Portal: Love as a Construct

Part Eighty-Four. The Trip

Part Eighty-Four. The Trip

Claptrap had invited Wheatley to Pandora a few days previous, though that part he hadn't mentioned to GLaDOS. Not because he thought she would stop him from going; he didn't, and was pretty sure she'd be just as amused by that as everything else. But the truth was, even though Wheatley did want to see what Pandora was like, he was too afraid to go. Pandora wasn't safe, and Claptrap had mentioned robots weren't liked too much over there. He would like to see Claptrap's home, but he didn't want to die while he was doing it. They also were used primarily for human labour, which he greatly disliked and wasn't sure he wanted to be anywhere near.

Claptrap, however, had most likely thought he was avoiding going because of GLaDOS herself and had apparently brought it up with her when Wheatley wasn't around. "You're supposed to go places your friends invite you to, moron," she told him after he'd tried to hedge the question of why he hadn't mentioned it to her. "Pandora isn't completely lawless, you know."

"But you can buy a gun out of a, out of a vending machine!" he protested.

"If it were legal here I'd be doing it myself. Though... now that I think of it, there's no reason it can't be legal now.... In any case. Stop being such a chicken and just go."

"I'm not a chicken!" he declared hotly, though he very much was, and GLaDOS just stared at him with the top half of her lens raised until he relented, "Alright, maybe I... maybe I'm not as brave as I could be."

She laughed a little. "Nothing will happen to you. It will probably be boring after the novelty wears off, really. Claptrap doesn't get out all that much. He'll take you to see Dr Z and Moxxi but that will probably be it."

"Oh, he talks 'bout them, sometimes," Wheatley said. "There's also uh, this Sir Hammerlock guy and uh, and the uh... the mechanic."

"Them as well."

"I kind of... would like to go," he said hesitantly, wondering if she really meant it.

"So pick a day and go."

"You're really... you're actually okay with it?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" All of a sudden she laughed and said, "Never mind. I understand now."

"What d'you... what d'you understand?"

"You're afraid to go and you're hoping I'll tell you you can't so you don't have to tell Claptrap you're chickening out," she answered teasingly, tilting her core forward knowingly, and even as he said "That's not true!", he could feel himself blushing in response to her statement. She could hear it as well as he could and it made her laugh again.

"You can blame me if you really want to," she told him, "but it's fine with me."

"There's really no reason to be scared?" he asked, in more of a small voice than he'd meant.

"Really."

"Okay, I... I'll go." God, just saying that was scary.

"Do you want me to tell him? So you can't back out?"

"N-no," Wheatley stammered. "I'll uh, I'll let him know myself."

He decided to make his exit then, so that he wouldn't have to think about how scared he was and couldn't use her to let him back out, and in doing so he crashed into that Core again! ... Meghan, was it?

"Oh," she said.

"We've got to stop uh, stop meeting like this," Wheatley gasped.

"Yeah," Meghan said, nodding a little. "We should uh... arrange a meeting, instead."