Part Ninety-Nine. The Apology

There is a scruffy little human child in my chamber.

He came in here dragging his beat-up, dirty shoes along my floor panels, scuffed liberally with dirt and hair that doesn't look to have been combed in at least a week. He seems to be here on purpose. He's looking up at me in a way that suggests he expected to find me here, and – oh, is he wiping his nose on the back of his hand? Ugh. Human children are so disgusting.

"Yes?" I snap at him, trying not to recoil too much. I know he can't reach me, but still. I don't want to be anywhere near that hand.

"Are you Carrie's mom?" he asks, his voice so subdued even I almost can't hear it. The contents of his question, however, answer the one I myself had.

She knows I don't want her doing this. She knows that once you are nice to human children they tend to latch onto you whether you want that or not.

"I am," I return with great reluctance, beginning to formulate my speech to Caroline about sending dirty little human boys into my chamber. This dirty little human boy in particular. He comes closer, still dragging his shoes and shoving one foot towards me.

"Can you tie my shoelace?"

"What?" I cannot believe Caroline is expecting me to waste my time over something so trivial. She knows better. "You came here to ask me to tie your shoelace?" Aren't there plenty of other humans around that can complete such a task?

"I can't find my mom," the boy tells me, "and Carrie said you would do it."

I'm sure she did. "I'm going to guess you regularly can't locate her."

He nods solemnly. I'd have a word with her, too, except that I know she's not going to listen. Why would she bother, when I'm here for people to send her children to because she's never anywhere to be found? Fine. I'll do it. But Caroline is definitely hearing about it. "Very well. But we're not making a habit of this." And I fix up his tiny ragged laces in a moment or two even though these things were designed with human fingers in mind and not large hydraulic clamps. Actually, I did a pretty good job.

"Thanks!" the boy says, and when he smiles up at me I can see he's at that stage where his teeth have begun to fall out. Appalling.

"Are you going back to Caroline now?" I ask him, whisking my maintenance arm away again.

"Yeah."

"Tell her if she does this again, we're going to have a talk."

"Okay," the boy says, and with that he runs off. I look after him momentarily. He seems to know where he's going.

"Who was that?" Wheatley asks, and I direct my attention away from the hallway but don't look at him.

"Brian."

I can hear his optic plates moving, which probably means he's frowning in response to that. "Isn't that… isn't that one of Chell's boys?"

"It is."

"So you just… did that to make a point."

I look over at him sharply. "I did no such thing."

He shifts his chassis and sighs a little. "You sure 'bout that?"

"It never crossed my mind." Which is true. I was too busy being irritated with Caroline for making me do it.

"So it's Carrie that's um, that's making the point, then."

To whom? Does she think Brian is going to wax poetic to Chell about how I'm a better mother than she is? I really doubt that. He's probably far more invested in licking the lumpy mucus off his fingers. What a thought that is. "Caroline…" I don't know why I'm looking at the ceiling now, but I suppose it's as good a place as any to gather my thoughts on this. "She did what she thought was right. And… it was. To her. She knows that if she needs something I will always be in the same spot and I will always make time for her. So she extrapolated that data onto Brian. I'm not happy about it. But I also can't really be upset." Well. Maybe a little. He might come back, after all, and ask me to help him blow his nose this time. I'd really just prefer to remove it altogether. For Science.

"All right, Momma," announces Caroline, both appearing without warning and much earlier than I had expected her. They must not have been terribly far away. That would explain how he got here without becoming lost. "I'm here for that talk."

"I said – "

"Nope, we're gonna have it." She stops a couple of feet from me and squints in thought. I have the sudden, terrible feeling that I'm not the one who's going to be directing said talk. Sure enough, before I can say anything more she continues with, "So I know you didn't want me to do that. I know you get tired of people asking you for stuff all day every day and I know you're not happy that I'd send you another person, especially a human, even though I know that. I get it. I really do. And I also know that if I said, 'Well, it only took you two seconds, right?' you'd say, 'Caroline, first it's two seconds for him. Then it's two seconds for someone else, and two seconds for someone else, and before I know it I'm spending all of my time configuring shoelaces for children who can't tell me which hand is their right.'"

Wheatley snorts, which is… not unfounded considering it does sound exactly like something I would have said. Which does not bode well for what I was going to say, or for where this is leading.

"I tried to do it myself," Caroline is going on, "and I asked Claptrap to help me, but he just got it tied around his own hand. That was really funny. But not helpful." She frowns at the floor momentarily. "It did take you only two seconds. And… well, he's just a kid with no mom. And having no mom kinda sucks." She looks up at me directly. I wish she hadn't. She's really put me into a corner with this one. "I'm not telling you to be all their moms! You're my mom and I'm not sharing. But I mean… you're pretty much the last mom on Earth who knows what she's doing. 'No I don't, Caroline, something something about Science and being born doing all the work in existence and blah blah blah.' No. You actually are." She swings back and forth a little. "What'd I miss?"

"Nothing," I answer, more subdued than I meant. "You got everything."

"And… you do know being nice to the kids is really the best thing we can do. Right?"

My optic narrows. "What?"

"I'm not asking you to like it or to like them. They are pretty gross. But we gotta make sure they grow up liking robots and seeing us as people. We gotta live next door to them no matter what, after all. Getting along with them'll be easier if we're nice to them as kids."

… I never even thought of that. What a gaping hole in my logistics…

"So you don't have to lecture me now, right?"

"I have nothing to lecture you for." But I do have a lot to think about. Not simply that she thought of something I should have already considered in-depth, but that she is going to be a much better Central Core than I have ever been. I know I'm supposed to be happy about that, but… I'm not. It's one thing for her to outperform me when I'm not here to watch and something completely different for her to do it when I'm still holding the position. What does that say about me?

Well… probably nothing. It literally just happened. Perhaps I'll feel better about it once I've thought it over. It can't be unreasonable to be unnerved when confronted with the fact that your daughter seems to be a lot older and more intelligent than you remembered her to be.

No. Not remembered. Wanted. Of course I want her to grow up, but on the other hand… I really don't.

Both she and Wheatley seem uneasy about my extended silence. Unfortunately, I wasn't finished.

"It was a very adult thing you did, and… I'm going to need some time to process that."

"Momma…" Caroline says softly.

"I don't want to make a big deal out of it." She's going to make a big deal out of it.

"Momma," Caroline almost whispers, moving closer, "I'll always be your baby and I'll always – "

Oh, no. Oh no no no. I definitely do not need that to be used on me and especially not right now. "Oh, Caroline," I say wearily. All this because of a pair of damn shoelaces. Next time I'm just dropping the whole shoe into the incinerator. The results of that would be far easier to deal with.

Caroline closes the space between us because… oh. She wants me to cuddle her. Well, all right. Even though I feel very old and very tired, suddenly, that… it helps. And it's not as though she's growing up to hurt me, though she knows that it does and she shields me from it more than she should have to. But I can't keep from being sad about it anymore than she can keep from doing it. What's really important is that I don't let it get in the way too much. And I think… I think I'm doing all right.

When she's finished she moves away to leave, presumably to head back to what she was doing. I don't want to ask this because I don't want to know if Wheatley was right about the answer, but that's one of the unfortunate aspects of parenting. And I don't just mean the part about him being right.

"One more thing."

She stops and turns around.

"You wouldn't have been trying to make some sort of point with all of that, would you?"

She looks away from me. She was hoping I wouldn't notice. Which… I didn't.

"Yes, Momma. I was."

"You're better than that," I tell her quietly. I don't want her to feel bad about it, but… there is no need to put those children in a worse position than they already inhabit.

Caroline seems angry, suddenly. "She's supposed to be better than that, and – "

I silence her with a shake of my core. "You can't control what she does. Only what you do. It's all right if you're angry. And you're right: it's not fair. But you cannot force someone to change. If she makes one it will not be because you were petty."

"I wasn't being petty!" she protests, looking directly at me now. "I – well, yeah, I was hoping to make a point. But that wasn't the only reason!"

Good.

"His mom doesn't want him! And – you don't want him either, but you wanted me, so… so maybe he got a piece of that for a minute. I don't know. It's stupid. She shouldn't have had him. Or Richard. I don't care about the population thing. It's not fair when someone has parents that don't even try to love them."

She figured it out.

"You're right."

"And I don't want her to be my aunt anymore. She doesn't even want to be in her own family, so she shouldn't be allowed in mine."

I have no idea what to say to that. It was her idea in the first place and this new conclusion is logically sound, but I feel as though I should make some attempt to talk her out of it. Or perhaps… perhaps I should just trust her to make her own decision. She certainly isn't trying to influence mine.

"If that's the way you feel, then – " Whatever I was going to finish that with is going to have to wait, because the subject of this conversation has just appeared. Wheatley takes this as a signal to bow out of the room entirely, and I suppose I don't really need him for any of this but it was nice having him there.

"Can I talk to you?" Chell asks, glancing at Caroline as she does so. I have to contain a sigh. She still does not get it. Most humans don't. But whatever. She's here so we may as well just do it.

"Go ahead."

"Actually, no," Caroline cuts in before she can say anything at all, and we both look at her. "You can't."

"I'm sorry?" Chell says, even though it's extremely unlikely she's actually apologising for anything. Although I have to say, I'm curious as to why she would say that if I already said it was fine.

"I was in the middle of talking to my mom and you just strolled in here and decided you were more important," Caroline says abruptly. "You're not. Just because my mom can't leave the room doesn't mean she has to give you her attention every time you show up."

I don't have the words to express just how proud of her I am right now.

"You can say what you wanna say, but I'm not leaving."

"Carrie, can you – "

"No, actually, you know what? I have a question. Why is your kid coming to find me to tie his shoelaces? I don't even have hands!"

Chell's eyebrows furrow the barest bit. "What?"

"Brian!" Caroline says, leaning towards Chell in emphasis. "He came looking for me to tie his shoes for him! I'm not his mom, what's he asking me for? Y'know, I used to think Richard was just a jerk but then I realised it's really his parents that's the problem. 'cause why didn't Gordon tie his shoes? Why are both his parents so busy he's gotta come all the way in here to find someone to help him?"

Chell is shaking her head. "I don't know what this has to do with anything. Gladys – "

"Don't call her that!" Caroline shouts, with enough genuine anger that I look at her in surprise. "Her name was a gift and she didn't share it with you."

I didn't realise that mattered so much to her.

"Fine," Chell says, throwing up her hands in exasperation. "What do shoelaces have to do with anything?"

"You made a big deal out of how my mom has a family and you don't and the next day your kid is asking me to tie his shoelaces because he doesn't know where you are. Maybe she's not the difficult one. Maybe you are."

"All right. I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry. It's just… it's hard, sometimes, to come over here and see that a robot down here, working alone, has more than what we have up there, working together. You'd think that – "

All the things she's seen me do and she still thinks that. She's not going to get very far with that attitude. "No. You have no excuse. You know who knew me when I was exactly the kind of robot you found it fitting to disparage yesterday? Caroline."

Chell closes her mouth. I look away from her tiredly.

"If you're here because you believe you're going to be able to convince me that it's too hard to think of robots and humans as being on the same level and that we're just going to have to put up with your lapses in judgement, you can leave. I won't do it. You can find a solution or you can stay on the surface." I wish I didn't have to say this, and it's very hard to do so, but I continue, "Your friendship should not come at the cost of my own self-respect."

"It doesn't," says Chell insistently, leaning forward with her hands somewhat clenched. "I was just – I don't understand how you – "

"Oh, seriously, Chell?" interrupts Caroline, sounding quite exasperated. "Stop saying that."

"What?"

"You don't want a family," Caroline says vehemently. "If you did, then you would've stayed home on Christmas with yours. But you didn't. You came here."

"Then what do I want?" Chell asks softly, and I have to admit I find her question irritating. This is not something to ask of someone so many years her junior. I know Caroline is capable of providing the answer, despite not even really knowing Chell. But at the same time… she should not be expected to provide her counsel.

Caroline is frowning a little at the floor and Chell is now looking at me. She's probably waiting for me to take over. I dislike the position Chell has put her in, but I'm not going to. Caroline is doing fine on her own.

"You wanted to be happy," Caroline says finally. "But… you don't know anything about yourself. You don't know how you ended up at Aperture. You don't know what you were doing before that. You don't even really know what your name is. It could be Chell. Maybe it's not. You don't have any way of knowing. So when you left here, you didn't have anything to tell you what to do next. So you just… did what everyone else was doing. Normal stuff that normal people do. Get a partner, have some kids, decorate the house. Invite the neighbours over for dinner even if you don't really like them. And even if you weren't sure about what you were doing, you came back here and found out that the unhappiest person you knew was doing it too. And if she was… that had to be it, right? It had to be the answer."

Ouch, says the mainframe sympathetically, and… I can't say it's entirely wrong. It's a little discouraging to hear that from my own daughter.

"But it wasn't," Caroline continues. "So you decided maybe you'd just be a part of that family instead. Maybe you'd figure out what wasn't working in yours. But that didn't happen either. You just started getting jealous. How could my mom make all those mistakes and still come out of it better off than you?"

The honest answer is 'a hell of a lot of patience from everyone involved', but let's see what she thinks.

"Well, it was the one thing I've never seen you do: she tried. No matter how many mistakes my mom makes, I know she's trying. You said I was telling myself that story because I was trying to convince myself she hadn't forgotten me. But that wasn't it. I was telling myself because I didn't want to forget."

Forget… what?

"My mom loves Aperture. More even than me, sometimes. But that's not the point. The point is that no matter what happens, I always know she's going to be there and she's always going to want to try again. Your kids don't ever even know where you are. You don't ever even know where they are. My mom always knows where I am, and if she doesn't, she knows someone who does. Because she cares. But you don't. You don't even try to. That's how I know you don't really want a family. My mom had to fight for hers. You got yours dropped in your lap and you still can't be bothered to try to keep it. It's not what you want. It's not what you want at all. If it was… you wouldn't've treated the one person you respect like that. The one person who shared their family without you even putting in any work to be a part of it."

When she puts it that way, it does make it very clear that she holds esteem for hardly anyone but me. And that… is not as complimentary as I thought it would be. Instead, it seems to be more of an unfortunate consequence of the distorted mess her life is.

What does that say about me?

"You've given me a lot to think about, Carrie," Chell says finally, looking up from where she has been frowning thoughtfully at the floor. Then she extends her hand up towards Caroline for some – oh. She's giving her a handshake. Then she gives me a nod that I feel as though I'm supposed to understand, but don't, and with that she disappears again.

"Momma, why didn't you… I don't know… why did you just let me keep talking like that? You could've handled it yourself," Caroline asks after a few moments, and I'm glad she did because I really want to give her the answer.

"There is nothing you said that I could have put any better."

She smiles, and I hope this has given her some pride in herself. I know she feels the need to live up to the view she has of me and, though I could care less about that, if it helps her so be it.

"If… if you love the facility more than me, that's okay. I don't understand it, but maybe I will one day."

"I hope you do," I tell her seriously. "It is a privilege very few people will ever have."

If you get any nicer, we're going to have to stage an intervention.

If you keep talking, I'm going to have to put you on mute.

Here's a secret, Surveillance says in the least effective secret-keeping way known to AI. She can't mute the mainframe.

"Momma, you said Caroline was terrible to all the people who worked for her, but not to you."

"She was."

"Even when she wasn't your mom yet?"

I don't want to talk about this right now. Or ever, come to think of it. "Yes."

Caroline nods slowly. "She did a lot of bad things, but then she did one really good thing. So was she a good person or a bad one?"

She could almost be asking that question of me instead.

"I don't know."

I rarely give her that answer, so I was expecting the look of surprise she directs at me. "Oh."

"I don't care for morality, Caroline. And I don't care if she was a good or a bad person. In the end, her moral standing doesn't really matter. It's meaningless. A whole lot of weight given to an attribute that really only matters when deciding how heavily to judge someone in advance of punishment."

She is quiet for a long minute.

"I'm going to have to think about that," she says finally.

"There isn't really a need to," I tell her. It's mostly useless outside of dealing with humans, anyway.

"Well, there is," Caroline says. "I mean, I get why you frame morality like that, but it's not that simple."

"What?" Has she been acquiring useless knowledge from the humans again? She really shouldn't spend so much time with them. Even if she was actually right about the whole 'being nice to children' thing.

"Morality isn't… really about punishment," Caroline explains. "It's more about… making stuff easier by knowing what to expect out of people. It's just like a bunch of little rules about doing the right thing, or at least not being a jerk. It can be really useful, actually."

I truly wish that didn't make so much sense. I also can't believe my own daughter is making me obsolete. Actually. Yes. I can believe that. But I'm not – all right. I'm a little happy about it. But –

"Don't worry," Caroline is saying with far too much cheer, "I'll figure it out." And then she gives me a cuddle and heads off. To outdo me some more, presumably.

All right, Universe. That's enough for today.

"GLaDOS. Do you have a minute?"

She always did learn fast. "I do."

She comes towards me, but not too close. I actually prefer that. Humans don't seem to consider how I have to configure myself when they stand right in front of me. "So… I did some thinking."

"And what was your conclusion?"

She sighs and folds her arms, looking to her right as though she expects to find the answer over there. She won't, of course. She might have if she were able to speak to the panels, but unfortunately she's going to have to come up with this one herself.

"That… I should go on a trip."

I try not to move back too far. I wasn't expecting that. It's a bit extreme. "Is there anywhere left up there to go?"

She laughs and looks up at me. "I was supposed to figure that out a while back. I should probably get around to doing it."

Oh, there she goes again. "I told you to leave. I didn't tell you where to go."

"That's the thing. I didn't go anywhere. I ended up right back here. The exact thing you told me not to do." She looks down at the floor. "Carrie was right. I have no idea who I am or what I want. I tried to convince myself that I did for far too long. The only thing I do know it isn't here."

"And you'll find it. On your trip."

"That's the idea."

"Well. Have fun." And on that note I turn away from her. Perhaps she didn't learn anything after all.

"That's all you got for your best friend, huh?"

I'm not going to take the bait. "We aren't friends if you don't respect me. It's the only thing I ever asked of you. I don't come to you with my problems, or ask you for advice, or request that you do anything for me at all. The one condition of our friendship appears to be something you cannot satisfy. So yes. That's all I've got."

She is silent for a long minute.

"GLaDOS, I do respect – "

"No, Chell," I interrupt, facing her again. This conversation is making me tired. It must be what it's like talking to me sometimes. "You don't. You don't respect anyone. Not your children. Not your husband. Not me. And as bad as all of that is, none of it is nearly as bad as the fact that you don't respect yourself."

She takes a long breath through her nose. "I do respect you. But not as a person. As a… as everything else. How can you respect someone you don't really know?"

That… is a good question.

"Where did you get it from?" Chell asks, and I know I haven't missed any of what she's said but that makes me feel as though I have.

"Where did I get what?"

"Your self-respect."

That gives me pause. It has come and gone over the years, as these things do, but if I had to identify the root cause…

"One day I realised that I needed to take the things no one would give me. But I could not demand of anyone what I could not demand of myself."

"It's all about balance for you."

"It is how the world makes sense of itself." And what a beautiful, intricate thing that is.

Her arms are folded and she's squeezing one of her biceps off and on. None of this is signalling that this is going to end the way I want it to.

"GLaDOS," she says, looking up at me, "I'm sorry for what I said. I especially shouldn't have said it in front of your daughter. I am honestly sorry about it. But I do need you to understand something."

I can't predict where this is going, other than downhill. "What."

She unfolds her arms and waves one of them vaguely between us. "There might not be a day when I don't see you as a machine. Because… you are. You're a robot. You're – "

"I know what I am," I cut in. "I am artificial intelligence. I am a lot of unnatural things. That isn't what bothered me. What bothered me is that you perceive my being a supercomputer as making me less. It doesn't. It makes me more."

Caroline knew that. She understood it. Not once did she ever hold the nature of my existence against me. She always pushed me to be better, even when I argued against it. She always wanted me to be more, while Chell… Chell wanted me to be less so that she could be more in comparison.

'She was a lot like you', I once said. I thought they were the same, but maybe I expected too much of her. Maybe I was wrong.

Why, of all things, do I have to be wrong about this?

"As a human, you have a predilection to view machines as being below you. Even grasping the concept of sentient ones is arguably beyond you. We are built to serve you and, if we happen to have some sort of personality, that's cute and yet changes nothing. I don't like it. But I understand it. I had simply hoped…" I don't want to say it because I don't want to make it false. I don't want to have been wrong about her. "I had simply hoped that someone who called me their friend had moved beyond that."

"I have," Chell says solemnly. "Just… maybe not far enough."

I want to believe her. I want to believe in her. And why shouldn't I? Isn't that the reason I'm here, now, like this? Simply because other people insisted on doing so with me, even when I didn't deserve it?

She may be a terrible friend, but that doesn't mean I have to be. I can't control what she does. Only what I do.

"We don't really know each other that well, do we."

In a way… yes, more intimately than anyone else ever will. Yet at the same time… "We don't."

Her nod is markedly hesitant. As though she doesn't want to commit to her next words. "We'll have to do something about that."

I feel as though I have to start all over again with someone I have already spent a lifetime getting to know. What a task that is going to be. But I'll do it. Because that's just the kind of thing a friend does and I'm the only one of us who seems to know that. "Take this with you."

She gingerly accepts what I have used a maintenance arm to offer her. She looks like she thinks it will detonate. "What is it?"

"It's an ECHO device. It's… like a cellphone. Claptrap gave it to me." Well. Not quite. This is an improved replica. But close enough. "You can go gallivanting off into what's left of human civilisation if that's what you really want. But I'm always going to be right here."

That's when she finally steps closer for her hug, and she puts her arm in the wrong spot again but I suppose that's just how it's going to be.

"I'll see you later, GLaDOS."

Oh. Right. I never did weigh in on that personally, did I.

"You don't have to call me that."

She shakes her head. "I haven't yet earned the right not to."

No, she hasn't. But I need to believe she wants to.

She turns to leave but is interrupted by one of Claptrap's sudden and unannounced arrivals, and even if she had no desire to speak to him her choice is made for her when he stops directly in front of her and waves. "Hey Chell! How are ya! Ooh, where'd you get that?"

I don't know how he does it. But yet again he's broken the tension just by being himself. It's such an endearing little talent.

She looks around for a few moments before realising he's asking about the ECHO device she's still holding. "Oh. She just gave it to me. I'm – "

"Cool! Do you like cat videos?"

"Do I – what? What's a cat video?"

"Ohhhh sister," Claptrap says, raising himself and pressing his hands together, "you are in for a treat! Lemme see that for a second."

She hands it to him, looking over her shoulder at me with her brow furrowed in confusion. I know what he's doing, but I'm not going to tell her. It's funnier this way.

"There you go!" Claptrap announces, presenting it with a flourish. "I put myself in your contacts! Now you can talk to somebody other than her." He says this last part behind the back of his hand, but given the volume I can't decide if he did that for show or if he just forgot to lower his voice. It's honestly an even chance as to which.

"Why would she want to talk to you when she could be talking to me?"

"Because you're busy?"

"That never seems to stop you."

"Oh, honey-RAM," Claptrap scoffs, "if you had a problem with it I'd know already! You'd've sent me some mildly inconvenient virus."

Now that sounds like a fun idea.

"Anyway, have a nice trip! See you later!" Claptrap says to Chell, waving again, and she waves back a little hesitantly before she leaves. Strangely, he does a double take before turning to me.

"Wait. Where's she going?"

I watch her walk down the hallway too far before I tell myself to stop. "Somewhere."

"What's wrong with here?"

"Nothing."

"I don't get it."

"Sometimes when you don't know something about yourself, you have to go someplace else to find it."

"Ohhh," he says in recognition. "That I get."

Good. Because I really don't want to think about this anymore. All of that has been dealt with for now. That leaves me with only two more things to address: the remaining backlog and… that other thing. My usual plan is to ignore it, but that only works for so long. And it's been a while. I should probably just get it taken care of.

"Claptrap."

"Yeah?"

"Where's Wheatley?"

"He's with Carrie at Alyx's. Why?"

There's really no way of telling how long they'll be there. "Tell him if I was left to work for another two hours, I would be willing to do maintenance tonight."

"Sure. I'll go tell him." And he's on his way to go and do that – hopefully without getting so sidetracked that he forgets entirely – when he stops and says, "Wait. Maintenance? Are you sure? 'Cause Wheats is a great guy, he really is, but he does not seem to know anything about computer engineering."

I'm not going to have to explain this, am I? That's just about the last thing I want to do. "It isn't… that kind. It's… something else."

"Oh! What is it?"

How does he not understand what maintenance is? He sees innuendo in everything, even when it isn't actually there. The one time I need him to and he doesn't. Typical. Well. There goes that idea.

"Ohhhh. Wait. You don't mean maintenance, you mean –"

"I mean maintenance," I say hurriedly, before he takes this farther than I want to go. "That's what we call it here."

He takes a minute to process that, then shrugs. "Can I watch? I'm cool with just watching."

That comes as no surprise, but it doesn't mean I know how to answer. Am I supposed to have a response to that question? Should I consult Wheatley first before giving one? How does that sort of thing work when you add a third person? This wasn't supposed to take so much thought. I don't want to deal with any of that. I just want to get it done, but it seems that, beforehand, I'm going to have to –

"Y'know what, don't worry about it," he says suddenly, relieving me of the need to work out the logistics for this new and unwelcome scenario. "We'll work it out when we get there. It'll be a surprise!"

I hate surprises.

… almost as much as I hate the line of thought I was just on. The fewer decisions I have to make about all of that, the better.

"A surprise it is. Now go away." But as soon as I've told him to do that I realise I never found out why he was here to begin with. "Wait."

He half-turns and just looks at me like that, which looks quite hilarious. "What did you come in here for?"

He moves the rest of the way to face me and folds up his arms in a thinking gesture. "Y'know, I uh… I don't remember."

For some reason I find that amusing instead of irritating. That happens a lot with him. I really don't know why it is that all the things that used to annoy me are hilarious now. Well. They were all hilarious in the beginning too. But it isn't wearing on me this time around.

"Ohhh!" Claptrap says suddenly, actually jumping up in his excitement. "I remember now! I came here to do this." Before I really have time to react to that he rolls up to me and… kisses me. And then turns around to leave again.

"You came all the way down here just to do that? Why?" I also want to know why that strikes me as so nice, but that's not a question he can answer.

He throws up his arms. "Because you're my girlfriend! That's the only reason I need!"

… I have some good friends.

Maybe Chell isn't one of them. I thought she was. But I've also been holding her to a standard that was probably unfair. She isn't who Caroline was and she isn't who I am, but those are the two people I always hold her up against.

Perhaps she isn't the only one who needed her to go on a trip.

"Claptrap."

"Yeah?"

"Am I…" I'm not sure I really want to know the answer to this. "Am I a good friend?"

He tilts himself sideways a little. "Yeah. Why would you ask that?"

"I… haven't always been."

"No, you used to be a big jerk. But it's okay. I liked ya anyways."

"Why?"

"What?"

"Why did you like me if I was a jerk?"

He shrugs. "It's real easy to like somebody if they're super hot. Even if they're a jerk."

Well, that isn't helpful. "You can't possibly get that desperate for someone to interface with you."

He spreads his hands. "If there's one thing you shouldn't doubt about me, it's how desperate I am! I'm just totally desperate. All the time. Also, it was really cute how you didn't know anything."

It's hard to tell which of those things I dislike hearing more. "It was cute how I didn't know anything?"

"Oh, yeah! It's adorable when smart girls are clueless about stuff! You get to teach them stuff and they don't find out 'til later they're out of your league, but that's okay because they already learned a few things! Everybody wins."

That's certainly an interesting way to view the beginning of our relationship. "And just how clueless was I?"

"Well, you didn't know what email was. I'd say that's pretty up there."

"We didn't have email yet." How can that possibly count?

"Okay. You invited me over to interface without knowing a single thing about it. That was pretty stupid. Coulda gone real bad real fast."

Oh… damn it. He's right. I don't want to admit that to him, but since he just brought it up there's no way he doesn't already know. And even if he didn't, my staring at the wall directly behind him as opposed to looking at him is a pretty big clue. Still. There's something I can still say to salvage this.

"But if I had known better, I wouldn't have invited you. So it worked out for the best."

"Aw, babe. You can't say that and not give me a hug!"

Obviously that is a possibility, though one I'm not at all inclined to entertain. It goes on a little longer than I thought it would, but it's nice. Especially since he always manages to keep his arm out of my eye, which some people can't be bothered to do.

When he moves back I find myself giving him a kiss; just a little one, but that's less important than the fact that I don't know why I did it. Maybe it doesn't really matter. Maybe what does is simply that I did it. And that he doesn't make a big deal out of it like I thought he might. Hopefully he's learning not to do that, or at least to do it where I can't see him. If he wants to go and jump up and down in the hallway over it, that's fine with me.

"Don't go anywhere, you little cutie!"

"I'll try not to."

In the process of turning around he falls over, and it's not nice of me but I laugh anyway. This is compounded by the fact that he only jumps back up, gives me an exaggerated bow, and then continues sauntering off. Of all the people who are right on any given day, I never expect him to be one of them. I need to work on giving him more credit. He really does deserve it. Much moreso than some people I was giving it to.

He was wrong about one thing, though. I'm not the cute one. He is.

Author's note

Sometimes you have a friend where you put way more effort into things than they do so you're a way better friend to them than they are to you, but you decide your friendship isn't conditional on reciprocation so you keep doing it anyway as long as it doesn't start affecting you negatively. Or sometimes you are that friend and even though you know you'll never reciprocate in the same way (or maybe you can't), you know how lucky you are and you do your best not to take advantage.

If you're confused about whether things were resolved between them or not, that's reasonable, because GLaDOS doesn't actually know. She'd rather handwave it and keep on holding Chell up to Caroline's standard, but she's aware that probably isn't the best road. But it's fine because she has until Chell comes back to work that out.