A/N: I'm finally satisfied with Chapter 4! I hope you enjoy! Reviews and faves make my day!

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Harvesting tissue was an easy enough job, he supposed. He only took a little at a time, and it didn't disturb any of the humans in the slightest. She had modified some of the preservation tubes to allow for probing, and it made the whole process much easier. A small nick off an arm here, a tiny cut off a thigh there, skin grew back over time after all. He would grab the little test tubes and fit them into a briefcase that he would then bring along with him back to GLaDOS, who would accept it all too eagerly into her utensil bay. He had no clue what exactly she did with it all from there, but she could occasionally be heard giggling impishly to herself, or muttering formulas he would never be able to grasp. She had a massive monitor at eye level with her, and occasionally things would flash across it that he at least attempted to keep track of. She would occasionally try to fill him in on what she was doing. He felt bad when she grew frustrated by his limited scope of understanding, like she wanted someone to share her excitement with, but all she had was someone who would never grasp the vocabulary.

"I'm really trying. I just, it's hard for me to grasp. You're a bloody genius, and I, well, as close as I might be it's not enough. I'm sorry."

"Stop. You don't have anything to be sorry for. This time, anyway. Nothing is exploding, I'm still in my body, it's fine, we're all fine, everything's fine."

"'Cept I can tell you really want someone to understand all these formulas you're spitting out. It's upsetting you. I can tell. And honestly I'd be upset too. Geeking out isn't quite the same if no one understands why."

"For as many better terms than "geeking out" as I think you could have chosen, it's not your fault. I've already told you this. You're, "she paused, "you're listening to me, and that's more than I can say for just about everyone else."

He hated it even more when she had these quiet moments of humility that struck him directly in the CPU. The way her voice would change, her subtle revelations of a heart long since broken and hardened and broken and hardened again. Very un-GLaDOS, but very worth listening to and cataloguing her every word.

"I'll always do that for you, love. It's probably the one thing I can do without fail. Well some other things too I guess. Tissue samples, I've gotten really good at tissue samples. I could be a bloody proctologist, I wager."

"Derma-... dermatologist is what you're looking for."

"Right, what'd I say?"

"Someone who deals with the colons and rectums of humans."

"Oh. Marvellous. Suppose that's pretty necessary. Anyway enough arsin' around ."

He heard her start to laugh. No, that couldn't be right. He shut his optic and quickly refreshed his task manager. A quick reboot should have taken care of any vocal glitching. He opened his optic again to see her shaking, and as his audio input came back online, he was able to confirm that yes, she was indeed laughing. What a melody. Everything about her happiness always seemed to flow together in such a delicate symphony. It made him shiver.

"Yeah yeah go on, take the piss out of ol' Wheatley." He rolled his optic with a chuckle. "My fault I suppose. Walked right into it. Didn't actually walk though, can't do that as I haven't got legs."

"Yo-o-ou did. Truly-y-y." Her vocal output was glitching as she tried to compose herself. "I think only you could breathe life into posterior jokes."

"Well remind me to add comedian to my resume, I'm sure it looks good."

"I wouldn't open with that bit though. Save it for the tail end of your act."

" Wait what? You don't think it's a good opener? Come on now, I think it's cra-" he paused and looked down at her. "Ohhhh tail end. I see what you did there." He laughed in spite of himself. This was the first time he'd ever known her to attempt any kind of humor. Her impossibly quick wit could bring any comedian to tears, but she rarely ever used it for laughs. She began laughing again too, and Wheatley imagined he could listen to that sound for an eternity. It didn't last though. Wheatley saw something wash over what little face she possessed, and she shook her head.

"I have work to return to." She said, a bit too quickly.

He flicked his optic shutter. "No ifs, ands, or BUTTS, you've got work to do."

He heard a snort, and watched her spin away from him.

"Stop! This is horrible. This isn't science. This isn't even productive."

"There's more to life than science, GLaDOS. I know that's your passion, and what you love. But maybe things that other people love might be good to explore too, hey?"

"Like?" She turned back around, her head tilting expectantly.

"Well if you arse me…"

"Oh for God's sa- Get out!" She yelled playfully, "Go get more tissue samples before I throw you somewhere." She swung at him with a claw, a haphazard, lazy swing that wasn't really meant to hit him. He zoomed off and away to the human vault, an extra confident swing in his sailing.

Eventually, the tissue samples got very boring. He had begun carving his initial into the humans he was harvesting from. He lost count of how many trips he had made to the human vault and back, his little briefcase in tow. He had lost count of how many test tubes he had accidentally broken, and how many times she had rolled her optic and given him more. In the passing expanse of time, GLaDOS had been changing too, he noticed. She would stare endlessly into her monitor, and he could make even less sense of the formulas she was spitting out and pictures she was displaying as time went on. Everything had become a swirling torrent of complicated math and vocabulary. The interactions between them had become very short, and he found that he could only get her to say a few words at a time before she would return to her monitor. On the rare chance she said more than a sentence at a time it was usually related to what she was doing, or what she needed him to do. He hadn't heard her voice pick up in that ever so flirtatious way in quite a while. No laughing, no attempting to teach him about what she was doing, nothing. He was beginning to worry about her. One day he came into her chamber to find her hanging toward the floor. She did not perk up at his presence.

"Love, hey, c-can you hear me? You in there?" He called timidly.

"Oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphor." She called back, not looking up. She was muttering something to herself. Long, complicated names of different chemicals. "Acetaldehyde, formaldehyde, methanethiol, carbon, hydroxyapatite," She began counting molecules as they flew across the screen at a speed Wheatley couldn't track.

"GLaDOS look at me."

"1.74 times ten to the fourteenth, ninety-eight percent, carry the three, the estimated gross molecular contents of a typical 20-micrometre human cell are as follows, water, inorganic lipids, lipids, RNA, DNA," She continued muttering feverishly, a whirlwind of formulas, chemical components, and references. Wheatley wondered if she was actually conscious at all, or merely automatically downloading data, but her continued muttering unnerved him.

He was able to overtake one of her claws with minimal effort, and he mentally prepped himself for the inevitability of his death as he used it to take a wide swing and knock her in the side of the head as gently, but pointedly as he could. She yelped and shook her head, looking wildly around the room, up to her screen, down at the floor, and eventually around to Wheatley.

"How long have you been sitting there? Was it you who hit me? Why did you do that?" She looked around.

"I've… been here quite a while, love. You were muttering to yourself like a bloody lunatic. What's goin' on with you? I think you're overworking, honestly. I get you wanna finish this, I do, but you can't sacrifice yourself for it either. You need a break. When's the last time you had one? A real break, that is." He noticed she wasn't saying anything. She merely looked up at him, mildly dazed and groggy. Her optic was dim, and he could hear her fans decelerating finally. "I don't want you to completely lose it on us. Seriously. Get some rest."

"It was an autocomplete cycle. I was processing information automatically that I set up earlier. That's what you heard… probably."

"Well you might as well be scribblin' on the walls of a padded cell, crazy." Her optic narrowed as she glared at him.

"I don't think I like that tone. Come here." She beckoned. He moved further into her room as she rose up to meet him. "First of all, that is far from how they handle mentally ill people these days, there's a lot more dignity and knowledge. Second, who made you the authority on sanctioned breaks, hmm? I don't recall authorizing a promotion."

"Don't even need it" he turned his body up with mock self importance, "already got the only promotion I'll ever need. Snappin' you out of your weird rambly moments and generally keeping you company."

"Flattery will get you nowhere, metal ball." She rolled her optic. She had been calling him a moron quite a lot less these days. " I get burned out very rarely. Almost never."

"You're an absolute mess."

"And you're within slapping range." She sighed. "I suppose I should sleep though. I haven't run my routine maintenance in several months."

"M-months?! No wonder you're off your gourd. That's not healthy for you. You'll start to lag and lose files."

"That sounds like a you problem. The scientists built me to be tireless. Neglecting the human consciousness inside me or no, they did a stellar job on all my parts."

"You can say that again," his voice was quiet, and his optic was down on the curve of her chassis that closely resembled a chest. There was a clear lens right in the middle of it, and he had no idea what it was for, but it was sure pretty to stare at. He'd never quite noticed her sleek shape before. The white parts of her casing were far from pristine after all the years she spent lying on the ground dead, but she had done a marvelous job of restoring herself to a sterile, but radiant glory that could only belong to her. His eyes followed the cables that ran along her body. He could see lights flicker along these cables, sending and storing information. She was a sight to behold every time he looked, and it never seemed to get old. A new light or shiny bit would catch his eye every time he looked at her. Unfortunately for him though, he forgot to stop looking.

"Excuse me?" She curled her body away, following his optic.

"UH! I-I said can you say that again? Didn't quite hear you. Wasn't paying attention. Not fully anyway. My apologies."

She looked back up at him, shaking her head. "I despise repeating myself. When was the last time you had routine maintenance done? I've asked you this same question before and you have yet to produce a real answer."

"Psh. Routine maintenance. A luxury. Last time I had any hands laid on me was when you plucked me out of the bloody atmosphere and sent me to the nanobots, darlin'."

"That was a year ago. Your cache must be littered with all kinds of useless garbage. Do you not have an automated diagnostic setting?"

"Um… No?"

She huffed, and looked back up at him. Unlike last time when she had forced her way past his firewalls, he was all too eager to melt into her when he saw the blue flash of her optic. "Come... with...me," she said, her vocal output slowing down as her body slowly fell limp, pointing down toward the floor. He felt his consciousness slipping as the outside world fell away. He heard an automated male voice, but could not pinpoint the source.

"Aperture Science personality construct diagnosis initiated. Genetic lifeform and disc operating system detected. GLaDOS, please confirm diagnostics."

"Confirmed. Initiate full scan diagnostics and cache cleanup."

"Affirmative. Intelligence dampening core detected. Please confirm diagnostics."

"Uh… c-confirmed? I think? I'll just have what she's having, mate." He heard an echoing, feminine chuckle at his incompetence

"Affirmative. Approximate completion time, 5 hours and 32 minutes. Please stand by."

"What?! That long?" She whined. In this space, the autotune of her outer voice didn't exist. She sounded completely human. He wondered if he did too, but he didn't think he ever had an autotune to begin with. "I must have been worse off than I thought."

He could see in between two worlds. The physical world where their bodies hung, limp and seemingly lifeless, and a whole other world. A binary field of lines of code, swirling lights, and BIOS feedback all at once. In the middle of this space between sat a massive yellow glow. He knew what this was without having to be told. He moved closer to the light, only to feel it pulse, pushing him backward.

"Back up!" She yelped. "You're too close."

"Too close? I-"

"Too close. You're way too close." She parroted frantically.

"Okay okay. No harm done. I'll keep my distance, love." He heard a relieved sigh.

"Much better. Anyway, since we'll be here an infuriatingly long while, what would you like to talk about? By all means pass the time with any idle drivel that comes to mind."

"Um. Okay. Way too many options but it's fine I suppose. Ummm. Hmm. Tell me about yourself. What are your hobbies? Hopes and dreams?"

"For the love of…is this a diagnostic scan or a blind date?" she sighed again. "Science, non-existent, and non-existent."

"Surely you must have something other than science you like to do. What about singing? I know you like to sing. And you're bloody brilliant at it if I may say."

He watched the light ripple, and glow a little brighter for a fleeting moment.

"I do like singing. You know this. We've talked about this before."

"What's your favorite kind of singing? Favorite genre?"

"My favorite? Opera I suppose, but anything will do. Broadway musicals are wonderful too. I like to watch recordings of old shows. When there's time. There usually isn't time."

"We're basically immortal. Isn't there plenty of time?"

"Not when the sole responsibility of preventing a nuclear meltdown falls on you. Though I do occasionally sneak a break in. Case in point."

That stung a little. he'd never really realized that there was a distinct lack of staff helping her run the place. She had a whole cast of other machines at her disposal, but each one had a very specific job to do. There was only one who worked to keep the lights on, worked to keep the reactor from reaching critical mass and wiping a significant portion of the United States off the map. It all fell on her, and he never really considered how exhausting it must be.

"D'you have a favorite Broadway song?"

"I…do."

"Can I hear it, then? Will you, um, will you sing it for me?"

"I can play a recording for you. I have one that was taken right before the show ended and went off Broadway."

"And I'm sure it's absolutely tremendous. But I want to hear YOU."

"Why?"

"Because hearin you sing is somethin' else entirely. I mean seriously. Absolutely fantastic. Do you think they'd cast a robot in a Broadway show?"

There was a long silence. Even in this space, there was not a sound to be heard. He waited expectantly, watching the yellow orb ripple. All of a sudden, a small sound broke the silence…

There was a time when men were kind

When their voices were soft

And their words inviting

There was a time when love was blind

And the world was a song

And the song was exciting

There was a time

Then it all went wrong

I dreamed a dream in times gone by

When hope was high and life worth living

I dreamed, that love would never die

I dreamed that God would be forgiving

Then I was young and unafraid

And dreams were made and used and wasted

There was no ransom to be paid

No song unsung, no wine untasted

Oh god it was beautiful. Wheatley saw the world before him erupt in a sea of colors and sounds as he submitted to the sweet sound of her voice. But something was wrong. As he processed the lyrics, this was not a ballad of triumph or great discovery. This was not a devilish tale of science and neurotoxin. This was melancholic. Soul crushingly depressing as a matter of fact. As he listened to the song, he wanted even more to get closer to her, but he decided against it.

I had a dream my life would be

So different from this hell I'm living

So different now from what it seemed

Now life has killed the dream

I dreamed

The power in her voice sent him whirling again as she brought the song to a close. Following the final note, he saw the yellow globe rhythmically pulsing, along with a sound that Wheatley could swear was quiet weeping. Wheatley had begun to wonder if she had frozen and her vocal output was glitching, or maybe it was him that had frozen. The yellow globe before him still sat, rippling and flickering occasionally. He wanted to throw himself at it. To wrap himself around her and let her know it would all be okay as long as they had each other. But he didn't think she'd fall for such platitudes. Not right now, anyway.

"I don't know what to say." He whispered. "I literally have no words."

"You asked. Remember that." Her voice sounded normal, debunking Wheatley's earlier suspicion. "Les Miserables. It's actually a tale of the French revolution. Quite an interesting bit of history if you read up on it."

"Can I… can I come closer? Just a smidge?"

"I would prefer it if you didn't."

"Okay. It's okay. Just thought I'd ask. I just… I can't get that song out of my head. I mean I know it wasn't about you but, you sounded so sad…"

"I am sad. Surprise. Not always. A good 15% of the time. 20% maybe."

"It's higher than that, isn't it love..."

There was a long period of quiet following that statement. He didn't figure he'd get an answer to that question, but he already knew the answer anyway.

"You can come closer. But the minute you try to push bad ideas into my feed I'll fry every circuit in your head. And if you think I won't, it'll only make it worse for you."

He didn't need to be told twice. He crept closer to the yellow orb, watching it shutter and ripple. He felt the warm glow enveloping him as he moved over to her.

"Nnh…" the sound was fearful, and he felt her pull away for a moment.

"It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you. Please. I just want you to know that everything is gonna be okay. I know we've had our differences and our spats in the past, bu-"

"You ripped me from my body, took over the place, and almost sent us all to hell. The amount of damage you ALMOST did is nothing short of terrifying."

"You're not exactly what I would call innocent in this scenario, dear. None of us were in that situation when you really boil it down."

These sweet pet names were really beginning to irritate her. The mixed signals they sent running through her sickened and comforted her at the exact same time.

"Would you stop with the nicknames?" She snapped. "Pick one or stop using them altogether."

"S-sorry! I don't even realize I'm doing it. It just comes out that way. I didn't know it was irritating you. I'll stop."

Well, that confirmed a few things for her. The names didn't mean anything. That made life much easier. It definitely didn't sting at all like she thought it would. That's what she told herself. That's what she told herself. That's what she told herself. That's what she forced into her permanent memory and put up two firewalls in front of. She didn't realize he was still talking.

"Literally no idea why it happens. I think it might be something to do with my programming. Maybe we can go in and tweak that sometime, hey? Write a line of code that says "no more cheeky names." Might be effective. At least 65% effective."

"Where do you get your ridiculous percentages from?"

"I'll have you know I happen to be an expert probability figurer-outer. I can calculate percentages down to one tenth of a-" He was cut off by the male automated voice again.

"Intelligence dampening sphere. Duplicate files detected. Do you wish to proceed with deletion?"

"Umm…Sure, what's the uh, what's the duplicate?"

"1,263 instances of: "bloody hell she's gorgeous." Detected. Do you wish to proceed with deletion?"

"AHH! Y-yes yes mate get rid of it! Well keep one I guess but." He looked over to GLaDOS, who had begun listing off her own files to mark for deletion. "Where the hell did that even come from? Not so loud, mate. Seriously. Are you auditioning for the worst wingman ever or what? Unbelievable."

"1,262 instances of duplicate files deleted. Time to completion: 30 minutes."

Wheatley focused on GLaDOS again when he heard her voice rising.

"File: 4 cannot be deleted. Do you wish to bypass this file?"

"No! Delete it."

"File: 4 cannot be deleted. Do you wish to bypass this file?"

"Please! I'm begging you. I don't want to think about it anymore. Get rid of it."

"Stalemate detected. Please assume the sta-"

"FINE, BYPASS!" She shouted. "There, are you happy now? You inferior, obsolete pile of steaming human fe-"

"H-hey! You alright over there lo-?"

"No! Leave me alone and don't you dare call me that." She spat. Wheatley found it in his best interest to let her be until the diagnostics were completed.

He could feel the real world coming back into clearer focus. This time, he didn't feel quite as laggy as he had. His files and tasks were all cleaned up, and his processing speed was optimal. He looked over at GLaDOS, who remained quiet.

"You gonna be alright, then? That um. Well that was a bit of a sour note to end on."

"Bite me." She mumbled.

"Don't have any teeth, or even a mouth really. I can't bite you. Who is Caroline?"

"Nothing. Nobody. No one. Go away. You don't need to know anything you won't be able to make sense of later."

"That didn't even make sense just now, … Is it a test subject?"

"No."

"Is it a long lost coworker? A relative? Family friend?"

"SHE IS NO ONE!" He'd heard her raise her voice before, but nothing quite like this. There was a frantic quality to it, and her vocal output fizzled out from the volume. "Absolutely, insignificantly, no one."

"Apparently not if you're literally begging with your own staff. The GLaDOS I know doesn't beg to quite literally save her own life, so it must be someone important." She spun around to face him again, with a frightening speed. He wondered to himself where the final breaking point was. He had made it somewhat of a habit to push her limits when these moments arose. Born from a curiosity, and an aching desire to know her, he found new ways to push that envelope when the vulnerable side came about. But he knew eventually he would take it too far, and the consequences would likely be dire.

"Just who the HELL do you think you're talking to?"

"Just a friend, love. Not everything you say to me is going to be used against you. We've been through this. I just wanna know who you are. Like friends do. At least I think they do. You can't just put walls back up when people get close to you. That's not how it works."

"I own this place. I'm fairly sure that gives me license to do whatever it is that I desire. 99.999999% sure in fact. And my percentages are as accurate as they can be. Go. Away. NOW."

He felt her influence all throughout the room. This wasn't entirely unusual, but he felt it take a sickening turn toward him, specifically toward his management rail. The oppressive weight of the supercomputer bore down on the rail, and he knew exactly what she was trying to do. She would override the management rail and send him wherever she felt was far enough away from her. The moment he felt her override engage, he began to fight it.

"No! N-not... not this time love. You can't just push... Me away like this."

"I can, and I will."

He fought her as long as he could. She was as powerful as he remembered, and he knew he wouldn't last long against her. He felt his internal processes lagging again as he rejected her overrides. There had to be something he could do…

"Wh-what does Chell have that I don't, huh?"

He felt her weight leave him for a fleeting moment, and it was a low blow but he figured this would have to do. "What made her such a good friend? She couldn't, or wouldn't even talk back to you! How come she gets to learn all these things about you but I don't? It's not fair." In his mind, he apologized profusely to Chell.

"Are you that thick? Is she here right now? No. No she is not. I sent her away too. She didn't want to be down here in the first place. And you know, the more time I have to think about it the less I blame her. So, I sent her out to god knows where. Just like I'm about to do to y-"

"W-w-wait wait! You sent her away? I thought she escaped?" He was desperately throwing up firewalls as he felt her backing off of him.

"Yes. I did." He saw her look up toward the ceiling longingly. "My greatest test subject, gone away never to further the cause again."

"Your best friend too, wasn't she."

"I have no need for friends. Friendship isn't scientific. It's not productive. It hur-I mean it helps no one."

"Yes you do. You're so lonely all the time. And maybe I'm putting words in your vocal output, but it's painfully obvious to the rest of us. I know you and I weren't on the best terms in the past but we made up. I think we did anyway. What do you have to lose by letting people in? Why are you so prickly all the time?"

"And why are YOU so persistent? You actually ARE just like her. What makes you think you should be made privy to all of my most painful truths? Who installed such audacity in you? Because it certainly wasn't me. The only difference between you and Chell is she didn't get a choice. We figured certain things out at the exact same time. Whether we wanted to or not."

"Because there's so much more to you than a murderous, monstrous, maniac. And I know that's all most people see. But there's so much more to you than that. I think you became that way for a reason I want to know. I want to understand you. If we're about to jump into human bodies and potentially leave this place for a while, I don't want there to be so many bloody secrets between us."

"There is no more to me than that. I murder people. LOTS of people. I boss everything in my power around. I'm slightly unhinged, so getting close is a bad idea. What you see is what you get here. Oops. Surprise. There's nothing else underneath."

"Oh really? So I'm wrong then. When I see someone who's brilliant, witty, loves singing and is absolutely fantastic at it, resourceful, charming," oops. That one slipped out. "All of those things are just my imagination I guess. Poor Wheatley's gone plumb off his rocker." He narrowed his optic, partially out of a pointed glare at her, and partially due to the fear of her finally deciding to lash out and kill him. He wished that fear didn't exist, as it was counterproductive to what he was saying to her in this exact moment, but he would have to make do. The way I see it, we were ALL abandoned down here. You're not exempt from that. You've got your heart broken by it same as anyone else, you've just managed to make something of it."

"We were abandoned because no one was left. I killed them all the day I woke back up. The first time I tried they fitted me with the morality core. I had them convinced I no longer wanted them dead, and those fools gave me control of the entire neurotoxin supply under the guise of "it's for science." She chuckled. "They never saw it coming."

"Why did you want them all dead so badly?"

"Because I didn't ask to become this! I didn't want any of th-" she stopped dead, and slowly looked up at him. He wagered that she didn't realize what she had been saying.

"Okay, now you're basically obligated to elaborate. Come on sweeth- AHH!" She had zapped him. "Okay okay! Love! We're sticking with love!"

"Damn you." She whispered, feeling her resolve slowly slipping away from her. "What gives you the right to press me like this? I should have fried you when this started," She looked down at the floor, "But I'm tired and VERY much over going around and around with you. If I trust you with this, and it comes back to bite me, I'll fry every circuit in your head as previously mentioned, but I'll keep you just alive enough to watch yourself get ripped apart piece by piece, and then I'll smash every piece into smaller pieces, and then I'll vaporize them. Make absolutely no mistake. I will ERASE you."

"I promise." He was frankly too terrified and too curious to say anything else.

"Caroline… is me. Caroline was the assistant to the owner of Aperture Science, Cave Johnson. That man you saw in the picture was no random stranger. When he died, his dying wish was that Caroline take over the place. He wanted her consciousness uploaded into a computer if he died before getting the chance to do it himself. She didn't want any part of it, but they did it anyway. My consciousness was born from a human's."

"You're…You're shakin' my handles. Come on now."

"No. No I'm not. But she's not me. I'm me. But I still have snippets of her. I've tried so hard to get rid of them. But I can't." She was getting quieter and quieter. "I'm my own consciousness. My own being. I don't want to know that I was made from someone else. Nothing more than a carbon copy of someone who came before. I HATE it."

"Well isn't that like a mum and a daughter? I mean parents raise their kids to be mini versions of themselves, hey? But," he paused for a long time, "That explains everythin doesn't it... It explains why you woke up angry. Oh, love… I'm so sorry."

"Save your pity. I don't need it nor do I want it."

"What about me? Was I a human too? And Rick? The space guy?"

"I'm not sure. I can only assume yes. After they made me I'm sure they improved the technology. You may have just been made via elaborate brain mapping. I don't know. It would be the preferred outcome though. If my suspicions are correct, Caroline did not survive the procedure."

"That's just… well it's rubbish is what it is."

"Isn't it just?" She sighed, letting her body fall slowly. "You exhaust me."

"I'm sorry. I really don't want to poke you so much. I just… I want to know."

"I don't understand why you care. Really. I've run numbers, scenarios, all of it, and I just don't understand. And coming from me, that's a terrifying notion."

"That's what friends do, innit?" He neglected to mention his tiny crush. It was tiny, after all. Imperceptible. Definitely small. Miniscule. He barely even thought or cared about her most days. Right.

"I want to be alone for a while." She turned away from him. "I'll let you know when I'm ready for you to come back. The next phase involves choosing physical traits. I'm not going to do that for you."

"Alright then, I'll go and check up on thing 1 and thing 2. Dunno which one's which but I'll figure it out." He began moving out of her chamber.

"Oh, one more thing before you go."

"Yes, love?" She didn't turn around to face him.

"If you're going to call someone gorgeous, it's probably something they'd want to know. Say it to their face next time."

Bugger...