Blue sky (portal 2 fanfic) not by me

Chapter 15

made out a will; I'm leaving myself
to the National Health. I'm sure they can use
the jellies and tubes and syrups and glues,
the web of nerves and veins, the loaf of brains,
and assortment of fillings and stitches and wounds,
blood- a gallon exactly of bilberry soup-
the chassis or cage or cathedral of bone;
but not the heart, they can leave that alone.

They can have the lot, the whole stock:
the loops and coils and sprockets and springs and rods,
the twines and cords and strands,
the face, the case, the cogs and the hands,

but not the pendulum, the ticker;
leave that where it stops or hangs.*

()~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~()

Wheatley drifted.

It was dark, and it was silent. He had nothing to see or hear with, and no voice of his own.

It was cold.

Down and down and down and down...

Days or minutes. Seconds or years. Time didn't really have any meaning, not down here. The facility was in deep, deep hibernation, and only the very faintest glass-fragile flickers of activity reached him, slow-ebbing glimmers of processes and protocols, all the way down here in the lowest, murkiest level of the mainframe.

He didn't hurt. He didn't feel, apart from the cold, and that was beyond a physical sensation- he was a part of the facility, and the facility was cold, an endless hard-coded cold that never changed and never, ever thawed.

He was tiny and drifting and quite, quite alone. He was- and that was all he was. He couldn't talk- but he could think. The bright trails of his thoughts traced slow paths through the wasteland, the mainframe's endless nuclear winter.

Not... too shabby... shutting Her down... getting her to the surface...

Feel... good about that. Definitely... good...

...really good, actually...

The memories were warm. They almost burned- nearly too much, comforting heat against frostbite- but it was worth it. It had all been worth it. Upturned faces and bright patchwork signals, the smell of new bread, stars and long grass and her, just her, a scary-brilliant universal constant, a sun-through-panels smile, laughter he'd give anything for.

Time passed, or didn't. He settled deeper, a fading digital ghost drifting like a leaf down into the cold black-blue nothing, held together by the fine, slow-unravelling web of his memories. He knew- without knowing how he knew, understanding on some long-buried level of his programming- that eventually he would simply drift apart, the small frayed strands of his mind unweaving into the nothing. As more of this slow, timeless not-time passed, he would become less and less himself. He would become just another nameless part of the sleeping mainframe, something only dimly aware that it might, once, have been something else.

It was alright. There was no gripping urgency, not any more. There was no trace of threat or worry, no panicky sense of losing control- just a numb, ebbing peace. If he let his fuzzy, wavering mind drift in the right direction, he could nearly hear the distant skreep-skreep of those not-so-mysterious little insects, a cheerful, scratchy chorus warming the chilly darkness. He could half-feel the cool tickle of grass at his back, the calm-breathing weight of her against his chest.

She was safe, out there, with an entire town's worth of humans to be getting on with. He'd done that, he had, genuinely honestly almost-singlehandedly; and if he'd made up for nothing else, he'd at least made up, fair and square, for dragging her back down here to save him. Better, much, much better than that, was knowing that she didn't hate him for letting her down. He'd known that much from that moment in the lift, her hand outspread on the camera lens, that proud, wry look that was his alone.