Chell remembers the first time she saw the moon.
It's a night of madness. A night of fear, of adrenaline, betrayal; a night of blackness and metal and pain, of explosions and fire and monsters.
He's the monster.
She's lying still, her cheek pressed against the gunmetal tiles, and she can feel the floor shaking underneath her. The entire facility is starting to split apart at the seams. Pipes are cracking, heat is crawling through the walls, and the ceiling is collapsing plate by plate. Water pours down from above, soaking the little hairs on her bare arms and seeping into the material of her jumpsuit, and a deep chill sinks into the marrow of her bones. A dull throb has already rooted its way into the webbed network of her nerves, pulsing steadily, and she grits her teeth as she tries to move.
Everything hurts, and she's going to die.
Her eyes flicker ahead of her, catching a glimpse of white and black. The portal gun is there, just there, her only defense, and she reaches out for it with shivering fingers and grabs a hold. The grip is warm, familiar; the only comfort she's ever known in this hellish construct of science. She brings the device close against her chest, grasping for solace, and she huddles against the barrel.
A roar rumbles through the cold tiles beneath her body, deep in the belly of the labyrinth, and she can hear the sound of him yelling. It's panicked and afraid and angry and it slams into her eardrums, a relentless cacophony of bitterness and terror, accusing her of everything, everything, and as she manages to lift herself onto her hip, another quake claims the room. The walls shudder threateningly; more ceiling panels unhinge and plummet to the floor. The debris flutters down in a shower of silhouetted shards, and she stares upward into the exposed opening, water dropping into her eyes. The moon stares back, a pale, gibbous face, the shadowed craters playing hollow eyes and a gaping mouth.
Take one more look at your precious human moon, because it cannot help you now.
Everything hurts, and she's going to die.
She twists about and her eyes dart frantically around the room. The conversion gel is a messy white-grey splatter beneath him on the floor. A single portal ripples in its center, a solid and unnatural orange, a hopeless dead end. There are no available surfaces to place another. The fire extinguishing protocol for the Stalemate Resolution Annex had made sure of that when it had washed the rest of the conversion gel away into sticky useless puddles. If only there were more!
… your precious human moon, because it cannot help…
Glancing back toward the moon, she feels the shaking force of another tremor. There's nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, nothing she can do, and fear wells up inside of her, constricting around her throat and filling the cavity of her chest and the spaces inside her lungs. She tries to swallow, but she can't. Her grip on the portal gun grows tighter, her palm slick with sweat.
… precious human moon…
Everything hurts, and if she doesn't do something, she's going to die.
The seconds tick past, drawing closer, and the facility continues to crumble. Thunder seems to crack from beneath her, issuing shocks through her bones. Another look at the gel, another at the moon—and then the pieces start to string together.
The portal gun is heavy in her hand, bearing down to the floor with a tired weight, but she sets her jaw and forces her muscles to move. Quivering, pain edging through, she aims her arm skyward, water speckling her skin, and her fingers tighten around the trigger, almost hesitant to comply.
… human moon…
The kickback plants her onto her spine. She's staring at the moon, staring, staring, her hair a damp mess with strands plastered to her skin in sweat, and a glimmer blooms across the sphere's surface. She feels the impact, wracking through every inch of her, and then there's a rush of force.
Panels are ripped from the walls, more of the ceiling collapses in, and she's thrust forward into a whirl of debris and water. She can hear him shouting as pieces of the chassis are torn off, and then she's next to him, falling, plummeting, and she reaches out with frantic hands because she's being sucked through to the other side. Her fingers catch onto the handles on his sides, and she hangs on for all she's worth, her body thrashing helplessly into the vacuum beyond.
The earth is a waning body in the vast darkness, bright and brilliant and extraordinary. Planes of grey spool out across the horizon as far as she can see, and as she's pulled further out, the oxygen flees from her lungs and she can no longer breathe. She gasps, struggling to bring in air, but everything's so empty and only molecules remain and it's not enough to pump the blood through her brain and her insides are starting to hurt. Pressure inches closer against her skin, compressing, compressing, and the stars seem like blackening bursts behind her eyelids and her fingers are aching, aching, she doesn't want to let go, make it stop, make it stop, and then a crash shudders through her, and one hand slips.
He's still connected. He tells her to let go. He can still fix this. All she has to do is let go, and he can fix it. Let go, and be whirled out into space. Let go, and everything will be fine. Let go, and die.
I've already fixed it.
And suddenly she's being pulled in. A mechanical limb reaches through the portal and grabs onto them, pinching the flesh on her forearm, hauling them back. She sucks in a testing breath, her ribcage expanding open, her body rejoicing as delicious oxygen flows into her hurting lungs. Drawn further into the portal, she can see the repairs that have already begun to take place: panels have righted themselves, new ones spawn from the walls, the ceiling slowly realigns, and the light above is harsh, almost blinding.
You don't understand the gravity of what you've done. And how could you? Moron.
The tips of her long fall boots pass through, and everything stops. The howl, the vacuum, and the compression all dissipate into nothing—blissful, wonderful nothing. The grip on her arm soon releases, and she then falls to the floor in a heap, limp and shaking and quiet. Her heart is an over-calibrated aerial faith plate, crashing against the undersides of her ribs. He's still wrapped tightly in her hands, his spherical body now pressed against the slope of her belly.
I should have let you go. It would have been more than fitting.
Before her eyes flutter shut, before she can slip into that comfortable, painless place of darkness and respite, she sees the yellow optic of GLaDOS flicker to life. The mechanical arm draws close, pincers flexing, reaching for her.
But I have plans for you.
A clamping noise, and the crunch of metal.
For science.
Even now, a year later, those words still make a chill clamber down the curvature of her spine.
Chell is sitting on her windowsill with the thin curtain pushed onto her lap, staring out into the midnight sky. The moon is a sliver, a thin crescent, a fingernail puncture in the starry black, and she gazes at it with a strange amalgam of curiosity and trepidation. Sometimes it seems like it was all a bad dream, a nightmare, like it was something she finally woke up from after all these years. She can't fathom being out there with the vastness of space sucking at her heels. She can't imagine being stuck in the depths of Aperture Science, forced to run tests for sentient mechanical beings. Just a couple weeks ago, she hadn't even been able to imagine seeing him again.
Now he's here, with her, present in a very human body, slowly (and quickly; his cognitive skills seem to jump between scenarios) following the process of integrating into human society. He's not the maniacal, power-mad AI that had tried to crush her with mashy-spike-plates, but he's not exactly the AI that had broken her out of stasis with the sole intent of self-preservation, either. And he's living in her rented apartment, sharing her meals, providing genuine conversation, learning how to do all these new things, and essentially happily coexisting in the life that she's managed to build for herself from the ground up.
Funny how the past can spit fragments back at you when you least expect it. Especially ones as big as Wheatley.
Chell rubs her eyes with the heel of her palm and stifles a yawn. She's been awake for hours now, gazing blankly at the stars, but she can't bring herself to sleep. Something seems to be tightening in the hollow of her chest, almost like an ache, and she can't figure out what it is. It keeps her awake, rolling along beneath her breastbone, rerouting her brain from slumber.
Stretching, she slides from the windowsill and drapes the curtain back into place. Moonbeams filter through the translucent fabric and dance across her bare toes. While her bedroom is mostly swathed in darkness, she's lived here long enough to know where everything is. She presses her right hand to the wall, and she follows it past the smooth wood of her bureau, careful to avoid the edges of the charred companion cube. It leads her across the plush red carpet in the center of the room to the small bedside table, and finally to the slender form of her mattress in the corner.
For a moment, Chell considers trying to go back to bed. Her body is physically tired and she feels the need to seek out reprieve, but her mind is awake as can be, flitting back and forth from one thought to another without any rhyme or reason. She picks up a tie from her nightstand and pulls her hair back, looping it twice, coming to the decision that further attempts to sleep will prove fruitless. No sense in trying to win a lost cause. She may be obstinate, but she knows when her mind doesn't want to obey. It's always best do something else to occupy it in the meantime.
The den is dark. The curtains are drawn, and the room is cast in murky shadow. After waiting a moment for her eyes to adjust, she walks out onto the carpet with soft, purposeful steps. She spots the metronome sitting on the floor by the sofa where she and Wheatley had taken their lunch, and she approaches it with a cautious stride. Studying it in the darkness, she reaches out with a steady hand and touches the smooth mahogany of the shell. It's pleasantly cool under her fingertips, making her arm tremble.
She pulls away and takes a seat on the rug. Carefully, she picks up the metronome, stretches her legs into a V, and places it between them at her knees. After taking a few choice breaths, she sets it into motion, and the periodic tock-tock-tock fills the room.
Chell tries to concentrate. Closing her eyes, she tries to feel the rhythm inside of her, the gentle cadence outside that matches the flow of her blood within; to focus on it and to draw out the tiny thrum that she knows exists somewhere inside of her. This calming silence should be perfect for such an endeavor, but she finds that no matter how hard she tries, she can't summon it up. It seems caught in her throat, shut with lock and key.
Gathering her resolve, she exhales slowly and makes another attempt. She lets her muscles relax, listening to the ticking tempo, and she feels the resistance coil tightly within her diaphragm, a block wedged between her mouth and vocal chords. It's not falling away like it was before; there's no freedom, no rumble inside.
There's no reason why she shouldn't be able to do this. No reason at all.
Scowling at the metronome, she thrusts her fists down upon the floor in a loud thomp. The force shakes up her arms and through her chest, and she slumps forward, bowing her head in defeat. Moments pass, marked by the constant beats of the little instrument in front of her, and Chell can't help but feel frustrated. She could hum just fine before. She even did it before dinner, and without any help. What is wrong with her?
A prickle makes her hair stand on end, and she senses movement somewhere behind her. She twists around, adrenaline pushing through her veins, and she sees Wheatley's lanky form standing in the threshold of his bedroom in the dark. He's rubbing at his eyes, his hair a tousled mess, his pajamas wrinkled from sleep.
"Wha…? Oh, that's the—oh, it really is on. Got out of bed and thought I was hearing things. Good to know I'm not crazy. Good to know." His jaw struggles with a mighty yawn as he ambles out into the den. Scratching the back of his neck, he sits down beside her on his haunches, peering at her through squinted eyes. He must have forgotten his glasses. "So, what're you doing out here in the dark? It's after midnight, you know. Should be asleep. Or if you're really determined, you should at least have a light on or something so you can see. Well, I suppose you don't really have to, but it'd probably be better."
Feeling inadequate and discouraged, Chell curls her arms around her waist. She doesn't want to confront him. She doesn't want him to know that she's taken a step backward. She's survived countless life-threatening situations, braved labyrinthine test chambers complete with lethal obstacles of varying intensities, faced power-hungry constructs of artificial intelligence intent on forcing testing compliance; and she's here, still alive, still hanging on after everything she's gone through, and yet she can't conquer herself?
Wheatley makes a thoughtful noise somewhere in his chest. "I can't see that well, but I'm pretty sure I'm getting used to reading your body language. What you did there isn't a good thing, is it?" He cranes his neck and tries to catch her eye, but she stares intently at the floor. "Something the matter?"
She makes a motion as if she's going to yawn, and then she stops and shakes her head.
"Oh. Can't sleep. Right. Got it." Wheatley glances at the metronome between her knees. "Trying to hum by yourself?"
Chell nods, but tightens her arms around her ribcage. A sinking feeling knots in the pit of her stomach and she finds herself wanting to curl up into a ball to hide.
"Mind if I join?" He smiles, working his hand through the snags in his hair. "I won't sound too awful. Hopefully. It might help the both of us. Maybe you'll get tired after a while."
She only manages a swallow. Chell can feel the tightness twisting in her chest, aching, and she wants so badly to scream out this feeling, but she can't. How does she expect to scream if she can't even find her voice?
"Here." Wheatley scoots closer, his hip nearly touching hers, and he mimics the placement of her legs. "We'll try something a bit different this time. Heard some music at the shop yesterday, so I'll give those a hum and we'll see how it goes. All right? Sound good?"
Chell shakes her head again. Her fingers move up her throat and open at her mouth, and then she slumps forward again, her bangs over her eyes, ashamed.
"… Oh. I see." Wheatley places a warm hand on her shoulder, and she can still smell the pleasant scent of soap on his skin. He squeezes gently; a comforting gesture. "Look, you don't need to do anything. All you've got to do is listen. Just listen. You can't force it. I know you're not going to believe me because you're stubborn and you've got a kind of tenacity that's off the bloody charts, and while that's a marvelous quality in any human, really, right up there with dispute resolving and button pushing—which are also still very good qualities by the way, just letting you know—I'm telling you… forcing yourself isn't going to make it any better."
Chell feels the pressure from his hand increase. She lifts her head, biting her lower lip, and she looks at him through strands of her hair. Everything is dim and the angled shape of his face is sculpted from spectrums of shadows, but she can still see the faint smile that curves the ends of his mouth. It's comforting and warm, and it looses a fluttering patter by her left lung.
"You know what will, though?" he asks, leaning close. "Time. Time and practice. And you've got time now. You've got all the bloody time in the world! All the time to do whatever you want, to listen and hum and talk, and—and you know what? There's no rush." Wheatley thumbs the locks of hair out of her eyes with his other hand. She can see the soft shimmer in his, flickering and blue; a world of kindness and concern. "There's no rush. Can't run before you walk. One step at a time. And I realize this is coming from Wheatley, Wheatley the gangly human who's still figuring everything out for himself, Wheatley who still can't walk straight or remember how to use a bloody fork, but I know this. I really do. It's in my head somewhere, and I just know it. There's no rush."
Chell finds herself splitting into a patchwork of trembles and tears. She crumples apart and her fingers are clawing into her ribs, blanching the flesh under her nightshirt, and the crescents of her eyes house blots of transparence that collect at the corners and tumble down the slopes of her cheeks. She doesn't know why she's doing this, she really doesn't; she's been so good and strong and careful, tucking everything safely within behind her bones where no one else could see, but the world seems pent up inside of her, pushing out the stitches with crippling strength, and she can't hold it in anymore.
"Oh, that's… okay, you're doing what I did that one day, that crying thing. Oh, that's not good. That's not good at all. Was not expecting that." Wheatley draws a breath between his teeth and straightens himself. "All right, uh… I'm going to be honest, not sure what to do here. Never exactly been on the, um… the observing end of this particular situation, as it were. I'm sort of guessing at this point, so bear with me. Bear with me."
And then she feels his arms encompass her. She's being pulled toward him, his hands pressing into the bend of her back and across her shoulder blades, and her legs are dragged away from the still-ticking metronome. Her face comes to rest against the fabric of his top, close enough to hear the rhythmic beat of his heart and the pumping bellows of his lungs, and her arms suddenly drop away and latch around his waist. She squeezes with all her might, shaking, while his fingers draw soothing circles along the length of her spine.
"Wow, that's good. Good, classic grip right there. Brilliant." A rumbling noise of discomfort can be heard under her ear. "Right, so—you're okay, all right? You're okay. Everything's fine. Breathe a bit. Breathe. That's it, slowly now. Everything's fine. I promise, everything's fine."
Chell feels the cuff of Wheatley's sleeve dab along the side of her face, soaking up the tears. She looks up at him in the dark, at the swell in his throat and the curves of his jaws and the length of his nose and at the particles of light that reflect off his eyes, and she digs her fingers into his shirt, clutching tight. She doesn't want to let go.
"You really know how to take someone's breath away, you know that? Quite literally. I'm not even joking. You're very, very good at squeezing the air right out." He chuckles awkwardly and bites at his lower lip as he tries to get another rolling tear with his damp sleeve. "Ah, there we go. That's better, isn't it?"
She replies with a sniffle and buries her head back into the folds of his top. Chell closes her eyes, taking trembling inhales, allowing herself to be lulled by his closeness. He shifts after a moment, and then his legs surround her body, effectively cocooning her between his lanky limbs. It's warm, incredibly so, and she feels herself leaning further into him, savoring the musky scent of his clothes.
"I'm sorry about this," he says, his voice a low murmur. "I'm not really good at this comforting thing. Never had to do it before. Didn't interact with anyone back there, just had to make sure everything was working properly. Didn't have a body like this, either. All I had was my voice." He swallows, and she feels his chin settle on top of her head. "This is what you did with me when I… when I was like this. And it felt good. So if it's not what I'm supposed to do, or if I should be doing something else, or… or something, just let me know."
Chell gives a slight nod, listening to the rhythm of his heart. She swears its cadence has increased within the past few minutes, but she can't be sure. It might just be her imagination.
Forgotten on the floor a few feet away, the metronome continues to tick. It's gentle and deliberate, a soothing tempo, and before long, she hears something else accompany it. A vibration thrums beneath her ear, and she realizes that Wheatley's started to hum. She can feel it under his skin, rumbling softly, welling up through his chest and beyond his throat, and it makes her breath hitch. The melody is staccato at first, but then the notes begin to change, and he draws them out in a smoother fashion, each connecting to the other seamlessly.
As the song progresses, she realizes that she knows this. It's the same melody from the first lesson, the one she couldn't pin, the one that had opened her up and allowed her to find her voice somewhere in the space encased by the circle of her ribs. It's the same from a year ago, the one that drummed in her ears as she rocketed up the lift, the one that followed her into the bright blue sky.
It's the same, and yet it's different. His voice is lower, masculine, dropping notes where they should soar, and he shapes them into something uniquely him. Chell feels quivers dive down her back beneath the warm palms of his hands. It's a sharp reminder, an untouchable memento; she knows that everything—that Aperture and the running and the fighting and the portals and the explosions and the moon—it was all real.
The melody tapers off, dissipating in his chest, and Wheatley releases a shaky sigh.
"I remember," he says, his voice a threadbare whisper. "I remember I was down there somewhere, somewhere far below. I don't know where. I didn't recognize anything. It was all white and empty with all this equipment I'd never seen before. But I heard it. I heard all of it. It came through the ceiling and the pipes, everywhere, and I heard it." He strokes her back, slow and tender, his thumb tracing her spine. "It was… it was sad. But I knew it was about you. She'd never do anything like that for anyone or anything else. It had to be about you."
He swallows, and Chell can feel his muscles tense. She breathes deeply and focuses on the rhythms that play inside of him. His entire being is a song: the movements of his hands, the nod of his adam's apple, the steady widening and narrowing of his chest, the pulse of his heart.
"But you know what? I was happy. Even though I was lying there alone in that room, listening to that, scared out of my mind, I just… I had this feeling. I can't explain it. I just knew you were all right. And I remember thinking, even if you didn't forgive me for all the monstrous things I did, even if I never saw you again, even if I died in that bloody place, I knew it'd be all right, because I was… because I felt happy knowing you were okay. That you were finally out, that you were finally free." Wheatley chokes on a half-hearted laugh. "Is that—is that a weird thing to say? I don't actually know. Sorry, if it is. I don't really know what I'm talking about anymore. Just rubbish. Best just ignore it or something. I should probably stop now, so… stopping. Sorry."
Chell feels like she's floating. She looks up again, moving out from underneath his chin, and she unhooks one arm from around his waist. Slowly, she places her fingers on his chest, and then drags them upward along the slope of his neck and then to his mouth. She keeps them on his lips for a moment, feeling the gentle curves, and then strokes across. Everything is smooth, and she finds herself marveling at the textures. It's so different than earlier, but it's no less pleasant, and it pools a flickering warmth along her bones and into the ends of her nerves.
The muscles in his throat tighten. "I… I'm sorry," he murmurs. His hands are locked across the small of her back, his thumbs circling absently. "I don't really know what that means."
She mimics the motion, but on herself instead, opening her mouth in attempt to symbolize sound.
His brow furrows. "You—you want to keep talking?"
Close. She makes a circular motion with her hand, points to the metronome, and then presses the flat of her hand against his chest.
"Oh, the humming?" He looks somewhat relieved. "I can… yeah. Yeah, I can do that. Not a problem. Easy."
The soft vibrating thrum begins to settle beneath her as she rests her head back along his pectorals. His voice swings into a lower octave, tight and staccato, and the reminder begins anew. The beat of the metronome ticks into her eardrums, thumping into the weaving patterns of Wheatley's heart, and Chell feels her eyelids begin to slump.
The last thing she remembers is the press of his chin on her head and the tender kneading of his fingers along her shoulder blades.