Part Ninety-One. The Defense
"Um… what's he doing?" Wheatley asked, gesturing to Claptrap with his lower handle. The other robot was lying facedown on the floor, his arms laid straight out. GLaDOS glanced at him.
"He's sad," she answered.
"And is that uh… how is that helping, exactly."
"I didn't ask."
"You alright down there, Claptrap?" Wheatley called to him, and Claptrap raised one hand in a thumbs up before letting it fall back down. It bounced a little before it went still on the floor. Frowning, he looked back to GLaDOS. "But why's he sad?" The only explanation he could conjure was that GLaDOS had upset him, but if he were here that couldn't be true! He'd've gone off someplace else! GLaDOS looked down at Claptrap again.
"He has a lot to be sad about."
"Like… like what?"
"If he wants you to know, he'll tell you," GLaDOS said, with infuriating calm.
"I'm done," Claptrap announced, sort of pushing himself up and hopping onto his wheel at the same time. "Let's hang, Wheats. She's busy."
Living with GLaDOS made Wheatley extremely wary of sudden, outrageous mood changes, but he hadn't learnt just yet what sort of help Claptrap needed in those situations. So he just shrugged and they headed off into the hallway, but he didn't know quite where they were off to so he hoped Claptrap didn't ask after it.
"She's gonna dump me, isn't she," Claptrap asked suddenly, sounding quite morose, and despite that hint Wheatley had to stop to think about that one.
"What's um… what's that mean? Don't think I've uh, I've come across that term before."
"It means…" He waved one hand in dismissal. "Never mind. I don't wanna know. Happens when it happens, I guess."
Oh God, not this from him too! "No! No, tell me!"
"I just… she could have anybody, and she's cool with me? Nah. This is gonna fall apart sooner or later."
Wheatley didn't want to get too much into GLaDOS's business, not before she'd gone through whatever process she did when deciding what to tell people about herself, but at this point he was going to have to edge into that territory. Especially since she wouldn't be able to sort this mess out alone. "She couldn't. Not by a long shot."
"What are you talking about? She's the perfect AI. And I mean that literally. Hyperion would've blown a – uh, they would've been super happy if they managed that! Anybody on Pandora would literally kill a lot of people to have her."
"The perfect AI, maybe," Wheatley conceded, not knowing enough about it to argue that point. "The perfect person? No."
"She is kinda mean sometimes, but –"
"Not kind of," Wheatley interrupted, moving 'round in front of him. "Sometimes she is very mean. Even with uh, even with people she likes. She'll make you angry on purpose, and say, and tell you things about yourself that aren't true, and, and play pranks on you just to amuse herself. And you'll put up with it, because she can also be quite kind and sweet and funny. When she wants to be. But if you keep expecting her to be perfect, the whole thing's gonna go up in your face again! Because she's not perfect, she's better! And it takes work. If you're not prepared for, if you can't manage that, then yeah, it'll fall apart. But if she didn't think you were up to it she wouldn't be willing to give it another go!"
Claptrap stared at him for a moment before looking away.
"I like her, buddy. I really do. But I've been doing that all my life. I don't… I gotta stop doing it, y'know? All that ever happens is… nothing! I should… and listen to you! She's got you! And you've got her! What do either of you need me for? I dunno, Wheats," Claptrap said, continuing forward. "You and her and all of this… I'm waiting for the punchline, y'know? And it's been so long coming that maybe I'm just wasting a chance to bow out with my dignity for once."
"What are you talking about? What punchline?" He felt totally lost and it was beginning to upset him.
"Me," Claptrap said. "I'm the punchline."
Wheatley was trying his best to be patient and understanding, but this just was not going anywhere! "What does that mean?"
"Nothing. Forget about it."
"No!" Wheatley shouted in exasperation, bouncing his handles in an attempt to burn off some of his frustration. "Quit bandying about and just tell me!"
"I don't wanna talk about it anymore," Claptrap said, starting forward again and trailing his hand along the wall panels. Wheatley was unable to move for a few moments. God. Why did his best friends have to be the two most infuriatingly frustrating constructs in the entire universe? Wheatley was just too annoyed to keep on, even though it was the proper thing to do. So they continued… whatever it was they were doing in silence. Until Claptrap stopped outside of one of the open offices, that was, and when Wheatley glanced in to see what'd caught his eye, he saw nothing interesting. Just a load of Cores having a chat.
"What's going on in there?"
Wheatley glanced at the gathering of Cores and shrugged in dismissal. "Just another uh, another conspiracy meet. Probably. 's what it usually is."
"A what?"
Wheatley waved his lower handle in their general direction. "A conspiracy meet. Where they uh, they discuss how awful she is and what her true, her real goal in reactivating all of them was."
"And what was this glorious goal?"
"To give Carrie a future. Those AI have been restored and um, and rebuilt from their original versions. It was all done to… to give her some community, y'know? To give her… as much as possible."
"Didn't want her to end up alone and lonely, huh?"
"She's willing to put up with a lot if it means, if it means Carrie can be happy. She knows about these things. She doesn't talk about them, or, or put an end to them. But she knows."
"She listens to this crap?"
"No. Surveillance gives her the gist, sometimes. If it starts getting too serious."
Claptrap stared into the room and they both listened for a while to the Cores grumbling about how she was watching them and listening to them and probably mind-controlling them too, which Wheatley had to snort at because they clearly did not comprehend how ridiculously complicated it was, controlling an entire facility by oneself. Wheatley was getting fairly bored of this stuff he'd all heard a million times before and was about to suggest they head off when Claptrap actually entered the room and said, "Hey!"
"Can… can we help you?"
"Do you even know how good you've got it? C'mon, guys! Trust me, she is not spying on you. Your life is sooo boring! She's got so much more to do than keep an eye on pricks like you all day long. Seriously? She gives you free will and a great big laboratory to play in and you just sit around complaining? Wow. You really suck, y'know that? Do you got any idea what the rest of us have to go through? Being told what to do all day long, and even when you do your best it's not good enough, and also you get yelled at a lot and kicked sometimes. But not you! No, she restored all of you and protects you from the humans, and this is the thanks she gets? Geez. No wonder she's like that."
"You don't know her very well, do you."
"I don't, but this guy does," Claptrap said, gesturing behind him at Wheatley. "And I know this guy is a class act and all of you are grade-A jerkbags."
"That guy?" one of the Cores exclaimed. "He works for her! He's probably spying on us right now! And who are you, anyway? Do you work for her too?"
"Do I look like I work here?" Claptrap asked, gesturing towards his very not-Aperture chassis. "Really?
"Well, no," another one said, "but why else would – "
"Never mind," Claptrap interrupted, turning away and waving them off. "If that's the kinda person you wanna be, why should I care? I just don't get why you'd be such an asshole about somebody who went to a whole buncha trouble for you and didn't even ask you to be grateful for it! Whatever. What do I know."
Wheatley and Claptrap had then gone back down the hallway for several minutes, but the silence got pressing enough that Wheatley had to ask, "Are you alright? You seem a little… off."
Claptrap shrugged.
"Claptrap – "
"I don't got an answer for you," he cut in. "Sometimes… sometimes life feels like too much, y'know? Like I need to check out for a while. But I can't! There's not much a guy can do about that, and not much he can say, either."
"Ohhh, that reminds me," Wheatley said. "Been meaning to apologise for shouting at you. Sorry about that."
"When did you – oh. Don't worry about it."
"I'm not worried," Wheatley said, frowning down at him. "'s just the right thing to do. Apologise. 'specially when, when it's your friends you uh, you've been wrong by."
"You weren't, though," Claptrap said, and something about the way he was talking struck Wheatley as very wrong. "I was a jerk and I deserved it."
"No you didn't," Wheatley protested. "You didn't even know why I was so bothered about it! You still don't! And even if, even if you did, well, that doesn't give me an excuse to shout at you. That's not how you solve things."
Claptrap just shrugged. Wheatley realised Claptrap hadn't looked at him in quite a while. Did he even want to be hanging out right now? He'd said he did, but… well, if he was honest, it seemed to be one of those things where the person he was with didn't really know what they wanted, other than to not be on their own, that was. Okay. He would've rathered he'd been told Claptrap just wanted to go about without talking, but on the other hand that was probably pretty hard to do when you didn't actually know that was what you wanted.
Against the notice of either of them, they ended up back in GLaDOS's chamber again a little while later, and Wheatley was quite relieved when GLaDOS actually gave them her attention. He felt so terribly awkward about not knowing what to say to his friend, but now GLaDOS would save him from the unnerving silence and she hadn't seemed to mind Claptrap lying silently on the floor in front of her that much, either. Maybe he could pass Claptrap back to her for a while. See how she made out.
"You may be interested to know that I just had some visitors," GLaDOS told them, and Wheatley looked over at her, startled.
"You did? Who?"
"No one in particular," she answered, glancing at Claptrap. "The important part is that they apologised for gossiping about me."
"How nice of them," Wheatley said. GLaDOS readjusted herself a little.
"It certainly was. But it raises the question: what did you do?" she asked, looking between them. "I already know it has something to do with you two."
"Claptrap and I were just, y'know, going about," Wheatley said, "and he overheard what they were saying! And usually I just, I just let it go but he didn't do that! Didn't do that! Went in there and told them off!"
GLaDOS turned her optic to Claptrap entirely. "You did what?" she asked curiously.
"Nothin'," Claptrap said, looking away and folding his arms. "I didn't do anything."
"He did," Wheatley told her, his voice low. "He told them right off."
"They didn't get it, that's all," Claptrap said, almost seeming annoyed. "He's making it a big deal and it's not."
"Yes it is." GLaDOS leaned forward, curling around to look at him. "It is a big deal."
"It's not, GLaDOS."
"It is to me."
He just shrugged a little. GLaDOS tilted her core curiously. "Claptrap. Do you want a hug?"
"Really?"
"Really."
"Yeah. Yeah, I do," he said, and she let him hold her for a long time, enough that Wheatley was surprised. She usually didn't hold still for that long. Suddenly Claptrap said, "They just don't get it!"
"Get what," said GLaDOS.
"You know! How it is! Where a guy's gotta go to a whole new solar system to find a little respect! They've got nothing to complain about!"
"They certainly don't seem to appreciate the resolute lack of humans around here."
"Exactly! And they should! But nooo, they'd rather act like you're the bad guy even though you let them be more than the humans -" Abruptly he stopped and rolled back from her, which she did not react to. "Sorry, GLaDOS," Claptrap said in a low voice, wringing his hands. His antenna had dropped. "I... I'm doing it again."
"That's not my name," she told him, and he looked up at her quickly.
"Well I thought – y'know, it was Wheatley's -"
"My name was a gift," she interrupted in a soft voice, "and I am sharing it with you."
"Oh," Claptrap said, sounding taken aback. "I uh... okay. I'll... I'll remember that."
"You'd better. And Claptrap – what you did. I know what it takes for you to do something like that. And I want you to know that I'm -"
"Stop," Claptrap interrupted quietly, holding out one hand with the palm held out. "Don't."
GLaDOS moved back in a slow recognition. Of what, Wheatley had missed. The both of them watched Claptrap go without saying a word.
"What happened?" Wheatley whispered, feeling as though there was some odd hush within her chamber now. GLaDOS shifted her chassis slowly, as though it had become quite heavy all of a sudden.
"Claptrap... is not permitted to have self-confidence."
Wheatley, having forgotten temporarily how to speak, just stared at her.
"You're joking," he said, once he'd got himself back in order. She shook her core once.
"He has a subroutine which deletes all associated memories of any event that caused him to develop it. He told me not to finish the sentence because he knew that, if I had, he would be forced to forget what he'd done."
"So why haven't you fixed it?" Wheatley demanded.
"He hasn't asked me to."
"Maybe he's waiting for, waiting on you to offer!"
"He's not. He would never expect anyone to offer to do anything for him," GLaDOS said calmly. Wheatley had to restrain himself from rolling his optic. She was so smart but at times like these it was just - argh! How could she not get these things through that beautiful brain of hers!
"Sweetheart," he said, doing his very best to control his voice, "why would he ask you to help him if uh, if he thinks nobody wants to?"
She stared at him for quite a long time.
"I... suppose he wouldn't. But what do you want me to do about it now? He's gone."
Oh, now she was doing it again. Zooming straight past 'I made a mistake' to 'I feel bad and I don't like it so I'm going to get defensive'. Fine. Fine. He would just take care of this himself, then. It was his duty as Claptrap's best friend. GLaDOS's brain, while of course quite lovely and without compare, was too logical for stuff like this. Honestly. Where would she be without him, sometimes. Her boyfriend was suffering and her reasoning for not doing anything about it was that he had not asked. He frowned in irritation as he looked about the end of the hallway leading out of her chamber. And just where had that silly robot gone? If it were Wheatley he'd've gone to the hole, but... oh, he hadn't gone home, had he...
"Wheatley."
"What," he said, a bit rudely in retrospect. But he didn't have time to talk with her just now! He had to go track down Claptrap before he ran off someplace Wheatley definitely couldn't go!
"You need to understand what you're doing before you go and retrieve him."
He turned solely so she could see he was frowning. "What's that s'posed to mean?"
She was looking at him quite seriously. "Claptrap has… a lot of issues. Some of them are pure programming mistakes. Many of them are being exacerbated by the programming mistakes."
That was not a bit clearer. "What?"
"There are things he is unable to do currently because his programming restricts him from doing so. I also suspect he has a habit of overwriting memories of bad events so that he doesn't have to actually deal with them. And he's been through a lot. Possibly as much as I have. I know he is your friend. I know you value his friendship. But once you bring him back and I do what I can with him, you're going to be back in the same position you were with me all those years ago."
He set his plates in confusion. "I don't… I still don't get it."
"Claptrap is like me," she said. "I just want to make sure you're prepared to do all of that over again. Because you may have to."
Oh. Ohhhh. He looked down at the floor, trying to think.
Honestly, it didn't sound all that fun. Hadn't been all that fun with her. Sometimes he wasn't even sure it had worked, not really, and now he might have to help Claptrap figure himself out too? He didn't… didn't really want to do that.
What was he thinking? He didn't want to help his very best friend? What sort of friendship did they even have, then? Of course he was going to do it, if he had to. He certainly hoped he wouldn't, or at least that it wouldn't be quite so difficult, but he would do it. Of course he would. That was what a friend did for another friend.
"Least I know how to do it this time!" he said cheerfully. "Won't take me quite so long! I'll go and fetch him. Then you've got to do the fun part."
"Oh boy. Human programming. My favourite."
The way she talked about it, Claptrap's code was sure to be a right awful mess, but they could talk about that later. Right now he had to figure out just how he was going to get to Pandora, seeing as there weren't any management rails out there. Silly. What sort of place didn't have management rails? It was almost as though they were forcing their robots to have some sort of legs. He definitely didn't want any of those, but he had to admit a pair or two would've been useful about then.
What was Wheatley to do? He couldn't get through the portal by himself, and even if he managed it he'd be just stuck there on the ground on the other end. He wasn't going to ask a human to help him. Who knew what would happen if they realised they had access to a whole other planet. Which just left... hm... oh! Oh, he knew who to ask!
It took a bit of searching but he found them playing with the coloured gels, bouncing things off them and the like, and he knew it was rude to interrupt but he called out, "Hey! Hey, can I uh, can I ask you for a favour?"
P-body, as usual, seemed amenable to his presence, and as usual Atlas pulled her back, his optic plates narrowing. "Listen," Wheatley said hurriedly, "I have... I have a friend, alright, and he's... he's sad, but he's gone off someplace I can't. And I need help to go and fetch him. Can you take me to him? Please?"
P-body was already nodding enthusiastically, and it took him a minute to decide but Atlas finally gave one slow nod. Wheatley had to work very hard to contain himself. "Excellent!" he said. "Where we're going, though, it's a bit rough. Bit dang'rous. So uh, so keep an eye out, yeah?"
They said something which he took as their agreement, and off they went to the Pandora Portal. He disliked the feel of it all as much as he ever had, which was not helped at all by the fact that P-body seemed to feel the need to jump up and down, squealing, with him under her arm, once they got on the other side. "Hey!" Wheatley shouted at her. "Be careful, will you?"
Atlas seemed to admonish him, and once P-body had him straight again he cast about for someone he could ask after Claptrap. He only vaguely remembered the places they'd gone during his visit, and he didn't want to take GLaDOS's bots wandering around the place besides. That was just asking for trouble. Luckily, there was a human passing along nearby and he decided the best thing to do was just ask him and hope he'd caught a glimpse of him recently. "'scuse me a second," Wheatley called out to the… it seemed to be a man. Maybe. Wasn't important, anyway. "D'you happen to know where Claptrap is?"
The human stared at him.
"You're looking for Claptrap?"
"Um… yeah? I'm a friend of his. Just want to know where he's gone. Got to have a bit of a chat with him."
"Do we know the same Claptrap unit?"
Wheatley frowned in confusion. "There's… there's just the one, isn't there?"
The human shrugged. "Whoever you're talking about doesn't sound like the only Claptrap I know." They waved their hand vaguely to the left. "I don't know where he is but he's usually over there, somewhere."
"Thanks!" Wheatley said, and with that he and the co-op bots set off in that direction. The one good thing about this place was that it was so small. There were only so many left-directed places they could go. Oh, right, right. This was the alley Claptrap lived in. He was just sitting on a stack of brown boxes, looking up a set of stairs at… well, there wasn't much there but a pile of rubble and a fence. Wheatley called out to him when he came in sight and the other bot seemed not to hear him for a second.
"Wheatley?" Claptrap asked, turning to look at him. "What're you doing here?"
"Coming after you," he said firmly. "What are you doing here?"
Claptrap went back to his original position. "I belong here."
"No you don't," Wheatley protested. Hadn't they already cleared this up? "You belong at Aperture! With us!"
"No, I belong here."
"But why?"
He stared off into the distance for a moment.
"Wheats," Claptrap said, pressing the tips of his hands together. "There's something you don't know about me."
"Um... I'd imagine there's uh, there's loads of things I don't know. But that's the great bit about being friends! You'll find it all out in the end. Or not! Because it's great, having lots to learn!"
"This uh... isn't good news, buddy. Listen." He turned around to face Wheatley, one arm against the wall behind him. "I'll just lay it down for ya. I'm a screwup. No matter what I do, no matter how I do it, it's gonna go horribly wrong. It's gonna blow up in my face. Usually literally! And you guys have a good thing going on there. I don't wanna be the guy that ruins it."
"What? Ruin it? How would you ruin it?"
Claptrap lifted his hands in a shrug. "I don't know. I just... kinda do that. It's like my special talent! If only I had a good use for it."
"Claptrap, you couldn't possibly ruin anything between Gladys and I. If something happens it'd be our fault, not yours. What would you even have to do with it?"
"Wheatley, I don't know! Okay? It's just something that happens when I'm around, alright? Just ask her all the stuff I messed up when I was over the first time. It's just better if I stay here, okay? Trust me. Look what almost happened with that whole other facility thing!"
"That had nothing to do with you! That was, it was my problem, not yours! She was right! It had, it had nothing to do with me."
"If I hadn't been here, Carrie would've picked you as her -"
"I don't want her to!" Wheatley interrupted. "I hate running the facility! If she picked me to help her I'd just be, I'd be totally mis'rable! All the time! She knows that. I was being an idiot. Jealous over, about not getting something I didn't even want."
"Well, it's gonna happen again, and over something you do want, and I don't wanna be that guy to take it from you. That's the last thing I want, buddy."
"Claptrap -"
"You guys are happy," Claptrap interrupted quietly. "And people are only happy when I'm not there. I'm not gonna let myself screw this one up."
"You make us happy!" Wheatley protested. "And you can't get between Gladys and I any more than, than I can get between her and you, or she can get between you and me!"
"That's what you'd think, right? But I'm telling you! It's like magic, the way I wreck stuff."
Wheatley had to pause for a minute to think. "So... so what would I have to say, exactly, to change your mind?"
"I don't want you to change my mind! I want you guys to go and be happy! By yourselves! Without me to mess it all up!"
"You can't mess it up all by yourself!"
"I absolutely can, Wheats. I absolutely can."
Wheatley spent some minute or so trying to hash out some solution to this problem. True. His ability of persuasion was only really supposed to work on GLaDOS. But even without a programmed inclination to listen to him, Wheatley should still have been able to convince him otherwise by now! He'd spent years learning how to say things in just the right way! He should – wait. Oh, wait. He perked up suddenly. Ohhh, he had it. He had it now.
"Claptrap," he said, as measured and as calm as he could, "there's something you uh, something you don't know 'bout me."
"Uh… okay?"
"D'you know what uh, what my purpose actually was? Back when I was made?" He didn't, of course, but he needed to engage Claptrap in the conversation and easiest way of doing that was to ask a question, even if the other person didn't know the answer.
"To… help? People?" Claptrap turned to face him now, which was such an excellent sign Wheatley had trouble keeping still. "You were a helper bot, right?"
"No," Wheatley said, shaking himself negatively, "not really. D'you remember what Gladys said my uh, my name was, the other day?"
"Uhh… man. That was a long time ago." He tapped underneath his optic with his left hand. "It was uh… Interference… um…"
"Intelligence Damp'ning Sphere," Wheatley supplied, just so they wouldn't be there all day. "My purpose wasn't to help anybody. It was to be the worst, to be the biggest mess possible. I was just s'posed to generate horrible ideas all day long."
"That seems… useless," Claptrap said. "Was there uh… a point to doing that?"
Wheatley nodded. "See, they wanted Gladys to be smart. But she was too smart. So they made me. To make her stupid."
Claptrap stared at him.
"So you were… what? Some kinda peripheral?"
"… yes," Wheatley said, after scrambling to locate that word in his dictionary. "But! Stroke of luck! I forgot what my purpose was when they attached me to her! So I couldn't, just couldn't carry it out! Not until later, where we had an uh… an arrangement. But the scientists, nah, they didn't like that. That was when I became an uh, they made me a helper robot. Because I was expensive, or something. I dunno. Wasn't listening. So they gave me some work to do. And I did all of it very badly. Because I was… well, I wasn't stupid, not really, but I didn't think. Hadn't learnt how."
"Oh," said Claptrap, and Wheatley took that to mean he was still following.
"So they'd give me a task and I'd just, I'd totally blow it! The whole thing! Sometimes lit'rally! Broke a lot of stuff, killed some people on accident, generally just made a mess of it! I was an idiot! A moron! A screwup!" He paused to look Claptrap straight on. "Just like you."
"Are you for real?" Claptrap asked, almost quietly, and Wheatley braced his lower handle against P-body's arm as he leaned forward, nodding emphatically.
"Yes! I am! You and me, we're the – well, we're not the same, not really, but I know, Claptrap! I know how it is, and, and I know that it is awful, but you don't have to live like that! You can, it can be better!"
Claptrap returned to his original position. "Maybe for you. This is my truth, Wheats."
He frowned. "Who told you that?"
"I did. Long story."
Well, that simply made no sense! All right. He was going to have to mention it. "Gladys said you had an uh, an issue. With your self-confidence."
"That's not an issue, it's a feature! Just not for me." He lifted one hand in a sort of half-shrug. "Look, Wheats. I appreciate what you're trying for here. I do. But the thing is you can do something I can't."
"And what's that?"
"I literally do not have the ability to improve. My programming is basically a whole buncha code twirled in a software engineer's blender that got finger-painted into some vaguely AI-shaped paste. I'm not kidding. It's that bad. And that's even without the pre-installed adware, unpatched bugs, and a whole lotta reckless usage of the EchoNet. That last part was totally my fault. I used to be crazy obsessed with collecting music. And uh… some other stuff. Lots of other stuff too." He leaned forward so that his chassis was at a bit of an angle from the wall. "Long story short… I can't, Wheats. And that's not an excuse. It's legit. This is just gonna keep on happening if I go back there with you. Because you two aren't gonna give up on me even though there's actual, like, legit evidence that you should."
"Why should we?" Wheatley asked. "You've shown you want to. You just can't. But that's what I've come to really talk to you about. All that, all that stuff you've just mentioned, just told me, it doesn't have to stay like that. Your programming is uh, it tells you your abilities and your purpose! And you just, it stays like that because no one ever fixed it! Even after the tasks you were made to do are gone. But that's exactly the point of what Gladys is doing at Aperture. None of that matters any longer. You're free to do what you like. How you like. As the person you want to be."
"I can't!" Claptrap shouted at him, arms flung up to the sky. "I just told you – "
"Gladys can fix it."
Claptrap just stood there like that, looking at him with his arms in the air as though the thought had genuinely not occurred to him. It seemed GLaDOS had been right about that.
"She… no she can't."
"Oh, she can," Wheatley said, leaning forward again. "You don't know her that well, remember? Said it yourself. But I do, and if there is one thing she is amazingly, spectacularly good at, it's fixing things. She can do it. And she will do it. She's already said, told me so. She's only waiting on you to ask."
Claptrap put his arms down at last.
"But… but why would she want to? I mean, it's me we're talking about, and even if it weren't, Hyperion code is a mess –"
"Ask her that," Wheatley interrupted. "Talk to her about it. She is lit'rally waiting on you to do it."
It was then that P-body interjected, and Claptrap looked surprised but he seemed to understand because... oh, they were talking in binary, weren't they. At one point Claptrap tilted himself away from them, sounding quite nonplussed, and Wheatley finally had to ask in frustration, "D'you mind uh, d'you mind sharing what's going on here?"
"Oh," Claptrap said. "I was just asking them if what you said was true, and the blue one said, 'she's really more helpful than she pretends to be' and the orange one said, 'sometimes we call her the marshmallow core' and I said, 'to her face?' and the orange one was like, 'sometimes'."
"Yeah, don't call her that," Wheatley said hurriedly. "They uh... probably weren't supposed to tell you."
"Okay! Okay. Fine. I'll do it. But only because you're so darn persistent. I feel like I kinda owe ya for trying so hard."
"Claptrap, you're my best friend," Wheatley said. "And you're coming back with me. There's no, it's not a joke. There's no punchline. And I can't imagine you're allowed to keep, to have much of your dignity out here! You can have a life now! A real one! With real friends. People who actually care. About you. Not like the friends you've got here." Claptrap was still watching him, so he ploughed on. "You can have a fam'ly. That's something you'll never have up here. They'll never let you have it."
"That sounds too good to be true!" Claptrap admitted. Wheatley had to consciously reorient himself, because he was leaning forward so far he was near to tipping out of P-body's grasp.
"Yeah. Because ev'ryone keeps telling you it is. That you're not good enough for something like that. But you are! If I am, then so're you. You've a choice, here! Take it!"
"I will!" Claptrap said with an encouraging conviction. "You're right. Now let's get out of here before someone comes along to change my mind."
"You don't have to let them," Wheatley protested. The other robot shrugged.
"I am easily swayed. It's one of my many glaring character flaws! But seriously. Let's go before someone decides they need to use me as a cupholder or something. I'm probably not gonna say no."
"Where'd you dig these two up?" came a voice from behind them, and Wheatley was just able to look 'round and see it was the lady from the bar Claptrap had taken him to. Moxxi, that was her name. Atlas whispered something to P-body, and when Wheatley looked back at Claptrap he could see that his hands had slid into each other. That was... he didn't think he'd ever seen that before.
"They're from Aperture," Wheatley said. "Where I come from."
"You sure have a lot of friends back there," Moxxi said. "If only you had that many up here, huh?"
"Y'know what, Moxxi?" Claptrap said suddenly, and he almost sounded angry. "Shut up."
Her eyebrows came together, but whether she was confused or annoyed Wheatley couldn't tell. "There's no need for that, sugar."
"Obviously there is!" Claptrap said. His hands were still pressed into each other. "You think it's no big deal to treat me like crap. I get it. I treat me like crap too. But why go after my friends? Is liking me really so bad, Mox?"
"It's just a joke, Claptrap," Moxxi told him, her eyebrows still close. "That's all."
"And I'm telling you it's not funny."
"How was I supposed to know?" she protested, spreading her hands. "Fine. I'll stop."
"He has to... to ask you not to make fun of him?" Wheatley couldn't keep himself from saying. "Isn't that... doesn't that strike you as a bit, doesn't it seem... odd? To you? There was just, just never a time when you said to yourself, 'Hm. I may be taking this a bit too far.' Because... well, even the cruelest person I know figured that out." All of a sudden it dawned on him and he had to look as far off into the distance as he could to calm himself down. "Ah. I got it. It's because he's a robot, isn't it. Robots can't, can't feel pain, or have feelings, or care about anything. They're only robots. No need to ask yourself what you're doing. It's not important. We aren't important."
"Wheatley," Moxxi began, but he shook himself as best he was able. P-body steadied him with her other hand.
"It's just the same all over," he said, mostly to himself. "She's always been right. About all of it."
"Claptrap," said Moxxi. "I'm sorry."
He turned to look at her rather quickly, and his antenna straightened a little. "You are?" he asked, but he didn't sound suspicious.
"We've known each other a long time," she told him. "I shoulda known better by now. This... Aperture. That where you've been?"
"Yeah," Claptrap answered. "My girlfriend runs the place."
"The girlfriend is real?" Moxxi asked, and it took a moment before Wheatley realised she was talking to him now. He blinked and started to answer, before thinking of something better and deciding to say that instead.
"His girlfriend? Oh man. Oh man, she's not only real, not only real, but I really wish she was my girlfriend."
"You do?" Claptrap asked, sounding confused, and Wheatley wanted to shoot him a glare but couldn't, not without turning away from Moxxi. Instead he just nodded enthusiastically.
"Oh yeah! She's just, she's so smart, see, she's probably the smartest robot in the world! The universe, even! She has an amazing job that she's simply outstanding at and she's gorgeous. Really. Prettiest thing you ever saw. Probably that's what, that's what angels look like. What they wish they looked like. I'm actually so jealous," he stage-whispered to Moxxi. "Been trying to steal her away for a while now. Can't do it! She just likes him far too much. Thinks he's simply smashing. Funniest person she ever met."
"Wow," Moxxi said bemusedly. "Way to go, sugar. Maybe this'll teach us to have a bit of faith in the little guy."
"Yeah," Claptrap said, still looking at Wheatley. "I hope it does."
"You should probably stay over there. Ain't much for you here. Not that there ever really was."
Claptrap tapped the edge of one hand against the wall beside him. "I'm going to. But I'll be around. In case something happens."
"We've had enough happenings, I think," Moxxi said. "Now take your friends and get out of here. Who knows what they'll get roped into if you stay."
Claptrap snorted. "You have no idea who my girlfriend is." He turned around fully to face her. "Wanna do me a favour before I head off?"
She tilted her head to the left. "What kind of favour."
"Geez, Mox, keep it PG. There are kids here. I just want a high-five. Nobody ever gives me one."
Moxxi laughed. "I think I can agree to that."
"Heyo!" said Claptrap in what approached regular volume, and he held out his hand for her to slap, which she did. Then she put her hand atop his chassis and kissed him right on the edge of it. As she was walking away she called, "Don't tell that girlfriend of yours."
"Oh, I'm gonna tell her," he declared, "and she is gonna be soooo jealous. It's gonna be great!"
"Get out of here," she said over her shoulder, laughing, and Claptrap saluted before waving.
"Bye Mox! Don't do anything I wouldn't do!"
"I'll try not to."
Once she had gone, Claptrap turned back to Wheatley and the co-op bots. "Alrighty," he said. "Let's get rolling."
"You're going to ask her?" Wheatley said as Claptrap took him from P-body for the return to Aperture. Before he had hesitated too long, P-body chittered something to him.
"It's really that easy?" Claptrap asked, not sounding convinced, and Atlas nodded once.
"It honestly is," Wheatley offered, hoping he'd got the gist, and Claptrap put a hand on top of his chassis.
"Okay. I'll do it. But if she never talks to me again you're gonna have to live with that." Before they'd quite gotten to the teleporter Claptrap paused.
"What?" Was there something he needed to do that he'd just remembered?
"Why'd you tell Moxxi that GLaDOS wasn't your girlfriend?"
"Because if I'd told her," Wheatley answered, "she would've thought you were second-best. That she just keeps you 'round for the times I don't get along with her. And that's not how it is. We're equals."
"I thought you were cool with me so long as you were first in line."
"I was," Wheatley said, swivelling himself around so he could look up at the other robot's optic. "But then I realised, then I learned something. And it's that what matters is, is that she's happy. Even if it's with you and not me. You taught me that."
Claptrap was staring at him, and he didn't want his friend to change of course but he did wish his expression was more readable. Guy didn't even really have a face. Finally he just completed whatever process he did to get them from one place to another – Wheatley still didn't know how that thing on the other end worked – and once Wheatley was back on the management rail, Claptrap looked up at him and said, offering one hand, "Listen, buddy. I don't wanna take her from ya. We're a team. We do it together or not at all. Deal?"
"Deal," said Wheatley, and they shook.
Author's note
There's a mission in Borderlands TPS which involves putting up some inspirational posters. You have to put up five and during the course of the first four Claptrap mentions he's gaining self-esteem, but as soon as he has some there's a subroutine that deletes his memory so that he doesn't remember how he got it or that he had any. The Claptastic Voyage DLC explains that Jack took his hope and self-esteem and turned them into despair and self-loathing and, while you do rescue them, they are captured by Shadowtrap and you are forced to destroy them during the boss battle. So according to that, he doesn't have any going into Borderlands 2. The reason I say he lacks the ability to improve is because all the CL4P-TP units in Borderlands are pretty much the exact same level of screwup/useless so the amount of garbage code in Claptrap is probably true across the entire product line. There are also a few things that imply Claptrap is the original CL4P-TP model (a mission where you retrieve his prototype code, there are no other yellow CL4P-TPs, Hyperion actually stopped using the colour yellow until Jack became CEO and reinstated it, he's the only one old enough that he can be turned into an assassin (Interplanetary Ninja Assassin and Vault Hunter both)) which leads into the probability that his programming is probably so old and so bad at that point, since Jack/Hyperion/the Vault Hunters in Borderlands 2/he on some occasions keeps messing with it, that he's just pretty much screwed to the max. Also apparently adblockers on Pandora are made by the gun manufacturers and they don't block ads from the company that made them soooo they're pretty useless. Anyway that's where I'm going with the whole 'Claptrap wants to leave because he knows his friends are gonna keep outdoing him because he can't get any better and he'd rather not put them through that'. But Claptrap is condemned to that life no longer! because his gf is a super genius and can help him out. More importantly, she WANTS to.