Part 103. The Bender
Synopsis: Claptrap knows how to talk, but he still has to learn the art of saying something. Wheatley, however, is still learning when to shut up.
"Where in the world is Claptrap?"
Oh, bollocks. He was supposed to've told her this simply hours ago. "He said something about um… about getting too old to go on benders and that he was staying at his place for a bit."
GLaDOS generated a long-suffering sigh. "What an idiot."
"Um," Wheatley said, realising there was an essential part of this he was missing, "what's um… what's a bender?"
"It's a robot whose sole purpose is to bend things."
"What?"
"It's also a word that describes what a person does when they decide to wilfully and resoundingly impair their ability to function."
Wheatley decided to give up on it. He'd have Claptrap tell him what it meant later. GLaDOS was in too much of a mood to give him an actual answer.
As though he'd been summoned, Claptrap reappeared. Before anyone else could say anything, he put his hands up and announced,
"Yeah, I know I did something dumb and I shoulda known better. You don't gotta lecture me."
"Actually," GLaDOS said, "I was going to thank you."
"What? Really?"
"Oh yes." She nodded as though to back up her words. "You did go off and do something stupid, that's true, but at least you contained your stupidity. You didn't come back here and expect me to deal with it for you."
"Oh," Claptrap said, chassis lowering from the defensive posture he'd taken. "You're uh… you're taking this better than I thought you would."
"I accept that you're an idiot. And that, in being an idiot, you're going to do stupid things even when you know better."
That was very… calm and reasonable, Wheatley thought.
"It wasn't as fun as I remember it being," Claptrap was saying, rather dejectedly in fact. "I don't think I'll be doing it again."
"Regardless, you took responsibility for your behaviour and I can respect that."
"I didn't come back here to bug you, either. I'm just gonna go watch TV." But before he'd quite turned around, GLaDOS said,
"You can watch it in here if you want."
He looked up at Wheatley, who had no answer to give him other than a shrug. Even after all this time he still didn't quite know what went on in that mind of hers. "Okay," Claptrap said, moving to face her again, "but uh… why?"
"Quite frankly, you learn faster when given an incentive to do so," GLaDOS said, providing him with a monitor.
"So if I uh… if I asked you to watch TV with me would you actually want to or would that be part of the incentive thing?" Strangely, he seemed anxious about asking. He was pressing his hands together and looking at the floor.
"Oh," GLaDOS said, surprisingly softly. "Claptrap, it wouldn't be either of them."
"You gotta work," Claptrap said, with not a small mount of resentment.
"Shockingly, that also isn't it." She curved around so that he would be able to see her. "I… Claptrap, I still use libraries to recognise people. I don't have the ability to process television."
"Is that all it is?" Claptrap asked, straightening. "Well, that's not a problem. I just have to turn the subtitles on for ya."
"Subtitles aren't really going to –"
"Not those kind," Claptrap interrupted, waving one hand. "The binary kind."
"The what?" GLaDOS asked, sounding confused.
"Not every robot in the universe can do all the stuff I can," Claptrap explained. "Some of them out there can't hear music or watch TV either! Music's kinda a bust, but video can totally be transcribed into binary. And it is! So… you could watch TV with me. If you actually wanted to."
"You know what? Let's do it," said GLaDOS. "Go ahead."
"Awesome! And you won't have to actually, like, look at it, 'cause of the binary thing, but if you for some reason wanted to, I dunno, kinda stay in arm's reach, that'd be cool."
"I bet it would be," said GLaDOS, laughing.
The show, Claptrap said, was some sort of robot soap opera (which he still hadn't explained the meaning of to Wheatley) but it took him ten minutes just to explain where the show was at during this particular episode and it was so all over the place Wheatley lost track of what was happening in the first two minutes. On top of that, it seemed Wheatley could not understand television either, because nothing about the show was making any sense to him at all. It was quite frustrating, because it was as though he could almost see and almost hear what was going on, but it just came through in tiny little bursts that were far too small for him to get any real meaning out of. GLaDOS and Claptrap seemed to be understanding it just fine while also holding a binary conversation at the same time, and honestly Wheatley was just becoming increasingly frustrated. It would have been nice if someone had noticed he didn't get it, but no, they were simply too busy pretending he wasn't there…
He was so occupied with that he didn't actually know at which point they'd stopped watching the show, but in his defense it wasn't as though he had been told, either. "It's okay," Claptrap was saying about God knew what, "it's not for everybody!"
"I feel as though now is as good a time as any to ask exactly why you went off and did such a thing," GLaDOS said. "It was a little extreme to be one of your usual whims of idiocy."
"What else was I supposed to do?" Claptrap asked, sounding annoyed suddenly. "It wasn't like you really seemed interested in helping me."
GLaDOS's optic narrowed as she glanced at Wheatley, but he had no answer to this either. Helping him? Claptrap was extremely self-sufficient. Wheatley couldn't even begin to figure out what he could possibly need help with.
"I… wasn't aware you needed me to do that," GLaDOS said finally, looking back at him. "I don't recall you mentioning it."
Claptrap jumped away from her. "I totally did!" he shouted, levelling his hand at her accusatorily. "But you didn't care! So I never –"
"When?" GLaDOS demanded, leaning forward. "I literally just told you I don't remember that. Before you begin making more false allegations, when did you make this request?"
"A few days ago!" He waved his left arm around in one of those elaborate gestures Wheatley had yet to find the meaning of. "I was like, 'I had a question for ya!' and you were like 'What is it?' and I was like 'Here's my problem!'. And then you were like, 'That's great! Also, here's my problem!'. And that was fine! 'cause we solved it! But then we never got back to my problem, so I hadda keep trying to solve it myself! But if I coulda done that then I just woulda done it in the first place, so… miracle! It didn't work a second time!"
GLaDOS seemed resigned to allowing Claptrap his rant, judging by the way she was staring at the wall. Wheatley already had a few things to say about this, but that made him think better of it.
"So I went back to Pandora!" Claptrap was going on, hands held very emphatically above his chassis. "And I tried to ask them for help! But do you think anybody had any? Noooooooo. Mordecai was all, 'You're gonna need some help if you don't get lost' and I was like 'Are you threatening me with bodily harm because I had a question, good sir?' and he said 'Can't bodily harm ya if you don't got a body' and I had to ponder that for a while 'cause I mean, technically, he was kinda right, but I didn't want him to be right, you know, and then I was thinking about what did count as a body. Like what's the important parts? Is it the fingers? The toes? Is it all the hair coming out of places you don't expect? Like I would totally love to have a beard but apparently you need somethin' called follicles and you have to grow it yourself and it doesn't count if you just borrow it offa someone's chia pet…"
Wheatley looked at GLaDOS in an attempt to gauge if he should move this along, but she didn't seem to notice.
"So then I asked Brick! And Brick was just like, 'I gotta water my garden,' and I said, 'Well in that case you'd better get going!' and then I remembered! His garden doesn't need watered! It's like one a them Japanese rock gardens, 'cept insteada rocks, it's legs! Human legs! He just sticks 'em in the ground until only their legs're sticking out and then he just kinda… arranges 'em! And even I know you don't have to water humans. They water themselves! Know how I know that? 'cause of how long they spend in the shower! That's where they get good 'n hydrated, and you don't gotta water 'em for like… I dunno. Two weeks at least. That seems to be some kinda average."
How long is this going to go on for? Wheatley privately asked GLaDOS, and the first thing she sent back was a resigned electronic noise.
He can do this for hours.
Hours? Wheatley asked in horror. She gave the smallest of nods.
"… at Moxxi's, and I already know not to ask her. Her advice isn't really useful for robots. So I said to myself, 'Y'know what, Claptrap? You're just gonna have to forget about it.' And the easiest way to forget about somethin' is to just get really drunk. So that's what I did. And usually I get kicked out sooner, but nobody was listenin' to me so nobody actually noticed how drunk I was 'til I started asking the slot machine if it was available. I dunno if I was actually doing that, 'cause that's just what someone told me, and you know how humans are with tellin' me jokes about myself. Anyway, at some point I realised I was facedown outside Dr Zed's and I thought about seein' if he'd help me out but then I was like, 'No. It's super dark so I musta been gone for, like, hours.' So I knew you were gonna be mad if –"
"I wasn't going to be angry. I told you. I just want a heads-up. That's it."
"Yeah, well, girls say that," Claptrap scoffed, waving his hand in dismissal, "and then ya get home and you still ain't standing quite straight and they're askin' why you sent them a message that only contained a picture of something blurry. And you don't got an answer for that! 'cause hell if you remember doing it! Anyway, I knew that was gonna happen and I couldn't come back 'til I was actually having, like, thoughts I could remember having, so I went to my place in the Wastes 'cause it's colder there so stuff'd get processed out faster. And then I went to sleep and when I got up I wasn't even sober yet, but I was also hungover at the same time, so I sent Wheats the message insteada you."
"All right," GLaDOS said tiredly, "but that doesn't explain why you didn't just come back here and ask me again."
Claptrap froze. "Ask you what again?"
GLaDOS sighed and seemed to need a moment to gather herself.
"For help, Claptrap. Why didn't you just bring it back up later?"
"Why would I…" His optic seemed to search the floor for something. "You mean if I don't get an answer the first time, you want me to just ask you again?"
"Why wouldn't you just do that?"
"Well, 'cause…" He fit his hands together. "I dunno. 'cause I'm used to not gettin' an answer, I guess."
"Have I ever intentionally not given you one?"
"Well, I… um…"
"Y'know what," Wheatley said, deciding it was his time to shine, as it were. "Claptrap, why don't you, you know, just… ask her again. Right now. No need to um, to go into the uh, into the logistics. Just get it done, yeah?"
"Sure," said Claptrap, and he turned back to GLaDOS. "Babe, what do I do about the memories? I don't… I don't know how to deal with 'em."
She looked at him silently for a long moment.
"If rewriting and re-corrupting them is what you need to do," she answered, quietly, "then go ahead and do that."
"But you and Wheats –"
"Of course I did it," GLaDOS interrupted. "Who wouldn't?"
"But… but that doesn't make any sense," Claptrap protested. "You told me everything!"
"Some of the files that Caroline found were backups of things I had personally destroyed. They didn't carry the same meaning any longer, so I just left them alone. Look," she said, levelling herself with him, "if you need to do it, then do it. I don't know if I actually have an answer to your question. Excepting the worst of the worst, accepting the past takes not just help but mindfulness. You don't have that and you won't anytime soon."
Claptrap was wringing his hands together very hard.
"So you can't fix my problem?" he asked, very quietly.
"There are a lot of problems I can't fix," GLaDOS said. She sounded… not regretful, not quite, but as though she still had a ways to go on that herself.
"But that means no one can!"
"It means you need to do it."
"Me?" Claptrap protested, gesturing to himself. "Are you nuts?"
"No. It's something you need to learn to do."
"I can't!"
"Claptrap," Wheatley cut in gently, sensing GLaDOS needed a reprieve here, "you haven't got to do it um, to do it all on your own. But the work for it, it's… it's got to be put in by you. There's not some, I dunno, magic line of code she can just, that Gladys can just snuff out of you and that'll solve it. And she can't force you to, to accept things in your life that've bothered you. You've got to learn to do it yourself. She can't… she can't manage your feelings for you."
Claptrap had wrapped his arms around his chassis as best he could and was rocking forward and back just a little bit, staring blankly ahead of him. It was a little ironic, Wheatley thought, that what they really needed Claptrap to be able to tell them he didn't seem to have the words to say.
"I know forgetting is easier," GLaDOS said, very softly, "and I know how much you like your stories. So if that's the road you want to take, I won't think any different of you for it. But I will tell you that only one of those options will help you grow as a person. I think you know which one that is."
"It's hard," Wheatley barely heard him say.
"It is hard," GLaDOS agreed.
Claptrap put his hands up in front of his optic and emulated exhaling. "Okay," he said at normal volume. "I gotta do it right. I mean, I would love to just go in there and remix it all right now but… that's not gonna do anything about it, really. It's still gonna be there, it's just… gonna have a really bad coat of paint on it."
"Good," GLaDOS said.
"It actually did matter to you which one I picked, didn't it," Claptrap said. "You just said it didn't to be nice."
"Well…"
"A little bit?"
"Maybe a little bit."
He didn't even need to ask for a hug this time, because she was already within reach and she didn't move when he spread his arms wide enough. He came for a hug from Wheatley as well, which he happily obliged. Goodness, it was so rewarding to watch Claptrap actively make decisions in favour of bettering himself. Not to lessen the achievements of people who were just naturally like that, not at all, but… changing oneself was hard. Especially when you usually just pretended the hard bits of your life didn't exist.
Claptrap and Wheatley then left for a bit, because GLaDOS had her things to do, and Wheatley somehow convinced Claptrap that he, too, was a bit of a problem-solver, and so they started talking about that Felicity lady Wheatley recalled him being upset about. The most difficult part was actually getting Claptrap to stay on-topic. He had an uncanny ability to go right off his thoughts based on a single word, and Wheatley was hard-pressed to manage interrupting him long enough to remind him of what they were supposed to be discussing. When he did, finally, remain on the subject, he started crying. Wheatley still did not know how quite to handle that, but he didn't really need to this time because Claptrap largely ignored it. He just kept on talking about what he'd done and how badly he felt about it, and how much he wished she'd had the chance to come here and have as big of a system as Aperture to explore because she would have loved it, and it was sometime around then that Wheatley remembered what he had said about GLaDOS's emotions. That they were twice as strong as his, because of Caroline reflecting them back on her. But now he was beginning to wonder whether he actually understood that in the same way, because Wheatley was starting to think that Claptrap actually felt things more intensely than he did.
It was odd, and it made him feel a bit… not bad, but as though he should have felt bad. Because here Wheatley was, going, 'You've just got to learn to manage your emotions, mate!' and Claptrap was there feeling things that Wheatley couldn't. Well, maybe not different things, but… if they were the same things, Claptrap definitely did have it a lot worse.
"I don't know how to get over that," Claptrap was saying, and he had mostly stopped crying by now. "How can I, when I know she would've hated me for what I did?"
"Because you don't know," Wheatley said, as patiently as he could. He had already explained this about four times, but Claptrap just didn't seem to be grasping it. "If she were still around, you could've explained it to her. And then she could've forgiven you."
"Yeah, but… what if she didn't let me talk to her? And she just ignored me for, like, ever? Then I'd know she hated me and didn't forgive me!"
"Claptrap," said Wheatley firmly, "look, mate. You didn't know her. At all. You barely even talked to her! She was going about with you for what, an hour? And one of the worst hours of her life, at that!"
"Wheatley, I know that," Claptrap protested, "but –"
"You didn't know her," Wheatley interrupted. "Not only did you, not only did you not, but the one you've got living up there in your mind? 's not her, mate. 's not her at all."
Claptrap lowered his hands. "What?"
"It's like…" Wheatley shook his core. It was getting hard to think properly. He had to sort through what Claptrap had said and why he had said it, and what he had said and how Claptrap had taken it, and he felt they were going 'round and 'round in circles. "You've got a snapshot of her. You can't… you can't be with a person for a time, for just an hour and that's it, you know them. You don't. You don't know her, and you don't know what she'd've done, and you don't know how she would've felt after, if she'd made it, and, you just, you don't know because you don't know her. You've just… built up this great, this great vision of her up in your head and it's not… it's not real and you're treating it like it is."
Claptrap didn't say anything for a minute or two.
"She wouldn't've given a crap about me," he said finally. "Who am I kidding. She wouldn't've come here. She was admin. She didn't wanna be my friend even before I did –"
"- before Jack had you do it," Wheatley interrupted.
"I'm a waste of time and she woulda found that out real quick."
Wheatley wasn't sure what to say.
"This is why I…" He waved one hand about vaguely. "Why I always just pretended everything was better than it really was. 'cause I mean… I guess I understand it now, but… now I also hate myself. And there's no fixin' that."
"Claptrap –"
"I'm tired, Wheatley," Claptrap said, and he got up off the Cube he'd been sitting on. "And you're not gonna be able to talk me outta that, so let's not go there."
Talk him out of being tired? Why would he – oh. Alright.
"We'll work up to it," he said noncommittally, and the two of them headed up to GLaDOS's chamber. Almost as soon as he'd gotten there, Claptrap managed to trip over thin air again and ended up facedown on the floor.
"Is someone tired?" GLaDOS asked, a little teasingly but not too much.
"This is the worst hangover I have ever had," Claptrap told her. "Seriously. It blows. Don't let me do that again."
"I doubt there's enough space between you and your vices for me to prevent that, but I can try."
He stopped right in front of her and then his chassis lowered suddenly. "Aw, hell," he said dejectedly. "I forgot. I can't sleep standing up."
"Luckily, you have me here to think for you," GLaDOS said.
"Thank God," said Claptrap. "What has your genius conjured up this time?"
Before she had the chance to answer, Claptrap spontaneously fell over again, but this time when he put out his hands to break his fall they connected with the front of GLaDOS's core. She twitched a little but otherwise did not move.
"Oh my gosh," Claptrap said, even while he was using her as a brace to stand straight again, "I am so sorry. I totally didn't mean to lean on your face. My balance is so messed right now and I really thought I was doin' good and then I forgot to think about it and – "
"It's fine," GLaDOS interrupted, but Wheatley was suddenly remembering the time he had bumped into her and it hadn't been fine at all, and before he was able to think through why he was so annoyed about it he snapped,
"You're being um, you're being awfully nice about all of this, aren't you?"
"What?" GLaDOS asked, sounding incredulous. So she was going to pretend she didn't know what he was talking about, eh?
"This!" Wheatley said, gesturing to Claptrap with his lower handle. "You aren't nearly so um, so accommodating when I do something stupid."
GLaDOS raised herself slowly.
"And with good reason," she snapped. "When you do something stupid it usually involves breaking my things and then lying to me about it. And let's not forget the time you told someone my entire history without asking me."
"Per'aps you should remember that your first thought about that was um, was to literally kill me over it!"
"Yes, because at least in death you're guaranteed to finally shut up."
"Oh my god!" Claptrap shouted, holding up his hands in disbelief. "Whoa! Why'd we go from zero to one thousand here?"
"Shut up, Claptrap," they both said simultaneously, and judging by her hot yellow glare GLaDOS was as displeased about that as he was.
"Fine," Claptrap said, and he turned around.
"Where you are you going?" GLaDOS demanded.
"You guys're fighting because of me. So I'm just gonna step out and you guys can… I dunno what you're doing, but it ain't pretty and I ain't gonna make it any prettier."
"We aren't fighting because of you," GLaDOS said. "We're fighting because Wheatley thinks I should keep treating people like garbage even though I know better."
Oh, well now she was just putting phrases into his vocalisation queue! And he would've argued about it, except that Claptrap's plan of getting away from her sounded pretty good. Excellent, actually. "Y'know what," he said, turning around, "I don't want to be here either."
"Good. I don't want you here."
By the time Wheatley had gotten about a hundred feet away, he was already only about half as angry as he had been, which unfortunately had the effect of making him realise what he'd just done was far more stupid than Claptrap impairing his ability to function. God. Every time he thought he was getting a handle on his jealousy, it just started taking him over again! Why had he made a big deal of it? GLaDOS really hadn't had to go as far as she had, but what had happened to his own resolution to just be happy for Claptrap? Ohh, he needed to go talk to him. Wheatley had single-handedly mucked up all of their nights, but if he found Claptrap quick he might be able to save at least one of them.
He hadn't gone very far, thankfully; he was just sort of leaning back against one wall and staring at the other side. Whatever being hungover felt like, it certainly looked to be quite awful. "You didn't do anything wrong," he said without preamble. "Go back to her."
"No," said Claptrap. Before Wheatley could conjure up his next words, he continued,
"We're a team. If you can't have her, I can't either. That's the deal. I'm stickin' to it."
"She got mad because I was being an arse," Wheatley insisted. "You don't need to do this. I mean, I appreciate the um, the sentiment, but… I did something stupid and you haven't got to, to face any consequences for it. Go on. It's alright."
"Well… okay," Claptrap said, turning around. "I'm convinced. But I'll talk to her, so come by later. You'll be all good by then."
"I'll sort it out myself," said Wheatley. "Don't worry about it. Happens all the time, I've just got to –"
"You don't get it, Wheats," Claptrap interrupted, looking up at him. "I don't care. All I care about is that everyone is happy."
"Claptrap – "
"I got it."
He found himself hoping that he actually did have the magical power to sort all of it out. He was no longer upset in the slightest. Well, about the argument, anyway. Now he was sort of upset with himself. Why had he started a fight with GLaDOS so close to bedtime? That was the absolute worst time of all! Just how long would it take Claptrap to change her mind, anyway?
… thirty minutes, and then he'd go check on things.
When he arrived at her chamber twenty-nine minutes later – close enough that he could see clearly, but not so much he was really there – they seemed to be having some sort of discussion about the panel that would've been directly beneath her if she'd been lying down. A wayward glance from her caught his optic, but she didn't say anything. She just nodded at him and went back to what she'd been doing. Wow. Claptrap had worked fast.
"Hi!" Claptrap of course shouted, waving at him. "You are just in time to see what Gladys's genius idea was."
"… oh," Wheatley said, completely missing the mark on the casualness he was going for as he entered the room. "What uh… what was it?"
"He can't sleep standing up," GLaDOS said. "So he doesn't want to."
"But Gladys said I could just lie down underneath her! Problem solved!"
Problem not really solved, Wheatley thought, because he knew with absolute certainty that GLaDOS did not like her lens being touched. Pretty much ever. She was honestly volunteering to have it mashed up against Claptrap all night?
But that was exactly what happened, and once they had themselves arranged Claptrap immediately started running one of his hands up and down the side of GLaDOS's core as far as he could reach, and Wheatley at once had to stamp down the old jealousy again. This one, though, he didn't think he was ever going to get over. His handles just could not do what Claptrap's hands could! Oh, but there was no use being cross over it. Especially since he had no desire for any of the rest of the ridiculousness that was Claptrap's chassis. Sometimes he actually leaked, for God's sake, and he was supposed to be advanced.
"I thought you were tired," GLaDOS was saying.
"I am," answered Claptrap. "I talk when I'm tired."
Wheatley tried not to laugh, he really did, but it came out anyway as a bit of an emulated snort.
"If I kiss you, will you go to sleep?"
"I'd be a fool to refuse that offer! Or a bigger one than I already am, anyway."
So GLaDOS moved back enough that she could press her lens into the top left corner of Claptrap's chassis, which he responded to by enthusiastically throwing his arms around her core as best he could reach. "Good night, baby!" he announced. "Don't do anything fun without me!"
"I wouldn't think of it," GLaDOS said, returning to her former position. Claptrap folded his arms on top of himself so that his palms were against the top of GLaDOS's core and then, without warning, he was off.
Wheatley wasn't sure if he was actually welcome there or if GLaDOS had just been allowing it for Claptrap's sake, but he couldn't keep from asking, "I thought um… I thought you hated having your optic crowded up like that."
"Oh, believe me. I do. I absolutely do."
"You're… you're very gentle with him," Wheatley said, as carefully as he could. He didn't want to set off another row, but at the same time… he felt very much as though he were missing something. Unfortunately, GLaDOS still seemed to be stewing a little about earlier judging by the ramping up of her hard drive, so he added hastily, "I'm not complaining! Or criticising! Or any of that, honest! It's just… well, you know it's unusual, Gladys."
Her hardware quieted, for which he thanked his lucky stars.
"Look," she said finally. "I'll tell you. But keep it to yourself."
He nodded before realising she couldn't see him, said, "Got it,", and then it came to him that she probably could see him after all via the wall panels. He often forgot they were there, let alone that she could do that.
"On Christmas, we… it's a little hard to explain, since you can't do it. But the simplest way to explain it was that we traded memories. All of them."
"He mentioned that," Wheatley said, so she would know he didn't need it explained any further.
"Well. Initially, I thought his life wasn't that bad. It wasn't great – it wasn't even good – but when weighted against mine, his just seemed…" She removed herself from Claptrap's chassis. "The intensity was different. A lot of things were happening, but they seemed small.
"But I found myself considering it all again, and I realised that I had been very wrong. His was actually worse."
"How?" Wheatley whispered. A life harder than GLaDOS's existed? And it was Claptrap's?
She glanced at him.
"The day that… you died, I didn't want to live anymore. And by that I mean I actively didn't want to. All the rest of the days I was consumed by apathy, but the first day was different. I… I honestly wished I was dead. And that feeling I had for that one day…" She shook her core. "He had it for… sometimes weeks at a time."
Wheatley looked over at Claptrap in horror. That couldn't be true. Could it? And if it was, he certainly couldn't have felt that way recently. They would've known! They would've been able to tell!
"On that one day, I honestly believed that Caroline would be better off without me, but there was not a single moment that I thought she wouldn't miss me if I were gone. I knew that she would. No matter how good it would have been for her. Even when I thought I had nothing, I still had that. But Claptrap…" She was looking down at him now, and her voice had become worryingly serious, even for her. "He knew that nobody would miss him. Not only that, but he knew exactly who would be happy if he were gone.
"It wasn't an illusion that people would be better off without him. It was fact. And this wasn't a one-time occurrence. No. For days upon days upon days. The feeling would pass, sometimes, but it almost made it worse because then he would have hope he was finally rid of it. And then it would come back and he would have to go through it all over again."
When Claptrap had said he hated himself… he had actually meant it?
"He carried a burden greater than the one I couldn't," GLaDOS said. "Hanging onto the idea that maybe, maybe, if he kept going for another day, something good would happen. Something that he knew it was inevitable for him to lose. No matter what it was he managed to get, he would not be allowed to keep it. He knew that. It wasn't his imagination. It was the reality of his life.
"He was willing to live for nothing, even when living was the last thing he wanted to do."
Wheatley didn't even know what he was supposed to do with this information. This was… it ran so incredibly deep that he couldn't even be sure he'd ever find the root of it, no matter how hard he tried. And Claptrap just kept dealing with it all himself! He'd never mentioned it, never asked for help. He knew that they cared, didn't he? That they absolutely would not be better off without him?
"Yes," GLaDOS said, sounding tired. "Yes, when he came back here today I absolutely wanted to tell him how incredibly stupid, irritating, and irresponsible he is. Oh, the speech I had. But I couldn't do that, because he was expecting it. He was expecting me to treat him like that because that is what his life consists of. And it is not fair. He deserves to have his patience and his loyalty rewarded." Her gaze, even at this distance, was still quite intense. "I am his way out. We are his way out. You're right. I have not always been as good to you as I should have been. I have never denied that. But I know better. I can be good to him, and I have to be. He was willing to live for less than nothing. I'm not willing to allow that. I am going to give him all of the things he was told he didn't deserve, and I don't care how many times I have to fight with you over it."
"I'm not…" Wheatley began, in an attempt to temper the hardness her voice had acquired. "Gladys, I didn't know. I didn't mean to… I'm doing my best here, honestly, but you've got to let me know of these things. I'm not trying to be an arsehole, but I just… a heads-up would be good. Not just so I don't make a total prat of myself, but so I can help you!" He had no idea how to so much as approach that big of a problem, but what he did know was that it would require a team. It could not be tackled by GLaDOS alone any more than it could be by Claptrap alone.
"Sometimes at night the system mixes my memory up with his," she said quietly. "I can't describe to you how it feels to wake up overwhelmed by someone else's crippling loneliness."
He couldn't imagine it, either. "You feel sorry for him?" he asked gently, but she shook her core.
"No. It's not pity. It's… I think it's called empathy. I'm not sure that it counts, given the method, but…" She sighed. "Caroline might have known."
"But that whole thing you were just talking about… it's gone now, right? Since all of the things he um, all of them, well… they're not true, anymore. We would miss him, and we wouldn't be better off if… if…" He faltered at the slow shake of GLaDOS's core. "No?"
"No." She lowered herself for a minute, but angled so that she wouldn't touch Claptrap. "And don't ask him about it. He doesn't want you to."
"But why not? Why would he want to stay mis'rable?"
"Wheatley," GLaDOS said, "you've never understood this and I doubt you ever will. But sometimes it is easier to be miserable. Especially when life has taught you that happiness is something that will always be held just out of your reach, no matter what you do to achieve it. And the day you do manage it is just as miserable as all the others, because you have to face the fact that it won't last. Not only that, but it just made everything worse, because once you've had it you truly understand just how far down you were and are going to be." She looked over at him again. "I get angry. He gets sad. It isn't something we really want. But it's part of what we are. I've come a long way and he can too. But it will take time."
Wheatley nodded, wondering how on earth he was going to process all of this information. Was that the sort of life he'd've been condemned to, if he were a more complex AI? Was it actually sort of a good thing he wasn't as much as they were? He honestly didn't know if the bigger problems were worth the greater abilities. To really, truly believe people that loved him would be better off if he… no. No, he couldn't even start to imagine it.
"Now come here," GLaDOS said. "Thinking about his depression is making me relive it. Which I'd really rather put a stop to immediately."
"Of course, luv," said Wheatley, and after she'd gone down again he pressed up against her. He had to admit this was a better outcome than his original plan.
"I'm sorry I implied I wish you were dead. I don't."
"I appreciate it."
When Wheatley woke up the next morning, GLaDOS was… well, he could tell that she was on, but she hadn't moved at all. Unsure of what was going on and if he should be doing something about it, Wheatley remained still himself. Was something the matter?
He got lost in that for a little while, until he heard Claptrap say, "Good morning!" which caused him to suddenly remember where, exactly, he had been, and why, and he was struck with a combination of annoyance and jealousy that immediately promised to put a dampener on his entire day.
"You don't wait for me to get up," Wheatley grumbled without thinking, but as soon as he said it he knew he should have just given himself a minute to calm down instead. They had just talked about this! And here he was, at it again already! "I'm sorry!" he exclaimed as she brought her optic to bear. "I didn't – I know, I know, I just – I forgot and – "
"Will you stop demanding I treat the both of you exactly the same? You are not the same person. And because you didn't mention it, I'm sure you took into consideration, before you made that comment, the fact that I make myself as available as possible for both of you to lean all over whenever you want, without making a big deal out of it."
"Babe," Claptrap said, drawing both of their attention, "bring it back there, willya? He already apologised and everything!"
Wheatley attempted to signal his gratitude to Claptrap with solely his optic, though he wasn't sure he understood. It was always difficult to tell.
"This shouldn't even be an issue," GLaDOS snapped. "So what if I did? It's the exact thing he does for me every single day."
"You're right," Wheatley said. That was all there was to it, really. But she had already prepared herself for an argument by this point and he wasn't sure how he was getting out of it.
"I don't think you two realise how exhausting it is, juggling the both of you all day long," she muttered darkly.
"I'm pretty sure if we did some of that objective measuring stuff you're so fond of, we'd discover you're as much work as at least four people!" Claptrap declared, somehow managing to sound both charming and offensive at the same time. "So how's about we call it even, huh? C'mon, Wheats, let's go check the weather."
"Um… yeah. Let's… let's do that," Wheatley said uneasily, glancing at GLaDOS to see how she was taking that. Possibly into consideration, which… was quite good, actually. The consideration seemed a tad bitter and reluctant, but he wasn't going to knock it. At least it was happening.
"Sorry, mate," he felt it necessary to say once they'd got to Wheatley's hole. It was one of those mornings where it was sort of still dark outside, but he could still hear the birds out there singing anyway. He felt as though it were a metaphor for something he was beyond figuring out himself. "I… I got jealous again. I'm working on it."
"No reason to be jealous of me, pal," Claptrap said.
It was probably a good thing Claptrap didn't know the loads of reasons Wheatley had found to be jealous of him, because if he had he probably would have been able to find a girlfriend back home and they wouldn't be having this conversation right now. And that, Wheatley thought, would have been simply terrible. He really would have been missing out. "Dunno 'bout that. She really seems to like that you've got hands."
Claptrap held them up in front of his eye. "I mean, they do come in handy… get it? 'Cause they're hands and they –"
"Yes, I got it," Wheatley said, laughing.
"She really does let us hang off her whenever we want, doesn't she?"
"Yeah." Wheatley was looking for one of those birds, but they seemed to be just out of sight. Or perhaps his processing was off and they weren't where he thought the sound was coming from. That happened sometimes. "She does. I shouldn't've made a big deal out of it."
"That was a bit extreme, though," Claptrap mused. "Only thing I can think of is that she actually is mad at me and she's just been really good at hiding it! For the first time ever!"
"No," Wheatley said immediately. "No, she's not." Actually, come to think of it… "It might've been that she didn't sleep very well."
"Why not?"
"She doesn't really like having her optic all mashed up like that," he answered. "Could be that was bugging her all night." Sometimes he forgot she didn't actually experience unconsciousness in the way that the rest of them did.
Claptrap threw up his hands. "Then why'd she do it?"
"She wanted to be nice," Wheatley said.
"Okay," said Claptrap, crossing his arms and looking outside again, "that's very touching. Really! I'll take it! But if she'd've told me that we coulda done something else! Not defer how she felt about it until the next day."
"What's defer mean?" Wheatley asked. Claptrap shrugged.
"I dunno. Just felt like it fit there, I guess."
"Well," he said, setting to finding it in his own dictionary, "we can talk to her about it later."
"I wasn't really in a state to talk about anything at the time, though, was I," Claptrap admitted.
"No. No, not really." Now that he was again thinking of the talk he'd had, though, he had to ask. "Claptrap, d'you ever… feel it's easier to be mis'rable than happy?"
"Well, yeah," said Claptrap. "It's always easier. Back on Pandora I used to get smashed all the time so I didn't have to think about it. I was still really sad but at least I didn't have to think."
"What… I don't know what 'smashed' means."
"Oh. It means you drink too much. Robots can't do it here, but back home there's like… robot booze and stuff. I haven't done any of it since coming here, but before? Man it was so much easier than putting in all the work to be happy and then coming up with nothin'."
"But… d'you still do it? Try not to be happy, I mean."
"Well… I try to avoid it, sometimes. It gets to be a lot, y'know? Sometimes I still wonder if it's all a joke. Because if it is, it would really suck to have the rug pulled out from under me when I thought I had it all. It's way easier to just anticipate the day the ultimate disaster strikes."
… what?
"That's not… really a good way to live."
Claptrap laughed. "Sometimes you're like… I dunno, this little life virgin, y'know that? I know, Wheatley. Look, man, I do what I can and that's all I can do. I know better'n to ask more of myself."
Wheatley was confused as to how you were supposed to become a better person if you never asked more of yourself, but he had to remind himself that Claptrap had had an entire lifetime someplace else that caused him to act the way he did. The best thing for Wheatley do to was just be available to help if he changed his mind. He hoped he would. He really did not like the thought of his best friend believing Wheatley was just going to give up on him one day. Maybe everyone else had, but Wheatley wouldn't. GLaDOS was right. They were his way out, and they did need to give him the things he thought he couldn't have. He deserved it, even if the day never came where he was able to believe that.
"C'n I ask you one more thing?"
"You can ask me all the things, buddy."
"What's a virgin?"
Claptrap turned to face him, raised himself a little bit as if to answer, and then backed up a handful of inches. "I could tell ya," he said, "but I think I'm gonna let Carrie do it."
"Why would I ask Carrie?" Was Claptrap using another word he didn't know the meaning of?
"'Cause it'll be hilarious!"
"But why?"
"We could keep doing this, orrrr… you could go ask her!"
"Fine!" snapped Wheatley, frustrated. "I will!"
"I am not missing this," Claptrap announced, and the both of them headed off.
Author's note
So, you might be wondering how robot drunkenness is supposed to work, considering Claptrap can't physically drink anything. Well, I haven't pinned down exactly how I'd like it to go, but it's probably like this: it's basically oil/coolant with a robot intoxicant added, and then as time goes by and it's run through the robot's chassis, the process of use burns off the intoxicant. This would necessitate the robot either removing some of the oil/coolant ahead of time or running with a low enough volume that they would have the capacity to take in more of it. Claptrap probably leaks anyway so the logistics of that aren't too important.
They were watching 'All My Circuits' from Futurama. Wheatley doesn't understand it even with the binary track because most of his processing power is already used up on the process of perceiving/reacting to reality (being alive, basically). He doesn't have enough left to watch TV too because it's akin to him being able to live two realities at the same time. He just doesn't have the architecture for that.
In Borderlands TPS they go out of their way to present to the player that Claptrap is a genuinely good person who just wants everyone to be happy (with a side of shameless hedonism). Claptrap's behaviour does tend to vary from game to game (he's usually put in whatever position is the funniest, basically), but because TPS went to so much trouble to characterise him that way, I'm going to run with it. Nobody in Borderlands is especially nice, except to their friends, and Claptrap's loyalty is especially intense.
Claptrap also has intense FOMO. Also also, what GLaDOS says isn't meant to be an accurate depiction of depression. She only understands it from her own perspective, which is that of a bit of a neurotic pessimist, she doesn't quite understand the chronic aspect of it. (I don't personally either, so when we get on the topic it's my best approximation, especially since robot depression wouldn't be the same as human depression). Wheatley still isn't over the jealousy thing because IRL, people don't just decide to be over stuff and then get over it instantly. They struggle with it for a long time after, sometimes forever. It always bugs me in media where people have these huge flaws and then some event happens and they immediately never do it again. Like nah that's not how it works.