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.
Shadow had observed before that Ironhide could not accept comfort with the same ease that he offered it, and it came as no surprise that he fought himself every step of the way, systems whining protest and field twisting with distress. Tremors ran through his frame, easing but still present. Shadow murmured reassurances, relaxing into his hold until it became less desperate, until she could shift from being held back to holding.
Familiar, for all their frametypes were different, and if she had never before had to maximize the impression of her size, she knew how to leverage her hold so that it felt like she had more mass than she really did. She knew from experience that sometimes, it was easier to yield if it felt like you had no choice.
Ironhide wasn't fighting her, though, just his own glitches and ingrained habits. Shadow leaned in a little harder anyway, just as she would have done for Viper, or Relay. "You're doing good, Hide," she said, the words secondary to the warmth and approval in her field. "I know it's hard, but I'm right here with you, and everything's all right. I won't let anything happen."
Safe, her field insisted, steady as her sparkpulse. Safe-protected-loved.
It was easier to ease his own systems with hers a solid, steadying weight against him. Ironhide leaned his helm against Shadow's, field choppy but conveying what was needed. Gratitude-loved-trusted-needed.
"Been a long time," he admitted, the words only filler, weak explanation for what she probably already guessed. "Ain't been this far down in a long time. Hard t' stop keepin' watch."
For a certain value, however, he could do it. Cycle down his protocols, relax a frame strung far too tight, and ease himself one grudging, twitchy micron at a time into a state that was more 'off-duty' than he had been in possibly more vorns than Shadow had been online. Keening softly, the sound so faint as to be subaudible, he gave himself over to fear and pain alike, the tremor of it shuddering through his plates.
"Hard to do," Shadow agreed, pulsing approval at him for every slight reduction in the tension radiating through his frame, "but you don't need to keep watch. I'm here. I'll keep watch while you rest."
Pressed this close together, the keen cut through her, felt more than heard. It reminded her of her cohort, of all the times they had held one of their number together with nothing more than the press of frames and fields and grim determination. Her systems steadied, engine slowing deliberately, giving him a stable baseline to sync to if he needed it. Her field modulated to his, acknowledged and accepted pain and fear both, returned comfort and reassurance in their stead. Acknowledged he was broken, wounded, and found no weakness there, only a need to heal.
Through it all, she held on. "You're doing good. You're doing good, and I'm here, right here, you aren't alone. You aren't going to be alone." Her grip on him tightened, her words a litany of reassurance. "Rest. It's safe, nothing's going to happen, because I'm here now. I'll stand guard. It's what we do for each other. Rest."
It's what we do for each other. Innocent words and perfect - the promise to guard and shield dropped into places in Ironhide's protocols that had been shored up and patched for so long that he had forgotten the feel of having them filled. He vented unsteadily, trying to curl himself smaller, make it easier for the scout frame trying to cover him. Glyphs, chained in Guard cant, rippled between them - gratitude-trust-pain-need-relief-love.
"Need this," he managed quietly, the word grated out. "...Sorry. 's been forever. Ah ain't..." Static scraped across his voice, muting another small keen of sound. "...Ain't used t' leanin' any more. Sorry."
"You'll relearn it, then." Shadow didn't let herself question how, when this wasn't her place and she wasn't staying, couldn't stay. Ironhide didn't need questions, he needed certainty to anchor him and a shield to rest under while his systems patched themselves back together, and she owed him this. She pressed her forehelm against him, optics shuttered, and pushed aside everything that had happened so she could give him what he needed.
"We're always going to be stronger together." It was a truth all but hard-coded into all of them, thirteen sparks as close to a gestalt as thirteen individuals could be; thirteen, but they could hold each other together in twos and threes as surely as they could in the entire group. "It's not numbers that give us our strength. It's that we can give each other time to heal, and no one has to be strong all the time." She shifted, tucking her frame more securely against his. "I'm here to lean on. I'm here for whatever you need, for as long as you need it. I promise."
She could have been Guard, Ironhide found himself thinking, the thought rippling in random bursts across the scattered mess of his processor. Should have been, maybe, though there was no way to tell - she was young enough but her upbringing was different, warped and changed enough, that there was no way to track traits that would have leapt out of one of their own newsparks. None-the-less, he held her close, wordless glyphs echoing and agreeing with every word - strength in numbers, together, support. The ones you would serve with and die for, without reservation. Pride in her, trust in her, gratitude and boundless love.
Here for you, echoed back, faint but steadfast beneath the pain, a reciprocal pulse to her own. He leaned his helm into hers, relaxing one hydraulic and plate at a time, held safe and warm within the press of her field.
Shadow's hold didn't alter, but she relaxed along with Ironhide, the tight grip of crisis easing from her spark. Reassurance hummed through her frame and her field, glyphs of love and trust-support-unity pulsing between them, cohort in everything but the word itself.
Because he needed it. Because she owed him. Because she loved him, even if her belief in him, in the cohort he had offered, had been a mistake.
It was an indulgence and she knew it, just as she knew the echoes of love and loyalty in his field were empty, just as she knew everything would hurt all the more when this temporary illusion shattered. But right now they were stronger together, even if together was a lie, and Shadow could no more stop wanting that illusion than she could have left Ironhide alone with the broken mess of his own code.
It could have been kliks or breems, curled together in a circling pulse of everything that they were together, as like to home as anything Ironhide knew. It eased some of the hard knots in lines and code, and the solidity of Shadow's frame against his own - safe, whole in mesh and plate - eased the rougher patches in a spark that had been running at a frantic pace for too long. Ironhide let himself believe it, let himself sink into it for long quiet moment, near-floating on the sheer ease in levels of pain.
Missed you rolled between them, pulsed in field and wordless glyphs. Love you-worried-so relieved-grateful-thankful, underscored with sorry-sorry-so sorry, a helpless circular regret for all the things he hadn't been able to stop, the things that had cut her deep and hurt her that he had lost all control of.
"Need yeh," he whispered at last, optics still shuttered, faceplates pressed into her own plating where the fragile solidity of her arms, wrapped around his helm, could block out some of the too-empty space around them. "Hopin'... hopin' Ah can be there for yeh, too, if Ah can. If yeh need meh."
Shadow grit her dente and pressed her helm harder against him, biting back the pained, angry surge his words triggered. I don't need you. I don't. I should never have let myself think I did.
He needed her, though, was hurting as badly as she was, his field made of jagged pieces in spite of the patchwork on his code, and the need to hold him together was stronger than her anger. "I know," she said, carefully not specifying what she knew or believed. He was hurting, he needed her, and if the thick tangle of remorse in his field didn't fix anything, it did make holding back her own hurts easier. "I know, and I'm here. I won't leave you like this, I promise, I couldn't. Long as you need me, I'm here."
"Ain't right." It burst out of him in short pained glyphs that he couldn't bite back fast enough, colored in hurt and confusion and helpless anger. Half a function, countless vorn of being the strong one, the wall around his fragile small makeshift cohort, the protector and guardian and officer, dictated that he say nothing. Vorns of being Bluestreak's caretaker dictated that outbursts of weakness in front of a youngling were wrong, needlessly upsetting, but Shadow's hold on him was that of an equal, her words echoing a time when there hadn't been sparklings, or caretakers, or different functions that didn't mesh so much as worked around each other. A time when together had meant whole and not just the absence of being alone.
There was a tension in her that had never quite eased, the distant echo of the same ripping tension that had sent her roaring out of the DMZ, the ghosts of the worst pains of her life racing at her bumper. Ironhide held her tighter, trying by the press of plates to share whatever sense of together might reassure or help. The words, once started, didn't stop, the pains of the last weeks ripping out in glyphs that tumbled over each other that he had no right - and every need - to voice. Let go, she had said, without judgement. Let go.
"Weren't none of it right. Yeh needed meh an' Ah couldn't... Th' Prahm an' Ah... An' before that..." It was a keen, thin and pained, a sound that had been stuck in his tanks since he had first seen an all too familiar silhouette materialize behind Shadow's frame. He buried the sound in her shoulderplate, holding just short of denting in the desperation of his grasp.
"Ain't right. Cohort... cohort don't hurt cohort, an we were sittin' targets an' Ah don't understand, Ah been tryin' an' Ah can't parse it, Ah don't know what she was thinkin', Ah'd never've brought yeh there if Ah'd known an' it weren't none of it right." Confusion bled into furious anger, bled into the sickening feeling of helplessness he had known in that one moment, safety shattered and betrayed, and spun back around to a raging confusion once more, impossible to even correlate to anything in the universe as he had known it, the lurching feel like gravity flux through his tanks that had only amplified the actual wreck of his own code.
He hadn't been surprised when Shadow had run from it. He was more surprised she had come back, the gratitude for that one small blessing throwing the rest into stark relief. "Sorry." It was useless, the glyph and helpless pain behind it the only thing he could offer in that moment. "Wasn't fraggin' right, wasn't anythin' yeh should've had t' go through, wasn't anythin' that should've ever happened an' Ah'm sorry, Ah'm so sorry."
It was less like someone had flipped a switch than like something had finally given way, words and glyphs and emotions tumbling around her almost too quickly to absorb. Shadow stifled her automatically queued reaction - shhhh, it's alright, shhhh - because it wasn't alright, it wasn't right at all, and he didn't need to be quieted any more than she had.
Instead, she hummed a note of reassurance, returning his grip on her with stubborn tenacity. "I know. I know. I don't understand either, I don't have answers, but I know it hurts, I know it shouldn't have happened. Shouldn't have happened to either of us, Hide; you didn't deserve this any more than I did."
And he hadn't; he had been as blinded by his trust in Cleaver as Shadow had been by her trust in him, and that trust didn't deserve betrayal. No new rules could justify that.
She couldn't help him untangle what had happened when she didn't understand it herself, but she could pulse love and support against the wreckage of his EM. "Cohort doesn't hurt cohort," she agreed; cohort were the ones who put you back together after, "and I know...I know you would have stopped it if you could have. Wasn't you, Hide," not directly, not by conscious choice, but she couldn't forget that the choices he had made led them to it. "Wasn't you, I know that, just like I know you would have been there for me if you could have.
"But you're here now, and I still need you, just like you need me," she added quietly, the words coming slow and reluctant, but free of the miserable, bitter denials that still whispered through the back of her processor. "And I'm not going anywhere. You can rest, and then we can take care of each other. We have plenty of time, I promise."
The keen wouldn't be quieted, wouldn't lessen or stop, bottled up in a subsonic burr through his vocalizer and systems. It had been him, his own fault, in ways Shadow's words couldn't absolve - too much, too fast, too soon, caught up in the promise of a newspark and establishing ties he had been so sorely lacking for so long, caution and common sense lost in the rush of connection. "Wouldn't've brought yeh t' all of it if Ah'd known it'd come t' this," he whispered against her plates, sorrow humming through the glyphs. "Didn't make sure it was safe. Sorry."
Safety and rest and together, the best and only cure for pains that had nothing to do with mesh and fluid lines or physical mass. The only wrongness was the bareness of two frames alone curled together, neither enough to shield all of the other. The sound bleeding out of his systems took on a sharper note, twisting into the oldest glyphs he knew, instinctive and barely Cybertronian, rooted in the clipped mission cant of the Guard - distress-danger-backup requested.
Except there wasn't any backup to be had, the others off base even if it didn't feel like too much all at once for Shadow or too many things he'd spent the last weeks denying vehemently, using anger to stave off the appearance of weakness. Ironhide bit off the sound before it could repeat and set a reboot through his vocalizer until he could form full glyphs again.
"Ain't right." Glyph layers emphasized here-now, not then, present tense but undirected at either of them. Ironhide hissed, cutting through errors until he could untangle himself from Shadow's hold, levering his frame upright again. The room was already a disaster, victim of bouts of temper. Disassembling the berth was the least of it. It was easy to slide to the floor, reaching to pull the femme with him, and drag the berth pad down as well. A solid kick shoved the frame of it between them and the door - a mesh thin excuse for a barricade, but better than nothing.
Shadow ex-vented, a slow sigh of relief at his words, the admission that the cohort was not the safe haven it should have been easing some of the anger out of her. It changed nothing, really, fixed nothing...he hadn't made sure it was safe, had let his own wants and assumptions cloud his judgement. He had let his guard down as thoroughly as she herself had, and Shadow could acknowledge his responsibility for that and forgive him in the same vent cycle.
She moved with him as he shifted off the berth, a hand pressed to her backplates telling her that his movements were purposeful and not just an expression of distress or an attempt to escape. She stayed close to him anyway, the tangle of their fields and frames a steadying, necessary thing.
The tremors running through Ironhide's frame had eased but not stopped, and when the berth crashed onto its side Shadow took over, responding to her own deeply ingrained sense of what was needed. She rose with a hand pressed to his shoulder - contact, physical reassurance, flowing and echoing between their frames like the tangles of emotion in their fields - and dragged the berth closer, creating a smaller, enclosed, safer space, two solid walls at their backs and a shield between them and the rest of the world. Imperfect, like having only the two of them to patch each other's wounds was imperfect, but better.
She turned back to where Ironhide had braced himself against the wall and settled back against him. This time, she didn't try to pin him - didn't think she needed to - but she was still a solid presence between him and the empty space of the room, field once again flared out and around them both.
"Floor again," she pointed out, resting her helm against his. "Guess there are some traditions we just can't fight."
"Never had a berth." It slipped out like everything else, not what he meant to say but lacking any filter between processor and vocalizer in the morass of errors and mess he was fielding. Ironhide tried to bite it back but the glyphs were already there, uttered into the air, and it felt half complete to leave it at that.
He shrugged, but the gesture turned into a duck and curl, one that pressed his helm back to her plating where Shadow's arms could wrap around him, a wordless request. "In th' Guard," he clarified reluctantly, voice a rough burr of sound. "Didn't have any... single stuff. Rooms." The feel of the berth pad beneath them, solid floor beneath that, was a comforting familiarity that he could shutter his optics and sink into, letting her field wash over him where the press of other frames was lacking. "Floor 'n pads worked fine."
Easy, too easy, to fall back into old habits of non-verbal cues, touch and field more important than words. Automatic, to tuck over and around a frame curled down and inward, and somehow the difference in their sizes was becoming less of a glaring obstacle and simply something to be worked with, adapted around, incorporated.
Shadow made a sound of agreement, hands ghosting over the plates of his shoulders. "We had berths." She went silent - he was not cohort, an outsider, they weren't his to know - and then, slowly, continued. A memory for a memory; self, offered in bits and fragments, for self. "Split up, across two rooms, six and seven. Never used them that way. We wanted...we needed...all of us in one room, and thirteen berths wouldn't fit." Even if they had, it would have defeated the purpose, separated them into ones and twos. Shadow ducked her helm down, rubbing her cheekplate against the helm tucked against her chassis, and pushed away the pain of what she'd lost in favor of a silent burst of understanding. "Floor and pads were better."