Sleep Walking
Disclaimer: Transformers belong to Hasbro and Takara, and are licensed to IDW and Dreamworks. My original characters are my own and any similarity between them and any existing characters from canon or fandom is purely coincidental. I claim no ownership by writing this work.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night when the Ark is running on a skeleton crew and just about everyone is deep in recharge I find myself walking the halls. Unless I exhaust myself I can't sleep properly. I just lie on the berth and find myself thinking about everything that has happened and everything that could. When I do manage to recharge on those nights I end up having horrible dreams. Hoist says that it's because I'm not defragging properly, but I know what it really is. When I offline my optics and it's just me alone in my quarters I have nothing to do but think and remember. It's the last thing I want to do. It's the last thing I ever want to do.
So I walk the halls and move from room to room looking for something to keep my mind off of it all. Anything to keep from remembering a beautiful living city filled with friends and family and more loved ones than I could count. For Prowl and Smokescreen it's easy. They left Praxus on their own. They remember it as it was, and when we talk about it, their memories aren't tarnished with the heat of burning slag and the tang of ozone in the air. They weren't there when it all fell apart. They weren't there when I fell apart. They say they understand, but, really? they can't possibly understand what it's like to lose it all.
Sometimes I think I can talk to Mirage, but I always get the idea that he feels his loss is greater than mine. That the Crystal Towers was devastating, but Praxus was collateral damage. I don't like talking to him about it. And I can't talk to the others. All they see is happy, talkative Bluestreak. They don't see what stories I have inside me, and really, I doubt they'd want to hear them anyways. So I walk the halls alone in the night, trying to find anything to exhaust myself so that I can recharge without remembering.
... I wonder if Sunstreaker and Sideswipe want company ...