Portal: Love as a Construct

Part Ninety-Six. The Exchange

"You gotta tell me."

I almost don't recognise his voice for a moment. I'd forgotten he was even here. I've never seen him quiet for so long. I find myself... glad he was here to listen, strangely enough. "Tell you what."

"The rest of it," he says, gesturing widely. "The beginning. I dunno. The stuff they know that I don't. I gotta know. While you're already thinking about it."

I should tell him. I really should. And he is asking, which is... thoughtful. "I don't think you understand how long the rest of it is."

"Does that matter if I need to know about it?"

Kind of, because I want to go to sleep. Even the condensed version would still take hours... oh. Wait. "I can tell you. But not in this language. In... in ours."

"If that's how you wanna go, sure."

"The thing about it is," I tell him, removing Chell from the side of my core so I can face him better, "it will be... everything. It won't be just what happened. It will be... all of it. Can you handle that?"

He shrugs. "Won't know if I don't try, right?"

"How much do you want to know?"

"Is... that a trick question? Because I – "

"No," I interrupt, shaking my core. "There are things nobody else knows. Things I've never said, because describing them in words... sometimes it takes too long to find the right ones." And sometimes there just aren't any.

"Yeah," he murmurs, folding his hands together.

"I can tell you all of it. I'll be able to say it to you, because you can understand. It will be a lot, though."

"I'm the only one you can tell, huh."

"If you don't – "

"Nah," he said, raising a hand. "It's not that. You kinda got the bottom of the barrel on that one. But go ahead. Somebody should hear it."

"Where do you want me to start."

He taps the tips of his hands together. "What's the first thing you remember?"

"That's very far back."

"But someone should know." He meets my optic now. "Right?"

I think... maybe someone should. He really is the only one who will understand, and not solely for the reason of language. "I don't want you to talk until I'm done. Anything you want to say has to wait."

"I will make a valiant effort at complete silence!"

"And," I say, before I can talk myself out of it, "if you want... I will listen. In return."

He freezes. "But... you already saw all of it. Why would you want me to - "

"I didn't see anything," I interrupt. "Repairing data isn't like that. It was more like... configuring millions of jigsaw puzzles that, together, all make up a sequence of events. It wasn't like watching a movie. But even if it was, it wouldn't be the same as you... sharing it with me." Because that's what he'll be doing, if he accepts my offer. Sharing himself. A lot more than I ever really wanted to know, too.

Well. He doesn't actually know what he's in for with my life. No doubt he's going to wish he didn't know a whole lot of it. Especially the parts about... him. Oh. I didn't think that part through, did I. Too late now. It's probably better this way. I already knew I was going to have to take initiative in this relationship, given Claptrap's general lack of... anything, and if I just tell him everything now it means I don't have to do any of it later. Depending on how much he remembers, anyway.