Steel Wings, Diamond Heart
Underneath the darkest yet clearest Earth night Omega Supreme had seen yet, the ancient Guardian sat with a flock of jets nestled on him. Slingshot and Air Raid sat on his calves, the Harrier's vectored thrust nozzles moving softly in his defragmentation cycle. Fireflight and Skydive rested on his thighs, while Omega Supreme cradled Silverbolt in his arms. The Aerialbot commander would have slept with his wheels on the ground, but the Guardian knew that all of the jets well preferred the touch of metal to the touch of dirt.
He gently ran his fingertips up and down the joint-seam that allowed Silverbolt's nosecone to bend. While he did not know the circumstances of the last week for the Aerialbots, they had come to him before dawn today and chatter-begged for him to go flying with them. They wanted to show him the beautiful places they had found, the wondrous skies to fly in they had discovered.
It had been beyond his power to look into those shining optics - Come with us, be with us, see the places we can't show the other Autobots, enjoy the joys we can't share with the other Autobots, approve of us strangeling jets. - and deny them.
So they had flown all the live-long day, criss-crossing the planet as the Aerialbots remembered different places they wanted to show to him or show off in. Until at last the Aerialbots were too tuckered out to go on, their minds starting to run slower from all the scattered data. They had wanted to show him the aurora australis, but he had herded them over to the nearest continent and convinced them to defragment first.
As much as Omega Supreme liked Optimus Prime and Cosmos, he liked the Aerialbots far more. They resonated with parts of him that had been smothered under hate for millenia beyond count. Being with a team again, a group of seemingly disparate individuals who fit together without joins, evoked a long-buried emotion that he did not yet dare name. But it was nice to be among them, seperate but not an outsider.
He had to admit, as well, that it was gratifying to be the only Autobot that they had felt the least bit of respect for when they first came into being.
Omega Supreme stilled his hand as he noticed Silverbolt's elevons flexing. When those ceased moving, he tentatively began to stroke the joint-seam again.
The elevons flexed gently.
He expelled air through his vents and stilled his hand once more. He didn't want to disturb the Concorde's defragmentation cycle. Nor, he reminded himself sternly, did he want to encourage the latent crush all of the Aerialbots seemed to have on him. He was too ancient to be healthy for them, when they had not even seen their first century come and go.
They were so terrifyingly youthful and vibrant, blue stars trapped in metal shells. He feared what might happen if they attached themselves to him, the star that would not die.
The stirrings of other unnameable emotions he felt when with the Aerialbot team, that he had felt once before, he would not dwell on. That part of him, at least, should remain buried.
He worried, though, about their future. They stayed with the Autobots because the Decepticons had refused them and because of Silverbolt's sense of duty (how many nights had he sat up with one or more of them while they let those details slip?). Slowly, slowly, they were all coming around to the Autobot cause. Without outside intervention, he expected them to be Autobots all their lives.
Megatron had ways of changing even the most resolute of minds, however.
Omega Supreme touched the leading edge of Silverbolt's wing lightly. He'd kill them before he let the Decepticons take them in hand, kill them as soon as he knew what had happened. Never again, he would never let Crystal City fall again.
The End