Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers. All recognizable characters are the property of HasTak. All unrecognizable ones are the intellectual property of yours truly; their theft is punishable by severe voodoo-induced pain in any and all sensitive organs of the body, followed by eternal damnation.
Because, you know, stealing is wrong.
Title: Juxtaposition
Summary: Transformers AU. She saved his life... and did not even know it. A series of unrelated events results in an earth-shattering meeting between species, cultures, and minds that is merely the beginning of so very much more.
Rating: T
Warnings: mild cursing, mood swings
Author Notes: Transition chapter ahoy. Hey, more robots! That's good, right?
Transformers: Juxtaposition
Chapter Ten
It's been a big day, what with the abduction and all.
– Simon, Firefly
She dreamed of wet grass and smoke tainted air, the mechanical groaning of an engine damaged beyond repair blending with the whisper of falling rain. Ever-changing light caught on falling drops: red, green, yellow, red, green... each color vibrant against inky black.
She dreamed of red metal, twisted and mangled, and silver puzzle pieces strewn upon the ground like things discarded from a child's toybox. Puddles of blue and pink gleamed upon grass and pavement. A steady glow pried past jumbled metal, fingers of light pressing through to caress the shadows.
She dreamed of gold, cracked and dull, damp yet warm, her skin crawling with static at its touch.
She dreamed of a star, pure and perfect and beautiful, cupped within her palms.
She dreamed of pain.
She dreamed of the dying shrieks of tortured metal and laughing demons with fiery eyes.
She dreamed of quiet voices that echoed and resonated, reaching into her chest and vibrating within her belly and lungs like rolling thunder.
And then the shadows of a rain-soaked night faded and drifted apart like mist beneath sunlight, and she suddenly realized that she was no longer dreaming.
"Stop moving before I weld the wrong thing." Clatter of metal on metal, a loud sizzling hiss. "What did this?"
A second voice, familiar, consonants smudged negligently. "One o' those ol' laser cannons the 'Cons were so fond of. Remember those? Big ugly things."
"I remember the messes they made. Didn't know they still used them."
"Yup. Still hurts same as ever, too."
A laugh, short, humorless. "You're lucky Mirage knows basic repair." A pause. "Did you ever find it?"
Sigh. "Kinda'. Found what was left of it."
"Damaged?"
"Destroyed."
A moment of silence.
"... slag."
"Yeah."
Her face and arms were cool to the point of chilled, hair prickling in goosebumps. Light pressed against her closed eyelids in a torrent of orange and red. The air smelled of oil and metal and ozone, foreign and unsettling, and she lay on something uneven and vaguely soft. Her fist clenched around a handful of scratchy, bumpy material.
With a jolt, she realized that her ears were ringing, and her eyes blinked open. Blazing white light assaulted her retinas with fury matched only by the sun itself, and a pained hiss puffed past her teeth as she jerked away, squeezing her eyes closed.
Oww...
"I said hold still. Primus help me, I will bolt you to the table."
"Thought I heard somethin'."
The persistent clinks and hisses that had been perpetual background noise slowed and halted. "Far be it for me to doubt your magic audio-receptors."
Evelyn's eyes opened once more, this time with more caution, squinting against the force of the light overhead. The white and gray blur above her slowly resolved into a gray ceiling dotted with huge, blazing bright lights. She blinked away the pained tears gathering in her eyes and raised one hand cautiously, shielding her face from the glare.
"Ah-hah." A flurry of mechanical sounds, hums and whines and creaks, mixed with loud boom boom noises that shook the surface upon which she lay, and the light was abruptly cut off as something loomed over her. "About time."
Glowing blue eyes narrowed in a shadowed face, a V-shaped something on its forehead giving the alarming impression of horns. "Good to know we didn't deactivate you, but don't do that again. Do you have any idea what it takes to support organic life?"
An odd little sound, akin to a hiccup, caught in Evelyn's throat as she stared up at the unfamiliar giant, and she froze, one arm still poised to shade her eyes.
Oh, God.
The second voice drifted over from somewhere beyond her field of vision. "Maybe it ain't online yet."
The V-topped head tilted slightly to look toward the other voice. "The hold still is still in effect. Lie down."
"Yessir."
One large red finger swept in from the side, gently nudging at her upheld arm, and the world blurred in a kaleidoscope of red metal and white light and gray everything as she scrambled gracelessly away in a humorless parody of that night in the parking lot with the red-eyed giant. Her back and shoulders slammed into something cold and hard, halting her escape, and her breath escaped in an incredulous squeak.
Like most children, she had found her fair share of orphaned kittens and injured wildlife to bring home to her parents, and like most parents, hers had settled the waifs in towel-lined cardboard boxes until, one way or another, they were ready to move on.
I hate irony.
She was in a box, a shallow metal box, with some sort of thick, coarsely woven fabric lining the bottom. The room was cavernously huge, and the box sat on one of several house-sized tables lined side-by-side, shelves all around, alien equipment dangling from the ceilings and lining the walls. A second robot lay on the next table over, white and black and looking on in interest.
The V-bearing robot squinted down at her with a look of bemusement bordering on irritation, but his attention was diverted as one of the wall panels on the far side of the room slid aside, admitting three more robots with a chorus of thunderous steps. The tallest, blue and red, was flanked by two shorter robots, one large and red, the other white with black accents, two panels showing over his shoulders like stumpy wings.
"Quite a few mechs have been waiting to talk to you," said the red and white robot with a glance down at her. He nodded at the newcomers. "Prime. Prowl. Ironhide."
"Thank you for the call," said the tallest of the trio.
"H'ain't never hearda' nothin' like this before, Prahm," grumbled the large, red robot. The broad accent smeared the being's vowels and consonants sloppily, and Evelyn shivered at the similarity to accents of the deep South.
"We'll see." A blue and red robot, the lower half of its face obscured by some sort of mask, drew closer to Evelyn's box, flanked by his two companions, and with each step, the robot grew taller... and taller... and taller...
"Mirage had quite a story to tell." Blue eyes peered down at her curiously. The being's voice was deeply resonant and strangely mellow. "He tells me that you claim to be an Autobot, and you call yourself Sideswipe. You can understand my doubts, I'm certain."
There was a long moment of silence while glowing blue eyes examined her dirt-smeared frame.
"I..." She wet her lips and swallowed. Her ribs seemed to vibrate from the force of her racing heart. Red faces stared sternly at her from four chests. "I... I'm n-not."
Four sets of blue eyes narrowed, and the red and blue robot asked, "You're not... an Autobot?"
The white and black robot spoke up, voice quiet, each word formed clearly and precisely. "Our records confirm that Sideswipe was an Autobot soldier."
"I'm not Sideswipe," she said quietly, voice cracking, hands clenching and unclenching in the rough fabric beneath her, the side of the box a strangely reassuring pressure against her shoulders. "I'm not."
The blue and red robot tilted its head. "Why would you say you were?"
"I didn't." She swallowed, peering up at the assembly of giants and feeling as though they grew even taller as she looked at them. Evelyn couldn't do anything more than shake her head. Her tongue seemed to be three times its normal size, breath rasping in her throat.
"Mirage wouldn't lie," said the boxy red robot with a glare that made Evelyn want to curl in on herself and hide, and the winged robot's expression, while not hostile, was not friendly at all, and without being able to see his face, she was at a loss to judge the tallest robot's mood. She looked toward the fourth giant.
The red and white robot crossed his arms over his chest, tilting his head and gazing down at her with a put-upon expression so reminiscent of Jamie that Evelyn could not help but giggle, the noise echoingly absurdly in the open room. The towering red and blue robot and the stumpy-winged robot exchanged glances, and there was a general chorus of uncertain shufflings and shiftings. She clapped one hand over her mouth to muffle the noise, her stomach churning and head pounding, but the laughter took on a hysterical tinge, and suddenly there was hot liquid dripping down her cheeks and trickling over the back of her hand.
"I-I'm go-going to k-k-kill him," she hiccupped, swiping at the tears with one hand as the other clenched around a handful of the coarse fabric of the 'nest'. "I t-told him no. I didn't w-want to... g-g-go. I'm going to m-m-murder that... th-that... s-stupid, selfish b-b-bastard."
The red and white robot's mildly irritated expression had morphed into darkly irate, and he sent a narrow glance at the large red and blue robot. "All right," he growled, "everyone out! That means everyone, Prime. You too, Jazz."
On the next table over, the black and white robot sat up. "But what about—"
"For Primus' sake, I was down to cosmetic work anyway. Go see Grapple and Hoist. The rest of you, scat!"
The white and red robot, easily one of the smaller robots in the room, herded and shoved and grumbled and snarled as he pressed the gathering toward the doorway. With one final push between the large red robot's shoulders, he hit a panel beside the doorway, and two gleaming metal doors slid obediently into place.
Evelyn drew in a shaky breath, scrubbing at her moist cheeks, but one glance at the gigantic metal tables and the alien instruments laid out neatly on a shelf prompted new tears.
Loud, metal footsteps vibrated the floor, and something large and white loomed over the table.
"All right." There was a long moment of silence, broken only by Evelyn's snuffling and the inner whirring, humming workings of the robot. "Obviously, a lot of our assumptions were wrong."
Evelyn resisted the urge to snort. Really?
Oh, God. Please, please, just go away.
"I don't know what to do for you. Is this normal for your species? Are you malfunctioning?"
Hah.
"N-not a malfunction." She swallowed thickly. "I am upset. I c-cry when I'm upset. Please, just leave."
The robot made an odd-sounding rumble, and one large red hand appeared on the table beside the 'nest' with a klang, startling Evelyn into looking up at the giant. "You're new. I'll give you some leeway, but let's have introductions."
Evelyn stared up at the silver face, topped with the severe black V that merely accented the robot's glare.
"Call me Ratchet. I'm the Chief Medical Officer of this unit. This—" He tilted his head to indicate the expansive room around them. "—is the medbay. My medbay, to be precise." He bent slightly, bringing his face closer to her level. "Don't order me around in my medbay. Clear?"
Stricken dumb in sheer surprise, Evelyn nodded.
"Good." In an abrupt about-face, the robot quirked his lips in the smallest of smiles. "Now, what should I call you?"
"Ah..." She blinked. Her voice was scratchy when she replied, meekly, "Evelyn."
"Evelyn. Interesting name. Now, Evelyn, I understand your species is from the third planet of a system that we know as zeta-4897. What would you call it?"
"... E-Earth. Th-the planet's name is Earth." She hesitated, but the robot regarded her with no hint of impatience, and she added, "The system... It's normally just called the solar system, but I think the real name is Sol. The galaxy is the Milky Way... if that counts for anything."
"Earth, Sol, and Milky Way." The robot's eyes flickered the way the blue and white robot's had back in the woods. "And what would you call your species?"
"Humans. Homo sapiens."
"And does your species trade genetic material to reproduce?"
"I—W-what does that have to do with anything?"
"To classify you. Organic species come in several kinds," said the robot. "One: asexual. Easy. Call anyone a him and you're prime. Two: bisexual. Relatively easy, once you figure out the distinguishing traits, not that different from mechs and femmes, though that's a different bucket of bolts altogether. Three: tri- and quadri-sexual and up, and that's when things get difficult, hims, hers, shims, heems... Enough to put a kink in anyone's cortex. Now, which are you?"
Her face felt oddly warm. "We're... I... The second one. Male and female. Hims and shes... hers. I don't—"
"And you are a...?"
"Female. A woman. A she."
"Good. That wasn't difficult, was it? Now, you need to tell me if anything feels wrong... temperature, pressure, anything. My job is to keep you online and in working order, understand?"
Alive and healthy, she translated absently with a nod.
The robot considered her for a long moment. "You obviously have quite a story to tell."
This time, she did snort.
"Quite a story," repeated the robot, eyes narrowed. "We were operating under the assumption that you were familiar with Autobots, and you aren't, are you?"
Her shoulders twitched in an aborted shrug. "A... little."
"How little?"
Evelyn met the giant's gaze, and with an 'eat the poison, eat the plate' attitude, she told him.
Everything.
At the end of her tale, the red and white robot bore an expression reminiscent of a thundercloud about to unleash holy fury. There was a long moment where the robot stood silently and Evelyn plucked absently at the dried mud caking her shirt and jeans.
"First," said the robot, "I would like to tell you that we have extremely specific laws about first contact and the protection of new cultures. This shouldn't have happened."
Evelyn nodded.
"Second: you mentioned that Sunstreaker knew the location of Sideswipe's body?"
"Yes."
"I'll have Ironhide question him about it. Hopefully he managed to bring it from your planet somehow." His eyes dimmed and flickered in that modem-like way. "If not, you're in for quite a wait until the Decepticons clear this sector."
Evelyn's heart gave an odd little skip before plummeting into her stomach. There's no way he could carry something like that with him.
"But for now, we need to see to you."
Evelyn blinked. "'See to me'?" she asked warily.
"Atmosphere is just the beginning," said the robot. "Sustenance, shelter, social needs... Organics have a lot of requirements. Lucky for you, we have someone on board who enjoys challenges."
The door hissed open once more, startling Evelyn badly. Yet another strange robot entered, this one mostly white with strange rounded projections mounted on either side of his head.
"You called?" asked the newcomer. The 'ears' flashed in synch with the words.
The white and red robot made the introductions. "Evelyn, this is Wheeljack, our resident engineer and inventor. Wheeljack, this is Evelyn, a human femme that arrived with Mirage. Our new project."
"Human?" The new robot stared down at Evelyn even as she stared at the cheerily blinking lights mounted on either side of his head. "Fascinating."
Took the words right out of my mouth.
End Chapter Ten