They had been living together for a month now.
Wheatley knew all of Chell's rules (he had learned and obeyed them much better than either one of them had expected him to), but he also knew something else. Something Chell was keeping from him.
He had feigned (some of his) ignorance for a month now, telling himself that she had every right to want to keep certain things to herself, and that over time she would eventually warm up to him again and maybe then she wouldn't keep secrets from him anymore.
But it had been a month now. A whole month since That Day.
Chell wasn't mad at him anymore, she didn't hate him. She hadn't completely forgiven him yet, either, but they had come a long way. Wheatley had come a long way. He was trying very very hard to stay on her good side: to follow all of her rules, spend enough time with her without being too clingy, help her around the house as much as he could. He was doing everything he could think of to try and keep her happy. To get her to like him, or, at the very least, to keep her from hating him.
Which, at moments like this, wasn't very easy for Wheatley.
He and Chell were sitting in the living room in dead silence. For Chell it probably wasn't very awkward, she was reading a book and even if she had simply been sitting there she was always silent anyways, but for Wheatley the silence was almost painful.
He hated silence. Nearly every bad thing that had ever happened to him involved silence, and so now part of him was convinced that if he destroyed any silence he ever encountered he would inevitably destroy the horrible things that went with it.
So Wheatley decided to break the silence, by talking, of course, and the thing he said was the first thing that came to his mind.
The thing that Chell was keeping from him.
"Why won't you talk to me?" Wheatley had meant for the question to sound curious and nonchalant (he was never very good at that last one), but it came out sounding annoyed and accusing. Chell immediately forgot her book and shot him a surprised, angry look that caused him to recoil.
Maybe he should have left the silence alone.
Chell didn't like this topic. Her voice was something she rarely used, and even in those rare circumstances it didn't always cooperate with her. She didn't particularly like it, either, and it was something that Chell preferred to keep to herself. Wheatley knew her (perhaps a bit better than she liked, at times), and he knew that she didn't talk. So why was he bothering her about it now?
Her crystal grey eyes shot him an accusatory glance, demanding an explanation.
"Okay, okay, that came out wrong. That wasn't what I was going for, there. That reaction." Wheatley sank back into the couch as Chell raised an eyebrow at him. "What I was trying to say, is that, I completely understand why you don't talk to me- buttons, bombs, elevator shafts- bad things. I understand." He offered a sheepish smile as her expression hardened. "However, there are no buttons, bombs, or elevator shafts here, in your lovely little home; just one very sad, very sorry Wheatley." He gave her his most innocent, pleading puppy face, hoping that maybe one of those halo things would appear over his head for emphasis.
Chell wasn't amused.
She had come to know that expression all too well in the short weeks Wheatley had been living with her. That face was dangerous. It made her want to give him a smile, or a laugh, or something, and in instances like this those things would indicate that she was agreeing with him. Which she wasn't.
Chell stared pensively at one of the couch cushions for a moment as if contemplating his wishes (which she wasn't) before turning to face him again and firmly shaking her head.
'No.' She then gave him one of her I'm-serious-and-I'm-not-going-to-argue-about-it looks (Chell was the only person Wheatley knew who could argue, and win an argument, without even speaking), which usually shut him up before he could even begin to argue with her.
Unfortunately, this time was different.
In a bold and completely uncharacteristic act, Wheatley rose from his spot on the couch and plopped down next to Chell on the love-seat. Her previous stubborn expression was quickly replaced with one of surprise as he took her hands in his and gave her an urgent look.
"Please, love? Won't you please talk to me? I just want to, to hear your voice. That's not such a crime, is it?" Wheatley was looking at her with those piercingly bright blue eyes, and they were terribly pleading. That sad look was boring into her with such an intensity that it almost hurt, yet she couldn't force herself to look away.
Wheatley was so close, and he was touching her- holding her hands, and giving her that look, pleading with that sad, pathetic voice.
Chell could already feel her throat locking up.
She gave him a sympathetic smile, gently removing her hands from his and breaking eye contact. Again she shook her head. 'It's not that simple.'
"Why not?" Wheatley whined, his shoulders slumping.
'I can't.' She placed a hand at the base of her throat, smiling sadly and shaking her head. The moment had passed. If she was going to speak to him she would have done it earlier; now it was too late. Her voice was gone.
Wheatley didn't understand. "Yes you can! You can talk! I'm not stupid!" His tone of voice was quickly changing from sad to frustrated.
'I never said you were.'
"Why won't you talk?! I know you can talk! I heard you when you- you talked to Her!"
Wheatley hadn't meant to say it- had actually spent quite a bit of time contemplating the fact that he should never tell her what he had heard on That Day- but now the words were out and there was nothing he could do to take them back.
The reaction was immediate.
Chell tensed, recoiling from him as if he had struck her. Her crystal grey eyes grew wide, and, for once, her expression was one of open emotion, clearly reading: 'You weren't supposed to know about that.'
Chells' mind raced with horrible guilt ridden thoughts. Wheatley knew. He knew that she had talked to Her on That Day, and if he knew that she had talked, that also meant he knew what she had said.
He knew those awful things that she had said about him... didn't he?
Little did she know that Wheatley, as per usual, was absolutely clueless. That Day had been extremely agonizing and stressful for him, and though he knew it was probably the most important day of his life thus far, most of it was a blur. He remembered being brought back from space, being terrified as he'd been confronted by Her, then there was... the core transfer... and with that he remembered excruciating pain, followed by a bright white flash... and then he'd been human.
Everything after that had been a blur. Somehow he had ended up on the surface. He woke up on the ground, unable to move, only to look up and find Chell towering over him. She hadn't seemed to notice him (or at least the fact that he was awake) at the time, but he had definitely noticed her, his mind racing to try and decipher whether or not she was friend or foe. However, all his thoughts had come crashing to a halt as he had noticed one small thing.
Chell was talking.
In all their time together down in Aperture, Chell had never spoken one word. Wheatley had assumed that that was simply because she had been in cryo for so long that her ability to speak had been... lost... but now he saw that she could speak just fine.
Half of him wanted to be angry with her for tricking him into thinking that she couldn't speak, but the other half was too focused on how beautiful her voice was to care.
Her voice sounded delicate and soft, a light ribbon of sound that wound its way through the air and into Her uncaring (metaphorical) ears. It was quiet from years without use, but it was firm and serious, too. Whatever it was she was saying, she wasn't messing around. Though he couldn't quite make out what it was that she was saying.
His head had been pounding from whatever She had done to him, the sunlight had been blinding, he had been half paralyzed with terror, so Wheatley had resolved to simply lay there and try to focus on the sound of the ladys' voice. It was a very soothing sound, and it had helped to calm some of his panic before the next phase of terrifying events had occurred.
Usually Wheatley looked back at that memory with fondness, remembering the flood of emotions he had felt upon seeing Chell again, at hearing her voice and hoping that she might save him. Now he realized something else about the memory.
"You-You talked to Her." His blue eyes widened, his gaze filled with sadness and shock. "You talked to Her, before you talked to me."
This realization was met with another: that Chell had moved away from him while he had been thinking. That didn't help.
Wheatley half expected her to try and give another one of those sad looking pity smiles, but, as per usual, her expression was hard. Apparently she saw nothing wrong with his observation.
"You're more willing to talk to Her than you are to talk to me?!" He chocked, "That's not fair! She was horrible to you the entire time you were in the facility! I should know, I watched all the tapes!"
Chell shook her head, her eyes lit with that familiar spark of tenacity, 'That was different. I had to talk or She was going to-'
"I was nice to you! I woke you up, and got you a portal gun, and, yes, I screwed up, but I fixed it, didn't I? I broke you out and we took Her down... and..." The tone of his voice turned, the blue of his eyes taking a darker shade as his speech slowed. "And then you turned against me. You tricked me into thinking we were friends, but then you turned around and took Her side. She was so terrible to you, I heard every word She said to you, yet when I finally did what you wanted, you decided that I was the bad guy! I was only doing what you wanted! I was doing it for you! I was going to get rid of Her, I was going to help you escape! But then you changed your mind."
Hearing that horribly familiar voice made Chell wish that Wheatley was a little core again. That if he was angry with her she could simply walk the other way where he couldn't follow, or pluck him off of his rail and that would be that. Things weren't that simple anymore; Wheatley was human now: he could move of his own accord. She had taught him how.
"I could see it. You didn't look happy anymore. You looked regretful. And scared."
She wanted to move, she wanted to run, but something inside of her was frozen, fluctuating back and forth between anger and fear and suddenly she couldn't move. She was frozen to the spot. But he was still coming towards her with that horrible look in his eyes and that awful voice that was all too familiar, and before she could stop him he was right in front of her, then holding her wrists so she couldn't move.
"You look scared now, too."
Chell grit her teeth and didn't respond.
"Look at me," She did. His words were firm though they were spoken completely free of anger. His voice was soft. "You're afraid of me, aren't you?"
His expression lead Chell to believe that she had imagined the worst of it. His eyes were their normal shade of bright Wheatley blue, and though they were sad they held no trace of anger. He was holding her wrists but he wasn't even really gripping them; his touch was feather light as he traced his thumb across her skin.
It wasn't Him anymore. It was Wheatley again.
In response to his question Chell delicately removed her hands from his grasp while giving him a calm, measured look. She still wanted to move away but she stayed put.
'What do you think?'
That answer was reason enough for Wheatley to continue talking.
"I only... I only did what I did, because I didn't know what else to do. I had done everything for you, to get you out, and then we were so close... and you didn't want it anymore. You didn't approve of how I was doing things." He pressed his palms into his eyes as he shook his head. "But then something told me that I didn't have to care whether you approved or not. It was almost like a voice-" He started, then cut himself off. "I had been kicked around for so long... I thought it would be so amazing to be in control of everything." He gave a grim little laugh. "Obviously not though."
His hopeful blue eyes were met by her stoney gaze. He looked down at the floor.
"I'm sorry. I thought... I thought I didn't have anything else to lose." He mumbled, his face turning pink, "But I was wrong, I had you." Here he forced himself to look up at her despite the fact that her expression hadn't changed. "And you were more important than anything else."
Wheatley cringed as he was met with more silence.
"I'm sorry." He repeated.
Chell shook her head and turned away, hurt at what he had said and how he had said it. The icy chill of distrust she felt, which was almost beginning to feel comfortably familiar to her more tenacious side, helped her collect herself. It unlocked something inside of her that allowed her to breathe a little easier.
It also allowed for something else.
Chell gave Wheatley one last measured look before she swiftly left the room, tossing the word over her shoulder in a quiet voice that was free of anger but nearly bitterly sharp.
"Good."
Author's Note:
This is just a quick chapter to get us up and running again.
Now that I know where I'm actually going with this story new chapters should get better and eventually old chapters will be revised/rewritten.
Also, my Chell can talk! :D
And this was the last fic that I had to write before I could write fluffiness! Hooray! This series should be much better and cuter now that I have some important details out of the way.