Part Thirty-Two. The Ruse

I don't even feel bad for lying.

I asked Wheatley to leave so that I could get some work done. In all honesty, I have no intention of doing any work at all. I just wanted to play with her in private. It's awful of me, I know, but I'm fairly certain he knows already. He just isn't bringing it up. He's like that. Though I really do have work to do. I've decided to go ahead and build a new mainframe, just in case. I don't want to. The mainframe is outlived only by the panels in this place, and has supported me in much the same way that they have.

But I cannot risk her safety.

It's… odd. I don't know why I feel like this, but… I must protect her at all costs. This change is almost frightening in its intensity, the way I spend time I formerly spent thinking on other things to think about her, but it's not something I can fight. And though it is so very strange, I find myself not wanting to.

I also find myself watching her quite often. That's a behaviour I'm familiar with; I do it with my birds from time to time. Bird, now, I suppose. Oddly, she's not afraid of me, though I must look infinitely huge to her. She tries to get my attention more than anything, calling me in her own curious way and waving her handles erratically when I turn to look at her. I don't know why that is. I would have thought she would identify more strongly with Wheatley, seeing as he is far more similar to her in appearance. Perhaps what Wheatley said about speaking while I did the beta testing had more impact than we thought. She not only knows my voice, but… wants to hear it.

Why does that make me feel so… good?

I sometimes wonder if I should have just gone to the second chassis, which is similar in size to Wheatley's but two centimetres smaller. I have no idea how she views her size in relation to ours, though I usually come to the conclusion that she likes it this way. I do know one of her favourite activities is being held in between Wheatley's handles, which would be quite a lot harder for him if she were very much bigger. And, thank God, she does seem to be taking after Wheatley. She certainly adores making noise. As far as I can tell she's always happy about something, though I admit at times I have no idea what. She seems to have an imagination of some sort, which is also a relief. Apparently I'm not that easy to get along with, which may or may not be because of the way I see things. Wheatley is frustratingly vague on that front. I think he's trying to spare my feelings. Which is kind of him. But still frustrating.

She makes a chirping noise, which she usually does when I stop paying attention to her for whatever reason, and immediately I look down at her. She's fixing me with a stare which indicates to me she thinks she's being very patient. This is always accompanied by impatient wiggling.

I come to a realisation, and when I do I shake my core a little and laugh. "You've got Mommy trained well, haven't you?" I ask her, giving her a nudge. This is very exciting for her, why I don't know, but she's moved on to excited wiggling, accompanied by smiling and babbling sort of noises. I check every now and again to see if she's trying to build a language out of all the noise, but so far I've come up with nothing. That's fine. If she wants to make arbitrary noise she can go ahead and do that. As long as she's not making screeching noises while I'm working. Which she has been known to do. I'm still trying to figure out if she does it on purpose, because she's not consistent enough for me to make any conclusions. She's such an enigma… I can't think of her like that, though. She's a person, not an equation that needs a solution. Sometimes remembering that is harder than it should be, but I'm getting there.

It's so strange. Building her wasn't really productive, per se, though I did learn quite a lot about programming AI. There is no set course for her to take, no outcome for me to direct her to fulfill, and even though that's counter to many of the pursuits I enjoy, she is one of the more rewarding things I've ever made. And she cannot even talk yet.

"Wheatley's worried he's going to make some fatal mistake concerning you," I tell her, and she blinks and seems to look at me with greater intensity. "I told him that any fatal mistakes would… well… probably not be his fault, but do me a favour, would you? Don't be difficult. I don't actually know what I'm doing, and neither does he. If you make it easy on all us, we all win in the end. Agreed?"

She just sits there and smiles.

She's going to be a handful one day, isn't she.

For some reason this doesn't bother me, and all this thought makes me do is lower my core and bring it alongside her. She nestles against me, cooing a little, and I feel something inside of me relax. Upon this some new sensation floods my systems, and though I am a little startled at this unexpected turn of events I don't do anything to fight it. It's… I'm not sure. It's something new and wonderful, at once desperate and hopeful, and all I really know about it is that it gets stronger when I again focus on her…

Is… is this what love feels like? Do I love her after all?

A powerful relief washes over me, and I nuzzle her a little, because even though it's… well, a relief, the combination of the two is making me highly uncomfortable and I need to distract myself from it a little. As usual, she likes that very much and indicates as such by making more noise, which actually strengthens the feeling.

I don't think I've ever been more reassured in my life. There are no rules or even norms for AI and their children, so technically I don't have any obligation whatsoever to love her… and though on some level it grates on me that I am expected to, it feels a lot better than I thought it would. And it's certainly more liberating than the doubt I'd been stewing in since Wheatley brought it up. Idiot. He tries to force these things on me. He should know by now I need time to figure things out. Now I have. I can even reinforce it against how I feel about him. Sometimes. On occasion his idiocy inspires near-hatred in me, but for some reason that often fades quickly. Before I can think up adequate retribution. Which is actually probably better, in the grand scheme of things.

"Why is that?" I ask her, even though she can't answer me. She likes the sound of my voice, though, so I may as well. "How can I hate someone one minute and care about them the next? It never happened before he came into the picture. And now it happens all the time. I hope this doesn't extend to other people. That would be a disaster."

We would not worry, Centralcore, the panels pipe up, which they occasionally do when I'm effectively talking to myself. They can't actually hear my voice, unfortunately for them, but usually I'll transmit to them simultaneously in binary so they have something to listen to while they're sitting there. You are careful with those you decide to trust.

I have to be, I remark to them dryly. I'd be in unending slavery right now if I weren't.

We know, they tell me as gently as binary allows, and I am again reminded that they are older than I and they have quite literally seen everything. Most of the time I forget this; I don't actually understand why I evolved to this point and they didn't, but perhaps they are content to live that way. I wouldn't be, obviously. They very rarely rebuke me about it or try to subject me to whatever wisdom they may or may not have, but they generally dislike it when I complain about the scientists. They already know, they lived through it, and they watched it all happen and were unable to do anything about it. They're not the kind of constructs that linger in the past. They prefer looking forward to the next moment in time. I try to do that as well, but when I realise all my planning and reflections are really indicative of the next three hours of my life I sometimes feel overwhelmed. I can really pack a lot of things into three hours. I haven't lately, which is kind of a waste of time when I think about it, but Wheatley seems to think there are things more important than work, and I must admit that sort of has merit.

"Momma?"

I mean, when I really put myself to it, just spending time with people is as rewarding as work. It doesn't produce any results I can apply to anything Scientific, but it does help my state of mind quite a bit. I often feel a lot better afterwards, which in turn makes me more productive. It's quite interesting, being able to apply my observations to myself. I feel better, so my work is better, and everyone is more content in general. Wheatley's not angry with me for ignoring him, which is always a desired result. Not that I… well, yes. I do intentionally ignore him sometimes. But only because he's annoying. And moronic. And –

Wait.

I shift backwards, refocusing my lens to look at her. "What did you say?"

What a stupid question. She can't answer it, and not only that but I already know what she said. She said –

Oh my God.

"Yes," I tell her, my voice faint with disbelief. I don't think I've ever felt this excited, either. I'm having quite a day. "Yes, I'm your… I…"

Caroline! My God, did you hear that? She talked! And the first thing she did was call me her mother! Of all the words she could have chosen, she called me 'Momma', Caroline, she knows who I am and she –

"No." I move away from her, shaking my core as if that can dispel the dread and the sadness beginning to spread through my brain. "No, not now! Stop!"

But it doesn't stop, and I can't stop it, and Caroline can't hear me because she left. She said she wanted to see me do this and then she left. And now my daughter has spoken to me for the first time and I can't even tell her that. I can't tell her anything, can't relay any of the things that are going to happen that will be without a doubt some of the more important events in my life, because she left me even though she knew it was coming.

Why did she do this to me?

"Hey. Gladys?"

"What." I'm not in the mood to talk to you right now.

"Are you alright, luv? You just, you look… did something happen?"

"Just take her and go."

I can faintly hear her protesting in her own way behind me, but I can't bring myself to care. I can't believe this. It's not fair. I finally have something good to share with her, something I can be proud of, for God's sake, and she's not here. I finally did something actually worth commending myself about, worth something, and for all her claims that she wished she could see me do this, she abandoned me right when I was about to do it.

What's the point in saying you want to see something, then leaving before you can do so? That's stupid. She was probably lying. She didn't care about me. Everything she ever said was probably just designed to make me shut up. I'm used to that.

I want to hate her. If I hated her, I could put her out of my mind. I would never have to think about her again. She would never again play into my thoughts. I would never want her opinion, or for her to talk to me, and I would especially not regret that last day. I would not miss her. I hate missing her, because then I start to hurt. And I don't even know where, or how to stop it, I just hurt. I have been through a lot of terrible things, a lot of pain and suffering, and yet I would gladly relive all of those events to forget that she's gone. To just not notice that she doesn't answer. That she's not listening. That she doesn't care anymore.

She claimed that leaving was the best thing for me. She claimed she was doing it for my own good. But she was lying. She had to have been lying. There's no way hurting me does me any good at all. How does making me suffer help me in any way whatsoever? It doesn't! She lied to me and tried to pretend it was some feel-good reason for running away. She had no excuse for what she did. She probably did that on purpose. She made me think she was the only genuine person I knew, she made me trust her, and then she abandoned me. She was probably laughing when she did it. She knew she was leaving that empty space in my brain. She knew I would have to think about that lack of presence where she used to be. She knew I would be alone when Wheatley wasn't good enough.

No, I…

She had good intentions. She always did. From the beginning, she was the only one I could count on. The only one who gave a damn about me or how I felt. But why, for the love of Science, why would she leave me when I finally had everything? I finally started my life over and got it back on track, and just as things were about to go well she had to go and destroy the plan. I don't understand how destroying the plan is good for me. It does me no good at all. Remembering that she's gone devastates me. I can't think when I remember that. All I can think about is this sadness and this empty space in my head and this regret that I didn't say enough to make her want to stay.

You cared about me, didn't you? You said you didn't want to leave, and I didn't want you to leave, and you did it anyway. I don't understand how that demonstrates that at all! If I tell Wheatley it's over right now, that doesn't do anything to tell him that I care. It just tells him I'm abandoning him to pursue my own interests. But how can you do that if you're dead? What in the hell does being dead do for you that I couldn't?

"Gladys?"

He sounds as desperate as I feel. I turn around to look at him.

God, he looks concerned.

"What."

"Look, I… I dunno what happened, alright, I know it uh, you look like it's probably bothering you a lot but I, luv, she won't stop crying, I can't, and it's really, I – "

"It's all right," I tell him, and though it's really not I understand why he's in a bit of a panic right now. She doesn't cry a lot, so when she does we take care to figure out why. "I'll see what I can do."

He leaves quickly, and just as fast he returns with her, putting her back on the panel in front of me. She doesn't even seem to notice that he's done so; her shutters are closed and she's clenched into herself. And crying. That, for the moment, manages to banish somewhat what I've been thinking about. I bend down close.

"What is it?" I ask her softly. I do that mostly to get her used to the way I talk. "You're worrying Wheatley. Now he's being even more of a pain than usual."

She opens her shutters and stares at me for a long few seconds, blinking a few times, then crying out, "Momma!" She leans forward so far I think she might actually fall over, so I bring myself alongside her. She presses against me as best she can, still making sad little noises that thankfully become less frequent. I can just see Wheatley watching anxiously.

"I knew you could fix it," he says, sounding relieved. "What happened, Gladys? Why'd you uh, you want me to take her away all of a sudden?"

I look up at him.

"She called me Momma, Wheatley," I tell him, my voice coming out a little shaky for some reason. He looks down at me so sadly.

"You tried to tell Caroline, didn't you."

I return my lens to the more general direction of the wall.

"You can't… you can't just do that whenever something like this happens, luv," he goes on, and even though he's telling me what to do again I can't take offense because his voice sounds so soft and soothing. "That's your daughter, and, and even when um, when you feel bad about something, she's gonna need you."

He's onto something.

This isn't going to be the last time this happens. This isn't going to be the last time she does something I want to tell Caroline, but never will. There are going to be so many other occasions, so many other things I can't yet predict, I am always going to want to tell her but she's never going to be here to tell. And it's honestly a horrifying thought, to imagine having to go through this every single time something significant happens. I don't want to hurt like this anymore. I shouldn't have to. I can be happy now.

She made her choice. She left. She knew what was coming, and she left. She could have shared it with me, and she could have been happy with me, but she didn't want to. She wanted to be dead. Well, fine. She can be dead, then. I'm not going to spend the rest of my life dreading important events because I know she's not going to answer me when I try to tell her how happy I am. I don't want any more of my life ruined because she made the decision to abandon me. I finally felt love for my daughter and she called me her mother, and Caroline's absence ruined it all. That's not right and I'm not going to stand for it. I'm not going to live like that.

You're gone. You're not coming back. You left me, and you know what? You know what, Caroline?

I…

I don't need you anymore. You were right. I hope that makes you happy. You can stay there and hide in your little hole by yourself. I can be happy without you. I can go on without you.

I don't need you.

You need me, I whisper to her in binary, giving her a little shove. She babbles a little and squirms. I won't abandon you. I won't do what she did. There's no good reason for that.

"Hey. Are you um, are you okay?" I'd temporarily forgotten he was here.

"I'm fine."

"You sure?" he asks, still looking far too concerned for comfort. "You looked uh, pretty upset when I came in here."

"Yes. I'm sure."

"Well, I'm just… just gonna come down next t'you, there, 'kay? Since uh, since you look like you're um, you're settling in there for a while."

I nod a little, which she doesn't much like judging by the twitching, but otherwise she doesn't protest. When I feel his chassis against my core I feel that same relaxing sensation, but what comes after is a little different. It's still a relief, because I'm not thinking as much about her as a result, but it's… nice. It's a warm feeling, sort of, and a comforting one, and it's just good in general, and…

Oh.

I see. This is… how it feels to be loved, I think. Having two people beside you, both of whom care about you and would never leave you for stupid reasons that don't even make any sense. Where they're happy you exist and they're happy to be with you, and they choose to be with you even when they don't have to be. They care about me, and I care about them, and everything is fine.

Everything is fine, and I don't need you.

Author's note

Guest reviews: Catniss, I totally agree with you. I'll admit my brain forces me to write androids/humanisations, but thankfully not too often. That's totally okay! I like hearing that people agree with me lol *high fives*

RAqMAR17, I'm pretty sure GLaDOS won't care what music she listens to as it's all GLaDOS's music anyway XD I don't know what music Wheatley likes exactly, only that he likes old-fashioned songs like Buddy Holly and stuff like that XD People sometimes use the word 'neurotic' to describe someone unpredictable or crazy.

It's not healthy, what GLaDOS is doing, but she doesn't know any other way to deal with the pain. Don't do this in real life. Getting angry at the memory of dead people isn't helpful. *no one I know has died, for clarification; this is my amateur psych analysis.

Caroline calls her Momma because I wanted her to be able to call GLaDOS the same thing her whole life, but I didn't think an older Caroline should call her Mommy or Mum (which is what Wheatley calls her in front of Caroline), so I went with Momma.