"…and honestly, I have no idea what it was, went about breathing on me for a while—creepy—and then it touched me with something wet, and I yelled of course—why wouldn't I honestly—and it ran off, and I thought…"

It had been the third time he'd gone over the story of his encounter with the deer, but Chell didn't care. She had turned out his speech until it was background noise, and kept walking.

While she couldn't fully say she was glad to have him back, she could at least say she had a clear conscience. But Wheatley was still nothing more than an unseeing, chattering ball of dead weight, and she could not totally bring herself to forgive him.

Though she had to admit, he'd at least somewhat paid, having been blinded and sitting in the dirt for two days.

Still, he had proven himself of no use to her other than providing background noise and a way to build upper body strength. Otherwise, he slowed her down, annoyed her, and wore her out. She was beginning to think that, as soon as she found civilization, she might pawn him off to someone who would take care of him. As much as he annoyed her, the idea of letting someone else dismantle him left a bad taste in her mouth.

Speaking of, she had finally come close to a stream again, and paused to take a drink. Setting Wheatley down, she stooped to scoop up some water.

It was a few moments before she realized that the core had gone silent, and she looked down at him.

"Did… did you hear me?" he stammered.

She continued to stare, waiting for him to go on.

"I was just—just asking what that noise was."

As always. Chell shrugged helplessly before going back to drinking.

"…W-would it kill you to bloody answer me for once?!"

She struck her hand against the surface of the water and glared back at him. To her surprise, his blank optic had a look of more hurt than anger.

"Lady, you—do you even—w-well you must c-care, I mean, you came back for me, but…" He gave a frustrated sigh, his eye shields narrowing and his broken aperture contracting as he looked around, trying in vain to just… "I—I can't see, lady. I don't even know where I am, where you are, and, and you can't even bother to… tell me." His optic dropped downward in defeat.

Part of Chell felt bad as she listened but the other was just as frustrated as he was. Didn't he know—couldn't he have figured out at this point that she could not talk?

Suddenly it struck her—if he had, would he be this hurt?

Wheatley's optic turned up, staring sightlessly over her shoulder for a few seconds before dropping again.

Chell sat back, pressing her knuckles into her forehead as she thought. She had only the faintest memories of communicating in sign language as a child, but that would do nothing for a blind robot anyway. But… Wheatley's sense of touch seemed to work well enough. Maybe…

Leaning forward, she tapped the side of the core's hull to get his attention. "What's…?" He looked up past her shoulder again.

Chell bit her knuckle for a moment, thinking, before reaching out and tracing the letter "I" on his side.

"What're you pokin' at me for?" he asked, optic narrowing a little.

She heaved a sigh, tracing the letter again.

"What're you trying to—" He paused for a moment, processor whirring, and blinked. "'I.' That's—that's a letter. Is that it?"

She smiled, nodding, but, on second thought, placed her hand on the side of his faceplate and nodded it up and down.

"Ah—what's—…oh. Yes? Are—are you saying yes?"

She repeated the action.

"Okay! Well, that's something at least." He tilted in his casing. "Wouldn't it be easier to just—y'know—speak?"

Back to square one. Chell rubbed her hand across her face before tracing "I" into his hull again.

"There's that 'I' again. What's that letter supposed to mean? Honestly, lady, I don't see why… wait." His processor whirred again, and Chell drew in her breath. "'I'… you mean… you?"

Chell released her breath and nodded his faceplate.

"All right, you… you what? Look—how about you just spit it out? Whole lot easier than all of this."

Oh goodness, if it took him this long to figure out what one little letter meant, it would take her an hour to communicate three words. She needed a better way to speak to him. If she could just…

Biting her lip and hoping by some miracle he would understand, Chell traced the letter over him again. Before he could speak, she placed her palm over the lower part of his faceplate.

"B-but I haven't even said anything, lady! Why would you… you… shut up… you…" His optic slowly widened. "You… can't speak."

Chell released the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding and pressed her hand against his faceplate, nodding it up and down. Yes.

"You can't… you can't speak," he repeated. By the sounds his processor was making, he was having a hard time wrapping his mind around this. "But why couldn't you have just—…well, no, you can't speak, of course you couldn't tell me… That's…" His optic turned away. "Well that's… that's a great lot for us, then, innit? Got a human who can't speak, and a robot who c-can't… can't see. Bloody fantastic."

For once, Chell shared the core's sentiments. A mute human and a blind robot did not make the best pair… but at least now, Wheatley understood her position.

Not that it made him feel any better. His whole frame seemed to wilt, his optic turning downward, his upper eye shield drooping, and his handles going limp. "So…" His voice had gone quiet. "I can't see, and… and you can't even tell me what I can't see."

Something stirred within her. It wasn't sympathy for him, or even any feeling directed toward him. Those two words—"you can't"—said more to her than the core realized. It brought up that old, familiar feeling within her—that feeling she got whenever she was presented with some new test, some new hurdle—that feeling, when someone said or something implied, "you can't," something within her said, "yes, I can."

It was a challenge.

Without hesitating, Chell traced the letter "U" into Wheatley's hull, followed by "I"—you and I—we—and finally gripped his lower handle, squeezing it tightly.

We can do this.

Slowly Wheatley's broken optic turned upward, and he stared unseeingly at her through narrowed eye shields, blinking a few times. "I… I'm not fully sure what you're tryin' to get at—" Chell heaved a sigh "—but… but it sounds—it feels like… you have a plan."

Close enough. She placed her hand on his faceplate, and nodded it.

W-I-N-D.

"W… w… wind. Wind—wind what up? Is it—is it the sound of something winding?" He tilted his faceplate. "That's funny, I wouldn't think—"

The lady shook his faceplate. No.

"No, not winding, okay. W-I-N-D. Wi-i-i-i… wind. Wind—that's the air blowin' 'round. Innit?"

Yes.

"Ah! That's one mystery solved. That brings us to… two. Two things we've figured out so far today." Not bad, honestly. Better than knowing nothing about the weird "outside" place. He had to admit, the lady's methods of explaining things—touching his hull in certain ways, allowing him to feel whatever he was asking about, sometimes spelling out words as a last resort—could be confusing sometimes, but it gave him things to think about. It was almost like a game—a "what the bloody heck is this lady trying to say" game. It was a difficult game, to be sure, but it kept them both occupied as they traveled to… wherever they were going. Somewhere for the lady to stay, possibly, so she wouldn't have to walk around so much.

Splash.

"Water—that's water," Wheatley said, and she quickly nodded his faceplate in reply. He listened for a moment, hearing the splashing noises continuing, followed by the sound of something wriggling—"What is that?"

The foreign noises continued, but over them, he heard the familiar sound of a huff of air—the lady was laughing, so evidently it was nothing to worry about. Still, the curiosity was killing him. He leaned in closer to the noise, optic narrowing, and—

Something wet and slimy touched his hull.

"EEEEUGH!" he cried, shuddering in revulsion. "What—I don't want to know what that is!"

The lady laughed again and traced on his hull: F-I-S-H. She then traced a funny oval-y shape for him.

It took him a second to process the letters. "F… fish. I thought—" Some vague memory of asking Aperture scientists about their lunches nagged at him. "That's something you eat!"

Yes.

"Wait, so you're really going to—" He shut his optic. This world was strange.

They soon left the river, after the lady had eaten, and were on their way again. Wheatley listened to the noises around him, relieved that he could identify most of them now: the whooshing was wind, the rustling was leaves in trees, the chattering and chirping were squirrels and birds… He wasn't floating in an empty, noisy void anymore—he had an idea, a picture of the things that surrounded him.

To an extent.

"Lady, I know that sound there—those are trees—but… but I've never seen a tree before." He'd felt them—the lady had held him up to feel the branches and leaves—but the mental image was still incomplete. "What… color are they?"

The lady stopped for a moment, evidently having to think about this. She let go of his lower handle and touched his side, then traced a circle—an "o." No, she put a line in the center. That wasn't a letter, was it? He ran through the alphabet once or twice in his mind, but it didn't match up with anything. A circle with a line in the center… Why did that seem famili—"Rick?" he sputtered, his optic shields narrowing in a skeptical look. "The bloody Adventure Core? Ugh, he was an annoying one, always lookin' around with that smug green optic. …Green… Wait, so the trees…"

Yes.

"The trees are green like Rick's… ugh. Y'know, I've just decided that I don't like trees. They could stand to be a better color."

The lady grabbed his lower handle again and held him up, allowing him to feel something both soft and scratchy—the leaves and branches, right. She then brushed his casing against something rough—the trunk of the tree. "Yeah, I know, lady," he grumbled.

She traced Rick's bloody ugly optic into his side again, then crossed it out. "Hm. You don't like him either? Or—wait, it's not green. The trunk isn't green?"

Yes.

Well, that was a relief—the whole tree wasn't some awful color. "So what color is it?"

She traced a strange, lumpy shape into his side—a shape that took a few repeats for him to picture. It was some lumpy, oval shape with some large-ish circle in the middle. Lumpy… "…A potato?"

Yes.

"The tree trunk is a potato? Wait—no—bloody ridiculous… Potato… potatoes are brown. So the tree is green and brown?"

Yes.

Wheatley brightened. "Well! That's not so bad, then."

They went on for a while like that as they traveled, the lady explaining colors using images he recognized. Wheat was yellow—like her optic—and he was so sure that with its similarity to his name, it would have been blue. Squirrels were brown like potatoes, wind had no color…

"And… the sky?"

There was a pause before he felt her gently touch the rim of his optic. Blue… like… like his optic was. Had been. Not anymore.

"Well…" He glanced aside for a moment before turning back in her general direction and managing a smile. "It's a nice color."

They'd been traveling for too long. Wheatley was fine, of course—he required no food or sleep, and her little challenge was keeping the both of them occupied. He didn't seem so depressed anymore, and Chell wished she could say the same for herself.

She was glad she was out of Aperture—she was—she had fought for her freedom again and again and had finally won it… but she was still used to Aperture. She was used to the cold walls, the adrenal vapor, the sense of danger… but most of all, she was used to the numbers—the numbers that told her how far she was in the track, the end goals clearly in sight…

Here, there was none of that. No numbers, no clearly laid-out tracks, no goal. She was searching for civilization, yes, but she had no idea how close she was to that goal. She felt like they'd been wandering through these fields and forests for ages, and for all she knew, they were getting farther away from their goal.

She was worn out. This endless travel was getting to her, and she was stopping more and more often.

At least Wheatley distracted her. He was good for that, if nothing else. But she didn't know how long she could go on carrying him like this. But, she argued, at least that was all she had to do for him—he didn't need to share her food and water. And without him and his questions—challenges for her to meet—she would be feeling a whole lot worse.

Though sometimes he did wear on her nerves.

"Lady! LADY!"

It was the middle of the night, and she'd awoken to his cries and his jabbing her in the side with his handle.

"Lady, wh-what is that?"

Any time he could have asked that question, and he decided to ask it in the middle of the night? Her anger spiked until she noticed just how terrified he was.

Something splashed on her face.

"A-are you there? What is that?"

Chell looked upward, eyes widening in horror. She dove for Wheatley, frantically tracing into his side—rain—before struggling to rip off the top of her jumpsuit.

CRASH.

"AAAGH! No—no—that's just thunder—no need to be scared! Just thunder! …L-lady?"

In spite of his reassurances, his voice remained high-pitched and panicked, and Chell could hardly blame him. She'd managed to cut off the top of her jumpsuit with a sharp rock and wrapped it as tightly around Wheatley as possible. She'd then set him on her lap and wrapped her own body around him as she sat in the mud beneath a tree, its branches barely providing any shelter. They'd sat like that for hours, and the thunder was only growing louder.

It's okay, she tried to assure him, squeezing one of his handles as best as she could beneath the folds.

"R-right, just checking!" he cried, barely sounding any calmer.

Immediately there was another flash, followed by a deafening crack of thunder, causing him to yell again and jump closer to her. The action added what felt like another bruise to her side, and she winced, looking up. Suddenly she drew in a breath to see a tree falling in the distance—the sound of its fall roared over the wind and rain, never seeming to stop, going on and on until its entire form hit the ground.

The lightning had struck it, and the storm was getting closer.

They couldn't stay here, it wasn't safe—

Before she could question herself, she struggled to her feet, keeping Wheatley's bundled form cradled in her arms, and broke into a run. She could barely hear his voice over the rush of the storm and over the prayer in her own mind that Aperture had made its jumpsuits waterproof. But even that was drowned out by the explosion behind her, and she gave a silent cry as she felt the bark strike her in the back. And there was that same noise again—that roar as the tree that had given them temporary shelter crashed to the ground.

But she kept running—kept going, not stopping until she found herself beneath the branches of an even larger tree. It was all she could do to keep herself from collapsing into the mud. But she lowered herself slowly, carefully to her knees, keeping a firm grip on Wheatley.

Who was not talking.

Her breath caught in her throat, and she shook him, trying to elicit some response from him before finally striking him with her open palm.

"OW—! Wh-what was that for? I-I said I would be quiet so that big ol' roaring monster wouldn't hear us!"

Chell began laughing, a huffing, silent laugh that gave way to racking coughs.