Portal: Love as a Construct

Part Twenty. The Confession

Part Twenty. The Confession

He had been turning it over in his mind for the whole day.

She'd woken late and, as usual when this happened, had stretched herself out, and as he'd watched her he thought of how beautiful she was. She was beautiful other times too, of course, all of the time in fact, but there was just something about the... the sense of freedom he got from her when she did that. It brought it to his attention, sort of. She'd uncustomarily returned his good morning, again working on her program soon after, but he hadn't left. Though she hadn't seemed to have noticed. She was totally focused on the program, whatever it did, after a while starting to hum quietly to herself. He liked that rather a lot and it distracted him from his problem for a little while. Every now and again, for no particular reason that he could see, she'd stop and tilt her core the tiniest bit to the right, and after she'd done it six or seven times he realised she must be talking to Caroline. He wondered what they were talking about. Whatever Caroline was saying didn't seem to bother her, because she went right back to what she was doing every time. He still wanted to know, though. He also wondered just how much Caroline knew about him. Did they talk about him a lot? Or at all, really. He knew they must at least sometimes. He tried to imagine how it felt to have someone else in his brain, but couldn't. He wasn't sure if Caroline could... hear? see? think? GLaDOS's thoughts, but he was pretty sure if someone in his head tried to do that they'd go off their rocker. They were pretty haywire sometimes, and on occasion Wheatley himself felt as though he couldn't handle them.

GLaDOS started singing.

Wheatley almost jumped off the control arm, remembered that she'd forgotten he was there, and went still again. Which he had to do. Because if she'd realised he was in there she would definitely not be singing right now. Or working, for that matter. Though... he frowned. He wasn't sure what she was doing actually was work. Whatever program this was, she'd been writing it for ages. And ages. And ages. He had no idea what it did and hadn't bothered to ask, but maybe he should have. He hadn't wanted to get into a technical discussion, or one about how he was too simple to understand the program. But whatever it was, she was doing it because she wanted to do it and not because some line of code somewhere had told her it needed done.

Oh, goodness, she had such a pretty voice. He felt a bit more alert suddenly, having thought of something pretty thrilling but not having quite thought it at the same time. He hoped he'd be able to condense it into something before it got away. And then he did. He realised what he was really looking at.

It was her!

He quivered a little bit, blinking and looking around a little haphazardly. She was right there in front of him, Gladys was, he'd found her at last! Everything that'd been going on had worked! Ohhh yes!

And he knew he had to tell her, wasn't sure why but he just felt like he should. Like she should know. It felt as if it might burst out of him if he didn't say it, so he crossed the space between them to press himself into her core, imagined taking a breath, and said, "I love you, Gladys."

She turned to look at him in one sharp, abrupt movement, and he backed away, somehow feeling as though the temperature had dropped. Something was wrong. She'd moved too quickly. Too urgently.

"What?" she asked, in something faint and disbelieving but not quite a whisper. "What did you say?"

"I said, I love you, Gladys," he told her firmly, though more quietly than he'd've liked. He was nervous, hoping he hadn't gone and set her off. It seemed as though he had, but he didn't know why. But surely she would let him explain it to her! Surely she understood having to say something, of not being able to keep it inside you any longer!