Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There’s something about Rodimus that keeps drawing Smokescreen’s eye.

It’s not his flashy red and gold paint. It’s not the way he can shoot flames out of his vents and burn his enemies to a crisp, although Smokescreen can admit he’s intensely jealous of such a powerful outlier ability. It’s not even how cool he is, keeping his logic unit functioning properly even in a situation as ridiculous as ‘falling into an alternate dimension and almost flattening Megatron into a beryllium pancake.’ And it had been really cool, seeing Rodimus assess the situation in the cycle of an optic and immediately start lighting the nearby Decepticons on fire, while introducing himself to a politely bewildered Optimus at the same time.

Actually, maybe Smokescreen is a little envious of that last one too. Remembering his own disastrous first impression back when he’d crash-landed on Earth makes him cringe.

“—Smokescreen? Smokescreen, watch out!”

Smokescreen jerks hard, stomping on his brakes and fishtailing off the road, but he’s not fast enough to avoid slamming into the mountainous ridge curving beside the highway. His right doors crumple on impact, metal screeching hard as it’s dragged between his frame and the unforgiving rock. Jagged pebbles skitter down the cliffside, pelting his frame like Earth-style bullets, and there’s a distinct thunk on his roof that Smokescreen suspects is a tree falling on top of him.

“Ow,” he mumbles.

As he transforms back into root mode, throwing the tree aside and cringing when he sees the damage done to his plating, Rodimus speeds over to him, hitting his brakes and flipping into his own root mode in a move so smooth and elegant that Smokescreen can’t help staring. “What happened? It looked like you zoned out completely during that last turn.”

Smokescreen’s gaze lingers on the attractive curves and angles of Rodimus’ frame, before he in-vents sharply and focuses on picking out small bits of gravel lodged in the gaps of his armour. “Oh, that? Yeah, I was—uh, distracted. Sorry. Didn’t hear your warning until it was too late.”

Rodimus waves off his apology. “I’m just glad you’re okay. That could’ve been a nasty crash.” He glances over Smokescreen’s frame, and Smokescreen is gratified to see his sympathetic flinch at the damage. “You are okay, right? If I bring you back to base needing major repairs, I think your universe’s Ratchet and my universe’s Ratchet will team up to kill me.”

The image of their uncannily similar Ratchets yelling unison materializes in Smokescreen’s imagination matrix, and he snorts. “Don’t worry, you’re safe from the Ratchets today. I’ve survived worse collisions.” He stretches out his arms, wincing as the rotor cuff grinds inside his shoulder and pops back into alignment. “Think it’s my pride that took the biggest beating.”

Rodimus’ searching gaze meets his own, but he must sense that Smokescreen is telling the truth because he relaxes back on his heels, spoiler lowering. “Well, that’s good. That’s great! In that case…” A teasing grin rises to his mouth. “That was seriously embarrassing, man. What was so distracting that it made you crash right into the giant mountain? The sight of my taillights so far ahead of you?”

Post-race banter is something Smokescreen is intimately familiar with after solar cycles of racing with Bumblebee and Knock Out, and he’s become pretty good at parrying their taunts with his own equally witty words, if he does say so himself. But for some reason, under the heat of Rodimus’ bright blue optics and arresting focus, every coherent thought vacates Smokescreen’s processor and leaves him tripping over his glossa like a newbuild.

“I wasn’t—! Well, okay, technically I was distracted by you, but it didn’t have anything to do with the race. I was just thinking about you.” Smokescreen pauses, replays those words in his processor, and immediately wishes he could melt through the ground. “I mean—not like that, I was thinking about, uh, other stuff. Related to you.”

Rodimus stares at him, seemingly taken aback.

“Wow,” he says. “I was joking about me distracting you, but. You’re serious.”

“Right,” announces Smokescreen, flicking away the last rock chunk from his gears and spinning around. “I’m going to leave before I do something stupid, and by ‘something stupid,’ I mean ‘keep letting myself talk,’ so—”

“No, Smokescreen, wait!” A servo lands on Smokescreen’s shoulder, effectively anchoring him in place. “I didn’t say that to be mean, I swear. It’s cool if there’s something you want to talk about with me. I won’t make fun of you.”

Smokescreen glances over his shoulder to look at Rodimus, the bot whom he’s overheard make fun of every single one of his crew members at least once since their arrival in this universe. “You sure about that?”

Rodimus places his other servo over his spark. “As sure as Magnus when he’s correcting a grammatical error in my reports.”

Smokescreen hasn’t met the Lost Light’s Ultra Magnus yet, but from that statement he can guess that he’s as equally law-abiding as his universe’s Ultra Magnus. Even if Rodimus’ words made zero sense to him, though, something about the solemn intensity in his expression would be enough to convince Smokescreen not to walk away.

Honestly? He doesn’t really want to leave, anyway. No one knows how long Rodimus and the rest of the Lost Light crew will be stuck in their universe. The bot called Perceptor had said something about breaking one of their quantum engines, which was all Smokescreen absorbed before tuning out the rest of his lecture, but he’s pretty sure the question is ‘when’ the ship will be fixed, not ‘if.’ Soon, all of them will return to their own universe, including Rodimus. Their time together is limited.

Smokescreen ex-vents and turns back around. The late evening sun slants through the swaying deciduous trees, casting shifting patterns of dappled light over Rodimus’ vivid plating. Rodimus gives him a soft, expectant smile.

“There is something I wanna ask you,” says Smokescreen.

“Yeah? Shoot.”

Smokescreen shifts on his pedes, considering, and then blurts out, “Why does everyone respect you?”

Rodimus’ smile freezes on his face. “Um. What?”

“I don’t get it!” Now that Smokescreen’s opening question is out, the rest of his words come spilling free like a dam breaking under a flood. “All the bots under your command get annoyed by half the things you say, and the other half is ignored because they don’t care about whatever you’re talking about. And I get that, because sometimes that’s how the rest of my team treats me, and so I thought you were…like me.”

When he saw Rodimus drop out of the sky and enthusiastically join the rest of Team Prime in fighting the Decepticons without a moment’s hesitation, Smokescreen had thought Rodimus was like him: someone who wanted to be a hero. Someone who desperately wanted to achieve something worthwhile in their life. But then Rodimus started yelling orders to the rest of the bots falling through the portal after him, and Smokescreen realized that no, Rodimus was already a hero, just like Optimus Prime.

And then all those other bots started yelling about how that portal was created, bickering about whose fault it was, criticizing Rodimus’ plans, and causing so much mayhem that Smokescreen suspects Megatron ordered the Decepticons to retreat more out of sheer irritation than being suddenly outnumbered. After witnessing Rodimus’ frantic attempts to get his crew under control, it had seemed obvious to Smokescreen that just because the guy was the Lost Light’s captain and a seriously capable warrior, it didn’t mean all the bots with him respected him.

At least, that’s what Smokescreen thought at the time.

“You’re not like me at all,” says Smokescreen, gesturing at Rodimus’ perfectly pristine plating. “The rest of the Lost Light might act like they can’t stand you sometimes, but it’s not because they don't like you. They’re so familiar with you because they’re really, genuinely fond of you. They trust you. They’ll follow you anywhere you go. You’re not just their captain—you’re their friend.”

It’s a stark contrast to Optimus, who wields his quiet, noble authority like an invisible wall he’s built between him and the rest of the team. Smokescreen always thought that was how an ideal leader was meant to act, and seeing Rodimus cartwheel around the base, annoy half of Team Prime, and throw tantrums in comparison makes him feel like there’s a glitch scrambling basic computations in his processor.

Smokescreen absently picks at the Elite Guard insignia on his shoulder. “I guess what I’m really trying to ask is: can you tell me how you got your whole crew to value you as their leader?”

There’s a long, long pause. Eventually, Rodimus lets out a little huff, rubbing at his forehelm, but the too-wide smile on his face has softened. “Well. That’s not what I was expecting. I almost forgot how young you are.”

Smokescreen bristles. “Hey, I graduated from the Elite Guard. I’m not a sparkling!”

“Yeah, I know.” Rodimus’ voice isn't coming off as patronizing, so Smokescreen forces the irritation in his plating back down. “I’ve seen you fight. You’ve got some good moves. I’m sure you’ll be a great warrior one day.”

“Arcee told me something similar.” Smokescreen kicks at one of the rocks he’d tossed aside and watches it bounce across the road, stopping just before it falls over the edge. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the compliment, but if I was really destined for something great, shouldn’t it have happened by now?”

“What’s the rush?” Rodimus leans back against the cliffside. “It’s not like you need to take down all the Decepticons on your own. You’ve got a solid team at your back.”

“Yeah, but—” Smokescreen throws his hands in the air. “To them, I’m just the rookie. The one who’s always making dumb mistakes. Not someone who’s hero material.”

Rodimus gives him a considering look, optics narrowed against the glare of the sun, before crossing his arms and staring out over the quiet highway.

“I’m serious when I say there’s no rush,” says Rodimus. “Us Cybertronians live ridiculously long lives, especially when we’re not killing each other, and you never know if you’re going to achieve your goals in a hundred years or in a hundred thousand years. There’s plenty of time for your new team to get to know you better and see your potential as both a fighter and leader.” His expression turns distant, wistful. “You should’ve seen my crew back when we first set off on our journey. Most of them hated me.”

Smokescreen cycles his optics. “But you’re incredible,” he says without thinking, and instantly flushes so hard he can feel the circuits in his face warming.

“Thanks for the ego boost,” says Rodimus, sounding amused, “but even I can admit that I wasn’t always the nicest person to be around. I made mistakes. I screwed up a lot. I dragged everyone with me on a quest to find the Knights of Cybertron, because I was convinced that was my great destiny I needed to fulfill.” He looks back at Smokescreen. “So I get it. Take it from someone who’s been in the same role as you: being a captain, or commander, or even a future Prime, isn’t about forcing yourself into the role of what you think a good leader should be.”

“Yeah, you’ll never be the next Optimus Prime,” continues Rodimus. “Neither of us are ever going to be the next Optimus Prime. Who cares? You’re good enough as you are. No matter how many times you screw up, and people hate you for it, you have to stand back up and keep going. In my opinion, that’s how you inspire the right bots to follow you. That’s what makes you a worthy leader.”

The sky above is lit up in a brilliant wash of pink and orange from the setting sun, painting the crest of Rodimus’ helm a shining, fiery red—and for a moment, with perfect, stunning clarity, Smokescreen understands why the bots of the Lost Light are so willing to go wherever Rodimus takes them.

Slowly, Smokescreen lets his shoulders drop. “Still wish I could get signs from Primus or something to tell me I’m on the right track to achieving my destiny.”

“If I always knew the right thing to do, Brainstorm wouldn’t have given me a taser that shocks me whenever I’m about to mess up again.” Smokescreen’s shock must show on his face, because Rodimus adds, “I don’t have it anymore. I threw it out the airlock. But…” A flash of mischief dances through his optics. “Maybe I’ll ask him to build some kind of multi-dimensional communicator. You know, in case you ever want advice from an almost-Prime to a future Prime about whether you’re on the right track.”

Smokescreen’s mouth falls open. “Really?”

“Weeeell,” says Rodimus, “I don’t really know for sure whether it’s possible, but I’d bet my arm that Perceptor and Brainstorm can put their heads together and do their usual magic to make it happen.”

“No, that’s not—” Smokescreen twists his digits together. “You want to keep in touch? With me?”

Rodimus blinks once, before his mouth curls up in a smirk. “Well, duh. I mean, you’re pretty incredible too.”

Smokescreen stares at him. Unless his logic unit is glitching horribly, Rodimus is flirting with him. He didn’t think Rodimus would be stupid enough to miss all the signs of Smokescreen acting like an idiot in front of him, of course, but—Rodimus is flirting back with him.

On impulse, Smokescreen steps forward, suddenly enough that Rodimus’ optics widen, and leans up to press a light kiss to the side of Rodimus’ helm. Rodimus goes completely still under his touch, and when Smokescreen leans back, there’s a dumbstruck look on his face that makes satisfaction and giddiness fizzle through Smokescreen’s fuel lines.

“Thanks, Rodimus,” he says quietly, before squaring his shoulders and arching his doorwings. “My universe’s Ratchet can probably help with building that communicator. I’ll ask him to lend a hand…if you can beat me back to base.”

Without further ado, he flips into his transformation and speeds away, leaving a trail of car exhaust in his wake. As he drives back into that fateful turn, Smokescreen angles his side view mirror in time to witness Rodimus touching the spot where he’d kissed him, and the sight pushes him to gun his engine harder.

Rodimus might have way more life experience than him, but Smokescreen isn’t going to let himself be outplayed in everything, and he’s definitely not going to lose their race this time.

Chapter Text

Ratchet’s day was going—well, not great, because having to perform an emergency surgery to remove a basketball from Misfire’s fuel tank due to him being stupid enough to swallow it on a dare was the opposite of great. But on the Lost Light scale of non-life-threatening to a Brainstorm-level emergency, his day was going fairly well.

And then Tailgate bursts into his medbay, not seeming to notice or care that Ratchet is standing over a powered-down Misfire’s open chassis with all his internals exposed, and cries, “I think Ultra Magnus has a head injury!”

Ratchet looks up, wiping at a fleck of energon spattered across his cheek. “What do you mean, you think? Does he have a head injury or not?”

“Well,” says Tailgate, wavering on his pedes, “no one actually saw him hit his head, and he’s not leaking from anywhere that we can see—”

“If you don’t know for sure that there’s something wrong with Magnus, go find another medic to bother,” snaps Ratchet, and returns to hunching over Misfire. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m busy.”

Tailgate inches forward and peers up at him, wringing his hands together. “No one saw anything happen to Magnus, but—he suddenly started hitting on Whirl!”

Ratchet’s hands freeze over Misfire’s internals.

Then he carefully sets down all his surgical tools and turns to Tailgate. “Where is he?”

***

The two of them hurry to Rewind’s habsuite. On the way there, Tailgate explains how he, Rewind, and Swerve had tried to rope Ultra Magnus, or more specifically, Minimus Ambus, into their regular “Minibot Nights,” but Minimus had kept insisting he wasn’t a minibot. So they created a new “Minibots and Friends Nights” to ease him into the idea, but then Chromedome, Cyclonus, Whirl, and a few others ended up joining too since they were also friends of minibots, and even more people came to check it out after word got around that Swerve was offering a discount on drinks since he was experimenting with new creations—

This is the part where Ratchet cuts Tailgate off and tells him to get to the point.

“Most of us were watching the movie, so we weren’t really paying attention to what was going on in the rest of the room,” says Tailgate, jogging to keep ahead of Ratchet’s longer strides. “But the last time I looked back, Minimus was just playing a card game with Rodimus and Brainstorm. They weren’t fighting or anything.” His shoulders rise in a confused shrug. “Whirl was watching the movie with us when Minimus suddenly left the card game to join our group, and he started saying…things. To Whirl.”

Ratchet is about to ask for clarification on what he means by ‘things,’ but then decides he really doesn't want to know.

“How did Whirl react?” he asks instead, because that he may actually need to know. Ratchet wouldn’t normally expect violence and rioting from a case of unexpected flirting, but in his experience, trying to predict Whirl’s reaction to any given situation is about as reliable as trying to repair a patient on an active battlefield without a functioning diagnostics program or a fully stocked medkit due to medical budget cuts.

“He…um. Well.” Tailgate stops in front of Rewind’s habsuite door. “I think it’ll be easier if you just see for yourself.”

Tailgate must’ve commed Rewind to let him know he and Ratchet arrived, because the door promptly slides open to reveal Rewind on the other side.

“Tailgate! Thank Primus you convinced Ratchet to come here,” says Rewind, his visor flashing with relief. “He’s getting worse.”

The ominous statement sends warning bells ringing through Ratchet’s processor. “I thought Minimus wasn’t showing any external signs of injury, despite his strange behaviour,” he says sharply.

“Er, I’m not talking about Minimus,” says Rewind. “It’s Whirl.”

Ratchet frowns. “When did Whirl get a head injury?”

“It’s not his head,” Rewind says glumly.

Frowning harder, Ratchet peers over the top of Rewind’s helm. The habsuite is, to put it kindly, a mess. Dozens of rust stick crumbs and empty engex cubes litter the floor, visible even in the dim lighting. A growing puddle of some mysterious liquid is staining the floor in the corner. There’s a huge cluster of bots in the centre of the room, though the cluster is being dispersed by insistent pushes from Cyclonus and Chromedome to clear some space.

Ratchet watches as the murmuring group slowly splits to either side of the room, unveiling Minimus stretching his arms upwards, holding the tip of Whirl’s claw as reverently as Optimus Prime holding the AllSpark. Whirl is bent over and holding his other claw over his own face, where it’s doing absolutely nothing to muffle the hoarse, static-filled wheezes spilling out from his vocalizer.

“It’s Whirl’s vocalizer,” explains Rewind. “He hasn’t stopped laughing since Minimus started hitting on him, and it’s beginning to affect his voice.”

Tailgate’s visor blinks. “But that was almost a joor ago! You’re telling me he’s been laughing the entire time?!”

Somehow, Ratchet already feels exhausted, and he wonders if it’s too late to pass on this problem to First Aid, return to the medbay to finish up Misfire’s surgery, and retire to his own habsuite for the night with a ‘Do Not Disturb’ message automatically sent to anyone who tries to comm him.

He heaves an ex-vent and pushes past Rewind, holding the medkit he’d brought in front of him like it’s a battering ram. “Medic coming through,” he snaps.

Millions of years of experience in making even the most hardened bots afraid of him has all the bots who weren’t already shoved aside scattering to clear a path for him. A few people leave the room, apparently bored, but most of them just retreat to the walls so they can keep gawking at the spectacle.

And ‘spectacle’ is, unfortunately, the right word for this disaster.

“I find it difficult to believe that no one has ever told you how stunning you are,” Ratchet has the horrible misfortune of overhearing Minimus telling Whirl as he approaches the two of them in the middle of the room.

Whirl is doubled over so far he’s in danger of falling, and his frame is shaking hard enough for Ratchet to hear his rotors rattling against his back. “Look,” Whirl manages to choke out, “I know that I’m the hottest piece of aft on this ship, but no one on this ship has good taste, so they’d all disagree with you. Including you, Mags. You’re only saying all this because you’re not in your right mind. Don’t get me wrong, though—it’s hilarious. I’m going to remember this forever.”

“You do have a very nice aft,” Minimus says gravely, and only his moral conscience stops Ratchet from spinning around and leaving the room. “And to me, it seems impossibly unlikely that no one else on this ship appreciates it. If you are telling the truth, then it must be because I have never seen you clearly before now.”

Whirl lets out a staticky snort. “Normally, trusting me to tell the truth is the last thing I’d advise anyone to do, unless you’re asking me about the fastest way to beat someone offline without killing them. Right now, though, I doubt you can even think straight long enough to absorb that bit of advice.” He tugs his claw out of Minimus’ grip and taps the top of his helm. “Whatever head injury you suffered must’ve been really bad. It’s even worse than our dear captain’s head on a normal day.”

“Hey!” comes a familiar, indignant voice from somewhere behind Ratchet.

Minimus doesn’t seem to hear or even notice Rodimus’ presence. “Then I don’t want to see as I did before,” he says, staring deeply into Whirl’s optic, which cycles back at him in bewildered amusement. “I don’t want my head to be fixed. I only wish to look upon your beautiful frame forever.”

“Too bad, because I was already summoned here to fix you,” growls Ratchet, barging his heavy frame in between them. Grabbing a medical-grade scanner from his kit, he lets the medkit fall to the ground and flicks it on, running a scan over Minimus’ frame.

“According to Whirl, my processor may be impaired,” says Minimus, and Ratchet notes that his glyphs are slightly slurred. On anyone else, it would barely be noticeable, but it’s very unusual to hear in Minimus’ voice. “If that is the case, I cannot give consent for medical treatment as per section twenty-six, sub-section fifty-seven, paragraph three of the Autobot Code.”

“Y’know, it’s cute that you still remember every word of the code even when there’s something obviously wrong with your head,” says Whirl, watching as the light from the scanner washes over Minimus, “but you should be more worried about your own health than whatever nonsense that’s running through your processor when you look at me.”

Minimus looks up at Whirl like he’s hung Luna One in the sky. “You think I’m cute?” he says, sounding oddly breathless for someone who doesn’t physically need to breathe.

The scanner beeps to indicate it’s finished, saving Ratchet from the risk of his audio receptors bleeding if he keeps having to listen to this conversation. He tunes them out and glances down at the screen to read through the diagnostics results, expecting to see either internal errors related to Minimus’ processor or hidden external injuries in his helm.

He pauses. Looks back up at Minimus. Looks down at the results again.

“Um,” says Tailgate, “is something wrong?”

Ratchet grips the scanner tightly and scowls. “The blasted thing must’ve malfunctioned. I need to run the scan again.”

He smacks the device a few times to refresh it, then initiates a new scan, holding it over Minimus. “Also,” he tells him, “as the CMO, I have the authority to approve any medical procedures if I deem it necessary and if I don’t believe you’re in any state to give consent. Which, considering you’ve been hitting on Whirl....”

“Is there a problem with me professing my attraction to Whirl?” asks Minimus. A shadow falls over his face, and he frowns up at Whirl with disappointment in his cloudy expression. “Is it because you’re already involved with someone?”

Whirl stares at him for a long moment. Then another hoarse laugh erupts from his throat and he doubles over again, cackling loud enough to drown out the muttering coming from the rest of the room.

Rewind pats Minimus on the shoulder. “It’s okay,” he says sympathetically, though Ratchet observes that he’s not sympathetic enough to turn off his red recording light. “He’s not laughing at you, he’s just being Whirl. And he’s not involved with anyone—”

“Actually,” interrupts Whirl, straightening, “I am.”

Everyone freezes. Even Ratchet’s attention is unwillingly caught, despite his attempt to focus as hard as he can on the medical scanner’s screen.

“You didn’t tell me that!” cries Tailgate. Betrayal ripples across his face. “Since when?”

Whirl clicks his claw by his side. “I didn’t tell anyone, so don’t look at me like that, Legs. And who cares since when?” He leers at Minimus. “Would that change your answer? If I tell you that I’m in a committed long-term relationship, will you fight the other bot for my affections? Threaten to kill them so you can take their place?”

Minimus rubs at his chin. “I have no plans to fight anyone,” he says, slow and thoughtful, “especially not this other bot you care deeply for. I would simply remind them of how lucky they are.”

Ratchet expects Whirl to burst into another laughing fit. Instead, Whirl cocks his helm to one side, regarding Minimus with an unreadable light in his single optic.

“Huh,” says Whirl. He hesitates, seemingly thrown off, then rallies himself with a quick flick of his rotors. “Well, of course they’re lucky!” He puffs out his chest. “Who wouldn’t desire me?”

As if drawn there by a magnet, Minimus’ gaze blatantly drops to Whirl’s chest.

If Minimus starts trying to grope Whirl’s guns right in front of Ratchet, everyone else in this room, and Primus himself, Ratchet is going to rip out his own optics and throw them at someone. Probably Rewind, if he doesn’t stop trying to duck under Ratchet’s left elbow for a better camera angle.

Thankfully, the scanner in his hand beeps again before Ratchet is forced to engage in self-mutilation, and he looks down at the results on the screen.

Identical to the first scan.

Well. That both clears everything up, since Ratchet is certain he now knows what the problem with Minimus is, and complicates everything, because he now knows what the problem with Minimus is.

“What does it say?” asks Tailgate, craning his neck to peek over Ratchet’s right arm.

Ratchet works his jaw, considers the best way to approach this, and then points at the doorway. “Everyone out!” he announces, projecting his best battlefield voice. “I need to speak with the patient. Alone. Without any of you nosy slaggers gawking at him.”

There’s a lot of annoyed grumbling, but Ratchet manages to glare everyone into leaving Rewind’s habsuite, including Rewind himself. As they all shuffle out in single file, whispering amongst each other and throwing curious glances back at Minimus, Ratchet reaches out to snag Whirl by the shoulder before he can join the rest of them.

“Not you,” says Ratchet.

Whirl’s optic curves in an upside-down crescent. “Gee, Ratchet. If you wanted to get me alone, you could’ve just said so.”

Ratchet waits until he’s sure everyone has left the room before answering. “Are you sure you want to say that right in front of your boyfriend?”

It’s very rare that anyone successfully catches Whirl off guard, and Ratchet savours the sight of Whirl stiffening instantly at the question, with his audial fins lowering and plating jumping up along his spinal strut.

“Boyfriend?” echoes Minimus. “Me?”

“You didn’t injure your head,” Ratchet tells him. “The only thing wrong with you is that you’re so drunk your charge levels are clocking past the maximum level on my scanner. I’m amazed you’re able to stand up without instantly getting knocked offline, but other than that, you’re fine. Make sure that you never consume whatever mystery concoction Swerve made for you ever again.”

Minimus’ optics take on a hopeful gleam as he looks at Whirl. “So it was me the whole time?” he asks, proving that he didn’t listen to a single word Ratchet said. Ratchet doesn’t know why he even bothered explaining. “I’m the lucky one, out of everyone who desires you?”

“Yeah,” Whirl says faintly, still looking like a spooked turbofox as he glances between Minimus and Ratchet. Heavy static laces his words, making it difficult to decipher what he’s saying. “But even I wouldn’t say it like that, so hearing it out loud from you is making me question my own sanity. And that’s saying a lot.”

“Stop talking!” Ratchet barks, spinning to face him. “You do have something wrong with you, and it's your obviously malfunctioning vocalizer! It’s only going to get worse if you don’t shut up!”

Whirl ignores his order. “I’m still curious, Doc,” he says, flexing his claws in what Ratchet assumes is supposed to be a threatening gesture. All he feels is tired. “How’d you jump to the ‘boyfriend’ assumption just from Mags being stupidly drunk?”

Ratchet presses his digits to his forehelm. “It’s a logical assumption,” he says. “Overcharged Cybertronians are usually stupidly honest, not the other way around, so I figured Minimus was genuinely flirting with you. He’s not the type to lie even when he’s not stupidly drunk. Then you brought up your mysterious long-term relationship, and you were surprised when Minimus didn’t react how you expected him to.” He shrugs. “I put the pieces together. And I figured that if you’re keeping your relationship a secret, you wouldn’t want me sharing the whole picture with everyone else.”

“I’m not—” Whirl’s frame seizes as he grabs for his throat, and a harsh cracking sound rings throughout the room as his vocalizer is knocked offline.

Rolling his optics, Ratchet approaches him, transforming his servo into a screwdriver and quickly popping open the access panel in Whirl’s throat. “That’s why I told you to stop talking,” he grumbles as he peers inside, magnifying his lens to search for Whirl’s vocalizer. He knows its approximate location thanks to the extensive frame scans he performed long ago on every bot aboard the Lost Light, including Whirl, but he’s never had to manually fix Whirl’s non-standard vocalizer before. A miracle, considering how often Whirl gets himself slagged into a crumpled mess.

Minimus bounces up beside him, startling Ratchet into almost dislodging several critical wires in Whirl’s neck. “Will he be alright?” he asks, poking his digits together. “I cannot bear the idea of us being separated so soon after discovering he is my boyfriend.”

“Oh, for the love of—” Ratchet reaches around Minimus’ head with his other hand and without ceremony, manually engages his FIM chip.

The cloudy haze over Minimus’ glassy optics clears. His entire frame jolts backwards once, twice before slumping forward. Minimus stumbles, but thankfully he regains his balance before he can topple face-first onto the dirty floor.

“Sorry for doing that so abruptly,” says Ratchet. He’s not really that sorry, not after everything he’s been forced to see and listen to since arriving here, but he’s pretty sure that’s the polite thing to say. Drift would be proud.

“It’s…” Minimus’s optics shutter a few times. “It’s alright. I assume that was the quickest way to restore me to normal.”

“It was,” confirms Ratchet, and he returns to treating Whirl.

As he locates the snapped wires inside Whirl’s vocalizer and starts soldering them back into place, Ratchet hears Minimus’ lights pedesteps come closer, though at least this time he has the common sense not to get in Ratchet’s way. Whirl’s helm jerks up to stare at Minimus, but Ratchet catches his optic and scowls hard to dissuade Whirl from even thinking about trying to speak while his servos are buried inside his throat.

“Whirl, I cannot remember everything I said while I was overcharged,” says Minimus. His voice is steady, completely unlike how he sounded just a few kliks ago, but Ratchet can detect the thread of uncertainty winding through his vocals. “However, I remember enough to know that my actions led to Ratchet accidentally learning about our relationship, and I cannot apologize enough for revealing your secret without your consent—”

Whirl makes a sudden, slashing motion in the air with his claw, and the movement makes Ratchet narrowly avoid burning the inside of Whirl’s intake with his soldering iron.

“Are you…trying to tell me there’s no need to apologize?” Minimus guesses. “I appreciate the sentiment, but I was the one whose loose glossa provided too many clues for him to pick up.”

Shaking his helm, Whirl gestures at the discarded engex cubes on the floor.

“It’s Swerve’s fault? He may have crafted those experimental drinks, but it was my choice to consume them when I am aware of my own low tolerance for high grade. My poor judgement is why Ratchet now knows we’re in a relationship, despite your wish for us to remain a secret—”

Whirl slices through thin air with his claw again, this time accompanied with a frustrated stomp of his pede against the floor.

There’s a pause. “I’m afraid I don’t know what that means.”

“Give me a fragging nanoklik and you two can stop playing charades,” mutters Ratchet. He sets the last wire into place, inspects his work, and closes Whirl’s access panel back up. “Okay. You can speak again, but carefully. Do not start yelling.”

Whirl taps his own access panel, a little gingerly, and clears his vocalizer with an electric cough. “Think you’re getting me mixed up with yourself, Doc. I’m not the one who’s always yelling.”

“I wouldn’t need to yell if you didn’t almost make me frag up your own emergency surgical procedure because you couldn’t wait five kliks to communicate with your—” Ratchet stops as he realizes that neither of them have actually confirmed whether he was right or not about their relationship. “Uh. Boyfriend? Is that correct?”

Whirl and Minimus exchange glances.

“Yes?” Minimus says tentatively. “We have been seeing each other in secret for some time.”

Ratchet arches an optical ridge. “Huh. Okay. You can date whoever you want, but…” He side-eyes Whirl. “As your friend, and your primary physician, I’m seriously questioning your taste.”

Whirl plants his servos on his hips. “That’s awfully rude to say when I’m standing right here. Do you judge all your friends’ berth partners like that?”

“No,” says Ratchet. “Only when it’s you.”

Minimus’ mouth presses into a thin line. “How Whirl and I began dating is a long story, Ratchet.” He pauses, and reluctantly adds, “I can schedule a meeting at a later date for us to discuss the details, if you really want to know.”

Ratchet hopes his alarm isn’t obvious on his face, or at the very least, that Minimus isn’t offended by it. “Er, no, that’s fine. Really. As long as you’re…happy, I don’t need to know the details of your secret relationship.”

Minimus mouths the word ‘happy,’ like he’s testing out his ability to speak it out loud. Evidently, he decides it’s not possible, because he simply says, “I am.”

“This is sparkwarming, really,” says Whirl, placing his servo over his own spark. “I’m touched that you two have a somewhat-functional friendship in spite of the mutual emotional constipation you’ve both got going on. But as I was trying to say to Mags, he’s the one who wanted to keep this whole thing hush-hush. I couldn’t care less who knows.”

Minimus stills. “Really?”

“Well, yeah.” Whirl busies himself with examining the points of his claws. “But I get it. I know ol’ Whirlybird isn’t the kind of mech you brag about being in a relationship with. Unless it’s a nemesis with benefits kind of thing. I’ve been told I’m great at that.”

Minimus is shaking his head before Whirl has even finished speaking. “That’s not…I have never wanted to be your nemesis, Whirl,” he says, lifting his chin and folding his servos behind his back. “Although everything I said to you while overcharged was extremely crass—and I apologize for that as well—none of it was a lie. I have come to care for you, far more than I expected when we first started seeing each other.”

Whirl’s optic widens.

So do Ratchet’s optics, but for an entirely different reason. This is far worse than when Minimus was under the influence of his nonexistent head injury, because at least there was the excuse of his processor being potentially damaged. This is Minimus—Minimus—voicing his genuine feelings to Whirl of all bots. Ratchet has never seen this side of Minimus before, and there’s a hot, prickling feeling crawling over his plating that’s telling him he’s intruding on something he shouldn’t be listening to.

Before Whirl can respond to Minimus’ confession, Ratchet drops to his knees, metal clanging loudly against the floor, and grabs his medkit. He shoves his scanner inside with more force than necessary, and shakes the whole kit once to let all his tools noisily clatter together.

Hopefully he didn’t accidentally leave anything breakable inside.

“Well,” grunts Ratchet, hauling himself back up. His knees are definitely going to regret that in the morning, but if he’s learned anything from the war, it’s that sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the greater good. “You two are obviously fine now, so I’ll just be on my way to finish Misfire’s surgery.” He tucks his medkit into his subspace. “And I won’t tell anyone about you two.”

“Thank you, Ratchet,” says Minimus. At some point, he’s started holding Whirl’s claw again. Ratchet tries not to think about that too much. “I appreciate your discretion.”

Whirl leans in, deep into Ratchet’s personal space. “Since you’re the first to know about us,” he says, voice pitched low, “you can also be the first bot on our list if we’re ever looking for a third interface partner—”

“Whirl!” Minimus interrupts with a hasty, mortified glance at Ratchet.

Ratchet takes that as his cue to finally, finally turn around and walk out.

And as he’s leaving, he makes a mental note to block both of their comm numbers for the foreseeable future.

Chapter Text

“ASTROTRAIN!”

Over the long, unfortunate astrocycles of their forced partnership, which eventually transformed into their slightly less forced but no less unfortunate relationship, Astrotrain has heard Dead End yell his designation in countless different ways. All of them range in between mild irritation and aggravated fury, and all of them are glorious.

But this particular inflection—this exact combination of sheer indignation and incandescent rage—may be Astrotrain’s new favourite.

He bends down, craning his neck to peer at Dead End and pasting on the giant grin he knows annoys him the most. “Something wrong, Dead End?”

Dead End glares at him, white optics blazing. “Let us out!”

Astrotrain raises his free servo and taps his digits against the bars. The metallic chimes resound across the mostly empty street, though Astrotrain catches a few double takes from passerby looking around for the source of the angry yells. “But today is my pick for date night.”

“Locking us in a cage,” hisses Dead End, “is not an appropriate date!”

“There are no rules for what is and isn’t a date,” says Astrotrain. He looks past Dead End. “Isn’t that right, Percy?”

Perceptor glances up from his datapad. Soon after Astrotrain had pushed him and Dead End inside the cage and locked them in, he’d taken a seat on the giant purple wheel and started reading, appearing completely unbothered by the situation and Dead End’s angry shouting. “You are correct. However, there are no established rules because generally, it’s assumed to be obvious what constitutes a date.”

“And this isn’t anywhere close to one,” bites out Dead End. “So let us out!”

Astrotrain lets out a thoughtful hum, holding the cage aloft until it’s at his optic level. As he stares at Dead End, smug grin widening, Dead End crosses his arms over his chest and doubles the intensity of his glare. Perceptor goes back to his reading.

Truthfully, Astrotrain hasn’t planned anything about this date beyond ‘lock Dead End and Perceptor inside, then walk around and show them off.’ That’s enough for him. Anything else that happens this afternoon, including the confused stares of the bots walking past them, is just a bonus. A delightful bonus, of course, but it doesn’t top the satisfying amusement burning through his fuel lines at the sight of Dead End’s slagged off expression.

“No,” decides Astrotrain. “It’s cute, seeing you two stuck inside like this. I’ll let you out when I feel like it.”

Predictably, Dead End does not agree with his assessment, and Astrotrain can audibly hear the sound of his dentae gnashing together. “I hate you. I hate you so much.”

In response, Astrotrain swings the cage, watching in amusement as Dead End loses his balance and topples off the pink ledge, banging his helm against the plastic tubes and landing flat on his back at the bottom of the cage.

Astrotrain isn’t actually sure what the cage’s intended purpose is. He’d just happened to pass by a window in Iacon with the cage in prominent display, and the garish colours had caught his optic. The lecture he’d received after smashing the window and stealing the cage had been a supreme waste of time, and it had taken astrocycles to reinforce the cage and ensure no bot would be able to break free, but seeing Dead End mutter something unintelligible but no doubt wonderfully rude as he picks himself up makes it all worth it.

Dead End steps right up to the bars, pressing his face to the gap to get as close to Astrotrain as he can. “I’m going to kill you,” he snarls. “It’s going to be slow, and it’s going to hurt.”

Astrotrain laughs at him. “How? You’re locked inside, remember?”

Seething, Dead End glances up at Perceptor, who managed to avoid tumbling to the same fate as him by clinging tightly to the wheel’s spokes as soon as Astrotrain started swinging the cage.

“You’re supposed to be smart,” Dead End says desperately. “Do you have any ideas on how to get out of here?”

“You can try blasting the bars,” says Perceptor, slowly rocking back and forth on the wheel. “However, it is far more likely you’ll end up accidentally hitting yourself with a ricocheted blaster bolt.”

“...Do you have any good ideas on how to get out of here?”

Steadying himself, Perceptor sets down his datapad and lowers his scope to examine their surroundings. Blue light sweeps over the cage, casting a blue tint over the various colourful accessories. Astrotrain cocks his head to one side, curious. If anyone can find a flaw in his perfect plan, it’d be Perceptor.

“Even if there is a way to escape from here without a high risk of self-injury,” Perceptor says finally, “I believe Astrotrain would simply catch you and put you right back inside. My conclusion is that we are indeed stuck in here until he releases us.”

“And there’s no rush on that,” Astrotrain gleefully confirms, and renewed anticipation flutters through every line of his coding. “We have the whole night ahead of us. Oh, we’re all going to have so much fun.”

Dead End groans and drops his head against the bars of the cage.

Chapter Text

It was supposed to be a simple mission.

According to the report submitted to Ultra Magnus, a large flock of birds has been roaming rural energon farms and stealing the farmers’ harvests, so the newly-formed township just outside of Iacon requested help in shooing the birds away. Bumblebee had immediately volunteered to take care of it. At the time, it sounded like a great opportunity to stretch his leg struts and get away from his mountains of paperwork for a little while. Smokescreen, obviously seeing the same vision as Bumblebee, offered to go with him, but Bumblebee declined. It was just a bunch of birds, after all. How hard could it be to round them all up and send them packing?

Really hard, it turns out, because whoever filed the request forgot to mention they weren’t dealing with the usual annoying but ultimately harmless Cybertronian birds.

Bright yellow laser bolts rain down on Bumblebee, cutting wide swathes through the expansive, dusty energon field as he ducks and rolls out of the way. He crouches behind an empty metal barrel and peeks out to fire his own shots, but he only spots one enemy going down before his barrel is blown up by a direct hit and he's forced to start running again.

“This is ridiculous,” he complains out loud. “Everyone knows all the DeathEagles were wiped out when Cybertron was destroyed!”

Unfortunately, the flock of DeathEagles shooting at him don't seem to care that they're supposed to be extinct. A bolt punches through the window of his doorwing and Bumblebee stumbles, cursing as tiny glass fragments litter the ground. He dismisses the subsequent error message flashing on his HUD and dives behind the abandoned farmstead. Lasers continue strafing overhead, peppering the wall he’s sheltering behind, but its reinforced steel seems to be tough enough to absorb the blasts. For now, at least.

Bumblebee twists to inspect his doorwing, wincing at the sight of the charred hole. Yeah, he’ll definitely need to call Ratchet to fix that later. Ratchet won’t be happy about having to travel back to Cybertron just to patch him up, but he’ll do it—even if he’ll complain the whole time about Bumblebee taking thoughtless risks yet again.

Thoughtless risk or not, he still successfully lured all the DeathEagles away from the non-abandoned farms. Now the only one in danger of getting their head shot off by an overgrown metal bird is himself.

He climbs to his pedes and cautiously pokes his head out over the top of the wall. Over two dozen blue, purple and green DeathEagles are circling the sky, optical sensors sweeping the area below. Only a few of them are actively shooting at Bumblebee’s hiding spot, but that’s still more than enough laserfire to keep him pinned down. Even if he could somehow escape without being vaporized in an instant by one of them, that would just mean the other twenty DeathEagles will spot his movements soon enough and he’ll get vaporized at a later instant instead.

Ducking a burst of laserfire that comes perilously close to clipping his helm, Bumblebee brings up his arm cannon and retaliates by blasting the DeathEagle. It lets out a horrible shriek as it catches fire and plummets out of the sky.

Right. One down, just twenty-three to go.

Bumblebee lets out a frustrated ex-vent. “Are you really going to make me pick you guys off one by one?” he calls out, dodging the suddenly high number of lasers firing in the direction of his voice. “Because I can and I will. Even if it takes a stupidly long time. If you’re at all interested in your species not going extinct for real, I suggest you stand down and—”

He cuts himself off at the now extremely familiar whine of a high-powered weapon charging up. Bumblebee spins around, and his targeting matrix locks onto the lone, unnoticed DeathEagle that had flown around behind him. A ball of glowing plasma is already gathering at the mouth of its cannon.

Oops.

Bumblebee swings his arms up and aims, but even as he’s powering up his own cannons he knows he’s not going to be able to shoot it down in time. With a pained wince, he digs his heels into the ground, braces for impact, and hopes Raf remembers he gets first pick of all of Bumblebee's possessions if he joins the AllSpark.

And then a ray of violet streaks in from out of nowhere and hits the DeathEagle dead-on. This time, it doesn’t even have time to scream—the bird promptly explodes in a cloud of metal feathers and burnt circuits.

Bumblebee jumps, peering into the forest beyond the farm’s backyard. There’s a tall figure with sharp finials and broad shoulders standing in the shadows of the crystal trees, their weapon lowering as they lock optics with Bumblebee.

For one ventless, spark-stopping moment, Bumblebee thinks it’s Optimus. The next moment, he chides himself for being an idiot because Optimus is dead, and deluding himself into believing otherwise isn’t going to bring him back. Then the moment after that, he thinks well, maybe it’s not that idiotic, because didn’t they all think Optimus was killed when the Decepticons destroyed their base on Earth, but he turned out to be alive? This is Optimus Prime. The hopeless, eternally naive part of Bumblebee still believes, even now, that Optimus is too wise, too strong, too good, to ever really die.

But the huge figure steps out of the trees, and Bumblebee sees their plating is grey and gold instead of red and navy, and the optics fixed on Bumblebee are burning crimson.

His spark drops to the pit of his fuel tank.

“Long time no see, little scout,” rasps Megatron. Most of his burnished silver plating is dull, no doubt because of his old age, but the gold remnants of Unicorn's possession still gleam in the fading sunlight. “I must say, I wasn't expecting to cross paths with you today.”

Bumblebee’s targeting matrix pings him with conflicting priority reports on whether he should be aiming at Megatron or the DeathEagles. After a beat of hesitation, he shifts until the wall is protecting him from the aerial lasers, then turns his arm cannons on Megatron. “What the frag are you doing here?”

Megatron chuckles, dark and cold, exactly like in Bumblebee's old nightmares. “Is that any way to speak to the one who just saved your spark?”

“I had everything under control,” lies Bumblebee.

“Ah, of course,” says Megatron, mocking. “Forgive me for forgetting the much-glorified Autobot strategy of trying to talk their opponents into surrendering by appealing to their better nature. Even if said opponents are DeathEagles, who do not possess the higher functions capable of such sympathies.”

Bumblebee’s plating bristles. “As if you didn’t used to talk Optimus’ audials off every time you two fought,” he snaps. “Or did that fact get wiped from your processor after I killed you?”

Megatron’s gaze sweeps over him. His expression is unreadable, but Bumblebee gets the feeling that he’s surprised him. Maybe he didn’t expect him to mention Optimus’ designation out loud. Maybe he still isn’t used to hearing Bumblebee’s real voice, eons after ripping out his voicebox. Or maybe he just doesn’t know how to act around the bot whom he killed, and then got killed by in return. Bumblebee can relate to that feeling.

Bumblebee turns around to stare up at the DeathEagles. Normally, putting his back to Megatron would be the stupidest idea imaginable, and he’d throttle himself for even considering it. But Megatron, for whatever reason, did save his life. Besides, right now, being offlined at Megatron’s hands actually sounds better than continuing this trainwreck of a conversation.

“If you only came here to make fun of me,” says Bumblebee, “then leave. I was doing just fine before you showed up.”

The silence that falls between them is broken only by the continued lasers striking the metal wall. Said wall is still the only thing standing between Bumblebee and certain doom, and if the ominous rattling sound coming from its foundation is any indication, the ‘certain doom’ part is going to happen way sooner than he’d like.

He grits his dentae. Thinking about the high likelihood of his impending death isn't going to help him get out of this alive. He needs a plan.

Bumblebee studies the flock, trying to observe the DeathEagles’ flight formations and common attack patterns. They aren’t coordinated, he realizes as he watches random DeathEagles swoop in and out to barrage the wall with lasers. They might have a leader keeping the flock together, but the leader either doesn’t have a tactical processor or isn’t interested enough in killing Bumblebee to employ strategies more advanced than ‘destroy anything that moves.’

So logically, his best chance of winning would be—

“A tag-team approach,” says Megatron, right next to his audial, and Bumblebee forcibly suppresses the instinctive activation of his defense protocols. Megatron’s claws tap against the wall, not seeing to care how close Bumblebee came to blowing his helm off. “One of us takes advantage of the DeathEagles’ lack of a unified assault by drawing all their fire. The other one comes in and brings down as many DeathEagles as possible, thereby attracting the attention of the rest of the flock. We continually switch roles of hunter and prey, and eliminate all the DeathEagles before their confusion wears off.”

“Uh, why are you still here?” demands Bumblebee. “And why are you trying to help me?”

Megatron’s optics are fixed on the DeathEagles, but his gaze is distant. “A very good question, scout. Trust me when I say it would have been much easier to allow that bird to disintegrate your spark and rid Cybertron of the one who once killed me. It would be much easier to leave now and allow you to face your own destruction at the hands—or wings, rather—of this flock.” A heavy puff of air exhales from his vents. “And yet, I find myself offering my assistance. I suspect the simple reason is that…it’s what Optimus would have wanted.”

Bumblebee’s vents catch. “You seriously expect me to believe that?”

Megatron laughs and spreads his arms wide. “Of course not. Considering my history, you would be a fool to blindly take me at my word. However, my word is all I have to offer. Will you accept my proposition? The choice to trust me or not is yours.”

Trust Megatron? As if. The last time the Autobots took a risk and teamed up with him, Megatron betrayed them the moment he got what he wanted. He’s tried to kill Bumblebee’s friends more times than he can count on both servos. He did succeed in killing Bumblebee, and would’ve destroyed all of humanity if Bumblebee hadn’t miraculously been revived to stab him through the spark.

But…again, Megatron also just saved Bumblebee’s life, as much as Bumblebee hates to admit it. And none of the Autobots know what Megatron’s been up to since he dissolved the Decepticons, but there hasn’t been any reports of major conflicts or rebellious uprisings, so Bumblebee thinks it’s safe to assume he hasn’t reverted to his evil warlord ways. Like everyone else, he was highly skeptical of Megatron’s sudden change of spark, but so far he’s done nothing to contradict his new ideals. He’s done nothing to disprove Optimus’ belief that even Megatron has the capacity to change.

It’s what Optimus would have wanted.

Frag.

This might be the biggest mistake Bumblebee’s about to make since Tyger Pax. He can already hear Ratchet’s voice in his processor, telling him off for trusting Megatron of all bots.

Too bad he’s never been all that good at following Ratchet’s orders, and it looks like he’s not about to start doing that now.

“Fine.” Bumblebee extends a hand. “A limited-time-only truce. If you make me regret this, I’m gonna kill you. For good this time.”

There’s a flicker of—something in Megatron’s optics, gone too fast for Bumblebee to read. Megatron’s scarred mouth splits in a bare approximation of a smile. “Very well. I look forward to this ‘limited-time’ partnership…Bumblebee.”

And he takes Bumblebee’s hand.

Chapter Text

In Sky-Byte’s opinion, one of the greatest benefits about the end of the war was the return of Cybertronian opera.

During his time on Earth, he’d deigned to attend a few human Earth operas, and…they weren’t horrible, he supposes, but they greatly paled in comparison to real opera performed on the majestic, twinkling stages of Cybertron. First of all, he often didn’t understand the trite, convoluted plots the humans came up with, although he did appreciate the wide range of genres they covered—and he may have shed a few coolant tears over ‘La bohème.’ Secondly, the typical songs in a classic Cybertronian opera piece were composed of notes that far exceeded a human’s vocal range, and Sky-Byte found the musical scores of Earth operas quite limiting as a result. He greatly missed seeing his diamond cube shatter in his grip and feeling like his audials were close to spitting out energon.

When the war broke out, most of Cybertron’s opera singers were either killed on the battlefield or fled the planet without joining either faction. Sky-Byte had despaired that he’d never hear such crystal-clear notes, behold such sublime splendor, stand atop the Cybertronian stage ever again.

“But here we are now!” Sky-Byte gestures around the reconstructed amphitheatre, with its shining gold columns, magnificently carved chandelier strung with thousands of dazzling lights, and grand stage polished so brightly that its mirror shine can be seen even from their high seats in the dress circle. “At last, opera makes its triumphant return to Cybertron! I was fortunate enough to snag a pair of tickets to this group’s first performance in over seventy million cycles.”

Jetfire gazes around the amphitheatre. A few bots are scattered in paired seats like theirs, but most of the theatre is empty. Somehow, the silence is deafeningly loud.

“Of course!” says Jetfire. “Very fortunate.”

Sky-Byte settles back in his seat, leaning back to marvel at the elegantly painted ceiling. “Many of the others—even my fellow former Decepticons, can you imagine?—do not appreciate the fine art of opera. They care only for dirtying their hands with violence and seeking out their next fight.”

“Well,” says Jetfire, “that’s an accurate description of you as well.”

Sky-Byte sniffs haughtily. “Hardly. The only fights I enjoy are my fights with you.”

It takes a strangely long time for Jetfire to respond. “Oh,” he says, his voice more faint than usual. “Sky-Byte, you should know that I, too—”

Sky-Byte cuts him off with a digit on his mouth and a fierce shushing sound as the lights begin to dim. “It’s starting!” he hisses, and fixes his gaze on the enormous red curtains slowly lifting to reveal the rest of the stage.

For the next several astrocycles, Sky-Byte is fully captivated by the performance onstage. He’d devoured every word of the show pamphlet beforehand, so he knows most of these singers have not stepped onto the opera stage in an absurdly long amount of time. But they must have kept up their practice all this time, because their vocalizers shine and enthrall the same way they did at the height of their careers.

It’s beautiful. It’s perfect. Sky-Byte has seen this opera numerous times, and perhaps he’s biased due to not having watched Cybertronian opera in so long, but he’s certain that this is the most sparkwrenching version of the show he’s ever seen. He wants to see how they pull off the conclusion. He wants the performance to never end.

The lights slowly fade back on at intermission, and Sky-Byte turns to Jetfire. “Well? What do you think so far…”

He trails off as he catches sight of Jetfire’s optics shuttered, a faint, steady rumbling sound emanating from his engine as he peacefully recharges.

Sky-Byte’s first instinct is to punch Jetfire in the face to wake him up, then demand to know how he could fall asleep during what may be the most incredible opera ever to grace the Cybertronian stage. Unfortunately, he then remembers he’s expressly forbidden from punching Jetfire, thanks to the specific clause both factions had written into the peace treaty concerning his and Jetfire’s rivalry.

He settles for growling deep in his vocalizer. “This is a new low, even for you,” he informs Jetfire.

Jetfire’s helm lolls sideways, tipping onto Sky-Byte’s shoulder, and he mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like Sky-Byte’s designation.

Sky-Byte lets out a huff, even as he adjusts his shoulder so Jetfire’s helm is resting on a less blocky, more comfortable position. Something deep is swelling inside him—the same strange sensation that had throbbed throughout his programming when he and Jetfire talked after the treaty was finalized and mutually agreed to stop trying to kill each other.

He’s unsure how they went from ‘no longer actively trying to murder each other’ to regularly inviting each other to hang out at various rebuilt spots around Cybertron together, but Sky-Byte isn’t complaining. Their outings have been…fun, surprisingly. When he gets past Jetfire’s irritatingly noble personality traits and incomprehensible dislike of haikus, he’s actually a fairly pleasant bot to be around.

Except when he falls into recharge during one of Sky-Byte’s favourite operas.

“Why did you even accept my invitation if you’re so uncouth that you can’t appreciate opera?” he grumbles.

“Hmm,” mumbles Jetfire, shifting to press his nasal ridge to Sky-Byte’s shoulder. Even so, his next words are stunningly clear. “Love you.”

Sky-Byte’s processor promptly crashes.

Instinctively, he jerks away, staring at Jetfire in shock. Jetfire’s helm slips off his shoulder and falls, crashing against the armrest between their seats.

“Ow!” cries Jetfire, abruptly waking up, and he bolts upright in his seat. With a scowl, he rubs at the fresh dent in the centre of his forehelm. “What did you do that for, you fiend?”

“What did I do?” screeches Sky-Byte. “You’re the one who just said that you…that you love me!”

Jetfire stares back at him, the last wisps of lingering recharge fading quickly from his optics.

“Oh,” he says faintly.

Sky-Byte was more than prepared to continue yelling at him, but at Jetfire’s ‘oh,’ he pauses. He can read Jetfire’s sudden embarrassment in the sudden upward cant of his wings and the way the corners of his mouth have become strained at the edges. However, it’s not the level of mortification he would have expected from someone confessing their love out of nowhere.

It’s almost like Jetfire isn’t all that surprised.

“Well,” says Jetfire. He coughs. “I did not expect to confess that so early on in our relationship, but since it seems I have—”

“What relationship?!”

It comes out more hysterical than Sky-Byte typically allows himself to sound, but he thinks he can forgive himself for this one instance, considering the circumstances.

Jetfire’s intake snaps shut. Out of the corner of his visual feed, Sky-Byte glimpses the few other theatre patrons craning their neck cables to look at them. If the thought weren’t patently ridiculous, he’d almost believe they seem more interested in his and Jetfire’s dramatics than the opera itself.

“Our romantic relationship?” Jetfire explains, as if that explains anything at all.

As his reality matrix struggles to compute with this brand new information, Sky-Byte considers the possibility that he somehow fell into a different universe with a very different Jetfire. He clears his vocalizer, trying to get his systems back under control. “Since when have we been in a romantic relationship?!”

Jetfire taps a digit against his chin. “Since the peace treaty was officially signed,” he muses, “so I believe it’s been just under a cycle?”

Since the peace treaty?

“You didn't ask me out during the peace treaty signing!” Sky-Byte leans closer, scanning Jetfire’s face for any indication that he’s playing a trick on him. “I would have remembered that!”

“I didn’t ask you out!” retorts Jetfire. “You did!”

“I—what?”

“You said you didn't want us to keep trying to kill each other! That we should move on and become something greater than enemies!”

Hmm. That does sound familiar, actually. Sky-Byte locates the file from his memory bank to confirm Jetfire’s claim and indeed, that is exactly what he told Jetfire, word-for-word.

“By ‘more than enemies,’” Sky-Byte says slowly, “I meant as friends.”

“Oh,” says Jetfire. “Oh!” The forced smile on his face becomes even more strained, pulling tight at the edges. “You, ah, you also held my hand while saying that, so I had assumed…”

Sky-Byte winces. Now that he’s watching his memory of that moment, he can see that he’d grabbed Jetfire’s hand in the heat of the moment, struck as he was by his own passionate words convincing Jetfire that they could set aside millions of cycles of enmity. He even remembers the comforting warmth of Jetfire’s palm pressed to his own. It isn’t difficult to understand how Jetfire could have misconstrued his intentions.

Not to mention all their subsequent outings. This whole time, Sky-Byte believed they’d been simply hanging out as friends, but Jetfire must have assumed those were all dates. Primus.

The turrets on Jetfire’s back twitch. “I apologize, Sky-Byte,” he says carefully. Too carefully. Sky-Byte has never heard Jetfire sound like this around him, and he doesn’t like it. “I didn’t mean to misinterpret your words, nor make you uncomfortable. I thought…” He trails off, his expression crumpling for a moment, before he seems to steel himself. “Never mind. I should go.”

When Jetfire had first sat down, it had taken him forever to cram his huge frame into the plush, ornate opera seat. Sky-Byte expected he’d unfold to his normal size when standing up from his chair, but that’s not what happens. Jetfire doesn’t look like he gets any bigger. He still looks…small.

Sky-Byte doesn’t like that either.

“Wait,” he says.

Jetfire’s wings stiffen, and he stops in his tracks.

“I never said it made me uncomfortable.” Sky-Byte chews on his lip, sharp dentae sinking into the metal hard enough to draw energon. “I…I also…”

Oh dear. He never stumbles over his glyphs like this. He’s never dropped his persona of the sophisticated, perfectly poised poet before meeting Jetfire.

Come to think of it, he never enjoyed fighting to kill before meeting Jetfire, either.

Something about Jetfire brings out the worst in him. Sky-Byte knows this. He’s lived with this knowledge for so long that he doesn’t know if he could ever peel away those parts of his personality matrix. He doesn’t know if he even wants to know who he’d be, if he never met Jetfire.

Sky-Byte draws in a deep in-vent, his logic and emotional subsystems clashing and weaving together like two operatic voices merging to create a mellifluous harmony, and falls back into his comfort zone.

“More than friend or foe,
Darkest hour, brightest light,
It was always you.”

Ringing silence greets Sky-Byte’s impromptu recital. Jetfire’s expression has gone from lost to completely blank. One of the other bots in the audience starts to clap, but they’re quickly shushed by the bot sitting next to them.

“I composed that just now,” says Sky-Byte, although he’s almost certain Jetfire could have guessed this fact himself. “What do you think?”

Jetfire’s optics go very wide. Sky-Byte laces his digits together behind his back and tries to ignore the nervous pulsing of his spark.

“You know I don’t really care for haikus,” says Jetfire.

The pulsing turns into a constricting sensation that wraps around Sky-Byte’s spark like a vice.

“I—”

“However,” continues Jetfire, a brilliant smile rising to his face, “I do believe I understand the meaning of this one.”

That’s when the speaker overhead announces that intermission is over, and the lights are turned back down again.

Which is fortunate, because Sky-Byte knows the other nosy theatre patrons were still watching them, and while he’s never cared before if he killed Jetfire in public, he much prefers that their first kiss is kept private.

Chapter Text

It happens in less than a nanoklik.

One moment, Deadlock is standing beside Optimus Prime as he’s standing on the stage before thousands of Cybertronians, delivering a speech that Deadlock is reluctantly paying attention to because he knows Optimus will derive joy from quizzing him on the speech’s contents later, and he’ll smile that awful, sickeningly sweet smile whenever Deadlock gets an answer right.

The next moment, there’s a bot breaking out from the front row and jumping over the security barriers, rushing towards Deadlock. Deadlock’s threat evaluation routines are unusually slow to react, and before he can do more than jolt and reach for his swords, his visual feed is blocked by Optimus jumping in to shove his own frame between Deadlock and the other bot.

There’s the sickening crunch of metal crumpling and giving way, and Optimus lets out a pained grunt.

It’s the sound of Optimus’ distress that finally kicks Deadlock’s processor into high gear. He hears the agonizing sound of Optimus’ hydraulics depressurizing as he staggers, but at the same time he spots Ratchet already running forwards, so he leaves him to catch Optimus, circling them both and leaping to tackle the would-be assassin before they can disappear back into the rippling, screaming crowd. The bot lets out a surprised oomph and thrashes under his weight, trying to buck him off, but it’s not difficult for Deadlock to pin down their flailing limbs while fishing a pair of stasis cuffs from his subspace.

Deadlock snaps the cuffs on, turning the bot over onto their back as he does so, and looks down at the Decepticon insignia on the bot’s chassis.

Okay. Considering they’d just tried to kill him, not Optimus, that unfortunately makes sense. He isn’t stupid enough to think all the Decepticons were happy to throw down their weapons and stop fighting the Autobots, and as the one who initiated the peace treaty on behalf of all the Decepticons and took on the role of Optimus Prime’s High Protector, Deadlock knows he’s got the biggest target on his back for any resentful ‘Cons to aim their weapons at.

He expected assassination attempts. He didn’t expect his glitchheaded Prime to get in the way when he barely carries any weapons in the current peacetime climate. In hindsight, maybe he should have. Primus knows how many times he witnessed, from the opposite side of the battlefield, Optimus nobly trying to sacrifice himself for a comrade or even some random nobody.

“Who are you?” hisses Deadlock.

The other bot tries to kick him, but Deadlock pushes more of his weight onto their legs, hard enough for the metal to buckle. The bot bites down on a curse and snarls at Deadlock. “Doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t know me.”

“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that.” Deadlock leans forward, watching the rapid flicker of the other bot’s optics as they desperately cycle to stay focused on him. “Trust me when I say I won’t forget you—your designation or your faceplates—for the rest of my functioning.”

“Is that supposed to scare me?”

“I may not know you, but I’m sure you know who I am,” says Deadlock, flicking out one of his knives from its concealed holster on his wrist. When Optimus reviews the footage later, he’ll definitely say something about threatening prisoners who are already restrained, but Deadlock isn’t taking any chances when there’s still a horde of panicked bots trying to escape the scene, and so far his offensive protocols have done slag all to prevent the situation from escalating. “I’m sure you’re aware of the reputation I had during the war. So you tell me.” He presses the knife dangerously close, close enough to draw beads of energon, to the bot’s major fuel line with a grin. “Do I scare you?”

Deadlock feels the tremor that runs through the bot’s systems, and his grin widens. Good. They should be frightened. They should feel the same chilling terror that froze over Deadlock’s fuel lines when they stabbed Optimus. They should be so afraid of Deadlock’s retribution that they won’t dare to even think of hurting anyone, of hurting the only bot foolish enough to fall for a former assassin and believe in him enough to choose him to guard his back, ever again—

“I’ll take it from here, Deadlock.”

A servo slips over his and pulls back his knife, carefully pushing Deadlock off the other bot. Prowl hauls up the prisoner, checking him for hidden weapons, and Deadlock doesn’t miss that he’s putting distance between them and Deadlock as he does so.

Deadlock pushes himself to his pedes. “Taking down anyone who makes an attempt on the Prime’s life is my job.”

“And you’ve done that part,” says Prowl, flinty-eyed. “I can handle the rest.”

Despite the abrupt loss of his focused bloodlust, ice still churns through Deadlock as he glares down at Optimus’ would-be killer. “Can I at least cut out a few throat cables before you take them away?”

Prowl looks at him.

“If you’re waiting for me to say ‘I’m kidding,’ we’re gonna be standing here for a long time,” says Deadlock.

Rolling his optics, Prowl jerks his thumb back towards the stage. “Optimus is looking for you.”

Deadlock hesitates, but for better or for worse, the mention of Optimus is enough for his priority trees to abruptly reroute all its threads and force Deadlock to push aside his thirst for revenge. His first priority is making sure Optimus is okay. Always.

“He’s—?”

“He’s fine,” says Prowl. “He just wants to see you.”

Deadlock vents out, slow and deep, before nodding his thanks to Prowl, retracting his knife, and sprinting back to Optimus’ side.

When he’d left, Optimus was standing, albeit barely. He must have either fallen down at some point or been bullied by Ratchet into lying down, and Deadlock’s emotional subsystem almost spirals into a panic before he catches the faint, laboured wheezing coming from Optimus’ vents. Ratchet is crouched beside Optimus, slathering something gooey—sealant, probably—around Optimus’ wound. Several members of Optimus’ Primal Vanguard are standing in a loose circle around the two of them, several mechanometres away to give them some privacy, and they part to allow Deadlock in as he comes running through.

Deadlock sinks to his knees next to Ratchet, and the sound of metal hitting the floor has Optimus’ optics cracking open. A small smile blooms on his face.

“Hello,” says Optimus.

Deadlock stares at him. “Is that all you have to say?” he demands. “Hello?”

Optimus tilts his head, somehow making the motion appear unconcerned despite the long hilt sticking out of his chestplates and the copious amount of energon welling up from his wound. “My processor is not functioning at its usual capacity,” he admits. “Is there something I’m missing?”

“Yeah,” says Deadlock. “Amazingly, it looks like you somehow missed getting stabbed.”

“Oh.” Optimus’ expression clears. “No, I have not forgotten. Ratchet has already yelled at me enough to ensure I am aware of that fact.”

“If you don’t want me to yell at you for deliberately stepping in front of an assassin, then maybe consider not deliberately stepping in front of an assassin next time.” Ratchet snaps the jar of sealant shut and tucks it back inside his medkit. “I managed to stop you from bleeding to death, but it’s only temporary. That knife nicked a major fuel line, and I can’t pull it out without risking you losing too much energon. Once I’ve brought you back to a fully equipped and sterilized medbay, I can remove it and fix your wound properly.” He scowls. “There’s too much traffic to drive you to the hospital, so I’m going to find Blades to transport you. Deadlock, make sure he doesn’t move.”

“‘Course, doc.”

Ratchet opens his mouth, probably to tell him off for calling him ‘doc,’ but whatever he sees on Deadlock’s face makes him stop. “He’ll be fine, kid,” he says instead. “He’s not in danger of dying today.”

Deadlock in-vents. “Yeah. Okay.”

After giving an awkward pat to Deadlock’s shoulder, Ratchet jogs away, and Deadlock turns his attention back to Optimus. Optimus is staring back at him with his huge blue optics, still with that same peaceful little smile on his face, and it makes the pit of Deadlock’s fuel tank clench painfully like he’s the one who was stabbed.

“Deadlock—” starts Optimus, but Deadlock cuts him off.

“What were you thinking?” he growls, digits digging into the metal of his thigh plates. “You’re the Prime. If you’re gonna start jumping in front of blades that aren’t even meant for you, then what am I even here for? I’m supposed to protect you, not the other way around.”

Optimus cycles his optics, as if he’s somehow surprised that Deadlock would be angry with him—as if he’s surprised Deadlock wouldn’t be happy about him getting stabbed. “Truthfully, I did not have time to think through my actions,” he admits. “I saw the attacker heading in your direction, and I was already moving to intercept him before I even finished processing what was going on.”

“So your answer to my question is that you weren’t thinking. Great. Just what everyone will want to hear when they ask why you didn’t let me take the hit instead of you getting yourself stabbed on purpose.”

“Deadlock, I…” Optimus’ servo drifts towards the blade still stuck in his chest, before he seems to realize that’s a really bad idea and drops it back to the ground. “I am truly sorry about worrying you. That was not my intention. But I will not apologize for protecting you from an enemy. Before we became Prime and Protector, we became conjunx endura, and we vowed to protect each other’s sparks. Not just my own.”

“And as you just said, that was before I became your Protector.” Deadlock feels his claws carving furrows into his thighs. “Things are different. Now it’s my duty to keep you alive.”

Finally, the smile on Optimus’ face disappears completely. “When I asked you to become my High Protector, I was not asking you to become the only one in our relationship willing to save the other,” he says, a hint of steel creeping into his vocals. “You have not failed your duty just because I chose to protect you when I had the chance.”

Deadlock would jab Optimus in the chest, if it weren’t for the knife still jammed way too close to his fragging spark chamber. “You can’t just do whatever you want! You’re the ruling Prime now. You’re the symbol of hope for this entire Primus-damned planet. If you die, the whole peace treaty we fought so hard for is gonna fall apart.”

“You know, I did lead the Autobots in our war for millions of years,” Optimus says mildly. “I won’t die that easily. And even if I were to offline, it doesn’t mean the peace would automatically collapse. I have full faith in your ability to carry on my wishes and—”

“You shouldn’t,” Deadlock spits out, the words dragged out of his intake like coals raked over a fire. “I’m not you.”

Optimus falls silent, with the familiar, searching look in his optics that means he’s thinking hard enough to risk burning through his neural circuitry. Gingerly, Deadlock pries his digits away from his protoform, uncomfortably aware of Optimus’ piercing gaze studying him.

“This is not about you failing to uphold your duty as High Protector,” Optimus says slowly. “And I do not believe this is about me getting stabbed, considering you have seen me get stabbed numerous times throughout the war, and one of those instances was by you.” He tilts his head to one side. “So what are you truly angry about, Deadlock?”

Deadlock forces out a snort from his engine. “Well, I ain’t exactly happy for those other two reasons, either—”

“Deadlock.”

It’s the subtle but obvious displeasure in Optimus’ voice that makes Deadlock give in easily. That disappointed tone is worse than the most brutal tortures he’d endured during the war. He can’t explain it—not even the one time when Ratchet told him to stop spoiling Optimus so much—but he’s never been able to resist him, at any point in their shared history. If he was able to, he doubts he’d ever have risked his spark to get involved with Optimus in the first place.

He doesn’t regret any of it—any of the long and fulfilling stellar cycles that followed—but his life sure would’ve been a lot less stressful.

Mouth twisting, Deadlock picks at an old scar on his wrist and avoids Optimus’ optics. “You need to stay alive because you’re important to a lotta people now. Not just me anymore. My life isn’t worth you throwing yours away.”

Another long moment of silence.

Every inch of Deadlock’s frame itches to fold back into his racecar mode and speed away from the vulnerability he’s opened up in himself. He’s just about to take back his words, maybe even ask Optimus if they can pretend he didn’t say anything, when the idiot suddenly braces his servos against the ground and starts trying to sit up.

“Wha—” Deadlock splutters, instinctively throwing out his hands to catch him, then freezing because he doesn’t want to accidentally hurt Optimus either. “Stop moving! Ratchet was very clear in his orders not to let you move!”

Optimus grunts as the blade in his chest is jostled by his movements, which anyone with a functioning logic unit could’ve predicted would happen. “This is more important!”

“More important than your life?”

“Yes!” insists Optimus, and the steely conviction in his voice actually makes Deadlock freeze all over again. He stares, mouth falling open as Optimus reaches forward to grab Deadlock’s hand with his own. That accomplished, Optimus lets himself lean back down on the ground with a relieved ex-vent, but he keeps his gaze fixed on Deadlock.

“It is very important for you to know,” he says, squeezing Deadlock’s hand, “that you’re worth much more than you believe. The Decepticons wouldn’t have followed us into peace if you weren’t there to lead them. Cybertron wouldn’t be as safe as it is now if you weren’t here to defend it. And I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish half the things I did if you weren’t there by my side. Your continued functioning is just as valuable to our planet as mine.”

The motor relays in Deadlock’s face are heating to dangerously high degrees. “That’s all very nice and Autobot-like and whatever of you to say,” he manages, “but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m your Protector, and you appointed me to that role so I could keep you safe, no matter what.”

“No, I did not,” says Optimus.

“Huh?”

Sunlight refracts through the stage’s glass dome, illuminating the energon staining Optimus’ chest in a shimmering halo. “I did not ask you to become my High Protector because I wanted you to die for me. I asked you because I wanted us to work together to create a better future for both Autobots and Decepticons.”

He levers himself up again, wincing at the effort. Deadlock is about to rebuke him for it, but the hand cupping his cheek successfully derails that line of code.

“From my point of view, the Prime and Protector function at their best when they’re equals,” says Optimus. “Both of us are leaders of Cybertron’s new age, and both of us are irreplaceable. While it is true that part of the Protector’s duty is to guard the Prime, nowhere does it say that the Prime cannot protect the Protector in turn.” His mouth turns up in a faint smirk, and for some reason, this time it doesn’t feel like claws hooking through Deadlock’s spark. “We spent the better part of the last few thousand stellar cycles guarding each other’s backs, have we not? And we’re both still alive, so clearly this tactic has been working for us so far.”

Deadlock is struck with the memory of a younger Optimus Prime, backlit by the rising sun, his hand tentatively reaching for Deadlock’s face like he’s not entirely certain Deadlock won’t bite his fingers off but he’s willing to risk it anyway. That was the same day Optimus proposed the idea of them working together to broker a ceasefire, and then eventually peace for all Cybertronians.

He’d kissed Optimus back, but he’d shot all his pipe dream ideas down. Deadlock hadn’t known Optimus very well yet—that wouldn’t come until well into their budding relationship—but he’d known enough to peg him as an idealist with bigger dreams than common sense. And he was right, because he soon discovered Optimus occasionally displayed a shocking lack of intelligence for someone who was supposed to be the Autobots’ perfect leader. Yeah, he’d eventually convinced Deadlock to ally with him through sheer stubbornness and his absolute refusal to give up on finding a permanent end to the war, but if it weren’t for Deadlock standing with him the whole time, keeping his head on straight and taking care of every issue that didn’t even cross Optimus’ processor—

Oh.

Deadlock thinks he gets what Optimus means, now, when he says both of them are irreplaceable.

He cycles his optics, and looks down at the current Optimus Prime. Older, and wiser—although jumping in front of a knife on purpose is making Deadlock reconsider that opinion—and still the same hopelessly optimistic visionary that had lit a candle of real, genuine hope in Deadlock’s spark for the first time since his days in the Dead End.

Deadlock swallows down the ragged lump of emotions caught in his throat, and carefully, gently covers Optimus’ servo with his own. “Guess you’re right. We’re both still here and alive, despite everything. That’s a pretty good sign that things are working out.” He flashes him a wobbly grin. “But still. If you ever pull a stunt like that again, I’m going to kill you myself.”

Optimus settles down, and leans his helm against Deadlock’s thigh. Around them, the rest of the stage and the crowd beyond seems to fade into silence. “I love you too.”

Chapter Text

“Why are you here?” asks Perceptor.

The question cuts through the humming of assorted operating machinery and bubbling of various liquids in the Lost Light laboratory, which has all become familiar background noise churning in the back of Pharma’s mind every time he’s on shift. The sounds aren’t loud enough to drown out all the thoughts constantly clamouring for attention in his brain module, but it’s nice not to work in complete silence. Once upon a time, he’d grown used to First Aid and Ambulon’s meaningless chatter filling up the medbay as he worked.

Pharma pushes aside the useless thought and scowls in Perceptor’s direction. “Last I checked, I work here.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Perceptor isn’t even looking at him—all his attention is focused on the viscous, silvery liquid he’s slowly tipping into a beaker. He pauses every couple nanokliks to check its level before continuing. “Why are you here, on the Lost Light’s science team, instead of working in the medbay?”

Since Perceptor isn’t watching him, Pharma looks away and sharpens his own focus on the massive drawing board taking up most of the back wall. The list of tasks needed to be completed is written on the board’s top corner, although the list is dwarfed by the massive amount of scientific jargon notes and equations scribbled across every other square inch of the board.

“You’re the one who approved my request,” says Pharma, crossing his arms as he deliberates which task would be the most mind-numbing to work on. “If you didn’t want me working for you, you didn’t have to let me join.”

“I never said I don’t want you here,” Perceptor says evenly. Frustratingly, there isn’t even a hint of irritation in his voice. Pharma wonders what it’d take to get a genuinely angry reaction from him. “I’m simply asking why you chose to be here.”

Pharma trails a digit down the list, considering. “And you waited until I’ve been working here for over a vorn before asking me that question?”

He hears the faint clink of Perceptor setting down the flask. “I didn’t think you would answer me truthfully. You were rather skittish in the beginning.”

Digit freezing, Pharma only pauses for a moment before whirling around, wings flaring out behind him and knocking several markers off the ledge of the drawing board. “Skittish? Me?!”

Perceptor picks up the beaker and carries it to the desk on the other side. “Yes,” he says, unfazed. “You avoided speaking to me, Brainstorm and Nautica unless absolutely necessary. You showed up exactly when your shift started and left as soon as it ended. I never saw you at Swerve’s or anywhere else on the Lost Light, so I can only assume you spent the rest of your time locked in your habsuite.”

Pharma scoffs, ignoring the uneasiness trickling down his spinal strut at the knowledge that Perceptor had been watching him so closely. “Have you considered that I just don’t feel the need to talk to anyone aboard this ship? I was one of the most decorated doctors in the universe, and I’ve had plenty of opportunities to observe your captain’s band of clowns. I know any conversation I could possibly have with any of them would be a complete waste of time.”

“You could talk to Ratchet,” suggests Perceptor.

Slowly, and very casually, Pharma strolls over to the desk Perceptor just left and reaches for the box of discarded weapons, helpfully labelled ‘Guns That Don’t Work And/Or Have A High Risk Of Destroying The Multiverse.’ He picks up the first weapon in the box, a small handheld blaster, and starts taking it apart piece by piece.

It’s hardly glamorous work, and it’s terribly beneath him. It doesn’t require any specialized knowledge beyond being able to identify the materials most likely to blow up in his face or worse, and that’s probably why it’s been left on the science team’s to-do list for so long.

It’s exactly the kind of work Pharma needs to do right now.

“I don’t want to talk to Ratchet,” he says finally. And Ratchet doesn’t want to talk to me.

Finally, Perceptor looks up and meets his gaze, his critical blue optics sweeping over Pharma like he’s running a tactical analysis. Pharma would normally dismiss that idea as ridiculous, but thanks to the one time First Aid got overcharged and babbled Pharma’s audial off about every single Wrecker in existence in painful, lengthy detail, he’s aware of Perceptor’s history as a sniper and his terrifyingly high kill count.

He’s not afraid of Perceptor. Now that he’s an official member of the Lost Light’s crew, he doesn’t believe Perceptor will do anything to harm him, even if he were one of the bots who looked at Pharma like they were waiting for him to slip up once so they’d have an excuse to shoot him through the spark. But Perceptor is, unfortunately, one of the few intelligent and competent bots on this ship, and Pharma doesn’t doubt he’s more than capable of dissecting his processor and analyzing all the lines of code that Pharma keeps buried as deep as possible.

If Perceptor had been among his team on Delphi, muses Pharma, he would’ve been the first bot he’d have needed to get rid of.

“I see,” says Perceptor, nodding and unaware of the macabre direction of Pharma’s thoughts. “I was wondering why you didn’t join the medical team when you’re obviously far more suited to be a medic than a scientist, but if you’re avoiding Ratchet, that explains everything.”

“I’m not…” Pharma trails off, realizing how pointless it would be to lie to Perceptor’s face, and goes back to yanking apart the blaster in his servos. “I joined your team because I’m familiar with the kinds of weapons Brainstorm makes, and seeing as I have a vested interest in this ship not blowing itself up or dismantling the entire universe—” he waves the blaster in his servo for emphasis— “I thought I’d lend a hand. The medbay has enough bots in it, but your team is pathetically small.”

A tiny smile curls up at the corner of Perceptor’s mouth, so fleeting that Pharma would’ve missed it if he hadn’t been watching for Perceptor’s reaction. “Most of the time, Nautica and I are capable of wrangling Brainstorm’s more impulsive ideas. But we appreciate the extra hand.” Perceptor glances up at the daunting list of tasks. “Rodimus keeps us all busy with his never-ending ideas.”

“I’ve noticed,” Pharma says wryly, and spreads his arms. “Feel free to use me as you see fit, team leader. I may have trained as a medic, but surely I still know more about science than most of the bots on this ship.”

Perceptor has started fiddling with the materials on the other desk, continuing the assembly of a large, misshapen lump with a long attachment sticking out of its side. When Pharma had glimpsed it on the desk earlier during his shift, he couldn’t tell what it’s supposed to be. It looks like something he’d expect to find in the trash.

He decides not to point this out.

At Pharma’s words, though, Perceptor’s servos briefly pause in their assembly.

“As I said, your help is appreciated,” says Perceptor, and he resumes his work on the mystery object. “But you are only required to stay with this team for as long as you want to. I will not be ‘using’ you for anything.”

Pharma’s mouth thins. “What are you trying to say?”

Perceptor pries open the warped cover on the side of the lump and starts pouring the liquid contents of the beaker into it. “Just because you have an aptitude for science doesn’t mean you need to work here forever. No one on the Lost Light is forced to do anything they don’t want to do.”

“Interesting.” Pharma starts organizing the torn-apart pieces of the handheld blaster into piles based on size, rarity, and volatility. “That doesn’t sound very effective for keeping this ship running at peak efficiency.”

Perceptor’s shoulders arch in a slight shrug. “If you were looking for efficiency, you joined the wrong ship.”

“It’s not like I had a choice in that,” mutters Pharma, and then cringes at the obvious bitterness in his vocals that he hadn’t meant to let slip.

All of Perceptor’s attention is still firmly fixed on the piece of trash he’s working on, and yet somehow Pharma gets the feeling he’s being scrutinized like an organic bug under a microscope. An apt metaphor, considering this is Perceptor.

“Rodimus has always said this is a place where everyone gets a second chance, even if they don’t deserve it,” Perceptor says eventually, replacing the cover and moving the beaker aside. “I didn’t understand it before, but now, after everything…I’m starting to see why he’s so insistent on that philosophy. Someone may not deserve forgiveness, but being able to unreservedly offer them that second chance anyway is, perhaps, less to do with thinking you’re better than your enemy, and more because you don’t believe you and your enemy are all that different deep down.”

With a harsh tearing screech, Pharma rips the trigger from the blaster, ignoring the shattered bits of metal that cascade onto the desk. He doesn’t think about endless snow, and invisible eyes watching his every move, and an isolation so crushing that he’d started having nightmares about offlining under the pressure. “I’d say that’s a very Autobot philosophy,” he sneers, “but even the Autobots don’t think like that anymore.”

“You’re right,” says Perceptor, leaning back and examining his handiwork, “but officially, this isn’t an Autobot ship, and we’re no longer at war. There are no strict ways of thinking to follow.” He hesitates. “Ah, but please don’t tell Brainstorm I said that. Also, when you’re done disassembling that blaster, can you pass me all of its carbon steel alloy components? Much of the blaster’s outer housing should be comprised of the alloy.”

The abrupt change of subject throws off Pharma’s logic unit, and it takes him a long moment to process the request. Frowning, he examines the discard piles he’s created. More than half of them are carbon steel. “Some of it is partially corroded,” he reports. “I was going to throw it out. Isn’t there new carbon steel, or even solid steel, in the storage shelves?”

“There is, but there’s no point in wasting perfectly functional metal just because it’s a little warped,” says Perceptor. “Besides, this project isn’t for anything crucial, so it doesn’t need to look nice.”

Pharma raises a disbelieving optical ridge, but gathers up all of the metal alloy and walks over to hand it off to Perceptor, who takes it with a murmured thanks. Glancing down, Pharma discovers that this closer vantage point doesn’t give him any more insight as to what the mysterious object is.

“What’s that supposed to be?” he asks.

Perceptor flicks on a burner flame device and holds all the carbon steel over the fire until it starts to melt, a few drops slipping off and bubbling when they land on the desk. “It’s my own creation, made to resemble a watering can.”

“Right,” says Pharma, watching as Perceptor shapes the alloy, careful not to stay in contact with it for too long and risk burning his servos. “Am I supposed to know what a watering can is?”

Perceptor points at the window, and Pharma looks out at the glowing starry streaks painting the darkness of space around them. Not knowing what he’s supposed to be seeing, he glances back at Perceptor’s finger, and realizes he’s actually pointing at the innocuous row of rust-red pots sitting along the windowsill. Each pot is sprouting a tiny shoot of pale green with even tinier leaves, protruding from some kind of sunlight-coloured soil. A powerful heat lamp hangs above the pots, glowing a fierce orange. The strangest thing about the sight, however, is that the whole setup is covered by a protective transparisteel dome, arcing over the pots like the universe’s biggest and most durable protective bubble.

“A typical watering can’s purpose is to douse plants with water, which most plants need to survive,” explains Perceptor as he transfers the carbon alloy and melds it with the watering can lookalike. To make it stronger without significantly adding to its weight, Pharma realizes as the object’s surface steams and hardens. Hm. Surprisingly ingenious. “However, I harvested these plants from a rather unique planet, and instead of water, I discovered that they need oil—although my experiments have proved that energon works just as well.”

Pharma stares at the row of small, leafy things. “You’re feeding these things energon?”

“Yes.” As the carbon steel continues to harden, Perceptor stands and moves close enough to lay a hand on the dome placed over the plants. “These plants are accustomed to a temperature far hotter than most Cybertronians can withstand, so our team constructed this temperature-controlled case to keep the plants alive. We’ve been aerosolizing the energon over the plants via a spray tube installed inside the dome, but it doesn’t seem to be providing them with their required level of nourishment as their growth has slowed. Therefore, my idea is to build a device similar to a watering can that we can insert permanently into the plants’ environment and remotely control it to water the plants closer to their roots, so they receive a higher concentration of the energon’s nutrients they depend on.”

The unexpected flood of words leaves Pharma vaguely feeling like he’s been hit over the helm by one of his academy’s required medical textbooks. “Okay,” he says, so stunned that he forgets to make the acknowledgement as sarcastic as possible. “But why go through all that trouble? What do these plants do? Do these things magically cure major diseases or something?”

“First of all, I decided to name this species of plants ‘feverlights,’” says Perceptor.

“I didn’t ask,” says Pharma.

“Secondly, they do not have any extra functions,” continues Perceptor. “They simply grow, and live.”

Pharma opens his mouth, processes that answer, and shrieks, “What?!” at a volume that’s likely audible from the other side of the Lost Light.

“Please calm down,” says Perceptor, although Pharma doesn’t know why he bothers to add the ‘please’ when his tone suggests he’s busy mentally cursing him out. Pharma has extensive experience with hearing that exact tone from Ratchet. “The last thing I need is Ultra Magnus declaring another Level Five Emergency and triggering the quarantine alarm because someone shouted too loudly in the laboratory.”

Pharma fumes, but he doesn’t exactly want Ultra Magnus coming tor regard him with poorly-veiled suspicion either, so he does lower his voice. “Why are you even bothering to keep these plants—oh, I’m sorry, feverlights—if they don’t have any medical or scientific benefits?”

“I’ve discovered that most plants are not useful, by your technical definition.” Perceptor gazes at the feverlights, and there’s an excited gleam in his optics that Pharma has never seen on him before. Something about the sight sends a strange, matching thrill through his own circuits. “Plants may play a crucial role in their local ecosystem, but when they’re taken from their natural environment, it’s generally in order to keep them for a purely decorative reason. Although in our case, we also gathered the samples for scientific research—the planet we harvested these plants from is starting to decline, so it’s possible they may go extinct in the near future. I’ve been testing the feverlights’ pollination capabilities to determine whether this sample is sufficient for regrowing their species.”

Pharma sniffs through his vents. “Who cares if they don’t grow back? If their local ecosystem is dead, it doesn’t matter, right? You could just let them die.”

“Well, of course it’s easier to not care,” says Perceptor. “It’d save time and resources to stop caring, give up and let them die. But just because something requires extra care and compassion to flourish doesn’t mean it deserves to be abandoned. My team went through the trouble of saving the feverlights, so the least we can do is provide them with anything they need to thrive.” He shrugs. “Maybe it won’t work. Maybe they’ll end up dying anyway. However, I think it’s still worth it to try.”

Pharma looks down at the unassuming row of pale green plants, and their vivid, distinctly organic batches of soil, and how small and fragile they appear within their protective dome.

“I don’t get it,” he says.

Perceptor’s scope nudges the edge of Pharma’s wing as he shifts to stand closer to him. “That’s alright,” says Perceptor, the faintest trace of a smile on his face. “You’re welcome to keep working on this team and visiting this laboratory as often as you’d like, until you understand.”

Chapter Text

“Usually, I’m a big fan of the ‘if it doesn’t work once, try again just to be sure’ method,” says Brainstorm, “but in this case, I don’t think trying to blast the elevator doors open is going to be any more effective this time than it was the first ten times.”

Starscream’s answering scowl is the wrong side of annoyed, the kind Brainstorm used to see him wear while plotting his next assassination attempt on Megatron, but he still obediently powers down his weapons without firing them at Brainstorm first, so Brainstorm considers it a win. The fortified elevator doors are riddled with blackened scorch marks from Starscream’s repeated attempts to shoot their way to freedom. As far as Brainstorm can tell, the only thing his shots accomplished was waste most of the ammunition charge in Starscream’s null-rays.

A pity. If Brainstorm had more time, he might’ve been able to rig the extra charge into a bomb that could blow the ceiling—and maybe themselves too—off the elevator as a last resort.

“I don’t see you offering any solutions,” Starscream says snidely.

“Sorry, Screamer,” says Brainstorm, raising his servos in mock defense. “I was a little busy trying not to get killed by your shots ricocheting off the walls.”

He’s not surprised when Starscream displays zero sympathy for his numerous brushes with death. “Don’t call me that,” is all Starscream says as he slumps to the floor. “Ugh. I can’t believe both Rattrap and Windblade turned their comms off. What if I was having a more serious emergency? I could have offlined and they wouldn’t know!”

Brainstorm tries pinging the Lost Light again, but all he hears back is silence. He throttles his engine before a frustrated huff can escape from his vents. The tight, confined space is forcing him to jam his wings at a high angle between the elevator’s walls, and no amount of shifting is making him more comfortable. Both his and Starscream’s jet engines are running hot too, and while the rising temperature won’t hurt them, it’s not helping to make him any less tense.

“Not getting through to anyone either?” asks Starscream. His wingspan is smaller than Brainstorm’s, but he doesn’t look any more happy to be crammed in here with him. “Maybe your ship took off without you.”

Brainstorm hesitates. “They wouldn’t do that,” he says, a beat too late. “I’m the ship’s genius. They need me.”

“Sure,” says Starscream. “Whatever helps you recharge better at night.”

“Hey, it’s not like your people are out looking for you either,” snaps Brainstorm. “Maybe they also got fed up and left the planet without you.”

Starscream’s mouth twists. “We’re here for an important conference with numerous planetary delegates. They need me in those meetings. They’ll start searching for me eventually, regardless of their personal feelings.”

“Sure,” says Brainstorm. “Whatever helps you recharge better at night.”

“Are you an actual sparkling?”

“Uh, I’m not the one who tried to blast the elevator doors open, then threw a tantrum when that didn’t work and tried to blast them again another ten times.”

Rolling his optics, Starscream crosses his arms and sits back against the wall without replying.

Inwardly preening at winning again, Brainstorm fires off another comm to Percy. Again, Percy doesn’t reply. Weird. Usually, Perceptor replies abnormally quickly to Brainstorm’s messages, since he’s apparently ‘afraid of the severe consequences of leaving Brainstorm unsupervised for too long.’ Brainstorm considers the possibility that the Lost Light really did take off and leave without him—

No. That’s the worst-case scenario, and even if it’s true, it’s not helpful right now. Brainstorm flattens his wings against the wall, processor whirling. There’s got to be a billion reasons why Perceptor might not be picking up his comms. Maybe he joined Swerve’s group to watch a movie and had to shut off all his internal communication systems, and he forgot to turn them back on after leaving. Maybe he got in a fight and his systems were damaged. Maybe he got knocked offline for another reason. Maybe he’s still ignoring Brainstorm, because he’s still mad about the—

“Aha!” cries Brainstorm, snapping his digits.

His exclamation reverberates loudly throughout the small space, and Starscream jolts, hard enough to smack the back of his helm against the wall. There’s a pained grimace on his face as he levels a dangerous look at Brainstorm and utters in a low voice, “What.”

Brainstorm is grinning too hard behind his blast mask, amazed at his own intelligence, to worry about the risks of pushing Starscream too far. “I know how to get us out of here!”

Starscream’s optics narrow. “Care to explain?”

With a flourish, Brainstorm reaches into his subspace and hauls out a massive, shiny blue gun. It’s large enough that he needs both servos to lift it, and the barrel is warm under his grip as he hefts the gun high enough to show off its polished, gleaming casing and smooth dials to Starscream.

“This is how,” he purrs.

Starscream eyes the gun with skepticism and edges away from it, although Brainstorm doesn’t know if that’s because the gun was close enough to press against his leg strut or because he’s worried about how Brainstorm-made guns have a non-zero chance of detonating without warning. “Are you trying to compensate for something?”

“Yeah, for the lack of decent weapons in here,” Brainstorm says with a pointed look at Starscream’s depowered null-rays. “This doesn’t just shoot whatever you’re aiming at. This is a deconstructor gun.”

“Which is…?”

Brainstorm runs a loving hand along the gun’s outer housing. “It’s an upgraded version of my disaggregator gun. This beauty scans and analyzes the target you’re shooting at, then breaks it down to its base components. Both literally, inside its computing system, and also physically, right in front of you. Disintegrates your target immediately.” He pauses. “Well, not immediately. I managed to fine-tune the length of time the analysis takes down to eight nanokliks, but any shorter than that and it has a tendency to backfire and starts targeting the user for disintegration.”

“You look fully intact to me,” drawls Starscream.

“Who said I tested the gun myself?”

Starscream looks at him.

Brainstorm’s wings sag. Because of the enclosed space, this action nearly ends with him hitting himself in the face with an aileron. “Okay, yeah, I came a little close to turning into a me-sized pile of ash. But I’d installed a failsafe to shut the whole computing system down, and I managed to trigger it before I actually got shot. I was fine! Everything was fine! Percy was overreacting when he confiscated the gun just because I almost vaporized myself with this thing once!”

“Hmm.” Despite the incredulous acidity lacing the word, Brainstorm doesn’t miss the glint in Starscream’s optics as he examines the deconstructor gun. “Well, I can’t deny I’m curious as to whether this thing actually works. Why didn’t you bring it out sooner?”

“Honestly? I totally forgot I had it with me.” Brainstorm shifts more of the gun’s weight onto his other hand and makes a mental note to try lightening the gun’s overall mass in future modifications. “Only thought of this gun because I remembered Percy was mad at me for making it, and that’s why he might be ignoring my comms.”

Starscream stares at him. “He’s mad at you for constructing this weapon, but he still gave it back to you and let you keep it in your subspace?”

Brainstorm snorts. “Of course not. He told me to throw the gun in our lab’s disposal bin, and then I stole it back later that night.” He tips his head to one side. “‘Stole’ is a pretty harsh word, actually. ‘Rescued’ fits this context better.”

“Hmm.” Starscream’s optical ridges rise. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, given your reputation for hazardous weapon advocacy.” He gestures with one servo, like an imperious ruler granting permission to a servant. “Well, go on. Let’s see if your skills are as impressive as you claim they are.”

Starscream’s expression is neutral, carefully fixed to appear like he isn’t expecting much from Brainstorm at all. But Brainstorm has stood before dozens of bots who took one look at him and believed all the rumours of his genius must’ve been nonsense gossip—until he showed off his inventions right in front of their faceplates, and proved that he doesn’t follow rules like the laws of physics or ethical standards. Those bots never liked being proven wrong, and they never appreciated Brainstorm further demonstrating his genius by presenting his even more brilliantly dangerous ideas.

Starscream doesn’t look like those bots. He looks like he’s already plotting several moves ahead on how to make use of him. Like he’s considering the best way to talk Brainstorm into abandoning the Lost Light and joining his own personal research team, or asking to ‘borrow’ the deconstructor gun blueprints so he can claim them as his own, or planning to incapacitate Brainstorm once they’ve escaped from the elevator and steal this prototype to improve it for himself.

Most likely, this should worry Brainstorm. It doesn’t. Instead, a frisson of adrenaline lances through every single circuit in his frame, lighting up his sensornet as if Starscream just reached inside him and applied a direct electrical shock to his energy core.

Covering up his exhilaration with a smug smile, Brainstorm rolls back his shoulders, wings scraping the elevator’s ceiling, and raises the gun. “Screamer, you have no idea. This is going to blow your mind.”

He aims at the elevator doors and squeezes the trigger.

Chapter Text

Bulkhead finds Wheeljack and Ultra Magnus slumped in the centre of the crumbling ruins of Iacon, surrounded by a dozen cubes of highgrade and listing heavily against each other’s frames.

It’s such an odd scene that he resets his optics several times, convinced that his visual feed is playing tricks on him. But then Wheeljack spots him and grins lazily, waving him over. Bulkhead automatically glances at Ultra Magnus, but Ultra Magnus doesn’t jump to his pedes and bark “soldier” at him, or even snap that he should be saluting when standing before a commanding officer.

Maybe he’s not hallucinating. No way his imagination matrix can conjure up something as far removed from his usual reality as this.

Broken shards of building tiles and concrete slabs crunch under his pedes as Bulkhead makes his way to the crumbling, half-destroyed wall Wheeljack and Ultra Magnus are leaning against. He tries to find a spot that isn’t covered with plaster dust, see none, and drops down to sit beside Wheeljack with a heavy thud that rattles the ground under his aft. The shattered wall does nothing to shelter him from the sun beating heavily against his back plating.

“What’re you two doing?” he asks, craning his neck to look at them both.

Ultra Magnus tips his chin down, subtly gesturing at the half-empty cube of high grade he’s clutching in his claw in a pincer grip. “Celebratin’,” he says, the word slightly slurred with static.

“Uh, okay,” says Bulkhead. He decides not to ask why he doesn’t just hold the cube in his regular hand. “What are we celebrating, sir?”

“What isn’t there to celebrate?” Wheeljack holds up his free servo, ticking off his digits. “Megatron has fragged off to Primus knows where, Screamer’s probably dead, the Predacons are sort of on our side now so who cares what they’re doing, the rest of the Decepticons shouldn’t be a problem, the Well of AllSparks is back online. Take your pick.”

Bulkhead sits back against the wall. Everything Wheeljack said is true. With Megatron having publicly disbanded the Decepticon cause, the war is effectively over. All that’s left to do is broadcast the message to the rest of the Autobots and Decepticons still fighting out in the universe, and then work together to rebuild Cybertron. After all this time, after everything they’ve gone through, their small Autobot family has finally succeeded in bringing peace back to their home.

“Then why—” The glyphs come out sounding strangled, and Bulkhead clears his vocalizer. “Then why don’t I feel like celebrating?”

There’s a long moment of silence.

“Well,” Ultra Magnus says finally. “There are plenty of reasons not to celebrate as well. We lost a lot of good soldiers during the war.” He looks down at his cube, watching the high grade swirl as he tilts it from side to side. “A lot of Wreckers. A lot of Autobots. And…”

He doesn’t need to finish his sentence. Bulkhead knows they’re all thinking of the same bot. The one everyone was sure would live to the end of the war and beyond, leading the rest of them throughout Cybertron’s peacetime reconstruction efforts.

Wheeljack huffs, draining the rest of his cube and tossing it aside. “Frag. Maybe the bots who’ve already offlined are the lucky ones.”

Bulkhead shoots him a horrified look. “Jackie!”

“What? Am I wrong?” Wheeljack gestures at the three of them and lets out a hollow laugh. “We’re Wreckers. We’re good at fighting for the cause, and we’re even better at dying for the cause. And that’s pretty much all we’ve been doing for the past eight million stellar cycles. How are we supposed to fit in with a peaceful Cybertron when none of us can even celebrate what led to that peace in the first place?”

Bulkhead looks away from him, feeling the rocky wall at his back dig into his plating and chafe against the metal. Wincing, he tries to shift to a more comfortable position, but he’s distracted by the sudden cawing of birds from high above them. He tips his head back, staring as the birds soar through the open, endless blue sky in a V formation.

He hasn’t seen any Cybertronian birds since before every bot was forced to evacuate the planet at the outset of the war. These birds must have been hiding somewhere, waiting until it was safe to come back and learn to live in their restored home again.

“I don’t know,” Bulkhead says slowly, glancing back at Wheeljack. “I don’t know how to feel happy about winning the war when we’ve lost so many friends, and when I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now that the war’s over. But maybe that’s okay.” Bulkhead looks down at his servos. “Ratchet once told me I could go back into construction. I think I’ll give that a shot. I mean, maybe I’ll hate it—I’m not the same bot I was before the war—but even if I do hate it, I can always drop it and try something else. We have the peace and freedom to figure out what we want to do now, even us Wreckers. Isn’t that what we were fighting for?”

Wheeljack’s scarred mouth twists into a thoughtful frown, but behind him, Ultra Magnus gives him an approving nod. “Well said. Optimus Prime would be proud of you, sol—no. Bulkhead.”

A complicated mix of pride and grief coils through Bulkhead’s spark. “Thank you, sir.”

“Freedom, huh?” Wheeljack digs around in his subspace and withdraws another cube of high grade to offer to Bulkhead. “Okay. That, I can drink to.”

Bulkhead smiles as he takes the cube and clinks it against Wheeljack’s. “Yeah. Ever thought of going back into science, Jackie?”

Wheeljack makes a face. “Not really.” He pauses. “Well, maybe if I was some kind of…freelance scientist. So there’s no one to tell me what I can or can’t blow up.”

“That hardly sounds any different from what you do now,” Ultra Magnus says evenly. He doesn’t even sound annoyed, and Bulkhead wonders exactly how many cubes of high grade Wheeljack convinced him to drink. “You might as well remain a Wrecker.”

“Thought we already established there’s no need for Wreckers anymore?” Wheeljack cocks his head. “Besides, it’s hard to imagine you fitting into peacetime society too, commander. What did you do before the war?”

“I worked in the secretarial office of Sentinel Zeta Prime,” says Ultra Magnus. “I was his primary assistant.”

Bulkhead and Wheeljack stare at him. Then Bulkhead says, “Wait, no, Jackie don’t—” at the same instant that Wheeljack breaks down into raucous laughter.

“Sounds like you might as well remain a Wrecker!” chortles Wheeljack. “You mean you were filing paperwork and bossing other bots around and slag like that? That’s the same thing you do now!”

“Are you mocking your commanding officer, soldier?” Ultra Magnus snaps, but neither Bulkhead nor Wheeljack miss the faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Wheeljack executes the universe’s sloppiest salute. Bulkhead is unsure if this is because he’s deliberately trying to be disrespectful, or because he’s so overcharged that his helm is starting to tip sideways onto Ultra Magnus’ shoulder. “Wouldn’t dream of it, sir.”

“Hmm.” Ultra Magnus finishes his own cube and neatly places it atop a tower of—oh Primus. That’s a lot of empty cubes beside him. “Then you won’t disobey a direct order: pass me another cube.”

“Uh,” says Bulkhead as Wheeljack gleefully pulls another cube of highgrade out of his subspace and hands it to Ultra Magnus, “you sure that’s a good idea?”

“Of course,” says Wheeljack. “We’re celebrating, remember?” He raises his own cube, letting the blue liquid catch the sunlight, and nudges his shoulder into Bulkhead’s side. “Wrecker-style.”

Bulkhead watches Wheeljack and Ultra Magnus, two bots whom he thought would never stop fighting, grin at each other, tap their cubes together and drink in synchronicity, all while collapsed on each other’s frames like they’re melting together under the heat of Cybertron’s sun.

Maybe there really was hope for a peaceful future for former Wreckers, too.

“We're celebrating,” agrees Bulkhead, and he takes a long draught from his cube.

Chapter Text

“Hey, Percy?” asks Blurr, breaking the silence and consequently shattering Perceptor’s focus for the fifth time in as many kliks.

Resisting the strong urge to comm a security guard and request that Blurr be removed from the premises on the basis of being a metal shard in his side, Perceptor lowers his datapad and stares down Blurr. “What?”

Blurr wilts a little at Perceptor’s frosty tone, but he squares his shoulders and keeps talking anyway, his ever-present irritating grin on his face. “This place is really nice. How’d you end up working here?”

“I was recruited to assist in species inventory and identification.” Perceptor ticks off the last box on his checklist and swipes to the next page, walking towards the next room. Blurr scrambles after him, and a distant part of Perceptor’s processor notes that it’s rather funny to see the world’s fastest bot running to keep up with him. “The current categorization system is horribly inefficient.”

“Oh. That’s, uh. That sounds pretty bad,” says Blurr as he follows him. “Did they call you up because you’re an expert in this field?”

“Not particularly,” says Perceptor. “I assume I was contacted because of my extensive general knowledge of offworld organic fauna.”

The two of them emerge into an enormous, brightly-lit enclosure that smells strongly of organic soil. Sunlight streams in through the glass roof, glittering against the lush green crystal trees and imported Earth plants growing in abundance. A steel bridge embedded with decorative stone pieces winds through the artificial forest, inviting visitors to continue strolling inside. In the distance, Perceptor can hear the merry bubbling of the water fountain spilling over fields of grass.

And throughout the entire room, thousands of cyber-butterflies and organic butterflies flap freely, filling the room with their distinct buzzing and unique patterns in a canopy of vibrant colours.

Blurr tips his helm back, intake falling open slightly as he takes in the incredible sight. Satisfaction curls through Perceptor’s internal lines at seeing Blurr so entranced, even though he wasn’t involved in the room’s layout and he has no reason to feel pride, and there’s absolutely no reason for him to feel fondness for Blurr in this moment, either.

“Once all the construction is complete, this cyber-butterfly conservatory will be the largest of its kind on Cybertron, perhaps even the galaxy,” says Perceptor, his vocals slowly defrosting without his conscious input. “This conservatory is unique due to its housing of species similar to cyber-butterflies from around the universe. In addition to our familiar Cybertronian kind, they feature butterflies from Earth and various other organic planets, which were sourced from butterfly farms across the universe.”

“That’s so cool!” says Blurr, his optics wide. Perceptor is used to hearing that statement accompanied by a heavy dose of sarcastic modifiers, but Blurr sounds completely sincere.

It’s…refreshing.

Perceptor looks down at the next list of species to check off on his datapad, but the memory of Blurr’s wide-opticked expression sticks in his processor and makes him pause, compelling him not to jump right back into work.

“I haven’t yet thanked you for helping me carry over all of my lab equipment,” he ventures, glancing up at Blurr. “I’m aware that it was a very last-klik request.”

Blurr blinks, tearing his gaze away from the butterflies, to look back at Perceptor. Something unreadable passes over him and in an instant, that annoying grin returns to his face. “It was no problem at all, Percy. Those boxes weren’t heavy, and I carried all of them here a lot faster than you ever could.” One optic shutters in a wink. “I always have time to help out a cute bot like you.”

Perceptor frowns. That seems highly unlikely, considering Blurr’s packed celebrity schedule, but he dismisses the comment. Perhaps Blurr is only saying that to be nice. “Still, I appreciate your assistance,” he says. “Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to repay you for your aid.”

Blurr’s grin widens. “You already know how you can repay me, sweetspark.”

“No, I do not. That is why I asked—”

He’s cut off by loud buzzing close to his audio receptors. Perceptor turns his visual feed skywards to see a swarm of speckled blue butterflies descending on him from. Most of them land on his shoulders, their red-tipped wings fluttering back and forth. Another perches at the top of his scope. One comes to hover near Perceptor’s face, close enough that he can see its tiny beady eyes peering at him when he magnifies his optics.

Perceptor lifts his free hand, allowing the butterfly to cling onto his digit. “Hello,” he says, smiling as the butterfly’s tiny legs skitter over his protoform.

When he looks back up, he finds Blurr watching him. He’s still sporting that ridiculous wide grin—the one that Perceptor knows he’s invested time in perfecting for the cameras—but the strict angles look softened, as if they’ve been accidentally brushed over with genuine emotion.

When Blurr looks like this, Perceptor can see why he has so many obsessive, adoring fans across all of Cybertron.

“Oh, you make a very pretty picture right now,” says Blurr, backing up and using his digits to form a rectangle mimicking a camera over Perceptor’s frame.

Perceptor’s visual feed narrows. “You did not actually take an image capture, did you?”

“I did,” says Blurr, unrepentant. “I’m going to print it to keep in my habsuite and put it beside a picture of me. We’re going to look so good together.”

“Very funny.” Heaving an ex-vent at Blurr’s tasteless joke, Perceptor raises his datapad again and scrolls through the list, searching for his note on Eastern tiger swallowtail butterflies. As he marks off the column and writes his estimation of the number living within the conservatory, he asks, “Did you really decorate your habsuite with images of yourself?”

“It’s not as bad as you’re probably imagining right now. Even I’m not that vain.” Blurr leans in closer, scaring the butterfly on Perceptor’s digit into flying away. “I do have a few lying around, though. Why? Do you want one for yourself?”

Perceptor focuses on his datapad and does his best to ignore the thrumming of Blurr’s engine so close to his chassis. “I’ll take one if you sign it too,” he replies. “I hear your autographed photos can easily sell for thousands of shanix.”

“Ouch,” says Blurr. “I don’t sign all my photo handouts, you know. You wouldn’t want to keep such a limited-edition item for yourself?”

“I’d rather receive a boost to my research funding,” says Perceptor.

Blurr places a hand over his own spark and puts on a wounded expression, but laughter is hiccuping out of his vocalizer. “Okay, okay, I get it. You only asked me out because of my bank account. Message received.”

You only asked me out because of my bank account.

...Asked me out?

Perceptor’s servo stills over his datapad.

He jerks his helm up, staring at Blurr as the racer steps closer to the bridge railing and raises his own servo to let a curious amethyst cyber-butterfly perch atop his palm, nuzzling at his digits. Perceptor’s intake suddenly feels dry.

“Blurr,” he says.

Blurr glances back at him. The cyber-butterfly makes a metallic chittering sound. “Yeah?”

“Are you under the impression that this is a date?”

There’s a beat of silence. Blurr cycles his optics. “Uh, yeah? You’re the one who asked me out, shouldn’t you know that?”

“I asked you to help me move all the laboratory equipment I require for this job.”

Blurr nods. “And then you invited me to tour the rest of this place with you.”

Perceptor’s digits twitch against the edge of the datapad. “That was common courtesy. It would have been rude to ask for your help, then promptly dismiss you from the building once you were no longer needed.”

Blurr stares at him. The violet cyber-butterfly on his servo flaps its metal wings once and takes off into the forest.

“Oh,” says Blurr. “Ohhh. Okay, I see how we got our wires mixed up.” He shrugs. “No biggie. Now we both know this is a date, so it’s all good.”

Perceptor knows Blurr is not the thoughtless, empty-helmed idiot that the media occasionally likes to pretend he is. Right now, however, he’s revising his original mediocre estimation of Blurr’s intelligence. “What do you mean, ‘now we both know?’ I was the one who didn’t ask you out. This was never a date in the first place.”

“To you, sure! To me, this was a date the whole time.” Blurr kicks his heel back, spinning the back wheel. “And don’t think I didn’t notice you making eyes at me whenever you weren’t avoiding my gaze. It’s obvious you wanted this to be a date, too.”

Perceptor can feel his optic twitching. “Has anyone ever told you how insufferable you are?”

Blurr snorts. “Yeah. A lot of people. They always tell me to frag off when I start getting on their nerve circuits.” He cocks his helm to one side. “You never have.”

“I have come very close numerous times,” Perceptor informs him. “Including earlier today.”

“Really close, I bet,” agrees Blurr, “but still never.”

Perceptor shuts off his datapad and tucks it under his arm so he can look at Blurr. Really look at him. He’s attractive, certainly—he wouldn’t have legions of fans worshipping his every move otherwise. His arrogance can be grating at times, but he has a good spark deep down. He has a habit of going overboard with his flirting, but now Perceptor is wondering if that’s less to do with Blurr’s personality matrix and more to do with him being specifically attracted to Perceptor.

What a strange thought. Until now, the thought of a romantic relationship with Blurr had never even crossed Perceptor’s processor. However…

“I would not be opposed,” says Perceptor, “to initiating a relationship with you and seeing what follows from it.”

In a flash, Blurr is crowding into his personal space, pressing their sides together and leaning an arm against Perceptor’s shoulder, and oh, Perceptor has a bad feeling he’s going to regret admitting that. “I knew you couldn’t resist me,” says Blurr, and Perceptor hates how he can still hear that awful grin even when he can’t see it.

“Yes,” deadpans Perceptor. “The shanix in your bank account was simply too tempting.”

Blurr pats his cheek. “I hear you. I’ll sign that photo for you tonight.”

“I’m going to sell it.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Well,” concedes Perceptor, “maybe not right away. It will become more valuable with time.”

“Knew you couldn’t resist me,” Blurr says again, even more self-satisfied this time. He slips his hand into Perceptor’s and Perceptor jolts at the touch, but after a moment of acclimatizing to the feeling of someone else’s digits laced through his own, he permits it. “C’mon. You’re supposed to be giving me a tour of all the butterflies.”

Perceptor turns to scrutinize him, even as he begins leading Blurr further down the bridge. “And that is an enjoyable date for you?”

“Percy,” Blurr says seriously. “The only bot I like hearing talk more than myself is you.”

A startled laugh bursts out of Perceptor’s vocalizer, and he receives a close-up look at Blurr’s blinding grin in return, softer and lighter than a butterfly’s wings.

Privately, he takes his own image capture.

Chapter Text

“No,” says Ratchet.

Soundwave’s head slowly tilts to one side. Ratchet was never as good at reading Soundwave’s nonverbal cues as Megatron and Optimus, but he’s pretty sure that’s either an invitation to elaborate or a physical challenge. Actually, knowing Soundwave, it’s most likely both.

“No,” repeats Ratchet. “I’ve already reserved this island. I even cleared all the details with Agent Fowler, specifically so that no one bothers me during my well-deserved vacation. You’re going to have to find your own island.”

«You’re going to have to find your own island,» is thrown right back in his face.

Ratchet scoffs. “Puh-lease. That may work on your Decepticon troops, but you’ll have to try harder than that if you want to intimidate me. I got here first. Get off my island and find your own.”

Soundwave stares at him, head still tilted consideringly, and then he starts trudging closer towards him. Each step he makes is swallowed up by the soft sand and makes little sound, but Ratchet still senses the deliberate weight he’s putting into every one of his pedesteps. He crosses his arms over his chestplates and glares up into Soundwave’s visor as the other bot comes to a stop right in front of him.

He wasn’t lying. He’s not scared of Soundwave. Ratchet knows that out of all the Decepticons, Soundwave is the most intelligent and reasonable, and possesses the most morals—for what that’s worth when compared to bots like Starscream and Knock Out. Soundwave knows what kind of retribution to expect from the rest of the Autobots if he were to assassinate Ratchet on a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Unfortunately, Ratchet also knows that Soundwave, despite his love for peace and quiet whenever he isn’t busy catering to Megatron’s every whim, is too level-helmed and stubborn to give in to Ratchet’s taunts and fly off to a different deserted island.

They’re at a stalemate.

One of Soundwave’s data cables moves in the corner of his vision, and despite himself Ratchet flinches—but it’s not swooping forwards to attack him. The cable plunges into the sand between them, digging a deep groove, and extends to slither a clear line up the width of the beach.

Ratchet watches it disappear into the distance, then looks back at Soundwave. “You’re proposing a truce?” he asks, just to be sure he’s reading this right. “I stay on my half, you stay on yours, and neither of us will kill each other in the middle of the night?”

Soundwave nods.

It’s a stupid idea. Trusting a Decepticon is the kind of idiotic mistake that left Optimus sparkbroken a long time ago. The smart thing to do would be to call Agent Fowler right now so he can arrange a boat to pick Ratchet up, and forget he ever crossed paths with Soundwave today.

But…then Ratchet will have to go through the whole hassle of arranging his vacation at a different location. Honestly, he’d rather just not go on a vacation in the first place, but then Optimus will stare at him with turbokit optics again and go back to delivering grave speeches about the importance of taking time away from work to rest and recuperate. That’s what pushed Ratchet to finally go through the long, arduous process of communicating with Agent Fowler and searching for a place large and remote enough for a Cybertronian to stay for an extended period of time. He really doesn’t want to do that all over again.

A wonderfully cool breeze wafts through the island, ruffling the leafy palm trees and carrying the scent of salt and sunshine. Ratchet in-vents.

“Fine. Let’s try it your way.” He uncrosses his arms and points at the furrow Soundwave carved into the sand to divide the island into equal halves. “But if I see so much as one cable creep onto my side, I’m going to alert the rest of the Autobots.”

His own words are played back at him. «I stay on my half, you stay on yours.»

Ratchet supposes that’s as much of an agreement as he’s going to get.

***

The first few nights are…tolerable.

Ratchet sets up a makeshift shelter on the far side of his half of the island, in a spot covered by a grove of palm trees. He has no doubt that Soundwave could still spy on him if he really wanted to, but the illusion of privacy makes him feel a little safer.

Soundwave has created his own hidden nook on his half of the island, but if he recharges there, Ratchet has yet to catch him in the act. Every time he stumbles awake in the morning, systems still in the process of booting up, Soundwave appears to have already been online for a while. Sometimes he’s curled up in the shade, long digits tapping at a datapad. Sometimes he’s standing at the edge of the beach, waves lapping at his pedes and his visor tilted up to face the sun’s rays. Once, Ratchet woke up and found Soundwave staring in his direction, expression completely unreadable, before turning and retreating to his nook.

Throughout their days, evenings, and nights together, they don’t exchange a single word. Ratchet reads some Earth novels recommended by Rafael, which are surprisingly good, and some recommended by Optimus, which are unsurprisingly bad. He explores the island’s plants and wildlife, but apart from the many different varieties of ants, there isn’t much for him to see. He attempts something that Miko called ‘sunbathing,’ but all it does is heat his plating to uncomfortable degrees and nearly give him metal burn. And the entire time, Soundwave is so quiet that Ratchet sometimes forgets he’s there until his visual feed catches sight of his sleek dark frame contrasted against the brilliant blue sky.

Before, a part of Ratchet suspected this was all part of some elaborate Decepticon plot and Soundwave was planning to establish this island as a secret base of operations. Now…well, he isn’t discarding the possibility entirely, but he has to admit the chances are slim. For one, Ratchet now knows about this island so the ‘secret’ part of Soundwave’s operations would’ve already been ruined, and yet he’s still here. For another, Soundwave seems to be doing the exact same kind of nothing as Ratchet.

Maybe he, too, just really needed the break from everything.

Ratchet was grateful for Soundwave’s eternal silence at first, but as the days go by and the Decepticon continues to be a soundless, looming presence on the other half of the island, a weird, twitchy sensation starts brewing under his plating. Ratchet always thought he would revel in the lack of noise, but obviously something has gone terribly wrong with his systems because he almost misses the other Autobots’ banter and the kids’ constant chatter.

The twitching feeling worsens whenever he catches himself staring at Soundwave from across their boundary line, or contemplating why Soundwave bothered staying when he could’ve flown to any random island and scared off anyone who happened to be living there.

Every time, he forces himself to snap out of it and go back to minding his own business. He doesn’t need to worry about Soundwave’s thoughts and actions. As long as he doesn’t break the terms of their truce, Soundwave can do whatever he wants. Ratchet is too old and too wary to take impulsive risks, and there’s no way he’s going to needlessly bother Soundwave and risk irritating him by pestering him with trivial questions.

***

“So,” says Ratchet later that night, dropping down to sit right at the border of their division line, “what made you come to this island?”

On the other side of the line, Soundwave’s helm lifts up from watching his small fire crackling merrily over a pile of twigs. He looks at Ratchet, visor dark, but he doesn’t immediately try to murder Ratchet for daring to speak to him. That seems like a positive sign.

“I suppose even someone like you would want a vacation after spending millions of stellar cycles aboard the Nemesis,” says Ratchet. He looks right back at Soundwave without breaking optic contact. “Or did someone have to force you to leave?”

For a few tense nanokliks, Soundwave doesn’t react, and the chilly night air is deathly quiet. Then his visor switches on and audio lines jump across the screen. «You have not taken any days off in quite some time,» comes Megatron’s familiar voice. «I need you operating at peak efficiency to finish decoding the Iacon coordinates. So go. Take a vacation and return to us refreshed. That’s an order, Soundwave.»

Ratchet snorts. “That’s pretty much what Optimus said to me. He didn’t make it an official order, but he might as well have with the way he insisted on it. Can you believe them? Making us go on vacation in the middle of a war? What’s going to happen if someone gets injured and I’m not there to fix them?”

Soundwave unfurls one data cable and taps it against the top of his own helm. Ratchet frowns, confused, until he pulls up Soundwave’s frame specifications that he’d downloaded a lifetime ago and realizes that’s where his emergency comm system is installed.

“Yeah, of course they’d comm if there were any emergencies that needed me.” Ratchet shifts back, leaning his weight on his arms and servos. “That doesn’t stop me from worrying about them.”

He regrets the words as soon as he says them. It’s one thing to do—whatever he’s hoping to accomplish by talking to Soundwave. It’s another thing entirely to admit a potential weakness to a Decepticon, especially one who happens to be the third in command of the entire army and is ruthless enough to take advantage of any opening that could win them the war.

But Soundwave surprises him by playing another audio clip: a jumble of high-pitched, twittering noises that doesn’t take Ratchet long to identify.

“Is that Laserbeak?” His gaze drops to the empty dock on Soundwave’s chest. “Oh. You left her behind and you’re worried about her?”

Soundwave hesitates. Then his head dips in a nod.

“I’m sure she’s fine,” says Ratchet, and winces at how useless the platitude sounds. “I mean, Laserbeak might be small, but she’s a formidable opponent even without you there to back her up. All the Autobots know not to underestimate her by now.” He pauses. “The children, on the other hand…if they happen to meet her, there’s an unfortunately high chance that they’ll try to adopt Laserbeak for themselves.”

He barely catches the faint metal screech of Soundwave’s neck cables twisting as he jerks his helm to stare at him. If it weren’t for how alone the two of them are on this island, his audio receptors would have missed it.

“I’m not joking,” says Ratchet. “What, you think Laserbeak’s arsenal of weapons would stop them? Those humans think the most monstrous Cybertronian creatures are ‘cute,’ and they have absolutely no sense of self-preservation. Let me tell you about the time Rafael tried to keep a scraplet as a pet…”

He tells the story. Soundwave is, as he expected, a silent listener. He doesn’t interject with witty jokes or his own casual observations. But the blank visor fixed on him and his still, unmoving frame indicate that he’s paying close attention.

It’s an unexpectedly nice change of pace from Ratchet’s usual daily life.

When he finishes with them luring all the scraplets into the Arctic via the groundbridge, Soundwave’s shoulders are shaking with laughter. Ratchet isn’t sure if he’s laughing because of how silly the whole ordeal was in hindsight, or if he thinks it’s hilarious that all the Autobots on Earth were nearly wiped out because of a scraplet infestation, but either way he finds himself grinning at the rare show of emotion from the typically guarded Decepticon officer.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” he mutters, but even he can tell there’s no heat in his vocals. Slag. All his time on Earth really is making him soft.

Soundwave calms down, his glossy violet plating smoothing down to its usual unruffled state, but Ratchet notes that he isn’t as tense as he was earlier. He can’t explain how he knows that—maybe a distant part of his processor still remembers learning to get a read on Soundwave millenia ago—but Soundwave’s frame language appears more relaxed. More open. Possibly more receptive.

Ratchet bites his lip, thinks of all the reasons why this is a bad idea, and tosses all those reasons in the trash folder.

“You know…there’s another way we can distract ourselves from worrying about everyone we left behind,” he says.

The instant stiffening of Soundwave’s frame tells him he didn’t misinterpret his come-on.

Slowly, Soundwave’s gaze roves over Ratchet’s entire frame, deliberate and obvious. Firelight reflects and flickers over his visor, playing patterns of shimmering orange and yellow on the screen. The scent of burning wood seeps through Ratchet’s olfactory sensors. He can hear the constant push and pull of the ocean’s waves as he sits in ventless anticipation, waiting for Soundwave’s response.

The tendrils at the end of Soundwave’s data cable scoop up a handful of sand and fling it over the firepit, dousing the flames. Ratchet’s optics cycle quickly to adjust to the sudden darkness.

Ratchet cautiously edges one pede over the line in the sand.

Soundwave doesn’t move.

“Okay,” says Ratchet, hauling himself up. “I’m going to take that as a yes.”

He marches across the line, strides towards Soundwave, and throws himself into his lap.

***

Optimus comes to personally greet him several days later, when Ratchet’s vacation ends and he returns to the mainland. As the ship Agent Fowler called in for him pulls into the secluded dock, Ratchet lumbers down the gangway and raises one servo in a wave.

“Welcome back, old friend,” says Optimus as Ratchet approaches him. “I apologize if the ship was late in retrieving you. There was a miscommunication between me and Agent Fowler, and he did not know you planned to depart the island in the morning.”

Ratchet shrugs it off. “Eh, it’s fine. I didn’t mind. It just meant I had extra time for one last frag—ah, uh, I mean, one last fragging…stasis nap. Before I left the island. The island with no one else on it.”

Confusion passes over Optimus’ face, but thankfully he politely dismisses Ratchet’s inane ramblings without asking for a clearer explanation. “Right. I am glad to hear you had such a relaxing time. You look well.”

“I guess you were right,” Ratchet admits. “I do feel a lot less stressed after some time away.”

A small smile blooms on Optimus’ face. “Excellent. You deserved the break, and I wish I could have granted you more time for your vacation. However, we are in dire need of a medic once again.”

“Of course you are,” says Ratchet with a huff, and he starts walking away. “Honestly, I’m shocked you didn’t have to comm me at any point for someone’s medical emergency. I expected at least one Autobot to get into a near-fatal accident without me there.”

There’s a strange pause.

“Ratchet,” says Optimus.

Ratchet stops moving and looks back. “What?”

“I am certain everyone at the base will be happy to see you again,” says Optimus, his vocals slightly strained, “but I suggest you buff out Soundwave’s paint from your aft before you return.”

Chapter Text

In her first time loop, Windblade chooses the simplest, most direct option.

“You’re going to die,” she tells Slipstream.

Slipstream looks at her like she’s gone insane. Windblade has to admit that’s a fair assessment, because she’s not entirely sure herself that she hasn’t gone insane.

“What,” says Slipstream.

Windblade reaches forward, trying to grab Slipstream’s servo, but Slipstream jerks out of the way. Blue electricity sparks off from her injured arm, highlighting the obvious distrust in her scarlet optics.

“Are you threatening me?” she demands.

“No!” says Windblade, aghast. “I’m being literal. I’m trying to warn you!” She darts a glance at the congregation of Autobots and Decepticons milling around and lowers her voice, even though she's pretty sure the secrecy isn't necessary. Before approaching Slipstream, Windblade had taken care of Bludgeon, just in case. For the sake of the temporary truce, she’d stopped herself from murdering him, but she’s certain that he’s in no shape to get in her way or hurt anyone else. “Look, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I’m from the future. And today is the day you’re supposed to die.”

“...You’re right,” says Slipstream, backing away like Windblade’s insanity might be contagious. “You do sound crazy.”

“Crazier than Starscream hiding in the missile silo with the rest of the Seekers and getting ready to use the AllSpark to destroy us all?” counters Windblade.

Slipstream’s mouth falls open. “How—”

“I know that because I’m telling the truth!” Windblade reaches out again, and this time Slipstream lets her grab her hand. Slipstream’s right servo is painfully hot, thrumming with the energy from her self-repair systems knitting her wounds back together. Windblade tightens her grip anyway. “I don’t know why I was sent back to the past, but now that I’m here, I want to save you. You risked everything to come back and warn us—Autobots and Decepticons—and you didn’t deserve to be killed for it.”

There’s a scowl on Slipstream’s face, but Windblade can read the confusion in the tilted slant of her mouth. “But,” says Slipstream, her voice unsteady, “but we’re enemies.”

No, we’re not, Windblade almost says, but she swallows down the words. That would be a lie. In this moment, in Windblade’s original timeline, she still thought of Slipstream as her enemy—someone who’d deactivate her without a second thought if she didn’t fend off her formidable strength every time they met. Just because she’d started to expect Slipstream’s appearances whenever anything of significance happened, her gaze automatically lifting to scan the skies for a bright violet jet, didn’t mean they weren’t prepared to kill each other if necessary.

It was only much, much later that Windblade, consumed with regret and guilt and the seething need for vengeance burning in her fuel lines, started thinking of Slipstream as someone who could have been her ally. Her friend. Maybe something more.

Slipstream never got that chance. She’d died before she could start to believe Windblade didn’t have to be her enemy…but this time will be different. This time, Windblade will make sure Slipstream gets her chance.

“Even if we’re on opposite sides,” says Windblade, “that doesn’t mean I want you to die.”

Slipstream’s gaze drops to their joined servos. Windblade doesn’t know her well enough to read the varying expressions flickering across her face.

“I don't know if I believe you,” says Slipstream, “but I didn't know if anyone would believe me about Starscream, either.” She looks back up at her, optics wide. “In the future, does Starscream—”

“No. No, he doesn't succeed. Optimus defeated him and we imprisoned him on the Ark.” Windblade decides not to mention that Starscream escaped from the Autobots’ custody. No point in stressing out Slipstream with that news. Besides, it all worked out in the end, and with Starscream, along with the Quintessons, dead and gone for good, there was nothing for Slipstream to worry about. “Your warning helps save us. It wasn’t in vain. You died before you were able to see that, but not this time.” She squeezes Slipstream’s hand. “I know you have no reason to trust me, but I swear I’m telling the truth. I’m here to protect you. This time, I’m going to save your life.”

There’s a long pause, until finally a shaky ex-vent leaves Slipstream’s intake. “Fine. You win. I’ll trust you for now. It’s not like I have any better options.” She rubs at the sparking wounds on her arm. “Just so you know, this is a temporary truce. I’m not switching sides to become an Autobot.”

Windblade huffs a relieved laugh. “As long as you don’t expect me to become a Decepticon, I can work with that.” She looks away from Slipstream for a moment, checking on the pop-up tent where Optimus and Megatron are still discussing the possibility of a peace treaty. “First, we’ve got to warn our leaders about Starscream.”

“Thank you—”

Slipstream’s words are abruptly cut off by a powerful sonic blast that knocks them both off their pedes. Caught off guard, Windblade goes hurtling through the air and slams hard into the solid metal wall of the tent. Pain lances through her wings at the impact.

Before she can recover from the blast, a shrill feedback whine drills into her audio receptors, throwing her processor and motor cortex into disarray. Windblade grits her dentae and fights past the scrambled error messages cluttering her processor, managing with great effort to online her optics—just in time to see Soundwave loom over Slipstream, blaster in hand.

“No!” Windblade screams, but Soundwave ignores her.

The green laser shoots straight through Slipstream’s chestplates to her spark. Slipstream’s optics flicker between their usual red and a sickly bright blue, and she lets out one last gasp before they dim.

Windblade thinks she spots Bumblebee and Cheetor in the edge of her visual feed, running to check on Slipstream’s vitals, but she barely notices them. All of her red-hot rage is focused on Soundwave as he lifts his blaster from Slipstream’s doodles sparkless frame

“Why?” she asks, voice cracking halfway through the glyphs.

Soundwave stares back at her, unmoved. The paint on his left shoulder is scorched with blasterfire, and Windblade spitefully hopes it was Slipstream who wounded him. “She was a traitor.”

“She was a hero!” Windblade draws Stormfall from her back and points the tip of the blade at Soundwave. “She was the first one of us to see past faction lines. To realize that uniting against a common enemy was more important than continuing this endless war we’ve been fighting for millenia. And you…you killed her for it!”

“You’re being an idealistic fool,” Soundwave says coldly. “If faction lines mattered as little as you say, Megatron and Optimus wouldn’t be in there—” he jerks his helm at the pop-up tent— “attempting to make peace for the millionth time in as many cycles. Ask anyone here, and they’ll agree with me: there’s no room for useless sentiments like seeing past faction lines in war.”

~*~

Unfortunately, Soundwave is right.

In her second time loop, Windblade stealthily dispatches both Bludgeon and Soundwave, and hides their frames under the ramp of Soundwave’s ship before heading out to look for Slipstream. Just like the first time, she’s able to convince Slipstream to trust her. Just like the first time, Slipstream is gunned down before Windblade can take her to Optimus and Megatron. It’s Shadow Striker behind the barrel this time, and when Windblade confronts her, she gives the exact same answer as Soundwave: Slipstream was a traitor who needed to be dealt with. It didn’t matter that she had vital intel about Starscream. All that mattered was getting rid of a loose end.

Windblade discovers that taking out several of the Decepticons’ top fighters doesn’t change anything either, after Prowl shoots Slipstream during her third loop.

“We can’t trust anything she says,” Prowl tells her. “She’s a Decepticon.”

“She’s more than that,” Windblade insists, but the disbelieving expression on Prowl’s face is too similar to Soundwave’s contempt, and it sinks in that Slipstream won’t be leaving this parley alive no matter what Windblade does. All the Autobots and Decepticons assembled here don’t understand. They don’t know that the war doesn’t have to last forever—that the bots who will one day throw down their weapons were far smarter and braver than the ones who insisted on clinging to petty grudges and constantly trying to murder their enemies.

It’s understandable, because they haven’t yet experienced what Windblade has, but it’s still bitterly frustrating.

~*~

“I need to go further back,” says Windblade.

A soft breeze blows through the still forest, rustling the crisp green leaves. In the distance, she can hear the faint, chattering sounds of small wildlife running and frolicking through the grassy fields, playfully innocent and without a care in the world.

“You sent me back in time for a reason, right? And you chose today, the day that Slipstream was murdered. If I’m right in assuming that she’s the reason I’ve been reliving this day over and over again, then your plan—whatever it is—it isn’t working. I can’t save her this way.”

Windblade looks down at her empty servos. “I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I had so many opportunities to save Slipstream’s life, and I failed every time,” she whispers. “Please, let me try again. Let me try another way.”

And Primus answers.

~*~

The last time Windblade was at this abandoned missile silo, she’d barely managed to escape after her capture and interrogation at Slipstream’s servos. There’s something absurdly ironic, she muses, about returning now with the express purpose of talking to Slipstream before she stumbles on Starscream's secret by herself.

She hears the familiar whine of powerful jet engines cutting out overhead, just before Slipstream transforms, drops out of the sky and lands with an earth-shattering thud that kicks up dust clouds by her pedes. She straightens, surveying the area around her, and her optics immediately land on Windblade casually standing near the entrance to the silo like she’s meant to be there.

“Slipstream,” says Windblade. “We need to talk.”

Slipstream’s arm swings up to face her, and Windblade catches the thrumming sound of her missile powering up. “That’s not exactly what the two of us do.”

The déja vu hits Windblade with the force of a semitruck, but she forces down the sudden lump in her intake. “Things are different now. You’re wondering what happened to your seekers, right? That’s why you’re here. You’re looking for them.”

Slipstream’s optics narrow. “How do you know about that?”

“It’s a long story.” Windblade bends down and pries open the silo’s entrance hatch, acutely aware of the missile still trained on the top of her helm. She’s confident she can dodge it in time, but she hopes Slipstream still recognizes the gesture of trust for what it is. “It’ll be faster to show you what I mean.”

Windblade stands back up and meets Slipstream’s gaze head-on. Slipstream stares back at her, missile still primed, for a few long astroseconds. Then she lets out a huff and lowers her arm.

“Fine,” she says. “If you really know what’s going on with my seekers, I’ll follow you for now. But if you do anything suspicious—”

“You’ll kill me,” finishes Windblade, amused. “I know.”

Slipstream’s stern expression wavers, seemingly caught between lingering wariness and confusion at Windblade’s overfamiliarity. Windblade just smiles and climbs through the entrance, and after a moment she hears Slipstream follow her down the ladder.

The two of them walk to the central chamber where Slipstream once led Windblade and Bee into a trap. Today, it’s where Starscream has assembled the rest of the seekers for the dramatic unveiling of his grand plans to defeat both the Autobots and the Decepticons. Windblade quietly motions to Slipstream, and the two of them crouch down to hide behind a giant pile of twisted metal scraps.

Starscream is spouting something about how lucky everyone is to be witnessing the beginning of his new era, but Windblade is much more interested in looking at Slipstream. As Slipstream listens to Starscream and observes all the seekers’ fascination with his speech, Windblade can see the growing rage, contempt, and something almost like hurt playing across her face. Slipstream’s hands are balled into fists, growing tighter with every word that leaves Starscream’s mouth.

Windblade lays her own servo atop Slipstream’s. “I’m sorry you had to find out this way.”

Slipstream looks down at their servos, then back up at her. She snorts. “I’m not. They’re the ones who are betraying the Decepticons to support Starscream’s evil ambitions. Serves them right if it leads to them getting killed.”

Despite the harsh words, Windblade can sense Slipstream’s regret as she watches Starscream converse with Acid Storm. The enormous sphere behind Starscream starts to glow, pulsing bright enough to illuminate the entire cavern.

“Is that what I think it is?” demands Slipstream.

Windblade gives her a grim nod. “It’s Vector Sigma. Starscream combined its powers with the AllSpark to make himself stronger.”

Beams of energy begin pouring out from the AllSpark, lighting up the ground with luminous spheres that swirl and reveal themselves to be scraplets. The dreaded sound of dozens of skittering metal legs fills the cavern as Starscream cackles, throwing his hands in the air.

“Well,” says Slipstream as the scraplets flock to Starscream’s pedes. “That’s great. That’s just what a deranged Starscream needed. An army of hungry scraplets. Did you know he was going to do this?”

“Yes,” says Windblade. “And I know what chaos he’s going to unleash next, and I know that you want to stop him. Badly enough that you’d even be willing to ask someone like me for help.”

Slipstream frowns, glancing back at Starscream, but she doesn’t refute Windblade’s assessment. She simply says, “What’s your plan?”

Windblade lowers her voice. “Optimus and Megatron will be meeting to discuss a possible truce to take down Starscream. It doesn’t go well. But neither of them know how dangerous Starscream has become now that he’s got both Vector Sigma and the AllSpark. If we tell them how much of a threat he is, then maybe they’ll really work together this time.”

“That’s a big ‘maybe,’” says Slipstream.

Windblade shrugs. “It’s still our best shot at stopping Starscream.”

It’s the truth, even if she’s omitting the fact that the Autobots and Decepticons will manage to stop Starscream even without her and Slipstream’s intervention. What Windblade really wants isn’t to stop Starscream, since she’s certain that will happen anyway. What she wants is to get Slipstream on her side earlier, and consequently under her and Optimus’ protection—where Bludgeon, or Soundwave, or any other Cybertronian, won’t dare lay a hand on her.

She doesn’t know if not telling Slipstream about the whole time loop situation this time will help convince her, but Windblade figures it’s worth a try.

“Okay,” says Slipstream finally. “I can’t say I trust you yet, but I agree that we’ll need the combined forces of our factions to defeat Starscream. For now, I’ll go along with your plan.” She crosses her arms. “But don’t get any ideas about us being friends now. This alliance is only temporary.”

A strange combination of fondness and stinging hurt wells up in Windblade’s spark. “Yeah. That’s fine.” She offers a smile. “We can discuss a more permanent alliance once we’ve taken down Starscream.”

Slipstream’s face contorts as if she’s unsure how to react to that. “You really—”

Her back suddenly arches, and she cuts herself off with a pained scream. Windblade jumps, startled—and realizes both of them had stopped paying attention to Starscream, and she hasn’t heard the scraplet’s scrabbling footsteps for a while now.

Slipstream leaps up, twisting to shake out her wings, and Windblade draws in a horrified in-vent at the sight of a dozen scraplets gnawing at Slipstream’s back plating. In astroseconds, they’re all over her frame, exposing sparking wires and chewing through fuel lines. Windblade shoots to her pedes and moves to draw Stormfall, but two pairs of servos latch onto her arms. She twists to glare at Nova Storm and Thundercracker, trying to yank herself free, but they’re gripping onto her too tightly. “Let me go!”

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, Windblade.” Starscream saunters forward, grinning widely at Slipstream’s increasingly frantic attempts to pull the scraplets off of herself. “As a seeker, Slipstream is supposed to be loyal to me. I don’t tolerate traitors.”

“You’re the only traitor here, Starscream!” Slipstream manages to hiss out, picking off a scraplet from her wing and flinging it away. “Not only have you abandoned the Decepticons, you’ve dragged my seekers into it! And now you’re conspiring to destroy us all!”

Starscream’s grin abruptly disappears. “I’ve abandoned the Decepticons? They abandoned me first when Megatron deactivated me—the second in command of the entire Decepticon army—by throwing me off the Nemesis, and no one gave a flying frag! Getting devoured by my children is the least of what the Decepticons deserve!”

“That just makes you as bad as Megatron!” Windbalde strains against the seekers’ grip, helpless fury rising inside her as Slipstream convulses, falling to her knees with a deafening crash that echoes around the chamber. Electricity arcs from countless patches of torn plating, and to Windblade’s horror she can see the dimming of Slipstream’s optics as her systems begin shutting down.

“Starscream, wait!” Windblade calls out desperately. “If you let Slipstream go, I’ll—I won’t go to Optimus and Megatron. I’ll let you have your surprise attack. Just let Slipstream go!”

Starscream’s optics light up with manic glee. “The famous Windblade, feared Autobot warrior, is begging me for mercy? I almost wish I was still a Decepticon, just so I could brag about this to the whole army!”

Windblade grits her dentae. “What’s your answer, Starscream? Do you want Megatron to come and deactivate you for good this time?”

Making a show of humming in thought, Starscream approaches her and leans in close. “I’m very, very curious about why you’re trying so hard to save your enemy’s life…but it seems I’ll never learn the answer.” His mouth curves in a sneer. “You’re too late. My children work very quickly.”

He steps back, far enough for Windblade to glimpse Slipstream’s greying frame collapsed on the ground. The scraplets nuzzle at her wires, and upon seeing that there’s nothing left for them to feast on, they abandon Slipstream and return to Starscream’s side, chittering around his heels.

“You…” rasps Windblade, incensed. “You!”

“Oh, are you mad that I killed her?” asks Starscream in faux sympathy. His wings hike up in gleeful delight. “It’s okay. You’ll reunite with her soon enough in the AllSpark.”

Rage billows inside of Windblade like an acid rain storm, boiling uncontrollably through her fuel lines. She yells wordlessly as the heat becomes unbearable and she instinctively switches on her turbines, cranking them on past their maximum power output. The most intense gust of wind she’s ever summoned blasts outwards, howling through the cavern and knocking all the seekers and scraplets clear off their feet. In the centre of the room, Vector Sigma shudders on its stand, but doesn’t topple over. It doesn’t break.

Right now, Windblade doesn’t care enough to decide whether that’s a good thing or not.

Nova Storm and Thundercracker are lying facedown several astrometres away, and they don’t look like they’re getting up any time soon. Windblade hurries to Slipstream, deliberately stepping on Starscream as she does so, and kneels down beside her. It only takes her a quick look to confirm that Starscream was right—the scraplets ate through too many of Slipstream’s critical fuel lines and completely shorted out her spark. When Windblade rolls her onto her back, she finds Slipstream’s final expression of anguish etched on her face, and the agony she must’ve felt in those last moments is echoed in the depths of Windblade’s spark.

“I’m sorry,” whispers Windblade. “But I’m not giving up yet. I have to believe I can still save you.”

Swallowing down her churning emotions, she transforms and flies out without looking back.

~*~

Windblade ducks as Slipstream’s missile zips overhead and smashes into the wall of the Nemesis behind her, exploding with enough force to send metal shards flying outwards. A few slice across her plating, leaving deep black marks in her red paint. She ignores them in favour of throwing herself at Slipstream, tackling her around the waist and driving them both to the ground.

“What the—?” Slipstream struggles in her hold, wings scraping against the floor. “What are you doing?!”

“Forcing you to listen to me!” cries Windblade, pinning her more firmly with an arm across her torso. Physically fighting Slipstream into submission wouldn’t normally be her first option, but she’s running out of time. Around her, she can hear the sounds of the other Autobots fighting the Decepticons within the Nemesis, blaster shots ricocheting off the ship’s walls, but eventually someone will notice she snuck away from the rest of her squad to corner Slipstream in the Nemesis’ communications centre.

“Look, I’m from the future, and—” Windblade grunts as Slipstream’s pede kicks out and dents her thigh— “in a couple hundred astrocycles, Starscream is going to use the seekers to steal Vector Sigma and create an army of monsters, and you’re going to die while trying to warn everyone!”

Slipstream laughs in her face even as she jabs an elbow into Windblade’s chest panels, hard enough for Windblade to reflexively let her go. “As if!” She scrambles to her pedes and leaps away from her. “Starscream is dead! And even if by some miracle he survived Megatron’s attack, he’s no longer the commander of the seekers! I am!”

“Only in name!” says Windblade. “The seekers are listening to you for now, but they’re more loyal to Starscream. Once he reveals that he’s still alive, they’ll start following his orders over yours.”

Slipstream’s mouth tightens. Even in the dim lighting of the Nemesis, Windblade can see the bright splashes of energon smeared across Slipstream’s plating, left over from Windblade’s own wounds when she tackled her. “You know, there are better, more convincing ways to tell me I’m a bad leader.”

“What?” Windblade twists to fully face her. “I don’t think you’re a bad leader.”

The reassurance comes out of her mouth automatically after spending so much time saying anything that would convince Slipstream to join her side, but when Windblade takes longer than an astrosecond to think about it…she really doesn’t know. Apart from witnessing Slipstream barking orders during Windblade’s time in her captivity, she’s never seen her leadership skills on display. She’s never seen Slipstream review the Decepticons’ attacks post-mission, or come up with military strategies, or connect with the other seekers.

She doesn’t know what kind of leader she is. And she’s not sure if she knows Slipstream well enough to make an accurate guess, either.

“If I’m not a bad leader, then why would my seekers be more loyal to Starscream than me?” demands Slipstream.

Windblade stands up slowly. “I don’t know. You didn’t get to tell me that.”

Slipstream chokes on a laugh. “You should’ve thought through the details of your story before confronting me.”

Engine growling, Windblade’s digits flex towards Stormfall on her back, but she doesn’t let herself reach for her sword. “I’m telling you the truth! What reason would there be for me to lie?”

“You could be trying to get me to lower my guard. Wait until I stop fighting you, and then stab me in the back.”

Windblade looks at her. “Do you really believe I would do something like that?”

Slipstream chews on her lip and doesn’t answer.

Sensing the opportunity, Windblade approaches her, hands outstretched. “I understand why you don’t trust me,” she says. “You don’t really know me, and I don’t really know you either, because neither of us got that chance. You died before we could try being something more than enemies. But if we can change that—if we can stop you from dying too early—then we’ll have more time. I’ll be able to prove that it was worth it to trust me.” She moves even closer, daring to step within point-blank shooting range. “All you have to do is stop fighting me.”

Slipstream studies her, gaze boring into Windblade’s like she might be able to see into her processor, or possibly into her spark, if she tries hard enough. Windblade knows from unfortunate experience that this isn’t possible, but she lets Slipstream take her time scrutinizing her anyway.

Finally, Slipstream heaves an ex-vent. “I can’t say I trust you yet—”

“Yeah, you said that last time too,” says Windblade.

“What?”

“Nothing. Sorry. Just an inside joke.”

Slipstream eyes her like she’s reevaluating the state of Windblade’s mental circuitry. “I don’t trust you,” she says again. “But I know you’re an Autobot through and through, and I’ve never seen an Autobot stab their own ally in the back. Especially not one like you.”

Windblade cocks her head. “What do you mean, not one like me?”

“You’re honourable.” Slipstream purses her lips, like even the word disgusts her, and Windblade would be more offended if not for this being the nicest thing Slipstream has ever said to her. “You’re not the kind of person to lead me into a trap, or bait me onto your side just to betray me later. I may not know a lot about you, but I’ve seen enough to know that much.”

Trusting that Slipstream is telling the truth and she won’t suddenly transform her arm into a blaster and shoot out her spark, Windblade lowers her hands. “That’s just common decency.”

A wry smile lifts the edge of Slipstream’s mouth. “It’s not as common as you might think.”

“Maybe you’re just not hanging out with the right people.” Windblade is close enough to see the faint smudges of darkened paint underneath Slipstream’s optics. “I’m not asking you to switch sides. I’m only asking you to help me figure out how to prevent your death.”

“Well, when you put it that way…” The tentative smile on Slipstream’s face grows a little wider, and Windblade can’t look away from her. “How can I refuse?”

Relief swamps through Windblade’s emotional subsystem. “You shouldn’t—”

The door beside them is blasted off its hinges without warning, flying straight at Windblade and smashing her across the room. Someone large crashes against the giant piece of metal, effectively pinning Windblade between the door and the floor.

Ignoring the angry error reports cluttering up her HUD and the overwhelming pain shooting through her chest panels, Windblade struggles until she’s able to stick her helm out from under the door. She looks up, and up, and finds herself staring at the back of Megatron’s head.

“Oh, slag,” she mutters.

But Megatron isn’t even looking at her. As he clambers to his pedes, all his attention is fixed on the doorway. Windblade follows his gaze and sees Optimus marching into the room, his attention equally focused on Megatron.

“Megatron!” growls Optimus. “There is nowhere left for you to run.”

In answer, Megatron raises his fusion cannon and starts firing. Optimus moves out of the way, and the powerful blasts whiz past him and explode somewhere in the outside corridor, shaking the entire Nemesis. The vibrations send lines of agony rippling down Windblade’s legs, still crushed beneath the door.

Optimus lifts his own blaster and returns fire at Megatron, but all his shots bounce harmlessly off the warlord’s thick armour. The two circle each other, trading a flurry of shots that fly dangerously around the small room. Windblade flinches back as one zips by uncomfortably close to her helm, and she renews her struggles to free herself from underneath the door.

As the overlapping sound of lasers fills the communications centre, Windblade catches sight of Slipstream hurrying to move out of the two leaders’ crossfire. She’s backing up, helm swivelling to keep track of Optimus and Megatron’s firefight, and Windblade’s gaze drops to the jagged piece of metal on the floor that blew off from the entranceway when the door exploded.

“Slipstream—!” is all she manages to get out before Slipstream’s pede catches the edge of the metal and she trips.

For Windblade, the next few astroseconds play out in slow motion. She’s still trapped under the door, helpless to do anything but watch as Slipstream stumbles, frame toppling over, and the next shot from Optimus’ blaster pierces straight through Slipstream’s chassis to her spark.

A pained yell is ripped from Slipstream’s vocalizer as she hits the ground. Her optics find Windblade’s, but Windblade can’t decipher what, if anything, she’s trying to communicate to her before their light fades out.

“Slipstream!” screams Windblade.

Optimus lowers his blaster, looking down at Slipstream with horror, and Megatron takes the opportunity to activate his commlink. “Soundwave!” he barks. “Send the nearest Decepticon squad to my coordinates. Now!”

Finally, Windblade manages to wiggle her arms free from the door and shove the giant piece of metal off of herself, pulling her frame out from underneath it. She scrabbles towards Slipstream on her hands and knees, desperately patting at Slipstream’s facial mesh, but all that does is make Slipstream’s head loll, unmoving, onto its side.

“Windblade.” Optimus crouches down, placing a hand on her shoulder. “We need to go. Megatron has called for reinforcements.”

Windblade stares at Slipstream’s slack features and open mouth, frozen forever in shock. “I can’t leave her,” she says numbly. “If I keep leaving her, I’ll forget that I’m supposed to save her.”

“What—” Optimus starts to say, but he’s cut off by the sound of Megatron’s fusion cannon powering up again. There’s a hard tug on Windblade’s shoulder, right before Optimus yanks her out of the way of Megatron’s blast.

“Windblade!” Optimus says, louder this time, as he maneuvers them both out of the way of Megatron’s second fusion cannon blast. “I do not understand what you’re talking about, but we cannot stay here. There is nothing more you can do for Slipstream.” He hesitates. “I am sorry, but she is already one with the AllSpark.”

Windblade doesn’t answer. She knows Optimus is right. But she also knows Optimus already knows he’s right, and the only thing acknowledging his words out loud would do is confirm that she’s failed Slipstream once again.

Under the barrage of cannonfire from Megatron, Optimus tugs her out of the room, and Windblade wordlessly lets him lead her through the Nemesis. Her processor is a million astromiles away, busy whirling through all the strategies she’ll need for rescuing Slipstream the next time.

~*~

Windblade keeps trying. Again, and again, and again.

She tries to warn Slipstream during the Autobots and Decepticons’ battle on the Earth’s moon, but Slipstream is killed by Megatron after he overhears their conversation and suspects she’s planning to betray him. She tries to warn Slipstream while they’re fighting over the Ark under Mount St. Hilary, but Slipstream is knocked into the lava by Shockwave after she stops obeying his orders and he deems her unfit for command. She tries to warn Slipstream when Slipstream corners her during her escape from the abandoned missile silo, but Bee accidentally shorts out all of Slipstream’s systems while helping Windblade, and Slipstream’s entire frame goes up in flames after she falls off the ladder and hits the concrete.

It doesn’t matter how many times she tries, or how far back she travels in time, or what different angle she takes to convince Slipstream to ally with her. Every loop ends with Slipstream getting deactivated in new, creative ways, and although Windblade is determined not to give up—not to feel demoralized no matter how many times she fails—it doesn’t stop her from feeling like she’s constantly slamming headfirst into a brick wall, unable to see what’s on the other side. If there even is anything on the other side of that towering wall. If everything she’s doing is accomplishing anything at all.

Windblade doesn’t know.

Until—

~*~

“Why?” asks Slipstream, distrust clear in her voice. “Even if what you’re saying is true, why would you bother warning me?

The two of them are locked in a standoff aboard Slipstream’s scout ship—the result of Windblade leaving Bee to pilot their own stolen shuttle as a decoy while she jumped onto the Decepticon ship and snuck inside. Far beneath them, the vivid blue surface of Earth is visible through the cockpit window, puffy white clouds swirling in gentle wisps around the planet.

Slipstream had, of course, attacked her the moment Windblade entered the room, but it didn’t take long for Windblade to get the upper servo and pin her against the glass window with Stormfall at her neck cables. She can feel the heat of Slipstream’s arm blaster powering up against her thigh, but she knows it’s an empty threat. Slipstream knows better than to blow up this tiny cockpit while she’s also stuck inside.

“Once, I told you that it’s because I don’t want you to die.” Windblade adjusts her grip, shifting until she’s putting a little less pressure on Slipstream. Not enough to let her break free, but enough to make her feel less like her life is being threatened. “And it was the truth, but…it wasn’t the whole truth. Yes, I don’t want you to die—but more than that, I wanted to be the one to save you.”

“What, so you can ease your conscience?” says Slipstream with a sneer. “Or is it to satisfy your so-called Autobot morals?”

Windblade laughs, and it burns in her throat. “No, it’s a lot more selfish than that. I wanted—no, I needed to save you because it was my fault you died. It was my own fault that I learned what it was like to miss you.”

Slipstream’s sneer melts into a confused frown. “You said Bludgeon killed me.”

“And I was right there when he did,” says Windblade. “I dropped my guard, because I was more worried about warning Optimus than watching out for you, and you died because of my mistake. You died, and adjusting to a life without you in it was…more difficult than I expected. So when I got this chance to see you again and save you this time, I took it.”

Slipstream stares at her for a long while, before letting out an incredulous snort. “I was right. This is about soothing your delicate Autobot conscience. That’s hilarious.”

“Excuse me? I said—”

“Yeah, Bludgeon stabbed me in the back and you, the all-powerful, infallible Autobot warrior, weren’t able to stop him. Boo-hoo. I heard you the first time.” Slipstream rolls her optics. “We’re on opposite sides. You have no obligation to save my life, even if I came to you for help.” She shifts her head a little further away from the sharp angle of Windblade’s sword and makes a face. “This doesn’t mean I believe you, by the way. I can’t imagine any universe where I ask you for help.”

Windblade resists the urge to roll her own optics in return. “Is it that hard to believe I just missed you enough to want to save your life?”

“Yes,” Slipstream says instantly. “It’d be more believable if you said you felt like you owed me for warning you about Starscream.”

“But that’s not true!” Windblade objects instantly, before hesitating. “Well, maybe it’s a little true. But it’s not because you tried to save our lives with your warning. It’s because you were the first one to change for the better. The first one to look beyond our differences. The first one to believe that we didn’t have to keep fighting this war forever.” She tries to smile. “I told Bludgeon that once. Soundwave, too. Don’t think it meant anything to them, but it helped to say it out loud.”

“Helped with what?”

Windblade gives a helpless shrug. “Remembering why I ended up liking you so much, I guess. Even though you weren't around anymore.”

Slipstream cycles her optics. Through the window over her helm, Windblade spots Bee flying their shuttle close to Slipstream’s ship, no doubt ready to assist her the moment she comms for help. It’s very kind of him, but Windblade hopes he remembers that she specifically asked him not to intervene no matter what emergency crops up. She doesn’t want a repeat of time loop number fifteen.

“That’s stupid,” says Slipstream.

Windblade’s head jerks back to face her. “Excuse me?”

Somehow, Slipstream manages to look annoyed even with Stormfall still pressed dangerously close to her neck. “You heard me. That’s stupid. You’re telling me that I died, and instead of doing something productive like taking down Starscream or avenging my death or, I don’t know, ending the war, you wasted your time moping about not being able to save me? That’s not what the Windblade I know would do.”

Windblade’s grip on Stormfall slips slightly, though fortunately not enough to accidentally nick Slipstream’s cables.

“I did avenge your death,” she says. “Wheeljack and I banished Bludgeon to unspace.”

“Well, it’s nice to know you managed that much,” says Slipstream, “but if you already succeeded at that, why are you still brooding over me?”

“I’m not—it’s not that easy!” snaps Windblade, fuel tank churning unsteadily. Slipstream never brought this up in any of the past loops. She never had the time. “Just because I personally made sure Bludgeon died doesn’t mean I stopped feeling like I could’ve easily prevented your death!”

Slipstream’s expression doesn’t change. “So what? Your feelings about the situation aren’t going to change anything. It’s not going to magically bring me back to life. I know you Autobots are all about looking on the bright side, but even you’ve got to admit that Primus himself sending you back in time to supposedly save me is already a miracle.” She snorts. “And I hope you weren’t expecting me to thank you for travelling to the past to rescue me like I’m some femme in distress. I don’t see the point in you feeling guilty over something that probably would’ve happened even if you weren’t there.”

An electric current speeds down Windblade’s spinal strut like Bee just shocked her with his stingers. She stares, mouth falling open and spark pulsing hard in its chamber, as Slipstream’s words light up pathways in her processor and form connections that she hadn’t thought to link together until this moment.

“Oh,” she says, stunned.

Slipstream raises an optical ridge. “Did I break you?”

“No.” Windblade lifts Stormfall, and sits back, and drags a servo down her own face. A mirthless laugh escapes her. “The opposite, actually. I think…I understand now.”

~*~

Windblade keeps trying.

Until finally, she arrives at the truth, and…

Stops.

Not because she wants to give up on saving Slipstream.

But because the truth, all along, was that—

~*~

“It was never about saving Slipstream’s life,” says Windblade. “It was never even about Slipstream at all. It was about me.”

The forest wind whistles over her, pressing encouragingly against her back.

Windblade grinds her dentae and glares into the knot of trees surrounding her. “Slipstream’s death was taking up too much of my thoughts. It was holding me back. So you sent me back in time and made me watch her die, over and over again, until I realized she was always going to die. That I alone wasn’t enough to change anything. And because of that, me feeling guilty about her deactivation was pointless. Am I right?”

Her only response is the continued pressure of the wind, curling around her frame in soft spirals that Windblade wishes she could tear apart with her bare servos.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Windblade works her jaw, doing her best to refrain from swearing at Primus out loud. “Did it occur to you that that’s really cruel, and also might not have even worked? Seeing Slipstream die right in front of me so many times wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience. What if it shattered my reality matrix?”

No answer. She lets out a frustrated huff. “Yeah, I guess you saw the future and knew that wouldn’t happen,” she mutters. “Or you didn’t know, and you just got lucky my logic unit didn’t melt during one of the time loops. Either way, it’s…” Windblade’s shoulders slump, and she forces her jaw to unclench. “Well. It happened. I witnessed all of Slipstream’s deaths, and I can’t change anything about them now—which is exactly what you wanted from me, I guess. Frag. At this point, I don’t even know if your plan worked or not. I don’t know if I’ve stopped feeling responsible for Slipstream’s fate. Right now, I just feel angry.”

Windblade startles as a rich, sonorous voice floats directly into her mind, soft and thunderous, and familiar and foreign, at the same time.

It is far easier to rage than to grieve.

“You’ve got that right,” spits out Windblade. “Because I’m furious. At you, at everyone who hurt Slipstream, at Slipstream herself, and at…”

She trails off, engine heaving thick fumes of exhaust. The sun’s rays peek through a gap in the trees high above her helm, burning against the back of her plating and illuminating the fallen leaves ahead of her in brilliant shades of gold.

To her surprise, Primus seems to take pity on her and keeps talking. As Slipstream told you, there is no need to feel guilty. She was always destined to become one with the AllSpark that day. All is as it should be.

The words are familiar, and Windblade locates her memory file of Cheetor saying the same thing when Slipstream died the first time.

It brings as little comfort now as it did back then.

“Is this the part where you spirit me back to the present time now that I’ve figured out your whole plan and learned my lesson or whatever?” Windblade crosses her arms. “Because if that’s the case, I have a request. Considering everything you put me through, I don’t think it’s too much to ask for.”

With a faint hum, the wind slows to a light trickle that spills over her chassis, close to her spark.

Windblade sets her mouth in a thin line. “I want one more time loop.”

One more try to save her?

“No,” says Windblade. “One last chance to say goodbye.”

~*~

The freezing, bitter wind of the Himalayas gusts around Windblade, leaving a fine coating of snow on her plating and a noticeable lag draining most of her systems. She doesn’t remember it being this cold the first time she visited this specific location lifetimes ago. Then again, she’d been focused on outwitting her enemies, not soaking in the nostalgia of this place.

The place where she first met Slipstream.

Windblade dodges Slipstream’s kick—an easy move when she already knows it’s coming—and grabs her ankle to slam her into the ground. Normally, Slipstream’s frame would’ve bounced hard from the impact, but thanks to the thick white snow, she only sinks through layers of white deep enough to cushion most of the blow. The instant Slipstream’s back hits the snow, Windblade moves, straddling Slipstream’s legs and anchoring herself with her servos against Slipstream’s shoulders.

Slipstream snarls, lashing out with her pede at Windblade’s chest in an attempt to kick her off, but Windblade takes the blow without flinching and holds firm.

“If you’re going to deactivate me,” hisses Slipstream, kicking at Windblade’s frame again, “make it quick. No need to torture us both like this.”

Despite herself, despite the spark-deep exhaustion that’s become a permanent companion lodged into every circuit of her frame, amusement bubbles over into Windblade’s vocalizer. “Don’t worry. I’m not planning to deactivate you, Slipstream.”

Slipstream’s optics narrow. “What, now you remember my name?”

“Yes.” Windblade brushes the snow from her optics to clear her visual feed. “I won’t forget it this time. I won’t forget any of this, or anything about you, no matter how many cycles pass. I promise.”

“Huh?” Slipstream blinks up at her. “What the scrud are you talking about?”

Windblade looks at her. At the flash of irritation in Slipstream’s blazing red optics, the uncertainty twisting her dark painted lips, the bright purple angles of her wings and chassis, the snowflakes dusting Slipstream’s frame and softening the stiff way she’s holding herself, as if preparing for the possibility of Windblade slitting her fuel lines at any moment.

She commits all of it, every last detail and every single time she’s tried to save Slipstream, to her memory.

“A part of me won’t ever forgive myself,” says Windblade. “I doubt anything can change that, not even numerous trips through time. But even though I could never save you, at least I know that every time, in every different situation, you chose to put your trust in me. That counts for something. It’ll have to be enough.”

Slipstream stares back at her. “I hope you know I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Windblade giggles. Snow is beginning to pile up over her optics again, but she doesn’t bother clearing her vision this time. “That’s okay. It’s probably better that you don’t understand. You live longer if I don’t interfere—I’ve learned that much, at least.”

Slowly, she shifts her weight off of Slipstream’s legs and stands up, pedes sinking into the soft snow. Slipstream mirrors her, carefully stepping back to put a significant distance between the two of them. There’s a crease in the metal of her forehelm as she regards Windblade with the suspicion of a stranger.

It hurts. But it’s also a comfort, knowing that Slipstream will still meet the real Windblade of this timeline, and they’ll fight, and flee, and fight again, and the dance they’ve perfected over the astrocycles will follow the same steps that Windblade remembers, clear as crystal in her memory banks.

“Thank you, Slipstream,” says Windblade, before she flies away from Slipstream for the last time. She straightens out her wings and summons a genuine smile. “And—goodbye. Let’s meet again someday.”

Chapter Text

When a bot deactivates, their spark leaves their frame to become one with the AllSpark. This is common knowledge to most Cybertronians.

What is not common knowledge, and what Wheeljack doesn’t know, is what happens to a bot who deactivates by deliberately altering their spark to corrupt the AllSpark, only for that corruption to be reversed when someone else purifies the AllSpark with their own positive spark. Would the evil bot’s spark still be allowed to pass on into the AllSpark? Would they get rejected and be forced to wander Cybertron as a ghost? Or would they just disappear into nothingness?

Considering it’s an extremely specific case that Wheeljack is pretty sure has never happened before, he doubts there’s anyone functioning who can answer those questions with one hundred percent certainty.

“Ha!” he says out loud. “That means it’s possible you’re still here, Shockwave!” He sticks out one servo and waves it in a wide arc in front of him. “Maybe I’m passing through you right now, and you’re pulling that funny angry face you make where the metal of your forehelm gets dragged down!”

The possibly-present ghost of Shockwave doesn’t answer him. Neither does the Well of the AllSpark, looming ahead of him like a glowing blue beacon.

Bits of broken glass and other debris are crushed under Wheeljack’s pedes as he walks forward. He knows it was Shockwave’s fight with Bee and Cheetor that had left this trail of destruction. Afterwards, Bee had volunteered to clean up the place, but Wheeljack guesses he hasn’t gotten to that item on his lengthy to-do list yet. Either he’s been busy, or he just doesn’t want to come back here. Wheeljack gets it. Part of him doesn’t really want to be here either, and wishes he’d just put his helm down and stayed in his lab.

Then again, nowadays even just being in his lab occasionally triggers its own set of bad memories.

Wheeljack lets out a heavy ex-vent and keeps moving forward, step by painful step, until he’s standing directly underneath the AllSpark.

For several long astrominutes, Wheeljack just stares up at the AllSpark, watching it spin and pulse in flashes of vivid light. It’s hard to believe that this small polyhedron is what their factions waged such a bitter war over. Logically, Wheeljack knows that it’s one of the most powerful Cybertronian artifacts in existence, and it’s entirely possible all the Autobots on the Ark would’ve died if they hadn’t had the AllSpark on board, but seeing it sitting innocuously hundreds of astromiles underground makes it seem less imposing. Less like a valuable object that so many bots needed to die fighting for.

A huff escapes him. Maybe Bee really did have the right idea. Wheeljack doesn’t know what he was hoping to accomplish by coming here. Just because Shockwave died here doesn’t mean visiting this spot is going to bring him back to life, or help him feel any closer to him, or make him understand why Shockwave made the choices that led to his death.

Because that’s the crux of it all, isn’t it? Despite the war, despite everything that went wrong between them, Wheeljack thought he understood Shockwave. His endless curiosity. His fervent desire to push the limits of what was possible with science. His wry sense of humour. The way his optic would start twitching whenever Wheeljack irritated him, which was pretty much all the time. The way he’d indulge all of Wheeljack’s whims anyway, because they were the same kind of genius idiots when it came to their work, and despite their many opposing personality traits, they weren’t that different deep down.

At least, that’s what Wheeljack always believed. Until Shockwave apparently decided at some point that his loyalty to Megatron was worth his life and whatever few morals he still possessed.

Wheeljack gazes up at the AllSpark gleaming brightly overhead, and wonders what Shockwave was feeling in his final moments. Regret, that he was about to doom all of Cybertron with all the unbridled malice he’d harboured in his spark? Happiness, that he was faithfully fulfilling Megatron’s orders and supporting the Decepticons to the very end?

“That last one doesn’t seem right,” Wheeljack says aloud. “And not just because I’ve never seen you happy in my entire functioning.” He shrugs, shifting his weight to his other pede. Metal fragments scrape against the bottom wheel. “I just can’t imagine you willingly sacrificing your own spark like that. You told me you only joined the Decepticons because they were less strict about ethics and gave you more access to the resources you needed. When did you start genuinely caring about their cause more than your science?”

When did you start genuinely caring about their cause more than me? is what he means, but Shockwave would know that’s what he’s really asking. If he’s able to hear Wheeljack, which is looking more and more like the delusions of a grieving bot rather than a plausible scientific theory.

“Well, maybe that’s a good thing.” Wheeljack chuckles, mouth twisting. “I bet you’d hate being a ghost. Stuck in this dimension, without being able to return to the AllSpark or your empty frame…unless there’s something tying you to this world, I dunno why you’d choose to stay here and haunt the rest of us.”

Wheeljack hasn’t asked Bee what he did with Shockwave’s frame after that fateful battle. He knows Bee took Cheetor’s frame back to Iacon and gave him a proper burial. He knows he wouldn’t have done the same for Shockwave.

It’s not like Wheeljack expects Bee to have treated Shockwave’s sparkless frame with even the slightest amount of respect, not after he’s the indirect reason that Cheetor is dead, but the thought of Shockwave getting unceremoniously incinerated or tossed aside like a piece of junk still makes Wheeljack’s own spark ache.

“I hope you weren’t expecting a fancy funeral when you died,” says Wheeljack, “because this is the best you’re getting.” He spreads his arms wide. “Just me, myself, and I. Your favourite scientist and favourite bot, rolled into one.”

Once again, only silence answers him. Somehow, his amazing sense of humour doesn’t feel as funny when Shockwave isn’t there at his side, ready to shoot him his patented disapproving glare on cue.

Wheeljack drops his arms.

And for the first time, he allows himself to stand still and just—feel the tidal wave of grief and loss and helplessness that’s been surging through him ever since he learned about Shockwave’s death. It’s thick and overwhelming, and nearly chokes his ventilations when the depths of his hurt inundates his emotional subsystem all at once, but Wheeljack shutters his optics and slowly lets out long, even ex-vents until he’s able to get his systems mostly back under control.

“I dunno where you are now,” he rasps, once his vocalizer is working again. “Whether you’re in the AllSpark, or another plane of existence, or if you’re gone for good and I’m talking to thin air right now…I hope you know I’m gonna miss you. I was already missing all those days we spent in the lab together, and all those nights at Maccadam’s, and all those times I blew myself up and you carried me to the hospital, complaining the whole time about how I never learned my lesson about following standard safety procedures. But what got me through the war was knowing you were okay, even if you were on the other side of the universe doing evil science experiments for Megatron. Now I don’t even have that much. Now I’m never gonna see you again.” He takes another deep, shuddering in-vent. “Life ain’t gonna be as fun without you in it, Shockwave.”

Wheeljack scrubs roughly at his faceplates and gathers himself, forcing his hunched shoulders to slope back down.

“Oh, right,” he adds abruptly. “I also came here to warn you—I’m gonna hack into your files and steal your code for the dancing drones. You can’t stop me from doing that anymore, seeing as you’re dead and all, and I already cracked all your passcodes, so…yeah. Thanks for the final gift.”

There’s a lot more he could say. But what’s the point? The only one listening is him, and hearing himself talk about Shockwave to no one isn’t making him miss him any less. It’s just driving the dagger further into his spark.

Wheeljack chews on his lip, and settles on one last message—just in case Shockwave is somehow, impossibly listening.

“I never stopped loving you,” he says into the painful silence. “I hope you know that, too.” He clears his vocalizer, swallowing down the same choking feeling from before that’s threatening to rise in his intake again. “Goodbye, Shockwave.”

With one last lingering look up at the AllSpark shining above him, Wheeljack turns and heads back out of the chamber.

He misses the rustling of debris beneath the AllSpark, scattering in a frenzied swirl of movement from the nonexistent wind.

Chapter Text

The comm comes, of course, as soon as Perceptor is settling down for a much-needed stasis nap after astrocycles of searching through all of the still-accessible Cybertronian databases and reading through the large quantity of information he was able to find on the Quintessons.

«We have a problem,» says Hot Rod.

Perceptor’s processor already hurts. If he sets his comm to ‘Do Not Disturb’ right now, he wonders if Hot Rod will assume he never picked up his comm in the first place and thus leave him alone.

«Hello? Perceptor? Perceptor, are you listening? There’s a problem! A big one!»

Ex-venting, Perceptor sits up on his makeshift berth. «Hot Rod. What is the big problem?»

«Uh, it’s kinda hard to explain. It’ll be easier if you come here and see for yourse—» A strange, high-pitched yowling sound tears through the comm, making Perceptor wince and quickly lower the volume of his auditory input. It’s immediately followed by the sound of screeching metal and frantic yells in the background. Perceptor can make out the distinct voices of Clobber and Whirl trying to scream over each other’s incomprehensible words. «—sending you our coordinates now. Hurry before we’re all—»

Another high-pitched shriek, and the commlink abruptly shuts off.

Perceptor stares at nothing for a long while. Then he lets out another tired ex-vent and starts moving.

***

He’d started mapping out Iaconus’ massive, labyrinthine interior after their group’s first few disastrous expeditions through the Titan. He estimates his map is far from complete considering the sheer scale of the place, and he’s not discounting the possibility that some of the hallways have the ability to shift around as a security measure to confuse unsuspecting trespassers, but the partial map is enough to give him a rough layout of a few dozen floors—all the floors they’ve thoroughly cleared of all traps by accidentally triggering every single one of them.

The coordinates Hot Rod shared are not within their cleared floors. While Perceptor pored through the Cybertronian databases, Hot Rod had commandeered the rest of their team to search for any other useful items hidden inside the Titan’s storage rooms. Perceptor had advised them to be careful if they decided to explore one of the floors they haven’t finished vetting, but considering this is the same group of bots that cleared over five hundred levels of a training simulator before realizing they were in danger of being deactivated, he’s not surprised they either forgot his warning or just didn’t bother listening to him.

With a cheery ding, the elevator comes to a stop at level ninety-four. Perceptor steps out, lowering his scope to scan the hallway ahead of him—and promptly flings himself to the side as he registers Whirl’s frame hurtling towards him.

One of Whirl’s rotors clips his arm as the helicopter goes crashing into the closing elevator doors and collapses in a heap of flailing limbs. As Whirl shakes his helm like a disoriented mechanimal, struggling to his pedes, Perceptor steps in front of him and expands his scope’s range. He spots Hot Rod and Clobber, facing off against…something very small and very fast that comes up as Unidentified Mechanism on his scanner.

Perceptor glances back at Whirl. “Where is Dead End?”

Whirl staggers to his side, and Perceptor frowns when he notices his blue plating is covered in dozens of nicks and scratches that, bizarrely, resemble organic claw marks. “He’s over there,” says Whirl, and points towards the others.

“What?” Perceptor checks his scope again. “No, he isn’t. I only see Hot Rod, Clobber, and—”

“The tiny evil murder machine?” Whirl guesses. “Yeah, that’s Dead End. Probably.”

Perceptor opens his mouth, then pauses as he processes those words for a second time. “Come again?”

Whirl’s answer is drowned out by a screech from the aforementioned tiny evil murder machine, which is astonishingly even louder now that it’s not being filtered through Perceptor’s commlink. The small blur lunges at Hot Rod, and Perceptor hears the distinct sound of claws scoring through metal before Hot Rod, yelling incoherently, manages to grab the thing and fling it away from him. With a yowl, it goes sailing in a high arc over Clobber’s head. She jumps up to snatch it out of mid-air before it can collide with the opposite wall, and it repays her for her thoughtfulness by immediately trying to gouge out the wiring from her cannons.

“Ow, ow, ow!” Clobber frantically shakes her servo, dislodging the creature’s grip, and it hits the ground with a painful-sounding thump.

At the sound of the pitiful cry that escapes the creature, Perceptor rushes forward.

“Perceptor, wait!” shouts Hot Rod, one hand outstretched. “Don’t get too close!”

“Whirl informed me this is Dead End,” says Perceptor, already kneeling beside the prone creature. “Why are you throwing him around?”

“Uh, did you miss the part where he’s trying to shred us all to pieces? Were we supposed to just stand there and let him?”

“Surely there is a way for you to subdue something so small without harming…” Perceptor trails off as he finally gets a proper look at Dead End.

Assuming this is, indeed, Dead End. It’s true that the creature, which closely resembles a cybercat, has red, white, and black armour of the exact same shade as Dead End’s plating. Violet biolights in the same pattern as Dead End’s set adorn the cybercat’s limbs and spinal strut. Even the way the cybercat blinks its huge optics and twitches its finials reminds Perceptor of how Dead End looks when he’s pretending to be annoyed at getting roped into Perceptor’s schemes, only to accidentally betray his own curiosity with his unsubtle frame language.

However, it is difficult for Perceptor to reconcile the ever-grumpy Decepticon he knows with the tiny, adorable cat curled up on the ground with its tail wrapped around its even tinier pedes. Especially considering—

“What did you do to him?” Perceptor says sharply.

“Nothing!” Seeing that the danger seems to be over, Clobber powers down her glowing fists. “When we found him, he was already, um…a little shiny.”

Calling Dead End ‘a little shiny’ is, in Perceptor’s opinion, akin to calling the Great War ‘a little spat between Optimus and Megatron.’ All of the cybercat’s plating is sparkling like it's been dunked in a bucket of gloss and then rolled over a carpet full of glitter. When the cybercat twists its body, checking itself over for injuries, countless shimmering pinpricks of light reflect off its armour. Even viewed through Perceptor’s scope, the sight of the cat’s overly lustrous finish makes him flinch.

Hot Rod approaches them, keeping a wary optic on the cybercat. “We were going to investigate the storage room over there,” he says, jerking his thumb at a door far behind him, “but when Dead End opened the door, it exploded.”

“Did any of you run a scan over the door to detect possible security measures before deciding to open it?” asks Perceptor.

“Uh,” says Hot Rod, a beat too late. “Yeah, of course. We definitely did that.”

Perceptor resists the urge to pinch the bridge between his olfactory sensors.

“Anyway, the door exploded in Dead End’s face,” continues Hot Rod, obviously eager to change the subject. “And some kind of fog poured out from the room. Whirl used his rotors to clear the air as fast as possible, but by that time Dead End was gone and this…thing was standing in his place.” He glares down at the sparkly cybercat. “We didn’t even get to take a close look at him, because he started attacking us right away.”

Perceptor bends down, magnifying his scope’s feed. “I find it difficult to believe this small cybercat could possibly deal that much damage to three experienced Cybertronian warriors—”

With a startled hiss, Dead End finally notices Perceptor’s close proximity to him. Perceptor jolts back as the cybercat’s optics start glowing a violent shade of scarlet, bright enough to be visible through the colour filter on Perceptor’s scope feed. His jaw unhinges to an unnatural degree, exposing a mouth full of knife-sharp fangs. Dead End unsheathes his claws, which are far longer than they should be for his size, and they carve a deep furrow through the floor with a harsh shriek of metal.

This explains Whirl’s comment about the murder machine, Perceptor thinks, right before Dead End leaps for his neck cables.

Perceptor is instinctively raising his hands to protect himself, shifting one leg backwards to help absorb the unpredictable impact of getting struck by an approximately fifty-pound supposed murder machine, when something unreadable flickers in the cybercat’s optics and he appears to lose momentum. He still slams into Perceptor, but his claws scrape harmlessly against his chest instead of slashing through his throat. Dead End tumbles down his chassis, and Perceptor automatically moves to catch him before he can hit the ground.

They all stare, waiting for Dead End to start hacking at Perceptor’s servo wires like he did to Clobber. Dead End stares back at Perceptor, wordlessly tilting his head. Then his claws retract. Slowly, his scarlet optics fade back to white.

“What the frag?” whispers Hot Rod. “Why isn’t he attacking Perceptor?”

Clobber’s optic is wide. “I don’t know,” she says, equally hushed. “Maybe he recognizes Percy?”

“Why would he recognize Perceptor but not me?”

Dead End’s plating fluffs up at Hot Rod’s indignant vocals, a growl building in his throat. Perceptor calculates the likelihood of his digits getting torn off, decides the risk is within acceptable personal parameters, and reaches out with his other hand to pet the top of Dead End’s helm.

Immediately, Dead End goes rigid. He doesn’t flinch or try to bite him, however, so Perceptor gently strokes a single digit along the soft plating on his spinal strut. Dead End pushes back into his touch, and his entire body starts vibrating. The vibrations match the faint rumbling sound emanating from his vocalizer, growing louder and louder as Perceptor continues caressing him.

“Holy Primus,” says Whirl. “He’s purring. Dead End is purring.”

Hot Rod raises his fist to his mouth, biting down on the protoform. His optics are suspiciously bright. “Someone please start recording this.”

Clobber gives Hot Rod a jaunty salute. “Already on it, boss.”

Perceptor attempts to ignore them, focusing on the feeling of Dead End’s purrs shuddering through his digit and aiming straight to his energy core. A strangely warm ache grows inside his spark as he watches Dead End arch his back and without hesitation, butt his head against the metal creases of Perceptor’s servo, silently demanding more pets.

“Huh,” says Hot Rod. “Okay. I was wondering how we were gonna look for a cure for Dead End while he’s busy trying to deactivate us, but I guess we’ll be fine since Perceptor has previously-undiscovered magic powers and he’ll be cybercatsitting him.”

“Do not say the word ‘magic’ in front of me ever again,” bites out Perceptor. “I have told you plenty of times—”

Hot Rod makes a wild gesturing motion at Dead End. “If it’s not, uh, the ‘M’ word, then how did you make him this—this docile when he was trying to rip out everyone else’s throats less than an astrominute ago?”

“I…” Perceptor looks down. Dead End is still purring loudly, nuzzling into his servo with his optics shuttered and the most contented expression Perceptor has ever seen on his face. “I don’t know. I’ll have to conduct some research into the exact nature of his condition, but as Clobber mentioned, perhaps it is because he recognizes me as someone…safe.”