notes: i beat portal 2 for the fifty millionth time tonight and have been consumed by nothing but chelley feels.
notes2: this is drabble. no rhyme or reason, but i like it. OTP feels. OTP feels everywhere.

Like an unfinished melody, Chell could do nothing but linger.

Her fingers traced the rust lined panels, made to grasp the tarnished handle, but hesitated, knew better. She would not be welcomed. And what was her purpose? There was nothing left for her there, nothing left in that crypt of a facility, an evergreen monument to science and all its terrors.

Nothing left except an AI who had (supposedly) deleted the last remnants of her humanity, leaving nothing except what Chell had first encountered during her very first trials through Aperture.

(She liked to think the robot had not deleted Caroline. As if she had been too proud, too attached.)

There was nothing left except for mechanical whirring, neon orange and electric blue, and endless reminders of him.

The pain in her chest was unbearable.

She recalled his desperate pleas, his promises. The sound of his laughter and his silly ideas. But with happiness and all its saccharine sweetness, she felt anger. She could remember his taunting, the abuse and the threats. She could remember the fear she felt, the spike plates, the bombs and the viciousness.

She remembered the monster.

(But she remembered him. The real Wheatley. Her friend. Her-

-partner.

The voice which woke her from a dreamless sleep and guided her.

The gentleness.

How could she forget?)

Chell rested her back against the wall of the shed.

She closed her eyes and began to think (a dangerous endeavor), wondering what Wheatley would have been like as a human.

As flesh, as a touchable, breathing creature. As a man.

How they could have met, somewhere, in some alternate reality, in a universe where up was down, right was left and love was something other than an illusive concept. They would see each other, standing on opposite sides of the street, and he would look at her, inquisitive and full of wonder, his blue eyes would shine, so iridescent, so breathtakingly spectacular, the perfect shade of ultramarine-

-and Chell would smile, fully, genuinely and easily.

She entertained the what ifs, the maybes and the could have beens until the stars shook off their velvet cloaks and twinkled brilliantly in the eternal darkness.

She stared at the sky until she swore she saw the shade of blue she was looking for.