We are a literate, intermediate to advanced AU Transformers RPG Based off of the first season of TFP with dashes of other incarnations sprinkled here or there. Characters from any continuity are welcome however must be restyled to match the TFPrime universe.
Active, with ongoing plotlines, we are always willing to integrate new characters into storylines once incorporated into the setting.
I don't know how to let you be here for me. Shadow didn't say it aloud; she was sure Ironhide knew just how hard it was. She curled against him, trying to stop the sounds she was still making and the shudders still running through her frame.
Not the same, never the same, but she had known that from the moment she remembered what Barricade had done. Not wrong...that was harder to believe, Ironhide's fierce certainty running counter to everything Labyrinth had ever drilled into them.
"Do want you," she said, vents hitching a little. "I didn't lie when I said that. And I believe you...want to be here for me. Just don't know how to feel it." Her servos flexed, digging in again. "I'm sorry."
Ironhide curled over her, armor flaring to enfold her. Safety, it said, in a quantifiable physical sense, a tactile presence. It made him feel better, the safety of her frame tucked against his bleeding into his spark like a soothing pulse. "Shh," he rumbled softly. "Yer okay, bitlet. It's alright. It don't come easy, Ah know."
He rubbed circles on her plates, helm tucked down against her as he gently rocked, a slow backwards and forward sway. "Don't be sorry. It's alright. Just believe it, sparklet. We're here. We'll be here, whether yeh can feel it or not. Yeh ain't gonna feel it, not all th' time, an' Ah'm sorry, Ah know it hurts. Ain't somethin' yeh can force, ain't somethin' that happens right from th' startin' gate. Ain't any fault in that." A deep ventilation, the thrum of his engine slowly strengthening. "Give it time, bitlet. It'll come, an' we'll still be here for yeh."
"I'm still sorry." She thought back to their first lesson, the horrible shift that had stripped all of the comfort out of Ironhide's hold, needing desperately for him to understand. "There was never supposed to be anyone else, just the thirteen of us. Outsiders..." She hesitated, struggling to find the right words. "It's not just that it hurts. Outsiders are one step away from the enemy. Don't like for you to feel like one. Don't like losing you that way."
Just the memory of it was enough to cycle her systems up again, countering the soft lulling motion and the enveloping armor that was almost enough to make up for the lack of other frames around them. "I keep thinking it's all right," she blurted miserably. "I keep thinking I can do this, but it's not real, it's not solid, I can't hold on and even if you're willing to put up with me...every time I slip I feel like I'll never find my way back. And if there's no way back, what's the point of even trying?"
"Always a way back," Ironhide rumbled gently. "It gets better, bitlet. It does. Partly mah fault - yer too young, th' loss is too soon, we pushed yeh too hard. It don't work like that. Yeh can't just forget them an' come t' us, it don't work. Ain't like flippin' a switch."
He pushed his helm against hers, with just enough force to feel it, venting a deep cycle. "It get's easier," he confided. "Yeh keep tryin', yeh keep believin', yeh find yer way back... it gets easier. An we'll be here waitin' an' ready t' help yeh find yer way back when yeh get lost. Yeh ain't alone, dahrlin', an' it gets BETTER."
Ironhide pressed his lips to the black plating of her helm, exventing across chrome and polish. "This ain't..." he had to pause, rebooting vocalizer and process queue until he could keep it steady once more, a truth that he hadn't thought of or voiced in more vorn than the femme in his arms had been online crackling ugly and raw through his circuits. "This... this ain't mah first cohort, Shadow." He sucked in another ventilation, the words tumbling out in a rush. "An' it hurts worse'n th' Pit, Ah know, there ain't nothin' else like it, but it DOES get better. It gets more real, it gets more solid, it gets easier an' better an'..." his voice cracked across a burst of static, arms closing tight around her, "...an' th' feel that yeh should've gone with 'em, that yeh ain't got no right t' be th' last one left - yeh realize that's a lie, luv. But it takes time an' Primus willin' it takes people t' help yeh an' Ah'm HERE, sparklet, Ah'm right here. Ah'll help. We all will. Yeh ain't alone."
There was pain behind his admission, an old ache as solid and real as the arms wrapped around her. It settled into her, its own kind of reassurance, nothing so tenuous as the words themselves.
Shadow went still, the frantic, scrabbling need to make him understand - to make herself feel like she wouldn't just be left wandering - easing a little. This felt like home, broken pieces meshing together into something almost whole; she wished she could archive the moment for the next time it felt like her entire universe had been ripped away (it had been, she had to accept that) and there was nothing left (because there was something, different but as solid, if she could just manage to accept that, too).
She didn't ask the questions she most wanted answered, because she knew those were answers Ironhide couldn't give her. "You'll always find me and bring me back?" she asked instead, curling up as tight and small as she could. "Even when I don't think I want to be found?"
Ironhide wrapped himself around her, plates flaring to shield and surround her, safe and concealed within his grasp. "Always," he assured her, helm pressed to hers. His engine stuttered a few more times before smoothing into something closer to a steady rumble. It was effort, pushed through around the ache clenched tight over his own spark, but once begun it became easier to maintain, a self fulfilling cycle of easing.
"Always, bitlet. Look for yeh, find yeh, bring yeh back. Even if yeh don't think yeh want meh t'. Even if yeh tell meh off or fight meh. Won't leave yeh alone. Ah Promise."
Not alone. Not when she thought she wanted to be; not when she thought she deserved to be. Not even if she fought for it.
That promise, wrapped in something more than just the need to comfort and protect, was the most recognizably cohort thing Ironhide had yet offered her. It was almost like home, almost like knowing she couldn't be allowed to break or leave because she would leave a hole they couldn't fill. It felt safe in a way no other assurances of safety or wanting ever had, and she let it soak into her like the warmth of Ironhide's field, the still slightly-unsteady sound of his engine.
She didn't have any real desire to uncurl from the tiny place of safety they'd made, but eventually, she moved just enough to increase the pressure of his helm against hers. "Think I'm better. Not okay, but better." That part came out steadily enough, but breaks and static riddled the words as she added, "Don't think okay's happening any time soon, is it?"
Ironhide huffed something like the smallest of wry laughs, though there was no humor in it. "'Fraid not. Wish Ah could tell yeh otherwise, but..." he shrugged slightly, his voice rough. "There's some days Ah still wish... but it don't mean what's here now ain't real or good. It is. Th' rest is just... memories."
He held her tight for another long moment, as much for himself as for her, field thrumming pulses of love-safety-cohort. For just a pulse beat he let the glyphs of cohort form not the family kin-grouping way he used them now but the way he had first learned them countless vorn before - to live for-to die for-duty-safety in numbers-support-loyalty-mission, the foundation glyphs of his function both soothing and scraping raw over his own ache.
Cycling a ventilation, he let the glyphs spin back into the family-kin-together-love grouping that he had only learned and taken to spark with the help of a drill sergeant and an ex-'Con and the tiny sparkling they had raised who needed love more than loyalty and a family more than a mission. Rumbling softly, wordless, he sculpted those glyphs with inclusions that took Shadow into account, the thread of her own designation intwined with the others and held just as close. "Yeh'll get t' okay, bitlet," he told her. "Just... takes time. An' every time yeh feel like yer slippin', Ah'll be here. Promise."
The unfamiliar shape of cohort was there and gone again so quickly that Shadow wasn't sure she'd been meant to notice it. It fit him too well for her to doubt that was cohort as he'd first known it, and the breaks around the edges, the flickers of pain through it, told her it was gone as surely as her own cohort was gone.
She pressed one servo against the living metal covering his spark in silent empathy, even as the glyph structure he was using changed again, tying her to them as if she belonged there. That broke her precarious self-control all over again; she felt the way she had when they formally invited her to join their cohort, overwhelmed and panicked and unworthy and so very desperate to deserve what they were offering that she would give anything, everything, in return.
Now, though, there was no one she needed to prove herself to. Just Ironhide, and if she had devolved to half-formed clicks of Basic and an incoherent glyph-tangle of love-gratitude-need-want-offering it didn't change the solid arms around her or the field anchoring her in place.
Ironhide held Shadow close, engine rumbling safety and together in vibrations that permeated them both, strut deep and steady. It was soothing, hummed sound and frame close warmth, and for long kliks he just held her, rocking gently, wordless reassurance pulsing between them.
When the edge of panic had subsided from her and old aches were safely packed away once more in his own systems, Ironhide eased back, nuzzling at her helm as his plates resettled. A fumbled hunt through his subspace produced the cube he had been brandishing at her doorway; he pressed it into her hands with a kiss to the top of her head before digging out a second cube. "Here. Figure any time yeh 'n meh end up on th' slaggin' floor, high grade probably better be involved." Humor edged his field, a small smile curving his mouth. "Tradition, yeah?"
Briefly, Shadow pressed herself tight against Ironhide one last time before taking the cube and settling on the floor, her side braced against his. She gave herself a few nanokliks to adjust to the shift from complete, enveloping protection before she opened the cube and confirmed that no, the high grade wasn't getting any better with time.
"This tradition sucks." A second swallow burned through her systems hard after the first. "At least, the first part does." She offlined her optics as a shudder of memory ran through her, flickers of pain that she doubted could be erased by all the high grade in the universe. "We should work on that. Just start with the high grade and never stop."
Ironhide looped his arm around her, tugging her in against him, their plates fitting into spatial harmony with each other with a little shifting around. She was warmth there, a shape and size similar to Bluestreak's, her field and pulse echoing into him on the same wavelength and triggering all the same protocols. Shuttering his optics, he let his systems synch with hers in a low, comforting rumble of here-together-kin.
The high grade was as harshly strong as he remembered it from every previous time he had sampled the output of their still. It was no secret that League made a vastly superior quality of high grade - the miner zealously guarded the secret and only doled out samples when the mood took him. Ironhide and Bulkhead, lacking the expertise that made League's distillation a treat, had opted for superior strength over taste in their joint still. It had resulted in an output that stripped paint off even when diluted and was designed solely for the purpose of knocking heavy frontliners on their afts when required. 'Medicinal,' Bulkhead had pronounced it, and Ironhide had to agree, which was why he now simply offlined his sensors and knocked back half of his own cube in an intake scouring gulp.
"Floor," he wheezed through the after burn. "Then high grade. Skip th' trauma first. Gotcha."
Leaning in, Ironhide pressed his forehelm to the top of Shadow's head. She wasn't better, by any means, but she was better than she had been and that was its own sort of victory. "Bitlet," he told her quietly, "yeh ever need meh - t' talk, not t' talk, whatever yeh need - Ah'm here."
Shadow pulsed quiet gratitude at him, her optics offlined. "Sometimes," she began, then stopped.
High grade was good for more than just blunting the edges of things; it was a good excuse for silence, and she used it for that now. How could she explain that sometimes, as much as she missed the individual members of her cohort, she missed touching, leaning into the mecha around her at whim and knowing she would be welcome, being part of something, even more? That she missed having the option to not be alone?
I miss them didn't begin to cover all of the things she missed.
For the moment, at least, she could make up for that lack by leaning into Ironhide. It wasn't a solution, but it helped, just like the high grade helped, pushing the things she needed and couldn't have just a little farther away.
"Thank you," she said finally, the buffering effect of the high grade allowing her to sound almost normal. "I'll try not to abuse the offer."
He flicked a light, teasing fingertip against her helm, field swathing her in warmth. "Ain't abusin' it t' make use o' it. Try'n remember tha', yah?"
It wasn't the high grade - not yet, not with the burning warmth of it still fresh in his tanks - but the entire situation, the subject matter and the memories it brought with it, had thickened his vocalizer with the echoes of a cant that hadn't been spoken since the end of an era. A jumbled mess of borrowed xeno languages that probably didn't even exist any more which, when translated through purely Cybertronian words, created a thick morass of non-standard sounds that was the only one he had known for the first half of his functioning and which he had never quite given up. Ironhide was aware, however, from prior experience with high grade and one memorable rotation on his home planet when he had been much closer to Shadowrunner's own age, that it wasn't terribly intelligible to unacclimated Cybertronian audials. Venting, he rebooted his vocalizer with a click, cycling it back to as near as what passed for 'pure' Cybertronian as he ever bothered to assume.
There were fine lines between too much and not enough, what would help and what wouldn't, and too often it felt like his pedes were too big and he was stomping through things without a map. It took a stretch of silence, now, and long moments bleeding into each other, to unarchive things cobbled together over the eons that might, once, have been helpful to hear some four million vorn earlier. He kept his field warm and easy against the femme curled into his side as he thought, rumbling safety and together to her in a steady stream, servos rubbing gentle circles across her plating.
"Used t' be," he ventured at last, voice low, "that t' be th' last one standin' was th' worst curse yeh could wish on anyone. Easier, by far, t' go down with yer cohort, an' we remembered an' honored th' ones who did. But last one left when all th' rest are gone... that was th' Pit made real. Was th' only thing we had any kinda medal for, in th' Guard, an' it was th' one no one wanted."
He cycled another vent, optics focused into the middle distance, and knocked back another half of what was left in his cube, the high grade burning a roughness into his voice. "When Ah lost mah first cohort... was a long time when Ah didn't want nothing' 'cept t' join 'em. Wasn't right, bein' still standin' an' livin' when they weren't, but that's th' lie talkin'. Truth is - an' it took meh a long time t' get here, bitlet, wasn't any instant cure - but truth is, now, Ah'm glad. 'Cus as long as one of us is standin', as long as one of us is still fightin'... then th' Twelth Strike Guard ain't finished. Ah've lived t' see th' slag sucking Pit spawn who killed 'em done for, an' Ah'll live t' see th' fragger's legacy ripped apart, an' Ah honestly believe they'd want that."
Tipping his head back against the wall, Ironhide shuttered his optics and focused on the feed back of sensors, tracking the still frame pressed to his side. "Bein' th' last one left an' goin' on livin' - that ain't selfish, bitlet. Not in mah book. It's Pit slaggin' hard, 'cus yeh ain't just livin' for yerself. Yer livin' for everyone yeh lost, an' so long as yer still fightin' then th' Thirteen are still fightin', an' that means something, Shadow. Means there's still time, an' still some hits t' get in, an' they ain't just gonna be a footnote of a lost squad that no one remembers. Not if yeh can carry 'em on an' keep th' function alive."
In spite of everything, Shadow smiled, both at the the sharp, familiar ping of metal against metal and the thickening of Ironhide's accent. She caught the gist of what he meant, though, as much from the warmth of his field as from his words, and it eased the faint, recurring concern that he didn't know what he was offering, that she would need too much from him.
Being last hasn't gotten any easier, she thought when he spoke again. Being the last...there were still days she couldn't wrap her processor around it. Even knowing she was not unique in her loss, it felt impossible, like being caught in a nightmare, for there to be something Labyrinth hadn't planned for and couldn't fix. It felt like failure, it felt like...
It felt like the sort of thing they weren't supposed to allow to happen, the solution so simple, so obvious, that Labyrinth would expect them to take it without thought or hesitation. She had known what to do from the moment they finished Barricade, her unit avenged even if her need for vengeance hadn't been sated.
She still didn't know why she hadn't finished things then, cleanly and quietly, loose ends tied up and the unit's file closed. Now, though, she could find reasons in Ironhide's words, justifications and reassurance...and how often had he given her that, made the excuses she needed to accept what she wanted? More often than she could count, and now she let him guide her again, let him soothe her conscience before she could protest.
She had wanted, desperatedly, for Ironhide to listen to Barricade's boasting and remember the Thirteen...but she was the only one left who had known them, who could remember them as more than a list of names and ugly deaths. And...she vented quietly, the admission hard to make even in the privacy of her own thoughts. Labyrinth would have expected her to finish things cleanly, but the others... She remembered Viper, dragging her into the back of his ship and teaching her to fight against explicit orders; Tundra, curled against her, the two of them pretending to recharge before a mission, while Tundra actually transferred targeting algorithms for the gun Wildfire had already slipped into Shadow's subspace. Hundreds of small rebellions, all meant to keep each of them alive and functional, and maybe the thirteen of them would have managed to survive just as well over the vorn without them, but she knew they had survived with them.
The others would have approved of this one last rebellion. That didn't make it easier.
What did make it easier - or at least bearable - was Ironhide's solid presence, his field wrapped around her and the rumble of his voice reminding her she wasn't alone, that she wouldn't be alone, and words that might not make sense tomorrow, but today, right now, they made her continued existence seem less of a failure.
"We worked hard to keep each other alive," Shadow said finally. "I'm not sure I can do this, I'm not sure I want to do this, but...I've lasted this long, I don't think they'd want me to give up now."