Ep1 - 'Thanks for coming home' - Open

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<<Set after 'Hurt Kitty'. Intended for Cat but Moonie can come in if Flick and Els fancy.>>

Cat and Moonshot had 'bridged back into Haven during the night. Cleaver had left Ironhide in the berth with a quiet assurance that she was just getting some fortified energon from the Medbay, then gone into Control to answer the short comm. message and 'bridge the pair back. There'd been a brief exchange of assurances, but they were both exhausted and the medic had left them to retreat to their rooms in peace.

A day later and still not having seen either, Cleaver had left Ravage to rest in the Medbay, pinged in with Ironhide to check on both himself and Shadow, and finally made her way down one of the two 'quarters' tunnels to where Cat had made her home. Standing on one raised blade, her holoform held a peace offering.

Setting the avatar down, Cleaver tapped a bladetip into the ground by the human-sized door cut into the Cybertronian-sized sliding door in the equivalent of a knock.

"Cat? I sent my holo to New York for pizza," she broached, finding that infinitely easier to get out of her vocaliser than the mashup of 'I'm sorry I threw you out/frightened you/ that the most feared and reviled mech is still in our basement/that Sideswipe's not here/that Moonshot is scared' that was already queued and clogged up.

"May I come in?"

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Somehow, time had done its weird business where it does whatever the hell it wants. Since Megatron it had dragged its feet, then with Moonshot gone into a full-on sprint, but now, it was paused. Taking a few cat naps of its own. So only about a day seemed like a week, or more accurately, nothing at all.

So she'd done a lot of napping.

A lot of napping. A lot of quiet thinking, and some idle hobbies here and there to keep her brain busy, but mostly cat naps. She couldn't go all the way to sleep and she couldn't stay asleep for very long, though. She was caught between exhausted and energetic, which left her entirely unable to do anything other than sit on her couch, nap, bounce a racket ball on the wall, and watch disney movies. Mostly disney movies.

She was waking up to the sound of the Muses telling the tale of Hercules when she heard the polite thump somewhere in the room. Moonshot. It rolled her to her feet with a sudden jolt of awareness.

He had been scared shitless, to be frank, when they left. She didn't blame him. Arriving to two massive mechs dukin' it out in the control room with a carrying Cleaver trying to keep them from killing each other wasn't a pretty sight, and considering he avoided most types of company in general, well…
The drive they took had stayed mostly quiet, but comforting (she liked to think), for hours until Cleaver comm'd them back. He went straight to his Cave. And probably… no, wouldn't come out again until Megatron left.

So she discarded the idea that Moonie was at her door.

Sideswipe was another hopeful. But that was more quickly discarded… had he managed to avoid a wall-to-the-head, he probably wouldn't have knocked. …At all.

"Cat?"

And it was then she realized she was starving. Not for sustenance, but for company.

She swung open the door, leaning casually against the frame. "Pizza, you say?" She put on a grin, giving an otherwise tired, sweatpant clad figure a bit of energy. God it smelled good. "What's the occasion?" She stepped back, giving the opportunity for both hole and mech to use the door(s).

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The holo vanished as soon as Cat took the pizza box, and Cleaver gladly took the invitation to step inside and take a seat on the floor against the wall. This end of the room was a designated 'Cybertronian Space', where she or Moonshot could position themselves without fear of crushing any of Cat's belongings.

"Occassions are generally positive," the femme drawled tiredly, one blade resting across her raised knees whilst the other pressed briefly to her optics as she readjusted the apatures. She was sorely due some recharge, but knew she wouldn't rest until she'd checked in. Thus, she nodded to Cat and the food offering respectively. "This... is a lemon branch after a pretty slagging awful day."

Cleaver scanned the human on a light, invisible band - satisfied to find her only tired and hungry. Her heartrate and respirations were normal, and though she wouldn't have imagined that Moonshot would have allowed her to get hurt whilst they were escaping, it was reassuring to see that she was entirely unharmed as well.

With a quiet ex-vent, she added in a quieter tone: "I just wanted to make sure you're alright, and apologise for the danger you were in."

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"Done some things that've put me just about as close to danger." She muttered, raising her eye brows as she dug in the pizza box. No.. she wasn't joking, but she left the comment to anyone's imagination as soon as she saw slices bigger than her head.

Outwardly she didn't seem too worried about Megatron, the entire situation. But she hadn't smiled when she said, or made eye contact of any kind for it, and though she said it lightly, didn't joke. Seeing Cleaver, though, referring to it, she wondered if it had effected her more than she noticed. Why it was any different from Barricade she didn't know, but…. well for now, pizza.

Hercules was muted before she kicked her rolling chair closer to Cleaver, carrying the pizza box with her before she flopped down. "So? What happened while we were out? Everything…" are you "…okay?"

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Cleaver shifted a blade out to bump the chair to a stop, watching Cat settle with New York's Finest Pizza (and she would quiz the woman about it later to make sure they weren't mismarketing their product). She seemed far calmer than expected, though she knew that Cat was something of a master of if not suppressing then certainly disguising her feelings. The old femme wasn't going to pick at that right now on purely selfish grounds - calm, even if put-on, was a much easier position upon which to talk.

"The fight stopped not long after you left," Cleaver began, focusing on the words and not the memory files of that nightmare that were pushing to replay in her processor. "Sideswipe got knocked out, but he's absolutely fine, and likely cursing my name and flying back here right now. I sent him to Hawaii to cool his jets."

One blade scuffed against the ground in a little twist. "Megatron's... he's still here, and he's under my care. A helm shot looks to have caused a mass of glitches system wide, and he's lost a little over four million years of memory. All of the war. Megatronus, as he understands himself now, is in the sub levels." She pulsed reassurance automatically, and arranged her features to convey the same so that Cat could understand it. "He's unarmed, vulnerable, and actively trying not to get into any sort of conflict right now. I've put him in the sub basement for now, to keep him out of sight of the Autobots until I can -" figure out what to do with him "-fix him."

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"Well shit. That's a bit scary, huh?"

"So we're the only ones who know he's here right now, aren't we." Her voice flat, brow raised, as if it were even a question. And maybe did or didn't get that look on her face in response. That look of when. How long before they find him? Because she had to wonder if he would actually stay put if he knew any of them were on base. When all she had to go on were her own reactions… it was easy to arrive to no.

"How long do you think that'll take?" She asked instead, brow knitting a moment later as she thoughtfully nursed a slice of pizza. "…What exactly was the damage again?"

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"Memory loss, in short," Cleaver replied, and then huffed a grim sort of laugh and smile despite herself. "Not very original in mechs I keep bringing home."

Sobering, the femme laid a blade across her midsection - covering the hot plates over the gestation chamber. The contact made her think back to the instant when, stupidly, suicidally stupidly, she'd put herself between Sideswipe and the larger mech. Of just how much worse it could have been.

"I've already done what I can for his mind, physically. I need his latest backup from the Decepticons to fully restore him, though," she went on quietly, the thick hesitance in her vocaliser conveying just how easily that sat with her. "Right now, though - yeah, we're the only ones who know he's here. And that's... safer. There's still work I need to do on him, and maybe autorepair will give him some glimmers of memory that I can work with."

Cleaver grimaced and shifted a little with a pulse of stray, sourly uncomfortable charge across neural wires that were still raw from Sideswipe's shock. "So for now, yeah. Scary. But, he's unarmed and following my lead. He wont do harm himself."

A quirk of a smile on one side of her mouth. "Remember he promised not to crush you underfoot? That's pretty huge coming from the most feared mech in the 'verse."

It was meant to be a joke. In retrospect, it was more awful than funny.

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"I take it as a compliment; the effects of my charm apparently aren't limited to the human race." She chuckled, returning the smirk, because she didn't know what else to fit in there and it came so naturally. She latched onto it like a bottle of water on a summer day. Joking, perhaps only because her mind was elsewhere, not paying attention to how serious those comments actually were. Not wanting to notice it, maybe.

"…Wonder what did that to him." She said out loud, calling up the mental images of the great Decepticon warlord, gladiator, 'most feared mech in the 'verse'. An image of him kneeling in the Asian jungle as Cleaver tended to the back of his helm, and wondered just what and how could have gotten behind him to land something that would make him lose four million years. She let the question hand, the rest of the thoughts following almost implied.

There was something of an invitation in there, too. She looked up, face emphasizing an almost blunt tone. Ah well. They might as well talk about it. Sometimes venting gossip did have its healing properties. "Got any interesting ideas?"

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Cleaver's mouth pulled down in a hard line, underscored by an uneasy sound from her systems. "A few, but they're all related to details about him as an existing patient. Outside of cohort, I can't discuss it." She thought of Ravage and his earnest queries, keen for reassurance about the safety and wellbeing of his commander. "Not that I know anything about Megatron's cohort, of course."

She twisted the blade across her lap in a gentle rocking motion, tapping the flat side against the hot plates covering the sparkling. Her optics had strayed down, and didn't come up to look at Cat when she went on. "You can speculate with me about Ironhide though, if you want. How long he'll snipe at me for hiding the overlord of his enemy in my home, in particular."

It was the screwy electrolytes that had that come out, Cleaver was certain.

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"Big Red Boyfriend will be Big Red Boyfriend." Cat said, her voice with a note of that's impossible to guess, taking to her private nickname for Ironhide, offering up a sincere smile if Cleaver managed to look her way. She'd only chatted a handful of times, but some thing (a lot of things, she should say) were universal. And father/mate figures were one of them.

"I give it a month." She said flatly, ignoring her previous tone entirely. A month maybe being on the min. side… Even she had to cringe at that one, but there was a smirk in it, as she went the route she often did, attempting to coax smiles from non-smiley faces. "On the bright side, at least we know at some point in the future he'll settle down, right? He could tire 'imself out." And even went so far as to giggle.

But taking a minute to observe Cleaver, sitting along the wall optics downcast, Catherine found herself wondering briefly if she'd even had the opportunity to sit like this until now. Let alone talk.

She couldn't do much, but she could extend a hand, or an ear. Maybe even enough that the medic, looking awfully tired about now, could maybe get some recharge tonight.

"Hey." She started, "…You okay? Really?" She let the invitation hang, for her to vent. Or not, because sometimes it was enough to just be asked. But mostly, at this point, she just wanted to give Cleaver a hug, because she looked like she needed one. Cat had a talent, for doing that with expressions.