Okay, new goal. Five pages this time. I got the last one up to four. I don't like writing long chapters, because I get bored after a few pages. Sorry you guys, a chapter never seems to have closure for me unless there's a cliffhanger. I'll try not to end this one that way. :P


Chapter: :03

"She's dead. You killed her." GLaDOS said coldly. Wheatley stood there, wide eyed, he shook his head, stunned. "Congrats, you got what you wanted."

"No. NO! Y-you're lying!" Wheatley collapsed to the ground, overcome by his emotions. "Chell... she doesn't die. She doesn't get killed. Not by you, and especially not by a... a moron like me." Wheatley whispered the last bit. As much as Wheatley didn't want to believe it, it was still there in the back of his mind. GLaDOS had been telling the truth before, about why he was created. Why would she lie now?

"You don't believe me? I'm just hurt. I thought we were friends. Well, I could show you the tapes of you killing her. I have plenty of your attempts. I have to say, they were pretty clever." GLaDOS lowered a large computer screen.

"No! I don't want-" Wheatley yelled frantically. "Don't want to remember clearly." Wheatley bit his lip as GLaDOS started the tape. All Wheatley could make out of it all was he'd done something VERY bad, and put Chell through a lot more than she deserved. He saw everything through a haze, and he didn't want to remind himself.

On the tape, he saw his robot self in GLaDOS's body. He saw the trap he set on the stalemate button. How disappointed he had been that she'd survived it. He saw everything. GLaDOS ended the video when Chell was on the floor, unconscious.

"She died later, from her injuries. It was tragic, really. We'd become good friends, while you were busy betraying her, and plotting her murder."

Wheatley was staring at the floor, hurt inscribed all over his face. "B-bullocks. You were insulting her a minute ago." Wheatley said quietly. He felt a sort of moisture coat his eyes.

"We had a very honest relationship." GLaDOS said simply.

"I... I'm so sorry. I never wanted this." He squeezed his eyes shut. The moisture was building up, and droplets began to fall. He'd seen this happen once before, he knew. But it was covered by that same haze as his other memories he'd wished he'd never created for himself.

"If you're trying to talk to Chell, I would speak up. I don't think she can hear you from six feet underground." GLaDOS taunted.

"Underground..." It hit Wheatley then, where he'd seen the eye watering he was experiencing now. It happened to Chell, when he betrayed her. Her eyes were watering as he knocked her deeper underground. "Why? Why did I do it?" Wheatley said breathlessly.

"I would assume because you're a moron... what? It says that right here in your file."

"So, are you going to kill me now? Is that it? Because I would really appreciate it if you just got on with that." Wheatley said coldly. He knew this was a losing fight. He barely knew how to control this new body, and he was too distraught to run away, even if he could. "I would also prefer spike plates not being involved. Or turrets... Or acid water, now that I think about it."

"Like Chell had preferred you to not blow up the stalemate button?" GLaDOS played a sniffling sound effect. "She was a good stalemate associate."

Wheatley paled.

"You're lucky, I'm not going to kill you yet." GLaDOS promptly dropped a hand-held portal device on his head.

"Ow! That bloody hurt!" Wheatley rubbed the back of his head as he picked up the portal device.

"Let the games begin." GLaDOS said, repeating what Wheatley had said in his short lived reign of Aperture.

)-x-O-x-(

Chell (who was very much still alive) stirred in her sleep. She turned to look at her clock. It read 2:46 AM. "Too... early." Chell mumbled as she tried drifting back to sleep. In truth, she couldn't. She'd had a disturbing dream, moments ago.

In the dream, Chell was in Aperture again. Distorted memories flashed through her mind. She remembered when she first woke up in the relaxation chamber. She'd been very distrustful of Wheatley at the beginning. After all, he was a cold, hard machine. No different from GLaDOS.

He turned out to be very different, at least at first. It didn't take very long at all for her to trust him. He was just so endearing, Chell had never seen an AI like it. He seemed almost human. The memories skipped back and forth. In her dream, Chell remembered when he'd put Wheatley into GLaDOS's body. She was excited, they were getting out. Then, it all changed. He started laughing, lightheartedly. If her vocal cords had been working at the time, she might have started laughing too. But then his laugh got darker. Chell knew at that moment what was happening. She shook her head, wide eyed.

The scene morphed to show Chell on the bottom floor of Aperture. After falling the whole way, she collapsed to her knees. For the first time in her trip through Aperture, Chell had given up, if only temporarily. She fell asleep where she sat, curled up into a ball.

Chell snapped out of her trance-like thoughts. Somewhere down the line, her half asleep mind remembered that those events weren't just a dream, but very much a reality.

"Did he plan this? Was he going to betray me from the beginning? Or was GLaDOS's own body to blame? In that case, maybe GLaDOS wasn't completely to blame either..." Chell was somewhat awake at this point. She was too busy thinking to drift back to sleep, anyway. She looked around her bedroom. The ceiling fan turned slowly, and her window was open. The summer air was humid, and she could hear crickets in the distance.

She turned to see her companion cube, used as a night stand by her bed and smiled slightly. It was the only thing that never betrayed her back at Aperture, of course, it's lack of sentience probably had a lot to do with it.

She got up, yawned, and looked out her window. "It has been a long time since I went for a walk at two in the morning." Chell yawned, walked out to her living room, and set her coffee. She used to have those dreams frequently at night, and every time, a walk cleared her head. This time, however, she was just too exhausted.

)-x-O-x-(

"Okay, so, quite obviously, I'm supposed to ram this box into the door, thus breaking it down. Brilliant!" Wheatley said optimistically. He was trying to occupy his mind with things that weren't Chell related. He apparently did this by focusing on finding the most difficult solution to an easy problem. An added plus to this method was it aggravated GLaDOS to no end.

"Sure, why not?" GLaDOS was losing interest fast. "You know, it's a good thing I don't have human brain cells. If I did, they all would have committed suicide by now." The puzzle was the easiest one imaginable. It consisted of moving a cube on the button and going through the door.

"Y'know what? No... maybe, if I made an endless loop with the portals, I can drop the box into it, then move the portal, aiming it at the door. Then... something will happen!" Wheatley put a green portal on the ceiling, and a purple portal under it. "Oh, well those colours are new." Wheatley said as he went to put the cube through the purple portal. The box flew in an endless loop for a moment until Wheatley lined the green portal up with the door.

The box flew and smashed into the door. Somehow, it managed to actually break the door, and it opened.

"That worked?" GLaDOS and Wheatley said in unison. Wheatley grinned and walked through the door.

The second chamber was slightly more complicated. It involved getting on a ledge to get to a box, and then another ledge with a button to put the box on. This was normally a test for single portal devices, but GLaDOS figured Wheatley would need the extra help. After a few minutes of Wheatley getting absolutely nowhere, GLaDOS decided to make her game more interesting. She very well knew what she was about to do was risky, but the entertainment was worth the risk.

"Listen to me, "entertainment". I act like some sort of human, striving for petty ways to waste time." GLaDOS thought in disgust. But, she wasn't about to give up those petty time wasters. She turned on a camera, and let the pieces fall where they would.

)-x-O-x-(

Chell was almost asleep when she heard Her.

"Wheatley, stop shooting portals at the same wall, it's moronic."

Chell looked around quickly, and spotted a projected image, coming out of the companion cube. "Wheatley?" She stared at the now human AI bot. He was sitting on the floor, with an extremely bored expression on his face.

"Not a moron." Wheatley said, almost indifferently. Chell felt as if she were in an episode of The Twilight Zone. And that was even with ignoring the fact that her Companion Cube is projecting the image, because, really, with Aperture equipment, she really should have expected it.

So, on one hand, this was an obvious trap. On the other, Wheatley was her friend. On the other, other hand, Wheatley also tried killing her multiple times, and there was no proof that he was good Wheatley again. She supposed there was just one thing she could do. She needed closure to all of this.

She was going back to Aperture.


Sorry guys. This would've probably been up earlier, but my friend had the amazing idea of making me read The Giver. So, I spent the entire day reading, and taking small breaks to cry my eyes out in between. If you haven't read the book yet, go do it! I finished it in a day (I'm a slow reader, too). It got me so worked up, for the littlest reasons.

Well, I made it to page 5, with the help of this Authors Note!

One thing, Wheatley's not actually THAT dumb, he's just depressed right now. He won't ALWAYS be terrible.

It's 3 AM right now, so, I'm going to just update this, and fix anything I may have overlooked in the morning. I don't think I did, but you just never know at 3 AM. :P