Perceptions

by Kamara

A slavefemme survives the war that puts Earth back into Decepticon rule... but can she survive the aftermath? A Decepticon Dominion MUSH future story.

Perceptions A Decepticon Dominion Story

They say that I'm a descendant from a warrior race. That many generations ago, our planet was guided by a race called Decepticons. There are some people, even among that race, who said they conquered Earth, but that the Guardians who ran it wouldn't call it a conquering. Rather a merging of the Terrans into the Decepticon Empire under their guidance and leadership. Then the planet was truly conquered by the Mrrks, a giant organic slug-like race, who had developed Transformers into slaves over eons of time. They removed the Decepticon rule from our planet. Some of the Terrans even supported the coup, saying that the Decepticons' rule was anything but a guidance. This happened before I was created... but more Terrans have died in the Mrrk Wars than ever died under the Decepticon rule. I know this, because I was created not long after the Mrrks took over, bringing in their society caste system, complete with their own slaves. The Terrans became merged into that caste system, somewhere between the Mrrks, who value organic first, metal last, and then there were us. Some say that we were originally part of the Decepticon and Autobot races, but that was so long ago that that time is no longer in anyone's living memory.

I find it simply hard to believe.

I am one of the metal-skins, the slave caste. I have a name, other than a bar code and serial number, but only because my owners chose to give me one. I was created, so they say, very soon after the introduction of Mrrk society, during first of the mass productions of Transformers on Earth. I, however, do not wear a copyright symbol. My owners said that it was because I was a special order, created for them, rather than part of the mass production. The Earth-produced Transformers were of a different line. We were smaller, made to be only about half-again as large as humans, rather than the average of three or four times. It made it more productive for us to work with them, and had far less chance of us harming them by accident. There were some of the original ones, brought in from Mrrkrr, but they were limited to actual Mrrkrr owners and not to humans. I am not even sure I should be qualified as a Transformer, because I do not transform. When I asked my owners about this, they said something vague about glitches in the first several model lines, and also that they had not had any need for a servant who could transform. I was built to be a house servant. They never used the word 'slave' to me. I was a servant, and companion to the elder woman of the family. And because a human generation passes in the blink of an optic to us, I was passed on from one generation to another, to each of the Grams.

My name is Cashel. It is an odd name for a Transformer, let alone a slave who might only have a name on the whim of its owner. Cashel is a type of linen, used in fine embroidery. It was the first Gram's favorite material to stitch on. The men of the family had their own business, but the women's business brought in almost as much income as the men's. We did embroidery, in an era when very few people could dedicate themselves to such a time-consuming task. The first Gram told me that in the early history of this planet almost all women were expected to not only know how to sew clothing and utilitarian pieces, but also to embroider fine designs. A lady might be measured not only by her ability to run a household, even if it was overlooking the servants that did the actual work, but also by her ability to stitch. It was also the most common past time for a lady.

In this era, an era of disposable everythings, sewing had been deregulated first to a hobby, then as an eccentricity. However there was still a demand for such fine work from the more affluent portion of society, those who could afford to pay for the true value of the pieces we did. We also provided a line of hand-dyed materials, hand-dyed floss and specialty threads, for those few who still did this type of work as their hobby. Again these hobbyists were usually among the rich. The Mrrks demanded a high tribute for their protection to keep this world safe from such invaders as the Decepticons, and only those who were better off could invest such time into a hobby. We were also one of the few families left who offered this service planet-wide, and even did some exporting off-planet. Therefore we could choose our prices... and we'd get them. And still have a waiting list of more orders.

I have been saying 'we' as if I were a member of the family. Indeed, it was hard for me not to think of myself as so. I had been entrusted with the recipes for the dyes, the instructions how to do each stitch. I knew how to choose the right material for any project. I could tell colors down to minute shadings. I had learned from the first Gram. This was why I had been created. The knowledge of embroidery had been passed down from generation to generation... as had I. Each daughter taught their daughters, and the love of thread and cloth might have been genetic, for no one ever stopped once they took up their first needle and sewed their first stitch.

Even with my larger size, I could also stitch as well as any of the Stark women. I did larger pieces, suitable for tapestries in grand halls, and indeed, some of my work hung in just such places. I had my own stitching frame, built to my scale. I was capable of working much longer hours, although the rules that also had been passed down from generations were strict. Cashel stopped working when the Starkes did. It was incredibly fair, and I would occasionally catch slaves from other households glaring at me for such preferential treatment. Sometimes, I would get glares from the other slaves in the Starke household as well, although not to the same intensity. The Starkes were good to us. We were well fed, well maintained. They had never raised a hand to me, I did not wear one of the inhibitor collars that other slaves wore, and I had never felt the touch of an electric whip. I loved each of the Starke women for their own qualities, was a teacher and alternate governess to them from the time they picked up a needle. Even before then, they climbed into my lap, begging for stories. I was a living history of their family, could tell them down to minute details of the primitive way of life their ancestors had lived in the early days of the Mrrk rule. I had been with the family for nearly a thousand years, had rejoiced with each birth, grieved with each death, worked alongside with them, helped build a miniature empire of thread and fabric.

I loved my life. And I was aware every single day of how extraordinarily fortunate I was.

And then the Decepticons returned to Earth.

The Decepticon/Mrrk Wars had never ended with the Decepticons' oust from Earth. They had warred around our planet, in systems far away from ours. They had taken a heavy beating, so the histories said, one that had set the Empire almost as far back as the Unicron War had. With the lost of Earth, one of their major sources of energy, they could not rebuild as fast as they had from the Unicron War, and new sources of energy had to be found. Still, they were exceedingly powerful, with many allies, and the war had become almost a stalemate, with each side winning and losing battles equally. Some of the histories compared this war with the Decepticon/Autobot War, which lasted millions of years. Both empires seemed to settle into that mindset... that this was going to last for generations. Transformer generations, not human. However, the Decepticons had not tried to retake Earth again. Some thought it was because they had finally decided Earth was more of an annoyance planet than was worth their effort. Indeed, they had had problems cascading over more problems in the Guardians' early days of rule, whether from Terrans, Autobots, disagreement within the Decepticon factions themselves, or the beginnings of the Decepticon/Mrrk War. Others had a more romantic view, that the Warlord Guardian Divefire had lost heart and desire to continue fighting for the planet he loved, after his mate and co-Guardian had been lost in the battle that had expelled the Decepticons from Earth; that he had taken their children and left without looking back.

There were many other hypotheses, as to why the War had never returned to Earth, but none ever confirmed. The result was that the Decepticons had not returned and the War waged far from our world.

Until now.

I felt strange whenever I read any histories of those days or saw any of the vids. Very few vids had survived from that era. So much had been destroyed in that last battle, and the work of the Mrrks had been to restore Earth to a resource-providing planet and not to restore the Terrans' artifacts. Many since then had tried to rebuild, to preserve that which had survived, but little was available to the public past a small section in history books. Most of what I knew came from helping the children study. Although I came shortly after that time period, it was 'shortly' in Transformer terms, not in Terran years. I knew dates and names, but little more. I had never seen pictures of the Guardians or of any of their contemporaries. I had seen pictures of Megatron, as he was still Emperor and considered part of 'recent news'. Still, I knew more of Mrrk history than I did of Decepticon... yet whenever that era came up in each Starke child's studies, I felt vaguely ill at ease, seeing images in my mind that made me feel like deja vu. It disturbed me, and I was always glad when the children had moved on to a different focus in their studies.

And now, they were back. With armies of such vast size, a planet is not a very large battlefield. Even though the first attacks were on the other side of the world from us, we knew that in the next week, or day, or even minute, the next attack could be on top of us. As the days progressed, there didn't even seem to be much of a pattern to the attacks, no line drawn from one strategic position to another. They were the hard, hammering attacks with the rage of titans behind them, screaming with raw power. Those same romantics said they were powered by the enraged pain of a warlord avenging his mate. I wasn't sure I agreed with that, however much the fairy tale notion appealed to me. That wound was over a thousand years old and surely it had healed over time. Then again, I had never loved a mate. It was seldom allowed in the slave castes, and therefore, I had no way to judge such wounds to the bond of souls and hearts.

This current Gram, Evelyn, had asked me once as a child with a child's innocence why I did not have children of my own. It was not a question of breeding or of origins. She just wanted someone to play with, and her beloved Cashie was often too busy. How could I tell this child that the parts of a femme Transformer that were meant to nurture a spark until it was grown enough for its own body, had been removed from all femme slaves. The production lines were a more efficient way to increase the herds than by breeding. Built Transformers were created in adult bodies. There was no time wasted on emotional growth or on the problems that emotional ties of parent and family would create in a society that was meant to be separated and shipped to different owners, different functions. How could I explain this to Evie, who just wanted a playmate that was part of me, who had endless amounts of time for her? Instead, I kissed her tousled mass of blonde curls. "You are my child," I told her, pitching my voice full of fond amusement. "I love you for my own, don't you know that?" And indeed, I did. I loved all the Starke women that had been in my care throughout the generations... but this one especially, ever since she had first crawled into my lap and told me that she wanted purple eyes just like mine when she grew up.

Now, some fifty years later, Evie was a Gram. Gramvy, as her own grand-daughter called her when she first learned to speak, and the name had caught. She was still my Evie, though, and I adored her. Our stitching time now was spent huddled around the large vid screen in the sewing room, which was on at all times now, except when young Kim was present. We were still trying to filter out the horrors that came over a period of days, the death counts of Mrrk and human. Never a count of the slave deaths, though. We were rebuildable. We didn't count as people. Although Evie had never thought that way, never once let me feel as if I wasn't a Starke myself, even if it was illegal to call me so.

In just a matter of days, it was obvious that Earth had become the new front line of the war. There was no sign of where the Decepticons had received such energy to direct such an attack, no hint of a reason why suddenly Earth was the target after so many years of being left alone. More Mrrk soldiers were being shipped in by the hour, and the same ships that brought them in, went out again crammed full with those refugees that could afford the high passage and bribes. I tried to talk Evie into leaving as well, to the point of having emergency bags packed and ready for herself, Kim, and Kim's mother Karen. I was even nervous enough to cross over the line of my duties and approach my male equivalent, a mech who had been around less than half of my years and who had been acquired, not created, for the job of tending to the male side of the Starkes. Our duties kept us from associating much at all, and he looked down his nose at me. "If there were any threat," he said in a haughty tone, "I would have been made aware of it. It is not your duty to decide in such matters." There were times when I couldn't tell which made me seem less in his view, my favored status or my inability to transform. One of the reasons he had been purchased was because he was a flier and able to commute the brothers to their various plants and offices. This time, however, his gaze rested on my lack of an inhibitor collar, and he could not help but finger his own. Ever mindful of my favored position and always reluctant to call attention to it, I gave him a half-bow of respect for his position as the head of the slaves for the textile side of the Starke empire and came away.

It did not stop me from worrying. Evie found me in one of the attics, sorting over cases of preserved embroideries, protected in the climatically controlled rooms and in specialized containers. She frowned at me, but perched herself on one of the containers. "There's nothing going to happen to us, Cashie. I hope you know that."

I couldn't explain my fear. I had never known the horrors of war close, but there was something deep inside me that screamed for precautions, for planning, for a run-away plan to protect my loved ones, my children. Perhaps there really was some of the warrior race in my ancestry, that gave foreshadow rather than vague worry. I bent my head over the case I was carefully sorting through and said nothing, because I didn't know what to say to persuade my beloved family to leave before the danger could become acute. They clung to the assurances that centuries without war had given them. How could the fears of one femme slave counter that?

Evie leaned over to touch my shoulder, her affection deep within her expression. Humans lived much longer now than they had when I was first created, and even though she was in her sixties, she looked little older than her daughter-in-law, Karen. "If we are truly in any danger," she said softly, "Charles will know about it. He pays attention to these things." The sun rose and set by her eldest son, Charles, the only one of her sons who not only had a feel for the textile business, but was also the first Starke male in three generations who could stitch as finely as any of the females. Evie always thought he was the perfect blending of both sides of the Starke empire. Her younger son, Edward, husband to Karen, did not have his brother's fine touch, but he could create vivid colors and dyes that set him as unique as his brother.

I took an intake of air. "At least," I said softly, "let me ship these to one of our off-world storage. If there is a danger and we have to leave, there may be little time to arrange such things."

Evie slid off her perch and came to lean against the edge of the storage case. The piece I held was a magnificent deep blue, the blues of the sea, of the sky on a summer day that seemed as if it would last forever. Embroidered on it was an undersea world with the vibrant colors of the coral reefs as they had been hundreds of years ago. "How many Grams back does this one go?" she asked.

I thought for a moment. "Six," I said with a smile. "Gram Juliana. Her eyes were the same blue as this fabric. Her husband created that dye with her eyes in mind. It took him years to get the right shade, although I think I was the only one who could see the difference in any of his attempts. Other than himself, of course. They eloped, you know. He was a blood-Starke, and Juliana had never held a needle in her life." My fingers gently traced the design without actually touching the ancient stitches. "Turns out she was meant for the family, wasn't she? I never saw someone take to stitching so quickly, who had not grown up loving it." I smiled faintly. "Then again, I am used to Starke daughters. Within a year, Gram Valerie refused to admit that there had ever been a doubt about Julie. She came into the dynasty and made it her own."

Evie's eyes, which held hints of Julie's blues, were soft and wistful, the way they always turned when I told her stories of her family. I was their living historian, more complete than any data file, because I held the emotions, not just the information. "Go ahead and ship them," she said softly, then stood to look around at the other cases. "All of them."

I carefully replaced the aquatic scene and sealed the case again. It was all I could do for now. I knew Evie would agree to send them. She would always put the embroideries before herself... but it was also an opening, the first admition that the dangers that I sensed did exist. What made me more desperate to convince her quickly, was the feeling that there wouldn't be enough time.

Two days later, we were in the sewing room, sorting colored threads and floss for Evie's next project. She always asked my opinion, even though her instincts were always true within the shadings. This design was one she had created. She always did the entire process herself, from charting the design, to dying the fabric, choosing the colors, stitching, and even choosing the frame, although she left the framing process itself to someone else. She had narrowed the choice of fabrics down to two versions of pinks in the same family of shades. She took a handful of the thread skeins and tossed them randomly on each piece of fabric, frowning as she tried to pick between the two. I already knew which one she would choose before she touched the one on the right and arched an inquiring eyebrow at me. I nodded at her from over my own stitching, agreeing with the choice even though she needed no assurance from me. She carefully rolled the fabric she had rejected to send back into storage and began to trim off a section of the chosen color large enough for her design. I will always remember that image of her, leaning over her table, sliding her sheers through the fabric, eyes narrowed in concentration, her long hair hanging over one shoulder and down past her face in a cascade of blonde that spilled over the bolt of pink cloth, long elegant fingers guiding the sheers with the effortless grace of long practice. She was relaxed in the splashes of sunlight from the large windows, her mouth curved in a soft smile as she hummed under her breath.

Life's greatest changes, the ones that completely wreck a smooth path, redirect into a detour of deconstruction... they never come on slowly. They hit like a bomb, turning peace of mind and soul into a crater of devastation.

I never saw Evie at such peace again.

Charles Starke, the favored son, had been in negotiations with a chemical company over a new supply of dyes. They were a product new on the market that promised deeper colors almost in a new spectrum. There was great excitement about these dyes in the textile business, for the main ingredient was one recently found off-planet, in a world just introduced into the Mrrk Empire, and Charles was determined to obtain an ownership in the new stock. The negotiations ran later than expected, which was what made it seem all that more tragic when the city he was in was completely decimated in mere minutes when fighting broke out in the skies above. Evie aged overnight, wounded in spirit so deeply that I feared she was broken completely. I held her and grieved with her, for I could not help but love who she loved, and all the Starke babies fell under my care at some time in their lives, regardless of gender. I remembered the tiny baby, sleeping in the curve of my hand and wrist and silently rained the blame on myself, because I had felt the foreshadowing of danger and yet had been unable to prevent it.

Around us, left in our mourning in the sewing room, we vaguely felt the grief lose itself in frantic packing. This last battle had been the worst yet, and there was a very real threat that Earth would be lost again to the Decepticons. Finally, the rest of the house felt the same desperation that I had, the realization that nowhere on Earth was safe, and the only choice was to leave the planet. The rest of the world was also in panicked fear. Rioting and looting were as wide-spread as the battles that were occurring all over the planet overlapped themselves together as the Decepticons gained ground with every hour. The rumors that the only Mrrks left on Earth were warriors became noticeably true as the newscasts came in over faltering networks. The other castes had been quietly evacuated before the threat became obvious. Humans were left on their own to evacuate themselves any way that was left to them... and that wasn't much. There were few ships left that weren't military and barred to anyone other than Mrrk. I have no idea the amount of the bribe Edward had to pay for space on a freighter for his family, but from the wild look in his eyes when he came for his mother, I knew it had been astronomical and had perhaps sent his family to poverty. It was a fair price, if it would save their lives.

And of course, with so little room for the humans, there was no room at all for slaves. The official word, spread through those sporadic newscasts, was that it was illegal to remove any slaves from Earth. Consequences for those caught would mean being left behind with no hope of safety. The slaves would be needed for rebuilding, they were valuable commodities, and Earth could not spare a single one.

But what that morrandum really meant, of course, was that we were being left behind. Our value could never match the value of an organic. It was the way it had always been. I don't know why I had let myself think that it would be different. Maybe it was because I always had been treated differently than other slaves. That I really had elevated myself in my own mind, as the other slaves whispered about me behind my back, in spite of the ways I tried to project modesty and remain visibly unaware of my difference in status.

In the end it meant nothing. My fortune had ended with the decimation of that city.

There wasn't time for the pleasantries of asking me out of the room, and instead the argument went on in front of me. It was the first flare of life I had seen out of Evie since the news had come, and it surprised me, because I hadn't expected it. Hadn't expected anything to cut through her grief except for time, but she reared up, reddened eyes flashing. "We are NOT leaving Cashel behind!"

Edward reined in his own temper, stretched by grief and fear, overstrained and frayed. "We can't take her --"

But Evie was on her feet now, advancing on him so fiercely that he back-stepped frantically to compensate. "You know we can't leave her. We're supposed to protect her. It's been our legacy, handed down from generation--"

"We have no time," he shouted, the words ringing and vibrating off the large windows. It was the deepest point of night, and the darkness wrapped around the room, enveloping it in soft velvet, broken only by one small lamp and the amethyst glow of my optics. "Don't you understand? We have no time to think about legends and bedtime stories, when every moment risks our lives. That pilot could decide that his life outweighs our money and could leave us here at any second. Do you want to risk Kimmie that way?"

Evie flinched then. The barb was meant to hurt, to bite deeply past indignant rage to appeal to logic. It was meant to hurt, but only out of love. I couldn't find it in me to blame Edward; I had held him as an infant, too. Edward looked at me, read my thoughts. "We have to leave," he said to me. "There's no other way. " The last was an appeal to his mother. "Cashel understands that, don't you, Cashie?"

Evie turned to me then, her hands held out to me, eyes pleading without knowing just what she was appealing for. I stepped forward and knelt in front of her, taking her hands. "I am just Cashel," I said in a low tone to keep the emotion out of my voice. "You have no obligation to protect me. Kimmie is your blood. You must go, Evie." I touched her face, smoothed back her hair as if she was Kimmie's age again. "Besides, someone needs to look after things here, so you can come back as if you had never left."

The fire in her eyes faded again, and I could tell she had heard enough through her grieving to know that Earth was falling and that even if she did return to her home, that nothing would be the way it was ever again.

Edward paced the length of the room once. "We ... we have to leave, Evie. Thank goodness, Cashie already had you packed." He gave me another guilty glance, and I knew that was as close as an apology he could soften himself to give now. It would be a long time before his family was safe enough for him to break down to his own grief.

Evie drew herself up again, but this time with dignified resignation. "I will be down in a few minutes," she said softly, her gaze still not leaving my face.

"Mother, we don't have --"

"Five minutes, Edward," she snapped, parental authority strong in her voice and every muscle in her body, and he backed down, giving me one last warning look. I gave him a nod. I would have Evie ready to leave if I had to carry her down myself. He stepped quickly out the door, fleeing from one room of misery only to plunge back into others. I could hear Kim crying faintly from downstairs. Evie seemed to wilt with the soft wail and I quickly stood up to go over to the fabric we had been working on just a few hours earlier. "It will only take a second to wrap this up and you'll have something to work on during the journey." My voice was steady, as if I were readying her to go on a vacation rather than a refuge flight.

"Leave it," she said dully. "I don't want it."

I kept rolling the fabric around the bundles of floss and was in the process of tucking the bundle into her sewing bag, when her hand touched my arm. "Cashie, please... leave that a minute."

"We only have a minute," I said softly, but I fastened the bag shut. Evie took my hand from it and gently placed a ring in the palm of my hand. It was made of some simple metal, but polished to a warm gleam, and I could see the fine engravings on it of a pattern that seemed vaguely familiar, dancing just on the outskirts of my mind. I frowned, because it wasn't like me to forget a pattern, but perhaps it was similar to a border or something I had stitched once. It was too large for any of my fingers, and I didn't know why Evie would have a ring sized for a normal Transformer. Slaves in general never wore decorations, unless their specific duties called for the ornamentations, and I had never seen any Transformer wear a ring in human fashion. I gave her a puzzled look, and she curled my fingers around the ring until I held it in my fist. "This is yours," she said. "It is your own legacy. Keep it hidden in subspace. Don't let anyone ever take it from you." She rocked a little, bent over my enclosed fist. "We were supposed to keep you safe," she moaned. "And we repay you like this."

Steps pounded up the stairs again. She let out a small cry, and I tilted her head to look up at me. "I've been repaid every day that I've lived," I whispered to her, then gently kissed her forehead and let Edward take her away from me.

When daylight began to crawl in through the windows, I finally came downstairs from the sewing room. I had not been able to bear coming down earlier, could not stand to wander aimlessly through the house, empty of voices and life. It was only when I heard movement downstairs, of metallic footsteps, that I made myself come down to join the other slaves who were milling aimlessly in the great hall. Some were frightened at the war coming closer, some jubilant at the unexpected vacation, but behind all the various emotions was the same bewilderment, the lost glances sent from one to another. For the first time in our lives, we had been left without any instructions, without anyone to guide us.

We didn't know what to do.

The room quieted as I stepped off the last of the stairs and all faces turned to me. Someone said clearly, "Look, they left her behind, too. Guess she wasn't so special after all..." but I couldn't catch which face the voice came from before a babble of voices rose, all asking for news, fears of the future, and most urgently, what to do next. I took a step backwards in a sudden panic, needing to flee, and stopped when my heel hit the last stair. The physical touch was enough to keep me from running back up to the solace of the sewing room. I looked through the sea of faces, searching for the mech who was my male counterpart. It took me three scans through the room before I remembered that he had been with Charles. I felt very far out of my domain. "Why are you asking me?" I asked in a soft voice, but it carried as all other voices hushed after my first word. There was a brief silence, then a mech stepped forward. I recognized him vaguely. He was the only one closest to my age, but his duties were to tend the grounds, and our paths rarely crossed. I was trying to remember his name and nearly missed what he said and had to do a mental replay. "You're the oldest," he said. "You've been here the longest."

There was another long expectant silence. Scape was his name, I finally remembered. His full name was Landscaper.

I realized I was tugging at my fingertips, longing to be back upstairs at my frame. "Well then," I finally said. "I... have you fueled yet today? No? Then all of you go eat. Things will look better on a full fuel tank. After that?" I faltered, then rushed on with, "After that, follow your usual duties. We'll keep the household running until the Starkes come back."

"What if we don't want to stay?" someone -- the same voice from before, I thought -- called out. "I think they ran, left us here to face the war."

I clenched my fists in an effort to stop the tugging and placed them behind me. "Where would you go?" I asked.

There was another long silence. I took another step forward into it. "I cannot make you stay," I said in a soft voice. "But... where would you go? What would you do? What happens when the Mrrks find you and determine you a runaway? This is what we know," I said, resting my hand on the banister, but meaning the household in its entirety. "Out there?" I shrugged, then added again, in an even softer voice, "I cannot make you stay."

There was another silence, then one by one, they left, not speaking. I let out a sigh of relief when most of them turned towards the slave quarters for their fuel. I knew it was never my responsibility to oversee them, to make them do their work, to keep them from running away... but I was relieved to be out of their scrutiny.

"Well done," said a soft voice. I jumped a little, not realizing that anyone had stayed behind. It was Scape, and I squashed the urge to let my fingers start their fidgeting again. When I didn't say anything, he pushed himself away from the wall he had been leaning on. "Come with me a moment," he said.

I followed him out of the house and around to the back, past the slave quarters to the building that powered the estate. I had never been in it, and peered around at all the tanks and meters as he led me to one meter in particular. "The estate has an automatic link to the energon relays. The tanks top themselves off every night, and energon runs from here to each of the other buildings on the grounds." He pointed at one monitor. "This is the main tank. It should be full now. Instead, it's a quarter gone."

I frowned. "But if they fill automatically every night, it should be..." My mind made the jump. "The relays are out."

He nodded, his optics flickering with approval at my quick following. "Looks like it."

I pressed the palms of my hands against my temples. "Maybe it's just a temporary thing? Something somewhere got damaged and they're working on repairs now?"

"Maybe." He wiped a streak of dust off the monitor. "But I'm betting either the lines have been cut, or the energon's been diverted to places that best help the fighting."

I pressed harder. "How long can we last on what we have?"

Scape reached out and gently pulled my hands away from my head. "A few days. Maybe longer, if I power down everything but the slave quarters and the house. You could go through the house, shut down things we don't need. The kitchens and the like."

"No one here to cook for anyway," I said faintly, gazing at the monitor, then pulled myself back away from the sudden rush of loneliness, of feeling bereft without Evie, without any of the Starke women around. I realized he was still holding my wrists, and I pulled away stiffly. "Shut them down, everything like you said. I'll take care of the house. Try to keep them occupied, but without taking up energy. Have them do inventories..." I faded off as I frowned, trying to remember. "Didn't... don't the last two warehouses still have solar panels? Did they ever get around to renovating them, or would they still be operational?"

He thought it through, then chuckled. "Yeah, they just might be. Enough to run lights, anyway. I'll take a few up there while the others are fueling, get them started on switching over to the panels. You're right, those buildings haven't been gone through in years, and that will keep the others moving and not thinking over much. In fact, I'll set them to moving the contents out and we'll house the rest of us in those warehouses, rather than spend more energy in powering the slave quarters." He studied me for a moment, then seemed to be satisfied with whatever he saw in my expression, although I couldn't imagine he saw anything other than bewilderment. Only a few hours ago, everything had been normal...

"What do we do when we run out of fuel?" I said in a small voice.

He shrugged. "One day at a time. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there are repairs going on and we'll be up and running again by nightfall."

I gave him much the same study he had given me, and I knew that neither of us believed that, either.

Two days later, we were still going. I did a nose-count every morning and evening, and each day our numbers were a little smaller. I kept going back and forth from fretting at the runaways, to being glad that there were fewer fuel tanks to fill. Several times a day, I ran to check the levels in the maintenance building, even though I knew that I was accomplishing nothing by it. It was a hope against hope, that the next time I checked, the levels would be rising again instead of steadily falling. There were no newscasts. All networks were off the air, and the world was silent without the running of highways, and dark at night, without the glow of city lights on the horizons. Our part of the world had gone to sleep, as if the humans, the Mrrks, the Decepticons had never existed. I separated a team away from the inventories and set them to work scrubbing the house down. "Do it the old-fashioned way," I said when someone complained that I had turned most of the power off and they couldn't use the electric tools. I heard someone grumble about where I got my authority to give orders, but when I took a bucket of cold water and started scrubbing the front stairs myself, the grumbles died and one by one, they all began to follow my lead. I scrubbed until the paint peeled off my fingers, but instead of dirty water and the floor beneath my hands and knees, I saw fuel gauges on empty. An obsessive fear gripped me, one of starvation, of watching those around me starve, falling into stasis lock from lack of fuel, without hope of anyone ever activating us. We were slaves. Who would care? The fear was so vivid, so touchable, that my hands shook and I scrubbed harder. I kept telling myself that I had no reason to be so trapped on this mind-set. I had never been hungry before, why would my mind focus on that rather than the rest of the horrors that I knew were just beyond our sight. We could feel the ground trembling from the shocks of terrible battles happening throughout the planet, and the sky darkened as the atmosphere filled with particles of ashes and smoke, even though the fighting itself was still so far away that we could not see the flashes of light or pillars of fire.

On the third day, I was scrubbing the floor of the sewing room, trying to force away the fears through sheer work. We were down to a quarter fuel reserves. About a third of us still remained, and I had set rationing on what fuel was left. I thought maybe we had another two days if the same numbers stayed. A few had filtered back in at night, whispering of dry fuel lines everywhere they saw, bringing back rumors of a third of the planet destroyed... no, a full half... the Decepticons were destroying everything in their path, leaving no human, Mrrk or slave behind alive. No news reports to either prove or disprove. I leaned on my brush with such force that it snapped under the weight, and I threw it back in the bucket with enough force to knock it over, sending dirty water sliding over the floor I had just cleaned.

I fell back, sitting on the floor, drawing my knees up against my chest, wrapping my arms around my legs, pulling them tight, buried my face against my knees. Let the water slosh around me, over my feet, as I rocked back and forth, wanting someone to take this away from me, to tell me what to do instead of looking at me for directions, for my Evie to be back, to see the sun shine through blue skies again, to hear the sounds of human life in the house.

The sounds of engines were so alien after the days of silence, that at first I didn't know what it was that I heard. I sloshed first to my knees, then scrambled to my feet and went to the windows.

There were vehicles coming.

I pushed myself away from the window and ran for the door. I wheeled to a stop long enough to wet a towel and wipe the grime off myself, ever mindful that I still represented the Starke family. By the time I had clattered downstairs and out the door, the vehicles had pulled up in front of the house. They were huge military transports and several Mrrks were oozing out of them, followed by several normal-sized Transformers, all wearing collars. One of the Mrrks was shouting orders, and the Transformers split up and fanned out over the grounds. I realized my fingers were tugging at each other again and firmly told them to stop it as I came down the front steps and went to the Mrrk who was apparently in charge. "We are so glad to see you--" I started but he ignored me, studying the monitor on the datapad he held. I trailed my greeting down to a silence and released my fingers from their orders. They gratefully went back to their tugging and fidgeting.

Finally, he looked down at me, scratching at the ooze on one stubby arm. "Who are you?"

I automatically gave a half-bow. "Cashel, of the Starke Household. I welcome you in the absence of my own--"

He snarled something under his breath in Mrrkvian and grabbed my arm, yanking me forward to run his datapad over the barcode and serial number on the inside of my wrist. He consulted the readout. "As I thought. Abandoned." He raised his voice. "Gather them up. Scan each of them, then get them into the transport."

I found my voice. "Sir, I beg your pardon, but we are not abandoned--" He stared down at me, as if in amazement that I was saying anything at all, and I rushed on. "The Starkes will be back as soon as the fighting settles down. I must stay here. It's my respons--"

He hit me across the face, knocking me backwards and to the ground. He was more than twice my height, and easily three times my weight. I felt the metal of my cheek peel apart, the soft spray blood, then the steady stream of it, the taste of it in my mouth from the split in my lip. My optics blurred and for a moment, all I could hear was a ringing, shrill and penetrating deep into my head.

I had never been hit before.

Hands grabbed me, pulled me to my feet, held me up when my legs refused to do it themselves. I was dimly aware of being half-walked, half-dragged to one of the transports. My hearing began to clear, just enough to hear the Mrrk shout after us, "And see that she gets a collar. That's what happens when they don't wear them. They think they can talk back." There was a chorus of laughter. The hands shoved me into the back of one of the transports and I fell again, this time against other metal bodies. Someone shoved me away from them with a curse; someone else cushioned me from falling a third time and eased me to the floor of the transport. I curled up in a ball, as tightly as I could, so I wouldn't have to see any of them.
The collar was made for a larger Transformer and didn't fit. It was heavy, biting into the metal of my neck and bearing down hard on my shoulders. Within minutes, it had chafed the paint off my skin, then went on to abrading the skin itself, sending fine trickles of blood down my shoulders. I wasn't sure if it had just been the only one available, or if it had been a piece of deliberate malice. After a while, I hurt too much to care about reasonings.

They trucked us in close enough to the fighting that we could hear the weapons' fire and feel the ground shake with each hit. They set us to building bunkers, the slaves from the Starke estate and more that they had picked up along the way. Any slave whose human owners had left planetside was considered abandoned and was confiscated. The bunkers were built haphazardly from the wreckage and debris of buildings, quickly fused together. I had no idea how to handle such large pieces of metal and concrete, wasn't strong enough to guide them properly into their settings, and within the first hour, my hands, agile enough to guide needles through the finest of linens, were ragged and torn to the frames. No one offered repairs, and I saw that there were slaves who needed them much worse than I, some who had obviously been wounded by stray shots or shrapnel and who were still working in place, optics dulled and covered with dust and grime.

I was trying to lever a chunk of debris into place when it fell loose, rolling back towards me. Without thinking, I shoved my hands out to stop it, and it would have rolled over them, but for a set of stronger hands that reached past me to brace the chunk long enough for me to set my shoulder against it and awkwardly shove it home. I stayed braced against it while another femme seared the edges to a liquid paste that solidified almost instantly. I stepped back then, colliding into the mech who had saved my hands from being crushed and felt only a dull surprise to realize it was Scape. He was the only one from the estate that I had seen after being unloaded. A missile landed nearby, the explosion knocking most of us off our feet and kicking up a shockwave of debris and shrapnel over us. Scape shoved me against the bunker wall and covered my head as bits of burning dust rained down on us. He brushed me off and held my hands for a moment, looking over them carefully. The femme next to me was huddled on the ground, screaming in what seemed like an endless breath. The Mrrk who was overseeing our unit came over and beat her until she stopped screaming. It wasn't until Scape tugged at my arm that I realized I had stepped forward towards them, with a dull distanced protective anger. Scape turned me away, guided me further down the bunker, where we fell in line again. He handed me the sealing tool that the femme had been using, still warm from her touch. I hadn't seen him pick it up. Without speaking, he wrestled another piece of concrete over and up onto the partially-built wall and held it in place while I fired the edges and melted it to the rest.

The rumors ran wild, up and down the bunkers. At first, we spoke only when the Mrrks weren't right on top of us. After half a day, half the rumors were coming from the Mrrks themselves, who stunk of clay-packed ooze and fear, yelling at us to build faster, or they'd leave us here for the 'Cons. We knew they would leave us anyway. They weren't wasting energon on fueling us. Every drop of it was going to the fighting. When a slave dropped, the ones next to him would lift him out of the bunker and leave him where he fell. At first, I thanked Primus that we had been well-fueled before the Mrrks had arrived at the estate. Then I reached the point where I envied those who had fallen and could die. We worked through the dark of night, lit only by the fires of the battle and by the glows of our optics. I could only recognize Scape by his amber glow. The sun never rose the next morning. The night lightened only to a dark grey. "Something's gotta break soon," Scape said, his harmonics jarred into hoarse discordance by the thick dust that we had all been breathing through our systems. It was the first I had heard him speak since we left the estate.

Right before noon, the bombing intensified to the point where no one could work, no one could do more than huddle in the bunker, praying that our construction held, praying that if it didn't, that the death would be a quick one, that we wouldn't be left for the Decepticons. The Mrrks had disappeared somewhen, had abandoned the bunker entirely, fled, leaving us behind, as we had known all along that they would.

And then, it stopped.

For a long moment, I thought I was dead. I thought death could have been the only thing that could have brought such complete silence. Then something moved beside me, spilling dirt in a cascade over me, until it sat up enough for me to recognize Scape. He gently brushed me off, and noises began to filter in. A femme crying, the sounds of dirt shifting and falling as others began to stand up, someone asking over and over, "What do we do? What do we do? Someone tell us what to do!"

There was no need to ask who had won.

We remained in the bunker for hours, waiting. No one came for us. We could see nothing over the horizon but fires and pillars of thick smoke, but no armies approached. Except for the crackling of the fires and our own murmured voices, there were no sounds.

We waited, because there was no one to tell us what to do. We spent the night huddled together in the bunker, and as the faint rays of daylight streaked through the smoke, I realized that hunger was beginning to cut through the fear. I had lost track of how many days had passed. I pawed through the dirt until I came up with the sealing tool. I poked at it, pried at it with fingers that still bled and left smeared prints behind, until I managed to crack open the casing to find the energon battery that powered it. It was still mostly full. I drank what I thought was half of it and passed it to Scape. He wordlessly drained what was left. Others noticed what I was doing and soon they were all looking for anything that might still have energon in it. I watched them for a few minutes, then looked at Scape. "I'm going home," I said and began to climb out of the bunker. He gave me a boost up and over, and I turned to give him a hand to help pull him out.

We started walking.

We had been walking for hours without saying anything with the exception of our first rest stop, when I only then thought to ask if he transformed to anything that could get us there faster. He had given a rueful shake of his head, and I felt stupid. Of course, he would have said something before if he could. I promised myself I'd stay quiet, rather than say anything else as equally stupid and focused only on my feet moving me forward.

By afternoon, I had burned off the small amount of energon I had taken from the sealer and was hungry again. It was an almost welcome distraction, and I raised my gaze from my feet to begin peering into the windows of buildings, hoping that somewhere under the dirt and grime of battle debris I might find a working energon relay or refill station. By evening, it was only more apparent that the world had simply stopped working, and I was starting to feel the desperate fear of starvation again. I kept telling myself it had only been a few hours, although in reality it had been a couple of days since my last full meal, and I knew we weren't going to get very far unless we found something to eat. Finally, I swerved off the road we had been following and scrambled down an incline. A transport had been run off the road somehow or another and abandoned when it became apparent that it was too badly damaged to move under its own power. I leaned into the back, balanced against the awkward angle of the transport nearly standing on its nose. Anything that had been of any use had already been stripped out of it. I dropped back down to the ground.

"Anything?" Scape asked, and I shook my head. He followed me as I picked up a piece of pipe about the length of my forearm and went around to the other side of the transport. Following some inner instinct, I picked a point near the fuel cap and rammed the sharp edge of the pipe in. I wasn't sure if I'd be strong enough, but desperation must have lent a whole lot, because the pipe pierced through on the first try. There was a sputtering sound, then fuel began to pour through the pipe. I cupped my hands, only now realizing that I should have thought a little further for something to catch the fuel in, when suddenly a casing of a missile appeared below my hands. I moved aside, gulping the fuel from my hands as Scape balanced his make-shift bucket under the flow. He glanced up at me with a brief delighted grin that suddenly meant more than any amount of words. When the fuel had finished pouring out, he yanked the pipe out and handed it over to me. "Keep that," he said. "Looks like it will be useful."

There had only been a half tank, but it was a big vehicle, and it was more energon than either of us had seen since leaving the estate. We camped there, inside the back of the transport. "Drink it slowly," I warned. "If you drink it too fast on an empty tank, you'll get drunk." I wasn't sure where I knew the warning from, but I knew I was right. He gave a thoughtful nod, giving me another one of his long studying gazes, but this one had the hint of a smile in the amber glow of his optics.

We split the energon equally, leaving half of it for the morning, and sharing the rest of it. It was gritty and tasted acidic... but it seemed like a feast. We drank it slowly enough to avoid over-energizing, but even with our caution, it made us drowsy, and we were both asleep within seconds after the last drink.

I didn't notice them at first, so I don't know how long they had been watching us, or even if they had been following us for a while before that. We had walked all morning, stopping every time we saw an abandoned or wrecked vehicle and drained it of energon. We had found a fuel can in a Mrrk-sized jeep and carefully poured the energon we collected into it. Scape insisted on carrying it, and since he was used to heavier labor than I was, I let him. We were making another stop for an armored truck with a broken back axle. It was almost empty, and I found myself resenting the time it took for us to find that out, time in which we could have made more distance. I was standing up and moving away in disgust as Scape carefully capped the fuel can again when I saw the two femmes watching us from the shelter of a half-collapsed office building. We looked at each other for a long moment. It was the first time I had seen anyone other than ourselves since leaving the bunker, either Transformer, Mrrk, or human. They didn't say anything or even move, and after a moment, I started walking again.

I wasn't even sure if Scape had seen them until our next stop, a flatbed truck that had been carrying a missile launcher. It was lying on its side, the launcher pitched off to land a short distance away. This one had a full tank, and we wordlessly agreed that it was as good a time as any to refuel ourselves. We sat in the shade of the truck, with cups that we had found in a transport several hours ago. "They've been following us," Scape said in a soft voice.

I sighed and nodded. They had not made any attempt to hide, always just far enough behind not to lose sight of us. In a few minutes, we heard their hesitant steps, and then they came around the back end of the truck, bodies tense and optics full of fear. I was sure that if either of us moved, they would both bolt. One of them, only slightly braver than the other, stepped forward, one hand gripping the side of the truck tightly. "We... we were wondering," she said in the precise and pleasant tones of a house slave, "where you are going?"

I looked at Scape with a You-Talk-To-Them expression, and snorted when he gave me the exact same expression right back. I rubbed my nose. "Home," I finally said with a shrug. "My owners..." and a bolt of fear went through me and I rushed on quickly. "I'm... I'm sure they'll be back soon, and I promised I'd keep the house ready for them, when... when they return."

The two femmes looked at each other. The other one was of a heavier build, the type usually used in factories. She was wringing her hands in a constant state of anxiety. The first one looked back at me. "We... we don't know where our owners are. And we... we don't know what to do." She was trying very hard not to look at the fuel can. "Can we... can we come with you? We've seen no one else and... maybe your owners can help us find ours? Or give us something to do? We're both hard workers," she rushed on, desperate to be useful enough to not be abandoned again. "And we don't complain. Wouldn't waste time in talking."

The other one spoke up. "We're not tryin' to run away, or anything. We just don't know where our owners are. We don't want to get in trouble. But you... you looked like you knew what you were doing..." Her voice trailed off and she glanced guiltily at the fuel can.

After a moment, Scape shoved the can over to them and handed his cup with it. I had a moment of panic... no, it's ours, there's not enough... and smothered it down. We'd found enough so far, and we were only a few days from home. The energon relays surely would be up and running then, and the Starkes would come home. They would know what to do.

Neither of us had actually given permission, but the femmes fell in with us when we left.

By late afternoon, a mech had joined us. By evening, another pair, mech and femme. By mid-morning the next day, we were ten, and we were spending almost as much time scrounging for fuel as we were walking.

"We could have been almost there by now," I fretted to Scape as we dug the back end of a jeep out from the ditch in which it had landed. The others had watched us and learned, fanning out as we walked, collecting fuel from the wrecks they found and bringing it back, fanning out again.

He grunted as he put a shoulder to the jeep, digging his feet in the dirt with each step as he inched the jeep out. "So you wanna leave them?"

"Wait, that's done it." The jeep was out enough to reach the fuel tank. Scape had sharpened the end of my pipe to a point, and it was much easier to ram it through the metal side of the jeep and into the tank. Scape shoved the fuel can under the end of the pipe, and I took my hand away, letting the fuel run out. I licked the splashlets of fuel off my hand. "No," I finally said in a low grumble. "Where would they go?"

Scape rocked the jeep gently as the fuel flow slowed, and the motion made it glug out a little faster. "We might need them," he said. "We don't know what state the house is in."

I shrugged. "It was in good enough shape when we left, as good as we could clean it without power." He gave me a sidelong glance, wordless and searching, then moved to cap the can closed again. With a flick of his hand and the squeal of metal, he pulled the pipe out of the jeep and handed it to me again. I caught the last drips out of it in the palm of my hand, licked it off. "They keep asking me what to do," I added in a grumble. "What makes them think I know?"

His optics glittered at me with the quiet amusement I often caught him watching me with. "You have a purpose. To get home. They're looking for someone with a purpose, to tell them what to do."

"Stop that," I scolded. "I'm not their owners."

He shrugged. "No. But you're something they need more than owners. You're a leader."

I stopped in mid-step of climbing out of the ditch and slid back down again. He made the climb in two steps and reached down to grip my arm and pull me up. "I am NOT a leader," I informed him.

Again, that quiet amused grin.

"What?" I asked in outrage, but he simply kept walking and before I could demand he tell me what was just do amusing, one of the others came running up with another fuel can she had found, this one already half full. She was so ecstatic that it completely distracted me away from the conversation, and I didn't remember it again until, three days later, we finally arrived at the gates of the estate, with thirty others in tow, and found that the house and every one of the other buildings had been burned to the ground.

The estate once boasted of a beautiful flower garden, behind the main house, down an incline to where the land leveled out again. Hundreds of years' worth of gardening and landscaping -- done mostly by Scape, as I now realized -- had cultivated this area into a shaded glen at one end with huge maple trees over grass deep and thick. Benches were scattered throughout the pathways winding past flower beds, all spiraling to eventually meet in the center where a fountain spilled out into man-made streamlets. A gazebo had been built there, large enough for several people, even those the size of Transformer slaves. On days when the weather tempted us out of the sewing room, we brought our frames out here, where we were surrounded by the music of water and breezes channeled through the maples to drift through the gazebo. It was my most favorite place in all of the estate, so I guess it shouldn't have been a surprise that I ended up there now. The gazebo had been pulled down, the flowerbeds torn up in ruts from heavy vehicles, the streambeds dry, no longer fed by the crumbled fountain. The largest of the trees still stood, although the younger ones had been pushed down. I sank down to sit under the largest of the trees. The bench that had been there was cracked in half, the ends resting against the torn-up turf, and after a moment, I wilted over it, pressing my face against the cold grain of the concrete surface, closing my optics and listening, hoping that at least the sounds were still there. But without the water from the fountain, and the trees that had been lovingly planted to guide breezes, there was nothing to bring back the memories.

The sun set, turning the now-unfamiliar landscape into splashes of fiery red that melded eerily with the acidic and scorched smell of burnt buildings. I closed my optics again until the coolness of the air told me that the sun had set entirely. I opened them again and shifted slightly to look up at the night sky, finding comfort in the stars. They, at least, were still there, in their normal constellations. A memory pierced through me, of myself laying on the ground near here with a young Evie, pointing out the different shapes the stars made and telling her their names and their stories. She was always filled with questions of other worlds and other people, and I could not answer them, for I had never been off of Earth. So I made up stories of worlds far away and the people that lived on them. Evie knew I was making them up and it only added to the magic. The memory chased away the peace that had begun to slightly fade over me with the nightfall, and I rolled over again to press my face against the concrete bench again.

There were footsteps, as I knew there would have to be sooner or later. They wouldn't be able to leave me alone for long. There had been a long moment of horrified silence as we stared at the charred remains of the house, and as the others suddenly realized that there would not be the solace they had hoped for, the homecoming welcome they had built in their minds, like the stories I had told Evie, of humans rushing forward to help them and, most importantly, to tell them what to do to bring back the comfort of routine into their lives.

What do the followers do, when the leader has failed?

When the murmurs had begun, raising in pitch, until I clamped my hands over my audios. Is this it, where are her owners, I thought she said... and the worst one of them all ... Cashel, what do we do? Tell us what to do? I had walked away from them, then, and mercifully, they hadn't followed.

Until now.

Reluctantly, I opened my optics. It was an inner battle to do so; once they were opened, I would be forced back into the reality of the present, when what I desperately wanted was the peace and comfort of the past.

It also wasn't a surprise when I saw that it was Scape. He sat on the ground next to me, studying me intently, thankfully without that gentle amusement that seemed to accompany all of his gazes at me. After a moment, he held out his hand and I made myself take it, let him pull me up to sitting. He looked away from me, then, to spread out several pieces of fabric on the ground. I recognized them as linen, but could not tell what dye lot they had been from. The edges were scorched, the heat having melted the qualities that made a specific shade that I was so good at telling apart from other shades. All I could see were reds, blues, yellows. There were no variances, none of the soft nuances that set Starke linens so far apart from anything dyed in a factory.

Scape spread each piece out carefully, then took one and leaned forward to work it under my collar. His fingers were gentle, but the skin was so abraded underneath the heavy metal, that I couldn't help hissing at his touch. He murmured a wordless apology, but kept working, sliding the fabric under and wrapping it around that section of the collar, then repeating it with each piece of fabric until the entire collar was cushioned from my neck. I could still feel the chafing, but this time, it was of fabric against my skin, and I knew it only hurt because the skin was so raw underneath.

When he was finished, I finally met his gaze. "I don't know what to do," I whispered.

He gave a very slight shrug. "Me, neither," he confessed.

"That makes me feel so much better," I told him and buried my face in my hands. And then, because I couldn't let it go unsaid any longer, I asked in a voice that sounded numb even to me, "It wasn't the Decepticons, was it?" I desperately wanted to hear that it was, so I could keep my illusion of who was our enemy. But I had seen the smoothed trails in the ground, still shimmering with faint ooze, and I knew that no Transformer made those tracks.

"No," he said in a gentle voice. "It wasn't the Decepticons."

I moaned then, beginning to rock, my face still buried in my hands, optics closed so hard that they hurt. "They were supposed to protect us," I wailed. "We've always been loyal -- why would they do this?"

Scape was quiet for a moment, and I could feel him looking out over the ruins of the gardens, feel the remains of the house behind me as if it cried out in as much pain as I felt. "Scorched Earth," he finally said. "Burn it, so there would be nothing left of any use."

I let out another soft cry, the last of the life I had known shattering in the space left by his words. Everything I had known, had depended on, lost. No better, after all, than those who had followed us from the battlegrounds. "A purpose," I choked out, then raised my head to glare at him, focusing my sudden rage at him. "You knew, didn't you?"

"I feared," he corrected gently.

The rage deserted me as suddenly as it had flared, and I turned my gaze away from him, to look out over the shadows. "They were supposed to protect us," I whispered.

After a long moment, he shifted to set his back against the trunk of the tree. "There was a time," he started, and I recognized the tone. It was the same one I had used when telling stories to young Evie... except that in his tone was the ring of truth, which had always been missing in mine. "A time when the Decepticons were good for this world. That is why they were called Guardians. Because they were the protectors of this planet, of the humans. Before, Earth was torn apart by multiple governments, warring among themselves, destroying their own home from the inside out. The Decepticons united the humans under one government, brought an end to the pollution that was destroying the ecosystem. It took a lot of time, and trial and error, and not all the 'Cons supported the Guardians. They were thinking in radically different directions than the Empire had ever thought of before. It was like they had to smash through a brick wall with every step, only to find another wall after it. But they did it...and then the Mrrks came and took it from them. And eventually, over time, they took the credit for everything good that the Decepticons had done and pushed on them the blame for everything wrong that they themselves had done."

I gave him a suspicious side-long glance. "Sounds like you were there."

He shook his head. "I've just read a lot. And I remembered when time shifted the truth into something else."

And because I had to, because it was too much for me to take in all at once, that my life and the history behind it had all been living a lie, over a thousand years of lies... I changed the subject. "How bad is it?"

He took to the new subject so quickly, that I knew it was a relief to him as well. "Pretty bad. They torched every house along this way that had no humans at home, and a few that did. The humans are gathered in the school. The Mrrks didn't get that far. There are a few slaves still here that the Mrrks missed. The energon relays still aren't up, and the humans have combined all their food and supplies, much like we did on the walk here."

I ran my mind around the words a few times, trying to sort my thoughts into something productive. "Are any of the vid-lines up?" I asked against hope. His amber optics flicked at me in a what-are-you-kidding? flicker and I shrugged. "Right. Which means there's no official word anywhere... just that the fighting's done."

"Yeah."

"Which means the worst is over," I said, my voice growing with hope. "Like I said, the Starkes will be back soon. We just have to keep going until then."

"Cash," he said gently, and the tone was what first made me brace myself, "This wasn't a local war. It was global. The whole world looks like this." He waved out over the ruined gardens. "The worst is only just now starting."

A week later, we were still holding together. Every spare moment was spent trying to scrounge energon enough for the fifty or so Transformer slaves that were left, as well as helping to find food for the four hundred plus humans that had set the school up for dormitory living. Between all of us, we had stripped the local department stores of bedding, towels, camping equipment, and anything else that could be used. The hardest part was convincing the slaves that it was all right, now, to break into abandoned houses and stores, that there wouldn't be punishment looming overhead when the almighty Someone Important found out and caught us at it. Some simply refused to assist, and I set them to work with the humans, in building, organizing, watching over children, monitoring the vids and news channels for any type of broadcasting and anything else I could think off. Water was also becoming scarce as the reservoirs were running low and the centralized water system had also been cut with the energon relays. Once the reservoirs ran dry, I wasn't sure what we would do. I set up teams to hike out and explore the nearby townships, and all that did was encourage more people to come back with them, adding to the number of mouths to feed.

"We could have humans drive out and do the same thing," Scape suggested as we walked up to yet another empty house. I dutifully knocked on the door first and called out. Like the others, I couldn't quite shake the need for politeness, the fear of being caught in the act of breaking in. When no one answered, I went to peek in through the garage window. I nodded at Scape, not in agreement with his suggestion, but rather to indicate that there was a car in the garage, and he stepped forward to claw his fingers under the large door, ripping it off its locks and rolling it up.

"I know," I said, back to his comment again, as I searched the rest of the garage for anything else that was powered by energon. I had been surprised to realize that I had a real knack for scrounging the stuff out, even draining batteries in datapads. "But it would mean using fuel, and I haven't decided if it's worth that, yet. The relays could still be turned on any day, now..." My voice trailed off, and I bit back what had become almost a prayer.

He grunted, his usual answer of agreement as he siphoned the car's tank empty. I found a lawn mower and several power tools -- ah, someone who liked to do their own work, as these were human-sized. A rarity in this era -- and carried them back to Scape. While he drained them, I went through the house, collecting food and quickly draining any household appliances that had energon batteries. I found three sleeping bags in a linen closet in the bathroom along with the bedding and took them too. My hands snagged on one of the sheets and ripped the fabric, and I cursed mildly. My hands had been too badly damaged building the bunkers to heal on their own, the skin and metal tissue peeled back into sharp edges. One finger was ripped down to the frame, another was missing the tip from the last joint on. For a moment, I saw my hands as they had been, guiding a needle through fragile linens, fingers long and slim and perfect. I had always been rather vain about my hands. The memory was so vivid that the room tilted for a moment, the memory more real than reality. I pushed myself away from the closet and lurched to the sink, hoping there was still enough water pressure in the pipes to wash my face, splash the memory away. There was, and the water did what I had hoped, bringing reality to the foreground again. I stared at myself in the mirror, a pale-opticed femme, covered in so much dust and grime that I never would have let her into any house I had the charge of. It seemed that the only bursts of color to me, were the scraps of fabric wrapped around my collar.

A far, far cry from the femme who spent her days sewing fine threads into masterpieces only a few short weeks ago.

There was a shifting step in the hallway, and I looked up to see Scape leaning in the doorway. "Find anything?"

I hadn't realized that I had been staring at my reflection for so long that he had to come looking for me. I gestured at the pile of bedding and sleeping bags. "Ripped one, though," I said, picking up the torn sheet and folding it out of habit.

"Bring it along," he said pragmatically. "We might have use of it, for something or other."

I nodded and began stacking blankets on top of the rest of the bedding, when he took my hands and frowned over them. He gave me a gentle push towards the counter, and I leaned back against it. He took out a file and set of pliers. "No painkillers," he said in apology and carefully began to bend the jagged skin, folding the sharp edges over and filing what he couldn't bend. I set my jaws and watched as if my hands belonged to someone else, trying to put the pain in another compartment of my brain where I didn't feel it as much. He was as gentle as he could be, washing grit out with a solvent. When he had smoothed as much of my fingers as he could, he took out a small can of oil and began to work it into the joints of my fingers. I had another brief moment of deja vu, this one not nearly as strong, of someone else repairing my hands, someone whose own hands were patched with ragged seals, rather than Scape's competent ones, and I had no idea where the memory had come from. I had never had injured my hands before, not to the extent of the memory, and I shook my head abruptly, trying to shove the image away. Scape gave me a questioning look, and I shook my head again, dismissing this time. He gave me another glance of yeah-right, but didn't say anything. After he had finished oiling, he took out a roll of electrical tape. "This will have to do," he said. "We don't have any patches or seals that wouldn't keep your hands out of working for a few days." It went without saying that there was no way I couldn't NOT use my hands for a few hours, much less than a few days. He carefully began winding the heavy tape around each of my fingers as a make-shift bandage. "At least this will keep the dirt out of them," he said as he finished and gave me another of his amused looks. "If you can manage not to tear these off as well as your skin."

I snorted and went to pick up the pile, but he beat me to it, taking the heavier items and leaving me with the lighter (and softer, with no threat of adding to my damage) bedding. We left the house, stacking the pile by the street-edge where one of the Transformers who had a vehicle alt-mode would come by later and pick them up. And we went on to the next house.

And that was pretty much how we filled every day, until the one a few weeks later when one of the human children found us, trying to drain a very stubborn delivery truck's fuel tank, to tell us that after almost a month and a half of silence, the news-chans were broadcasting again.

The size of the school building hadn't been the only reason why it had been chosen as a temporary residence. It also boasted what had been, a few weeks ago, a very new and powerful media center. The first thing the humans had done, before I had arrived, was to rig up the communications equipment with a portable power system fueled with energon batteries. We had manned it around the clock, certain that the first sign of a re-emergence of control would be in the form of broadcasts.

We hadn't been wrong.

I slipped into the media room and made my way through the crowd of humans and Transformers to the communications area, where the humans who had emerged as the leaders were packed around the console, arguing about the merits of piping the broadcast through the entire school versus the energon it would take to do it. "Spend the energon," I suggested. "Otherwise, we'd have to rely on word-of-mouth and it will get distorted in the retellings."

There was the muttering of agreement from the pack behind me, and a chair appeared for me. I wasn't sure if someone had abandoned it for me or somehow pushed it through the crowd without me noticing. It was warm, I noticed, and went with my first thought.

"They've been repeating it every fifteen minutes," the teenager at the console said. "Audio only, still no visual." He was sitting back in his own chair, looking smug. I had missed his name in the mass of names and faces that had been pushed past me over recent days, but I did remember that he had been one of the students here, and the media room had been his domain. From what I heard, he had even been sleeping in here ever since people had first begun trailing in. I couldn't help grinning at him, young and eager, elevated from the status of kid to communications manager by default of his knowledge. The young always adapted better to abrupt change than we elders did, either flesh or steel-skinned.

He grinned back at me, then leaned forward as the speakers crackled, then let out a chime, indication of an incoming broadcast. He turned a knob, typed in a command, making minute adjustments to something that I could tell he had already adjusted dozens of times.

A femme's voice echoed over the speakers in the soft but firm tones of an airways coordinator, in something that was an obvious recording. "Inhabitants of Earth. This planet is no longer under the command of the Mrrk Empire. It is once again a world in the Decepticon Empire, under the Guardianship of the warlord Divefire, as it was before, and as it shall remain henceforth. In the wake of the destruction left by Mrrk troops, we ask that all inhabitants join together to restore this world to the glowing gem of the Empire that it once was. Following this message will be a list of locations where Earth Forces have set up crisis centers. Humans are encouraged to come to these centers for supplies, medical attention, and to locate missing loved ones. All able-bodied persons are asked to participate in the rebuilding.

"For those of you who wish to remain citizens of the Mrrkvian Empire, we will allow you to leave the planet. Transportation will be provided to a neutral system. However, you will not be allowed to take anything that is considered a resource of the planet. This also includes any Transformer slaves, for as of this moment, all slaves are freed. There will be no tolerance for anyone continuing the Mrrk slavery system. All Transformers are asked to check in at one of the crisis centers for removal of collars and assistance in adjusting to their new way of life. This is a beginning of a new era for Earth and a new freedom for her Transformer inhabitants. This message will be repeated every fifteen minutes. Decepticons forever!"

News travels faster by mouth than by radio waves, and it seemed to take forever for me to push my way out of the crowds in the halls of the school and yard. We must have had more of an influx of Transformers since last count, because it seemed like there were dozens upon dozens of slaves --- ex-slaves, I corrected myself numbly -- pressing in on me, voices and harmonics chorusing and clashing in confusion, all wanting to know the same thing. What now? Fear, rejoicing, wonderment... all collided around me until it was impossible to filter out one voice at a time, impossible to soothe, console, advise. I was so weighted under my own shock that I wasn't even sure I could speak myself. Then suddenly, Scape's comforting bulk was there, parting the crowds in front of me, guiding me into a room and locking the door behind us. The babble disappeared with the shutting of the door into such a stark silence, that I reeled as much from the absence of the noise than I had at the crushing presence of it. I dropped myself into the nearest chair and stared blankly in front of me until I realized Scape had leaned back against a table and was simply... watching me. I ran my tongue over my lips, realized they were torn and sore from anxious chewing and that I couldn't remember exactly when I had started chewing on them in sheer nerves. "Is this good news?" I asked weakly.

He shuffled one foot against the floor, then shrugged.

"Oh, that's real helpful," I snapped.

Scape ducked his head with a sheepish expression. "Sorry." But his voice didn't show it in the slightest. I picked up the nearest object -- a book, it was a school, after all -- and flung it at him. He ducked it easily and it clattered off the wall behind him and to the floor where I stared at it. I had never thrown anything in reaction before, anger, exasperation... in any emotion. I would even shoo insects out the window rather than kill them. "Is this a good thing?" I asked again, in a whisper. Then, louder, "After hundreds of years of the Decepticons being our enemy, we're now supposed to be all chummy?"

Amusement flickered in his optics. "They've freed us."

"Yes, but at what price?" I stood up and began to pace restlessly, circling the table he was leaning against. "They take off our collars, and replace them with... with what?"

Again, the shuffling of a metal foot against floor. "The 'Cons had their flaws. But they always were trying to free us, you know."

I kept pacing. "No, I don't know. And you don't know, either, other than things that you read about that happened over a thousand years ago." I stopped in front of him. "You don't even know how accurate those writings were," I accused.

He held up empty hands as if warding me off. I gave him another glare and went back to pacing. After the third or fourth circuit, he reached out and stopped me, guiding me back to my chair. "You're making me dizzy," he said.

"Sorry," I mimicked his own earlier unrepentant tone.

He shook his head. "Anyone else would be rejoicing over freedom, and you're ... you're sulking."

"I am not," I snapped, then had the uncomfortable feeling that he was right. I straightened from my slouch, unfolded my arms. My mind suddenly clicked on one of the phrases in the broadcast. "Locate missing ones... do you think they can find the Starkes for us?"

His brows arched. "Cash, you are free. You don't have owners now. You can't tell me you want to go back to that, do you?"

"Yes!" I burst out. "Damn it, I was happy then." Words spilled out almost faster than I could speak them. "Happy and... and loved... and not followed around by mobs of people wanting me to tell them what to do and make decisions for them that might save or risk their lives. Yes, I want to go back to it, and I don't care who rules, I just want my family back." My voice cracked, harmonics clashing, and I shoved back the chair, blindly heading for the direction I thought the door was in. Arms stopped me, turning me around, and I shoved at them with no hope of moving them aside.

"You don't want to go out there," he said softly. "There's only another mob waiting for you."

I made a noise that was either laughter or a sob, wasn't sure which, and leaned back to find the door behind me. I rested my head back against it, optics closed for a long moment, seeking comfort in the blackness of my vision. "Right," I finally said softly. "I'm leaving tomorrow, then. Maybe someone at one of those centers will know how to find the Starkes." I let out a shaky breath and this time there was more laughter in it. "At the very least, I can get this damned collar off." I frowned, thinking back. I couldn't remember having ever sworn before. Quiet Cashel, embroiderist, with the patience learned from centuries of untangling thread and overseeing rowdy children. I placed the image of her against the one that had looked out of a mirror at me earlier. The purple optics were the only thing that matched in both images. I didn't recognize the one I had become. All I knew was that I wanted the other one back. I wanted the Starkes again. And I'd go to the Decepticons and pledge anything, if they could give my life back to me again.

I wanted to leave the next morning, early before the rest of the world, and Scape agreed. I found myself delighted at the prospect of not having a pack to worry about feeding and organizing, and therefore making much better time. The nearest center was going to be a longer walk than it had been to return home, but with it just being Scape and I, we thought we could make it in a couple of weeks. I was actually humming to myself as we stepped out into the school yard.

And found close to seventy Transformers and about twenty humans waiting for us with packs and fuel cans.

I stomped along the road, taking a fierce pleasure in kicking rocks and anything else that had the misfortune of being in my path and kickable. "Shoulda left last night."

I could feel Scape's amused glance touch me. There was nothing right there to kick, so I scuffed hard and showered dust up in front of me. Then spent the next several steps blinking grit out of my optics. "They were going to make the trip anyway," he commented mildly.

"Yeah, but why did they have to do it with us?" I snapped and stopped myself before I landed my toe against a rock the size of my foot. That one would probably hurt. "They were WAITING for us, dammit." I shot a glance behind me at the ... pack, was the only word I could think of ... following us. "It'll take forever for us to get there at this rate." The journey was mostly through battle-torn areas, too, and scavenging for fuel would be bad enough... adding water and food to the grocery list would mean spending half of each day searching instead of traveling. "I know!" I said with sudden brightness. "Next vehicle we see that's our size, you and I take it and run with it."

He arched an amused brow at me. "And leave all of them behind? To fend for themselves?"

"Yes! Perf -- oh, hell." I had spent too many centuries taking care of children. The sense of responsibility apparently was clinging, transposing Starke children into this flock following me.

I went back to kicking rocks and spat out more dust, pretending I didn't hear Scape's soft chuckle.

I dropped off my canteen and can at the fuel tank wagon. The mech who had pulled duty at it this evening took it with a brief grin at me. He poured the contents of the can into the tank, then refilled my canteen and handed it back to me.

It was a simple system, but it seemed to work. Those who weren't wounded or otherwise able fanned out during the day, scavenging as we continued forward. I know we spent more time scrounging than we did going forward, and it made me grit my jaws in annoyance often, but there didn't seem to be any other way to gather enough food, water, and fuel for the pack that had adopted me. In first week, our numbers had grown again by half. By the next week, we had doubled. A third of these were human children too young for me to feel safe in sending out, or elders too old, or wounded. The few Transformers who were large enough to have vehicle modes acted as carriers or tow vehicles, held back to a walking pace. At the same time, I could sense the same frustration from the humans. There were more of them than there were abandoned vehicles that they could drive. Also, the roadways were often damaged beyond what a vehicle could drive over, or clogged with rubble. It was difficult even for the Transformers, who often had to transform to clamber past the road block, to transform again, drive a few miles, only to repeat. We made progress at an excruciating pace.

Each night, those who had been sent out scavenging came back and gave their finds to the communal collection. In turn, they were given enough rations for the next twenty four hours.

I was amazed it was still working. Every day, I expected a fight to break out, accusations of someone hoarding, over-frayed tempers to explode over some slight. The very fact that it hadn't happened yet made me even more edgy.

I stepped aside for the next Transformer in line to move forward with her finds and made my way around the wagon that had been set up for food and other supplies for the human part of the pack. Scape had staked out a corner made by the two walls left standing of some building. It was almost dusk, but the soft glow of our optics gave us enough light to set up our own small camp, like the rest of the pack were doing around us. In some ways, it was easier for the Transformers. We didn't need bedding to keep warm, or proper clothing, or camp fires to cook and keep warm by, although I could see the comforting appeal of the flickering flames and sometimes wished for a fire of our own. Burnable materials, however, were also becoming scarcer and harder to find the deeper we went into battle-torn areas and it wouldn't be right to use them when we had no real use for it.

So what little excuse of a camp for us thankfully did not take long to set up. I sat down with a grateful sigh, leaning against one of the walls. A jagged edge poked me in the back and I fussed with it a while before it broke off in my hand. "That's better," I murmured and leaned back again, optics closed. "How many more today?"

I could hear Scape settle down not far from me. "Five humans, and that's it."

"Really?" Up until now, the incoming Transformers had outnumbered the incoming humans. I didn't know how to explain it. Perhaps more humans had escaped the planet than I had briefly estimated. Or maybe they had already traveled ahead of my group, or gathered somewhere else. Truthfully, it wasn't high on my list of Things To Worry About. That was quite large enough on its own, without me adding something that was impossible for me to determine anyway.

There was rustling and something soft hit me. I blinked my optics open. "Wha--" The soft thing fell into my lap and I realized it was a pillow. A blanket followed in its path, trying to wrap itself around my head first. I sputtered and clawed the thing back under control. "Shouldn't this go to the supply truck?"

"Hush," he said. "You'll sleep better if you're more comfortable. I made sure that there's no human without, and if there is any Transformer among us who needs sleep, it's you."

I grunted, having found that it was a wonderful non-committal answer, and was probably why Scape used it so often. I had just finished spreading the blanket out with the intention of rolling up in it, when there was the sound of someone running towards us. Scape was on his feet in an instant, faster than I could register, and was holding his siphon pipe almost like a spear. I was more distracted by his reaction than by what he was reacting to, and when the body collided into me, I had to windmill to keep from falling over.

It was one of the other femmes. She was the youngest, had in fact only just come from the production line only a few weeks before the Decepticons had returned. She was almost painfully afraid of making mistakes and was in near constant need of reassurance. However, she was also one of the bravest in foraging out into new experiences... once she knew that she wouldn't be punished for it. This, however, was more than a reaction from the fear of doing something wrong; she was trembling violently and clung to me. Even in the midst of her fear, she was obviously making the effort not to draw the attention of anyone else in the pack, and I was impressed by that presence of mind, even as I wrapped my arms around her and tried to calm her down enough to speak sense. "Bodies," she finally cried out, even that in a harsh whisper. "Dozens of them, oh, so many!"

I shushed comfortingly and she clung more tightly to me for a moment before easing her grip. Once getting the words out, sharing the horror, she seemed to gather some control back around herself, even though I could still feel her trembling violently. "Can you show me?" I asked.

She nodded and started back the way she had come, although she refused to let go of my hand, and I let her keep that bit of reassurance. She led us a good two miles away from the camp, and my estimation of her raised another notch. It was a longer distance than most of the ex-slaves preferred to be away from the protection of others, especially when it meant walking after dark. Her footprints were clear in the ground and from the distance between steps, she must have been near-flying on her way in. She slowed when we came to a small group of buildings that were still standing in spite of the wide-scale wreckage we had been walking through for days. She pointed to the area behind the buildings and gave me a pleading look. I patted her hand. "You don't have to go any further," I murmured.

She had a moment's expression of relief, then her gaze darted around the darkness enveloping us. Evidently waiting by herself in full dark was more terrifying than whatever she had seen, for she didn't let go of my hand and went with us.

Behind the buildings was a trench bunker, much like the ones Scape and I had built. It was filled with the bodies of Transformers, piled in on top of each other. The young femme moaned as Scape held up his light to splash over the bodies, the light reflecting back off of metal skin, and she buried her face against me so she wouldn't have to see. Each body had been shot through the laser core, and even I could tell that the precision was too neat for people shot during battle. This had been an execution.

"It was the Decepticons, wasn't it?" the femme said in a shaking voice. "They said they were killing everything, even the slaves." And it was only then that I realized the bodies were all those of slaves, not Decepticon warriors taken in battle. "That's why they're calling us in. They're going to kill us, too, aren't they?" She gripped at me again. "We can still turn back, can't we?" she begged.

Scape was kneeling near the trench, examining something on the ground. My mind was refusing to work, and I couldn't understand why he was scavenging now, in the face of this .... this massacre. Then he suddenly held up his light again, the beam splashing again over the bodies, and something reflected back in the wrong direction, not natural to the movement of the light. "There's someone still alive down there!"

Both the femme and I jumped forward at the same time, and in the spiraling nonsense that was swirling around in my head, I did notice that as frightened as she was, she didn't hesitate when there was a life at stake. The three of us slid down the slopes of the trench, Scape guiding us down to where the movement had been. There were too many bodies to easily tell which one moved, and it was the femme who found a slim hand reaching up from under two large factory-style mechs, fingers trying to twitch. The femme leaned hard against one of the mechs, necessity overruling fear and revulsion, but it took Scape's strength to shove the body off, then to lever the other one away, letting it roll down the other side of the pile, and then there was a soft cry. "Thank Primus," a femme's voice sobbed. "I was so afraid you were Mrrks."

Scape reached in and pulled her out as the two of us untangled her from the mess of bodies. Scape carried her up out of the trench and gently set her down in the puddle of light the young femme and I made by combining our lights together. The femme was another factory-style, rough featured, but of lighter build than most manufactured for factory work. Even in the poor light, I could trace where the laser had hit her, bounced somehow off her chest-plate to ricochet and plunge through her arm, taking it off between the elbow and shoulder. Her side was covered with dried blood. I reached out, stopped with my fingers hovering over the ragged remains of her arm. "You should have bled to death," I blurted out.

She managed a smile at me, through the mixture of fear, pain, and exhaustion. I did a mental figuring; she must have been trapped in that trench for weeks, even if it had only been in the last days of the fighting. Her other hand slipped into subspace, then came out with a handful of clips, the kind used in offices to clip large bundles of paper together. "I could reach the fuel lines," she said, "Clamped them off." Her voice shook again. "I didn't know what else to do. I was so afraid. They lined us up and started shooting."

"We can still go back, can't we?" the young femme begged again. Names, the swirl in my brain said... we need names... "We can hide from the Decepticons somehow, can't we?"

The injured femme blinked up at us. "The Decepticons? They... they tried to save us."

Scape was giving her arm a quick examination in what I realized was a little too professional a matter for a… a gardener. "I think we'd better leave the clamps on," he said. "I doubt her self-healing would have sealed them off. This is going to take major repairs, and we don't have anyone capable of that in our pack, even if we had the parts."

She gripped his hand for a moment, the clips tumbling to the ground. "Do you have any fuel? I'm so hungry..."

I realized I had left my rations back at the camp, but the young femme held out her own canteen. Scape took it, guided it to the femme's lips. "Drink slowly," he instructed. "Your fuel lines will freeze otherwise."

The femme sipped obediently, but still whimpered when he eased the canteen away. "It was so long..." she murmured weakly. "I... I... There wasn't anything else to do. They were bleeding fuel." Her optics begged us for understanding. "I would have died if I didn't... and then I couldn't reach anyone else..."

"Shhh." Scape's touch to her cheek was gentle, as it had been when he bandaged my hands, wrapped cloth pieces around my collar. "You lived. We'll take care of you now."

She relaxed in his arms. "The Decepticons... they tried to save us," she whispered, her strength running out, but needing to tell us. "It was the Mrrks. Were going to use us as shields... didn't work, we were too small... then they said they weren't leaving anything for the Decepticons..." Her optics closed and she drifted into sleep as she began to shut down, conserving the energy that her body desperately needed to keep her alive.

We were silent as we went back to the camp, Scape carrying the injured femme. I waited until he had her settled with the other wounded, none as bad as this one, and who would look after her, then I drifted away and over to the fuel wagon. I took four fuel cans and went back to the trench. I stood at the edge of it for a long moment, chewing the soft metal skin of my lip before sliding down among the bodies again. Most fuel would still be in fuel tanks, some still in fuel lines. My fingers seemed to know exactly where to cut. The swirl of confusion in my mind was gone and I saw everything in vivid clarity. We were moving deeper into battle-torn territory. It would be harder and harder to find fuel, and we still had a long way to go.

Dirt cascaded down the side of the trench and I crouched, trying to hide among the bodies, until there was a soft murmur of assurance in Scape's voice. He skidded down at the other end of the trench with four fuel cans of his own. He started at that end and I continued from mine.

The sky was just beginning to streak with sunrise when we finished. Scape had made one trip back to the camp with full cans, returning with empty ones again. I had begun counting bodies when I had begun, lost track part way through and never picked it up again. I had lost count at thirty, and it had not even been false dawn yet.

We rested at the top of the trench after scrambling out for the last time. I couldn't pull my gaze away from the bodies. "Don't tell anyone," I heard myself say. "They wouldn't understand."

Scape was quiet for a long moment, then he said softly, "We wouldn't be the first to survive this way. It's not talked about... but we're not the first."

"They still won't understand."

Another long moment, then, "That's why they come to you for directions."

I sorted that over, saw the distinction he was making. "Sometimes... you don't sound like a gardener."

I heard him breathe out in wry amusement. Finally he said, "I guess I've read too much."

We both stood up and reached for the fuel cans at the same time. The hike back was silent. No words of wisdom, of encouragement, of hope, of horror shared. But the sunrise was breathtaking as we carried life blood of the dead back to keep the living alive.

We finally made it. It took us a month, twice as long as Scape and I had estimated we could make it there on our own, but no one took on more wounds, or even died, so I guess we did all right. By the time we walked in through the gates of the compound the Decepticons had set up, I was almost numb with exhaustion. But we had made it. And we were all still alive.

I was amazed.

And also had no idea what to expect. I kept looking back over my shoulder to make sure that my pack was still following me -- as if they'd have stopped somewhere along the way. There was a series of tables set up just inside the entrance, rather unmissable, although Scape had to point it out to me, because I was too busy looking over my shoulder. He gave me a gentle shove to guide me in front of the first table, where the Decepticon femme behind it was leaning to one side to try and gauge the number of people grouping in behind me. "Who's in charge here?" she asked in the automatic tones of someone who has said the same series of questions entirely too many times.

Scape nudged me again, which seemed to knock the words, "I am," out of me, although I followed it with a hesitant, "I guess..."

The femme broke off in her gauging to study me. "Really?" I fought to keep from shrinking away. "That's a first. There's always been a human in charge." She entered something into her datapad. "How large is your group?"

I gave another look over my shoulder, not that I needed to run a head count. "About two hundred Transformers and seventy-five humans, give or take. Fifteen Transformers wounded, one seriously. Five humans wounded, nothing serious, although one is pregnant and due almost any time now."

The soldier gave another nod, pleased with the detailed account, it seemed. All the time, she kept entering figures into her datapad. "The humans go to the right side, where medical crews will see to them and their names will be added into the registry. All ex-slaves go to the right, for removal of their collars and also to be seen for repairs." Her voice had fallen again into rehearsed rhythms. "You will receive further guidance from that point."

I felt, more than saw, Scape nod and turn to the young femme behind him, the same one who had discovered the bodies of the slaves, and repeat the same information to her in a low tone, sending her to spread the instructions. I fidgeted for another moment, then said hesitantly, "The broadcast said that you'd help us find missing people?"

The Decepticon paused, jolted out of her recitation. "That really pertained to the humans," she said, uncertain for the first time. "We aren't set up to do searches for ex-slaves, although all of their bar-codes," and her voice hardened into distaste over the word, "are being scanned, and I suppose we might be able to trace someone down."

I could see it in her expression that this was another question asked for the first time, and I could understand. Slaves had never been encouraged to create emotional ties between each other. Of course, realistically, friendships were impossible to curb completely, but an outsider to the society would hardly know the realistics. I shook my head, losing my own hesitation at the appearance of hers. "No, I'm looking for a human family. My owners. They went off-planet --"

She cut me off, her expression echoing the same distaste that had shown through at the word "bar-code". "There is no need for you to find your owners," she said sharply. "You are free, now."

I leaned across the table to plead with her. "You don't understand. They're my family. I have to find them."

She shook her head, turning her attention back to the datapad in a dismissal, and I suddenly saw, as if from her optics, the hundreds, thousands, of slaves who had filed past her, all wanting some form of new ownership, all wanting someone to tell them what to do. My plea must have sounded like echoes of the same bewilderment, if not the same words. I reached out, covered the screen of her datapad with my hand with my taped fingers. "Listen to me," I said in a low voice that I almost didn't recognize, and something in the tone made the soldier sit up straighter, her attention focused on me in an automatic reaction. "I've spent the last ... almost two months looking for my family. Mrrks called them my owners, but I have lived with them for over a thousand years. Their joys were mine, I shared their tears, raised their children, saw them born, grieved their deaths... for over a thousand years." My fingers tightened over the datapad, and the soldier's optics flickered down to them briefly, then shot back to meet mine again. "I didn't come this far to have you push me aside in your misguided mission to save me from oppression." I let go of the datapad, and her own hands tightened around it, brought it to her chest in a protective hold. "Now," I said, my voice still soft, "how do I find my family?"

After a long moment, she said in a voice also soft, "You aren't like the others, are you?"

I heard Scape snort and mutter something softly, but I could only hear the amusement in his voice, not the words. I didn't say anything, just continued to watch the Decepticon, my jaws locked.

She set the datapad aside -- out of my easy reach, I noticed. "You said they went off-planet?"

I nodded, not quite ready yet to believe that she was going to help, that I wasn't going to have to crawl over the table in some other more emphatic manner.

She shook her head ruefully, but her expression was thoughtful as she tapped her fingers against the surface of the table. "We wouldn't have record of them, then. Certainly not here, anyway," she rushed on to caution me. "Our records of Terrans only pick up from the end of the fighting here. There might be something more in the Mrrk transportation records, but those records are very sporadic, some destroyed outright before we could get them. I'm not saying that we can't find them. I'm saying I can't do it from here."

I sorted over what she had said, trying to push through the wave of despair to hear the encouragement. "Then where can it be done?"

She gave a hesitant shrug. "I'm thinking Earth Academy, if it can be done at all." The name wasn't familiar to me, although I felt Scape recognize it. The femme saw my blank expression and gave a brief smile. "That was what it used to be called. Our main embassy and university. The Mrrks called it something else, can't remember what right off-hand." She brought out the data-pad again, calling up a map on it and turning it for me to look at. "It's in the western part of the continent." Her fingertip rested on the location and I felt my hope waver and sink. It was close to two thousand miles away. Exhaustion swept over me, almost over-powering and I pressed the palms of my hands against my optics. Scape's hand gripped my shoulder and I read the support in it. After a long moment, I lowered my hands. "Guess we'd better get started then," I said in a rough voice. "Can we have some fuel, please, to start us off?" With the request, I heard my voice fell back into the respectful tone of servant to master. I didn't have the strength to modify it out of the deeply ingrained habit.

But the soldier was sorting through files in the datapad. "Hold on just one moment, though. They were supposed to leave half an hour ago, but they were running late..." She found something and grinned in triumph for a moment, then spoke through her radio. "Silvershot? You still around?" I heard the murmur of radio waves, but not the words, however she shot me another grin. "You're going back empty, right? Got room for a couple of passengers? They're Terrans Transformers. Won't take up much space." She gave me a thumbs-up, and I felt a surge of hope drain through the exhaustion. "I'm sending them over." She stood up and came around the table, turning me to follow her pointing finger. "See that black flag over there? There's a supply convoy heading back to Earth Academy. You can hitch a ride with them. They're leaving in five minutes and they'll drive straight through. The mech in charge's a big silver guy. Don't let his appearance spook you off. He's a friend of mine, and he'll see you there all right." She gave me a clap on the shoulder that would have toppled me over if it hadn't been for Scape's quick move to steady me. "Good luck," she added in a lower, more sincere voice, then she was gone, back to her table to sift through the pack I was leaving behind. I gave all of them a last look, then took a deep breath and began to dart across the compound, swerving around humans and Transformers of all sizes. I slowed down to a trot as we drew near to the post with the black flag, scanning around until I decided that the train of four large covered supply trucks were what we were looking for. There was a huge mech in silver armor, and I gave Scape a nervous glance, before going hesitantly up to him. The mech turned around and I could see why the femme had given me the caution. He was not only large, but completely silver. There was absolutely no color to him. Even his optics were an eerie pearl shimmer. Then his face lit up in a large smile, and the icy appearance melted away in his obvious good humor. "You must be the ones SaberStar sent over, right? Well, the ride won't be the most comfortable one you've ever had, but we'll get ya there." He held out his hand and I felt a moment's uncertainty. Then Evie's face came to my mind as she bent over to glide her sheers through the pink fabric and I took his hand without another thought. He helped me up into the back of one of the trucks. Scape vaulted up in behind me as I peered around, trying to find my bearings in the dark interior, and with a lurch of the truck bed, Silvershot stepped up inside as well. He crouched against the wall of the truck in the manner of one used to bracing himself against the movement of such a large vehicle, and I took his unspoken advice and found myself a spot to sit in where I was fairly well cushioned in. Scape settled beside me as Silvershot spoke into his radio and the truck roared to life, lurching forward and jouncing over the uneven compound floor until it reached the smoother surface of the paved road and settled into a rolling movement. Silvershot let out a long sigh and broke into another brilliant smile. "And now we sit back and relax for the next day and a half." He gave an amused shrug. "Give or take a few hours. We're still clearing the roads of wreckage in some areas."

"Better than walking it," I said faintly. The exhaustion was beginning to sink in again.

He gave us a long study. "Wish we had time to get you cleaned up. Get those collars off you." His face creased in the same distaste the femme had viewed them with. "But we were running late as it was, and the next supply convoy wouldn't be for another few days yet. Saber seemed to think you were in a hurry."

Scape was frowning at me with some concern, and I waved him off. "Just tired." I shuffled around until I found my fuel canteen and was beginning to pour some when a huge silver hand grabbed it away from me. "You aren't going to eat that, are you?" he asked in genuine horror. He sniffed at it and grimaced. "Where did you get that? Out of the bottom of some army jeep's fuel tank?"

I started to answer that, yes, that was exactly where it had come from earlier that morning, but he had already moved to the back of the truck and before I could stop him, he hurled the canteen out. "Now, don't you worry. I promised Saber I'd take care of you, and that doesn't mean letting you drink that sludge." He came back to rummage in his own pack, coming up with three energon cans. "Brought to you from Earth Academy's own supplies."

Dear Primus, nothing had ever tasted so good. Silvershot and Scape fell into an easy conversation that I was too weary to follow, but the gentle tones of their voices rumbling soothed me as much as the motion of the truck and the feel of the pure energon washing into my fuel lines. Somewhere along the line, I felt something soft being tucked around me, and Scape's voice saying softly, "She's exhausted. Brought almost three hundred of us through, finding us fuel and food along the way."

Silvershot said something I couldn't make out, his tone surprised, then Scape's voice settled back into the rumbling rhythm of story-telling. Although I couldn't pick out the words, I let the rhythm ease me into sleep.

The sudden absence of motion was what woke me before Scape gently shook my shoulder. I sat up, peering around the back of the truck blearily and not quite placing myself. "Why're we stopping?" I mumbled.

Scape crouched to study my face intently. "We're there."

His gaze unnerved me and it took another moment to catch on to his words. "Already?" I felt like I hadn't slept at all, much less the entire distance. I pawed around until I found the half-empty can of energon Silvershot had given me and drained it much too quickly for someone with a mostly-empty fuel tank. Instead of steadying me, it only seemed to make me more bleary, although the wonderful taste of the high quality fuel brought the world more into focus.

Scape was still studying me. "If we don't find help here," he said in a stern no-arguments voice, "you are taking time to rest before going on to the next stop. And I don't mean rest by sleeping in the back of a convoy truck, either."

I flickered my fingers at him, for him to read either as agreement or dismissal, whichever he chose, because anything more would take more thinking than I was able to do at the minute. I clambered up, feeling every inch of standing in the action.

Silvershot's ice-like face appeared at the end of the truck and immediately broke into that smile that melted the eeriness of the single color. "Wasn't first class traveling, but we got you here." He held out his hand to help me step down, a respect I wasn't used to towards a slave, even one in high authority of a household. I covered my discomfort by paying close attention to my footing. The ground seemed to ripple somewhat when I looked at it, and when I refocused my gaze ahead of me, the desert air was baked oven-hot, searing around me, raising off the ground in uneven waves that made me feel queasy. I had rarely been out of my mountains with their cool green comfort.

If the crisis center had been in a state of frenzy, this place was in chaos. The courtyard of the campus was crowded with tables and people manning them, cords linking consoles and equipment running under them twined in huge piping to keep them together and from tangling unwary feet. There was motion everywhere I looked, with almost everyone larger than me, and I suddenly felt very lost and small. It took me a moment to realize that the humans were being guided through a separate section, rather than risk being stepped on by the much-larger Transformers than they were used to. The normal-sized Transformers hadn't seemed so large in the open area of the crisis center, but here within the circle of buildings, they seemed to loom over me, and I suddenly wondered if I should go through the human side of the courtyard, or if I'd be bowled over by a soldier more intent on his errand than where he was stepping. Then, as my vision began to pick out more between the larger Transformers, I saw that there were just about as many of the Terran-Transformers, more my size, and that the larger Transformers were paying much more attention to their footing than I had first assumed. On the tail end of that, I realized that the chaos was much more organized than it had seemed at first. It was the ... temporary feel of stations being placed outside and of repairs from battle damage that made it seem more uncontrolled.

Still, it was a tremendous amount of activity made active by people much larger than I was, and I didn't know where to start. I gave Scape a helpless look, and Silvershot nearly knocked me over with his encouraging pat on my back. "They're running the outside portion just like the other crisis centers," he assured. "Almost a mirror image, if you know how to look at it." He pointed to one set of tables, closest to the entrance, although the supply trucks had taken us a good distance past them. "Go check in over there, and they'll get those collars off you and some medical treatment." He hadn't missed my shaky footing, and he exchanged glances with Scape that clearly said he was supposed to take me to the medics no matter what argument I gave him. I felt vaguely comforted by the conspiracy between them. My hand was still in Silvershot's and he turned it over to look at the barcode and serial number on my wrist. He patted my hand, much more gently than his earlier clap on my back. "I'll check in on you, make sure you get through the checkpoints all right."

I slipped my hand out of his with a smile that tried hard to be grateful, but that I could tell only came across as tired. Then as he and Scape gave each other another of those conspiratorial looks, I headed over towards the set of tables and the long line leading up to it. I took my place in the line, leaning gratefully up against the wall of the building behind me, more than a little afraid that if I sat on the ground, I wouldn't be able to get up again. Scape was about to make me sit anyway, I could tell from his expression, but there was suddenly a large amount of movement and noise as a group of Decepticons came through the entrance into the courtyard. It drew my attention, not so much from the noise itself, but by the reaction to it. As the soldiers headed through the courtyard, everyone else seemed to ease out of their way, leaving their path clear. People in the line with us were turning around to look as that area fell into relative quiet, except for the dozen or so who had just entered, who kept talking as if they didn't notice the effect they were having on the rest. The sheer power of their entrance made me shrink back against the building behind me, made me wish that I could fade into the metal surface and disappear... yet at the same time, I was drawn to them, wanting a better view. Here were people who had rank and who were not afraid of responding to the honors given to them... unlike the slave girl cowering in the shadows of a building, who had spent her whole life trying to fit in, trying to blend away the favoritism placed on her by her owners. These soldiers frightened me... yet at the same time, I felt a longing for even a fingertip of their confidence.

"Who are they?" someone nearby asked in a whisper, afraid to draw the attention of that focus of power.

Scape seemed frozen next to me, and for that instant, my attention was pulled away from the soldiers by some instinct to look at him. His expression was torn, a mixture of something that bordered on excitement, and yet something else older than this moment. As if an ancient worry, an immense weight, overpowering for an unknown eon of time, was about to be finally put at rest. His gaze was sealed on those few, and I didn't think he even remembered that I was still there, that he was aware of any of the crowd around us. "It's the warlord," he said faintly. "They were right. Divefire has returned." Then slowly, as if with a huge effort, he pulled his attention back to me, optics burning with amber fire. He caught my shoulders, steered me in front of him, pushing our way through the crowd. "Go ask him about... about the Starkes", he said, his voice low and urgent. The people around us were all jostling for a closer look as the warlord's name was echoed over and over again throughout.

I dug my heels into the baked ground in a panic. "Are you insane?" I hissed. It was one thing to long for the confidence of recognized rank. It was another thing entirely for an unknown slave girl to approach a warlord of the conquering race… especially one associated with so many rumors. Insane, powers of a god, Chaos Itself... Divefire had been known as all of these an eternity ago. Considering he had returned to an alien planet, wiped it free of those who ruled it, against all odds, against all hope, against all sanity... Given what I had seen myself, I had little doubt that all the other ancient myths were reality.

Scape's hands tightened on my shoulders, spinning me around to face him. "Do you want to see Evie again? Because he may be the only one who can find them for you." He gave me a shake, my jaws clicking together, his optics burning with that strange amber fire that I had never seen before, even in the half-built bunker as the world rained hell down on us.

I faltered then, as he knew I would, twisting my love, my desperation to find my family into... I wasn't sure what, but for lack of anything else, I called it strength, braided that love and desperation into it and turned to push my way through the crowd myself. "Divefire," I called out, barely hearing my own voice over the murmurings of the crowd. "My... my lord, please..." The crowd seemed impossibly tight; my voice couldn't even make it through, much less myself. Scape tried to use his bulk to lever people aside but wasn't making any further ground than I was. "Louder," he said through clenched jaws. "Hurry! Before they go inside."

...Evie... oh, Evie, I just want to go home.... I shoved uselessly against the person in front of me, a full-sized Transformer, placed as if a god himself couldn't move him. ....home, I just want, I want.... I took a deep breath and shouted, but something grabbed my words, melded and meshed them with a will that wasn't my own, and what came out in my voice was "DIVER!!"

Something had happened within the crowd, whether it was luck or fate or the presence of soldiers reigning over the cowerings of slaves, but the noise level had suddenly dropped for a brief instant, and my voice rang out, echoing against building upon building, more loudly than I had ever spoken, more loudly than I had ever heard a slave speak, and I didn't connect the sound to myself, because the word wasn't what I had meant to speak. And then the world fell into a silence so complete that I could hear the air burning with the heat of the desert.

The warlord turned around, and I could see him for the first time, for somehow, the people in front of me had disappeared, withered aside from the blazing rage from deep green optics. All I could see were those optics, filled with rage and loss and insanity, and all I could think was... Dear Primus, what has hurt this mech so completely... Then his wings, strangely flexible, hackled and flared out, sweeping through and billowing the oven-hot air, and when he spoke, it wasn't with the roar I expected, but with a deep growl that echoed as loudly as my voice had. "Who called me that?"

There was a deadly silence again. Even the air suddenly seemed chill compared to his rage. He took several steps forward, sweeping that fiery look over the crowd. "NO ONE is to call me that again! No one is to EVER AGAIN--"

And then he stopped, as if all the blazing rage had suddenly frozen to ice, and I was so caught in those optics that I could read his thoughts as clearly as if he had spoken them ... that no one would dare brave that rage to call him by that name which brought him so much pain... no one except...

He took another step forward, awkward, as if he had forgotten how to move. His lips moved, and there was no sound at first, then only a single word: "Who...?"

A pair of hands hit me square in the back and pushed hard. I fell forward, too startled to even try to catch my balance, and instead I sprawled on the baked earth.

There was suddenly a hand in front of me, and I blinked up in confusion at the warlord, because no one could possibly cross that courtyard so fast, it was impossible... but instinct took over and I placed my hand in his, letting him help me to my feet. I couldn't look up at him. My gaze was frozen on his hand... and the ring of simple metal on his finger, in the human style that no Transformer followed. For a second that was so long it was painful, I kept staring at that ring, unable to move. Then once again, my body took control. My hand reached into subspace, curled around the ring that the darkness had held safe since Evie had given it to me, brought it out into the daylight and placed it in the palm of the warlord's hand. It was the mate to his, the only difference being its size, slimmer and made for a more delicate hand. I looked up at him then, lost in confusion, and his hands went up to cup my face, to hold me steady while his optics bore into my face, his own face splashed with the amethyst reflections of my own optics. "Cats...?" he asked in a sound more breath than voice, filled with pain and the fear of being wrong, and the fear of the agony that would bring.

At first, I mis-heard him, thought he had called me Cash, as Scape did, and I nodded as much as I could with my face held in his hands, my optics not leaving his, drowning in those green oceans of pain-filled fear. I couldn't stand seeing such pain from anyone, and my hands slipped up to ease his hands away from my face, dwarfed in his. He brought my hands to his lips and kissed them. "What happened to you, Cats?" he asked, still in that whisper.

All I could do was gaze helplessly. "I don't... I don't know..." I managed to say, and my voice was no louder than his. "I don't... remember..."

He stared at me for another of those eternal moments, then his mouth twitched, one side curving up into a lop-sided smile. "Oh, Cats... not again." He gave a soft laugh, nothing more than a couple of breaths, and I was bathed in sudden delight at the sound, knowing that this mech's laughter was something to be treasured. "I swear, this time I'm making sure those memory circuits are fixed, so help me..." He shook my hands gently, still closed in his, and I could feel the metal touch of both rings. Then he looked down at our hands and his fingers started to glow with a soft purple light, a shade in harmony with my optics, and something called deep inside me, in a part of my mind that I didn't know existed, and my own fingers started to glow in response, the energy halo-ing around our hands, growing brighter, pulsing from between our laced fingers. The taste of energy flooded through me with an achingly familiar feel to it, and I pulled more of it in, wanting more and not knowing what it was, but somehow I needed it, as if there was a part of me that had been asleep forever and this energy was beginning to rouse it. For an instant, I was suddenly terrified. This was more than the slave-girl had ever been and that part of me that was waking would forever change me and the terror made me clench my hands tighter. The bite of the rings in our hands steadied me, and I looked up into the fear of those green optics, and I knew that I couldn't live without the love in them. The glow grew around us, softening the sharpness of the desert air, and suddenly I was bombarded with images that I didn't recognize, but somehow knew at the same time, of waking up in a dark rusted alley, of starvation fierce and deadly, of endless battles, a night sky that never saw dawn, a ship touching down graceful and screaming with speed, a ruined building in the wreckage of a battlefield. Earth seen from the deep stillness of space. Pain entering in my shoulder in a pinprick and exploding out my back, green optics looking down at me with the panicked fear of watching death stealing love away. The same green crazed with the burning insanity of chaos, softening into the deepness of love as the ring slips onto my finger, blending into awe as they look down at our children, the best of both of us. Climbing onto a shuttle with an airy wave of back-soon and an explosion of white pain encompassing everything else. Falling, falling, swallowed into darkness, never waking...

Except that this time, I knew my mate would catch me before I hit the ground.

I woke to the feeling of being held.

It was such an alien feeling that I didn't dare move, didn't dare make any indication that I was awake. Then, gradually, the physical comfort of those arms seeped in. I was wrapped in the softness of blankets and the back of my head was cushioned. Great care had been taken to ensure that I was comfortable. It was something I couldn't remember experiencing and for a long moment, I sank back into that delicious state of being not-quite-awake. Just as gradually, I became aware of how much my body ached. I hurt deep, all the way to my frame, accompanied with the surface irritation of sand and grit in my joints. The soft blankets only seemed to emphasize the pain more, and I whimpered, trying to burrow more deeply into the cushioning, afraid to wake completely and have to take notice of the damage I had been through.

The arms gave and moved with my rearranging, and I had a dreamy image of being held in a hammock, although I had never even seen one before, other than in pictures. Then a hand tucked the edge of a blanket under my chin, fingers brushing along my face on their way to resettle more cloth under my head.

Hammocks didn't have fingers. I opened my optics to the gentle forest-green glow of the warlord's optics. For a long moment, I wondered if I was still asleep, dreaming that green warmth, because I had never seen such love before and certainly never imagined being the focus of it.

"I... I don't know what happened," I said in a tiny voice, and suddenly I wished I had said anything else, because now I was heart-afraid that I had broken the spell and I would do anything to keep that gaze on me. My mind blurred, with the odd sensation of seeing him through double-vision; in one set was the warlord holding a grubby slave-girl he had never seen before... and in the other set was my mate watching me in disbelief at seeing me alive. Disbelief and also a kind of elated awe.

I couldn't decide which vision was more unsettling. Still, I couldn't bring myself to move. My skin felt starved for the comfort of his touch and I wanted to close my optics and drift back into that protective sleep.

Instead, I reached up and traced his lips with my fingertips as if in the grip of an ingrained instinct that went much deeper than ones of a careful servant. He closed his optics at my touch, kissing my fingertips as they explored his face, rubbing his cheek into the curve of my hand. The sizes were all off; my hand should have been larger, should have fit differently than it did, and I bit my lip in a rush of loss. "I don't know what --" I started to say again, then caught myself before I could finish. I closed my optics, bit my lip hard enough to part the soft metal and taste blood. "Oh, Diver," I said, without knowing I was going to. "I'm all wrong, aren't I?"

His finger brushed over my lip gently. "Shhh, Cats." He kissed the drop of blood away, then kissed my forehead with equal softness. "There's no rush. We'll figure it out."

"I am Cashel," I said faintly. "I belong to the Charles Starke family. I am the personal servant to Evelyn Starke, specializing in fine stitchery. My serial number is --"

He crushed me against his chest, burying his face against the top of my head. "Stop it, Cats," he choked out, agony in every fiber of his body.

I slipped my arms around his neck, clinging to this source of unfamiliar comfort that at the same time was one that I knew better than myself. "And I am CatsCradle," I wailed. "Vice-Guardian of Earth, mate to Divefire, and I don't know which one is right."

"Hush, Cats," he said again, rocking me gently. "It'll be all right, hun. You're both. The two will blend themselves eventually." He kissed my forehead again. "Gotta trust me on this one, hun. I should know." I could hear the wry amusement in his voice at the last, matched it to the reason. Divefire, who once had three personalities battling inside him. would indeed understand my confusion.

"The Twins," I said suddenly, having no warning that I was going to. "Our children -- Diver, are they--?"

He rubbed his cheek against the top of my head. "They're on their way. I had them called as soon as I knew for certain. I mean... I knew, Cats.. I knew the moment I saw you, knew it even before then..." He broke off to turn me in his arms, catch my face in his hands. "Cats, I swear, if I had known you were alive, I never would have left." He was suddenly wild to convince me and I gritted my jaws against my own dismay... so much love, so desperate... and all that time, I never remembered him. His gaze fell on my collar and his hands moved blurringly fast to grip the sides of it and pull it from both directions, snapping it into two pieces, and hurled it away in an action so violent, that I shrank away from him, abruptly afraid of him in a way that I knew I had never been back... back before. He felt my fear before he even saw my expression and went very still. Cautiously, he made himself relax around me, holding me in the same gentle confinement that someone might hold a frightened animal. "They had to drag me off the planet," he said in a calmer voice, somehow holding in all that emotion to a conversational tone. "I never would have left, if I had known... but we found the wreckage, found pieces..." His voice trailed off, and I felt him brush his face against my head again, felt the agony of that abandonment through his whole body, and I didn't know what to say. All those years... and I had never once remembered.

In an effort to change his mood, I could feel him smiling against the side of my head. "You did cause some upset, today. People were telling me that it was a Mrrk trick, an assassination attempt even. They were trying to take you away from me, and I would have torn them all apart before giving you up again. I knew you were real, but try telling a riled bunch of battle-tired 'Cons that I had just relived most of our life together in my head in less than ten seconds. No one was in the mood to listen, and I sure wasn't in the mood for explaining."

I tucked my head under his chin, feeling distressingly tiny, but fascinated in the vibrations of his voice against my face. "How did you convince them?" I asked, more to keep him talking, to hear more of his voice.

"I didn't." And I could hear the smirk in his voice. "Tempest pushed right up and sniffed a few times. She said it was you no matter what you looked like, and that was enough for Motormaster. The Stunticons kept the others away long enough for me to get you inside. That was a couple of hours ago, and I'll figure out some way to convince the doubters eventually." He leaned back enough to look at me again, face creased with concern. "I want the medics to look you over, Cats. No arguing with me this time."

I shrank into myself. How could he ever imagine that I could object to the wishes of a warlord? I had always felt unease before seeing a medic, and now I could trace that fear back farther in time, though another lifetime millennia long, could trace it to a wall of blankness behind which roiled a black cloud of fear and pain and --

"Shh, Cats.." I heard as if from a long distance and slowly came back from that blackness to the feeling of being rocked again, a large hand rubbing my back to soothe away the tremors of fear. "I'll be there every second. I'll watch everything they do, hun, I promise." And yet, his voice held relief, as if my fear comforted him, proved to him that I was really his mate.

"It's too much," I whimpered and I felt him nod against me. "One step at a time, Cats," he said. "We'll worry about the memories later, but you have to get checked out, hun. You've just about worn yourself out. And we have to make sure the Mrrks didn't do more damage to you." He leaned back again to look at me, cupping my face in his hands and stroking the side of my head with his thumbs. "Although I would prefer seeing you in your own body again. You're so tiny, I'm afraid of breaking you."

I wrapped my hands around his, feeling his ring against my fingers. "I'm tougher than I look," I managed to say.

"You always were."

There was a series of noises, and I looked around us for the first time, realizing the noises came from outside the room we were in, just outside the door by the sound of it. Voices growing in volume in an apparent argument. One voice, pitched louder than the grumble of the others, clearly said, "He specifically said that no one was allowed to disturb--"

And another voice cutting through in a growl so much like Divefire's that I had to look at him to make sure he was still the one holding me, "We are not considered 'no one' and you'd damn well better let us in to see our mother, or you'll be picking pieces of your armor out of the wall from three buildings over."

The door burst in at that point as if simply kicked open and a femme stepped in, slender and dark, green optics blazing. "Where is she?"

A mech crowded in step with her, her obvious twin, with my optics looking out from his face. "Father? Is it true--?" His voice broke off as both of their gazes fell on me at the same moment, as if directed by the same thought, and suddenly my children were in my arms, laughing and sobbing at the same time, all of us trying to talk at the same time. I had a blur of confusion of families, the fear that this was the wrong family, dizzyingly powerful, almost strong enough to make me falter, but I pushed it away as hard as I could, hiding my uncertainty by pulling my children to me again. Then I was anchored by Divefire's arms around the whole mess of all of us, and that solidity clarified the blur, and I could lean back to cup first Firewave's face in my hands, then Starwave's, pulling my memories of them up foremost and reinforcing them with the reality of their bodies in front of me, their faces in my hands, their optics searching mine.

And for that moment, I thought that everything would be all right, after all.

Divefire was much as I remembered him. The burning intensity had always been a part of him in one level or another, and although the servile programming in me shied away at the abrupt outbursts, he really was all that I should have expected.

The twins were different. Their expressions held much of that same burning intensity, of rage within, of warfare and of loss that had never been present before. They had been adults when I had last seen them. Now they had a maturity in them that was deeper than their relatively young age should have held. Then I mentally corrected myself. It was deeper than I had hoped I would ever see in them. Decepticons aged early. Starwave and Firewave tried to hide some of the same dismay from me, but I caught them exchanging glances filled with worry. I tried to see myself through their optics and couldn't. I was still mostly Cashel. I had the memories of CatsCradle, but it was as if I saw them from a distance, as if it was a video I had watched and not something I had lived. Sometimes a memory or emotion swam vividly clear, as if it were a favorite scene that I had watched over and over, but for the most part I was... Cashel. I tried desperately to hide that, to be the Decepticon, mate and mother, that they had known, but from those furtive glances, I knew I was failing. The first outburst of emotions from all of us gave way to uncomfortable silences while each of us searched desperately for a new and safe topic. Even so, we kept a hold on each other, always touching, desperate for that reassurance.

During one of those lulls, one that was beginning to stretch past merely uncomfortable towards unbearable, there was a soft tap at the door. Divefire snarled softly, but I knew we were at the point where any more talk would have to lead to the areas we were all carefully avoiding. Not yet, I begged him with my optics. It was too soon, too much. He touched my face gently in understanding and nodded towards Firewave. She flowed to her feet and went over to the door, leaning out of it and talking in a low voice, before looking over her shoulder at her father again. "Message runner from out front, says there's someone wanting to speak with you."

Divefire rumbled in annoyance. "They know bloody well there's any number of people who can play interference for me."

Firewave rubbed her nose thoughtfully in a gesture that was touchingly familiar. "Sounds like he's been through the whole line of interference and still insisting. Actually," and she raised a brow in curiosity, "he wants to speak with Mom." Her optics touched on me with a glimmer of amusement, but went back to her father for verdict. "He says to tell her that it's Landscaper?"

I sat up straighter, still muffled in blankets. "Yes, let him in," I said, and only after saying it did I fear that I had been out of place, answering for a warlord, but Divefire merely gave me a look of inquiry not dissimilar from his daughter's, and I said in a more placating voice, "Diver, I never could have made it here without him."

He nodded again to Firewave, and we waited for the message to make it through the various levels until finally there was another knock on the door. It opened and Scape was allowed in by whoever was standing on notice outside. He had not taken time for rest, and I winced inwardly as I realized he must have spent the entire time while I was resting in comfort trying to argue his way through. I started to apologize guiltily, but stopped in mid-word when he gave Divefire a perfectly military salute. Divefire looked mildly surprised, but I dropped all pretenses and glared at him through narrowed optics. "You are not a gardener, are you?" I accused. "Who are you?"

Scape grinned briefly. "I am a gardener. Always had the hobby, just as you liked to sew."

I stopped again in mid-stammer. Memories blurred and collided again. CatsCradle had adopted embroidery as a hobby, back in the beginnings of the Mrrk War. I had not had time to put the two together and was stumbling over that... coincidence... when my mind made a jump over that and over to, "But... but how did you know..."

Scape gave me the same amused look that I had seen so often, but behind it was something different that gave it a different feeling, and I couldn't quite place it. "I know you're a little muddled right now," he said, "but there was a young Decepticon with you on that shuttle. He was one of your cadets that had gotten himself into trouble, and your punishment was that he had to be your aide for a time."

I couldn't bring that memory clear, but I heard Divefire make a noise of faint recognition. "I remember something about that... but not the name." His brow arched as he caught on. "Or… should I say…your name?"

A blur became clear, and I focused on his amber optics, saw them in a different face. "Racer..." I said hesitantly. "It was Racer, wasn't it?"

The amber optics brightened. "Close. RoadRacer. I was a messenger, training in communications. You nailed me for... um..." He shifted, shuffling one foot against the floor. "... racing through the halls of the Academy and using one of the stained glass windows as an exit."

Firewave giggled and Starwave cuffed her shoulder to silence her, but he was also hiding his own grin at the same time.

Divefire had closed his optics in the universal give-me-patience expression. "Yes," he said, drawing the word out through the sibilance. "I remember now. That stained glass window had been a donation. It made things... difficult to explain."

Scape shuffled his foot again, and I could see the shadows of that brash cadet in the lines of his body. "Anyway, that's how I ended up on that shuttle." All amusement died out of his expression and he met Divefire's gaze squarely. "It... it was really bad, sir."

It hurt, with a sharpness that was so sudden that I twitched in response, seeing those green optics turn to agony. "I know. I ... saw it afterwards." He felt my movement and the agony eased before I could imagine how bad the wreckage had been from his expression.

"I don't remember..." I said in apology.

He leaned to kiss my forehead, then rested his forehead against mine. "That's for the better, love."

I lost myself for a moment then, caught in the love of that simple gesture, and I have no idea how long we remained like that, forehead to forehead. There was no sound from Scape or from our children. They let us stay suspended in that moment, until Divefire moved to kiss my forehead again and that broke the spell.

Scape held empty hands out. "I didn't know what else to do, sir. The Mrrks were landing. They were so close I could hear their engines. Everyone else was dead. There was no way I could fight them off, and they KNEW, sir, that she was on board. They were looking for her. And she was... "

"I know," my mate said roughly. "I know how she was."

Scape's voice was low. "Any radio transmission I sent out would have been picked up by the Mrrks too. So I did the only thing I could think of. I took her laser core, left the rest for the Mrrks to find, and I ran." He gave Divefire a pleading look. "I didn't know what else to do, sir."

I could feel Divefire trying to think of something to say, and for a long time, he simply couldn't. I touched his face, brushing my fingers along his jaw, and he finally said in the same rough voice, "If you hadn't been there, I would never be holding my mate again."

Some of the tension eased out of Scape's body and he shifted positions slightly. Starwave stood and went to the door, murmuring, and in a moment, came back with another chair. Scape took it with a nod of thanks and settled himself down. After a moment, he went on. "It took me several days to get us down off that mountain. I was pretty beat up myself, and I still didn't dare radio out. I could hear the fighting, and I knew it had to be bad, but I didn't know just how bad until I got to the first sign of people. It was a summer cabin up in the woods, in the foothills of that mountain range. The family had gone there when the fighting broke out. Thank Primus, they believed me when I said whose laser core it was, and they hid us both. By that time, the Decepticons had pulled out, abandoned the planet."

Divefire nodded, his optics far away. "In less than a week, we lost Earth," he murmured, more to himself than to anyone else. In almost the same movement, both Starwave and Firewave reached out to him, gripping his forearms in support, and I suddenly knew beyond a doubt who had been the ones to drag him away, leaving his world behind. Such a weight should never be put on young shoulders like that.

But they were Decepticons.

"They hid us," Scape repeated. "It was easy to hide a laser core, but it still amazes me what they went through to hide me, too. We kept hoping the Decepticons would rally back, so we did nothing for a long time. Finally, we had to admit that the Mrrk hold on the planet was too strong and that they were here to stay." He smiled over at me, shadows of memory softening his face. "Those were the Starkes, as you've probably guessed. The first of the Grams, in her youth. We waited and watched as the Mrrks brought in their slaves, as their propaganda smoothed their introduction and scorned the Decepticons. By the time Sheila actually became a Gram, the Mrrks were bringing out the first line of the Terran-sized Transformer slaves, and we decided that the safest way was to rebuild us both. Hide us in plain sight, as it were, as slaves, until somehow we could make contact with Decepticons again." He held out his hand to me, and unthinkingly I rested my hand in his. "It was my decision to block your memories, ma'am. I knew... well, everyone knew... how strong your love for your mate was. If you remembered, you would have gotten yourself killed trying to leave the planet to find him." His optics pleaded for forgiveness. "I didn't know what else to do."

Like my mate, I could think of nothing to say, and I finally said, "Don't call me ma'am, Scape. I'm just Cashel."

He shook his head, with that look I hadn't been able to place before, and I realized what it was. Respect. "No. There's never been "just" anything about you."

"Damn straight," Divefire muttered, but he glowed at me with pride.

"For a thousand years..." I murmured. "All those generations, and they kept me safe..."

Scape smiled, his optics soft. "Even when time changed who they were saving you from."

I sat up suddenly, the blankets falling from my shoulders. "We have to find them, Diver." I clutched his hand, holding it tight, somehow afraid that he would pull away. "Please? It's why I came all this way. They said at one of the crisis centers that there might not be records of those who left before the fighting was over, but that there might be a way to find them from here. Please, help me."

He seemed at a loss for a moment, then brought my fingers to his lips and kissed them. "Hun, I'd do anything for you, but I'm not sure it's possible. There ARE no transportation records. The Mrrks wiped the databases clean, and everyone who left was shipped to planets in Mrrk control, where we can't get through."

I stared at him for a long moment, unable to believe that I had come so far and that my search was over in the finality of a few sentances. I bit my lip hard to keep the blankness of futility from washing over me, trying to think. "I... I might know..." I looked up at him again with determination. "I had our stores sent to warehouses off-planet?"

"Your what?"

I shook my head, impatient at myself. "Generations worth of embroidery. I was scared. I knew... felt, somehow, what was coming. I talked Evie into shipping them away, to keep them safe. She knows where they are. Sooner or later, someone will check in to pick them up. We can track them that way."

Divefire was trying to follow, but I was talking too fast for him to sift the information from the barrage of unfamiliar terms and names. "Cats, we have no access to any of the Mrrk planets. There's no way --"

"I could go," I said without thinking. "I would look like any other slave--"

He caught both my shoulders in his hands, pinning me tightly enough that I withdrew a breath of pain. "Do you honestly think I'd let you go again?" His voice was flat and dangerous.

Before I could stop myself, I had met his optics with mine, saw the blazing reflections of purple, and blurted out, "They kept me safe for you, Diver!"

The room was deathly silent. I kept my gaze locked on my mate's, over-riding the panicked scream deep inside me that I was only a slave and enraging a warlord, but after an endless stretch of that agonizing silence, his grip eased, hands slipping up to cup my face. "Only my family could ever get me so angry and face me down like that," he said, his optics softening with amusement.

Firewave, with her characteristic bluntness, made a hmph-type noise. "At least none of us ever raced through the halls of the Academy and blew out the windows."

The tension broke, almost audibly, as my daughter had calculated it would. Scape squirmed, the young cadet showing through. Divefire grinned rather lopsidedly. "No, but we made up for that lack in other ways, believe me." He slipped his arm around my shoulders again, cradling me against him. With the sudden ease of that tension, the frame-deep aching came back to the foreground of my notice. I desperately wanted to sleep again, but I couldn't leave off yet. I touched his face, drawing his gaze back to me and simply looked at him. He let out a soft sigh and gently kissed my forehead. "All right," he whispered, then gave Starwave a pointed look. My son nodded, brisk and efficient, and slid behind one of the consoles on the other side of the room, quietly beginning to bring up screen after screen of printed data. Divefire stroked his thumbs against my face under the frame of my optics, my face still cupped in his hands. "No promises, love," he said under his breath, just meant for me. "But we'll try to find them."

That was enough for me. I closed my optics and felt him settle me back in his arms again. There was the sound of a scuffling step, of someone wanting to slip out of the room without calling attention to himself, and I felt Divefire notice him. "RoadRacer?"

I opened my optics again as Scape shook his head. "Sir, I think..." He drew himself up, no longer an unsure cadet afraid of the trouble he had caused, but the years settling around him again. "I am Landscaper, now," he said with more strength, although with no less respect.

Divefire's arm tightened around me, and his sudden unease that perhaps I would remain Cashel rather than CatsCradle radiated through him. It was not apparent, other than that small tightening, but I could feel it as strongly as if it were my emotions and not his. His face never changed expression as he studied Scape as if he was seeing someone he hadn't expected. After a moment, he relaxed around me again, and not even our children noticed his brief discomfort. "You have restored to me that which I treasure most," he said, his voice low and formal, "And reunited my family. What can I give you in return?"

Scape blinked in surprise, and I could see that part of him, that young cadet, was still certain he was in trouble. "Sir, I didn't do anything out of... for some type of reward," he blurted out.

Divefire grinned again, suddenly on firmer ground. "I think a promotion is long overdue, for starters."

Scape glanced at me, almost in appeal, and I lifted one shoulder in a slight shrug to let him know he was on his own with this one. He looked away, down at his wrist for a moment, studying the bar code imprinted there. After a long moment, the years gathered around him again and he looked up, standing squarely, but not quite in military regulation. "If I could, sir," he said calmly, "I'd like to go back to my gardens."

It was not what my mate expected, and I caught myself before I could chuckle at his expression. He blinked several times, then looked at me in confusion, and I gave him the same look I had given Scape. "Are you sure?" he had to ask. "Promotion, transfer to anywhere in the universe you'd like... and you wanna plant flowers?"

Scape said with a completely straight face, "I plant very pretty gardens, sir."

I couldn't hold it in any longer and choked down a short burst of muffled laughter. My mate's gaze touched me again and he gave a helpless shrug. "If that is what you want," he said. "Where would you like to go?"

Scape scuffled his foot against the floor again. "I thought... I'd go home. Rebuild for the Starkes." His gaze slid to me. "For when they come home. You believe in it so much, that I have to believe it, too."

My laughter caught in my throat so firmly that it hurt, and suddenly there was another of those blurrings, as if I was Cashel standing on the outside watching and at the same time, CatsCradle standing even further away than that, leaving just the shell of a slave body behind without any anchor to it. I heard my voice give a soft whimper, but couldn't feel myself making it, and then the blur went darker, becoming abstract shapes around me with no definition to them. I was scooped up, carried, couldn't see where I was being carried too, couldn't feel the metal of my mate's arms cradling me, but his voice growled over me, "That's enough waiting. Starwave, get those medics in here, now."

Scape's voice floated from ... somewhere. "She's pretty worn down. You'd be amazed what she was doing and what she was living on for fuel while she did it."

My mate's voice was filled with fond pride. "No. I wouldn't be."

The medic confined me to bed rest, which seemed to be a relief to everyone around me. I guess I was less likely to disappear again if I had to stay in bed. I protested, of course; I wanted to help in the search for the Starkes. The medic frowned sternly at me and the Twins and lectured that besides being overstrained, my fuel lines were full of sludge from the -- and now the medic's expression was a combination of horror and disgust -- poor quality of the fuel I had been existing on. Divefire's arm was around me as he sat on the edge of the huge bed that dwarfed me, and I could feel his amusement at the medic's struggle to keep his words diplomatic at describing the condition of his warlord's mate. The medic himself seemed to have no doubts that I was the late CatsCradle returned from the dead. I had had a moment of extreme panic at the sight of repair tools and would have bolted into hiding from Divefire's arms, had I not sunk to the ground the second my feet touched down. I hadn't landed more than a second, had barely registered that I was too weak to walk, much less escape, before I was in the air again, curled in the support of my mate's arm. It happened so fast, that I realized he had been expecting my panic, and in fact, was pleased to see it. Yet another confirmation. He had settled me back into his hold with a firmness that said that I was going to let the medic examine me no matter how hard I tried to avoid it. Cashel herself cringed at my reaction, at my audacity in disobeying orders, much less those from a warlord. The panic, however, went far deeper than Cashel did, and it was only Divefire's touch that kept me from trying to bat the medic away. It was a touch that went far beyond simple words, past time and experience. It was the knowledge of trust, of souls, all said in touch and aura. It was very likely the only thing that could reach past that deeply embedded panic that I understood even less with CatsCradle's influence.

Scape was also confined to a bed, with much of the same sludge in his own fuel lines. I had tried to keep the worse of the fuel for myself, rather than inflict it on others, but apparently Scape had been swapping rations on several occasions. We both escaped the dormitory repair bay. Scape had a private room, as benefited the hero status that everyone was proclaiming him behind his back. And I, of course, was settled in Divefire's quarters... what had once been ours long ago, when we needed to stay at the Academy.

"She's going to be very uncomfortable," were the medic's last words as he left, and that turned out to be as much of an understatement as his careful description of what my diet had been. The sludge moved through my fuel lines with excruciatingly slow progress. The first several days were spent in solid sleep, with waking moments only long enough to take in pure energon to assist in flushing out the sludge and acidic build-up, and then back to sleep. Even my skin ached with fatigue. Firewave had wiped me down, trying to clean the worst of the grime off of my skin and armor, but by that time, the reaction had hit me so solidly that I was too weak for a full bath. Firewave's touch was as gentle as Scape's had been, which was somewhat of a surprise from my brash daughter. She didn't try to talk to me, sensing that idle conversation would only exhaust me further, and she didn't want to talk at me aimlessly. Her presence and touch were enough, and I was already dozing even as she carefully oiled my fingers, trying to ease the embedded grit out of the joints. I longed for the relief a full bath and oiling would give me, but I was so tired that each time I awoke, I was asleep again before I could do more than think wistfully of warm liquid.

Divefire never left my side. I lost track of the time, but every time I opened my optics, he was there. Sitting next to my bed frowning over datapads and the console that had been brought in for him, or giving orders in a soft growl from the doorway. Several times I woke up to find myself curled in one of his arms, while he sat on the bed next to me, dictating written orders and communications. The Twins became his extension, or maybe they had been all along, and it was one of the many adaptions over the last thousand years that I had missed.

I couldn't get enough of touching him. Every moment I could, I rested against him. My fingers curled in his. When he had to be in another part of the room, my optics followed him, afraid that if I closed them or went to sleep while he was even that short distance from him, that he would be gone when I woke. When I couldn't hold his hand, I held the ring that had been mine, the mate to his. Far too large for my finger in my current size, I wore it around my neck on a chain, another human custom and one seldom seen on a Transformer.

Gradually, I was able to stay awake and sit up for longer periods of time. The pain of the sludge moving through my system abated slowly into a dull constant ache. The medic visited daily, and after several days of Divefire demanding to know the minute he walked in when I could be restored to my normal body, the medic finally sighed and said that I was far too weak for such a transfer. My mate was quiet for the rest of the morning after that, and I shrunk back into myself. I knew his brooding was in answer to the Mrrks who had brought about this condition... but the slave-instincts wouldn't leave me alone. I had displeased a warlord.

Later that week, Divefire held another of his small conferences in the far corner of the room. Very few people were actually allowed past the door of the room outside of family. Motormaster was one of them. He had also been playing messenger between Scape and me. The Stunticon leader had taken a liking to the gardener, but he would always shake his head over Scape's chosen profession. "Waste of a good warrior," he'd always add in a mutter. Scape had also been ordered to bed rest, although he was already walking around and touring the Academy. In spite of his good intentions, his fuel lines were still in better shape than mine.

Slowly, I was able to piece together what was happening outside this room, by comments that were let drop around me or what I overheard from these meetings. It was going to take years to rebuild Earth. The damage from the all-out fighting was severe. The planet was hurting bad and it wasn't anything that could be repaired any time soon or with any ease. There were still Mrrks scattered around the planet who couldn't escape with their brethren, and they had to be tracked down and killed. In the meantime, they were causing spats of chaos by sniping and sabotage. There were human armies, hastily assembled, who sympathized with the Mrrks and refused to leave, joining them in their guerilla tactics. The humans were harder to deal with than the Mrrks; their smaller size made them ideal for slipping in to do damage in areas that were being repaired. For every step we made forward, it seemed we made three backwards. And there was the constant rush to set up defenses, to repel the counterattacks everyone expected. There was too much to do, and not enough time to do it in.

And in the middle of it all, were the slaves.

This seemed to be the main focus of this conference: what to do with the slaves. Reports of post-war casualties continued to flow in. Most had starved, locked into stasis, with no one to tell them where to find fuel. Others were lost to those Mrrks still left, who were determined to leave nothing that might be of use to the Decepticons, who shot down slaves running joyously to them, certain that their masters would still save them. Even after the mass killings during the days of battle, even after starvation and exposure, those killed in fights over fuel... even after all those deaths, a population of a few million were still left, lost and wandering. Some were too afraid of the Decepticons to come near. Most followed any human or Decepticon they could find, begging for fuel and -- most importantly -- to be told what to do. Over and over again, that plea was heard -- tell us what to do -- until Decepticons couldn't bear to hear the words any longer, couldn't stand to see the desperation in optics, starving for fuel, starving for instructions. Decepticons were a species of strength and purpose. They had no idea what to do with these bewildered and lost slaves. And there were so many of them!

"We're trippin' over 'em," Moto finished. "We keep tellin' 'em they're free, and they look at us like they don't know what it means."

"Recruiting them into work crews would solve a lot of problems," Starwave said thoughtfully. "It would certainly solve the mech-power shortage, and free up soldiers for defense and patrols."

"Now, wait a minute," Firewave protested. "If we put them to work, are we any better than the slugs?"

"We work," Starwave pointed out reasonably.

"That's different. We made a choice to do this."

Her brother snorted. "Tell that to the next officer that sends you digging trenches."

Firewave folded her arms over her chest. "You haven't had to dig trenches in centuries," she accused.

"That's enough," Divefire growled, and it stopped the twins in mid-debate. I watched the four of them, struggling most with the alien concept of an entire race of people who couldn't seem to function without being told what to do. And there wasn't time to debate over the semantics of slavery versus survival. "We have to get the energon plants up and running again, or all these people are gonna starve on our doorstep." He glanced over at me, optics lighting when he saw that I was awake and listening. "What do you think, Cats?"

He asked it casually, as he had asked for my opinion on decisions so many times in the past. As if this should be no different than any of those times, and I could tell he longed for working together as the team that we used to be.

Except that all I could do was look at him blankly and with an amount of panic. I opened my mouth, almost blurted out that I was just a servant, why were you asking me about such matters, and caught myself only because it would have been a disrespectful answer to someone of his rank. An eternity went by, his optics hopeful, then slowly the hope died out of them as he realized I was too paralyzed to answer. "That's all right, hun," he said softly, then managed his lop-sided grin. "I didn't mean to throw you back into things so quickly."

I swallowed, trying not to look at any of the others, feeling their gazes of concern mixed with sympathy. "I... I just can't think of anything... not right now..." I said weakly, my fingers tugging at each other, plucking fretfully at the patches holding them together until I was strong enough for repairs.

He gave me a gentle smile and turned back to Motormaster. "Tell them that all volunteers to work get shelter and full energon rations. We'll have to figure out social systems and ... and... whatever later."

"Give them names," I said suddenly, and found myself immediately under their focus again. I made myself look at them, or at least at Divefire, although the sudden hope in his optics again almost made me wish I had not spoken at all. I felt a moment of desperation... what if I said the wrong thing? Embarrased the warlord in front of... but these people were also family, and that gave me the strength to continue. "Someone... you can't have any respect for yourself... or individuality... if you are just a barcode and number. Name them. Or... better yet, let them pick their own names."

The glow of my mate's optics bathed over me, and I let out a breath of relief. I had done all right, then, if he could still look at me with such pride. Motormaster nodded with satisfaction and stomped back out with a new sense of purpose, followed by Firewave and Starwave as they started their debate anew. This time, however, it was slanted towards training programs and education, how to teach the slaves to choose and think for themselves. I saw the beginnings of the new way of life for millions being born in the voices of my children.

Had we taught them so well? Or did creation instill something into them that was beyond what two soldiers of the old ways could teach. They amazed me. Our children. The best of both of us, and more.

My heart ached at the lost years between us.

Divefire came back to the bedside to pick up his datapad from the table next to it, diverting for a few seconds to stroke his hand against my cheek. "I missed you by my side," he said softly, and I placed my hand over his. He frowned at the size difference. "I'll be glad when you're back in your own body again." His optics glinted with humor. "No one guards my back like you do."

Cashel clashed with CatsCradle again in a moment so sudden that I didn't have time to even realize it. "Don't be silly, Diver," came out before I realized what I was going to say, "I can't even kill an insect. I shoo it out the win--"

The delayed reaction of personality clashes hit in a collision so physical that I jerked away from him in a spasm of movement, staring up at him in dismay. He started to comfort the confusion away. "I have to resign," I said, pushing the words out before he could touch me and soothe my resolve away. He sat on the edge of the bed, still reaching for me, and I scooted over to the other side of the bed, out of his reach. "I do, Diver." My voice raised, shook. "Look what I just did. Someone could attack you, and Cashel wouldn't know what to do! I'm no soldier. I'm just...." The words stopped as if cut off sharply from my mind, and I looked down at my fingers, tugging at themselves, so I wouldn't have to see his expression. Even when his hands swallowed mine, holding them still, I couldn't look at him out of dread for what he would say next.

When he did speak, it was in a voice as deep as his growl, yet there was a lightness of bewilderment in it. "What was it like, Cats?"

It was so unlike what I had expected that it jolted me to look up at him. The bewilderment that had lightened his tone was complete in his optics. I gave my head a little shake in confusion, my gaze caught in his as firmly as my hands were held in his. "What was it like?" he repeated. "A thousand years... without war?"

I looked back down at his hands again, not to avoid the question, but to pull myself away from the loss in his gaze that hurt so deeply that I wanted to do... anything, to take that pain away. After a long moment of trying to gather words again, I said softly, "They never hurt me. You have to understand that, Diver. They never hurt me." I did flicker a glance up to him then, and saw his need to understand. I plunged back in again. "I... I was never hungry." Memories of ancient starvation caught me for a moment, and I had to chase them away before I could go on. "I was never beaten. I was never... never overworked. I was the bearer of their history, the creator of masterpieces, the keeper of their secrets and industry. I saw their children born, saw them grow, saw them become part of that history. I knew laughter and I knew love." My memory of Evie bent over that last bolt of cloth swept over me. "I was family."

"You were... happy, then?"

I smiled, Evie's peace still holding me. "Yes," I said. "I was happy."

His long silence drew me out of Evie's image and I looked up at him again. This time, it was Divefire who avoided my gaze, his optics fastened onto my hands in his, so tiny in comparison that they seemed alien. His jaws were clenched, and his wings locked in tension over his shoulder. "Do you..." He had to stop for a moment, and I watched him with dread as he worked to get the words out. "Do you... want to go back to that? Were... were you happier than ... when we..."

It hit me for the first time. I had known, somewhere deep inside of me, but I hadn't really looked at it yet.

I was going to have to make a choice between families.

The weight of it crushed on me, and I heard myself whimper, but just as immediate, I was bombarded with some of CatsCradle's strongest memories, ones that felt real, instead of like a video that I was watching with detachment. Of a rocky desert on Earth, and my voice saying to a young Tempest, "I will not out-live my mate." And then Divefire's body being pulled apart by Unicron, piece by piece, vivid against the blackness of space, and the screaming that started in my brain, the sound of my soul shattering with his death, the shattering of my sanity when I wasn't allowed to follow him into that death as I had always vowed, the screaming that continued, never silenced even with his return to life, always there in the background of my mind, becoming even louder whenever I was away from him, becoming unbearable the longer we were apart, always a breath away from falling into that insanity again... until the memories were blocked after the shuttle crash.

I could live without the Starkes. But the haunting of that desperate fear of being alone, in a world without Divefire, came rushing back over me, as clear as if I were entirely CatsCradle again, as infinitely sharp ... as if Cashel had never existed.

It wasn't even a choice after all.

I slipped my hands out of his, placed them on either side of his face to pull him near me, to rest my forehead against his. "I love you," I whispered. "Always."

The tension poured out of him with shuddering relief. His hands came up to cup my face. "And forever," he whispered. "I love you."

It seemed to take forever before I could feel that I was rebuilding strength again, to where I was at the point where my healed hands were restless and longing for needle and thread. There were none, of course. The Starke warehouses were gone, and any retail stores that carried a line of embroidery supplies were most likely a pile of rubble. When the inactivity forced me to the point of pacing around the bed in frustration, Divefire and I reached a compromise, which entailed a sketch pad, graph paper, and pencils, and I began to chart new designs. It was never something I had been good at. I had the skill to embroider any pattern, but I never had the creativity to create my own. Most of the first pad ended up in crumpled sheets tossed over onto the floor. Firewave patiently picked up each one and found a container to put next to my bed for future ones. Most of the second pad actually did make it to the container. If anything, the frustration of trying to force myself into a new skill kept me in bed, where the medics were still insisting I stay. I did make an exception to rules they set by deciding that going to pick up the sketch pad I had hurled across the room in frustration didn't count as being out of bed.

Divefire would watch with this... grin on his face, that I privately called goofy, but didn't dare ruffle his dignity by telling him so. In the middle of the chaos of rebuilding, hunting down renegade Mrrks, sifting ex-slaves into some form of social position, my mate was... happy. It was a joy to see, from the corner of my vision, and I'd throw in an occasional rant and rave about how I was probably the last embroiderer on Earth, and couldn't even come up with a decent pattern. I knew that he had taken the crumpled attempts from Firewave and saved each of them.

He was right. They probably weren't as bad as I was making them out to be. But my criteria was impossibly high for my skills... and I also knew there were no supplies for me to sew anything, so I could afford to be difficult about my slow process of creativity.

And each rant only made Divefire grin more. I was hoping for one of his laughs that I treasured so much, but hadn't quite achieved that yet.

I was debating another try, as he scowled over the latest energon production report, comparing it against the growing number of mouths to feed, as more and more slaves flooded in the crisis stations. They vastly outnumbered the humans, since any human who could left the planet after the first attacks, and most of them were in need of repairs and recovery time before they even could be considered for one of the construction teams.

Firewave walked in and caught me in mid-sketch-pad-hurl. "I'm not picking that up this time," she warned.

I put the pad down.

She waited for another beat, just to make sure the pad was going to stay down, then held the door open to maneuver a hoverpad in with a large container atop it. With an odd mix of emotions, I recognized the container as one of the many I had shipped off-planet, the ones specially created to preserve cloth. I sat up, pushing the blankets and drawing materials to one side. "You found them?"

I knew her answer before she spoke. She had to have found them, in order to have one of those containers. She never would have been able to pick up one without Starke authorization. And since there wasn't a Starke with her... "They aren't coming back, are they?" I asked in a dull voice.

Firewave folded herself on the foot of the bed, her gaze full of concern. After a long moment, she said softly, "This world is too different for them, now."

Divefire's hand touched my shoulder, but I couldn't move. He was the other part of my soul and yet... he did not know Cashel well enough to understand. Not fully. I slipped out of the bed, trying not to notice that his hand had fallen away with my movement, and keyed open the locks on the container with my access code. The air locks hissed, and the lid burped open. The container was divided into two sections. One was filled with embroidery supplies and a set of my frames, enough supplies to keep me sewing for the next few years, most likely more, since if it wouldn't be at Cashel's usual pace, but back at CatsCradle's sporadic attempts at finding spare moments. The other side...

The other side was filled with finished tapestries. I took them out slowly, one by one, draping each across my lap and barely noticing Firewave's indrawn breath at the vivid colors and intricate stitches on each one. They were all mine, projects I had done over recent years, perhaps over the last century. These were the ones that hadn't been sold or donated. These were the ones I had kept for myself, the ones that had been too special for me to part with, for one reason or another. The ones that held more of my heart, that sang of who Cashel was, beyond the metal skin and bar code.

The last one was one that I had treasured more than any of the others. It was the only one of my own designs that had ever been stitched. It was of a lakeside scene, framed by trees and blue skies, with a beach of white sand, and a home built into the cliffside, surrounded by a cascade of ivy flowers. I had never known why it had been so easy for me to create this design, when so many others had fought me and had been discarded. This one had sung to me every moment though the process, from paper to cloth, and I saw that CatsCradle had still been with me all that time.

"That's our home," Firewave breathed softly. Her fingers traced the waterfall that laced down the side of the cliff, brushed over the beach where she and her brother had played together as children.

Divefire took the other tapestries from me, touching each one with great care as he looked at it and gently placed it back in the container. I watched him, holding the lakeside one to my chest as he drank in the part of those missing years that he could hold and touch, share that segment of my life in the only way that we could. I would never have the right words to tell him... but the threads sang of more than I could ever say. My happiness was in each stitch... yet the one still in my hands told of what had always been missing. I gave it to him, and he took it gently, looking at it for far longer than he had looked at any of the others.

Then my mate put it to one side and stood up, reaching for my hands to help me to my feet. "C'mon," he said gruffly. "It's time you went home."

The flight revealed the vast extent of battle damage. Areas that I vaguely remembered as being wooded mountains were leveled, or, at the least, bare of trees. Rivers had changed course, cities were gone, and in some places, there were nothing but deep craters.

Nestled in Divefire's cockpit, I was silent as he took me past hundreds of miles of wasteland. Finally, I asked in a small voice, "Is it this bad everywhere?"

"It's pretty bad," he said, his voice heavy. "Most major cities, world-wide just... don't exist any more."

It was the environmental loss that hit me harder than the numbers of lives. CatsCradle was used to such high numbers of casualties, from millions of years of battles. But the beauty of this world had been a relative newness to her, that the comparatively short years had not lessened. I supposed that was why Cashel had felt most comfort in her mountain home; not because it was all she had ever known, but because CatsCradle had loved such areas so much.

"We should have checked first," I said suddenly. "Diver, I don't think I can bear it, if it's gone."

"It's not," he soothed. "Those mountains weren't a target. They were still unpopulated, even after all this time, and the fighting didn't reach that far." His wings tilted slightly as he shifted directions. "Overgrowth may be a problem, though."

And as he burst out of the clouds of dust and smoke that still seemed to clog the air wherever we went, I could see the green of dense trees ahead of us, a breath of life gradually emerging out of the wasteland, proof that the world still lived.

"How long will it take us to rebuild?" I moaned, my forehead against the glass of his canopy. The rich green only seemed to emphasis the dead of the land around it.

Divefire sighed. "I don't know, hun. Buildings are one thing. I just don't know about ecological damage this extent." His wings tilted again as he banked into a gentle curve around the mountain range. "I gather that the damage had to be about as bad when we were driven off the planet, and Earth recovered, but I don't know if Decepticons have that knowledge." I could hear the wry smile in his voice. "We don't tend towards the study of organic ecology."

"Noooo," I said slowly, pattering my fingers on the seat.

He chuckled. "You're having an idea, aren't you?"

"Maaaaybeee," I drawled it out smugly. "We might not have an environmentalist in our ranks... but we do have a top-notch gardener."

"Heh." He thought it over for a moment as he circled in over a thick growth of trees. "It's a start. And a better one than I have here. I'm not sure I could even find someone to import, especially who wouldn't mind working with humans. Think he'd do it?"

I shrugged. "The Starkes aren't coming back." There was still a flinch of pain in saying the words. "So he won't be looking at rebuilding the home. And I'm certain he wasn't the only one created with the purpose of landscaping."

Divefire transformed, shifting me to the crook of one arm and floated down to just above the layer of trees. "I get to promote him after all," he said with some contentment. "I like that part of the job."

There was a shimmer below us, and the trees shifted and disappeared to reveal... more trees. Divefire grunted. "I was afraid of that. Overgrown." He whisked down, darting agilely between trees where there would have been no space for his Interceptor mode to land. "At least the generators kept working, although after a few decades, the trees would have grown thick enough to hide this spot even without the holograms." He moved one hand to shield me when the branches that bounced and broke off his armor might have dented my skin, and so I couldn't see what our valley had become until his feet touched down, and even then, the trees were too thick to see much more of the lake than a glimmer of sunlight off of water. He tried to push through them, then finally set his shoulder against the trunk of one tree and pushed until the tree groaned in protest and swayed over, its roots cutting up through the thick forest ground as it fell against its neighbor. Divefire pushed harder and gradually the entire line of trees came down with echoing crashes through the mountain air, the last one ending in a mighty splash. "There," he said with satisfaction. "That will do for now." He followed the felled trees down the rest of the mountainside. "I'll get those cleared out for you," he said, almost as an afterthought, remembering that I was too small to make my way over the tumbedly path with anything close to his ease.

The trees thinned as we came out at the lakeside, opening to blue sky over the lake. Divefire carefully set me down and we began to try and reclaim our home. Water had carried our beach of fine white sand away, and a thick carpet of the clinging flowers that had once decorated our cliff-side home had completely covered the rock wall. The waterfall, however, still splashed down, and I could hear the soft hum of the generator, fed with energy created from the cascading water, that had powered the concealing holograms, as well as the equipment inside the cave. Divefire began swiping away the thick ivies, trying to find the doorway. The carpet of tendrils fought back, and he growled, one hand suddenly flaring with purple energy. The ivies caught with a sizzling hiss, melting and crawling away, falling in sparking rain down to the stone and water below. Our stone steps had eroded away with the years, but once the fall of burning leaves and ashes had subsided, I was able to pick my way up to the door as Divefire keyed the security code in. His optics caught mine, and I found myself holding my breath as he gave me a shrug and swung the door open.

The environmental systems had done their job well. We could have left the cave dwelling only that morning, instead of over a thousand years ago. I never tried to understand the technology Divefire had used as he had carefully built our home. What had started out as a smallish cave had been hewed originally into two large rooms, then in following years, enlarged gradually, the rock walls replaced with thick steel and covered again in rock until the entire cliff had been rebuilt over and around our home, providing a natural camouflage. Rooms for the twins had been added, a lab for Divefire, and, in the latter years, a room of clear material, where I could sit and sew in the hours of relaxation that I could wrestle out of my schedule, surrounded by the outdoors, even in the dead of winter.

Divefire was not even bothering to hide his smugness at how well his inventions had preserved our home. He swung into the chair behind a console in the living area of the cave and began keying in activation codes. Lights came on first, and I began to cautiously walk around the room, trying to reconcile memory with the present. My size kept throwing me off; the differences still made me feel as if I was walking through the set of a beloved movie, rather than through the home we had built ourselves. There was a minimal amount of dust, but everything seemed to be where we left it. The only damage I could find was that my vase of crystal and silver roses had fallen over, and one of them had shattered. I carefully picked up the slivers of glass and gave Divefire a tragic look. He had given me the crystal roses so long ago. The silver one had been from Megatron, on my first promotion.

Divefire looked over his console at me. "If that's the worst of the damage, I'll consider us well off," he said, then really saw my expression. "Ah, hun... I'll find another for you, I promise."

I brushed the glass pieces off onto the table, knowing that he was right; after all the years, if the only thing that was broken beyond repair was a crystal rose, then we had been extremely lucky. And yet... I hated the loss of anything that held precious memory.

Divefire was settled behind his console again, contentedly keying in commands to re-link our relay to Earth Academy and muttering something about massive upgrades being in order. I left him to it and wandered outside again.

Normally, we couldn't hear the workings of the generator over the current of the waterfall, but I could hear rattling protests and carefully picked my way up what used to be a path up the cliff wall, keeping it well in mind that if I fell at this size, I probably would get more than a few dents. I had a bad moment when my footing slithered out from under me in a shower of pebbles and dirt. I flailed wildly and regained my footing almost immediately. Still, I stopped and rested a moment. It would have been a simple thing to call down and ask Divefire for a lift up, but for some reason, I wanted to make the climb without his help. Maybe the size difference was finally beginning to annoy me, as well. It was ... disconcerting... to go from being larger than the human population, to suddenly being smaller than most of the Decepticons that surrounded me these days. Worse, was the feeling of disorientation when I saw something from one height that CatsCradle remembered from a much higher one. It was bad enough having the clashing personalities, without having the height difference as well.

The least I could do was to climb the cliff without help.

The generator, like most of the cave area, was trapped within a coverage of ivy and one maple tree sapling that seemed to be determined to grow through the casing. I snapped off the sapling and began to clear off the generator. It gave a cough at one point and spat out a shredded maple leaf, then settled down to work at its normal quiet hum. As I worked, I had an image of a replica Evie had owned, of a small clock under a bell jar and toyed with the idea of the same type of dome over the generator. Overgrowth had never been a problem while we lived here, as one of us, at least, usually caught the forest before it invaded and drove it back. None of us, however, had ever anticipated being gone a decade, much less a thousand years. A protective dome over the generator was a simple solution, and one that hadn't occurred to us.

Of course, I really hoped we'd never have the opportunity to need it again.

I came back to perch on top of the generator, high enough to be able to see over the growth and edge of the waterfall, into my valley below.

/My/ valley. For the first time since I had left the Starke estate, I felt as if I was somewhere I /belonged/. The quarters at Earth Academy had been the same that we had used back in our reign, but there was nothing there that spoke of us. All of our personal touches had been stripped, not only from our rooms, but from the entire Academy. Only the size and construction of the buildings were the same, and that was only a hint of our presence. Everything else had been... scoured away. I had wondered, once as I wandered the halls, trying to regain some sense that this had been a home, why the Mrrks hadn't razed the Academy to the ground and rebuilt it to suit them. I thought maybe it had been out of a sense of triumph that they kept the structures, to rule from the same complex that we had, a sign of their superiority. But I knew that may have only been a surface excuse. In truth, the Mrrks wasted nothing in their conquests. It was more efficient to steal and adapt, than to destroy and rebuild. The floors had been curved, humidifiers brought in, endless changes until it barely even felt like a Transformers establishment. It had taken weeks to dry the place out, and most of the Decepticons complained out the lingering stench of Mrrks. I remembered with a strange sort of disoriented amusement that there had been a time, many centuries even before the Mrrks conquered Earth, when the smell of the slugs had brought back memories of pure horror, of weeks spent as their prisoner and their scapegoat, when we had thought we had beaten them permanently, their distraction, their play-toy in their crisis of loss. The simple thing of smelling their scent, thick with moisture and decay, would be enough to send me into a panic attack that I could barely control. As strong as that had been... yet I had never even had the slightest recollection of it in all of these years. The phobic fear of repair bays, however, had been too strong for even the mind block to filter out, although it had been muted down to an undefined unease.

Earth Academy didn't feel like home, but my valley did, even more strongly than the estate had, even though once I had counted back, I realized that I had been at the estate almost as long as we had claimed the valley home. Of course, the Starkes had not lived in the estate for that entire thousand years, but it had been a few hundred. The main difference was that the estate never was mine. I lived there, worked there, thought of it as home... but as much as the Starkes had tried, I was still, in all intents and purposes, a slave.

The valley, however, was mine. I had been the one to find it, to bring Divefire to it with hopes of turning it into a secret retreat from the crowded and chaotic EarthBase. Together, we had hewed the cave habitable, turned it from cold damp rock into warmth and comfort, brought it from primitive to permanent. It was our solace, our refuge. We build more than a place to live. We build our dreams and future here. We raised our children here. Being here brought memories back so vividly that, even though a few hours ago my memory of this valley had been vague, now I could close my optics and mentally rebuild the details of our home. The way the air held the hint of sun-warmed humidity from the lake, soothing and healing. The way the clouds would create moving shadows to contract the sparking of the sun off of the water's surface. The soft sound of waves lapping against the beach. The way the rain would pound on the skylights, even though the stone of the cave blocked out the sound anywhere else. The stars glimmering down through the same skylights as we lay in bed under them. The feel of the soil in my hands as I planted flowers and trees. The singing of the breezes through those trees. The laughter of our children as they played on the beach. It was the valley as it had been, but it was bright and real, and when I opened my optics, it was almost more real than what lay before me. I mentally super-imposed the stronger image over the reality, beginning to chip away at what had to be removed and adding what had to be created to bring the valley back to my treasured version.

It was going to be a lot of work.

I couldn't wait to start.

With sudden energy, I hopped off the generator and began to clear away more overgrowth. Perhaps I didn't have Scape's talent, but I had obviously done this before, and more memories sharpened out of the disoriented blur as I worked. I let the memories come as they would, cascading one after the other. It wasn't a rebuilding, not yet. There were too many years that needed to be solidified out of that haze all at once, and I somehow instinctively knew that if they did, it would be another overload. I wanted to savor each of these memories as they came, turn them over and examine them from all angles, reliving each one and storing it carefully away again, knowing that this time, I'd be able to take it back out again whenever I wanted. I swept away at the overgrowth, pulling as much as I could up from the roots, longing to get down on my hands and knees to dig them up with my fingers, to feel the warm soil in my hands, but my hands had not been completely repaired yet. Still, the longing was strong enough that once I had cleared away a section, the ground turned by the action of uprooting bushes and saplings, I knelt on the ground and placed both of my hands palm-down onto the soil, cool from being sheltered from the sun by the growth I had torn out, cool and moist and rich earth.

Earth.

And then without trying, almost without realizing I was doing it, I felt the energy from the soil, energy of life, from the soil itself, the bugs and creatures living in it, the sun pouring warmth down into it, the unique and distinctive energy signature of my mate deep within the earth itself, the power of the water pounding through the bed it had carved through the earth, hurtling down into the valley below, the churning of mist and condensation rising through the air, the beating of wings as birds soared over the water, the swirling of fish in the water itself, the soft touch of hooves next to the lake as deer drank in the shelter of trees that reached back down into the soil, I felt it all, woven together and flowing into me and cycling back out as I became part of the energy cycle that was Earth and knew that I had done this before, as natural as flying, except that Cashel didn't fly, and then it all just blended together from there. Cashel didn't fly, but CatsCradle did, and CatsCradle could weave energy, and if Cashel could do it too, as I was doing it now, then we were both...

....me.

I'm not sure how long I stayed like that, but it couldn't have been as long as it felt. There was another surge of energy from deep within the earth, as curiosity drew Divefire out of the cave, having felt me as easily as I had felt him. I had never asked anyone else if this way of sensing was common among life-mates, or if it had to do more with our own unique ways of manipulating energy. All Transformers had their own connection with energy, in the same manner that all humans had their same connection with blood and the pounding of hearts. But the way Divefire and I could call energy to our will, shape it, share it, know its flavor and name... that was different. It had taken the shared energy between us to blast through the mind block... but it had taken that along with the energy from the planet that we both loved, to bring me whole again.

They didn't call us Earth nuts for nothing, I thought with amusement. Always different, never along the same wavelength as the others, never with quite the same priorities, and with our own brand of insanities.

I didn't need to hear the soft rush of engines and wings, or feel the vibrations of my mate's steps to know when he came up over the edge of the waterfall and hovered there briefly, armor glistening in the sunlight from the spray of the water. Then he gently settled down beside me. He didn't need to ask. He already knew. He pulled me against him, and we sat together in the warmth of the sun, looking out over our valley.

"I'm not ready to jump back in yet," I said softly, tracing his hand with my fingers. They left little smudges of dirt and plant fluids.

He brushed his cheek against the top of my head. "I know, hun."

We let the sounds of the valley take over for a while, the songs of birds and wind in the trees playing counterpart to the melody of the pounding water. At a point in it that seemed right, I let out a long breath. "But you don't really need me doing it yet, either. You've got Firewave and Starwave, and they've been doing as good a job as I could have."

Divefire was silent, not jumping in to protest, because he could tell I was working up to something, and he let me do it in my own pace. I turned my hand over and ran my fingers along the bar code and serial number. "But what you do need… is a liaison for all the Earth Transformer. Decepticons can't understand them. No one who hasn't been through it could understand. Not really. And Decepticons least of all."

"But you do," he said simply, but I could tell his mind was leaping ahead, finally seeing a break in the problems that was becoming as serious as the war-ravaged planet. Not only a break, but a lifting of the weight that problem off his shoulders, leaving him to concentrate of the rest of bringing the planet back to life.

"It wouldn't be forever," I said, not because he needed the reassuring, because I was sure he already understood what I was planning, but I needed to say it out loud, as a way of thinking it through. "And it would be best for me to start while I'm still this size. They wouldn't... wouldn't trust it as much, coming from someone a normal size, who looked more like a Decepticon than one of them. At least, I could get one batch through some sort of orientation, and each one of that group could take a group and go from there. By the time the medics get me back into my right body, the size difference won't matter anymore. It's just for that first span of time, when they're the most... fragile."

Once it was out, I found myself relaxing from a tension that I hadn't even known was there. Maybe there was something to what Scape has once said. That I needed a purpose, instead of being told what to do. And that was what had set me apart from all of the others when our world crumbled. I closed my optics against the sun, feeling it in more detail than I had before, still feeling each swirl of energy around me, and savored the feeling of being whole again. If smaller.

"It's gonna take a lot, to get it back the way it was," Divefire finally said, and this time, I knew he was talking about our valley. I nodded, leaning my head against his chest, enjoying, as always, the way his voice rumbled against me. "I could probably spare a crew for a couple of days," he mused. "Wouldn't take as long that way."

"No," I said softly. "Let's do it ourselves. The way we did before."

I felt him smile. This place had become our refuge again, our solace against the chaos outside. But as bad as it had ever become out there, it had never touched this spot. It had survived. Grown a little messy, perhaps. But it was provide healing for us yet again as we brought it back to what it had been. To what we had been.

We were home.

-end-