Nobody thinks about surviving to old age during the war, but time passes.
Title: Age
Warning: The ailments, deaths, and sadness of old age, mixed in with everything else time brings.
Rating: PG
Continuity: G1(ish)
Characters: Everyone.
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.
Motivation (Prompt): I did a prompt challenge on Tumblr, had fun, lost all the resulting ficlets, and made dying whale noises until xxmistressofflamexx, Larisareader, Everythingyouthinkyouknowisalie, Sinceredir, and Fhc-lynn found them all. These people saved the fic. TTuTT Thank you, guys.
[* * * * *]
Kup
[* * * * *]
Nobody thinks about surviving to old age during a war. The 'Cons attacked for so long there are Autubots who barely remember a time without daily chaos, death, and violence. It happens, though. The war ends. Cybertron has a rough time readjusting to peace, but civil war does that to people. It's hard to step back from targeting half the population as the enemy.
Cybertron's positively giddy once reality sets in. They feel invincible, like nothing can get in their way, the whole planet living loud and proud as though the high life will go on forever. Nothing will bring them down, now~
Kup's more realistic. Even outside of war, nobody lives forever. He just happens to be further along toward the end than most.
"Here's a statistic for you," he said eons ago to Perceptor, and the scientist snapped to instant, interested attention. Optimism and enthusiasm shone bright in his optics despite the poor energon and grubby base they were stuck with. Kup felt a little bad dimming those optics with reality, but he still said, "We ain't had a mech die from old age since before the war started. Not a single one."
Perceptor started to reply, confident in how statistically unlikely that was in a population that once filled a planet and several colonies, but Kup raised a hand to shut him up.
"Not one. We evacuated the assisted living homes, abandoned the elder care services, and bombed the shelters. If anyone made it out of the cities alive, it sure wasn't the old and infirm." He gave Perceptor a wry look. "Getting killed while on life support ain't dying of old age, kid."
"I suspect this statement, while improbable from the perspective of one sampler, is untrue throughout our species. Understand that I am not doubting what you feel to be true," Perceptor assured him, "but the reality of the broader population invalidates your personal experience."
That massively overpowered CPU whirred almost audibly as Perceptor ran calculations. Kup sat back and let him work, smiling a bit as Perceptor's thoughtful grace became a fraction jerkier in excitement. Perceptor thrived on unexpected challenges. Kup liked giving the kid puzzles when the situation was at its worst. Thinking was as much as an escape for Perceptor as his clever solutions were salvation for the rest of them.
Kup waited his calculations out. Perceptor began to frown. "Hmm."
Ha. That was the sound he waited for. Hard numbers didn't produce uncertain noises.
Kup's smile widened, and he popped one forefinger up to mark his triumph. "Not saying time don't contribute to mechs my age dying more often, but age's a factor, not the cause."
"Age is never a primary cause. Age isn't a disease," Perceptor said, but Kup knew from the distant tone that he'd already lost Perceptor to thinking.
Years later, and the scientist is done thinking. He's back to talk with Kup, and it's a talk, not an argument. He's not here to change Kup's mind. There's no proof to back up his argument.
Kup's up for an argument anyway, but nobody talks to him in so much as a loud voice anymore. They're afraid to drown out the whisper of his voice. They're afraid to rile him up. A nurse will rush in to remove anyone who dares get him excited. The monitors attached to him blip wrong and everyone rushes about in a tizzy, terrified he's about to die. They all wear masks over their mouths, shields strapped over their open vents to keep direct puffs of air from skirling shed flakes of time-decayed plating off his old, frail form.
"I'm the first," he breathes, and Perceptor would contradict him if he's wrong, but the data isn't there. The war killed so many before their time. So, so many, and he remembers the dead. He's not sure he remembers everything about them anymore, but they're there in his mind as alive as he is. More than him, even. The wild tales of his adventures are filled full to the brim with flashes of memory brighter than the softened reality he finds himself in these days. He has a tough time remembering new faces, new people, but his visitors sit and respectfully listen as he describes the faces are the long dead. He tells their stories over and over.
He's the first, a legend in his own time, going out when he should instead of when the war forced an end, and what he wants to tell Perceptor is that he's more than just one old-timer. He won't die alone. He may die first, but the people alive in his mind will follow him down. He couldn't tell the stories fast enough or pass on firsthand experience from speaking face-to-face, and all the people he remembers will fade away at long last as his plating grays.
There's no data to back it up. There's no proof. But they're already gone except for their memories, and those have lived on in him. His stories kept them going.
Kup sighs, settling back. There's sorrow in his spark, sure, but satisfaction as well. He remembered the dead for as long as he could, carrying them when their bodies gave out. Just a little farther, and he'll lay his burden down.
A hand covers his, the careful hand of a scientist and a friend, and Kup smiles. Soon it will be his turn to be carried onward.
[* * * * *]
Optimus Prime
[* * * * *]
Time presses on him like gravity, an inexorable pressure pulling him down.
He doesn't tell others about it anymore. They don't listen past what they want to hear, and they hear that he's being pulled down. They think he means metaphorically. They recommend counselors, therapy, time away from the turbulent peace process he's brought to the final stages. Even Megatron, the mech who likely understands him the best, scoffs at him. Everyone assumes he's depressed, maybe as some sort of delayed feeling irrelevancy as Cybertron's new government takes over or the boisterous new generations turn the planet into an unrecognizable place around him.
They don't understand that he means physically. He feels down.
No, not as though he's being crushed, although every step he takes is heavier than the last. His feet separate reluctantly from Cybertron's surface. His tires turn against ground that clings to them. But it's not depression. It's not a bad feeling at all. He wishes he could make his friends - or even just Megatron - understand that the strange magnetic pull downward isn't a sticky flypaper feeling. The metal of Cybertron hasn't turned to quicksand, sucking him down as he wades through its muddy pull. He's not trapped.
Cybertron holds onto him like someone closer than a friend. It pulls him downward, and every time his feet touch ground, it's as if he's embraced in safety and comfort. The older he gets, the more he feels that standing up is an unacceptable distance.
He's not creaking, cracking old when he says his silent goodbyes. He's just old enough that nobody thinks it odd he's leaving the party early. His hand lingers on his friends' shoulders, his optics crinkling up in the centers as he memorizes their faces, and he closes the door behind himself as though it's the lid on a box he's packed his life into. It's full of cherished memories, and it's time to put them on a shelf as he moves on.
It saddens him to leave them behind. They won't understand his disappearance, but they'll get over it soon enough. The Matrix won't be gone long, he feels. There has always been a Prime, and there will always be one. His turn is up, that's all.
Optimus Prime descends slowly and carefully into the depths of the planet. The deeper he climbs, the lighter age lies on his shoulders. It feels as though he can breathe again. He grows stronger. His feet quicken until he's jogging, eagerly rushing down a gentle slope further into Cybertron as the last of the pressure falls away. His plating lightens. His colors brighten, glowing red and blue. If the light shines through him as if he's translucent, evaporating away, he's merely relieved the weight is gone.
The dwellers in the deep places don't see him. Obstacles fail to block his path. He hurries somewhere that opens to welcomes him, a place he belongs, and before long, he finds it.
It's a nook, a small curve in an otherwise unremarkable wall. Optimus climbs up toward it. Once he curls up into it, it seems to adjust to fit him just right. It's so comfortable he can't imagine leaving it. The metal around him holds him like it was made for him, like he imagines the arms of Primus would feel as they enfold him, and it suddenly occurs to him that's what this is. The metal of Cybertron itself is taking him back.
He shuts off his optics and sighs, relaxing as he slowly sinks downward. Time has finally let him go, and he's returning home.
[* * * * *]
Thundercracker
[* * * * *]
Age personally offends Thundercracker.
The first two assisted living homes throw him out. Under nicer guises than pitching him out on his skidplate, of course, but to the same effect in the end. The directors talk on and on about divergent needs that their particular homes can't provide for, and duty of care to employees as well as the elderly. It's all a load of scrap. It's a polite way of saying get out, he's not welcome there.
Skywarp's slowed down but he still causes a lot of issues when he gets bored. He shrugs and accepts Thundercracker's explanation that the stupidity's gotten them kicked out, but Thundercracker knows it wasn't the fault of pranks, or silly drinking songs sung late in to the night, or even the thing with the balloons. There are visitors who've done worse, much less the people who actually live here. No, it's Thundercracker's fault. He doesn't get it the first time he's cornered into packing up his things and moving to a new home, but he understands what's going on the next time.
The caretakers don't like him. The other old mechs hate him. It's all on him.
He has a hard time admitting he's to blame even to himself for the longest time. It's not easy, alright? He can't admit he's wrong because he's not. He isn't. Nowadays grounderpounders mingle in among the flightframes as if there's nothing wrong with mixing, but there is. It makes his wings crawl. People look at Thundercracker like he's a relic from before the Golden Age when he mutters at the uppity fraggers, but he looks down his nose at them. It's political correctness gone rampant, that's what it is. Can't call a groundpounder that anymore; it has to be groundframe. Even 'grounder' is too slang, apparently.
The day Thundercracker slips up and calls someone 'wheels,' the director of their second assisted living home sends two burly porters to escort Thundercracker to his office so fast it feels like being back in the military. That's when the niggling fear hits him, the sense that he's screwed up somehow, and it keeps getting worse. Nothing he says seems to set things right.
It doesn't matter how he protests that he has grounder friends. He doesn't really mind them in their places. He just doesn't like them acting like equals in among the flightframes. None of his groundframe friends have ever said anything about his language! They agree with him about the PC nonsense!
"They're probably just nodding and smiling because it's not worth a fight," Starscream says later, lounging against the wall instead of helping throw things into crates for transport. Thundercracker's not sure why he's even there, except Skywarp stormed out to say goodbye to the people he actually likes here and Starscream showed up as if to balance his departure. "Why do you keep doing this? You know how politics affect our lives down to the smallest thing. They called us dissidents and guttermechs when we were fighting with the Senate for our rights. They used words in the media to change how people thought about us. The people you keep insulting don't like being disrespected anymore than we did back then."
Thundercracker shoves more of Skywarp's stuff into the crate while glaring at his old wingmate. "Then why don't they ever say anything, huh? Nobody's ever said – "
"Someone just did." Starscream examines his fingertips. "Twice, I believe."
Grumbling, Thundercracker ducks his head and keeps putting too many things into too few crates. He won't be able to lift these things. His shoulder joints don't have the weight ratings anymore, much less his back. "I never liked it here, anyway."
It's a lie, but Starscream doesn't call him on it. He just says, "Skywarp did."
It's true. Thundercracker shuts his mouth.
Starscream's there for a reason, after all. He's the one who carries the crates out to the moving trailer, sighing the whole way as if immensely put upon. Too proud to say goodbye, Thundercracker forces his wings up as he follows Starscream and refuses to meet anyone's optics. Curious neighbors watch him go. He notices they don't hurry out to protest his leaving. A few of them gather around Skywarp, making him promise to tell them where he's moving next. Thundercracker doesn't know where they'll go, yet. Applications take time to process, and he has the sinking feeling there are black marks on his living record.
Skywarp laughs, playing the uncertainty off as a joke.
Then he doesn't speak to Thundercracker for three days.
Starscream reluctantly lets them stay in his apartment, crashing on his bed because as much as he complains about them abusing his hospitality he won't inflict his awful modular couch on their creaky frames. Thundercracker swears modern furniture is made to torture old folks. After the first two days, however, he wishes the bed hurt his back as it hurts his spark. He lies awake beside Skywarp, and the space between them is painfully cold.
It's terrible here. It's not just Skywarp being angry – although it's kind of horrid having his tentative conversational ventures glared into silence by Skywarp, of all people – but also just…Starscream's apartment is crisp, clean, and cluttered by enough new technology that it's sort of frightening. After a week, they notice the fine silty layer of dust on the counters, and Starscream mumbles something about the place smelling like a museum. He repeatedly shows them how to use the control panel in the washrack. The sixth time through, exasperated by their confusion, he programs an On/Off button, pastes a label on it, and orders them not to touch anything else. That works well enough, but neither one of them knows how to adjust the energon dispenser for the low grade their systems run on these days, and the regular fuel gets them drunk. They wake up still overcharged with Starscream hovering over them in a panic, checking their vitals and shrilly berating them for getting fendered at their age.
"Look, it was an accident," Thundercracker interrupts the scolding a few minutes in.
Starscream just stares at him. It isn't even a glare. There's a slightly unbalanced glint in his optics Thundercracker can't interpret, and before he can ask what that look is for, Starscream's commlink beeps. Still staring at Thundercracker, Starscream flips his arm projector on.
A miniature hologram of a mech wearing EMT shoulder tags pops up. "We'll be arriving momentarily. Have they regained consciousness yet? Any success restarting their - "
"They're conscious and coherent," Starscream says evenly over the EMT and hangs up mid-reply. Standing slowly, he looks down at the two old Seekers sprawled on the floor. Thundercracker finally notices they're lying in a puddle of purged energon. Skywarp grasps his forearm like a warning, and he swallows down the words he wants to lash out with. It's defensive aggression covering shame for losing control of his own systems, nothing more.
Starscream's lips tighten into a thin line, but he only says, "No more accidents," before leaving to let the EMTs in.
The EMTs spent an extra half an hour speaking to him in low voices after they're through with Thundercracker and Skywarp. He won't tell his wingmates what the lecture was about, but Thundercracker knows. He treats the two of them far more gingerly after that, hesitating to touch them as if afraid they'll break, and it's an insult and a relief in one.
He finds them a new assisted living home after another week, probably out of self-defense. Thundercracker's applications aren't getting any responses, and Starscream doesn't have the patience to help two old mechs get by day to day. He's better after the EMTs tear him a new one, but he just can't slow down enough to be their caretaker even if he wants the job. He doesn't. Thundercracker can see him straining to speed up. Impatience breaks through more and more often.
It's not fair that Starscream is still bright and strong. Thundercracker needs help cleaning his back and thrusters, yet Starscream pretzels through transformation into his altmode as easy as venting. Thundercracker hasn't been able to do that in years. Well, he might be able to, but he's afraid he wouldn't be able to transform back, and he knows his wings wouldn't be able to take the stress of flight. They'd probably snap right off. A few of his old friends died that way, back before the government started evaluating the elderly for driving permits and flight capability. Starscream soars through the tests Skywarp and Thundercracker fail.
"How do you do it?" Thundercracker asks him on the day he helps them move to the new home. Puzzled, he sweeps long look over the mech. Someone as old as they are shouldn't be able to lift a crate under each arm, not anymore. "How long can you keep it up?"
"I don't know," Starscream says, but quietly, and Thundercracker thinks he wouldn't share it even if he knew.
There's something haunted in his old wingmate's face whenever he visits the assisted living home. Not haunted enough to keep him from verbally aft-kicking Thundercracker, of course, but Thundercracker is trying, he really is. He hates the PC slag, and sometimes he slips, but Starscream pulled some strings to get them into a place where they actually know some people from back in the war. Shared history makes Thundercracker more tolerable, or so Starscream tells him, but telling him he's merely being tolerated is enough of a blow to his pride to shame him into minding his manners.
It helps that this place keeps the flightframes in the upper stories and the groundpou – groundframes on the ground floor. The Aerialbots move in later on, their relative youth a huge contrast to the older mechs. That really reminds Thundercracker to behave. Anytime he slips up, they radiate smug superiority at the stodgy old loser they think he is, and he starts correcting himself out of sheer spite.
And it's worth keeping his mouth shut when Skywarp sits out on the front patio, faded black and purple in the sunlight, surrounded by people laughing at old stories, trading remember-whens and whatever-happened-tos. He looks up to wave, and Thundercracker waves back through the window. Right then it doesn't matter that there are groundframes sitting around his wingmate like equals. For the moment, Thundercracker can smile down at Skywarp and then look up at Cybertron's sky stretching on far above, ageless and free.
[* * * * *]
Perceptor
[* * * * *]
Age isn't the cutting edge of science in the flashy, high-pressure way of weapons research or space bridges, but is has its own urgency. Perceptor sees the need rising long before his peers notice. It's a slow-building issue, stacking up in names Perceptor recognizes showing up in small soundbites in the news, people on his social media feed complaining of the same chronic problems, symptoms connecting in a pattern that worries him. People are growing old, and Cybertron doesn't have the social or medical structure in place to deal with age, anymore.
"I won't die of old age," Kup told him once, the first time the old soldier was hospitalized for what should have been a simple joint replacement and turned into a permanent limp. "I'll die 'cause nobody knows what to do about me being old."
Perceptor took that as a challenge. He makes age his specialty despite Kup's tired scoff, but it's not just Kup inspiring him. He sees the necessity of his research applied day by day. He's never worked his best under pressure, but he flourishes when his work is immediately useful, and it is. It takes time to convince others of the importance of age-related research, but time is as slow as the days passing by. One day more or less won't make a difference to most people.
Changing Cybertron's social structure is beyond his talents, but the medical applications of his research can be used immediately. He opens his work to his colleagues. Most of the younger generations don't see the point of it, blissful in their ignorance. They're unable to see this will someday be in their own interests. Time isn't a danger to them, not yet.
Ratchet…sadly, he's one of the elders Perceptor seeks to treat, but Ratchet refuses any help offered. The retired medic stubbornly won't accept modern advancements in science and medicine. He lives in the past, endlessly suspicious of the present. He insists – loudly and angrily, often in public – that patients did as they were told back in his practicing days, and these newfangled treatments are nonsense, and the medics these days are unskilled pretenders depending on technology to diagnose problems they then over-prescribed useless drugs for. The patients are addicted junkies who self-diagnosed, believing any scaremongering post on the infonet and dictating their own treatment to the stupid jumped-up technicians the hospitals hire nowadays instead of real medics.
Every time Ratchet starts in on some poor caregiver just trying to help, Perceptor idly wonders if he can develop some kind of program to stymie the bigoted rudeness some older mechs spout. The respect people generally give their elders protects the bigots, unfortunately, and makes them confident in their invincibility. It would do a lot for Perceptor's friend if someone took Ratchet down a peg or two the way Thundercracker has apparently been cut off at the knees. Everyone knows that the only way to budge the grumpy old Seeker is to get Skywarp or Starscream involved, as neither one has a problem yelling blunt truths at their wingmate until Thundercracker is hammered into polite behavior. Grudging politeness with overtones of resentment, but the arrogant snob keeps his prejudices to himself much more these days.
Perceptor almost doesn't move into the assisted living home the old flightframes live in, but Thundercracker's practically tolerable compared to Ratchet's cranky, entitled complaints. He decides he'd rather deal with Thundercracker glaring at him than Ratchet verbally abusing people who won't fight back.
"I just turn off my audios," Jazz confesses comfortably when Perceptor grows exasperated enough to ask how he can stand living next door to the old medic. "It makes him feel better t' bitch. He's obsolete, y'know? He ain't never learned t' cope with that other than puttin' down the folks he feels inferior to."
That explains rather more than Perceptor originally asked. "Oh."
"Yeah. He's pretty bad 'round you."
And that, quite frankly, hurts to hear. Perceptor never meant for his continued work to make the retired mechs around him feel useless.
It flusters him badly, but it's not his place to help someone who doesn't want to be helped. Perceptor doesn't feel good about it, but he lets time and space distance them. He gradually drifts away from Ratchet, seeking other people who look at his projects with interest instead of fear.
First Aid is young enough to still be a practicing medic. He's overjoyed to help Perceptor further his work in the medical aspects of hardware compatibility. The rest of the Protectobots are drawn in through First Aid, and they're young, they're active, they're willing and able to lobby for the social changes necessary to help the aged community. They burrow into the midst of Perceptor's work. As always, they throw themselves into it like a rescue mission. It's not two months before they're suggesting their own ideas and heading off in directions Perceptor hadn't even thought off. Before long, they're taking his research and making it flourish in real-world applications. There are laws being passed, a caretaker's union in the works, a series of courses for an elder care program in the Academies. Streetwise gets involved on the legal side, setting the age restrictions for driving and flying; Groove unsurprisingly turns out to be a wonderful trainer for social workers, laidback enough to let even Ratchet's vicious sniping roll off him; Hot Spot works with emergency services, advising first responders on how to help older mechs involved in accidents or in need of immediate care; Blades tackles the grim, awful bureaucracy of the workplace, things like retirement age and physical tests for insurance benefits.
The rest of his work, Perceptor takes to Wheeljack.
"Will you ever retire, my explosive friend?" he laughs as he enters the reinforced bunker the inventive engineer still works out of even after all of these years. His fingers immediately itch to investigate all the strange technobobs and widgets hanging off the walls, the latest in technology carelessly tossed to the floor where Wheeljack probably forgot about it while on his way to test something else. The Academies have graduate students fighting to apprentice to Wheeljack, and Perceptor can tells why as the sheer personality of the mech precedes him into the room.
"Never!" Wheeljack crows. "Perceptor, what brings you out here?! Good to see you!"
"I called ahead," Perceptor reminds him, but it's waved away.
"My memory core's shot for short-term recall."
"How do you – "
"I hooked up a search engine to my long-term storage. Easy retrieval, and with my synthetic recording core, I don't even need to remember what happens! At the end of the day, it all gets written to long-term storage, and I recharge a sort of instant-replay dream of the day." Wheeljack's already rummaging in the junk.
Perceptor stares. "That is a brilliant solution to a prevalent problem."
"Yah, only problem's that I can't remember where I set things down today until it's tomorrow." And indeed, the engineer's glancing around as though he's forgotten something important. "Wasn't I making something? I swear I was making something."
"Knowing your tendencies, it's all but guaranteed that you were."
"But the real question," Wheeljack muses, tapping one finger on his blast mask thoughtfully, "is whether or not my students stop it before it – "
"Duck and cover!" someone screams from deeper in the bunker, already giggling, and both old mechs hit the ground.
"Nope," Wheeljack concludes cheerfully when the fire's out, "they didn't. Oh, hey, Perceptor! When did you get here?"
Ah, so it's not such a brilliant solution. Well, it's brilliant in that Wheeljack remembers, technically, but this is going to make working with him interesting.
It's exceedingly fun in a strange way, and exhilarating in how fast things move. Perceptor has always been a mech of lecture halls and solitary laboratories. His research into age has isolated him further, but Wheeljack? Wheeljack doesn't have a specialty. Wheeljack has an everything. Every science, every experiment, every funding grant, every grad student who shows up from departments Perceptor can't imagine have anything to do with an elderly inventive engineer unable to stop working on new things long enough to look back and realize his work litters Cybertron's technological advancement.
Perceptor's own optics take on a sparkle he's forgotten he used to feel, and Wheeljack laughs fullsparked and happy, his joy in creation as inspirational as it's infectious. It's refreshing to do what they used to do in a new setting, always going forward instead of looking back. Perceptor hasn't flung himself into research as though he needs it to live since the war. He does, he's getting old himself, but there's a vast difference between staying alive and actually living. The science is about age, his research studies time, but more importantly, he's learning. He's making progress.
So many of the mechs he knew are in a holding pattern, barely there and just waiting around for the end. Wheeljack doesn't sit still unless he accidentally glues himself to something.
The bunker is cluttered. People pop out of the half-finished projects as if grown there. Wheeljack is always moving, never still, and Perceptor doesn't work beside him. It's more like he's constantly following a skittering trail of excited words and shared ideas, picking up the thoughts to organize while Wheeljack goes on ahead, just out of sight. Forever out of sight, his voice always coming from the next room, speakers hidden in the ceilings and recordings stretching back over centuries, a thousand years of planning for the moment an explosion finally takes his body out of order, but they don't find him for weeks. His corpse is hidden away under a table somewhere while he talks on and on, alive in a cheerful haunting of the work he loved and the people he taught.
Perceptor stays there in the bunker with Wheeljack's ghost, and he listens. He lives.
[* * * * *]
Rung
[* * * * *]
Age isn't a dramatic thing, not for Rung. It's not personal. It's not professional. It simply is.
It's time creeping up on him, stealing quietly through his circuitry like the slow burn of a banked fire. It doesn't hurt in an 'ouch' sense. It's just a constant, inevitable thing that eats along his wires and chews him down to the struts. Bite by bite, it strips him back to basics.
To the gentleness of a smile offered to someone having a bad day.
To a helping hand for those who need it.
To an audio willing to listen, and understanding of the afraid.
Eidetic decay washes the faces from his memory. It used to upset him to realize he's forgotten someone. It hurt to realize another person blurred out of his archives, face bleeding into a pixilated blot and details forgotten, but the ache faded over time. The acidic sting of memory loss became more tolerable the further along data fatigue progressed. It's part of a general tiredness. His body is constructed from old parts that can no longer be replaced, the new manufactured pieces incompatible with his operating system, and his processors are in no better shape. The exhaustion of his hardware and software is a mechanical disease, but there's no cure for old age. There are treatments for the symptoms, elder care homes that make life easier, but that only helps so much.
After a certain point, the software can't be updated without a full wipe. The hardware can't be repaired with a full replacement. And then? Will he still be the same person once a new operating system is installed? If his archives are too full of errors, will his personality be changed by the transfer? If his spark is transplanted to a new body, is it still him?
There's a whole section of Cybertronian philosophy based around those questions. Medical science, as well. Rung has participated in both areas, debating the questions, and it was professional and personal at the time. He helped set up the inheritance laws, as well as the consent requirements for an aging patient to choose one way or another. Perhaps that is his legacy.
Time continues, however. Time stretches such things out until sadness really just becomes a method of reaching peace. It's a tragic process, not a dramatic one.
Rung disintegrates quietly, slowly, becoming a distillation of the remaining traits that made him who he was. He might not be recognizable to anyone else on the outside, but if he met himself as he is today, he would take off the glasses, look into his own optics, and see in them a mirror. Who knows what he could contribute to the philosophical debate these days if only he could put into words what is happening to him.
He's beyond understanding such things anymore. He feels nothing but contentment as he sits in his wheelchair these days. When the medic holds his hand and reads to him his living will, Rung listens as intently as he listens to anyone who talks to him. He doesn't remember making his will anymore, but he smiles agreement to the medic's words.
There's a time limit on certain choices, limits he was part and parcel in establishing, and he preregistered for this procedure while he was still coherent enough to make decisions. Today is the day he chose.
The nurses touch him on his arm, his shoulder, his hand as he's wheeled away. The other mechs in the elder care home stop them in the halls to exchange greetings. He doesn't know any of them, anymore, but he's delighted to meet them. If he recognizes the sorrow in their goodbyes, he only asks if there's anything he can do for them. His care for those around him, as ever, shines through his words like the glow of a spark stronger than the metal around it. He's still concerned about how they are feeling even if he can't connect to a reason why it matters to him. It just does.
The spark shines ever brighter when the medic tenderly helps him lie down, and Rung smiles one last time before he starts again from the very beginning.
[* * * * *]
Swindle
[* * * * *]
Here's the secret of age: youth is a seller's market. Everyone wants to buy what isn't readily available.
But although youth can be sold, it can't actually be bought. Purchased youth becomes more time added on. A conundrum, isn't it? It doesn't seem to make sense even though it's a fact. A mech can throw all the money he has at time and only make himself older in the end.
Swindle is a conmech at spark. He knows all the tricks available to sell to suckers who desperately want to believe they can stop age. The hard part of knowing it's fake, however, is that he can't fool himself. He's seen too many customers age in front of his optics. He knows the game too well to buy the lies, so there's no point in trying the stuff himself.
Swindle wasn't one of the conartists selling the junk Blurr's addicted to, but he can recite the side effects just from seeing it so often in his own trade. He also has the experience to know what's going to follow. Blurr isn't the first mech to fall for false promises, but he's high-profile. When he goes down - and he will, marks like him always do - he'll go down hard. It'll be ugly, loud, and very, very public.
That's all the Enforcers are waiting for. They know about the black market for this stuff, but they need to get their hands on a celebrity case like this to bring it out into the open before they can move in for the kill. Every one of Blurr's sources is going to be raided. The black market is going to take a massive legal hit.
It's a tough decision, but the timing's right. Swindle dumps all his backstock while the prices are still good, then cuts all his contacts and builds up his alibis. According to them, he was never part of the scams and had, in fact, been involved in legitimate enterprises the entire time. He really was, which helps. Swindle always has his fingers in more than one project at a time. Now he has time to devote to his above-board businesses.
Blurr crashes as spectacularly as a racer careening off the track. Swindle feels a little bad for the guy. Not enough to get involved, but yeesh. The media gets outright nasty toward the end, there.
Then the Enforcers purge the underground hard, and Swindle's thoroughly distracted playing innocent. He knows they have their optics on him, but his alibis hold. He isn't even taken in for questioning.
Staying out of black market is a lot like quitting an addiction cold turkey. It takes effort to stay away at first. It gets easier the longer he keeps to his legitimate businesses. He finds he even enjoys having the extra time. Not having to spend half his days bargaining in back rooms with questionable people feels a bit like retirement. Maybe that's what it is.
He thinks about it for a while and decides to roll with it. The older he gets, the less work he likes to do. Keeping his hand in makes him feel younger than he is, but it's just a feeling. It's not real, and he doesn't fool himself that it is. He sells the businesses that take too much out of him, delegates managing the others to younger associates, and settles in to live. It's sort of boring at first, but he finds hobbies. Trading on the stockmarket keeps him busy. Giving Vortex advice on running a business keeps him entertained on the weekends, although it drives the old whirligig half up the wall that he's always right.
"I hate you," Vortex mutters as he drums his fingers on the desk. A manager's desk, and isn't that a hoot?
Swindle grins at him. "Hate me all you want. You're still going to redo that ad before you run it. Oh, and one of your first-shift employees is stealing from the till. Somebody's shorting you on stock, too."
Vortex stares at him. "What the Pit?"
"It's all over your accounts." If a mech knew where to look for it.
After a minute of gaping at him, Vortex slaps a hand over his visor. He uses his other hand to gesture at his console. "Nevermind how you even got access to them." He knows better than to ask, and Swindle sniggers. "Just…show me where. And who. And how I can catch the fraggers."
Well, then. Even Vortex can learn. Impressed, Swindle demonstrates the many and varied ways to steal without getting caught by the cameras. Vortex swears a lot. It's pretty fun.
Annoying Vortex is time well spent. Not as much fun as outrunning the Enforcers, but he's old and wise enough to know his limits. He lives down the street from the assisted living home Prowl lives in. Prowl, for Primus' sake. He's not going to start slag-all with that guy as his neighbor.
He starts going out to the races, instead, and to the casinos once he finds out Smokescreen's practically next door. Frag, half the old Earth crew lives on his block. There's something viscerally satisfying about getting reacquainted with so many of the people he used to fight against or beside. It's kind of alarming how old most of them seem, but it's not like he can talk. He's younger at spark than most of them, but his body's reformatted from Earth material. His metal's decaying at a faster rate than theirs.
The medic he sees tells him he should move into assisted living soon. Swindle grimaces and goes out more often. He loses money at a horrendous rate, but only his petty cash. Funny, but he's been so obsessed with getting cash all his life that he has to remind himself it's okay to spend it now. He's reached retirement. He's aging fast. There's nothing he can do to stop it. Money can't buy him what he really wants, so he might as well spend it on other things before it's too late.
Here's a secret of aging: happiness is a buyer's market. Money can purchase so much of it, even if only temporarily - but life is temporary. Swindle intends to enjoy time while he has it. Eventually it will run out.
[* * * * *]
Tarn
[* * * * *]
Some causes age well. Some units stay together forever.
Some fanatics find esoteric hobbies that occupy 95% of their time once they retire.
"Fragging Pit. Primus, why do you keep doing this to me?" the K-Con with the chin groans for the four millionth time as Tarn shoulders into his shop. "Why? Wasn't I a good mech?" He catches himself, optics wary as he eyes Tarn as if waiting for the denial. Once a traitor, always a traitor.
But a traitor reluctantly, by weird circumstances, pushed into developing Cybertron's premier greenhouse. Look, there are certain things in life that happen as inevitably as fate, and hating something until one realizes there's a natural affinity there is one of those things. Fulcrum loathed his way into knowing everything there is to know about growing organic plants. At some point, he threw up his hands in defeat and just opened a slagging store.
Hence Tarn's presence in it. For the second time today.
"I require - "
Fulcrum thumps his forehelm down on the counter. "You already bought fertilizer. You have the fancy new rake. The watering hoses meant for leaving in the garden won't be in until next week. I don't have any new products until next week! You don't need to buy something new for your garden every single day. You're not gardening, you're filling time, so - so - " He looks up in time to catch the slight twitch under Tarn's left optic, and survival instinct kicks him in the aft. " - so obviously you need to expand. Have you thought about growing vegetables?"
No. No, Tarn has not. He blinks, abruptly diverted from rage into interest. "Vegetables?" That sounds like a whole new section of his garden he can fill up.
Fulcrum gives him a weak smile and hands over a seed catalog.
[* * * * *]
Black Shadow
[* * * * *]
Time is a gambler, and Black Shadow's betting against it. The stakes are whether or not he'll die before he runs out of money.
He retires with a heap of credits. A heap of credits. An entire mountain of money. Most of it he invests, getting rid of temptation how many of his peers have never learned to. There's financial reasons why most mercenaries don't retire, after all, and Black Shadow's grow wise in his old age. It's harder to spend money on a whim if it's tied up in something. Especially something off-world, although he retains a fondness for his homeworld that shows in how much he gives to projects on Cybertron.
Alright, so he mainly just likes seeing his name plastered on buildings. It tickles his sense of humor. The Constructicons list him as one of their primary project funders. Entire quadrants of Cybertron are rebuilt using his money, and his name's everywhere.
He was a great mercenary, but he's even better fighting on the stock market. Galactic bankers know his name well. So do the Galactic Peacekeepers, and for admirable reasons, however grudgingly they admit it. It's pretty fun being on the right side of the law for once. Nowadays, he spends a lot of time baiting con-artists of every species. Pillaging and looting for money might be a bit much for his frail frame these days, but he's not above beating up the occasional con-artist for loose change before the authorities arrive to arrest them.
He's become a patron of the arts, lately. Paintings don't move him, and sculpture's kind of boring, but he's found a style of dance that looks like slow motion fighting. It reminds him of the old days. It tempts him to try learning it, although he's smart enough not to set his rickety old body up to fail. Instead, he sponsors the recitals, optics wistfully following the graceful brutality acted out on stage.
The dance centre he funds is, conveniently enough, located on a warm, sunny resort world. Cybertron is nice, but his memories of it are nicer than reality, these days. He's happier stretched out under an alien sun, soaking in solar energy for whole days at a time, not stirring until the cooler evening moves in. It's refreshing to still have sun-warmed armor when he's out enjoying the nightlife, although it's more interesting to watch the clubs than go in.
He doesn't have as much energy as he used to. Sometimes he has to talk Blue Bacchus out of picking fights they can't win anymore. He's got a tight fist, especially when it comes to repair bills or bail money. He wants his money to last. They're not dead yet, and he wants to keep living as a rich mech.
At the end of the night, Blue Bacchus looks over at him with that half-sarcastic smile he wears when he once again can't outlast his idol. Black Shadow laughs, throws an arm around his shoulders, and leads him back to the beach sands, where they curl around each other and fall asleep, their battle senses dulled like swords rusting gently back into the dust they were forged from.
[* * * * *]
Fortress Maximus
[* * * * *]
Age wears the edges off.
Off his armor, of course. That happens to everyone. The older Cybertronians grow, the more brittle their plating becomes on a microscopic scale. The paint nanites die, the support structure's strength leeches away, and the edges sough away gradually. Older mechs are always accompanied by dust. The older a mech is, the more dust flakes off his plating. It sifts off in tiny flecks, lifted away by air currents or movements made too quickly. They return to Cybertron in bits and pieces, exhaling clouds of swirling dust even as it drops from their shoulders.
People who touch Fortress Maximus end up with chalky palms, their hands dusted white and grey by dead metal. He's well-worn. There isn't a sharp edge left on his old body.
It doesn't bother him. Time has worn the edges off his memories, too. The past's become a vague blur that muddles together unless he spends time picking the individual events apart. It's one of the problems with advanced age, but it's also one of the benefits. He's done so much in his life that the worst files have decayed in his archives, error messages replacing nightmares. He doesn't even remember what he used to wake screaming from.
Every once and a while he'll start to brood, thinking of Overlord, thinking of the war, but even those things are hard to get upset over. No sooner does he sit down in a corner like a dusty, forgotten relic than one of the elder care staffpeople notices. Within a day, visitors will pour in, invading his lonely corner like a friendly wave of paws and excited voices. He fumbles their names and doesn't know why they're here, but the hoarde of beast modes stampeding through the door won't let him molder away in his own dust. They don't notice the silky grime falling from his plating. They whine and play and chatter at him, climbing up his soft plating to perch on him, and while he can't remember why Cybertron's beastmode community is always ready to come to his rescue, he's happy to be saved.
[* * * * *]
Jazz
[* * * * *]
The new generations have terrible taste in music.
Okay, now he knows he's old.
Jazz shakes his head at his own thoughts and goes back to filling out the form Smokescreen sent him. Dating's not exactly infiltrating an enemy base or playing a live set in front of a cheering crowd, but he's more into meeting new people than sitting around on his aft staring at the walls. He likes meeting new people. He's really into getting out and doing stuff, and dating seems like the perfect way to do it.
The problem is that he doesn't have a whole lot going for him. He's a lot older than most of the people he knew back during the war, which started becoming real obvious when his paintjob turned a muddied gray where white and black blurred into each other. He spent more money than he'll admit to on temporary paint touch-ups before giving up and spinning a patently untrue yarn about premature color fade. He doesn't know how many of his friends fell for the story, but he knows his attitude helped downplay his age far longer than his body did. His plating edged in dull, dead gray centuries before anyone else he knew.
Eventually, he couldn't squirm out of talking about it. A couple of joints popped out of alignment? Big deal! He was in and out of the hospital in no time. Sure, he was in physical therapy for longer than he liked, but he played it cool. He got clever about arranging his schedule so his friends weren't visiting when he had prior appointments for things like, er, having an at-home elder care assistant come over to help him scrub the parts of himself he couldn't bend to reach anymore. Frag, that was embarrassing.
Not as embarrassing as getting stuck in altmode in the middle of a three-mech pile-up that crumpled his fender like paper. It was barely a tap, but they had to emergency airlift him to the nearest hospital to repair his old body. The parts were hard to come by, and his plating was a mess. It took forever to get his engine running without painful hitches, but it wasn't like it mattered. The government revoked his driving privileges while he was still doing joint-stretches under a nurse's watchful optics.
That kind of ended the secrecy. His friends came to see him in the hospital once he gave up trying to pretend he'd be out in two days.
"How far off is your official age?" Prowl asked when he came to visit.
"I ain't never acted my age," Jazz muttered.
"Jazz."
"Prowl."
"How far?"
Jazz grimaced and looked away. "Really far."
Prowl looked between them, from the softened black-and-white of his own body to the muted all-over gray of Jazz's. "So I see."
At least nobody has tried asking exactly how old he is. Nobody he can't talk in circles, that is, and even if they do ask, he honestly can't remember anymore. He's just old.
There isn't a lot to do after he admited defeat and moved into assisted care. He should have moved directly into an elder care home, but frag that. All of his friends are younger than him. He's not getting out of the action, even if he has to go down the stairs by sliding down on his aft one step at a time.
Hence dating. Smokescreen's a brilliant mech, thinking up this idea. Everyone's atwitter over the idea of a dating service specifically targetting the older age range. Primus knows Jazz is all for it. He tried regular dating sites for a while, but there's something awfully disorienting about his profile being matched with someone a quarter of his age. It's flattering, but he's not interested in dating someone that much younger. Perhaps far less flattering but also more accurate, nobody that young is excited to look up and see their date arriving in all his dusty, stooped glory.
Besides, the music venues the dates are at inevitably play lousy music. That means he's well and truly hit his expiration date, he knows, but blech.
He likes talking about music. He can still play his electro-bass, although he has to use all his own equipment because nobody else maintains electronics that can still connect to the old thing. Blaster lovingly dotes over the equipment. It'll stay in pretty good shape for a while, yet. The trouble is finding someone roughly his own age who gives half a scrap about music like he does. Oh, and who's available. He's all for expanding his circle of friends, but he figures that if he's too old to keep running away, maybe it's time he settle down with someone at long last.
At this point, he'll settle for somebody who can hold a conversation about something other than the war or what operation they're scheduled for next. Ugh.
He eyes the screen distrustfully. He can't think of anything else to add or change. Time to submit this.
"Here's hoping," he mutters to himself.
[* * * * *]
Blurr
[* * * * *]
Blurr doesn't age well. Oh, frag, he doesn't age well at all.
He has his bar, but he stops paying attention to it. It's not that he retires. The Old Oil House has become a good chain run by better managers, and he can sit back these days if he wants to. He chooses to, but it's because he's become obsessed with something else.
The second his speed drops, he's riding the track repair team's afts to bring him back up. That works for a little while, patches on top of patches in his software to keep his brain wired, processor running up to speed with his legs, but even a retired racing champion's fortune can't buy youth. So he goes to the underground, to the chopshop docs who take out nonessential systems and maybe some essential ones. Anything to make him lighter. Any work-around to fake it. Anything to get that extra burst of speed out of his aging frame. Any cheat, even the oily noxious illegal fuels he knows he shouldn't take. He gags on their taste but downs anything he can convince himself might work.
The conmechs and charlatans of the black market see him coming, and they sell him short-term solutions he eats up by the barrel for even the illusion of being what he'd been. He poisons himself, desperate to believe the lies he's fed.
When he crashes, it's spectacular. He's not even on a track when he goes down, but it's as dramatic as a twelve-racer pile-up tumbling off the bend. He crashes into a news van, the reporter stumbling out of the pile-up holding a microphone and the damaged camera mech filming the whole time. His face is plastered over every station. It's the opposite of good publicity, and it gets worse from there on out.
The hospital barely keeps him alive. They pull in specialists left and right to replace his gutted internal systems, reinstall his butchered plating, and wean him off the addictions he was told – and he told himself – would make him better.
There is no 'better' for time. It's an incurable disease that wins out over every stopgap treatment in the end.
They force him come to terms with that truth, since he's a helpless audience trapped in a bed for months afterward. He's in traction, limbs suspended to heal, and he's jonesing for a hit of exactly what put him into this position in the first place. The nurses have sympathy for him. The doctors don't. And the Enforcers bring him to trial right there in the hospital, his face splashed across all the newsfeeds until there's no place left to hide and he's finally made to see what he's become.
He looks at himself and sees an old mech, injured and humiliated, on trial for a dozen illegal substances.
It's not a pretty sight.
Wincing, he plea bargains for a lighter sentence. The Enforcers agree, eager to get at his black market sources, and Blurr escapes the trial with a relatively light sentence. Far lighter than he deserves. He knows it. He doesn't like it, but he knows what he should have gotten. He keeps his head down and complies with the drug treatment plan.
It's hard, especially at first. It…kind of helps that they don't let him run. They fix his legs, but part of his sentence includes a speed monitor. He's not allowed to accelerate above a certain speed in either mode, and, well, if he's not allowed to drive or run fast, he can't really tell how far his top speed has dropped. He's not happy about it, but he's guiltily grateful for his ignorance. Better not to know.
Although the ache to take off in a sprint is actually worse than getting over the addictions. When he shakes, it's the jittery restless shaking of a career racer.
His friends help him, when he lets them. He's refused their help for so long he's gotten into the arrogant, prideful habit of turning them down, and he has to learn how to swallow his pride. Jazz refers him to a good physical therapist, and his sentence confines him to the addiction treatment center most of the time. The rest of his time is spent dealing with a nonstop barrage of business matters his managers tactfully bury him in, keeping him too busy working to worry.
The years pass. He slows more. He gets out of treatment, lapses, goes back in, and gets back out. The Enforcers evaluate his case, and he's humiliated all over again when they downgrade his permitted driving speed even further. Then he visits to the assisted living home most of his friends stay in, and they tell him he's well above their average allowed speed. Slag, some of them aren't even allowed to drive in altmode anymore.
Jazz looks at him like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "Mech, my reflexes ain't that good anymore. And my plating'd buckle like paper if ol' Crackerbarrel here tripped over me!" He jerks his thumb at Thundercracker, who looks as though he's giving serious thought to kicking Jazz in the aft for calling him that. He settles for ignoring the two of them.
But the old Seeker catches Blurr at the door, out of sight of everyone, and resets his vocalizer right before the ex-racer leaves.
Blurr eyes him. "What?"
Thundercracker looks steadily at the wall. "You can drive?"
"Walls can't drive," Blurr says just to make the uptight flightframe actually look at him. Thundercracker's jaw creaks, and Blurr smirks. "Yeah, I can drive. Why?"
To his surprise, Thundercracker hands him a list of things he wants. Blurr's a little confused but has nothing else to do. He goes across the city, buys the assorted nothing-muches and sundry, and brings them back.
It apparently opens the floodgates on being the assisted living home's errand-bot.
"Can't you get this stuff yourself?" he asks Blaster, exasperated.
Blaster blinks at him. "No? I can't go out by myself anymore. I forgot where I lived, last time I went out somewhere." He says it matter-of-factly, not remotely ashamed, and Blurr is still staring at him when Scrapper pokes his head through the door.
"Is Blurr still - oh, thank Primus. Mech, you have got to get me this drill! It's brand new and can run off the inbuilt battery for seventeen years and - "
"Do not buy him a drill!" one of the caretakers yells from down the hall. "No power tools allowed!"
"He's not buying me a drill!" Scrapper shouts back, but meanwhile Long Haul's slips under his arm, winks at Blaster - who winks back - and hands Blurr a coupon and a credit card. "He's buying a drill for me," Scrapper finishes under his breath. "There's a difference."
Which is how Blurr finds himself smuggling a drill into the home a day later. The caretakers confiscate it soon after, but that doesn't seem to deter the Constructicons, who've taken to indoor carpentry in their old age like they've found religion. The drill's not the last 'forbidden' item Blurr buys them, along with various bits and pieces the others send him out for. The caretakers always stop him outside to check that it's stuff they can allow the old folks to 'hide' for a while before taking it away to be returned. They know how to keep their charges entertained.
To be honest, Blurr doesn't mind running errands. He takes pains to drive carefully. He doesn't want to lose the open road. It stings when he sticks to the slow lane, and people swear at him as they pull out to pass. Primus, he hates it. But it's still driving, and he can still do it, so he's going to do it as long as he can, as fast as he can.
One day, soon after he moves into the assisted living home at the insistence of his friends, there's a knock on his door. Blurr eyes it warily. People don't knock on his door unless they want something, and even then, Blurr prefers to go visiting. He likes to be the one in motion. He's the one who organized the weekly Event, taking his friends out in a big group to the nearest Old Oil House. He drives behind the transport most of them need to take. It's not far, but it's out.
It's not one of his friends at the door. Large optics look up at him when he opens the door. They're as big as he remembers but faded to a dusky lavender
"Swindle?" Okay, a Combaticon isn't what he thought he'd see on the other side of his door, like, ever.
A smile pulls up one corner of Swindle's mouth, and the big optics crinkle in the middle, microplating pushing up into thick ridges underneath the glass. "Blurr! So, ah. Are you coming?"
Blurr stares at him blankly.
Turns out that Smokescreen's been meddling again, but Smokescreen has the attention span of a mayfly so he forgot to tell Blurr about it. It's as hard as ever to get ahold of the idiot, however, so it's easier just to say yes to going out. He doesn't know why Swindle, of all people, is taking him out, and the retired merchant weasels out of answering his questions about where they're going, but it's something to do and a place to go. Blurr finds himself cautiously following Swindle's taillights down the busiest highway this side of the city, right at peak traffic jam hour. It's unnerving. Crowded streets make him nervous, now. Frag his life.
He's so focused on getting through the last intersection unscathed that it takes him too long to figure out where Swindle's taken him.
"Oh, wait, no – "
Swindle's joints screel protest as he transforms, but his smile is as brilliant as ever. He could – and has, although all of Cybertron's Enforcers couldn't make the charges stick – sell a moon with that smile. "C'mon, I've got a box. Surprised you don't, but I suppose you didn't spend much time up in the stands in your day. It's a lot nicer than sitting on the benches, let me tell you. Right this way, come on now!"
Staring in numb horror at the outside of the race track, Blurr is easy to chivvy along one step at a time. By the time his frozen processors start to function properly, Swindle's already plopped him down in a sinfully cushy chair in front of a luxurious spread of fine energon jellies and treats. Blurr hardly sees the table for the wall of windows right beyond it.
The track. The speed. The racers jogging through their warm-ups, hitting the far turn with easy grace. He remembers…
Swindle doesn't give him a chance to sink into loss or grief. Maybe he doesn't even know. He's pulling up sheet after sheet to gleam between them, names and stats in a hundred translucent lines of information, and his fingers linger greedily on them. "Okay, Starvector's favored this round, but there was a paparazzi ambush last night, and I've got a picture right here," he pushes it at Blurr in almost aggressive eagerness, "that looks like he's got a dent in his ankle. What do you think? Will he favor it? And I've got an inside source who told me just this morning that Rimrunner was down to half a tank after a regular run."
Offended sensibilities jerk Blurr's head back. "Who's selling you information on the racers? That's against the rules!"
"My secret." One finger taps the side of a nonexistent nose, an absurd gesture that surprises a laugh from Blurr. Swindle winks, and suddenly it's like something just between the two of them. Blurr knows better, but he relaxes a bit, and Swindle never lets up. He's throwing numbers at Blurr, interrogating him for expert opinion one minute and playing Unmaker's Advocate the next. They barely stop arguing once Swindle's placed his bets. Blurr bats at his hands, trying to change who the money's on, but they're laughing as the racers line up.
Then it hits Blurr all over again what he's looking at. Waiting on the starting line will always wake a tension in his knees and wrists, a leashed tension that will spring free the moment the gun goes off, and he's waiting, waiting, waiting –
"And they're off!" Swindle whoops, and Blurr nearly falls out of the chair.
Part of it is starting with the gun, but some of it is just plain shock. He tears his optics off the track with physical effort to scowl at the Combaticon, but Swindle is cheering in that louder-than-life way that makes his presence fill a room, reaching out to slap Blurr on the shoulder as he points excitedly at the leader of the pack.
"I told you he'd break first!"
That can't stand, and Blurr's smacking his hand away, mouth running on automatic. "He doesn't have the endurance."
"Ha! Says you!"
Swindle's shoving a bowl of something into his tensed hands, insistently pushing until he takes it, and Blurr discovers it eases some of the jitters to cram handfuls of the little crunchy goodies into his mouth as he watches. Swindle doesn't seem to think there's anything wrong with that. Half the Combaticon's bowl scatters to the floor as he jumps up, cheering again, and Blurr yanks him down in the seat as he really starts to get into it. Watching races has never been his thing, but he's never had someone jeering at his pick for winner or updating him on the odds between the starting sets. The enthusiasm feeds his own.
He wants to be on the track. He wants to run, he wants to win, but Swindle is talking in the staccato rhythm of a sprint, and Blurr can barely keep up. It hurts, Primus alive but it hurts, and he wants to rage against the slow, dragging, aged relic he's become, but Swindle won't stopping coming at him sidelong with things he didn't realize could be interesting, things that can grab his racing thoughts and redirect them, and Blurr is screaming triumph before he knows it, standing on top of his chair with his arms in the air as his predicted winner crosses the finish line.
"Pay up!" he orders Swindle, gloating, and the faded purple optics turn sly.
"Double or nothing?" the Combaticon offers. "There's an amateur race tomorrow."
He shouldn't. He knows he shouldn't. He really, really shouldn't, and yeah, he hesitates for a moment thinking about it.
Swindle puts out his hand, that smile beaming over the open offer. "We can drive out together."
And he's shaking the fragger's hand, knowing he's lost no matter how the bet turns out.
Both of them lose the next day, as it turns out, but Swindle somehow talks himself into joining the Old Oil House outing later in the week. Blurr's friends look at him, shrug, and that's the extent of it. But Swindle joining the group means his own friends are invited, another whole assisted living home descending on the bar, and Blurr ends up setting up a Nostalgia Night. Blaster takes on Soundwave in a spirited competition over who gets to DJ, Jazz plays the electrobass, and Blurr doesn't remember inviting half these people but the party's a hit. Swindle toasts Blurr at the bar for hosting as everyone cheers.
The day after, Blurr looks up the track schedule and goes to knock on Swindle's door the next time there's a race. Somehow it actually turns into them talking in Swindle's apartment for two hours, almost missing the race, but they breathlessly tumble into the box in time to place their bets.
Watching the races keeps hurting, pain that never stops, but Swindle keeps smiling, looking his way through lavender-hued optics frosting on the inside as time gracefully wears away at him. Blurr smirks back at him, already knowing they'll be talking late into the night after the races end. It doesn't matter how many races they go see, or how wildly off their bets are. They talk, and they drive.
When a rumor goes through the assisted care home that Swindle failed his last test and isn't allowed to drive anymore, Blurr doesn't even ask. He just walks beside the Combaticon, the two of them making their slow and careful way to the distant track one step at a time, always in motion and still moving.
Sometimes on the way back, Swindle's smile falters. Blurr pretends not to see him limp. The obvious signs of age makes him uncomfortable. This particular infirmity makes him want to run away.
Swindle gets a cane. It's a dapper thing. He uses it to trip Vortex, grinning at the mech's indignant swearing, but at least Blurr can look at him again. Guilt dogs him for looking away in the first place, but he just – can't. They're half-jokingly making plans to move to the same elder care home when time comes, because time doesn't stop, but Blurr can't get past the revulsion sitting like a lump in his throat. The topic he really wants to bring up is also the one he doesn't dare mention: they could share a room, when they move. They get along well enough, and they already spend most of their time with each other these days.
He's just not sure he could stand looking at Swindle all the time.
The Combaticon's not doing great. His mind's as sharp as ever, his smile bright and voice animated, but his optics are dim. His body was made on Earth out of domestic materials, not even the military industrial-grade materials the rest of his teammates were made from, and it's breaking down around him. He seems so weirdly okay with it. Blurr doesn't know how he can stand it, but he does, and he keeps going out with Blurr to the track even though he hobbles more than he walks.
One day, as if by accident, he leans against Blurr for support.
Blurr almost doesn't let him.
[* * * * *]
Sixshot
[* * * * *]
The good thing about being a cyberninja is that his skills improve as he ages.
He slows down, of course, and his joints creak alarmingly as he sweeps the floor with uppity students, but losing his strength hasn't made him weak. The focus of his training simply moves to perfecting the details, now. Brute force is an option of the young. A precise strike at the right moment is the lever that can move a world, and he's old enough to know exactly when to strike.
He misses being young, but on the heels of nostalgia treads merciless self-reflection. Sixshot's trips down memory lane usually end in cringing remembrance of what he was like when he was young and infinitely confident. His students are a constant reminder to him that with age comes wisdom, with wisdom comes fewer instances of cutting off his nose to spite his face.
Sure, he has a dojo of his own. He's a lauded master of Circuit-Su. Shows across the galaxy beg him to judge their competitions. Students from other dojos respectfully submit their applications just to be considered to join his dojo. He's had a long, successful life, and there are many important people in his life. He doesn't regret much about how he's lived.
He can name five regrets off-hand. Six, if he counts their combined form.
Seven, if he acknowledges his cowardice in spurning them all. It's one of the cringier moments of his life, and one he actively avoids thinking about. He hasn't seen the Terrorcons in years, so that helps. Sometimes he stalks them on social media, checking out their exploits secondhand, but that never leads anywhere productive. Those aren't good nights. Sixshot isn't known for his depressive tendencies, but he does get quiet and introspective after looking at the lives he could have been part of.
The Terrorcons haven't held the spotlight anywhere, haven't been famous or changed Cybertron in any way, but they seem to have led normal lives full of their usual weird bits of laughter, joy, and all-you-can-eat buffets. It's nothing special, but that's to be expected of regular people in a post-war world.
It's funny, but all the doubts he'd had about holding their attention - much less affection - don't seem concrete in retrospect. Their lives are full. They weren't looking to fill a void that couldn't be filled. They were trying to add him to the group. Sixshot's the one who feels like he lost something, and the emptiness aches when he thinks about what might have been there.
He has a life. He has a legacy. As he ages, however, he wonders if that's enough.
[* * * * *]
Soundwave
[* * * * *]
Age makes him reckless.
"Soundwave: foolish," he hums, vocalizer barely online enough to buzz in his throat. He's going above his age bracket, against their profile incompatibility, and in defiance of a plethora of personal history. He should be staying half a planet away, not stiffening his back struts in preparation for a date.
He shouldn't even be dating. He should be self-sufficient. Content with what he has.
But he can't be. Soundwave has always been one to quietly hunger for more. More information, more resources, more power, more more more. He's pieced together go-arounds for many of his software deficiencies, even if he knows they won't last, just to keep the infonet streaming through his CPU. He's fairly sure most of the government databases he's tapped into are aware he's hacked them, but if they won't prosecute, then he'll take advantage of their soft spot for the elderly. He's old, not damaged. He'll seize whatever opportunities he can make.
This is an opportunity unlike any other. It's not safe to expose himself this way chasing something dangerous, but he saw him at a party playing a stage like age didn't matter, and he wants more. It's foolish, but he's still walking through the door like a starving mech searching for fuel.
Someone sees him looking around, peering into corners, and they connect the dots. If one old mech comes in, he's probably looking for the other old mech. "He's up on the roof," the kindly employee informs him. "Do you need help getting up the stairs?"
Soundwave summons his coldest glare. "No." If someone quite a bit older than him can manage the stairs up to the roof, then he'll be fine.
His pride will kill him yet. "Soundwave: foolish," he repeats at the top of the stairs, panting hard. One flight of steep steps was tiring. Two, exhausting. Three leaves him leaning dizzily against the railing at the top, cycling his ventilation system quickly to cool his overheated body.
He waits until he doesn't sound like an window air conditioning unit before opening the door to the roof.
Washed out into the palest of grays, age-dulled armor reflects faint moonlight as if glowing from within. Jazz sprawls flat on the roof, and his visor reflects an entire night sky of stars. Soundwave stops in the doorway, struck breathless again by the beauty of what he sees.
The hunger purrs, content.
[* * * * *]
Sunstreaker
[* * * * *]
Age comes in like a sparring partner: they get into the rink together, and although the blows are harsh, they're working together and having a good time.
People probably expected him to fight tire and bumper against the onslaught of old age, but it's not as though he hasn't had time to see it coming. The idea was hard to get used to, at first because of the stupid hardheaded invincibility of youth and then later because of sheer idiotic denial, but he's not a total fool. His body is his pride and joy. He knows the fine, sleek fit where the microplating is jointed together on his cheeks and around his mouth, under his optics and between his brows. He knows how every joint will stiffen a bit with age, disrupting the features of his face. Not a lot, but even a tiny flaw is horrendously obvious to someone as aware of his looks as he is.
He can't win. His choices are to die young and leave a pretty corpse, or go all out on his way out. Sunstreaker decides to age with style.
There's a kind of grace to what he does. He and Tracks meet up most weeks, plotting their latest extravagance, and while it comes off as absurdly over-the-top, they're so comfortable with themselves that other people can't help but admire them. A long, long time ago, the two of them had seen elderly humans in New York reveling in old age, combining fashion with age until it was the cutting edge, and that's what they strive for now. The humans had gray hair to wash with rainbows of dye, clothing to strike a pose in, but Tracks and Sunstreaker find their own ways to mimic that kind of fashion.
Sunstreaker's plating is graying around the edges where his paint pigments are dying off; he paints them in temporary, lurid, garish colors, patterns that flash gaudy as a neon sign. He hangs things from his helm, swinging fringe or strands of light. He likes constructing footwear. It's usually just for decoration, hard to walk in, but his aching backstruts won't let him walk far to begin with. The novelty is worth it.
Tracks has lost more color than him, but he's taken to covering most of his dull plating in imported materials like organic fabrics and synthetic mesh, chainmail knitted from fiberoptic cables studded with active circuitboards for the projector turning the street around him into a skyscape. He may not be able to fly anymore, age and frail metal making his wings unable to hold him in the air, but he brings the air to the ground. The flyers passing by overhead sometimes loop around for a second look, hooting their approval. So do the pedestrians.
They're kind of a thing in their neighborhood. They craft bigger and better projects, debuting out onto the street to applause from downtown fashion snobs who've seen their pictures on the infonet, casual passersby, and their regular admirers. The hubcaps in ombre effect hypnotize mechs driving by. The facepaint imitating human-style makeup becomes a Cybertron-wide fad.
It's their beauty drawing the looks, undeniably, but also their gumption. It's their bold denials of social rules, a refusal to fade away. They're here, and they're fabulous.
Sunstreaker preens under the attention, and he doesn't feel old at all.
[* * * * *]
Starscream
[* * * * *]
Age? He doesn't.
It's a thing of pride, for a long while. His acquaintances slow. Their plating grays, their joints stiffen. They soften. As the world grows bigger, broader, and brighter, the horizon always expanding - they shrink, and he doesn't. Of course he's proud of that! There's a spring in his step while their feet drag. His wings sit high and sharp whereas theirs slowly sag down under the weight of years.
"What's your secret?" Skywarp demands, half-joking, but under the laughter is a hint of confusion.
"Good base metal," Starscream brags. "I wasn't built from factory reject slag like the rest of you."
Skywarp laughs and makes a smacking motion at his head they both know doesn't stand a chance at connecting. Even if he was in range, Skywarp's slowed down. Starscream's always been fast, but the half-sparked motion makes him really look at Skywarp, really look at him. He looks at the all the others of his generation, the frametype that saw Vos fall, and unease flickers. Starting from a good metal doesn't account for how hale and healthy he is compared to them, but maybe it's just his usual contrariness. Maybe it's nothing more.
"You must spend a fortune in paintjobs," Sunstreaker mutters, envious. He squints at Starscream as if he can see the trick if he just looks close enough.
"All natural," Starscream says to make the faded gold mech glare, but he doesn't tease him how he used to. It comes off strange, like a younger model needling the old, and Starscream is actually older than him. Sunstreaker is still gold, still beautiful, but the gilded beauty that was famous during the war has faded to handsomeness. The gold doesn't shine no matter how lovingly it's buffed. The lines of his plating don't sit quite as perfect as they used to.
Starscream doesn't look a day over middle age, if that. The local chemical depot checks his purchasing license every time he goes to pick up something. The clerks apparently don't believe he graduated from the Science Academy, and definitely not the War Academy. They've tried peeling the ID picture off his license to see what retired old-timer scientist it really belongs to. They keep threatening to call the labs to report it stolen.
It's getting weird. It's starting to make him uncomfortable.
Most people don't notice, but most people don't stop to think about it. He lives the fast-paced lifestyle of a young, reckless mech, someone experienced enough to work politicians enough for grant funding but smart enough to stay the frag away from politics these days. He doesn't socialize much, sticking to the people he knows and the lab work he excels at. Slowing down to meet new people takes effort. It always has, but now it's becoming more and more noticeable that it's not just because he's high-strung or energetic.
The cutting edge of science keeps his name known, his face fresh in the right places, but there comes a time when he's accepting an award for a discovery in his latest field and the announcer praises him as, "A worthy successor to the name, Starscream!"
He doesn't have a predecessor. He is Starscream. But he realizes as he looks out over the crowd that no one believes that anymore. The truth doesn't even occur to them. They think he's one of them, but he – he's not. He's from a time before them, masquerading in a time he shouldn't belong to.
It's only when he visits people his own age that he feels right. This is where he should be. The conversation is inane, the movements are doddering, but they know him. Him, not who they think he is.
"How are you doing it?" Thundercracker asks in that deep, slow whisper that once boomed. Puzzled optics peer at him. "How long can you keep it up?" Why couldn't it be shared?
"I don't know," Starscream admits, and wonders if he can make it stop.
[* * * * *]
Brawl
[* * * * *]
Age turns his life upside-down.
He spends most of his life destroying things. Places, people, things, all of it. It's fun, it's good work, he knows what he's doing, and he keeps getting paid to do it.
Right up until the day the hints stop going over his head, mostly due to the fact his supervisor pulls him into the office to talk about retirement. He's apparently far, far overdue. The company insurance won't cover his health benefits anymore. The injuries mechs his age are prone to get aren't the kind that are easily treated in regular hospitals, and it's only aggravated by the fact that the injuries he's likely to get in this particular job are prone to killing anyone without the toughest armor available. His armor no longer passes the insurance standards for the job.
It's such a bewildering idea that Brawl's signed the dotted line and been shuffled out the door before he really has time to think about it. He knew his armor had thinned over the years, but failing a health test? That could happen? Bureaucrats couldn't be fought by fist or yelling, he knew that all too well, but…slag and scrap, did they have to fire him?
He spends one night stewing over it, and then he's right back in the office demanding, "What the frag am I gonna do as a retired guy, huh? I'm already bored!"
The company manager handles him. Brawl gets madder at all the soothing noises. He knows what soothing noises mean. They mean he's making no progress no matter how loud or obstinate he is. This loser's just waiting for him to get tired and meander off for a nap like an old mech.
The worst part is that he can feel it working. Look, he's mad. He's beyond pissed off. But he's not completely stupid, okay? He…well, the sudden retirement was kind of a wake-up call that this whole age thing isn't going away no matter how he ignores it. He's old. He's going to get older.
Brawl has to sit down in the waiting room after one long rant about he doesn't even remember what, and the manager murmurs, "Let the poor old thing rest for a while before ushering him out. Do you know what home he lives in?"
He wants to scream that he doesn't live in an assisted living home. He's not weak! He hates those places, with their creepy friction-plated floors and the smell of dust. Only old mechs live there! Like – like Swindle. And most of the people he used to fight beside, now that he thinks about it.
Brawl doesn't want to think about it. And he's definitely not going to move into an assisted living home, not even if he'll lose his place due to no longer drawing a regular salary. He never really thought about why that proviso was in the lease, but he understands, now. The apartment building kicks out anyone who isn't working in order to prevent mechs like him from settling down to die there. He can take care of himself, but society doesn't want him to.
The secretary takes pity on him when he mumbles something to that effect, sitting tired and worn in the waiting room staring at the floor between his feet. "Hey, I've got a friend who's looking for somebody to fix up a place so he can rent it out. You any good at handymech stuff?"
To be honest, Brawl's never tried fixing anything. That's not his job. But he's not about to subside peacefully into doing nothing, so he'll try his hand at anything. He nods. "Sure, I guess. Is the pay any good?"
The pay's scrap. The guy offers Brawl a cruddy apartment in the basement as his own, however, and that's not a bad deal for an old-timer about to lose his apartment. It's cheaper than a normal flat, more dignified than the assisted living homes, and he can still have a job.
Plus, it's worth it to see Swindle's optics go really huge. "You? A handymech?"
"Uh-huh."
"You."
"Yeah."
"Now I know my audios are malfunctioning."
"Hardy-har-har." Brawl swats the little mech. Swindle grunts uncomfortably. "You know anybody else our age who's still working, huh?"
Swindle has to think for a minute. "You mean besides Vortex?"
"Pssht, Vortex. Vortex don't count." Shockwave has the chopper's ball bearings in a vice or something. Vortex won't stop torturing himself managing that shop until he either owns it or dies from it. Even Onslaught's given up convincing him to quit if he hates it so much. Brawl kind of figures it's masochism.
Whatever trepidation Brawl has been feeling toward his job turns into anticipation the more he talks about it with people. Sure, he's never really fixed anything, but he can start small. His new boss lives way the frag downtown, and there's no time limit. He apparently just cares if there's progress. The building's been sitting vacant for so long the guy seems happy to have remembered it exists, much less that Brawl will be messing around with it.
Besides, the Constructicons can smell a project in the works. Brawl asks them one question about fixing a generator, and suddenly they're all over him. He has to start sneaking in and out of home Swindle lives in. The Constructicons are older than him, to the point where even he has to admit they need to take it easy, but he doesn't know how to stop them. They ambush him in the hall with questions, and he's a little afraid if he doesn't give them something to work on they're going to start following him home.
"How old's the building?"
"Is the wiring still intact?"
"Let me know if you need things hauled from the store."
Brawl twitches, giving Long Haul a look. "Mech, you can't drive anymore."
"Well…yeah…but I know a guy…" A guy being him, if the shifty look meant anything.
"No!"
So he's doing this mostly on his own, but he's got back-up on speed-dial if he gets stuck. Weirdly enough, he doesn't. He thought he wouldn't even know where to start, but the more he looks around, the more it looks like stuff he's destroyed in his time. Knowing how to take something apart is a strange, backward way to learn how to put it back together.
He starts on the front stoop, because steps are kind of important for going inside, and the steps lead to the front hall, where he has to tear up the sagging floor to puzzle out where to replace the old supports underneath, and messing with the supports brings him down to the basement, so he decides to work on the foundations next, and the tutorials on the infonet gradually lead him through redoing the floor down there, too, and he still has to repair the damn generator, so he's reading up on electrical stuff and realizing he'll have to bring the whole building up to code. Everything's about as old as he is.
"I'm not gonna throw out anything," he mutters, determined. Seems too much like symbolism, to him. Retro is in, right?
So now he's looking up how to restore antiques as much as he's researching how to fix and install new stuff, and this is the most reading Brawl's ever done in his life. "My processor hurts," he moans to Swindle, who has no sympathy but has gotten pretty interested in what he's doing anyway. "Can't you find me a download on how to do this scrap?"
Swindle doesn't look up from surfing the infonet for a fixture Brawl wants him to match. "They don't make downloads compatible for our OS anymore, dumbaft. Look at this one, what do you think? Close enough? I can get it on sale using Scrapper's discount."
It is close enough, and if Scrapper's ecstatic to be asked for his builder's discount, Scavenger is absolutely over the moon when Brawl starts sending him texts about looking through his collection for things to use here, or there, or he has this niche that needs to be filled, and the molding around the ceiling could use some accent pieces, can they whip up something?
The Constructicons take daytrips out to the nearest junkyard like pilgrims visiting a holy shrine, returning twice as excited and having a grand time. Swindle's hunting for things he might need online. Atomizer takes one look at what Swindle's doing, pitches a fit, and redoes the entire color scheme, practically cramming a new floorplan down Brawl's throat the next time he visits.
Brawl's just relieved he doesn't have to do it all himself. Sorting through piles of discarded old things is tiring. He usually comes back with more than he went out looking for. And what's a color scheme? Is that the Art vs. Artist thing? He'd thought that was a metaphor, but maybe the colors really were plotting against him.
His boss is pleased. Surprised, but pleased. "This place looks fantastic," he says, blinking at the antique lights and exposed pipes in the first-floor flat. Brawl finished the basement first, now this one, and he's already poking around in the second floor looking at what has to be done. "This is the height of fashion in the new places downtown, but – is this all original?"
Brawl nods proudly. It's hard work, frustrating amounts of research and screwing up, going back to do it again once he figures out what he did wrong, but he's doing something he's never done before. He's fixing things. Age has turned his life on his head, but it's given him the opportunity to change, to renew, and time is the best tool in his growing collection.
[* * * * *]
Whirl
[* * * * *]
Age is fragging boring.
He didn't expect to make it this far, and he's bored out of his helm that he did. Seriously, what's a mech got to do around here to find some action? He goes to the nearest market with his guns out, shaking his barrels at the young mechs doing their shopping, and market security gets a good laugh out of it before they send two of their wussy group to corral him.
"Sir, if you'll just step this way?" one of them says brightly without a trace of fear, and Whirl spins his rotors hard enough things fly off the shelves of the nearest market stall. The security mech continues to smile. "Sir?"
"What's the matter, afraid to arrest me? Too much for you?" Whirl dares him, skittering in a surprising turn of speed between the stalls. "Catch me if you can!"
"Sir? Sir! You can't go there!"
"Oh yeah? Who's gonna stop me, you? Quick – catch, fumblefingers!" he crows, knocking a stall awning loose. The security guards dive to catch it, less amused. He hates the expression of tolerance they wear, now. People laugh, cheering on the chase, but Whirl's good humor has soured.
He keeps knocking things over, running rampant, but the chase wears thin. He's not very fast anymore, and they're more concerned with cleaning up in his wake while he winds down. It's pretty insulting how blatant they are about letting him have his moment of attention.
By the time they corner him, the mischievous light in his optic has turned to a manic anger. The crowd ignores him being hauled away. He knows why, but he can't stop himself from screaming an incoherent rant about his rights as a free citizen, they'd never be able to take him in a fair fight, he could break them in half with one pincer. An old lunatic loosing it, he thinks distantly in the part of his processor not locked up in sheer, uncontrolled fury. He used to go to therapy for this, but he'd never found a therapist he trusted since Rung.
Optics slide away from him in discomfort. He kicks, screaming louder so at least some of them have to see him. He's spent so much of his life forcing people to actually see him, he can't stand it that he's still invisible.
The security guards set him down on his feet on the sidewalk on the other side of the street from the market entrance. They don't even toss him. They set him down carefully, holding his arms as though he's breakable. They're afraid he's as fragile physically as he is mentally.
He used to be a Wrecker. He used to be an Autobot. He used to be a Senate thug. He used to be a watchmaker. Whirl isn't sure what he is now besides old and angry about it.
Rattled by the sudden loss of his anger, he staggers, and the nice young security mech catches his shoulder to help him stay upright. "Are you alright, sir? Do you need us to call your residence?" There's an innate assumption there he doesn't like that someone his age obviously lives in a home with nursing staff who'd come fetch him, but he can't manage more than a tired huff of denial. "Are you sure?"
"'m fine. 'm the…toughest. Unvincible," Whirl mumbles, the memory of a tongue thick in his throat. It sits on his vox box. He doesn't know what to do with it.
The guards smile at him, their optics straying back to the market. They're ready to leave. "Sure you are, sir. You have a nice day, now."
"Yeah. Yeah." He stands there on the sidewalk after they leave him. The energy's drained out of him, and he's scooped out. Hollow. They won't let him back into the market today, he knows that. They probably won't let him back until next week, if that, but there's a place half a dozen blocks down the other way he can hit tomorrow.
For a little while, then, he'll feel something besides numb boredom again.
[* * * * *]
Silverbolt
[* * * * *]
With age comes wisdom.
Or rather, the older they get, the more his idiot team realizes he was right all along.
They laugh when he takes a room on the ground floor. "Still afraid of heights?" Slingshot needles, throwing an arm over him and poking him in the chest
.
He shakes his head at the laughter. "I was never afraid of heights. I'm afraid of falling," he corrects. The argument's old enough that it bores them quickly if he doesn't fight them over it. They don't care that much. None of them can fly unassisted anymore, so what does it matter that he never flew as high as them?
What matters is the first time one of them takes a tumble down the stairs. Fireflight's fine, but he's shaken. Silverbolt lets him stay the night with him on the ground floor.
Things are okay for a little while after that, all of them reminded to caution, but it's not the first fall. Worse, the claustrophobia from being indoors and grounded all the time does things to flightframes. The lift malfunctions, trapping Slingshot and Skydive inside for nearly two hours. Air Raid would have been fine if he was in their place, but those two can't handle close quarter fighting, much less being shut in a small box with no doors or windows.
Fireflight and Air Raid get fairly hysterical themselves, unable to help their gestaltmates, but Silverbolt's coherent enough to feed updates to his trapped team. The local Enforcer station ran into a snag. It seems the power for the whole block went down, but there's a hospital right down the street that needs their help a whole lot more than two old jets who are stuck in a tiny box but are otherwise perfectly fine.
Skywarp comes to the rescue, believe it or not. "I got this," he says, clapping a casual hand on Silverbolt's shoulder when the whimpering on the other end of the open commline reaches critical levels. "They're gonna purge their tanks, but I can get 'em out."
Thundercracker yanks the old Seeker aside immediately for an exceedingly unhappy rush of whispering, the bass rumble of his engine still deep enough to shiver the air. Skywarp hisses back at him, fists clenched and wings hiked high. He looks more offended the longer Thundercracker talks.
Silverbolt holds his breath. Skydive begins hyperventilating, his fans screeching against the too-quick push of air.
"I'm not on life support yet, fraggit – I'm doing it!" Skywarp finishes browbeating his wingmate, loud enough that it's hardly a whisper.
Thundercracker shuts his mouth into a scowl. It's obvious he disapproves. It's just as obvious that he disapproves because he's worried about Skywarp. The Seekers are far older than the Aerialbots. They both belong in an elder care home, both of them stubbornly refusing to make the move and depending on each other to keep themselves going. Thundercracker himself is horribly frail, wings a dusty blue far faded from his original dark navy, but Skywarp looks even more fragile, his armor limned in gray where his paint nanites have died off completely. The idea of him using his warp generator is scary, at his age.
The Seekers are worried for the much younger Aerialbots in the lift, however. Old and weak as Thundercracker is, Silverbolt still leans into the supportive hand he put on his shoulder. The Aerialbots never did get over their belief that the Seekers knew everything, could do anything. If Skywarp can get Slingshot and Skydive out, then it'll be confirmation of a truth long believed, and Silverbolt doesn't give one bit of scrap if it's a naïve hold-over from their youth.
Skywarp gulps down energon, wincing – "Frag, that burns. Anybody got a bucket? I'm gonna be purging, too, if my tanks can't take anything but diluted fuel anymore." – smirks at the anxious crowd with that old spark of mischief bright in his optics, and vops away.
He warps back a moment later, and he and Slingshot cover the floor in pink as they vomit everywhere.
Silverbolt doesn't care. He rushes forward, and the team envelops Slingshot in a group hug. "Oh Primus," he whispers hoarsely against Slingshot's helm. "Now you know why I stay on the ground."
Slingshot wobbles a laugh.
[* * * * *]
Smokescreen
[* * * * *]
Time doesn't change him. Once a meddler, always a meddler.
He doesn't have anyone to report to anymore, but he still has connections and networks like a dedicated hub. Up until he sold his casino, those connections always came back to business somehow, no matter how personal the information he pulled in. Everything could be used.
Heh. Once he retired, all bets were off. He became the meddling old matchmaker other mechs rightly feared. Asked for advice, sure, but lowered their voices to a whisper around just in case the yenta turns his attention toward them next.
An unadvertised part of old age is that the elderly don't die off quickly. They're themselves up until things go critical, and that means with good health care and reasonably prudent behavior, the mechs filling the assisted living and elder care homes are just like everyone else. Just, well, older. More experienced. Less likely to do stupid things, although that's debatable and depends on how many of them get involved.
The point being that old folks are just as eager to hook up as the younger generations. Dates are a hot commodity, as something to do as much as they're an opportunity to meet someone special. The elderly don't just move into homes to die. They go there for the community that comes of a contained system all about them. Sure, many of them already have partners. Just as many of them have lost one or more, or they're open to making it a party before they hit the end.
Smokescreen's casino gives him a tidy fortune to play with, and he's not reckless with it. He invests quite a bit into the network between the homes, nothing on the level of a dating site but definitely a resource for people interested in finding someone in their waning years. It doesn't return much in money, but in entertainment? It can't be beat. He gets a rush much like a winner's high whenever someone he sets up on a date comes back beaming happily, their hands entwined or plating showing a little more wear-and-tear than when they left.
Part of what he does is patch together information gleaned from gossip and observation, which is why he's been trying to nudge Blurr and Swindle together for years. Another part of what he does is match people on a hunch, just winging it, like he does with Jazz and Soundwave. He has just enough tact left in his old struts to wait until he's behind closed doors before crowing in triumph the morning Jazz does the Walk of Shame back home.
However, the biggest part of what he does is just plain spot the opportunity when it happens. He has to act fast and get the timing just right, but when he does...
"You're not going back!" Thundercracker growls, trying to hold onto his wingmate. Skywarp's warp generator is howling, loud and uneven, but the prankster keeps grinning as he pours energon down his throat to replace the spent and purged fuel. "Skywarp!"
"One more," Skywarp promises, and he looks every bit his age, but he also looks determined.
The Aerialbots flock to the exhausted Seeker, worried and needing, and Smokescreen feels dread build in him as their borderline panic puts pressure on someone so much vastly older than them. But they can't leave Skydive alone in there, they just can't, and the Enforcers are still on the commline saying it'll be another hour more while Skydive pants huge juddering breaths of claustrophobic terror inside the malfunctioning lift. Skywarp belongs in an elder care home, he has trouble walking much less anything else, and Thundercracker's no better. Smokescreen knows through judicious snooping that it's likely only Starscream's daily visits that keep the decrepit Seekers out of full care. Neither of them should be under this kind of stress, and Skywarp needs more than luck to pull this off twice.
Skydive mewls tiny cries from inside the lift, panicking the Aerialbots further. Dark paint-powder poofs off of Skywarp as he draws himself up, meeting Thundercracker's optics with the most stubborn look Smokescreen's seen in his life. He prays the clunking warp generator in Skywarp's chassis can manage just one more miracle, because the Seeker's going whether or not Thundercracker likes it.
"Just one more time," Skywarp says to his wingmate, and Thundercracker's reaching for him right as he teleports. Vop!
A split second later another vop comes through loud and clear from inside the lift, transmitted through the open commline. The Aerialbots exhale as one. Smokescreen looks to Thundercracker, hating the impending doom pressing down between his doors, but Skywarp's coughing his intakes clear between rough reassurances to Skydive. It's okay. They're both okay. Just the return trip and they'll both be safe. Come here, hold tight, and here they go. Vop and –
Oh, Primus.
There's a second of shock. It's the moment of expectation as the distinctive sound of a warp generator engaging comes through the line, and then it stalls. A moment becomes a few seconds becomes something drawn out and awful as the crowd in the hall realizes the warp should have been instantaneous. Waiting longer won't make them appear.
Sick, Smokescreen seizes the moment. This is the most important relationship he's ever seen put on the table, an off-chance that will either implode or save everything. It's either make a grab or lose it all.
He hauls Thundercracker into the center of the four remaining Aerialbots right as they crumple. Shock too deep to react to resonates through them from the gestalt links outward, bond backlash, and it's all the proof no one wants to accept as they collapse inward. Thundercracker collapses to the floor under their weight.
The Aerialbots are too stunned to make a sound. Thundercracker screams for them.
[* * * * *]
Metroplex
[* * * * *]
Age is a documented process, for cityformers. Metrotitans live, they settle, and eventually they die.
It's not a terrible way to go. The rare cityformers interviewed before they die seemed distracted more than anything, unable to concentrate on too many things happening at once around the peripheries of their bodies. When asked, they likened it to pulling apart. A cityformer that does not move becomes a city, and cities grow. A spark meant to support a body of a certain size can't support something the size metrotitans gradually become once they settle permanently.
Every major city on Cybertron was once a cityformer. It's how the cities were established. It's not a bad thing, or a frightening thing for the surviving cityformers returning to Cybertron to choose where they want to set down. It's the natural life cycle of their kind. They come online, they travel, and sooner or later they tire of wandering. Once they stop, they inevitably grow. After that, they either pull up their pylons and go elsewhere to start again, or they stay and die.
No one's ever been present when death actually happens, but Metroplex thinks he knows why. It's a private thing, this decision to let go of being a person in order to become a city. His friends asked to be here, but in the end he doesn't call for them. This should be done alone. He's not going away. He's simply soaking into the ground. He's dispersing. Instead of being, he's becoming.
The cityformer Metroplex will be the entirety of a city soon. He's eager to join it.
[* * * * *]
Krok
[* * * * *]
How's his life gone? Well, they named a stadium after him, so he can't say he did too badly.
Wasn't an easy life, but getting a mechasoccer league started from scratch took dedication. Committing every day of his life to cold-calling politicians and businesses for funding didn't leave much time for his old unit or actual friends. Pulling a network of coaches together to do neighborhood start-ups getting the game going at the local level substituted for a social life, most of the time. Shmoozing with sponsors sometimes felt like having multiple open relationships. They just gave him money instead of affection.
He was okay with that, back at the beginning. A little less okay as things started to snowball, the games garnering more attention and his name getting out there. Then it seemed like everyone wanted something from him. They wanted their logos on the teams, and the teams to win more. Cities wanted to write their own rules, and Krok had to fight hard to make it a planet-wide game. Street games were all well and good, but a league had to abide by league rules.
He won that fight in the end. He established the planet-wide tournaments, and for a while, Krok had ridden high on a wave of popularity. Money, fame, acknowledgement, his name on the first major stadium built for the sole purpose of hosting mechasoccer games! Ah, yeah. Those were the days.
But Cybertron moved on, and his days faded into history. That's the problem with being a long-lived race. Newer, brighter stars come along, and the old stars dim to mere light pollution. Background noise. Forgotten heroes and faded glory, that's all he has left. History is interesting to those who bother to do their research. Most people don't.
Krok looks up at the dazzling lights encircling the old stadium, and his spark breaks. One last look, he tells himself, and he pretends the shakiness deep in his struts comes from old age instead of emotion. It's mostly true, anyway. He's old enough that his joints wobble. His hands have a permanent shake to them, now. It's one of the bad aftereffects of the early days of the game, back when it was legal to headbutt the ball without safety gear reinforcing a mech's helm. He doesn't regret playing hard, way back when. He thinks all the safety regulations and new rules are mollycoddling the players nowadays, but it's not his place to object.
He's a relic of history, not someone relevant anymore. His voice won't be heard.
"Hey! What're you doing here?!" someone yells from up in the stands, and Krok startles. When he turns, a scruffy stadium janitor on a last sweep through the place for useable items is scowling his way. "Get on outta here, old timer. This place is scheduled for demolition in an hour, don't ya know? You don't wanna be here when the walls come down."
Doesn't he?
[* * * * *]
Knock Out
[* * * * *]
Knock Out ages gracefully, but he doesn't care. He stopped caring a while back and never bothered starting again.
It surprises those that knew him how little it matters to him as his finish dulls and his armor thins. His vanity was practically legendary, after all. The cherry red finish had to be polished, the chrome shining. And he does keep clean, no doubt, but he doesn't buff obsessively. A dull glow is the best his efforts can bring to his plating nowadays, and he doesn't mind.
"Why should I?" he scoffs, tossing his head and flashing a smirk that hasn't changed a bit. "I'm not out to impress any of you."
Most people who know him now don't understand, but there are those who remember. Their initial surprise eases into something more uneasy than compassion, and he's too prickly to invite their sympathy, so they settle for nodding agreement.
It's strange how his refusal to give a frag about anyone's opinion translates into something else. He doesn't so much age as he transcends time. He takes good care of himself, wiping away the dust mechs his age continuously shed, and instead of appearing dusty he merely softens. Once he outlasts the expensive waxes and tires of applying new paint, absolutely striking strutwork shines through. He is all powder-fine curves and straight-edged struts, and the more his armor thins, the more impossibly slender he becomes. He's a collection of elegantly strong lines joined by achingly perfect curves like a minimalist sketch, a few bare strokes drawing a complete mech more beautiful for what isn't detailed than by what's filled in.
He's always turned heads, but he begins to stand out in haunting, haughty way like a building abandoned, everything still in its place but the life missing. It's the kind of beauty that artists capture in photographs, a delicate mystery of what isn't there and what's left behind. It's enough to stop people dead in the street, their optics locked on him as he sashays past. Knock Out was vain and pretty in his youth, but now he wields the uncaring power of truly exquisite grace.
Strangers feel a pang of hollow yearning in their sparks when they see him. It hurts in a wonderful way as he stares through them. Traffic slows, people pulling off to the side of the road to take a second look. They strain to keep him in sight for as long as possible. There's a story inherent in how he became this, a silent history behind the half-smile he wears. It's some tale of unknown sorrow that seduces passersby in secret whispers about how he stands, how he moves, the way he turns sharply, optics seeking someone who isn't there, who hasn't been there, and who will never be there again.
Old, sad disappointment moves across his face like sunlight through a clouded window, and his optics pass over the crowd that parts respectfully before him. He doesn't see them, nor will he care if he does. All of his attention has turned inward.
Behind him stretches a ghost's shadow, dark and blue, and it ever follows him home.
[* * * * *]
Megatron
[* * * * *]
He never imagined himself as an old mech. Miners didn't live to old age often, and gladiators got out of the business or it killed them. War had taken the concept of the distant future, shaken it, and smoothed it over with visions of glory that never came to pass. The winners - even the losers - didn't visualize anything but middle age in imagining how the war would end.
Visions aside, this is the future now, and Megatron is old.
He's lonely. He's always been alone in a sense of not trusting the people around himself, but war filled the gap where a social life would have been. When the war ended, Megatron found there wasn't anything left behind to fill the emptiness. As the years passed, fewer mechs stepped in to ease the ache. Once Optimus disappeared, there didn't seem much point in seeking an end to loneliness.
So he's lonely, and that's fine. He's used to it. Optimus isn't coming back. Soundwave is still here, although the old Cassette carrier is busier than ever and proud of that fact. Starscream stops by weekly to pick a fight, and Megatron accuses him of looking younger every time just to get on his nerves. He's more than halfway convinced the old Seeker primps most of the week to make himself look that good. The former Emirate of Vos is older than him. He knows that, yet Starscream's colors are brighter than ever, and he flies with the speed and confidence of the latest generation to step off the assembly line. It's absurd the lengths that stupid jet goes to one-up him, even now.
Grumble grumble mumble.
Megatron's aged well, believe it or not. The power of his youth settles, armor thinning as his struts grow more feeble, but the lumbering gait of many heavier mechs has become a slow, deliberate elegance in him. Put him and Knock Out together on a busy street, and they cause accidents. There's something spellbinding in the contrast between them, both of them walking like an ongoing dance, Megatron with studied dignity and Knock Out all but floating. Every footstep is lifted and placed with enough care that it looks stunningly careless.
But if Knock Out carries the haunting mystery of an abandoned place, Megatron is the bare structure of an industrial zone: stripped of the clutter, stark, and waiting empty. Knock Out's history fills his optics in beautiful, half-seen memory. Megatron's has been swept out of sight. Knock Out is what's left behind after a life. Megatron is the stage set for the next act.
There is something in him waiting. More is coming. Nothing is finished. He is not abandoned. A sense of action about to happen creates tension around him. He's constantly poised for what's around the corner. He's slower now, an old warlord ponderously graceful in retirement, but contained violence is in the instinctive curl of his fists, in the restrained way he uses his cannon arm to this day. The threat is muted now, far less likely to become war again, but the potential is still there. He bleeds charisma, history, and something of the future.
There's good reason Starscream still visits him.
Also good reason Jazz's dim visor lights a tiny bit bluer when Megatron sits down beside him. They are both watching Soundwave make the rounds of the tired affair people their age call a decent party, and they both blatantly approve of how fulfilled the influx of information makes their friend. They can bond over Soundwave. Soundwave would grow brittle and break if he didn't have a social life, have something new to do, have new people to investigate, and this party is his gateway into Jazz's entire network of buddies. Despite the years and years between today and the end of the war, the divide between Autobot and Decepticon lingers. Soundwave has never been welcome to step over that line. Jazz has given him a door he's rushing through, and Megatron smiles indulgently at the nigh-giddy carrier listening to Bluestreak.
Nobody else could probably tell how giddy Soundwave is right now, but Megatron can tell. So can Jazz, he thinks. And that's why Megatron has sat his creaky body beside the little ancient glitch that used to be such a pain in the collective Decepticon aft. This relationship will be good for Soundwave, even if Megatron finds it somewhat distasteful. Still, to each their own. If it makes Soundwave happy to date an elderly ex-enemy, Megatron certainly won't interfere.
Powdery gray plating whispers the sound of dust falling as Jazz shifts to look at him. Megatron's armor is nearly the same color, but he started out as silver. It's a testament to how much older Jazz is that black and white has blurred that far.
"Good party," Jazz says, neutral.
"Indeed." Megatron nods without taking his optics off Soundwave. He hasn't seen his old friend so animated in years.
The two of them nod and greet their own acquaintances as the room moves around them, people shuffling about how parties always do. High-ranking former enemies throwing a party with all their former allies invited has broken down whatever social stigma remained. It is profoundly weird seeing Vortex mingling with the Aerialbots. He appears to be trying to hire them.
It's less weird seeing Thundercracker swoop in to hover protectively over the four remaining jets. Megatron heard about what happened there. He doesn't find it surprising at all that the dusty blue Seeker has latched onto the younger set. It's a little strange that they seem to cling just as much in return, but trauma smoothes out even war's animosity.
Hence why Jazz and Megatron can sit at a table engaging in light conversation for most of the night.
The old warlord groans back to his feet sometime before the elder care home closes to visitors, and Jazz smiles up at him. "Thanks for comin'."
"If you die before he does," Megatron says, looming over him like the whole history of a war that nearly destroyed them all, "I will make you regret it."
Jazz froze. "How - that don't even - "
It didn't make sense, but this is Megatron. He will make it happen. Do not doubt him.
"Have a good night."
Jazz warbles a weak acknowledgment at his back as he leaves.
[* * * * *]
Streetwise
[* * * * *]
Prowl's body fades away, but his mind stays sharp for much longer. He was once a detective. He can be a detective again. Old, retired, and dismissed as irrelevant by the current law enforcement, but that doesn't mean he can't act as a private investigator. For special cases, he will. For this case, he does, and he sends Streetwise out where he can no longer go, achy wheels and weak axles keeping him in assisted care while the Protectobot follows clues for him. They're not clues most people think to look for.
It takes a device from Wheeljack's bunker, a theory from Perceptor, and measurements from the scene of the disappearance, but Prowl eventually sends Streetwise to the right coordinates. Months after the disappearance, they find the bodies.
"Are they there?" Prowl asks through the commline. "Streetwise, answer."
Streetwise, for once, doesn't immediately respond. Prowl was his superior officer for half of forever, but however strong habit is, sadness temporarily wins.
He transforms slowly, aging joints clicking as the pieces fall into place one by one, and stands over the greyed-out corpses. It's about what he and Prowl expected to find. The details are somewhat surprising, but dead is dead. Actually seeing the bodies kills whatever lingering sense of hope he might have held onto. Doors lowering in respect for the dead and his own personal sorrow, the Protectobot kneels beside them, one hand hovering over them without quite touching. It wouldn't be right to disturb them, not even now. Especially not now.
Skywarp's arms are still locked around Skydive, the Aerialbot huddled against his chest, face barely visible above the ground they were fused into. Most of Skywarp isn't visible, just his arms, shoulder vents, wingtips, and helm above ground. His head has fallen back to an awkward angle, but Streetwise can reconstruct how they teleported from the angle of his neck. He must have been holding Skydive tucked close, helm held beneath his chin in reassurance, or perhaps in last-second panic as his teleport generator malfunctioned. Skydive's body isn't visible but for part of his back, and who knows what relaxing in death had done to their pose, but Streetwise hopes death was as sudden as his peaceful expression hints at. He wants to believe that Skydive died believing he was seconds from freedom, that Skywarp died trying to help.
Streetwise wants to believe their end didn't come in pain and helpless terror. He wants to believe there was no time to realize what had happened. More than that, he wants Thundercracker and the hysterical remnants of the Aerialbot gestalt to believe death was instantaneous. There's enough guilt on the grieving right now.
"Streetwise, report!" Prowl barks. He's old but hasn't lost any authority over the years.
"They're here," Streetwise says after swallowing to loosen his throat. Grief is tight around his vocalizer. "Dead." He doesn't say that they'll have to call someone to cut the bodies out of the ground. He doesn't say it's an ugly scene, because the scene of death usually is.
There's silence on the other side of the connection for a long moment. Then Prowl sighs, weary but unsurprised. "Was it quick?" The words sound as though they hurt to say out loud, but it's a question they both know will be asked. Dead is dead, but the grieving mechs want it to have been at least as fast and painless as possible.
Spark hurting, Streetwise examines the ground around the two bodies. There's little evidence, but it's enough. "There's no sign of a struggle around them," he concludes.
And if he changes anything at the scene, he's the only one who will ever know.
[* * * * *]
Overlord
[* * * * *]
Ununtrium doesn't decay. The rest of him does.
Age steals his energy. His endoskeleton is as sturdy as ever, but it's heavy. His power generator winds down the older he grows, producing less and less output to support the sheer weight of the body around it. Overlord spends more time resting than moving.
He hates it. He hates not having the energy to get up. He hates trudging, unable to square his shoulders or straighten his back for more than a minute before the confident poses sap away his energy. He hates having to sit on the curb, breathing hard as he gathers the slow trickles of power into his reserve batteries just to walk. It doesn't matter how much fuel he gulps down. His internal systems aren't reinforced the way his plating and struts are. They can only process low grades of energon these days, giving him a steady but low output of energy to face the world with. It's enough for a mech easing into old age in a gradual decrease of activity, system strain reduced by help offered by caretakers in assisted living, but Overlord can't contemplate surrendering to age like that.
He won't. He refuses.
The frustration and rage take too much energy to maintain. Sometimes he sits on the side of the street for most of a day, dull optics staring at nothing as he tries to muster enough energy to care about anything. All the things that used to amuse him when he was young can't hold his attention now. He doesn't have the energy to care about anything happening around him now, either. Overlord just doesn't care.
He doesn't care when he doesn't return home. He's refused to leave it, refused to seek help, but now everything he stubbornly held onto have no meaning for him. His home's full of things he doesn't give a scrap about. It makes no difference to him if slouches into a couch there or just sinks to the ground in a dark alley, muttering to himself about events he half-remembers. It takes less effort not bothering to go home, after a while. Chasing down memories doesn't require him to move. It means more to him, too.
Shutting off his optics, he tucks himself behind a dumpster and dedicates all of his energy to piecing together error-laced memory files. The faces are washed out, but he has the feeling that if he just thinks about them long enough, hard enough, maybe he'll recall something new.
Eventually, someone will empty the trash. They'll kick him awake, and he'll slowly shuffle to a different alley, a fixture of back alleys that will never rot away.
[* * * * *]
Rewind
[* * * * *]
Time makes him relevant.
Everyone thought he was full of useless trivia, before. They ignored all the information he knows down to the tiniest details. They didn't want to listen to him tell them about trivial bits of the past.
Eidetic decay wears their memories away, however. Rewind realizes one day that his own mind suffers from memory fatigue, but not his protected archives. They aren't connected to his regular directory. The hardware still grows out of date, the software updates no longer download, but archive-level files have a much longer life expectancy that normal memory files. He can't remember if he refueled yesterday, but he can pull up the footage of a battle fought so long ago the place it happened is now a thriving mega-mall.
Many of his recorded files are narrated by his voice, filmed from his perspective. Rewind can't remember events firsthand anymore, but he doesn't mind. He truly enjoys pulling up the files to watch, relishing what he'd done in the past even if he was seeing it for what felt like the first time. It's exciting.
Plus, his archives have become others' memories as well. People used to push aside his little asides, but not anymore. They don't remember any better than he does, and movie night out of his archives is one of the most popular weekly Events in all the assisted living homes.
And there's the little details, too. The day-to-day facts used to annoy everyone, but now…
"What did this used to be?" Bumblebee asks, pointing across the street, and everyone looks to Rewind to bring the past once more to life.
Proud, he opens the files.
[* * * * *]
Sideswipe
[* * * * *]
Time is kind to Sideswipe.
It takes his sight. His medic installs new optic lenses, but they click useless images to old parts. The software's no longer able to support high resolution images, and his processor just isn't compatible with the new hardware. Sometimes, if he stares for a long time, his processor can piece together a blurry, warped picture of what he sees as information trickles through slow, old programs and even older equipment, but it takes a long time. He doesn't often have the patience to wait to see. Even when he does, what he wants to look at has up and left by the time his sight catches up.
He talks to his medic about solutions, but elder care physicians are limited by what parts their supplier can scrounge up. The lenses his optic systems require aren't produced anymore. It's a trick of his processor that the software can't be bypassed or linked to a jury-rigged replacement, however, a trick unique to him. Other old mechs manage okay with their old optical systems by getting a visor or getting rid of the visor they had, but Sideswipe is pretty much blind.
It doesn't affect his life much, to be honest. He's too old to get out and see new things anymore. Most days, he sits out on the front patio of the elder care home soaking his aged plating in warm sunlight. He's cold a lot. That's a complaint his medic can't do anything about, either, but it's a complaint he's had a long, long time. The only thing he can do about it is sit by a busy road in the sunlight, waiting for the rays to hit him just right.
He stares up at the sun, lenses flicking clear but unseeing straight up into the sky. Why not? It can't blind him any more than he already is, and sometimes his degrading processors give him a glimpse of bright golden light.
His chest hurts for those bright moments. He feels like he's been following streaks of light half his life, searching for something missing in the darkness. He sits, and stares, and waits by the side of the road, cold in the sunlight as he strains his hearing for an engine that isn't there, a warmth he's lost, a memory out of reach. He stares because there's something beautiful he can no longer see. He knows it's gone, although he doesn't remember it leaving. He doesn't remember what he lost. All he knows is that it's gone, like his sight. It's not such a bad thing being blind, if he can't see what he's looking for.
So Sideswipe is content to sit here in the sun waiting for a flash of gold like an elusive memory, and if he doesn't remember why, it's the kindest thing time has done for him.
[* * * * *]
Onslaught
[* * * * *]
Time changes a lot of things about Cybertron. Onslaught didn't expect it to change him as well.
The Detention Centre and the Box were horrifying, no denying that, but they gave him and his team a second chance at life. They were middle-aged when they were sentenced. Their sparks were suspended in stasis, and being rebuilt granted them a new lease on life. Everyone they know from the war has an old spark in an old body. Only the Combaticons have young sparks in new frames. New frames made of Earth materials, so they've actually aged at a far greater rate, but the inferior materials serve to their advantage. Like the Dinobots, Aerialbots, and Stunticons, the Combaticons are able to swap out far more of their old parts, install better materials that continue to be compatible with future upgrades. Sure, that doesn't do anything for the age of their processors or sparks, but a slow, tired body is completely functional when housing a sparks aware of their true age.
It's turns out to be a fair trade. The Combaticons missed out on more than four million years of war; in return, they're going to outlive almost everyone they knew during it.
The odd part is that none of them are gloating about it. Although Onslaught's not entirely certain the others have really thought about it in terms of length of life, as they all act their actual age. It's as though they hit an extended middle age. Their bodies feel as though they're waiting for their sparks to catch up before age really comes down on them. It's stretched on for millennia, one long ease into early retirement that is also lasting twice as long as anyone else they know.
Except for the Dinobots, but frag. Nobody should hold themselves to Grimlock's standards. That level of energy - and maturity - just isn't natural.
But everyone else from the war and earlier is far, far older than the Combaticons. Brawl's apparently determined to spend his early retirement making the Constructicons whine with envy, doing what their old bodies won't let them do anymore. Vortex is driving himself crazy absolutely loving how much he hates being a manager, the boltheaded sadomasochist. Swindle's cashing in on his savings and laying some sort of lovetrap for that relic of a racer he's been mooning after since the speedy aft slowed down enough for a real chase. Nobody's seen Blast Off in years. They know he's alive, but the shuttleformer's dislike of other people has evidently made him a hermit. Onslaught…
Onslaught's waiting to feel good. So far he hasn't, but he sits by Megatron's bedside hoping it'll kick in. Any time now, he'll be happy. He should be. Any time now. He's watching his condemner, his conqueror, his old enemy and master dying one breath at a time. That should bring cruel glee to his spark. Look at the ancient wreck. Onslaught's old, but he's able to get around. He'll be old for a long time yet. Megatron's history. Megatron's dying. Megatron's almost gone, and when his spark finally flickers out, Onslaught will have won over him at long last.
This should be the height of delayed gratification, here.
So why doesn't he feel good?
"Optimus is gone," he says gently the few times Megatron regains consciousness. "Soundwave isn't here now. Starscream is busy." The words seem to calm the dying mech, or maybe it's just the repetitive cadence of words spoken over and over again to him. Starscream is the only one Megatron ever truly reacts to anymore, but Starscream disappeared not long ago. Onslaught hopes he doesn't return. At the same time, he's almost desperate for the unnatural freak of youth to come back.
Starscream is the only one who might override all of the filework Megatron filled out years ago, back when he was coherent enough for informed consent on medical matters. For some reason, he refuses to be reframed. They're Cybertronians: their minds and bodies eventually wear out, but their sparks maintain a basic sense of self. Reframed, Megatron would become a different person yet stay alive.
Onslaught wants Megatron to be reframed. He doesn't want Megatron to take the easy way out. He doesn't want Megatron's spark to die out.
He wants Megatron to feel old in a young body. He knows the reframed are never the old person. A new person wouldn't be the same, wouldn't be Megatron, but it would be enough for some sort of satisfaction. All Onslaught wants is to know Megatron suffered at least part of what the Combaticons went through. Spark extraction for punishment isn't the same as a transplant, but there's a visceral part of Onslaught that wants it to happen.
There's just as deep a part that knows it's he wants it because at least then Megatron will survive. He knows what that part is. It's the blasted loyalty program.
It was long ago deactivated, but it hasn't been uninstalled. Starscream and Shockwaved buried it so deep in the Combaticons' essential programming that it's part of their personality matrixes. Uninstall it, and they'd destabilize. Instead, it's been deactivated since the war ended. It itches at the edges of their databanks whenever they're around Megatron, still present if not active. They don't like it. They avoid Megatron out of habit, from the itch if not leftover distaste.
Onslaught tolerates it now for the sake of imminent victory. It bothered him when he began visiting the former warlord, but he considered the annoyance worth bearing witness. Every rumor said the old warlord would die soon. He wanted to be here for that.
He will be. Onslaught's armor is showing the thin spots, the brittleness of age that forced Brawl out of a demolition job and put Swindle in a wheelchair. Onslaught walks carefully wherever he goes, but he can still move freely. The other mechs of his generation shed dust when they move. The floor of Megatron's room is powder grey. Microscopic flecks of decaying metal sift gradually off the former leader of the Decepticons, and Onslaught is surrounded by him. At this rate, Megatron will dissolve if his spark doesn't give out first. He'll die soon, and Onslaught's here to watch it happen.
He tries to feel victorious. He wants to feel superior.
It disturbs him that all he feels is sorrow.
Onslaught has held onto hatred for so long, he's at a loss now. Victory's a box he wrapped up in the back of his mind long ago, a present he intended his future self to open on the occasion of Megatron's inevitable demise, but it's as though he's opened an empty box. The joy he expected to find has withered during the wait. Satisfaction deflated into sad bits stuck in the corners. He can dig it out if he tries, but it hardly seems worth the effort.
There's a sort of majesty to watching Megatron die. It's like standing witness to something tremendous coming to a close. There was a war, and it shattered Cybertron. Then there was peace, and the peace closed a huge chapter in Onslaught's life. Peace was the start of something new and exciting, yes, but it was an ending as well. Peace was a turning point. It marked Cybertron as much as the war had.
The end of the war was one of those things where years later, they could recall, "I was here when I heard the news. I was doing this."
Megatron's death feels that way to Onslaught, for all that it's a quiet passage from one moment to the next. Megatron dies, and Onslaught witnesses it as one of the most momentous occasions in Cybertron's history. Something should be said, something should be done.
But nothing happens. There's a flicker of light as a great spark extinguishes, a sigh of systems shutting down, and Megatron fades away silently into whatever comes next. Perhaps Optimus Prime is waiting.
Onslaught bows his head in respect he didn't know he'd feel, because at the very least someone should pause to remember this moment.
Time continues onward, leaving him changed.
[* * * * *]
Grimlock
[* * * * *]
It's almost a relief when Ratchet dies.
No, it's definitely a relief. It's a relief when Ratchet dies, and Grimlock doesn't tolerate pretending otherwise.
"Passes," the other Autobots insist in whispers, but he's the one who set up the funeral. He's the one who's watched his brethren cringe during the obligatory visits they inflicted on themselves toward the end. The other Autobots can shove their kindly euphemisms up their fragging tailpipes. Ratchet is dead, end of story.
Ratchet is dead, and Grimlock is glad. He wishes, looking back on the last years, that he had the smarts to bluntly tell the other Dinobots that they didn't have to go to the elder care home. They didn't have to endure Ratchet's crotchety, bad-tempered, absolutely hateful sniping at their youth, their liberal beliefs, their ongoing lives that Ratchet either couldn't or wouldn't attempt to be part of. There's an odd sense of obligation forced on the younger generations. They have to respect their elders. They have to include them. They have to accept the abuse heaped on them by those older mechs who've shriveled into condensed bitterness.
It's a social obligation. Dinobots don't belong to normal society. Grimlock feels a fool once he realizes what he let happen to the Dinobots at the whim of Cybertron's stupid social mores, and he resolves never to let it happen again. Wishes change nothing. Action is everything.
"What's the matter?" Wheeljack asks cheerfully when Grimlock visits him, because that's what's expected and Grimlock has decided expectations should be vetted for legitimacy before they're pushed on unsuspecting Dinobots. "What's wrong? Did something happen?"
Ratchet is dead, but Wheeljack has no short-term memory. He won't be sad until tomorrow. Grimlock decides to come back then. Maybe he should bring Snarl, too.
After thinking about what Wheeljack has been like the past years as he rollicked into old age, the leader of the Dinobots brings them all. They find their creator crumpled among the half-finished inventions, bewildered grief in faded optics staring at nothing, and Grimlock is glad the whole herd's here. They crowd around the aged inventor, and he doesn't remember inviting them, doesn't remember Grimlock called ahead, but his shaking hands reach for them because he remembers Ratchet is dead, now, and while they can't grieve for who the medic became, Wheeljack's hitched breathing allows them to grieve for the person who helped create them. They grew up under his protection. They matured listening to his wisdom.
The person Ratchet became hurt them, but they loved their creator nonetheless. They still love Wheeljack. Losing Ratchet reminds them that they will lose Wheeljack, too.
It's less social obligation and more clinging when they visit him after that. Grimlock brings them over often, but he's busy with an increasing amount of political responsibility. The others go on their own more often than not, and he's not surprised that Sludge almost moves into the workshop. Even with Perceptor working alongside him and a dozen weird-aft grad students popping in and out of the place, Wheeljack needs the help. He's not the type to move into assisted living even if he should. There are always things for him to do. He finds heights, climbs to them, and looks around for more places to explore.
Grimlock doesn't realize what kind of example that sets until long, long afterward. It's not a bad legacy to leave behind. A tough example to live up to, however.
Wheeljack is a million years gone when the second civil war threatens, and Grimlock looks around. He sees the increasingly combative politics gearing up toward a war. He listens to the inexperienced generations starting to talk about division and persecution as though pulling apart is natural, as though destruction is the only thing that will solve Cybertron's problems. He sees the empty place where a Prime should have arisen eons ago. There's a sucking void created by a vacant position of power.
Social obligations he has refused suddenly tower over him and, sighing, Grimlock remembers Ratchet's refusal to adapt. To live in the present instead of the past. He remembers Wheeljack always going onward and upward.
Age stops some mechs. It inspires others.
His joints creak as he opens the drawer he locked shut a very long time ago, revealing something he's been putting off because he doesn't want it. He just plain doesn't want it. Yeah, he still refuses to sugar-coat his words, and that's not going to change anytime soon. Cybertron's going to have to learn to deal with it.
And Grimlock Prime kicks in the Senate door to end the foolishness as only he can.
[* * * * *]
Drag Strip
[* * * * *]
They say the winners write the history books.
Drag Strip intends to win.
Now, he won't obtain immortality. He knows that. He's obsessed by winning, not stupid. He doesn't think he can turn back time. But this is the reality of Cybertron's Great War: of all the people sucked into it, the only ones in the inner circle who aren't old as rusted gears are the Aerialbots and the Stunticons. That's it.
Sure, there's the Combaticons, but Drag Strip's been paying attention. Those guys have way older sparks than the gestalts made on Earth. Even cast from slightly inferior metals that are decaying faster than normal, but the two Earth teams are a lot younger than the other Autobots and Decepticons. They're going to outlast all those old-timers. The Dinobots could probably stick their noses in, but the Dinobots don't care. The Aerialbots and Stunticons are the youngest major players from the war, and Drag Strip's going to capitalize on that.
At first he intended to wait until the old crankshafts died out, then rewrite history to showcase his own awesome accomplishments. It would be great. History could show that he saved Cybertron single-handed.
Things don't go as planned, however. The stupid Neutrals start publishing their own accounts of what happened, smooth and slanted and ever so calmly placing the blame, and Drag Strip's so indignant he can't stop himself. Megatron didn't do that! Frag, even slagging Optimus Prime didn't do that! Drag Strip wasn't even around for the start of the war and he knows the scrap being taught as history to the newbuilds is third-hand fiction!
So he starts writing, and to nobody's surprise, he sucks exhaust at it. To everybody's surprise, that's what makes him such a popular author. A - he talks like people on the street do. B - he tells off the current pompous historian Neutral-splaining the war. Primus, that nerd needs to get that strut out of his tailpipe. C - when challenged on his wild stories, he can yell, "Because I was there, that's why!" to back up his claims.
And if he wasn't there, he's perfectly willing and able to go harass the mechs he came online fighting beside and against for the real facts. Everyone else treats the old dudes with respect. He goes and pokes them repeatedly until they cough up details. Frag, it's like the rest of Cybertron's forgotten that these glitches fought in a war. They're not delicate. They're old and absentminded and crotchety as the Pit, but they're not dead yet.
The surviving Autobots and Decepticons, frustrated as Drag Strip is by awful war documentaries mangling what actually happened, find him a bizarre but endearing champion. Drag Strip finds himself spending most of his time recording long, involved interviews about battles and people that only oral history has preserved. Cybertron's archives are lost. The war wiped out most of their planet's history from sheer property destruction and loss of life, leaving the only people who remember what really happened dying as old age takes them out how the war failed to.
It drives the academics crazy that some uneducated grunt from Earth is undermining their research. Yeah, well, they can shove their pretentious presentations and inaccurate historical research where the sun don't shine. Drag Strip's publishing truth. The Neutrals are trying to erase it as fast as he writes it.
By the time Grimlock Prime arises, Drag Strip's winning.
[* * * * *]
Bob the Insecticon
[* * * * *]
"Ah, slag," someone says from inside, and Bob wags his aft as the door opens. "He's here again."
Someone else sighs. Faces appear in the doorway, and thick hands covered in smears of cooled metal reach out. The Insecticon meets them halfway, already chittering in pleasure as hands used to high heat and hard manual labor rub behind his antenna. The recycling plant employees are careful with him. One of them has given up on shooing him away and has set out a bowl for him, filling it with the crumply kibble bought special for him. He can fuel on pure energon like a regular mech, but everyone here knows he digs into the textured scrap with far more enthusiasm.
They're more familiar with him than the people he's supposed to be staying with. Sure, every once and a while First Aid will send an Aerialbot to fetch him back, and he'll stay in the elder care home for a little while, but Bob always returns here. He picks his slow, old way through the junkyard surrounding the recycling plant, and once he's made it, he'll turn three times in a tight circle before lying down with his optics fastened on the door.
It's the door Sunstreaker went through. Bob will wait patiently outside it until his master returns.
[* * * * *]
End
[* * * * *]