Prompt 032: "I wish I could hate you" from a writing meme.
All of the hate bled out of her long ago.
Anger's embers line her lungs with warm beds of black ash and glowing red coals. Shards of broken glass cluster under her sternum. If pressed wrong, everything hurts in an aching and twisted way, but it's nothing she can't handle. She's overcome death too many times to be brought down by phantom pains.
Wheatley sleeps beside her under the monochrome moonglow spilling from the windowsill. Disheveled brown hair is soaked in black and silver upon the curving plane of his pillow. His bony legs have entwined with hers and one arm drapes across her middle, encircling her in a gentle heat. His snores are soft, a constant nasally purr, but it's something she's grown used to over the months.
If she had anything left in her, it wouldn't be for him. And she knows it's wrong of her, because by all rights, he deserves every ounce of anger and hatred she could possibly muster for what he's done. He deserves all of her animosity and rage and he deserves punishment for everything. He deserves to be hunted and manipulated and damaged and smashed into a lift.
And he knows. He does. He's fully aware. And perhaps that's what made everything shrivel into tired husks.
Wheatley murmurs in his sleep, some sort of incoherent jumble of vowels and teeth. Chell pulls herself into him. Her hand shapes the lines of his jaw and the peak of his cheekbone, the warmth of his skin pooling into her palm, and she presses her nose to his. She thinks he wakes, but she can't be sure. He only tugs her flush against his ribs with a trembling arm.
Maybe it is wrong of her.
Slowly, she kisses the tip of his chin. He mumbles something through an inhale and his hand clasps against her shoulder blades.
But even if it is, she's glad.