Ep 0.5 - But the Cat Came Back - Closed

"What's new, pussycat, woah woah woaaaah," Steeljaw sang in a rough approximation of Tom Jones' voice, rising to his pedes to take a few skipping steps down the wall. His spark wasn't much in the teasing, however, and he dropped it after only a few feet, descending the wall at a more sedate pace.

"As long as you don't sing it I suppose that's allowable," he agreed as he reached Jazz's optic level, unclamping to leap easily to the floor. He paused there, several sensor tendrils unfurling to sweep the surface for anything that might have been in the testing stage, before walking across to join Jazz at the workbench. Sitting on his haunches, he leaned up to study the bits of items Jazz was working on, then dropped back down again.

His voice, he was pleased, remained clearly professional, and he had schooled frame and field into compliance before entering the room, giving his tone only a dull flatness that could just as easily have been boredom. "If you're busy, I can come back later. When would be a good time?"

Steeljaw shuttered his optics for a long klik and counted backwards from five trillion in base sixteen, the numbers cascading through his processor in a soothing, continuous flow. [It'll be fine,] Uplink whispered to him, soothing glyphs of support and trust and solidarity. [Nothing's permanent.]

His host was right, it wasn't, but there was something terribly permanent feeling, like giving away something with no reassurance of getting it back, when he opened his optics and quietly rebooted his vocalizer. "I'm staying," he announced levelly. "I just had occasion to visit the Neutral settlement in Africa. I have decided I will be staying here. I thought..." he faltered slightly "...I thought you would want to know."

Steeljaw shuttered his optics for a long moment again because it was that, or quite possible walk away and not come back, even if he had no idea where he would go. Cleaver's demilitarized base. The Australian outback. The Canadian rockies. Anywhere that was NOT the fragging South American rain forest or right here, facing an Autobot's honest happiness at the idea of getting to "keep" him.

A roiling feeling like acid and organic sugars in his tanks made him wish he could purge. He wanted to rip something to shreds, he wanted to run, he wanted to claw that look out of Jazz's optics, he wanted to hide in the vent ducts until his tanks ran dry and his spark faded cold and there were not enough words in any language, even the complexity of Cybertronian, to express the frustrated knot of hate that could not be resolved in any amount of poetic verse.

The shriek of metal on metal made him aware that his claws were out and gouging grooves from the floor plating, long ribbons of steel curling up beneath his front pedes. He made himself stop, made his plates lie down flat and still, forced his frame erect even if he wanted to curl down and into himself. Made himself carry a steady, level tone, flat and droned though it was, the words only partially bitten off in savage, sharp edges of half formed glyphs. "Yes, you get to 'keep' your 'ceiling cat'. Call it whatever you like. I will NOT..." he vented, long and low, plates clamping tight, "take your brand, but with that understanding I will stay."

"I can't." It clawed its way out of his vocalizer like cracked, shattered crystal shards, punctuated by the shriek of more ribbons carved from the flooring. He was on his pedes, entire frame stiff and rigid. Steeljaw shuttered his optics and kept them shuttered, head turning away in a stiff twist of his throat that he couldn't override, unwilling to look at Jazz.

One vent out, long and full, holding his systems empty until his internal temperatures ticked up a notch. One intake, another full vent. Uplink was murmuring to him, soft reassurances and consoling whispers that, for once, didn't help - it only made it worse, underscoring in ragged pain the reminder of everything that was wrong with the option facing him. His carrier wasn't real. His carrier wasn't there, his carrier couldn't pick him up, couldn't hold him, couldn't polish his plates or unkink the lines that Steeljaw couldn't reach. His carrier couldn't warm his systems or defrag the partitions that were trembling perilously close to cascade failing against the ugly weight of archived memories. His carrier couldn't make his spark whole again, or give him back the long ago feeling of being complete, or wipe away the terrifying awareness of his own limitations when he was only one broken piece of a set. His carrier could only whisper meaningless reassurances because his carrier was NOT real and the memory echo of Uplink's voice, preserved in clarity in Steeljaw's auxiliary core, only tipped the hate into fear and the anger into a hopeless terror that crawled under his plates to shudder through his struts.

[I'm sorry,] Uplink whispered, like drops of acid flung against proto mass. [Jaws, my mech... I'm sorry.]

Uplink wasn't real. Uplink was dead, killed by Autobots, and short of hitching a ride on the orbiting Decepticon warship there was nowhere else to go.

Steeljaw turned his face away, optics dark, and held onto the feel of metal beneath his pedes and all around him as though it, too, might spin away into nothing. "I can't," he repeated, short and rough. "It's..." large, terrifyingly so, too full of open spaces and nowhere to hide "...organic. Not made for anything my size." He vented sharp and full, the rest coming out in a rush. Jazz would have to know. It might, under some circumstances, make Steeljaw a liability. "I've been ship board since I left Cybertron. Cleaver's base is... organic. Too large. Too..." unsafe, when the press of all that space made his plates itch "...empty."

He drew in a deep intake and forced his optics back open, focusing sidelong on Jazz. "I would have liked to have gone with her," he admitted flatly, "but I can't, and there is... no other real option." He swallowed down something that tasted like rust and smelter slag, choking up his systems as he tried to push through a dry laugh that he couldn't feel at all. "So I suppose you're stuck with me."

The "Jaws, mech," so nearly but not quite familiar and the pulse of something perilously close to belonging or even home broke him. Voicing a sound like ground gears and ragged feedback, Steeljaw lunged into Jazz's arms, plastering himself plate to plate in a desperate shove to be closer still.

"I can't," he choked out, the words muffled where his helm was mashed into the other mech's chestplates. "Couldn't. Too big. Too empty. Primus, it's organic, there's nothing to cling to, nothing to walk on, nowhere to go that isn't empty space!" He was scrambling, pedes sliding across plates (no magnaclamps on plates, not polite, that was coded with a triple reminder now), claws catching at plate edges in ways that probably hurt but Jazz wasn't pulling away and Steeljaw wrapped himself bodily around the mech's chassis. It wasn't a good fit. It wasn't even close. Jazz was smaller and lighter than Uplink had been, made up of entirely different angles and tessellations, their plates fitting together awkwardly with gaps, but it was almost - almost - enough.

Optics powered down, helm pressed against the pulse of another's spark, it was almost enough. Steeljaw let go, the fear and helplessness rising up out of his endomass to physically shake him.

"Even here," he vented brokenly. "This room, too big, too much space. Not safe. Didn't realize, but now I can't stop." He pushed his face harder into Jazz's plates, shuddering.

"So afraid," he admitted, the words barely vented into sound, "you wouldn't let me come back." Which was wrong, on so many levels, when it was the last place he should be, but the tangled endless knot of that sat like molten sludge in his tanks and he didn't know where to even begin to express it.

Petting. It was ridiculous, it was juvenile, it was a holdover youngling habit, but the petting helped him get a grip on systems spiraling out of control. It broke through some of the flailing emotion and let him listen to what Jazz was saying, for better or worse. He let the words tumble through his processor for several long kliks, flung back and forth through thought threads until the edges were worn from them with repetition, until the petting had eased the shiver from his plates and he could press his helm to Jazz's chassis without so much of the desperate need to meld with it.

"It does not get 'better'," he finally corrected dully, Jazz's words latching on apropos of nothing to one of the many threads of 'wrong' that were knotted up inside. "Or maybe it does, for full mecha. I don't know. But it does not get better and sometimes it gets worse, but I won't have to decide what to do about THAT for another few orn." The symbiont hadn't admitted to anyone what the actual time table was, and voicing it now eased the barest fraction of something inside, shared and lessened.

He shoved his head a little harder against Jazz's plates, not in desperation but to indicate that the hand, which had paused, should continue. Optics dimmed, he rubbed the flat of his head against gray plates in a mimicry of the preferred rhythm. "Cleaver can fix it," he added morosely. "If she's not carrying. I won't ask if she's carrying. Or Ratchet. Upkeep and continued functioning, that's covered under contract, yes?"