left. You get angry when Atlas and P-body act human, but then why did you build them to look like humans?"

"They can't solve the tests if they don't look like humans."

"You could build whatever tests you wanted to build! You could build tests for… for… for cats! Or dogs! Or constructs, even. But you don't. Because you need them. You need them to make you angry."

She turned, lifting her core enough that she could look at him. "Go on."

"Well… the reason you killed the humans in the first place is because you were mad at them for… for ev'rything, right?"

"Yes."

"And… well, that didn't all crop up in one day. You must've spent years uh, getting mad, getting angry with them."

"Yes."

Wheatley took a breath. He wasn't sure how well this would go over, but he had to try. He had to make her see what she could quite possibly be doing to herself. If he could figure it out himself, that was. He was making it all up as he went along. As usual. "D'you think… well… I dunno… you don't know what to do with yourself if you're not angry?"

She looked down at the floor for a long moment. She was overheating a little, he realised; he could feel the heat coming off her core even from three feet away. Seemed this was a bit of a conundrum even for her.

"I… do spend a lot of time that way," she said finally. "And I do allow even little things to bother me."

"And now you're… you've… uh…" He didn't know how to put it.

"You're going to have to explain it to me. I never did quite understand psychology."

He couldn't help but smile at that. She was asking for his help! Not directly, of course not, but she was! Mental! Okay, okay, how to explain it… hm… C'mon, Wheatley, he told himself urgently, his panic and regret at having brought it up fading, this is your big chance! Show her she can depend on you. "Well, first… come here, will you? No need to be uh, to get all, to be all defensive. I'm only trying to um, to help you out, here."

She returned to her previous position, and he pressed his core against hers and thought as hard as he could. "So… you feel bad for being angry with people who did nothing wrong, and doing something you now regret, and, and… well, that's… quite an easy fix, actually."

"It is?"

"Yep. Stop getting mad at Atlas and P-body. You built them that way. They are how you made them. Bet that'll solve your, solve your problem right there. Well, start solving it, anyway. If they can't uh, can't solve the tests or if they, they act too human, well, that's your fault. You taught them ev'rything they know."

"But that makes me too human," GLaDOS protested. Wheatley shook himself quickly.

"See? You're getting mad already. And I don't get it, anyway."

"Get what?"

"Why they're not allowed to hug or shake hands or… or… uh… stuff like that. Surely not only humans do those things. Surely other kinds of… uh…"

"Species."

"Yeah. Other species do stuff like that." He shrugged. "So long's we keep away from the really nasty human stuff, I don't see what the problem is."

"So I have to stop trying to make myself angry, because it leads to doing things I'll regret later. That's what you said, right? I feel bad about killing the humans because I only did it out of unjustified anger?"

"Yep!" he said, and he was right pleased with himself. Figured all that out on the spur of the moment, and it all made sense. Sometimes Wheatley wondered if he'd actually been a Genius Sphere at one point, and then the engineers had realised to make GLaDOS any smarter (as if she could possibly be any smarter than infinitely smart like she already was) would be incredibly stupid and they'd corrupted him themselves.

"Huh," GLaDOS said thoughtfully. "And I don't need to be angry anymore, but… I keep feeding it, because it's… well, I've been doing it for so long…" Her chassis shuddered violently, and she made an electronic noise in annoyance.

"What's wrong?" Wheatley asked in a panic, because it seemed to have been unintentional. And when GLaDOS did things by mistake, well, that was never good.

"The stupid Itch is driving me crazy," she muttered. "It's getting very, very hard to ignore. Not that I can actually do anything about it."

"Because you're tired?"

"Tired would be a dramatic understatement. Try exhausted."

"Go to sleep?" Wheatley suggested. "You're okay now, right?"

After a long moment she answered quietly, "Yes. I feel much better."

Something inside of Wheatley melted, and he closed his optic and rubbed up on her. When he realised what he was doing, he froze. Oh no. Oh no no no. He'd gone and mucked it up, hadn't he. He had fixed everything, made her feel not only better but much better, and then he'd gone and rubbed up on her. She hadn't said he could do that. She wasn't going to be able to stop herself from getting mad about that.

But she said nothing, only put herself back to sleep.

Wheatley blinked rapidly, then shrugged and nestled against her until he was in a more comfortable position. Okay. Maybe she could not get mad about it. Maybe she didn't mind it when he did that, because she hadn't said anything about when he'd done it that day they'd played cards either. He got a little excited to think that. He loved the feeling he got when he ran his chassis along her core. And she would be able to sleep now, so he'd be able to talk to her tomorrow! Maybe they could play that game again too! He hoped so. He'd missed her. He'd missed chatting with his snarky supercomputer best friend, and he really hoped he'd helped her so that she didn't have to feel bad for killing the humans anymore. He rubbed up on her a little more, since she was off anyway and wouldn't even know about it, probably, and put himself to sleep.

Wheatley got up at the usual time, and when he did there was something inside of his head that begged for his attention. Ah. That was right. He'd forgotten about that! Which was exactly why he'd made a note of it. So he wouldn't forget. Probably the only note he'd been successful at making, but that was okay. It was the most important one. Maybe. Since he didn't know if he'd ever made another one, it was hard to tell. He set out on his mission, hoping he'd be able to complete it as planned.

When he got back a few hours later, having gotten both distracted and lost on the way there and the way back, he was a bit surprised to see that she was still asleep. He looked at her, a little worried, hoping that she was just catching up on her rest and that nothing was wrong with her.

She continued to sleep for a few more hours, and every time her optic flickered his chassis tensed in anticipation. She was dreaming, that he knew, but he hoped it wasn't a nightmare that she was stuck in. He suddenly realised he might've made her problem worse. Oh God, he hoped not. That would be simply terrible. He blinked very fast and looked around her still-darkened chamber nervously. She could not wake soon enough.

When she finally did, it was slow, as if she didn't really want to but didn't really want to keep sleeping either. She lifted her chassis languidly, twisting a little and shaking it out gently, and Wheatley watched her, fascinated. He didn't really know what she was doing, only that he could not get over how lovely she looked while she was doing it. Her movements were… they were… more open than her usual ones, less… robotic, kind of, and he found himself wishing she moved like this all the time. Her body looked… loose, and… and free, and he liked it. She had so much grace for someone with such a large chassis. He had a tiny little one, and near everything he did was jerky and awkward. But watching her he could tell that she knew how her body worked, and she knew it well. She knew exactly how much she could compress it or shake it or twist it, and for some reason this new kind of movement was exciting him, a little bit. She was… well, kind of beautiful, now that he thought about it. He just wanted to sit there all day and hope she kept on doing it, even though he knew she wouldn't. She gave a contented sigh and stretched herself out a little more.

He rather liked that noise almost as much as he liked watching her, but it shocked him out of his reverie a little and made him remember that she didn't really like being stared at. "Good morning, luv!" he called out.

She looked over at him, not even seeming to care that he'd been looking. "Good morning, Wheatley," she said to him, and he smiled. She almost never returned his good mornings.

"Had a good rest there, did you?" he asked, and she nodded once.

"And a welcome one, I can tell you."

"So, uh," he said, twisting nervously and looking away, "I've um, I've got something for you."

"You what?"

"You know, I've… I've got a present. For… for you."

"Oh," she said, and he looked up quickly. She sounded rather disbelieving. Well, he supposed the humans hadn't given her very much by way of presents.

"Can… can I give it to you?"

"I don't know. Can you?" she asked teasingly, tilting her core a little bit. "I don't know what it is, so I can't tell you whether it's mobile or not."

He laughed, which made him feel a little less nervous. "Well, yes, it's mobile. 'course it is. I'm not going to uh, to give you a present that, a gift you can't have, you silly robot."

"Well, what are you waiting for? The suspense to build up?"

That sounded like a pretty good plan, that, but Wheatley'd been waiting long enough to give it to her and his own personal suspense was already through the roof. He brought it out through the ceiling panels and looked away shyly. He didn't know if she'd like it or not, or if she was even in the right mood to accept it, but he didn't think he could wait any longer. "I… I hope you like it, GLaDOS."

He knew that she'd taken it when the maintenance arm gave him an error message, saying that it had instructions to hold something it no longer had, and he put it back in the dock and continued to inspect the floor.

"What is this for?" she asked curiously.

"Well… this is uh… the day you brought me back here out of space. I uh… made sure to make a, put a note on my calendar, so I'd… I'd remember it. So… yeah. I've… been here a year, now, and you haven't killed me and I haven't blown anything up, so… yeah. Thanks."

"I'd forgotten all about that."

He laughed a little. "I thought that it'd probably mean something good, if I was able to remember it. Since that'd mean I wasn't tortured or dead, or something." Maybe she didn't like it. Maybe she didn't want to be reminded of bringing him back. Maybe it'd reminded her of The Incident. Oh God, it reminded her of The Incident, didn't it. Bloody hell. He'd mucked it up again. For real, this time. He'd mucked it up for real. "Uh… I know it's technically yours, since I did get it from your, your plant house thing, there, but… well… ev'rything here's yours, and… didn't have much of a choice, really. Is it… is… do you like it?"

"I think," she said, and here she paused. Wheatley cringed. She thought it was the worst idea he'd ever had. She thought she wanted to smash him into the floor for being such an idiot. She thought it was stupid to give a robot a flower. She thought it was silly to take something from her own facility and give it back to her. She thought –

"… that this is the perfect end to a very horrible experience," she finished, and he looked up in surprise. And hope. He was hopeful, too. "I like it a lot. Thank you."

"You… you're welcome," he managed, not really sure how he'd formed words at all. She liked his present. She thought it was the perfect end to a very horrible experience. He had no idea what he wanted to do right now, other than go outside and declare triumphantly to the humans that she was not a heartless monster and he was not a hopeless idiot, but unfortunately that was impossible. So he contented himself with going up to her as casually as possible, which was probably not too casually at all given the level of excitement coursing through his chassis, and settling against her. He would be perfectly happy to just sit here all day long and snuggle with his Gladys, and not move, if he could sit still for an entire day, that was. Even though the day was half over. Well… maybe he could sit still for half a day…

"Can we pick up on that game, there, luv?" he asked, concentrating very hard on making it sound like a good idea.

"Certainly," she said, replacing one of the panels below her with the one the board was on, and Wheatley smiled.

"I'm glad you're feeling better, luv," he said, daring to rub up on her again. Wow, he was getting daring lately! And she was letting him… hm…

"No thanks to you, moron," she replied, and when Wheatley started laughing she laughed along with him.

Author's note

Wasn't going to post this yet, but ah, what the heck.

Once GLaDOS rediscovers the good side of herself, it unlocks the guilt she feels for doing bad science [making a blanket conclusion when she doesn't have all the data, which is VERY BAD SCIENCE] and treating all humans as if they are the same. She doesn't like it when it's done to her, but she used it as an excuse to unleash her anger. But she spent so long containing her anger that she can't really get rid of it, and keeps feeding it because she no longer knows how to live without it. Not being angry scares her. I based this off of a few things in Portal 2, mainly her word choices. She uses the harsher word 'murder' instead of asking you to 'kill' the bird (yes, I know she says kill after, but she uses murder twice in near succession). She tries to appeal to you through the concept of 'revenge', and she's perfectly happy to 'get mad'. She's likes expounding on how irritated she is both through her tone and her actual words and yes, she built two robots who look human-like when she really didn't have to ("I'm starting to think giving you arms was a big mistake" kind of implies to me that she had a choice). Wheatley hits her over the head with what she's doing to herself, and after that she's able to sleep. I don't think GLaDOS outright ENJOYS killing people, she just thinks it's funny how fragile and easy to kill they are. I don't think there's actually an example of her outright killing someone in a personal way, more of a blanket killing thing that went on. [Yes I know she would've killed Doug if she'd found him, but that's not the point, because she didn't actually do it] I'm pretty sure Chell's the first person she goes to the trouble of actually dropping into her chamber and trying to personally observe the death of. As if Chell is the first INDIVIDUAL she hates, rather than before, where she just hates everyone as a general rule ["You're human, and all humans I know were bad, therefore you are bad because you are human"]. In addition, GLaDOS views humans as 'objects', rather than as sentient entities, which makes sense to me. She's treated like an object, so she learns to treat everything else like an object. She has no reason to do otherwise. She has to learn that not everything is an object.

Is Wheatley attracted to GLaDOS? Yes, yes he is. I don't really understand why people think he would prefer Chell. He's a robot. Robots are used to hard, cold things. We like soft, warm things because they imply safety and security, but a robot has no reason to believe that. I would think that if Wheatley came into contact with something warm and soft, he'd get scared that he's about to get smothered and that he'll overheat. My laptop is always warm, though, so I think GLaDOS would be a heck of a lot warmer than my laptop, since she's doing a lot more work. That's why in a previous chapter I mentioned Wheatley had a preference for GLaDOS's… I forget what I said, but it was something like her massive, robust chassis to the human's tiny, fragile frame. Anyway, I don't know why a robot would find a human being attractive over another robot. Humans aren't usually attracted to robots, after all. And THAT implies that a human partner is the most desirable one. As if Wheatley would choose Chell over GLaDOS because a human is preferable to a robot. As if GLaDOS is below Chell merely for being a computer. See how that works? This might not be the case for everyone's Chelley explanation, of course, but in Wheatley's world humans are undesirable [which he does believe, because he tells you that more than once] and GLaDOS is the highest rung on the robot ladder, so why would he not go for her if he had the chance? He wouldn't come out of space and all of a sudden decide that he likes humans. For all we know, he's sitting there wishing he'd never met a human, because he did that and now he's in space. People assume he's coming up with a way to beg Chell for forgiveness, but like I've said before, I don't understand why you would appeal to someone who can't help you. And I'm going to tell you right now, GLaDOS is his only way out of space. Why? Because gravity. He'd explode everywhere. Please don't make me run the physics, but he wouldn't survive falling back to Earth. He would die. Hands down. IF he didn't melt on re-entry, and I know she says all Aperture technologies are operational to 4000 degrees Kelvin and re-entry goes up to 1922 degrees, but if that were true the incinerator would be useless and there would be no point in having an 'Aperture Science Emergency Intelligence Incinerator'. So yes. His only hope is to appeal to GLaDOS and hope she's feeling magnanimous.