Part Forty-Two. The Rain

Caroline continued to sort herself out, in which Wheatley would drag out his visit to his hole, just in case she came early and he could have a talk with her. But she did no such thing, which disappointed him. He was doing his best to be patient about it, but he really didn't like suddenly being ignored by his daughter. He never ignored her, after all! For the love of Science, not even GLaDOS had given him the silent treatment for this long. It was irritating and made him feel terrible.

"What did we do?" he lamented to GLaDOS over their daily game, which was chess today. She looked up, dropping Wheatley's rook among the other pieces she'd captured.

"I told you. She's figuring things out."

"Why is it taking so bloody long?" he griped. "It's been a week! Is it gonna take another week? One after that, maybe? An entire sodding month?"

"You really don't like when people stop paying attention to you, do you," she said, obviously amused by his outburst. "Learn patience. It's a lot more useful than you seem to think it is."

"It's not… it's nothing to do with… with patience," he tried to explain. "I just… don't understand why, why someone would want to… distance themselves from people who care about them! Doesn't she realise what, what it's like to be alone?"

"You just answered your own question," GLaDOS said. "She doesn't know."

Wheatley blinked.

"So… hang on. She doesn't know what it's like to be alone… so she wants to be alone."

"Yes."

"That's ridiculous," he declared bluntly. "Why would someone do that?"

"I suppose you can ask her when she's decided she wants company again."

Wheatley hunched into his chassis and frowned at the board.

"Oh, don't be like that," GLaDOS chided. "She hasn't disowned you."

"Feels like it."

"Take your turn. I'm getting bored."

He glared at her. Didn't she appreciate that he was trying to sulk? After a few seconds of glaring she sighed.

"Wheatley, I… don't like seeing you like this. I'm just trying to distract you. Though apparently I'm coming off as inconsiderate."

She really was the sweetest robot in the world when she wanted to be. Despite his resolve he perked up a little. "Well… I guess if you're that worried I can probably stop."

"I didn't say I was worried." But she had moved back slightly and stopped looking at him. Well, that did it for Wheatley's bad mood.

"It's really cute, the way you uh, you pretend you don't care."

"I'm not pretending. I really don't – " Her optic narrowed momentarily, and she looked around a little bit, as if confused. But she did not finish.

They stared at each other in silence.

"What the hell," GLaDOS said faintly. "Why can't I – "

"Maybe you don't want to," he suggested, though he was privately thrilled that she couldn't finish that statement.

She shook her core slowly. "Why would I try to say something I don't want to say?"

"You just said the other day you uh, that sometimes you say things you don't want to say."

"I don't think I like this."

He held her optic as seriously as he could. "Why does it bother you so much that uh, that you can't… well, lie to my face, basic'lly. Even if you're uh, you're just joking around, it's… still a lie."

"There should be no reason I can't say something I want to say."

"There's no reason you can't um, can't actually tell me that you, that you care, either." He tried to think of how to word his thoughts. "I know you do. And you know you do. And even though uh, though I do know, it's uh, it's nice to hear once in a while."

"I'm not ready yet," she told him quietly.

"Maybe the uh, the fact that you can't say that you don't just means you're getting there."

She regarded him thoughtfully. "You know what? I hope so."

"Really?" he said hopefully, smiling a little bit at her.

"Well, here I am lamenting the fact that I can't tell you something negative, when I often can't tell you positive things either. As much as it pains me to admit it, it's… better that I move away from those negative things. Isn't it?" she finished a little uncertainly.

Wheatley nodded vigorously. "Yes. Definitely. You feel better when you do good things, so uh… so, so do them. And you'll feel. Better. Not that uh, that you feel bad, or anything, least I don't think you do, but um, y'know, you'll feel better." He felt he'd gone a bit too far and went back to studying the board. He knew it wasn't easy for her to change half her personality practically on the spot, and she had made quite admirable progress in all the time she'd been doing it.

"I do," she said softly, and when he looked up in surprise he could see that she'd gone back to looking at the board as well. "I got so used to being angry all the time. I got so used to being bitter and frustrated. And it's… odd, because I feel as though I'm losing something and I don't like it, when it's good that it's being lost and I should be happy about that."

"Well," Wheatley said, feeling something soften inside him at her admission, "I guess it's… guess it's like losing any uh, any part of yourself. Doesn't matter what it is, it's just sort of, sort of scary, to lose it."

"As long as there are some things I can't lose, I suppose it will work out."

She was closing off again, was feeling she'd revealed too much, and he understood that, but he couldn't help asking, "Things like… like me?"

The look she gave him felt tired. Not like she was tired of him, not that, but as if this line of conversation was causing huge mental stress. She was getting emotionally tired, which was something Wheatley knew she did not know how to deal with. He shouldn't have asked. He should have left it alone, and asked some other time.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Yes."

He squinted across the board at her. "Yes… what."

"Yes, things like you."

Suddenly he felt fantastic, and when he smiled at her she nodded a little bit and looked back at the board again, but he got the impression she was at least a little proud of herself. And she should be, he thought fondly as he finally selected a piece to move. She worked hard to push away the erroneous lessons of her past, and good for her, being able to do it so well.

After ten minutes or so she was more or less back to normal, insulting him every time he lost a piece or did something stupid, but it was more hilarious than bothersome. He even got in a few shots at her, though she brushed them off with her usual witticisms, and yet again Wheatley found himself barely able to believe how lucky he was. He got to feeling so lucky he just smiled at her, which caused her to ask, "Why are you smiling at me like an idiot? Other than the obvious, that is."

"I'm just... pretty lucky to have you," he said, a little shyly. He didn't want to make her uncomfortable twice in one day. She tilted her core endearingly.

"You certainly are lucky," she said, a lighter note in her voice. "You'd be lost without me. Not to mention pretty bored."

"Are you suggesting," Wheatley said in his best indignant voice, "that I'm not bored when you're around? Cause that, that's weird, honestly. Bizarre."

"Your entire life has been one string of bizarre events after another," GLaDOS teased. "I don't see why you expected that to change."

"I hope it doesn't," he answered, wiggling his upper handle suggestively, "because if it did that'd mean I would have to win you back."

"And what would you do to make that happen?" she whispered, leaning forward.

He moved within an inch of her and whispered back, "Anything."

She laughed, tapping him with her maintenance arm. "Liar," she said, though she sounded pleased. "You would not."

He was pretty confident he would, but he also didn't want to get into a conversation which put GLaDOS in the position of finding something he wouldn't do. Which he was sure she would. She was a supercomputer with the ability to calculate millions of outcomes in seconds, after all. So he just smiled and said, "Let's not get to the point where I have to find out, eh?"

"Very well. But only because I don't completely hate you."

"You don't do a little bit of hate, Gladys," Wheatley said, laughing. "It's either all-consuming loathing or no hate at all!"

"Don't go spilling my secrets," she told him.

"I'll keep some of them," he answered. "The… best ones." He wiggled his handle again for emphasis.

"That was the worst possible thing you could have said."

He loved it when she guessed exactly what he was talking about.

She looked up suddenly, right at the ceiling, and with a frown he stared at the ceiling too. He wasn't sure exactly what they were staring at, but hopefully it would come to him. When it didn't, he asked tentatively, "Um, luv… what're we… what're we looking at?"

"You're looking at the ceiling," she told him, a little distantly. "I'm looking at something else, which, if things go as I think they will, I'm about to show you." She stared for another handful of seconds, then nodded to herself. "There we go."

"There what –" But before he could ask, she was separating the ceiling panels and dimming the lights of her chamber. Though that didn't do much to help his confusion.

"We're leaving the game for the moment. Come and look."

"At what?" Wheatley asked, getting a bit frustrated, but he obliged and moved next to her. All that was there was the same night sky as yesterday!

"Give it a minute. I'm about to show you something you've never seen before." She tilted her core. "Well. I'm presenting it, anyway."

He kept his optic on the sky overhead, still confused but determined to see whatever it is he was supposed to see, and without warning there was a flash of light in the sky and he jumped. "What was that?" he asked, his voice a little shrill.

"Lightning," GLaDOS said with relish. "Electrical conduction as demonstrated by nature."

"What does that – " His voice was halted as there was a loud, crackling, rumbling noise, and he cried out and buried his optic in GLaDOS's core. GLaDOS, of course, started laughing.

"What was that!" Wheatley shrieked, not at all pleased when he heard it a second time. "Gladys, close the ceiling, we're gonna die, oh my God the sky, it must be, must be splitting in half, you have to close the ceiling, it's gonna collapse on top of us, oh God oh God oh God – "

Only the fact that GLaDOS had not stopped laughing wrenched him out of his panic. In fact, he thought inasmuch as he could possibly think with his chassis buzzing with unspent electricity and unadulterated fear choking up his thought processes, he had never heard her laugh so hard in his entire life. That thought didn't kill his panic, but it did stifle it quite a bit.

"You don't seriously think the sky is about to split open, do you?" she asked, knowing full well that he did. "It's just thunder."

"And what's causing it, then?" Wheatley demanded. "It's an earthquake! Except… except in the sky! It's gonna split like a melon!"

"I don't think you realise," GLaDOS said, still laughing, "how stupid that really, really is. Do you even know what the sky is made of?"

"Yes!" Wheatley said defensively, even though he had no idea. "It's – it's made of – of sky stuff, it is, that's… what's up there!"

"No, it's not," GLaDOS said. "It's made of oxygen and nitrogen, Wheatley. That's it. Well. Mostly it, but I doubt you want the full molecular breakdown."

"It can't be!" Wheatley argued, wincing at another flash of lightning and praying the thunder wouldn't come. "Look! The sky is splitting open!"

"That's just electrical discharge from the inside of clouds. Nothing to worry about."

"How does, how does the sky stay like it is, then!" he demanded. "If it's just, just made of air, and, and water, then, then how does it stay up? Can't explain that, can you!"

"Of course I can," GLaDOS said, not even sounding indignant he'd said such a thing. "Gravity."

"You're lying," Wheatley whimpered, pressing his face into her core again at an exceptionally loud crack of thunder. "You're gonna kill us all!"

"The sky is not solid, Wheatley. The atmosphere is made of air of differing molecular structures." She gave him a shove. "Come and look, moron. If the sky decides to prove me wrong and shatter, I promise you I will do something about it before it gets anywhere near us."

He didn't really want to, but he did as he was told. He still didn't quite believe her. "What about that, that lightning stuff, then? Won't it uh, won't it get to us?"

"No," GLaDOS answered. "Lightning is attracted to the tallest object in the vicinity. We're underground. There's no way it will get in here. Unless…"

"No," Wheatley said hurriedly, optic constricting, "no, no no, whatever you've just thought of, you're not doing it. You're not getting lightning in here. You're gonna, gonna leave it out there where it belongs. You're not gonna do that."

"Ohhh yes I am," GLaDOS said gleefully, and she produced a very long rod, about two inches across, and began sending it up through the hole in the ceiling. In fact, the thing looked endless! Where was she even keeping such a long rod, and why, for the love of Science, why was she taking it out now?!

"What I'm about to do is very dangerous," GLaDOS told him, though he doubted she had any of the dangers on her mind at the moment. "Never do this without me."

"I don't even want to do it with you!" Wheatley shouted. "What is wrong with you?! Are you insane! You're insane! You've cracked! If it's so dang'rous, why are you doing it?"

"Do I really have to answer that," GLaDOS said, seemingly trying not to laugh. Wheatley shook in frustration.

"Yes!"

"For Science, of course."

"What kind of Science involves killing yourself?" Wheatley screamed, and now she did start laughing again. She shook her core.

"We're not going to die. I know what I'm doing."

"If you did, you wouldn't've stuck a giant metal stick out of the ceiling so that we could get struck by lightning!"

"If you really want to get struck by lightning, I'll bring it back and put you on top of it," GLaDOS teased, looking at him and widening her lens a little. "Do you?"

"No!"

"Well, now we wait."

"For what?"

"For the rod to attract lightning."

"You're… you're actually doing it. You're actually going to kill us." He couldn't believe it. Since when had GLaDOS become so suicidal?

"We're not going to die," she repeated. "You're hardly even going to notice it's in here. Come on. Look."

"No," he said sulkily, but she actually sounded rather excited, so he made the effort to zoom in on the top of the lightning rod. With another flash, a long stream of light fed itself into the top of the rod and disappeared. Wheatley cried out and pressed against GLaDOS again, but when there was no explosion or crackling of electricity he looked apprehensively around her. The lights on the panels, as well as the overhead, came to maximum brightness for a few seconds, then returned to their previous state. Wheatley stared.

"What… what was that?"

"A power surge," GLaDOS answered. "The electricity from the lightning has to go somewhere."

"And… and we didn't die."

"We're separated from the conduction grid, so no, a power surge wouldn't kill us."

It seemed she knew what she was doing after all. "Is it… is it gonna happen again? D'you know?"

"Yes," she said after a moment. "The probability is dropping, however. The thunderstorm is either going to pass or it's just going to turn into rain."

He was still a bit scared, and a bit disbelieving that the sky was not splitting and all that was happening was a whole lot of science-y stuff, but she probably was not going to do it again at some later point in time so he forced himself to calm down and keep an eye on the gap in the ceiling. And really, when he wasn't panicking about stuff that wasn't going to happen, it was really quite neat, how the lightning just jumped into the rod like that. GLaDOS generated a contented sigh.

"That was fun," she said fondly, and began retracting the rod. "I should do that again sometime. I wonder if I could get the lightning into the room…"

Wheatley blinked upon feeling something unfamiliar on his chassis. He frowned, looking at the ceiling, it being the likely culprit. Something hit him right in the optic, and he jumped, squinting. "What – what's happ'ning now?" he asked, trying not to panic. GLaDOS looked up.

"It's raining," she said.

"Well, maybe you should… should close the ceiling, then," he suggested, not wanting to know how rain would affect his components, but GLaDOS shook her core.

"We'll be fine. If you get terribly soaked I'll do something about it, but… Wheatley, we've never done this before. Let's just… do it."

Wheatley looked at her, surprised. He suddenly realised the magnitude of what she was doing. GLaDOS was taking a risk, was doing something she'd never done, and if there was one thing GLaDOS did not do, it was take unnecessary risks. She was feeling different right now, moreso perhaps than she'd ever felt before, and now he was the one holding back. And he shouldn't be. If GLaDOS wasn't worried, he should trust her.

He resettled his chassis and resolved not to panic.

It wasn't raining hard, or at least not a lot of the water got into the facility itself; very few droplets made it onto Wheatley. The cool air coming in felt nice as well, and his olfactory sensors were picking up something he was tentatively categorising as… fresh, sort of, and thickish… it was a little dizzying to figure out, honestly. Aperture didn't really have a lot of things for him to smell, other than dust and sterility and a bitter chemical vapour. And GLaDOS, of course. But this was unlike anything he could remember, other than perhaps the rare freshly washed human he'd come across back in the day. He fought back a shudder. Smelly lot, humans. What was worse was that no matter how much sickly sweet fragrance or masculine scents they poured on themselves, he could still pick up the sweat and the fear and the days unwashed that they hid from each other. Now he did shudder. Disgusting.

"What?" GLaDOS said.

"Just… thinking about something," he said sheepishly, since he'd forgotten he was hanging out in the rain with GLaDOS. Her hard drive hitched.

"About what?"

"I'll… tell you later," he said, torn between telling her because she was actually asking after him and not telling her because he didn't want to spoil the mood. "Not really appropriate."

"Hm," was all she said to that, and to his indescribable surprise she tilted her core so that she was leaning on him! He froze, unsure of what to do. He was delighted, of course he was, he was overjoyed, but if he did even one thing wrong she was likely to change her mind! He elected to keep quiet, for once, and just sat there, amazed at how natural the cozily warm weight of her chassis felt on his. It was as if… she kind of belonged there, belonged on him just like that, and for the first time in his life he wished he had arms, or at least hands, so he could hug her or rub her or something. Something nice and comforting, same as she felt to him right now. Maybe, for her, his stillness was enough. He hoped so.

Soon after the rain stopped, the only water coming into the chamber being that of a steady drip drip drip of runoff from the panels, and he was more disappointed than he'd ever felt before when GLaDOS shifted off of him. He watched her as she studiously reformed the ceiling, draining a bit of a puddle on the floor, and sulked privately as he could. He liked having GLaDOS lean on him like that, and he liked that she'd gone and started the cuddling even more! Why did it have to stop raining? He could have done that for hours!

She stared up at the now-complete ceiling. After a few moments she turned to him.

"We should… do that again. Sometime," she said hesitantly. No, not hesitantly. Shyly. She knew it wasn't like her to have done what she did, and she had liked it but it made her uncomfortable because she knew it wasn't like her. But Wheatley had been waiting for a long time for this side of GLaDOS, that softer, gentler side that was there but so hard to bring out, and he was going to encourage her to bring it out in any way he could, no matter what.

"We should," he told her firmly. "And… and I know it's hard for you. I know that, that you like it when you can bring yourself to do it, but uh, but getting there isn't easy." He shook his core slowly. "But Gladys… today… I don't think I've ever seen you happier."

"I don't think I have been. Not in a long time," she admitted in a soft voice, looking at the floor. "Wheatley, can… I tell you something?"

"Of course." He said it in his calmest voice, but he was really terribly excited.

"I'm… afraid," she said hesitantly. "I know feeling like this is good, but… it's so new to me. I feel as though I need to avoid it, and… I know I don't, but its novelty is hard for me to handle. It's almost too much for me."

"Feeling good scares you?" he asked softly. He would work this out with her. He would do what he could to make her feel better. She nodded slowly.

"A little bit. As if it's about to be offset by something terrible."

Wheatley looked down at the floor, almost immediately spying the chessboard. Well, that was a solution right there! "Well, let's get back to the game, eh? That something terrible can be me beating you at your favourite game!"

She laughed and bent over the board. "That is not going to happen."

She of course did not even remotely begin to lose, which was fine with Wheatley, because he was far more interested in looking at her. The time-roughened plates of her chassis, the varied wires that carried power and control into her magnificent brain, that dandelion glow of her optic… he loved it. He loved all of it, loved everything about her, genuinely. Her mind and her body and her soul were all interchangeably powerful and important to him, and once again he was in awe of her. And terribly grateful that she'd chosen him. That she had gone forward with him, instead of building someone else to do what he was doing, albeit differently. She was so beautiful in every way…

Well. There was only one way to make her realise that. He wondered if she was feeling up to it. He eyed her as surreptitiously as possible while trying to make a move that both didn't look stupid and didn't bely the fact that he hadn't been paying attention. He decided to move a pawn that didn't look as though it'd be captured where he was putting it and went back to wondering if he dared ask. She leaned over the board far more than was necessary and whispered in that way that made Wheatley's chassis tingle, "I know what you're thinking about."

He was honestly not surprised. "Probably. But y'know, can you run it by me? Just for… hm… confirmation."

She whispered it into his left microphone, and she was right, of course. But the fact that she was bringing it up meant a hell of a lot. He grinned at her.

"Hey, you guessed right! What d'you say we… do something about that guess, hm?"

"After this," she said, waving her maintenance arm at the board. "If we don't finish I'm going to be running endgames all night. Even under normal circumstances that drives me insane."

Wheatley had never tried so hard to lose a game in his life.

Guest reviews: (I have a lot this round, sit tight for the A/N!)

Catniss: I actually stole the cat videos bit from Claptrap. He probably introduced them to her and she pretended she didn't like them at the time, but she secretly watches them when she gets the chance.

Itis: Hi! Actually, all facial expressions are intentional! Part of how we express emotions is how our eyes look, so when I say that they're smiling or frowning or whatever, just think about how your eyes look when you do those things! I'd also like to mention that although we might not be able to see it, the constructs do know how to read each other's facial expressions. You might have noticed that I have never mentioned GLaDOS's facial expression; that's because, while she does have them, they're a lot harder to read and Wheatley mostly bases his perception of her mood off of her voice.

Collacio: I put your binary through several translators, but since not even your first character, 01000000, equals any letters in ASCII I was unable to translate it.

Sads: Thanks :) I'm seriously not sure where this story came from; it was supposed to be a one-shot about Wheatley and GLaDOS and now it's forty-two one shots ;.;

The Timmynator: Thanks bro. I'll try to keep it up!

Anonymous: Hello anon! Twenty years of age is twenty physical years, just like with us; we don't stop aging when we're in a coma, after all! GLaDOS's prototype chassis was built in 1989, and for the purposes of this fanfic that is where her life started, but she doesn't remember it because she wasn't fully sentient at the time. I estimate that no more than five years passed while GLaDOS was dead, and with Portal having been pegged as happening in 1999, that makes the beginning of LaaC to be in 2005. She was alone with Wheatley for three years, and now Caroline is a little over three, so GLaDOS is twenty-two. Am I counting the years she was off? Yes. Two reasons: one, she was actually still 'on' the whole time (we know this because she remembers the two-minute thing and she remembers that she did it repeatedly, so it must have been an almost dreamlike state for her) so she was still incurring wear and tear, albeit a tiny amount; two, which I forgot to mention last time, she was sitting in a puddle outside. She has a lot of rust on her, and though she replaced most of the parts of her chassis that were outside she didn't change anything on her core. So she likely has water damage, heat damage, etc., from those five years lying outside. So wow yeah she's pretty old for a computer.

And in case you were wondering (because I'm sure you were), Wheatley is eighteen. And I know I know it might sound weird that they started um 'seeing each other' when Wheatley was thirteen and GLaDOS was eighteen but then again they were adults by the time they were two.

Don't question why GLaDOS has a lightning rod lying around. She just does.

These chapters are about GLaDOS and Wheatley reconnecting with each other. After couples have children, they often have to put so much time into the kid(s) that they don't have time to spend with each other anymore, and if they do have time, it's often interrupted by the kid(s). Now that Caroline's spending all of her time elsewhere, Wheatley and GLaDOS are able to really talk and hang out and stuff, things you can't really do when there's a kid around. And yes, Sads. That too.

I think that the bots of Aperture DO have a sense of smell. Wheatley tells us that humans are smelly, and yet how would he know that if he didn't have olfactory sensors? In Poker Night 2 (which I know is not canon, but Valve signed off on the lines and they were recorded by Mrs McLain, so it is for the purposes of LaaC), GLaDOS basically says that she dislikes both Claptrap's cologne and the smell of wherever he lives. There would be no point to either of them saying those things if they couldn't smell. And it's really kind of stupid to assume they can't smell because they don't have noses. They don't have mouths or ears but we know they can talk and listen. Seriously, a robot that could sniff out chemicals would be more useful than a dog. I've never mentioned it before because I didn't want to have to refute people who are going to tell me 'but they can't smell!', but the smell of rain was something I can't leave out. Though you know what? We don't know they can't smell. And I believe they can.