A/N: This one was weird to write; I ran into a roadblock halfway through and then it suddenly disappeared. Also, I swear, the story ran away with me. It came out a lot differently than I envisioned; check the end for more because saying anything more at this point would be rather spoilerish.
I have to say I'm a bit proud of how it came out, especially considering my ... recent issues. Health, as you can expect. Sigh.
6. Apologies
Summary: Years after Chell's escape from Aperture, two very-familiar robots crash back into her life...
Genre: Tragedy
Characters: Chell, Wheatley, Space Sphere
Warnings: Character Death
He was offline when she found him.
She wasn't sure of the probability that he would land within a quarter-mile of the old house on the edge of the wheat field. It was probably a smaller number than she could imagine.
And yet it had happened.
The house was an old, rickety farmhouse, a little too close to There for comfort. Chell had bought it dirt-cheap after years of working in a nearby town, one of the few remnants of civilization left over after the Resistance had won the earth back from the Combine. The house itself was old and falling apart; too hot in summer and too cold in water; roof always leaking and animals always making their nests inside, but most importantly, it was hers.
She had been sitting on the front porch, watching the sky (hoping, just hoping, she would catch a glimpse of blue), when two objects fell from space. At first, she thought they were meteorites, until she realized that meteorites, in general, did not scream.
They had landed, one after the other, about a quarter of a mile away from where she sat, their impact with the ground forming large craters.
For a moment, she just stared - could it be? - before rushing into house and slipping on the heaviest gloves she could find. Some half-buried memory, perhaps from Before, told her not to handle the objects bare-handed.
Flashlight in hand, its narrow beam of light cutting a swath through the thick darkness that blanketed the field (why did she hate the darkness?), she approached the crater.
Three hours later, both Aperture Science Personality Spheres were on the old coffee table in her living room.
"Is space-friend hurt?" the yellow-eyed core asked, his optic twitching around, like a hyperactive child. Chell remembered him as one of the corrupted cores she had attached to the chassis to attempt to put Her back in charge. She also remembered the other two, the pink-eyed, fact-spewing core, and the green-eyed core who had immediately taken a liking to her. "Space gonna get space-trial for murder of space-friend. Space gonna go to space jail. Bad space."
Despite her concern, Chell couldn't help but smile at Spacey (as she had dubbed him). She reached over and rubbed his hull a bit, noting how his casing had become warped and darkened from the heat of reentry.
But overall, the crash back to earth had been far kinder to him than to Wheatley. She turned back to the offline, blue-eyed core who had once been her friend.
He probably still hated her.
But still, she got to work repairing him, using a small penknife to chip away the packed dirt that was nearly fused to his casing, wiping away the rest with a soft cloth. Her fingers explored every inch of his hull; his lower handlebar had been torn off completely, his once-spherical shape was barely recognizable, and his optic had hundreds of thin, spiderweb-like cracks.
Her fingers continued to trace his hull, exploring until she found it. The switch that would reboot him.
She turned and walked away.
Too soon.
For weeks, Chell remained in stalemate - fingering the switch, almost, just almost flipping it - but not quite.
Spacey took it hard. At times, his pleas for his "space-friend" couldn't even be calmed by taking him outside to stargaze. "Space-lady going to fix space-friend soon?" he always asked.
One day, after she fingered the switch, she went over to the bookshelf and pulled down the photo album. There were photos from when she had first been discovered in the wheat field - mostly of her, in the hospital, clutching the charred Weighted Companion Cube. It was now relegated to her bedroom closet, the worst of the char marks having been cleaned off by a kind hospital janitor years ago.
She looked at the photos, then looked at herself in the mirror. More lines in her face, more grey hairs -
Would he even recognize her?
She walked over again, looking at the offline core, fingered the switch and -
Walked away.
Spacey wouldn't even talk to her now. "Space-lady mean," he muttered. "Space-lady go to space-jail."
Eventually did come the day when she flipped the switch. She heard the small vibrations of his internal components as the sphere rebooted. It seemed to take forever, but the blue optic flickered to life.
Although he was harmless now, Chell couldn't help but jump back, remembering the 'deadly lair' -
"Space-friend?" the yellow-eyed core asked, his vocal processors giving him a slightly breathless tone of voice. "Space-friend not dead?"
The blue optic darted around a bit, before settling on her.
He just stared.
Chell avoided his gaze. The silence was deafening; she could hear the clock ticking in the next room. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
It seemed like an eternity (but really less than 15 seconds) before he spoke.
"Izzzat ou, luv?"
The words were garbled by static. Not a good sign.
But he recognized her.
For a moment, she remained paralyzed. Then she nodded.
"Oh, brilliant! Herezzzzzzas, in zzzzzzace, telling myself, 'You know, if I was ever to seezzzzzzzgan, d'you know what -"
His voice fizzled into pure static, his usually animated optic becoming deathly still for a long, long moment, before he continued.
"-orry. I honestly am sorry I was bossy azzzzzzzntrous. I truly am." He looked up at her, the blue light steady.
All she could do was encircle the battered sphere into her arms and sob.
His optic shrunk. "Luv! Y-you're leaking. You might want to see a mechanic abzzzzat." Then his optic widened, rolling around a few times in realization. "Oh, OH! No - you're crying, aren't you luv? The crying. There's no need for that, honestly. It'll be all right."
With a weak smile, she stood up, placing a hand on his hull. But they both knew.
Damage at 98%.
Chell was reluctant to leave the two cores the next day, but she needed the money from her job to live on. She could only just concentrate on her work; even the manager noticed how strange this was for Chell, the only employee to never, ever, ever call in sick.
When she got home, the first thing she did was to go check on the cores. But before she opened the door -
"Space-friend going away?"
"Yes, mate." His words sounded oddly tired, and Chell wondered if the usually babbling sphere was in pain.
"Space-friend come back soon?"
"No ... no, I'm goizzzzzzzmewhere far away."
"Space-friend going to space?"
"No, mate. Not space."
"I don't want space-friend to leave for space."
"Same here."
That night, Chell carried Wheatley and Spacey to a grassy knoll not far from her house; not far from where the two had landed in the wheat field. It was a clear night; stars sprinkled across the dark blue velvet of the sky, as though somebody had spilled a bag of sugar.
"There's a star. Star. Star. Star. Star," Spacey said, gazing up at the sky. "There's another star. There's the Big Dipper. There's Jupiter. There's Orion."
Wheatley was strangely silent, until Chell placed a hand on his casing.
"Wow," he finally said, his voice still quiet and tired. "It looks a lot safer frozzzzzzzown here, doesn't it, luv?"
She didn't say anything, just breathed in another lungful of the cool night air.
All three were silent for some time.
"Meteor," Spacey eventually said. Chell looked up to see a shooting star falling across the sky.
And all at once, she was aware of a familiar, uncomfortable pricking behind her eyes. She inhaled again, perhaps a little too sharply, because Wheatley rolled over, his internal components making painful-sounding grinding noises rather than the usual soft creaks.
"Chell?" he asked. "Are you okay? Are you - no, no, you're not."
She reached over and touched his hull. "I'm fine," she said, although the breathless tone and the tears running down her cheeks testified otherwise.
He did his best to roll into her side, occasionally squeezing his optic shut in an expression strongly resembling a human expression of pain, and eventually succeeded. Hs remained there, nestled against her belly, whispering over and over, "I'm sorry, luv. I honestly am."
Only once did he stop apologizing, so he could ask her to take care of Kevin. It took only a few moments of confusion before she realized that he had named the yellow-eyed core.
"I think the little bloke's goizzzzzzake it hard, to be honest. My - dying and everything. First time I've sazzzz the word out loud - 'dying.'" He sighed. "I am truly sorry. And not just because I'm dying."
Chell touched his hull again. "Wheatley?"
"Yes, luv?"
"I -" The word caught in her throat. "I forgive you."
"Thank you, luv," he said.
He never spoke again. A few, long minutes later, she was aware of the blue optic growing dimmer with each passing second.
She wondered if the minister of the local church would allow her to bury him in the graveyard.
"Is space-friend - Wheatie gone?" asked Kevin.
"Yes," Chell whispered back.
"Wheatie gone to space?"
"No - not space."
Another question she'd have to ask the minister. Could robots go to heaven?
"Look, lady. Meteor. Wheatie's in space. He's a meteor."
Chell looked up at the sky, at another shooting star coming down.
She could've sworn she saw a twinkle of blue.
With a small smile, she laid back in the grass to watch the rest of the meteor shower.
A/N: Here's the promised author's note. I guess my health issues left me a little morbid as of late; Wheatley wasn't supposed to die. Also, Spacey wasn't supposed to steal the spotlight. (Also, if the end of the story leaves you wondering, I'm agnostic.) This was a strange experience, to be honest.