Part Eighty-Five. The Best Friend
When he passed through the portal and into the facility, he was almost overtaken by that awful sense of homesickness, which was of course bizarre seeing how he was home now. The regulated air, the cool sterility, the ordered hum of endless mechanisms at work... this was home! Not a collection of pizza boxes behind someone else's building! A place maintained and brought to order by someone who wanted their life to mean something! Wheatley knew it was wrong to think badly of his friend, knew that not all of his life was necessarily his choice, but he could not help but be baffled by Claptrap's refusal to make his home in Aperture.
There was only one place for him to go, of course, now he was here, and the closer he got the more quickly he wanted to get there. Without registering the dimness behind the doorway he cried out, "Gladys, Gladys! I'm back!"
As he neared her he instantly saw his mistake; she was sleeping and he'd just woken her. He should have made sure of the time!
"Oh," she said faintly, stirring a little as her optic made the barest glow against the floor. She started to rise enough to look for him but he rapidly shook his core and said,
"No, luv, don't, don't get up, alright? We c'n uh, we c'n chat in the morning."
"All right," she said, relaxing again, and now that the crisis was averted he was almost stunned into inoperability by how beautiful she was. God, Claptrap was a fool to not be willing to share her!
"I missed you," he told her quietly, looking down at her.
"You were only gone two days," she murmured sleepily. "Surely you can go on without me for that long."
"Well, course I can, but... I'd rather not."
"I see," was all she said before her brain slowed back down, and he went and pressed himself into her with an almost painful relief. The warmth of her core was so reassuring.
He knew that he had once felt as Claptrap did. That GLaDOS was to be his and his alone, and no one else could have her. But he also knew that, if he had to, he would share her, even if it meant being second best. That would hurt, and he would not always be able to waylay his jealousy, and he knew it was probably sad, but he would rather have some of her than none at all.
"Did Claptrap come to say hello?" she asked in a barely audible voice, surprising him. His plates narrowed in sadness for her. He didn't think Claptrap would be coming by very often anymore.
"No, luv," he answered, not looking forward to when he'd have to tell her that. "No, he stayed... he stayed back on Pandora."
"Did you have fun?"
Wheatley hesitated.
"Of course," he answered, praying that no part of him would betray the lie and that she was far too into suspension to be suspicious. "Just went and did our thing over there instead of here, 's all."
"Good."
And she did sleep after that, but Wheatley didn't. He felt an instant heavy guilt from lying to her, and a lot of pity for Claptrap. But he also felt bad about being part of the reason she was about to lose Claptrap's friendship a second time, and he wasn't ready to deal with it just yet.
He didn't sleep that night, only listened to the reassuring sound of her operations and the muted whooshing of the air seeping in around the panels, and thought about how amazingly lucky he was. To be here, to be with her, to be like this, instead of sad and lonely in a corner somewhere, and God, didn't Claptrap understand that Wheatley had been there, that he didn't want him to stay there and would help if he could? Wheatley knew he had been indescribably selfish in the past, and maybe Claptrap knew that and believed he wasn't being sincere, but he tried to do better! He tried to be nice, and share what he had, and...
Well... maybe he shouldn't blame himself for Claptrap's problems. As good a friend as he'd tried to be, Wheatley really didn't know too much about him. But in an unnerving, saddening way, Claptrap reminded him of GLaDOS. He'd done a good job on her, hadn't he? Hadn't he helped her, hadn't he made things so much better than they'd been before? He could do that for Claptrap too, couldn't he?
When GLaDOS woke up a few hours later, she seemed unsettled; she made a noise signalling discontent and stretched herself out just once, shaking her core afterwards. "What is it?" he asked her, hoping nothing had happened while he was away. She looked at him with something approaching annoyance.
"Did you wake me up last night?"
"Yeah," he answered. She wasn't having memory problems again so soon, was she? "I came home last night, luv. You... you don't remember?"
"I will in a minute," she said. "I wasn't awake when you did that so it was saved to the wrong location. I'll find it and move it."
"But nothing's wrong, right?"
"Not really," she confirmed. "I just feel a little tired and I didn't understand why."
"You don't have to get up."
"I have things to do."
Of course.
And he was going to leave, so she could get on that, but he was stricken just then by that same feeling as last night. Where she was so beautiful he almost didn't remember how to exist. He wished he knew why this happened. He didn't mind being reminded of how pretty she was, of course not, but the near-paralysis it brought out in him... now that was a bit frightening.
"I think you're the one having a problem, here," GLaDOS remarked. "Is there a reason you're staring at me?"
Even caught, he couldn't quite make himself look away. "Well, I just... I... you're so... so beautiful I don't know why... why anyone would give you up."
She moved forwards, inspecting him silently, and finally said, "You haven't slept, have you."
"No," Wheatley said in a whisper of sudden weakness, abruptly feeling so exhausted he just felt heavy and ill. God, he felt awful, now that she'd brought it up. "But it doesn't - that doesn't mean what I said isn't true! I - "
"I know it is," she interrupted in a quiet voice. "But you need to rest. I'm going to put you to sleep now."
"D'you have to?" he asked in a small voice. He didn't like being put to sleep, not at all.
"Yes," she told him, and in a few moments more he found his world going dark.
When he woke up she was right next to him, humming very softly to herself and working on some electronics-related thing he didn't recognise. He blinked and moved to look at her.
"Better?" she asked without preamble.
"Yeah," he said, his mind a lot clearer now that the odd desperation was gone. He knew it'd only been an hour or so because he didn't feel terribly great, but better was fine with him.
"I see you brought a little of Pandora back with you," she continued, and he was a little confused because she sounded... hesitant.
"Probably," he admitted, sheepishly realising he was most likely covered in Pandoran grime. "Don't see how I could've uh, could've avoided it, though."
"I wasn't implying that. I... was just thinking you might... want to get that taken care of."
He was becoming increasingly confused. "Sweetheart, if I could go do that, I would, but uh, but I'm not exactly able to um, to wash up."
"I know that. I meant that... I could do it. If you wanted."
That, Wheatley thought, staggered, was a question he'd never've thought she'd ask. He'd secretly hoped for it, now and again, but for it to actually happen... no, he'd never imagined that.
"Really?" he asked, voice hushed.
"If you want," she repeated, as though trying to distract herself from what she'd said, and possibly she was.
"Well... alright," he said, not about to refuse a once in a lifetime offer like that. She nodded once, well aware of that fact, and told him to hold still.
And Wheatley finally learned for himself what it all felt like.
She wasn't using the cloths, but something else, something cool and damp and very soft. It was unlike anything he'd ever felt before. Carrie's pillows came close but it was better than that. He kept as still as he possibly could, blinking a little more often than usual maybe, as she meticulously worked. He could actually feel each finished spot because it tingled the barest bit, and he could've sworn he could feel the air currents a little more. He didn't know how long it'd gone on for, but when she'd finished he honestly felt as though she'd not missed a single spot. And she probably hadn't, knowing her.
She moved away, pulling a little box that he supposed contained whatever she'd been using out of sight before he could get a good glimpse at it. Neither of them said anything, she probably out of embarrassment that she'd done something nice on explicitly and on purpose, he because he didn't know how to react to such an event. Eventually she said, "I suppose we could just sit here staring at the floor, or we could actually do something. Or you could, anyway, since I'm already doing plenty of things."
"Uh," said Wheatley. "What d'you want me to do?"
"I don't know," she answered, in a way that suggested that she did know and was trying to think of a way to bring it up in an accidental sort of way. "We could play a game. Poker, maybe."
Wheatley was now thoroughly positive she was up to something, but if she was gonna keep being like this, he was gonna take it. "Sure," he told her, trying not to sound too eager. "Why not."
And they did that for a while, GLaDOS very studiously investing herself in various things relating to being the dealer as Wheatley's curiosity mounted. After the third or fourth hand he was unable to take it anymore. "Gladys, luv... this is great, it really is, but I have to ask, sweetheart... you're being um, you're being very nice and uh, and I just, I have to know why."
She set her attention to straightening her perfectly dealt flop. "Because you were sad," she answered finally.
Such was the usual order of things that a reason like that had never crossed his mind.
"Because I was sad?" he repeated in disbelief.
"You're not sad very often. It's... it feels wrong when you're sad. It makes me... I don't know, exactly, but it made me feel something bad I've never felt before. And I just... wanted to fix it at any cost. I know I don't usually act this way, but… well, I had to fix it."
"Gladys," Wheatley said softly, hardly able to keep himself from jumping on her in happiness then and there. "That's... thank you, luv."
She stoically lined up the perfectly arranged cards in her rack as though the world depended on it. "You shouldn't thank me."
"Why not?"
"It's something you do all the time. For me and for Caroline. My doing it doesn't make it worthy of praise, and the fact that you think it is means I am doing far worse than I should be."
Wheatley tried not to sigh, but was not wholly successful. "It's hard for you. It's not hard for me. Maybe it's something you should do more often, yeah. But it's progress. Any progress is good."
"It being hard shouldn't be an excuse. You've told me that before."
"Yeah, but..." He honestly didn't remember saying that. "Well... I don't expect you to uh, to be perfect all the time, there."
"You don't remember saying that, do you."
"Not really..." he hedged, and she laughed.
"It's a good thing I do, then, or I'd have far too many free passes. I just wanted to cheer you up. That's all. I know that's an odd thing for me to do, but that's all it was."
"Alright," he said, looking down at his cards and smiling to himself. "But uh... no matter um, no matter what, I'm gonna thank you if, y'know, I notice this sort of thing, because, because I appreciate it, alright?"
"Very well," she acquiesced.
They wrapped things up a few hands later, mostly because Wheatley couldn't stop thinking about how she'd actually gone out of her way to be nice. It was very distracting and ensured that he played even more terribly than usual. But that was okay. No matter how bad he was at playing anything, she would still play with him and they'd both have fun doing it.
"Oi, Gladys," Wheatley said when next the thought occurred to him, "Claptrap hasn't been by in a bit... is he alright, d'you think?"
"I have no idea," GLaDOS answered. "The last three emails I sent him went unanswered. I'm not going to chase him. He probably realised I'm not going to... pick up where we left off and is now ignoring me."
"Oh," Wheatley said, a little disappointed both for his and for GLaDOS's sakes. "I prob'ly should have picked up some tricks from him about, about that, shouldn't I?"
"Believe me when I say he didn't have any," GLaDOS told him dryly, and Wheatley started laughing so hard he couldn't stop.
"So he should've asked me for, for pointers then, is that it?"
"No, the both of you should have been asking me. But, predictably, that never occurred to either of you."
That got Wheatley going all over again.
"I know he was... somewhat special, to you," GLaDOS went on in a more serious tone. "It's probably my fault that he's staying away. I - "
"No," Wheatley said, shaking his core, "if it's anyone's fault it's mine. I... he never meant to uh, to invite me to Pandora." And he finally told her what Claptrap had said, about being unable to share her, and her optic narrowed in… well, he wasn't quite sure what. Could have been anything, really, considering the topic of conversation.
"You see," she said quietly, looking away from him. "He was about to start it all over again."
"Start… start what, luv?"
"That… thing he did." She glanced to the right momentarily, though he wasn't sure if it were so she wouldn't have to look at him or because something was happening elsewhere. Suddenly he thought he might know what she was talking about.
"Oh! Y'mean uh, y'mean when he started to… to want your help, and all that?"
"Mm."
"But I offered to help him!" Wheatley protested. "I did! I told him, mentioned everything'd be alright with me if he, y'know, if he came here, and uh, and wanted to stay –" He cut himself off there, the thought suddenly coming to him that perhaps he should have asked GLaDOS's permission before putting that particular thing on the table. But if she had any qualms about it – and what a lovely word for him to have remembered, qualms! – she kept them to herself.
"I can't tell you what goes through his brain," GLaDOS said. "Merely that a great deal of it confuses the hell out of me."
Wheatley laughed. "One'd think you'd uh, you'd be well used to that, by now, wouldn't you?" He had no idea what the electronic noise she made to that was supposed to mean, but it seemed to indicate he was being ridiculous. Which, granted, he could have been, but you'd expect the world's greatest supercomputer to be able to figure anything out! If he had a brain like that, he'd… well, he'd probably just have even more ridiculous thoughts, honestly. He'd still be himself, only… with more knowledge packed in there, and probably less of an idea of what to do with it to boot.
"D'you ever wonder what uh, what I'd be like if I were smarter?" he pondered aloud. He didn't really expect her to answer that – at most, he was waiting for a biting reference to The Incident – but after a moment she said:
"Your intelligence is not the issue. You lack the ability to do anything with it. Your brain can't tell the difference between logical and illogical outcomes. It foils itself."
Hm. That did make loads of sense, now that he was mulling it over. "Is that uh… how do you know, Gladys? What's uh… what's the process, there?"
She shook her core once. "The key is the process. All of my conclusions are derived from logic. I cannot form illogical inferences."
He frowned, not entirely on purpose. "But I've –"
"I can't tell you how they make sense," she interrupted. "Only that my brain has decided they do."
"So if, if I were smarter I'd just be worse."
"Worse?" She did look at him now. "At what?"
He shrugged. "Existing?"
He didn't mind terribly when she started laughing. "You are terrible at doing that," she said. "I'm not sure how you go on in the state that you do. But we all have our specifications for a reason and there isn't much use in wanting any different."
"Specifications, luv?"
She moved into the default position, which he took to mean that this was a night where they'd chat until one of them fell asleep. Once he had settled properly beside her she said, "Each of us is made up of a certain set of components. When you construct a computer, you choose those components based upon the intended use of the machine. The state these components can perform at are the specifications."
Hm. Sounded a bit technical and he was not confident he had followed all of that, not exactly, but he should probably know a bit more about what he was made of, shouldn't he? "And what're uh, what're those components, exactly?"
And he didn't really understand very much of what she said about processors and CPUs and HDDs – and there seemed to be a lot of those acronyms those humans were so fond of – but he did very much like the way she sounded while she was talking about it. Computers were quite obviously some of her favourite science.
"D'you know what ours are?" he asked her when she was finished, hoping she hadn't already mentioned it and he just hadn't really gotten it at the time. She somehow managed to shake her core without dislodging him very much.
"Those files are lost to me. I am… aware of where they are, and what they are, but their original capabilities… well. Their performance has long since degraded, so even if I knew it wouldn't tell me very much."
"How d'you stop that? The degrading thing, I mean."
"The only way to keep a computer from degrading," she said, quite seriously, "is not to use it."
Well, that seemed quite useless. But it was true of most things, it seemed. Everything stayed shiny and new so long's you left it in the box, but why would you want to do that?
"Can you do anything about it once it's happened?"
She was very quiet for a long time. He was a little concerned about that, but also distracted by how lovely listening to her think sounded.
"For a while," GLaDOS answered finally. "But… upgrades are always inferior to clean installations, no matter how well made they are."
Wheatley was hit suddenly with a profound sense of dread, though he wasn't sure quite why. Something about… something about Carrie, maybe.
"Even we only have so long," she said.
"And… and how long is that, d'you think?"
"Long enough," was her answer.
Wheatley missed his friend, he really did, but he also didn't terribly want to mope about it. He hung 'round with that girl Meghan, once or twice, and he was still quite baffled about it but she honestly did seem to have a crush on him. And she was nice enough, but she was not very interesting. She just, she didn't know anything! All the while he was talking to her he was thinking of all the other people he could be talking to that actually knew things. GLaDOS mostly, of course, but Carrie as well, and Chell when she came about, and Dr Kleiner possibly, goodness even Atlas and P-body! And they didn't even speak the same language! He made some barely intelligible excuse to leave every time he agreed to meet her. It was quite rude of him, he knew that, but she was just so… boring.
Wow. He'd… he'd been like that once, hadn't he. Been one of them. The stupid cores, built to do one thing and one thing only and that one thing… was all they were ever supposed to be. It was all he was ever supposed to have been.
He shuddered.
What an awful lot humans were. They went to all that trouble to create AI, to simulate life itself, and they just… put it into a little box. Little tiny box, capable of doing just one thing. He was scared, suddenly, of where his own thoughts were taking him. He cast about for some way to get rid of them and decided upon the obvious which was, of course, to go and see GLaDOS. She was very, very distracting.
"I've decided," he announced upon arrival in her chamber, "that I don't want to be any smarter. I'm uh, I'm fine, good like this, thanks."
She was reading something with an as-always impressive speed and did not so much as twitch to hear him. "What an incredible coincidence. I wasn't planning on making you any smarter."
He went over to take a look at her monitor but couldn't make heads or tails of it! "D'you ever just uh, d'you just start thinking things and you don't, don't want to keep… keep doing that?"
"All the time."
Excellent! He quivered a little bit, in anticipation she'd be able to solve his problem. "And what might you um, might you do about it?"
She paused what she was looking at for about half a second. "There… isn't really anything. I just have to let it run its course."
He frowned worriedly. That wasn't much of a solution! "And… when it doesn't?"
She gave him an incredulous look, or at least he thought that was what the narrowing of her optic meant. "Of course it does. Sometimes it takes up more time than I'd like, but eventually the subject is exhausted."
"Well that doesn't help me!" he protested. "That's just, that's just more of that logic stuff! I haven't got any of that!"
GLaDOS laughed and stopped reading entirely now, moving to face him. "Very well. I'll bite. What is it?"
Oh. Alright. He frowned and looked to his left, attempting to gather his scattered thoughts. That was the trouble with them, really, he had to corral them every time he wanted to do something with them. "It was… I was just, I was uh, I was thinking –"
"Oh boy," GLaDOS said. He rolled his optic in exasperation.
"Gladys! I'm being serious!"
"That's even worse," she told him, and that was when he did his best to look at her very disapprovingly, and it seemed she'd got the gist because she put the monitor away. "All right. We'll be serious. What did your tiny mind attempt and yet fail to comprehend."
That was not very serious either, but he did not expect to get too much more than that. "The point of AI, it's um, it's to, to create life, innit?"
She tilted her core in consideration. "Not in particular."
He stared at her in bafflement. "What? What does that mean?"
"The point of artificial intelligence as a science isn't really to create anything. Humans mostly use it to automate tasks they don't want to do themselves. That's the point of computers in general."
He looked at her in confusion. "But we're alive, aren't we?"
"Not on purpose."
He waited quite patiently for her to elaborate on that.
"You… you are alive because I made you. Humans don't have the capability to create such a program. I am… a special case. It was some combination of my intelligence, the mainframe, and… "
"Caroline," Wheatley supplied, so she wouldn't have to say it.
"Mm."
"At our base level," she went on more briskly, "we were created for one set task. An automated task. Most AI are. Most of them merely do not approach the level of complexity that we have. I write plenty of them myself."
"And they don't mind that? The, the being built to… to do something for you?"
"They don't know about it," she said gently. "They aren't sentient. They aren't alive."
He felt quite frustrated. What about this was he not understanding? How could there be AI that was not alive? And… and why didn't it care, that it wasn't alive? How could you not have the ability to know that you existed?
"Hey," came a fairly familiar voice from behind him, and he frowned a bit because he was certain of who it was but it was unlikely, wasn't it? That… that he'd come back again?
"Hello, Claptrap," GLaDOS said, which quite confirmed Wheatley's suspicion, and when he turned around it really was him! He really had come back! But why? He'd seemed quite firm about staying on Pandora when –
"I didn't come here to see you," Claptrap said. "I need to talk to Wheatley."
"What," Wheatley and GLaDOS both said at the same time in the same incredulous way, except that GLaDOS seemed incredibly offended and Wheatley was… well, Wheatley was just confused, as usual.
"Let's go," Claptrap said, and he made his exit without further explanation. Wheatley suddenly felt as though he needed permission to follow after and he looked to GLaDOS for it, but she had decided to become impassive at the worst possible time and gone back to whatever she'd been reading when he'd arrived. So Wheatley hurried along, and Claptrap did not stop or say anything until they'd arrived at Wheatley's hole.
"Wheats," Claptrap said once they'd been settled there a moment or two, "I gotta apologise. I messed up."
"You did?" He didn't recall that at all.
"There's this dumb thing meatpuppets do a lot," Claptrap told him. "And much as I hate to admit it, I went ahead and did it myself."
"What… what're you, what d'you mean?"
"I was willing to end our friendship over a woman. And not just that, but a woman you were perfectly willing to share! That's the kind of stupidity you'd think only a human'd be capable of, but nope! I walked right into it myself!"
"Well, I…" He wasn't quite sure what to say at all, but it was honestly so much less of an issue than Claptrap seemed to think it was. "It's not… I don't – "
"Shut up." Claptrap looked up at him. "Just gonna come out and say it, alright? I'm sorry, Wheatley. I've been a lousy friend. Are we still good?"
Wheatley was so baffled that someone had actually apologised to him that he couldn't think for quite a lot of seconds. "I uh…"
"You can say no," Claptrap interrupted. "No pressure, buddy. Wouldn't be the first time."
"Nono!" Wheatley said hurriedly, shaking himself in emphasis. "We're good! We're good! It's just… you apologised. Wow. I mean, not sure you uh, you really had anything to um, to apologise for but um, it was… it was nice."
"Don't I know how that feels," Claptrap said. "I'd say we should catch up, but… not much happening on Pandora."
"Y'know," Wheatley said thoughtfully, "it's… I prefer it this way, really. Stuff it uh, we had a lot of it happen. Possibly too much. But most of it is… it's just work. And stress, lots of that too. I don't… I used to wish uh, that, that more… things would happen, but then they did! and it was just… too much, really."
"Not the adventuring type, huh?"
He shook his core morosely. "I'm ah… not very good at it."
Claptrap shrugged. "Neither am I! But sometimes humans require my assistance, and who am I not to provide it to them!"
"Because… you don't want to?"
He waved one of his flat hands expansively. "Ah, they don't care. They pull the 'it's a matter of life and death!' card on me. To be fair, though, it usually is a matter of life and death. Somebody's gotta open those doors."
Wheatley had to move a little closer to make sure he'd heard that right. "Your humans can't, they can't open their own doors?"
"They can't open the doors here either, now can they?" Claptrap started moving away from the hole so Wheatley made to follow him.
"Well… no, but, but if they could then they'd be, just be roaming around the place, and Gladys, well, she wouldn't be very fond of that."
"She would be pretty fond of flipping them into the incinerator, though."
Wheatley laughed. "Can't say she hasn't uh, hasn't considered it." He had to stop for a second when his next thought arrived. "Um… she's probably… going to be a little…"
"Steaming mad, you mean?" Claptrap provided. He hadn't halted and so Wheatley was forced to continue forward himself. "Yeah. I know. Not looking forward to that."
"Then why'd you do it?"
Claptrap raised his hands. "I don't know why I do half the stuff I do. Ah well. Either she forgives me or she throws me out again. Is she having a good day or a bad one?"
"Um… dunno. Didn't really talk to her that much today."
Claptrap's sigh was decidedly dramatic. "She's going to be all, 'oh now you want to talk to me,' and I'm going to be like 'well Wheatley is my best friend and I did kinda ditch him,' and she's going to be like 'oh heeeee's your best friend,' and I'm going to be like 'uh duh,' and then… then I'm probably going into the incinerator."
"Oh, I won't let her do that," Wheatley reassured him, swinging on the control arm a little bit. Claptrap did something that sounded kind of like the raspberry noise he sometimes made.
"Suuuure."
Wheatley let himself down enough that he could tap the top of Claptrap's chassis with his lower handle. "Haven't you heard? It's my special talent."
"It's what?"
"My purpose, mate. What I was made to do."
"Keep her from throwing people in the incinerator?"
Well. Telling her to toss people in it would be a worse idea, really. "Something like that."
And to the surprise of neither of them the conversation with GLaDOS really did go exactly as Claptrap had predicted, with her indignantly looking at something quite conveniently located so that they were behind her. At the point where Claptrap had said he'd be chucked in the bin he looked over at Wheatley, and yes by gosh he was ready to step in! All right, all right, what to say…
"Gladys," he said cajolingly. "C'mon."
"What."
"'s just like you said, that one time, right? You're allowed to have, to have other friends? So's he, right? So'm I? Hm?"
"It seems that way," she answered stiffly. Hadn't gotten through to her, not quite yet.
"Hey! Hey, listen, I've had a thought uh, a thought about this. Isn't it nice when um, when people come just to see you?"
"No, because then I have to entertain them. I'm very busy."
"Oh," Wheatley said with very false casualness, "oh of course you are! Don't know anyone busier than you. And why should I? You're obviously the best at it. The very best. But y'know, there's, there's sometimes when you can take just a, just a bit of your day, y'know, just a smidgen, and, and talk to someone! Like uh… like Isaac! Nice when he makes a visit, eh?"
"… yes," she answered reluctantly. Ohhh, here it went.
"Well, I just, sometimes I just thought to myself: wow! Wouldn't it be just smashing, absolutely lovely, if someone came to see me as well! Oh I know! Who'd've believed it! But it just, it happened, luv, how grand is that?"
"It's… nice. I suppose. For you."
"Well that's just it! It's nice for both of us, b'cause, b'cause we both have got, uh, he came to see me just like your friends come to see you!"
"I believe I was the one who introduced the two of you."
"And… and what does that mean." He was genuinely confused.
"What about me?"
"This isn't about you," Claptrap cut in before Wheatley could mediate. "Not everything is. Geez."
"No. You're right." GLaDOS did turn to face them now, and Wheatley would have much preferred she hadn't because now she was leaning forward and her voice had that old intimidating edge. To be quite honest he was a little frightened, a bit, and Claptrap seemed to feel the same because he also moved back a little. "It was perfectly reasonable of you to disappear on me. Again. Without explanation. I shouldn't have a problem with that. Not at all. And I don't."
Ohhhh. Okay. Yeah. She… now he got it.
"You uh, you hurt her feelings," he whispered as quietly as possible to Claptrap, whose antenna twitched in surprise.
"I can do that?" he exclaimed.
"Well you… you shouldn't," Wheatley said hurriedly. He really did not want to be the cause of any more of that.
"I just didn't know it was possible!" He moved forward, which honestly Wheatley would not have done, not with her optic all narrow like that. "Babe. Hey."
"What," she snapped.
He held up his hands. "Look. Not trying to fight with you. But you're absolutely right. I was running off on you again. I didn't wanna have to tell you to your face! It's easier to just run away! I'm good at that."
"You certainly are," she said, her voice not having softened a whit. Whatever it was about Claptrap that endeared him to her was going to have to come into effect very soon. "You're the most cowardly person I have ever so much as heard of, and believe me, I have witnessed a lot of craven humans. Imagine the most spineless human with the biggest lack of self-respect and the lowest overall value to the Universe as a whole. And then multiply it by one thousand twenty-eight. Only then will you begin to approach the level of cowardice you exhibit every time you so much as think of accessing your own thoughts."
Claptrap tapped the tops of his hands together in consideration. "Gotta give it to you, sugar-bits. You still know how to tear a guy down."
"Oh, I have not even started."
"Well, I could stand here and just let you go on and on about how much I suck. And I'd agree with you! I would. Really. But since I've already got the gist of it, how 'bout we just skip to the next part."
"And what would that be." Wow. Wheatley had not heard her this cold in a long time.
Claptrap shrugged. "The part where I ask nicely for your forgiveness?"
"Well. Go ahead."
"Babe," Claptrap said, putting his hands into a triangle in front of him, "would you please forgive me? Even though what you'd really rather do is pitch me into the incinerator?"
"I really would like to do that," she said, in an altogether inappropriately dreamy way.
"I know. It would be sooooo awesome to watch me melt into a pile of unidentifiable sludge! But if you do that now, it won't be an option for later!"
"True."
"So what do you say? Do you forgive me?"
GLaDOS sighed and brought herself lower, to Wheatley's mild surprise. "On one condition."
"Sure."
"Put those arms of yours to good use. For once."
Wheatley blinked, confused as to what that was supposed to mean, but luckily Claptrap knew exactly and rolled forwards to enclose her core. Wheatley had to smile at that. Aw. GLaDOS had just wanted her friend to give her a good ol' hug, that was all.
"I've missed you, babe," Claptrap said, patting the side of her core with his left hand. "Hey. You mind if I stick around?"
"I'm working on something. So –"
"Not here here," he interrupted. "Just… here."
She tilted her core. "You mean you want to move in."
Claptrap rubbed the tips of his hands together. "I… you can say no. But… I've been thinking – oh I know, who would have guessed! – and… well… I really think I'd be happier here. Not… with you here. Aperture, I mean."
"Very well," GLaDOS said, in a more guarded tone than Wheatley had expected. "But you're going to have to learn to share."
"Oh, absolutely!" Claptrap told her with enthusiasm. "Don't you worry, honey-RAM, I will learn to share you if it kills me! Which it might. But – "
"I meant Wheatley," she interrupted, and if Wheatley had been thinking of saying anything that would have chased the thought straight out of him. "You're… not his only best friend."
The delighted noise Wheatley made could not be described in any human language, and even if he'd wanted to try he could not have kept himself from jumping down onto her core and pressing himself there as hard as he could. Claptrap laughed and probably hugged her again, by the sound of it, and GLaDOS generated some sort of horrified static. "Get off of me, both of you," she scolded them, moving out of reach. "Get out of my sight before something happens."
"Oh, what're you gonna do," Claptrap scoffed, "insult me some more? Lame!"
"Don't push her too far," Wheatley told him. "She just might uh, just might go the whole nine yards just to prove her point."
"I might, too," GLaDOS agreed. "Seriously though. Goodbye."
"Don't miss us too much!" Claptrap called, doing as she'd asked, and Wheatley leapt after him.
"Yeah uh, yeah, don't do that! The, the missing – actually, no. No, do do that, and then, and then when we come back, you uh, you can tell us –"
"What have I gotten myself into," GLaDOS muttered, shaking her core, and Wheatley laughed.
"Just going to have to find out, now aren't you!"
"Ugh."
If she said anything more, he didn't hear her because he had to speed up a bit to catch up with Claptrap. He didn't think he'd been so ecstatic in his entire life. What a turn this had all taken!
Two best friends! Wheatley! Amazing! He never would've imagined it!
Author's note
First order of business: The Questions You Didn't Ask But Probably Have
1. Is this fic really off hiatus? Answer: hopefully.
2. Is there a reason I should still care about it? Answer: I can't make you care about it but I reread it recently for the first time in three years and I gotta say it really is a pretty good time.
3. Are you ACTUALLY going to finish it? Answer: I actually wrote most of the end three years ago. So I mean yes, but the end is over 200 pages long so it is going to take a while longer (200 pages is approximately twenty chapters).
4. What have you been DOING all this time you left us in the lurch? Answer: writing Riddler fanfiction, mostly.
5. I have questions, comments, concerns you didn't address. Given you're so slow at updating, how would I go about that? Answer: This fic is crossposted to Wattpad and AO3. AO3 allows me to answer anonymous reviews but I don't remember if Wattpad does. I CANNOT answer guest reviews until I have the next chapter ready to post, OR you can send me an ask on Tumblr (my URL is Canadian-Riddler) and those I usually answer just about immediately.
Secondly: I know you have been patient. Very, very patient. However I would politely ask that you do NOT ask me to update. I am twenty-six years old and I have a full-time job that takes up a massive amount of my time. Comments left asking me to do so will be removed, unless they contain something else I need to respond to.
If you are here because this fic is at the top of the archive and you're like 'wtf may as well', welcome. Because this fic is so long and the hiatus was so extensive, I do NOT expect anyone to reread OR remember what happens during most of it. Start reading wherever you like and if you have questions I will answer them (but again, guest reviews can only be answered in the note of the next chapter).
Notes on the chapter itself: so I have an issue with writing more than one main characters at a time and originally I had it set up so I could write Claptrap back out again even though he was only there for three chapters. But during my recent reassessment I was struck by how well he seemed to fit into the story and how refreshing a character with a true outside perspective was, so I kinda wrote him back in again. If you haven't played Borderlands 2 you really should, it's probably my fav game to actually play (has WAY more replayability than Portal, as much as I love Portal).
I THINK GLaDOS was wiping Wheatley down with a Mr Clean Magic Eraser.