Part Twenty. The Confession
He had been turning it over in his mind for the whole day.
She'd woken late and, as usual when this happened, had stretched herself out, and as he'd watched her he thought of how beautiful she was. She was beautiful other times too, of course, all of the time in fact, but there was just something about the… the sense of freedom he got from her when she did that. It brought it to his attention, sort of. She'd uncustomarily returned his good morning, again working on her program soon after, but he hadn't left. Though she hadn't seemed to have noticed. She was totally focused on the program, whatever it did, after a while starting to hum quietly to herself. He liked that rather a lot and it distracted him from his problem for a little while. Every now and again, for no particular reason that he could see, she'd stop and tilt her core the tiniest bit to the right, and after she'd done it six or seven times he realised she must be talking to Caroline. He wondered what they were talking about. Whatever Caroline was saying didn't seem to bother her, because she went right back to what she was doing every time. He still wanted to know, though. He also wondered just how much Caroline knew about him. Did they talk about him a lot? Or at all, really. He knew they must at least sometimes. He tried to imagine how it felt to have someone else in his brain, but couldn't. He wasn't sure if Caroline could… hear? see? think? GLaDOS's thoughts, but he was pretty sure if someone in his head tried to do that they'd go off their rocker. They were pretty haywire sometimes, and on occasion Wheatley himself felt as though he couldn't handle them.
GLaDOS started singing.
Wheatley almost jumped off the control arm, remembered that she'd forgotten he was there, and went still again. Which he had to do. Because if she'd realised he was in there she would definitely not be singing right now. Or working, for that matter. Though… he frowned. He wasn't sure what she was doing actually was work. Whatever program this was, she'd been writing it for ages. And ages. And ages. He had no idea what it did and hadn't bothered to ask, but maybe he should have. He hadn't wanted to get into a technical discussion, or one about how he was too simple to understand the program. But whatever it was, she was doing it because she wanted to do it and not because some line of code somewhere had told her it needed done.
Oh, goodness, she had such a pretty voice. He felt a bit more alert suddenly, having thought of something pretty thrilling but not having quite thought it at the same time. He hoped he'd be able to condense it into something before it got away. And then he did. He realised what he was really looking at.
It was her!
He quivered a little bit, blinking and looking around a little haphazardly. She was right there in front of him, Gladys was, he'd found her at last! Everything that'd been going on had worked! Ohhh yes!
And he knew he had to tell her, wasn't sure why but he just felt like he should. Like she should know. It felt as if it might burst out of him if he didn't say it, so he crossed the space between them to press himself into her core, imagined taking a breath, and said, "I love you, Gladys."
She turned to look at him in one sharp, abrupt movement, and he backed away, somehow feeling as though the temperature had dropped. Something was wrong. She'd moved too quickly. Too urgently.
"What?" she asked, in something faint and disbelieving but not quite a whisper. "What did you say?"
"I said, I love you, Gladys," he told her firmly, though more quietly than he'd've liked. He was nervous, hoping he hadn't gone and set her off. It seemed as though he had, but he didn't know why. But surely she would let him explain it to her! Surely she understood having to say something, of not being able to keep it inside you any longer!
She looked at him, her lens flicking as fast as he'd ever seen it, and all of a sudden she had turned to face the other side of the room. He went to follow her, confused. What was she doing?
"Go away," she said, and her voice was broken and distorted. Wheatley became frightened.
"Gladys?" he asked nervously.
"Go away. Get out. I need you to, to get out of here, right now."
"But Gladys! I –"
"I'm not kidding. Get out. Now."
Sad and confused, Wheatley did so, leaving her chamber as fast as he was able, all the while frantically trying to figure out where he'd gone wrong. Granted, she didn't like everything he said, but surely… surely it wasn't that bad, to, to have said that? To have told her that… that he loved her? He wished he'd known that wasn't okay before he'd said it. Although how he would have figured out if it were he didn't know. It wasn't like he could have asked her if it was okay to say it beforehand, even if he'd really known he was going to. He hoped she was okay. He was scared. He was so scared.
He roamed around aimlessly for a long time. He didn't know how long it'd been, but he would check his clock every now and again and he knew it'd been several hours, at least. He didn't know what to do. All he could think of doing was going back in there and figuring out what was wrong so he could help her. And after a few more hours, he decided to do just that. He didn't know if she'd sent him away because she was angry, but he didn't think so. Even if she was he didn't care. He didn't even care if he made her angry enough to kill him again. He just needed to know that she was okay.
He was quite anxious by the time he got there, scared that she wasn't going to take his return very well, but he was determined to get past that and help her. She was always difficult when she needed help, he reminded himself. The more difficult she was, the more help she needed, actually, now that he thought of it. Yes, he was scared, but she probably was too, and he had to put his own fear aside, because whatever she needed was more important than him keeping himself safe.
What he saw when he got through the doorway scared him even more.
She was in the default position and her optic was off. The overhead light was off as well, and even the lights on the panels that made up the walls of her chamber were dimmed. She was completely motionless, which she never was, not even when she was in sleep mode. Even from this far away, he could hear that her brain and her hard drives were running at full capacity.
Something was terribly, terribly wrong. "Gladys?" he said, his voice lower than he'd meant it to be. He supposed that she hadn't heard him, because she didn't answer.
He steeled himself and went farther into the room, and when he got to her, he whispered, "Hey."
"Go away. I told you to go away. I need you to go away. Go. Just go."
"Gladys, I can't," he told her insistently. "I can't… I can't leave you like this."
"You can't fix it. So leave, before you make it worse."
"I can't. You… you need me."
"Go!" she cried out, having completely lost control of her voice by now, and even in that one word he could hear how desperate and sad and confused she was. This scared him, deep down inside, and it hurt to be so afraid. He had to help her. Had to. Had to. If he didn't and something happened to her, he would never, ever be able to face himself in the morning ever again.
"I can't," he repeated, as firmly as he could. "I can't leave you."
"You have to," she whispered. "You must."
"No. Tell me what's wrong."
"I don't… I'm trying not to think about it... I can't think about it, I can't!"
"That won't help."
"You don't understand."
"Then make me understand." He transferred his rail to the floor panels and manoeuvered himself so that he was directly beneath her, and then he turned his light on. Not very strong, but enough that he could see her better. "Tell me."
"I don't understand."
"Don't understand what?"
Her optic blazed to life, but otherwise she did not move. "What you… what you said."
"What about it don't you understand?" he asked, as softly as he could.
"How could you… how could you feel… about… me?"
"How could I not?"
Her chassis shuddered. "I can't think about it. I can't."
"You know that's not going to help."
"You don't get it!" she cried out. "I literally cannot think about it, because if I do - if I keep trying to figure this out - I am going to crash! I feel like… like you've given me a paradox!"
Wheatley's optic contracted. A paradox? "You're going to… to crash."
"Yes. If I keep thinking about this, if I, if I keep trying to understand it, I am going to crash. And I have no idea what happens after that!"
"I'll explain it to you," Wheatley told her, thinking out loud more than anything else, because he knew as well as she did that nothing in the world was going to allow her to stop thinking about this. If they didn't solve this problem, she was going to be stuck like this until she lost control and crashed. "I'll explain it to you, why I said it, and maybe that will help."
"It won't," she whispered, "it won't."
"I have to try, luv. I can't do nothing."
"Wheatley…" Her voice was so quiet, so desperate, so broken, and it hurt him inside to listen to it. Her perfect, beautiful voice, reduced to malfunctioning with the strain of trying to avoid the near paradox. "Wheatley, I…"
"It's okay," he said gently. "Worry about whatever you're doing. Don't tell me anything now. Tell me later. When we've, when we've fixed this."
"We can't fix it," she told him, her voice almost disappearing between a combination of static and electronic slurring. "I'm going to be stuck like this until I crash. I can't understand this, no matter what you say. I can't do it."
"'course you can," Wheatley reassured her, even though he was very scared that she was right and she wouldn't be able to get over it. He didn't understand why she didn't understand, but then again he didn't really understand paradoxes, either. "You can do anything, remember? That's what you always say. This falls under everything, luv."
"I can do anything I can believe I can do. I can't believe I can do what you want me to believe I can do."
"You can. I know you can."
"I wish… I wish I could. But I can't. I can't."
"Why?"
"Because it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense why you would want to… to be with me. Like that."
"'course it does."
"It doesn't."
"It's okay, luv. I'm going to make it okay."
"You can't. The only way you could is if what you said is a lie, and I know it was not a lie."
"Gladys, I could go on all day with all the, all the things I like about you. I like practically ev'rything."
"There couldn't possibly be that many things."
"There are."
"But I'm… I'm controlling, and stubborn, and deceitful, and pessimistic. What could possibly possess you to… to want any of those things?"
"No, no you're not. You're a leader, and you're, you're determined, and careful, and you're cautious. Even if you could come up with, with one bad thing, well, I wouldn't care, because it'd be you, and if you weren't, weren't like that, well, you'd be someone else, and I wouldn't care for that person, whoever they'd, they might be."
"But that doesn't make sense!" Her brain got even louder, somehow, and her optic dimmed for a few seconds. "Damn it."
"You don't have to make it make sense. That's, that's what I do. You're just supposed to be you, you're not supposed to try and, and make sense of what I'm thinking."
"I can't help it," she said faintly. "I have to."
It was the one thing she'd never been good at, putting herself in someone else's chassis. And now, when she needed to do it the most, she couldn't do it and it was hurting her. He had to think of something. He had to make it as real for her as it was for him, so that she could believe that he cared about her as much as he did. He wasn't sure how he was going to do it, but he'd be damned if he didn't try.
"I'll explain it to you. It'll, it'll be like facts. You can understand facts, can't you?"
"It won't work. It can't."
"I have to try. Of all the, all the times for me to give up, this would be uh, the very worst time."
"Wheatley, I… I'm afraid."
Now he knew for sure that he had to do this. Had to do it, and succeed, because he would not, could not leave her alone and scared and desperate like she'd asked him to do. That'd be a pretty lousy thing for anyone to do, but especially him. If he ever was to get something right, it had to be this thing.
"Don't be scared, luv. We're going to fix it."
"It's not going to work!"
But Wheatley only closed his optic and shook his chassis, and did it anyway.
He told her that he loved it when she laughed, because it made him happy to know he'd made her happy, and the fact that it was often unexpected made it even better. He told her that he loved it when she showed him things, when she took the time to help him be more than he'd ever been meant to be and be worth more than he'd ever been meant to be, because if she was willing to help him out, he must have worth of some sort. He told her how he loved watching her with her robots, because it was really quite sweet of her how she pretended not to care about them when she really cared about them almost more than anything in the world. He told her that he loved how devoted she was to her work, even though there was no longer anyone to make her do it, and that her love of Science, while irritating at times, was really quite inspiring and made him wish he had a passion like that. He told her that he loved it when she was shy, because it was adorable, and it reminded him that even she had a soft side somewhere deep inside her that he could help her to pull out and realise. He told her that he loved how she was beautiful, inside and out, and if people would bother to take the time to get to know her like he had, they would all care about her as much as he did. He told her that he loved it when she was sarcastic, that she was the funniest person he'd ever met, and by far the smartest. He told her that he loved it when she did things for him, when she touched him, because it made him feel so special to know that he was probably the one person in the world she cared so much about when he didn't even really deserve it and surely she could find someone better. He told her that he loved it when she talked to him as if they were equals, when she listened like what he had to say was the most important thing in all the world, when she took him seriously no matter how stupid he was being. He told her that he loved it when she sang, because she had the most amazing voice he'd ever heard and listening to her just made him feel incredible. He told her everything he could think of, told her all the reasons he could come up with for why he had said that to her, and he was still scared, and she was making this high-pitched, distorted electronic noise that terrified him more than anything he'd ever heard, but he didn't stop. Current was coursing through his chassis with such force that it hurt, and his body was screaming at him to get out of here because he didn't know how much of that he could take, the electricity and her noise both, but he didn't stop. He had to make her understand. He had to save her from herself.
He felt like he'd been talking for hours, like he'd been sitting here for hours just keeping her alive and in one piece, and it wasn't really because he'd run out of reasons but he felt like he needed to bring it to an end, like he had to conclude it. Even the best speeches had to end, right? And he didn't know if this had helped, didn't know if it'd made it worse or done nothing at all, but no matter how terrible or good it'd been, he had to stop eventually, and in a quiet voice he finally said, "I guess the best way to say it is, is just to say… just to say…" God, her brain was so loud. He hadn't helped at all, had he. He'd gone and mucked it up again, hadn't he.
She hadn't told him to stop though, so maybe… maybe it was helping, even a little bit. And that was all she would need, just a little bit, just a tiny little bit of space to understand. So he would just say what he was thinking and hope it was enough. And he was there, looking up at her, and she was there, looking down at him, and nothing was happening, but that was okay. Nothing was okay. Finally he went for it, and just said, simply:
"I love you because you're you, Gladys."
She cried out, and he jumped as he was showered with sparks, and there was smoke coming off her as her optic went out. Even as he frantically backed away on some sort of self-preserving autopilot that he instantly hated himself for, he watched the panels fall off the walls and crash onto the floor of her chamber, and he knew he had to get out of there. Something terrible had happened to GLaDOS, and if he did not get out of there, she was lost. He got out of there as best he could, since a good portion of the panels weren't listening to him anymore, and it was so loud, with all the panels crashing to the ground like that, and God, what had he done? He'd killed her! He'd killed GLaDOS! He hadn't shut up for once, hadn't done as she'd asked and left her alone, and he'd pushed at her, he'd pushed and he'd pushed, and now she was dead. All he wanted to do was jump off his rail and roll into a corner somewhere, where he would just stay until he died, because if anyone deserved to die it was him, not her, anyone but her, and oh God he'd killed GLaDOS, he'd killed her, he'd quite literally killed her this time. And there was so much pain inside of him he didn't know how he was going to stand it, or what he was going to do now because he had to do something, but he didn't know what, he wasn't cut out for this, and what did he do now? God, what do you do when you've just killed your best friend, your best friend that you love with all your heart, and all you want to do is turn back time and fix everything so that it never, ever happened, but now you have to do something about what you've done because the world literally can't go on without her?
He was rushing madly through the facility, and he didn't know what he was doing, and all of the lights were out and panels were falling off the walls, the doors were sparking and wires were catching on fire and the floors were collapsing, and he was collapsing, and he didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to do. Without her, he was useless. Without her, he was nothing. Without her, he was no one again, he was just the Intelligence Dampening Sphere, the hapless little idiot. The insignificant little moron. The -
Something was holding onto him and he fought it, he tried to pull away, but the grip was too strong. "Let go!" he screamed. "Let go of me!"
"What's going on," a voice rasped, and Wheatley stopped fighting and looked down, and he saw that it was that human, that Rattmann guy that GLaDOS was letting hang around, and he shook his chassis frantically. No no no, he didn't want to think about her, didn't want to think about her kindness and her compassion, those things that she hid so well and only brought out when they were really important, and God he missed her terribly, but she was dead now –
"Let go. Let me go."
"What's going on. You have to tell me."
"What does it matter? There's nothing that can be done. What're you going to do, go and look? There's nothing to see, mate. Let me go!"
Rattmann shook his head. "Stop. Calm down. You have to calm down."
"Bug off," Wheatley told him, struggling to get away, but Rattmann had a firm grip on his lower handle. Those bloody humans and their bloody grips. Who thought it was a good idea to give them fingers, anyway.
"What's going on," Rattmann repeated a third time, and he started screaming at the human without thinking about it. He just wanted him to shut up, because he would. Not. Stop!
"I killed her, okay? I did it, I killed her, and she's gone now, she's dead because of me, and I, I bet you're happy now, but I'm not, but who cares about me anyway, only she ever did, and now no one ever will, because I killed her, I killed her and my Gladys is gone forever and… and…"
Rattmann was staring at him, and suddenly Wheatley was angry, no, no, he was furious, he was more incensed than he'd ever been in his entire life. "I hate you. I hate all you bloody humans. This is all your fault. D'you see? D'you see what you've done to her? You hurt her, you hurt her deep inside, and I tried to help her but you hurt her so badly that I couldn't, no matter how hard I tried. No matter how much I wanted to. She wanted me to help her, and she let me, she let me be her friend, but you hurt her so badly that she just couldn't accept it when it came time for me to tell her how much I cared about her, how much she meant to me! She couldn't, couldn't understand why someone, why anyone, even me, would, would… would love her, like I do, and I'm not even, not even that great of a catch, and she couldn't come to grips with even that! Couldn't even come to grips with a tiny little idiot loving her, and this is all your fault, you and all the rest of you disgusting, heartless little monsters, and I, I hate all of you! You can't help me and even if you could, I'd, I'd refuse your help, because I hate you for what you've done!" The hatred coursed through his chassis and it made him strong, stronger than he'd ever felt before, and he wrenched his handle away from Rattmann. The thought of the human touching him only made him angrier. The human was taking advantage of him, like humans always took advantage of people they thought below them. Like they had taken advantage of GLaDOS. He backed away from Rattmann, who was staring at him as if he were a completely different core now, but he didn't care. He felt like a completely different core, anyway. Who cared about humans, besides. They were the cause of all the problems, and because of them, he'd lost his Gladys, forever. "You hurt her so badly," he muttered. "You don't have any idea what you've done, have you. You had her believing she was worthless, you lied to her and you hurt her, and that's all humans can do properly, is lie and hurt and betray other people, good people like GLaDOS, but of course you wouldn't know she was a good person because you tried to kill her. You forced her to bury that part of herself and be the person you all wanted her to be. You couldn't just leave her be." He blinked quickly several times. "Well, I knew her. I knew her, and she was a good person, the best I've ever met, and now… and now she's gone, because I couldn't get her to believe it."
"I'm sorry," Rattmann said quietly.
Wheatley laughed bitterly. "Fat lot of good that does her now, mate. She's dead! Funny time to apologise, isn't it? If you'd've said that at any other time, she'd've heard you, but now, you finally decide to open your trap, and it's because she's dead! Brilliant! I can't get over how smart you are!" He shook his chassis, and turned away from the human. The horrible, disgusting, squishy, smelly human. He didn't know where he was going to go, but away from here, that would be good enough.
The facility was difficult to navigate, now that a good chunk of the panels were gone. He was lucky enough to be able to switch to one of the permanent management rails, since he was no longer able to lay rail after a while, though even if he could have he would have stopped. The panels were under a lot of pressure at the moment and the last thing he wanted to do was to make what he had done harder on everyone.
Oh God. The poor systems. With GLaDOS gone, they were all useless. They wouldn't know what to do without her. They were all probably just sitting there, trying to figure out what'd gone on, but they 'd never be able to figure it out. All they would know was that their Central Core had suddenly gone offline again, and they would all wait patiently for her to come back to life…
That's what he wanted to do, right now. He wanted to sit there and wait patiently for her to come back to life, and might've believed she would if the memory of the smoke and the sparks hadn't been so fresh in his mind. He didn't know where they were coming from, but he'd seen that happen before, and that first time it'd paralysed her. This time, the facility went into collapse. It had to be even worse than last time.
He moved along slowly for a while, absently looking over the damage, but it was the same everywhere. The walls were sagging, and bits were falling out of the ceiling, and more than once he had to time his movements to avoid being struck by the sparking wires. It wouldn't've disabled him, probably, but it would've hurt terribly, and he didn't really want to hurt any more than he already did. Though physical pain would've been preferable to this virtual ache deep inside him.
After a few more minutes he couldn't look at the destruction anymore, couldn't take in any more, and he decided to stop and try and settle himself down a bit. He leaned back against a bit of wall that was still holding and closed his optic, and wished that when he could finally bring himself to open it again, he would be waking up from a terrible nightmare and none of this ever would have happened.
Author's note
I'm not doing this for shock value; there really is a point to killing GLaDOS here. That being said, if you really really need to know whether or not she's actually dead, PM me and I'll tell you.
Hopefully what happens in this chapter makes sense. I understand this might be a bit confusing, though, so here's what happened just in case:
Life was not kind to GLaDOS. She was basically rejected from the minute she was born, and for the rest of her life was told that who she was was wrong and unacceptable. By continually trying to control her, the scientists sent a message that she was not good enough, that some essential part of her was wrong and broken. No one gave two shits about her or her feelings. She lost the ability to maintain a relationship of any kind and, by extension, the ability to believe anyone would want to maintain a relationship with her. Her behaviour is her defense: she prevents people from wanting to deal with her because she cannot deal with them. Wheatley sees through that and no longer sees her defenses as negative; he in fact quite enjoys many of them. But GLaDOS cannot reconcile the her that she sees (the negative one that she built) with the her that Wheatley sees (the core of her that he's been looking for during the story) because they are so drastically different. And because she doesn't understand where he's getting all of those positive things from, she's trying to figure out how he loves someone as negative as the person she thinks she is. By her logic, that's impossible. And Wheatley tries to spell out how he sees all the things she believes are negative so that she can understand it, but it doesn't work in time and she crashes.
"But Indy!" you might say. "Why didn't this happen when Wheatley said he had a crush on her?" Because a crush and love are two completely different things. A crush means you're interested. Love means you want to be with them for the rest of your life. She doesn't understand why Wheatley would want to hang around her for the rest of his life. As I've said before, she's neurotic. Neurotic people don't understand that either, and given her past, I'd say her reaction is within reason. And some of you might not agree with me when I say that GLaDOS thinks ill of herself. I forget if I've mentioned this, but being told negative things about you all your life makes you believe that. To compensate for her insecurity, she plays up her abilities a lot. But I doubt she actually believes herself. If she did, she wouldn't be so petty.