0.5 - I Wasn't Worried - Closed

It had been quite some time since Sniper had last even transformed into his vehicle mode. Whilst aboard the Nemesis, he had simply let his drones take care of all the business Earth-side. There had been no need to get his own paint job dirty. But with the Autobots, things weren't quite as simple. While there had been a time Sniper had prided himself in being an excellent driver, he wasn't feeling any of that with his tires getting stuck in the sand. It was all very ... frustrating, to say the least. It made him wish he had picked a flying vehicle after all, even if he had always fancied the gleaming, green paint job and the aesthetics of this particular human design. And, of course, for the speed of it - which he was now lacking. At least according to the yellow bugbot, who was calling him out on it.

While Sniper had no face to emote with, the air about him vibrated with his invisible grimace.

'I'll have you know that not all of us do as much physical field work as you do!' these words came out of Sniper as a grumpy mutter. '...on this planet, anyway.' And this even more so, for he had only a little actual experience of driving down on this watery mud ball. Seeing how the Scout was obviously very good at it, got Sniper even more defensive about it: 'And shouldn't be the one take it slow, cyfluenza?' he countered, trying to avert the discussion from his lack of speed. His words weren't meant as an insult as much as they sounded like it.

Should there have been a cybertronian equivalent of a embarrassed blush, that is something Sniper would have felt right about now. Something, similar to a glyph of surprise, poked through his grumpy field for a moment, before it disappeared with a slight rev of an engine. The bugbot had a peculiar kind of life about him. With him, things were more unpredictable than they usually were, as Bumblebee was one of the rare cybertronians Sniper had met that had yet to grow cold and cynical.

"Don't-!," a pause that was filled with something that sounded remotely like he would have been clearing his throat. "Don't flatter yourself, scout," he seemed a tiny bit flustered at best. "I didn't even-," and then the bugbot spun off the road. Great. Just great.

Sniper didn't have the chance to come to a complete halt, but he slowed down a bit before letting himself cruise off the road. The sun had up heated the already unpleasant land beneath him. But while Sniper's signature grumpiness continued to dance about him, he didn't complain - out loud, that was. His complaints did were, however, visible on his faceplate as he transformed, doing it with a strange lamborghini elegance - like he would have crawled out of his vehicle form as it disappeared into a lanky green robot. He followed the scout like a shadow - a grumpy, green one.

"Right," Sniper said, his voice remaining ever the same. "As long as you don't flip out on me, I'm fine with-," his sensors alerted him to a subtle sound of- "Son of a-!" Sniper hissed and glanced down at a very fine scratch in his green paint job. This is why he did so little actual field work.

Sniper didn't honor the bugbot's remark on affection with a verbal answer. There was just a slight, grumpy frown, which could also have been associated with the fresh scratch he had managed to get on himself.

"You don't say?" he muttered when the Scout mentioned he should probably watch his paint job out here. Yes, Sniper had studied this planet quite carefully whilst on board the Nemesis. His drones had done scouting on the surface on multiple locations for countless of times, but the actual physical experience of this muddy orb was ... different to say the least. "Such an unfortunate mudball, this wretched planet," Sniper hissed, more to himself than anything, and mostly because of the stupid scratch, at that.

Only the thought of their objective got him to concentrate again. His gaze climbed up the Scout's yellow back. The scoutbot went through so much trouble that Sniper, as a spy, could appreciate, but had also eliminated during his time in this profession. With this thought in mind, the spy let a panel on his back slight away from its place and a little spy drone crawl out. The green little thing climbed onto Sniper shoulder and took flight, locking onto the energon trail the two were tracking.

Sniper was aware of their arrival to their destination before Bee addressed it. He did, however, acknowledge the words by slowing his pace and coming to a complete halt eventually. He followed how the yellow bugbot kneeled down to do his job, and then turned away, keeping an optic on their surroundings. It might have been that Sniper was being a bit paranoid, but who could blame him? And while he was attending to that, his drone kept its big, empty eyes on the Scout's work, giving Sniper the chance to observe more than one thing at once.

There was a silence. Red optics turned their gaze from one point to another, back turned partly towards Bumblebee, who then decided to break the said silence. And he did it in a way that got a certain tension rise along Sniper's protoform. The crimson hue of his optics froze to a single point - while he looked at nothing in particular.

"I-," he begun, his gaze drilling into the dry wilderness without a single blink. "I am good at my job," he said. "So the the reasons to my empty records are obvious ones." His tone was a distant one. And while it carried its usual coldness, there was a certain tension about it as Sniper moved on: "But before the war I-," Sniper couldn't decide weather or not he wanted to share these facts, especially with an Autobot Scout. "I had a team." A compromise? "We stole data." Apparently not.

The thoughts about the Protoform had been present in Sniper's processor much more now than ... ever before. He couldn't quite put his digit on it.

The little bug-eyed drone kept a tight watch over every movement the Scout made while he worked on the Energon vein. The little thing had such a sharp attentiveness about its gaze that bwginning to be borderline creepy, even. It was likely that everything it observed was fed to Sniper's private frequency, even while spy himself had turned his back on the view - his gaze frozen ... elsewhere.

The things the Scout asked him about, Sniper hadn't thought about for a very long time before being cast out of his now former faction. Now, however, the screams of his teammates haunted like never before.

Sniper blinked, as though he would've landed back on Earth. The expressionless red of his optics turned their gaze over a green shoulder. And a pair of blue Autobot optics greeted him. Bumblebee. A Scout who had spared a Decepticon. Even after seeing his share f this war, which Sniper trusted he had, this particular platform still harbored a capability to care over the borders of his faction. He had an odd air of trust and innocence about him. Peculiar. Sniper didn't quite know how such qualities should viewed, as in the Decepticon ranks they had been long dead and gone.

A long pressing silence. And then, Sniper turned away again. Yet, this time, the bugbot might have been able to see a glimpse of his expressionless profile.

"As you are to be concidered a soldier, the concept of killing must not be foreign to you," Sniper begun on a steady note. It seemed as though he would have changed the subject, but behind his words, a shadow lingered. The kind that suggested that he had done anything but changed it. "So tell me," he begun after a heavy pause. "Do you ever regret any of it?" Sniper's voice was empty of all emotion. It seemed that beneath the darkness of his words, he was puzzled.

Sniper's gaze was frozen to a single patch of the forest. He didn't look at anything in particular, but rather, he had lost himself into the Scout's beeps and whistles. The spy's expression was empty, but in a different way than usual. His faceplate had lost its attentiveness - its sharpness - for a moment. It wasn't like him.

'Do I regret killing? Yes. Do I regret watching my friends/family/allies killed? Yes. But I regret the latter far more. It’s them I feel/watch die in my dreams, not the Decepticons.’

The words felt like the Scout had shot him right in the chest. During his time as a Decepticon, no such words would have reached him, but now - it was different. Ever since Soundwave had ripped open his processor, Sniper had found it hard to shut the memories out like he used to. Maybe being exposed to the horrors of his own past was too much - or maybe, it was the kindness he had been shown that was.

"I-," Sniper begun, but shifted uncomfortably when he could hardly recognized his own voice. He cleared his voicebox and turned so that the Scout couldn't see his face anymore. "I see." Sniper couldn't think of anything else to say. He was weighing his options in a silence that cast a sad shadow on him. Then, he let out a sigh. It was, however, a tense one, like he would have let go of a breath he had been holding for long time. Bumblebee had spared his life on the Desert. He was good by spark. Perhaps he deserved the know what kind of a mech he had allowed to outlive the friends and allies he had just mentioned.

Sniper refused to look at the Scout.
"If-," Sniper's claws twitched in a tense manner. "If that that is how you feel, there's something you should know, perhaps," his voice remained empty and absent - almost vulnerable by his own standards. So, it tightened up some when continued by saying: "And I wouldn't share it with you, if you weren't the one who spared my life," his usual coldness shone trhough these words. It was the first time he had actually addressed the things that had happened back on the Desert. And his tone still refused to sound grateful for it - even, if Sniper actually was. He just didn't know it then.

Yet, when he opened his mouth again, the coldness begun crack. "But my team-," he begun. "I sold them out," a pressing silence. "And I let them die." Sniper felt his spark quiver uncomfortably in its chamber. "I watched as the Decepticon troops took them apart piece by piece." This was a conversation Sniper had never had - even with himself. "I wasn't...I didn't think much of it until recently, but now-" that Soundwave ripped open my processor. "-their screams won't stop haunting me." All of this came out of the spy as a steady stream of words. And when he got to the end, there was a hollow little chuckle - so empty and grey it was almost only a breath.

And then came the questions.

Sniper had expected them, but he was not in a very good place to process worthy answers - not to worthy to Bumblebee, at least. It seemed that while the concept of killing had been clear to the bugbot, deception was not. One of the things which made him a fine Autobot. Sniper didn't look at him. The spy didn't move a digit. He simply stared into the landscape, looking at nothing in particular.

"I wish I could give you a noble reason," he said with the empty, hollow voice he had spoken with just a moment earlier. The one that lacked his signature coldness. "But I have none." These words dragged a heavy silence into the air. "I wasn't…I am not a good person, Bumblebee." While these words were spoken in an empty way, a very subtle trace of regret rung in them. "We shared an information loot my team didn't want to give sell to the Decepticons. So sold my partners with it. I traded their lives for power. It's as simple as that." But it seemed that even the pile of their bodies hadn't been able to lift him higher enough in that sense. "It is the life I chose back then," Sniper bit his dental plates together. "And apparently the ghost I will live with now."

This was one of his most vulnerable moments. And to think he would experience it in front of a former enemy.

"Should I get to choose again, I..," Sniper couldn't find it in himself finish the sentence. It dangled in the silence, dead and empty. The spy stood motionless, his back turned towards the Scout.