Ep 0.5 - Locks and Keys - closed

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((Follows directly after "Happy About Your Face"; Shadow/Jazz))


Shadow let Bee leave some of the balloons in her room, tied together and anchored in a corner, and helped him move the majority of them to the rec room (a few innocently "escaped" to hover above medbay). She didn't think he understood why she was upset, which was all right since he had promised to stay out of her room unless it was an emergency or she was actually there. Understanding meant explanations; explanations meant remembering.

Easier by far to get Bee to promise and let him drag her into a brief round of video games before seeking out Rhinox. The big engineer was just...soothing to be around, and even better, he answered her questions without asking any of his own.

Then she went back to her quarters and sat for a while with the door locked.

Eventually - when she could catch the shift and sway of the balloons from the corner of her optic without thinking of all the other things they might have been - she settled in with the equipment and advice Rhinox had given her, and started building a secondary locking system for her room.

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Monitors, check. Patrol, check.

Security camera sweep, check. Status report from Base Cat, check.

Find and subspace one of Rattrap's hidden cameras. Check. (Pervert Deterrant Strategy #7: if Jazz finds your cameras, they're Jazz's.)

Jazz stretched. All this officer slag was starting to get to him. He was beginning to see the humans' love of ticky boxes.

He came to one thing, marked "personal-semi-impt" and paused over it.

Jazz was enjoying how many on the base told him things. Not just gossip--though there was plenty of that--but other happenings and interactions that weren't important, just interesting or odd, and particularly if they involved his cohort or someone else who seemed down. He encouraged it whenever possible, having cracked enough bases to know that half of the battle was knowing the ebb and flow of communication and information. If base security was a nosy busybody who knew everyone's comings and goings both on and off duty, well, ou was doing hir job, and it made any infiltrator's job ten times harder.

Not to mention it was fun to head off problems when they were itty bitty ripples in the energon rather than serious, blow-up-in-your-face Issues.

Case in point: Rhinox had seen Jazz wandering on his security check and stopped to chat. Their talk, plus another one in passing with Bee had made the mysterious appearance of the smiley-face balloons trailing all over the base suddenly make sense. Rhinox had mentioned, though, that Shadow had come (on her own, even) to talk to him, with the conversation turning to security and locking systems.

Jazz's processor had taken all this in, shook it together, let it smelt, and come up with a ripple.

His feet turned to the residential hall, field arranging itself in longwave as he arrived at Shadowrunner's door and knocked.

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Shadow normally didn't get polite knocks at her door. Bee and Blue were more the "pound, comm, and yell until they were sure they had her attention" type. Ironhide tended to comm her to his location. Jaws didn't use the door. And Shadow had the vague hope that most of the other mecha on base forgot she was around unless she was physically present.

Which narrowed the options for who was at the door to Jazz, Rhinox, and Rattrap; Shadow was fairly sure Rattrap didn't bother with niceties like knocking, and while she wouldn't have been surprised to see Rhinox outside her door, she was even less surprised to see Jazz.

"Hi, Jazz. Is everything okay?" she asked...cautiously, because Jazz always made her feel like she needed to watch her step, in spite of the way he wore longwave and cheerful like a coat of fresh wax. It didn't help that she still couldn't read him, couldn't figure out what he wanted now any more than she'd been able to when he first arrived, and the things he said he wanted didn't make any sense.

(It didn't help that he was cohort, but not in the way she'd always known it, and she still wasn't sure how well she could trust that cohort was more than just words between them.)

She took a half step back, tacit invitation for him to enter; it took her a nano-klik to realize he was waiting for something more. "Come on in," she said, unable to stop gratitude from worming its way into her field. "I'm just...working on something."

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"Yeah, everything's fine." Jazz came in, sensors flung wide enough that he didn't miss that flash of gratitude. Boundaries: they were still working on them. Or, more precisely, working on convincing Shadow that she could and should have them. Still...at least this time she didn't lock up in must-be-on-best-behavior!fear at the sight of him. That was a step up.

Movement up and off to the side drew his eye, and Jazz grinned, tipping his chin toward it. "Aha, so it's true. Heard that Bee had helped you redecorate. I like the yellow. Adds a little, y'know, yellow to the room."

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Shadow flinched a little at the reminder, both of her own sloppiness, and her reaction. And that Jazz had heard about it.

Uncomfortable, she moved away, not sure what she should say. Apologize? Go along with his apparent approval? She looked at the partly finished lock on the table, which suddenly seemed hopelessly pointless...stupid, even, when the problem hadn't been the locks, but her own failure to use them.

"Bee thought a room full of balloons would be a nice surprise. It was," horrible, "more colorful before I dragged most of them out to the rec room."

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Ah, there was the usual complicated mix of self-recrimination and guilt. Jazz had been afraid of this.

"Hey," Jazz said, his field turning to concern and understanding. "You all right? I know that you like your space...must have been uncomfortable for Bee to just waltz in...even if he was trying to do something nice."

He took a step in, not crowding her but his field resonating softly with concern-cohort-support. "I can talk to him, if you want. I'm not really sure how much he GETS why what he did might have upset you."

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Frankly, Shadow doubted that Jazz got why it had upset her, either. The Autobots knew the Lucky Thirteen were dead; she had never shared the details of how they died, and no one had ever tried to get the information from her. The records didn't lack for Autobot dead, after all.

She hoped he didn't get it.

"There's no need to talk to him. He meant well." She stepped away again; Jazz's field was hitting all the areas left raw and open by memory, and the last thing she needed was to break down like a sparkling and admit how much it all hurt, how much it never stopped hurting, how she couldn't just lock what Barricade had done away and stop living it. Other mecha had lost as much - more - and survived; she wasn't going to admit she was too weak to do the same.

She didn't want to admit that, for a split second, Barricade and her own dead had been on the other side of the door.

"I shouldn't have let it bother me." That was true, and that she could admit. She vented a sigh, disgusted with herself, and started cleaning up the mess on the table. "I'm sorry you had to hear about it."

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"I'm not," Jazz said. "When something bothers you, I like to know about it."

Frag, but he wanted to disassemble Labyrinth piece by piece every time he had to explain basic decency. He'd found that that was the best way, though. Otherwise Primus only knew what Shadow would fill in the blanks of his motives with. Half the time she seemed to do it anyway, but Jazz liked to head it off at the pass whenever he could.

"Hey." Jazz ducked his helm until he'd caught her optic, moving a step closer, field open and inviting. "You got a right to be upset when someone does something you don't like. I just like knowing when it happens, so I can help. Let you vent. Maybe make sure whatever upset you doesn't happen again. Whatever. That's what our cohort does. Life torques us off sometimes, but we like makin' it better for each other. S'what we do."

support-care-cohort

Another step. Not too close. Just...there. "So if you're sad...or confused...or hurt...we want you to tell us. It's not an imposition. It's not weakness. It's lettin' your cohort help you. We WANT to help. Makes us feel good. Understand?"

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It's lettin' your cohort help you.

Shadow's vents froze for a nano-klik at the familiarity of Jazz's words. You owed it to your cohort to let them help, to not put them or yourself at risk that you'd break at the wrong time. She had lived by that her entire function, the thirteen of them holding each other together even when Labyrinth disapproved, and she might not know or trust Jazz the same way but if she was going to call him cohort, she owed him the same things.

Slowly, she forced herself to stop moving the objects on the table and shifted ever so slightly into the promised comfort of Jazz's field.

"I only set the first set of codes on my lock," she said, "and Bee knows those. I know he knows them, and it shouldn't have bothered me that he used them, but when I saw my door unlocked..." She exvented shakily, unsure how to explain the thoughts which had immediately flooded her processor. "I didn't know who'd been in here, and I didn't know what I'd find on the other side of the door, and..." She looked up at him a little helplessly. "Knowing hasn't made any of the feelings stop."

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That was, evidently, the right thing to say. Never a given with Shadow. Navigating the minefield that Labyrinth had made of her expectations (of them and of herself) was a painstaking process, and Jazz had made more than his share of missteps.

Still, his words made some of the tension in her frame unwind, and the slight turn into him was all the permission Jazz needed to pull an Ironhide and wrap his arms around her, tucking her further into his field. He hummed understanding and support.

"Hey, hey, it's all right. You never have to apologize for being upset. C'mon, let's sit. Why don't you start from the beginning, yeah? Take me through it so I'm sure I understand. You came back and the door was unlocked?"

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"I didn't notice right away, but when I did..." Shadow let herself lean into him, optics offlined and helm pressed to his, as dread snaked through her systems again. "I was terrified," she admitted quietly. "I didn't know what was on the other side of the door, just that it wasn't safe, and I was terrified."

It sounded worse when she said it out loud, but Jazz said nothing, just kept urging her toward the berth, which was the only place other than the floor where they could both sit. She curled against him when they got there, shaking a little. "I wasn't like this before. Home was safe." Her vents hitched a little as the memory of greyed out bodies and spilled energon and demonic red eyes rose up. Only it wasn't.

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Jazz's systems felt like they simultaneously dropped a gear and revved with the implication that Shadow didn't feel safe in the base.

If someone's been harassing her, I will take them apart. Maybe if they're lucky, it'll be verbally.

The saboteur leaned up against the wall, tugging Shadow close and his field longwave and steady. "Why don't you feel safe? Has someone been threatening you? Or messing with your room?"

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Jazz's questions surprised Shadow enough that she looked at him strangely before letting her helm drop back to his shoulder. "No, no threats. I just..."

She vented softly, debating, but as long as she was being honest...

"I still haven't figured out how to keep Rattrap out. I know I should have by now, but he's better at taking things apart than I am at putting them together, and welding the grate to the wall or blocking the duct completely would keep Jaws out, too. I clear the cameras," she added anxiously, glyphs of shame and failure coloring the words, "I just can't stop Rattrap from putting them in here."

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Jazz calmly watched the conversation take a left turn off into the weeds somewhere. He was almost getting used to this. It had gotten to the point where he wasn't even frustrated by the way-too-frequent discoveries of yet more ways that Labyrinth had twisted Shadow's perceptions and expectations. He looked forward to them. Each time, it was an opportunity to attempt to ease Shadow's mind, and even if he couldn't, it was a chance to remind her that there were new rules here, different expectations that were not as punishing as those she had always operated under. She might not believe him, but each time it was a chip, a crack, in the walls that held her.

This one was a challenge. No threats, that was fine. And Rattrap was still bugging her room, which as NOT fine (and he put a note on his to-do list underlined in red to go have Another Discussion with Rattrap about that) but not terribly surprising. But it didn't explain her fear (she certainly wasn't scared of Rattrap, that Jazz knew) and didn't explain the glyphs she was using. Did she think she had to deal with Rattrap all by herself? Or just put up with it?

Jazz let the conversation turn, dealing with the pain he could see, just on the off chance it was feeding into the larger problem. He pressed reassurance and confusion against her shamed-worthless-failed field. "I'm sorry, Shadow. I'll talk with Rattrap again and tell him to leave your room alone on pain of Really Unpleasant Consequences. But why didn't you tell me or Hide about it? I told you I'd told Rattrap to knock it off, remember?"

He had. Hey, just so you know.... Had a talk with Rattrap today about his little hobby of setting up cameras everywhere. I told him to keep them out of the private quarters, but just be on the lookout for them, ok?

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"You..." Shadow pulled back, confused and more than a little uneasy in spite of the reassurance pulsing through Jazz's field. "You told me to watch out for him. I've been trying. He's just...better than I am. I'm sorry."