Ultra Magnus didn't have a lot to say as he escorted a cuffed Maximus down yet another hallway. Again. But that suited Max just fine; he didn't feel much like talking either. In fact, he never wanted to talk, but did anyone here accept that? No. He'd said he didn't want to talk about it, but first Ratchet and that nurse, and then that orange pipsqueak Rung had insisted. They'd just kept pushing and pushing, never taking 'No' for an answer. Now look at where that left all of them.

Still, it didn't stop oily guilt from warming the bottom of his fuel tank.

Magnus brought them to a halt in front of a hab suite door and fixed him with a bland glare. "Turn around."

Maximus didn't like having people at his back, not anymore, but with nothing better to do, he did as he was told.

"Against my better judgment," Magnus went on, "I'm going to remove your claw."

'Your claw' and not 'the claw,' as if the thing belonged on him. Hell, it may as well have; especially in the eyes of the crew – a ragtag collection of 'bots he really didn't want to have to deal with right now.

"I don't think I need to tell you," Magnus continued, "that if you make Rodimus regret this, I'll reduce you down to your primary pair of struts."

Maximus said nothing. Ultra Magnus was right, he hadn't needed to say it.

"Do I make myself clear?"

"Yeah," Maximus grit out.

Ultra Magnus reached down to undo the cuffs next and as they came open, the relief of regaining complete mobility took him by surprise.

"Stay out of trouble," Magnus said, more a warning than a farewell as he turned around and strode back the way he came – presumably to continue babysitting their rash captain.

Finding himself alone, Maximus turned to the hab suite and was startled when the door unlocked to his signature. Venturing inside, he realised it was the one he'd been assigned when he'd first joined the crew; something that felt like it had happened years ago. As Maximus looked around the empty room, he wasn't all that surprised to find he now had it to himself.

Hot Rod had made a mistake. If their places had been switched, he'd have left both the inhibitor claw and the cuffs on. He'd have left himself in the prison too – and he'd have done worse before that.

Dropping heavily onto a slab, Maximus was somewhat relieved to discover it was larger than those down in the brig. Well, that was one good point at least; especially since the two of them were going to get awfully familiar with one another seeing as he had no intention of leaving this room any time soon.

It was probably for the best he wouldn't have to deal with company.

.


.

In the end Maximus hadn't been able to keep to his self-imposed exile and by the beginning of the second week he was tentatively making his way down to a refuelling station. He hadn't had a choice in the matter and should have seen that coming. After all, energon wasn't catered to their rooms and he wasn't chasing a slow, painful deactivation either. If he'd had a pistol, maybe he would've had an alternative, but seeing as he didn't, his hands were tied and he was forced to get his fuel at a canteen just like the rest of the crew. Well, except for Hot Rod, maybe. Maximus was willing to bet the kid had his energon delivered – probably by Drift – and willingly too.

No one assigned Maximus any duties and his existence within the Lost Light was a quiet, hollow one. He learned he hadn't missed much during his stay in the brig, only the loss of the security director's mind and Maximus had already seen enough of that. Still, this was a ship and as such gossip was passed around quicker than a bad case of rust among the K-class the night before a drop.

Apparently things hadn't been well with the crew following... the hostage situation. People said that shortly thereafter Red Alert had started slipping, that he was seeing things now because simply hearing them hadn't enough. His very vocal descent into madness was a popular topic of conversation. More than one crew member had been startled by the director's sudden appearance and frantic accusations of seeing 'bots that simply couldn't have been where he'd reported them. It was both the raving and Red Alert's increasingly public demands to see Rung that caused the crew at large to notice the officer who'd once avoided most complex social interactions. Popular opinion was that it was right to keep the two separated. Someone in Red Alert's mental state shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near the still recovering doctor; it simply wouldn't have done either of them any good, and in Red's case, probably would've just compounded his issues. The only thing left to do, people agreed, was to give the director time and hope he sorted himself out and stopped being such a nuisance.

Unfortunately time hadn't seen Red Alert ameliorate and instead he'd only gotten worse, going so far as to have some sort of fit near the munitions store, screaming that he was seeing spectres of people who should have been dead. Consensus said that it was for the best, really, that he'd been put away, that it was for his own safety. Who knew what he might've done next while left alone? Others agreed, he might have hurt himself, they said. He especially needed to be kept far from Rung.

The latter 'bot was a popular topic too, but strangely, though he'd been prepared for it, Maximus never heard mention of his own name. It was as if the entire event was a dirty thing, not to be spoken of, or if they did, they certainly didn't do it anywhere he could hear. They did stare though, those few times he found himself in a corridor with someone else. They never spoke to him, but Maximus could feel the resentment of their glares curdling the paint on the back of his neck. As it turned out, for all his apparent uselessness, Rung was obviously well liked.

Maximus continued to keep to himself after that, staying in his room though it wasn't completely necessary. People avoided him for the most part and he couldn't say he blamed them; he didn't really want to have much to do with them either.

Once, there had been a knock on his door late into the night cycle – later than most would consider appropriate visiting hours, let alone for visiting him. And though he hadn't been recharging exactly, he hadn't bothered to get up . The knocking had come again, softly, from what were probably a pair of lightly-built hands. Feeling somewhat uneasy, Maximus had left his would-be guest to their own devices and told himself he wasn't interested. Eventually, whoever it was had grown tired and been carried away by the sound of retreating footsteps. Max had vented a breath he didn't know he was holding and gone straight into sleep mode after that.

.


.

By the third day into that second week he'd had a simple, straightforward routine. Once he'd grown tired of staring at the ceiling from his recharge slab he'd move over to the other one and see if his perspective changed. It didn't, but it was still better than sitting in front of the dead console while waiting for the lull period in that day's active shifts.

Boredom had driven him to log onto the machine a single time. As soon as the screen had booted up he'd seen a small status bar indicating him as an online presence within the network. There was another window that defaulted to the side of the screen, this one with an aggregated list of all the others online at the same time. As soon as everything had finishing loading and his name had dropped into that running channel, all conversation had ground to a halt. Not even a second later and he was alerted that he'd received a message shunted to a private folder. Fortress Maximus had shut down the console before he'd even seen who had sent it.

He didn't want to know.

He had nothing to talk about.

.


.

The day after that saw a break in his routine and he wasn't sure what prompted the deviation from his schedule. He'd been on his way to refuel, mind as carefully blank as he could wrestle it when he'd found himself loitering outside Swerve's bar. He must have turned at the wrong corridor, but for some reason he found himself lingering.

The door was open, someone was playing music, someone else was having a heated but good-natured argument, and superimposed over it all, people were laughing. Light – multicoloured from shining through the various refined engex columns lining the wall – lit the room in different hues and pooled along the floor reaching out into the hallway. It was the vibrancy that shocked him most, bright and glowing warm. Everything had seemed so grey lately, as if he'd had faulty filters installed over his optics. But maybe it was just the ship with all its bland grey hallways and the bland grey of his undecorated, empty suite. There was something to all this colour though, and Maximus found his eyes drawn to a mottled patch of orange-pink-yellow light near his foot. It was like watching a bit of reflection through pieces of painted glass. The association floated up through his processor and unable to place where that memory had come from, he shrugged it aside.

Magnus's threat of deactivation hadn't been subtle, and the consequences of screwing up were clear, but Maximus didn't think he was doing anything wrong by being here. If they hadn't wanted him near the rest of the crew, they shouldn't have given him leave to wander the ship. There wasn't anything inherently dangerous about coming back here and besides, he was just so tired of all this damn grey everywhere.

No one came in or left the bar while he stood there, allowing him to watch the crowd for a moment longer before he finally made up his mind. The patrons seemed much the same as the last (and only) time he'd been here. Pipes was sitting with the same company at the same table Maximus noted, and he'd been repaired. Nothing suggested he'd been shot with a preposterously large handcannon not long ago. Judging by the way his shoulders were shaking, he was even laughing.

Maximus stepped forward. The minute he crossed the threshold, the atmosphere went still – like that quiet, sharp precipice before the first shot on a battlefield – silence rippling outward 'bot by 'bot. Swerve froze mid-word behind his counter, the grin he'd been wearing falling off his face like a dead thing. With hands he didn't seem to notice were shaking, he carefully put down the tray he'd been carrying. The little white one – Tailgate – turned away from where he'd obviously been pestering Cyclonus, paused, and then took a tentative step in Maximus's direction. Chromedome stopped him with a hand on an ancient shoulder as he stood up from his table, silent and glaring from behind his visor while both Tailgate and Rewind peeked their heads out from around either side of the tall body. Skids was standing now too and he mirrored Chromedome, placing himself between Maximus and a completely rigid Pipes who could only stare as his drink slowly dripped down his knee from where he'd spilt it. A few others had risen as well – the larger ones – some Maximus didn't know, but he did recognize the faces of Sunstreaker and Cosmo. The rest were statues, rooted where they sat.

It wasn't until there was a crash from the bar that the crowd finally moved, parting to reveal Whirl, casually leaning his back against the bar counter, legs stretched out loosely in front of him, an empty seat on either side. "Oops," he half sang, voice completely insincere as he let broken glass fall to the ground from between his claws. Then with an almost shocking joviality, locked his optic with Maximus's and said loudly, "Maxy! Who you been hiding from? Haven't seen you since that little fiasco in Rung's office. Why don't you take a load off, sit down." Whirl's legs splayed open a little wider as he gestured to one of the empty bar stools beside him. "You look like you could use a friend."

There was a biting inflection in the way he said that last word that made Maximus feel like he'd missed something important, and the way the light refracted off that one unblinking eye was both sick and jagged. But then again this was Whirl, and by now, the two of them had a history.

"You know what," Maximus heard himself say, "I think I'll pass." Then turning around stiffly, he walked back out the way he'd come in, Whirl's voice the only thing that followed after him.

"Don't be a stranger; you barely stayed last time!"