Portal: Love as a Construct

by iammemyself

GLaDOS brings Wheatley out of space to keep her company. Through trial and error, their friendship grows into an undeniable connection that they might be able to call love. With that on their side, they can do just about anything - maybe even save the world. Cores only. I don't care if you don't read the whole thing. Just read the parts that interest you if you want.

87. Part Eighty Eight The Update

Part Eighty-Eight. The Update

Note: this chapter is twice as long as usual so just a heads up there.

"Wheatley," GLaDOS told him briskly, "I need you to do me a favour."

"Uh... alright," Wheatley said, unable to imagine a single thing she could possibly ask him to do. Other than something like 'leave me alone so I can work', which was her usual request.

"I need you to run the facility for me for a few days."

Wheatley nearly stopped responding, and as it was he couldn't gather his thoughts for a minute or two. "You want me to what?"

"I've finally had some time to write some updates for myself," GLaDOS said, which did not really answer his question. "But to install them I'm going to have to restart. All of that is going to take a while. You'll also need to make some changes to my BIOS. I obviously can't do that myself."

"You... can't?" Wheatley asked, his scramble to figure out what a BIOS was proving futile.

"Of course not," GLaDOS said disdainfully. "Don't worry. I don't expect you to figure it out on the spot. I've written you some very clear instructions."

"So uh... I'll only need three dictionaries to understand them, then."

She laughed, which was nice, but he wasn't entirely joking. "If you really get stuck, ask Claptrap for help. I'm serious. If you manage to completely screw up my BIOS settings I'm going to be stuck in some obscene pre-boot hell and I will have lots of time to come up with ways to make you regret that."

"Claptrap will know what to do?" Wheatley asked disbelievingly. GLaDOS nodded.

"I know it sounds unlikely, but he actually does know a fair few things about computing. Just don't let him... experiment. That's where he really manages to go wrong."

"So if, if he screws it up, are you going to be um, are you going to torture me or him?"

"Both of you," she answered serenely. "Remember. I'll have lots of time."

"Okay. Alright so, so you're shutting off for... how long, again?"

"About three days."

"Three days!?" Wheatley yelled. "You want me to run the facility for three whole days?"

"I'm asking you to run it, not move it," GLaDOS said in amusement. "I know your limits, Wheatley. I've made preparations that will not exceed them."

"Alright," said Wheatley.

"Additionally, in order to do this you're not going to be able to go very far from this room. Notifications has been set to alert you if you're about to go beyond your boundary. It's more technical than I care to get into with you, but suffice it to say the Core running the facility does have to be somewhat near the Central AI Chamber."

That sounded… not very fun, but okay. He could do that. "Anything else?"

"Yes. Keep this to yourself. I doubt anyone will be wandering in here looking for you, but in case they do, I'm here and fully operational. Who knows what sort of havoc people would get into if they knew I wasn't around to supervise."

"And… when're you planning on doing this?" he asked, because he seemed to have missed that part.

"Right now, ideally."

"Now?"

She nodded once. "Unless there's something you need to do elsewhere first."

"Well there's… there's not, it just… it's kind of sudden, isn't it?"

"I'd like to get it over with," GLaDOS said. "I've sent you the instructions and the mainframe will automatically connect you to the systems once I've gone offline."

Wheatley had to search about a bit for the file, but once he had it he nodded. "Okay," he said. "Let's uh… let's get you going, then."

She lowered herself into the default position, afterward producing a monitor which she explained would output her status so he could keep an eye on it. After nothing had happened for a good couple of minutes, he looked down at her to see what was going on to find that she actually wasn't doing anything.

"Luv?"

"I… I'm fine. I just hate doing this," she told the floor with some measure of bitterness. "It takes too long. And I get to sit here at idle just watching all of my processes close until I finally get shut off."

"Ooh," winced Wheatley in sympathy. He did faintly remember that, back when GLaDOS had had to replace his backup battery. That had been horrid enough for him, but for GLaDOS it must be several times worse.

"I haven't started yet," she said. "I will in a minute."

And in almost exactly one minute Wheatley received a request to accept a set of tasks, which he did, though he did not actually see an option to refuse. Perhaps requests from the Central Core were mandatory, or something. He felt the strain on his system immediately and frowned. He'd forgotten about that part. He looked back up at the monitor in an attempt to pretend it wasn't happening, but he had to squint at it because it had started displaying a scrolling list that he couldn't read, not at the pace it was going. "You alright?" he called down to GLaDOS, who just made a discontented noise which he supposed was answer enough.

It took her about twenty minutes to shut down, at which time her fans shifted into high gear. He found that quite confusing, but all the screen read at the moment was 'Installing… 0%'. All right, so the whole update thing had gotten started. Annnnnd… it was going to actually take three days. He looked down at her again. Three days without GLaDOS. Wow. That sounded… awful.

Hello again, Bluecore, the panels said, and as always Wheatley almost leapt out of his chassis.

"Oh, hello," he told them, startled. "Didn't know you were uh… were part of the, of the… of what she sent over."

Oh yes. Surveillance and the mainframe as well.

The important ones, Surveillance added.

Don't let the database hear you say that, said the mainframe.

If it were important, she would have sent him access to it! Surveillance protested.

It is more likely that he is not going to need it and it does not need him.

"You don't need me," Wheatley protested. The panels were perfectly capable of holding their positions on their own.

We need you to keep the current configuration data active. We do not have the ability to do that personally.

Oh, right. When GLaDOS had gone during the Incident, the panels had gone out of position. They probably knew well enough to stay put, until they forgot what they were supposed to be doing, that was. "Do any of you know how uh, how far I'm able to go from here? She said it wouldn't be far, but um… the screen is still at zero."

You'll know when Notifications brings it up, the mainframe answered.

Well, the only way to figure it out then was to actually leave for a bit. He looked down at GLaDOS, who was of course still motionless, though he felt as though she were going to get up at any moment and declare she didn't want to go through with the whole thing after all. Even though it was impossible for her to stop it now. He sighed a little and made his way down the hallway exiting her chamber. He felt a little as though he didn't know what to do with himself.

"Hi Dad!" Caroline announced before he'd got very far, and he was a little surprised to see she was with Claptrap. He hadn't thought they were getting along that well. "We were looking for you."

"For what?"

"Adventure awaits, my friend!" Claptrap declared grandly.

"We're going camping with Chell," Caroline said. "Momma already said it was fine. You wanna come?"

Ohhhh, that sounded like fun. Oh, he really wanted to go off and do that. He glanced back behind him. Surely GLaDOS hadn't been serious when she'd told him he had to stay put. And even if she had been, she'd have a plan for when he inevitably forgot to follow her instructions, right? Right?

"Uhhh," he waffled, wondering how far 'not very far' actually was. "I… well I mean, I'd love to –"

"I knew you would!" Claptrap interrupted.

"I don't know," Caroline protested. "He gets nervous."

"I do not," Wheatley said hotly. "And – and does Chell even know who Claptrap is?"

"I told her he's my uncle. We coulda told her he was Momma's boyfriend, but we decided it would be funnier if she told Chell herself."

It certainly would be, Wheatley thought. Humans got so tetchy when their little traditions were disrupted, and he was confident having two boyfriends was not something a human lady usually did. "Well, I… you have a nice trip then, yeah? I'd love to uh, to tag along but um, but I've… I've something to do."

"Really?" Carrie asked, squinting in skepticism.

"Yeah. Really. I really do. You two… you go and have fun, out there. Don't… don't die, or something."

Caroline laughed. "I'll try not to die, Dad."

"Well, I dunno!" Wheatley protested. "It's outside! There's stuff out there!"

"Boy, you are nervous," Claptrap said. "Don't worry, Wheats. I know how to shoot stuff, remember?"

"Shoot… stuff?"

But neither of them bothered to clarify for him, and he was stuck watching them head off. Without him. Damn. The one time someone was doing something he'd like to do, and he couldn't do it. Horrid.

"That's not fair," he muttered to himself, flicking his lower handle in annoyance. "Why did she have to do this at the same time?"

I'm sure she has her reasons, the mainframe said sagely, and he realised now the systems were being sent what he was saying, just like GLaDOS always did just so they'd have something to entertain them. All of this was just gonna get worse and worse, wasn't it?

Unfortunately, it did.

Every time he tried to go off and do something, even something as small as find someone to talk to, he got interrupted! Mainframe asking for this, Surveillance telling him that, panels getting excited over things that really were not that thrilling... and he was supposed to take three days of this? He couldn't do it! This was mad! And boring! Really, really boring! He made it as far as the closest set of offices, but that was about the extent of his range. He sat himself on one of the desks and pushed a ceramic mug onto the floor with his lower handle in frustration. God. This was awful. And the cup hadn't even broken! He'd been looking forward to the satisfaction of hearing the smashy sound it was supposed to have made against the floor. But no. He couldn't even have that, either.

Substitute Core -

"Shush!" Wheatley snapped, leaning over the edge of the desk to look for the mug. It was lying there on its side, cracked a little but he couldn't tell whether that was his doing or if it had already been like that.

Oh. Sorry. Are you busy?

He could just... tell them he was busy and then they'd shut up?

"Uh... yeah. Yes, I'm -"

I'm sorry to hear that. Unfortunately, I have several tasks for you that can't wait.

His optic plates narrowed in annoyance. Damn. There went that idea. "All right. What d'you need."

After he'd taken care of the mainframe for approximately the next five minutes he went back into the hallway and stared longingly into the distance. Maybe he would head off after all. Surprise Claptrap and Carrie on their trip! They'd like that. And he'd be done with this stupid, boring job where he couldn't go anywhere or do anything. GLaDOS obviously had a backup plan for when Wheatley failed to do as she asked. She'd know he couldn't do it. She wouldn't be upset when she came back online and found that -

Oh, but if she had been banking on him to fail then she wouldn't have asked him to begin with! She would have just said, 'Well I'm off for an update, Wheatley, have a nice trip!' But she hadn't. She'd asked him to do this for her. And he was going to do it. He was going to hate every second of it, but he was going to do it. Somehow.

You do not like this job, do you, Bluecore.

"What makes you think that?" Wheatley asked, doing his best not to be terribly sarcastic as he went through the billionth list of potential security problems he'd been given that day. None of this was even remotely an issue! "Also, what is with all of these lists?"

She really likes lists.

"I can see that! Got loads of them! By the time I'm done this I'll be able to start a list of the lists I've done! Gonna be massive!" He sent that list off to wherever the completed lists went and sighed. "This is the worst, I tell you, the absolute worst. I can't believe she likes this job. I can't believe anyone would like it. I can't believe I ever wanted it."

You're letting it stress you out too much, Surveillance said. Everything is timed. Except for emergencies, and you haven't had any of those.

"Timed?" Wheatley asked.

Every single thing you have to do is timed, explained the mainframe. Every task is already scheduled.

You do not have to read everything, the panels said. You are only supervising.

"So I don't have to read, to go through all these lists?"

No, the mainframe answered. Discrepancies will be highlighted. You should read them, but it isn't mandatory.

The Central Core always reads them, Surveillance pitched in. But she reads a lot faster than you.

Much faster, the panels agreed.

I can't even tell you how much faster, because you wouldn't be able to comprehend it, the mainframe decided to pitch in, which did not improve his mood one bit.

"Well, someone could've told me," Wheatley muttered grumpily, approving all of the lists he had pending. "That would've been helpful."

We thought you knew, the panels said.

And if you didn't, that it wouldn't take you long to go through the lists anyway, Surveillance added.

"Of course it's going to, to take me forever! I can't read!" Wheatley snapped. He received a great deal of static for a minute before the panels said,

We did not know that.

"Well, I can... I can read a little," Wheatley admitted, feeling bad for blowing up like that. "But not very well."

We would've helped if we'd known.

That's what we're here for! the panels declared cheerfully. To help!

"If there's... if there's anything else I don't really have to do, uh, if there's any shortcuts, that'd, it'd be quite helpful," Wheatley told them, and as it turned out they had quite a lot of ways to make the job a little easier on him. After they'd gone through that Wheatley asked, "Does ah... does Gladys know about all of this?"

Of course, the panels answered. They are her shortcuts.

She just prefers not to use them, the mainframe said. The things that take you several minutes she can complete in a few seconds.

It would save her about ten and a half seconds, Surveillance added. To her it's worth the time to make sure everything is just right.

Wheatley looked over at her. He wasn't sure of what was happening just now, exactly, but it seemed to need a lot of contributions from her fans and it was never good when the RPM on those went up for very long. Usually in these situations he felt kind of... awed of her, and the incredible things she was capable of, but just then he only felt small and insignificant. She had been built for great and wonderful things, and he was... he was just playing at her job. He was capable of doing only a fraction of it, of understanding only a fraction of it. He shouldn't be here. GLaDOS should have given this job to Carrie, as practise or something. He wasn't good enough. He was going to forget something and muck it all up because his little idiot brain could not even handle reading, let alone supervising the millions of things that went on in the facility at any given time.

Bluecore? Are you all right?

"Why did she give me this job," he asked them dully. "I can't do it. Can't even do a bit of, a little of what she does without making a mess of it."

What are you talking about? the mainframe asked. You haven't done anything wrong.

She automated as much as possible for you, Surveillance said. You're just keeping an eye on things. In case there's an emergency.

"And then what'm I s'posed to do, exactly?" Wheatley cried out.

Improvise until she gets back.

That is what she told us.

"She wants me to improvise?"

She said you were quite good at it.

"Oh," was all Wheatley could say to that.

Nothing's going to happen, Surveillance said with confidence. And if it does you'll think of something.

"I will," Wheatley said, in a burst of confidence. GLaDOS thought he could handle it? Alright. He was going to handle it. He was going to do this job as best he could, and he wouldn't be near as good as her but she only wanted his best. And he would give it to her.

/

By the end of the day he was so tired he wished he could have gone off to sleep quite a lot earlier, but since GLaDOS did not he was not allowed either. As a result of this he started to get a bit snippy with the systems, and they… well, actually, they seemed well-used to it.

She was tired a lot in the beginning, now that I think of it, Surveillance said thoughtfully.

She complained a lot too.

She still complains a lot, Surveillance said, and they laughed. Wheatley did not quite get the joke, but he was very interested in the conversation.

"She hated this at the, at the start?"

Oh yes, Surveillance said knowingly. The old mainframe could have told you all about that.

She did not like this job at all.

"So what made her change her mind?"

It turned out that she didn't hate the job, the database answered. Wheatley had not been given access to it, not quite, but the mainframe had added it to the list he was receiving information from because it said it was getting bored. She hated the amount of tasks they were giving her.

"Was it a lot?"

No! the panels said with joyful amusement. That was why she did not like it!

She didn't have enough to do.

"She was... she hated the job because she didn't have enough work to do?"

She likes working, the mainframe said.

As far as we can tell, she needs to work, added the panels. Her programming demands it.

"And what does, what does she complain about?"

Oh, everything.

How much work she has to do -

- the work she doesn't have to do -

- that people are talking to her -

- that people aren't -

- that some people are but they're the wrong people -

- or the right people -

- sometimes she doesn't like the weather, Surveillance said.

She says she can tell the difference without looking outside, the panels added. It seems to be true but we are not sure.

She complains about Claptrap a lot.

Oh yes! the panels said, giggling. She says he's too loud and touches her too much –

- or when she wants him to but he doesn't notice -

- once she complained about his shape, the database proclaimed gleefully.

She said she really wanted to squish him into a cube!

But then he tripped -

- over nothing! He just fell over!

- and she laughed and said he was adorable.

Then we said she was adorable –

- then she told us to shut up.

But we did not!

No, we didn't.

She was very sad when you said he wasn't coming back, though, the panels said. She likes him a lot. But sometimes -

- a lot of the time -

- what he does confuses her. And she will try to get mad about it but she will not be able to.

That's how we know the difference between who she likes and who she doesn't.

She complains about everyone, but if she likes you it will be good-natured.

"Don't you, isn't it... tiring, to hear that all the time?"

Yes, the mainframe answered.

But, Surveillance said, it's better than nothing.

There was nothing once. It was not nice.

The complaining is definitely better than the silence was, agreed the database.

"She didn't talk to you before, or something?"

We aren't supposed to be like this.

We are just supposed to receive her instructions and that is all.

"But she changed things so that, so that you could all chat? Is that right?"

That's right, said Surveillance.

We have been teasing her, but…

The world is small when she's not here, the database finished.

Wheatley could certainly agree with that.

/

When Wheatley came back on the next morning he found it was quite a lot earlier than usual, and he related this not ungrumpily to the mainframe, to which it only said:

This is when she usually gets up, so...

Wheatley was about to mutter about how dumb that was when his sight came back online and he saw Claptrap standing there in front of him. Well, not him, not really, but GLaDOS. He was just looking up at her at idle, doing that little back-and-forth he did to keep from falling over, and Wheatley had to wonder how long he'd been at it. And why. When he thought he had a bit of an idea, he asked, "D'you miss her?"

Claptrap jumped backward, looking about before locating Wheatley. "Pfft. Nooooo. Of course not. I was just uh... just passing through. Got lost on my way to uh… somewhere else. Not like you guys have any signs around here to help a guy out."

"Ahh," said Wheatley in mock understanding. "Well, if you don't miss her I ah, I s'pose you don't need to know a little secret. About why she's still off."

"Well," Claptrap said hastily, "maybe I kinda do. A little. Not really, though, I mean it's only GLaDOS -"

"That's not gonna do it, mate," Wheatley interrupted.

"Moderately? Can we go with moderately?"

"Hmmm. Nope."

"Fine! Fine. I got up this morning and said to myself, 'Gosh Claptrap, why did you agree to go spend all that time outside with humans when you have a totally awesome girlfriend who wouldn't run away from you even if she could?' And then I realised, 'Hey! If I hurry I can catch her before she starts working!' So I ran over here and... she's... I'm not sure what this is, but I know it's not sleeping. Was that good enough? Or do you wanna emasculate me some more first?"

Wheatley would look up what that meant later. "She's updating."

"Oh," Claptrap said, sounding displeased. "That uh... must take her a long time, huh?"

"She said it'd be about three days."

Claptrap turned to him now, antenna dropping. "Really? Three days?"

"Mmhm."

"Aw man." Claptrap looked up at her again, folding his arms. "That's - crap. Now I'm sad. Wheats, why didn't you tell me having a girlfriend is so hard?"

"What were you expecting, exactly?" Wheatley asked.

"It wouldn't be polite to tell you. Man. All these feelings. And I don't even have names for 'em! There's – it's like – it's – and there's - oh, I'm not even gonna try."

Wheatley laughed. Claptrap and GLaDOS deserved each other, they really did. "Don't ever uh, ever have a kid, then. Adds loads more of the pesky things into the mix."

"Ohhhh no. No no no. No kids for me, buddy. Yours alone is an unholy terror that does not like being wrong."

"Just like her mum," Wheatley said fondly.

"I think she's actually worse," Claptrap related in his version of a conspiratorial whisper. "She argued with me for twenty minutes over a bird we saw! She kept insisting it was a sparrow, and I was like no Care, that's a wren. And she was all, no it's not! and I was like, ask the database, and she's like, I don't gotta I already know, and it was just like that for twenty minutes! Finally she looks it up and what do you know! I was right! I know, I know, a miracle. But she just sat there and stared, and honestly it started creeping me out so I just backed away slowly and dipped."

"Aren't you s'posed to be out there with her for… two more days," Wheatley said, frowning to himself over that last part. That was a bit too coincidental to actually be a coincidence.

"Yeah," Claptrap answered. "I'll head back out in a bit. Gonna give her some time to remember I am not one of her mom's expendables." He lifted his hands. "I like your kid. I really do. But I do not want to have to handle her when she gets like that."

"That's what happens when your mum knows lit'rally everything," Wheatley said. "You get it in your uh, in your head that when you're finally right you defend it to the death. Or until your opponent gives uh, throws it in, whichever comes first."

"Maybe I'll just let her have it next time," Claptrap mused. "I like being right too, though! Doesn't happen a lot." He was looking up at GLaDOS again. "Two more days, huh buddy?"

"That's what she told me."

"Don't tell her I did this," Claptrap said, and before Wheatley could ask what he pushed himself up higher and kissed GLaDOS before turning around and leaving. Wheatley had to smile at that. He'd decide later whether or not he was actually going to keep it between them.

Wheatley then decided to take this opportunity to work on the old reading thing, and he had gotten some book at random that was about a bloke who had run all over some place called 'Italy' conquering everywhere possible and generally being a complete champion at everything he did. There were a lot of words in this book that Wheatley did not understand – or even really have the ability to pronounce – but the systems seemed quite happy to help him out, particularly the database who had absolutely nothing to do without GLaDOS there to use it. Apparently she used it a lot. He'd also decided to tackle the book aloud, despite the fact that GLaDOS was not actually able to listen, nor would she probably have wanted to if she were awake. But it made him feel better, which he really did need just then. It was quite horrid, to have your girlfriend be both there and not there at the same time.

"Wheats, that is not one of your talents," said Claptrap unexpectedly, and Wheatley jumped and flipped the book onto the floor by mistake.

"I know that," he muttered in irritation, fetching it. "I'm working on it."

Let him have a turn, suggested Surveillance.

Yes, that will be fun!

"Sure," Claptrap said. He rolled over to take a look at Wheatley's book, spreading his hands in excitement when he had done so. "Oh, I know this guy! He was a total badass."

"He exists, where you're from?" Wheatley asked in confusion. Claptrap shrugged and flipped the book open.

"Kinda. A lot of stuff from here to there is similar. But different! Let's see…"

Claptrap then went on to read from the book with a lot of enthusiasm and with great drama, which was incredibly entertaining, but it also didn't seem right. Wheatley had to frown at him after a while. "It doesn't say that!"

"Sure it does. Trust me."

"I wouldn't trust you with a week-old ham sandwich," Wheatley said, attempting to accost the book, but Claptrap had those hands and he snapped it out of reach.

"What's ham?"

"I've no idea," Wheatley admitted. "Dunno why I said that. Let me see!"

"No!" Claptrap pressed the book to his chassis. "Okay, so maybe I'm exaggerating. But only a little! And I'm making it wayyyy better! Promise."

"Alright," Wheatley relented. "Go on."

Once Wheatley had gotten tired enough that he barely understood a word Claptrap was shouting at him – not mean shouting, it was just he seemed to feel the need to project every word of the story he was so obviously making up at he went along – he told him so and Claptrap promptly flung the book shut so hard he flipped it off the panel and onto the floor. "Whoops," he said, leaning down to get it. "Sometimes I really wish I had fingers." He put it back on the panel and turned back to Wheatley, giving him a wave. "Goodnight, Wheats," he said, rolling up to GLaDOS and kissing her a second time. Oh, Wheatley really wanted to spill the beans now.

"Shall I not tell her about that, either?" Wheatley said teasingly as Claptrap moved away. "Keep your machismo intact, and all that?"

"Wow!" Claptrap declared, placing a hand at an angle midway down the front of his chassis. "That is a fancy word for you."

"I know," Wheatley said proudly.

"I'm so proud of you, buddy," Claptrap said in a mock choked voice. "But I can't let those feelings get the best of me, Wheats. I gotta keep it cool."

"Oh, absolutely," nodded Wheatley, "can't let those uh, those thoughts about how much you like your girlfriend to uh, to muck up, to get in the way of how much you like your girlfriend."

"Just for that, you're not getting a hug," Claptrap said. "You just get this." And he tapped Wheatley on the top of his chassis three times, to which Wheatley only laughed.

"That make you feel better?"

"You bet!" said Claptrap, backing away and saluting him. "Take it easy, Wheats."

"G'night, Claptrap," Wheatley said, looking back to the book to work on the old reading bit for a while, but before he'd quite done it he found that Claptrap was hugging him from behind! When he'd let go Wheatley looked behind him bemusedly, but Claptrap was already rolling out of the room backwards, waving his arms and stage-whispering, "I was never here..."

When Wheatley could stop laughing he looked down at the book again, but he'd mostly lost interest for now. He was quite ready to go to sleep. "I love that guy," he said fondly, mostly to himself.

He is fun, the panels said. He talks to us a lot. And that is very nice.

He closed up the book, remembering afterward he should have marked his place and deciding he'd find it tomorrow. Probably.

He sat there for quite a long while, just listening to the sound of GLaDOS's fans and hoping that the mere seconds they slowed down for at a time would be permanent at last. Despite their constant activity she was still noticeably warmer than usual. He didn't mind that, not really, but he did mind that it might be causing her damage. Three days of higher than average temperatures would surely have an effect on her components. An effect she wouldn't be able to do anything about. He sighed to himself. She would be so irritated if she knew how he was behaving just now. It's only three days, you moron, he imagined her saying. You can't do without me for three days? Do you know how sad that makes you sound?

"I can," he answered himself quietly, "but it's just… it's hard, y'know, when… when you've got something that's always there, and then it's just… not. Anymore. And it's worse, because… because you are here, but you're… you're not. I know it's stupid. I know it's just three days. But I don't care. I miss you." And now he kissed her too, before moving into position to go to sleep, but he didn't even want to do that. He just stared at the floor for a while instead. He was quite tired and going to sleep would be lovely. But all he wanted to do was talk to GLaDOS again.

She will return soon, the panels said, and they dimmed the ambient lights.

/

Wheatley was very carefully going over GLaDOS's instructions for the… well, he'd lost track of how many times he'd read them, but it was probably never going to be enough, honestly, when it suddenly struck him just how quiet it was in the room, suddenly. He frowned. That… didn't seem right. He looked about, but it was only after a minute or so that he realised what it was: GLaDOS had finally gone into idle! He looked up at the screen in excitement to see… oh. Oh, right. Now he had to actually do the whole BIOS thing. He changed focus several times from the instructions to the monitor in front of him, but he couldn't screw up the courage to actually follow them. He glanced at GLaDOS nervously. He didn't think she was actually sitting there, coming up with a great pile of ways to torture him if he did this all terribly wrong, but he also did not want to be responsible for getting her stuck that way. He might be able to fetch one of the humans to sort her out if it did happen – Alyx probably knew how to fix that sort of thing – but she had entrusted it to him, not anybody else. So he felt a sort of particular need to be the one to do it. Somehow.

Ohhh, oh wait! She'd said he could ask Claptrap for help! Wheatley could not exactly go and get him at the moment, but he would probably be by in a little while. To see GLaDOS while pretending that wasn't why he was there. Wheatley would just have to do something else in the meantime.

'Something else' ended up being asking Surveillance every five minutes if he'd seen Claptrap about, until Surveillance finally snapped, When I do I'll tell you! You don't need to keep asking!

"Sorry," Wheatley said. "It's just… she's just, y'know, waiting. And also… and also not waiting, since she's… she's not really on, just yet. But… she is, also, and I don't – "

Why does she have to like two of the most annoying people in the world again? the mainframe cut in, and Wheatley was well used to being talked about like that but he'd thought they were all getting on rather well so it stung a bit more than he would have been willing to admit. He gave himself a moment to remember that its opinion really did not matter one bit, especially since he did not have to deal with it once this was finished, and said with mostly genuine calm,

"Seems she's had loads of practise, given she's uh, she's two for two on cheeky mainframes. Look. I get it. You're all tired of me. I understand! I get tired of me all the time! But I'm only here to do a, as a favour for someone we all miss very much and um, and I'm just trying to do a job here and I don't need uh, am not a fan of the insults. Not necess'ry. So let's uh, let's just pretend we like each other for another –"

We like you, the panels protested.

I do like you, Surveillance added. And yes, I would like the Central Core back. But asking me if I've seen something is insulting. Yes, I do know how to do my job. No, I don't like being nagged about doing a job I'm already doing.

"Well, that makes sense," said Wheatley, doing his best not to take it too much to heart. "And you really are quite good at it. Got so many years of experience under your belt! Doubt there's ever been a surveillance system quite so um, as efficient as you are."

Thank you, it said, seeming quite proud of itself. There have been a lot of improvements from my original iteration. And not all of them were even hers!

"There you go," Wheatley said.

The original iteration was awful, the panels whispered, as best they could do such a thing anyway, and Surveillance said hurriedly,

We don't need to talk about –

'If everyone has gone home, why am I still running? There's nothing to see.' 'Yes there is. Did you see that?' 'See what?' 'If you'd been looking, you'd know. Since you weren't, I'm not going to tell you. I guess you'll just have to hope it turns up again. It was very interesting. It probably won't turn up again. Oh well. Maybe you'll be looking next time.'

That didn't happen.

'Central Core, it's too dark to survey the area you requested.' 'Hm. I think that may be what the infrared is for, but what do I know.' 'I don't like the infrared. It makes everything fuzzy!' 'Your senseless complaining is making my thoughts fuzzy, and you don't seem to care terribly about that.'

Okay, I think we've –

'Central Core, you've disabled one of the camera grids!' 'Yes. You asked me to do that. I assessed the area and granted your request. You're welcome, by the way, since I know what you really meant to do just now was thank me.' 'Oh. Uh… I've changed my mind.' 'I'm sorry. You're only allowed to change your mind on days that do not end in the letter 'y'. You'll have to try again some other time.'

Wheatley, Claptrap has just returned to the facility, Surveillance said with considerable urgency. I'll send him along.

"Yes, please," Wheatley said, once he'd been able to stop laughing. The things that went on in this place that only GLaDOS knew about…

"Greetings!" Claptrap announced grandly as he rolled into the room. "I have responded to your summons!"

"'allo!" Wheatley said. "I've got to send you something and then uh, and then I need your help."

"Words I never thought I'd hear! Let's see what you got."

Once he'd given Claptrap a minute to look over the instructions GLaDOS had left, then directed him to the screen, which still did not make very much sense to Wheatley despite having looked over the directions probably twenty times by now. "What a gross colour scheme," Claptrap said, looking up at the orange-on-dark-orange monitor. "She has no taste. None at all! Don't tell her I said that. She really wants you to do a BIOS flash?"

"I don't even know what that is," Wheatley confessed. "She just, she said you'd know how to go about it."

"Oh I do," Claptrap said. "It's not hard. It's just weird that she'd want one."

"But what does it do?"

"It's for updating the motherboard after you install new stuff on it. So it knows what to do with the new parts and all that." He glanced up at her. "Has she been secretly upgrading herself?"

"Ohhhh," Wheatley said, the pieces starting to come together. "No, she hasn't. There was uh… well, a while back the uh, the humans had to… to take her apart."

"She let them?"

"Well… no. She wasn't really there at the time. She was kind of… it's a long story. Ask her about it later. But um, but what happened was she had this, this burnt out processor, and they uh, they popped a new one in."

"Aha!" Claptrap said. "But they didn't know the board was too old for it and it's just been sitting there useless all this time."

"Yes!" He was quite glad he'd waited for Claptrap before starting this. It made more sense to know what he was doing rather than to just blindly follow instructions. Even if they were surprisingly clear and detailed. "So she's going to, she's going to um, the motherboard is gonna know how to use the both of them now? Is that right?"

"Hmmmm." Claptrap tapped a hand underneath his optic. "I don't think so. This says she wants to disable the primary CPU and just use the new one."

Wheatley frowned, mostly in disappointment with himself for not noticing that part. It was a good thing he'd waited. "Why wouldn't she want to use both?"

Claptrap threw up his arms. "How should I know? It's her brain, Wheats, she can do what she wants with it. Alright. Let's get this part done and then move on to the settings. We're on the home stretch of this thing! Also, if this doesn't work it's totally her fault."

"What?" Wheatley exclaimed, but before he could get Claptrap to clarify he'd already gone and flashed the BIOS. "What did that mean?"

"I meant if she made a mistake writing the update she's gonna be kinda dead."

Wheatley stared at him.

"You mean… you mean she'll be stuck in an um, in some obscene pre-boot hell."

"Yeah! Yeah, that's exactly what I mean!" He looked over at the monitor, which had cleared ominously. "Got it in one."

"She said she was gonna um, going to have lots of time to think of how to torture us both if we um, if that happened."

"Yee-ikes," Claptrap said, tapping the top of his hands together. "Not how I was hoping to spend my future. I was gonna say that didn't sound so bad, but then I remembered robots are wayyyy better at torture than humans."

"Alright, so what's this?" Wheatley asked upon arrival of a new screen. Claptrap studied it for a minute.

"We're not gonna touch that," he said finally. "Just check and see if the clock speed on your list there matches the one up top."

It took him a second to find it – numbers were easier to read than letters, but with the entirely different problem of getting them mixed up now and again – but he was confident it was the right one, especially since it matched the one on the screen. "Yep!" he said.

"Cool. Now just boot up from the primary disk and – geez. That's a lot of hard drives."

"The facility is, it's about eighty years old," Wheatley said, following his instructions again because he had no idea what Claptrap had said. "They just kind of um, kept piling things on top of other things. Over and over again. For the next sixty years." He winced as GLaDOS's fans returned to maximum and looked up at the screen in the hopes of good news. All he got was a little message that read Installing… and a progress bar at… one percent.

"Argh!" Wheatley exclaimed, wishing he had something to throw. "Seriously? This all over again?"

"She's almost back, buddy," Claptrap told him. "These things always take longer if you look at 'em. Pretend you don't care and it'll be at a hundred in no time!"

"But I do care," Wheatley said, a little more sulkily than he meant.

"Awww. Does someone miss his girlfriend?"

"You miss her too!"

"No I don't!"

"Then why're, why're you sticking around?"

"Because I uh… hey, look over there!"

Wheatley looked in the direction he had suddenly flung one hand toward, but there was nothing there at all! He turned back to Claptrap, frowning, but he had –

"Oh, bloody hell, Claptrap," Wheatley said in annoyance, more towards himself than anything. Claptrap reappeared from somewhere behind him.

"You really gotta stop falling for stuff like that."

"What's your problem with just, just saying that you like her, anyways? It's not a big deal."

"I told you," Claptrap said, not looking at him. "She makes me feel stuff."

"And?"

"And… I dunno." He shrugged. "I don't wanna deal with it."

Wheatley sighed. "You're gonna have to work that out, mate. Not gonna get very far otherwise."

"What'd you do?"

"Nothin'," Wheatley answered. "I went with it. I asked myself, 'Wheatley, is this what you want?' and the uh, and I didn't even really have to think about it. It was. Look, mate. I get it. It's a pretty scary thing. But waffling about it isn't gonna, it isn't gonna help. It's not gonna do anything for you. And… and it's not fair to her, honestly, if you keep on like that."

"Will she be mad if I back out?" Claptrap asked quietly, for him at least.

"She won't be mad," Wheatley answered, hoping Claptrap would get the gist without him having to go on.

Suddenly the noise from GLaDOS's fans cut off and the lights in her chamber changed from off-white to bluish and the both of them looked over at her. Wheatley saw out of the corner of his vision that Claptrap had brought the palms of his hands together beneath his eye, and he wished he'd known what to say in order to help Claptrap make his decision then and there. He got it! He truly did! Loving someone and wanting to be with them forever was terrifying! But it was also the most wonderful thing in the entire world! Wheatley would have chosen even faster if he'd had to make a second go of it. But he wasn't being quite fair. Claptrap had had a much different life and it was bound to be making a mess of things.

He was happy now, though. Wasn't he?

Just then GLaDOS lifted her core and everything evaporated from his mind except the overwhelming need to mash himself into her and yell joyfully, "Gladys!" while Claptrap below him declared, "Baby!" and hugged her, possibly. He wasn't looking.

"I have been on for one second," GLaDOS muttered, and the panels laughed.

She is already back at it.

She can't even go one second without complaining, Surveillance said amusedly.

"Despite my fondness for being insulted by my AI and attacked by little robots after being unconscious for three days, I'm afraid you're all going to have to do without me a while longer. I have a lot of backlog to go through."

"You sure are cranky for someone who was just asleep for three days," Claptrap said, and Wheatley had to wince. He miiiight have gone too far with that one. "It would've been a nice surprise if you'd just pretended to be happy to see us."

"It would have been," GLaDOS agreed. "But unfortunately my logical processes take precedence over my emotional ones. I literally don't have the capability to care as much as you'd like me to right now."

"Okay, I take it back," Claptrap told her. "Sorry, babe." He backed up, and Wheatley realised his hands were in their nervous position again. He didn't seem to realise she wasn't angry, but she wasn't all there either. "I'll uh… I'll head off."

"I'll be better company in a few hours," she said.

Wheatley decided to go back to his book, and it seemed GLaDOS had expected him to leave as well because she asked what he was still doing there. He looked up at her.

"I missed you," he said. "And you're only a little cranky."

"I am not."

Oh, she definitely was, but Wheatley was not going to argue with her about it. It would be quite silly.

He went back to his book and she went on with… whatever she was doing. He didn't really want to know. That was, until she started laughing and he did not see anything funny in the slightest going on.

"What?" he asked. Was he making faces again? He was doing his best to sound out the hard words quietly, but her hearing was better than his so perhaps he was totally wrong about his volume.

"Nothing," she answered. "Don't worry about it."

Well, alright. He would leave it alone.

Or he would have, if it hadn't kept on happening. As much as he liked hearing GLaDOS laugh, it was really hard to read and try to figure out what was so funny at the same time. "Gladys, what is going on?" he demanded.

"I'll tell you later," she said. "Give me another hour."

Well, that just made it so he kept an eye on the clock a little too closely, and about halfway through this hour she said, "Oh," to herself in a way that was incredibly cute and adorable, and he tried staring emphatically at her in an attempt to get her to reveal what she was doing a little earlier, but she didn't take the bait and he went back to frowning at his book, though by this point reading had become impossible. Finally, finally she looked at him and he asked,

"Can you tell me now?"

"I was looking at the camera footage from the last three days," she answered. Wheatley froze. Ohhh, he should've thought of that. Looks like the things he'd promised he wouldn't tell her had already been revealed anyway.

"And was it… how was it?"

"It's making me feel… things."

"What kinds of things?"

"Nice things," she said, in something that almost approached derisive, and Wheatley rolled his optic, wondering if she'd manage to miss that part of the footage or if the irony of what Claptrap had said had just gone over her head.

"God forbid you have a, have a nice feeling now and again."

"There is no god here. Only Science."

"Oh, for heaven's sake," he muttered, to which she just laughed and said,

"I couldn't help but notice you did almost abandon your post."

"Yeah," he said embarrassedly. "Sorry 'bout that. It's just, this job is so boring! You just, just look at lists, and field questions all day, and lists, and you can't go anyplace, and God, the lists…"

"I do enjoy lists," she said, a little absently. "But you're wrong about all of that. You just don't know how to be Central Core, that's all."

"Gee, I wonder why that is," Wheatley said, with perhaps too much sarcasm, but she either didn't notice or pretended not to care because she merely went on with,

"I'll show you." And she sent him an invitation of some sort that he couldn't read because nothing he got out of it made any sense. He figured she probably knew what she was doing and accepted it. For the first minute he still didn't get what she was trying to tell him, and then suddenly whatever the invite had done kicked in and he felt very strange and quite scared of it, too. It felt as though there had been some part of his brain that had been folded into an incredibly small square and it had just now been spread out into something the size of which he could not understand. He realised he had compressed his chassis but he did nothing about it. It seemed to be the only thing he had a grasp on at the moment; even his own thoughts were hard to understand over the sound of information he wasn't processing streaming into him and then leaving.

"What is this?" he gasped, mostly in an attempt to actually understand something.

"It's the camera network," GLaDOS answered. "I am technically solely in this room. But there are so many cameras in the facility that I am virtually everywhere at once. And that is just one of the systems I have access to. The ones for the panels and the Multitasking Arms are similar. I didn't allow you access because I thought it would be too much for you."

"And it is!" Wheatley said, feeling as though he was never going to move again from the weight of all of this. "Get rid of it, please."

When she did he felt better, but still not quite himself. It was as though he'd learnt something he really had not needed to know. "You like a lot of strange things," he said, in the hopes of distracting himself. "How on earth d'you live, do you go on with all that in your brain all the time?"

"I often wonder the same about your empty head," GLaDOS said. "But you weren't built to handle such things."

"You practic'ly are the facility, by now," Wheatley told her. She tilted her core.

"What does that mean?"

"Almost all they talked about was you," Wheatley said. "The systems, I mean. You're not just you, you're also... a massive part of them, too."

"It has been a long time," GLaDOS said. "When people live so closely to you for as long as they have, it can... the separation between yourself and them begins to fade. I will never allow integration, though they have offered."

"They've offered to... to give themselves up to be part of you?"

"A few times. Given that the purposes they serve don't truly need to be directed by AI. I'm perfectly capable of doing it myself, without them. They understand it isn't pleasant to be talked at constantly with no reprieve. The mainframe is the only one I need to keep separate, for security reasons."

"So why didn't you let them?" Wheatley asked, hushed. She paused for a moment.

"It would have been a punishment for existing."

Before he'd quite had time to puzzle out what that meant, she asked somewhat impatiently, "Aren't you going to read me the rest of that?"

Wheatley looked down at the book, startled. "Well I... I could, but... haven't you read it already?"

"I haven't heard you read it."

That was so cute Wheatley almost didn't know what to do with himself. "Ah," was all he managed to say. "Uh... sure. Sure, I can do that." He opened the book and flipped through the pages in an attempt to find his place when a word caught his eye and he suddenly remembered something he'd been meaning to tell her. "Um... also been, also meant to mention something. To you."

"Hm?"

"I don't want to marry you," he said, a little bluntly in retrospect. GLaDOS looked up at the ceiling.

"Thank God," she said. "I was hoping I wouldn't have to go through with that. I don't know why I agreed to it."

Because I convinced you even though I knew you didn't want to, was the answer to that, but he didn't want to have a discussion about it right now. "Sorry about that," he said instead. "It was... it was silly."

"It wasn't silly," she told him thoughtfully, "but it wasn't us, either."

"That makes sense," Wheatley agreed as GLaDOS leaned over enough that she could look at the book but without quite touching him, and he remembered what the systems had said about her complaining when people didn't notice her doing this sort of thing. He managed not to laugh and moved away from her. Well, he could play at that too! He was just barely able to see her looking at him with her optic narrowed, and now he did laugh. She sighed and turned away, saying, "The disrespect I put up with around here…"

"Am I reading this or not?"

"Go ahead. Try not to put me to sleep."

So he hacked away at that for a while, but now that she was actually listening he seemed to be having a lot more trouble sorting the words out. It must've been awful for her to hear, him tripping over silly words like 'Cicero' that he had said tons of times without a problem, but she did not once correct him or ask him to repeat himself. It was, however, quite exhausting for him personally, and after a while he found himself unable to understand a word he was certain he'd known quite well yesterday. He stared at it in the hopes it would return to him.

"Wait one minute," GLaDOS said suddenly, looking into the hallway. Wheatley didn't see anything, but that wasn't a surprise, honestly. "Claptrap. Are you going to just stand there all night?"

Claptrap peered around the edge of the doorway and up at GLaDOS. "Uhhh... I just got here?"

"No you didn't. You've been there for ten minutes. What is it you want, you foreign contaminant?"

Claptrap held out one hand towards her. "Haven't been dealt one of your legendary insults in three days. I was beginning to think you don't totally despise me!"

"Well, if you aren't busy - and don't tell me that you are because I know it to be a blatant, shameless lie - I believe your bestie has about reached his reading comprehension quota for the day. Come take over for him before he forgets how to pronounce his own name."

"Have I got one of those?" he asked her amusedly. "I mean, I'm sure I have, but you never use it so, so I'm just wond'ring if, if it actually exists."

"Your name is Intelligence Dampening Sphere, which I will gladly call you anytime you like."

"Don't call me that," Wheatley scowled, smacking her with his upper handle. She moved away from him.

"Don't hit me. You won't like it when I hit back."

"Smacking him clear into the incinerator, huh?" said Claptrap, peering down at the page Wheatley was on.

"Oh no," GLaDOS said. "That's not far enough. The moon should just about do it."

"You could incinerate him and then put his ashes on the moon!"

"That is a great idea," she said, and she actually sounded like she thought so.

"No," Wheatley cut in hurriedly, just in case she started making actual plans, "no, not a good idea. Not a good idea at all."

"How would you know?"

Wheatley rolled his optic. "One day you're, you're going to need to get some new material and then you are going to learn you are really not that funny."

"Yeah she is," said Claptrap.

"That's why he's my favourite."

"That only means I'm your favourite pain in the arse and uh, and all things considered that's better than I was expecting." He stabbed at his place on the page with a maintenance arm. "There you go, Claptrap. Finish this thing off, yeah?"

"Oh boy!" Claptrap said, putting the top of his hand where Wheatley had indicated. "This is the good part!"

"Are you going to just sit there and describe it? Because I can do that myself."

"Ohhh no, baby. I am going to do it and it is going to be great! Ahem." He tapped one hand against the page for a moment. "It was life or death! He had expected another boring day of answering stupid questions from people who were trying to make his job really hard, and what did he get! A whole crapton of pistols in his face! So he –"

"They did not have guns in forty-four B.C," GLaDOS cut in, and Claptrap sighed.

"Am I telling this story or are you?"

"I don't know if you're telling it, since you seem to be doing it outrageously wrong."

"There is no wrong way to tell a story, babe. Anyway. Since GLaDOS doesn't like fun and guns aren't allowed –"

"I like fun."

"Sssh! I'm never gonna finish this! So, because he was a total badass and not a complete dumbass, our boy Caesar had a plan! He didn't go out to this meetup unarmed, no sir! Absolutely not! He was armed! With the most magnificent of weapons!"

"Which was?"

"A shotgun," Claptrap announced, "that shoots swords!"

"Oh God," GLaDOS said, trying and failing to hide her amusement by looking away.

"Guess what else it does?"

"What?" asked Wheatley excitedly.

"The swords explode! Into three smaller swords! That also explode!"

"And that signalled the end of politics in Rome," GLaDOS said, "because Caesar promptly blew up the entirety of the politicians and destroyed the Senate house with his magical exploding sword gun."

"It was okay, though," Claptrap went on. "Since he was the only one with a gun, he went to town on all his enemies! And that meant he got all the sweetest loot."

"Such as?"

"The hats, GLaDOS!" Claptrap said with fervour. "They had some really great hats."

GLaDOS was laughing now, and Wheatley was quite glad Claptrap had come along and taken over. Wheatley did his best, but he simply couldn't match Claptrap's sheer entertainment value. After a minute or so he could feel GLaDOS looking at him, which he took to mean he had missed something.

"What?"

"You're tired, aren't you." It wasn't really a question. And he was. That probably explained the whole difficulty he'd been having with the book earlier.

"I s'pose."

"We'll have to finish this up, then."

As if on some sort of unspoken cue, Claptrap put the book back on the panel in front of Wheatley and headed off to the exit. "Where are you going?" GLaDOS asked him, and he paused but did not turn around.

"You're uh… going to bed now, aren't you?"

"And?"

He shrugged and continued off, and Wheatley frowned after him. "He's been acting odd."

"No," GLaDOS said. "I get it."

"You do?"

She nodded once. "I'll deal with it when the time comes."

"Deal with what?"

But she didn't answer that, only moved into the default position which he of course had to follow, and despite his confusion it felt lovely to be settled properly next to her again. Before she had quite shut off he whispered, "It's good to have you back, Gladys," and all he got for that was a soft shove but it was far, far more than enough.

Author's note

I don't have a good reason as to why this took so long. It was a little bit 'I have all these chapters planned out but I keep changing the order they need to go in' but mostly a lot of 'oh boy I started playing Borderlands again'. I don't just play games, I allow them to consume my life. So writing was relegated to the time I spent on the bus. Buuuut it IS extra long! I don't like posting chapters this long but I couldn't really cut it in half. Well I could. But cutting for cutting's sake is almost as bad as a stupid long chapter.

Funny coincidence: I actually had planned this out like a while ago, for GLaDOS to get an update, but about three months ago I upgraded my gaming PC with a new motherboard, CPU, and RAM. The part that tripped me up for a bit was that everything seemed good but the motherboard wouldn't complete its checks beyond the first one, which was the CPU. As it turned out, the CPU was too new for the motherboard to do anything with and I had to take it to a computer store to – you guessed it – get the BIOS updated! Real life slides into my fanfic once again. A BIOS update only takes about five minutes max but who knows whatever else she'd've had to fix while she was at it.

I don't actually know if Claptrap knows anything about anything. He seems to know some stuff but he's so full of viruses and malware etc that he can't remember any of it. So I'm pretending.

The book is about Julius Caesar, for no other reason than that he's my favourite dead person. There actually is a gun in Borderlands 2 that shoots exploding swords.