Hey guys, sorry to leave you hanging for an extra week, but you finally get to learn about the mysterious Spanner, so I hope you'll forgive me. Enjoy! :)

Across Bounding Interstellar Waves

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10 – Interludes of Lucidity – 10

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She walked into his lab like nothing had ever been wrong, even though it had was the reason she'd come in the first place.

"Hey Jackie," Moonracer said with only part of a soft smile where she leaned against the open frame of the door. "I heard you had a rough orbital cycle."

He didn't respond, but his hands paused their meaningless modifications. He should have known Magnus would have a way to handle him when he woke up. His...episode had ended with him beating poor Drivewinder senseless in place of the Shockwave Wheeljack had seen. It was like a switch had gone off in his central processor. One minute he was wrestling with the Decepticon, the next he was standing over a viciously beaten and bloodied mech he hardly knew. An orbital cycle later and he still didn't remember doing it.

They must have told her what he'd done, but even still she stood there so easily, watching him with soft optics that he couldn't meet and saw in his recharge tremors. Her paint was thin, but bright, protoform silver showing through around her joints and digits where she frequently handled her different blasters. She favored her left leg and there was a restriction brace around that same knee. He wondered what had happened.

But she was beautiful. And for some reason that irritated him right now. Trapped in this slag pit and she was still just as lovely as ever.

"Come to tiptoe around my questionable sanity?" he wanted to snap, but he bit the ugly words back. It wasn't her fault the Wreckers handled him with extreme care now. Topspin didn't even bother to keep his safety on when they were in the same room.

"What are you doing here?" he asked instead, his voice low and lifeless, like a flat tire.

Moonracer pushed away from the door and swept forward with that grace of hers, none of it marred by a distinct limp and the whirr-and-click of the brace. She was obviously anxious, but she didn't shy away from him, which actually made him nervous. It had become abundantly clear to everyone that he wasn't safe to be around. And that didn't even take into account this connection he had with that thrice-slagged Swarm. No telling what Shockwave had done to him to get that, but it surely spelled just as much danger to those around him as himself. Shockwave was sickeningly efficient that way.

If Moonracer had gotten the warning, she ignored it blithely and instead watched him with those concerned optics.

"I came to see you," she told him.

He almost believed her. "Ultra Magnus asked you to come."

Her mouth twitched ever so slightly. "Actually he screamed it at me over what sounded like a very large invasion." She tilted her head at him. "Something to do with your handiwork I take it?"

Her optics didn't flinch away from him when she said it. Wheeljack began to wonder if the same force that had damaged her knee had affected her processor.

She raised a hand as if to touch his arm when he didn't answer her, but stopped and pulled it back into her personal zone. Wheeljack couldn't tell if he was disappointed or relieved.

"Will you tell me about it?" she asked softly.

Wheeljack's hands paused again. Not, 'do you want to talk about it', like he had heard with annoying repetition since the episode ended. It smoothed some of his rough edges. It implied he still had some choice in the matter, and that she would respect that choice even if he gave her an answer she didn't like. He wasn't at all sure that she would, but the allusion was nice in itself.

"I'm sure you've heard all about it already," he told her as he snapped part of a motor into place with a sharp clap. "Repetition isn't necessary."

He felt Moonracer look away. "I heard you beat Drivewinder within an inch of his internal energon," she said in a low voice. "What I want to know is why. Who did you think you were hitting?"

He felt her optics on him again and he resisted the urge to meet them. So far she'd been the only one to ask him that. Even Triage had written off his episode to lingering mental instability and left it at that.

But then she's always been cleverer than most bots credit her with.

He stared down at the intelligence Ultra Magnus had given him on Shockwave's drone net currently hovering in Cybertron's atmosphere, the figures making as much sense to him as his own mind at the moment.

"It was Shockwave," he finally told her. "I was in here, trying to work on the isolation field weapon-"

She gave a semi-nod. "The bubble-gun. Right."

He shot her an aggravated look, but continued. "The thing went off." He thumbed at the large dent in the wall behind him. "Next thing I knew I was back in Tyger Pax and Shockwave was standing over me."

She blinked as she took this in. "You had a flashback," she stated. "That's not uncommon. You know that."

He turned away from her, wanting to collapse in on himself and speed away, but the room didn't have room for his alt-mode. "It's not the same," he insisted. "Who else do you know of that cracks like that and turns on their own?"

She rolled her optics. "You're not dangerous-" she started.

Until he slammed his fist against the table, making his tools and the femme jump. "Then why is Drivewinder in medbay?" he shouted at her.

Moonracer didn't answer, but she could feel her sudden wariness as she watched him. It made him feel worse, like he had some need to prove to her he wasn't safe to be around.

Wheeljack groaned and hung his head, a dull pounding starting in the back of his processor. "Why are you here?" he moaned. "You just- you keep coming back even after-" He stopped himself, digits curling tightly around one of his screwdrivers. He thumped the point of it into the table sharper than he'd meant to, the sound of it frightening himself. "You just keep coming back," he repeated in a torn up voice.

She was silent. He spun the screwdriver against the table.

When the question in his processor grew into an all-consuming need to know, he finally asked her, "Why?"

Moonracer's optics widened as she started ever so slightly, and then her temperature rose in a metal blush. "Because I-" she started, misunderstanding.

"No," Wheeljack cut her off, afraid of what she might admit. He lowered his voice, but couldn't ask what he wanted. He was too afraid of her answer. "I mean," he quickly switched words. "Why are you still here? Why haven't you run yet?"

She was silent for a long time. The divot in the table became deeper.

"I can hear them," he said when he couldn't stand her silence any longer. "I don't know why or even how, but they're loud as sirens."

Her optic ridges creased together. This time she did put her hand on his vambrace, maybe to make up for her silence, maybe in relief that he hadn't waited. "Who Wheeljack?"

He put his hand to his forehead, dislodging hers in the process. "The Swarm," he reminded her. "I can hear them...chattering to each other like- like old sparks. And it's only getting worse. We ran into them orbit before yesterday and they were even louder. They never shut up-" He raised the screwdriver to slam into the table, but surprisingly strong fingers stopped him in the air.

He clapped his other hand over hers and, with effort, made himself drop the screwdriver before the Swarm in him figured out how to use it.

"I know that," Moonracer told him softly. He could feel her eyes on him. "You told me, remember? When you first came back to yourself."

He scowled furiously at his tools. "But they're still in there, Moonracer, the whole Swarm, in my head."

"Shockwave put them there-" she protested.

"But I can't make them leave!" he shouted, tossing her off and stomping a safe distance away before turning around again and jerking his thumb at his chestplates. "I'm not safe to be around." He cut out every word. "I thought that was crystal clear at this point, but you keep coming back." He threw up his hands, distressed huffs escaping out his vents. "No matter what you see, you keep coming back..."

The fight went out of him, like helium out of a punctured balloon. He stopped, leaning his palms against the scarred surface of the table. But he still kept the table between him and Moonracer.

"Why-" He couldn't look at her, couldn't stop himself from whispering. "Why do you still want me?"

Arms clamped across her frame, standing rigid where he'd left her, Moonracer looked like he'd just asked her to walk naked in front of the High Council instead of a simple question.

"Because I love you, you bolts-for-brains idiot!" The words he was terrified to hear boiled out of her.

Wheeljack stared at her, rising warmth quickly followed by a wash of cold terror. She looked away, optics flaring in tightly reigned emotion, but couldn't keep her optics from him. "I know it's stupid-"

It was, but his spark sank anyway hearing her say it too.

"-I know you already love another femme-"

The sinking paused. He did?

She must have caught the confusion in his optics because she forced air out stiff vents and covered her mouth before collecting herself enough to go on.

"I know about Spanner," she told him, voice threatening to break. "You kept calling me by her name when we found you."

Wheeljack remembered, though he really wished he didn't. He'd blocked out all those unimportant little details, why couldn't he forget this one too?

He stared at her, drifting like he was no longer connected to the floor. "Spanner?" he finally heard himself say. "You think I love...Spanner?"

She looked up at the ceiling, biting her lips closed, and nodded quickly.

"Don't do it," he told himself. "Keep it to yourself." But it was too much.

"Ha!"

Wheeljack's laugh shredded through the quiet in the room. It was a grating, wheezy sound, rough from long disuse, but he still couldn't stop.

Moonracer stared at him, gaping. Was he...was he laughing at her? After what she'd said? Did Shockwave spark-swap Wheeljack for Sunstreaker?

Before she could lay into him, Wheeljack's rasping wheeze was replaced by rasping words. "Spanner wasn't my sweetspark."

With that blasted mask he always wore, Moonracer couldn't see his face, but she heard some form of smile in his voice – bereaved or relieved it was impossible to tell.

"She wasn't?"

Wheeljack looked at her and shook his head. There was definitely a bittersweet tinge to his optics this time. "No," he repeated.

"She was Ratchet's daughter."

...

Moonracer needed to sit down.

"Ratchet...has a daughter?"

Wheeljack flinched. "Had," he corrected.

Moonracer looked down, feeling foolish. "She died in the war," she murmured, for the first time glad that Ratchet wasn't here to hear her misstep. Everybot had lost someone once Megatron came to power. So many lights had been extinguished...

"No." Wheeljack surprised her again. "Long before all this." He swept a hand to take in the decay surrounding them.

Moonracer stared at him, central processor threatening to run in loops. Ratchet had a daughter...Ratchet had a daughter.

She let herself fall back against the wall behind her and hissed out air as she slid down to the ground, legs bending at the knees as she sank. "I don't believe this," she muttered, trying to reconcile the image of cantankerous, grumpy, wrench-slinging Ratchet with heel-struts and glitter paint. "I mean, it's Ratchet."

She looked up to find Wheeljack standing next to her. "How?" she stammered.

The engineer followed her down to the floor, the scrape of metal on metal not raucous enough to make it through Moonracer's shock. "He adopted her," he said. "Her femme-creator extinguished on his table at Iacon Central from an overdose. No one knew what to do with her, so when Ratchet announced he was keeping her. You know how he is. No one had the internal wiring to argue with him."

Slowly coming out of her mental cloud, Moonracer asked, "Was...was she a lot like me?"

Wheeljack's huff of laughter told her more than actual words. "No," came his immediate response. "Not really. Maybe in the heat of battle when you get that scary look in your optics, but it's only a passing resemblance."

Moonracer wasn't sure if that was a relief or not. "She was a tough femme then?"

Wheeljack nodded, one arm looped around a bent knee as he watched the distant past. "Span was...daring. Adventurous. There was nothing she couldn't do if she decided she wanted to do it." He rolled his head to face her, head fin ringing against the wall. His optics were laughing. "It drove Ratchet crazy."

A small smile twitched at Moonracer's faceplates, but it was a mechanical gesture. "She sounds unstoppable." Nothing like me at all.

Wheeljack gave a slow nod. A long, weary sigh escaped him as he reached back and scraped a palm against the ridges of his helm. "But she was also sick. Her femma was circuit boosting and it warped Spanner's spark chamber, left her open to flare fits that could melt her from the inside. They're treatable, but only if you catch them in time. And once..." He exhaled again, his words riding along with it. "...they didn't.

"She was out with friends, getting into Primus-only-knows what kind of trouble, when she had a fit. Her friends-" He bit the word out. "-got scared and left her in some back alleyway alone. One of them called Ratchet half a breem later from an attack of consciousness and told him where she was, but by then it was too late. She died a few cycles after we found her."

Moonracer sat there quietly, trying to take it in. Poor Ratchet... she thought. No wonder he's so unhappy.

Wheeljack's last words finally registered in her processor. "Wait, you were there too?"

Wheeljack nodded. "I only had a few more orns before I finished my med-caste training under Ratchet. That's how I met them both. Ratchet was my caste appointed instructor – makes you wonder what he did to deserve that kind of punishment, yeah? – and Spanner dropped by after her shifts at the pharmacy dispensary so they could drive home together."

"Did you like her?" She tried to say it like she was teasing, but she forgot how once half the words were already out her mouth.

Wheeljack shrugged. "Maybe in an older-femme-crush sort of way, but that was before I got to know the femme under the black-and-neon paintjob. When that withered up, somehow we were friends."

Moonracer's processor was perfectly quiet, possibly for the first time ever in her life cycle. What were you supposed to think when the missing core of your spark called you another femme's name and she turned out to be the daughter of his best friend who tragically and needlessly died?

Something pulled at her digits and Moonracer gave a small start. She looked down, expecting to see an over-fed frizz-rat experimentally nibbling at her paint, but there was none. No twitching whiskers, no beady red optics, no snaky tail.

Dark gray digits were laced between her lighter ones. She had no memory of taking Wheeljack's hand, and from the look on his face neither did he. Must've happened when I wasn't looking... she heard her processor mumble like it was whole different bot.

It was probably the same bot that had pulled her sidearm out of subspace when she'd been distracted.

Wheeljack went stiff, seeing the danger pointed at his t-cog about the same time she did.

"Sorry!" she immediately started to babble as she dropped it back into her subspace. "Sorry I- well I thought it was a frizz-rat, only it wasn't. It was you. Well, your hand, which is still connected to the rest of you so it's still technically you and, um, ah-"

She went to scratch the ridge of her nasal plating out of nervous habit, only to almost smack herself in the face with Wheeljack's hand when she forgot to let go first. She tried to let go, then worried he might think she was trying to shake him off, tightened her grip on his digits just as he tried to let go in what could only be described as the clumsiest handshake in Cybertron's history.

They somehow disentangled their hands and Moonracer, in horror, heard the most embarrassing burst of laughter jump out her mouth. Okay, even I'd ditch me at this point.

Horrified that that might be true, she lurched to her feet, hands clasped safely out of the way behind her back.

"I should, um-" She pointed at the closed door, already backing towards it. "I really need to, ah, to deal with those frizz-rats so I'll, I'll just see you tomorrow and-"

The door closing cut off her panicked verbal flow. She stood there for a cycle, staring at it, picturing Wheeljack sitting where she'd left him, watching her with bright optics. She had no idea what he'd been thinking through that mortifying display of insanity, what he must be thinking right this very cycle on the other side of the door. She certainly couldn't tell with that blasted mask covering most of his face.

She leaned her helm against the door with a metallic thump, a whine hiccuping out her vocorder.

"You almost shot your crush," she reminded herself bitterly, just soft enough that Wheeljack couldn't hear her through the door. "Biggest. Moment killer. Ever."

She enunciated each word with another thump against the door.