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Her memories, her voice, for a time even his sanity. Aperture had taken much from both of them already, but its final parting shot was the loss of his sight. Chell felt a pang as they emerged, at long long last, into the grass and the sunlight. Even as she took her first breath of fresh air in years, tilting her head back to bask in the bright blue sky, her heart twisted a little for Wheatley. He’d never see any of it.
They adjusted to the change, both of them, just as they’d adjusted when Wheatley was transferred from his small spherical casing into a gangly, sandy-haired humanoid form. He’d discarded his glasses now and his bright blue eyes had faded to a dim gray that almost matched hers in color, if not in focus. Despite the fact that she didn’t talk, he’d grown uncannily good at turning his head to face her when he was speaking to her, but his eyes always stared straight through her.
It was difficult at first. Wheatley had been very good at reading her body language, to the point that she no longer minded that she couldn’t seem to find her voice anymore. She could always count on him to understand her perfectly, even if it sometimes took a few tries. Now that he couldn’t see her, to him it was as if she’d fallen silent.
They experimented. Chell found a voice synthesizer but gave it up rather quickly; no matter which female voice option she chose, its artificial tones and enunciation never failed to unsettle both of them. None of them really sounded like her, anyway - despite neither knowing what she was supposed to sound like, they could at least agree on that. The words came haltingly and awkwardly after going so long without using them, and in the end Chell gave up. Wheatley didn’t mind, tired of jumping at a voice so uncannily like Hers every time Chell wanted to say something to him.
They fell back on touch, which to some extent they’d already been doing. Chell had led Wheatley by the hand ever since he was blinded, communicating in quick squeezes and tugs if there was some obstacle or danger in his path. It was hard to adjust to being much more tactile than that. Neither of them was used to touching someone else or being touched. Chell had to fight back violent reflexes every time he touched her unexpectedly, and Wheatley for his part was cautious. He found himself craving physical contact, sometimes the only thing that grounded him in his sightless world, and forced himself to pull back from her when all he wanted to do was keep hanging on and never let go. The way she stiffened up when he touched her shoulder or took her hand without warning was proof enough that she didn’t like it.
He took to talking her through it whenever he had to grab her to steady himself, announcing the matter with a running commentary - “Okay, just a fair warning, I am going to grab your hand now! Or at least try. I am going to try to grab your hand, and... hope for the best. Here goes. Brace yourself, wouldn’t want any injuries, I -- wait, no, that’s a shoulder, that is definitely a shoulder, let’s try a bit lower - sorry! Sorry, I swear that was not on purpose, can’t really see what I’m doing here, so maybe you could give me a hand and - well, no pun intended - give me a hand, just sort of reach out and I’ll try to - ah! Fingers! I feel fingers, that is definitely your hand. Well done. Solid teamwork there, absolutely brilliant.”
Sometimes as he was grabbing blindly at her, blathering away, he thought he could feel her trembling faintly. It was slightly worrisome, and when he finally thought to bring it up, at first she only trembled harder, apparently deaf to his increasingly panicky questions. Finally, she grabbed his hand and moved it up to her face, where he felt around doubtfully. “Are you sure you’re okay? Because I’m not sure I see the point of- of--” He trailed off, suddenly understanding. “You’re smiling. You’re... you’re laughing at me, aren’t you?”
She pulled his hand away from her face and squeezed it hard, then leaned briefly and awkwardly against his side. For a second he felt her warm and solid against him before she pulled away. Wheatley thought maybe he understood that, too. Yes, she was laughing at him, but only in an affectionate way. No hard feelings.
No one, Wheatley thought in a sudden epiphany, had ever laughed at him in an affectionate way before. Maybe this was why he didn’t mind. For that matter, no one had ever really interacted with him in an affectionate way before. Affection, back there, didn’t really come into anything. He thought about saying this, and didn’t. She was happy right now, and he wasn’t about to ruin that with a reminder of where they’d come from.
Chell stepped away from him, but her grip on his hand remained firm and anchoring.
It was fortunate that this body was so much more sensitive to touch than his old metal casing had been, but being something so close to human did have its drawbacks. Wheatley had discovered that humans’ sleep cycles had a number of distressing glitches, not the least of which was the tendency for old, unwanted memory logs to replay in one’s mind during sleep. He often heard Chell twitching and kicking at the ground in the night; she didn’t whimper, of course, but her distress was plain even to one who couldn’t actually see her. He felt his way over to her on his hands and knees, reaching out experimentally until his hand connected solidly with her face.
Chell jolted awake and punched him hard in the jaw.
He learned to be cautious about her nightmares, but couldn’t bring himself to leave her to her terrors, particularly not with the horrible creeping suspicion in the back of his mind (which he usually managed to not think about) that many of them were probably because of things he’d done. He got better at drawing her out of them without scaring her, a gentle grounding touch to the back of her hand or even just sitting next to her and talking. It didn’t seem to matter what he talked about. In the morning he never did mention what happened in the night, but she would squeeze his hand extra hard and once she actually hugged him briefly, almost roughly. He thought - hoped - this was probably her way of saying thank you.
Her night terrors were not a nightly occurrence, but they happened frequently, and so did his own. Wheatley only ever dreamed about one thing, and that was Chell’s death. In his dreams he’d seen her crushed, killed by neurotoxins, shot down by turrets... the only common thread in every scenario was that he alone was responsible. One night he woke shaking and convinced that he was alone, that she was gone. For a moment he almost couldn’t breathe with grief and panic - then he felt a gentle touch on his shoulder, a reassuring hand clasping his, reminding him firmly that he was not alone. He turned to her and grasped her hand tightly in both of his.
“I’m sorry... I’m sorry,” he whispered, over and over, and for some reason she stayed there for the rest of the night, holding his hand as he cried.
She had never once spoken the words “I forgive you” - because she couldn’t, of course. Often, Wheatley doubted that she would even if she could. Sometimes - and this was one of the thoughts that, for some reason, never surfaced in the endless chatter he spouted to fill the silence between them - sometimes he honestly wondered why she stayed with him. He knew he slowed her down. It would have been hard enough, wandering the immense surface world in search of other humans, without a blind personality core in awkward human form to take care of. She didn’t need him anymore, and if she decided to leave him stranded there was basically nothing he could do about it. But she never did. She was always there, even when he couldn’t feel her; always materializing at his side when he shouted or reached out.
She started initiating contact more and more - tentatively, awkwardly, but still reaching out and wrapping an arm around his shoulders or leaning into his side at reassuringly regular intervals. It took him an embarrassingly long time to figure out what this one meant, but by the time he did, he couldn’t prevent a quiet enlightened “oh!” from escaping his lips. It meant I’m here, I’m staying, I’m not going to leave.
Maybe even, by extension... Maybe she’d been saying “I forgive you” all along. It just took him a while, moron that he was, to hear it.
He found that at night, as they camped out under the stars he’d never see, they were sleeping in closer and closer proximity to one another. When she began thrashing, he only needed to reach out with one arm to give a comforting touch; when he woke gasping and shuddering in the night, he could feel the warmth of her presence almost at once. One night they woke almost at the same time and moved instinctively toward each other, shaking fitfully. Wheatley woke up the next morning to discover Chell nestled in his arms.
It was nice. He was pleasantly surprised when she decided to do it again the following night, no nightmares necessary. The dreams grew less and less frequent for both of them.
As the days passed, physical contact felt more and more natural. She no longer flinched when he touched her without warning, and her occasional quick embraces were not quite so stiff. He was delighted to discover he could return them now, wrapping his arms around her tightly and feeling her relaxing into him rather than stiffening and pulling away.
The first time he kissed her - or, more accurately, the first time she kissed him - was a little awkward and to be perfectly honest it took a few experimental tries for them to get it right, but neither of them really minded.
And lying beside Chell at night, their breathing synchronized, Wheatley realized that for the first time, he truly believed that everything was going to be okay.