Portal: Love as a Construct

Part Six. The Mistake

Part Six.  The Mistake

"Hey," Wheatley said quietly, half hoping she wouldn't hear him. She most likely had, of course, but she didn't turn around to face him. As far as he could tell, she was making blueprints. She seemed to prefer to do them by hand.

"You found it, then."

"Yeah."

"Congratulations. You succeeded at something."

"Why didn't you just tell me?" he asked in a hushed voice, not knowing how hard he was to hear but not wanting to leave the safety of the doorway. She made one of her annoyed electronic noises.

"Why should I have to? You're never here. It should've been obvious, even to you. I could have just left you in space, you know. I don't do things without a reason."

"I'm here –" he started to protest, but she swung around to meet his optic, shaking her core.

"Don't," she said warningly. "It's not true and you know it. All you do is what everyone else does: you take what you want from me and then you walk away. You leave m– you leave here every morning and don't come back until late at night, and only then because you want to lean all over me. You've barely said anything to me since you made me write that stupid list, and even when you did talk to me you didn't pay attention to a word you said, let alone anything I had to say. What you want is more important. I get it. It's always the same with you people. I don't know why I thought it might be different." She shook her head. "Actually, I do, but there's no point. Never mind. Go on with whatever it is you do. I'm sure it's terribly important."

Wheatley came forward as she returned to her blueprints. He wasn't sure what he was going to say, but it needed to be considerate, and it had to be something. "I'm not busy."

"I can't remember a time you were."

"I didn't mean any harm, GLaDOS," he told her. "It was just so frustrating, you know, not being able to find the stupid thing, and I guess, well, I didn't mean to take it out on you. And you're just, you've always got stuff to do, and I dunno, I thought you were busy."

"What else am I going to do? Of course I'm going to keep busy. I don't want to just sit here and do nothing. That's stupid."

He nodded slowly. That did make a lot of sense, actually. Somehow he tended to forget she was stuck in that one spot. "I hadn't thought of that."

She laughed bitterly. "Of course you didn't."

Wheatley blinked rapidly a few times, trying to remember where he'd wanted to go next. "Well, I'm sorry for how I was, how I was acting, these last few days. Few weeks, I mean. I didn't realise what I was doing. I just wanted to find that list so badly, and, and I couldn't, and it was just so frustrating..."

"I put it in the most obvious place."

"I guess you did," Wheatley admitted, "but I tried to be all smart and clever and look in the, the most obscure places. But, but GLaDOS..."

"Yes?"

"Did you... did you mean it? What you, what you wrote?"

He knew immediately that she did mean it because she was looking away from him again. He was quickly learning that her body language was far more indicative of what she meant than what she actually said. She did not answer for a long moment, so he pressed, "Be honest, c'mon. Don't say, don't say maybe, or perhaps, or, or those other things you say. Just, just be honest. I'm, I'm listening." And he resolved to shut up, because it was really hard to listen while you were talking.