Gravity, Part 1

[nightwritey]

Title: Gravity
Rating: R
Warnings: Slashy slashy! This half doesn't have the spark-smex in it, though, alas. Also, TC talking to himself again.
Main Character(s): Thundercracker, Skywarp
Genre: Mush.
Summary: Wow, there is such a thing as love at first sight after all... *mushy sigh*

The other part.

“Don't think twice before you listen to your heart
Follow the trace for a new start …”
--Enigma, “Gravity of Love”

Frantically I paced the dim, cramped confines of my quarters. I was nervous, anxious in the extreme. My mind as I paced was in a whirl, my thoughts disorganized, scattered, and screaming at me in the most strident of tones…

You’ve gone completely insane! one inner voice yelled at me. You’re out of your mind!

You can’t possibly go through with this! another insisted with horrified certainty. It’s crazy!

If you do this, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life, still another voice cautioned. It will destroy you. And him.

They were the loudest voices, the ones that disagreed with my current course of action, with the decision that had resulted in me pacing manically around my quarters, waiting. But they didn’t entirely drown out the few voices that agreed with me, that encouraged and reassured me.

Don’t listen to them, one of those voices soothingly cooed.

This is the reason you came here, you know, another confidently proclaimed. More and more often you’ve been wanting to know that, haven’t you? So…now you know. You joined the Decepticons because he’s a Decepticon.

Yes, you’ve been following him all along, yet another voice agreed. It was a quiet, mellow voice but quite an emphatic one. You just didn’t know it…until now.

I stopped pacing then, blinking at what that last voice had said… The voice that had “spoken” was the one I tended to think of as the voice of reason, and although there were at times many voices that raged in my head, battling for my attention, that voice was the one that I heeded more often than not. And now it slowly it dawned on me that, yet again, that voice was right. I heaved a long sigh that was perhaps more of a groan and collapsed down on the chair that fortuitously happened to be nearby when I’d stopped pacing.

This…he…is what you’ve been searching for… the voice was continuing to whisper, meanwhile, now that it had my complete attention. You knew that two days ago, when you first saw him. For Primus’ sake, Thundercracker, don’t go and rationalize yourself out of what you know is your destiny, what you know is right

And as I sat there, I knew, despite the other voices that yelled to the contrary, that this voice was completely, appallingly, and…well, terrifyingly right. Of course, I had known that already, deep down, without the voice having to tell me so, but it was nice, in a way, to have some sort of confirmation of the inexplicable sense of “rightness” that I’d been feeling for two days now, ever since I had first seen Skywarp…

…I think that maybe it was the way Skywarp moved that had first compelled me to notice him. He had a certain…lightness about him. His confident and carefree personality was reflected in the easy, artless grace that seemed to characterize his every move, even down to the smallest, most insignificant gestures that he made. That had to be it, yes… I mean, it certainly wasn’t his physical appearance that attracted me to Skywarp. But for his color scheme, after all, he looked more or less exactly like me, as did a large number of our Decepticon brethren. But still, there was something ineffably different about Skywarp, at least in my own eyes. And whatever that difference was, it had compelled me to look up from what I had been doing - which at the time had been a terribly mundane ordnance inventory - as Skywarp and several of his comrades had burst through the doors of the armory, a riot of noise and color. They’d been out at the target range, and judging by their high spirits, they’d had a grand time. They had come to the armory to return the rifles they’d used out on the range. I had glanced up as the doors had opened. I did so not because I was necessarily interested in seeing who was coming in - It was the officer-on-duty’s job to collect and inspect the borrowed weapons; my job that day was only to count and catalogue everything in the armory - but simply because… Well, when one hears a loud and unexpected noise, one tends to reflexively look to see what had created it. So I had glanced disinterestedly at the doors as Skywarp and his loud gang of four comrades spilled into the small, claustrophobic armory…

…And I had found myself immediately, inexplicably, and completely mesmerized. The details are still quite fuzzy in my mind and probably always will be, but I clearly remember slowly standing up from the bench upon which I’d been sitting. I recall the sound of the shells that had been scattered across my lap hitting the floor as I stood up. I remember not caring that they had fallen; it hadn’t even occurred to me to pick them up. I remember approaching the counter where the bored officer-on-duty - I hadn’t yet bothered to learn what his name was - was collecting rifles from the new arrivals. I remember just standing there, staring intensely at Skywarp, all of my attention focused solely on him. He had been, at that moment, talking to one of his comrades as they waited for the others to hand in their borrowed photon rifles. With one hand, he held his rifle so that it rested carelessly against the front of his shoulder, the barrel pointing toward the ceiling, while the other hand rested casually on his hip, and his posture, his entire bearing, was completely at ease, relaxed. His comrade had said something to him, and he had thrown back his head and laughed at whatever it was…and I remember thinking, quite fancifully, that his laughter was the sweetest sound that I’d ever heard. I simply stood there watching him, drinking him in, absorbing him…And then suddenly Skywarp was up at the counter, almost close enough to me that I could have reached out and touched him if only I had been bold enough to do so. And then for some reason -perhaps he felt the intensity of my stare or perhaps it was something…greater than that - he looked over at me.

Our gazes met…held…

I don’t know how long Skywarp and I stared at each other like that. To me, it seemed like hours, eternally blissful hours, and during those hours I was drowning in his stare, consumed by it. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. And I felt my spark ever so slightly…shift, I suppose would be the right word. Its rhythmic pulse that I took for granted, that had underscored every moment of the few months of my life so far, halted for a dizzying moment before restarting and then steadying into a rhythm that I could feel was just slightly different somehow from its previous one. I unfroze enough to lay a shaking hand on my midsection, over my spark’s location, and I could have sworn that I felt it radiating an odd warmth through the thick armor that separated it from my hand. Skywarp, meanwhile, smiled slightly at me as he watched me, and his was a smile that…warmed me…

…And then the spell was broken as one of Skywarp’s comrades harrumphed loudly at him, tearing his attention away from me. I wanted to leap across the counter and throttle that comrade of his…but I controlled myself. Barely. Hastily, Skywarp handed his rifle across the counter to the officer-on-duty…and I noticed as he did so that his gaze started to slip toward me again, as if of its own volition. But then his comrades turned to leave the armory, going off to do who-knew-what. Skywarp, at their urging, followed them, although I remember thinking that he did so rather reluctantly, and I noticed that just before the armory doors slid closed behind him, he cast one last look over his shoulder at me, his expression almost…wistful…

But then he was gone. For long moments after Skywarp had left the room, I simply gaped at the closed doors, standing there like an idiot as my thoughts sputtered and whirled drunkenly around in my mind. Dimly, I noted the officer-on-duty giving me an odd look but then shrugging and wandering away to do whatever it was he’d been doing before Skywarp’s party had arrived. I, on the other hand, just continued to stand there, staring at the armory doors. I don’t know how long I stood there, my energon pump hammering frantically at me. It was, I imagined, loud enough to be heard on the other side of Cybertron, and my thoughts were just as loud as they tore through my mind in a dizzying flood. I think I would have stood there for days if it hadn’t been for an unexpected voice that chuckled at me in vast amusement.

Startled, I glanced at its source.

It was one of the warriors who’d come in with Skywarp; I hadn’t noticed that they hadn’t all left with him. This one had remained behind for whatever reason. He was a big, dark blue mass of a warrior, taller and much bulkier than I was, and his face was an unreadable mask illuminated only by a narrow, red optic band across the center of it. A much older warrior than me, he was. Or so it seemed to me, at least, given his somewhat antiquated design and given the patronizing manner in which he eventually spoke to me.

“Ahhhh, so another one falls under his spell, I see…” the warrior commented with unconcealed amusement in his voice.

I just stared at him for a moment, half embarrassed and half indignant.

“What…What do you mean?” I asked, attempting to keep my voice steady, once I had found it.

The warrior just chuckled at me again for a moment, his amusement apparently growing by leaps and bounds with every passing second. He jerked his chin at the doors through which Skywarp had swept a moment before.

“Skywarp,” he said nonchalantly.

That had been the first time I’d heard Skywarp’s name, and I found that upon hearing it, it echoed and ricocheted dizzyingly through my spark for a moment before finally settling down into my mind, into me. I remember that I silently repeated it several times, even, as if to somehow carve it into my being, to make Skywarp’s name a part of who I was.

“He’s got quite the legion of…uh, admirers around here,” the old warrior was continuing, meanwhile, unaware of my thoughts, unaware that the hand of Fate had been resting heavily upon me since I’d had my gaze locked with Skywarp’s, since my spark had reacted to him as if...

…As if it had recognized him…

“He does?” I eventually managed to answer the warrior, and my tone of voice was obviously crestfallen and barely above a whisper. The news that Skywarp already had admiring legions was rather…daunting, after all.

“Ohhhhh, yes,” the warrior had replied with a wide grin in his voice that he couldn’t display on his immobile face. He was quite obviously enjoying himself at my expense. “Many have admired that one since I’ve known him. A select few have even come close to snaring him…but no one’s ever managed to succeed at that.”

I just blinked at the warrior for a long moment, digesting that news, and then for some inexplicable reason I blurted out, “That’s because they weren’t me.”

I hadn’t known at the time where that knowledge came from - and I still don’t - but I knew that it was true. And in response, the older warrior just stared at me for a beat. In the end, I’m sure he probably saw my words as yet another example of the self-aggrandizing boasting that seemed to plague Decepticon Headquarters. But at the same time…I think maybe for a brief moment the old warrior saw or perhaps somehow sensed that my conviction and the words that I’d said came not from my conscious mind…but from the deepest, surest recesses of my spark. Whatever the case, though, the moment passed and he laughed out loud at me. It seemed to me, though, that his laughter had about it a faint whiff of hysteria, that he laughed because he had sensed something beyond his ken and yet refused to acknowledge it as such, preferring instead to belittle it with scathing laughter.

“Kid,” the warrior had commented between bursts of disbelieving laughter, “if you believe that… Well, if you believe that, you’re crazier than Starscream.”

And with that, he had tossed the concussion rifle he’d been examining onto the countertop that separated us, turned on his heel, and left the room, still shaking his head at me and what he perceived, I’m sure, as my foolishness…

And maybe you are crazier than Starscream, one of those dissenting voices in my head taunted me now, suddenly, which served to abruptly pull me from my reverie. Call him, Thundercracker. Call him right now, right this moment. Call Skywarp and tell him not to come, that you’ve had second thoughts, that you’re both being foolish and crazy and reckless if you go through with this now, without even knowing each other, that you’ll both destroy your lives if you do this, that…

But even as I listened to the voice fearfully babbling on and on in my head, I knew that I wouldn’t do as it advised. I wouldn’t call Skywarp. Moreover, it seemed that I couldn’t call Skywarp. I had tried, several times, over the past two days, to do just as the voice was urging me to do, to call everything off. More than a few times, my finger had hovered mere millimeters over the button that would put through just such a call to Skywarp…but something had always compelled me to pull my hand back. Fate, I think it was. For better or worse, I had chosen a path - or rather, both Skywarp and I had chosen it, or it had been chosen for us, or whatever - and now we would just have to see it through. We would have to follow the path to its end…and just hope as we did so that it wouldn’t be a bitter end.

And I wanted to see this…this thing through to that end, whatever that end would be. I wanted that more than anything. I knew that. I didn’t understand it, not at all, but I knew it. With every fiber of my being, I wanted Skywarp. Everything that I was, every part of me was insistently crying out for him. I knew, simply knew, that he was the person who would complete me, and I him. Once joined, we would be one complete being living in two bodies. I knew that with unshakable certainty. Yes, the voices advised against it, some of them stridently so, but I had simply known, from the moment he’d walked through the door of the armory two days before and I had first laid eyes upon him, that Skywarp had to be mine. He simply had to be. I was more certain of that than I had been of anything in my life, as brief as that life had so far been…

…And that idea, the idea that I was meant for Skywarp, that I was meant to be a part of him and that he was meant to be a part of me, had plagued me for the rest of my shift that day, two days ago. I had hardly been able to concentrate on the inventory that had been assigned to me. In fact, my superior had checked in on me and had harangued me quite soundly for my slowness and inattention, particularly because he had caught me staring off into space. I had been busy carefully, lovingly etching into my memory every detail of Skywarp’s appearance instead of working on my assignment.

So, it had taken me much longer than it should have taken to complete that assignment. I stayed in the armory until it was finished, though, working determinedly but distractedly, because I feared leaving it undone in the face of already having been rebuked once that day. But when the inventory was finally done, I trudged wearily out of the armory, my head down, Skywarp still inexplicably weighing heavily on my mind and on my spark. I had just turned to head toward the elevator at the end of the corridor that would whisk me off to the level where I was quartered…when I heard a voice behind me that both thrilled me to my core and filled me with utter terror.

“Finally!” Skywarp’s voice exclaimed suddenly from behind me.

I winced, froze for a moment, and then I turned slowly toward him and stared at him. Skywarp simply stood there, utterly relaxed, his arms folded loosely across his chest, his head tilted a bit to the side, a faint smile playing over his face as he regarded me.

“I thought you’d never get out of there, Thundercracker,” Skywarp was saying casually, meanwhile, apparently oblivious to my rather…dazed state of mind. I just gaped stupidly at him for a long moment…and then it vaguely occurred to me that he had called me by my name.

Fighting to keep my voice from wavering pitifully - an effort at which I did not entirely succeed - I hesitantly asked, “How…how do you know my name?”

It was a stupid question to ask, of course. Skywarp vastly outranked me; he could find out anything that he wanted to find out about me, if he but chose to do so. But I was…flattered - Intrigued? Alarmed? Scared out of my wits? All of the above? - that he had apparently made the effort to find out my name, at least. And besides that, asking him how he knew my name had been the only thing I could think of to say to him…or at least it had been the only coherent and acceptable thing I could think of to say him. The alternative was to say to him something like, “Primus, you are the most gorgeous creature I’ve ever seen in my admittedly brief life. I want you…I love you.”

That last notion had shocked me. Especially because, as I stood there in the corridor staring at Skywarp…Oh, that was the moment - a moment that is and no doubt forever will be crystal-clear in my mind - that I realized that I did love Skywarp. I had loved him instantly, I think, from the moment I’d looked up when the armory doors had opened and he had swept into the room with all the blazing, unmistakable glory of a comet streaking across a clear night sky. And I realized, as I stood there in the corridor staring at Skywarp, that my completely incomprehensible and instantaneous love for him was every bit as deep, every bit as true, as it would have been had I known him for eons and had it taken all of those eons to slowly and rationally fall in love with him.

But it wasn’t a conscious, rational decision I had made, that decision that I was in love with Skywarp. Rather, it seemed as if the decision had been made for me and that perhaps it had been made for me before I even existed. It seemed to me that, for the duration of my brief existence up to that point, I had simply been along for the ride, swept along by the riptide of destiny until it had unceremoniously dumped me there in an empty corridor with the one I was given to love. That moment, in that corridor, when I acknowledged my emotions, when I recognized Skywarp as the other half of me that I hadn’t even known had been missing…that was when I really began to live, I think. Prior to that, I’d simply existed, patiently waiting for Skywarp to come along and make me truly alive.

I wasn’t about to say any of that to Skywarp, however. After all, apparently many people admired and maybe even loved Skywarp. And probably, those others were better than I was, older than I was, more experienced than I was, and much more deserving of his attention and esteem, much less of his affection…his love than I was. Whyever would he take heed of a nondescript, brand-new someone like me? I was doomed, I remember dismally thinking at that moment, doomed to love him from the depths of my spark for the rest of my life…and he would never know… Skywarp, meanwhile, quirked an amused grin at me, accompanying it with a graceful, eloquent shrug.

“Eh, I asked around,” he said lightly, answering a question that I’d almost forgotten that I’d asked. “I figured that it’d be good to know your name and all…”

There was suddenly an odd edge to Skywarp’s voice, one that made me…wary, I suppose. His words were casual enough, and his tone was supremely confident, of course…yet there was an indescribable something to it, as well, something that I immediately detected but couldn’t quite process. It was almost as if he was being too casual. It was a diversion, perhaps. A diversion from what, I had to wonder…and then it dawned on me that he must have been waiting for me to leave the armory, to be done with my duties for the day, in order to speak with me. And whatever the reason was that he was waiting for me, it had to be somewhat important. Otherwise, why would he have waited extra time, no less, for me? I was sure that he had other, better things to do to than to wait around for me…

And then I suddenly felt dizzy as I wondered if he had waited for me because… No, it couldn’t be, I had automatically thought. The idea that Skywarp might be feeling as I was feeling was completely ludicrous… Wasn’t it? I didn’t know…but it occurred to me that I should probably find out.

“Why?” I asked shakily of Skywarp. “Why did you need to know my name?”

That odd smile was still playing over Skywarp’s face as I asked the question. It widened a little as I spoke, illuminating his face with a radiance I can’t accurately describe except to say that it thoroughly weakened my knees, so much so that I suddenly wished there was a convenient wall nearby to lean against for support. But I was in the middle of the corridor, so I simply willed myself not to collapse into an undignified puddle before him…

“Ohhhhh, I think you know exactly why, Thundercracker,” Skywarp was practically purring at me, meanwhile.

I took a few steps backward, away from Skywarp, as he said that, as a dizzying conglomeration of emotions - shock, fear, confusion, pleasure, desire, and an utterly confusing chaos of others - stampeded its way through my consciousness in an overwhelming rush.

He can’t possibly mean what I think he means…I remember insistently thinking to myself, over and over again, but aloud I only stammered, “I…I…do?”

Skywarp chuckled at that, shaking his head bemusedly at me…and then slowly, ever so slowly, he approached me, moving with that light, effortless grace that was distinctly his, that I knew I would never tire of watching. He steadily closed the half-dozen meters that separated us until he was close enough to me that it would certainly be considered an invasion of my personal space. And what surprised me the most was that I didn’t shrink away from that invasion. The thought certainly occurred to me to back away…but I found, to my surprise, that I really didn’t want to back away from him at all. In fact, much to my shock, I realized that my first unconscious impulse had been to move closer to him… But I didn’t. I just stood there, frozen in place. And he stood there, as well, just out of arm’s reach, and simply watched me as I fought to control the thoughts, the desires, that were merrily rampaging through my mind simply because he was physically close to me.

“Oh, yes,” Skywarp asserted with a decisive nod after he watched me for that long moment. “Yes, you do know, Thundercracker. I wasn’t quite sure before, but… Now I’m sure.”

He paused for a long moment, during which he stared intensely at me, and then he finished quite casually, as if to belie the enormity of what he was going to say, “I’d say it’s a good thing to know the name of one’s future bondmate. Wouldn’t you agree?”

At that, I did shrink away from him, and as I did so, I had to fight back the impulse to convert my surprised gasp into a shout of alarm.

“Ex-Excuse me?” I stammered instead, staring wildly at Skywarp as I backed a few clumsy steps down the corridor. “I…I don’t think I heard you right…”

“Oh, you heard me right,” Skywarp asserted firmly. When I just looked at him with an expression on my face that must have spoken of utter disbelief, he added, “Aw, come on, Thundercracker! Don’t even try to tell me you didn’t feel it earlier today, back in there!” he exclaimed, jerking his chin expressively at the armory doors. And then he continued solemnly, his voice lowered conspiratorially. “I did, you know. I felt it right here,” he said, and he laid a hand on the right side of his midsection, where his spark must have been housed. So he had felt that shift, too…

“You…did?” I echoed dully, still stunned, as I stared wide-eyed at him. At that moment, I was thankful for my deep, gravelly voice. Deep, gravelly voices weren’t given to squeaking in alarm, after all.

“I did,” Skywarp confirmed calmly, with a decisive nod. And as he continued to speak, he once again closed the distance between us, this time approaching more closely even than he had before. “I looked at you…and I just…knew. And I knew that you knew, too. I don’t understand it. I don’t understand it at all, and I won’t pretend to understand it. Others have caught my eye before. Many others, in fact, over the years. But you, Thundercracker…Well, you’ve caught more than my eye, you see…”

And it was then that he reached out to me, touched me. It was just a light touch, his fingertips running up and down the length of my forearm, barely making contact, but I found that it was infinitely…stimulating. No one had ever touched me before, certainly not like that. And I never realized that a simple touch could evoke such emotions, the helpless longing that was suddenly raging through my mind as Skywarp lightly stroked my arm. It was all I could do to prevent myself from reaching out to him, pulling him to me…

Unaware, perhaps, of what was going through my head, Skywarp eventually intertwined the fingers of that teasing hand with mine and quietly, sincerely confessed, “I spent all of today thinking about you, Thundercracker. I found that I couldn’t think about anything else if I wanted to. And now, at the end of the day…Now, I know that I love you. I don’t know why or how, and I’m not even going to try to figure out why. I just know that I do, even though it’s totally crazy. And I know that I have to have you, too. And only you. Forever.”

I nodded helplessly; he had indeed reached the same conclusion that I had reached that day.

“I know,” I murmured longingly, my voice shuddering. “I know that, too… but -“

“No, Thundercracker,” Skywarp interrupted gently, seeing my obvious hesitation. “No ‘buts.’ Don’t question it. I’m not going to. I’ve learned to trust my instincts. ”

Whereas I didn’t trust my instincts as far as I could throw them, of course, preferring instead to follow a course of action dictated by more careful and rational thinking… But I wasn’t about to tell Skywarp that, of course. Especially because in this case, despite the fact that a significant portion of my being was screaming in horrified protest, I knew deep down in the depths of my spark that my instincts…and Skywarp’s…were right this time. My mind whirled with an odd combination of awe, jubilation, and terror at the thought. I had to fight the urge to lean against Skywarp for support; I had more than an inkling of what would happen if I did that, and that certainly wasn’t something I wanted to do in a public corridor…

But I loved him. And now I knew he loved me. We would be bondmates, Skywarp and me. The very thought was overwhelming, especially because I suddenly knew it would happen very soon…

“When?” I asked softly, dazedly, and I realized I’d said it aloud only when Skywarp looked at me askance. I vaguely thought that perhaps he’d been expecting more of a fight from me…but then I realized that he’d just misinterpreted what I’d meant.

“When did I learn to trust my instincts?” he asked, blinking in temporary confusion.

I chuckled at that, my unease loosening its hold on my thoughts a little bit, for just a moment…and then I spoke, before I could think about it and therefore think the better of it.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, I meant…Well, when do we do…uh, it?”

Skywarp just looked at me for a moment, surprise registering in his expression. And then he smiled lecherously at me. He has the most dazzling smile, I found myself distractedly thinking, and then, shyly, I reached out to him and lightly traced with one finger the line of his smiling lips…and his smile only widened in response.

“And here I’d been told that you can be indecisive,” Skywarp said merrily, chuckling softly at me.

He had been asking around about me, apparently, if he knew that…although I wondered who in the world would know about my tendency to be…deliberative, as I chose to call it. I had only very recently joined the Decepticons, after all. It was somewhat…unsettling…that someone already knew that much about my personality. It momentarily gave me pause…but I determinedly put it all out of my mind for the moment, in order to concentrate on Skywarp. Paranoia, I decided, could wait…

“I’m glad to see that’s not totally true,” Skywarp was continuing, running his thumb lightly along the inside of my palm. “And I checked our respective schedules, actually. Just in case I was right about you and we decided to…you know… We have three consecutive days off in common, starting two days from now… Three days should be enough time to…”

His voice trailed off almost uncertainly, which I hadn’t really expected. He had struck me as someone who would never be uncertain about anything. I had much to learn about him, indeed…and I found that I relished the notion. With him, I suddenly knew that, at the very least, I’d never be bored...

“Three days of…” I whispered wonderingly.

“Three days of…that, yes,” he answered with a nod and an amused, affectionate smile.

“But first I have to wait for two days?”

Skywarp chuckled at me and confirmed, “Yes, first we have to wait two days. Best I could do.” And then, letting go of my hand, he ran the fingertips of that hand lightly down my cheek and whispered, “I promise you that it’ll be worth the wait, Thundercracker. I’ll see you then.”

I just stared at him, dazed, unable to speak. I felt oddly numb except for the path that

Skywarp’s fingers had followed down my cheek, which blazed not unpleasantly at me, with the heat of a thousand smelters. And then he was leaving, moving away from me, and I could only stand there, frozen, watching him walk away. He looked back at me just once…and then he disappeared around a corner. It was then that I backed into the wall behind me, sank down slowly, weakly against it until I found myself huddled on the floor, my arms wrapped around my knees. Half-excited, half-terrified shudders ran their way through my body as I sat there, staring at the wall across from me. I couldn’t believe what I had just agreed to do…

…And I still don’t believe it now, two days later. I had seen Skywarp but once after that encounter in the corridor, and at that time we had been amongst others and so all that we’d said to each other, all that we’d agreed upon, was that Skywarp would come to me. It made sense, after all; I, as a new recruit, wasn’t yet entrusted with free rein of the installation while Skywarp could go anywhere he pleased. And so…here I was…in my cramped little quarters…waiting…. I hated waiting. Or at least, I hated waiting in this instance. Normally, I was a very patient person, content to sit still and wait when most others, I had discovered over the brief length of my existence, would at least begin to fidget. But this… The two days of waiting had stretched even my patience to the breaking point. Those two days had seemed to pass more slowly than my entire life before them. I had spent them in a distracted daze, mechanically going through my duties but pausing often to think about Skywarp, wondering what he was doing and thinking at the moment that I was thinking about him. Most of the time during those two days, my mind had been capable of contemplating only Skywarp, of anticipating what would happen in the very near future…until at some point during those two days, I came to believe that they would never pass, that I’d managed to end up in some sort of bizarre time loop, one that cursed me to relive those two days over and over again, never reaching the end of them.

But now…

Now Skywarp would arrive at any moment, and my emotions were a self-conflicted mass that sat rumbling in my head, alternately encouraging and heckling me. I offered up a silent prayer that Skywarp would arrive soon…or else he might arrive to find me nothing but a babbling lunatic, huddled in a corner and overwhelmed by the loud and conflicted voices in his head…

And apparently someone heeded my prayer, since it was then that a soft chime sounded, indicating that someone was outside my door, seeking admittance. It couldn’t have been anyone but Skywarp, but I nevertheless sat there in my chair a moment longer, working through my final deliberations. Half of me wanted to race to the door and unceremoniously leap upon Skywarp while the other half…the other half wanted to run in terror in the opposite direction. I ended up managing to banish entirely the latter impulse while simultaneously reining in the former so that I could manage a small - very small - degree of decorum…I hoped…