A/N: So, I wasn't planning on posting anything again so soon, but I got a comment on my last story which annoyed me and which I cannot directly respond to. Petty as it is, I didn't want this person thinking I wasn't posting because of his unsolicited, unwanted and unnecessary advice.
This was originally a drabble written in response to the prompt "memory" on femslash100. I forgot about cross-posting it and wasn't terribly keen on the drabble version anyway, so I rewrote it for the new year. Enjoy!
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Anode knows every line that makes up the surface of Lug's frame. She understands, in theory, where every last nut and bolt must lie beneath. This foundation she lays with all the certainty of a master, doubts pushed as far into the deepest corner of her mind that she can spare the effort to reach. Fingers deft from memory and determination alike coax the widowed metal into the right shapes and she knows, when her work is through, that the protoform on the table is going to grow soon into the most beautiful bot that she's ever seen.
What she doesn't know, what holds her spark in a vice, is who will be looking up at her out of those optics now flickering up blue.
"Lug?" she murmurs, hoping and frightened. Her hand trembles for the first time as she smooths it over the curve of a cheek becoming more familiar by the second.
Those optics cycle wide and Lug- maybe, hopefully, please- jerks upright. She coughs up binary as her vocalizer develops and comes online, vents wheezing in a gasp, and throws a look around the room. When her attention comes back, bringing her bearings with it, she lunges forward to catch Anode by the shoulders and sputter, "That was the Necrobot! You said-" The rest of the sentence gets tangled up in a frown and her hands go from Anode's shoulders to her face, fingertips brushing at whatever expression she sees there. She doesn't spare a glance for her hands, still meandering into her own shapes. "Anode?"
"Y-yeah," Anode manages to say through static. Her vents hitch, relief flooding her hiccuping engine. She's the one to lunge forward this time, drawing Lug tight against her. She gasps and has to pull back only a moment later; it's too much to let Lug out of her sight right now, especially with a frame in her arms still so different from the one she knows. She sobs a laugh and says, "I say a lot of things." She laughs again, giddy, and folds her fingers around Lug's. "Just listen to me, I'm saying things right now!"
And she has a lot of things still to say.