Portal: Love as a Construct

Part Forty-One. The Change

Part Forty-One.  The Change

 

Caroline stuck pretty close to GLaDOS for the first few days, extremely anxious and full of questions, though it seemed she couldn’t tell how irritating GLaDOS found this.  He knew she was trying, but come evening her responses were often curt and pointed.  After Caroline finally decided she was ready to face things she left for the greenhouse, and immediately after she was no longer in the room GLaDOS threw her screwdriver across the room.  It bounced off one of the wall panels on the opposite side and rolled across the floor for a couple of feet.  Wheatley eyed her apprehensively.

“Are you… are you okay?”

She retrieved the screwdriver and put it down next to the modem.  “She has been asking me questions for three days straight.  I am going out of my mind.”

“That was a lot of questions,” Wheatley admitted.  “Least she’s done now, right?”

“With my luck, she’ll be back in ten minutes and stay another three days.” 

“Well… the important thing is um, is that she… that she’s comfortable enough with you to um, to ask all those questions, right?  She’s not… done accepting your judgement, and that can only be a good thing.”

“I didn’t expect you to remember that,” GLaDOS said, looking over at him. 

“I try to remember ev’rything about being a good dad, luv.”

She looked away, back to the case of the modem, which she slowly placed overtop the internals.  “You are, you know,” she said, her voice and posture both softening a little.  “You’re not going to screw anything up this time.  Probably.”

Wheatley felt pretty good about that so he closed the gap between them and gave her a shove.  “Careful.  You almost um, almost gave me a compliment, that time.”

“I’m sorry.  I really should try harder to keep those things to myself.”

And Wheatley knew he should let her get on with what she was doing, especially since she had three days’ worth of work to do now, but he couldn’t help himself.  “I don’t suppose um… don’t suppose you’d be able to uh… to spend some time with uh, with me, would you?”

She looked up, shifting so she’d be able to see him, and he instantly felt bad for asking.  It was inconsiderate.  “Y’know what, um, I’ll just uh –“

“I would love to,” she interrupted, very softly.  “And I really do want to start right now, but unfortunately I must go back to that… thing I was working on.”

“That?” Wheatley asked, waving his handle at the modem.  Whatever she was doing with it, it shouldn’t take too long.

“No.  The other thing.  The one I can’t talk about.”

Wheatley grunted and looked away, frowning.   He tried to be patient and accepting about that little project, but he couldn’t push back the resentment.  He wanted her to tell him everything.

“Come back in four hours,” she went on, removing the modem from the room.  “After that I’ll never have to look at it again.  Hopefully.”

“After four hours you’ll be… you’ll be done with it.  Forever.”

“That should be enough time, yes.  When you come back, we can play cards, if you want.”

“Poker this time?” Wheatley asked excitedly, having since learned that aces of fours did not exist but full houses did.  “Oh, c’mon luv, I can handle it, I can, I can do it, I –“