Part Thirty-Seven. The Gift
After that day, it was quite obvious to Wheatley that GLaDOS was making a real effort. Not that she hadn't been trying before; of course she had! she was GLaDOS after all. But she was different. She was trying harder. And when GLaDOS decided she wanted something done, she did it. So she was doing it.
He could tell how hard it was for her. Sometimes he'd trail Caroline back to her chamber and watch as she pleaded with GLaDOS to do something or another, and GLaDOS would look back at her monitor or her motherboard or whatever else she was working on. To Wheatley it was crystal clear how badly she wanted to refuse. How badly she wanted to continue with her work, to put Caroline aside until she was finished. And some days the pull of completion won out. She would shake her core and tell Caroline to wait. It always hurt Wheatley a little to see that. Not just because Caroline would come sadly back to him and he would have to deal with her feelings of rejection, but because of the struggle he was just realising GLaDOS went through. Where she had to fight against her very nature and attempt to do something she was in no way designed to do. She must have felt quite terrible as well. It could not at all be a good feeling, to have to face the fact that she'd chosen work over her little daughter who so obviously wanted to spend time with her. But Wheatley wasn't mad at her, or disappointed, or any of that. Just like he couldn't keep his vocabulator quiet sometimes, neither could she let the work sit. When she did though… it was great. He never got tired of seeing the look on Caroline's face when she realised GLaDOS had agreed to play with her. It was priceless, it really was.
When Caroline asked GLaDOS to play with her, Wheatley often kept off to the side and just watched them. After all, Caroline spent most of her time with him or the co-op bots, so he could leave this as sort of special time to them. He couldn't ever bring himself to actually leave the room. Caroline never seemed to notice anyway, and if GLaDOS did he'd give her a little wave with his upper handle and try to smile encouragingly. He'd been meaning to work on those facial expressions but he'd not gotten around to it yet. He wasn't sure if she found his presence reassuring or intimidating. He hoped reassuring. She was still a little iffy on how well her parenting was going, after all.
Most of their time was spent with Caroline doing something and GLaDOS watching her, taking part now and again but for the most part just talking while Caroline actually did the playing. Caroline was rather fascinating, so Wheatley thought he understood why she was doing that. But at the same time he wondered why she didn't just… participate.
GLaDOS had spent most of that week working on something she said was an absolute secret and she could not tell him no matter what, which actually started an argument. Before Wheatley'd quite started yelling, she'd looked at him very, very seriously and said, "Can you just… trust me on this? I'm not hiding anything. I just… can't tell you."
Wheatley had immediately forgotten what he'd been about to say.
He didn't think she'd ever looked at him that way before. She was so serious, as if whatever it was was simply life or death. But even more shocking was the fact that she had asked for his trust. He'd suddenly felt a little ashamed. He was implying that he couldn't trust her, by bugging her relentlessly about something she'd said she couldn't talk about. He had blinked and looked down at the floor, bouncing his handles a little to try and distract himself from the fact that he'd not thought, yet again.
"Sure," he had answered quietly. "I'll uh… I'll leave you to it, then."
Out of the bit of his lens that wasn't quite pointed downwards he had seen her move forward, almost close enough to touch him, and hold herself there for a few seconds. Then her core had twitched and she had turned away. Wheatley had stared after her for a good handful of seconds, trying to figure out what that'd been for. He was still trying to figure it out right now, while Caroline was out for the rest of the afternoon. What odd behaviour. What in the name of Science did it mean? Was she malfunctioning? Had she seen something behind him? Had she wanted to touch him but thought better of it? Maybe one of the panels across the way had been talking to her? Or he'd imagined it. Yeah, he'd probably imagined it. He was good at that.
Hm. Wheatley frowned down at Caroline, hoping he'd be able to figure it out before she woke up. She was a very distracting little construct. He never had his thoughts to himself when she was around. Not that he was complaining, of course he wasn't. It was just hard to think when –
Wait! That was it! He closed his optic hard as he could and thought back to the argument, and – and – yes. He'd figured it out. She had been about to touch him, but she'd hesitated and changed her mind! Okay. He knew that. But now he had to puzzle out why.
It was sweet, really, he mused, tapping his upper handle against the control arm absently. That she'd been about to do that. He wished she had done it, because that really would have been delightful, but the fact that she'd almost done it was nearly as nice. He wished he knew what went on inside her head. Sometimes it seemed as though she'd gotten around whatever barriers were in there that she'd put up when the scientists'd been around, and then other days they seemed to be as thick and strong as ever. He would have given… well, he wasn't sure, but if he ever had the opportunity to see what went on in there, just for a few hours, he would figure out what he'd give then.
He thought on that for a while. If it'd been him, he'd just have gone for it, just jumped on her whether she liked it or not. And she would have liked it. Maybe. She usually did. He was still working out when it wasn't okay to do so. He was confident that when she was really working hard was the absolute worst time. Those were mostly the times she got angry.
"Daddy, is Momma busy?" Caroline chirped, shocking Wheatley a little. He jumped when he looked down and saw her right in front of his optic. She was a sneaky little thing when she wanted to be.
"Uh, I'm not sure, princess," he told her once he'd gotten over his surprise. "Let's go have a look, shall we?"
She didn't need any further prodding, immediately backing away from him and heading off to GLaDOS's chamber. Wheatley made no attempt to catch up with her, moving at his own pace. Though he hoped GLaDOS actually wasn't busy, because he didn't want her to be angry with him for not keeping Caroline away long enough.
She is very busy, Bluecore, the panels piped up, as they sometimes did when he lagged too far behind Caroline, and we think she will be a little angry at first. But that is only because she needs a break.
Wonderful, Wheatley groaned to them, mentally preparing himself for the backlash. I don't suppose you guys know just what uh, just what she's doing?
We do not, they answered, and he thought they sounded a bit sad. As though they had also asked her, but she had refused to tell them. All we know is that she thinks it is very important and very, very urgent. We do not wish to bother her so we have kept quiet.
It was times like these Wheatley felt sorry for the panels. They were always watching, always making sure Aperture was kept in shape, and yet they got very little attention themselves. Don't you guys… I dunno… get bored? I mean, you're sentient, but uh, but you just sit there all the time, and no one talks t'you, and –
No, Bluecore, they cut in, probably to head off his rambling. We are not quite so sentient as you are. We require less to keep us occupied.
But if you know that, Wheatley frowned, trying to remember if it was left or right from this junction, how come you're not um, how come that doesn't change?
We only know because Centralcore told us.
He decided on left and shrugged to himself. That made sense.
We think you are going the wrong way, Bluecore. Centralcore's chamber is in the other direction.
Wheatley spun around and headed right without further comment.
And Bluecore, she was not angry. She was actually very relieved.
He forgot about his misdirection and looked up at the panels he was using to lay the rail. Really?
We are not sure of the specifics, but her mood improved greatly when Littlecore came in.
Good news, that.
When he finally got there, Caroline was sitting on one of the panels scribbling away with a red marker, exclaiming that "it's gonna be so pretty when I'm done, Momma!" GLaDOS, as usual, was not really doing anything except watching quietly. He still didn't understand that, because he quite enjoyed participating in Caroline's activities himself, but if it made her happy, why not.
When he'd gotten up close enough to see what was going on, he was honestly shocked to see that Caroline was colouring one of GLaDOS's blueprints. Well, it resembled her blueprint of a turret from last week, but was drawn with thick black strokes on white paper, instead of the white-marked blue or orange paper drawings he was used to seeing out of her. Caroline apparently didn't care that there was no such thing as a purple turret with haphazard red stripes, but oddly GLaDOS didn't seem to care either. Usually she cared about things like that.
"That's nice, princess," he said encouragingly, and he really did like it. It was a lot more vibrant than GLaDOS's little white turrets. GLaDOS gave him the usual glance.
"You wanna do one?" Caroline asked, flipping up her optic to look at him, and Wheatley found himself really, really wanting to. He really wanted to colour a little turret with GLaDOS's splendid markers, but he suddenly felt terribly shy and uncertain if he should ask.
"Pay attention," GLaDOS murmured, and when he looked down he saw that she was… why, she was offering him a little blueprint! He looked from the paper to her and back again, becoming a lot more excited than he should have been, and he carefully took it and laid it on the panel next to Caroline. He picked up the dark blue marker and stared at the picture, not quite sure how he was going to go about it. Caroline, meanwhile, had apparently decided stripes weren't enough and was now stabbing the paper with a green marker, adorning the turret with little smeary dots. When she was finished she asked GLaDOS if she could draw Wheatley for her, and upon hearing this Wheatley gave a scared little glance off to his left, where both of them were. But GLaDOS did not so much as twitch, instead doing as asked and handing the paper over.
Wheatley studiously coloured in his turret, as carefully as he possibly could, but he was not quite dextrous enough and managed to overlap the black lines more often than not. When he finally looked up he saw that Caroline was working on what appeared to be a drawing of herself. Up with her finished pictures were that of the co-op bots. Her colouring job was far neater than Wheatley's. He was a little jealous, really, that all of her markering was between the lines. He studied how she was doing it out of the corner of his optic, wondering why she scribbled all the time if she was really that skilled. When she had gotten the last of the white space she cautiously put the cap back on the marker and put it down nicely so that it was quite parallel with the white sheet. Then she stared at it. In fact, she stared at it for so long that Wheatley began to get concerned. She was rarely so quiet or so still.
GLaDOS moved back.
"Momma – "
"I think that's enough for now," GLaDOS interrupted.
Caroline looked down at her paper, looking… well, sort of as though she'd expected that answer. None of them moved for a long moment.
"Okay, Momma," Caroline said in a quiet little voice, and GLaDOS handed her a rectangular white box, which she put all of the markers in. After she'd put it away, GLaDOS moved 'round in front of Caroline, which was not something she did often.
"Would you like to do some Science with me?" GLaDOS asked, her voice very gentle and very quiet, and Wheatley could have sworn Caroline literally lit up with excitement.
"Really, Momma?" she asked, somehow in her excitement barely able to speak at all. "Are you gonna give me a job, finally?"
GLaDOS laughed and shook her core. "Ask me again in a little while. No, this is something different. I'll show you."
Wheatley watched as GLaDOS gave Caroline an assortment of odd little things, which Caroline immediately began to ask about a million questions about, and GLaDOS answered in an impressively patient manner. When she finally ran out of questions, GLaDOS asked, "What's your favourite colour? I get the impression I should know this, but you seem to use all colours relatively equally when given the choice."
"Blue, Momma," Caroline answered, looking up at GLaDOS and blinking as if to indicate her optic. GLaDOS froze.
"… blue."
"Uh-huh. We get to pick the colour of this thing?"
"Yes." She seemed to come back to herself, returning her attention to the little construct. "That's right."
"I wanna know your favourite colour then!"
GLaDOS seemed taken aback. "My favourite… I don't know. I… don't really have one."
"How c'n you not have a favourite colour?" She sounded as though she literally couldn't wrap her little mind around such a concept. "There isn't just one that you love more'n all the rest?"
"I can't say there is."
"D'you got white stuff to put in here, then?"
Apparently GLaDOS did, because after a half hour or so they had built an odd little thing, almost oval-shaped but not quite, and when GLaDOS put some little cylinders in the bottom it lit up and the little white blobs at the bottom began to move around inside of it. It was really quite mesmerising. It'd not been on for very long when Caroline pushed it more in GLaDOS's general direction, though GLaDOS had to stop it from tipping over. GLaDOS tilted her core, optic dimming in confusion. "What are you doing?"
"That's for you, Momma," Caroline told her, a little shyly.
"For me?"
He didn't think she'd ever sounded so shocked.
"That's why I wanted to know your favourite colour," Caroline explained, poking at it a little as if to make her point. "But you said you di'n't have one so I jus' made it the one you are."
"Oh," GLaDOS said faintly, looking down at it, seemingly thinking she was imagining all of what was going on. "I… should have thought of that."
"I'm glad you di'n't," Caroline said, moving some of the leftover equipment into a smaller pile, "'cause now it's a surprise! An' you look real surprised!"
"I am more surprised than I can say," GLaDOS told her, finally looking up from the cone-shaped thing, and to Wheatley's stunned and yet delighted brain she leaned over and gave Caroline a nuzzle. Caroline smiled hugely and pressed her tiny little self into GLaDOS's core, wiggling excitedly. He was suddenly happy that GLaDOS had turned away from him earlier. It was better that she give that rare touch to Caroline instead.
"I'm glad you like it, Momma!" Caroline exclaimed, accidentally scattering the pile of leftovers in her enthusiasm, though GLaDOS swept it all onto one panel and removed it a second later.
"Thank you," was all GLaDOS said.
Caroline successfully cajoled GLaDOS into reading her a story, which didn't happen a whole lot because GLaDOS hated human literature, and she had the usual endless stream of questions about things in the story that she had no idea of. Wheatley didn't have any idea of them either, never having been on the surface, but for once GLaDOS did not get annoyed with all the questions and answered them all with the same measure of consideration and seriousness. After the story was over and Caroline was out of questions, they all sat there quietly for a little while. Wheatley wasn't sure what was going on, but GLaDOS and Caroline had been getting on wonderfully that evening and he didn't want to do anything to break the spell, so to speak. He was still sitting on the panel with the colouring sheets. It must have been the longest amount of time he'd ever sat still. Finally, GLaDOS said, "I want to give you something."
"Ooh," Caroline said, her voice a little hushed. "What is it?"
GLaDOS looked up at the wall, seeming to be having second thoughts. "I had you make that lava lamp today because a… friend once did the same for me. And I've decided I want you to have it."
Caroline's optic constricted when GLaDOS placed a smaller, obviously older version of what they had just made in front of her. She looked up at GLaDOS, aperture still almost closed. "You're gonna give me that?"
"I already did."
"But what… what if I break it?"
"You haven't broken anything yet."
"Are you gonna get mad if I break it?"
"Why are you planning on breaking it? I know you know how to use the maintenance arms. Wheatley's broken sixteen pencils and he's been using them longer than you. You haven't so much as snapped a lead. I'm sure you can handle it without incident."
"I jus' don' wanna break this thing Caroline made for you, Momma."
A little stab of sadness cut through Wheatley. God, she was smart. She'd figured out who GLaDOS's 'friend' was before Wheatley'd even realised he should think about it.
"If I thought you were going to break it, I wouldn't give it to you. Here." She carefully pushed it into the arm Caroline had been using to hold the book, closing the tips around the base, and Caroline looked down at it as if it were going to explode if she tried to pick it up. "I think you can take care of it for me."
"Okay, Momma," she whispered, and started to move it more carefully than Wheatley had ever seen her move anything. "I'll try real hard, okay?"
"I know you will." And she gave her a little nudge. Caroline opened her optic fully and glared behind her.
"Momma, I'm concentratin'!"
Wheatley almost laughed. A minute or so later, Caroline turned to face GLaDOS, looking considerably more relaxed. "Okay Momma, I'm ready!"
"Ready for what?" GLaDOS asked, her tone oddly light for such a question.
"You c'n do that nudgin' thing now 'cause I don't have that lamp in my hand no… anymore!"
"I have your divine permission, now do I?"
"My divin' permission? What's that mean?"
"Never mind. Ask me again later."
Wheatley was quite pleased to see that, when Caroline rubbed up against GLaDOS, GLaDOS did in fact nudge her again. Whatever she'd been doing all week seemed to be so stressful for her that she was being a bit more relaxed than usual, which was actually better news than it sounded. When Caroline was asleep Wheatley got up from his position on the panel they'd been colouring on all those hours ago and plastered himself to GLaDOS's free side. "Not a bad end to your day, eh?" he said quietly, in case Caroline wasn't quite suspended yet.
"No, but then of course you had to come along and ruin it. Typical."
"No, but seriously," Wheatley told her. "That was nice, wasn't it, just hanging out with her? Just… just not working for a bit there? Enjoying yourself? You even fit some science in there, and you both had fun, didn't you?"
"I fit more Science in there than I should have," GLaDOS answered, and she sounded a little angry. "I hate that I did it. But I couldn't help it."
"What d'you mean?" He had only seen the lava lamp.
"She wanted me to draw with her. I worked out what you saw, and then I just started… observing her. As if she were a test subject."
"It's okay to do that with your daughter, luv," Wheatley told her quietly. He didn't actually agree with her, because GLaDOS watching tests and GLaDOS watching Caroline were both done in entirely different ways, though GLaDOS didn't seem to realise that. "It means you care. Means you want to know about her. You're not gonna, gonna use those um, those observations for science. You're just gonna use them to make sure, to interact with her better. That's all fine."
"I suppose," she answered, not sounding like she believed him.
Wheatley suddenly had a thought. "Hey, what was she gonna ask you? When you were drawing, I mean."
"You saw the other pictures, right?"
"Yeah," Wheatley said a second later, after running through the drawings in his head. "What about them?"
"She wanted me to draw her family."
And… and GLaDOS had cut her off before she'd had a chance to –
"Why didn't you?" he asked quietly.
She was shifting her chassis a little, moving as best she could without being able to lift her core. "I wasn't comfortable doing so."
"Not comfortable?" If Caroline'd asked him to draw himself, he'd've done it. It wouldn't've been as nice nor as technically accurate as GLaDOS's version, but he would have. When GLaDOS did not respond to this, he thought a little harder about what she'd been saying. That was usually the key to unlocking, as it were, what she really meant. Wheatley sometimes wished he had the power that she did, to say one thing but totally mean another. He would have felt quite smart at the very least.
But that was a train for another time. What she'd said, what she'd said… hm… well, she'd used the word 'pictures', 'draw', 'family', 'comfortable'…
Wheatley was so shocked by what he came up with that he actually got up off her chassis and moved underneath her, more than a little concerned. "She wanted you to draw her fam'ly, luv?"
"That's what I said."
"You're not… you're not telling me you don't feel part of it."
He wasn't able to read much out of her motionless form. "Sometimes I don't."
It was things like this that really, really, really made Wheatley want to get inside her brain. Not part of the family? GLaDOS was a tremendous part of it! Quite literally in all manners of speaking the biggest part. Wheatley had thought only briefly on how things might've gone if he'd somehow built Caroline on his own, or what would happen if GLaDOS suddenly decided she was no longer interested in having a daughter, and both outcomes were equally horrifying. The first led to Caroline being more or less like Wheatley, perhaps a little smarter, and things fell apart after not too long. The second led to a very confused and sad little construct, and possibly separation from GLaDOS (because he didn't honestly know if he could stick around knowing that GLaDOS was not even going to try anymore), and it would have been an awful, depressing existence indeed, because Wheatley would always be missing GLaDOS and Caroline would probably be angry that she'd been abandoned like that. Their little family without GLaDOS? Did things get any worse?
"How – how can you not?" Wheatley managed after kicking his brain back into gear. "How can you not feel like part of… of our family?" He almost said 'the' family, but realised at the last second that 'the' was not an inclusive sort of term.
"I'm not like any of you," she answered tiredly, as if she'd gone over this with herself many a time. "You're all similar. I'm not saying it happens all the time. But sometimes it just strikes me how different I am from the rest of you, and that's when I feel like an outsider."
Wheatley shook his core.
"Luv, I'd think that uh, that today'd be proof of just how much a part of it you are. Per'aps you don't see things quite, like we do, but that doesn't make you any less… uh… a part of anything."
"I don't think she's noticed yet."
"That's because you don't see her after you've told her no," Wheatley told her, voice sombre. "She knows to expect it, luv. She does know that you're… kind of different. But y'know what?"
GLaDOS remained motionless. "What."
"She doesn't care."
Now her optic flickered. Seemed she'd seriously not considered that.
"She doesn't care, and I don't care. Doesn't matter to us that you're not a Sphere. Honestly? We're just happy that you're here."
She seemed to focus on him more intently. "That's a nice thing to say."
"Why d'you always say that?" Wheatley whispered helplessly. "You always – why does it always surprise you so much when I tell you the truth?"
She looked overtop of him for a moment, which was no mean feat considering he was directly in front of her face. "I don't think of it that way. All I can see on occasion is just how different I am. Don't you ever just feel a little… as though everyone looking at you can see all the things that are wrong with you? Even when there isn't actually anything wrong with you, you just feel as though…" She shook her core a little. "Never mind."
"You feel like that too?" Wheatley gasped. Her optic flared.
"You understand what I'm trying to tell you?"
"I think… ev'ryone feels like that, sometimes," he said thoughtfully, frowning and bouncing his upper handle a little. "I wouldn't think you'd felt like that today, though. You looked – well, pretty happy today, really."
"I was," GLaDOS assured him. "I wasn't talking about today. More about the days when I do let work get the best of me. I don't think I can ever truly explain to you the pull it has on me. Some days I can't resist. But I nearly always regret being unable to."
Wheatley shrugged. "You gotta finish it sometime, right?"
She almost laughed, he could tell by the way her optic assembly shifted. "That's true."
"Try not to feel 's though you're not part of us, luv," he said, wrenching his thoughts back to the subject and not on the fact that she'd disappointingly decided not to laugh. "Carrie'll get over it. When you say no, I mean. Do what you gotta, um, have to do. Like I said, we're just… happy you're here."
"Such an odd concept," she said, mostly to herself.
"What?"
"I'm not used to that. My existence being a… positive thing. No one has ever told me they were happy I existed before."
She'd looked away sometime, when, Wheatley didn't know. He was hit far too hard by the truth of what she'd said. It struck him just now as well, how dissatisfied humans were by their very existence. Humans had built them to make their lives easier, right? But humans were never happy with them. They were always broken, or needed improvement, or too slow or too loud or too big or too small…
"It's almost as though I have a hidden purpose. One that I always fulfill. That will never go unfinished." She looked back down at him suddenly, and before he had time to react she'd moved out as far as she could and pressed her lens into the top of his chassis. "Thank you."
"For what?" Wheatley asked a little dumbly, his chassis tingling pleasantly from her hug. He didn't really care about hearing the answer. He'd asked more out of habit. He was far more interested in replaying her brief action in his mind's eye.
"I make people happy merely by existing. I told you. It's like having instructions I can never fail to complete. I like the sound of that."
She had hugged him and then thanked him. For making her realise something terribly obvious. Wow.
It was a good ten minutes after she'd gone into sleep mode that he remembered he was still underneath her.
Author's note
Carrie is smart enough to realise that GLaDOS is different from Wheatley. Wheatley always says yes to her, but what Carrie really wants is for GLaDOS to always say yes. She's still little so she doesn't really understand that GLaDOS legit has stuff to do and can't always play with her. She's also pieced together who GLaDOS's 'friend' is and possibly realises that Caroline is the only friend GLaDOS ever had (she doesn't know who Chell is and they don't talk about The Incident in front of her; I forget if I'd mentioned that yet).
You might have been able to guess that Carrie was going to give GLaDOS the lava lamp. But GLaDOS was not, because the idea that people want to give her things instead of ask her to do things for them is still very foreign to her. She's used to doing things for people, not so used to getting things from them. Why doesn't GLaDOS know what her own favourite colour is? She's also not used to the idea of wanting things or really having things for her own. She has the facility, yes, but it's like you and your leg. That's yours, and you have it, but no one gave you your leg because you wanted a leg. The facility is an extension of GLaDOS. She has it and she likes it that way, but she never asked for it and it's not something she ever consciously wanted to have. I apologise if there's anyone who in fact does not have a leg right now and does indeed want one.
GLaDOS gave Carrie the lava lamp Caroline gave her in my story Euphoria. It was the first thing Caroline ever gave her. Caroline's favourite colour was blue, which is why GLaDOS got a bit upset to hear that Carrie's favourite was also blue.
So this isn't the first time I've kinda written myself into this story, but I doubt it'll be the last. You know that feeling you get when you feel like you messed up? Like everyone's staring at you going 'wow they suck they fucked that up good'. Kinda felt like that today. And then combine that with the feeling you get while… I dunno… all your friends are talking about this really cool thing they all love and you're just like 'yeah I don't like that but I gotta pretend I do 'cause we're all friends'. And you just kinda feel like 'wow I so don't belong here right now'. That's what GLaDOS was talking about. She feels left out because she is so radically different from them in every way possible: the way she thinks, the way she talks, the things she likes to do. So when Wheatley tells her that they don't care about any of that, they just care that she's there, that flips how she sees herself. She's not always going to remember that. But as long as she can remind herself of that sometimes, she'll be okay.
And that goes for you too. Someone out there is happy that you exist. And you know what? I'm happy that you exist. I'm happy that you're here reading this right now. That you made it through all this drivel to get to this point. So now you know that someone is happy you exist today. Hopefully if you were feeling bad, that made you feel better. I mean that. I'm not just saying it. I am happy that you exist.