Ep0.5 - 'Old As You Feel' - Closed

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<<Should be under 'North America' as this takes place in Texas...>>


There wasn't anything she could do for Reflector, loathe as she was to admit it, and Cleaver now retreated from the sealed entrance to their ship with a heavy feeling in her tanks. The guilt was entirely uncalled for - Reflector had known the risks, accepted them and the task in exchange for a hefty price, and was unscathed beyond some overseen memories - but there it was. Churning away. She'd left him with the TV and one of the energon cubes Ironhide had given her last time, giving him the space to fume and curse her. The little mech had wormed far deeper into her spark than she'd realized.

At the co-ordinates she'd provided, some hundred yards from the shrub-bush camouflaging the trapdoor-hatch, Cleaver settled her pedes into the dirt to wait. She had a few minutes - long enough to start figuring out how she was going to get ice cream for the little glitchmouse...

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He had taken a few liberties with the ground bridge log, but all in all it had gone smoothly and Ironhide stepped out into rocky sand and shrub brushes right on schedule. Cleaver was already there, the femme a bright burst on his sensor net (and YES, frag it, yes, he should have been scanning before he ever walked through the bridge, sensors on field alert, but he didn't want to have to think about linking combat routines to the femme).

He was going to her before he really thought about it and it was only the brush of her field, a faint buzz around his unthinkingly outstretched hand, that gave him pause. She felt... he might have said 'worried' in a 'bot he knew better, and somewhere in the back of his processor he added up neutral, low on energon, and a - probably - medical need for high grade and found he didn't much like some of the possible answers. "Yeh alright?" he asked.

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Ironhide had 'bridged in behind her again, and Cleaver had been so wrapped up in her own thoughts and dangerously at-ease in the relative safety of 'her patch' that he'd done so without her noticing. At his voice, she turned with hiss of hydraulics that had already been complaining about being stood for days at a medical berth.

Concern was a warm eddy in his field, and she couldn't help a wry smile at the feel of it. "Me, yeah..." Her shipmate was another story, and Dasal even more so, but she in herself was fine. Just tired. And feeling her age. And slag it all maybe even a little lonely now that Reflector was avoiding her and she was spending all her time with the unconscious.

She folded her arms, thought better of the signal the pose would send out, then dropped them back in blade-form back to her sides. Finally she cleared a blurt of static from her vocaliser. "Hope this wasn't too much trouble for ya. Big ask out of the blue and on short notice, I know. If it means anything, you calling in the favour can go 'xactly the same way."

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"It's fine," Ironhide told her truthfully. "No trouble at all." He stepped back, unloading the cubes and neatly stacking them. Finished, he hesitated, hydraulics shifting. "That favour - yeh don't have t' worry about it," he said at last, gruff. "Ah'll call it in if Ah absolutely have t', but that wasn't why Ah did this."

It was a short step forward, and a small space from there to reach up, his fingertips brushing her shoulder. From there it was an even smaller and easier thing to rest his full palm on her plating, letting sincerity and warmth pass from his field to hers. "Yeh need anything else, yeh let meh know," he rumbled. "Ah'll do what Ah can, no favour needed."

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The small contact point sent a shiver through her lines, and Cleaver met Ironhide's vaguely evasive optics with a soft level gaze. "Actually, was wondering if you were as strapped for time as you were last time. 'fraid I over-ordered a touch. Got a spare cube to share, if you're interested?"

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He wanted... frag. Scrap. A part of him just wanted to press her against his plates, soothe the little tremors out of her, and it was bad enough he'd been doing too much of that with Shadow. Cleaver was no light framed scout to be mech handled, and she certainly didn't fall under the youngling he'd mentally slotted Shadowrunner as.

A mech could read this all sorts of wrong, he thought wryly, both him and her both. He didn't... slag it, he'd feel better if he knew how to read it, but he didn't, never had, and he'd heard more than once how utterly hopeless he was at it. Best he could do was go with what was in his own lines, and that was what made him meet Cleaver's optics, his smile warm and unfeigned. "Listed mahself out on patrol," he confided. "Ain't due back for a bit... and Ah'd be happy to."

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Cleaver rumbled a laugh at that, already halfway down to setting aft on the ground and drawing a knee up. "Out playing truant drinking High Grade with a Neutral - no wonder you keep getting yourself into trouble," she murmured as he follow suit, casting an optic over the myriad of welds, patches, scars, dings, dents and the general patchwork-history of violence and survival that was Ironhide's body.

She accepted the first sip of the noxious liquid and handed the cube back, absorbing the wamr flush with a sigh. Dasal didn't need the umbilical line any more, and his systems were firmly in the 'stable' category, so the medic had no need to abstain from this indulgence beyond propriety, and she highly doubted that Ironhide held much stock with that.

But then they barely knew each other. It just felt like he'd always been there, steady as an old tree with deep roots. Best to actually have a [i[conversation[/i] with him rather than just continuing to take from him (and Primus didn't that thought make her feel even worse?).

"So who do you hail with aside from The Prime himself?"

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Ironhide sat himself beside her, not quite close enough to brush plates but close enough to feel, flush of warmth and an easy familiarity that he didn't have with some of his own teammates. She was, he thought, the kind of spark that set a body at ease, and it had to be spark deep - medical training alone didn't instill it, Ratchet was walking proof of that.

A swallow of high grade gave him a moment to turn her question over. Tactical intel, on the one hand, but she wasn't asking for a roster list and he wasn't so addled as to give her one. "Been with Optimus since near th' start," he told her, handing the cube back. It wasn't pride or ego, just fact - their Prime was what had gotten him into the war, was what held him there, and he was, spark and frame united, the Prime's mech.

"Got separated from th' others awhile back - happens, out there," he admitted, hooking a thumb skyward. "On mah own for awhile, followed th' fightin' here. Glad Ah did. Prahm's got a motley group here - good, some of th' best, but hailin' from different units. Didn't know too many faces, but th' ones Ah did made it worth it." The warmth in his field had nothing to do with the high grade and he couldn't tamp down the smile as he sent a small, still vid render to Cleaver, culled from countless memory files.

"That's mah Blue. Raised hir from just a bitlet, slag near fit in one of mah hands. Last one Ah expected t' find here, but Primus' own luck was with us."

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Cleaver inspected the shared precious file with care, felt a pang in her spark and gave Ironhide a sidelong smile. "I could have figured you for a Creator-type. Got that recklessly-selfless protective streak running as wide as a runway's long. Warms me to hear your bit's still tucking about your pedes."

It felt natural to send one back in return. The memory file was old - laced through with the little static streaks that no amount of careful data management could keep away from the passage of time. The render was of a young, dark grey sparkling that, even with this quality, gave off a field of mischief.

"Forge - was back in the Golden Age when he could still fit in my hand. Not been so lucky as to find him again, but I reckon he's still drifting about out there. Somewhere."

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He was reaching out before he could even process it, shifting closer, his hands cupping the plates of her shoulders. "Believe it," he rumbled, rough and certain in his vocalizer. "If he's anything like yeh, then Ah'm sure he is."

Ironhide settled down again, closer, one hand still resting on Cleaver's shoulder - in part to press warmth to her, in part to draw some measure of it back to himself, his spark shivering with too many memories of separation. "Sometime's belief's all yeh got," he said. "Kept meh going more than Ah could say when Ah didn't know where Blue was or if ou was still alive." He shook his head slowly. "Believe it long enough, chances are good it'll be true." He huffed softly, almost a laugh. "May not make sense, but Ah've seen it happen."

He nudged her gently, snagging the cube for a quick sip before handing it back. "Bitlet raised by yeh - Ah'm sure he's doin' fine. Just like his Creator."

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It was disturbingly easy to relax into Ironhide's steady embrace, to soak in his field and wrap it about her own like a second shield against the 'verse. Cleaver told herself it was exhaustion from working near non-stop on Dasal for days, and nagging worry over whatever had glitched Reflector out so bad that he wouldn't share it. Not that she was going soft. Not that she liked him.

Appreciation for the sentiment flowed back in eddies, as easily as the High Grade flowed into her systems. She nodded a little, half-smiling. "What about your bitlet? You raise hir by yourself?"

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Ironhide vented amusement. "Scrap, no. Ah'd have had no idea what t' do with th' bitlet by myself." He sobered, leaning his shoulder against hers, the steady warmth of her field seeping into fatigued systems. "Blue was... sorta th' base adoption. We found th' bit in th' ruins, only survivor. Wasn't any of us, no matter how rough we thought we were, who hasn't spoiled that sparklet rotten. Th' first time Chromia put hir in mah hands..."

He shook his head, memories unspooling across his processor. "Before that Ah'd have said a war build like meh didn't have any base t' be doin' anything with sparklets, and Ah'd have been dead wrong. Ah don't know where it came from, or how, but that bitlet means th' whole slagging universe t' meh."

"Chromia..." he slanted a sideways glance at Cleaver, amusement flickering through him. The comparison was hard not to make, for all that it had no basis at all in the metal. "Yeh'd probably like her. Femme kept a tight ship, didn't take slag from nobody, an' half the 'bots were hot for her, or scared scrapless of her, or both. We stood as creators for Blue, her an' Ah. Had a lot of help, though." Unbidden, a litany of that roster rose up, the designations tagged over the passing vorns - missing, missing, deceased... "Jazz, Mirage, Moonracer, even Prowl..." He vented, long and slow. "Ah ain't seen any of 'em in ages. Won't, for some of 'em, until Ah'm cold an' gray an' there's th' end all reunion party afterwards. Th' others... Ah just keep believin'."

Ironhide gave himself a small shake, brushing away the memories. "What about yerself?" he asked.

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"Tempest - Tower mech, Primus help me, but a solid spark and as prone to spoiling as you, from the sounds of it." She rubbed a finger over a covered finial, remembering the crack of an injury from when the towers fell around them like it was only breems ago. Another sip of High Grade, and slag if it hadn't come from a decently potent still. "Most of my cohort went with Cybertron, including him. I left when the core went dark, content with the notion that I was going it alone from now on and looking forward to the peace. Kick over a patch kit on the first night and find a mech that'd make a minibot feel large stowed away. So it's been me and Reflector."

Cleaver handed the cube back, felt a crack through her field at the contact and knew her old lines had had enough of the moonshine. Everything was getting too loose, too easy to think and to say. She nodded in the vague direction of the buried ship. "And Dasal as well, I suppose." A grunt of a laugh. "Though for being in stasis lock at the moment, he ain't much of a talker. More of a berth weight and a way to pass the time than anything else. Medic's dream: patient who can't talk."

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It startled a laugh from Ironhide. "Not a medic Ah've known that hasn't said somethin' of th' same sort," he agreed. "Given as Ah've been told Ah'm the exact opposite, Ah promise if Ah have t' call that favor in, Ah'll do mah best t' keep it shut."

He took another swallow, but the heat of the high grade wasn't doing half as much to ease the knots in him as the warmth of her field overlapping his was. "It's good, what yer doin'," he told her quietly. "Yeh - all of yeh, neutrals - yeh keep alive stuff we'd be too close t' loosin, otherwise. Too many of us," he tapped his own plates, "are becomin' nothin' but our guns and old grudges. You - yer friends are lucky t' have yeh." He pressed a flicker of comfort to her, and a sympathy of knowing full well what it was like to watch a friend linger in stasis lock while medics worked, but the personal warmth that underscored it unspooled all on its own, admiration and affection and the open, bright burst of pleased delight her unexpected intrusion on an otherwise un-noteworthy day had brought him.

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It was a peculiarity that by vehemently refusing to join either of the warring factions, that the Neutrals had come to make a faction of their own. With a general directive to stay out of the way of clashing Autobots and Decepticons, they had the disadvantage of being largely unorganized and scavenging in small clusters or, commonly, individuals. There were only a handful of genuine settlements where Neutrals had put down stubborn roots, hoping to stay under the radar and keep living in the comparative peace that the hostile parties were still, long after their homeworld's death, fighting for. It was a hard existance, but a stance they were proud to hold, if not simply resigned.

Cleaver had spent comparatively little time with other Cybertronians since Cybertron had gone dark, and those she had temporarily put down with or run alongside for a while had been Neutrals. The same prejudices ran, about Autobots and Decepticons, both as bad as each other for perpetuating the war far past the point of it except for a personal grudge between its leaders. Optimus Prime needed closure, Megatron needed the Prime dead and the Matrix in his hand. It wasn't about caste anymore, or even their civilization. The Cybertronian race was little more than a gang now in its diminished populus, scattered and eeking out scraps of a living.

She was having trouble with those old-held beliefs about both sides now, sitting in the too-comfortable field of an Autobot and relaxing more than she ever had with any Neutrals. Neutrals needed to take things because that's how they survived. It's what she had been doing to Ironhide. But Ironhide didn't want anything of her, was giving generously and freely, and not spouting the virtues of the Autobot side with hopes to lure her into the war.

He respected her position. Respected her. Pit, seemed to like her if his EM was anything to go by.

Oh, frag it all.

Considering his scarred profile for a klik, Cleaver finally vented a quiet sigh and rested her helm against his shoulder. "It's good to hear that. Most, and I mean Bots as much as Cons, just see us as sitting on the beam or being in the way. Not that we're representing anything like that peace both sides are scrapping over."