Ep1.5 - "Dairy Queen" - closed

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So they were in a Dairy Queen parking lot in LA and there was ice cream on his steering wheel. Sideswipe didn’t have it in him to be snappish about this because he didn’t have it in him for very much at all right now. His rage was used up, currently, and worse – he wasn’t so sure about the purity of his rage anymore as so much of it kept sliding down a backslope into Wow, you really can’t function without me here can you? It was 2AM. The street light Sides had parked beneath was flickering, throwing a hazy yellow cone around his wheels, a dull dirty sheen of gold on the Andromeda Red of his paintjob.

It was one week since he'd come back.

“So, this is just about th’ fuckin’ skuzziest part of town,” said Sideswipe, his voice originating generally from somewhere beneath his dashboard.

He was entirely aware of how little enthusiasm he was faking just now, like he'd be unable to fake much enthusiasm for agreeing to take Cat out for frozen treats, like he couldn't stop his anger bleeding into every wavelength he threw. His ability to conjure energy from nowhere had been, apparently, tied to Sunstreaker not being catatonic and now he had to function entirely on half of what he was used to. But really… if he were to trace back to the source of his current lackadaisical mien… it wasn’t all to do with his other half being down and out.

“I’m pretty sure my alt’s gonna get noticed an’ then some. I’d rather not have th’ attempted carjacking of th’ night, though, could be funny.”

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"Could be." She agreed, speaking around her spoon. There were late nighters coming and going when they first went through the drive window, but now any other stragglers were finally filtering out of the area. Leaving the shiny red muscle car alone in its spot light. "Could scare the livin' shit outta them."

Somehow the spoon ended up back in the ice cream cup in her lap, and somehow she had only just now noticed the drip on his steering wheel. And somehow, it stayed relatively quiet. She let her head tilt, contemplating the sticky, minty green substance. 'This is weird.'

Really weird. In fact, things hadn't actually stopped being weird, had they? She supposed things had only taken on varying degrees of weirdness, and this was just one more thing on top of the many others that had added up to one clusterfuck of a week.

Some of which she caught, some.. felt like she was missing some pieces. Some obvious, some not so much. She watched the green goop slide around the wheel. And for a quick sec 'you okay' almost burst out of her mouth, like it fit. Bit of a stupid thing to ask, she scolded herself. But now that she thought of it, more started coming. About things she'd overheard and things she'd missed, about everything. And the jets. Where did the jets come from?

Better do something. Else it'll be the worst case of word vomit since her sweet 16.

Very suddenly she unfolded her legs from his seat, picked up a corner of her shirt and started scrubbing that fucking drip of ice cream. Well. That only made it fucking worse. So she wet her shirt on some of the perspiration from her cup and scrubbed until that fucking steering wheel shined. And only then, perhaps with more energy than was necessary, she sat back in the seat again, one leg crossed underneath the other outstretched.

"There! You're welcome." And only after she patted his steering wheel did she spoon another mint chocolate bite into her mouth. "We could hit up a street race, grab some extra cash."

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“Aint gettin’ in another scrape wit’ no scuzzy douche-bros in junker muscle cars again, fam. Straight funny watchin’ their faces doe. Didn’t appreciate it much when that last guy tried ta sideswipe me when I smoked ‘im.” There was a distinct and amused hum in the tone of the Lamborghini’s voice, that self-satisfied buzz in the framework of his body. “Was fun earnin’ my namesake afterward, give ya dat, cuz. Look. You done swabbin’ my goddamn dash? S’kinda freaky. Mechs my size-class aint ever fitted for passengers back home an’ you a squirmy passenger, Kit Cat.”

His headlights came on briefly, shining a strip of light across the worn parking spot paint stripes, illuminating the cracks in the asphalt before he shut them off again. If he was going to have it his way, they’d go the rest of the night bitching about the latest in bad Hollywood horror flicks, assholes with expensive cars Sides could wreck, and the propensity of the human male to get ‘butthurt’ (as Cat had said) about getting beat by a girl. Granted, a girl in an alien supercar, but they didn’t know. He would have liked to go on all night not mentioning what Cleaver had done or how he felt about it.

But what Sideswipe wanted most was to say that his neo-cortex was in no way short-circuited through any emotional subroutines over what the medic did. He would have liked to say he never trusted her, not really, and therefore, he was unsurprised and unbothered. This was, unfortunately, categorically untrue.

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"I'm cleaning up my mess, 'kay. Because I,"she continued,"am an excellent passenger. I clean up my melted ice cream. Thought you'd appreciate the gesture considering spilt ice cream usually means," And she went for her best impression of Sideswipe's hodgepodge of accents, "we WILL have PROBLEMS."

Okay so she might have exaggerated a bit. But there it was. Wrapped up in casual conversation was the first mention of anything regarding…well… everything. A hint (yeah, so a pretty lame hint) that she noticed his off-ness.

"Soo…" She twirled the spoon around in her nearly empty cup, the ice cream turning into a cold soup. Winced. Almost like a 'well might as well' expression that she was convinced he could detect. And focused her eyes on his dash. "I noticed the two new tenants." Tenants, a fond term for those of the Neut base. "Seem pretty cool…"

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“Ugh,” said the parked lambo, the vibrato of his irritation muttering through the radio and the whole car seemed to resettle itself on its wheels. Then, because Sideswipe was just irritated enough to decide English wasn’t sufficient for him, he swapped to Italian. “They haven’t stopped following me around long enough for you to have a judgment on whether or not they’re ‘cool’. And they are not ‘cool’. They stalk me around the base and when they aren’t stalking me, they’re clinging to me and when they aren’t clinging, they’re breaking things, or stealing things. Or stealing things then promptly breaking those things. The only good thing about them is that they can fly and I have my doubt about how well.”

He made a noise, like a cross between an engine cooling down and a very obvious ‘tch!’ sound.

“Ain’t a thing in their heads t’gether, fam. Got here on their own, survived here on their own, ditched the Cons or so they say on their own. Conscripts it sounds like – aerial cohort in with th’ Decepticons ‘fore they was proper sparked t’ their majority even. Cohort goes, then you go. Not getting loyalties off them. If they like me’n Sunny, ‘n they aint got a strong ties t’ nothin’ but each other. War’s still on, but the homestead’s dead. Lots of Cybertronians on either side’a dis whole thing thinkin’ it’s not worth fightin’ over anymore. Plenty out there still ready ta fight though. Plenty.”

[Deleted]

"So they're the ones who fucked up the atrium? Jeez, hope they don't find Moonshot's place…" Because he might just void the DMZ all by his lonesome if that were to happen. Nevertheless she found herself trying to conceal a smirk. Newbies either been threatened and somehow managed to evade, or Side's didn't quite bother to follow through on said threats. Either way, they didn't seem like an awful couple. Better than a warlord or a Barricade, in any case.

'Actually,' she thought over a spoonful of mint chocolate soup, 'just better than proper 'cons in general.'

And fell silent as other thoughts crept up now. She wasn't that good at subtlety when it was called for, and could never quite soften her blunt edge. 'Hey, what's the deal with layin' into Cleaver like that.' Is what she wanted to ask, and is what she had beenwanting to ask since she and Moonshot overheard it. 'That's pretty stupid.' That one part of her said again. Because the asshole who put his brother on a slab had been brought back into the DMZ. And she knew she'd probably do the same thing, and be just as livid if it were someone like Tony in that same position. But then, she also cared a great deal about Cleaver, the same part of her that wanted to blurt out 'what the fuck?'. That conversation, though, just seemed to be a lot more than about just one thing.

"So basically you made a couple new friends?" Meant to be teasing, smirk and all.

A beat. Something viciously hissing 'he'll talk if he wants to fuckin' talk'.

"Hey, can I ask you something?" She waited, either for confirmation or silence following, all the while contemplating how different her voice sounded in her head than it did now. Quiet. Hesitant.
If there was nothing (he had to have known this was coming, right…?), "What the hell happened?" 'When…' "…When you got back?"

Didn't know why, but almost instantly felt guilty. Like she'd made a choice and didn't know what it was, all this causing her to sit back in the seat and stir her ice cream, adding in a voice that was uncharacteristically flat, casual. "Sorry. If you don't wanna…" She stopped, shrugged, "Jus' wonderin'." 'Stupid.'

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There was a quiet. So heavy it had a physical weight, bleeding this low, weighty frequency into the interior, filling the cab and humming a low through the roadster’s false carbon-fiber framework. The low rev moved into the heart of the engine block, rumbling there too deep in the metal and sound both exactly and nothing at all like the mechanizations of a true Murcielago. Sideswipe internally processed the question, rolling it through his head and letting it propagate itself through his neural-net. What the hell happened? What the hell happened? What. The. Hell. He knew what happened. What happened was he’d snapped, sum-total fucking lost it and took the battery acid core of his hate and shoved it down Cleaver’s goddamn throat.

That’s what happened.

This silence persisted for a bit too long, then:

“In South Asia there there’s people called Dalit. Used ta be they made up twenty-nine percent’a Punjab’s total fuckin’ population. You heard’a dis?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s a word; means you’re an untouchable. You filth, you sick, you th’ lowest’a th’ low. Left over from the caste system in Indian, fam. Like South African apartheid, Jim Crow, Nuremberg Laws, eugenics. Pick one a number. Human history got this all over. All over th’ world someone somewhere thinkin’ that’s a good idea. Tell someone their worth from the get go in th’ name of greater good.”

A beat. He wasn’t really answering the question. Fuck it.

"Cleaver shoulda known better," he said finally, "than ta bring that world-killing warlord motherfucker near my cohort."

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'Shouldn't've asked.' Surely it wouldn't have made a difference either way. But it seemed like the easiest thing to think to herself. 'Should've known.' Because she hadn't expected much different, had she? Anger and fury and probably gonna be fresh for a while.

But what followed took her by surprise, leaving her glad she'd clenched her jaw shut to keep it from slipping. 'She made it a DMZ, she can't exclude anyone… especially someone who helped sanction it. …Right?' But even thinking that made her breath catch, 'I was with her when she found him, he couldn't even remember being on Earth--' She scrambled for something else. 'She told you to leave--' No. That was worse.

No. That she wanted to say any of the above in Cleaver's defense at this very moment to a pissed off Sideswipe, family to Sunny on the berth, that was worse.

Well now at least she knew where the guilt was coming from. Because she couldn't bring herself to be angry at or even disagree with Cleaver either, not sure whether or not she would have done the same thing in her place.

'What d'you say t'that, Mom? Tony?'

She just did what she thought she had to do, thought was right; with as little collateral to everyone as possible. In and out, done. At the time, Catherine even entertained shoving the amnesiac warlord in the broomcloset to be as easy as it sounded. Everyone just stay the fuck busy until Cleaver gave the a-okay.

Another pang of guilt, this one some how heaviest, even though it never happened. Because she probably would have had to keep it a secret from Sides, if all did go according to plan. All in secret.

'That's real fucking selfish.' Cleaver actually had a history with the both of them. She was a human bystander.

It was about the time she was feeling disgusted with herself that she realized she hadn't responded to him at all since he spoke.
Same question: 'What d'you say?'

"I'm sorry." It came out almost unnoticed, almost under her breath, her subconscious perhaps realizing she'd never answer that question. And she regretted it about as quick. She'd want to punch someone if she heard that. But there it was, because it was more true and sincere than 'yeah'.

[Deleted]

Another pause.

Then Sideswipe started laughing. The sound started out human – that synthesized approximation of laughter, but fragmented into engine noise and radio chatter. He hadn’t really meant to do that but for some reason it came sudden and reactive, leaping through his vocoder he couldn’t seem to shut it up for a long moment. Took him a minute to get a grip on it, the radio noise dying back to the more human chuckling. Primus fuck, she was sorry. Everyone so goddamn sorry. Hell, the human who didn’t know jack squat about the sum-total planetary fuckery of their genocidal suicide war was sorry.

“Why? What the fuck you do, fam? You lie ta me? You decide it wasn’t important ta tell me when th' most reviled glitchfrakker in our racial history come callin’? You decide keepin’ th’ warlord all snug and comfy takes priority over keepin’ my brother protected? Tellin’ me th’ whole fuckin’ truth like I told her she could tell me? You decide you know better’n me an’ what you think is best trumps my right to know my brother ain’t in spark-shucking distance of the mech who tried to tear is spinal strut out his back? Tried to rip me limb from limb?”

Sides laughed again. This time it was a lot lower.

“Why are you sorry?” he said. “You’re not the one making shitty decisions an’ watchin’ people you supposed to be protectin’ get hurt.”

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It was so unexpected that she almost jumped, the laughter forcing her up straight and her focus to the dash with an almost incredulous expression. Like she wasn't sure whether or not she was hearing things. Missed something. Hell, she even looked down at her ice cream cup as if that might have given her some answers. But that was his laugh, reaching up through the radio before it settled back into something more familiar.

What the fuck you do, fam?
Oh yeah, well. Duh. That made sense.

Back relaxed she flopped back into her lounging position in the driver's seat, making a face at the dash (for some reason she always equated that to 'face'), almost about to respond to 'lie'. But then they kept coming, and quietly she began to realize that the answer to her question was weighted in each word. And now that she was listening she couldn't help but wonder why she didn't see all of these angles before, why they hadn't occurred to her.

Sometime during all of it she'd slipped off her flats to quietly fold her feet underneath herself. If she felt her thoughts were muddied before, well her mind was certainly a clusterfuck now. But, strangely, she felt calmer for it.

'You're insane, remember?' Oh, yeah.

Why are you sorry? with his laugh, seeming to be coming from everywhere.

She felt herself want to laugh, too-- equally unexpected. Shocking almost because she didn't quite know why. Maybe because he was, and she wanted to latch onto the idea of it. "I dunno." She said, voice light and breathy with a chuckle that wasn't fully formed. "Not doin' anything, I guess." She felt about as awkward saying that as she did saying 'I'm sorry'. "Eh, well… still got your back in Halo, though…" She added lightly, jokingly. But speaking in the way she often did, to say one thing but mean something more. 'At least, I can still keep you company.' Even if she was but a wee human trying to grasp their million+ year conflict.

Catherine turned her eyes back to the focus point of his dash, briefly wondering if his response would be another laugh to make her jump out of her skin. Or if it'd be a silence thicker than her ice cream soup.

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There was a brief quiet wherein Sideswipe contemplated the fact that someone ‘having his back’ was, when he boiled it all down, at the root and core of why he was just so fucking pissed off in the first place. Because in the sum total violent string of abuse, brutality and egoism that made up the vicious streak of his long life he’d always had at least one mech at his back. Some bots never got that. They never had cohort worth trusting, never had partners, never had a binary half to themselves upon whom they could rely with the certainty of physics itself. Sideswipe was used to that assurance, accustomed to the mechs who would take an energon axe to someone’s skull for you.

It was a moment of self-awareness that he didn’t often visit because, well, Sunstreaker was a constant as persistent as sunrise and the long-term lack of him now manifesting in such a way as to make Sideswipe wonder how anyone functioned solo. How did you do trust outside the two-way quantum entanglement of a spark-split? What was all other trust built on but words?

Cat had his back… in Halo. Okay. But she wasn’t exactly Autobot commando material so it was the gesture that counted.

“Cleaver’s got her own shit to protect,” said Sideswipe, not taking the out that Cat was offering. He could just talk about Halo, but he didn’t feel like it. He wanted to say it aloud, to someone, even if that someone was Catherine the human, a match-flame of memory to his semi-immortal forever and a half. “I don’t care if she wants ta play on her old links ta Megatronus. If she got connections there she can buy her own safety with dat’s fine.”

A hard beat.

“Course… I assumed she wasn’t gonna buy her safety by spendin’ Sunstreaker’s safety, spendin’ mine, spendin’ – ‘pparently – the Autobots’. Plenty a Neuts ‘fore her repairin’ Phase Sixers an’ world killer motherfuckers ta keep their peace. But ya do it right. She didn’t. She picked, fam. She fuckin’ picked an’ fuckin fast too an’ I guess that’s my fault cuz, see, I bet th’ house on our history meanin’ more’n that, cuz she was from Kaon, cuz she knew us.”

No laugh this time.

“Was wrong ‘bout dat.”

[Deleted]

It was during the new silence that she settled the cup and the remainder of its contents in the cup holder, finger tips tapping so lightly on its cardboard surface that it was little more than finger movement.

Tapping that immediately stopped, though, when he spoke again.

Made her mouth give a brief upward twitch as she pulled her knees into her chest, curling herself into the driver seat, head rested down on her knees… listening. The soft lines of her face somehow an invitation for whatever would be unloaded, was welcome. Because it was one of the few things she could do, lending an ear that was for the most part uninvolved and untouched by the politics of it all; and it was something he obviously needed.

So it was in that spirit that in the next few moments she said nothing at all. Said nothing, because she was having a rare adult moment of thinking it wasn't about what she should or could say, but what he needed to; because his words lingered, were weighted in the way that told there was more wanting to follow. So instead Catherine shifted so that her face could more easily and fully face his dash, attentive and patient.

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“We been fightin’ each other for four-million years. Four-fucking-million years an’ you know what we fought about in th’ first place?” His tone was poisonous. “Equality. We fought so we could have th’ right ta have a fuckin’ name, fought not ta get throttled an’ spark shucked an’ crim-coded an’ killed. Sunny’n’me…”

He stopped because ‘Sunny’n’me’ was not up for discussion. Because his half-dead, coma-locked, crazy-heart morph twin was not for talking about when he wasn’t awake. Sunstreaker’s grievances were under Sideswipe’s alloy skin, laid into his proto-skeleton like wires and galvanized him to white-hot hate but it was not for talking about because it wasn’t his to talk on. So he didn’t. He shifted slightly, the microseams all along his sports car frame flexing and settling again.

“I wish Sunstreaker was awake,” said Sideswipe finally, maybe just a little desperately, not that he’d admit to it. Ever. “He’d say this right. You remember… when you knew ‘fore I did that Cleaver was a self-gen? See… I known her since before th' war an’ she never told me she was Towers. Now, you don’t know Towers. Towers some step below Translucetica – the fuckin’ alt-exempts an’ th’ ‘Intellectual Class’ ruling elite, whatever you wanna call ‘em. She never told me that..."

He wished he wasn't in vehicle mode. He wanted to move.

"I dunno. I just... I don't fuckin' trust her now."

[Deleted]

A lot of sides. A lot of sides and layers and secrets. 'With good intentions.' She wanted to think, recalling the very first day she'd met Sideswipe. Storming into the atrium with her on his shoulder and the conversation (at least the parts they kept in English) that followed. They both said it…agreed that she had to, couldn't say anything. Else essentially forfeit her freedom to a desperate and dying race…

Maybe, keeping it to herself just seemed like the best way to keep everything, everyone, safe. Catherine couldn't honestly say she'd have done it much differently, if that were indeed the case. Hell. Technically she was living one this very moment, every day, because ain't no way in hell she's tellin' Mom about alien robots or any life threatenin' danger that could (…has?) put her in because it was just better that way.

'..decide you know better'n me an' what you think is best…' Sideswipe's voice rang loud and clear in her head, the memory of his voice popping up prompt and uninvited. And just then, as she had been little by little, she got just a bit more of what he was talking about.

'...Fuck.' Nevermind. She'd deal with Mom later.

Point was, she reminded herself, she could get some of it.

Cat let the air begin to settle, before lifting her chin enough to speak. "So," The words came out quiet and even, hesitant but curious, "What happens now?"with you? 'Think you might ever trust her again?' Is what she wanted to say, 'Ever forgive her?' Some of those notes from those thoughts had managed to creep out in her voice. It was easy for her, as a bystander, loving them both.

[Deleted]

“I dunno.”

There was a flicker in the passenger seat, a buzz and a suffusion of sudden shape and darkness and like a bad TV image flickering on suddenly a sullen black boy in a hoodie and cap was sitting in the passenger seat. The yellow of the street light hit the holo avatar realistically, casting bands of sickly light down blue jeans. The glow warmed the brown and slightly too smooth skin on the back of his hands, laid palms down on his knees. The brim of his ball-cap threw a deep shadow across his eyes, did nothing to hide the hard line of ‘Sideswipe’s’ mouth.

“S’up ta her innit? Maybe she sorry. Maybe not. Ain’t really seen enough t’ know yet cuz aint nothin’ she ever shown me been real. Or if it was how’m I supposed to which is which?” He turned his head away from Cat and a low rumble rolled through the lambo. “Dunno how much’a her’s th’ femme up ta her elbows in gladiator guts and how much’a her’s stuck in th’ Towers. What I seen lately…” He looked back to Cat finally and his holo-form’s eyes weren’t wholly human, the irises burning Cybertronian blue, lighting up the face beneath the hood. “Dunno. Secretin’ a warlord, throwin’ me cross th’ world, whole business with Barricade, and Sunstreaker… haaaard shit t’ get th’ fuck over. Aint got a switch for that, fam.”

He held Cat's stare a moment.

"Whaddya you think?"