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.
The ache of betrayal still lurked beneath the anger, threatening to break her if she let herself listen, if she focused on anything but escape. He had her pinned, one arm and both legs secured, but there was no threat to it, and Shadow found herself faltering in the familiar wash of his field, unable to take any of the openings she could - should - exploit.
"None of it should have happened. Shouldn't have..." been possible.
She could cut the words off, but she couldn't keep the lost confusion out of her field, the sense that the unthinkable had happened and was somehow being treated as normal.
"But it did," she finished, dredging up bitter scorn to cover the confusion. "All of it happened. And I'm not slagging stupid enough to wait for it to happen again."
The burst of anger was fast fading and her confusion made Ironhide ache, echoing some of his own outburst to Jazz weeks before - how? why? - and all of the rational discussion in the world couldn't overwrite the feeling of lost confusion or the suckerpunched sensation of having been blindsided. It couldn't erase that one stark moment, Megatron silhouetted against the tunnel entrance, when everything safe had abruptly become everything but and he was still looking for an answer that connected to something more than words.
Ironhide didn't ease his grip but let it gentle a little, turning into something more like holding instead of restraining. "It happened," he agreed quietly. "An' Ah'm sorry, bitlet. Ah was wrong."
He let himself lean into her, his chin fitting along her helm the way it always had. "Shouldn't've thrown yeh an' Cleaver together like that. Shouldn't've gone in blind, thinkin' it was safe when it wasn't. Whole thing was completely fragged up."
Somehow, Shadow had let herself be tucked in against Ironhide's frame, cheekplate pressed to throat cabling and optics offlined. The vibration of his systems filtered into hers, not quite steady, filled with little hitches and breaks that she distantly noted, even as she let the familiarity of it cycle down systems that had, a klik before, been primed for escape.
"Shouldn't have trusted Cleaver," she snapped, pulling back with a glare, fresh bitterness washing through her. There was nothing recognizably cohort in the femme's actions, nothing Shadow could hold onto to soothe the anger and betrayal that spilled from Cleaver onto the rest of the cohort.
No reason to stay, she thought, but that frantic, spark-torn certainty was fading. A long moment and shaky vent cycle later, she yielded to Ironhide's hold, curling back against him; another, and she managed, with reasonable calm, "Wouldn't have helped to not throw us together. No easier to hear about Barricade second-hand. No easier if I'd known her before I found out I couldn't trust her." She reset her vocalizer against the keen edging into her words. "Only thing that would've helped is her not doing the slag she did."
Ironhide winced slightly, tightening his grip on Shadow. "Ah know," he told her gently, field open and accepting of the snap of her anger. "Wish it hadn't happened, but wishin' can't change what did. Ah'm sorry for mah part in it all goin' t' scrap."
He leaned his helm against hers, letting the familiar feel of her permeate through his systems, soothing subroutines that had been in endless knots since he had watched her speed out of range. The rumble of his own engine was rough, chugging, but he settled into as much of a steady hum as he could, holding her close. "Shadow-bit, sparklet, luv - Ah know yeh don't got any reason t' trust meh right now. But Ah promised, an' yeh ain't gotta do anythin' alone."
She didn't have any reason to trust him, but the empty ache of betrayal was very like the pain of realizing her cohort was dead...and just as he had then, Ironhide was offering her a haven that might not be safe, but which was better than being alone. Shadow curled into his hold, making no effort to contain the anger and confusion spilling into her field.
She wanted to know why, how, utterly pointless questions when there was no explanation that could make it hurt less. She wanted, part of her was willing to admit, an answer that would, impossibly, make sense of what had happened.
"I'd rather be alone than have to watch my back," she said, but there was less anger than grief behind the words. "Cohort...you shouldn't have to watch out against cohort."
It was easy, aches or no aches, to tuck her in against him, plates flared around her, field murmuring a low pulse of love-reassurance-safety against her. Ironhide shifted the grip of his hand to cup the back of her helm, easing his weight back onto the elbow of the arm she had taken out only when he was sure it could hold it. "Ah know," he repeated helplessly. "Ah know, bitlet."
The words were hard, coming careful, and he could feel the phantom shape of a minefield all around them, full of misspoken words and pitfalls of assumptions that their entire cohort could little afford more of. Ironhide pressed his own faceplates against Shadow's helm, optics dimmed. "Ah can't speak for anyone else, Shadow. Never should've done in th' first place. But Ah promise yeh, on mah spark - yeh don't ever have t' watch yer back with meh. Hear meh, bitlet?" He nuzzled at the edge of her helm, nudging her slightly. "Ain't nothin' Ah'd do t' hurt yeh, not on purpose."
Shadow offlined her optics, weighing his words and the touch of his field against her own pain. Against the clear evidence that he was an outsider. Against everything Labyrinth had ever taught them. Against Barricade's smug mockery. Against the angry voice in the back of her processor whispering, He doesn't even think Cleaver did anything wrong. Can a mech who accepts lies so easily be trusted to be honest with you?
The one didn't compare against the others.
"I know." She was a fool, grasping at nothing, wanting to believe in phantoms. He meant what he said. Now, as an abstract, nothing in the balance, but even knowing that she wanted to believe. "I shouldn't believe you, I can't, but I know."
Shuttering his optics just left him with errors bursting like fire tracer rounds across his HUD. Ironhide left his lowest optical feed on to provide a hazy glow from the room lights that offset the effect, muting it a little. "Don't have'ta believe meh right now, bitlet," he rumbled. "Yeh don't have t' believe anythin' right now. Just... give it a chance? Know it's askin' a lot, but Ah can't prove nothin' if yeh leave." He tightened his arms in a long hug around her, field echoing love-cohort, only reluctantly easing back again. "If yeh stay, maybe Ah can prove it with more'n just words."
A hydraulic pressure alert flared and Ironhide vented shakily, shifting to roll back onto his dorsal plates and pull Shadow's lighter frame with him. "Sorry. Know we've got a tradition about th' floor, but mah joint's are older'n yers." He leaned up to press his forehelm against hers. "Ah'm glad t' see yeh, bitlet. Really glad. Thank yeh for comin' back."
"Jaws dragged me back." A thin excuse, made entirely for herself; Shadow knew better than to examine it, and she suspected Ironhide would accept it for what it was and leave it alone."I didn't intend to stay."
I missed you pulsed through her field, though she managed to keep the words in check.
The floor had become a tradition because untangling fields and frames, giving up contact, even for as long as it took to move elsewhere, took more effort than either of them usually had to spare. Now, Shadow needed to move, needed distance, needed to give herself an illusory margin of safety. She pressed her helm against Ironhide's, bracing to move away from him. He had loosened his hold while they talked, making it easy enough to slip free and crouch on the floor beside him. A sparkbeat's hesitation, a reflexive assessment that he could do nothing if she chose to run, a reflexive urge to run that surged through her hydraulics...then she caught his hand in hers, silent assurance for them both that this wasn't an escape.
"Berth isn't far." She forced the ghost of a smile, glyphs a complicated tangle of humor and hurt. "We might make it there before we hit the floor again."
Ironhide squeezed her hand gently, then had to grasp at her wrist for stability as he pushed himself up from the floor, hydraulics complaining in fits and starts. Clearing his motor systems long enough to manage the task rerouted the errors elsewhere and he exvented sharply as he gained his pedes, unable to hide the wince.
"Berth's a good idea," he agreed. "Fieldin' a few errors right now." He hesitated, biting back the habitual reassurance - it's nothing, don't worry, never mind - and found himself comparing that habit to things left unsaid versus the open bluntness he had once used freely. Comparing, and feeling a trickle of shame for it, a habit that did nothing but hold his cohort at arm's length when he needed them most.
Prove by action, he thought to himself, and let his field unfurl to where Shadow could feel it, rife with multiple levels of pain and a glut of errors. "Could use a little help," he admitted roughly.
"I noticed." Shadow stepped in closer, bumping her helm lightly against his arm to cover her own wince at the mess of his field. She tried to keep her tone light, teasing; she wasn't cohort, couldn't call what Ironhide's grouping had a cohort at all, not as she understood it, and it wasn't her place to worry over him. "The floor's never been quite that involuntary before."
She had thought he was wrecked when she first entered, but this was actually worse, drawing her in even as she wondered how anyone had been convinced to leave him alone. It had an all too familiar feel - missions gone horribly wrong and damage that wasn't as easy to deal with as patch and weld - and her field pressed back against his reflexively. Here-safe-not alone, devoid of cohort signifiers; she'd have been a liar to use them, and she never would have been able to hide that cohort had become something...alien, something painful and ugly.
Instead, she tucked herself against him, comfort and support both for the short distance to the berth, and whatever else had changed, their frames still conformed easily to one another, microtransformations fitting them together without thought. "I've been out in an organic wilderness for three weeks. What's your excuse for looking and sounding like utter scrap?" And moving like he ought to be under Ratchet's care, getting a complete system overhaul, even though her scanners assured her that whatever was broken wasn't physical.
She nudged him onto the berth, eyeing him critically. "You're a mess, Hide. What can I do to help?" she asked, and if asking instead of acting put a non-cohort layer of distance between them, the glyphs accompanying the question - here for you-whatever you need-my place-my responsibility-my right - were purely, achingly cohort, in spite of her best intentions.
Sinking down onto a surface that could take the weight of his mass was a relief; Ironhide cycled a vent and cut the error reroutes, channeling the worst of the mess back into his autonomic motor routines. It left a palsied shake in his rotor joints, struts aching and plates clicking fitfully against each other, but it eased some of the tightened, off cycle pain in his inner systems.
He reached up to tug Shadow down, tucking her against himself, and that helped too - a familiar system against his own, the easy support of her glyphs, and he pulsed gratitude back to her. It was hard to let go of the need to downplay his own pain, habit ingrained to try to be the strong wall that the rest of his cohort could lean on. Harder still to admit to a hurt that was his own willful stupidity, nothing as simple as a Decepticon blaster fire wound. Exventing, Ironhide wrapped Shadow in his arms, leaning his forehelm against hers. "Ain't too much t' be done t' help," he said at last. "Yeh know Ah used t' be a Guardian, right?" He gave her a small nudge with his helm. "Not th' kinda Guard th' Senate used. Buncha useless show pieces. We were th' real thing, offworld, made for protectin' Cybertron."
Shadow nodded against him; Labyrinth had had opinions about the Guard, and none of them matched what she knew about Ironhide. It had only made sense to do a little research after he'd mentioned the Guard during their lessons.
"I know enough to know the difference," she said, though Ironhide's immediate clarification told her more than the records had. She pulsed teasing affection through her field. "And now I know better than to ever conflate the two."
It was familiar and comfortable enough to ache, and Shadow leaned closer against him, focusing on the clicks and whines of systems running off-true until it passed. Something in his shoulder was grating, misaligned and working against itself; she shifted in his hold and applied pressure over the subacromial sensor until over-stressed lines flexed and relaxed.
"Not much to be done still means there's something," she prodded, when Ironhide didn't immediately resume speaking. "Slag's happened, but...as long as I'm here, I'm here for you."
As long as she was there... Ironhide tightened his grasp just a little, tremors or no, to hold Shadow closer. As long as she was there, within grasp, it was something to hold onto. "Not much means Ah don't rightly know what t' do," he admitted. "'Cept wait it out."
He vented, pausing, searching for words for things he hadn't had to discuss or describe in too long. "Thing is, bitlet... th' Guard took oath. Wasn't just words an' empty promises. Oath was part of our base code we came online with, written in our sparks." He tried to smile, the expression meant to be reassuring and coming out more of a grimace stretched in a rictus across his faceplates. "Can't break somethin' like that an' not have consequences. That's why most of th' Guard glitched themselves straight into th' Well when th' Cores went dark. We'd failed."
That was all public record, things Ratchet could have told her, or Jazz. The rest came slower, the words flat and static streaked in his vocalizer, anger that defied words flickering up through his field. "Ah... didn't. Ah'd already rewrote mah Oath, given it t' th' Prahm." A shudder worked through his shoulder rotor, his hand spasming against her plating. Ironhide grit his dente and rode the sensation out, waiting for it to subside. "Ah've been holdin' that oath t' him for most of th' war, 'til now."
He pressed his forehelm against hers, pulsing a ragged burst of reassurance through the entangled wash of their fields. "Weren't yer fault, bitlet, don't go thinkin' it was. Long time comin', maybe should've had it out with him before." His voice turned harsher, a low growl underscoring the words. "Ah ain't got nothin' t' give t' a Prahm who holds his fraggin' cause higher'n th' sparks fightin' for him, an' he ain't got any use for an obsolete relic like meh. We got into it, shoved it in each others intakes, but..." the bubble of anger burst, fading, and Ironhide winced, shoving another half dozen mutating errors aside.
Exventing heavily, he curled around Shadow, letting himself lean into the wordless comfort her field offered. "He said 'go' but an oath ain't nothin' but words if Ah could just drop it any time Ah wanted t'. Code don't care about reasons, only knows Ah've abandoned mah postin'. It's unravelin' itself in mah base code, but it ain't fast an' it ain't pretty an' Ah ain't got anythin' t' do 'cept wait for it t' scrap itself."
"Primus." Shadow pressed herself more tightly into Ironhide's hold, love and concern washing through her field. She regretted her role as a catalyst in his falling out with Prime, though perhaps, after the other events in Africa, that had been inevitable. Her guilt lay elsewhere, another ghost of cohort not yet laid to rest, protesting her absence from where she had been needed.
Cohort may no longer be the right word, but the give and take of cohortmates patching each other together was all she knew. She didn't fight it, didn't want to fight it, old habits smoothing caresses over restlessly-shifting plates, hands searching out pressure points to release faltering hydraulics and constricted relays. The difference in their sizes made anything other than him holding her awkward, her frame unable to offer him a meaningful shield; instead, her field wrapped over and around them both, here-together-safe, steady and impossible to ignore.
"No wonder you're a wreck." Three weeks of his code clawing itself apart, stripping his systems, with no end in sight and likely no recharge outside of shutting down from pure exhaustion. She offlined her optics for a klik, going over options, anything that might help, her helm pressed to his. "If all we can do is wait it out, we wait it out. How much worse is it likely to get?"