A/N - Claimed by jessara40k over on LJ
"This sucks," Vortex muttered, still sprawled out on the dirt.
"You said it," Swindle answered glumly, tipping over an empty cube, the last of their stockpiled supplies.
Vortex blew air in a heavy sigh, a gesture picked up from too much time watching humans on Earth. Dirt blew up in little eddies, miniature versions of his namesake.
He watched the dust drift across the rocks and wished he was back on Earth.
He hadn't realized that he'd spoken out loud until Swindle responded. "You aren't the only one," he muttered. "Anything's better than this."
"Almost anything," Vortex corrected. "At least we're not stuffed in a drawer."
Swindle chuckled, but there wasn't any humor in the sound. "Yeah. At least it's not that." He flopped down next to Vortex. "Y'know, for a organic-covered dustball, Earth really wasn't that bad, was it?"
They lay there in silence for a long moment.
"I'm hungry," Vortex grumbled into the silence.
Swindle shook his head. His tanks were nearly empty as well, but his larger gestalt mates had it worse than he did. Being the smallest in the team had one advantage at least – he was also the most fuel efficient of the bunch.
"I know," he replied eventually. It wasn't like either of them could do anything about it.
Vortex sighed again, slowly fanning his rotors.
They'd fallen back to Chaar under the pretenses of regrouping, intending on sorting themselves out and mounting a counter-strike against the Autobots. It wouldn't have been the first time the Decepticon forces had been forced to abandon a world, but it was the first time they'd been routed so throughly. Now they were trapped, unable to manufacture enough energon on Chaar to keep themselves functional, much less fueled enough for attack.
"I hate this planet," Vortex muttered.
"I know," Swindle repeated.
Vortex fell silent again, idly tracing nonsensical patterns in the dirt with a fingertip. "Maybe the box wasn't so bad," he said after a moment.
Swindle shifted to look over at his team mate. Vortex hated being locked up; in fact, he could barely stand being cooped up in their underwater base back on Earth. Of the Combaticons, the helicopter had been the one who had come out of their imprisonment the worst off. If he's thinking that bein' in the box is better than bein' out here, he really isn't doing well, Swindle thought in surprise.
"At least I wasn't hungry in the box, y'know?" Vortex continued, scrubbing out the designs he'd drawn.
Sympathy wasn't something Swindle felt often, but he found himself reaching out and resting a hand over the nearest rotorblade. "I know."
Onslaught's shadow fell over them. "Ah, there you two are." Onslaught's voice sounded as tired as Swindle felt. "Come on. The others are already back at camp. We need to stick together."
"Yeah, we're comin'," Swindle answered, levering himself to his feet.
Onslaught nodded once and turned to trudge back down to their makeshift camp.
Swindle waited for Vortex to drag himself up before following. "Don't worry, Tex, we'll get through this." The words sounded hollow even to him.
"Yeah," was all Vortex said, but Swindle couldn't tell if he meant it or not.