Wheatley's first instinct when danger appeared was to run away. Of course, he tended to freeze beforehand, but that never lasted long. Fast talking and misdirection worked wonders when the management came around to check on him, and they scarcely seemed to realize he would start to back out of a conversation before they'd finished telling him off. Whenever She spoke, his code booted up routes of escape through the rails should he draw Her attention. Even the plan to leave the facility; it was just an elaborate version of that. Those fleeting moments of bravery were few and far between, and only came about once he was truly alone or had someone backing him up.

So it wasn't a surprise then, when the hinges to the Enrichment Room sounded their duress, that Wheatley felt a surge of movement under him as those baked in responses dragged him back tight into the corner. There were no other escape routes here, and he knew that perfectly well. Enrichment rooms didn't do well with windows considering they were in a huge vault, and no one would be awake to admire the view of grey containers. The only exit was the door, and whatever shattered his hastily found peace had just come through there. He couldn't even hide; the shower practically screamed Hey! Fresh Wheatley right here! Still, he did try to run.

Light footfalls crossed the carpet, and a shadow fell over the curtain. Wheatly spared a pitiful glance around, searching for any openings he missed. There were none. In a single motion, it drew back. He screamed.

A blob wrapped in white stood before him. Something grey extended out behind them, but Wheatley couldn't make out the details. He missed his optic. Even if it was cracked into two overlapping images, at least he could bloody well see everything. It didn't take a lot to realize it was a human, though. Nothing else in the facility was that pale peach color. What startled him most was the white clothing. Wheatley hadn't seen another scientist in what had to be a few centuries, not after She flushed them all out with neurotoxin or put them through testing. He didn't remember them being too pleasant.

Papery skin stretched out toward the valve, and deftly turned the water off. Drops continued to cling to his skin, and without the constant stream the cold attacked tenfold. Wheatley kept his eyes fixed on the intruder, who seemed to waver where he stood.

"…hello?" The word came out easier than the first, but Wheatley cared too much about the person in front of him to properly notice. After a second, they leaned forward. Details came into view the closer they got. Black matted hair clumped around his face, and similar strands flew wildly behind him. Mismatched eyes stared down into his, one a heavy dull brown and the other a frantic blue. Sagging purpled skin sunk under them, and his cheeks were all too hollow. The smell wasn't great either. Wheatley wasn't even surprised when he was flooded by that feeling again. He was starting to wonder if the body itself knew these things, but he himself didn't. "Hellooo?"

The man raised a finger to his lips and jerked his thumb back over his shoulder. "Wha-" Warmth burst like firecrackers along his sides, and he yelped as the scientist hoisted him to his feet with little noticeable effort. "Oi!" Wheatley attempted to struggle, his sputtering giving him a few new mouth sounds, but the stranger's grip was firm. He felt his arm be threaded around the other's shoulders, bumping against the thing on his back, and a hand rested on his waist. An intoxicating warmth radiated off the guy's body, and he subconsciously leaned more into him as he was led across the floor. Wheatley understood the concept of heat; She had said She'd stick him in the incinerator for a year, so he knew that would hurt, and he'd overheated enough times to know how unpleasant that could be. Never had it been this; this glowing simmering thing that shot straight to his wires and left him fervid in its wake, diffusing over his skin in wavelengths while he chased after. Never had it been this pleasant, and never had his body required it. Every concern about the Scientist dissolved under his new resolve to be immediately swaddled in this glorious radiance.

The weight being taken off his legs as they meandered across the floor also helped ease those lingering thoughts. He still had to maneuver them, but not much else. It was like being on the management rail again where he only needed to keep an eye on one or two bits. Wheatley felt his lips move into some string of words, but a lightheadedness had settled in when he'd been hoisted, and his stomach was starting to demand his attention again. The Scientist continued to remain silent. His eyes turned nervously to the camera on the floor, then around the room, and Wheatley found himself frowning. "Nah, camer's off, mate." The stranger just shushed him softly.

A lump of bright orange on the side of the bed caught his attention. That hadn't been there before. The Scientist guided them towards it, and he could just make out the edges of white folded under it before the warmth and support vanished, and he was pushed to sit on the edge of the bed. A breath of a whine escaped his throat before he clamped down. Wheatley didn't have the right to such an indulgence. He deserved to be cold and shaky and gross. The Scientist picked up half the lump and unfurled it, draping the fabric over his head and obscuring his vision. "Hey-" It felt like he was being scrubbed by a square of the carpet. Wheatley brought his arms up to batter the offending object away, but soon found he didn't have to as the scratchy fabric moved and tangled around those instead.

The Scientist trailed it across his torso, then down to his legs. He walked around, and he could feel it scratching along his back, agitating the metal in his spine. "Jesus!-" A current of agony sparked from the base of his neck. It felt like GLaDOS was electrocuting him all over again. Wheatley whipped his head around, curling away from the stranger. "Hey! What're you doin'?!" Words tumbled over each other, clipping awkwardly against his throat. A hand clamped on his shoulder, and the Scientist's eyes bore into him. He frowned. "Oh for- what is so ruddy important that we can't talk?"

"She'll hear us." Frantic timbre barely reached his ears as the stranger was once again surveying the room. It tickled the section of his brain trying desperately to figure out where he knew it from. The information got him to shut his jaw with an audible click. The stranger brought the cloth up again, then spoke in a hushed whisper. "…You got water in your port."

"Port?" Wheatley gagged as the spark stung again, though with a lighter touch. The cloth disappeared, and the Scientist scooped up the white clump. His body was pushed and twisted around like a mannequin as fabric was yanked over his torso and legs. It took until he was being forced into a pair of pants to realize he was being dressed. Wheatley was out of breath by the end of it, and he hadn't done anything other than move where he'd been shoved. He tipped his head back with a gasp.

"One more thing."

He dropped his head back down to see a pair of thin black circles extended out in the Scientist's hand. Wheatley plucked them up, squinting at them as he realized he could extend the sides. The glint of glass caught his eye. He remembered some of the scientists wearing these things on their face; he'd assumed they were some sort of fashion choice, but as he slipped them over the bridge of his nose the world, and his companion, came into focus. "Oh!" Wheatley's face split into a grin. "Hello!"

Details stood out in the clarity. Wrinkles and folds pinched near the Scientist's eyes and drew deep grooves between his brow. Thousands of tiny dots broke up what once appeared to be smooth pale skin- pores, he thought he'd heard the word before- and an oily sheen coated everything. Even the strands of hair seemed to be weighed down by it, hanging limp and loose against his neck. White cracks broke the skin over his peeling lips, and dried red flaked between them. Two prominent divots were worn into his bottom lip. Wheatley spared a glance down, and the vague white uniform had sharpened into a torn and tattered white coat, button up shirt and pants with stains splattered haphazardly into the fibers. Most were a shade of brown, though around the Scientist's sleeves were flecks of more vibrant orange, blue and grey. The thing on his back had taken form into that of a weighted companion cube. Long scratch marks and soot covered the metal and dirt infested the seams.

More orange caught his eye, and Wheatley could finally made out what exactly he'd been stuffed into. A jumpsuit, much like the one the Lady had worn, with the upper half tangled haphazardly around his waist. A stretchy white shirt with the Aperture logo covered his chest, clinging to his figure. His feet were still bare.

The Scientist stared with a morose expression as he explored his new quality of vision. Wheatley yanked his gaze back and held that intense eye contact, though for very different reasons. That familiar feeling was overwhelming at this point, and it screamed that he knew this person. Maybe he'd seen him around the facility? Though all the scientists' faces blurred together at some point. No, it was this one specifically that filled him with that frustrating itch of misplaced memories. Maybe if he tried to see beyond the grime and hair…

A low growling sound sliced through the tension, and he felt his stomach clench. "Come on." The Scientist broke the eye contact and hoisted him off the bed. That warmth attached to his side again, and Wheatley forgot he'd told himself he didn't deserve it minutes earlier.

"Oh- still silent?" The Scientist nodded, then stopped as Wheatley slammed his forehead directly into the top of the doorframe and toppled back onto his ass. "Ow- ow ow ow-" He brought his hands to his face. It rattled his dome, though not as bad as when he'd collapsed into the curtain. Wheatley tapped around the skin but couldn't feel anything leaking out. "Did I break something?"

"No." He was greeted with the same morose expression as he was lugged back to his feet. They exited into a larger chamber; carpet under sole gave way to uneven rock. Several other rooms made hallways around them. The walls were made up of rock that disappeared up overhead, with one made of large panels of metal with thumb thick rivets keeping them in place. Pipes zigzagged down from the ceiling and prodded out of the walls, connecting to the various pods and crossing overhead. They were silent, though. But if She were in control of the facility, shouldn't things be going back and forth? And there was a distinct lack of management rail. Cold muggy air coated his lungs as he was led to the door labeled 'EXIT'. "Duck this time." The Scientist informed him.

Wheatley craned his neck down, slipping under the frame easier this time. Even more frigid air blew over him, followed by the odor of sodium and sulfur. This wasn't the facility he knew. The space around him was run down beyond belief. A large expanse of brown sludge sloshed in the pit near the edge of where they were walking, and spheres of triangled metal hung suspended as far as the eye could see. Some had detached from their cords or remained hanging by one or two with remnants of metal sloughed off into the toxic waste below. Pipes big enough to fit both him and the Scientist side by side ran the length of the wall beside them. Vertical structures connected the few spheres that remained. Catwalks lined the pit, which he soon found hurt to walk on as it pressed dimples into his feet.

A stripe of yellow paint ran along the wall, and long white numbers were painted overtop spelling out '1986'. Wheatley stared down the year.

"This place is huge," he yelled back, the rush of the pneumatic tube whisking him onward. "And we're only seeing the top layer! It goes down for miles!" Wheatley spun, though the Lady didn't seem too interested in his commentary, choosing to focus on the whorl of tubes outside the glass. He could have launched into a spiel about it, about the various horror stories he'd heard about what was down there, but they were having too much fun for him to bring the mood down. "All sealed off years ago, of course!" Wheatley finished, flipping back into his ride.

"Hey. Mi- mister scientist? How far down.. are we?" The man under his arm flinched, and his voice echoed far beyond their little circle.

"…I don't know. Far enough." The Scientist nudged them across the walkway.

He turned back the way they'd come. "'Core Donor Storage Vault'." He annunciated, reading the sign over the door. Unease pushed down on him. "…huh. 'Core donor'. Like investors? What an odd place to keep them. So did they have a caretaker or-"

"Please be quiet."

"Right, right. Of course. Silence. Absolute silence. Starting now." Wheatley trailed, silent as instructed, though his hands started to fidget with the sleeves of his shirt. The cave groaned and creaked around them as they inched up. Water splashed somewhere deeper as he passed a surreptitious glance at the cube still strapped to the man's back. Dug into his shoulders, he could make out an Aperture Science Magnetic Support Harness. Odd, that he had that with him. The subjects got so attached to these little things, though he never understood why. How long had this man been in isolation? Having a spare cube was always important, though, maybe he should keep his mouth shut. Wheatley allowed himself a bit more weight on his legs, and the movement started to feel more fluid. The human mind must be able to retain a lot more than he thought, as he'd never walked a day in his life and yet the process was coming back fairly naturally to him. Muscle memory was a concept he'd only heard in passing. He wondered what other cobwebs still clung to this form's squishy head organ.

A spot of light danced far in the distance, and he noticed a few panels had been propped around a broken door almost as if to hide it. "I'm not going to drop him." He heard the scientist mutter.

"I'm sorry?" Wheatley let his head lull forward.

The dull brown of his right eye flickered away. "…nothing."

The light spilled out of a pair of sliding doors up ahead, and the closer they got, the more he could smell burning electronics. "Duck again." The Scientist helped him through the gap before waving his hand. "I checked the room. You can talk in here."

"Er… lovely place, you have here?" He peered in, doing his best to start up his usual chitchat. Now his mouth wasn't the problem; it was his lungs. Even the few sentences he'd thrown out made his chest ache. The room they stepped into brought with it a sense of dread he was intimate with. Wheatley knew the facility when he saw it. Part of the room had been sectioned off into a small office area, but the glass was cracked and covered in dust. He could make out a few desks and chairs based on silhouette. The lights overhead cast everything in a harsh glare. "Very… homey. Which is a good thing, people live in homes, so this place is- is very liva-" They passed a wall holding the office, and a red beam blinked out, landing directly on his chest.

The powder keg of fear that went off scattered his platitudes like ash. He screamed as he toppled away from the laser, purely out of concern for his companion and not the sudden weight of his own mortality blinking in time with the scope. "OH GOD, GET BACK GET BACK-"

"Wheatley." The sound of his own name spoken by another knocked him back from his fear. The Scientist watched him tiredly from beyond the wall, having been pushed away in his panic. Wheatley's legs shook under him, but he'd managed to not fall. The turret's sight remained fixed against the wall. It hadn't even opened its wings.

"I'm different!" It chirped happily.

Wheatley panted. "You— but— the tur—" He dropped his arms, resorting to what he did when he couldn't get his words out: yelling in frustration. "It's a crap turret, innit?" He rubbed his thumb and pointer against the bridge of his nose in a motion that felt far too natural but still slightly soothing.

The Scientist lowered the cube into one of the chairs, eyes fixed upon the chipped paint as if he were listening intently. "She won't hurt you." He said eventually, trying to coax him further out. Wheatley inched around the wall until he could see chairs, and quickly snatched one up. Relief took some of the burning out of his legs, and he turned to the space around him.

A few steel foldable chairs were placed around a smoldering PC propped on a toppled table; the casing broken off to reveal the bright orange insides. Warmth rolled off it in waves toward his chest, though it was different from what came off of the other person. Something was missing, though he couldn't pinpoint it. The turret he'd been panicking about stood propped up between two of the chairs. Paint cans and discarded brushes were gathered next to it. Various cylinders lay pried open, scattered about the place, along with large jugs labeled 'water' and a couple mugs messily discarded. The walls were positively covered in the stuff. Small motifs caught his eye first: Nonsensical dots and lines, equations that remained unsolved, and the x's and squiggles drawn near the corners. A long series of marks went from the middle point of the wall to his immediate right and carried on towards the floor. Three large murals caught his eye, but before he could properly dissect what he was looking at, the thrill of another realization had him turning back to the Scientist.

"You?" Relief buoyed that joy. He didn't have to guess where the familiarity of the room's state came from. While keeping his optic on the Lady as he tried to break her out, she'd sometimes portal between the seams of the facility and he'd panic for a whole minute before finding where she went.

The Scientist looked back from where he'd hunched over the table. An unopened small metal cylinder- they had a name that was escaping him right now- was gripped in one hand over the frying equipment. "What?"

"You're the one who left those notes and drawings everywhere?" Wheatley perked up. "Aw, let me tell you, the Lady, she was absolutely chuffed to find these things," he jerked his thumb at the wall, "lit right up. Bout the only time I saw her have a proper rest."

Despite the lack of expression change from the guy thus far, these words seemed to make him noticeably... not as glum. Like the shadows making their homes across his features lessened a bit. "Well… glad she got some use out of them."

Wheatley tapped his fingers against the arm of the chair. His conversation partner clearly wasn't one to fill the silence, but the rawness in his chest kept him from taking up the mantle. He turned his focus to the murals again. One clearly wasn't finished, lacking any detail beyond a few blobs of color, but the rest were clear. The first was a depiction of Her sending the Lady- he leaned forward- up a lift! Wheatley's heart lodged firmly in his throat. So she'd gotten out! He hadn't killed her, and She had seen fit to let her leave. An ounce of the weight around his collarbones dropped.

Wheatley turned to the second; a blackened stick figure with an orange splatter over its face and a companion cube hoisted a Personality Core over its head while a large orange-yellow optic trailed after them. The impressions from his memory weren't wrong either, then. This man had been the one to rip him out of his torture chamber. But it left a gap between then and how or why he'd been forced into this body. If She hadn't done it, that left…

He flicked his eye to the third one. The paint was still shiny, pearls weeping down the tile. A pang hit his ribs. A large oval and circle were drawn side by side. The grey circle had the characteristics of a Personality Core sketched onto them while the oval contained a blob of peach paint. Even without the details, Wheatley knew what it was supposed to represent.

Words traced in red paint dripped down the plaster next to it:

'The ship of Theseus lay before me,
All rot, all repair,
Neither the wiser of how they fair'

Wheatley's heart clogged his throat. "That's me, isn't it." His compatriot nodded. It didn't clear anything up. The most reasonable follow up to that question was, "Did these really happen?"

The man hesitated for a moment, dashing his eyes across to the cube before responding. "I paint what I see."

Wheatley didn't feel any confidence in that statement. Nor did he find any comfort in the way he kept tilting his head back to the cube. Or him talking to no one, or the marks across the room. All of this together meant only one thing. "Ah, no, you're a loon, aren't you?" The man across from him snapped his head up, cloudy eyes bright with clear anger. "Not- not that that's a bad thing! Quite the opposite in fact! One of my best friends had quite a substantial amount of brain damage, and she- well she was mighty capable, so it's not…" He ran out of breath, reduced to panting as he pressed back into the metal seat. "…is talking usually this exhausting?"

Those sparks of anger dampened and melted into something akin to defeat. "If you haven't done it for a while." The Scientist plucked up one of the mugs from the stack and poured in some water before setting it near him. He didn't respond otherwise, more intent on heating up the metal in his hand. Wheatley took the cup but tried to keep his mouth shut. What I wouldn't give for a good cuppa. The stray thought caught him off guard. He'd never had a 'cuppa'.

The Scientist withdrew the can- that's what they were called!- once he seemed satisfied with its temperature and peeled back the top using the tab with a wet pop. Brown sludge seeped from the lid. A long metal implement shaped like a miniature scoop was pulled from one of the man's pockets. He placed it into the can's contents before foisting it into Wheatley's hands.

"Oh- yes, uhm." A less kind warmth zapped his fingertips, but he applied his best human grip and peered inside. Brown lumps sloshed around, and the implement inside- that also had a name that escaped him- swung to knock against his thumb. That growling started again, and this time he could feel how it vibrated his new set of guts. "What am I-"

The Scientist had picked up another can and was scooping up the lumps into his face accompanied by a gross slurping noise. Disgust crawled under his skin. The sound carved tracks in his brain that made him want to rip whatever muscles controlled his hearing out. But he took notice of the action. Maybe he should… Wheatley studied his movements more closely. The Scientist pinched the scoop's handle between three fingers, bringing it up to his mouth and depositing the contents before doing… something with his jaw. It moved up and down before he swallowed. Wheatley grabbed the implement with his whole fist, lifting it slowly and cringing as the stale smell wafted up.

Having just gotten used to having a mouth, maybe he should have known he wasn't prepared for foreign objects entering that space. Never before had Wheatley imagined what metal would taste like, or anything for that matter, but the mix of the slippery congealed juice from the container and the unexpected sharpness threaded through it made the back of his throat jump forward as he ripped the spoon from his face and spat the offending objects across the floor. He didn't even realize his brain had managed to scrounge up the right word, too focused on the way the motion left a slime with a taste similar to the smell of the mines in his mouth. "What the-" his throat contracted violently, tightening his words into a gag, "what is that?"

"Kidney beans." His companion's own can was half empty now. "You're going to need to eat to get your strength back."

Eating. Right. That thing that humans did between work, or sometimes during it. Putting things in their mouths because they didn't have batteries to keep them running. Something test subjects moaned for when coming out of stasis. Like heat, this had remained nothing but a concept until this moment. Wheatley blinked away the water that had inadvertently gathered in his eyes. He dipped the spoon back into the lumps and teased one out. "But it's so…"

"We don't have anything else to eat."

"Damn it." Wheatley whined. He knew how it felt now, he just needed to force it down. This was no worse than the stasis goo that he'd thrown up. Wheatley tipped the bean back into his mouth and swallowed as quickly as he could. Without the initial shock, it bordered on tolerable. He struggled getting it down, and it felt like a rock covered in conversion gel, but his stomach seemed to appreciate it. The tangle of knots it had worked itself into loosened.

The Scientist cleared his throat, muttering a small 'right' after a moment. "I'm sure you have questions."

Several. They'd been accumulating from the minute he woke, but now that he had the floor, he couldn't pick where to start. "Oh, yes!" Wheatley straightened up, picking one on the fly. "Who are you? I thought all the scientists were dead. In fact, all the scientists should be dead. Humans don't live that long, do they?" He didn't wait for an answer. "How do you know my name?" He fiddled with the spoon. "Also, what's your name? I feel like that's important, to know. Should have asked that first really…"

"Doug." A note approaching amusement creeped into his voice. "I used to work here, as a programmer. And I was assigned to the GLaDOS project. That's how I know your name." Wheatley sucked in a small breath, heart slamming out the syllables of the name he tried desperately never to say or hear. Doug stood and picked up the brush closest to him, still thick with grey paint.

Wheatley quirked his brow up. Finally, some more questions loosened from the stranglehold of nerves they'd been wound in. "So you made me?"

A nod, though his hand quivered. "I helped."

He scoffed gently. "What kind of masochist are you, then? Why on earth did you give us the ability to smell? Or to feel pain? That seems like bad design, giving something you rely on the ability to feel pain. It's awful." He let the spoon rest in the can now, bouncing his foot against the tile.

"…it's a good motivator." Doug spoke blithely as he tapped the brush a few times, then turned back to his mural.

"Oh really?" Indignation lit a flare through his chest. "So then why did you make me such a-" moron. The word fought against his gritted teeth. That word that seemed to crawl through his veins like a viscous sludge, that made up his very being. Wheatley stared down at his hands as they curled around the can, the skin desaturating with the pressure. Making mistakes caused him more pain, and it never mattered how motivated he was- he had motivation in spades!- he always screwed something up. Was he just designed that way? Part of him didn't want to know the answer. He opted for something less emotionally taxing but still pressing. "Is that why you did this?" He clicked the can down on the chair next to him and flapped his hands at his personage. "As some sort of motivator? Why did you- what- what caused you to do this?" The query that had sat on the tip of his tongue tumbled out with a bit more venom than he'd hoped. "What did you do to me?"

His companion didn't respond for a moment. Wheatley almost thought he wasn't going to. "…I know that." He sighed. "But not right now."

Wheatley stared, bewildered. "Pardon? What 'not right now'?"

"I did what I had to." Doug continued as if he hadn't said anything. "We want to escape. There's only so much I can do," he looked back over his shoulder, "And you didn't have a large range of motion. A human body was the best compromise."

The moisture in his mouth was becoming overwhelming. He swallowed. "This is- I don't want this." He clipped. "This is cruel. Rather Machiavelli of you. I don't even think I could help you escape, so could you just, I don't know, pop me back into my core?" Wheatley looked around, as if his discarded chassis would suddenly appear. "Could probably do more with that, honestly. Wouldn't have bits of human cropping up." But did it matter what he wanted? A conflicting whirlpool started swirling in his thoughts. When the entire sequence of events predating now had been his own fault, maybe he deserved to be in a form that was weak. Like a potato. In came the self-loathing again, torn between what he knew he deserved, a return on the pain he'd caused the Lady, and what he wanted. And in some way, maybe it would be an improvement, what with the ability to grab things and walk on his own. The bigger issue pressed down on his shoulders, though; this wasn't his body.

This would never be his body. It wasn't right. He wanted it gone.

The gaze that he turned back to was devoid of emotion. It frightened him enough to shove the despair back into the little box it kept leaking out of. Doug blotted the brush against his makeshift canvas once, then twice. "What do you mean?"

"Hm?"

"What keeps coming up?"

"Oh, you know, just…" Wheatley drew his shoulders up, picking up the can he'd discarded. "Things that I feel like I should know. I think maybe this human stuck around a little." He jabbed at the lumps. "Who'd you put me in, anyway? Whose vegetable do I inhabit?"

Doug's expression lengthened again. The sigh took with it a few inches of height. "…a friend's."

Wheatley couldn't keep his expression neutral. "That's a bit unfortunate." He swallowed another bean. "Where am I, anyway? Not me, I know where I am, in here with you. I mean me, the core. You know, so we can put me back in there?"

"I can't do that." He watched the scientist paint in a few details along the Mural Wheatley's panels.

He huffed. "Wha? Come on, yes you can. If you can put me in, you can take me back out, it's not that hard- where- where are you going?"

Doug had shifted back from the wall and crossed the floor, hoisting up the companion cube as he yanked open the door on the other end of the hall. "I'm going to get 'you'." He spoke plainly, then ducked out of the room.

The silence was deafening. It was the one other thing Wheatley tried to avoid, always filling the air with chatter. His throat was growing raw with the amount he'd been speaking, but he refused to let it settle. It let him panic. What had he said wrong? Surely, he must have. Doug looked so upset. The red light caught his attention again. The turret blinked steadily at him. "…so what's your deal, then?"

"He's singing below us!"

Wheatley frowned. The turrets weren't exactly stupid, but they only had a handful of preprogrammed phrases. They stuck to them rigidly, preferring to put more R&D into the code that recognized and reacted. Speaking wasn't a huge deal. "What?"

"Daedalus warned Icarus what would happen if he flew too low or too high. Icarus didn't listen and was condemned to the sea."

Maybe it hadn't been lying when it had said it was different. "I don't know why I bothered talking to you, really. Don't know what I expected. Not that." Wheatley cast a disapproving glance at his can. "Do you think he'd notice if I just dumped a few of these out? Enough to say I'm done eating."

The turret just trilled. "She'll be back."

"Yeah, thanks, mate."

Words drifted in past the doors, and he stopped picking at his food long enough to strain his ears. Doug spoke softly naturally, but he could still tell it was him. The vibrations of syllables pierced the iron walls, but none of the contents reached. He left gaps, though Wheatley supposed he did too when he spoke to himself. There was a different weight to these pauses though, longer than just letting himself think. They were bits of a conversation, a call with no response. He really worried about that man. The door creaked gently, signaling his return. Metal swung in his left hand, rattling and groaning just as he remembered.

It was hard to pinpoint which emotion took up the forefront as his lifeless core was presented to him. Fear? Yes, yes, he was very afraid. Anyone would be afraid seeing their own corpse. Anger? Plenty of that. The shell was covered in dents and scratches and lay saturated with dirt and grime. Wheatley never did quite recover from being crushed, and to see himself in such a state prodded something deeper. There was a large dose of sorrow though. Of loss, grief even. Was it possible to mourn oneself? Doug let the core drop into his palms. Contact made the reality of his situation all too apparent. His core was almost dishearteningly light.

Wires frayed from one end where Her claw had clipped him as She'd sent him into space, and one of his handles was half unscrewed. The port that attached him to the plugs around the facility was hanging out limply, soot caked on in a starburst pattern. The crack along his lens had etched down, almost splitting it in half. It smelled a lot like the burning electronic not too far from him. His own body ached with sympathetic pangs.

Doug groaned softly as he lowered back into the chair. The paint brush was still pinched between his fingers. "Do you realize why I can't do that, now?"

"I mean," he pushed up one of his shutters, "you could… probably fix it. Just a couple parts you need to replace. Be good as new. It would be less likely to fail."

"Wheatley." Again, his own name made him shudder. "You need to make a choice. Freedom or immortality. Even if you escaped in that, you wouldn't be truly free." Doug held up his hand as Wheatley's mouth opened to retort. "Let me finish. You'd be stuck, dependent on someone forever. On a management rail until your final wire snaps. No amount of new circuits and fresh paint will give you what you're looking for. We don't have the parts to repair you either. So which do you want more?"

Wheatley gulped down. What kind of life would he lead outside? What would existence be like in this thing? Painful, by the looks of it. He didn't even think to be angry at Doug for forcing this onto him. Gazing upon it now, this core didn't feel like him anymore. This wasn't right. This wasn't him either. Who was he? He pushed the handle back into place trying to distract himself from an oncoming crisis, though it popped out the moment he slipped his finger away. "Why can't I have both?"

"No one can have both."

"But She made those little robots-"

"We don't have the parts for that either." Doug clasped his hands in front of him. His expression was a stone wall. Even the turret was more readable than this man. "Which do you want more?"

He cradled the exposed wires. Wheatley really had been tiny like this. No wonder Her body had overwhelmed him so easily. The energy to fight spent itself on shame, and his shoulders sagged. "…fine. I get your point. But I don't even know how to use this crummy body."

The serious expression finally cracked into something akin to mirth. "You can learn." Wheatley flinched as Doug stood back up, drawing his legs up onto the chair to try and compress around the core.

"Can I hold onto it- I-" he huffed. "Me?"

Sympathy pooled in the blue lake of his right eye. "Of course, Wheatley."