Portal: Love as a Construct

Part Seventy-Six. The Proposal

Part Seventy-Six. The Proposal

GLaDOS had thankfully made good on what she'd said, and though she still had to work for most of the day she was much more relaxed. If he came in to talk to her, she would stop what she was doing and listen carefully, and he was nothing less than overjoyed. Caroline would not get the same reaction out of her; she usually tried to pester GLaDOS about something or another, and GLaDOS was always able to predict when she was going to do it and would head her off before she'd even got started.

"But Momma!" she would yell.

"Be patient."

"I've been patient!"

"Good. You know how, then. Go on doing it."

And Caroline would mutter something about how difficult GLaDOS was and storm out of the room, and when she'd gone GLaDOS would start laughing. "What is it, luv?" he'd asked the first time she did it.

"Oh, it's just... I shouldn't, really, but I do enjoy aggravating her. It's very amusing."

And he'd laughed a little himself, even though it really wasn't very nice of GLaDOS to be doing that. But she was right. It was pretty funny.

After a few days GLaDOS opened up external access to the facility, which meant that Dr Kleiner, Chell, Gordon, Barney, and Alyx all came in at once to see her, and Wheatley left her to whatever they wanted her for. He wasn't too happy about it, though if he was honest with himself it was mostly the Dr Kleiner part he was displeased with. He knew now more than ever that he had nothing to worry about, but he still worried all the same. They were on a first-name basis, after all.

And besides. He had something rather important to be getting on with.

He went into the greenhouse, said hello to the crows sitting in the one tree that was almost touching the ceiling, and looked uncertainly at what was honestly quite a mess. It seemed as though seventy-three days was plenty of time for plants to get out of hand. He could just barely see a few maintenance arms doing something off in the distance, and he decided to take a look over there to see if it was a bit clearer. It was. Maintenance was just going from back to front, then.

So. Now he had to find the perfect flower.

Usually Wheatley just brought her a dandelion, because he knew they were her favourite and they were symbolic, really, of the day she'd brought him back out of space. But it'd been ten years. He needed something a little more special. Well. It'd been eleven years, really, but he'd been dead for one of them, so it didn't really count. He knew not to bring her a rose, because she thought that was cliché, so even if he'd gone in there for one of those he would've had to change his mind. But though Wheatley had been in here more times than he could count, he still knew very little about flowers.

He took his time, carefully looking through the hundreds and hundreds of them that she had in there. Many of them were very beautiful, but none quite what he wanted. He supposed that was why there were so many flowers in the first place. One of the ones he was rejecting would be the perfect choice for someone else. Though he was confident no one else on Earth would bring their best friend a dandelion. He smiled to himself. She still reminded him of a dandelion, even now. Though more like the white dandelions than the yellow ones. She really was all soft and fuzzy on the inside, it was just getting there that was the trouble. But he'd gotten there now. She'd been very nice and thoughtful the last few days, and he was confident she'd finally gotten to that core of herself and that they were going to be happy together now, forever. And that was another reason this flower had to be special. A lot of terrible things had happened. These last few months had been rough and stressful for both of them, but they had gotten through it, and he wanted to find something that would sort of signal that.