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Love as a Construct: Part Two - The Lie

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Part Two.  The Lie



GLaDOS had a room, a very special, secret room that he wasn’t allowed in, and this, of course, made him want to get in it more than anything.  He cajoled her and he begged her and he endeared to her softer side, but she would only shake her head once in refusal and say nothing.

So Wheatley decided to find it.

Through the facility he went.  He looked behind the stiffest panels and below the most movable floors.  He went deeper than he’d ever gone and higher than he’d ever dreamed.  He began to get discouraged.  He knew the facility was massive, and he knew full well he could search for every second of the rest of his life and never find it.  But he also knew that people preferred to be around people who were like them, and so Wheatley was going to have to take on GLaDOS’s determination and immovable nature if he wanted her to keep him around.  And he was pretty determined and immovable, he told himself as he searched.  True, he didn’t know if he could demonstrate the same amount of those things as she could, but he reckoned he could come pretty close.  So he continued his search.

When he returned to her chamber each night for their chat before they went into sleep mode, Wheatley would inch close enough to touch her and she would pretend not to notice.  Wheatley especially loved that part of the day.  She did not look it, but GLaDOS was very good for snuggling with.  He could not think of anyone or anything he’d rather snuggle with more, not even the human, and she had been soft and squishy.  Those were supposed to be good attributes for that sort of thing, but Wheatley much preferred GLaDOS’s massive, robust chassis to the human’s tiny, fragile frame.  It was much more familiar and comforting.  While they were doing this, GLaDOS would ask Wheatley what he’d been doing all day and he would reply with (what he hoped was) a nonchalant, “Exploring, luv.  Just exploring.”  And she would nod a little and change the subject.  He wasn’t sure if she knew what he was doing and was leaving him to it, or if she really had no idea, but he elected to keep it to himself.  If she didn’t want to tell him, she didn’t want him to know, and would certainly not approve of his quest.

Time wore on, Wheatley becoming less and less convinced he’d ever find it, when he overheard a conversation between two nanobots concerning a very old Companion Cube three floors below.  Wheatley chased after them, but they disappeared into an invisible hole in the wall, leaving him to grumble in annoyance about the lack of invisible holes for behavioural cores.  Summoning his almighty, infallible sense of direction, he descended three floors and resolved to inspect the floor he arrived on thoroughly.

Within an hour or two (his sense of time being slightly less than terribly not infallible), he stumbled across a panel that seemed to have been removed from the wall.  Excited, Wheatley told the ceiling panels to extend his management rail so that he could get inside.  He hoped GLaDOS was too busy to pay attention to any information she might be getting from the panels.  He still wasn’t sure if she kept an eye on him during his adventures or not.

It was very dark, and with a hesitation borne of years of misinformation, Wheatley turned on his flashlight.  He spread the beam around the room, and what he saw in there was quite puzzling indeed.

It honestly looked like the junk someone might keep in their attic.  Wheatley’s optic plates narrowed in disappointment.  This could not possibly be the room GLaDOS was hiding from him, it couldn’t!  And if it was… well, maybe GLaDOS was a little bit crazy, after all.

Wheatley began making a partial mental list of what was there, just in case he could maybe bring some of this stuff up in casual conversation and get her to tell him what it was all about.  A pen… a couple of paper tests of some kind… a grimy old Companion Cube… a cake, which must have been quite old but looked rather fresh… some books, lined neatly up on a shelf by height… a potato, which he only looked at for a second before nervously looking away… a deck of playing cards… an ancient laptop with what must have been three inches of dust on it… a little roll of blueprints… he took a minute to look at those.  To his surprise, Atlas and P-body were drawn on the papers in various shapes and forms.  He had only rarely seen GLaDOS write, given that it was a lot easier and faster for her just to make a mental note of something, but he was confident that it was her handwriting.  Going over the papers again, he watched the handwriting change ever so slightly, becoming cleaner and more precise as time went on.  He was looking at GLaDOS learning to write!  Oh, she really could be quite adorable, sometimes, though he didn’t know if he’d ever dare tell her that.  For a minute he daydreamed about a younger GLaDOS, who would not have looked younger, of course, but she would have talked differently, maybe, and possibly could have moved a bit more eagerly, more like he did, actually… he had no doubt she’d been like that, once, everyone was, even very powerful supercomputers, and he wondered if she still could.  That would be interesting to find out.  Probably quite a lot of fun, as well.

Ready to leave, Wheatley took one last look around the room, watching the dust sparkle in the beam of his flashlight.  But wait… that wasn’t dust… scooting forwards, Wheatley took a closer look.

It was a piece of glass.  

Wheatley blinked a few times.  He knew that piece of glass.  He thought about the risk involved with using his maintenance arm.  She would probably know he was using it, but he just wanted to look.  He just wanted to make sure it was the same piece.  So he looked left, and he looked right, and then he reached out quickly and snatched it up, holding it close to his optic in the manner he imagined appraisers of precious gems might do it.

It was the one he remembered, or kind of remembered, seeing as these were his backup memories, but at any rate, it had been the glass GLaDOS had had him shine his light through a long time ago.  He was glad she had kept it.  That had been a good night, and it was nice to remember.

Maybe this room wasn’t full of junk after all.  Maybe… maybe all of these things were linked to events that were nice to remember.  Maybe this was where GLaDOS went when she was sad.  Not anymore, of course, because now she had Wheatley and he would make sure she was never sad again, but before, when she was alone, maybe.  He narrowed his optic pates.  No, she wouldn’t need this room again.  They would be mementos, nothing more.  He would make sure of it.

There was a squeaking noise, followed by a loud smashing sound, and Wheatley started, swiveling ‘round to look out the hole in the wall, remembering at the very last second to dash his flashlight.  He waited, terrified he’d been caught, electricity coursing through his chassis with excruciating force in case he needed to bolt.  But there was no one there.  The nanobots must have caused an accident in another room.  He was safe.  He switched his light back on and turned to face the maintenance arm.

All that was in its grip was a tiny shard of glass.

Uh oh.

His optic a pinprick, Wheatley dared look below him for a fraction of a second.  But even in that fraction he saw a sparkling of light, and he could not deny to himself what had happened:

He had broken GLaDOS’s glass.

He knew there was no way to hide it from her, and no way to fix it, so he dropped the one piece that was left and sped out of the room as fast as he could.  He didn’t stop until he was a good twenty floors away and made his way into one of the abandoned offices.  There he stopped and leaned back against the wall.  

What was he going to do?  She would never forgive him for sneaking into her room, which she had expressly forbidden him from entering, and breaking one of her things.  It made it all the worse that the item he had broken was one connecting the two of them.  If he’d tripped over the cake or damaged her blueprints, it would not have mattered so much to him.  But he’d gone and broken that piece of glass…

Wheatley knew he was very poor at making decisions beforehand, and he honestly did best when thinking on his feet, so to speak, so he elected to do nothing until he had to go back to her chamber that night, and he would decide what to do then, when she confronted him about it.

But she did not.

Was this a game, Wheatley wondered as he did his best to avoid looking at her.  Was she fooling around with him, ready to spring his crime on him when he was least expecting it?  But she seemed genuinely confused with his short answers and general reluctance to have anything to do with her, and he was pretty sure she was actually disappointed that he hadn’t tried to sneak up on her today.  But she did not ask and he did not tell.  GLaDOS, unlike himself, he thought rather guiltily, respected his privacy.  This hadn’t always been the case, but the test subject appeared to have rubbed off on her in quite a few ways.  That night he woke up cold and lonely, and looked sadly at the very inviting side of her head, but she had thought he had wanted her to keep her distance and had done so.  Why did he have to be so curious?

He could not avoid her similarly the next day, so, nervous as he was, he did his best to act normal, which seemed to satisfy her.  He merely told her he’d been feeling a bit off, which she accepted with a nod and a statement of having that happen to her every now and again, and he had to admit that their nightly snuggle was a lot better than hanging out on the ceiling by himself.  

The days wore on and she did not say anything about it, and every now and again he would pop down and check if the shards were still there.  And they were.  It appeared that GLaDOS did not use this room very often.  He rather hoped she would never use it again.  Then his secret would be safe.

A while later, he wasn’t sure how long but it was a while for sure, he cheerfully rolled into her chamber, eager to tell her about a lovely thing he’d seen, wasn’t sure what it was but it was neat, when he screeched to a halt, gear assemblies frozen.

She was looking forlornly at a small pile of glass.

“What’s that, luv?” he asked, more because he had to say something than anything else, and she slowly raised her optic to look at him without moving her head.

“My prism,” she answered.  “The nanobots found it like this a little while ago.  They claim they didn’t break it.”

“Maybe they, perhaps they lied?” Wheatley suggested, hoping the nanobots might take the fall. If she found out it was him who had broken it, all the months of getting through to her would be wasted… and he would be alone.  He could not let that happen!

“They can’t lie.  They’re too simple for that.”  She looked back down at the shards, touching them gently with one of her claws.  It was so quiet that he could hear her processors, and he wondered what was making her think so hard.  She raised her optic to look at him again.

“You wouldn’t have broken it, would you?”  He rather thought she sounded like she didn’t want to believe he had.  So he ran with it.

“Me?” Wheatley said indignantly, leaning back on his rail.  “You wouldn’t tell me where that room is, remember?  Even though I uh, I asked you several times.  Where it was.”

“You could have found it,” GLaDOS suggested, in much the same voice.  “You do a lot of exploring.”

Wheatley leaned forward, optic plates narrowing.  GLaDOS raised herself to meet his gaze.  “Are you suggesting,” he said in a low voice, “that I not only somehow stumbled across your room without you, without you finding out, but I went in there, broke your prism, left, and am now lying about it?”

“I would understand if it was a mistake,” GLaDOS said, looking him over a little.  “All I want to know was if you did it.  I don’t care if it was an accident.  I’ll even try not to care that you hid it from me.  But I would care if you were lying.”

Wheatley shook his head and turned around.  “So you’re going to accuse your one and only friend of breaking your things and then lying to you about it.  Fine.  Be, just, do it that way, then.  Go find someone else to, to hang out with because I, uh, because I don’t want to be friends with someone who thinks I’m a liar.  Good luck with that, mate.  I wish you’d left me in space.  I try so hard to help you and this, this is the thanks I get.  I’ve had it with you, I really have.”  He began to wheel out of the room.  Really, accusing him of lying.  He might not be the brightest optic in the bin, but even he knew better than to –

“You’re… you’re right,” GLaDOS said in a soft voice, but ohhhh no, Wheatley wasn’t falling for that one.  He was going to keep heading right on out of here.

“I’m sorry.”

Wheatley couldn’t have kept moving if he’d wanted to.  And he really, really wanted to, because he had a creeping feeling he’d lost control of the situation somewhere and had no idea where it had gone.

“It’s… it’s okay,” he said, turning around to face her.  “I, uh, I overreacted, that’s all.  I should’ve, um, been more understanding.  That was, the prism, it’s special to you, and I guess uh, well, you’d just like to know what happened.”

“Yes,” she said faintly.  “But now I suppose I never will.”

Wheatley’s spirits lifted.  “Why not?”

“The nanobots didn’t see anything and I don’t keep a record of what goes on in that room.  No one’s ever used it except me.  Well.  And the nanobots I sent down there to clean it up a little.  But other than that… one of them must have knocked it on the floor by mistake,” she finished, shaking her head a little.  “It wouldn’t be beyond them not to notice.”

“They’re simple, you said so yourself, you did,” Wheatley reminded her, eager to get off this topic of conversation.  

“I’d hoped they weren’t that simple,” she murmured.  “I’ll have to do something about that.”  With one more crestfallen look at her prism, she gathered the pieces into a Weighted Storage Cube and removed it from the room.  “What will you uh, what’re you doing with it?” Wheatley asked.

“I’ll put it back,” she answered.  “Maybe I’ll try to fix it.  I’m not sure.  I don’t want to think about it anymore.”

He nodded in as understanding a way as he could manage and turned to leave.  He knew she probably did not want to be alone right now, but there was a horrible sick feeling in the back of his head and he knew he couldn’t bear to be near her.  Best to wait until he buried the truth deep inside his head where she would never suspect it existed.  He could not avoid her that night, of course, but by then he’d almost convinced himself he’d had nothing to do with it and nestled against her without any guilt whatsoever.

That is, until he woke up that night in a panic, practically leaping back from her chassis and staring at her as if she had somehow transformed while they were off.  But no, she was only dreaming again, and he knew exactly what it was about.

Damn it.  Damn her for thinking of that night.  That night where he had truly gone from annoying behavioural core to friend.  That night where she had first admitted she needed him.  Damn it all.  

And he knew, knew right then and there, that he could not live with this knowledge any longer.  He had to let it out, had to tell her, right now!  If he didn’t and morning came without him having told, he would officially be a horrible person.

He pushed on her as hard as he could, which didn’t seem to have an effect on her at all, given her size (and her head alone probably weighed three times as much as he did, all told), and instead resorted to yelling “GLaDOS!” at random intervals.  After a few minutes of this her fans started up and she stared at him blindly for a few seconds while her recognition programs restarted.  

“What,” she said finally.

“I’ve got something to tell you,” he said quickly.  “It’s important.  It really, it really is.”

“Go ahead, then.”  Her optic was very dim, and he sensed she was barely paying attention.  She probably wasn’t.  Probably more of her attention on startup was delegated to running the facility.

Wheatley hesitated.  She didn’t seem to be all there at the moment, as if a large portion of her programs did not resume between certain hours of the day, but he couldn’t wake her and tell her nothing.  He had to go through with it.    

“I… I uh, I…” It was a lot harder than he’d thought it would be.  All he could think was that she would be disappointed in him, very, very disappointed, and very angry, and would probably never want to see him again, and would probably yell, which he really did not want her to do, but he deserved it, honestly he did.  He should have come clean a long time ago.

“It was me,” he told her.

“What was.”

“It was me that… that broke your prism.”

Somehow the sound of silence overpowered the sound of GLaDOS, and she just stared at him dully as he tried to think of a way to dispel it.  The only way was to keep talking, and come to think of it, he did kind of owe her an explanation, even if he didn’t want to give it.

“I… I heard the nanobots uh, they were talking about a, a Companion Cube, and I heard where it was so I, so I went down there and uh, and I took a look.  I only touched the papers and the, the glass, I swear, I know you’ve no reason to believe me but I’m being honest, I really am, and I didn’t mean to break it, it was an accident, I was startled by this noise and I, I crushed it by accident.  I was looking at it, I was just thinking about, about when you showed it to me, and uh, I didn’t mean any harm, I just, I only, I…”

Somehow he managed to shut up.  She probably did not want to hear any more out of him.

The silence pressed harder, but Wheatley had nothing left to say.

“You lied to me,” GLaDOS said finally, in one of her very quiet voices, “and then you tricked me into believing I was in the wrong for suspecting you.”

“Yeah,” Wheatley said in an equally quiet voice, trying not to shake.  He wasn’t sure if it was working.

“You went to the one place I told you not to go, and then you broke something of mine and you hid it from me.”

“Yeah,” he repeated, the terrible weight of his crime making him feel at least a stone heavier.

She looked at the floor for a moment, and he could not help but marvel at her: she wasn’t even totally on, but her mind was sharp as ever.  She said nothing for a long moment.

“You know what gets me the most about all this?” she said, but he could tell it wasn’t really a question and kept quiet.  “It’s that you were willing to put us on the line to save yourself.  You had me afraid that…”  She stopped and shook her head, very slightly, but he was pretty sure that sentence ended with something like, you were really going to leave.  Instead, she went on, “I guess you really don’t care about anyone except yourself.”

“That’s not true!” he protested, but she cut him off with a slight brightening of her optic.  

“You lied to me.”  And now she was getting angry, and she was pulling up off the floor and he was becoming very, very scared.  God she was scary when she was mad.  “And you tricked me into apologising!  When I did nothing wrong!”

“GLaDOS, please.”  He didn’t know what he wanted her to do, except maybe stop being so menacing, and he backed away, cringing.  “I didn’t mean it.  I didn’t.  It just, it all happened so fast, and I –“

“The scientists used to do that to me,” she went on, and even though he had backed away she still filled his vision, “They used to blame me for their mistakes.  And you know what I did to them?  Of course you do.  And the question here is,” she said, in far more dangerous a voice than he had ever heard from her, “whether or not I do the same to you.”

“No!” he yelled, trying to back away, but of course she could stop him from using his control arm whenever she wanted, and she did so now, freezing him in place.  “No, GLaDOS, no!  Please!”

“Stop begging, you pathetic little worm,” she snarled.  “I hate it when people beg.  I know you’re pathetic, but I was hoping you weren’t quite that – oh, who am I kidding.  Of course you are.  You were built to be pathetic.”

“Please,” Wheatley said in a voice he could barely hear, “please don’t kill me.”

For a few seconds he could see nothing but the hot yellow glow of her optic.  Then she released him.

“Don’t come back,” she said, again in that dangerous voice.  “Go up to the office levels and stay there.  If I catch you doing anything, that’s it.  I’m done giving you second chances.”  She turned away from him and he hurried to do as she asked.  It would be a horrid, lonely existence, but at least he was alive.  And maybe he would figure out how to not be such a bloody idiot, because he’d just ruined the most important thing he’d ever had: his friendship with GLaDOS.  

When he reached the doorway, he could not move.  She was not holding him there.  But he could not bear the thought of being banished from her for what could quite possibly be forever.  He wanted to go back to her and ask her if maybe she could work on that time travel thing, so they could turn back time and erase this from existence.  She would, wouldn’t she?  She didn’t like having to send him away, did she?  No, she did, didn’t she.  She was glad to be – no, no she wasn’t.  She wouldn’t’ve let him sleep on her all this time if she wanted to be rid of him.  She wouldn’t’ve listened to him go on for simply hours about nothing.  She wouldn’t’ve –

She wouldn’t’ve let him live.

With that revelation, Wheatley felt the terror and the sadness and the creeping loneliness wash out of him, to be replaced by hope.  She would have killed him.  She wanted him to fix this mess, wanted him to figure this out, wanted to find a reason to let him stay with her, but she had standards to uphold and so could not let this go.  And she was right, Wheatley agreed.  If their positions were reversed, he’d be pretty angry right now too.

He looked back at her.

She was in the default position, and she was moving back and forth, very, very slightly, and her optic was off.  This saddened Wheatley.  He’d never seen her do that before.  She must be quite lonely, he decided, since this would be the first time she’d been alone in there since she’d brought him back from space.  And it was his fault.  He had done this to her.

He made his way to the offices, but could not think of how to fix it.  He spent a long, long time on the rail thinking, somehow managing not to lose the subject he was trying focus on, doing his best to distract himself from the guilty feeling sitting in the middle of his head, that is, until he heard something and had to stop thinking to listen.

GLaDOS was singing.

He strained to hear her voice, while knowing that he didn’t deserve to hear it, but all he caught was, this time I’m mistaken for handing you a heart worth breaking, before he stopped trying.  No.  She had sent him away, and he would stay away.  He would do as she asked, this time.

But he could not help listening for the faint strains of her voice as he shut off for the night.
Part Three: fav.me/d6uc551

Author’s note
This is a continuation of Dreamscape, which was originally posted as a one-shot.

First note of business, guest reviews!  At the bottom is my explanation for some of what happened in this chapter.  If you never reviewed this or you don’t need an explanation, feel free to hit the x, the chapter is done.
snailing-along: Thanks very much!  I’m glad you enjoyed it.  I don’t know if you’ll read this, because at the time of your review this was a one-shot, but I appreciate your taking the time to type it out!  I like the idea of GLaDOS and Wheatley snuggling as well, and I’m sure GLaDOS enjoys it when she’s willing to admit it…
Amber: Thanks!  I love the idea of them together too!  I don’t know how long it will take, because I think GLaDOS has a long way to go before she’ll be ready to ‘have’ kids with Wheatley, but I will get there eventually, and if you stick around, hopefully there will be other parts of this that you will enjoy.
Love as a Construct, which was originally just the first part and published as Dreamscape, uses elements from a few of my other fics, My Little Moron, Euphoria, and You Know I Can’t Wave Back, Right? in particular.  They are not essential reading and I am not asking you to read them, but I wrote them in the first place to use as foundations for other things, so unless you ask me to clarify something I probably will not explain it.  GLaDOS’s room refers to the room at the end of Portal with the cake in it, which I use as the room where she stores things that have meaning to her.  GLaDOS likes having possessions so I think she probably would have such a room.
© 2013 - 2024 iammemyself
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PantherFlint's avatar
DO NOT TURN ON THE FLASHLIGHT OR YOU WILL DIE LOL Could you imagine him playing Slender?

Woah Dear God, I just read the part about GLaDOS learning to write, and the "attic"... Quite frankly I think that's creepy... Reminds me of planet of the apes, something evolving to be more human-like...

Okay I just cried. That was extremely sad. You spin a very great web of a tale. I need to read part 3.