Portal: Love as a Construct

Part Twenty-One. The Idea

Part Twenty-One. The Idea

"There you are."

Wheatley knew it was Rattmann again, but he didn't care. He didn't care about anything. All he cared about was his wish that the camera he'd found himself next to would lift from the default position and look at him, and that her voice would come over the intercom and she would chastise him for being such a moron and thinking she was dead. Only she wouldn't really mean it and would only be teasing, and he would go back to her through her perfectly operational facility and he would be so happy to see her that he would just go up to her and put himself beside her no matter how much she didn't want him to, because he was so lonely and sad without her...

"What d'you want," he asked dully, knowing full well that humans never went away unless you placated them, especially not in post-apocalyptic environments.

"Are you all right?"

"Like you care."

"It's hard for me to do this, you know. I want to help you, but the more difficult you are the less I'm going to be able to."

"I don't care. I want you to go away."

Rattmann said nothing after that, and after a few moments Wheatley couldn't help peeking to see if he was still there.

He was sitting against the wall opposite Wheatley, staring right at him.

Bollocks.

"Are you all right?" the human repeated.

"Oh yeah, I'm great, thanks. My best friend is dead... I killed her... facility's falling down around me... and I'm talking to a human! Yeah! Best day of my entire bloody life, mate!"

The human rubbed his face very hard with both hands. "Why are you cores always like this."

"Because we don't trust you. Obviously. Why would we bother? There's no point!"

"If GLaDOS didn't trust me, she would've thrown me out a long time ago," Rattmann said seriously. Wheatley winced at the mention of her name. It hurt to hear it.

"Well I... I guess that's true."

"What happened?"

"I told you. I killed her."

Rattmann shook his head. "That doesn't make sense. You said you cared about her and then you proceeded to blame humans for what happened to her. Where do you factor into it?"

"It was me that... that caused it. I told you. She couldn't, couldn't come to grips when I told her. She said it was like a paradox. She couldn't make it make sense."

Rattmann blinked, eyes widening a little. "She couldn't understand why you would... why you would love her?"

"That's right," Wheatley answered. "She crashed trying to... to make it make sense. She tried. She tried really hard. But she... she couldn't. I tried to help but I just made it worse. And she crashed, and now, now she's gone, because I should've just kept it to myself."

Rattmann looked at the floor for a long moment, then said, "Don't regret what you said."

"How can I not? It killed her!"

"I think she'd agree when I say that it was probably worth it."

"Worth what? Nothing's worth anything when you're dead!"

"I think that it would be worth it to die knowing that someone loved you. Even if it killed you. Even if it was the last thing you ever knew. Because you're right. We did do that to her. And I think that, no matter how scared or confused she was, somehow she was happy to know that you were willing to say that."