Chapter 10

She didn't move at first, optics studying him as he went into stasis while her processor worked to analyze everything that had happened tonight. It occurred to her that she should contact the autobots as soon as possible, right now even, but she couldn't bring herself to move away. Not yet. She also realized that she was running out of time. Lockdown had given her a week when she contacted him on Backlash's ship. That had been almost five days ago.

Two days. She had two days left.

An old fear struck her spark and she finally turned away from the scarred mech. She had forty-eight hours to steal the shield, and here she was, helping him and thinking about him and staring at him and not at all trying to actually take the shield. Pits, she'd given it back to him. Why? Why didn't she just take the shield and run while he was down? Why did she stop and help him? The mech was even confused. He'd asked her himself, and now her response echoed in her processor.

It was his optics. It had to be. And his face. And his arms...and his scars, and the shape of his armor and his scent and the way he spoke to her so softly when-Stop it! Venting sharply, she moved away from him to stand in front of the controls. Her hands hovered over the keys, thinking of the code he'd given her to contact base. She hesitated. Did she really want to call the autobots? Wouldn't that just make this mess even bigger? It would be impossible to get the shield if she did, even if the mech was too damaged to stop her. She'd gotten into it with a lot of autobots, and she knew that not one of them had forgotten.

If they showed up on the moon, they wouldn't let her out of their sight.

But the mech was damaged, and he couldn't pull self repairs. The thought of just grabbing the shield and leaving him, broken and alone, here on the moon...it was painful. Suddenly she found herself wondering just when exactly she had started to care for the mech. Wasn't he kind of like her enemy? She was supposed to be taking advantage of his weakness, not worrying about it. Primus, she'd known him for a week almost. What was she doing?

She was always on the move, she never stayed in one place longer than absolutely necessary, and she never got close to anyone. That was how she'd survived all of these years on her own. She needed no one. She wanted no one. She was perfectly fine on her own and she didn't need some ridiculously beautiful, scarred, quiet, hard-headed mech around. All she needed was the fragging shield on his back. She should just pry it out of his armor and throw him out now while he was unconscious.

Instead, her fingers landed on the keys and she accessed her ship's comm. lines and punched in the autobots' number. She straightened, crossing her arms over her chest plates as the screen dimmed and the computer pinged softly. She turned her head to look at the mech, completely still. Now would be the perfect time to steal the shield, but she wasn't going to. He had trusted her, even though it was forced, and it had taken her days to get to this point. Suddenly earning his trust was just as important as taking the shield.

The pinging continued until her call was answered, and the screen flickered as the image of a couple of autobots popped up. She blinked, recognizing one of them. She smiled brightly, and greeted, "Hi there, Prowl!"

The mech jumped. The other looked back and forth between them. Prowl said, voice almost dripping with disdain, "Jinx. I was told that you had crash landed on the moon."

"You were told right." She nodded, "I didn't know you were on Earth! Hows the weather down there?"

"Mild." He said. "Why have you contacted us?"

"What is it with you autobots and despising me?" She asked, still smiling. She folded her arms across her chest, "Its not like I slipped into your ship and stole your best blasters or anything."

His blue optics narrowed. "Odd, thats exactly how I remember our last encounter." She gave him her best innocent look. The mech wasn't amused, "Why are you contacting base."

Her smile faded as her thoughts once again turned to the mech in stasis a few steps away. She glanced at him, questioning her actions. He was just a mech. A freaking gorgeous mech, but just a mech. And he was in her way. She needed the shield, and now was her chance to get it. He was in stasis, unable to defend himself if she decided to wrestle the shield from his back armor. Her optics trailed over his black armor, marred with some of the worst scarring she'd ever seen. Take the shield. Take it now. Tell them you dialed a wrong number or something. Just do it.

Instead, she looked back at the screen. The two autobots were staring at her, waiting for a response. "I guess Backlash probably told you I was here, huh?"

"He did."

"Well hes the reason why I'm calling." She held Prowl's gaze, "something happened. Some burrowers got into the ship, ended up blowing it up with us inside." The autobots' expressions shifted as she spoke. Prowl became concerned, his friend in the background started panicking. "We're both okay, but he's damaged, and he needs medical assistance as soon as possible."

"Is he still online?! Where is he!" The one in the background pushed forward, blue optics wide. "Is he aware, in pieces, whole or what?!"

"He's in stasis, isn't he?" Prowl cut in, interrupting the other, "or else he'd be making this call himself."

She nodded slowly, "He is."

"Pits that mech always gets himself in trouble like this," The other autobot threw his arms up in the air and stomped off, "I'm going to find Flashback."

"Hurry, Hotshot." Prowl distracted himself with tapping out commands or comm. line codes on the computer. "Do you know the extent of his damage?"

"He's blind," She said, "can't see a thing. He said something about his back struts being damaged, and a knee joint. He had a hard time walking."

"Do you know how to operate the space bridge?"

She blinked owlishly at him. "The what?"

He paused to look up at her again, optics narrowed like he was being forced to share a secret with his enemy. "Backlash didn't tell you."

"Tell me? About a space bridge? Uh, no. He failed to mention that." She vented, "A fragging space bridge?! Where the pit is that at?" The mech didn't say a thing about any kind of bridge. A space bridge, on the moon? Her processor raced, automatically thinking of all the advantages she could gain from it. A free trip to earth, whenever she got the shield...or a free trip anywhere else in the galaxy if she didn't. But where was it?

"Its there on the moon," Prowl said, voice suspicious, "Backlash's family discovered it a few months ago."

"Okay, where is it?"

"I don't know. I've never seen it myself, but Backlash knows."

"And that helps how? The mech is in stasis. He's not moving for another twelve hours."

"You have a reputation for finding anything thats of use to you. I thought that you might have located it on your own."

"Nope. I didn't have a clue until you said something. So are you going to send help or not?"

"Yes. I was hoping that you knew of the space bridge so we could transport him here within the hour, but seeing as you don't, we have to prepare a transport to bring him here."

Which mean that Backlash would have to wait for treatment. The realization bothered her, and she straightened, "How long?"

"A day or two at most."

"Pits." She vented quietly, "What if he gets worse or something?"

"We have no choice but to deal with it when the transport arrives on the moon."

"Is there something I can do? I'm not a medic, but I can still do something, right?"

He studied her, silent. She was about to yell at him when a third mech hurried into the room. This one appeared older than the others, and there was an intense frown on his face. Prowl stepped aside when he came up to the screen. Narrowed blue optics fixed on her. She asked, "Who are you?"

"Ratchet, head of the autobot med bay," He said, "where is he?"

"In stasis right now," She said. Jinx described his injuries while the medic nodded, taking note of everything she said. "I made him swallow some energon before he passed out, but I couldn't do anything else because I don't have the training."

"The damage doesn't sound life threatening. What concerns me is his blindness, its possible that he damaged the sensory wiring in his processor. If he did, it will be difficult to repair, but not impossible. This isn't the worst he's suffered."

"I've seen the scars," She said quietly. "Shockwave got him with the fusion cannon, didn't he?"

A mildly impressed look crossed his face, "Yes, and it hardly slowed him down. Before he even finished recovering, he carried out a rescue mission then assisted in the final battle against Cyclonus' decepticons."

Somehow, that didn't surprise her. "Is there something I can do to help him?" She repeated, hoping that he would answer her and not just stand there staring like she grew two heads. Prowl was still watching her like that, standing behind the medic.

"Without training, you've done all you can for him just by getting him out of the open and giving him energon to consume. Stay close to him when he comes back online, he doesn't react well to waking in strange places. It won't help that hes blind, either."

She nodded, "Its not like I got anywhere important to go." Not for two more days, anyway. She ground her dentals when she realized that waiting for the autobots may take up the rest of her time before she had to take the shield.

"His family must be notified. Can you be contacted through this channel?"

"Yes." She answered, focusing on the medic again.

"We'll contact you when the transport departs. Until then, stay close and keep him calm."

She rolled her optics at him, "Sounds simple enough. Keep the blind, injured mech calm while hes trapped in a foreign ship with a femme that he doesn't trust."

The medic cut her a sharp look, "Just do it, youngling."

She glared back, "Fine. Just get your bags packed and fly your afts up here already." With that said, she closed the link. The monitor flickered off, and her ship filled with silence. She turned to fix her gaze on the mech, asking herself for perhaps the hundredth time just why this was all happening. She walked towards him as quietly as she could, leaning down to study him more closely now that he was unconscious.

He really was a good looking mech. His height, shape, and features were all attractive...marred only by the thick blanket of scars that covered him head to toe-plates. Why hadn't he taken care of them? Jinx had a few bad scars of her own, though they were barely visible since she'd spent months keeping them clean and patching over them until they smoothed out.

Frowning, she straightened and crossed her arms. "You're a real mess, you know that?" She told him. She stood there in the quiet for a moment, just looking at him. Then she turned and walked away a few steps to sit down with her back to the wall. She could feel exhaustion setting in. Shoving down all of the questions running rampant through her processor, she slowed her intakes and let it take her into a deep recharge.

Jinx came online hours later, frame tensing as her systems booted. She blinked a few times before she focused on the pilot's chair. Her spark seized when she realized it was empty.

Climbing to her feet, Jinx scanned the interior of the ship. Before she was even fully awake, her processor was cycling through questions. Where was he? When had he left? How far did he get? She called out, "Backlash?!"

The ship was dark, so she didn't see him at first. He was leaning against the wall across the room, the soft red glow of his optics turning in her direction. She nearly scrambled for him, "Pits, mech! What are you doing?"

"You're here," He said, voice quieter than usual.

She blinked owlishly at him, "Of course I'm here. I told you I wouldn't leave, didn't I? I was just recharging..." She reached out to touch his arm, "what are you doing?"

"I needed distraction."

She raised her optic ridges at him, "So you got up and strained your injuries?"

"You didn't respond. I thought you had left."

Jinx moved closer, shifting her hand to his back. Studying him, she noticed that he was leaning to take weight off of his damaged leg, bent almost oddly into the metal paneling to ease the pain in his back. "I didn't. Now get over here and sit down before you really hurt yourself."

His optics narrowed, that same hint of fear in them. Jinx moved to stand against him so she could help him back to the chair. Cautiously, he raised the arm closest to her and braced it over her shoulders. Her spark did something weird when he shifted to lean on her instead of the wall. Jinx guided him back to the chair and the control panel, "How exactly were you distracting yourself?"

"Counting steps."

She blinked, helping him sit down. "Doing what?"

"Counting steps," He repeated.

"Okay...what does that mean?" Jinx looked over him, looking for any new damage. There wasn't any.

"Counting steps is a way to learn surroundings when you have no light. So many steps one way to a wall, and so many steps the other. Its a way to...see."

Jinx straightened to hunt down another cube of energon. Her optics brightened when she saw him tense when she lifted her hand from his shoulder, breaking contact. That's...new. A theory came together in her head, processor analyzing everything that had happened and been said since the ship exploded. He doesn't like contact, but hates being blind. He can't see anything... Curious, she brought a hand back down to his arm, fingers stroking over rough scarring. A slight easing of his frame, hardly noticeable but there all the same. He was uncomfortable but accepting, even wanting, the contact.

She grinned, her spark flaring with triumph. It was interesting, and by far the the best reaction she'd pulled out of him even if it was a small one. It also made her realize just how much the blindness was effecting him. Her smile dimmed, suddenly remembering his earlier words; "You didn't respond. I thought you had left."

He had tried to speak to her, and she had been recharging. Her voice softened, "Backlash?"

"Yes?"

"How long have you been up?"

"A few hours at most."

A few hours of complete silence while he was completely blind. No wonder he'd been up moving around when she found him. Wincing, she whispered, "I'm sorry."

"You needed the rest. Don't apologize."

"Still. I bet you were freaking out, huh?" She settled on the floor beside him again, crossing her arms over his good leg.

"As I said...I needed distraction." He changed subjects on her, "did you contact the autobots?"

"Yep." She nodded, "They said they wouldn't get here for a few days."

"Thats what I thought."

Jinx brushed her palm over his leg plating, finding a particularly rough scar. She traced the jagged edge, eying it as she tried to think of what weapon had made it. "Why didn't you tell me there was a space bridge on the moon."

She felt the tension in his legs in reaction. "The space bridge?"

"Yeah, some stiff named Prowl told me about it-" More tension, though she imagined it was from irritation. "-and wanted to know if I knew where it was. So if you could just tell me where it is, that would help a lot and I could get you down there in a few hours." She titled her head up to see his expression, half expecting it to be closed off.

His optics were still narrowed, looking down at her unseeingly. His mouth was turned down in a slight frown. His jaw was clenched. She wondered briefly if he knew how easy he was to read right now. He answered slowly, "It's deep underground in the caverns."

Jinx vented sharply, "Of course it is. And you're the only one that can find it, right?"

"My family can as well, but no one else knows its exact location."

"I'm guessing you can't just give me directions?"

"Why are you so fixated on it."

"Because you're blind and probably in a lot of pain," Jinx rolled her optics, "why else?"

When he didn't answer, she sighed, "Would you just trust me already? Maybe, just this once, I don't want to hurt you."

"Nothing you do is without a purpose," He started.

"You're right. The purpose is to save your aft. Why is that so hard to believe?"

"You've spent the last week trying to attack or trick me into lowering my guard. You tell me why its so hard to believe."

Jinx glared at him, "You are the most hard-headed, confounding, brilliant, ridiculously attractive mech I've ever met. If I was still out for the slagging shield, don't you think I would have grabbed it by now?"

He stilled and his optics became distant, thinking hard about what she'd said. Jinx tried her best not to think it through herself. I'll get it next time he's in recharge, she swore. She needed to change the subject. "Where did this scar come from?"

"What?"

She pressed her palm to the mark she'd been tracing, "This one. Where did it come from?"

"Its not important-"

"Why are you being rude? Just tell me. You want distraction, I'm trying to keep you distracted."

"A burrower. Most of my scars come from them."

"Pits, what did he hit you with?"

"She." He corrected, an edge to his voice.

Jinx stopped, staring up at him. "'She'? What did 'she' hit you with?"

"Claws."

Jinx frowned, edging closer. "Those must have been some big freaking claws."

"They were."

"Were?"

"Shes offline now." The note in his voice was sharper. This was something he didn't want to talk about-she could see it in his gaze. It confused her. She had seen the burrowers. They were an insane, mindless bunch of skeletal mechs and femmes. Yet he made it sound like this one was different. Whoever 'she' was, she was important.

And she was gone.

From the glaze of pain in his optics, she could tell that the loss was recent. He hadn't gotten through it yet. Jinx felt the scar beneath her fingers, carefully mapping out the harsh mark in her processor as she processed all of this. "Why did she attack you?"

"She didn't remember who I was." There was something broken in his voice. Jinx dropped it. She took one of his hands and pulled it to her own armor. He tensed, "What are you-"

It was old, and she had managed to wear down the ugly edges over the years, but she found the scar easily on her shoulder. She slid his palm over it so he felt it, "This one came from an insecticon. He caught me with a pincher, nearly cut my arm clean off. Then I shot him in the faceplates."

She smiled when she saw how uncomfortable he was with this. He wasn't pulling away, though. He spoke slowly, tone suspicious, "What is this?"

"I just told you what it was."

"I meant what are you doing."

She shrugged, "I don't really know. I thought it would be a good way to pass time until those morons on earth get up here. You told me about one of your scars, I told you about one of mine. It's your turn again." She used her other hand to touch the worst of his scars, the one on his side. She knew it came from Shockwave's fusion cannon, but she wanted to hear him say it. "This one?"

"Shockwave."

She waited for an explanation, but he wasn't offering anything else. "That was enlightening."

He made an expression that looked a lot like he was rolling his optics, "The decepticons seized the autobot base on earth, using the burrowers as an advantage against the autobots. I was trying to keep them all safe, and in the middle of it all I was shot down."

"Ouch."

"It was painful, but the scars wouldn't have been so bad if Cyclonus hadn't caught me in the last battle."

"Cyclonus?" She squinted at him.

"Yes."

"What did he do to you?"

"He tried to turn me inside out."

Jinx worked her jaw, then lifted his hand to her chest plates where her biggest scars were. "Seacons." She bit out, holding her breath as old, painful memories came back to the front of her processor. "Caught me looting their base. They put me in their brig and did...things."

"'Things'?"

"Bad things," She clarified, "things I'm still trying to forget about. Lets just say that I knew something they didn't, and they were willing to do anything to know it, too...and enjoy themselves while they were at it. You ever been forced into merging?"

His fingers twitched beneath hers. He answered, "No."

"Consider yourself lucky. Its not fun."

His voice seemed to soften, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It's all in the past. You're not the one that hurt me." Her optics focused on his again, "you've never hurt me."

"I've come close to it," Backlash muttered, "several times."

She grinned at that. "So I am getting underneath all of that thick armor, huh?"

"You're a nuisance."

"Thats not nice." She picked out another scar on his frame and touched it.

"Burrowers, when I was young. I don't remember the details other than they got into our ship before we adjusted security to react to pick up their energon signatures."

Nodding, Jinx guided his hand to her side. "An autobot designated Drift gave me a warning cut there when he caught me following him."

"You were caught often, weren't you?"

"At first, yeah. It wasn't until I went through a couple of near-death experiences that I figured out how to actually stay hidden." Her hand moved elsewhere, to a gouge on his shoulder. "Here?"

He told her, slowly relaxing as he fell into the routine. They went on for what felt like hours, exchanging stories. She ran out of scars long before he did, but he didn't seem to care. Talking was a distraction, even if some of the stories behind the scars bothered him. He had the softest voice she'd heard, even if it was toneless. She realized that she liked it. When he would stop, the quiet grew too heavy.

Eventually he slipped back into recharge. This time she stayed close, trying to her best to stay awake in case the autobots tried to call back. She leaned against the mech's legs slowly, resting her chin on her folded arms. Her optics were still on his face.

What the pit am I doing? She asked herself, whats happening here? Her optics narrowed, shifting to the shield on his back. She had less than two days.

SORRY GUYS. We went so long without a lot of work until like a month ago and now it just keeps flooding in and we're out working all day every day. I can't even remember the last time I had more than a day off. ANYWAY...yeah.

Kinda gets crappier towards the ending of the chapter, but thats because the beginning was written before we started working our asses off. the rest was written over a series of nights anywhere from ten to one in the morning. Lots of fun. Yeah.

Backlash and Jinx belong to me, as well as the burrowers and the story. Transformers does not.

Love to you all, I hope you enjoyed reading. :) I'll try to update sooner next time.