Little Gifts [Closed]

[Deleted]

//ooc// Not sure when to set this. It'd be almost a week or so (5-7 days) since Deuce last contacted Sarita. End of week 3, maybe? Let me know if this doesn't work or is too far ahead.

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Kerosene. Granola bars. A compass. A map. Some hastily-picked travel pamphlets for the area, and a list of addresses to local Internet cafes. Coffee, non-dairy creamer, and sugar packets. Peanut butter, too, if bread was on hand — all of it went into a shoebox, and then into the earth, or perhaps under a rock. Sometimes, there was the old, gnarled stump of a desert tree, not yet taken over by insects or bees. She found them charming, but sometimes they were too noticeable — in that case, she'd use a cactus with a hollow in it, careful not to prick her fingers on the thorns. She'd track where she'd been, write down the place in Spanish, and then scramble with the letters with a quick cipher a friend showed her. He'd once said it was for fun, but she knew it lent to so much more.

Sometimes, she'd look up at the sky, and wait for a sign. A familiar silver dart, or perhaps a screech of engines, or even a cheeky text or voicemail. There and gone again, like so many she'd known — nothing in life was permanent. The day ended, the stars changed their places in the sky, and tumbleweeds rolled on until they found something to hit. Such was the ebb and flow of the universe, and she could only hope he wasn't lost in some vast, dark corner of it.

She knew his type. She knew he wouldn't be back, or that it was a snowball's chance in hell that he would. The odd behaviors, the sudden crash (or rather, teleportation) into the valley lake, the strange man he'd traded information with — Deuce had a secret. So did she. Thus, she could appreciate when that secret led him off and away, with no word or acknowledgement of thanks. His time was up, she wished him well, and told herself over and over again that he wasn't him. He'd been a lot like him, and she had been too attached, and succumbed to her own biases and loss that had built over the year.

There was no point in missing Deuce, but she would. Just as she missed a familiar pair of red-heads, a sweet and tall earth-maiden, a fiery teenager who that Miko girl would have been friends with — yes, he had joined all of them. They would always be her kith and kin, even if the jetformer had known her for but a few weeks, and she held those memories dear. She turned away from the sky, and followed a barely-visible antelope trail to the highway.

The open road beckoned, and it was time to move on. There was much to do now, and many places to go, even though they around a fixed point in Jasper, Nevada. It was a place to sleep, but she couldn't give the impression she'd up and abandoned the offering of lodging there. Nell Collins was a rough but kind woman, and Sarita McCoy fully intended to repay the soldier's charity. If Sarita was needed, the singer couldn't gallivant too far, lest she possibly miss something that she might be needed for. It was only right, no matter how much Nell might argue otherwise.

But once again, there were things to do. How many wayward wanderers had there been like Deuce? How many had suffered the fate of dear Cleaver, captured and hacked to pieces somewhere hidden and unknown? Every time she got the notice that his number had been disconnected, Sarita reined in the panic that he'd been taken too, and tell herself a thousand times more, "No, he's not, he's too smart for that." To be stranded, alone, in a foreign land, on an unknown world — she wouldn't stand for the idea. She couldn't bear to even think about a lost Cybertronian being ambushed and ripped apart, or worse. Haven was all the way in Africa, and Layby had scoffed at her questions when Cleaver had first gone missing.

This was something she would do alone, and incognito. She was not going to go hunting for MECH, nor would actively try to seek a Cybertronian's attention — no, she was only looking for signs. Traces of where the massive, robotic beings might have come and gone, or perhaps stayed a while. All along her route and search, she'd leave little bundles of human-friendly and alien-friendly goods, just in case a pick-me-up was needed. Little gifts of charity, geocaching without the trackers, the only thing marking their presence a little sigil carved somewhere close. One in the know would recognize it as the upper half of an Autobot and Decepticon insignia, sliced in half and put together over a line, reminiscent of the old "Killroy was here" graffiti. Other than a few human things for herself, just in case something happened or she needed to stop, most of it was meant to help the robots or their holograms.

When all was said and done, she'd drive back to Jasper, and make up a believable excuse. A show, a job, traffic, some tit on the road — Sarita knew how to lie. She always made sure to give the right answers, or so she hoped. So far, no one had questioned her, and she intended on keeping it that way.