Passages of Time

by Macx

movie-fic, re-uploaded 'cause it went mysteriously missing. Imperfection 'verse. There was really not much else to do nowadays. He had lost command of the human unit at the base. He had lost his rank. He had lost his freedom to come and go wherever he wanted to – because of the fucking runes.

His life had become disjointed. Days blurred into each other and there was no difference between weekdays and weekends any more. If not for the TV program, he might not even realize when the week was truly over, ready to slide into weekend. So Lennox set himself up a schedule.

In the mornings he made his rounds, jogging mile after mile, keeping himself in shape. He used the training facilities inside the base that the unit used, too, for his further work-out. After that it was catching up on daily news, share lunch with the others, maybe play a game of cards if anyone was willing to, chess, or video games.

Close combat training with Ironhide was once a week. Weapons training was the day after that. While Will couldn't transform a weapon out of his arm or any part of his body, Ironhide insisted he should know how to handle theirs. If he handed Lennox a weapon in battle, the hybrid had to know what to do with it.

"Knock the enemy over the head with it?"

It had gotten him an annoyed look and a mutter about Lennox not being much better than young, cocky recruits.

Considering that it took freshly sparked Cybertronians a while to learn all this, Will wasn't too deterred by his lack of progress with the heavy stuff or the way Ironhide managed to have him on the ground in no time.

Ratchet claimed a day of the week, too. Once a week he took general readings and once a month Lennox underwent a complete check. New developments were noted and fussed over. Will felt no different before or after each test, but Ratchet seemed to be fascinated nonetheless.

Some days he went over to help Sam with the remodeling of the old side building, some he dug around the base for handiwork.

Lately, it was a job that kept him busy, where he had his hands full. It was a job where he stopped thinking about being miserable because Ironhide was somewhere in South America, looking for whatnot and being out of contact.

No, he was not missing his friend. He had lived quite fine before alien contact had thrown him for a loop, had changed him physically, had turned him into a freaking hybrid! He could go for a few weeks, even months, without the black mech.

Cleaning out the remote areas of the Autobot base sounded like one of the less desirable jobs and it was. He usually ended up greasy, sweaty, and in need of a good scrubbing. But he felt good; and he didn't think too much about how he had come to depend on Ironhide's presence each day.

There was really not much else to do nowadays. He had lost command of the human unit at the base. He had lost his rank. He had lost his freedom to come and go wherever he wanted to – because of the fucking runes.

Angrily, Will lifted some twisted piece of metal into the container he had hauled here with the help of Epps, who was shaking his head over his former CO's antics.

The runes made him an outcast to normal people, his people. He was human, had been born as one, the youngest son of Ellen and George Lennox. One brother, one sister. Now he was neither-nor. He fit in no world. If the runes would stay out of his face or off his hands, sure, he could go somewhere, have a beer, play pool, watch a movie. But they were everywhere, quite visible, and how could one explain moving tattoos? Answer: not at all. So he spent his time at the base or he went out with Ironhide.

Now his friend was away for who knew how long and Epps could only spare so much time from yelling at the new guys to cheer up his former CO.

What a life.

But it was his life. He had to manage it, and he did it as best as he could.

It was two months into Ironhide's absence and in the middle of fighting with the plumbing, that Banachek turned up personally at the base. Will got a bad feeling at that and when the man actually told him he wanted to talk to Lennox…alone. Very bad feeling.

"I'm sorry to tell you that your father has passed away," Banachek said solemnly.

Lennox felt like punched in the stomach. "When?" he managed to ask tonelessly, ignoring the painful twist in his insides.

"Three days ago. We didn't get the information until just this morning. I decided to deliver the message personally. I'm sorry, Will."

He nodded. "Yeah… H-how?"

"Heart attack, it seems."

Lennox tried to remember whether he had ever heard of his father having heart problems and failed.

"The burial is tomorrow," Banachek went on. "I thought you'd want to know."

"To do what?" Will asked, sounding almost desperate.

He couldn't go there. He couldn't say good-bye. He could sit here, wallow in memories, regret everything and nothing at all.

His father had been a teacher at the local U, a family man, with a wicked sense of humor. His students had loved him. He had taught math and physics. It was probably where Lennox had gotten his knack for math from. It had been his uncle Jimmy who had been career military, who had had a big impact on Will's decision to join the armed forces, too. That and being named after his great-grandfather, a military hero. His older brother Gene had gone into his own business of computer science, his sister Sue was a teacher, like their father. Last he had heard, Gene lived in Chicago, Sue had just moved somewhere in Iowa.

"We could arrange something," was the vague answer.

"Wrap me up and hide me?" Lennox asked acidly.

"The funeral is held at twelve, in Minot, as a family affair. We can arrange for you to be… around."

They were burying his father at home. Will had grown up in Burlington, just outside Minot, where his parents had lived all their lives. It had been home until he was old enough to join the Army, and after that he had only been back for family occasions.

Emotions welled up inside him and Will fought them down hard.

"How?" he now asked.

"You leave that to me. While you can't show up at the graveside throughout the service," Banachek said, "you can have all the time you want afterwards. I'm sorry, Will. Very sorry."

He nodded. "Yeah." Whatever. "I'll be…" He gestured vaguely. "Packing."

And he turned and walked away, leaving Banachek to find his own way out or wherever he wanted to go next.

That Jazz offered to tag along had come as a surprise. Will knew he was staring at the silver robot, stunned. Of course he was friends with them all, on different levels. Prime was a respected warrior, a commanding officer. They talked sometimes, both aware that the other had shared the same responsibility, and in his active time with the Autobots, Will had spent long hours exchanging stories with the Autobot leader. Ratchet was more interested in him because of scientific reasons, keeping close optics on him. Jazz… well, he was Prime's second in command, very easy to be around, and Will had found him ready to listen should he need an open audio receptor – especially since Ironhide was now away on a mission.

Ironhide himself… Lennox was hard-pressed to explain what was between them. Friendship. Yes, a very intense, trust-filled friendship. Ever since Mission City, where both had fought in different battles, they had come together as a team. Like Bumblebee had Sam as a charge, Ironhide had somehow taken Will under his wing. Not for the same reason, though. Will had learned new fighting skills and techniques, and he had gotten to know their new alien allies. Mission City hadn't been the best first start; Qatar even less.

Now Jazz was offering to accompany him.

"It's in North Dakota!" he finally blurted.

"Hey, I'm small. I fit on the plane," was the easy answer. "And I always wanted to see more of your planet."

"Why?"

"Because it's a fascinating world."

Lennox growled and Jazz smirked, then he grew serious.

"Will, you lost a parent. While I have no concept of parents or off-spring, I understand loss."
The former Army Ranger felt something inside of him curl up. Yeah, Jazz understood loss. He had lost everything, almost his spark-bonded partner, too. Speaking of which…

"I doubt Banachek will be happy about a Decepticon in the middle of North Dakota."

Jazz grinned. "Cade and I aren't welded together at the hip, Will. He's bitchin' enough about my 'foolish idea' – his words, not mine. I doubt he'd trust your government to fly us anywhere. He thinks they'll push him off halfway across the continent without a parachute."

Will chuckled, true amusement flooding through him for a moment.

"And you'll need wheels, right?" Jazz added pointedly.

"I doubt I have time to cruise." Solemn blue optics looked down at him and Will sighed, surrendering. "Okay. Thanks," he only said.

Jazz nodded wordlessly.

Banachek didn't throw a fit over the additional passenger. He actually looked like he had expected it. Jazz parked himself in the cargo hold in vehicle form and Lennox spent the short flight gazing out of the window, memories chasing each other.

It was a day like every other day. The sun was out, but it wasn't too warm yet. The trees were swaying in the slight breeze that brushed over the silent grounds and touched the group of people dressed in black. Underneath one of the old trees, hidden by the massive trunk and dark shadows, Will Lennox kept his eyes riveted to the grassy ground, listening to the drone of the priest's words with only half an ear. Now and then he looked at the coffin with its flower ornaments and tried to get a clear grasp on his emotions. It was difficult.

He had loved his Dad. There had never been too harsh a fight not to reconcile, even when a younger Will had told his parents he would join the Army; when he had made his career; when he went overseas for months.

He died thinking I'm dead , ran through his head over and over.

His family thought he was dead. All of them. They had an empty grave if they wanted to visit, but their son was gone.

Lennox leaned against the tree, tears in his eyes that were hidden behind sunglasses. He was dressed in black, had forgone his uniform because that would have been too obvious. He would have honored his father with it, he knew, would have wanted to be here as the Major, but he was a civilian now. He was no longer the William Lennox who had been raised by this man.

His mother stood next to her remaining children. Will's eyes were riveted to her aged face. He remembered her joy at becoming a grandmother. First Gene, then Sue, then Will's own baby girl. Now she was a widow who had also lost her youngest son.

Gene looked just like their father, Lennox mused. Older than him by a good ten years, grayer, heading for the big five-oh. There was a bald spot, too. Next to him stood their sister Carol. She had cut her hair, Lennox thought dimly. And dyed it a darker maroon. Their respective spouses and family were behind them, the children all so much older and taller than Will last remembered. And Sarah…

He felt his throat constrict even more.

She was here. She and Annabelle. God, she was so big now. Such a big little girl. Will had to hold onto himself not to leave his hiding place and approach.

There were people here, Banachek's men, keeping an eye on him, ready to intervene. Jazz himself had been parked not far away and Will knew his friend was scanning. He could feel it prickle over his skin. The runes were alive, agitated and mobile, reflecting his inner turmoil.

When the priest was done, some friends and family members said a few words, and then it was over. People dispersed, but Lennox stayed. His eyes followed his wife's retreating form, riveted to his former family, and something inside him was ready to break.

Finally there was no one left. Funeral home people were clearing away what wasn't needed and soon the grave would be closed, flowers draped, and by the end of the week it would have a headstone.

Will walked over, steps heavy, emotions overflowing. He stopped in front of the open grave, hands pushed into the pockets of his pants.

"Hey, Dad," he whispered.

His 'bodyguards' didn't stop Lennox when he got into Jazz. He sat inside the Solstice, hands curled around the steering wheel, staring sightlessly out the windscreen.

"Will?" came the soft query.

"I'm fine," he answered automatically.

He could almost see the skeptical expression.

"Want to drive?" Jazz wanted to know.

"Yeah. Just… yeah." He exhaled sharply. "Damn." His head fell forward and he let it rest against the steering wheel. "Damn."

Jazz remained silently, engine off.

"She was here," Will finally choked. "She and Annabelle and my Mom… God, she's grown. My little girl… She's… and I wasn't… I can never be… there."

Runes flitted over his hands like tiny fireflies.

Will sat back, running a shaky hand through his hair. "Let's go," he said roughly.

"Where to?"

"Just… away. Tell Banachek… I want to drive."

Jazz acknowledged and gave control to Will, who pulled out onto the street and just headed down the road, no specific place or direction in mind. They ended up between Minot and Burlington, in the middle of what looked like unused farm land and pasture. It was wide-spread, an ancient farm house leaning against the wind, its paint long ago stripped by the elements. There was a make-shift fence, a 'property for sale or lease' sign out front where the highway met the road leading to the house.

Lennox smiled dimly.

"My grandfather's place," he said softly. "We came here to play. It was always an adventure."

So many memories.

"Dad's been trying to sell this for years now. First he wanted to keep it. For us. Thought one of us might move here. Now…"

His past. All dead and soon gone.

"Our bodyguards still around?"

"Yes. They're waiting at the airport in Minot."

Lennox nodded. "No chance of driving home, huh?"

Jazz chuckled. "We could try, but I doubt Mr. Banachek would be happy."

Screw that.

But Lennox just nodded again. Instead of driving back, though, he got out and walked toward the ancient building. Jazz followed him with a softly purring engine, still in vehicle form. He wouldn't chance transforming and getting seen.

Will smiled at the old swing on the apple tree, the tree house that looked as ramshackle as the day it had been built by two boys and their grandfather. The old fields lay empty, weeds growing in abandon. The barn had seen better days, was a hazard to enter, and Will just peeked inside. The musty smell was the same as many years ago. There was an old, rusty pick-up parked underneath the hay loft. The tractor had no wheels and the farming instruments were all but gone.

Sitting on the porch of the house, looking out over the fields, Lennox smiled dimly. Jazz was patiently sitting with him. Looking at his marked skin, he found the runes had quieted down. They looked like faint, weird scars now.

"Will?" Jazz finally broke the silence as the sun touched the horizon.

"Banachek asking?"

"Yes. I told him where we are. He said he understands, but…"

"… we need to go," the ex-Army Ranger murmured.

"Yes."

Getting up, dusting off his pants, Lennox walked over to the Solstice. He cast a last look at his childhood memories, then got inside. He left driving to Jazz, just gazing out the windows as the shadows grew longer and longer.

They arrived at the airport as dusk was about to slide into night. The plane lifted off into the night and Will spent the flight in the cargo hold, talking to Jazz, sharing memories, listening to the Autobot's own, and smiling wistfully to himself.

Ironhide returned three months after the signal from the supposed Autobot had been picked up. He had Ratchet in tow and both looked unhappy.

"We lost the trail," he growled when Will shot him a quizzical look.

"How come?"

"No clue. Slippery bastard. We found the impact point and he made it out alive, was seen here or there, and we even have a pretty good idea on his two alternate modes he's been using, but he evades us. He's moving North, that much we figured, but we lost him somewhere in Mexico. Prime decided to have Jazz look for him next."

Which meant Barricade, too.

"You know he's an Autobot?"

"No. We have a crash site, we have signals that could be both a Con and one of us, and we have the hope that the Cons are either all dead or hiding somewhere." Ironhide rumbled unhappily again. "He's hiding and that doesn't look too good. Optimus has been trying to get in contact with the newcomer and if he can't convince him… who can?"

"Jazz will be spying for him?"

"Yes."

Will smiled. "And you know who's coming along and why."

Another unhappy sound. "Might be for the best," the weapons specialist finally muttered. "If it's a Con, that is."

"What about Barricade defecting again?" Lennox voiced a thought Ironhide had been muttering about ever since Barricade had joined their ranks.

That got him a snort. "Doubt it."

"Oh?" Will gave him a neutral look. "How come?"

"Jazz," was all he got as an answer.

"Didn't stop him the first time."

"The first time he was loyal to Megatron."

"So you believe Barricade now?"

Another rumble. "Let's say I believe that he's too attached to what he has now to give it up again, and the very real possibility of having to face his spark-bonded in battle."

Wow, Will thought. Whoa squared!

This coming from Ironhide was the closest to the mech saying he saw Barricade as an ally as he had ever come. Not that Lennox believed for a second that Barricade would go back to any arriving Decepticons either. Still… Ironhide had been most vocal about the danger of that happening.

"Yeah," he now muttered. "So you're not going back?" he asked.

Ironhide shook his head. "No."

Something inside Will itched to go out, too, to be useful, to have something else to do. He shifted a little from one foot to the other, but he didn't say anything.

Blue optics narrowed a little. "Will?"

"Nothing." He walked away, thoughts whirling.

The next few days dragged on. Will felt more balanced now that Ironhide was back, but the idea that he could be out there, helping with something, was on his mind. Ever since his father's death, the visit to his grandfather's old farm, and seeing his family, he felt so much more alone, removed from humanity.

He had a new life, but what to do with it? He couldn't go out or just explore his own country, find places he had never even heard of before, because he stood out like the rune-covered human bill-board he was. Lennox was confined to this place or the inside where people already knew him.

It was driving him crazy at times.

He wasn't a scientist. He was good with math, sure. But he wasn't Sam, who was an engineer and a technopath and damned good with Cybertronian tech stuff. Epps was running the military unit and while Lennox liked to help out, he was no longer part of the command structure. And the desert only offered so much in distraction.

It was right after Ironhide's return that Will decided to catch up on his own bit of Cybertronian tech stuff and immersed himself in what Sam had so easily assimilated in the past years: basic mech anatomy. Being able to mimic them, Lennox concluded that knowing what they actually looked like inside might help him get a handle on those abilities.

It proved to be a ton of new stuff to handle. Just what he needed to keep him from boredom.

Ironhide found him in Ratchet's lab a week after his return. Ratchet himself hadn't been in for a couple of hours, tinkering around on a new project outside. Will looked up from his reading material.

"Hey," he greeted his friend.

"Jazz radioed," the weapons specialist said.

"They found the new arrival?"

"No. It wasn't about that. He told me what happened."

Will sighed and put away the stack of paper. "So?"

"You didn't tell me."

"Parents aren't really a concept of your world, Ironhide. My Dad's death…"

"Is something even we can relate to," came the slightly annoyed growl. "We might not have parents, but we know a passing. Not all of my kind have been killed in battle. We age, we can stop functioning."

Lennox studied his tattooed hands. He had seen hints of that in some of the chapters he had read.

"How old are you?" he finally asked.

Ironhide looked surprised and he settled down on the floor of the lab, gazing at the so much smaller human.

"Older than Prime. Young enough not to know much about the creation of Cybertron itself. I wasn't one of the first. I never met one of them. I think they are all dead."

Will nodded. "My father wasn't old enough to die. Not naturally. It was a heart attack. Pump-failure," Lennox added, searching for a compatible version in mechanoids.

"I know what a heart attack is, Lennox," Ironhide snapped. "I learned about human illnesses."

"How come?"

"Being around you, I wanted to know what could happen to you."

Something warm spread through him for no apparent reason. "Oh. Cool. But… I'm not really human, Ironhide."

It got him a scowl. "At the time you were."

"Ah. Okay. Right."

"And I would have come with you if I had been there," the mech added as if he needed to say it.

"I know. Thanks. It was good to have someone there, to have Jazz, because just Banachek's men…" He stopped and shrugged.

"I understand." Ironhide reached out and touched a rune crawling over Lennox's forearm. "Loss," he translated softly.

"He meant a lot to me. My Dad. He wasn't a great military officer or some hot shot anywhere else. He was a teacher. At the university in Minot."

"Greatness doesn't come from one's job, Will," the mech said quietly. "He was someone you trusted."

"Yeah. He died thinking I'm dead. And maybe it's what killed him."

Blue optics studied him compassionately. "You cannot change the past."

"No one can."

It got him a nod. "We live with the loss. We survive because there is something else we live for."

"Chasing the Allspark?" Will asked neutrally. "Only to watch it blow up into Megatron? Why don't you leave this planet, Ironhide? Why stay?"

"Because we have found something else. Because your world needs us in case the Decepticons return."

"Duty?"

"It was our all decision. Prime didn't make it for us. We could try to reach the Ark, but then what? There is nothing left."

"There are worlds to explore. There might be others out there, other Autobots…"

A shrug. "Prime sent the call. They might come here one day. I can't find fault with my life as it is here."

"Hiding amongst us."

"Yes. Some of you know. We have friends." The blue optics seemed to turn a deeper shade. "You have friends. Loss is never final as long as there is someone to share it with."

Will smiled slightly. "Yeah."

The loss of his father still sat heavily with him and he would need time to work through it. Unlike his siblings he had no one to share this with but people who had never known George Lennox. That was the most difficult part: the inability to be there for his remaining family and have them help him in return. Share memories of his Dad, listen to the others recount their anecdotes.

"Tell me about him," Ironhide said, startling him a little.

"My Dad?"

"Yes."

He wanted to know why, but he didn't ask. Somehow it wasn't important. Somehow he wanted to give Ironhide a little insight into humans, into him, and maybe, just maybe, he would be able to ask similar questions in return.

Hope you liked!

In case you wonder why I picked Minot, ND... Josh Duhamel was actually born there. Got that from his IMDB page. :) Everything else is pure fiction.