Ep. 1.5 - What the Cat Dragged In (closed)

[Deleted]

(Shadow/Steeljaw; follows directly from Worst Cat.)

Stepping through the ground bridge was a risk; a calculated risk, but still a risk, with nothing but Steeljaw's word to go on that the security feeds were blocked and no one was waiting for her. A part of Shadow wanted to transform and run rather than take that risk. She could survive on nothing but this planet's resources; she'd proven that before, from a far worse start. She could survive, but energon would make it easier, give her the luxury of being able to scan a new alt mode and keep her self-repair system functioning. At best, taking the risk would win her fuel and supplies; at worst...she doubted Prime would see her executed. And if she couldn't escape, well, there were other ways out.

A calculated risk, and her investment in the outcome was more a matter of habit than self-preservation. The only part of it she could really call foolish was the hope that Steeljaw was telling her the truth.

No one met them in the control room, and Shadow exvented a sigh of relief, though her sensors remained warily alert. The Autobot base had never felt like home, but it had been enough: safe enough, comfortable enough, familiar enough. Now it just felt like enemy territory.

She had told Steeljaw that she was coming back to say goodbye, but that was the last thing on her hastily assembled list. Fuel first, as much as she could fit in her subspace. Emergency ration supplements. The patch kits she kept in her quarters so she could avoid Ratchet. Then she could risk saying goodbye.

Maybe.

Fuel first. She looked at Jaws, who, in turn, looked very much like he wanted to jump back into her arms. "When I went after Soledad, I cleaned out the rest of the Nemesis gummy supply." A mostly-full foil packet came out of her subspace. "You're more than welcome to what's left if you can get me to the energon stores and give me time to refuel."

[Deleted]

Steeljaw's audials were pressing low on his helm, tail held still and limp. She was still intending to leave, he realized, well and truly intending, and there was nothing he could realistically do to stop her - not and have her even remotely willing to speak to him every again, much less let him accompany her.

Which, if he was truthful with himself, he had to weigh heavily if he was willing to do or not. The base was protection, employment, room and board, all very important things. But Shadow.... Shadowrunner, he had realized, was friend, in a visceral way that he hadn't had in a very long time, and which echoed to the symbiont in ways he wasn't used to but had abruptly found he didn't like to go without. It had lent a frantic fervor to his search for her and had gelled in his spark when he had found himself seeking refuge in her room as though that space, shared over mutual polishing and a ridiculous list of movies, was somehow more 'home' than the rest of the base.

It would be empty without her, nothing more than the bare necessities of functional needs that he was used to surviving on, and somehow all the emptier for having known more.

Steeljaw made himself lift his audials and tail in a ghost of his usual expression, trying for a haughty note that he didn't actually feel. "Energon stores? Easy. I can even get you to the wash racks - which might not be a bad idea, since you're trailing enough organic debris to tip off Rattrap half the base away."

[Deleted]

Wash racks were a luxury that hadn't made it onto her list, but Steeljaw had a point. More importantly, the symbiont himself was covered in a fine layer of dirt and plant fragments, which, given his aversion to outside, would be a red flag to anyone who saw him.

And while keeping an optic on him wouldn't prevent Jaws from privately comming anyone, Shadow didn't think he was such a good liar that he could keep her from noticing if he tried it.

"Wash racks first," she agreed, tucking the gummies back into her subspace, "as long as you come with me. You're filthier than that little tumble in the dirt can explain, and no one is going to believe you had a sudden desire to roll around in Rhinox's garden. Then fuel."

Then her quarters, and medbay, and back out the bridge. That was...the more logical course to take.

[Deleted]

"Washracks," Steeljaw agreed, leading the way. His audials twitched slightly, tail tip tapping out an unconscious rhythm as he reached ahead of them, blanketing security feeds along the way in quick, clean loops. The middle of the night made it possible, when Blaster was in recharge and would only have the feeds flagged for suspicious things - things which did not include Steeljaw's authority codes, whispered in and whisked back out again in a practiced sweep. He lead Shadow away from the central corridor, pinging her his revised route which took them away from the main hallways.

"And refueling," he added quietly. "And really, you could catch a bit of recharge on an actual berth. I guarantee no one has looked into or disturbed your rooms this entire time-" except for him, slag and scrap, and if she didn't notice the symbiont shaped indentation on her berth she certainly would notice the elaborate eight tier spiral overlaid petition to Primus for the safety of returning travelers which he had, in a moment of temporary insanity, carved into the ceiling of her room, but there was nothing he could do about that now "-and they're not likely to start today for no known reason."

[Deleted]

"Jaws, I'm not staying," Shadow said, equally quietly; no reason to tell him before he needed to know that a trip to her quarters was on the agenda. "You know I'm a lousy excuse for an Autobot. I was never in it for a cause, I was in it for my cohort, and I don't have that now." If he had been closer, she would have reached out, picked him up in spite of how hard she'd worked to get him off of her. "A berth and four walls can't make up for that."

[Deleted]

...Oh.

Steeljaw faltered in mid-step, catching himself before it was apparent. His audials and tail sunk lower, flat to his helm and low to the ground, and he didn't dare turn to look at Shadow.

There it was, then. Did he have the bearings to go with her? Would she let him? He half opened his mouth to ask and found he didn't know what to say. He had, a portion of his processor insisted with habitual protocols, already infringed enough upon her by practically dragging her back to base. It was none of his business - or anyone else's - where she went or what she did.

That was Neutral thinking and Steeljaw acknowledged, with a sinking feeling in his tanks, that it wasn't enough. That solitary, selfish, no ties, no permanency philosophy that had become his entire life after Uplink... it didn't apply. Not to Shadow. Maybe not to several of the others, either, but definitely not to Shadowrunner, friend and confidant and there had been a part of him that had wondered, in her absence, if he had lost his first and only chance to find a new partner that could be something more than a horrifically awkward one time affair.

Shadow... who was going to leave, and looking back over the last breem Steeljaw could narrow down, with hindsight clarity, when she had pulled away. The question was why and the more he went over it, replaying words and glyphs and field in his memory, the more he wondered if that habitual Neutral thinking - all for one and one for no one else - had shoved his pede further up his vocalizer than he gave it credit for.

He lead the way to the washracks in silence and waited until Shadow had turned the spray on before joining her in the wet wash of it, plates flicking open to let the solvent drain through his systems. Sitting at her feet, he wrapped his tail around his pedes and leaned up to rest one forepede on her thigh. "I'm sorry," he said solemnly, glyphs sober. "I think I mis-spoke earlier." He shook his head, plates ruffling. "Neutrals... we're a faction, really, even when we're claiming we're not. Which shouldn't be any sort of excuse when it comes to cohort." He tilted his head back, looking up at her. "I'm sorry if this is a glitched question, but... Cleaver. What she did there. Does it counter everything you had here?"

[Deleted]

"Yes."

The word came out sharp-edged and unthinking, awash in the corrosive anger she'd felt upon seeing Barricade alive. Straighforward, true on at least some level, it left no opening for argument. An easy answer, no explanation needed; incomplete, but she was leaving and Steeljaw didn't need to know more.

Everything I thought I had here was so much slag.

Except that answer only applied to the mecha she had briefly called cohort, and Steeljaw had never pretended to be anything he wasn't. Shadow exvented, a fine mist of solvent and heat briefly obscuring the golden form by her pedes, and throttled back the remembered anger, the hurt and betrayal that were still fresh and raw.

Lies, from a quarter she never would have thought to defend against. And Barricade, laughing as he pointed out how meaningless cohort really was.

"I don't know," she admitted. "If not everything, then...enough. Enough that there's no reason for me to stay."

[Deleted]

Steeljaw's first response - the only correct response, as he had practiced it for the last few millions vorn - was to let go and agree. 'I'm sorry', maybe, or 'I understand', and then to back away and let the individual choose to do as they would, because that was what Neutrals did, not interfering, not controlling, just... letting go.

He shut his optics for a long moment and tried to think past that first habitual ingrained response. Thinking back, he tried to recall what a very young symbiont might once have said... but he had never been in a position of talking seriously to anyone about their cohort, much less any problems thereof. A plaintive search query to the back of his processor produced nothing but the silence of his own thought threads.

He didn't want to let her go, but he couldn't think of any good reason - any reason at all - why his words should carry any weight in a decision that, on the surface, made perfectly logical sense in the counterbalance of how Steeljaw weighed his own life choices.

[...You used to get completely fragged off at me,] Uplink offered with quiet hesitation. [For good reason, sometimes. But you always came back. Even that one time, with that one newscast carrier array, remember? They'd have courted you, if you'd let them.

::You were my carrier!::

[Didn't mean someone else couldn't court you,] Uplink replied. [You weren't even talking to me that orn.]

He hadn't been, Steeljaw remembered dimmly. He had spent that orn recharging in the apartments and hab suites of mutual friends, refusing to take Uplink's comms, refusing to speak to the mech in person or by carrier link... but he couldn't remember why without unarchiving more data than he had time for. It felt distant and dim, like something belonging to another symbiont entirely, but it was just enough to let him sit back on his haunches, leaning up to press both forepedes to Shadow's thigh.

"I understand not having enough left to stay," he said softly. "But what she did... did Ironhide condone it? Did Jazz, or Bluestreak? A cohort... is a group, but the individuals in it are still individuals. Aren't they?"

[Deleted]

Shadow didn't answer, because as much sense as Steeljaw's question made, it didn't ease any of the hurt. Didn't change the assurances that she could trust them, assurances that extended to Cleaver by virtue of Cleaver being cohort. Didn't stop the doubts, the suspicion that Cleaver had lied because she had no reason not to, and that any of them might lie as easily.

Labyrinth had always warned them about trusting outsiders. Shadow had known better, and had still told herself that the risk was worth it. That these mecha she could trust. For no better reason than she had wanted to trust them.

Reality had punished her mistake far more harshly than Labyrinth could have.

"They condone it enough to still call her cohort," she said finally, turning off the spray. She stepped carefully back from the smaller mechanism. "And I'm not saying they shouldn't. I told you, we mean different things when we say cohort. This is just one of the things that's different."

[Deleted]

Steeljaw let his forepedes drop heavily, shaking the last of the spray off of his plates in a rippling gesture. "I think we all mean different things," he said after a long moment. "None of us are with who we started with any more."

It was true. All of the varied cohorts he had met, traveling endlessly on ship after ship, had been formed of mechanisms ripped apart from their sparked cohorts, broken and reshaped into something new. Steeljaw, who had sworn never to take another carrier, had spent most of his existence as a Neutral looking askance at individuals who would willingly choose to risk that sort of loss all over again, for a collection of strangers who were nothing like themselves.

Steeljaw, forcibly grounded and finding himself possessed of that rare thing called 'friendship', was starting to reconsider whether he had been right, or only a coward.

He exvented, spraying liquid from his intake covers. "I'm not sure being alone is any better," he admitted at last, unable to meet the femme's optics. Taking a step forward, he pressed the flat of his helm to her calf. "I missed you."

[Deleted]

"Being alone," Shadow said flatly, "is better than learning that the only thing that mattered to you is meaningless."

Far better than to insult the memory of her cohort, by including something so empty in the word.

The anger slid caustic through her lines and blazed up in her field; it took a klik for her to rein it in, to remind herself that Steeljaw, who had the sense not to get involved, deserved no part of her anger. Venting, Shadow crouched and rubbed her fingers over the solvent-slick plates at the base of his audials.

"But for what it's worth, I missed you, too."

[Deleted]

Steeljaw leaned into the familiar touch of Shadow's hand for a long moment before raising a forepede to rest against her bent knee. "May I?" he asked. It was perhaps the first time he HAD asked, the niceties of polite boundaries lost somewhere in the first time he had shoved his faceplates into her lap, circuits in a knot and wrung out over unarchiving memories he had preferred to forget. Shadow's flicker of surprise confirmed it but the cassette waited for her affirmative before clicking light clamps on and scrambling up into her arms.

"I'm sorry," he confessed, pressing his helm to hers, forelimbs draped over her shoulder. "I'm scrap at this, I don't know what to say." It was easier, though, like that - chassis to chassis, wrapped in her field and the feel of living metal, so different from the cold inert walls he walked on all day. "It's been... a long time since I had a friend. I'm a little rusty at it, but if you want to talk, I'll listen."

[Deleted]

"It's okay, Jaws." Shadow rose, aching at the familiar heft and balance of him, his frame locked to hers and her arms around him anyway. "There isn't anything left to say. Can't fix something that never existed."

She held him like that for long moments, silent but for the hum of their systems and whispers of their ventilations, but middle of the night or not, the washracks were still a public space. "Energon," she reminded him quietly. Energon and then...no, really, energon was all she needed, and the ground bridge would be easier to access while most of the others were in recharge. "I can't stay here forever."

[Deleted]

Steeljaw tapped cameras and location pings automatically and was already shaking his head, the motion bumping their plates together beneath her chin. "Prime's taken to walking the base instead of recharging," he told her, audials flicking back as though the mech's nightly ambulations were a personal security affront. "He's on the rec level right now. If you don't want to be seen then it'll be safer if I go - I'll need to use my codes anyways, yours would leave traces all over it. If you head to your room I'll go load up my subspace and meet you there."

She was going to protest - the denial was already in her field and Steeljaw sucked in an inaudible invent. Shadow wanted to leave and he hadn't decided yet, hadn't figure out how to convince her yet. He bumped her helm with his own, trying to put deliberately obtuse reassurance in his field. "No one's been in your room, no one would check there, and I can get to it from the vents. There's no cameras - I've been keeping Rattrap out - and no one's wandering around in the quarters area. You've got a clear shot from here to there, and if Prime trips over ME getting energon, well, what of it? I'm working late. Don't worry, I have plenty of subspace; and if I have to make two or three trips, then I'll make two or three trips."

[Deleted]

The illusion of trust could be a valuable tool, and going along, meek and seemingly credulous, could open doors otherwise locked. The trick lay in breaking the illusion before too many of those doors closed between you and escape.

The more Steeljaw herded her back toward her quarters, the more Shadow suspected she was on the verge of waiting too long, of being trapped.

"All right," she said finally, before he could give up on the game and just call for someone. The wash racks were closer to the ground bridge, but it would be far easier to leave while Jaws wasn't with her. Leaving with energon, even a partial supply, would be even better, and she had no doubt that her subspace was substantially larger than his. Let him make the first trip, leave while he was occupied with the second; with any luck, he'd believe he had time to reason with her and not watch her as closely, and at least the risk of coming here would not have been for nothing.

He already knew she had doubts; attempting to ensure that she wasn't walking into an ambush shouldn't raise any alarms. "But I swear to Primus, I see any sign of anyone around that room," she refused to call it hers, "and I'm leaving."