Title: Wistful Wishes
Prompt: Ungranted Wishes from Week 1, prowlxjazz 2011 anniversary challenge.
I watch him. He's making Bluestreak laugh, lightening the atmosphere in the base, helping mechs forget that we're in the middle of a war and that tomorrow will be another battle. We're losing. Megatron seems to have in interminable supply of mecha to throw into the fray, all built for battle. We have civilians recreating themselves into war machines, interspersed with a few mechs, like Ironhide, that were built for battle.
I am one of the few that was able to take my civilian job and translate into a war time; the tactical processor linked to my main processor works just as well for war as it did for gang activities, and I am proud that I have been able to shift over so easily. Not every mech has been so lucky. Bluestreak is one that is still coming to grips with the changes in his life wrought by war and devastation.
Unlike the mech I am watching. No one knows who he was before the war began. Sometimes, I think he doesn't remember himself. He's changed so many things about his frame that very little is original or unenhanced according to Ratchet. I…can't plan for him. He's a wild card, an unknown factor in every calculation I make. I have learned to do my calculations without factoring him in, then give Prime the odds before and after he becomes part of the scenario. It's easier on me, although the wide margin of error induced by his presence has caused me distress. It doesn't cause me to crash, the way I was when I was calculating his factor in from the beginning. Sometimes, it's easier to acknowledge the random factor than try to plan around it.
Getting back to the object of my surveillance, he's moved from Bluestreak to Tracks, complimenting him on the new wax Tracks is using. He's good at this dance, noticing things about mechs, drawing them out, making them feel like they're the only mech around when he's focused on them. He is good at noticing, at remarking on small changes or differences and making the mech he's talking to feel like he really sees them. He was also good at reading mechs, seeing potential in them that no one else could see, then helping them bring that potential out. He had helped take our rag-tag group of civilians and made them into a fighting force. Not by himself, of course, but he'd helped.
Now he was moving to Grapple, getting him to laugh. He was acting like a morale booster, something sorely needed after our latest defeat. We'd made so much progress on Earth, enough to allow us these bases on the moons of Cybertron, our human allies helping tilt the balance of war in our favour. As often as he's done this, moving around and talking to so many mechs, he never talks to me unless it's related to our jobs.
Sometimes, I wish he would look at me and see me.
Sometimes, I wish for the improbable.