Ep 1 - Shaken - Closed

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<<ooc- takes place immediately after Would You Could You, simultaneous with Elders>>

Ironhide found his way back to the main atrium space of the base on automatic, one hand trailed almost idly against the wall, optics mostly shuttered, until the wall ran out and the sensory pings of open space shivered up underneath his plates, his systems breaking free of a tenuous hold and spiraling up once more. He shuddered as protocols flared, struts aching.

What if...?

'Leave it,' Optimus had told him, as though the idea were something he could put aside and walk away from, an object to be discarded. Apologies couldn't scrape the raw horror of the idea from his internals, where it felt like it had taken up corrosive habitation in his endomass, rust and oxidation in his innermost systems.

He had tried to assure Optimus - their ordained Prime - that it was no excuse for where Megatron's legacy had lead them, but there was a sick, brittle feeling in his tanks that it wasn't his assurance to make, any more than it had been Optimus' question to ask. What if...?

Would he, in Megatronus' place, have been satisfied with only the energon of those directly responsible? Would that have been enough? Would ANYTHING have been enough absolution for a crime of that magnitude?

Ironhide opened his optics, barely registering the space around him, his location ping a sharp, desperate call to Shadow.

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Everyone accounted for and no apparent problems looming hadn't made Shadow any less restless. Whatever veneer of safety the Neutral base started with had been shattered the moment Megatron appeared behind her, and while she didn't expect to find Decepticons stashed down every side tunnel she couldn't settle, either, and mapping the tunnels off the atrium was as good a pastime as any.

Ironhide's location ping had her on her wheels and tearing back up the twisting corridor she was in before she'd even answered. Her first panicked thought was that Prime was down, that Megatronus had been nothing but a trick they'd all fallen for, but Ironhide's call held none of the anger that scenario demanded. It simply ached, with a hollowness behind it that goaded her to move faster.

It was an effort to remember that charging blind into an unknown situation was stupid, to give up the speed of her alt and actually enter the atrium on pedes instead. She paused, just long enough for optics to confirm what sensors had already told her: no Megatron, no Optimus, Cleaver and Gasket off in the area which had been proclaimed the bar. No signs of trouble, except that Ironhide was in the mouth of the tunnel Megatron had emerged from earlier, just standing there as if he had no idea what else to do with himself.

Wheels were faster, but Shadow was a light frame, meant for speed in both alt and root mode. She darted across the atrium, quick and silent, sensors focused forward to make sure nothing was coming up the tunnel at Ironhide's back, and when she reached him there was none of her usual reticence about making the first move.

'What happened/what's wrong?' The question came out in a buzz-click of Basic as she tucked herself in against him, attention now split between making sure he was undamaged beneath the sick tremors in his field, and continuing to monitor the corridor behind him. Her own field wrapped around him, warm with cohort-unity-safety in numbers. 'Where/how are you hurt?' she pressed gently, the flurry of glyphs making it clear she wasn't talking about physical damage.

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Ironhide wrapped an arm around Shadow by instinct, the warm rush of her field against his such a disparate alternative to the sick crawl of his own internals that for a second it registered as nothing so much as pain, but a vital, necessary one that jolted him out of the depths of his own processor.

Awareness - of space, of the corridor at his back and the too-large emptiness of the atrium - came back to him, and the arm wrapped around her became a tug and support all at once, dragging them both towards the relative more-defensible solidity of the side wall. He pressed her against the wall, for once not asking or holding back , arms wrapped around Shadow's frame and his own plates flaring wide to cover them both. Safe. It drummed through him, a baseline protocol as necessary as his own spark. Safe, protected, and he pulsed miserable redundant scans against her, needing the reassurance of her safety and undamaged state.

It took him another klik to unlock his vocalizer, but the sounds he forced out were static streaked and thick in Guard cant, mindless reassurance as much for her as for himself. "Shhh... ain't nothin', bitlet, can't beh fixed, just a bad tahm o' it, needed t' know yer safe..."

It wasn't any sort of real answer, though, certainly not what she or any of his cohort deserved when he was clinging to her, his core shaken and spark aching. What would you do, if someone killed one of your sparklings? The glyphs of it echoed, traitorous, through his field, the unwanted answer trembling deep through his circuits in fractal primal harmonics of the oath that had been printed on him long before his spark date - ...to guard, by any means necessary... to avenge any loss...

Ironhide pressed his helm to Shadow's, optics shuttered tight, and tried to remember how to cycle his own systems in something that wasn't the red hot flare of primed weapons.

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"I'm safe," Shadow assured him. Everything she knew clamored to close ranks around Ironhide - shield and protect him from the outside universe, pin him with the weight of a dozen EM fields whispering safety - but there were no ranks to close, the cohort too slagging small even if they had all been present. And with just her...she pushed down the sense that their positions should have been reversed and worked with what he so obviously needed, wrapping one hand around the back of his helm and pulling them even closer together. "I'm right here, I'm safe, nothing's happened, nothing's going to happen."

Her field pulsed with her words, safe-here-together-safe-safe-safe, warm and anchored in the solidity of cohort, even as she caught the phantom glyphs of a question no one should have to consider. It sent a twinge through her own systems that she clamped down on before he could feel it.

"It's all right. Everyone/the cohort's fine." Both arms around him, now, holding on as best she could given the difference in their mass. A brief pause, weighing his obvious need to wrap her up, protect her, ensure her safety, versus her own feeling that he was the one who needed protecting right now, and she finally settled on gently reminding them both that cohort was stronger together than individually. "I'm right here, Hide, I'm not going anywhere, and there's nothing the two of us can't handle. Whatever's going on, we've got it covered." Gently, she nudged her helm against his. "S'okay to cycle down a little."

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Tone, more than words, washed over him, the familiar feel of her field meshing with his. Safe, it hummed. Safe-safe-here, the rage and fluxing terror only a hypothetical, a projection, not the reality. The reality was Shadow's arms wrapped around him, her field and frame pressed to his, the sound of her voice and the hum of her systems. Ironhide cycled a deeper ventilation through his systems, trying to listen and truly hear and to parse his own systems into some sort of stand down.

His protocols responded with rejections so long used that they had become the baseline, settling grudgingly into a lower hum of combat ready. His field fluctuated, pulsing in fits and starts with the ache of his spark, but Shadow was right there, solid and real, and that made it just a little easier to push the sick feeling down and concentrate, desperately, on the here and now.

He huffed softly, pressing his helm to hers tight enough to truly feel the mesh. Her words pinged at him, parsing slowly, and he made himself nod, tension filled linkages creaking through his throat. "Covered," he echoed with a wash of static. "Yeah. Just... Gimme a klik."

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"No rush, we're good," Shadow said, listening to the faltering growl of systems being forced from high alert, the hiss of hydraulics as energy shunted from weapons translated to tension throughout his frame. No rush, no urgency, nothing but the two of them together-safe-together; all the time he needed to deal with whatever was tearing through him like the destruction of some vital part of his universe.

Ironhide held on to her like she was the only thing anchoring him in place. She knew that hold, had been on both sides of it more times than she could count. It was something she associated with missions gone straight to the Pit, losses greater than even they could shake off easily, reminders of why outsiders should never be let too close, should be viewed as expendable.

It was the way she had held onto him after Barricade, and she pulled him a little closer at the memory, field pulsing a steady reminder that he wasn't alone, wrapping him as tightly as his arms wrapped her frame. "I'm right here, I've got you." Cohort, she reminded him silently. United-sheltered-protected-safe.

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Right here. It anchored him, steady and tangible and implacable. Right there, solid, real, in the way the words that had ripped through him weren't. Ironhide held her close, let Shadow hold him, optics shuttered and forehelms pressed together as his systems latched onto the sound and feel of hers and slowly synched to that rhythm.

Safe. It seeped through him in faltering fits and starts, a low reassurance. She was there, she was safe, no one was harmed, no one was in danger. Ironhide clung to that, repeated it to himself, until he could unclench enough of his systems to raise his head from Shadow's and draw in a deeper ventilation, pulsing wordless gratitude to her. It was inexcusable, really, nothing warranting that level of response, but the idea of it had crawled up under his plates and into his spark and there was a very real portion of him that still wanted to shake for it.

What would you do, if...?

It wouldn't have been war. He could tell himself that it wouldn't have been war, but the ugly truth underneath was that it wouldn't have been war only because he could have waged the war better, a function of military tactics and swift strike missions to incapacitate and utterly obliterate an enemy's defensive position unfurling like nano replications in fractal patterns at his fingertips. The only reason they had all survived to where they were today was because the fledgling Decepticon movement had been enthusiastic and brutal but uneducated in the ways and means of waging actual military strikes. Megatron had learned, to be sure, but it had taken awhile and it had given them enough time to rally around a split Primacy and deliver true control into Optimus' hands.

It wouldn't have been war, but Ironhide could plot out half a dozen ways the Towers and Iacon could have fallen faster than they did if there had been enough rage coupled with tactics behind it, and he couldn't estimate, not really, not with that frigid spark tearing fear rushing through his lines, whether he would have gone that far or not. For revenge.

But Shadow was there, and Blue was back on base, his bitlets safe and sound, grown to see their full frames, warriors in their own right, and Cleaver was safe, her bitlet with her, and there was nothing he could do but try to throttle down the specter of all his worst fears put into words. Ironhide cycled another ventilation, slowly relaxing the desperate grip on Shadow to reach up and cradle her face between his hands. "Ah'm okay," he managed roughtly. "Ah ain't... nothin's hurt. Just... rattled." Another vent cycle, released sharply. "Pit spawn fraggin' bucket head winds Optimus up like a spring toy an' it all just rolls down in a gravity well."

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Shadow managed to restrain herself to an only-slightly-derisive exvent, not commenting at all on their differing definitions of hurt. He was doing better, though tension still hummed through his frame, and his field still periodically flickered with sick horror.

With any of the Thirteen, she wouldn't have hesitated to call him on the evasion, would have been sure of her right to help and his willingness to let her do so. Ironhide wasn't one of the Thirteen, though, and the rules of this cohort - her place in it - were less clear. Torn, Shadow did hesitate, the automatic desire to help, to comfort, to stay with him until that horror was banished warring with the sense that this wasn't her place, that she was crossing boundaries she had no right to cross.

Boundaries that her spark insisted needed to be crossed, unable to let go when he was clearly still hurting.

"Like slag you're okay," she said finally, her tone gentler than the words, and hugged him close again. "And you were more than just rattled when I got here. At least tell me what happened."

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Ironhide shuddered, another cascade of ripples running through his frame. There was, for a scant few pulses of his spark, the urge to just lean into her - into the warmth of field and tone and the press of hands that offered safety and something steadier than he felt. Cohort, together, safety, it whispered and for the first time in a long time, longer than he could remember, it was both tinged with something familiar and pressed against a hurt he couldn't swallow down. The combination made him waver, vents heaving on a broken hitch as he let himself press into her solidity just a moment longer.

There was the yawning open space of the atrium at his back, Cleaver and Gasket, and Cleaver was cohort as well but the idea of breaking in front of her, or sharing the horror crawling through him with a femme who was actively cradling a half formed sparkling in her own frame, made his systems writhe with sick dread. Trying to draw a deeper intake, he forced himself to straighten, to step back, but he couldn't take his hands from Shadow's frame or still the tremors in his plates. "C'mon," he managed gruffly, tugging her a little further away from the atrium towards one of the side tunnels. "This ain't... too many acoustics, here. Ain't for everyone's audials."

It was no excuse at all, not with comms working, but he couldn't. The stark glyphs of comms gave it too much immediately, too much stark reality in his processor. English was almost easier, a xeno language full of double and vague meanings in ways that Cybertronian wasn't, and even it left a sour film of code across his vocalizer, no matter how low he dropped his voice. "'s what Ah asked him. Optimus. Whatever Megatron - Megatronus - told him, down there, had him tighter'n overtorqued gears. Rattled him. An' Ah've always... Ah've always helped him sort it out, when he gets tangled up like that." Ironhide vented slowly, shaking his head, and finally released Shadow to step back, letting his back come to rest against the rock wall. "Old habits. He's Prime an' all, but back when Ah met him... he was younger. An' sometimes another processor t' work it through helped."

His knee joints cut of their own accord, dropping him in a slow metal-against-rock slide down the wall. Ironhide, his optics tracked unseeing on the opposite corridor wall, let it happen, settling in a crouch with his hands cradled loosely between his knees. "He asked meh..." Static corrupted his vocalizer, forcing him to stop and reboot it as the sick horror of it skittered uneasily through his tanks. Hypothetical, he reminded himself. Just words, but it felt like so much more. "...he asked meh what Ah'd do if it was Blue. What Ah'd do if somebody... if it weren't on th' field, if it were deliberate... how far Ah'd..." The words choked up through his vocalizer, overlapping in errors that cut him off, the sound broken and rough.

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It was easy to fill in the words Ironhide couldn't bring himself to speak; easy, when she'd experienced it herself. Deliberate, not in the field but back at base, home and cohort torn apart in a single vicious act. Easy to fill in the blanks, easy to provide her own answer, and Shadow didn't immediately react to Ironhide's retreat or his broken explanation, knowing that her own bitter anger was not what he needed.

The visceral dread twisting through his field pulled her back a sparkbeat later, and she closed the slight distance he'd put between them. Ironhide's position negated their height difference, let her lean against and over him, cheek pressed against his helm and frame shielding him from the direction of the atrium. "It's okay," she soothed, and even though she knew it was a lie her field modulated into the old, familiar cant of united-strong-safety in numbers. "We've got each other covered. Nothing's going to happen, not to Blue, not to any of us."

She pressed in a little closer, frame tight to his, field warm with comfort and the reassurance she was there, that he wasn't alone. "Don't have to let this eat at you," she said quietly. "The rest of us are here to help." A quick hug, love suffusing her field. "That's what you keep telling me, isn't it?"

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Ironhide shuttered his optics, pulsing love and gratitude back. The weight and warmth of Shadow's frame against his eased some of the twisted knot within him, real and solid and reassuring. He couldn't stop himself from leaning into her, helm twisting to press his faceplates into the metal and polish scent of her armor. Scan data, also unbidden, swept her frame and circled back to him, carrying with it the concrete reassurance of her well being, whole and safe and unhurt.

He cycled in a vent, the shudder a small one, there and gone again. "Ah know," he managed quietly. "Ah know... Ah just... Ah ain't ever thought on it before. Wouldn't. Couldn't." Another small shudder, his plates twitching against hers as he leaned into her. "If somethin' happened t' Blue, or yeh, Ah'd...."

Ironhide cut his vocalizer against the static, a deeper shudder working through him. The sick feeling was the petrified cold of ice methane and the fiery smelter burn of rage all at once, chilling and heating through his spark until he felt like he would crack with it, his own structure weakened and riddled with hairline faults from the extremes. He curved a hand around her hip, holding as tight as he dared (not nearly as tightly as he wanted, servos not pressing into her plates, the desperation swallowed down into a lump in his tanks) and rested his helm against her chassis.

"Think he wanted t' hear meh say Ah wouldn't've done th' same," he admitted. "Ah said it, Ah think Ah did, but... Ah can't swear it's true. If anythin' happened t' yeh or Blue... Ah can't swear Ah'd stop at rippin' th' ones who did it apart. Ah can't swear Ah'd stop at them, or their cohorts, or anythin' an' everyone that helped 'em or stood with 'em, an'..." He cut himself off with another shudder, the trace of a feedback whine crackling in static through his vocalizer. "...Sorry," he managed, the word glyph a broken skeletal thing, formless and perfunctory against the backdrop of the corrosion in his systems that whispered that spark for spark, there wouldn't be enough energon to be spilled, anywhere, to balance the cost.

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"It's okay." Shadow's weight shifted incrementally as he leaned into her, his grip one of pure desperation, and once again she wished for others, enough frames to properly surround and shield him from the nighmare of what-ifs the Prime's question had evoked. "I understand. You know I do."

Need - both his and her own - pushed her to find ways to compensate for the difference in their frame size. A reassuring croon running through her frame, Shadow held him tighter, refining micro-transformations to allow her to press a little closer, offer what comfort pure surface to surface contact could give. Not enough, not to stop the tremors that ran through him, shaking his frame like the spark-deep pain that shuddered through his field.

"You know I understand, and you don't have to think about it now. You don't, Hide. Nothing's happening to any of us." Her field whispering cohort and unity against his; tacit promise, even as her words denied the possibility, that if anything happened she would side with him. She nuzzled her cheek soothingly against his helm. "It was a pit of a stupid question, and you gave him the answer he wanted. It's safe to let it go now, and I'm right here, I'll help. However long you need to work it out of your system, it's okay. I'm not going anywhere."

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"...stay?"

It came out so much weaker than he wanted, barely a thread of sound, whispered pale and insubstantial against her plates. Ironhide vented shakily, optics shuttered tight, and forced the words out in a ragged string. "...sorry. Sorry, bitlet. Ah ain't... this ain't alright, Ah wouldn't... Primus, Ah can't say Ah'd've stopped. Ah can't. It ain't right..." it was so wrong he couldn't even formulate the words, the sick horror in a spark that had been bound to protect all sparks, but that day was so long distant and the world had been ripped apart, reformed into a distorted echo, 'us' and 'them' dividing Cybertronian sparks that should never have been separated, and between one of his younglings and 'them' he could only too easily a lust for repayment that swept all other concerns aside.

Ironhide vented again, short and sharp, and reached up to tug Shadow down. She had the right of it - cohort did this, for each other, and it had been forever and then some since he had needed it but right then, right now, with the ache twisting inside of him, he had never needed it more. "Stay?" he repeated, the glyph breaking through his voice. "Please?"

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"Shhh." Shadow let him pull her down and against him, let him hang on as tight as he needed. "Of course I'll stay, long as you need, long as you want; you don't have to ask." She leaned up to press her helm against his, field whispering reassurance. "There's nothing that'd make me leave you like this."

His reaction was, at least, something she was familiar with, broken half-explanations and hurt like a tangible thing threaded through his systems. It was only Ironhide himself that made it unfamiliar, without the vorn of familiarity to help her parse what he wasn't saying, to explain apologies which made no sense.

She didn't need to understand in order to tuck herself against him, though, or to push stabilizing pulses of together-love-trust-reassurance against his field. "It's okay. Whatever you think you'd do...whatever you'd want to do...you don't have to apologize for that. Not to me." She hugged him tightly. "I'm here, whatever you need. And you don't have to apologize for that, either."

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Shadowrunner's size was awkward compared to Ironhide's own, the differential between their frames too much and not enough in any given direction. She was much too large to tuck beneath a plate and hold safe and warm against his own endomass, and not large enough to press him down and cover him with her own frame. He settled, by sheer necessity, for pulling her into his lap, curled half over her, her field and frame warm against his own and pressed reassuringly close to his spark.

"Thank yeh," he managed, glyphs of love-gratitude-cohort-together-belonging echoing through the words. It helped, to sit and hold her close, feel her hug him back. There was a stability there, something that eased his vent cycles and unknotted a little of the soured tension through his frame. Exventing, Ironhide leaned his helm against Shadows, optics shuttered and just feeling.

"Ah ain't," he started, and then had to stop, not even sure what he wanted to say. A scrub of static through his vocalizer surged and cleared again roughly. "...Ah meah, Ah can't," he tried again, the words coming haltingly. "There's... frag, there's scrap in mah code Ah ain't ever rewritten, can't, an' it's... this..."

He vented sharply, shaking his head slightly. "Yer right," he managed. "Ain't doin' meh no good t' be thinkin' on it. Ain't nothin' but scrap an' rust in mah head, an' it's chasin' sensor ghosts. Yer here, Blue's fine, it's just junk code." All the same, he didn't let her go, holding tight and close as he cycled in the scents of polish and living metal, of an electric field thick with the unique codifiers of cohort in all the ways that mattered, all the ways that pushed the ghosts just a little further away.