Part 109. The Insult

"GLaDOS, I have a confession to make," said Claptrap the next afternoon. Wheatley looked up, hoping it was that thing he had been refusing to talk about. GLaDOS's turn to look at him was a bit more on the confused side.

"What?" she asked.

Claptrap clasped his hands together and bounced up and down a few times. "I posted your music on the ECHONet."

"What?!" GLaDOS cried out, and as she moved towards him all of the lights in the room brightened momentarily. "Why?"

"Wait! Wait wait wait!" Claptrap protested, backing away and throwing up his arms defensively. "Look, I know I messed up and I am gonna delete it. I just forgot the password to get into the account! And also I forgot the email that the reset got sent to. But I'm working on it, I swear!"

"Why did you do it in the first place?" demanded GLaDOS, seeming on the verge of snatching him up and smashing him to pieces right then and there.

"Because I thought it would be, like, inspirational!"

"To whom?"

"Other robots," said Claptrap, spreading his hands apart. "The ones that're like you."

GLaDOS drew back, optic narrowing. "What are you talking about?"

"It's like this," Claptrap said, pressing his palms together in front of him. "Not all robots on Pandora are like me. In fact, most of them aren't! There are tons of 'em who can't hear music or can just hear a little bit, like you. And I thought it'd be nice if they knew there was an admin bot who had the same kinda hard time as they did! And that you went on to make your own music anyway! Also, I didn't really think about how you'd feel about it until this morning, and then I had a panic attack. You know how much that sucks when you literally can't breathe? I'm all good now, though. Anyway, I was just gonna delete 'em without telling you, but that woulda been like lying! So what I'm trying to say is, it's totally cool if you're mad - and why wouldn't you be? I did something incredibly stupid! - but I'm kinda hoping coming clean about it'll get me some points. In the not-mad column, I mean."

That sounded reasonable to Wheatley. He looked at GLaDOS, but she gave him nothing to gauge her with. Not even when she said, "And was it?"

"Was it what?"

"Did posting it do all those things you were hoping for?"

"Kinda," said Claptrap, folding his arms up thoughtfully. "Most of 'em think it's someone faking a disability for attention. A lotta people do that. It's competitive out there! But an admin bot being short on features seems to be mostly unbelievable. And also you gotta take into account that you guys're kinda backwards compared to over there, and that it's a side account I'm running, and - it doesn't matter. I gotta go look through my ECHONet history to find that email address. And you know that's gonna take me a long-ass time."

"There's more," GLaDOS said before he'd quite left. He paused and turned around halfway.

"More… what?"

"The files Caroline found and showed you were a decoy. I actually keep most of it somewhere else."

Wheatley almost laughed. Carrie really should have thought of that before she'd come in all triumphant about finding it.

"Uh… okay?"

"For when you can get into the account again, I mean."

"You… want me to keep posting it?" He perked up suddenly. "So does that mean you're not mad?"

"Oh, I am," GLaDOS said, and his chassis sank. "But I'm intrigued by your goal. I don't think I've ever been described as 'inspirational' before."

"You are a woman of many descriptors!" declared Claptrap. "If you really want me to, sure! I'll keep putting it out there for you!"

"Don't attempt to pass it off as yours. That's all."

"Why would I? You don't have any dubstep." Without waiting for an answer, if he'd actually even wanted one, he went on, "Hey, you remember that schedule thingy you made for me? Can you put something on it?"

"I made it so you could put things on it, but fine. What."

"Can you put a reminder for me to do maintenance on you in, like, six months?"

"Why would you want to do that?" GLaDOS asked, sounding taken aback. Claptrap looked at her a bit sideways, arms curled against the front of his chassis.

"Uh… 'cause you look really good right now and I know you're not gonna keep yourself this way?"

"If you really think it's important," GLaDOS said, still seeming confused.

"It won't take as long the next time if that's what you're worried about," Claptrap told her. "I can do it at night if you really want me to! But I am gonna forget if you don't remind me."

"You could make your own reminders."

"But I like yours better!" Claptrap said imploringly, leaning towards her. "Though you could use more emojis."

GLaDOS rolled her core away from him. "I don't know why you're so enamoured with those things. But fine. I'll… use more emojis."

"Hooray!" said Claptrap, throwing up his hands. "You can even use the frowny face if you want."

"I'm so glad I have your permission. I don't know how I would have done that without it."

"You're not mad at me," Claptrap said suddenly, causing GLaDOS to look over at him again.

"What makes you say that?"

"'Cause you didn't lose it on me like you did your kids the other day."

Wheatley looked between them, a little surprised that Claptrap had noticed but he hadn't. "He's right," he said. "You were much more upset with Atlas and P-body. You didn't shout at Claptrap. You didn't even raise your voice. Or… anything."

"I'm…" She shook her core and looked at the opposite wall. "I am… not happy about it. But it's you, so I have to use a different set of rules for dealing with your actions. Orange and Blue knew while they were doing it they shouldn't have been playing near the incinerator, and especially not with the device. You said yourself you didn't realise you'd done wrong until this morning. Thoughtlessness is different from willful misbehaviour."

"Shouldn't you be mad that I didn't think about it, though?"

"No," GLaDOS said, shaking her core. "I know better than to expect that. So whenever I'm tempted to be angry about anything you do, I first remind myself what it's like to be you. That's usually enough to take the edge off."

"What it's like to be him?" Wheatley asked, a bit confused as to why that mattered, and GLaDOS nodded.

"His thoughts are best and yet inadequately described as chaos. He seems to have a randomly-firing subroutine that sometimes decides he's only allowed to have an attention span of ninety-nine seconds. Paying complete attention to anything is nearly impossible if he doesn't devote literally all of his resources to it, which is obviously ridiculous to expect of anyone. Right now," she said, raising her voice a little and looking pointedly at him, "despite his best efforts he can't help but look for new gifs of cats falling off of things, but reversed."

"They're so cute," whispered Claptrap, bouncing up and down excitedly. He didn't seem to quite be looking at them, either.

"And while he's trying to manage all of that, he also does his best to remain cheerful and friendly at all times. Being Claptrap is extremely difficult. I honestly don't think I could do it."

"It's so freaking hard!" Claptrap burst out, and he suddenly went quite still, his hands folded up tightly at his sides. "I'm doing my best! I'm trying really, really hard! Your patch helped a lot, but it's still so damn hard!"

"I know it is," GLaDOS said.

"People seriously gotta stop acting like I wanted to spend my whole life a buggy mess! Why would I want that? It's a miracle I can even still function by myself!"

"Considering it was a miracle in the first place, yes."

"Honestly, it was! The software for my model stopped getting updates before we got to version two! Who publishes an OS at version two?! Clowns, that's who. And those same clowns kept going 'why are those CL4P-TPs doing that?' We don't know!" Claptrap shouted, pushing his folded arms forward in emphasis. "You tell us! We're not programmed to be programmers!"

GLaDOS, who had had a distinct air of studiousness throughout this, said, "You haven't cried in a while, have you."

"I don't want to!" snapped Claptrap. "I'm sick of crying! I wanna be more like you guys! You never cry and you get along just fine!"

"You know that isn't true," said GLaDOS, to Wheatley's surprise. "I will admit your habit of crying about almost everything both confuses me and makes me very uncomfortable, but it's by no means a bad thing."

"I just -"

"In fact," GLaDOS continued as though he'd said nothing, "we would do well to emulate you."

"... really?"

GLaDOS nodded. "You cry a lot, that's true. But that's also how you deal with things as they come. And then that's it. You don't have to think about them anymore. They're over. It's a much better option than trying to pretend them away for the better part of a decade like someone we know."

Wheatley considered his managing not to laugh at that to be quite impressive.

"I never thought of it like that," Claptrap admitted.

"That's why I do the thinking around here. Anyway. Go and watch one of those sappy romantic dramas you like where everyone professes their love for each other and then dies horribly. Have your cry. And then it will be over."

Claptrap stared at her for a minute, then said, "What I wouldn't give to be as smart as I am sexy just like you are."

"It's both a burden and a boon," GLaDOS said serenely.

"I mean it! You are an absolute sex machine," said Claptrap, who then immediately froze up in horror. Wheatley frowned and started to ask what that was about when he said, backing up,

"Oh my god. I cannot believe I just said that. That's the worst thing I've ever said to anyone, and that includes the time someone told me the dog they'd had for fifteen years died and I said, 'Look on the bright side! Now you can get a puppy!"

GLaDOS, of course, found that to be incredibly hilarious, and no amount of Wheatley rolling his optic and sighing would be able to make her think otherwise. He tried it anyway, though.

"You gotta be mad at me now."

"Why do you keep asking that? If I was angry, you would know. I wouldn't be keeping it a secret."

"'S true," said Wheatley in a low voice. "The entire facility'd know by now. If she were."

"Like I said! It's the crippling anxiety! But I'll try to remember that." He looked down at the floor and tapped the tips of his hands together. "So uh… about the movie thing. You guys'd watch it with me, right?"

"Yes," said Wheatley firmly, before GLaDOS could protest. She made something in between an indignant and a panicked noise, clearly intending to argue, but Wheatley continued, "We would love to do that with you."

"Great! I know just the one." He turned around and headed out, calling back, "I'm gonna get into that email, I promise!"

As soon as he'd left, GLaDOS snapped her narrowed optic to him, but he shook himself before she could speak. "Now's not the time."

"You don't understand what he watches!"

"And you were doing so well at being nice, too."

The glare she directed at him might have been frightening if he hadn't already been annoyed with her. "I hate you."

"That's fine." He was bothered enough that he started to leave, but before he did he added, "But just because you don't want to be cross with ev'ryone else doesn't mean you get to be mad at me."

"You're right," she said, which made him stop. "I'm sorry."

Oh, she'd said the S-word. He couldn't have kept going even if he'd wanted to. Which he still sort of did.

"Everyone else just cries when I get angry with them," she nearly lamented. "It's almost refreshing when someone gets angry back."

"They're all scared of disappointing you. 'Course they start crying. But you and I've long passed that sort of thing."

"That's why you're my favourite."

He turned around just so she could see his excellent expression of wry disbelief. "Now you're just lying."

"Not at all. It changes quite a lot, actually. Right now it really is you."

That sounded about right, to be honest.

"I am trying, you know. But it gets exhausting sometimes. It's nice to have someone I don't have to try with."

Wheatley could understand that. "Alright. But I like it when you're nice too."

"Well, I don't have any niceness left at the moment, so you're not going to get whatever you're hoping for."

"Civility? Is civility too much?"

"Get out before I throw you out."

Alright, then. He'd made his point and no need to keep pushing.

What he saw when he got back, though, was going to require a bit of pushing. Because GLaDOS was looking at herself, which was not a thing he had ever expected to happen, let alone witness. "Having a look at yourself, there?" he asked as kindly as he could, but even so she jumped and nearly slammed the monitor she'd been using back into the ceiling.

"What?" she said, in a very uninspired attempt to pretend she hadn't heard. Wheatley crossed the space between them and looked up in the direction of the hastily removed screen.

"Having any thoughts in particular?"

With an air of reluctance, she pulled down the monitor again and looked at it. She appeared to be using the cameras on the panels instead of her own optic, which was a bit disorienting for Wheatley. She looked at herself again slowly, as though she didn't recognise herself from one minute ago.

"I like it," she said, which was just about the opposite of what he thought she'd say.

"You do?"

She nodded once, putting the monitor away. "I didn't realise until now how distorted my vision was the first time I saw myself. It's a lot different when I'm not using a laptop screen as a mirror."

"A laptop screen?"

"Mm," said GLaDOS. "They already aren't the easiest thing for me to see. And I honestly didn't get that good of a look, either. Though in all fairness to Caroline, that handful of seconds I was looking didn't go very well."

"Wait," said Wheatley, unable to push down the rising incredulity this had brought on. "You've been upset about a reflection you saw in a laptop screen for five seconds? For the past twenty years?"

"It does sound sort of sad when you put it like that," GLaDOS admitted. "But - "

"You're so frustrating!" Wheatley ground out, chassis clenched. She narrowed her optic.

"What?"

"We could've solved this years ago! But you just refuse to - oh, forget it. 'S not gonna make any more of a, any more of a diff'rence now than it did before." He turned away from her.

"We didn't talk about it because there wasn't anything to say," GLaDOS insisted from behind him. "Not that how I feel about my appearance ever affected you in any way." He heard her shake her core. "Honestly. You're being incredibly ridiculous about this."

"How'm I being ridiculous when it's you that needs twenty years to get over something so stupid?" he snapped, whirling on her. She pulled back slightly.

"It was stupid. That's why it wasn't important enough to think about. Yes, I decided to look today. So what? It doesn't really change anything. It would have been perfectly fine if I continued never looking again."

"It was important!" Wheatley nearly shouted, facing her again. "'S why you refused to talk about it! Because of how important it was!"

"There were a lot of things that were far more important than my feelings on what I look like. No matter how many years I didn't want to talk about it for."

"Like what?"

"The facility," GLaDOS answered as though he were being stupid. "It comes first. Always."

He didn't know what answer he'd been expecting, but it hadn't been that. He had a bit of a sinking feeling that he really, really did not like.

"Caroline? Fine. I should have dealt with that a long time ago. My anger? Yes. But that's a process and I already told you today that I'm working on it. There wasn't anything else that really shouldn't keep waiting."

"It comes first over things you should be talking through with me?" Wheatley asked, a little shocked to hear the bit of hurt in his voice. GLaDOS narrowed her optic again.

"Of course it - wait. Why did we need to talk about it? You still haven't answered - oh, it doesn't matter." She moved away from him. "We've been over this already. And I have been better about telling you things. When they're important. And that - "

"No, you haven't," he interrupted shortly, even though he actually wasn't sure at the moment, and before she could tell him how wrong he was some more he left.

"Can you believe she would even say something like that?" he griped to Claptrap. "The facility! The most important thing! Really. 'S not like she's got anything else going on in her life. 'S not as though she's got fam'ly, or friends, or anything. 'S the facility! Of course! Why didn't I think of that?"

"I don't know why this is a surprise to you," said Claptrap from the couch he was currently lying down on, reading one of his comic books. "I mean, she made it pretty clear the first time I moved in with her."

"But that was before all of this!" Wheatley argued, opening his handles in emphasis. "You'd think her priorities'd've changed by now!"

"Why?" asked Claptrap. "She's like… god, dude. When you're god, you've got bigger things to worry about than what one person wants. Even if they're your favourite person. She might be your world, but you ain't hers."

Something about that just made all of it worse.

"Not even Carrie is," Claptrap went on, turning the page, "and believe me, she can go on for hours about that kid."

"Then what's the point?" Wheatley found himself saying.

"Huh?"

"Doesn't it bother you she'd be willing to trade you up for a building?"

Claptrap's eye seemed not to focus for a minute, but then he said, "It's not just a building, though. It's her life's work. And you're always gonna be a speck compared to that no matter how much she loves you." His voice quieted a little. "And trust me, that's a lot."

"Really."

"Yeah, really." He looked again at the previous page, then went back to his current one. "You're a big baby sometimes, you know that?"

"I am not!" Wheatley snapped hotly. "You just don't know what it's like to give someone everything just to hear it may all have been for nothing!"

"Yeah, well, them's the breaks."

That couldn't be it. It couldn't! That wasn't fair!

"The world don't care what you put into it or what you think you deserve. Sometimes you give everything and get nothing. Grow up and deal with it. You're old enough you shoulda done it already."

"At least nobody can accuse you of not acting your age," Wheatley snapped without thinking, and he definitely was not expecting it when Claptrap slammed his book down on the coffee table and stood up right in front of him. He had the sudden need to back up, or at least lift himself out of reach, but he found that he couldn't. Claptrap thrust his hand towards Wheatley so forcefully he flinched.

"You don't get to talk to me like that," Claptrap snapped. "I went through more crap the second year I was alive than you ever will. What were you doing when I was helping my friends take out a dictator who wanted to wipe out all the life on an entire planet? You were probably whining about poor little you has it so hard and nobody understands what a freaking slog your life is. Just like you're doing right now."

… that probably had been what Wheatley was doing.

"Poor Wheatley," continued Claptrap with vitriol. "He's got a wife and a kid and a best friend and they all love him, but that's not enough! Because if his girl had to pick between him and everyone else on Earth, she wouldn't pick him! And that's not fair, right Wheatley? It's just not fair that she wouldn't let down the entire world for you."

He'd gone right back to being selfish all over again.

"And I don't get it 'cause I'm young. I just don't get how unfair life is and I'm childish 'cause I don't feel sorry for you and how freaking easy your life is. You think you have it hard 'cause what. You gotta play twenty questions with your girlfriend? So what? Carrie's gotta do the same thing and she never once told me I don't know what I'm talking about because I'm not old enough." He waved his hand down in a dismissive gesture and sat back down again, snatching up his book. "You don't wanna listen to me? Fine. 'Cause I don't wanna listen to you either. I'm tired of hearing you complain about stupid inconveniences. Come back when you got a real problem. Oh wait! You don't have real problems!"

He'd got it all so incredibly, painfully wrong.

He didn't know where else to go, so he returned to GLaDOS, who immediately asked, "What did you say."

He froze in the doorway out of surprise. "How did you know?"

"He likes to read me his comic books. He stopped shortly before you got here."

"I…" He almost said he didn't want to talk about it, but how could he say that after the fuss he'd just been making? "I said he was too young to understand… things."

"That was stupid," GLaDOS said matter-of-factly. "I already told you he had it worse than you. He still does every time he goes home."

"Yes, I - "

"And," she interrupted, "I have been getting better about talking about things."

Oh, great. He really should not have said that either. "I know, I… was just being an arse."

"I don't like having my efforts undermined."

"I'm sorry. I just… I wasn't thinking."

"You should try doing it more often," said GLaDOS, surprisingly calm. "It would have eliminated about half of the stupid things you said today."

Wheatley sighed, mostly out of relief she'd made good on what they'd discussed earlier. "You know what? You can have that one."

GLaDOS laughed. After a minute or so of silence that was quite uncomfortable for Wheatley but probably not so much for her, GLaDOS said,

"He won't be angry for very long. So you don't need to worry about that."

He was more anxious about the thought that he had lost his resolve to be less selfish, but he decided he would give it a go on his own before bringing it up with her. She'd had plenty of her own lapses back into bad habits; obviously he would also return to his old ways now and again. And maybe… and maybe being willing to trade one person for the rest of the world, like he was, was proof he hadn't really made that much progress after all.

Well. He knew about it now, at least.

"Claptrap said you showed him what I looked like when you first saw me," GLaDOS was saying.

"Oh, yeah," Wheatley said, vaguely remembering it. "Yeah, I did."

"I'd like to see it."

"Um," waffled Wheatley, "not to say you haven't uh, haven't though this through, but… have you thought it through?"

"I have," answered GLaDOS. "I'm not going to have a crisis over it, if that's what you're worried about. And while I still deem your anger over it ridiculous, you were right in that I was bothered by a five-second look at a darkened laptop screen. Actually, no. What I saw wasn't why I was bothered. It was just the icing on the already horrible cake of a day I was having at the time and it ended up being sort of a focal point. My point is, I want to see the picture and I will be perfectly fine when I do."

"Alright," said Wheatley. If she said she was ready to do something, he supposed he should trust that she was. It took him a minute to find the file and another minute or so to remember how to get it to her, but he knew that she had received it when she drew back slowly.

"Oh my God," she said, her voice low.

"What?" Wheatley asked worriedly. Perhaps she hadn't been ready after all and her progress had just been ruined!

"I was… beautiful."

"You still are!" Wheatley protested in a bit of a panic.

"That's not what I meant," GLaDOS told him. "It was more along the lines of… how unfortunate the timing was. If I had seen myself on some other day, I don't think it would have bothered me."

"Oh," said Wheatley, willing himself to calm down. He'd overreacted far too much today.

"I'll have to think about why all of that happened the way it did," GLaDOS said, indeed quite thoughtfully.

"And… and which one do you like better?" Wheatley asked, not being able to help making certain it was all put to rest.

"Oh, the way I am now," GLaDOS answered without hesitation. "This picture almost looks like someone else. She's very beautiful, but… she hasn't lived yet."

That was something Wheatley immediately knew he wouldn't be able to grasp for a while. He would do his best to think about it, though.

"And you?" GLaDOS asked unexpectedly.

"Hm?"

"Which one do you like?"

"Oh, I um…" Damn. He still had no idea what to say to this! "I dunno."

"You don't know?"

"I… like whichever one I'm looking at. Sort of."

"You can say it's the other one." She even sounded genuine, but he shook himself and protested,

"It's not! But… but also it is." He frowned at the floor, exasperated with himself. "I don't know about any of this, Gladys. This is one of those um, those things that you and Claptrap understand. Not me. I don't want anything to do with any of it."

GLaDOS laughed. "But I don't need to ask him. I already know which one he likes."

Wheatley wished it was as simple for him, but only a little. It didn't really matter. He just… would have liked to be certain about one or the other, that was all.

"You know what," she said thoughtfully, "I'm glad it worked out like this. If I had liked myself before and seen myself now, I would have just had to do all of that in reverse. But I'm already old and, without any memory of my younger self to make comparisons to, it doesn't matter in a way that it otherwise would have."

"You're not that old."

"No. I am." She looked at the wall for a moment. "The general lifespan for a supercomputer is about five years. The advancements in technology in that timeframe are large enough that the original machine is incredibly obsolete. Fortunately for me, Aperture's preference was to keep building on top of what they already had, rather than actually make any real progress."

"Good," said Wheatley, without meaning to.

GLaDOS looked at him.

"I don't want to think about a world where you only lived to be five," he told her.

"What if I was replaced with an exact duplicate of myself?"

"You with diff'rent parts wouldn't be you. You know that."

"I do," said GLaDOS, "but instead of getting upset about things like that I'm trying something new."

"And… what's that?"

"Making light of it," she answered. "It's hard, but it seems to be working out. I feel better about it now than I did that time you called me 'dear'."

"Oh? So if I call you that, you won't be mad?"

She sort of shrugged a little. "... a little bit."

"So I should call you that more, so you can work on it?"

"Yes, but not right now. I'm already angry about your behaviour earlier."

"You are?" Wheatley asked, baffled. "I couldn't even tell!"

"That's because I had an idea after you left." She glanced into the hallway, but when he did the same he didn't see anything. "Claptrap gave me a lot of video games. And a lot of them are about killing humans."

"Mmhm," said Wheatley, already able to tell where this was going.

"So that was what I did instead of fighting with you," she went on. "It's not quite as gratifying as killing real humans, but it's close enough."

"Gladys," Wheatley asked without thinking and instantly regretting doing so, "would you give Carrie up for the facility?"

Seeing her almost immediately seem to become smaller made him feel awful, and it only got worse when she said, despondently, "Wheatley -"

"I'm only trying to understand," he interrupted. "Not trying to fight."

She looked away from him in silence for so long he thought she wasn't going to answer, but then she said,

"I would have to.

"Some things are bigger than her. Some things are bigger than me. The facility is one of them. I don't know why you think I haven't already thought about this or why you think I want it to be this way. I don't. And I am sorry about it. But it's a responsibility that trumps any I could ever have."

"Okay," said Wheatley, even though it wasn't and he still didn't really understand. When he pressed himself into her core she sighed, sounding defeated.

"It's probably never going to come down to that."

Even if it never did, it didn't keep the knowledge from being painful.

Author's note

Selfishness and failure to accept responsibility for his actions are two of Wheatley's biggest traits from Portal 2. Our biggest traits take the most amount of work to change, but Wheatley gets complacent sometimes when things are going his way.

I stole the breathing thing from Borderlands 1, where there's a CL4P-TP who tries to breathe to calm down but remembers it's only a recording of someone breathing.

When people get older, they often struggle with their self-image because at some point they no longer look how they feel they should look or how the media tells them they should look. I thought it would be nice to do a reversal of that with GLaDOS.