Part 6
Disclaimers in Part 1
When Diarwen woke, she found that someone who knew about the maintenance of metal had meticulously cared for her chain shirt, and the quilted padding she wore under it had been cleaned as well; yesterday's clothing had also been washed and dried. Diarwen smelled Ivory washing powder—the women had been true to their word, and used the only available soap unlikely to irritate her "allergies." She dressed quickly and packed her bag, then went out to check on Optimus.
She was relieved to see that his aura looked better; she hoped he felt as much improved as she did.
Gary had been talking to Optimus about the US 50 route to Washington DC. "It'll take you six or seven hours total—more if road work's got the traffic tied up. But you'll only have to cross an interstate twice more before you get to DC—after here in Marietta, that is."
Optimus asked, "How is US 50 across the mountains?"
"Not too bad. It's four-lane as far as Clarksburg. You might want to wait for your escort at Romney or Capon Bridge, because it's one interstate after another past that, if I remember right."
Optimus nodded. He was very familiar with the roads, as well as the sensor net, east of I-81.
Diarwen said, "I remember Romney. Once my band played a wedding reception in Springfield. I realized then that I had also visited there...some time previously." She swiftly edited herself rather than admitting that the "previously" was during the Civil War. "I think our campsite there might be a good place to meet whoever is going to be traveling into the city with us, if it has not greatly changed in three years."
Gary asked, "Have you figured out what to do about I-77? There's only one way east out of Marietta, if you want to stay completely off the Interstate, and that's old Route 7, at least till you cross the river at St. Mary's and head south to US 50."
Optimus said, "I have. I mean to use the Ohio River to cross under it. The water will prevent any sensors that might be on the bridge from detecting me. If you can give Diarwen a ride, we can meet somewhere east of the Interstate."
Gary said, "Not a problem, we've got a job site on the West Virginia side just east of Buckley Island where we're building a coal dock. From there you can take the back roads south to US 50."
Optimus could tell from Diarwen's body language that she had a question, but was hesitant to ask it. He cocked a brow at her, and she said, "I...am no engineer, but even I know that electricity and water do not mix. Can you go into the river, injured as you are?"
"Since I thought of this I've been prioritizing self-repair of my critical seals. If I can rest a while after leaving the river to get the water out, there ought not to be a serious problem. The risk is less than that of another run-in with Lugnut."
Diarwen nodded a bow, conceding the point. Everything was a calculated risk at this point.
Gary said, "The only problem I can see is, the Ohio is a working river. There's a lot of barge traffic. You'll need to stay in the eastbound channel. Don't stop in the channel, whatever you do. Takes a riverboat with a float of barges two miles to stop."
A quick Internet search confirmed that. Optimus also learned that, like freight trains, many of the barges carried hazardous materials which caused a major incident if they spilled into millions of people's drinking water.
He would not be doing anything foolish in the shipping channels. "That leaves only finding a good place to get into the river."
Glen said, "We have a fishing spot a few miles downstream. Got a boat ramp bulldozed out. There's a lot of trees, so I don't think anybody's likely to see anything from Route 7."
Gary opened the garage door. Route 7 was the two-lane highway in front of the construction company; their fishing camp was a few miles east of town. He climbed into the driver's seat of a white club-cab pickup with the Glengary logo on the side.
Glen, meanwhile, pulled the passenger seat forward to get in the back, leaving the shotgun seat for Diarwen. His mother, not bound by medical ethics as was Triona, had said rather inaccurately that their guest was "bruised from head to toe," and Glen would give pride of place to any warrior: which this silver-haired lady definitely was.
Optimus transformed to alt mode and followed the pickup to the twins' fishing spot. A dirt road led between two cornfields into a patch of water maples and sumac. The lot was large enough for a cabin, though they hadn't gotten around to building one yet, and high enough above the river that it would take quite a flood to get up here. The boat ramp had been roughly bulldozed to allow the launch of something no larger than a john boat.
Diarwen tossed a rock into the steel-blue water. "How deep is that?"
"Here, not very. Twenty to thirty feet. That's what the Ohio River dams are for, to keep the channels deep enough for navigation year-round," Gary told her.
Optimus waited until there were no boats in view before he went in the water. Despite the confident assurances he had made to Diarwen, there was no way to know if there were any dangerous breaks in his water seals until he actually tested them. He was ready to get out fast if there were any indications of water seeping into areas where it didn't belong: he waited for the sizzle and burning pain of a short. After a few moments he was certain that his seals were holding well enough to swim along the bottom to the eastbound channel.
Of course bots could not "swim" the same way that humans did. They transformed water jets which they had to run constantly to do anything except walk along the bottom, unless they had the instruction set to transform some sort of flotation system. Unlike Wheelie, who had to run his jets constantly to stay afloat at all, he had such a buoyancy system, and needed the water jets only to move.
But during his crossing, Optimus came across nothing larger than the occasional catfish. He had lights, but they were about as useful in the turbid water as high beams in the fog. He was glad he was going upstream, otherwise the cloud of silt that his jets created would have reduced the already-limited visibility to nothing at all.
Buckley Island split the river east of the confluence with the Muskingum. I-77 crossed the river there. He stayed as close to the bottom as he could until he was well past the island, keeping as much water between himself and the sensors as possible.
Once he was a safe distance from the bridge, Optimus sent up a small tethered remote to see where he was, and located the construction site. Glen and Gary's truck was already there; he spotted the twins sitting with Diarwen and a few construction workers on a half-built coal dock.
Diarwen spotted him first, and waved him around to the upstream side of the dock, where a boat ramp was already in place.
Optimus saw wide eyes and heard hushed conversation as he climbed out onto dry land. It wasn't every day that a giant robot came out of the Ohio River to visit their construction site, but the workers seemed more interested than awed or frightened.
As soon as he got out of the river, one of the workers parked a flatbed with a bulldozer on it to block the view of passers-by on the nearby road.
River traffic was less a concern, since they would see a boat coming in plenty of time for him to transform to his alt, or get out of sight in the surrounding trees.
Between the blazing June sun and letting his own systems run a little hot, Optimus swiftly dried himself. He told Glen and Gary, "Thank you for your help. It is one thing to open your home and business to strangers out of kindness and generosity, but quite another to do that knowing the sort of trouble we might bring with us."
Gary said firmly, "You fought beside our brother-in-law, so as far as we're concerned, you're family." His twin nodded.
The construction foreman said, "Besides, everybody 'round here knows, trouble's our middle name."
"Travis, I thought your middle name was Doofus," a stocky woman with a riot of red curls tied in a low, messy ponytail under her bright yellow hard hat replied.
Travis aimed a half-intentional swat at his grinning underling, which the younger worker easily ducked, but the exchange served its purpose by dispelling the serious atmosphere. Optimus could see immediately these folks were a lot like the NEST troops, or Sides and Sunstreaker for that matter—unless someone deliberately kept them serious, they would immediately turn anything into a joke and simply get the job done.
The redhead, Arlene, lived on the West Virginia side. "Now this is plain ol' blacktop country roads, but they'll get you there. Just watch yourself on the hills, we got some crazy drivers around here."
"I've never yet been anywhere on Earth, or anywhere else for that matter, that I haven't shared the roads with crazy drivers, but there are humans who seem to take pride in idiocy behind the wheel." (Ratchet had once said it had to be some sort of mating display—anyone who could survive that had to have good genes to pass along to their offspring.)
Arlene grinned. "Yep, we got us some good ol' boys just about everywhere. No matter what they'll try to tell you, it ain't only a country thang."
They bade farewell to their benefactors, thanking Glen and Gary yet again, and left. The swim had tired Optimus more than he expected, but surprisingly the slow drive zig-zagging along the river and then through quiet hill country seemed to restore his energy. He supposed he had healed to the point that moving around forwarded the self-repair process.
"Diarwen," he said a few miles out, "did you sleep well?"
"Like a rock. It was wonderful. Yourself?"
"Very well, thank you. This is a different landscape than that we've come through so far."
"This land is old—the Mother is strong here, for all the harm that has been done Her. I have loved these mountains since I first set foot here."
"You started to say something about this town, Romney?"
"Yes, when I said I'd been there before I meant during the American Civil War! That was four or five generations ago among humans, and no human Civil War Veteran is now living. You would not know it to look at it now, everything seems so peaceful, but once this was a border between warring nations. John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry was not far east of Romney. The town itself changed hands more than fifty times during the course of the war. It was a hotbed of spies, and I was often one of them. It was so strange to come back there three years ago, and find people still bearing the surnames—aye, and the look—of those I knew in the war. Sentiments were so divided that, even though Romney fought for the North, as did the rest of West Virginia, there is a monument to the Confederate war dead in one of their cemeteries. You will understand better than any how such a thing divides families."
"Indeed."
"That was the first war I took part in which was not so much a contest between warriors as an effort to destroy the enemy's ability to make war. I learned then for the first time that the code by which I have lived my life has become but an inconvenience to many a commander."
"Not to me, nor to William Lennox."
"That I know well! But this General Morshower, him I do not know."
"I've found him to be an older version of Will Lennox," Optimus observed as he skirted an area of cracked pavement near a stream bank. It looked like the next good rain would wash half the road down, and he did not want to chance his weight bringing that about under his own wheels. "Is the poverty here a result of that war?"
Diarwen shook her head, looking at a collection of rusty house trailers around a battered shack with tar-paper walls. "That may be part of it, but much of the responsibility, or the blame if you will, is to be laid at the door of those who owned the mines in the days that followed. A certain amount of corruption became endemic even after they were gone. The Great Depression did its part as well, and never truly ended here. In the seventies, when the planet's industrial centers moved to other parts of the world, the area was dealt another hard blow. These people have suffered so much for so long, I do not see where they find the strength to get through this day—yet they do, and thrive despite the adversity that they face. I do not know what the solution might be."
Optimus rumbled agreement. "There can be no solution, until the people decide upon one of their own. We can't help them in that—all we can do is try to buy them the time to find it. No matter how young and violent a race these humans may be, we are not their parents, nor their guardians, nor even, really, their teachers."
Diarwen bowed her head in agreement.
After about half an hour, they reached the four-lane highway that was US 50, and turned due east. From there, it was an easy hour and a half run to Clarksburg, West Virginia, a community along the I-79 corridor between Morgantown and Charleston.
Along the way, they passed another fast food place, this one part of a national chain. Nearby, a farmer was selling fresh produce from the tailgate of his pickup truck to passers-by. Diarwen bought some chicken nuggets from the restaurant, but bypassed the sad-looking french fries in favor of a big vine-ripened tomato chosen from a bushel basket sitting on the tailgate of the truck.
They stopped in a small city park on a hilltop overlooking the Interstate, at the end of the parking lot farthest from a playground full of noisy children and their mothers, who sat around a picnic table visiting while their children let off steam.
Diarwen, sitting on Optimus' running board, munched chicken nuggets alternately with wedges of sun-warmed, juicy tomato.
"How far is it from Romney to your old campsite?" Optimus asked quietly, to avoid being overheard.
Diarwen considered, then answered with equal quietness, "Perhaps ten miles? I doubt it was more than that."
"Will you be able to find it again in the middle of the night?"
"If I cannot, I shall find another like it," she said confidently. "I know every hideout within twenty-five miles of there. I certainly used most of them to evade the Confederates."
He laughed, hearing a lot of stories behind that. "The humans change things quickly in a year, much less a century and a half."
"It had not changed so terribly much three years ago," she replied. "There are more people, but the places that I chose to hide were not where one would wish to build a house. Most were more my size than yours, but you still should have your choice of several."
"Let's find a good place to cross, and rest until dark," Optimus said. He was not going to be able to cross I-79 in daylight without also making an appearance on the local news, but at night he stood a good chance of doing so unseen. And after that hurdle was crossed, they had another three-hour trip to Romney.
In answer, she got up from his running board to throw her trash away, then climbed back into his driver's seat.
Optimus scouted several places on the outskirts of Clarksburg, and finally settled on a farmer's road that went nearly to the interstate on either side, while staying between two fields throughout that part of its length he could see. There was a fence, barely as high as his ankle, that he would have to remember to step over rather than on; but other than that, the way was clear. On the other side of the freeway was a deep ditch, and a short distance beyond that, the farmer's road continued. According to an internet map, it led to a series of country roads that, in fifteen miles, led back to US 50.
The remains of a barn sat back from the farmer's road. The roof had long ago caved in, and the ruins were covered with some sort of vine—Diarwen made no effort to determine whether it was Virginia creeper, or poison ivy. A few old beer cans were evidence that someone else had once passed time here, but from the leaves fallen on them and the weeds grown over them it had been a while ago.
Optimus was simply grateful for the opportunity to transform and rest.
Diarwen strolled in the direction of a nearby creek, but suddenly jumped back, sword in hand, and backed up slowly. When she heard Optimus' gun come out, she said, "Hold, 'tis nothing but a copperhead snake. I startled him and he returned the favor."
Optimus asked, powering down the weapon, "He didn't strike at you?"
"No, I'm fine and so is he," she assured him with a grin, sheathing her sword. "I've no love of snakes, but no great hatred either. He is welcome to his sunny rock."
Optimus laughed and put away the autocannon. In spite of everything, he realized, he had laughed more on this trip than in...he did not want to think how long.
Last fall's leaves crackled under her boots as Diarwen returned, if only because she made no effort to move soundlessly. The light breeze caught a few strands of pale hair that had escaped her braid; they shone like silver in the evening sun. She sat down beside him, took a deep breath and released it in a contented sigh.
He let some time pass, then identified a small niggle of disquieting thought. "Diarwen, what will you do when we're no longer needed in Chicago?"
"You have asked me to teach you. I will do that. Perhaps by then, I will know how much of my magic will return, and there will be the thing which haunts that rest stop in Indiana, and whatever else needs putting right after that. Goddess will send me where She has need of me."
"It takes a great deal of faith to live that way," Optimus observed.
"I had nothing to lose when I first made the decision to live so, my friend. I did not know then how much I stood to gain from it, but I have received far more than ever I have given."
He knew that for himself; a Prime gave his life over to a greater Being just as surely.
They watched afternoon fade peacefully into evening. Diarwen talked Optimus into recharging while he had the chance, to which he acquiesced, knowing such to be sensible. As it began to get dark, mosquitoes started coming up from the creek; Diarwen cast a charm to discourage them.
Fireflies came out around her, and stars above. She cast no charm against either, and danced a very few steps with the fireflies before the timer he had set woke Optimus at full dark.
Like all interstates, this one was busy twenty-four hours a day, but gaps between bursts of traffic might allow him to cross unobserved, if they were lucky.
"Diarwen, there is a ditch between the lanes, and an even deeper one on the other side of the highway. We will cross much more quickly if I carry you than if you have to get over them on foot."
"Aye," she said, and stepped up to his offered hand. "Your bad shoulder-"
"Your weight is no problem to lift, but I'd rather have you riding on the other if I should have trouble with it."
She bowed her head and stepped gracefully into his palm. He lifted her to his collar strut and she held tightly as he started walking.
He was on the shoulder on the far side of the highway when a car came around the curve, well over the speed limit, drifted out of its lane, and headed right for him. There was nothing for it but to jump the ditch to get out of its way.
At the same time, when he saw Optimus, the driver slammed on the brakes and skidded into the guardrail.
Diarwen yelled a furious string of insults in Sidhe, shaking her fist at the driver, not least because she had come close to falling.
"Are you all right?" Optimus asked her.
"Aye! Best let me see if that fool broke his neck!"
She ran, heart in her throat, to the door of the car; the vehicle was heavily damaged, and she saw the driver slumped over the wheel, the door unlocked.
The car smelled strongly of whiskey from a bottle which had spilled in the passenger seat. The driver proved to have passed out, and was restrained unharmed by his lap-and-shoulder belt. In a rage, Diarwen grabbed his keys and threw them as far as she could across the ditch. That would keep the fool here until the state patrol found him.
She ran back to Optimus. "He is fine, just drunk! We need to go before the law stops to see what is wrong with him, or he wakes up."
As soon as he found the farmers' road again, they were on their way. Optimus was not happy that he had nearly been hit by a drunk-not for his own sake, as he would not have been seriously harmed. But the driver almost certainly would have been, and that was not the worst that could have happened. "Had it been a human there instead of me, he could never have gotten out of the way. And you—you could have been killed if he hit me."
"No harm was done. And no one is likely to pay any attention to anything that a drunk has to say, even if he does remember seeing you."
"There is that, I suppose."
"What is wrong? You were not hit, were you?"
Optimus admitted reluctantly, "No, but jumping over that ditch..."
She winced in sympathy. She was amazed at how graceful Cybertronians could be for their size, but any time they jumped, several tons of metal had to land. After that hit Optimus had taken from Lugnut yesterday, she was sure the impact had not been pleasant.
Diarwen felt him smile, somehow. "As you said, no harm done. I just hope they get that idiot off the road before his irresponsibility kills someone."
She nodded agreement, but had nothing to add.
He scanned her carefully, and said, "Diarwen, it will be some time before we get to Romney. It might be a good idea if you slept."
"Are you sure you do not mind?"
"Of course not. I'd rather you were awake while we're trying to find your campground up a gravel road in the dark."
She laughed. "I will not get you lost in the middle of nowhere."
"No, you won't get me lost," he teased, "since I have very detailed maps of the area. If you knew the address I could go right to it."
"It is not my fault that I knew where things were before there were maps, or an Internet to get them from!" she said, mock-offended, and was rewarded by the low rumble of his laugh. "Listen to the land, then you will not need maps."
"Listen to the land?"
She rolled up her BDU shirt for a pillow and made herself comfortable. "Pay attention to the energy in the land beneath you as well as the auras of people around you. That will tell you as much as any map."
"I'll wager that it won't help you find a street address, though," he replied.
She laughed and conceded, "That it will not!"
"Then it seems we have to continue working together," he said, with patently false forbearance.
"It seems so," she agreed, with a dramatic sigh worthy of the Faires.
The banter settled down quickly when Diarwen stretched out, and realized how very tired she truly was. She wondered briefly if Optimus were as fatigued, but sleep took her before she could ask.
Most humans looked younger when they were sleeping and their cares forgotten. With Diarwen, Optimus found sleep different. Usually her appearance matched the cover identity that she used to go unnoticed among the humans, the mask of a young person, a young woman the same age as Betony, as Jordan, as Sam.
In her sleep, however, Diarwen's face did not age so much as forfeit the illusion of innocence.
Ageless she was, but there was no immaturity left in her. Her life had been hard and likely always would be painful, yet she avoided bitterness and resentment, places sorrow easily lead to when you had lost all of your people forever. That shattering grief behind her, she lived each day to the fullest, spending no time on regret.
She had kept her sense of humor, and even her compassion for those whose ancestors had cost her everything. Such forgiveness was hard fought for, rarely won by those of any age, any species.
That person who had fought so hard for her peace was still there. He hoped for Diarwen's sake she always would be. But now, asleep on his front seat, she was the weary warrior that Optimus had met two years ago: she who had given voice to her ancient sorrow, her half-millennium of loss, only in song; she who had survived the casual, brutal cruelty of a roadside IED short months before, and let the song bear that for her as well.
The Prime realized he had been making an amateurish mistake with the Sidhe, judging her by the appearance she chose to present to the world, and therefore lumping her in with the humans.
It was an error he would make no more.
-Sidhe Chronicles-
The hills slowly changed to mountains as he continued eastward. He monitored everything from his own passive sensors to military frequencies and local 911 bands for any sign of Decepticons, but everything seemed quiet. If he had shaken them after chasing off Blitzwing and Lugnut, they might be safe now.
Trusting "might be" could get you offlined faster than anything else.
But, weary, wary, he noted still that this was a beautiful landscape. These were not the craggy barren western mountains; rather, old, weathered, heavily-forested peaks.
With his optics configured for low-light conditions, he could see quite clearly at night when, as now, the moon approached its first quarter: almost as well as in daylight. He wished he had the leisure to enjoy the scenery, but it was more urgent to monitor for possible trouble.
So far the most dangerous thing he had seen was a trio of overweight coal trucks breaking the speed limit. If they were going to flush the highway patrol out of hiding for him, he would take advantage of that to make up a little time, as he could do so without putting anyone at risk.
The highway went through several more small mountain towns. At this hour of the night, the only traffic was people passing through. Except for a few bars and convenience stores, the businesses were closed.
When they went through a town, he kept his windows darkened so that the lights did not wake Diarwen.
He woke her finally when they reached the Potomac just west of Romney. She looked around at the bridge they were crossing, and knew at once where they were. "Some company I am. I did not mean to sleep the whole way."
"It was no longer than you let me rest, Diarwen."
She nodded. "Very well. Right in the middle of town, turn left on High Street. If I recall correctly there is a coffee shop opposite the turn."
High Street soon left town and became a narrow blacktop road with a constant double yellow line. They passed a number of small farms along the Potomac, and when they came to a crowded campground, Diarwen said, "There's a switchback left turn just up here in front of a big farm."
Optimus found the turn exactly where she recalled it, a side road that turned back to parallel the highway as far as a sharp bend in the Potomac, then followed the river. A rambling two-story farmhouse was surrounded by barns, sheds, and a large silo.
He downloaded the public satellite images available on the Internet. "How much further?"
"Not much, but this road is awful," she warned.
He had to slow to a crawl to make the turn, and didn't bother trying to speed up again. The road was barely more than parallel dirt tracks with a little gravel scattered here and there, weeds between the tracks growing almost as high as those on either side. "Are you sure this isn't someone's driveway?"
"No, there are a number of houses up here, but they are mostly vacation homes. Past them, there are some cliffs on the right, and then another dirt road just past the cliffs that goes over a steep hill to the campsite."
They continued for at least a quarter mile past the last of the vacation homes, with the Potomac on one side and the cliffs on the other, before they came to the turnoff.
"Steep hill" was putting it nicely. The so-called road to the campsite was an overgrown dirt track with a gulley running down the center, which passed through a forest of oaks and beeches and buckeyes taller than he was. Like most wooded areas in the region which had been clear-cut at one time and then allowed to grow back wild, under the trees there were heavy thickets of weeds and briars, younger saplings, and screens of grape vines hanging down from the canopy. Deeper into the forest where less sunlight reached the ground, it was more open, but the edge of the forest screened everything from view.
Optimus stayed in alt form as far as he could, but near the top they found a large log across the road.
Diarwen jumped to the ground and took a look around. "I don't think anyone is nearby."
His scans confirmed that. On this high ground, his range extended easily to the first few vacation homes. Miraculously, all were empty; he was lucky they were not passing through here during the Fourth of July weekend, a few weeks hence.
He considered simply pushing the log aside, but if he tried that on this steep grade, he might further injure his shoulder and get himself marooned. That would be, at the least, a dangerous inconvenience. As quietly as possible, he transformed and stepped over the log.
The campsite was on the other side of the ridge they topped a few minutes later. It was overgrown with weeds, and didn't look as if it had been used recently, but someone had cut down the new growth of saplings the winter before. Optimus probably would have gone right by it without giving it a second look if not for Diarwen's cheery, "This is it!"
"What is the difference between this patch of weeds and any other?" he asked.
"This fine, outstanding patch of weeds is where we had our tent," she replied with a grin. "There is a fire ring, should someone want a camp fire. And that ditch is where Jordan sprained his ankle, causing us to make a trip into Romney to get his leg x-rayed."
"This is where the wedding was?"
"Yes. The bride and groom are SCA people—members of the Society for Creative Anachronism," she explained.
He did some Googling and goggled at the results, but said nothing. Humans were very strange.
"The wedding party had their camp further up the valley. This land all belongs to the bride's family. At that time, of course, the weeds were trimmed, and all was music and dancing." She paused, and her expression grew serious. "When I was here before that, Romney was in Confederate hands. I was with a band of Union spies, reporting on troop movements, and trying to catch the Confederate spies. Those were indeed interesting times."
He sat down near the fire ring. "It's hard to imagine this was once a battlefield."
"To this day, it is possible to visit the Civil War trenches here. There are still some signs of the fighting, but it was long ago. The land has largely healed."
"Someday perhaps we will go back to Chicago and say that."
"Aye," she said with a sad smile. "Perhaps we will."
"Ariel would have been fascinated by the history of the place," he commented.
"She was your..." Girlfriend was not the right term. Diarwen found herself searching for an appropriate English term when the only language that they had in common was foreign to them both.
"We were still in our trial mating, a situation that I believe is similar to engagement. We met at the university where I worked. She was training to be a healer, and took history classes from my professor because she enjoyed them."
"What happened?"
"A campus protest went wrong, and turned violent. A protester was shot. Ariel was kneeling over him when she was also gunned down. I never found out who fired that shot. I hope that it was a stray, that none of the enforcers would have intentionally gunned down a uniformed student healer doing her duty. But there was no way to trace a laser beam back to the weapon that fired it."
"Optimus, I have no words to say how sorry I am. I—I know. My husband was killed in the same battle that stranded me here. It is left for us...to go on, and remember. They live in us. We must live for them."
He nodded. "Yes."
For a moment, they were silent, contemplating the difficulty, and the honor, of living for those who had gone on. That burden was lighter for having been shared.
Optimus excused himself after a moment. "I had better let the base know that we are here."
Diarwen nodded. "I am going to walk around a little while you do that. I will see what has changed in three years' time."
She didn't go far, but by the time Optimus radioed Lennox that they had arrived and made plans to meet Ratchet and his escort, she had explored the area around the camp, as well as the camp itself.
When she returned, he got her pack from his subspace, and she rolled out a ground sheet and her sleeping bag. "What is the plan?" she asked, again sitting beside him.
"In the morning, we're to travel north to the Greater Cumberland airport."
"Oh, I know where that is. It is but ten or fifteen miles along the same road that brought us from Romney. That is not a huge airport; will it be large enough?"
"They won't need the C-130s. Ratchet and most of the others can travel on cargo helicopters. Once on the road in a group, we will be able to use the Interstates for the run into DC."
"We will only be on our own for a few more hours, then. I believe that it is my watch. You had better rest—Ratchet will undoubtedly know if you have not."
"Right. I have enough explaining to do about that fight."
"I should like to have seen him avoid it!" she said, in some heat.
Optimus said, "It would probably be better not to point that out to him."
"Hmm," was her non-committal reply. "Rest well."
As Optimus' optics dimmed into recharge, the thought crossed his processor that she had made absolutely no promises about not provoking Ratchet.
She who made no promises about poking irascible medics walked the camp to stay awake. Where Optimus was recharging, Thomas Pelphrey and Isaac Compton had pitched their tent; hers had been to the left of an oak tree which had now grown huge.
Thanks to prejudices she would never truly understand, Tommy and Isaac had never been able to share a home and be the family that they were, but Confederate rifle balls had not discriminated between two men who loved each other and the lovers of women around them.
They had died for a freedom that they themselves had never known. Their shared grave was not five minutes' walk from here.
She had buried the Confederates an equal distance in the opposite direction; those graves she would not visit.
There were still Pelphreys in Kentucky and Comptons in Boston. She wondered if they knew of their bachelor uncles who had been dead for a hundred and fifty years, and if in this modern age, they would still share the hate that had forced Tommy and Isaac to live a lie throughout their short time together. Or would they finally have been accepted and loved for who they were, welcomed into each other's families?
Truly, it no longer mattered. Only she now remembered Tommy's laughter and Isaac's sweet tooth.
Only she now remembered Tommy's deadly accuracy with his long Sharps rifle.
Only she now remembered Isaac's gentle touch with the horses.
Only she now remembered.
Remembering, Diarwen once more stood night watch under the stars in this valley, listening to the rustle of leaves and the quiet sounds of an opossum looking for its dinner. Now she was lucky enough to wear comfortable BDUs instead of calico and homespun.
Optimus had set an alert to bring him out of recharge at dawn. He unshuttered his optics to see Diarwen standing guard, back to him, at the edge of camp. When she heard him moving, she turned to him with a smile and a warm, "Fair morning."
"And to you as well," he replied. "Did you have a quiet watch?"
"Nothing stirring save memories, and a stray 'possum. I've one more thing to do here, Optimus, but 'twill only be a moment." She glanced away from him, to a patch of blue wildflowers.
"Very well," he rumbled. "I'll keep watch."
She knelt now to pick a small bouquet of those blue flowers, something—different—about her energy field.
Optimus watched her climb to the top of the hill through knee-high morning fog, then stop briefly, and locate her landmarks. After, knowing where she was, she went to a large tree, and knelt under it to place the flowers beside a boulder, overgrown deeply with moss, and surrounded by maidenhair ferns.
He wondered if the moss had been so thick, the ferns so luxurious, when she was here last.
She stood straight, took a step back, and drew her sword, pulling the back of the blade to her forehead, then pointed it away from herself and swept it down and to the side in salute, the light fog swirling about the blade.
With the pale sun shining on her hair, morning mist around her knees, she was ageless and timeless: a warrior honoring fallen comrades, as every warrior must.
Then she sheathed her blade, and took two more steps back before she pivoted and returned to camp, her aura changing again as she neared him.
Without a word, she gathered her things, leaving nothing but footprints.
Optimus asked, after a while, "Do you have something for your breakfast?"
"It's waiting for me ahead, I hope!" Once again, her usual persona was in place, cheerful, not a care in the world.
They walked back the way they had come. Diarwen went into the trees where a fallen oak allowed sunlight to reach the forest floor, and a patch of blackberries had set up housekeeping. She had a couple handfuls straight from the vine, juicy and sweet and still wet with dew.
There was no one near, so Optimus stayed in root form to descend that treacherous road. Diarwen at his side licked blackberry juice from her fingers.
End Part 6