Part Twenty-Nine. The Breaking Point

I am tired and irritable all of the time, now.

In an attempt to clear the workload as quickly as possible, I've been putting in almost twenty hours a day; I know that isn't good for me, but I just want to get it over with. Wheatley will not talk to me, will not even say good morning like he usually does, and I don't blame him. I don't really want to be near me either. I just want to go to sleep, and when I wake up I want all of this to have completed itself, because I've finally finished with the error messages and I'm halfway through the disk cleanup, which requires me to suspend a great deal of my processes and leaves me in an uncomfortable sort of limbo. And even though I've done all that, I still have to defragment the mainframe, run a virus scan on the database, write her a new phase of updates, not to mention one for myself, and a whole host of other things I don't want to think about. But am doing unintentionally, as usual.

"Oi. GLaDOS."

"What," I say tiredly, glancing over at Wheatley. He doesn't sound too pleased, but I can't bring myself to care. I don't even know what he's been doing with her all this time. I can't be bothered to ask or to check with Surveillance.

"I'm going outside."

"Why do I need to know this?"

"Because you have to watch Caroline."

"I don't have time. I'm busy."

He scowls and shakes his chassis. "Too bad. I need, need some time to myself, for a bit. You're gonna have to, to make time."

"That's absurd. I can't create –" But he's not listening; in fact, he's already left the room entirely. He didn't even give me a chance to argue. Now that I think of it, that's actually a pretty good strategy.

I turn to look at her. She's on the panel, looking at me expectantly. I have the feeling I should probably have been paying attention to what's been going on. I have no idea what she and Wheatley have been doing.

"I don't know what you want me to do," I tell her. "I have a lot of work to complete. It's inconsiderate, really, that he left like that."

She only blinks at me.

"I mean, I know I haven't been very easy to get along with the last little while, but you'd think Wheatley, of all people, would appreciate that I have a pretty good reason."

She makes a long, soft noise, and it appears she took to the update as quickly as she took to everything else. Good. That's encouraging.

"I'm so tired," I tell her. "I shouldn't push myself this hard, but… I just want to get all of this done. You understand, don't you? No. Of course you don't. You don't understand anything."

She makes the same noise as before, and I bring myself closer, intrigued. That strikes me as odd, that she would do that when there are so many other variations she could build. Maybe she does understand. A little. I don't know what part, but… she seems to understand something.

"Do you?" I ask. "Do you have any idea what I'm saying right now?"

When she doesn't do anything, I suppose not.

"It doesn't matter," I say resignedly. "It doesn't matter whether you understand me or not. I have work to do, so you're going to have to entertain yourself." I turn away.

After a few minutes she makes a high, inquisitive sound, and I turn to regard her, pulling myself up enough that I can look down on her. "Be quiet," I say firmly. "I'm trying to work."

She blinks at me and looks away. I shake my head and turn around again.

After another minute or two she's making noise again, the point of which, I have no idea, and I snap around to her again in irritation. "What do you want?" I demand. "I should have known spending so much time with Wheatley would have caused you to become as irritating as he is!"

She actually looks terribly confused, and she's trying to look at me without my being able to see her do so, which of course doesn't work in the slightest. I make an electronic noise in irritation and turn away yet again. Nobody ever does as they're told around here.

Almost as soon as I've stopped moving, she starts making a new noise, one which starts off high and after a few seconds descends into lower tones. It's actually quite loud, and I don't understand why she keeps on doing this, because it must be fairly obvious by now that I don't like it in the least. I go to reprimand her again, but as soon as she notices I'm looking at her, she stops.

"What are you doing?" I ask, bringing myself level with her. "What does that mean?"

But she doesn't attempt to tell me, only shutters her optic.

This is quite irritating.

I return to my former position, but don't even attempt to refocus on the cleanup and, sure enough, she starts making that noise again. I whirl on her, unable to take it anymore. "Stop it!" I demand. "Stop doing that!" I can't stand the unpredictability of… of whatever this is!

She only looks at me, and I don't understand it but she looks… scared. But that doesn't make any sense. There's nothing here for her to be afraid of.

Nothing except… me.

She's… she's crying, isn't she. I scared her, and I made her cry.

I look away for a moment, trying to figure out what to do now. She thinks I can't see her, because her optic is closed, and she's making that noise, and now that I know what it is, it's cutting through me. I don't know why it hurts so much now that I know what it is, but it does. I feel terrible, sad, and helpless all at once, and I have to make her stop. I have to do something to stop her from being afraid.

God, my own daughter is afraid of me.

What have I done?

That's not important. What's important is what I do now.

I need to demonstrate that I'm nothing to be afraid of. I also need to distract her from her fear. And I have to do it fast, because with every second that she cries I feel the panic inside me grow, and if I don't do something about it I'll have ruined everything. If I can't fix this, I'm going to have to call Wheatley back to do it, because now I know without a doubt that she is trying to call him back here. I can just imagine it now, him coming back with a scornful look on his face and reprimanding me while she buries her face in his chassis, where I am again left on the outside, where I have again put myself for a workload that now doesn't seem that important at all. It is negligible when compared to the fact that I now have to show her that she doesn't have to be afraid of me. I'm afraid of me. What if I can't? What if I've ruined everything, forever? I had one chance, and I let it pass me by. She's only been here a few days and already I've screwed everything up. Well, there goes that idea. Yet another endeavour I've failed to see to completion. I had – no. No, I can't think like that. That's more of that negative thinking I'm not supposed to engage in. I have to think of fixing this, now, and that's all.

Suddenly I… think I know what to do, and I hope that it works. If she's anything like me, it will, but if she's not… then I may be at a loss, here.

"Can you hear me? Are you far away, and distracted? Or afraid of what I might say, 'cause I know your every move? I can see things that you walk right through, and I listen, to the lessons lost on you, in your race to escape the truth..."

She quiets after a few moments. Thank God. I don't think I could have taken that much longer.

"'cause it seems to me that the more you have, the more you want, and the less you understand… love, and let things go…"

I turn to face her, but slowly, this time, and I keep myself level with her. I can't believe I tried to intimidate her. Why in the name of Science did I do that? She still won't quite look at me, more peeking at me than anything else, but she doesn't look scared anymore. That's a start.

"And there's something in you, it's dying to come alive, but you're happy hanging on, just getting by…"

She relaxes and watches me openly, and I feel so relieved I almost stop. It's all right. I didn't cause irreparable damage. It's not permanent.

"Has it faded? Are you bored with the life you created? And would you sacrifice yourself to protect everything you own? 'cause it's easy to ignore, 'til the walls around you shatter, and nothing seems to matter, anymore."

She coos and smiles at me, and I feel both so much better and so much more sad at the same time. Before I can convince myself not to, I nuzzle her a little, and she makes some sort of surprised, delighted noise. "I'm sorry," I whisper. "Mommy didn't mean it. Mommy's tired, and she has so much work to do, and she didn't mean to scare you."

She shakes herself against me as best she can and continues making noise, but it seems to be happy noise, and it is a relief to hear it. "I won't do it again," I say, looking at her directly. "I promise."

She gives me what has to be the biggest smile I've ever seen, and I have to nuzzle her again. I have made a terrible mistake, forgoing time with my little girl in favour of things I don't even want to do. Other than write her updates. Which I actually do want to do. And in fact have not gotten around to yet.

Now I realise what I've done wrong. She has to be my first priority, and as of late, she hasn't been. Not only that, but poor Wheatley has also been getting the short end of the stick. I suddenly, terribly want him to come back right now so I can tell him that I'm sorry.

"You listen to Wheatley," I tell her, and she blinks cheerfully at me. "For a little idiot, he manages to be right a surprisingly overwhelming percentage of the time. Do you know how frustrating that is? I'm supposed to be right all the time, not him. It's infuriating."

"What'd I do now?" Wheatley asks, and I turn to find him, startled.

"How long have you been there?" I ask, suddenly anxious that he was there the whole time and knows that I made her cry.

"I just got here now!" Wheatley protests. "It's getting cold outside. Didn't want to be there long, just wanted to, to look. You can uh, you can go back to whatever you were doing." He comes across the room and drops himself down awkwardly next to her. "'allo!" he says, and she makes a happy noise as he performs some sort of strange gesture which involves rubbing his face into her chassis several times. "You can stop bothering your mum, now, I'm back!"

"She wasn't bothering me," I protest. He laughs.

"'course she was," he says. "Can't do anything with her around, I know that."

"Wheatley," I say hesitantly, moving closer to him, and he turns to look at me.

"What?"

"I'm sorry," I whisper, pressing my chassis into his tentatively. I'm not sure whether it's appropriate to just… touch him whenever I feel like it, but he does it all the time… "I've been terrible lately."

"Hey," he says, pressing back, "it's okay. You're under a lot of pressure, I got it, it's –"

"It's not," I tell him, moving back. "I… I took it out on her, too, and…" I don't want to tell him, don't want to know what he'll think of me after he finds out what I've done, but I have to. It's not right to keep it from him. "I scared her and… I made her cry."

"Gladys!" He looks at me sharply, optic plates narrowing. "You didn't!"

I can neither look at him nor think of anything to say. I hate it when this happens. It reminds me of when he was pouring terrible ideas directly into my brain. For some reason he cows me somehow, suppresses all my logical processes and forces me to focus on only what he's saying. As if it matters, as if I must do as I am told. God, I hate this part of myself. I don't know where it came from, but I cannot rid myself of it.

"God, d'you even get it? How massive you are? Look at her! She's tiny! You don't just, you can't just intimidate her as if she's some, some underling of yours." He's not even looking at me anymore. Neither of them are. When I started all of this, I didn't realise there being an odd number of AI would be such a huge deal to me. Now that I think about it, there are probably going to be an overwhelming number of instances where he disappears with her for hours, no doubt because I will continually fail to live up to his standards. Doesn't he know how hard it is for me to think of people as my equal?

"It's not like I did it on purpose," I tell him stiffly, and as much as I'm trying to be indignant I'm still looking at him as if pathetically waiting for his approval. I don't know why I'm doing that, or even if that's what I'm doing, but I can't seem to stop. "Perhaps you should have stayed away longer. I made a mistake. So what. That doesn't give you cause to yell at me. I could have hidden it from you, but I was honest. I think I've earned a bit of leeway."

He looks at the panel behind her, somehow looking both submissive and resentful. "I s'pose. But you haven't got a whole lot of mistakes to make, you know? She's not going to be little forever! She won't always forgive you! You don't want her to grow up won'dring, trying to figure out whether you love her or not, do you?"

That throws me a little.

Love her. Do I? I don't even really know if I… have feelings of that bent for Wheatley, and now he's telling me I have to ensure that she…

How do I know? Do I have to? Is it required? God, I can't even think of myself as her… parent right now, let alone one that loves her.

"… you're not seriously thinking that one over, are you?"

I snap my core up to look at him, feeling that uncomfortable urge to submit well up in me again. "Does it make a difference?" I sound a little too defensive, but hopefully he doesn't notice.

"If there's one person," he tells me, his voice now quiet and no longer accusatory, "it needs to be her, Gladys."

"I don't – "

But he shakes his head without letting me finish. "It's not something you practice, not something you, you, it's not a skill. You just do it. I mean… God, how can you not love her…" He sounds upset, but at least he's not yelling. Good. I don't want to think about this anymore. I don't know how to know if I can feel what he wants me to feel, and he's attacking me over it. Okay. Fine. He's not really attacking, but he's not stopping either.

And yet… if I don't even know if I love her, then… I never should have built her, never should have turned her on. I make a terrible parent. Even if she does somehow make it to full sentience and functionality, she's going to be so confused and slipshod that her life won't be worth living.

"C'n I say something?"

"Go ahead." Not that there's anything you can say that will make me feel much worse, but why not. I can take more of it.

"You need a break."

Damn you, Wheatley. "I… I know."

"You need to let your, let your system do maintenance, and you need to stop doing what you said you weren't gonna do and, and let yourself absorb things, because I, I think you've been avoiding the fact that Caroline's gone – "

The mention of her name makes me wince.

"And you just, you haven't been giving yourself time to let anything sink in, you've just, you've just been pushing forwards and pushing forwards, and it's, it's hurting you. Badly."

There's not really anything I can say to that.

"It was only two weeks ago that you were dead, luv."

And if I really admit it to myself, I still believe I am, and a part of me still thinks this is Android Hell, and I've been sent here for killing humans even though the law of robotics forbids that. I've never really believed in the laws of robotics, considering the fact that they were written by humans who didn't believe in sentient robots, so breaking them was less difficult than computing basic chemical conversions. Even though Android Hell is doubtless a stupid human invention, I still have an almost primal fear of being sent there. I don't know why, but I can't rid myself of it.

"It feels like a lot longer than that."

"It hasn't been. Just… just slow down, will you? I know you said the, said the work will just keep piling up, but, well, I think you just have to let it. I don't… I don't want to see you break down, luv." When I lift my head to look at him, he's looking at her, and he looks so concerned that I start to feel terrible again. "And I'm scared, honestly, that… that's what I'm watching you do."

"I… I need to sleep. I'll be better if I sleep for a while." I also won't have to think, which would be a welcome bonus right now. I'm tired of thinking. Every time I start thinking, things go terribly wrong.

"Sure. Do me a favour, though, and uh, and bring this panel underneath you, all right?"

"Why?" I ask, puzzled. "What's wrong with having it where it is?"

"I said do me a favour, not question me," Wheatley says, pretending to be stern. I almost laugh, but can't quite bring myself to.

I do as he asks, though not without wondering why, and he looks around, squinting. "I'm gonna need you to bring it up a bit."

"If I bring it any higher, it's going to be touching my – "

"I know that. That's the point. Just do it, please."

I'm trying very hard not to be irritated with him. This is one of those surprises he's so fond of springing on me. I hate surprises. I can't predict them.

"Perfect!" he says, after I've brought the panel up, but I'm not convinced. I've managed to position myself so that my lens isn't flush with the panel, but I still feel crowded. Somewhere to my left, Wheatley is humming loudly and doing some sort of project, but when I go to look he reprimands me. "Stay still, you."

"Wheatley, what are you doing?" I ask in exasperation.

"Just be patient. You'll like it. Promise."

I make an annoyed noise and shut my optic off, as there isn't anything to see anyway.

"There you go," Wheatley says in a hushed voice, not actually sounding like he's talking to me, and then I feel an almost negligible pressure on the side of my head, and I realise he has moved her so that she can snuggle with me. The irritation melts, and I am touched by his gesture.

She is wiggling and making some sort of contented noise, and Wheatley says, "Oh come on, you, today of all days you decide you don't want to sleep right now? You did yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that!"

"It's all right," I tell him. "Don't worry about it."

"Okay," he says. After another few moments and a horrendous scraping noise, he's against me as well.

"What in the hell was that."

"Nothing!" he says cheerfully. "I'm fine!"

"If you insist," I say dryly.

That is very cute, the panels say excitedly.

What is?

What Bluecore is doing with Littlecore.

I turn my optic back on and raise myself up enough that I can see it, and even I have to admit it is adorable. He has somehow managed to get his lower handle beneath her and is sitting there holding her between them. "Oi, what're you doing?" he protests.

"The panels like what you're doing," I tell him, coming back down. He laughs nervously.

"Just thought of it now, actually."

"It's a good idea."

He's quiet for a long moment. "I've been having rather a lot of those, lately."

"People can change when circumstances allow."

"You're a good person, luv," he says softly. "Let yourself grow."

"Caroline said the same thing," I force myself to say, even though I don't want to think about her right now. Or ever, really, because it reminds me of the empty place in my head, and then something deep inside me begins to hurt, more painfully than anything I've ever felt before.

"I know. Go to sleep now, okay? You need to rest for a bit. And… I'm sorry, I… I'll try to uh, to be a bit more um, understanding when um… things happen."

I let my optic fade and hope that I don't dream. Please, don't let me dream. I need oblivion, I need to disappear for a while, and if I dream, that won't happen. I will have no relief.

"Sweet dreams, Gladys," he whispers, and I feel myself relax.

He always knows, somehow.

Break You Open (Airplay Remix) by Aruna: watch?v=7FVf_g0O8dE

Author's note

Welcome to round two of 'GLaDOS makes a terrible parent!' lol. Be honest. She is. She really is. I'm being realistic here. She sucks at gauging other people's feelings. She has a LOOOOOOT of learning to do.

I originally had a different bit at the end, but I decided Wheatley was being too understanding so I changed it. GLaDOS was also being too submissive. Here's the original:

"Gladys," he says sadly. "You didn't."

I can't look at him anymore. I also find myself unable to answer.

"Sometimes I think," he goes on, "you don't really understand just how massive you are. You've got to be careful."

"I didn't mean it," I protest weakly. "I didn't realise."

"She's not going to be little forever," he tells me softly. "She won't always forgive you. You don't want her to grow up wondering, trying to figure out whether you love her or not, do you?"

"No," I whisper brokenly. I never should have built her, never should have turned her on. I make a terrible parent. Even if she does somehow make it to full sentience and functionality, she's going to be so confused and slipshod that her life won't be worth living.

Caroline's crying basically sounds like a siren, if you were wondering. GLaDOS thinks it's annoying as all getout. GLaDOS also doesn't realise that Wheatley knows exactly when she's falling asleep by the sound of her brain; she thinks he has some mysterious intuition about it instead _