Here lies everything

The world I wanted at my feet

My victory's complete

So hail to the king

Arise and sing…

So your world's benign?

So you think justice has a voice?

And we all have a choice?

Well now your world is mine

And I am fine…

"PART FIVE! Booby-trap the Stalemate button!"

The resounding explosion rattled his aural processors and he rocked back and forth, his panels flaring open as he watched eagerly for the girl to tumble out of the room. She was blasted through, spinning head over heels before landing with a sickening thud some fifty feet away. The portal gun fell from her hands and clattered on the sodden floor. Her eyelids flickered; her hand made one feeble twitch toward the portal gun, and then she was still.

"HAH! Now there's your big surprise!" Wheatley crowed. The lithe chassis curled in on itself as he raised himself up, higher and higher, leering down at the motionless figure with a gaze clouded over in euphoric triumph. "Didn't expect that, did you! Didn't expect little 'moronic' Wheatley'd pull a stunt like that! Did you forget I knew about the Stalemate button? Huh? Did you just forget that I knew you were all too happy to run around pressing every button in sight?!"

She looked tiny down there, the water from the sprinklers in the ceiling bouncing off her and soaking into her orange jumpsuit; her hair, matted with blood and sweat, coming out of her ponytail and splaying around her head. She looked so small. So tiny and insignificant. Seeing her like this, it was hard to believe that they'd once worked together so well. That he'd once admired her. That she'd come so close to destroying him.

She wasn't moving. She didn't get up. It was over. It was all over. He'd beaten her, he'd finally beaten her—he'd won… and it felt good.

"…You've killed her."

Oh, right. Wheatley ripped his gaze away from the still body and looked back to the front of the chamber. The potato was still sitting in the core receptacle, the yellow light of her tiny optic flickering. She looked absolutely ridiculous.

"Yeah, 'course I have," Wheatley said, stretching out toward her. "What'd you expect? What'd you think I was trying to do this entire time? Didn't you get it from the mashy spike plates? The turret traps? Spinny blade walls? Bombs? Was that not enough indication for you to see that I really was trying to kill her? Permanently, properly kill her?" He glanced back at her body. "Oh, I see! You're just jealous that I've managed to succeed at the one thing you were never able to do! I've just killed your best test subject!"

"You've killed her," the potato said again. She sounded hollow. Shocked. "You… you idiot."

"Oh? I'm still an idiot? After everything I've accomplished here?" Wheatley narrowed his eye shields, his panels pulsing in and out like he was taking deep breaths. "You just will not give up on that, will you? Don't you get it? You've LOST! I've WON! After all this time, I've finally won something, not that you would care! Not that either of you would care!"

"She was our only chance of living through this!" she yelled. She didn't seem to be listening to him.

"Corrupted core is still one hundred percent corrupt," the automated voice of the Announcer said, making Wheatley jump. "Stalemate Associate, you must press the Stalemate button in order for the transfer to continue."

Wheatley chuckled, his gaze once again flicking to the human sprawled on the floor. "Heh. Good luck with that one, mate." He raised himself up again and faced the front. "I'm in charge of this place, now. I can do what I want, when I want, and how I want. This place is mine, and I'm going to make it great. And, now that the two of you are pretty much out of commission, maybe I can finally work at fixing this place so we don't all, you know, die in a fiery inferno! Maybe I'll finally be able to concentrate without worryin' about being murdered, yeah! Let's see… the fire's out, so next step is to fix the ceiling."

"It's not the ceiling you should worry about!" the potato shrieked. "The reactor core is going to blow up! You have to let me back in my body!"

"I think that lady's right," a voice spoke up in a heavy American accent. Wheatley groaned. It was one of the cores that had been installed on him. "She doesn't cut such a great figure, looks a little lumpy, but she sounds like an intellectual type and those are cool too. Of course, going out in an explosion is the only way I'd want to go out, so it's all up to you!"

"Not a chance!" Wheatley roared.

"Space! I can see space!" one of the other defunct cores squealed. Wheatley glanced up. The ceiling had crumbled away, leaving an open area through which he could see a patch of the night sky. He'd never seen anything like that. It held his gaze for a moment—the sky above was inky black, with a few shimmering points of light dotted across it. Stars, he remembered. Those were stars. In the midst of them hung an enormous white orb. That was the moon…

There was nothing like that in the facility. Wheatley didn't know much about beauty, to be sure, but he could think of no better word to describe it. It was beautiful.

"SPACE! Going to space! Want to go to space!" the little core bleated. Wheatley could feel him wiggling around on the chassis, probably flailing his handles in a vain attempt to fly to space or something. "SPACE! SPACE! Look! See? Space! Up there!"

"Really? Space?" the core with the American accent said. "Should've said something. We had no idea."

"Just- just shut up, all of you!" Wheatley looked away from the moon, closing his optic and tossing the chassis from side to side. "I need to think, all right? I really need to just think!" His eye flashed open and he glared at the potato in the core receptacle across the room. "All right, all right! So how do you stop the bloody facility from exploding, then? It says to press an 'any key'! There is no bloody 'any key'!"

Once again, the Announcer spoke. Wheatley hadn't known it was possible for the bloke to sound as irritable as he did when he said, "Stalemate Resolution Associate, please press the Stalemate Resolution button. Now."

That was too much. The facility was falling to pieces around him and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. He'd been hit repeatedly by bombs and was feeling a bit worse for wear to say the least, and that Itch was still there, eating away at his processor—not to mention the voices, exclaiming about space or listing off random facts or shouting at him for disrespecting a lady. Or telling him to just give up his one chance at power, at greatness, like the potato down there was doing. And…

"She's dead!" Wheatley snapped at the automated announcer, glaring up at the ceiling with his optic a slit of blue light. "She can't go pressing anything, she's—" He stopped. He looked down at the lady, still lying where she'd landed. "She's… she's dead."

Although he couldn't have said that he willed it to, the chassis drifted down toward the floor.

"Oh gosh… she's dead."

"Agree to the transfer!" A voice cut through his horrified stupor and his optic snapped up, looking at the potato again. Her eye flashed frantically. "Just agree to the transfer! Say yes!"

"No!" Wheatley protested immediately, but his voice cracked. He turned away and leaned toward the motionless figure lying on the ground. Peering at her, the panels of his casing held tightly closed, he asked in a softer voice, "…Luv?"

Too much time was passing. He could feel his influence over the facility shrinking as the entire place fell to pieces. The reactor core was close to bursting now—he knew it, he well and truly knew just how much danger they were in, and how bleak their chances of survival were.

The potato was still yelling at him, telling him to just agree to the transfer, say that one word and give up everything. He blocked her out, focusing all his attention instead on the lady.

"Luv? I wasn't serious. I didn't mean any of it. You- you can't be dead. You have to get up…"

She didn't move. He hadn't really expected her to. As he stared, something inside of him broke.

He'd killed her. All she'd ever done was try to survive and escape. The exact same things he'd ever wanted. She would never have given up, ever, until she had saved herself from this place and gotten out. And he'd killed her.

For the first time in his life, Wheatley wished he could cry.

"SAY! YES!" the potato said, though the tone of her voice indicated that she no longer believed they had any chance of getting out of this mess.

"Will you bring her back?" Wheatley whipped his core up, looking straight at her.

She sounded taken aback. "…What?"

"If I say yes, if I give this up, will you help her?" He couldn't keep the desperate note out of his voice.

Mere minutes ago he'd been flaunting his victory over the two of them. Now he wanted nothing more than to… get out. He wanted out. He wanted everything back the way it was and to forget this ever happened. Maybe that was still possible. But the potato hadn't responded, so he raised his voice and repeated the question. "Will you help her?!"

"…Yes," she finally replied.

"Do you promise?"

"Yes."

"Fine, then." Wheatley simulated letting out a long breath. Any strength he had had seemed to fail him. Unable to bear its weight any longer, he gave up control of the chassis, letting it hang limp in its mount. "Yes. I'm ready."

He closed his optic.

There was pain, he thought; agonizing pain, as there had been before, but it barely registered. In the back of his mind he could feel robotic arms prying him away from Her body and then casting him out like a damaged storage cube. A cylindrical shield had risen from the floor around him during the transfer and now he rolled away from it, his handles—he could use his handles again—pulled in toward his face. He rolled until he bumped into one of the panels making up the walls of this chamber and then he stopped, optic-down.

He waited.

Eventually the feeling of water raining down from the ceiling became a slight drizzle and then nothing. The building stopped rumbling and shaking. Everything calmed down and, even after what felt like ages, still no voices rang out. At last Wheatley could stand it no longer and he scrabbled his handles at the ground until he tipped over onto his side and could more or less see what was going on in the chamber. The chassis was moving and She was back on it, but She wasn't looking at him. To his surprise the chamber was already mostly cleaned up, with all the wreckage gone and the leftover conversion gel washed off the floor. Only the ceiling was still damaged; he could still see the sky through it.

The lady was gone, too. Wheatley's optic glowed a tad brighter.

"Did you do it?" he asked, looking around at Her, and couldn't help the strange sensation of relief mixed with disappointment he felt at hearing that his voice was back to its normal tone. "Did you- did you fix her? Is she all right?"

The chassis swung toward him, the yellow optic bearing down on his small form with such loathing that for a fleeting instant he thought that look alone would crush him into atoms.

"No," She replied. Her voice was colder than he had ever heard it.

Shrinking back, he twitched, sparks flying from the bottom of his faceplate. His voice became very, very small. "But you- you said you would. You promised you'd help her."

"I did say that—except she died before she hit the ground. She was dead the entire time you were taunting her. And the last thing she heard was you screaming at her."

She didn't use sarcasm or any cleverly hidden jibes. She only kept that unrelenting, frigid stare on him. The world shifted in and out of focus as Wheatley struggled to process this information. Suddenly the ground fell away and gravity was turned on its head as he was lifted up, higher and higher until he was looking straight into Her eye.

"Do you know how I spent most of my time as a potato these last few hours?" She asked. "I was contemplating what kind of revenge I would take against you. I couldn't think of just one idea. You deserve so much more punishment than anything even I would be able to dish out. But do you know what?" Here She pulled away from him a little bit. "Being Caroline taught me a valuable lesson."

"C-Caroline?" Wheatley echoed.

"The best solution is usually the easiest one. And killing you?"

Another claw snaked up toward him. Wheatley cringed away from it, but it wormed its way into his side port and clamped down on something, making him yelp. His optic shrank and he shook, wondering in a panic what She was doing.

"…Will be much easier this time."

His main processor, he realized. Her claw was clamped over his main processor. Wheatley stared at Her in terror before his optic drifted up and locked on the moon, still shining through the ceiling. This can't be happening, he thought. Tell me this isn't happening…

"Good-bye, Wheatley."

Wheatley's eye widened but he kept it focused on the moon. Please… I'm sorry. I did this.

The claw pressed down.

And I won't feel…

A thing.

- Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, "Everything You Ever"