Seaspray stood in the kitchen alone; staring at the staircase while his chronometer ticked away the minutes. He had picked up the pieces of the pots he had broken in his rush to be by Alana's side. He had carefully checked all around to make sure that not even the tiniest shard remained for someone to step on. And now.
Now he had nothing to do, but wait. He'd half expected Chac to come back down, perhaps even kick the robot out, but either the younger brother was fast asleep again or had decided to not interfere for now. Leaving Seaspray bewildered in the dim room in the middle of the night, playing Alana's words over and over again in his processor, searching for some clue, something to guide him to what he should do next. 'I don't want you to…' To what? To help? To see? To be here at all? Seaspray's audio detector's could pick up the faint muffled sounds from the rooms above, sounds he suspected were crying. He eyed the staircase with frustration knowing that his bulky shoulders would never be able to make it through the narrow hole in the ceiling. Besides, she said she just wanted to be left alone.
Alone. Seaspray moved to sit with his back to the wall, where he still had a clear view of the staircase. He felt that sitting was the only way to keep him from doing something impulsive, like attempting to remodel Chac and Alana's stairway. He settled to the floor very carefully, not wanting to damage anything else in the house, and stared toward the dark upstairs numbly. From the second he'd made up his mind to tell Prime, Seaspray had focused on getting here. To this place. He just knew that once he and Alana were together that everything would be okay, they would help each other through this. It had never occurred to him that Alana might not want him here. That she might not want his help. I just made things worse. Seaspray berated himself, how could I have forgotten to send them a message saying I was coming?
He locked all his joints into place, and then allowed his hydraulics to relax, settling in, determined not to move. If this was a close as he could get, then this is where he was going to stay. He tried to push the image of Alana's reddened eyes, her trembling hands, deeper into his databanks where he wouldn't be forced to return to it, but it refused to be filed away. She doesn't want my help right now, he had to remind himself. I'll just wait here until she does.
A sudden thought struck him. What if this is it? What if this is how it ends for us? Seaspray had a vision of Alana rejecting him, and he could feel his world slipping away around him as he nearly panicked from the idea. But her haunted eyes reminded him that it wasn't all about his world. He stared down at his bulky metal body, looking for something to distract him from the ache inside. Six million years and it still felt clumsy, because in six million years Seaspray had hardly changed. Six million years ago Alana's people hadn't even existed, but Seaspray had already felt awkward in his robot mode, hated his voice, and loved a good fight.
Seaspray hardly ever thought much about his past, no Autobot or Decepticon did. Oh, they were aware of what had happened in the past in general, especially when it affected their present state, but very few of them thought about their personal pasts. A robot had no need for memories to linger in his consciousness. Six million years of data was stored deep in Seaspray's memory banks, each instant recorded, filed, and put away, never coming to mind unless he had a directive to search. He had been shaped by his experiences only slightly. He'd not grown. He'd not matured. Up to six months ago, when he had first seen Alana, he'd not really changed at all in six million years. Except once.
For the first time in millennia Seaspray uploaded the memory. After all, he had the time, and it would at least distract him from the image that was lingering in his processor of Alana crying upstairs where he couldn't get and wasn't wanted.
Seaspray had been brought online just as the Third Cybertronian War was taking a turn for the worse. The Decepticons were overwhelming the Autobots throughout much of the planet, and in many places had forced them underground, into the very bowels of Cybertron. Someone, Seaspray realized he didn't know who, had pointed out that it would be useful to the Autobots if they had a small, quick, scout that could navigate the planet's maze of sewers; the series of fetid, dark pipes where used oil, coolant, and acid rain collected and flowed to processing stations. A maintenance boat had been selected and rebuilt, rather hastily, and programmed with a cybernetic personality by the supercomputer Vector Sigma. Seaspray had spent the first million years of his life speeding through the filth of Cybertron in complete darkness, confined to going only backwards or forwards through the narrow rivers of greasy sludge.
It was when he was sent to assist in the set up of a refugee colony on an uninhabited world for Autobots unsuitable for battle that he first saw the ocean, for Seaspray considered all oceans to be one. It was like nothing he'd experienced on Cybertron, a vast expanse of blue waves stretching to touch the horizon line; as far as the sensor could detect, and as deep as a robot could dive, teeming with aquatic creatures of all shapes and sizes. Clean water, limitless freedom in all directions, adventure, mystery, organic life, deep sea, open sky, it was everything he'd never known he was missing. Everything he could have dreamed of. Seaspray remembered the rush, the charge that had surged through his systems when he'd first sped over those powerful, pristine waves; flying across the open plain of blue; graceful and free and bathed in sunlight of an alien world, feeling for the first time completely at home with himself and the universe. In that moment he was transformed. The ocean made him bold. For the first time in his life he felt pride; pride that he alone, out of all Autobots, was master of this wondrous element.
When he'd returned to the sewers of Cybertron he'd taken the memory with him. He let the knowledge that somewhere, on some planet, the ocean was waiting, give him hope for the future. Remembering how it felt kept him going through the long millennia patrolling and fighting in the dark. But after he'd left Cybertron, like many did after Prime and Megatron and their crews disappeared, he'd always managed to find a planet that had the ocean. So, he had let the precious memory of his first ocean voyage slip into storage. He no longer needed it.
Seaspray looked at the shadows falling across the stairs, wondering if there would ever be a time when this would slip into storage. If there would be a time when he would forget all of this, forget Tlal like he'd forgotten his first taste of the ocean, forget Chac, and Alana, and the baby. All the pain, all the love, everything he had thought he cared about now, turned into a series of ones and zeroes and locked away.
No. He thought firmly, with a passion that surprised himself. I will not let it. Looking back on his entire six million years for the first time he realized how empty they seemed. Sure there had been war, and death, and battle, and friendship and laughter, there'd been good times that he wished he'd tried harder to hold on to. But there hadn't been love, not love like this. There hadn't been Alana.
Seaspray braced his back against the wall. He was still hurting deep inside, and the fear that he was losing Alana was threatening to overwhelm him, but the Autobot was resolved. He wasn't giving this up without a fight. And even if Alana rejected him, even if this was how it ended, sitting in a dim room feeling helpless and alone, he swore that he would never, ever, let himself forget her, and what it had been like, being in love.
There was a flicker of light at the top of the stairs, and Seaspray's joints unlocked automatically. His hopes sank though when he realized that it was Chac coming down. The young man stopped halfway and peered into the kitchen. He seemed startled when the robot in his living room shifted. "Seaspray," he hissed, "What are you doing down here?"
The robot shrugged, preparing himself to be kicked out of the house, "I don't fit up the stairs." He answered dryly. If I get kicked out of the house, I'm going to park myself in the street, the Autobot had decided. Chac examined his staircase, then eyed his sister's friend.
"That's never stopped you before." He reminded Seaspray. The Tlalakan frowned, "What's wrong? Why aren't you with Alana?" he asked in a low voice as he finished his way down the stairs, quietly talking a seat next to the motorboat.
Seaspray looked away, rubbing one metal arm with a blue oversized hand. "She…She said she wanted to be alone."
Chac let his head knock against the wall in frustration, "Blast it, Alana!" he muttered to himself. He inhaled deeply before turning to the bewildered robot. "Seaspray you have to go to her."
"But.."
Chac took a hold of Seaspray's shoulder, and Seaspray noticed that the pain in the Tlalakan man's eyes matched his own. "Seaspray, listen to me. I know what she said, and you have to go to her. She needs you now. The last thing she needs is to be alone." Seaspray hesitated and Chac continued gently, but gripping the Autobot's shoulder tightly and watching him with his blue, intense eyes.
"Please Seaspray. You have to understand. Our people, Alana, we had been enslaved for so long; and slavery changes you. You train yourself not to show pain, not to stand out from the crowd. You put on a brave face for your friends and family, do everything you can to build up your defenses, because if you falter, if you become a burden, you can take them all down with you." Chac shook his head sadly, "Alana is brave, much braver than I ever was, but now is not the time for her to be brave. She has to grieve and she needs to grieve with you, but she won't let herself."
Seaspray felt a little ashamed. There was so much about Alana that he didn't know yet, but he couldn't help feeling that he should have been able to figure this out. "I hadn't realized." He murmured. "I'm sorry."
Chac dropped his arm and stared at the ceiling, "I love my sister, very much," he said, "and my sister loves you Seaspray, more than she thinks you can understand." He looked at the machine sitting next to him, "But I think you do understand, or you wouldn't be sitting here in the dark with me."
There was a pause while they both considered this. A man and a machine, sitting on the floor in the dim room in the middle of the night on account of the woman they both knew the other would die to protect. It was a moment of solidarity between the two males that startled them both. "I love her." Seaspray burbled out.
The Tlalakan clapped the Autobot on the back, "If I had ever thought otherwise, Seaspray, I wouldn't have let you stay. Now," he said, gesturing to the dark hole at the top of the stairs, "I think we both know what he easiest way up the stairs is. I'll stay here until you get back."
Seaspray nodded to Chac. And after removing Bumblebee's gift from his chassis the motorboat left the house in a hurry.