Fic
Title: Borealis 74/92: Sigh No More - Part IV
Author: tainry
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money.
Rating: PG -13
Characters/Pairing(s): Ensemble, Blades/Prowl
Warnings: PnP/spark, OC
Summary: Wherein Borealis has thinks and feels, Prime navel-gazes, the nature-bots hang out, and Blades and Prowl have a snuggle.
Notes: Thusly there will be a fifth part. ::palm:: But at least this way I'm making progress! XD Special thanks to sakon76 for an assist with Matrix-bearer names. <3
~3100 words.
Part I
Part II
Part III
BOREALIS: Sigh No More - Part IV
2043 - March
She was outbound again for another long pull, ferrying a load of space-bridge emitters to Cybertron. Orris had elected to go with her this time. He would be the first of the minicons to see their homeworld since the minicons had emigrated. He knew it wasn’t going to be pleasant, but he was curious - as much about what his own reaction would be as what the planet actually looked like to his bare sensors.
For her part, Borealis liked these seven-month jaunts. She was in space! Usually by herself! Like an ADULT! Navigating pulsar by pulsar, running her sensortips along the feathery edges of graviton waves. So many signals rode the non-Euclidean surfaces of the deeps; networks of civilizations she was not a part of and had little contact with. Not yet, anyway. She was a member of a pariah species, for now. That was okay. Just knowing others were out there was enough to make up for a lot.
For Ixchel it had made up for everything, really.
Orris was in light stasis, and would be for another few weeks. He wasn’t as fond of stretches of solitude, even ones so brief. Borealis didn’t mind. She had plenty of things to think about.
She unfolded the pale, still moment when Ratchet’s spark had faltered. Helpless was a state she thought she’d left behind, but she’d been terrified, pacing outside the med-bay, grasping after but not finding a way to cope with the knowledge that she would feel the moment of his death. She felt adrift and mortal. Twenty-eight years as a Cybertronian was far too short a span - Ixchel had been fifty-one when she’d died - though she should be grateful for even that much. She was…she had experienced so many wonders already…but she didn’t want it to end yet. She didn’t want Ratchet or any of the others to die either, no matter how much older they were. People died in wars. Most of Cybertron already had. And most of the dead wanted to stay that way.
Voice wouldn’t carry in the void, and she didn’t want to disturb Orris. She flared her fields wide in sorrow and worry and fear and anger, striking out across the EM spectrum.
After several hours of field-lashing, however, she began to feel vaguely ridiculous. Go cry in a corner, emo kid. She sleeked herself down and flew on.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
2043 - April
He folded his legs beneath him. Not as neatly as the digitigrade Seekers could, but it served as a mindful pose Prime could hold in meditation without engaging his articulation locks; balancing his torso and all its parts just so. He thought about how breathing and heartbeat informed so much of what humans did and thought and how they stilled their minds, and how different that was from the spin of a spark and the constant shusssh of energon and coolant pumps, of which, because his body was large, he had many. Spin and flow, tideless, constant, steady. There were oscillations in Cybertronian bodies, but of different kinds than the oceanic changes humans took for granted.
He settled his mind into calm and quiet. No active scans, only receiving. Even here on the mesa top, dulling his outward senses entirely would be a foolish risk. The Allspark had sent out its homing cry once every thousand years when it had been separated from the planet and the people it had created. Optimus considered that he ought to therefore be prepared to observe it on that time scale. He would never again be able to slip away from his entourage, into the Simfur temple at night and press himself against the cube to feel its comforting warmth and presence.
He thought about Prowl’s request of the Allspark; about embodying it and what his responsibilities therefore had grown to encompass. A soul of souls. His consciousness expanded, contracted, slipped between to that strange multiplicity of planes where most of the Allspark resided. It had become easier, though not yet a journey to be lightly undertaken.
Voices, patterns, names rose and coalesced out of the glimmering undark to greet him. The Matrix - separate but connected - resonated with him/them; seven of the sixteen Primes bestirring themselves to observe and comment upon what the youngest member of their cadre was up to this time. Optimus did not have to travel this path alone.
Ahead (Optimus had the odd sensation that he was beginning to think of the Allspark as having a bipedal shape. Or a Cybertronian landscape on the surface of a bipedal Cybertronian shape - as Sam had once said, if you were a car, then life really was a highway) lay a bruised and disconnected region. The very substance/energy felt thinned, fractured. Galvatron’s moiety. Was the power of the Allspark truly infinite or merely staggeringly immense? Could Galvatron drain it? Was he trying to? It could heal itself, rebuild itself, given time. Could Optimus really aid it? Vector Prime seemed to think so. Healer of sparks. All sparks - all sparks are one, all are linked, all come from this, return to this, the ultimate mother-pattern.
Mother. Spark-merge. He’d already done that, in a way. But maybe not in the right way? The old way. Vector’s way! Oh Primus! The field of stars/sparks opened around him as he dropped deep, opening himself wide and wild, surrendering to first principles, choosing the direction and speed - the vector - of kindness and care; to heal, to make whole again, to join the sundered pieces.
Told you… Volant laughed.
The intent, the choosing, was only the beginning. Energy, life, had to come from somewhere, could be redirected. Would the entire life-energy of a single spark be enough? The Primes in the Matrix reared up in alarm. Not so hasty, young one!
He didn’t get those self-sacrificial instincts from me…
Obviously not. The vast sarcasm of a Prime dead for seven billion years is vast indeed.
Little steps, Optimus, said Galena Prime gently. Have patience. The healing can be as well accomplished over time.
How much time? Optimus wondered how much the deceased Primes understood linear, chronological time any more. How much time did he have? Galvatron’s moiety grew with each miskindling.
Oh Primus, here comes old Brightaft, said Zeta.
Flight, intoned Effulgent Prime, using the glyph for flight-of-the-body rather than flight-within-another's-body or flight-of-spark. The branching path. Distance is all, distance is nothing. Find the answer in the wheel, though wings will follow. The Prime's pattern trembled, caught between the tines of hope and anxiety.
There, there, Gen, Palladium, who had been Prime before Volant, murmured, sweeping his pattern through Effulgent's.
Worlds eating worlds, Effulgent whispered, calm, resigned. You are the laser, I am the shield.
Optimus reeled with overwhelming fondness for the ancient, often incomprehensible Prime. Effulgent had been the third, after Nova and Guardian, and he rarely spoke any more. Optimus loved them all so much, these dear, unquiet dead; his inner companions since soon after his kindling. They'd kept him sane through the war. He had sometimes wondered if the Lord Protector shouldn't have had a Matrix of his own. Perhaps. Or perhaps each Lord Protector needed their own singularity, needed that swiftness of thought and resolve. They weren't supposed to be identical twins, they were supposed to balance. And yet, would not Megatron have taken comfort and wisdom from the presence of earlier Protectors?
Of course now it was too late. To force such a thing upon Galvatron might only drive him more mad.
All will become dark and quiet, Effulgent said, pulsing in an absently affectionate way through Palladium.
I will pass you on to the next Prime long before then, Optimus assured them. His spark would never join with theirs in the Matrix in any case. His Primacy would be a gap within that artifact's memory, a sore place that could never heal.
Not entirely, Volant said. There will be an echo of you, through us. We'll remember you, kiddo.
That was a comfort. Everything he had learned would not be entirely lost. Still, he would have to face the long dark more completely alone than he'd ever been. The best he could hope for was eternal stasis. The thought of being conscious and aware as the last black holes evaporated, the last neutron stars stopped spinning, and as proton decay unraveled matter itself horrified him beyond rationality.
Optimus…speak with Perceptor of your fears, said Plenum thoughtfully. Plenum had had a talent for forecasting not unlike Effulgent’s and Prowl’s.
Yes! Optimus felt hope rush through his mind and body. If anyone can figure out how to kill me, it will be Perceptor.
That’s not what he meant! Volant shouted. Bastion, Lustral and Maximal figuratively threw their hands in the air, and Zeta laughed at everyone.
Optimus wanted to ask for further clarification, but suddenly felt the pinch, and the rending of another mass kindling of Galvatron’s new legion. This time he followed the cold, cruel, iron bands of Galvatron’s will; saw in one incandescent glance the imperatives by which the warlord coerced the Allspark to produce the forms he desired to entrap the unwilling sparks of the fallen.
Not this time.
Did you really forget, brother? All life matters to me. All Cybertronians are my people.
The kindling struck clear and true, new sparks coalescing from the infinite possibilities. The backlash knocked Galvatron off his feet and into stasis.
…
Arcee walked around him slowly. She wasn’t certain she should interrupt whatever he was doing. The feathery patterns of ice crystals were growing up his arms and legs, almost to his torso. She rested a hand on his forearm, then rubbed it gently, brushing the frost away.
Prime. She rubbed harder. Optimus?
Mm? Hello, Arcee. His optics flickered on.
Come inside. You’re going to get your aft frozen to the rock up here.
He looked down at her hand on his arm. At the frost muting his colors. Turning his arm over, he spread the fingers of that hand, watching the shimmer of moonlight on the crystals. Arcee jerked her hand away as heat rushed beneath it, melting the frost in seconds, wisping the remaining moisture away as steam. She blinked up at him.
“Neat trick.”
“It is the same as Ratchet or Perceptor channeling warmth to their hands.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know you could do that too.”
“Neither did I.” He rose to his feet. “Arcee?”
“Yeah?”
“Please don’t tell Sam.”
She laughed and headed for the “ladder” down. “You just don’t want to get put on the popcorn duty roster.”
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
2043 - August
“So, anyway, Rutile says he and Umbel want to make a greenhouse of Earth plants on Cybertron.” Trailbreaker waved his hands in broad circles. “Big arboretum kind of thing. And then Grapple gets wind of it, and already he’s got domes the size of the second moon planned.”
“Just domes?” Groove asked, grinning. “Last I heard, Grapple was having raptures about Art Nouveau and wanted to complete the Sagrada Familia as a warm-up before starting something really big.”
“Mmmmmm,” said Beachcomber. “Gaudi.”
“It’s pretty,” Trailbreaker agreed. “But if he puts up any more wrought iron in your base I don’t think you’ll be able to move.”
“Most of the non-structural stuff is recycled plastic, not iron,” Beachcomber said absently.
“Okay, whatever,” Trailbreaker shrugged. “But first you guys hollowed out the entry so Skyfire could come in out of the rain and then Grapple installs so many lacy beams and trusses poor ‘Fire daren’t move once he’s in for fear of tangling his wings.”
“It’s not that bad,” said Miles. “Skyfire only had to duck that one time, and then Grapple moved that piece.”
Hound pretended to ignore them, (though he was actually keenly interested, or had been, while they were talking botany), reading early-21st-century Thundercats porn. Tygra was hot. Hound had also read a late 20th-century science fiction novel wherein a Siberian Tiger had represented Earth in an intergalactic beauty pageant. Hound had to agree it was a logical choice. He’d wheedled Perceptor into doing a genetic survey on the surviving big cats shortly after Perceptor’s team had arrived on Earth. Not that it had taken much wheedling, really. Perceptor was just as eager, taking the status of endangered species kind of personally, as the Autobots all rather tended to do these days, despite Vector’s assurances.
Trailbreaker threw another rock at him. Beachcomber had managed to work himself into a startlingly lazy sort of headstand against the sloping canyon wall, with Miles balanced on one of his feet. The inclusion of the human in the nature-mechs’ gatherings had become a more and more frequent occurrence over the years. No one minded, and it wasn’t that much more trouble to be careful about trajectories and ricochets when throwing the traditional rocks. Groove bounced one off Trailbreaker’s thigh plate, making a satisfying clongg! which caused Hound to look up from his porn for a minute and snicker.
(Miles had deduced fairly quickly that this rock throwing business was remarkably akin to a farting or burping contest. It had taken him slightly longer to learn to appreciate the subtleties of the various sounds thus produced, and the scoring system - admittedly this changed rapidly and unpredictably - for direct or indirect hits on various bits of anatomy.)
“Aren’t the Russians and the Build Team commissioning him to make a lot of new gingerbread for the tube stations they’re rebuilding in Moscow?” Hound asked. The Russian capital had been a bright spot in Eastern Europe and had therefore been one of the Vivisector’s targets. The city and kilometers of the surrounding suburbs had been cut in half. Like the inhabitants of most such cities, the Muscovites were already rebuilding over most of the slagged canyon, but were leaving a section to remember by and building a memorial park around it dedicated to the thousands killed.
“Yeah,” said Groove. “He’s basing a lot of it on stuff from St. Petersburg.” Another bright spot, but fortunately the older parts of the city had been spared. The Russians in general had endured these past four long, grinding winters with aplomb. Snow made their country more beautiful and they’d had experience with famine.
Hound got a dreamy expression on his face. “So if Grapple gets involved with Rutile’s arboretum project, we could have spires of glass and tri-luminum filled with green. And humans could come and live in them.” It would be nice to have more places on Cybertron friendly to breathing things, instead of just Embassy Row in Iacon and the Well Market in Polyhex.
Miles looked at him. Maybe becoming a centenarian wouldn’t be enough. He’d need another decade or three. Living in a glassed-in habitat might strike some as uncomfortably close to living in a zoo, but Miles thought it would be a pretty interesting zoo.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
One thing both humans and Cybertronians appreciated was a good long soak after a hard day. Blades was no rebel in this respect. Only his tipped-back head kept him from sliding completely under the oil at the middle-deep end of the bathing pool. His rotors were fanned out, waving gently - the only part of his body in motion at the moment. So warm, so good, soaking all the way through every hinge and bearing and gimbal and rotator assembly.
He vaguely heard someone walking down the ramp. Nothing wrong with his hearing, he just wasn’t paying that much attention. And it didn’t really matter who it was, did it, as long as it wasn’t Slingshot. Didn’t sound like his gait, so that was as far as Blades got, cognition-wise. He felt the waves through the oil as the other mech waded in, came closer, immersed, spent some time scrubbing, immersed again. In silence. Even the mech’s fields were held close so as not to disturb Blades. There was a familiar feel to the silence, as there had been a familiar feel to the footsteps, but Blades had done his one little bit of processing and then let it drop.
Blades’ awareness shimmered, half slipping into recharge, dipping in and out of consciousness. A hand touched him high on his back, beneath the rotors, steadying him before he dropped entirely into the oil. Not that he would drown or anything, but hitting the bottom from that angle would jar his rotors some and that wouldn’t be a fun way to wake up. He lit his optics.
“’Lo, Prowl,” he murmured. His spark gave a happy little whirl. Prowl’s optics brightened at him, which was one species of Prowl-smile. Without thinking, Blades curled an arm around his progenitor, rolling on his side to meet him.
Once Blades kissed Prowl, he found he didn’t want to stop. “Mm. Mmmmm… Prowl… Prrrrwl…” Prowl’s name, spoken aloud between kisses made for a wonderful purr. He cupped Prowl’s helm, thumb tracking half-circles over an audial, and pressed his body against his progenitor’s, revving engine, spinning spark, his other hand stroking that lean, deadly body. Prowl’s armor overlapped more than most Autobots’, making it more difficult - but oh so worth it - to get at the sensitive places. Prowl’s beautiful silver hands settled on Blades’ waist; Prowl moved his entire torso against Blades’, flexing his fields and deepening their kiss. Blades clutched at him, gasping as Prowl’s cables thunked into Blades’ ports, the link like fire and thundering wind, the weightlessness at the peak of a parabolic arc. Blades arched his back, mouth open wide, oh Primus, hot as re-entry on a ship’s hull; he shook, chest parting under Prowl’s hands and mouth, corona blazing, reaching its pale amber arms for the blinding silver of its parent star.
Their shields keeping the oil from boiling away, they collided in midair, gravity swinging them around, bodies like planetary cores coalescing; a molten, singing dynamo. The wings of their radiation brushed the limits of the cavern and beyond, arcing and overlapping, enveloping them in incandescent coils. Blue lightning rang like solar flares striking the Earth’s magnetosphere.
Blades’ last coherent sensation was of Prowl easing him to the bottom of the pool, making sure his rotors lay smoothly along his back.
…
Big engine rumbling warm. Motion; a lifting, a little bounce to settle the load, long swing and sway of footsteps. Hot Spot kissed their helms and left them entwined on a table in the recharge bay.
…
To awaken from recharge to the feel of Prowl’s body pressed to his made Blades’ core temperature rise slow and contented. To online his optics to find that Prowl was himself only just coming out of recharge as well made Blades’ spark spin with happiness. Prowl had let himself sleep! In Blades’ arms!
Part V
Table of Contents
.
Author: tainry
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money.
Rating: PG -13
Characters/Pairing(s): Ensemble, Blades/Prowl
Warnings: PnP/spark, OC
Summary: Wherein Borealis has thinks and feels, Prime navel-gazes, the nature-bots hang out, and Blades and Prowl have a snuggle.
Notes: Thusly there will be a fifth part. ::palm:: But at least this way I'm making progress! XD Special thanks to sakon76 for an assist with Matrix-bearer names. <3
~3100 words.
Part I
Part II
Part III
BOREALIS: Sigh No More - Part IV
2043 - March
She was outbound again for another long pull, ferrying a load of space-bridge emitters to Cybertron. Orris had elected to go with her this time. He would be the first of the minicons to see their homeworld since the minicons had emigrated. He knew it wasn’t going to be pleasant, but he was curious - as much about what his own reaction would be as what the planet actually looked like to his bare sensors.
For her part, Borealis liked these seven-month jaunts. She was in space! Usually by herself! Like an ADULT! Navigating pulsar by pulsar, running her sensortips along the feathery edges of graviton waves. So many signals rode the non-Euclidean surfaces of the deeps; networks of civilizations she was not a part of and had little contact with. Not yet, anyway. She was a member of a pariah species, for now. That was okay. Just knowing others were out there was enough to make up for a lot.
For Ixchel it had made up for everything, really.
Orris was in light stasis, and would be for another few weeks. He wasn’t as fond of stretches of solitude, even ones so brief. Borealis didn’t mind. She had plenty of things to think about.
She unfolded the pale, still moment when Ratchet’s spark had faltered. Helpless was a state she thought she’d left behind, but she’d been terrified, pacing outside the med-bay, grasping after but not finding a way to cope with the knowledge that she would feel the moment of his death. She felt adrift and mortal. Twenty-eight years as a Cybertronian was far too short a span - Ixchel had been fifty-one when she’d died - though she should be grateful for even that much. She was…she had experienced so many wonders already…but she didn’t want it to end yet. She didn’t want Ratchet or any of the others to die either, no matter how much older they were. People died in wars. Most of Cybertron already had. And most of the dead wanted to stay that way.
Voice wouldn’t carry in the void, and she didn’t want to disturb Orris. She flared her fields wide in sorrow and worry and fear and anger, striking out across the EM spectrum.
After several hours of field-lashing, however, she began to feel vaguely ridiculous. Go cry in a corner, emo kid. She sleeked herself down and flew on.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
2043 - April
He folded his legs beneath him. Not as neatly as the digitigrade Seekers could, but it served as a mindful pose Prime could hold in meditation without engaging his articulation locks; balancing his torso and all its parts just so. He thought about how breathing and heartbeat informed so much of what humans did and thought and how they stilled their minds, and how different that was from the spin of a spark and the constant shusssh of energon and coolant pumps, of which, because his body was large, he had many. Spin and flow, tideless, constant, steady. There were oscillations in Cybertronian bodies, but of different kinds than the oceanic changes humans took for granted.
He settled his mind into calm and quiet. No active scans, only receiving. Even here on the mesa top, dulling his outward senses entirely would be a foolish risk. The Allspark had sent out its homing cry once every thousand years when it had been separated from the planet and the people it had created. Optimus considered that he ought to therefore be prepared to observe it on that time scale. He would never again be able to slip away from his entourage, into the Simfur temple at night and press himself against the cube to feel its comforting warmth and presence.
He thought about Prowl’s request of the Allspark; about embodying it and what his responsibilities therefore had grown to encompass. A soul of souls. His consciousness expanded, contracted, slipped between to that strange multiplicity of planes where most of the Allspark resided. It had become easier, though not yet a journey to be lightly undertaken.
Voices, patterns, names rose and coalesced out of the glimmering undark to greet him. The Matrix - separate but connected - resonated with him/them; seven of the sixteen Primes bestirring themselves to observe and comment upon what the youngest member of their cadre was up to this time. Optimus did not have to travel this path alone.
Ahead (Optimus had the odd sensation that he was beginning to think of the Allspark as having a bipedal shape. Or a Cybertronian landscape on the surface of a bipedal Cybertronian shape - as Sam had once said, if you were a car, then life really was a highway) lay a bruised and disconnected region. The very substance/energy felt thinned, fractured. Galvatron’s moiety. Was the power of the Allspark truly infinite or merely staggeringly immense? Could Galvatron drain it? Was he trying to? It could heal itself, rebuild itself, given time. Could Optimus really aid it? Vector Prime seemed to think so. Healer of sparks. All sparks - all sparks are one, all are linked, all come from this, return to this, the ultimate mother-pattern.
Mother. Spark-merge. He’d already done that, in a way. But maybe not in the right way? The old way. Vector’s way! Oh Primus! The field of stars/sparks opened around him as he dropped deep, opening himself wide and wild, surrendering to first principles, choosing the direction and speed - the vector - of kindness and care; to heal, to make whole again, to join the sundered pieces.
Told you… Volant laughed.
The intent, the choosing, was only the beginning. Energy, life, had to come from somewhere, could be redirected. Would the entire life-energy of a single spark be enough? The Primes in the Matrix reared up in alarm. Not so hasty, young one!
He didn’t get those self-sacrificial instincts from me…
Obviously not. The vast sarcasm of a Prime dead for seven billion years is vast indeed.
Little steps, Optimus, said Galena Prime gently. Have patience. The healing can be as well accomplished over time.
How much time? Optimus wondered how much the deceased Primes understood linear, chronological time any more. How much time did he have? Galvatron’s moiety grew with each miskindling.
Oh Primus, here comes old Brightaft, said Zeta.
Flight, intoned Effulgent Prime, using the glyph for flight-of-the-body rather than flight-within-another's-body or flight-of-spark. The branching path. Distance is all, distance is nothing. Find the answer in the wheel, though wings will follow. The Prime's pattern trembled, caught between the tines of hope and anxiety.
There, there, Gen, Palladium, who had been Prime before Volant, murmured, sweeping his pattern through Effulgent's.
Worlds eating worlds, Effulgent whispered, calm, resigned. You are the laser, I am the shield.
Optimus reeled with overwhelming fondness for the ancient, often incomprehensible Prime. Effulgent had been the third, after Nova and Guardian, and he rarely spoke any more. Optimus loved them all so much, these dear, unquiet dead; his inner companions since soon after his kindling. They'd kept him sane through the war. He had sometimes wondered if the Lord Protector shouldn't have had a Matrix of his own. Perhaps. Or perhaps each Lord Protector needed their own singularity, needed that swiftness of thought and resolve. They weren't supposed to be identical twins, they were supposed to balance. And yet, would not Megatron have taken comfort and wisdom from the presence of earlier Protectors?
Of course now it was too late. To force such a thing upon Galvatron might only drive him more mad.
All will become dark and quiet, Effulgent said, pulsing in an absently affectionate way through Palladium.
I will pass you on to the next Prime long before then, Optimus assured them. His spark would never join with theirs in the Matrix in any case. His Primacy would be a gap within that artifact's memory, a sore place that could never heal.
Not entirely, Volant said. There will be an echo of you, through us. We'll remember you, kiddo.
That was a comfort. Everything he had learned would not be entirely lost. Still, he would have to face the long dark more completely alone than he'd ever been. The best he could hope for was eternal stasis. The thought of being conscious and aware as the last black holes evaporated, the last neutron stars stopped spinning, and as proton decay unraveled matter itself horrified him beyond rationality.
Optimus…speak with Perceptor of your fears, said Plenum thoughtfully. Plenum had had a talent for forecasting not unlike Effulgent’s and Prowl’s.
Yes! Optimus felt hope rush through his mind and body. If anyone can figure out how to kill me, it will be Perceptor.
That’s not what he meant! Volant shouted. Bastion, Lustral and Maximal figuratively threw their hands in the air, and Zeta laughed at everyone.
Optimus wanted to ask for further clarification, but suddenly felt the pinch, and the rending of another mass kindling of Galvatron’s new legion. This time he followed the cold, cruel, iron bands of Galvatron’s will; saw in one incandescent glance the imperatives by which the warlord coerced the Allspark to produce the forms he desired to entrap the unwilling sparks of the fallen.
Not this time.
Did you really forget, brother? All life matters to me. All Cybertronians are my people.
The kindling struck clear and true, new sparks coalescing from the infinite possibilities. The backlash knocked Galvatron off his feet and into stasis.
…
Arcee walked around him slowly. She wasn’t certain she should interrupt whatever he was doing. The feathery patterns of ice crystals were growing up his arms and legs, almost to his torso. She rested a hand on his forearm, then rubbed it gently, brushing the frost away.
Prime. She rubbed harder. Optimus?
Mm? Hello, Arcee. His optics flickered on.
Come inside. You’re going to get your aft frozen to the rock up here.
He looked down at her hand on his arm. At the frost muting his colors. Turning his arm over, he spread the fingers of that hand, watching the shimmer of moonlight on the crystals. Arcee jerked her hand away as heat rushed beneath it, melting the frost in seconds, wisping the remaining moisture away as steam. She blinked up at him.
“Neat trick.”
“It is the same as Ratchet or Perceptor channeling warmth to their hands.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know you could do that too.”
“Neither did I.” He rose to his feet. “Arcee?”
“Yeah?”
“Please don’t tell Sam.”
She laughed and headed for the “ladder” down. “You just don’t want to get put on the popcorn duty roster.”
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
2043 - August
“So, anyway, Rutile says he and Umbel want to make a greenhouse of Earth plants on Cybertron.” Trailbreaker waved his hands in broad circles. “Big arboretum kind of thing. And then Grapple gets wind of it, and already he’s got domes the size of the second moon planned.”
“Just domes?” Groove asked, grinning. “Last I heard, Grapple was having raptures about Art Nouveau and wanted to complete the Sagrada Familia as a warm-up before starting something really big.”
“Mmmmmm,” said Beachcomber. “Gaudi.”
“It’s pretty,” Trailbreaker agreed. “But if he puts up any more wrought iron in your base I don’t think you’ll be able to move.”
“Most of the non-structural stuff is recycled plastic, not iron,” Beachcomber said absently.
“Okay, whatever,” Trailbreaker shrugged. “But first you guys hollowed out the entry so Skyfire could come in out of the rain and then Grapple installs so many lacy beams and trusses poor ‘Fire daren’t move once he’s in for fear of tangling his wings.”
“It’s not that bad,” said Miles. “Skyfire only had to duck that one time, and then Grapple moved that piece.”
Hound pretended to ignore them, (though he was actually keenly interested, or had been, while they were talking botany), reading early-21st-century Thundercats porn. Tygra was hot. Hound had also read a late 20th-century science fiction novel wherein a Siberian Tiger had represented Earth in an intergalactic beauty pageant. Hound had to agree it was a logical choice. He’d wheedled Perceptor into doing a genetic survey on the surviving big cats shortly after Perceptor’s team had arrived on Earth. Not that it had taken much wheedling, really. Perceptor was just as eager, taking the status of endangered species kind of personally, as the Autobots all rather tended to do these days, despite Vector’s assurances.
Trailbreaker threw another rock at him. Beachcomber had managed to work himself into a startlingly lazy sort of headstand against the sloping canyon wall, with Miles balanced on one of his feet. The inclusion of the human in the nature-mechs’ gatherings had become a more and more frequent occurrence over the years. No one minded, and it wasn’t that much more trouble to be careful about trajectories and ricochets when throwing the traditional rocks. Groove bounced one off Trailbreaker’s thigh plate, making a satisfying clongg! which caused Hound to look up from his porn for a minute and snicker.
(Miles had deduced fairly quickly that this rock throwing business was remarkably akin to a farting or burping contest. It had taken him slightly longer to learn to appreciate the subtleties of the various sounds thus produced, and the scoring system - admittedly this changed rapidly and unpredictably - for direct or indirect hits on various bits of anatomy.)
“Aren’t the Russians and the Build Team commissioning him to make a lot of new gingerbread for the tube stations they’re rebuilding in Moscow?” Hound asked. The Russian capital had been a bright spot in Eastern Europe and had therefore been one of the Vivisector’s targets. The city and kilometers of the surrounding suburbs had been cut in half. Like the inhabitants of most such cities, the Muscovites were already rebuilding over most of the slagged canyon, but were leaving a section to remember by and building a memorial park around it dedicated to the thousands killed.
“Yeah,” said Groove. “He’s basing a lot of it on stuff from St. Petersburg.” Another bright spot, but fortunately the older parts of the city had been spared. The Russians in general had endured these past four long, grinding winters with aplomb. Snow made their country more beautiful and they’d had experience with famine.
Hound got a dreamy expression on his face. “So if Grapple gets involved with Rutile’s arboretum project, we could have spires of glass and tri-luminum filled with green. And humans could come and live in them.” It would be nice to have more places on Cybertron friendly to breathing things, instead of just Embassy Row in Iacon and the Well Market in Polyhex.
Miles looked at him. Maybe becoming a centenarian wouldn’t be enough. He’d need another decade or three. Living in a glassed-in habitat might strike some as uncomfortably close to living in a zoo, but Miles thought it would be a pretty interesting zoo.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
One thing both humans and Cybertronians appreciated was a good long soak after a hard day. Blades was no rebel in this respect. Only his tipped-back head kept him from sliding completely under the oil at the middle-deep end of the bathing pool. His rotors were fanned out, waving gently - the only part of his body in motion at the moment. So warm, so good, soaking all the way through every hinge and bearing and gimbal and rotator assembly.
He vaguely heard someone walking down the ramp. Nothing wrong with his hearing, he just wasn’t paying that much attention. And it didn’t really matter who it was, did it, as long as it wasn’t Slingshot. Didn’t sound like his gait, so that was as far as Blades got, cognition-wise. He felt the waves through the oil as the other mech waded in, came closer, immersed, spent some time scrubbing, immersed again. In silence. Even the mech’s fields were held close so as not to disturb Blades. There was a familiar feel to the silence, as there had been a familiar feel to the footsteps, but Blades had done his one little bit of processing and then let it drop.
Blades’ awareness shimmered, half slipping into recharge, dipping in and out of consciousness. A hand touched him high on his back, beneath the rotors, steadying him before he dropped entirely into the oil. Not that he would drown or anything, but hitting the bottom from that angle would jar his rotors some and that wouldn’t be a fun way to wake up. He lit his optics.
“’Lo, Prowl,” he murmured. His spark gave a happy little whirl. Prowl’s optics brightened at him, which was one species of Prowl-smile. Without thinking, Blades curled an arm around his progenitor, rolling on his side to meet him.
Once Blades kissed Prowl, he found he didn’t want to stop. “Mm. Mmmmm… Prowl… Prrrrwl…” Prowl’s name, spoken aloud between kisses made for a wonderful purr. He cupped Prowl’s helm, thumb tracking half-circles over an audial, and pressed his body against his progenitor’s, revving engine, spinning spark, his other hand stroking that lean, deadly body. Prowl’s armor overlapped more than most Autobots’, making it more difficult - but oh so worth it - to get at the sensitive places. Prowl’s beautiful silver hands settled on Blades’ waist; Prowl moved his entire torso against Blades’, flexing his fields and deepening their kiss. Blades clutched at him, gasping as Prowl’s cables thunked into Blades’ ports, the link like fire and thundering wind, the weightlessness at the peak of a parabolic arc. Blades arched his back, mouth open wide, oh Primus, hot as re-entry on a ship’s hull; he shook, chest parting under Prowl’s hands and mouth, corona blazing, reaching its pale amber arms for the blinding silver of its parent star.
Their shields keeping the oil from boiling away, they collided in midair, gravity swinging them around, bodies like planetary cores coalescing; a molten, singing dynamo. The wings of their radiation brushed the limits of the cavern and beyond, arcing and overlapping, enveloping them in incandescent coils. Blue lightning rang like solar flares striking the Earth’s magnetosphere.
Blades’ last coherent sensation was of Prowl easing him to the bottom of the pool, making sure his rotors lay smoothly along his back.
…
Big engine rumbling warm. Motion; a lifting, a little bounce to settle the load, long swing and sway of footsteps. Hot Spot kissed their helms and left them entwined on a table in the recharge bay.
…
To awaken from recharge to the feel of Prowl’s body pressed to his made Blades’ core temperature rise slow and contented. To online his optics to find that Prowl was himself only just coming out of recharge as well made Blades’ spark spin with happiness. Prowl had let himself sleep! In Blades’ arms!
Part V
Table of Contents
.