[ti]Ep 3[/ti]Static [Closed for now]

[Patch]

Episode 3, Day 5, Week 3.

0300 hours.

It was quiet in Omega base. The constant hum of recirculated air through hidden, and unhidden vents along the walls. The usual warmth of heavy, gold lights suspended far above the control room now extinguished. The room lit instead, at this hour, by the gentle green of familiar hexagonal screens of the monitor, and the groundbridge controls. Just enough light across the floor for safety’s sake in emergency, and for ease of those on firewatch.

Lights had gone out in the barracks section of the base as well. The corridor well below the main hub of control now lit with spots of blue, from intermittent consoles and security pads beside each door. It was perhaps not unlike the feeling of a naval ship, with how far under the ground it was. Steady and encapsulated- a bit cramped, to the larger among them.

The quarters themselves were spread around each wall, with an island of them back to back along through the center. Thin bars of safety lights down each hall, between the usual, larger rounds which lit the ground from the ceiling in the day- now silent with sleep.

Indeed, there was a humming peace to the Omega outpost, at night. Like a wire live with current, safely tucked within its casing- its power still felt, and known, yet dormant. A warmth to be found in its hum.

It was within this tentative silence, that Patch had crept back to her quarters late. Kept well busy in sickbay with Sundance till nearly 0130. With lightened pa-dunks, soft and swift, she’d crept past the doors preceding her’s; her own remembered especially easy as the one beside the dent -well since filled with light colored putty- stood out, against red stone.

In she’d punched the default code (just the same as the day she’d arrived) with deft, stubby digits. In she’d flopped- not needing to step in far before easily reaching her slab. Patch took great pride in her simple little room. Perhaps at first it had taken adjustment to sleep all alone, when all her life she’d lived in barracks. Here though, it seemed she’d taken full advantage of the solitude.

Though the space was small -even for the likes of her- she’d taken to placing knick-nacks and half-started collections on the shelf at the foot of her slab. A small box in the corner, beneath it, filled with metal scraps, and what looked like irreparable junk. Her med-pack, usually latched against her shoulders propped up on the wall beside the door.

There were stickers on the walls- the inspirational sort that humans would use as decoration in bedrooms, or living spaces. A sparse smattering of tiny, five pointed glow-in-the-dark stars across the upper walls and ceiling…


She’d had to cut her legs off…

That didn’t really leave a person- least of all in a matter of hours. It had been so long since last she’d done that… Especially without supervision.

At least Sundance had been in stasis… How was she gonna tell her what happened? How would her patient respond? Suni still hadn’t woken… Maybe it would have been better to recharge in sickbay- maybe she should have stayed up longer- if not to work, at least to sit with her… make sure she wasn’t alone.

So such thoughts had swirled, for the first half hour, before growing more abstract. Eventually guiding the femme to recharge- if not through choice, through sheer exhaustion. More than once she’d stopped herself, and peeked back at her data pad. More than twice she’d sat back up to write down one more thing, that she just Knew she’d forget by the morning…

Though after a matter of hours… She was under, if shifting, frequently.

It was through this tentative, fragile recharge- through thin sleep, and thin walls, any able would hear a quiver of air into unsteady vents… A series of huffs, as it left- the frame it came from small.

Silence.

A few more aggressive breaths kicked up, a whimper, as they slipped away… 

“Augh-... AUGH!”

Patch's voice. Desperate. Terrified. A scrape and clang of metal on metal.

“AUGH-HAgh!! Ahg-.... Ahha-...”

Another set of huffs, the repetitive sort- not terribly unlike crying.

[Avalanche]

It was a quiet night. Avalanche stood by the main exit, the door half-cracked open to let cooler air swirl inside and flow into her vents. Her chassis wasn’t especially fuel efficient; it had been forged long before that had become the overriding concern of the Cybertronian people, and she ran a little hot sometimes.

She missed rain.

Strange thing to miss, really. Not something you’d go looking for on Cybertron, nor on space stations, or in mines. Canyon was a dry dustball. But before that... Erdinira had been lashed by rainstorms often, and deep in her spark, she’d come to enjoy the way it poured relentlessly from the sky, plinking against her thick plating. It cleansed, and cooled. Made for horrible flying weather too, which she’d found useful. It did rain here sometimes, but not often, and not enough.

She vented a sigh, her orange optics glowing in the dark shadows of the half-open entryway. Somewhere out there, Decepticons lurked, plotting, marshalling their strength for... something. She didn’t know what, not yet, and that made her feel half-blind. Still. The garrison had pulled through the leanest times. If they could find a pressure point, somewhere to take initiative, maybe they could give the ‘cons a few processor aches of their own.

Either way, she wasn’t doing the base any good where she stood. Grunting once, Avalanche prodded the door controls with a blunt finger; the door slid fully closed, sealing the base from the outside. She’d been restless, after bringing Sundancer in, unwilling to settle down and recharge. Times like this, she leaned on Solus Prime for solace.

The translated English word caught her attention. Solace from Solus. She huffed a low sound of amusement; the pun didn’t work in Cybertronian, but they were oddly similar in the native tongue. Making her way towards her own quarters, she paused mid-step as a shuddering whimper curled through the corridors. Pained, aching sobbing, a femme’s voice.

It was a sound she’d heard before, many times. Sometimes, when the battle ended, and the furious burn of systems cooled from fight-or-flight, bots just... fell apart. It wasn’t weakness. It was just another kind of injury. The big femme shifted direction, following the muffled sounds, and as she approached the source, she recognised the voice.

Patch.

Without making too much noise, Avalanche rapped on the medic’s door with the back of her knuckles, a double clang of metal on metal. “It’s me,” she said quietly.

[Patch]

Tucked up in the corner of her room, knees in her chest at the corner of her slab, Patch took an in-vent, then another caught it midway through; both breaths worth of air escaping at once on top of each other. A shutter as the little medic merely tucked her helm into her knees with a clunk. The metal of her fore-helm rubbing softly back and forth against the traction lattice of her hexagonal joint guard. An echo of another’s hand that rubbed the same spot once, perhaps.

A knock.

A start- her entire frame jolted. Soft though it was, a gasp was taken and caught. A servo rose to press flush over her intake, chin nicking to the side, as panic flooded bright, blue optics.

There were other people here.
There were other people here asleep.
Frag.

Patch forced her tensor cables to soften, relaxing into the panic. She held her vents- allowing her spark to heat up and burn as though a seeker trine were flying overhead.

Avalanche.

She recognized the voiceprint in an instant.

The last-sparked curled over deeper, descending to a new level of silence. Her servos rose to clutch at the small lip at the back of her helm as her head bowed. Her digit tips curled against the overhang just above her neck. The inner plating of Patch's arms clicked flush with the freckles and minuscule scars on her cheeks. Overbright optics squeezed shut as though that would somehow make the commander go away.

One beat.

Two.

Then a hesitant whisper. Monotone. Numb- as though the words weren’t Patch’s, but had simply passed through her.

“I’m fine.”

Another beat, frame still frozen.

“It’s okay. I’m okay.”

She called, ventilation still held.

[Avalanche]

The sounds from within ceased, so abruptly and totally it was as though a knife had descended and cut them free. It was a wary, watchful silence; Avalanche knew well the difference, after so many ages had passed.

Sometimes, the best thing you could do for a bot was leave them alone, let them work through their grief and pain in privacy. But often it wasn't. Often, that only let it burn deeper into the spark. Knowing the difference was hard. Especially when she wasn't, at root, all that sensitive to emotional nuance by nature. Then Patch's voice came through the door, and the big femme knew for a fact that this wasn't the time to go anywhere.

Blank, mechanical, without inflection. That was a mecha too burnt out to even pretend normality.

There was a scrape and a clunk-thud as Avalanche bent down, planting one armoured hand against the corridor floor to ease herself to the ground. Unhooking her shield from her back, she rested it against the corridor wall.

"It's a nice night outside," she remarked, seemingly apropos of nothing. "The air's cool. Stars are bright. Different, seeing them through an atmosphere. When you're out there, there's too many to take in. Down here, though. The way they flicker. They seem alive."

She wasn't customarily a talkative mecha, or a poetic one. But that didn't matter. What mattered was that, in this moment, she wasn't addressing Patch like a soldier. She wasn't pressing on the obvious raw spot, the incredibly transparent lie that Patch was fine. She was company. That, as far as she judged, was the best thing she could be.

[Patch]

The heavy clunk of Avalanche’s plating as she sat.

Oh no.

Oh nonono, oh Frag, she was settling in.

A warm sort of… twisted frustration lifted in the younger femme. It was a complex thing, all too many damn emotions all at once to really process any single one. Anger at being disturbed. A warm, deep love for the care. Gratefulness that she didn’t have to-... like it for someone to stay there and care for her anyway. Like she didn’t deserve the attention, yet so badly craved it.

It did feel like she was bleeding, somewhere deep within her spark. But-... but she was so used to dealing with that alone! She was both… Glad, and upset she didn’t get to this time. Like a smile that twisted across one’s lips in spite of the person’s wishes.

It was an experience Patch took great pleasure inspiring in others. But to be the one looked after here? It-... it was harder. Hard to trust, hard to believe she, needed, help.

Well- Patch had tried to give the commander an out! At this point it was Avalanche’s own fault if she chose to stay and deal with- All, of what was happening here. The young medic recognized what Ava was doing, as well. Grounding. Bringing the present moment forward into view as something to grasp, to stabilize.

There was a short pause, before she said anything. Rationalizing that NO, an excuse at this point would Not, make the commander go away. The young femme still had a feeling if she wanted- needed, privacy, she could just ask for it and be respected, but… She didn’t. She did, kinda need someone right now, as much as she didn’t wanna admit it.

Another in-vent was interrupted halfway though, and let out in a soft huff. On the other side of the door, Patch pressed the cool heel of her palm beneath her overbright optic to try and cool it. Her spark still wavering with heat, and fear, and… Sorrow.

“Sounds pretty…”

A short pause, a slight shift of metal on metal through the door. If the commander listened very closely. she may even hear an unsteady, shuttered breath. In and out, as the younger stabilized herself a bit more.

“I like em’ here. Never really got to see all that many back home. Too much smoke.”

[Avalanche]

There was a trick to listening to the quietest sounds. First, stillness. Absolute stillness of body. Second, focusing on a single sound in the background. The steady hum of air circulators. The almost subliminal buzz of power couplings. Focusing on it, inviting it in, until it lost meaning and faded from awareness. Slow, methodical acceptance of the aural landscape. And then, at last, the smallest sounds were left with nothing to hide behind.

Patch's unsteady, trembling vents.

"It's pretty." Avalanche's voice was a deep, soft rumble, from the depths of her chest. No point in talking about what Patch hadn't got to witness, in the time before the dying of their world. This wasn't the time for loss, not when the medic had been heaped with it beyond her capacity to bear. Instead, she went on quietly, "First planet I was deployed to, after the homeworld, that was about as different from Cybertron as you could imagine."

Her orange optics slid closed, seeing into her memory. "...it was hot. Humid. Wet. Most of the world was thick jungle. Swamps. Seas. Lots of island chains and long, narrow continents. And the rain. It rained every single day, hard enough to make you think it was trying to hammer you into the ground." She paused, then added absently, "Ceti Alpha Seven. I hated it. Squishy underfoot, fast-growing plants everywhere making it impossible to move around. I was a bulldozer back then. I was brought in more to clear roadways than fight. But after a while...

"It grew on me. Hah." She gave a brief laugh, realising the inadvertent pun. "The rain, I mean. Wasn't something I was used to, but... when my engine was running hot, and there was mud up my sides to higher than my tracks. Down it came. Drumming on my hide. Cooling me. Washing me clean."

A long, quiet pause, Avalanche's audials attuned for any sound from within. "I was a little disappointed, when I found the garrison was somewhere so dry. I was looking forward to feeling rain again."

[Patch]

The commander’s low, gentle voice was warm and guiding. A balm, applied with knowing care. It hurt a bit, even if it helped too. It was hard to focus- hard to ground so quickly after waking, as the signals of panic and sleep still coursed through Patch’s circuits, competing with each other.

Mineral freckled servos lightly cupped at the back of a similarly patterned neck as the younger femme listened. Focusing on the slab beneath her, and if not on the words themselves, at least the tone with which her leader spoke.

Again, she closed her optics, through more gently than before. She took another breath, surrounded and protected by thin walls, and green tinted, tiny glowing stars dappled and distanced across them.

She had some say, here. On what went on the walls.
She’d been given the time to put them up.

It was safe, here. It was supposed to be, at least; and it ached how new that was. It ached to start to question it after only just learning what it WAS, what it Meant.

A soft, pained smile lifted to Patch’s optics as they gently split open to glow. A warm ex-vent escaped her lips in time with her vents.

Rain.

A wash of feeling- complex and heavy fell across the younger femme, and altogether likely the room around her. Perhaps even felt through the door, should Ava be keen to pick up on such things. There was, pain, and twisted joy of humor in irony. Relief, and strife, and anger- past, anger, and fear that lifted now as an almost… slightly feral wrath. Some, broken, backwards pride, all, backed up by only still more hurt. More broken.

Melting, aching- screaming strangers and friends and enemies alike. The thick, murky air of Uraya… The trenches outside Iacon…

Acid Rain, as Patch had come to know it.

It had taken everything within her, at the time, not to imagine what it must have felt like upon the wounds inflicted within it. Or the pain of those dunked into puddles of the stuff; swirled with the energon of those already fallen, their carcasses half consumed by the corrosive after days afloat upon it’s surface.

A medic’s nightmare. Proven positive here in even the most literal of senses, as Pain lingered in Patch's joints from the echo of her dream…

But here…

HERE, rain was so, soft. Just as Avalanche had said- here on Earth, it was… cleansing. You could nearly feel the local fauna breathing it in, as it fell. As what little smog in the sky was weighed down and washed away. The ground grew fragrant. The air grew smooth.

Shaky words, laced in pain. Weak, and tumbled out slowly.

“I like that better here too.”

[Avalanche]

Emotion, powerful emotion, swelled outwards from behind the door borne on Patch's field. It was too complex for Avalanche to pick apart, a wash of anger, fear, pain, pride... battlefield emotions, raw and visceral. Her own field tucked tight against her hull, Avalanche's lips twisted together with a touch of regret. Clearly something she'd said had caused a reaction, and not a happy one.

Still. Patch spoke again, and if her voice was fractured with pain, trembling in the air, at least she was speaking at all.

Sometimes, the best response to another's pain was restful silence, just being there. It didn't feel like that was the case here, but Avalanche was well aware that she wasn't the most emotionally attuned of bots. After a moment, she remarked, apropos of nothing, "Why did the Decepticon cross the road? Because I threw him." Another little pause. "Most of the jokes I know are like that. I was never going to make it as an entertainer."

Some small, foolish thing. Something to blunt the edge of her authority, to set rank to one side for a little while.

"Want to talk about it?"

She didn't specify what it was, though she was pretty sure the half-wrecked frame of Sundance lying in the medical bay had a lot to do with it. Maybe Patch would uncork the words bottled up inside her, and she'd listen. Maybe the medic wouldn't, and Avalanche would talk and talk about old days, old worlds. Either way, the message was the same. I'm here for you.

[Patch]

Her helm tipped down to touch one of her knee guards. She turned to look vaguely downward, gaze glazing across the wall and floor, overbrightened and wavering slightly as her optic ridges knit together.

A giggle tumbled out of Patch, for lack of any other response. For the sheer surprise of the joke, and the fact the emotions needed some way to escape. In telling a (truly, genuinely terrible) joke, Avalanche offered Patch an opportunity to spill a little bit of the overflow, and she did so- nearly without cognition. A simple, response, of her frame. A release.

The elder femme was clearly uncomfortable with this level of vulnerability. Patch imagined this wasn’t the sort of thing she did often. But she was Trying- and it was kind. It Was helping. If for no other reason than to simply not be alone.

"Want to talk about it?"

A pained huff of a laugh. “No.”

She looked down and hunched, optics soft and turned forward as a quiet, melancholy smile spread across her intake. Stress still bubbled in her chest.

“Probly’ should anyway though.”

She looked up, a little, towards the source of the other femme’s voice. Optics tired, as their blue glow softly pierced the dark.

“You can open the door, if you want.”

So long as she was here, Patch figured it might be nice to invite her superior to peek as much of herself inside the room as was comfortable.

“It’s still the default code.”

[Avalanche]

The little laugh behind the door was more than reward enough for the awkwardness of her purposefully terrible humour. Avalanche vented a little exhale, the back of her helm coming to rest against the door with a little clink.

When she'd been a lower-ranking soldier, she'd been able to know all the mecha under her command. Not just know casually, but know. The things that'd set off bad memories, the things that soothed them. A quiet drink. A game of chance. Getting smashed and reminiscing. The little signs that betrayed fatigue, that signalled that an apparently functional bot was reaching the end of their tether. As she'd climbed the ranks, with more soldiers under her command, it hasn't been possible to know every single one like that. But she'd tried, she'd worked at it.

Sometimes, she was the one that would be best fitted to help someone on a rough, rough cycle when they finally broke down. Sometimes it was Frosty, or Drillbit. When it came to Patch, she didn't know the tells, didn't know the landmines, didn't know which heading to steer. She might not be the best mecha for the job. But above all else, she was here, and that made her the most qualified right now.

Did Patch want to talk about it? From within, 'No', but then a tired admission that she should talk about it anyway. Clearly Patch was trying. Trying to apply to herself what she'd suggest to others. Avalanche respected that.

With a few clanks and metallic sounds – she was never a stealthy machine – Avalanche pushed herself to her feet and turned to face the door. The keypad was a bit fiddly for her blunt, armoured fingers but managed; a few careful taps of the keys with the edge of a finger and the door withdrew into the frame. It was dark within, unlit.

Nearly dark. Above, the ceiling was speckled with dim greenish stars, the characteristic soft radiance of glow-in-the-dark plastic. Where the bunk presumably lay, a pair of blue optics glowed softly in the darkness.

Avalanche lingered in the doorway, a blunt, squared off silhouette against the dim corridor lighting, her ring-optics glowing the orange of smouldering coals. Then, ducking her helm under the frame, she stepped inside. The door hissed quietly closed.

With a measure of care, Avalanche crossed the room to where those blue optics waited, settling down to the ground beside her bunk. Letting Patch's optic glows linger in the corner of the vision, the big commander leant her helm back to gaze at the star-shapes on the ceiling. Her rumbling voice came quietly. "Responsibility. It's the worst. Things go wrong. There aren't any good choices left. And then everyone looks at you, their optics saying, 'what are you going to do about it?'." She grunted, then repeated half to herself, "It's the worst."

[Patch]

The lights in the hallway were brighter than those in her room, if only slightly. The safety strips like guidelines on a runway, or monitors softly watching rhythms in the background of a medical bay. Cuts of blue that liminalized the space, a bit. Made it feel, longer. Far away, yet close. Distinguishing this planet's local day, or lack thereof, in this case.

Those soft, round, tired optics turned down gently as the commander entered. A whuff of hot air from her chest through the vents on her back, and legs. A release of tension, as it seemed the young medic accepted the help.

As Avalanche settled, Patch’s optics flicked gently back up. Quiet features regarding the elder femme with curiosity, care, almost distance, as she remained crouched in the corner of her recharge slab. Tired though alert. A slight edge taken off, and still slipping away at the presence of another, it seemed.

A quiet smile tugged at the corners of the young femme’s intake, as she watched her commander look up at the ceiling she’d so carefully decorated.

Patch liked Avalanche’s voice. Low and warm. Honest. Real.

“It suits you.”

An earnest statement. Not a complement, or, a chiding remark to herself to be better- no- this was simply an observation to Patch. A fact, as plain as blue in energon.

“Responsibility, leading. Seems to come naturally.”

Patch’s chin came to settle on the lattice-etched traction pattern of her knee guard, looking to the commander as her own voice lowered and leveled off. The youth in it appearing as though from around a corner.

“You make it look easy.”

[Avalanche]

The door sealed, cutting off the dim hallway track lighting. Now it was just the two of them, in a dark space that could have been... anywhere, really. Tolerable gravity and atmospheric pressure. The rocky walls were anonymised in the dimness, mere platonic surfaces. It was good; almost confessional. Rank invisible, emotion conveyed not by expression, but by tone of voice and hints of field emissions. Little hints of body language, the way the optic glows moved.

She'd often thought that mecha more readily showed who they really were, in the dark. For good or ill.

Avalanche's optics cast gentle orange highlights from her black helm armour, her gaze lingering on the star-speckled ceiling above as she listened. Made command look easy? A rough chuckle escaped the big femme, resonating in her chest, and she shifted a little to rest one armoured hand on her knee.

"What comes naturally is breaking rock, shoving it around, driving foundations, and lifting heavy things. That's what I was made for." It wasn't true to say that was all that'd been expected of her. It was far more accurate to say that was all she was believed capable of, and any footstep outside those narrow, proscribed roles was an ignorant impertinence to be hammered back into place. "Barely sentient, the way towerlings used to talk. Never was meant to be good with other people."

Avalanche hummed deep in her chest. She wasn't sure if Patch really wanted to explore that avenue with her, but lacking any better ideas and settling on it as a distraction from the medic's trauma, she went on, "Back when, I attended the early Decepticon rallies. Saw Megatron as one of us. Shows you my grasp of character." And oh, how she'd never been allowed to forget it, once she finally entered Autobot service.

"It's never easy. You know why. Like I said; responsibility sucks. Never sought command for its own sake. But someone's got to do it. I trust my own judgement. Holding onto that trust, when you've had to make hard choices, or made mistakes – that's hard work. But you have to. Lose trust in yourself, and you can't lead. Just get those under you lost."

[Patch]

The light of her optics shifted forward, and fell over her knee guards. A slight reflection fell across the convex shape, and into the crevices carved for traction.

For a moment, Patch found herself reflecting on the reasons this war was necessary in the first place. On the good it yielded for those who remained, even if they were still in the midst of the bad. Patch, after all, had never been assigned a caste. ‘What she would have been’ never mattered to her, really. She was a medic- because it’s what she liked to do. Because it’s what she’d shown promise for.

Not something she was 'meant for' simply something she was… good at.

A moment of surprise caught the younger femme at the mention of Decepticon rallies. The light of her optics lifted slightly as the ridges above them rose. She wouldn’t have imagined her commander to be the sort. A short, soft whuff of a laugh escaped her vents at the partial joke on Ava’s judgment of buckethead himself, at the time.

As Avalanche continued, Patch shifted a bit more. Two light clunks as each of her peddes lifted up and settled again. Re-positioning her arms around her knees a bit, as her helm lifted and settled more comfortably.

Her optics cast downward, as the ridges above them furrowed. Melancholy pain rose, and curled around her spark. She spoke through a gentle smile.

“You sound like Pre-connect.”

The soft blue light of her optics was interrupted a moment in a slow, soft blink. It came to cast downward, across the speckles which flecked the metal on her cheeks.

“He was uh… Real big guy. Pyrobot before the war.”

A fondness drew forward as her vents grew full, a soft whuff as she released the warmed air.

“One of the first medics I served with in the field. Helped look after me.”