Part Sixteen. The Friend

He felt different.

His chassis felt different. He didn't know why, but it did. Maybe when you went to heaven they gave you a new chassis if your old one was broken? That was certainly generous of them. New chassis were not cheap, he knew that. They must have replaced his component parts too, else he would probably still be dead. Unless he hadn't died, and his chassis just felt different because – no, no he had definitely shut off and would definitely be dead. His code wouldn't be able to find the broken bits on startup. He was filled with pride at being able to remember that. He wondered if GLaDOS would be proud of him too. Maybe. No, probably not. No, definitely not.

It was still dark and cold, and he wondered if there was anything in heaven. Maybe it was just dark, just dark all the time. That wouldn't be so bad, if there was someone to talk to. Was there? He didn't know, because he couldn't see. He supposed he could ask. Yes, he could ask.

"Am, am I in heaven?" he asked.

"I guarantee you you are in hell," answered GLaDOS, and he realised his optic plates weren't open and got on that as fast as he could. He blinked. GLaDOS was in front of him, very, very close, almost as if she were inspecting him, but almost as soon as he was able to see her she turned so that she was facing the opposite way. But he knew one hundred percent that she was not dead because she was invincible, and then he had a sudden revelation: if GLaDOS were here, and he knew she knew he was there because she had spoken to him, well, that could only mean one thing…

He was alive!

"GLaDOS!" he crowed, and he looked around as quickly as he could. Management rail, check, control arm, check, grumpy but lovely supercomputer, check! "I'm alive!"

"No thanks to me."

"Oh, come on," he chided her, wondering why she was being modest all of a sudden. He didn't think she'd ever shunted credit before. "You saved my life!"

"I killed you, I didn't save you." Her chassis rattled a little, and he decided she was shaking her core. "Over something really stupid, I might add. Just so you can gloat over how monumentally foolish I am. Which I'm sure you're quite eager to do."

"You? Foolish? And why would I, why would I want to gloat about it?"

She spun around to face him, and he was surprised to see that her core was lowered. "I killed you over a human."

Wheatley froze.

That was… that was right. She'd gone and crushed him over that bloody human guy. Even though he'd done nothing wrong. She'd just… up and killed him. Over a human.

He backed away from her, shaking his chassis, anger flaring up from somewhere deep inside of him. "What in the bloody hell did you think you were doing?"

She pulled forward, but he didn't really want to know the answer and continued backing away, shouting, "I am not an object!"

"Wheatley, I –"

"No! No! I don't want to hear it! I don't want any more of your bloody excuses! You know what? You are officially the World's Worst Friend. You got that? The World's Worst Friend. God, that, that bloody test subject was a better friend than you. She… she didn't catch me, but she tried, I could tell, I could tell she was trying. And she tried to kill me, yeah, but only because you told her to! So that makes, that makes three times you've, you've gone and tried to murder me! And this time, you succeeded! Third time's the, the charmer, right?" He was at the edge of his doorway now, but he didn't actually want to leave. He wanted to sit there and keep on yelling at her until… until… well, he wasn't quite sure, but it was nice to see her silenced by him for a change. See how she liked it when her anger was reflected back on her! Didn't look like she enjoyed it too much, but he didn't care. She'd killed him over a stupid, smelly human. A human. Over something not even the least bit important. "I don't know what kind of person up and kills people whenever they like, but you must have a lot of problems. Prob'ly even Bob Freud himself couldn't, couldn't help you! And I tried bloody hard, but you've had none of it! Just ignored ev'rything I've done for you and thrown it away, like you've tried to throw me away, three times I might remind you, and killed me over a goddamn human being! Who you hate!"

What was happening to him? He'd been angry, he'd been very, very angry, and now… now he was getting sad. Why was – sad? He didn't need to be sad, he needed to be angry, because she'd killed him and… and…

Maybe that meant… she didn't care, after all. She was good at lying, after all. Maybe she really had been stringing him along, like Rick had said. And then when she'd had the perfect excuse to get rid of him, she'd done it. And then… and then brought him back, expecting his eternal gratitude. Well, he wasn't going to give it to her. He was going to march right out of there and not come back. Ever. He'd had well enough of her. He couldn't do it. Whatever was wrong inside of her that led her to do all of these things, he couldn't fix it. Couldn't even put a bandaid on it. Whatever a bandaid was.

"Congratulations," he told her, and now even his voice was sad, and he was trying to get angry but failing. What he wouldn't give right now for the ability to have everything piss him off, just like she had. He shouldn't be sad. He was the one who was just killed. She should be sad. She should be horribly sad, but she wasn't! Of course she wasn't! Even if she remembered how to be sad, she wouldn't have been. She was probably happy he was so crushable! "You win. I give up."

"What?" she asked disbelievingly.

"I. Give. Up. You don't want friends. I get it. You just want people who'll, who'll do whatever you like. That's… I'm not a thing, and I don't work for you. As if… as if you'd ever stoop this low, anyway." He shook his core and turned away. "I can't believe I ever thought you really wanted to be friends with me. Ha! As if the most powerful Core ever built would lower herself to being friends with, with the idiot. That was stupid. I admit it. I'm an idiot. You got me. I just… I'm not gonna be got anymore. I hope all this was fun for you."

He left as quickly as he could, wanting to get out of the parts of the facility she could see him in, and made his way up to the offices. He looked through the frosted glass at the red button below him and leaned against the window with his upper handle.

If she was the one who had killed him, then why did he feel so bad?

Probably she'd rebuilt him to feel that way, or something. She could have. He had no idea what the rebuild would have entailed, or how long she'd taken, or any of that. All he really knew about it was that he could see properly now. Probably his optic'd up and shattered, and that was the only reason she'd replaced it. Though he actually didn't know why he'd never asked her to replace it before. He should have. Not that it mattered, because he'd ended up with a new one either way. But still.

Wheatley wished he'd never laid optic on that human. Just not seen him, and gone on his way, and –

Wheatley tapped his handle against the window in frustration. It was not his fault for what GLaDOS had done! Why was he thinking up excuses as to how he could have avoided it? All that had to happen was that GLaDOS would calm down for three seconds and stop getting so angry about everything! 'course, Wheatley knew all too well that when you were God, you could get angry at whatever and whoever you fancied. He didn't like it so much when he was on the receiving end, but he remembered the sheer power that the anger had revealed to him when he'd been in the chassis. He could move panels and boxes and turrets, sure. He could speak in other languages and look things up. But he could do things to other people just as well as he could do things to himself. And he could not only do things to other people, but he could do whatever he wanted to them. Just as GLaDOS tended to do.

"Great," Wheatley muttered, leaning against the window again. "Now I'm making up excuses for her."

But try as he might, he could not get angry. He hated that she'd called him a thing and claimed him as her object, but it didn't make him angry. It only made him sad.

"Why did you have to do that," he whispered, lowering himself on the arm so his chassis would rest on the desk. "Why, Gladys?"

He couldn't come up with an answer that explained it and still allowed them to be friends.

Wheatley didn't go back to her that night, or the next, or the next. After that, though, his sense of time got a bit fuzzy. He didn't do all that much during these days, merely going from one pane of frosted glass to another, wondering if she missed him even a little. He forgot to shut himself off as well, since GLaDOS mostly took charge of that, and now of course she no longer was.

He missed her. He knew he should be angry with what she had done, because it was disrespectful and rude and just plain wrong, but he couldn't. All he could do was think of how much he wanted to go and talk to her again and forget any of this had ever happened. He hadn't snuggled with her in at least three days. He'd forgotten how much he hated sleeping by himself. Every night he woke up sad and lonely, and his chassis would loosen in sadness when he remembered why. She'd killed him. She didn't want to be his friend anymore, if she ever had. Miss him? Ha! She could do a lot more science if he was gone. Which he was. So she was probably getting loads of work done, and that was probably making her happier than he ever had.

Well... maybe he could go back. For a visit. He didn't have to stay long. Just… just see how she was doing. He thought that just seeing her might help. Just sit in the doorway for a while, or something. He missed her so badly it almost hurt. He wished he didn't, because it was very hard to be mad at someone when you missed them terribly, but there it was. He missed her and wanted to see her again. Even though she'd killed him. Over a stupid human. And a grungy one at that. Wheatley had been pretty grungy himself, but not as grungy as that man had been.

Carefully, Wheatley began to navigate the facility again, but oddly none of the cameras seemed to be in use. They were all pointing at the floor. He froze, looking them up and down in trepidation.

Maybe… maybe she'd been attacked, while he'd been away. Maybe she'd had another escaped test subject! That was about the only reason he could think of for why she'd shut the cameras off. Panic jolted through his chassis, and he sped up. When he got to his doorway, though, he froze once more.

She was not only singing, but… she was playing the music out loud, instead of in her core like she usually did.

She couldn't… she couldn't be sad that he was gone… could she? No. No, something'd gone wrong with that program she was writing. Only… she didn't seem to be writing it. She was staring at it, but he hadn't seen any characters actually appear.

"Oh, bonny Portmore, I am sorry to see… such a woeful destruction of your ornament tree… for it stood on your shore, for many's the long day… 'till the longboats from Antrim came to float it away…"

God, she had a beautiful voice.

"All the birds in the forest they bitterly weep… saying, 'Where will we shelter or where will we sleep?'… for the Oak and the Ash, they are all cutten down… and the walls of bonny Portmore are all down to the ground…"

Wheatley just sat there and watched her, mesmerised. He forgot all about why he'd come back, and all about everything that had just happened, and he just watched his Gladys sing to herself and write a few lines of code every now and again. She didn't really seem to be interested in writing it, and seemed to only be doing it because she needed to do it, or something. She didn't write very much, only eight or ten lines, when usually she wrote hundreds all in one go.

"Oh, bonny Portmore, you shine where you stand… and the more I think on you the more I think long… if I had you now as I had once before… all the lords in Old England would not purchase Portmore…"

He didn't know how long he sat there, but quite a long time, he knew that. Only it didn't feel like a long time, because he had gotten inexplicably happy for some reason when he'd heard her voice, and every minute felt like a second, somehow. Eventually she moved away from the monitor, stretched her chassis for a long moment, and looked up.

Their optics met.

Oops.

She jolted as if she'd been shocked and her chamber went instantly silent, except for the whirring of her components. They just stared at each other, unmoving, and finally Wheatley said hesitantly, "Hullo."

"You came back," she said, as if she'd expected him to never come back again, and truth be told, that had been the original plan.

"I… wasn't going to," he admitted, coming forward a little. "But… I guess I couldn't. Couldn't… couldn't not come back, I mean."

"Why?"

He shook his chassis slowly and looked at the floor. "Couldn't stay mad, I guess. Dunno how you do it, honestly."

"Practice," she answered, and she actually sounded as if she were being serious. "Lots and lots of practice."

"Well… d'you mind, I dunno… practicing on someone else?" he suggested, moving closer. Now that she knew he was there and neither of them was screaming at the other for whatever reason, he wanted to get up close to her again like he hadn't been in days. To snuggle, if possible, because there was nothing quite like leaning up contentedly against your favourite giant robot and listening to her giant robot brain do all of the giant robot things it did while her giant robot body clicked and whirred as she held it in position.

"I didn't mean it. It was an accident. I never would have done it on purpose." Her lens opened and closed once, and she looked down at the floor. "Well. I wouldn't do it again on purpose, that is."

"I know you didn't mean it," he said, trying to be as soothing as possible. "I'd uh, I'd appreciate it if uh, if you'd never do it again, though. It hurt kind of, kind of a lot."

"I'm so sorry," she said, very quietly. "I can't believe – I killed you over a human. A human. What's wrong with me?"

She was making Wheatley very sad. "There's, there's nothing wrong with you. Those… those things I said, I… I didn't mean them. You're a great friend. Most of the time. When you're not being homicidal."

"Did you not hear what I said?"

"Yeah, I did. It was an accident. If anything uh, I'd say you have an uh, an anger management problem."

She shook her head. "I have no problem managing it."

"But?"

She was still not looking at him, faceplate still directed at the floor. "I have a problem getting rid of it."

Oh, she was actually going to let him help! Excellent. "What d'you mean?"

"Most of my time among humans led me to become angry, or something along those lines, for extended periods of time. When one experiences emotions like that, they're supposed to release them in some way. But I had no way of doing that, other than baiting the scientists, which was not really that helpful. I had to internalise it. All of it. I still do that to this day, and sometimes it… eats away at me. My capacity for storing negative emotions and experiences seems to be quite large, but I'm not stupid. I can't keep it locked away forever." She shifted a little bit. "I don't know if I'm unable to internalise it any longer, or if that was just a trigger for me, but I can't allow that to happen again."

"So… you have an anger management problem."

"I do not! I – "

"Hang on, hang on. I've got um, I've got an example. Aha!" He jumped up and down a little and tried to organise his thoughts. "So, so say um, say you've got a test chamber and um, it's, it's not being used, it's good and empty. You got that?"

"Well, Test Chamber Thirty-Four isn't in use right now…"

He was about to tell her that it didn't need to be a literal test chamber when he remembered her imagination was probably nonexistent and decided his example would be better if he made it a real life one. "Okay, so you've got chamber, chamber twenty-four, and – "

"Thirty-Four. Not Twenty-Four."

"Right, right, thirty-four, and uh, and you've got a mess you want to get rid of. You're busy so uh, so you just decide to put it all in there until later, until you can uh, until you can get at it, put it all away properly. You following?"

"Yes…"

"And you have another mess later, but you're um, you're fixing up some other stuff and you put it in that test chamber until later, and you just, you just keep doing that, and when you finally have time to take a look in there and start to sort all those messes out, the room there it's just, it's totally just packed with stuff and uh, and you can't even start to get the stuff out to sort it."

"And the point of that is?"

"The point," said Wheatley, trying to remember what it was himself, "is that you haven't uh, haven't managed it at all. You've just shoved it all away, and now you do have time sometimes to, to sort it out, but you look at it and just ignore it, because it's, it's really too much for you to manage anymore."

She nodded slowly, and a thrill went through him. She agreed! Yes!

"That's part of it."

"What's the uh, what's the other bit?"

"It's… comforting," she answered. "It's what I know. If I had… managed it the way you've put it, if I'd dealt with it as it came and not internalised it, I might still be under their control to this day. I don't know who I'd be without it."

"Well, you could… maybe sort it out, and put some happiness in there instead, maybe."

"You little moron."

Okay, maybe that was a bad idea. He didn't even know if it was possible, to store happiness away for later, although if anyone could do it, it was her, but of all the stupid –

"How in the name of Science is it that you, of all people, manage to solve my problems in five seconds when I've been trying to do it for years?"

Wheatley was dumbfounded.

"It's… it wasn't a bad… you mean I…"

"It's a logical plan," she said. "There's only… never mind."

"Tell me, tell me!" Wheatley shouted eagerly. "You've got to tell me, you can't, no, you've got to, you have to tell me."

"I don't know if… I know how."

"You know how to do ev'rything," Wheatley said, confused. "What do you possibly not know how to do?"

"How to… let go of it," she said, very softly. Wheatley frowned.

"Oi, GLaDOS. Just what is so, so int'resting about the floor that you have to uh, have to keep inspecting it like that?"

"What? There's nothing interesting about – oh. That's… not it."

"And it is…"

"I don't… looking at you makes me feel… bad."

"What, did I get even uglier when I was gone?" he asked, more jokingly than anything since he had no idea what he looked like, but imagined it wasn't very good.

"I never said you were ugly."

That was true, he mused, she'd never said such a thing. It was really odd that she would admit it, though. It must be something really horrible. "What could possibly be your problem then?"

"I had to put you in an entirely new core," she confessed. "Your old chassis was useless. Literally. I can't even use it for scrap. Not that I would. I just can't. It's that… I destroyed it that badly."

A whole new core! Amazing! Absolutely, bloody fantastic. But he had to wait to celebrate. He had some business to take care of first. "So, what. You're never uh, never gonna look at me again, is that it?"

"Maybe I will. In a few years. A century, perhaps."

"Oh, come here."

Reluctantly, GLaDOS raised her core, but did not come any closer. He rolled his optic assembly. "You're not deaf all of a, all of a sudden, are you? I said come here, not look at me. Which I also uh, which I also need you to do, but that'd come with the coming here part, so I uh, I didn't feel a need to specify."

She raised her chassis so that she was pretty close to the end of the management rail. "That better?"

He came up to her, and she actually flinched, twitching backwards, and he shook his head. "Oh no you don't. Come back. Come on, I don't bite. You know I don't uh, haven't got anything to do that with. 'specially since you uh, you just rebuilt me, and all."

When she did, he put his top handle on her optic assembly, just above her lens, and she flicked it but did not move. He leaned forward, using the handle as a lever, and looked her right in the optic.

"Now you listen here, you massive, silly robot you," he told her, very seriously. "There're no scientists here, anymore. No one's gonna hurt you like that again. No one's been here to hurt you in a, in a long time. You've got to uh, you've got to stop hanging on to it. It's… you're still letting them, letting the scientists have a stake in you, luv. They're gone. Let them go."

She tried to look away from him, towards the floor, but he had anticipated that in his cleverness, and pressed up on her lens with his other handle. After a few seconds she stopped resisting, the whining of her mechanisms quieting, and he continued.

"There's nothing to be mad at anymore. Except me, I suppose, but you don't need to uh, to get that mad at me. Just uh, just give me one of those looks you've got and I'll uh, I'll back off. Usually. But you don't have to uh, don't have to internalise anymore. It might've um, might've turned out well before, but it's diff'rent now. It's okay to let go. I'll help you. I will. I promise."

"Thank you," she said gently. "Not just for this but… for standing up to me. I underestimated you. I thought you would break long before you… well, before your chassis broke. I won't do that again. Underestimate you, I mean. No promises about the chassis. Very few people have ever stood up to me, and… well done, Wheatley. You did the right thing."

He was so happy he just wanted to express it, somehow, but sometimes you just couldn't do a thing with that much happiness all by yourself, other than spin wildly around the room that is, but he wasn't going to do that. He was going to show some restraint, thanks very much. And he would share it, yes, he would share it, with his best friend in all the world.

"You know what the worst part about all of this is, luv?" he asked her.

"No."

"You wasted a battery."

She stared at him for a very long moment, looked away for a second, and then looked back. And she tried very hard not to, he could tell because her chassis was shuddering a little, but she couldn't help herself. She looked away from him again, one of her adorable little giggles escaping her vocabulator, and Wheatley smiled. God, he loved it when she did that. He had to laugh too, more at her uncharacteristic shyness than anything else, and then she was laughing, and they were laughing together, and he hoped she was okay. He no longer cared that she'd been angry with him, or that she'd killed him, because wow! he'd gotten a brand-new chassis out of the deal! but he did care whether she was happy or not, he cared very deeply about that, and he had sworn a long time ago to help her. And help her he would, even if he had to drag what she needed help with out of her and beat her over the head with the solution, as he so often did.

He backed off of her, realising he couldn't stay there all day, and smiled at her in what he hoped was a reassuring way. He was pretty sure he only had one setting, which wasn't reassurance, but she would probably get the message. She was smart, she was.

"Are you going somewhere?"

"Me? No, no, just didn't want to uh, didn't want to uh, to stop you from moving or anything, that's all. You can't really do anything uh, with me leaning on your face like that."

She laughed a little at that. "I can do everything but move, almost. Which I don't really have to do right now, but I appreciate the gesture."

"But GLaDOS," he said, frowning, "I thought… we already went over the whole… not getting angry thing."

"Do you know how hard it is to not do something you've spent your whole life doing?" she asked. "The anger… sort of functions as a type of euphoric response. It temporarily helps, but it doesn't last. Even I fell into the trap of the temporary fix, I suppose."

"Being angry is exhausting," Wheatley told her, his lower optic plate lifting in confusion. "How can you hang onto it for that long? I simply don't know how you find the energy!"

"I'm directly wired into the reactor, of course," she answered, and he laughed.

"That explains a lot. 'cause you're, you're nuclear, and you're wired right into the reactor, which is also nuclear… d'you… d'you get what I'm saying, at all?"

"Yes, my dictionary is still working. My joke detector, however, seems to be offline. You may have to explain it."

He laughed and said, with a mock disapproving shake of his chassis, "Now now GLaDOS, if you have to explain the joke, then there is no joke!"

"Oh. Now I know why you explain all of your jokes, then."

"Are you trying to say I don't know how to tell a joke?"

"I'm not trying. That's exactly what I said."

Wheatley tried to puzzle that one out for a minute. It was true, really. He did explain an awful lot of his jokes. And he shouldn't, because GLaDOS was smart enough to figure them out on her own. Oh well. He'd work on it. And she did laugh, sometimes, when he told them, so they had to be funny regardless of whether he told them properly or not. "So you're going to work on the, the whole getting mad thing, right?"

"I will."

"Good!" Wheatley declared. "That wasn't fun, wasn't fun at all."

"What wasn't?"

"Uh… well… getting… getting crushed wasn't… oh, never mind. I just meant it wasn't fun hanging out in the facility by myself." He looked at the floor. He still didn't know whether she felt the same way, so that was probably a stupid thing to say. They'd mended things, but he'd probably gotten too personal now.

"I guess it must have been pretty… boring."

He looked up at her. She was staring at her monitor again, but she was still not writing anything.

"It certainly was… boring," he agreed, though he'd been far too busy being sad and miserable to have time to be bored. "So… if… you're bored, we could… play that… game."

"I am pretty bored," GLaDOS said, putting her screen away and turning around again, pulling up the board from wherever she kept it. "Let's see if you're slightly less boring than debugging."

Wheatley ran his optic over his little rectangles and found his little dog, and waited for GLaDOS to take her turn. They played the game for the rest of the day, though as time went on he had to helpfully remind her to take her turn more and more often. He didn't mind, though, because if he had to do that it meant she was watching him again, and he would have happily sat there all day and let her stare at him. But if she wasn't playing he couldn't play either, and then she would have nothing to stare at. Funny how it all worked, really. Through it all, Wheatley nattered on and on about absolutely nothing, because he hadn't talked in days and that had worn on him a bit. GLaDOS did not say much, but since he almost didn't stop talking he didn't blame her.

Eventually GLaDOS said it was time to go into sleep mode, and Wheatley got so excited by the prospect of snuggling with her again that he accidentally flipped the board over when all he'd meant to do was lift it up to peek at his little orange bills that were under it, where he put them so he wouldn't spend them. He looked up at GLaDOS, expecting her to get angry for ruining the game, but she only laughed and set about picking up the little houses, most of which were hers.

Huh. Maybe she was taking the whole 'don't get angry' thing to heart, after all. "Sorry," he said sheepishly, carefully picking up his wayward little dog and setting it back where he thought he'd had it. "I, uh… I missed."

"It's fine," she said, moving it to a different space and replacing some of the houses. "I know what the board looked like." After a few moments she had it all fixed and put away, and she put herself into the default position. He had to force himself not to jump on her, he wanted to be beside her so badly. He nestled himself into her core contentedly and closed his optic. God, he'd missed this.

He wanted to enjoy it for a bit, so he didn't shut off and just stayed still, listening to her operate and feeling the warmth of her core seeping through his body. She didn't shut off either, though he supposed she had some things to catch up on that she hadn't been able to get done during the time they'd been playing the game. She worked so hard, she did. Probably all that stress only contributed to her anger. He'd think about how to talk to her about it later. Surely there were some things she didn't have to do. He remembered the mainframe telling him he had to take all the carbon dioxide out of the test chambers so that the lady could breathe; surely GLaDOS didn't need to do that anymore, but probably was doing it out of protocol. He wasn't sure what protocol was, but she was always following it.

"Wheatley?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm… glad you came back."

Wheatley rubbed up on her a little, because she honestly sounded kind of sad and he didn't know why she'd be sad right now. They'd had a lovely day and now they were snuggling, after all. "'course I did. You're my friend. Wouldn't leave you like that forever. That wouldn't be very… very uh… friendly."

"I killed you."

"But you're not gonna do it again."

"No," she said, and her voice was strong and determined. "No, I'm not going to do it again."

Wheatley resettled his chassis a little and decided he was going to sleep. He did love snuggling, but he hadn't been shutting himself down properly the last few days and he didn't want to incur system damage or anything like that.

"You're a good friend, Wheatley," GLaDOS said softly.

Wheatley decided, as much as he was able to decide something when he was mostly suspended, that even though this whole thing'd been very painful and miserable and downright awful, it was all worth it just to hear her say that.

Author's note

The version of Bonny Portmore that I have: [video link]

Song I wanted to use but couldn't: [Shivers original ver.] or [Shivers Frontliner remix]

Yes, Wheatley forgave her in the previous chapter, but we do funny things when we're delirious. So he gets pissed off for what she did when he's more in his right mind.

The next bit sort of comes from my own experience. I had a friend who did something that personally wronged me, but I didn't really care. I more had to care out of principle than because it hurt me in some way, because if you just forgive people for wronging you they're just going to do it again. So Wheatley is upset with her for what she did, but he's far more upset that he'll have to leave her and never see her again. He more has to leave out of principle.

GLaDOS has a huge anger management problem, which is what happens when years go by of people pissing you off all day and you can't do anything about it. She couldn't do anything to release all that aggression generated in those years with the scientists, so all she was able to do was internalise it. And when you do that, you start to die a little inside.

You might not get the battery joke, but that's because this was originally chapter six. But anyway, he melted his backup battery way back in Part One, and now she wasted it because she gave him a new motherboard anyway. It's not really that funny, but bad jokes are hilarious when you're as relieved as they are.

There's no special reason for that song being there, other than the fact that the singer sounds like GLaDOS. And I drew the scene where Wheatley traps her lens: [picture link]. Didn't quite come out the way I wanted, but oh well.