Dani looked down at her sweaty feet. She wore one of Graham's old pairs of stuffy, rugged engineer's steel toe boots. They were black. They fit. And she was ashamed to admit, but although she told others the stains would not come out, she had not even tried to scrub her own boots of the messy splatter of energon staining them bright blue. She felt nauseous at the thought.
Blades had died in the line of duty, a messy death, a hero's death. It came back to her in a wave of screaming, explosions, mangled metal and fluids and pain. Blades' voice rang out over the chaos, "Dani! Dani, wake up! Dani! Are you okay?"
She peeled herself off of Blades' console, blinking blood from her eyes. She reached up and felt a long but shallow gash in her forehead, but pulled back a hand smeared as glowing blue as it was red. She sat up and the world spun. Everything was leaning to the left. Blades' screen fuzzed in and out of static, his face distraught with worry. "Dani, are you ok?"
She held her head and replied, "yeah, I think so…"
"Oh thank goodness!" Blades worried,"You hit my console really hard when we crashed! I thought you might be-"
She leaned up and took stock of her surroundings. The cockpit was a mess of broken glass and twisted metal, pierced tail to snout by a steel beam that barely missed Dani's head, and glowing blue like a rave. "Blades, are you ok? Is..." She choked. "Is that your blood?"
"I think so. Everything hurts, and I can't move, and do I feel like I'm leaking. What happened? Is it bad?"
Dani stared wordlessly at the beam and the river of glowing blue leaking from around the messy hole where the beam pierced what looked like some pretty important… organs? It sure looked bad. Darker fluids mixed inside of the hole, what might be a lubricant or coolant that made a hiss as it escaped. The cabin floor glowed.
Blades shrilled, "It's bad, isn't it? How bad? Really bad? Am I going to die?" There started a labored mechanical grinding from behind the cockpit wall.
Dani put her hands on the monitor, hoping some part of this screen worked as an eye. Her injured hands couldn't muster much strength. "Blades, calm down! It isn't, I promise you it isn't that bad. It's… just a little leak. It's small. The others will be here any moment now, you'll be okay." She moved her foot and noticed that the cockpit had pooled nearly enough of the glowing blue fluid to reach her bootlaces.
"You'll be okay," she repeated, more to herself.
She blinked away tears to see his face in the monitor, but his panicked face fuzzed out, and he cried with voice distorted, "Dani? Dani, I can't feel my monitor! I can't see! Dani? Dani, help me!" His controls began to wiggle as he attempted in vain to move. Dani put a firm hand on his joystick, stilling it. Her head pounded and she struggled to stay focused on her partner. "Blades, calm down! I'm here. It's okay." But she couldn't keep the fear out of her voice. The wound in Blades' cabin was flowing energon just as freely as before, gushing in pulses. Something inside of Blades whirred and began to grind vigorously, like a coffee grinder filled with screws. "Blades, I'm going to need you to focus," Dani said in as calm a voice as she could manage. "Is there some way I can stop your leak? There has to be some-"
"Dani? What was that?" Blades responded in a voice too quiet and too slow. "My audio receptors *fzzzt!* funny." The lights in the cabin dimmed. The grinding reached a horrible crescendo. Dani lurched to her feet, gasping at the feeling of broken ribs. Gripping the monitor in both hands, she shouted: "Blades! Blades, stay with me!" She felt a trickle as the glowing fluid leaked into her boots, burning mildly against her skin, hot. "Blades! Blades! Oh god, Blades, wake-"
A soft, static-filled transmission emanated from the screen as energon welled at its edges; "Dani," his voice was barely a whisper. "I'm scared. I'm so scared, Dani. I'm so scared."
She gripped the monitor in the dark. "I am- no, it's, it's going to be all right Blades. The others are coming soon! I can see them now," she lied, "they're almost here, they're coming, stay with me, stay with me, stay-"
"I'm scared Dani. Please. Please, no. Please. Dani."
Dani could no longer hold back her tears, and she began to whisper incomprehensible words of soothing or of prayer as she held the oozing monitor close against her chest. Blades' words faded into dull static. There was a prolonged, low tinny warning beep, then nothing. The grinding in his motors eased up, fading to the background, and she could now hear the slow dripping of his vital fluids onto the hillside. She reached for her com link, jamming the broken button furiously. "Come in," she screamed with ragged voice, "Anybody, please! Help, we need help, help us! He's dying god damn it, help us!" The com link only buzzed and sparked in response. Behind her, Blades' mechanics sputtered and rattled ever more quietly. The hinged stand behind Blades' monitor went limp and she fell back in his seat, curling around it and trying not to cry. There had to be some solution, some way to fix what was broken. Maybe there was a roll of duct tape she'd forgotten about in his cockpit somewhere. She forced her puffy eyes to cooperate, but actually looking at the floor forced her to acknowledge the scrap and debris that was Blades' insides turned outsides. Only the seat behind her had stopped her from being impaled by scrap. Her brows twitched together on their own and her eyes teared as she realized that there was nothing she could do. She petted his controller joystick and through choking sobs began to say, "Blades, it's- it's been really great, hasn't it? I, I just want you to know- you're the best partner I could ever ask for. Blades, I. I promise, if you make it out of this, I'll wax you every day. And I'll be more careful, I swear I'll never fly you up any higher than you want. I'll never call you a wimp again. I'll never- Blades, please, you have to make it out of this. You have to. You have to, I, I love you, you're my best friend and you're the best goddamn helicopter I've ever flown. You, you're…. I. I-"
The screen lit up beneath her, and let out a glitchy beep that sounded like an exclamation of fear. And then everything went quiet, and deathly still. Far off, she could hear the rush of the river, and she found herself hating the dam for having been saved. She hated herself for it, but she'd rather have the whole city washed into the sea than have Blades...
She forced herself to look outside. Her father, three brothers, and four bots stood outside in an awkward cluster. A great hole had been dug in the yard, and beside it stood a large, heavily ornamented metal box. It gleamed with a pattern reminiscent of a circuit board. Her stomach tied in a knot. She looked away, examining the faces of Optimus, Heatwave, Boulder, and Chase. Despite being aliens, they showed their grief in a surprisingly human way. She did a double take; their faces were not discolored by tears, but oil. The bots cry tears of oil. And then it hit her, why Blades' face was discolored after watching Titanic with her last Friday. That little idiot had told her it was some kind of robot rash, but his tone had left her skeptical. She laughed hard, falling against the hallway's wall as it turned into quiet sobs. It didn't feel real. None of it felt real. Her eyes burned, and she could feel the many layers of mascara washing away along with any piece left of her composure.
She didn't want to be seen like this.
She couldn't go out there. She felt vulnerable, hugging her stomach, arms grating against her unfamiliar starched black attire. She ripped the suit jacket off and threw it away from her. It felt too sharp, it all felt too sharp, too harsh and real. She wanted to flee back to her room. She hadn't left it since the accident, not even to eat. At least her bed was soft, and didn't make her lacerations itch and burn in their bandages. She slid back up the wall, clenching her fists, trying to force the sadness back inside. Deep breaths deep breaths, it wasn't working. Her tears continued to leak out. You can't give a respectful speech while you're crying, she told herself, feeling it all ball up heavily in her chest. There was no way she could face this. There was no way she could have ever been prepared for this.
She remembered Blades defended himself one hazy afternoon, unwinding in the bunker after a rescue involving some very frightening parade balloons.
"Bravery is still bravery," she whispered his words to herself, "even if you're screaming the whole entire time." She wasn't ready, and she would never be ready, but she stepped out that door anyways. Blades deserved a good send-off, and a decent speech from his partner. Even if she looked like a swollen-eyed, crying child the entire time. It was better than nothing.